Choices (40K/RWBY)

I wrote a thing. It might become things, maybe. My muse is being a bitch, but it gave me this so I can’t complain.

Inspired by TCL’s For Those We Cherish, sadly long dormant but in my opinion one of the best 40K/RWBY crossovers I have ever read. This is just a tribute to their work. Also takes inspiration from the official 40K short story Consequences. Said story’s also referenced below, you should go read it.

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“We must refuse.”

The reply was so stunningly brazen, so unexpected, that all upon the command deck of the ancient warship were stunned to muteness. A dread silence washed though the chamber, A hundred souls both mortal and immortal unsure of what would come next.

“Brother-Captain Theosius,” The voice of the Emperor’s emissary spoke, “Have I misheard you?”

The Brother-Captain shook his head. No clarification was needed, as both Astarte and Custode knew the gravity of the statement, the undertones it conveyed.

“You do realize that this is no mere suggestion?” Shield-Captain Ankelion demanded. “That this order comes not merely from Lord Commander Robute Guilliman, but from me as well? You would dare defy an order from one of the Emperor’s own Ten Thousand, an order that is absolute?”

Around him, Ankelion gauged the situation. Among those assembled were the Captains and assembled officers of the five full companies of Greyshields meant to reinforce the Lamenters, sent to restore their beleaguered chapter to some semblance of fighting strength. A squad of the Sisters of Silence shrouded in their Blank aura, ever present and observing. There were others there, the Bridge crew his retinue. A few men and women that had accompanied the Lamenters, with Brother-Captain Theosius and two of his fellow Marines at the head, the penance black of their armor doing little to conceal the deep rents and scars inflicted upon it. All on the command deck were silent as the dead as Ankelion and Theosius continued to converse.

“We must, because we have not earned this.”

So it was their crusade of penitence then? “Your crusade is over, Brother-Captain,” Ankelion retorted. “Ended by writ of Guilliman himself. You have read his missive, as have I. Whatever years you have left have been waived by Imperial edict.” The Shield-Captain’s words took on an icy tone, belying the danger in his words. “Again, you would dare defy his word and mine?”

“No, Shield-Captain. We understand the gravity of the situation at large within the Imperium, the galaxy. But so long as an enemy yet lives that we have taken up arms against during our crusade, we cannot yet in good faith accept our brothers in arms. My Battle Brothers and myself have dug our graves upon the world below. Some have already been filled. And until our foe lies dead or the last of us do, our crusade cannot end.”

An ongoing battle then, Ankelion understood. A caveat, buried in the text of the original mission placed upon them. Their crusade would only end after the last battle of their century of penance. But their last battle was yet over, and thus their crusade had yet to end. The Lord Commander’s words were clear, that their remaining years of penance were earned in full. They were to resupply and rebuild their forces to join the Indomitus Crusade. But it had made no mention of ongoing battles or conflicts, nor any orders to withdraw. Ankelion frowned, at the stubbornness of the Brother-Captain, at the position he had been forced into and at a poorly worded edict from an Inquisitor long dead and of a Primarch’s slip of oversight.

In their minds, accepting the Greyshields now at their lowest would be yet another black mark, Ankelion noted. Yet one more sign of weakness in a chapter that some felt were wanting. But the fact that they yet survived after nearly a century of ceaseless warfare against the worst the universe could offer was proof otherwise. These were his Master’s finest warriors, Amongst the greatest of the gene-sons of Sanguinius. Fooled once by traitors, but never to be fooled again.

What would my brother Tyvar do here? Ankelion was left wondering. The answer came as soon as he had posited the question to himself. Tyvar would have ordered them all executed to the last with zero hesitation, both the Firstborn Lamenters and their Grayshield Primaris reinforcements behind him. Ankelion remembered the report of the events surrounding Khassedur, and the Brazen Drakes’ betrayal of the Emperor. Of how even Grayshields whom had never met their parent chapter had been all too eager to take up arms against the Imperium alongside their heretical Brothers.

“I understand that we risk heresy, Shield-Captain,” Theosius continued to explain. “If such is your judgement of us, I only ask that the Astartes sent to aid us be spared our fate, and that they may continue in our stead. There is a darkness on the world below us, one which we have not yet seen the end of.”

Behind him, the Primaris Captains and their secondaries milled, indecisive, unsure of how to proceed. One spoke. “Shield-Captain, we-”

“Silence, Greyshield,” Ankelion ordered him. He was still thinking, still judging the Marines before him. Had the torchbearers arrived later, after the Lamenters finally purged this world of whatever foe yet stymied them, would they still be refusing aid and reinforcement? Custodians seldom dealt with hypotheticals, with what ifs. For their brotherhood of demigods, only madness lay down those paths that such questions laid out. And the Custodes were beyond that.

Ankelion knew one thing for certain. That the Lamenters would die to the last to preserve their honor, no matter the cost. Even to kneel before him one by one, to let themselves be executed, so that Brothers they had never known would not share their fate.

“Tell me, Captain,” Ankelion asked, “What sort of foe can so oppose the combined weight of your Chapter?”

“Her name is Salem.”

It was not Theosius who spoke. The interjector was one of the mortals that had accompanied the Brother-Captain, a woman who until then had remained silent. She stepped forward toward the trio of Custodes, no hint of fear or hesitation in her expression. She wore simple attire, black pumps, a black skirt and a white dress blouse. Her blonde hair was tied up, framing a stern looking and bespectacled face. Crystal blue eyes peered up at him, apprehensive of the golden giants before her.

