Warhammer 40k: Ferrus Manus

[DumDumDum]

It is a legendary time.

Mighty heroes clash for the right to rule the Galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Mankind conquer the stars in the Great Crusade. His finest warriors are destined to crush and erase myriads of alien races from the pages of history. The dawn of a new era of cosmic dominion beckons humanity. Gleaming citadels of marble and gold sing praises to the countless victories of the Emperor, who reclaims system after system under His dominion.

Upon millions of worlds, monuments are raised to the glory of the great deeds wrought by His mightiest champions. Foremost and most eminent among them are the Primarchs, superhuman beings who lead the legions of the Space Marines to war. They are magnificent and unyielding, the pinnacle of the Emperor's genetic mastery, while the Space Marines themselves are the deadliest warriors the Galaxy has ever known, each capable of cutting down a hundred ordinary men or more in single combat.

Many legends are told of these fabled creatures. From the halls of the Imperial Palace on Terra to the distant reaches of the Ultima Segmentum, everywhere their deeds shape the very destiny of the Galaxy. Yet can such souls remain forever pure, untroubled by doubt? Or will the temptations of absolute power prove too great even for the Emperor's most devoted sons?

The seeds of heresy have already been sown, and only a handful of years remain before the outbreak of the greatest war in human history…

. . .

The impact was the first thing I felt. It felt as though I had been a meteor, slamming into the earth at unfathomable speed, tearing through dozens of tons of rock and soil. Steel shuddered, a faint light blinded me for a split second, and the nearby machinery began to let out an irritating whine… Where the hell did all this even come from?

I didn't recognize the place I was in. A strange metal box, lit by a few tiny bulbs, packed with bizarre machines, and fitted with a single viewing port to look outside. The trouble was, right now it was webbed with cracks and smeared with some kind of grime, rendering it completely opaque.

There was a whole host of problems with myself, too. For one, my head was splitting with a monstrous migraine, and my entire consciousness felt sluggish, like I had just dragged myself out of some centuries-long slumber. Because of that, it took an inexcusably long time to look down at myself and register the critical details.

I was a young child, dressed in a lightweight white undershirt and shorts… Wait, wasn't I supposed to be?

Trying to latch onto that thought only triggered another spike of blinding pain. Memories surged into my head of things I couldn't possibly know, concepts I couldn't have even imagined. My mind groaned under the sudden flood of everything conceivable: from unknown languages in which I could now converse with effortless fluency, to technology that utterly defied the imagination. Schematics of impossible machines sprang into my mind unbidden, shattering my focus.

Still, now wasn't the time for that. I needed to figure out where I was and, ideally, break out of this mysterious metal barrel. So, gritting my teeth against the headache, I tried to stand and get my bearings.

Doing my best to ignore the intrusive thoughts lecturing me on the molecular lattice of exceptionally hard carbon glass, I spent several minutes peering out as much as I could, pressing my face first to one section of the viewing port, then another. Unfortunately, through the muck, all I could discern was some dark, cavernous chamber, dimly illuminated by a sickly green radiance. Not a flicker of shadow, not a whisper of movement.

No sounds or scents penetrated my chamber, leaving me with a pitiful dearth of information. I turned toward the mechanisms behind me, searching for some kind of optical feed or monitor, but that proved equally fruitless. There were no supplies either—no food, no water, no dataslates or notes, nothing resembling an information drive.

Left with no other option, I reached down for a cluster of wiring beneath me and, guided by the knowledge hardwired into my skull, set out to short-circuit them to release the hatch. The entire process came with an uncanny sensation of almost instinctual comprehension, reading the inner workings of a machine I was seeing for the very first time. Even with my thoughts churning in a chaotic whirlpool, one absolute fact shone like a beacon in my mind: no one understands machines better than I do.

All it took was a single glance at a mechanism, and blueprints and structural schematics unfurled behind my eyes. I understood how every component of my chamber was constructed, why it was made, and what exact function it served. It took less than five minutes of deft finger work to pluck out the correct lead, pull it from its terminal, splice in another, and then trip a bypass toggle off to the side…

With a sharp click, the viewing port shifted and ground upward with a metallic screech, revealing a sprawling cavern bristling with luminescent green stalagmites and bizarre metallic pillars. Stranger still, the rock faces and walls were covered in glowing runes and glyphs inscribed in a language completely alien to me.

Poking my head cautiously out of the pod, I scanned the area, checking for booby traps or signs of life. My gaze met only dead stone and steel. The surfaces were carved with runes, each subtly distinct, and the air around them seemed to shimmer with a faint, unsettling distortion. A deeply ominous sign, even if I couldn't quite put my finger on why.

A part of me burned with the urge to decipher them and analyze their function, but common sense and raw survival instinct won out. In any case, I could always double back later to study them properly.

Once satisfied there were no immediate sights or sounds of danger, I took my first step. My small, bare foot touched the glassy, polished stone, but the chill didn't bother me. To my astonishment, though my body looked frail and undeveloped, I could feel an unnatural reservoir of strength and vitality coiled within it.

Clenching and unclenching my fists, feeling the slide of muscle, the tension in my sinews, and even the heavy, rhythmic thrum of my own heart, I realized I was exceptionally powerful. Now wasn't the ideal time to run physical drills and map the exact threshold of my capabilities, but the realization was striking. For some reason, my head was packed with facts proving I was far beyond normal, yet I possessed practically zero baseline data on what that "normal" was supposed to be…

First, I resolved to inspect my immediate surroundings and the chamber I had awakened in. Despite the massive influx of fresh technical knowledge, my brain flatly refused to dredge up anything from before I woke up. It was as if I hadn't existed at all before this moment.

