Chapter 547: 4th & 10

I stand upon the blood sands

and see them blown

through doors left open.

Ajar, broken. Shattered.

The forges, cold and dark,

their wrath and hate gone.

By the end of their makers,

ruined, depleted

And in these empty halls,

where once sang

anvils and hammers

of wrath and hate,

There do I see it,

a single ember yet glowing.

The wind blows.

The glow spreads.

To fresh tinder, laid ready

And in the pop and crackle

of flames lit anew

I hear the silence whisper:

Behold Humanity

-stanzas 37-42 from "The Sands of War" by Palvox, Telkan poet, as passed on by u/MuchoRed, Archivist of Second Precursor War Era Lore

Hesstla shuddered beneath the pounding of the guns. Atomic hammers went off, driving hate in the form of phasic 'enhancement charges' into the very soil. Particle bream, masers, lasers, entropic rays, anti-matter beams, sonic bursts, and much more tore into the ground, shredded the air, or reflected from the sky. Nanites fought an unyielding battle under the direction of an Elven High Queen against bioweapons from beyond space and time. Newly designed insane and Enraged warbois shrieked, gibbered, raved as they raced through Atrekna psionic computer systems. Kinetic kill weapons pounded the enemy, hammering the weapons of the Atrekna, and the Atrekna themselves, into wreckage and/or gobbets of dripping gore. Time itself shuddered and heaved, then was smoothed and soothed by Terran weaponry. At points people, much later, swore they saw the sun go black then reignite with a rage filled scream.

The Third Battle of Hesstla was in full rage when a Conclave of Atrekna moved through the forest, toward a short wide box-canyon midway up the slopes. The fighting had been going on for nearly fifteen hours, the Atrekna forced back step by step as the Confederate forces advanced with bloody boots and roaring weapons.

They had known of the building in the box canyon and the treasure within.

Over a hundred bright and shining points of intellect with the taste of youth that had already been spiced with terror and agony.

Behind the Atrekna moved war machines and bioweapons as the Atrekna headed up the mountain slopes. There was wreckage that the Atrekna paid no attention to. The screams of primate wrath still echoed off the rusting chassis, still audible to the Atrekna's senses. Shells of great slavespawn sat empty, the insides rotted away, the chitin still trembling with primate screams of all consuming fury. They were worthless the Atrekna, beyond the reach of their temporal mastery, now and forever more and eternally yesterday burnt by the howls of insane primates.

The Atrekna moved up steadily, through the mist that drifted through the forest. They neither knew nor cared what name the food gave to the larder ahead and so paid no attention to the sign they passed.

GENTLE HANDS ORPHANAGE

FILIAE FIDELIS DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH

o(╥﹏╥)o (✿ ♥‿♥) (●´ω｀●)

--------

It had been built after the First Battle for Hesstla. When the Precursor Autonomous War Machines had arrived, before the Terrans and the Unified Council had gone to war. So early that the PAWM thought one Goliath could take a system.

A trio of junkers had been in the system, trading, when the Goliath had arrived.

They had fought it for hours, days, as the Corporate Security and Executor Military forces had stayed in the high orbitals and watched the three junker ships beat back the subcontinent sized unliving starship again and again.

All three had been severely damaged, on the ropes, with the Goliath and its attendants closing in for the final blow even as their machines ripped through the Unified Council ships to land on the planet, when Task Force Ruby Saber had arrived.

Task Force Ruby Saber and the battered junkers had ripped the guts out of the Goliath and its attendants. They were joined by two other ships, full of crazed and howling savages that somehow were still able to function well enough to pilot starships.

The First Battle of Hesstla took nearly two months. A full 6% of the population of Hesstla was killed. It ended with a battle between the Executor Forces and Task Force Ruby Saber and a garrison being put on Hesstla.

The Orphange had been placed in the box canyon, the only green left on the side of the mountains. The rest naught but smoking rubble and charred forests. Children who could do nothing but scream, who flinched away from the slightest touch, were brought there in hopes that they could be healed.

The months passed, and the children were cared for. Many of them heavily medicated to the point they could barely walk, others just rocked back and forth, some just wept endlessly.

The Second Battle of Hesstla was not the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, but rather the arrival of the Atrekna themselves for the first time.

