Chapter 381: A Rain of Fire From the Heavens
Kian gripped Luca's flute in his left hand, his sword, its disruption field dead, in his right, and dropped down off the Knight's wreckage.
He hit the ground hard, and it took a long moment of ragged breathing before he could shakily haul himself back up.
Once upright, he pointed the sword out at the tens of thousands of cultists surrounding him.
"Chaos scum! Fight me!!"
None of them moved.
One towering warlord stepped forward from the crowd, longsword in hand, expression heavy as he studied Kian.
"That's enough."
He said simply.
He waved a hand behind him, and the cultist ranks parted, opening a clear path stretching from where Kian stood all the way to the Golden Bridge.
"Piercer. You have proven your valor. You have endured combat no mortal should have survived. You are spent. We would gladly take your head, but not today. When your strength returns and our paths cross again on some other battlefield, that will be a new fight."
Kian looked at the parted crowd, at the open path to the bridge they'd cleared for him, and finally at the towering warlord who'd spoken.
He smiled.
"You're telling me this now?"
He gripped his sword and started walking, step by step, straight toward the warlord.
The warlord's expression hardened.
"Stop, Piercer. Come any closer and I will act."
Kian didn't stop. If anything, his pace picked up, breaking into a run, charging straight at him.
"If that's what you want, then so be it."
The warlord murmured, raising his sword to meet him.
Their blades crossed, and Kian staggered from the impact.
His condition was terrible right now. The Demon-Cleaver's power was gone, the disruption field dead, and he was fragile enough that a solid touch could kill him.
The warlord knocked his blade wide with a single strike, then drove the tip down toward the weak point in Kian's armour, his abdomen.
The waist section of powered armour always ran thinner, needed for mobility, and this warlord clearly knew exactly where to aim, having been through god knows how many trials himself.
His weapon, blessed by his god, punched clean through that weak point and out the other side.
Kian, helmetless right now, would have had his skull split just as easily. But given how impressive his performance had been on this battlefield, the warlord had earned him a measure of respect, and chose to leave the body intact by going for the gut instead.
Run through, what little strength Kian had left drained out of him instantly, both arms hanging slack.
"Heh heh heh."
He raised his head, looking straight into the eyes of the towering warlord standing over him.
"Kid. I'll be back."
The warlord had no idea what that meant, and said nothing, just watched him warily.
"And so I can pick you out of a crowd when I do, let me leave you a little souvenir."
Before the warlord could ask what that meant, Kian's mouth snapped open and clamped down, hard, on the man's nose.
"AAAAAH!!"
The warlord let out a scream of agony, tears bursting from his eyes.
Kian poured every last scrap of strength he had left into his jaw, and tore the man's nose clean off.
He spat it out and burst out laughing.
"How'd you like your present?"
"YOU—!!"
The warlord roared, drew his sword, and brought it down hard on Kian's skull.
The next instant, his mind went dark.
...
Some indeterminate time later, a point of light flared to life in the darkness, and a long-dormant train of thought sparked back to consciousness.
Kian's eyes opened slowly, staring up at the ceiling of a ship's cabin.
He knew immediately what had happened. He'd respawned. He sat up in bed and flexed his fists.
Feeling his refreshed body, the surge of full stamina and willpower gave him a wave of physical relief.
But somewhere deep in his soul, a lingering exhaustion remained.
It was a strange sensation, stamina and willpower both maxed out on the surface, and yet he felt genuinely tired underneath it, like he couldn't quite muster the energy to care about anything.
He sat there for a while, then dug through his Sanctum and pulled out a set of fatigues to put on.
He opened the Sanctum's door and headed straight for the Inquisitor's chambers.
Staff along the way stared at him in visible surprise. Kian just nodded at them and kept walking, and none of them stopped to ask.
He made his way down the steel corridors, and at some point, ran into Nova.
"Meow? Aren't you—"
Kian ignored her, pushed past, and kept walking straight toward the Inquisitor's chambers.
The door was sealed shut. Just as he approached, about to knock, it opened on its own.
The biometric scanner had recognized him, and his clearance with the Inquisitor was high enough that the door simply let him through automatically.
He walked straight in. Trasolh sat behind a long wooden desk, working through paperwork.
Trasolh, quill in hand, glanced up and paused briefly at the sight of Kian walking in. But knowing the man was an Immortal, it didn't strike him as particularly strange.
He set the quill down, folded his hands on the desk, and asked.
"Died once?"
Kian nodded, pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a long drag.
"Died once. Damn, that mission really wore me down."
Trasolh didn't rush to ask for details. He stood, walked over to the coffee machine.
"Coffee?"
Kian nodded. Trasolh worked the machine, and a steaming cup was set down in front of him a moment later.
Kian held the cigarette between two fingers, staring at the steaming cup for a long moment.
Trasolh waited patiently, in no hurry to press for answers.
When the cigarette had burned down to the filter, Kian finally spoke.
"The fleet's macro-cannon shells. We got enough?"
Trasolh nodded. "Enough to level a hundred mountains."
Kian said, "One will do."
Two weeks later, the Inquisitor's fleet arrived in orbit above Glory, and flew straight for the peak of Throne Mountain.
Across the fleet, every gun, including the defensive batteries on the transport ships, locked onto the mountain.
The first massive lance beam dropped from the sky, striking the mountain and vaporizing tens of tonnes of stone in an instant. Then came the macro-cannon shells, hundreds, thousands of them, falling like rain.
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