"Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer."
— Revelations 6:1-2
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The invaders had arrived in orbit four days hence, Radiant Prince Marduk Nar Rakasa IV recalled wonderingly as he brought a goblet of gold to his lips again. The wine within was bitter and scarlet, ringed by thin ochre at its edges where brilliant gold showed through. He swirled the cup again in his left hand, watching as the ruby-red liquid danced with reflected torchlight.
They had smote the bare flotilla in orbit and slaughtered its skeleton crew in short order, making landfall on the dawn of the second day, seizing Nergal's spaceports with mercilessly coordinated orbital bombardment and wave after wave of alabaster-armored warriors. Marduk pulled a long draught from the cup again, beckoning for a bare-breasted serving girl to approach and pour him another.
She did without hesitation, gods bless her loyalty, even if there was a hitch to her step - a shake to her hands as she poured. He was tempted to have her, having sent his harem to safety a day ago.
There was no time, not at the rate these demons made war - no time, not even for making love. Prince Marduk waved her away, bright jewels and precious metals glinting from his many-ringed hand. She bowed low repeatedly, shaved head bobbing until she had retreated all the way across his audience chamber: past columns of black opal and statues of silvered skin and sapphire eyes.
The third had seen them pressing in hungrily, like wolves baying at the smell of fear and taste of blood. In all his years, Prince Marduk had never seen warriors so ferocious - nor a campaign so effortless. His men had been tossed aside, at the plains of Hermunz. Even the Holy Temple of Gorum had disappeared beneath their advance silently, without so much as a moment of respite for its blood-crazed chaplains to howl in anguish... Despite the steel of their faith and their vaunted martial skill. Their march was unyielding. Like a pitiless machine, grinding and destroying at a deliberate but alarmingly hastened pace.
Did they not sleep? These men of ivory? Had their twice-damned three-headed god stolen their souls too? The Prince ran a hand over his curled beard, rolled into perfect ringlets much as the hair atop his head had been: dangling ornaments of gold and opal at the nape of his neck. A crown of silver ran above them, across his forehead, studded with precious black stones.
Outside, Marduk was certain, he could hear screams.
Let them gnash their teeth now if they must, it is too late for sorrow, he knew.
This was the fourth day, and now these barbarians overran Irybae itself: capitol of planet Nergal and his dominion, home to the Garnet Palace of Eternal House Marduk. Perched atop the Ziggurat of A-Thousand-And-One Steps.
His chamber sat exposed to the skyline of Irybae, its darkening horizon lit with fire as the war raged at his doorstep. Smoke rose in twisting columns, plumes of scarlet erupting from shattered spires as manmade thunder roared, rolling ever closer. A fighter met his end in the sky above, wings clipped as his fuselage caught fire and split from his craft's wing - two trails of bright flame tracing their way toward the obsidian spires and ziggurats of Irybae below. Radiant Prince Marduk Nar Rakasa lifted his goblet and drank to the brave man's memory.
And then, over the precipice of his Palace's uppermost steps, the sound of barked orders and the shrill scream of laser rifles as they sounded their victims' death knells. Marduk would have a better dirge than that, he thought, as the dozen Bloodguard ringing his chamber readied their wickedly curved blades and laser pistols anxiously. The skirmish below seemed short-lived: silence fell in moments, and the Radiant Prince leaned forward curiously on his throne of carved onyx... Violet robe swishing and golden chains jingling at the movement.
Then they came, cresting over the rise: men in alabaster-armor with sickly-hued eyelets the yellow of a feral hound's eyes. Scarlet wings painted on their ivory shoulders, golden flightpacks in the shape of angelic wings behind. A few stepped over the uppermost step, under a hail of azure laser fire from the dozen men of Prince Marduk's honorguard. One of the marble-skinned demons fell, tumbling backwards like a ragdoll from the Prince's heavenly domain... down A-Thousand-And-One steps... But they returned lancing rays of red, and more yet came from the sides, rocketing upward and falling among them with their flightpacks of gold - trailing jetwash as they fell like a storm, sewing death amongst Marduk's faithful with blade and rifle.
The Prince's men were capable. They were brave. They were loyal... and they died, like dogs. These demons fought unlike men: their sinews trained to war and chaos with a proclivity no sane mortal should ever know. Vagrek, his most competent guard and a foreigner with skin like snow from the Aesgar homeworld, rallied to his side: drawing a scimitar of silvered-steel, as much a thing of ceremony as battle. Marduk held a bejeweled hand to hold him back, noticing that the white wolves had not closed in for the kill.
Off to the side, one crouched over a squirming bloodguard, slamming his ringlet-curled head into the ziggurat's stone as gold-banded arms flailed... then went still. Still, they did not press in.
Then,
he came.
A figure crested the Ziggurat's Thousand-And-First step, though he could not have known him, if not for the other demons' reactions. They ceased their struggles, dropping weapons to their side, and fell to one knee reverently. Each traced two lines across their foreheads, in the shape of a "t", murmuring a single word that the Radiant Prince did not know:
"Apollyon".
This
Apollyon was bedecked in bleached armor too - like the rest. A single blood-red stripe ran the course of his helmet, from the brow of his eyelets to the back of his skull, ringed by a filigreed wreath of olive leaves painted across his helm. White metal clasps - polished like pearls, held a scarlet cloak to his shoulder: one that covered the right side of his body, but trailed to nothingness between his golden flightpack and his ivory back. Instead of the frenzied yellow of his minions, his visor glowed an unearthly blue: bright like distant starfire. He was tall, but no taller than the rest of these infernal invaders.
