New Imperium Ch. 02

I groaned and felt a not-small bit of shame. It was easy to bury my own feelings, but I knew these villagers wanted to rescue their fellows, and I needed their goodwill if I was going to survive on this cursed planet. I checked my kit, snatched my pistol back from the glowering woman, and took off across the body-strewn plaza. The squad fell in behind me with the clank and swish of mail and blood-spattered tabards. Again I wondered what cosmic sense of humor had thrown an old sump-rat like me into this feudal nightmare.

The smoke from burning homes irritated my augmented throat but choked the natives. My eyes stung, and blinking away the sting helped me ignore the scores of victims the cult had butchered. I paused at the corner of the square, shadowed by the looming town hall and a smoldering home, and peered at the heretics' escape route. Seeing nothing but smoky haze, I swept around the wooden wall and rushed off in pursuit.

Right into the teeth of their ambush.

They were no fools, not like I was then. Shadowed traitors spun from door-frames and behind hand carts, unleashing a volley of musket fire and crossbow bolts. I winced instinctively but could or would do nothing to check my forward rush.

A bolt cracked against my thigh and shattered into splinters, and a musket ball flattened itself against the chest plate of my carapace armor. It drove the breath from my lungs like a glancing blow from a power maul, but I stayed standing. I searched for the ambushers behind their smears of foul-smelling smoke, raising my rifle, when the second squad of heretics loosed their volley.

My compatriots had been spared the sudden violence of the first shots, but they'd hurtled around the corner just in time to face the second. Throats coughed with sudden violence before choking on the blood filling their lungs. Mail coats rung like hellish bells as lead blasted through them like so much paper. The survivors shouted in surprise and terror, trying to drag their wounded friends back into cover.

Another ball smashed into my left arm but failed to penetrate, and I could hear the whizzing crack of the others that went past me and into my new allies. Pain throbbed beneath my armor, and I clenched my teeth to force it down. There was no chance of reaching decent cover, and what would that accomplish? The heretics were entrenched and already jeering our failure. I hefted my rifle: as Deldan always said in his inhumanly deep voice, the only way to meet an ambush is with such surprising violence of your own that the ambushers turn tail.

I strode through the musket smoke to my left, and a female heretic with alabaster skin and raven-black hair gasped in surprise. She'd have been darkly gorgeous, if she weren't an abominable traitor. "Amhosibl," she choked before I carefully blew the back of her skull across the building with a single aimed bolt.

"Impossible," the Elucidator helpfully translated.

A crossbow bolt hissed close by, and I skewered the quarreller with two bolts. My limbs ached from wounds and my travel through the warp, so I could do little more than relentlessly march forward towards the next musketeer. I squared my thick chest armor towards him and took another moment to steady my aim. He gasped and cursed, fumbling with the ramming rod of the crude matchlock, and howled in fear just before I cratered his chest into burning ruin.

Three more died to my measured shots and plodding steps, and the others began to break from their well-chosen cover to run, screaming, towards the dark woods. I cut down as many as possible, breath coming in shorter gasps as adrenaline lost the fight against the bruising in my ribs. A knot of them held, surrounding their leader, with the civilians huddled against the last few buildings not burning.

Another fired, and white light shot through my vision before my right eye went blurry and dim. I stumbled, my right leg suddenly weak, but I managed to squeeze my rifle's trigger as I collapsed to one knee. The long burst scythed down three more heretics, but the leader remained. The same aura of dark sorcery as the man in the inn swirled around him, and I could see him smile mockingly.

Blood trickled into my left eye from beneath my dented helmet. The plasteel had saved my life, but my skull had still taken enough of a beating that I felt helpless as the mage strode forward. My fingers trembled, and the rifle slipped onto the cobblestones. I heard bootsteps behind me but knew what survivors remained wouldn't be able to defeat the man-witch.

A voice churned in my damaged mind, but they were not spoken words. "You killed my daughter, whoever you are, and you will suffer for that." He strode forward with easy confidence, but I could just make out the hateful sneer on his aging face. "None of you can stop what is coming. The Burning Legion will rule over a world of corruption and ash and slip the bonds of this vast prison of reality."