The fighting was brutal. Harsh. Intense.

It was estimated that nearly a million Terran Confederate Armed Forces soldiers and Marines died on Hesstla, and nearly a thousand Telkan Marines.

At the end, the box canyon was still green. Flowers still grew on the bushes.

But the mountain slopes had been scoured. Smouldering rubble and charred forests were all that was left.

And more children came to the box canyon to be healed. They were cared for, as best as modern medical and psychiatric therapies could.

There were some injuries that nothing but time could heal, and even then it was not guaranteed that the scarring would leave anything behind but pain and agony.

The Elven Queen sent her children to heal the mountainside. To return the trees, the plants, and purify the streams and creeks, to return the insects and the birds.

Time passed. Not long, but enough that some of the children began to relax, to feel as if they were safe again.

Then the Atrekna came again.

But the box canyon and the slopes of the mountain were ignored. No Atrekna, no autonomous war machine, no bioweapon came for the children.

But the fear had been there.

The Mother Superior had soothed the children, reminding them that they were protected.

And they had hoped, over the years, that perhaps this time war would not find them.

But the Atrekna knew they were there and had saved those tasty morsels like the delicacies they were. They had planned on harvesting them last, once the system was subjugated, and devour the tender morsels they had denied themselves.

Now, however, the Atrekna planned on harvesting them. Their pain and terror would push the autonomous war machines further. Their fear and hopelessness would galvanize the more lethal and vicious of the slavespawn.

Their agony would be delicious to the Atrekna.

And so, the Atrekna moved through the forest, dimly lit by the dawn, until they reached the road that wound its way up to the box canyon. They could feel when they were spotted. Taste the fear and alarm.

Behind their feeding tentacles their mouths filled with saliva at the anticipation.

They held their slavespawn and autonomous war machines back.

They wanted to savor it.

------------

In the middle of the short, wide box canyon, accessible only via a narrow gap in the high cliffs less than fifty meters wide, sat a building. It was flanked on both sides by three smaller buildings per side. A garden was behind it, with gravestones beyond that. The smaller buildings were baroque, ornate, with heavy architecture, with weeping saints and angels. The smaller buildings were made of black stone, with frescos carved into them. The single doors had stained glass windows, and the doors were sealed with lead.

The building itself was massive. A heavy thing of brooding stone. Vines climbed in, the windows were narrow, and the edges of the roof were jagged and toothed. It had a single tower, with a balcony that encircled the top where the Mother Superior often walked and prayed.

Inside were nearly a thousand children. All of them traumatized by the wars. Several times a single grav-striker had dropped off children. The grav striker was unlike any others, and piloted by those who had given all to rescue children during that horrible second war.

But they, like the Mother Superior, continued their self-imposed dread task.

Deep within the building, at the rear, was a chapel. Large stained glass windows depicted miracles, the Digital Omnimessiah, and the Biological Apostles.

But they were not the middle window. The great window that had a row of crystal globes beneath it, each with a piece of plasma glass that burned with fire that never waned, each piece of glass sitting on a thick bed of red sand.

The great window depicted a Terran male, bloodied and obviously dying, in the arms of a young woman. In the forefront was a younger woman, almost a child, furiously tearing apart black mantids with her bare hands, her eyes set into the window with burning plasma glass. Beneath the window was the scroll, done in gold and etched with symbols of burning warsteel that simply read: ಥ_ಥ Ahtoesahn - Joan - Keyeshesurut ಥ_ಥ

Kneeling in front of the alter, the symbol of Lost Terra, with glass bowls holding shards of burning lossglass, was a massive figure. Its shoulders were as wide as two people and even kneeling they were nearly as tall as Mother Superior. Its head, covered by a rough burlap hood, was bowed before the altar and the great picture.

Two hands, clad in a stained gauntlet wrapped with warsteel barbed wire, rested on each side of hte crossguard of the engraved chainsword that was grounded point down into the stone.

The Mother Superior's heels clicked on the tile as she moved quickly to where the figure knelt. She curtsied, made the sign of the Holy Emoji and the Digital Starburst, and moved up to the figure, which had stayed behind after all the others of their kind had left with only one simple statement for explanation, spoken through another being who acted as a translator.

