The Mercenaries

[Srgt. Master]

awsome!!!!

*in a possesed voice* [glow=red,2,300]NOW GIVE ME MOOOOORE!!!!!!!!!!!![/glow] no one heard that...

[Rolling Thunder]

Drang screamed as the force halbeard tore across his chest, tearing a hideous, smooth red line across his torso, before he ducked and rolled away, the actnic roar of his shock maul sending a familiar, evil thrill down his spine.

The enemy paused, before leaping at Drang, swinging the blade around in a vicious arc intended to tear out his entrails. Drang sneered and stepped inside the armoured figure's guard, the helmeted head snapping up in cold, brutal realisation before Drang's elbow smashed into his face, blood and shattered bone exploding inside the tight confines of powered armour as the inquisitor's nose shattered under the impact.

Drang lingered to watch his foe drop, the wet, final thump of metal into mud provoking another familiar, malevolent surge of pleasure even as he whipped round, bringing his mace around in a lethal, whistling arc to shatter the carapace armour of a sword-wielding killer, shattering bone and flesh into unrecognisable pulp despite the ornate, beautiful armour and heroic courage.


'For the Dark Gods!' he howled, charging headlong into a rank of terrified stormtroopers. Supremely disciplined, they leveled their weapons, as one tracking the terrifying blur that-

Smashed aside their bodies like toys, three men sent hurtling through the air already limp and bloody even as Drang lashed out, laughing with psychotic, animal glee as he wrought death and destruction amidst the inquisition's footmen. A knife blade slashed passed his chest, tearing another incarindane line across his flesh, before his armoured fist shattered the man's jaw into a thousand fragments, an inarticulate scream muffled in his ruined face as he dropped to the earth. Another, a sergeant by his looks, swung a blazing powersword at him. Drang smashed his blow aside with contemptuous ease, before seizing the hapless figure and pulling him close, savouring his incoherent, mindless terror, watching beautiful, hazel-brown eyes contract in fear before slamming wide open, Drang's knife ramming into the man's groin. He dropped the sergeant, the man screaming as his lifeblood spurted and leaked out through his fingers.


Inured to pain, and mad with frenzy, Drang tore his fellow humans apart with sadistic abandon, dealing out the pains of his life, the injustices, the self-loathing and the fear onto the soldiers. How ironic, he thought, that the same fears and pain the inquisition had used to turn Kamenev Drang, a normal young man, into a bloodthirsty, murderous killer. And how delightfully, bitterly ironic, that this depraved monstrosity they had sought for their own power was now the cruel, nightmarish figure that shattered bones and rended flesh.


Drang finished disposing of the last stormtrooper, watching his body thrash and writhe as the acid of an inferno round ate into his body, dissolving flesh and incinerating nerve endings as one hapless, agonised one man watched another cavort in pain.


And he laughed, a howling, booming noise that tore across the entire battlefield, a horrific capahocany that roared of death, savage, cruel and utterly implacable.

'Oh, he breathed. ' That we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor!" he cried, malevolent delight in the sheer, peverse, cruel irony of life.


'Sturm und Drang!'

[Count Elakor]

"Another, a sergeant by his looks, swung a blazing powersword at him. Drang smashed his blow aside with contemptuous ease, before seizing the hapless figure and pulling him close, savouring his incoherent, mindless terror, watching beautiful, hazel-brown eyes contract in fear before slamming wide open, Drang's knife ramming into the man's groin"

"Drang tore his fellow humans apart "

this is madness, not only is Drang a psyko, but he is a super psyko, make him les godlike more human. even drang would have some problems with a sergant with a powersword, you wrote it like Drang was bathing a fly

[Ymmot (M.I.A)]

I think most of us have gradually come to accept that Drang is an unstoppable god of death and pee in your pants terror, I've started to appriciate all of the lesser chacters much more and find their stuggles all the more interesting because I no longer worry so much about how Drang can kill countless powerful opponenets without even breaking a sweat.

that being said, bring on the lesser chacters!
like the lowly traitor guardsmen and Drang's goonies and what nots.

