The Daemon Prince

Tales of Ava-Nikali: The Daemon Prince

 

The guardian defenders marched, twelve strong including accompanying warlock and the shuriken catapults' controller. The ruins of their once great craftworld was strewn before them, once great skyscrapers were mere wrecks at the feet of the daemon horde.

Lessyana Morali was one of these guardians. She wasn't anything special, she was a poet before all this broke out, so much so that she was stuck on her path the way an Exarch was stuck as a warrior. She wasn't even that well trained, most Ava-Nikali guardians were trained under a regimen similar to Ulthwe's, she had only the basics under her belt. Still, home was burning and there was a line to hold.

She was just glad to not be writing any more gods damned dirges.

        "Why are we bothering with the Mon-keigh refugees? they caused this!" blurted out one guardian, with an angry glare towards his warlock, "we should cut our losses and abandon them to their fate!"

        "I can understand your attitudes," the warlock uttered with a sigh, "but for our Autarchs to recommend diverting the daemons onto them is just heinous. For you to recommend a similar is a crime..." his tone was a warning.

        "The exarchs and the seers promptly disagreed with them," reassured a guardian, marching alongside him, "What matters is that there's lives to save."

        "Such barbaric babbling and rattling of tongue!" cursed Lessyana, slamming another solid core into her catapult, her speech pattern coloured by her poetic leaning, "Lives, souls and the saving thereof, preventing the salivating and savouring sinful succulence Slaanesh so sinfully-"

Echoing in the streets came a booming voice that oozed sultry promises and sweet decadence, accompanied by a thousand orgasmic whispers that yet issued from the one mouth, "Such loud voices and such a clever tongue, such doubt and division... and look how alone you are," A veiled threat issued from a python maw.

It slithered from round a collapsed ruin, the mock lamia body covered in spiked and ruinous sigils, scales coloured purple and spattered in blood, eldar and human severed heads adorned its belt. The creature itself was six feet tall in the upper body, and eighteen long in the tail.

The upper body was clad in chaos space marine armour, helm retaining the ever ancient corvus 'beak'. This traitor was once an assault marine, as evidenced by the fact he still had his jump pack strapped to his back. He was wielding a pair of singing spears, his muscles constantly tensing and seizing with the shocks the weapons were inflicting, the lack of eldar DNA triggering it's defensive measures. The shocks were enough to fry a human or temporarily disable a space marine, but this creature was moaning as each shock brought a twisted sense of pleasure. The sign of Slaanesh etched around his loincloth'd and perpetually bulging crotch to emphasise the unnatural priapism.

The helmet bleak opened and dozen hooked tongues that were each three feet long a piece flicked out, tasting the scents and sensations dancing in the air. This ex-human had been moulded to the shape of his armour, the plates served as skin.

The eldar didn't wait for him to act, all guns and the warlock's psychic powers, were directed for his centre mass. A field of psionic energy erupted in response, soaking the shuriken shots, the tiny razors stuck into it like they would a stone wall.

The figure laughed as a coating of shuriken dotted the barrier, "My, my, ever the pragmatists your little craftworld. Most others would at least wait until after I had said my entrance monologue and slain a wayward warrior or two."

As it was becoming evident that none of the blades were searing through the barrier, the guardians immediately packed up and started retreating, the warlocks covering it with a well timed concealment power.

Not that it mattered, the creature instantly teleported in front of them, cutting off their escape. He held up one arm and let go of a spear, which instantly shot forth, tearing a guardian in half with the impact. The second spear was flung for the warlock, who managed to parry it with hit witchblade and a surge of psychic energy. The creature ripped his arms back, drawing the spears to his splayed hands, one spear ripping another guardian's head off in the motion. The warlock tried to lead them down a different path, only for the creature to teleport in front of them once more.

        "I am her chosen champion, the prince Eronius, and I'll see your tender forms raped eternally! HER LUSTS WILL NOT BE SATED!"

Lessyana double backed towards the previous path faster than the others, which proved the wise choice. The daemon slammed both spears into the ground and a wall of psionic energy erupted outward. The warlock erected a barrier in response but was quickly overwhelmed. He managed to save the remaining guardians, but the psychic feedback rippled back into him.

The warlock's head promptly exploded, but the emanation, lashing out from the seer's untimely demise shattered the power protecting the daemon in turn. Lessyana used the opportunity to fling a plasma grenade at the recovering daemon.

The prince responded by swatting it away, however it exploded by his tail, a distinct sensual gasp escaped his lungs in response to the pain.

All the guardians, including Lessyana, wasted no time in following the grenade impact, flinging yet more grenades and renewing their efforts with their shuriken fire.

The daemon prince writhed and giggled, "Oh my little eldar! what delightful agony!" seemingly fuelled by the attempts on his life, the prince vaulted forward, using the jump pack to propel him. His tongues lashed out and in an instant quartered a nearby guardian, while he parried another's catapult with one spear and ran him through with the other.