"It was here he revealed himself unto my only eye."

The figure had not elaborated

"Enemies come, Show-Joe. The purple ones themselves. They want the children," Mother Superior said.

The massive figure stood up, raising their face to the stained glass window. The Mother Superior saw tears track down the figure's face from the one eye that remained intact, the other covered with a piece of warsteel crudely riveted to the skull that was bare around it in a patch the size of a man's palm. The exposed bone was inlaid with pink warsteel and rose gold.

"It won't be long," Mother Superior said.

The massive figure lifted its blade with both hands, holding it up to the altar and the stained glass window both.

"Neko," the Mother Superior intoned, her soft voice loud in the silence of the chapel.

The motor coughed and sputtered, then roared to life. The lossglass beneath the largest portrait erupted in plumes of flame that roared to pink and white life. The engraving and the cruel barbed chain of the Mark One Cutting Bar began to glow and smoke.

The massive figure, dressed entirely in a burlap robe, turned around and knelt down on one knee in front of the Mother Superior. Their head was bowed as their hands moved, lifting the rumbling and growling chainsword to the Mother Superior.

The Mother Superior touched the figure's brow.

"Ex-Skootchi-Saw."

She touched the figure's heart.

"Doki."

She touched the figure's chainsword.

"Ick-Are-Ree."

She touched the figures lips.

"Desu Kawaii."

The figure stood up, hissing and thumping coming from inside the burlap robe. The Mother Superior's eartips, painted pink and white, only came up to mid-chest of the massive figure.

With thumping steps it moved slowly, stately, in elegant restraint, through the building. Small children, many of whom had never spoken since war had touched their minds, opened the door for the massive figure with the red burning eye. Sparks trailed after the figure, pink and white, as it moved with exaggerated care down the long hall and out the door.

It moved to the low wall that was less than two hundred paces from the front of the building, standing a moment in between the posts that marked the only gap in the wall. As the figure walked children streamed out from the building, to the three buildings on each side. A half dozen of each stood on either side of the doors in a line. At the end of the line a Hesstla female in a pink and white habit raised her face to the golden dawn and began to sing. The children sung with them, their voices clear and pure in the morning air.

The figure raised the chainsword as pink and white lightning began to growl and crackle around the hem of the figure's robe. The figure raised its face, the hood falling free, and bellowed out a single command.

"DOKI DOKI ̿̿’̿’̵͇̿̿=(•̪●)=/̵͇̿̿/’̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ WAAAAAARRRRGGGH! ̿̿’̿’̵͇̿̿=(•̪●)=/̵͇̿̿/’̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ KAWAII DESU!" the figure bellowed.

Six trails of lightning arced from her, bounding and leaping across the grass, each of them rippling and roaring to the doors of the tombs behind her.

For a long moment there was only silence as the children kept singing.

The doors clanked and rattled as they slowly opened, pulled on chains of bronze and copper and red iron all forged on the Anvils of Hate and in the Forges of Wrath.

From two of them stalked massive war machines. One was painted in pink and white, daubed all over, with graffiti and smiley faces daubed on it. The other was in dark green and gold, the sigil of the Imperium of Wrath upon it. Their armor was dented and savaged, but they moved with dreadful purpose as they thudded forward, their massive feet leaving deep impressions in the grass as they strode from their crypts and down the line of Hesstla children who threw flowers to them even as they sang hymns.

From the middle two on each side stomped massive figures in armor. All of them were without helmets, their faces gray and ravaged. Tubes and wires were drilling into their skulls, each had a tube up one nostril. Their armor was rent and torn, breached here and there.

The children tossed black roses as they moved past, all of them drawing cruel blades that crackled with purple and black and indigo lightning. The children never stopped singing, nor did they feel fear at the sight of such terrible beings.

More than a few cried in relief.

The last two, closest to the building, the monastery, the abbey, two massive green figures stalked out. They were in powered frames, with armor crudely welded to them. Their paint was pink and white and red, smeared on their armor. Their faces were grayish green, their eyes burned with red fire as they drew heavy axes. Upon their heads they wore wigs and scalps torn from the enemy.

In their footsteps flowers grew.