[Rolling Thunder]

With a hollow, booming thud, a heavy mortar round slammed into the black earth of a crater wall twelve feet from Drang, the impact spewing filthy, bloody mud high into the air. Drang looked up from his position, his face smeared in the same thick, glutinous mix of earth and human flesh, as, instead of exploding, the bomblet began to hiss violently. Smoke billowed up from the shell, filling the air with foul, murky gloom. As more rounds landed amongst the empty space of no-mans land, the wafting darkness writhed and swirled above the scorched earth, and a cloak of unnatural darkness fell over the world.


'"And out went the candle, and we were left in darkling"' Drang murmured to himself, the horrible familiarity of the darkness sweeping down into his mind and dredging up a name.


Inquisitor Volke.

Covered from his boots to his neck in filth and dried gore, Drang stood. All around him, grey smoke circled like the vengeful hounds of the Emperor. Noise echoed behind him, and he spun. Out of the smoke loomed a figure, slender and lethal in her movements. He recognised her even as the bolt pistol left it's holster and whistled through the air, even her's swept up and leveled at his forehead. Reflex brought the weapon this far, but even as the impulse to squeeze the trigger began, the sheer, it crashed headlong into an insurmountable, glacial prescence. The vital spark stayed unshorted, and even the chemical frenzy sputtered and died as it demanded actions so utterly alien to Drang, so repulsive and unnatrual, it was physically impossible.

He looked over the sight of the gun, into sapphire-blue eyes he knew so well.

'Did I ever tell you,' Drang whispered to Emir 'that I love you'.

Bringing the cold metal up,he leant forward, and kissed her.

[Srgt. Master]

thats.....it?!

thats a teaser!!!!!
NEED...MORE.... *TURNS INTO HULK AND GOES ON RAMPAGE!!!*

IT IS VERY NICE THOUGH, GOOD WORK!

[Rolling Thunder]

Sorry about that; if you look at the time of posting, you'll realise that I had to go to bed, and I didn't want to lose my good work.

[Srgt. Master]

for me, it says 1:05 PM................... i wanna have the book...

[Count Elakor]

remember timesones.
just make the story work, evolve and move on.
JUST POST MORE CHAPTERS FOR ME
also please update that other story of yours

[Rolling Thunder]

How long it lasted, none can know. For Drang and Emir, it was a lifetime's peace and painful tenderness stolen for a few, brief seconds from the jaws of War himself. Viconia and Diego, watching through the cool gaze of a scope, would have sworn it was a minute of beauty more potent than all the miserable barbarity surrounding it. Kasson said it was two people's prelude to more interesting things, but nobody paid any attention to the dog-like sergeant unless he was shouting.

The rest of the mercenaries said nothing, or at least nothing that could be heard over their madcap, raucous cheering as they flooded into the deppression, slapping their leader on the back and howling with the sheer, joyous relief of it all. Relief at having found him, at knowing that now, now, there would be direction, and order, and that the dead and the hurt would have the solace of a purpose.

Drang broke the kiss first, pulling back to lose himself in those wonderful eyes, now liquid with tears that streaked away the dirt.

Emir smiled again, not the pained, half-grimace but a genuine, small smile that lit her features better that the stars.

As they held each other, the mercenaries formed a strange, disorderly system as men took it in turns to picket the battle until each had congratulated their leader, before peeling off to watch the horizon. Kasson moved amongst them, dealing out curses and kicks with his usual merciless abandon even as Von Luckner strode through the heavy mob to slap Drang on the shoulder and speak:

'Damn it Kam, I never thought I'd say this, but I am glad to see you' said the old Mordian.

'Thanks Siegfried' murmured Drang, his voice somewhat muffled as he and Emir clung to one another.

Von Luckner smiled, and turned away to organise the defence even as the slow bombardment petered out, unnoticed.

'You did' whispered Emir, the words so soft that you couldn't hear the rasping from the scar tissue.

Drang made a quizzical noise a few inches from her ear, unwilling to sacrifice even a few moments of closeness.