There was another man at his side, similar in appearance but for the lack of a painted wreath. Both carried vibroblades at their sides, in white sheaths the color of their armor.
Vagrek roared, launching unexpectedly from his side with his curved blade of silvered-steel in hand. The
"Apollyon" did not slow his step, nor move to defend himself: the man at his side, instead, leapt into action. Drawing his own blade, he interceded between his master and Vagrek. Sword meeting sabre, as the two dashed their steel against eachother. Vagrek was the second finest swordsman on all of Nergal, inferior only to himself Prince Marduk knew, but as he watched the demon out-maneuvered him: stepping in close, and sliding his steel up and over Vagrek's own, vibroblade grinding against metal as it swung low to cut an arc of splattering scarlet across Vagrek's gut.
For a moment, Vagrek teetered sword in arm, til he fell with the others. The other demons muttered a few unknowable words in a dozen upon a dozen voices made one, while making the sign of the "t" across their foreheads again as they remained knelt. The Apollyon's second cleaned his blade off on Vagrek's resplendent spider silk-woven armor.
Meanwhile their leader, the one with the haunting ghostlight in his eyes and the ring of gold round his head, had stopped a few feet before the Radiant Prince's onyx throne. Behind him, fire laced the skyline of Irybae: sparks dancing and swirling around ashen columns of smoke risen heavenward. The gunfire though had gone suspiciously quiet. This Apollyon said nothing, white-clad fingers of composite metal hanging motionless at his side as he looked to the seated Prince. He made no move to finish what his men had begun.
The Radiant Prince flashed a knowing smile, seeing now an escape from joining Vagrek and the others in death. He downed the remnant wine in his cup - the dregs, and little more, and stood from his throne to stand before the Apollyon. Only then did he realize how massive this man was: and all the others with him. A full head and a half above what a man ought to be, in the Prince's mind. Swallowing back his fear, Prince Marduk drew his own curved sword: a scimitar like Vagrek's, its edge forged from the bones of star's heart... And he took it by its blade, directing its handle toward the silent statue of a warrior to his fore.
The Apollyon did not move. He did not speak.
"I yield the planet, Nergal is yours, by right of conquest." The Radiant Prince professed with growing confidence.
"I and my line will swear allegiance to you and your god, as we did to the Aesgar. We were theirs. Now we are yours." Marduk promised, bowing his head low expectantly, his voice reverent.
No words.
The Radiant Prince looked up questioningly, to his conqueror's unknowable alabaster mask. Then, in hushed words that came across his lips on the back of growing fear and rising bile, he asked:
"Do you accept my surrender?"
"NO." Came the answer, loud as a trumpet and piercing as a dagger - spreading terror and reckless anger through Prince Marduk's heart.
How dare this barbarian? This infidel!? To reject the service and faith of one so beloved of the heavens? His House had stood millennia beyond count - since the Old Fathers raised this Ziggurat from the midnight seas of Nargel. He was eternal! A god, in blood!... And he would not die at the hands of some twice-damned zealot...
Prince Marduk turned his blade over, taking its handle in both hands - then raised it in front of his face, in preparation to defend himself. The demon did not reach for his own blade.
"Then we fight as men!.. And when I have dashed your broken body upon the Garnet Palace's steps your -" He stopped, voice shocked, as the Apollyon's hand snapped up with bizarre alacrity for a man so big: ivory fingers wrapped around his blade. Marduk attempted to pull it free, tried to wrench it loose, twisting and turning... But it was no good. This devil was
too strong.
"NO." He spoke again, that accursed word.
A single bead of red ran down the Apollyon's wrist, forging a trail where followed a streamlet of the same: a thin red line. The demon's other white hand strayed to his waist, and the sheath hanging there, drawing a dazzling vibroblade worked with inlaid inscription. Marduk had little time to appreciate it, however, as it ripped upward from its sheath - humming as its keen edge arced through the Prince's wrist, severing it from his arm.
Pain. So much pain. It hurts, hurts, HURTSHURTS SO BAD! My hand, where's my hand, give me back my hand! Put it back! PUT IT BACK! His mind screamed, or perhaps his tongue did, Marduk couldn't tell. He writhed, fingers grasping his ringlet hair and dragging him forcefully on his knees across the bloodied floor of his palace - past Vagrek and a dozen other corpses, grey lifeless eyes cursing the Radiant Prince as he screamed, kicked, and whimpered. Trailing behind a thick red line. He felt the wind, as the Apollyon dragged him to the precipice of the steps and shoved his face down over the edge - looking down, to a white roaring sea with raging golden eyes. The banners of his house put to the torch behind him, replaced in the city streets by ivory standards bearing a golden "t".
Above, engines roared, and the demons' warlord shouted in a strange and ugly tongue. Then, Prince Marduk felt a cold line of steel on his outstretched neck: and he screamed. For mercy, for his mother, for anything.
He knew so many things. So many useful secrets! Spare me! Spare me, I will tell you anything! Everything! The words came out in a blubbering mess as the steel left his skin, the hair on his back standing on edge as he cried to the gods above for mercy and heard only the roaring din of applause.
And then there was pain again. For only a moment. Then Marduk was falling, falling down the stairs with his body tumbling behind him, though he felt so light as his eyes closed to darkness. Like a feather.
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This message was last edited by the player at 03:09, Sun 27 July 2014.