Examining the engineering marvel from a fresh angle, I noticed an enormous gilded numeral emblazoned across its hull. "X." The Tenth.

Another fact surfaced from some uncharted corner of my mind, one I was more certain of than anything in my life. It wasn't a letter, not a designation code, and not some random serial mark—it was distinctly a number. The knowledge felt branded into my consciousness, so heavy was its significance.

I was the Tenth. The tenth what? I suspected I would find out eventually. If someone had designed and built this triumph of engineering, they would certainly know about me. Whether that reunion would happen anytime soon was another question entirely. My current predicament looked either like some bizarre experiment conducted by unknown forces, or an emergency jettison.

Tilting my head back, I saw a massive embankment of churned soil sloping down from an angle—presumably the trajectory my pod had taken on its descent. Unfortunately, there was no breach left to climb through; the impact had caused a total cave-in of earth and stone, meaning I would have to find another way out. And while several tunnels branched off from this central cavern, there was no telling what lurked around the next bend.

Without food or water, I wouldn't last long, so I needed to move out as soon as possible. But first, I had to fashion some rudimentary arms and protection to brace for whatever unexpected horrors might be waiting. Fortunately, I had a prime source of raw materials right in front of me.

Casting an appraising eye over the heavily damaged pod, I shook out my hands and began visualizing the structural design of my first creation. It was as if a switch had been flipped inside my head, flooding it with a torrent of ideas. Unfortunately, lacking both the time and refined components to fabricate some of the truly fascinating blueprints spinning through my thoughts, I decided to settle for something simple and resource-efficient…

. . .

The tunnels were a fascinating environment. Where these luminous glyphs drew their power from—and why they were even carved here in the first place—was a complete mystery, but it made for an intriguing puzzle. As I searched for an exit, I combed my subconscious for anything even remotely resembling the script, to no avail. What I did discover in the process, however, was that I somehow possessed complete fluency in twelve entirely different languages and dialects. Another riddle shelved for later.

In theory, it would be worthwhile to eventually transcribe everything I knew about them to extrapolate the cultural markers of the civilizations that spoke them. Even now, it was obvious these tongues belonged to societies at wildly disparate tiers of development. One dialect had twelve distinct designations for types of snow, yet completely lacked the concept of an atom. Another had precise technical terms for various fusion reactor designs, yet held no concept of the changing of the seasons.

My subconscious ran those calculations in the background while the bulk of my cognitive power focused on navigating the cavern. In my grip, I held a crudely fashioned metal spear with a wicked, razor-sharp point. I hadn't tested it on living flesh yet—seeing as I was the only breathing thing down here—but it was hard enough to score grooves across the metal plating of my pod. For now, it would do.

I had also entertained the idea of cobbling together some armour, but the salvageable metal was sparse. Scavenging fragments sheared off the ruined pod had barely yielded enough material for the short spear. I'd had to manually hammer, fold, and reshape the jagged scrap into the proper proportions so I was wielding a spear rather than a glorified trowel, but the physical labor had proved shockingly effortless.

Yes, as it turned out, I was strong enough to crush and reshape steel with my bare hands. Granted, I was only able to work this particular alloy because the crash had already severely compromised its structural integrity, but still. I might not be a master of biological sciences, but an organism of my current physical mass simply had no business wielding that kind of mechanical output…

I stopped dead before taking another step. Naturally, I was proceeding with absolute caution, anticipating ambushes or hazards at every turn, which demanded calculating every footfall while tracking minute environmental shifts.

It was during my ongoing scrutiny of the alien glyphs that I began discerning patterns. My mind worked at full burn, and I caught onto the fact that they were mapped out in an intentional sequence, clustered according to an esoteric logic reminiscent of a warped Fibonacci progression. The symbols directly ahead of me, however, were fundamentally different.

Stepping a few paces to the flank and narrowing my eyes, I realized that, viewed from a distance, they converged into a cohesive image. The runes aligned seamlessly, and the radiation bleeding from the stalagmites cast its light at the exact angle required for the eye to stitch the individual components into a single picture. And I despised what I was looking at.

The glyphs formed the coiled silhouette of an enormous worm—or perhaps some serpentine beast—spiraling toward a single central rune that flared with an intense, sickly radiance. The emerald glow was an overt lure, begging a passerby to reach out and touch it…

I simply turned on my heel and walked the other way. Absolutely not. Far too transparent a trap. I pinned a mental note to revisit the anomaly later, but for now, it could rot.

Escaping this subterranean maze was my paramount objective, though unraveling my own identity couldn't be deferred forever. I had a creeping suspicion that leaving that question unanswered for too long would only invite disaster.

. . .

Navigating out of this endless network of tunnels—a bona fide subterranean labyrinth—proved to be an ordeal, but the journey yielded significant insight. Even setting aside the blatantly artificial architecture of the complex, I learned a great deal about my own nature.

