Chapter 379: The Knight Duel, Part 4
Kian let out a breath of relief. Alive was good enough for now.
"Luca, can you get up? He's coming."
"Static... everything hurts... I think every bone in my body's broken... I'm so cold..."
The heavy interference on the vox line said everything about how far gone the frame really was.
Kian asked, "Luca, are you bleeding?"
"I don't know... I don't dare disconnect from the throne to check... static... I'm afraid I won't be able to reconnect..."
Kian took a deep breath and glanced at the Preceptor closing in from a distance.
"Luca, he's two hundred meters out and closing. You need to get up. Can you do that?"
"I'm trying... AAAAAAAGH—"
A grinding shriek of metal tore through the Cerastus's frame, and Luca's agonized scream came through the vox.
Kian's teeth ached just listening to it. The command throne wired a pilot's whole nervous system to the machine, meaning damage to the Knight registered as real pain in the man himself.
What Luca was doing right now was the equivalent of a man with every bone in his body broken, trying to stand up after getting hit by a truck.
Amid Luca's screaming, the Cerastus swayed and hauled itself back onto its feet.
Nearly half the plating across its front had already shattered, the sections weakened by the flail earlier finally giving way completely under the fall.
Huge sections of internal structure lay exposed now, looking uncomfortably like a flayed body with the muscle showing through.
Sparks spat from the wound the lance had punched clean through, fluid leaking from somewhere inside. The frame was in terrible shape.
Kian, standing atop the swaying Cerastus, watched the Preceptor close in.
"Luca. Can you still fight? Or do we run?"
The Cerastus turned to glance back toward the Golden Bridge. The million-strong evacuation had thinned to a final trickle, and some of the defenders had already begun their own retreat.
"No... if I run, Frales will chase down the refugees... we can't fall back..."
Luca's pained voice came through the vox.
Kian nodded. "Alright. Then we fight."
Another silence.
Luca spoke again. "My apologies, Count Voss. Looks like... I won't be joining you among the stars after all."
Kian sighed. He'd been so sure he was the one running the whole seduction campaign here, and it turned out somewhere along the way, Luca had ended up maxing his affection stat first.
This guy. Real traditional knight, through and through.
"Don't worry about that now, Luca. Get ready to fight. Give it everything you've got."
Both of them turned to look at the Preceptor. Its waist bore a large gash from earlier, but the plating hadn't been fully breached, the internal structure untouched.
The massive lance was slightly bent from where the gauntlet had crushed it, but it still functioned, its disruption field still active.
Luca said, "Static... the High King's frame... it's been reinforced by the Chaos God... his armour's nearly impossible to breach..."
The Cerastus swayed unsteadily. Kian, standing on top of it, had to switch on his boots' magnetic locks just to keep his footing.
"Luca. Can you actually still fight?"
"One more..."
Kian asked, "One more what?"
"One last attack, that's all I have left... the powered gauntlet's wrecked, the disruption field won't activate anymore. The chainsword still works, but it can't punch through the High King's daemon-blessed armour."
Kian pressed, "So what's the plan?"
"Static... static... CHARGE!!"
"Alright!"
Kian dropped to a knee atop the Knight's frame, pressing both hands flat against the plating.
"Luca. Go. Leave the daemon-armour to me. I'll help you break through it."
Golden light began flickering in Kian's eyes. In that moment, he threw every neuron, every ounce of willpower he had, into reaching for his psychic power.
In Khorne's domain, neither powered weapons nor psychic force were supposed to work at all.
Gritting his teeth, drawing on the Emperor's favor and every last scrap of mental strength he had, Kian fought to tear open a crack in the god's own anti-psychic field.
"BROTHER!!!" the Preceptor's vox roared.
"This farce ENDS NOW!!!"
RUMBLE! RUMBLE! RUMBLE!
The Preceptor charged, flail and lance both crackling with blue lightning.
Luca said, "Static... Count Voss, here we go... one final charge... it's been an honor to fight beside you to the very end."
Kian had no time left to answer. Jaw locked, teeth grinding, he was burning muscle and willpower alike just to force his psychic power through.
The swaying Cerastus began accelerating, closing the distance to the Preceptor head-on.
"For His Most Holy and Divine Majesty! For the purity of the human soul! Die, heretic!!!"
RUMBLE! RUMBLE! RUMBLE!
Both Knights charged, closing for the final, decisive clash.
Inside the Preceptor, the corrupted mass of flesh fused to the command throne let out a triumphant laugh. Victory was already in sight.
His war engine, blessed by his god, couldn't be pierced by any weapon.
"HAHAHAHAHA! DIE, LUCA!!"
On the other side, Luca roared back, the Cerastus surging forward, chainsword screaming.
The Preceptor's flail lashed out, aimed straight at him.
Luca caught it on his ruined gauntlet, and without the disruption field to protect it, the gauntlet shattered outright on impact. But being a solid mass of adamantium, the damage only cost him a few broken fingers and cracked plating. The main structure held.
With the wrecked gauntlet, he seized the flail anyway, controlling the weapon, and kept driving forward.
The Preceptor thrust its lance forward to meet him, charging in turn.
"LUCA!!"
"FRALES!!"
In that split second, both weapons closed for the final exchange.
Atop the Cerastus, Kian, forcing his psychic power through a god's own anti-magic domain, felt like his very soul was catching fire.
"OPEN, DAMN IT!!"
Kian roared, veins bulging across his forehead, eyes bloodshot.
His soul genuinely did catch fire in that instant, and for one brief moment, a crack tore open in Khorne's domain, just long enough for a thread of golden psychic light to slip through into reality.
That thin thread of light, forced through, Kian channeled straight into the Cerastus, into the chainsword itself.
WHOOSH! The massive Hellstrike chainsword erupted in golden psychic flame.
The flame wrapped the entire blade, and in the fading dusk light, just as the stars were beginning to show, it lit up the whole battlefield in an instant.
Inside the Preceptor, the daemon-warped Frales caught sight of that golden flame and felt like he'd stared straight into the sun, his eyes scorched instantly.
He screamed, and the lance, meant to drive straight through the Cerastus's chest, veered off course, catching the shoulder plating instead.
In the same instant, the Cerastus's chainsword, wreathed in golden flame, drove hard into the Preceptor's chest.
The daemonic protection was burned away by the golden psychic light, restoring the armour's plating to its true, unblessed toughness.
The adamantium teeth, spinning ten thousand times a second, tore through the Preceptor's armour, through the internal frame, through the cockpit itself.
A horrific shriek of grinding metal followed, and the chainblade punched through the heavy steel and reached Frales's own face.
Amid his own terrified screaming, the adamantium teeth ground the blasphemous mass of his flesh, and the corrupted command throne fused to it, into nothing at all.
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