The six joined the robed figure, who pointed at the forest, and at either side of the narrow entrance to the box canyon. The two massive war machines moved to either side of the entrance, while the five figures moved to the middle of the entrance, then twenty steps beyond so they could see the forest below.

From the mist on either side slipped lithe figures, dancing, twisting, moving in and out of the mist and shadow. The crystal armor covering their bodies was deep purple, their weapons appeared to be carved from bone and engraved with strange runes. The six figures took position between the five figures and at either side of the slightly bowed outward line. Their skin was purple, their smiles fierce, their eyes flashing, and their hair a spray of silver in the breeze.

Lightning crawled up the middle figure and the robe turned to ash and blew away, revealing heavy ornate power armor, the plates as thick as a man's hand. The armor was painted pink with white edging, a bloody handprint across the chest over a deep puncture as thick as an adult's palm. Pinkish blood slowly oozed from the puncture as the figure snarled.

On the balcony, at the top of the tower, hands on the railing of the widow's walk, the Mother Superior watched, her ears proud and high, the pink and white powder on the ends glittering in the rising sun.

As one the figures below raised their weapons and bellowed the same thing.

AVE DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH, MORITURI TE SALUTANT!

The one in the middle added one more line.

"۞_۞"

-----------

The Atrekna felt it. A growling, snarling, muttering cloud of static that seemed to envelope not only the mouth of the canyon ahead but cover the entire canyon. The fear vanished, the echoes of night terrors and the stain of agony vanished beneath a sweet clean calm that made several of the Atrekna wince. Then the murmuring growling snarl covered the box-canyon in a field of static that blinded the Atrekna to the morsels beyond.

The Atrekna knew that they had been seen, detected somehow, and the building had mustered defenders.

They weren't worried.

Still, they urged their creations into further urgency, harrying them and driving them forward even as they brought up their personal phasic shielding and spread out.

The exited the treeline and saw what was before them.

A pathetic group. Barely numbering a dozen. While two of the opponents were the hardy and tough machines that nearly qualified as an army on their own, the Atrekna could see plainly the evidence of battle damage, of rent plates and buckled struts, of cracked weapons and damaged tubes.

Even those who stood before them were damaged. Six of them were garbed in crystals that felt dead and heavy to the Atrekna's psionic abilities, but the others were dressed in damaged plates of riven power armor.

If it wasn't for the burning blades and axes in their hands, the Atrekna would have dismissed them as statuary.

Covering the baker's dozen was field of snarling, snapping, growling phasic static.

It didn't matter to the Atrekna, who gave the order for their creatures, mechanical and biological alike, to attack.

With a roar the great beasts lunged forward. With the shriek of YOU BELONG TO US the mechanical war machines moved to engage.

The figures roared back a single sound. The Atrekna wouldn't call what the creatures bellowed a word, just a sound.

WAAAAAAAAAGH!

---------

The Mother Superior watched from the widow's walk as the great War Titans opened fire, the Deathnauts raking the front lines of the Atrekna forces with their great cannons, the quad-barrels lancing out a solid bar of light even though the tracers were mixed 5:1. The shells, self-correcting semi-guided density enhanced armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot mass reactive phasic enhanced antimatter rounds, tore apart the first ranks even as the War Titans fired rockets and missiles.

The eleven other figures stood silent, unmoving, as the War Titans raked the lines of Atrekna with their cannons, the missiles, rockets, and mortars hammering the rear lines.

But still more creatures and war machines left the forest to charge the thin line of defenders.

Below her, in the chapel, more Sisters knelt and led the children in prayer. Some held the ones that could only rock back and forth. Others cradled the ones that, before, could only scream and now did nothing but endlessly weep even in their sleep. Mute ones pressed their hands together and mouthed the prayers. Blind ones turned their empty eye sockets or blind eyes to the great picture.

"♥╣[-_-]╠♥ Doki doki Omnimessiah kawaii desu ♥╣[-_-]╠♥," they sang.

The Mother Superior could hear the singing, an ancient song, spoken in the only language almost all of the children seemed able to speak. She watched the Fallen Elves, who had fell in the early days of the War and had been brought to the Abbey to be buried in the soft loam of the forest that came all the way to the cliffs, suddenly moved. They had been buried where sweet water trickled down the cliff face to become creeks and streams, their graves tended by the children who now prayed, and they had honored their Queen's vows.