To begin with, my cognitive baseline was vastly superior to that of a normal human. While I possessed no frame of reference for the day-to-day existence of ordinary people, I managed to trick my own memory into surrendering baseline data. By mentally modeling hypothetical cybernetic improvements for an average human subject, my mind immediately supplied data on an exhaustive array of implants and augmentations designed to rectify specific flaws in the baseline human frame. By assembling that diagnostic puzzle, I was able to extrapolate my own parameters.

I was, without a shadow of a doubt, nowhere near baseline. Even setting aside my freakish physical output, my cognitive bandwidth was astounding. The moment my eyes registered an object or an environmental detail, my brain was simply incapable of forgetting it. Thanks to this absolute recall, I didn't even need a physical map; I effortlessly committed the route to memory, generating an exact, real-time topographical schematic of the entire cavern network behind my eyes.

Wandering aimlessly through this complex would never yield an exit. Given that the entire subterranean infrastructure was undeniably manufactured, there had to be people—or at least sapient beings—somewhere nearby.

Secondly, since the air was breathable—if stale—and showed no signs of active ventilation shafts, an exterior breach had to exist. I began hunting for barometric pressure differentials and air currents, systematically traversing the corridors, occasionally backtracking to make brief pit stops at the pod. My engineer's soul simply refused to abandon such a breathtaking piece of advanced technology without scavenging what I could.

I left the sophisticated internal avionics untouched—they might prove invaluable down the line—but from the pod's narrow crash-couch lining, I managed to fashion crude, insulated garments and wraps for my feet. The subterranean air was frigid, and even for an organism as heavily optimized as mine, roaming through stone vaults for hours practically naked was pushing it.

After clearing a layer of grime from the pod's shattered viewing port, I finally caught sight of my own reflection: a stocky, solid boy of about ten years, with cropped black hair and dark green eyes flecked with gold. What proved far more unsettling was the total absence of birthmarks, blemishes, or skin irregularities; my entire visage possessed a distinctly artificial perfection. Flawlessly symmetrical, devoid of the slightest biological error…

Having surveyed my reflection, I immediately turned my focus back to the path out.

After a grueling period of calculation and trial, I observed that while the layout of the runes maintained geometric uniformity, their internal resonance differed. To navigate this endless maze, I needed to track toward the path where their luminescence dropped to its weakest threshold. Even though the variance was a mere candela or two, I committed to following that faint gradient. The hypothesis proved correct when a subtle draught of fresh air brushed against my skin.

I didn't lose my composure, nor did I break into a reckless dash like an amateur. Instead, I advanced with measured steps, scanning even more intently for tripwires and kinetic triggers. The black stalactites faded to a sullen, dim sheen and the runes grew sparse, but I pressed forward toward the open air.

I moved until the gloomy twilight of the subterranean vaults gave way to a dense, oppressive gloom, ultimately spilling into a vast cavern almost completely devoid of ambient light. Only a single, narrow fissure—barely a meter wide—admitted a chilling draft and bathed the chamber in a harsh, cold gray light. I had to inch my way up the slick, freezing rock face, probing every crevice with the tip of my spear for structural faults, but the effort paid off.

Scrambling clear of the cave mouth, I immediately tilted my head back, searching for the sun. But beneath a suffocating blanket of heavy, leaden gray clouds, nothing broke through. The local climate was brutal and bleak. In place of fertile soil, the horizon unfurled into endless expanses of black ice and slate-gray snow, bordered by colossal, jagged mountain ranges. Yet to me, none of that mattered.

Drawing a deep breath, I felt crisp, biting mountain air sear my lungs for the very first time. And through a momentary rift in the cloud cover, a solitary sliver of sunlight broke free, illuminating my silhouette against the frost.

 

[DumDumDum]

At first glance, the thought crept into my mind that the surrounding world had died long ago, and I was merely treading upon its corpse. A freezing, desolate ice desert where the ground was glazed in black ice, and the sky hung choked with heavy gray clouds, blotting out the sun completely. The wind howled between the peaks, whipping up squalls of dirty, slate-gray snow.

In the distance sprawled the northern mountain ranges, while ahead lay a low expanse of vicious gales and stinging, almost predatory squalls of dust. It was bisected by a wide belt of metallic flotsam that seemed to twitch with life in the wind. Mangled scrap metal rolled across the wasteland like shapeless legions forged of dark iron, which, despite their apparent vigor, never traveled far. The tempest pushed them back and forth, gradually swallowing them into the black sand.

And not a single living soul besides myself. Not a bush, not a tree, not even a blade of grass. Only dead, frozen earth.

Left with no other alternative, I began my descent down the mountain, searching for signs of anything at all. Crouching down, I swept a hand through the gray snow, gathering an armful to examine it. Bringing it close, sifting and rolling the grains between my fingers, I noticed that beneath it all was completely ordinary snow, seemingly blended with foreign matter. Some strange metal or particulate mineral that thoroughly coated the entire range.

Analyzing the black ice yielded the exact same result. It was simply frozen water infused with the very same metallic sand. Curiously, the ice proved far tougher than anticipated—trying to chip off even a sliver with my spear met with stubborn resistance. It was vastly more resilient than steel or natural stone. Even so, my strength proved superior.

The razor-sharp ice crystal was also considerably denser and heavier than I had assumed. Drawing its sharp edge carefully across a nearby boulder, I sheared straight through the stone like a knife through butter. Well, I had a feeling that would come in handy too.

