The Warmaster. The Emperor. Slowly, his focus started to return as he pushed the other images tearing at his mind away. His mission, to escort the general, had been a blessing- a momentarily respite from the siege that killed his brothers by the thousands. They had been hurrying through the great vaulted halls, deep in the Imperial Palace when they were overcome by an odd smell and a blinding flash of light. That’s when the nightmare began, he recalled. They had found themselves here, in this hell. The officer cracked instantly, gibbering like a madman, though he couldn’t blame him. Madness seemed like the only answer the more the trooper thought of it. His sergeant had been more level headed at the impossibilities and hastily began issuing orders to keep control, but for all his efforts he could not remember his orders, those too were lost to him. They had found they were not alone, at first. Perhaps he had been given hope for a moment, upon seeing the mighty space marines, clad in their familiar yellow armor. For just a second he had felt safe. That’s when madness gave way to terror and the trooper began to weep when he remembered the terrible fray, he was alive not because of his orders or the mighty space marines, but because of his cowardice.

And then John was a zombie.

When they had met the fiends and their monstrosities and their multitudes in battle in the perversion of a ship, he was cowed like a child in face of the rod. As he watched the invincible Astartes and his comrades die, his sense fled him and he was left petrified at the scene, his only able action being flight. He had run as a coward for the first place he could find. Had they seen him? Had they cried out his name in fear, hate, or desperation? Was he a traitor to them, as the Warmaster to the Emperor? The questions ripped at his mind and he felt himself slipping to his emotions as tears started to streak his soot and blood covered face. He wished desperately for it all to be over. His knees weakened and he heard the thud of his lasgun hitting the deck plates. He had stopped. A torment of emotion filled him and he saw his hand move toward his combat knife. It was strange, he thought, as if he was watching himself from afar as the gleaming blade was removed from its sheath. As if possessed, his hand brought the blade tip to his chest. How easy it would be, to end the nightmare he supposed, to escape from it all and embrace the stillness of death. He heard the whispers of the faces in the walls and felt the pressure against his chest plate. He heard the pop of his armour, like a can being punctured and his thoughts drifted for a moment to how he had found the strength to do such a thing. He felt warmth on his breast and he decided it was death taking him, yet the darkness never came. His eyes lowered expecting to see his life blood streaming forth, yet there was none. As he removed the knife, the only sight he saw was a faint glow from within his flak armor.

He would have dwelt on it more, but a fierce shrieking wretched him from the dark thoughts. It was one of them, he knew instantly. He turned about quickly, still on his knees, holding his knife before him in pure instinct. He had not been mistaken. In front of him was another of the vile and twisted monsters. It was a corrupted and terrible thing, torn from depths of a pit of nightmares. Perhaps it had once been a man as he, but its mutated features revealed nothing beyond that which it was, a daemon come to claim his life. It shrieked again and he saw the beast’s talon claws flailing wildly in front of a twisted and putrid body, a strange froth boiling over in its gaping maw. The daemon swung for him, his mind registering only a blur of motion, almost groping for his very soul. He hesitated as it drew ever nearer and again he felt himself falling to his emotions. He was certain he would die, there was simply no way he could fight this terror. His only hope was to flee again, to escape before it tore him limb from limb and feasted on his entrails. A hundred, hundred horrible thoughts swept across him and the soldier faltered, almost lowering his blade.

He stopped. Upon is breast he felt the warmth return anew, but now much warmer than before, the glow from the pierced armor now a powerful beam of light. He felt himself strengthen, as though feeding off some great power from within. His mind focused and his muscles tightened. The daemon thing shrieked as it flew at him, reaching back its death blow. The trooper closed his eyes and struck forward with the blade he had tried to turn against himself. A horrible crack of bone echoed through the hallway and the shrieks fell silent. The trooper opened his eyes and looked to the daemon in front of him. Its fierce eyes looking dumbly down at the wound in its chest, as a black froth began to ooze from its fanged mouth. He turned the blade with a quick motion of his hand like he’d been trained to and tore it from the wound. The monster crumpled to the deck and all was silent but for the sucking wound.