Lessyana figured this was the end of her time in the universe, but she didn't despair.

There was a line to hold after all.

She sprinted headlong for the warlock's body, slinging her catapult over her shoulder. She took up his pistol and immediately holstered it on her hip, the wraithbone armour responding to her will and providing a makeshift clip for it. She also took up his blade, despite lacking the psychic potential to use it in any meaningful way.

She looked back up at the prince, who had coiled around one guardian and was crushing him in the snake body, while finishing a very swift melee with another guardian, bisecting her with a well place swing.

Lessyana moved swiftly, sprinting headlong to the segment of the tail just in front of the constricted guardian, racing up the nearest ruin and leaping off it for some extra momentum.

Her downward slash didn't do what she had hoped, she didn't cleave off the tail and the guardian coiled inside popped like an infected sore, viscera spraying in a fountain.

However, she did hurt him and did draw his attention. Eronius immediately vaulted about, decapitating another two guardians with an expert swing. Lessyana however had already legged it behind come cover, a move that protected her from the following singing spear impacts.

When she emerged from the cover, catapult in hand, a guardian was tangled in the tongues. Eronius flicked one tongue about, twisting her head off completely.

Lessyana opened fire on the tongues, using the blind spot provided by the guardian's body. Her shuriken tore through the paltry armour and landed true on Eronius's face and body, however the loss of momentum bluntened the impact, merely embedding the blades into his steely skin rather than shredding them.

The prince responded by reefing the spears back once more and, while tossing the corpse aside, flinging them once more for Lessyana. The poet managed to duck behind cover in time for the spear to fly overhead. She looked to find where it landed, only to see one of the remaining guardians being telekinetically flung towards her. She rolled out the way just in time to avoid the impact, but the guardian was flattened by the impact. Lessyana broke into run, sprinting around the ruins and generally avoiding the line of sight of the prince. When she emerged from the other side and into the open, she heard the unmistakable shriek of orgasmic pleasure.

She looked up to see the shredded base of Eronius's tail, slowly regenerating from a point blank assault from the shuriken cannon. The other surviving guardian had managed similar to Lessyana, avoiding the daemon long enough to get a semblance of a plan going. He had used his borrowed time to get the control unit for the shuriken cannon, however the prince was tenacious and smashed the cannon with one spear while running the guardian through with the other.

Lessyana advanced, attempting to use this opening to her advantage, firing her catapult straight for the prince's midsection. Some of the shuriken struck true, ripping flesh from bone and agonising the prince, who was cackling in glee between shuddering breaths.

He turned to Lassyana, "My, oh my, what joyous little barbs you have! Come closer little whore, show me your teeth!"

He vaulted forward, hovering with his jump pack to compensate for the injury. In a panic, she whipped her catapult to bear and opened fire at the prince.

Eronius swung.

Lessyana proved nimble and managed to jump back away from the blow, but the tip of the spear ripped through the catapult, the impact throwing her off her feet and a few metres in the air.

She landed awkwardly against a wraithbone wall, an impact that would have shattered her ribs if it weren't for the armour. She managed to painfully roll about and pulled her shuriken pistol.

She figured if she was going to die, she was going to be as great a thorn in the side of the daemon as she could.

She fired as the daemon slithered closer. Eronius was having trouble reconciling the jump pack, his slithering and the gaping wound. He opened his mouth in what seemed to be a sadistic grin.

        "Why hello there little whore! why don't you open your legs and let her show you what she can do for you!"

The entire time Eronius spoke, Lessyana was firing the pistol as swiftly as she could squeeze the trigger. Most of the blades ricocheted off the armoured plates, but a couple lucky hits clipped the open wound or the tongues. One shuriken, much to Eronius's pleasure, found itself scything through his codpiece.

He slowed his approach, savouring each and every cut.

Lessyana was panicking, her hands shaking and her aim failing. She was fortunate that he was a big target.

He planted the spears on either side of her and used them to lean in, slowly and steadily, beak opened and tongues lashing.

Lessyana took a breath and steadied her hand long enough to unload more shuriken into the opened maw, causing Eronius to laugh and cackle with every cut.

She gulped as a tongue started to wrap around her leg and fired one last shot.

Eronius's laugh cut short as he simply fell limp, falling forward, the shuriken slicing its way through the brain stem and out the other side of his head..

Lessyana curled into the foetal position, narrowly avoiding the razor sharp beak and in a panic, kept shooting and kicking the tongue off as the corpse burst into flames. Lessyana rolled away and scrambled as quickly as she could, the convection cooking her under the armour.

Her desperate struggle proved worth it however as she got herself far enough away that the flames no longer seared. She rolled to her back and looked up at the ruined sky.

        "Uh..." she activated her communicator, her experience rocked her so hard that it temporarily stole her normal speech patterns from her, "Guys... I... I... did a thing..."