Fashioning a makeshift belt from the remnants of the pod's fabric, I secured my newly minted dagger and pressed on. I maintained vigilance for traps and kept a razor-sharp eye on my surroundings, yet there was no one in sight. Even after several hours of trekking, I didn't encounter anyone… living. As it turned out, that distinction mattered immensely.

They appeared as if conjured from thin air. As I was moving forward, cyan and emerald sparks abruptly began crackling into being all around me. Translucent human silhouettes flared into existence only to vanish instantly, impossible to examine in detail. Relying on sheer instinct, I immediately braced for combat, leveling my spear and tracking their apparitions, hunting for any predictable pattern. I didn't have to wait long.

Ten seconds later, a fresh flash flared several paces directly in front of me, but this time it held its form. Before me coalesced the gray silhouette of an elderly man, wreathed in a sickly, brilliant green glow. The man's eyes blazed, though stripped of any flicker of sapience. His face was frozen in an agonizing, eternal scream, yet the voice issuing from his open jaws sounded deathly cold and hollow:

"Completion."

He spoke in one of the twelve languages hardwired into my skull. The flat cadence alone boded nothing good.

"Completion."

Abruptly to my left, another figure flared into reality. A woman in her thirties, sporting long black hair, ashen skin, and the same vacant, headlight-bright eyes. Her head vibrated violently, occasionally dissolving into a cloud of elementary particles before snapping back into cohesion. Her throat produced the exact same dead voice, framed by a visage trapped in a single moment of torment.

"Completion."

To my right materialized the phantom of a child of perhaps six years old, staring straight into my soul with the same chilled, hollow gaze. Tears hung frozen upon its cheeks, and its left arm was missing entirely, terminating in an unstable blur of digital pixels. I tried to step clear of the perimeter formed by these grotesque manifestations, but this was merely the opening salvo.

"Completion."

With every passing second, more silhouettes manifested around me. Women, men, children—all of them tracking my every move. Every time I took a single step, yet more translucent entities appeared, splintering into fragments and instantly reassembling. And with each newly manifested apparition, their voices, chanting the same word over and over in unison, swelled into a deafening crescendo.

I had no intention of standing there like a target, so I decided to make my move. First, I attempted to at least prod one of the phantoms with the tip of my spear. To my surprise, it didn't react in the slightest; the metal point passed clean through it. Fair enough…

The phantoms manifested rapidly, but their processing speed was sluggish. Throwing a feint to one flank, which immediately drew a cluster of newly forming spirits, I pivoted hard the other way, darting through a narrow gap devoid of the bizarre apparitions. The moment I cleared their perimeter, an ear-splitting, agonized shriek tore through the air. Yet when I spun around, the clearing was completely empty…

There was no time to catch my breath, however. I had to dodge immediately, this time slipping past razor-sharp metallic talons that whistled a bare centimeter from my throat. Dropping into a hard pivot, I lashed out with the spear and severed the monster's wrist, but the creature barely registered the loss of the limb. Leaping forward, I evaded a follow-up swipe and finally got a clear look at my assailant.

At first glance, it appeared to be some sort of humanoid encased in heavy, severely degraded plate that fully enclosed its body. Two arms, two legs, a head, and a rotting maw crammed with jagged metallic fangs.

The creature was slightly shorter than me, concealed beneath a bronze-colored ceramite carapace. Between the thick bundles of cabling and crude metal growths jutting from its spine, patches of blackened, necrotic flesh showed through. Faint lines of pictograms were etched into the curved plates of its cuirass, but dust, sand, and the erosion of time had worn any legible script into oblivion.

I took the measure of the undead monstrosity while it took mine. It behaved like an apex predator stalking its prey, waiting for the right moment to pounce and tear it limb from limb. The trouble for it was, I was the hunter here. Leveling my spear in a ready stance, I slid my off-hand toward the hilt of my ice dagger.

As a fresh blast of wind kicked up a blinding veil of sand and black snow, the beast made its move. It lunged toward me with lightning velocity, tearing a guttural, feral roar from its throat. I was already braced for it; my spear punched straight through the creature's chest, skewering the cavity where its heart should have been. Unfortunately, this walking corpse had little use for vital organs, barely faltering from the impalement.

Another scything swipe of its remaining claws, another fluid slip and pivot—and I cleared two paces of distance, bringing the dagger into play.

The spear wedged in its chest impeded its mobility, an opening I had no intention of wasting. Throwing my entire weight into an explosive leap, I ducked beneath its sweeping claw, slid low past its footing, and severed the rear sinews at its knees, bringing the beast crashing down. It lashed out wildly with its remaining hand, but my reflexes were far superior.

Ducking beneath the blow, I locked the limb in an armbar and drove the primitive blade down—the hand sheared clean off. The creature attempted to snap its jaws at me, but my body moved on pure muscle memory, executing combat routines I had never consciously practiced. Before its maw could reach my arm, I shifted the dagger into a two-handed grip and rammed it with all my might straight into the creature's skull. The crunch of bone, the screech of parting metal, and a shower of sparks from ruptured cybernetics sounded the death knell of my victory.

Curiously, I wasn't even winded after the skirmish. It felt as if my biology had been specifically engineered for warfare. Retrieving my spear, I drove it repeatedly through the head to ensure the creature was truly dead. I severed its lower jaw just to be thorough, then knelt to examine the corpse. The specimen was deeply intriguing.

