Chapter 10: Powerful Enemy

Sotha-Nal continued forward, passing through the towering archway and into the center of the sepulchral hall.

The space within the hall was immense, the air suffused with a green glow, as if one had stepped into a mechanical hell.

Polyhedral blackstone structures, supported by pillars of light, floated horizontally all around him. Slender, silent Necrons lay dormant within them—thousands of remains, framed by light, blackstone, and gravitational fields, linked together by an automated control system.

If they were all to awaken, even if the entire Seventh Company were thrown into the fray, they wouldn't be able to stir up so much as a ripple.

Fortunately, perhaps due to some mysterious curse, only one-tenth of the Necrons had awakened, but that was trouble enough.

Sotha-Nal carved his way through the forest of steel, reaching the center of the battlefield—the very place where his Captain had been surrounded.

However, he was too late.

The company Apothecary lay on the ground, his chest split open like a scallop, viscera and blood gushing out to stain his white armor. With the death of the Apothecary, the gene-seed of the fallen warriors would be lost forever in the cold void.

For any Chapter, this was a devastating blow.

Under normal circumstances, this sight should have forced Sotha-Nal into a defensive state, with maximum speed and heightened alertness.

Despite his superhuman instincts, the death of the Apothecary left his mind reeling for a fleeting moment.

And so, the first strike caught him off guard.

The attack came from the side; it was only by sheer luck that Sotha-Nal’s shoulder guard deflected the blow.

The attacker’s warscythe shattered the pauldrons and gashed Sotha-Nal’s forearm.

"Damn it!"

He staggered backward, his face filled with shock and fury.

Fury at the mistake of being distracted.

Shock at the immense power of the entity that had ambushed him.

Sotha-Nal regained his footing, parrying the enemy's assault with his sword.

He was locked in a duel with a Necron Noble—a fleshless beast, its sleek silver armor adorned with various reinforced organs and striking green crystals. These xenos were usually the rulers of their pathetic kin, the elite among the undead population.

The warrior’s physique was worthy of a formidable opponent, and its weapon was a reinforced warscythe.

After a brief standoff, they spun through the hall like dancers, attacking one another.

The Necron Noble’s challenge was more threatening than all the Necron cannon fodder Sotha-Nal had destroyed that day combined. The combat skills of these elite warriors were terrifying, and their augmented strength far surpassed Sotha-Nal’s.

Even its speed left the Astartes breathless.

One could hardly imagine such agility from a machine.

In a chilling moment, Sotha-Nal wondered if he was, at last, experiencing the feeling of helplessness himself.

They fought their way toward the center of the hall.

There stood a massive stack of stasis-generators, carved with grotesque figures, resembling the altar of a temple.

Necrons were being transported out of their coffins, floating up and stacking together.

Several colossal black statues, as dazzling as snow, knelt respectfully around the stasis-generators.

The Necron Noble’s silver armor shimmered with an oily luster in the eerie light of the tomb. Its warscythe danced like a ribbon of light, launching every attack with cold, precise calculation.

But Sotha-Nal’s defense was more seasoned.

"Ha!"

With a roar, he seized an opening, delivering a lightning-fast strike with his sword hilt that cracked the opponent’s breastplate.

The Necron Noble stumbled back a few steps, immediately regained its footing, and launched a counterattack.

Clang!

The two weapons crossed, locked firmly together.

But the chainsword’s teeth suffered against the phase-blade of the warscythe. With a piercing screech, shards of flying metal struck Sotha-Nal’s power armor, and some flew past his face, carving bloody furrows into his skin.

Seeing that the stalemate was unfavorable, Sotha-Nal intended to disengage and fight again, but the opponent suddenly slammed its shoulder into him.

The Astartes staggered backward, crashing into a row of automated control systems.

The casings shattered, fragments scattering like withered petals under the weak light.

Some casings were knocked out of the range of the gravitational light pillars, smashing onto the polished metal floor.

The tomb’s energy supply instantly faltered, and the sleeping xenos tumbled onto the floor in a chaotic heap, like bundles of branches and roots.

"Victory or death!"

The Necron pushed aside the floating casings blocking its path, trampling over the debris and wreckage as it charged at Sotha-Nal.

The Astartes struggled to stand.

Dark, sickly flashes of energy jumped between the collapsed sections of the sepulchral hall like misfiring neurons, and explosions of multicolored flame twisted into the serene silver surfaces of the undamaged walls.

A strange harmony, like a low moan composed of thousands of voices, filled the entire hall.

The Necron Noble had already reached Sotha-Nal.

The Astartes steadied his nerves. In this moment, time slowed down drastically, as did the opponent’s movements.

A thousand thoughts flashed through his mind. Then, Sotha-Nal raised his arm, his chainsword sweeping before his eyes, shattering a sensor unit and carving a mark down the opponent’s abdomen and hip.

In the blink of an eye, the Necron swayed and swung its warscythe, narrowly missing Sotha-Nal’s head.

But the Angel of Death’s counterattack forced the xenos to retreat step by step, grinding the debris on the floor into powder.

Sotha-Nal’s next strike wounded the enemy’s thigh, and something silver, like liquid water, whimpered as it flowed out.

In this highly disadvantageous position, the Necron Noble violently twisted its upper body around its spine, knocking Sotha-Nal’s chainsword away with its warscythe, while simultaneously slamming the butt of the weapon into his face.

Sotha-Nal fell instantly, the impact making his brain buzz within his skull, his mouth and nasal cavity filled with blood.

He lay face down, reaching out in a daze to grope for the sword he had dropped, but he felt nothing.

"Sir!"

He rolled over and looked up, wondering why the enemy hadn't finished him off yet.

He found that Velinus from his squad was dueling the Necron Noble, with Fex not far behind.

The thunderous sound of weapons fire echoed from the entrance, indicating that other squads had entered the core of the tomb. Nothing was more heartening than the arrival of reinforcements.

But what happened next left Sotha-Nal heartbroken.

Velinus had been wounded on his way into the hall, and his movements were sluggish.

His arrival and interception had saved Sotha-Nal, but it had also doomed himself.

The Necron Noble was too powerful an opponent. Before the dizzy, bloodied Sotha-Nal could stand, the xenos leader delivered a fatal blow, splitting Velinus from his left shoulder to his right hip.

A single strike, cleaving him in two diagonally.

The squad member’s mangled remains fell heavily to the ground, blood and viscera spraying everywhere.

Fex roared and lunged at the Necron, but the creature blasted him into another row of coffins with a single punch.

This gave Sotha-Nal his chance. He found his sword, though its teeth were now jagged and broken.

"Die!!"

He drove the sword into the Necron Noble’s spine from behind, the tip piercing through the center of the emblem on the xenos’s breastplate.

The beast fell to one knee, then collapsed face-first.

Sotha-Nal pressed his knee onto its back and sliced through its skull. The Necron Noble’s pale face turned to the side, cheek pressed against the floor, the silver metal stained with dark red droplets of blood.

As Sotha-Nal destroyed everything within its cranium, the eerie green glow in its eye sockets gradually faded away.