Dark purple energy swirled around his right hand before he flung his foul sorcery at my wounded form. My mind was too bruised to feel anything more than grim acceptance. There was another flash, brilliant yellow-gold light, and I supposed that all those dreary sermons the battle sisters had tried to preach to me might've been right. I embraced the Emperor's light with a sigh.

When I heard a bitter curse and the crack of more sorcery, I supposed that I might not be standing before the Golden Throne after all. I opened my blood-caked left eye a bit wider and saw a bubble of magic around me. Beyond, one of the civilians stretched their hand towards me, the same golden light wreathing their fingers.

The witch stomped towards me, intent on finishing off the former hive-rat that had gutted his rebellion, and readied an even larger bolt of sorcery with both hands. It took nearly all my energy just to remain half-upright on one knee. Nearly all. My left hand still obeyed my battered mind and slid down to my belt to pull my pistol free.

The man-witch shouted in alarm, trying to shift his energies from his sorcerous assault to another protective ward, but a dozen of my ruby bolts succeeded in vaporizing his entrails and setting his robes ablaze.

I shook and trembled, sliding towards the cobblestones. His eyes faded, mad and greenish witch-light flaring in them one more time before they glazed over. The ward around me faded and flickered, and my conscious mind followed quickly. But my last sight before painful darkness overtook me and sent a surge of panic through every fiber of my being. The psyker that had saved me rushed towards my slumping form as my vision darkened.

It was a Xeno, long-eared and purple-skinned, and I knew this 'Azeroth' was even more damned than I'd previously realized.

***

I woke after who knows how long, and, for a single moment, I thought I'd dreamt all of the insanity of the last day. My eyes fluttered open, letting in the light from a fat candle and a gently crackling fireplace. Pain rushed back into the entire left side of my skull, and I winced and hissed reflexively.

"Paid a symud," a familiar voice cooed to me. The vision in my right eye was still blurry, but someone had cleaned the blood from my scalp and my other eye. I twisted my head as gently as possible and saw my blonde companion smiling at me from a stool at my bedside.

"Maybe I did see the Golden Throne," I muttered, trying to ease my head back and lessen the throbbing pain. It didn't work. I was beginning to assume I'd survived the duel with the witch, and all thanks to the aid of a Xeno.

If I ever saw Onca again, it was summary execution or the excruciator for me.

She held up the dark shape of the Elucidator and tapped a thin finger against one of the runes. "How are you?" The box squawked as she spoke her primitive Aeldari.

How did she know how to use the Elucidator? How did she even know what it was? I was too tired and aching to care, "I got shot in the head," I tried a roguish smile, but winced in pain instead.

She reflected my attempt with a warm smile of her own, but hers had a hint of worry. "Here. Ella the Chemist. Make for you." She held a glass bottle of reddish liquid to my lips and gently tipped it.

It tasted surprisingly pleasant and raced through my veins like cool spring water. I suppose I should've wondered if it was poison or some other nefarious serum, but I was damned and battered enough by that point. The throbbing in my skull lessened to the point I could focus on the rest of the room.

With a curious flash of deja vu, I realized it was the same room I'd started the evening in, with a hastily repaired door and my things carefully folded and stacked on another table. "Thank you. Diolch."

She took the glass and set it and the Elucidator on the side table. Her big blue eyes searched mine, and she leaned closer until I could smell that damnably alluring perfume again, "Who are you? Really?" The gentle whisper of her words was at stark odds with the mechanical chirping of the Elucidator, but I didn't care.

What reason was there not to indulge her? Perhaps my time as a loyal servant to the Inquisition was over. I certainly didn't expect to ever see an Imperial world again, much less Onca or the others. Maybe the Emperor would even smile on his light being brought to a backward, xeno-infested, daemon-swamped land? Not that I believed in such things, of course.

The thought of the purplish, Aeldari-like psyker gave me pause, but my companion's hand cupping my cheek sent the idea glittering away.

"Mekdonas," I answered, the last of the pain seeming to leave my skull. "A soldier, a filwyr. A rogue, a scoundrel, and a criminal too, if I'm honest."

She smiled and let out a single, somehow sorrowful giggle, "Aren't we all?"