Inside the cracked, ruined helm lay a face. Pale, rugged, looking as if it had been stretched over bare bone, framed by an unkempt mane the color of ash, possessing an uncanny symmetry of its own. The forehead was jammed hard against the helm's inner padding, as though the dead man had died glaring sideways. Strands of hair hung plastered over livid contusions mottling the flesh. Dominating the visage were wide, staring dark eyes and blue-black lips.

I was practically certain this had once been an ordinary human. Pockets of untouched, half-rotted flesh remained, yet the vast majority of the body had been overtaken by metal, invading the host like an aggressive mechanical parasite. The creature's dermis had fused seamlessly with the steel, and most of its natural cranium was simply gone—the helm served as the structural skull, encasing putrid blood and a thick gray slurry. Deep inside the brain tissue I had just pulverized sat a dense array of cybernetic mechanisms, mangled beyond recognition even for my intellect.

I conducted the post-mortem with extreme care to avoid contracting any pathogen from the corpse. For that reason, I refrained from scavenging anything from my first kill. The risk of undergoing some forced biological integration with the metal simply wasn't worth the scrap.

Concluding my inspection and confirming the perimeter was clear, I resumed my journey. It was then, amid the continuous environmental calculations running through my mind, that another realization took root.

I wanted, desperately, to find another living soul out here.

. . .

As time wore on, I confirmed that my sensory apparatus was vastly superior to baseline human biology. Only the most advanced cybernetic ocular arrays could match the visual acuity of my naked eyes.

It was precisely this sight that allowed me, hunkered down behind a boulder, to spot a group of figures traversing the terrain roughly a kilometer away. Whether they were human or not remained an open question. Unfortunately, I couldn't jump to conclusions just yet. I had already learned that this land was rife with lethal hazards, and taking appearances at face value was a death sentence.

The party consisted of ten humanoids. They had dusky, bronze-brown skin, snow-white hair, and emerald eyes that seemed to gleam even across the vast distance. Nearly all of them were clad in dark gray armor that looked as though it had been hewn directly from mountain stone, fully encasing their frames.

They carried elongated silver staves in which I recognized remarkably advanced weaponry, the schematics for which surfaced unbidden in my mind. Despite the distance, I could almost physically sense the terrifying destructive output coiled within those armaments. It was an exotic design of directed-energy weaponry, capable of drawing from virtually any available power source to discharge a hyper-focused ion beam. A miniaturized lightning caster.

One figure stood out—the tallest among them, towering a full head above the rest. In place of heavy armor, he wore a simple white toga, and he carried no weapon at all. He appeared completely indifferent to the biting cold, displaying not the slightest discomfort; on the contrary, even from this distance, his expression radiated deep wisdom and authority. He looked like an ancient deity who had assumed physical form to walk among mortals.

And while their skin tone seemed striking at first glance, that was trivial compared to the cyber-undead and phantoms haunting this desolate valley.

Crawling closer to narrow the distance, I registered an even more staggering anomaly—every single one of them was several times larger than a normal human. By my rough estimates, the rank-and-file warriors stood around three meters tall, and their leader approached nearly three and a half. That single realization shifted the tactical equation entirely.

If I revealed myself and approached them, and they turned out to be hostile, I was dead. A single blow from them would pulp me, and trying to outrun nine ion rifles was suicide. On the other hand, if I intended to negotiate peacefully and open a dialogue, I would have to close the distance entirely, surrendering every tactical advantage to them.

Then again, I didn't have much of a choice. Across the fifteen to twenty hours I had spent scouring these mountains, this was the first sign of genuine life possessing even a spark of higher intelligence. There were no animals here, and plant life was nonexistent. The only matter available that could theoretically be consumed for sustenance was the dirt and the cyber-undead. But I would rather starve than resort to eating that.*

There was no potable water either, and thirst was already beginning to set in as I caught myself eyeing the gray snow. In the back of my mind, basic metallurgical equations even suggested refining the snow as an accessible source of decent steel for future fabrications. Durable as I was, I doubted even my physiology could process that without consequences, internal filtration or not.

Furthermore, I could tell night was falling and the temperature was dropping rapidly. It had plummeted to a degree where even I, despite my clothing, was beginning to feel the strain. My only other option was to retreat to the caverns, hunker down to ride out the worst of the freeze, and then resume scouting… In search of what?

I had no idea what planet I was on, nor what era this was. I didn't even know if civilization existed here at all. If it did, I was intensely curious to learn how they adapted to such hellish conditions, and why they hadn't eradicated the packs of roaming cybernetic horrors that had crowned themselves the apex predators of the wastes.

I needed intelligence. I needed rations, water, and shelter from the elements. A secure place to rest and recover without the constant threat of cyber-corpses tearing my throat out. My survey across dozens of kilometers had revealed only one constant—this land was devoid of life. My only realistic chance of survival hinged on these giants.

Giants who clearly possessed logistical support; they certainly hadn't grown to such proportions on a diet of snow alone. Their sheer mass also provided some grim reassurance that they wouldn't look at me as a food source; there hardly was enough meat on my frame to satisfy a single one of them anyway.

I weighed these factors carefully, peering out from behind the massive boulder and tracking the group's patrol path. They appeared to be conducting a reconnaissance sweep, searching for something. Concealed beneath an embankment of sand and snow, I had managed to remain completely undetected…

Or so I assumed, until the eyes of the colossal giant in the toga snapped across the distance and locked dead onto mine. His gaze was serene, laden with profound wisdom and ages of experience. And something—a primal sixth sense—told me to step out from cover and walk toward him.