'You told me you loved me'


There are some moment so beautiful they are simply beyond expression. Some emotions that can't be named beyond a certainty that despite the fear, despite the pain, despite nursing someone through nightmares and terror, despite watching love glut itself on death until the heart should tear and break, despite all the blood and hell and madness the universe can dredge up, despite it all, that you know that life is beautiful.


At this moment, the world tore, and burned.

[The Refined Gentleman (M.I.A)]

God this is good! You should get into a writing career!

[Srgt. Master]

so....*sniff*...beautiful....*sniff sniff*

[Rolling Thunder]

The sky seemed to crack. Shellfire exploded across the broken land, fire and destruction tearing into earth, flesh and bone alike as the wrath of the Emperor spoke.

Drang clutched at Emir, holding her quivering, slight form into him while the blind fury erupted about them. Shrapnel tore his back, rivulets of hot blood running down his flesh and over Emir's hands as he tried to shield her.

Don't want to let you go, he spoke into the quiet space between their minds.

Don't she replied.

Drang sent out a unvoiced query into her mind, and tasted a strange bitterness in the space between. Before he could probe further, Emir's presence swept it away, suffocating that terrible, foreboding emotion in a single instant of panicked reflex.

Just hold me a little longer was the only reply. Just a little longer, please he heard, feeling the same, strange calmness he had sensed a moment before in her desperate plea.

His only response was to hold her closer, the two figures holding one another so tightly it bordered on physical pain.

How long the embrace held is irrelevant. Certainly, it was enough time for the blasts to tear Drang's back into shreds, soaking the wool of his greatcoat with blood, though he felt little of the pain. Certainly, it was enough to tax Emir's shield around them, for when Drang felt her gently move away and look up at him, her face was drawn with exhaustion, sweat smearing the grime on her forehead.

Emir smiled again, a small, half-grimace that tore the heart of the tall, dark haired figure she stared up at, the subtle, beautiful grey of his eyes. His expression shifted, and for a moment fear tore at Emir's soul, fear that the elegant, kind lines were going to reshape themselves into that terrible, inhuman visage. But the vital spark stayed unshorted, and those cool, smiling eyes asked the question the voice did not.

'Kiss me' she whispered, her voice breaking with emotion.

Drang's eyes, those warm, cloud grey eyes, widened a little. A precious second passed, before he swept down, slowly, tenderly to-

Kiss lips not there, as Sergeant-Major Dirk Kasson slammed his elbow into the side of Emir's skull, knocking her off balance. His gauntleted fist hammered into Drang's sternum, knocking the wind out of him as he grabbed the slight psychic and threw her to the floor. Shock lent him a few moments, before the world around them exploded in gout of flame. The blast hit him like the fist of the gods, cracking two of his ribs and sucking the air from his lungs as the inferno erupted over their heads.

Kasson rolled, expecting to see his commander descend on him mad with killing frenzy, to shatter bones and draw blood before he could explain himself. Instead, it was Emir's fist that came down like the wrath of the mad gods, his nose breaking with a sickening crack of cartilage on bone. His howl of pain was cut off as Emir slammed her fist into his mouth, clipping the top of one of his teeth and snapping it in half.

He grabbed for her hands, for he knew full well what she could do to him if she lost what restraint was left, and her psychic powers unleashed.

'You bastard!' she screamed. 'You stupid, grovelling blunt bastard!'

Kasson snapped, and unleashed a hammer-like blow that smashed into her jaw line. He felt something break under his fist, and Emir fell back onto the earth.

He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the horrible witchcraft he knew was coming, every nerve screaming in terror as he cringed away from the psychic apocalypse about to erupt.

But it did not. Instead, through his terror, he heard something far worse. Sobs. Quiet, gasping little sobs of someone in so much pain that she lay on the floor, curled in a ball in the cold mud as she cried. Brief, horrible shudders ran up and down her body like convulsive lightning even as her sobbing tore at his heart. Emir lay there, her weeping unable to express the full, venomous horror that lay in her heart.

Kasson crawled to her side, sympathetic tears wetting his cheeks as he felt his heart would burst from the pain he had somehow caused, watching Emir's cheekbone reshape itself under a faint corona of psychic energy. The healing completed itself, but the knife's edge never dropped from her tears that rolled from blank, terrified eyes.