She closed her eyes and leaned closer, and I kissed her as if those soft lips were the only thing in the universe. Our warm lips parted, and our tongues explored each other like it was our first time together. My arms were trapped beneath the thick blankets, but she cradled my head in both hands and kissed me with sudden urgency. Why was I drawn so intensely to this joygirl, this cosmic orphan on a doomed planet?

We parted to take hungry breaths, "And who are you? What's your name, lovely?"

"Ava," she whispered, eyes still closed, urging me to quit stalling with the way her lips lay half-open and trembling.

I obliged Ava only after taking a moment to free my burly arms and wrap them around her slight body. We both cooed and moaned into that long, soft kiss, until a fresh hunger overtook her. She pulled away as best she could with her waist trapped by my grip, and her eyes glittered at me in the flickering light.

She bit the corner of her plump lip, and dainty fingers hurried up the strings of her blouse. Deciding it might be nice to enjoy the show, I uncoiled her from my grip and let her stand up from the stool. Her eyes never left mine, not as she eased the blouse off her shoulders and down to the floor, not as she untied her skirt and let it pile on the floor, not as she ran her hands slowly down her petite but undeniably feminine figure.

Perhaps it was the slower pace or the flickering light. Or, maybe it was the potion and the throbbing head wound it kept at bay. Either way, I noticed details I'd overlooked at our first rendezvous. Tiny freckles coated her shoulders and her chest. Wisps of blonde down collected between her toned thighs, failing to obscure her womanhood beneath. At least a dozen scars, pale white and puckered, crisscrossed her torso and thighs at random.

Ava seemed nearly as damaged as I was.

I don't exactly know what she was planning, but the throbbing in my skull threatened a return at any moment. So, I took her hand gently in mine and pulled her towards me. I eased her onto the bed before wordlessly urging her to kneel across my chest. Ava sat up slightly, her hands on my broad shoulders, her breath quickening and making her delightfully full breasts quiver.

Sinking my fingers into her pert rear, I pulled her hips further up my body and brought her womanhood right where I wanted it. Ava yelped when my tongue found glistening, down-covered lips, and her hand instinctively clutched against my bruised scalp. She tasted heavenly, already dewy enough that her nectar ran down my bearded chin.

Ava bit back another long moan that ended in an adorable whimper. Whatever she'd intended to do, she abandoned that thought, grinding her hips down against my lips and tongue with reckless desperation. Leaving one hand pawing at her rear, I let the other drift up her slender, scarred torso to cup a handful-sized breast. She clasped her hand over mine, urging me to squeeze and grasp to my blackened heart's content, and, of course, I obliged.

Her hips had a mind of their own, constantly bringing her little nub just within reach of my tongue before rolling away. I lapped away all the same, sliding my tongue up and down between her folds, teasing the tiny opening I'd experienced less than a day before, savoring every drop of her nectar that ran across my lips.

"So...good," she panted, her thighs beginning to tremble. "By the Light, you're good."

The Elucidator was being surprisingly helpful at that moment, but I had no idea what this 'Light' was. A hopeful part of me believed it was these heathens' relict belief in the Emperor. The rest of me just wanted to make her scream until the Mechancius device stopped trying to translate her frantic and panting moans.

I murmured happily into her before taking hold of her rolling hips with my hand and pinning her tightly against my hungry mouth. She squeaked again, especially when I clamped my lips over her hard little nub and sucked greedily. My tongue flicked back and forth over it as fast as I could make it go, and her thighs trembled against my head at the exact same tempo.

Ava twisted, arching her back, and the hand on my scalp left when she reached back to grasp my throbbing hardness. I groaned involuntarily into her again, pleasantly surprised that she'd decided to kill two gargoyles with one bolt round. Her fingers struggled to close around me, and I could feel her growing excitement by the way her hand trembled as her skin grazed mine.

We stayed like that for what was probably only a few moments, but felt like timeless bliss. But, soon enough, my little joygirl spoke with a devious lilt in her voice, "Move that big paw and let me up a bit, lover. I've got something to show you."

Now, if most people in my life had said 'I want to show you something' with that exact devious tone, I would've run screaming in the opposite direction. When Ava murmured the words, though, it sent a fresh tingle of anticipation through me. So, I complied, pulling my hands from her hip and chest and giving her clit one more hard lick.

