*Rated:M*
Summary: A newly sanctified Sister of Battle in desperate straits against the Greenskins on a farflung Hive World notable only for its sacred shrine finds safety in the questionable presence of a suicidal Dark Eldar Succubus seeking the ultimate balm to her jaded senses, death and consumption by She Who Thirsts. The divine will of Him On Earth demands that the Xeno must not be suffered to live but, to Sister Alessandra, Isarae represents her only ally in the wartorn Hive of Amphitria, and possibly her only means of survival.
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22139983?view_adult=true&view_full_work=true
Word count:153k
Chapters:51
Chapter 1: Empty
Empty.
How long has it been since I have felt anything but empty?
Like an amphora that was once filled with the finest wine, now carrying only a faint, barely perceptible hint of a scent. The insides of the vessel are stained with the memory of fermented fruit and spices, but it is empty.
I am empty.
Even here, resting in the midst of the bloodsoaked sands of my arena, I feel nothing. Once upon a time, the gore-stink of the millions of deaths spent in this place, combined with the psychic residue of their torment and the echoing screams of their drained souls would have been something to exult in.
Or at least it would have moved my soul in some manner.
Now, they were simply noises and smells, empty of meaning and devoid of flavor.
I took another deep breath, the stink of blood rich in the air.
The miasma of agony filling the infamous theatre of the Cult Cruciatrix sustained me and disgusted me. It was like filling my mouth with ashes and slowly chewing until they were nothing more than a spit-filled paste of grit, and then swallowing until the resulting muck filled my stomach to bursting.
"Isarae, w-why…" a voice hissed, and I glanced to the side to see one of the hekatarii of my cult, surprisingly, still clinging to life.
Her ruined hydra gauntlets, clad on equally ruined hands, spasmed as she tried to engaged the extradimensional weaponry within to kill me.
"Because, Aelithya," I replied neutrally as I stood from where I crouched and stalked over to her, my razorflail dragging along the sands, rasping through the dirt.
"Bec-cause…?"
"Simply, because," I repeated, kneeling in front of her and seizing her by the jaw.
She was beautiful, all of my brides are beautiful, though.
Were beautiful.
Her hair is the deep, angry red of a raised welt, and her eyes glitter like amethyst shards. Her flesh is pale, it has always been pale, but now it has more to do with the fact that most of her blood has left her body than due to her cosmetic modifications.
Aelithya was always one of the strongest, something proven by the fact she survived having both of her legs sheared off and her torso opened up. Not even the narco-compounds of the haemunculi could preserve her through this much damage.
Soon, She Who Thirsts would take Aelithya as well, just as They had taken the others in this long, scream-filled night.
I had thought that exterminating my own cult would stir something in me. I had hoped that the gross betrayal, the shrieks of outrage, the sight of so many familiar faces dying to their own Succubus, would at least fill some measure of that ancient amphora.
Well, the look on Archon Shae'lith's face just before I removed it did evoke the smallest twinge of amusement. I would savor that sensation for days, perhaps weeks if I was lucky. The fact that I still had his face hung from my belt hooks would help me recall it.
Just under a thousand dead in a single night.
And I felt next to nothing.
"You… are… damned," Aelithya hissed. "They will… come for you…"
"They are welcome to take me," I replied dryly. "I welcome the blackness of Her hunger and the torment eternal, perhaps I will even feel it."
"M-Madness," Aelithya sputtered through wet lips.
She was dying, and I angled her face up until we were staring eye-to-eye. There was terror in her eyes, terror of the Prince of Excess, terror for her soul and its ultimate destination.
I wanted to see it, maybe this time I would feel something. I had trained Aelithya myself, and for centuries we had moved in a delicate dance of lust, depravity, and violence.
Perhaps I would feel it when she was devoured.
Her eyes reflected my features as she gasped like a drowning animal. I admired the artful, arterial spray that had crossed my face. My pale complexion highlighted by the perfect fanlike arc of red.
She was fading, I could see it in the glassiness of her eyes, so I pulled her close and pressed my lips to hers. It was a familiar taste and curve, one I'd tasted too many times for there to be any novelty to it.
I held her there until her body went slack, and her death rattle croaked out from her.
"How disappointing," I muttered as I dropped her limp body to the ground. "Her final breath tasted the same as all of her other ones."