'Sssh' he whispered, afraid to touch her for fear of exacerbating the nightmarish, life-draining sorrow that engulfed her. 'Sssssh' he repeated, screwing his courage up and placing a tentative hand on her muddy, tattered long hair.

Her sobbing continued, as if she were trying to weep her life's essence out into the lifeless mud she lay in. Finally, Kasson gathered her up in his arms and held her, an act of absolute desperation as he tried hold back the grief that cut like a razor's blade. Swallowing his revulsion, he tried to comfort the witch as she wept her misery-sodden heart out.

Finally, the sobs quietened, and Emir disengaged from his arms like she had done from Drang's not so long ago, sitting back on her knees as if praying to a god-Emperor long forsaken. She looked into his eyes, seeing the confusion and fear sitting just below the surface of his mind. He looked back, into beautiful sapphire stars ringed with blood and nearly mad with the awful, acid sadness in her mind. A brief moment, and Kasson looked away, his distrust of psychics overcoming the sympathy he felt.

'I'm sorry Dirk' she began, keeping her voice even despite the hot, nauseating pain sitting in the pit of her stomach 'but you don't understand what you've done. You don't understand' she repeated, and the rest was strangled as she broke down, sobbing helplessly. Kasson could only look on helplessly, his own fear holding him prisoner, unable to leave, but incapable of helping.

When Emir recovered again, he spoke.

'I'll admit, I don't understand. I don't understand why you and him were standing around like that, like you couldn't see the bombs. Like you didn't care anymore. Like you-' he paused, voice swallowing itself as he gathered up his bravado once again. 'Like you were trying to die.'

Emir looked at him, and slowly, a smile spread over her face. A smile so cold, and pained that it took Kasson's breath away. The smile widened, and Emir threw her head back and laughed- mad, terrible laughter that tore at the storm clouds overhead, ripping the air into pieces from the sheer agony it held. Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks, two, brilliant lines of white against the filth covering her face. Kasson sat there, frozen as he realised how close Emir was to total, abject insanity.

Slowly, her laughter died, it's cold, ringing tones dying like the bombardment, slowing to a stop with the same, terrible slowness as a glacier buries a mountain. Her head came back down, and Kasson gasped again at the blind, hellish fury in her eyes. As cold and inhuman as the depths of space, two sapphire orbs that burned with barely contained power.

'Quite right Sergeant. That was not deluded romance, nor was it fear. At least, not as you would think it.'

'That was out last chance to die together.'

[The Refined Gentleman (M.I.A)]

I can't describe this. Just superb! Nothing more i can say!



I've updated my own story by the way. I'd like more people to comment please.

[Srgt. Master]

Emir.....so....powerful....wow......thats......FRAGGING AWSOME!!!

Keep at it!This is what id read a hundred times and never bore!
(it has also gotten very good from your first Chapt.... Keep it up! ;D )

[Rolling Thunder]

With a kind of fascinated, peverse detachment, Viconia swept the battlefield from her lofty perch atop a ruined chapel spire, the twisted, blackened metal and shattered masonery clutching around her slight form like a iron fist thrust up into the sky. It was moments like this, she deceided, that made life so worthwhile; looking down on her friends and enemies alike in the manner of a god, invisible, but able to reach out and save, or end a life with the soft, slow click of a metal trigger. Idly, she brought the long, familiar muzzle of a sniper's weapon around to bear on the smoke haze lifting over the shallow deppression the rest of the mercenaries held, watching the murk clear as the smoke shells sputtered out. Eyes open and slightly out of focus, searching the lifting fog of war for a target, she let her conscious mind wander, and instinct unchain itself for the hunt.

Yes, only the Gods had a better view of this war, a cinema scope of human stupidity and barbarity laid over a broken landscape of craters, scorched earth and human bodies.

Viconia sighed ruefully, wondering at her own undoubtly unnatural fascination with the phenomena of conflict, cool satisfaction laid over a quiet, venomous guilt at that calm superiroity. A pacifist who watches men die, she thought, black, icy bitterness rushing over her as she took aim.