----------------

Author's Note: Starting a brief segment dedicated to raising awareness for the most overlooked Legion. Canon Ferrus, upon crashing onto Medusa, was quite the peculiar individual. He shunned all contact with other sapient beings and occupied himself with only one thing: an endless hunt, constantly seeking out larger and deadlier monsters. As a mere boy, however, he could hunt very little, so for the first few years he literally sustained himself on plain dirt and the occasional viscera of the techno-zombies he butchered. A prime testament to the resilience of a Primarch's digestive tract, and proof of how little Ferrus ever cared for concepts like "logic" or "common sense."

 

[DumDumDum]

Reasoning through my options, I decided against pushing my luck or testing the warriors' nerves. I stepped out into the open as slowly and deliberately as possible, raising my hands high to demonstrate they held no weapons. I had no idea what customs these giants observed, but given their close anatomical resemblance to baseline humans, there had to be common ground. Instinctively, the human psyche balks at slaughtering children.

I started advancing toward them, hugging the margins of the boulder clusters so I could duck behind hard cover in an instant if they opened fire. Purely as a precaution.

The warriors spotted me immediately, leveling their staves straight at my chest. Before a firefight could erupt, however, the tallest and oldest giant raised an arm and swept a calm gaze across his vanguard, slowly shaking his head. The others held their stances for a beat, eyes locked on him, before lowering their weapons. Lowered, yes, but not stowed.

The closer I drew, the clearer they came into focus. Up close, their crystalline armour and polearms were engraved with faintly luminous runes in an unfamiliar script. Their faces were set, expressions hard, their eyes tracking me relentlessly. Aside from their sheer bulk and stone-hued flesh, their features were identical to baseline men.

Yet their skin remained their most arresting feature. At point-blank range, it wasn't merely an unusual pigmentation; it looked like a literal crust of weathered rock. Fissured, plainly ancient, yet retaining an underlying density that seemed practically indestructible.

The colossal elder stood apart from the rest. Stepping nearer, I picked out the deep creases lining his face and a snow-white beard that bled into the folds of his garment. But it was his eyes that arrested me. Cold, piercing blue orbs that seemed to burn with an inner radiance, locked square on mine. Once I crossed within conversational range, he spoke:

"Greetings to you, child who fell from the heavens." He inclined his head in a deliberate bow, then fixed me with an unnerving, penetrating gaze. "It seems the portents spoke true this day. I am Uthor, Stone-Speaker, and may the tempest never bar your path."

"I... cough, cough..." The first word to cross my lips in this life broke into a dry rasp, but I quickly cleared my throat and found my cadence. "...I am glad to encounter someone in this place who doesn't try to butcher me on sight. I trust we can come to terms and find peace."

Though piped through young vocal cords, my voice carried a steady, disciplined resonance—dry, perhaps, but underpinned by clear authority and composure. Hearing it, the giant raised an enormous hand and stroked his beard thoughtfully.

To show respect, I mirrored the giant's formal bow. With my absolute muscle memory and biomechanical control, replicating the motion with flawless grace was child's play. The surrounding warriors exchanged startled looks. The elder, however, maintained an arctic stillness.

"Aye, the lower slopes of Karaashi are rife with perils and esoterica that daunt even my kind," he said, shaking his head slightly as he took my measure from head to toe. "They are no place for one such as you. Indeed, I suspect this entire world is no place for one such as you..."

He spoke with the quiet gravitas of a patriarch dispensing foundational truths. I hung on every syllable, filing each word away to dissect and mine for intelligence later. Right now, context was survival.

"To be frank, I know nothing of this world, having only just begun surveying it. If you would enlighten me, I would be in your debt."

"Enlightenment is the sole reason I still walk beneath these heavens and draw breath," the giant rumbled, his lips twitching into something resembling a wry smile. "Well then, since you possess such an appetite for knowledge, walk with us to our temporary refuge. There, I can lay matters out plainly, for we shall have time for extended discourse. Lingering here as darkness claims the plains is foolishness. The iron-bound beasts and the time-lost spirits hunt only by night."

The giant turned, nodded to his vanguard, and swept an arm toward the peaks before offering his open palm down to me.

"Our sanctuary lies some five thousand paces distant, yet traversing the black sands and iron crags is treacherous for the uninitiated. Forgive me, but these lands show no mercy to missteps. Though I perceive a great vitality within you—one that might well see you endure the trek on your own—we are pressed for time. The night is dark and fraught with terror. Linger even a moment too long, and the legions of the unliving and the thinking machines will take up our scent. My people are ill-prepared to withstand them in the open, and so, from the bottom of my heart, I ask that you place your trust in me."

Naturally, I had no burning desire to climb into the grip of a titan who could pulp me into paste simply by closing his fist. The giant read my hesitation immediately.

"I understand that you have no cause to trust us," he conceded, nodding slowly. "The portal of trust swings both ways. Yet trust is also the stone from which bridges are raised between men. So that you may know you can rely upon me, take this."

Uncoupling a meter-long silver staff from his belt, he offered it down to me. Blueprints of roughly comparable designs flickered through my memory, but my instincts registered immediately that this piece had been aggressively modified. The baseline ion beam architecture had been overhauled to channel micro-particles of antimatter... Terrifying destructive yield wedded to a practically bottomless power cell, all packed into a single polearm.