The Fallen Elves lunged forward, disappearing into silver streaks that zig-zagged around the edges of the mob of Atrekna forces, each corner and twist of the zig-zagged pattern they appeared, streaked and blurred, for a brief moment.

The Fallen Elves vanished into the forest, and the Mother Superior knew that they would fulfill the High Queen's oaths.

The horde of machines and Dwellerspawn were shattered by the massed firepower of the group as the other fire figures began adding firepower from their weapons, but for every one they killed or destroyed a dozen took their place.

Slowly, but surely, the horde advanced, even as the seven defenders poured all of their wrath and hate into the ever growing tide.

------------

The Atrekna Conclave knew that they were rapidly running through their forces. The two war machines were still outputting heavy fire, even though the Atrekna could see that their weapons were damaged. All seven of them took hits that should have killed them, each impact not even rocking them back, despite the fact that their armor was rent and damaged.

Snarling, three of the Conclave began to bring up reinforcements, reaching into the timestream and finding their forces intact, able to be copied forward.

Bluish phasic energy wrapped around their hands, cored with sickly yellow light as they began shifting the chronotrons.

Each of them stiffened as one, their hands reaching in front of them, to their robed chests. Their eyes opened wide with shock.

Blades of ivory, bone taken from fallen defenders of Hesstla and forged into a solid blade, erupted from their chests, smoking and sizzling as the purple blood was devoured by the black and purple flames surrounding the blades. The runes, inlaid with purple and pink warsteel, glowed and burned in the shadows of the forest.

Each of the three Atrekna felt the lithe bodies of the Fallen Elves press against them.

"I ar rís Alv-ah-naya on- hen Suilad," they whispered, before withdrawing their blades with a whisper and vanishing back into the shadows.

The rest of the Atrekna looked around, startled by the sudden disappearance of three of the Conclave. They increased their personal shields as they cast around for what could have killed three of their brethren.

One let their concealment drop, just for a moment, to look around better.

The blade flashed as it bisected them from shoulder to opposite hip, and the Fallen Elf vanished back into the forest.

The Atrekna fell in two pieces.

The Fallen Elves waited in the shadows, moving silently through the forest's secret paths, their dead eyes watchful for any trace of the Unclean.

----------

The Mother Superior watched as the horde reached the seven defenders, who erupted into furious motion. Fists wrapped in Enraged Wrath crushed the life from insects, point blank weapon's fire gutted machinery, and melee weapons wielded with wrath and fury sliced and hewed at the attackers.

Dredgutz fell first, collapsing to the ground even as he kept firing his heavy gyrojet pistol, each round slamming deep into insect and machine armor, moss and vines spreading from the wound even as flowers bloomed.

Zakariwrath fell next, cloven in half. The massive Dreadful Knight pulled himself forward with one hand, firing with the other, until a massive taloned foot ripped away half of his skull and left him dead.

The Mighty Wrathbourne fell next, his chassis screaming as he took a shell that would have gutted a starship directly to his mighty chest. He fell to the side, his chassis burning, even as he washed green fire over his foes that tore them apart screaming in agony, be they living or machine.

The Dying Joan screamed her wrath and redoubled her efforts, her chainsword in one hand and her beloved Ackack in the other. Her cry drove the others to redouble their efforts. The torches on her shoulder burned with pink and white incandescent fury as she leveled her wrath at those who threatened the innocent behind her.

Pericles the Rwandan Ferocious One fell next, his skull caved in, but he took the machine that had killed him with him, his muscles giving one more convulsive effort that ripped the robot in half, spraying hydraulic fluid like blood.

From the forest the sounds of FWOOP! began to rise. Singly, then more, then faster and faster as the Atrekna themselves realized they were under attack and gathered together to defend themselves and one another.

The Mother Superior watched with an unreadable expression on her face, her ears still held high.

The Burning Wrath of Zunil Anvil fell next, but not before his mighty guns had hammered the last of the largest machines to junk. The burning warsteel chassis slumped, smoke billowing up.

The Dying Joan shrieked out in enraged emoji-Engrish as she attacked her foes with more fury, pink and white lighting completely wreathing her, almost blotting her out.