I glanced around the theatre, considering how, in the next half-cycle, it would be crawlin with the new Archon's incubi and kabalites. Perhaps they would offer me a new cult, perhaps they would kill me to ensure I did not do to them what I did to their predecessor.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Stepping over the empty vessel which had once owned the name 'Aelithya', I walked to my chambers. I kept my pace slow and languid, no need to rush after all.
I wasn't going anywhere.
An errant thought slipped through the dull, caked, slurry of apathy that was coating my mind.
Not going anywhere.
Perhaps, perhaps.
What if I was going somewhere? Why stay on Commorragh? If I fled, would they pursue me?
Perhaps.
The galaxy beyond the webway was a panoply of chaos and death, I could choose a restricted portal to flee through and go somewhere truly horrible. A place soaked in war where no sane Aeldari would dare step foot without a full fleet at their backs for fear of being devoured by She Who Thirsts.
If I went there alone, I might find something to stir me.
"Perhaps," I purred quietly.
A familiar sensation trickled through my mind. Something like…
Anticipation.
Yes, that's it.
I cast open the doors to my chambers and doffed my ceremonial armor. Instead of that, I moved to the stands that held my true armaments, that which I wore when called to war by the Archon.
Gauntlets of deep black were fitted over my hands, their color like the emptiness between the stars, and covered from finger to wrist with cleverly fashioned edges that were as sharp as any blade. Greaves of the same shade and cast, went on next, strapped easily up to my knees and leaving my legs bare and free for movement.
A cuirass, artfully cut and slashed to leave wide portions of pale flesh bare to bleed, was secured next, with scores of smaller blades hooked in place along my sides and hips.
I ran a fountain of clear water to wash the blood and grit from my hair, the long locks that were a delightful shade of orange flame. I took great pride in my appearance, as all Hekatarii do, for what is death without beauty? What beauty is there without the finality of death?
Once clean of my evening of blood, I sat to begin preparation.
With delicate brushes, I drew lines of thin cerulean in curling calligraphic symbols across my face. Broader ones pressed rouge to my lips and flat ones gave a hint of color to my cheeks.
It had been so long since I'd done this for myself. So many years had passed since I'd had any but one of my slaves use these little brushes and cosmetics, and yet I still knew the soft motions.
The teasing prologue to a dire narrative of blood and shrieking.
Now my slaves were dead, along with my Archon, my Wyches, my Hekatarii, and my Haemonculus, along with everyone else in the building, and still I feel nothing.
Yes, it is time to leave Commorragh, and seek my death elsewhere. It will not suit me to die on the blade of a spited Archon and his gaggle of Incubi. I will die in some other manner, something awful and wretched, something truly obscene and unworthy.
To die on an open field, surrounded by the stench of true war, gripping my entrails as I'm closed in upon, and screaming expletives while swinging my weapon in graceless spasms of defiance as my death approaches with inevitable tread.
"Yes," a true smile graces my face for the first time in decades. "Yes… that is how I shall die, and it shall be a perfect end to my performance."
My armory cabinet at the far end of my room is one of the lone pieces of ostentation I permitted myself. My quarters are dull and bare to remind me of what I must forever press against, but my armory… oh yes, that is a masterpiece.
A stroke of my finger pulls the veiled metal aside, and run my fingers along my myriad tools.
I paused at my hydra gauntlets, a favorite of some of my lesser Hekatarii, and a difficult weapon to master with its lashing, extraspatial material. I had outgrown their use centuries ago when their novelty ceased to amuse me. The shardnet was still an old, passing favorite of mine. Seeing captives writhe in its grip, cutting themselves to pieces until they either bleed out or learn to stay still remained a cherished, if distant, memory to me.
My favored weapon it would be, then.
The Razorflail.
I lifted the deceptively light weapon and cradled it, admiring the wide, monowire-linked blades that would rip and hiss through the air like a whip as they painted the field around me with viscera. It was a paintbrush of a sort, a simple tool that required a lifetime to truly master, and I had spent many lifetimes perfecting the art of the Lacerai.
So many battlefields had been rendered into canvasses of ruin, each death, each severed limb, each arterial spray, calculated just so to maximize the effect on the senses when viewed for the first time, and for too long I've employed my skills to the jaded delights of Commorragh's mighty.
Too long they have stared hungrily as I painted them masterpieces night after night until it was naught but a chore.
I fastened the razorflail to my waist, holstered my twin splinter pistols which had been gifted to me by none other than Asdrubael Vect himself after a particularly long night of performance for his Kabal, and left my home, my theatre, for good.
It had served its purpose.