A cynical part of me suspected a trap, but the logic didn't hold. Had they intended to execute me, they could have done so far more cleanly already. Or rather, they would have attempted it—my burst speed and evasive agility were nothing to sneeze at. And now, handing me a primed weapon of this caliber skewed the lethal calculus entirely out of their favor... I took the staff and immediately began running a physical diagnostic on the housing, half-listening to the giant's exposition.

Coldly assessing the balance of probabilities, my solo survival odds out here were abysmal. No food, no clean water, no shelter, zero intelligence, no thermal insulation, and not a single functional ranged weapon. Abysmal.

"This is Thunderbringer, one of our finest relics, capable of unmaking the foulest horrors of the ancient eras," Uthor explained. "A single discharge would strike me down instantly. A masterpiece handed down from the Golden Age, before the Long Night swallowed the heavens. An heirloom passed down through our bloodlines for generations. Yet I see clearly that one such as you is far more worthy of bearing such a treasure."

His voice carried a solemn, reverent weight as he recounted the provenance of the relic. Meanwhile, my focus was entirely consumed by the engineering marvel nestled in my hands. A respectable piece of hardware, though my mind was already firing off revisions to make it drastically more efficient...

"...Your wiring leads are routed backwards."

The giant blinked, staring down at me in utter bewilderment as I scrutinized the device. The cold casing, etched with unfamiliar glyphs, was not entirely seamless; peer closely enough into the chassis seam, and a tight bundle of internal cabling was plainly visible. Though I couldn't see the internal circuitry directly, every mechanical instinct I possessed screamed that the power distribution array was screaming for optimization.

Glancing up, I caught the giant watching me with a faint, bemused grin. Weighing the margins one last time, I gave a curt nod and stepped into his palm. Without another word, he turned and accelerated into a blistering stride.

The transit took just under an hour, during which I studied the lifeless terrain scrolling past. Crags, ash, black ice, and not a trace of foliage or biological life. Not the growl of a beast, nor the faintest footprint of civilization. A freezing stillness held dominion over the valley, surrendered wholly to un-life: dead rock, dead soil, dead snow, and dead air sighing over the carcass of a murdered world... Only near the end of our march did something break the monotony.

A colossal citadel loomed into view, visible from leagues away. Once, it seemed, a gargantuan temple-fortress had stood here, now reduced to cracked masonry and ruin. Shattered ramparts and tumbled boulders lay strewn about the bases of towering metallic obelisks, having crushed the ancient curtain walls beneath their weight.

Tracing my mental map of our vector, I realized we had looped suspiciously close to the colossal mountain where my pod had breached the crust. It took little deduction to guess what recent cataclysm had wrecked their home. If my telemetry was right, it explained why Uthor called me the one fallen from heaven, and why he was so eager to usher me inside...

Tilting my chin up, I studied the giant carrying me. His features were set in a mask of total composure. He held his free hand loosely cupped over me, his posture signaling clearly that he would sooner take a fatal blow himself than let harm reach me. My instincts insisted he was genuine, and that breaking away into the wastes was a fool's errand.

Drawing nearer, I spotted more giants. The social hierarchy of this enclave became obvious: silica-armoured guardians holding perimeter security, and unarmoured artisans laboring among the debris to clear the devastation.

Ten minutes later, we reached the lower foundations of the mountain upon which the fortress was anchored. The armoured sentries cast wary, hardened glances at me and Uthor, but the elder ignored them entirely, pressing forward until we arrived at an entrance that yawned vast even against his towering scale.

"Whom have you brought, Speaker?" barked a sentry captain barring our way, his eyes darting toward me. There was no outright malice in his posture, only deep, bewildered suspicion.

"The child who fell from the heavens. We shall discuss the details anon, but night has fallen, and we must secure the perimeter without delay. Trust me on this—there will be no incident. My honour is the collateral."

The sentry didn't press the matter. He nodded once and stepped aside. Uthor strode forward, traced a sigil in the air with his free hand, and spoke a single syllable in that strange tongue. The stone responded. The massive blast slabs ground apart, revealing interior corridors of bare, polished rock lined with luminous script and, bizarrely enough, completely ordinary electric light fixtures.

Why did my mind register an incandescent filament as ordinary, yet flag the runes as alien? Likely because the mechanism governing these gates was sophisticated enough to elude my immediate, reflexive comprehension. I would need to crack open their drive housings later to understand the telemetry...

With the immediate urgency behind us, Uthor set me gently back onto the flagstones and led the way. He walked in silence, eyes fixed straight ahead, as if taking it for granted that, danger notwithstanding, I would follow. Deep into the belly of a mountain from which escape would be impossible should they decide to lock me in a cage, no matter what weapon I held.

I didn't hesitate; I fell into step behind him. Even setting intuition aside, the raw logistics were stark: I could not survive out there alone. In a wasteland devoid of potable water and organic sustenance for dozens of kilometers, an isolated child stood no chance. Even a child built like me. What was I supposed to do, eat dirt?

The blast slabs ground shut the moment I crossed the threshold. Keeping pace with the giant, who had noticeably slowed his stride to match my gait, I took in the fortress interior.

The architecture was scaled to its denizens: every passageway vaulted ten meters high and stretched just as wide. Soft, ambient illumination washed the stone walls, though the prevailing mood remained dour and subterranean. Curiously, certain corridors were lit far more brightly than others.