Ava cooed before languidly arching up again to give me a view of her lithe body. She half stood on the bed, flipping her body around to face my feet before not-so-gently settling her sopping wetness over my face. Most importantly, she laid her body across mine and inhaled my cock into her mouth with little more warning than a hungry moan.

It was my turn to groan into her wetness and grip her pert ass for dear life. I don't know how she'd managed to take my entire length the night before, and I certainly couldn't understand how she was already forcing the spongy head of my cock against her throat. By the Emperor, she was growling just as much as she was moaning, as if it was a personal affront that she couldn't take my entire cock all at once on the first go.

Her flaxen hair draped across my thighs and tickled my sack, forgotten while Ava rammed her pretty little face down my length again and again. She alternated between moaning -- especially when I managed to suckle on her ceramite-hard clit -- and lewdly gagging and coughing all over my length. Her mouth was boiling hot, her lips softer even than her scarred skin, and her tongue desperately lashed out to reach the spots she couldn't yet cram into her mouth.

I was beginning to worry that I'd stumbled into the middle of some mind-warping Slanneshi cult, but I couldn't be bothered to care.

At that point, it was a race, albeit one that we were both going to win. And, well, I don't like losing. I grabbed that warm, pert ass with both hands, clenched her hips tight against my face, and did my damnedest. My recent head wound was a distant, throbbing memory compared to the tide of lust inside me and the drive to get Ava to the finish line ahead of me.

My tongue was everywhere: up and down, back and forth, questing into her tight little hole, and never spending more than a few moments away from her clit. She writhed and bucked and twisted, trying to delay her release just a bit longer while still doggedly trying to swallow every inch of me. Even as she fought back, I could feel her muscles tensing and turning to soylens viridians all at once. Her heart was pounding, her breath coming in ragged gasps. I was going to win.

And that's when she grumbled something deep in the back of her throat and slammed her head down one more time. My cockhead punched past her tight throat and slid all the way inside of her. I could feel her smiling despite the lewd coughing and gagging, her nose tickling my sack and her tongue darting out to reach everything she possibly could. By the Emperor, this woman would make a fortune in any uphive bordello. I was forced to pause my relentless assault on her clit and unleash a groan of my own. Her tight throat massaged and caressed me, and I reflexively pumped my hips upward.

She squeaked and coughed again, spluttering as she pulled away. We both paused for the briefest of instants, each surprised and impressed by the other. "I knew I could do it," she whispered.

"I was hoping you could, too," I quipped back.

She twisted on top of me, managing to peer at me around her shapely thighs. Those pale blue eyes sparkled with promised mischief if only I decided to keep her around. If I was honest with myself, I was already starting to think about it.

"There's so, so much more I could do, filwyr," she smiled despite the sweat plastering her wild hair to her face and the spit beautifully dripping from her chin.

I took the implied challenge, one hand slapping her pert ass-cheek and the other grasping a handful of that hair to push her head back between my legs. In an instant, we were back to attacking each other like 'slaught fiends.

I strummed her clit with my tongue so fast and forcefully that my whole jaw ached, and Ava relentlessly fucked her throat down onto my bucking hips until the room was filled with just one long, gagging moan. I could feel the pressure rising inside me, could sense the same ecstatic tension within her, and both of us assaulted the other even as we struggled to hold out.

I lost, so to speak, the sump-flood of ecstasy bursting through my thinly frayed self-control. My hips jerked upwards once more, and Ava coughed, gagged, and moaned all at once. I growled into her boiling hot wetness and roared my release, all while the first jet of my seed sprayed down her throat.

Perhaps it was the sheer eroticism of the act or the way I'd buried my face in her, but Ava shrieked and seized up in that same moment. Her throat convulsed, trying to swallow and scream at the same time and failing at both. Her back arched enough, thank the Emperor, to keep me from drowning her while the rest of my seed flooded her skilled little mouth and her nectar splashed across my lips and chin.

My release kept coming, helped along by the glorious feeling of Ava desperately and sloppily swallowing around my shaft as I gave her everything I had left. Her hips trembled beneath my big hands, and I had to pull them gently away to take a huge, gasping breath. Ava twisted and rose away from me, wiping her messy chin with a bedside rag.