'V?' her earpiece crackled with the warm, rolling tones of her partner Diego, twelve metres below and three hundred to the right of her but whispering into her ear like her was hunched over her crouched form.

'I'm here' she said, luxuriantly drawing the words out like the cat-like stretch she couldn't enjoy, muscles humming in protest at the tautness forced upon them. The only reply was the small, grinding noise of armour plating softly rubbing against stone. She grinned, imagining Diego shifting in discomfort as her sultry tone took effect.

A brief silence followed, and Diego spoke again, his voice only slightly more strained than previously.

'Smoke's clearing.'

'I see. Looks like-hold on, I can see something' Viconia replied, pressing the cold metal of an optical sight against the soft, warm flesh of surrouding her eyes. Muted, indistinct flashes erupted in the smoke cloud, and, moments later, a booming roll like thunder swept over them, more force than noise in it's fury.

'Artillery fire' she said, tones suddenly crisp and edged with fear. 'Just off to your west, about-

'-I see it' was the reply, tension balancing on Diego's tongue like the edge of a razor.

Viconia watched, as the battlefield cleared to a sudden, terrible clarity with a grotesque, elegant sweep not even the devil himself could choreograph, the smoke disappearing into the ether and allowing her to watch the destruction unfold.

'Oh, hell' Diego snapped, his eyes watching Drang and Emir cling together in the unfolding firestorm.

'Kasson.'

'This is Kasson' barked the tones of the burly, thickset Kreigsman.

'The boss and the witch are trying to kill themselves. Just left of you-'

'Sh!t, what in the name of all that is holy are they playing at?'

'I do not know,' he growled, his nerves howling with confused painc 'but get them the hell out of there, or we are-'

'Shafted' interrputed Kasson.


Diego watched the blonde, close-cropped skull pull itself up from the burnt ground and race, trenchcoat flying out behind him to where the two figures stood. He watched, grimacing as Kasson knocked the slight Alpha-class psyker to the ground. He watched, helpless, as the shockwave of a mortar bomblet lifted Drang and hurled him away like a dead leaf in a hurricance.

And froze, as the last of the haze lifted.

[The Refined Gentleman (M.I.A)]

Still luvin it! I don't have any suggestions on improving. Great work!

[newcomer]

dang! i wish i checked out these stories ages ago! good work man!

[Count Elakor]

great, just great, perfectly great.
only thing is, if your trying to make whats hapening nex a suprise, you didnt make it

[Rolling Thunder]

Both eyes opened, and the man stared up at the sky. A nightmarish, twisting maelstrom of dead, black clouds wreathed in a inferno of lightning stared back at him. He smiled, watching the coruscating fury dance and burn above him with a detached sense of malevolent glee, as white fires of vengeful destruction cracked and thundered overhead.

How long he lay there, in comforting, warm numbness, he did not know. He knew he could not lie there for too long- how he knew that, he did not know- but the imperative to move cried out in the privacy of his head, growing into a singular caphocany that, eventually, compelled him to stand.

He stood, and his vision swam, his head spinning horribly at the dislocation of his senses. Colour drained from his vision, reducing the world to a strange, alien monochrome. Lights flashed in the distance around him, flickering, greyish flames lighting in the corner of his eye as he looked around him. No fear entered his mind, but rather, a strange, liquid calm that he tested, querying, and found to be not fear, but tense, irrational anticipation even as the muted thunder of explosions erupted around him.

Something called to him through the disordered haze of his thoughts. He turned, and saw a figure, clad in ornate, black power armour stride towards him. He cocked his head in confusion, unable to hear her words through the blanketing, soft layer he seemed to be immersed in.

The woman strode on, and, two steps from him, drew out her sword and slashed it across his ribcage, the ferocity cutting through flesh and grinding against bone.

The impact threw him through the air, landing with the audible crack of shattered ribs through his body. His cool, monochrome vision flickered, drained and died as the pain rushed in.

A second later, Kamenev Drang awoke.