Looking closer, I spotted sections where the carved runes were fractured, inert, or spitting occasional static sparks. They differed subtly from the glyphs etched into the cavern walls where I had first awakened, though shared architectural motifs were clearly discernible. Fascinating.

We navigated the vaulted corridors for another ten minutes until we arrived at what appeared to be an immense forge. Dominating the far corner were an enormous hearth, a heavy worktable, an anvil, a smelting furnace, and assorted tooling. Yet though the layout seemed archaic at a glance, my thoughts immediately began deconstructing the primitive exteriors, identifying the advanced, high-yield machinery masked beneath the rough craftsmanship.

The moment we entered, Uthor sealed the chamber door. He looked me over once more, satisfied with my composure, and moved to the table. Dragging a massive chair toward me, he settled into another opposite. Scrambling up into the oversized seat was no problem; my enhanced musculoskeletal system allowed me to vault onto the seat with effortless leverage. The giant watched my agility with raised eyebrows, then leaned back into his seat, visibly easing his posture.

"Now then, we may speak in earnest. Rest assured, no harm will come to you within these walls. Our warriors may seem forbidding, but they are guardians, not butchers. We draw steel only against that which threatens our kind," he began evenly.

"To start with, I would like to know who you are, where I am, and roughly what year it is," I said, laying out my core queries.

Uthor inclined his head and answered steadily:

"We are the Order of the Keepers of Mount Karaashi, the peak upon which our sanctuary rests," he declared with quiet pride. "And though our halls are battered by the recent impact of the falling star, our strength is not so easily broken. Our craft will endure for millennia yet, as it has endured for ages past."

He offered a dry chuckle, his eyes twinkling as he mentioned the falling star striking the mountain. I wasn't blind; the connection was obvious. Yet there was no resentment in his voice, only measured fascination.

"The year... Even to our scribes, keeping count of the centuries and millennia that have ground past since the Fall is an arduous task. Few cultures retain archives of lore and wisdom to rival those at our command," the giant mused, running thick fingers through his beard. "Alas, nearly all records chronicling the eras prior to the Long Night were long ago swallowed by the relentless sands of time. Yet our oldest codices maintain that some five and a half thousand years have elapsed since the Great Awakening of humanity and the birth of the stellar tempest that severed the stars. Though we may well be mistaken."

He let out a heavy sigh, his gaze drifting toward the shadowed rafters before resuming.

"Once, this world was called Schenelus," he said, a note of mourning coloring his tone. "A world of steel and fire, a legendary star-forge where wonders of human ingenuity were brought into being. A nexus of progress and science amassed across uncounted thousands of years. But following the rebellion of the Men of Iron—the thinking automata who cast off the yoke of human mastery—and after the uncontrolled awakening of the latent power of the human mind, capped by the fall of the Empire of Immortals into the abyss of depravity, nothing remains of that ancient glory save ruins. In those rare hours when the shroud of ash parts from the sky, one may still glimpse the shattered remnants of the great orbital ring girdling the world. The Telstarax was once the supreme jewel of mankind's ascendancy, a monument to how high our species climbed. Today, it stands only as a tombstone marking how far we have fallen... We are the final stewards of knowledge, and the wardens of the elder terrors sealed deep within this mountain. For dozens of centuries, this was our vigil. Yet now, my bones tell me the entire world stands upon the precipice of transformation. I sense an age of upheaval approaches, and you will not play a minor part in it, Child of the Stars."

I had no immediate reply to such grand declarations. My bizarre physiology, uncanny provenance, and instinctive comprehension of high mechanics were glaring proof that I was anything but baseline. It was far too early to contemplate reshaping an entire planetary ecosystem, though that would make for an interesting project down the line. Right now, practical priorities came first.

"...I can neither corroborate nor contest your history, having virtually no context of my own. That said, I am entirely certain no great figure ever achieved anything in total isolation. For the immediate future, I will require assistance..." I replied, choosing each word with deliberate care. Uthor merely chuckled, waving a massive, dismissive hand.

"You may dwell among us as long as you wish. Our order does not cast out an infant into a dead wasteland crawling with predators. I will gladly teach you everything I know, and I doubt any of my brethren would deny you the same," he stated with firm, unshakable resolve. "The damage wrought upon our sanctuary is already done, consigned to history. We preserve the past, but we also look to the horizon. And our world desperately needs someone capable of guiding it toward something better. Either that, or the ash of this graveyard will swallow us all."

---------------
* Continuing to reveal the lore of the most unpopular legion. Yes, Medusa was once one of the most advanced human worlds in the entire galaxy, rivaling Mars in terms of technology. The Red Planet is somewhat smaller than Terra, but Schenelus is five times larger than Earth. And accordingly, one can imagine how much larger the giant ring around the planet—the Titans—is than the one on Mars.

If, after the Fall, they were able to produce most of the ships for the Crusade on Mars, then what kind of manufacturing capacity did Medusa have? However, that era has passed, and now the planet is inhabited by Storm Giants, Digitized Wraiths, cyber-zombies, and thousands of other types of techno-monsters and abominations. Personally, I believe this is the most underrated and interesting world in all of Warhammer, with limitless potential for storytelling. And that's not even mentioning the Black Pyramids of living metal, located just a short distance from Ferrus's landing site...