Side by side she stood with Bluddonnur, until a lucky hit from a tentacle smashed the Orkz head in, caving in his face.

The Dying Joan grabbed Bluddonnur's heavy axe, KawaiiByte, in one hand, her chainsword in the other, and kept fighting, screeching and yowling her fury as she was forced back step by step.

The FWOOP in the forest slowed, then ended.

The Dying Joan crushed the skull of the last of the Dwellerspawn with the hammer head backside of KawaiiByte and ripped in half the last of the machines with the pink and white Nekoblade.

Silence slowly descended, broken only by the snap and crackle of flames consuming machine and flesh alike. The Dying Joan dropped KawaiiByte and gripped her Nekoblade with both hands, grounding the tip in the earth as she panted, her tongue hanging out, trying to lower the heat of her armor and her body that was fused to it.

The Mother Superior gripped the railing tightly and leaned forward.

Drifting from the forest came a single Atrekna. Upon its head rested a crown of burning golden alloy set with phasic crystals that shone in the noonday sun.

The Dying Joan lifted her blade to the guard position as she stepped forward in between the two posts of the low stone wall, which was somehow still unbreached.

"╭∩╮（︶︿︶）╭∩╮" was all the Dying Joan said.

FWOOP!

The air rippled as the psychic blast tore through the noonday air, sending smoke spiralling in a whispy translucent funnel around the edges of the blast.

The Dying Joan stepped forward, guarding her one eye with the blade, the pink fire in her single eye that still was burning brightly.

The Atrekna lifted a hand and the ground turned to mud.

The Dying Joan kept advancing, slogging through the mud, pink and white lighting flowing over her Nekoblade, the torches attached to her back blazing, the banner on her back, showing a crudely drawn and smiling Hesstla child's head, snapped briskly in the breeze.

The Atrekna made a fist and the ground turned solid.

The Dying Joan slogged out of the dirt, her power armor hissing and thumping.

The Atrekna began to float backwards, thickening its shields.

It was too late.

Five quick charging steps and the Dying Joan was on the Atrekna. The first chop of her Nekoblade, the teeth of the chain roaring and sending fountain of white and pink sparks showering out, destroyed the thick phasic screen.

Before the Atrekna could do much more than scream the Dying Joan grabbed him by his head, crushing the crown in her armored fist.

And sawed his head off, standing in the wreckage, under the burning fire of the noonday sun.

She stood there a long moment, then opened her hand, dropping the pulped head of the Atrekna. She turned away, moving slowly back to the abbey.

Her lossglass torches fluttered and went out as she approached the door.

The children opened the door and she thudded through.

The Mother Superior stood inside. She reached out and touched the wound driven deep into the armor, that still oozed pink blood.

"Rest. Return to your meditations, Beautiful One," the Mother Superior said. "The children will awaken your companions and return them to their resting places."

"(￣。￣)～ｚｚｚ" the Dying Joan said.

"I know, Glorious One," the Mother Superior said. She motioned at the chapel at the back of the Great Hall. "Dwell in the light of the Father, the First Joan, and the Initiate."

Four children rushed up, two holding chairs. The other two climbed on and draped a thick burlap robe around the mortally wounded Neko-Marine. The adjusted it, then drew the hood over her head, hiding her missing ear, shadowing her ravaged face.

Outside the children moved to each of the fallen defenders, touching them, singing in Engrish-Emoji hymns of faith and duty. Others moved into the forest, knowing where each of the Fallen Elves lay, to bring them to sleepy wakefullness and return them to their rest.

Each of the fallen struggled to their feet, and followed the small children, still singing hymns, back to their tombs.

The Dying Joan knelt in the chapel, the tip of her sword grounded on the stone. She put her gauntlet clad hands on each side of the crossbar of her Nekoblade and looked up.

"Father," she whispered.

She bowed her head and began to pray again.

The bodies of the Dwellerspawn, the wreckage of the war machines, was covered by moss that grew in minutes. Flowers bloomed on the mounds and humps, vines spread out, and berries appeared.

The High Queen turned her attention away from returning the defenders to their rest, having set into motion magics and spells and rituals to reclaim the land and erase the scars of war.

Beyond the valley, away from the mountains, Operation Billy Mays entered its eighteenth hour.