“You are?” Ankelion asked.

“Professor Goodwich,” the woman answered. “Depu... Headmistress of Beacon Academy, of Vale and of Remnant, the world below.” Her expression flickered for the briefest of moments, and Ankelion saw a shadow of grief cross her features. Sorrow at the loss of a trusted friend, an honored colleague. Most mortals would have been overwhelmed being in the presence of a Custodian, but the woman before her seemed to be handling his presence well. “When Captain Theosius explained your coming to me, what it meant, I wanted to accompany him.”

“Are you aware of the gravity of this situation, Headmistress?”

“To the best of my abilities, yes.”

Ankelion nodded. “Then who is this Salem?”

The woman began to explain. In truth, Ankelion didn’t need to hear the woman’s tale. He’d already absorbed the after action reports and battle logs of the Lamenters, from the past year they had stationed themselves above this world. Remnant, as named by its inhabitants. The records of a thousand thousand skirmishes across a thousand battles of a year-long war to reclaim the world for the Emperor, etched and logged into his mind.

Their foe, these so-called ‘Grimm’ as they were known to the world’s inhabitants. Monsters in name and form, a black tide of foul ichor and chitinous bone that crashed against the walls of Remnant’s few cities of note. They appeared ex nihilo from its wilds, an ever present threat to all who lived on its surface. By themselves they would have been just another hazard, not at all out of place on any other barely habited death world and certainly no threat to the Astartes. But there was one important caveat of note.

The Grimm had a Queen, an arch-heretic controlling and guiding them.

And her name was Salem.

From the blurry pict-captures and reports he’d studied, she might have once been beautiful. But whatever foul sorceries the witch dabbled in had warped her form and mind into something monstrously evil. She seemingly lusted for the destruction of all of mankind, its very annihilation. She viewed the Lamenters’ arrival as nothing more than a hindrance to whatever machinations she schemed, based on the scant few interactions with the Marines and Remnant’s PDF equivalent who thus far had survived those encounters with her. The answer as to why the woman yet lived despite such massed opposition was simple and readily given.

The Lamenters had tried and succeeded in killing her. Many, many times.

Salem simply kept coming back.

Be it bolter or cannon, melta or flamer, gravitic beams or plasma blasts, chainsword or power sword, no weapon in the Astartes’ arsenal would put her down for more than a few minutes at the most. Even from total disintegration she could reform, a truly horrifying feat. Twice early on, the witch had ambushed Battle Brothers who had declared her dead, rising back to life with their backs turned and even managing to slay one with her sorcery. A full squad had been assembled and sent after her when she had shown herself during a siege of one of the world’s fortress-cities, and during their encounter they had reportedly killed her several dozen times over with every method they had. It had not been enough, and only one of those Brothers had survived in a sense of the word, interred within the sarcophagus of a dreadnought.

Over the course of the year, the Lamenters and the world’s defenders had traded blows with not just the arch-heretic and legions of unthinking monsters, but her traitorous minions as well. With honeyed words and promises of power she had taken under her wing mortal supporters, foul traitors and mutants loyal only to her dark cause. Some had been slain by the concerted efforts of the Lamenters and their allies, but others yet lived. It was an act a Custodian seldom ever performed, but all had been declared Excommunicate Traitoris the moment after Ankelion had learned of them, to be forever cast out of the Emperor’s light.

The turning point finally came when the Lamenters had found Salem’s hidden bastion, the redoubt from which she sent forth her legions. Only through brave explorations of a blackened, Grimm-infested continent and careful discernation of orbital imagery were the Lamenters able to determine its precise location.

Macro shells fired from their barge’s few remaining functional weapon batteries came in short order. A battle barge’s weapons were powerful, bespoke proof of the word and will of the Master of Mankind. The arch-heretic’s bastion weathered the blows from above, powerful heretical wards shielding it from bombardment. Yet even more heresy, wrought by the witch. Even as the blows sundered the surrounding mountain ranges, her fortress stood triumphant.

Which brought him to know, and the arrival of the torchbearer fleet. Ankelion had learned that the Lamenters were on the verge of staging a final, massive ground assault upon her fortress, a do or die mission with the aid of gathered mortal auxiliaries. An all out assault in just a scant few hours, the final planning of which the Brother-Captain had been called away from.

The warp currents had been favorable to the Shield-Captain’s fleet, and had swiftly carried them on to the far distant world and their destination. For nearly a thousand other Chapters, the arrival of desperately-needed reinforcements were welcomed with open arms, with scant few exceptions. So it was a strange twist of irony and fate that their early arrival was something undesirable. Had the fleet been slower, had they arrived even a day later, would the Lamenters have welcomed their Primaris brethren on the heels of their victory? Or would the Greyshields have arrived to find the still warm corpses of the Chapter they were sent to reinforce, slaughtered to the man?

Deliberation, choices, a decision to be made. It came easily to Ankelion.

He was not Tyvar.

“So be it,” Shield-Captain Ankelion spoke, turning to the Lamenter Officer. “Brother-Captain, you have made your choice. This will be the last battle of your crusade, one way or the other.”

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About 2K words total, written over the course of two days. I’m basically working on several things at once, plus a day job.