Colours swept back in to his vision, the muted rumble of shellfire became an indescribable caphocany as his hearing returned to it's full, nascent power as adrenaline surged through his body, catalysing a series of potent, electrochemical reactions as the blades of indescribable agony scraped and burned along his nerve endings. The dull copper taste of blood mixed with the acid already risen from his throat. The stink of gore, powder and burnt flesh assailed his senses even as brilliant, incandescent rage exploded in his mind.

In a single, inhuman motion he exploded from the mud, his massive, gore-spattered figure sweeping up to seize the Inquisitoress by the throat in his right arm, his left seizing her right and idly snapping it. The blue-steel of the sword hit the ground with a soft, wet thump. Drang watched as her eyes warped and shifted in convulsions of agony, two soft, brown orbs locked onto the inky, daemonic black as his pupils dilated so grotesquely that all of his eyes were black.

Deranged laughter bubbled up in his throat as she thrashed in his grip, helpless. With a howl of triumph, he tossed her aside, her armoured body hitting the ground with the same wet thump as her blade. Ignoring her soft, agonised gasps, Drang reached down and lifted the strange, elegant blade from the ground. The muck and filth slid off it as he lifted, unable to gain a purchase of the slick, ethereal blue metal.

Malleus Malefactorum, he read.

Hammer of the witches.

Witch-Hunter's blade.

Witch-Hunter.



Oh gods, Emir! Terror exploded throughout his psyche like a fire through dead grass as he madly groped for the familiar connection in the back of his mind.

Nothing.

Desperately, he tried again. Nothing. That same, tender prescence that had sat on the edge of his thoughts for so long, so utterly central, integral and part of him, so familiar and so calming-

Gone.

Near-crazed with terror, Drang groped for reasons. It must be the witch-hunters. Yes, they're responsible for this- they're using something to block the connection, that must be it. Emir's not dead- she can't be dead, oh dear immortal bastard Emperor she can't be dead, not Emir, not Emir of all the people you've left me.

Wait, spoke the cold, deadly prescence from the rational core of his being. Emir was frightened of something.

Drang voiced silent agreement.

And she could sometimes see the future.It pointed out. What was she frightened of? Whatever it was, it was big enough for her to hide it from you.

So she foresaw her own....her own....damn it, no! Drang snarled, head snapping back and forth in incoherent denial. You think she saw her, that she saw her-

It fits.

Silence! Drang screamed inside the confines of his mind, the visions of his nightmares rising up and overwhelming him.

Something glinted on the floor. Cold, gleaming in the lights of the fires around, Drang lifted it up. A small, twisted piece of metal, at once so familiar, and so horrible, a few strands of raven-black hair still caught in it's clasp, and the wonderful scent of Emir mixed with the corrosive, sickening odour of blood, and death.


His knees wavered and buckled, gorge rising in his throat as he fought to hold off the implacable, unstoppable conviction that Emir was, was, was-

Dead.

The fragile defences ofhis mind crumpled like a gunshot victim under the onslaught. Greif swept over him, engulfing his consciousness in a wave of misery, pain and utter despair. Mad with the pain, he sought refuge in memory. But still the grotesque, inexpressible pain followed, wedging it's venomous blade into the cracks in his mind and calling up those memories he wished so desperately to forget. Those few, tender moments- brushing hair back from her face, a small, secret smile- the moments that are for the dark, painful times became so hateful to him, each one tearing at him with all the pain, and acid venom of true misery.

Unable to hold back any longer, he lifted his head to the madness overhead, and howled.

[Srgt. Master]

awsome....exept he killed my tame 'fex...........

I wish I could type like that, keep the greatness coming!

[Count Elakor]

pasing the zombie story, long past
just acept it, your a great writer.

[The Refined Gentleman (M.I.A)]

Keep it up mate! Still no phrases that could describe the awsomeness!

[3ff3ct]

Gripping stuff, you got style ;D

[Count Elakor]

now i havent seen annything on anny of the stories you are writing. its realy sad if you stop writing stuff here, your the best.
o and dont abort like commissar did on the zombie stuff, i dont wana shot you to for inability to do you duty