Farseer Falling

Chapter XI

Caius could barely move as his ribs screamed in pain with every breath and his head swam with a concussion, but he watched in awe as the massive pieces of metal bounced off of the psychic barrier above him and slid off to the sides around them. Nuadan was groaning under the exertion and muttering to himself in his strange language, and after what felt like an eternity, the debris stopped falling. Nuadan dropped his arms and let out a shout, bracing himself against the floor as he turned to Caius.

"Can you stand?" Nuadan felt his head swimming as he looked at the Ultramarine.

"The village," Caius groaned as he raised himself up, ignoring the feeling of his screaming cracked ribs and the pain in his head. "They know where it is... We need to warn them."

"Kaira.... Hela..." Nuadan felt fear grip his stomach as he forced himself to stand despite the exhaustion that gripped his entire being. "We need to warn them! If we move quickly, perhaps we can..." He let the thought die in his throat. They had to get there before it was too late. Maybe they could avoid the future that he had seen. Maybe...

"The artifact," Caius met his gaze as he forced himself to stand. "What happened to it?"

"A tech-priest made off with it. I believe they have gone to activate one of the Webway gates." Nuadan saw Caius swear as he began making his way towards the only open exit. He followed him, the sharp pain in his own torso making it hard to breathe as he moved as quickly as he could behind Caius.

When they cleared the fort, Caius saw a lone Thunderhawk vanishing into a low-lying cloudbank in the distance, but what made him stop looking was the sight of Nuadan punching himself in the large cut on his ribs and then taking off across the open expanse at a dead-sprint. Caius followed after him, trying his best to keep up. The Farseer was moving remarkably quickly considering that he had no augments or power armor, but he couldn't blame him. The safety of the civilians needed to be their new top priority no matter what else happened.

The closer that they came to the village, the more that Nuadan could smell burning timber and superheated metal. A part of him still clung to the hope that perhaps his vision had been false, that their preparation and warning about the Chaos forces on the planet had given them enough of a warning to keep them safe, but that hope was dashed when he reached the entrance to the village

It was like a nightmare. The images from his vision were playing out before him in real life, and it was just as terrible as he believed it would be. Slain militia lay at the gate with guns in hand, bodies mutilated by bolter fire and melee weapons, and every building had been put to the torch. The buildings had been burning long enough to begin collapsing on themselves, and he had gone almost entirely numb when Caius finally fell in step beside him

"By the Emperor..." Caius muttered as he looked out over the scorched village, soon turning to look at Nuadan beside him.

"No...!" Nuadan tore past Caius, who could only stare at the town in flames. "Kaira!" He screamed out, voice breaking even through the modulation of his helmet.

"Bahad!" Caius shook himself and pursued. It didn't take him long to catch up, watching as the Eldar used his sword as a lever to lift burning piles of wood out of the way.

"Help me, mon-keigh!" Nuadan looked back at him, voice pleading and desperate. Yet Caius saw burned and butchered bodies everywhere. Nothing was alive in this village, Hepharion had seen to that. "Kaira! Hela!" He let the wooden beams fall aside out of his way and spun to where their house was, shoving his way past Caius who tried to stop him, but who couldn't yet find the heart to tell him that he already knew what he was going to find.

Caius followed behind slowly, coming to a halt when he saw the Eldar frozen in front of the little house where the woman and child that he knew he was looking for had lived. It remained untouched by flame, but it only took a few more steps to see what had made the Farseer stop. The front of their house had been smashed in, the door torn from its hinges and the windows shattered by bolter fire. Nuadan walked forward like a man possessed, his movements loose yet robotic as he stepped over the broken door laying on the ground. Caius followed behind him slowly as he saw the interior for the first time. The carved wooden furniture was smashed and broken, and he saw some of Hela's little colored pencils and papers strewn over the ground. A piece of him hoped that they would find no bodies, no blood, nothing, and that when they went outside they would find them hidden away in a thicket somewhere. He saw Nuadan stop in the doorway of the bedroom where Kaira and her daughter stayed, body going completely limp before him. Caius approached him from behind and looked over his shoulder to see what made him pause. Kaira and Hela lay on the floor, hands intertwined with throats slit, left to die in a pool of their own blood. There was the clang of metal on wood, and Caius turned to see the Nuadan had dropped his sword and had begun to walk forward slowly into the smashed door of the room, the heavy wood unable to stop the might of the fallen Space Marines. He fell to his knees, hand running over Kaira's hair, brushing it from her face before doing the same to little Hela. He pulled the little girl into his arms, and Caius saw him begin rocking back and forth slowly.