He stared blankly head for a moment, when realization returned to him. He wondered, how had it been possible? Killing a daemon with his combat knife struck him as impossibility, yet it was just so. Instantly, his free hand reached into the neck opening of his armor to grasp the source of the light and warmth. As he closed his hand, he expected pain, but the thing did not burn him. He removed the source from behind the plate and tears again began to well in his eyes. Radiating light and beauty from a golden chain was the icon, the double-headed eagle of the Lectitio, of his god. He looked into the shining emblem and his doubts were swept aside. The fear and pain he had felt were erased and his mind was filled with joy and determination. He would not fail in his mission, he would avenge his comrades, and he would not run anymore. He let the icon dangle upon his chest plate and he recovered his lasgun. With a loud click, he fixed the blood stained knife to his weapon and straightened himself. He quietly said a prayer of thanks and began to move forward again down the cursed corridor. The faces were still there, but their whispers did not reach him, his ears filled with the song in his heart. From ahead he heard the rumble and clash of a battle and the cries from those engaging. He quickened and came to the entrance of a great domed room.

His heart stopped at the sight. The room, filled with horrors he could have never dreamed of seemed to reach forth to rip his sanity from him, but he paid such things no heed. For there, before him at the center was the Emperor. Though he had never before seen such beauty or divinity, there was no mistaking Him. His golden armor shining through the darkness, the most beautiful and perfect being the trooper could have ever hoped to have seen, that had ever existed, was mere meters from him. His god, there only for him to experience, holding aloft his flaming sword like a beacon of the glory and power He represented. After the long journey through the warped and horrible corridors, the light was at last before him. The trooper was moved to tears at the sight. New joy tore through him and he felt something akin to ecstasy as he marveled at the God-Emperor in the flesh.

Then his reality was shattered.

As if in slow motion, the trooper watched the super human blow strike the Emperor. The Emperor dropped his blade and twisted downward at the impact. His perfect armor crushed at the site and the flesh within surely destroyed. Joy was replaced with pain in a moment, as the trooper reeled from the great blow himself. He somehow tore his eyes from the fallen Emperor, to see what could possibly fell a god in such a way. He instantly regretted it. For there, above his god, was the monster, the daemon itself, the Warmaster.

An impossibly huge warrior of death, clad in armor so foul it sickened the trooper to even gaze upon it. Its mirror sheen reflecting, not its surroundings, but some wretched pit of hell of old legends, the horrifying spikes set at impossible angles, and the eyes, the very eyes of the warp draining the life from all that look for too long into them. Yet, most horrible of all, was the beast itself. The corrupted Primarch, whose face had once been so regal, now twisted to the face of pure evil. The trooper saw in the dead eyes and daemon features the very sins of mankind and the true face of terror made manifest. The daemon king raised his great weapon above him and the trooper knew what would happen next. His mind raced, he prayed, he hoped, he cursed everything the monster stood for, but he realized he was helpless. The Warmaster had defeated the Emperor, the impossible present to his very eyes, evil had prevailed. Surely mankind was doomed to whatever evil the monster willed, he thought, the end of existence was all so clear. Everything was to be damned, the Emperor, Terra, humanity, his family and his friends, everything was to perish into the torment of the warped.

From his breast, he felt the warmth once more and his mind cleared. With knowledge he seemed to know for no reason but for the grace of the Emperor, he realized the truth. They would not perish. He could save them. He was the only one who could save them. He felt surer of this fact than he had ever felt of anything in his life and the light of the double-eagle icon now seemed to radiate from his entire body. This was, he thought, what it was to be blessed, to be a hero.

In a voice that was not his own, the trooper cried above the roar of the war about him,

“The Emperor protects!”

The trooper charged, faster than even a mighty astartes, his eyes locked forward, his face set in a howling scream. He saw the titan of evil turn and hate filled him. He saw the Emperor’s eyes upon him, and he knew he would not falter under the gaze of the God-Emperor. He struck forth with his lasgun, his bayonet thrusting forth and cutting through reality to destroy the great enemy before it. With a flash, his body enveloped in warp fire, a great pain tore through his every being. He pressed forward, but found himself removed from the evil around him.

The pain was gone and all he could see was the most beautiful light imaginable. There, at the center, was He. The Emperor, perfect in every way, smiling at the trooper as he approached.

“You have done well, my child.”

In that moment, Ollanius Pius knew he had done his duty.

Then everything seemed to fade to black.

>>4920663

I weep for the savior of mankind.

NEVER FORGET

We must start a petition for GW to retcon Pius back to canon.

I cried girly tears. ;_;

>>4920791
Actaully, this was never cannon. This is some kind of hodgepodge of three different stories. Ollanius, as I recall, got in the way of a plasma ball heading for a distracted Emperor.

I like this a lot more than nameless custodes going "HUUUUUR DEATH" though.

>>4920848
Well this was never canon, sure, but Pius himself should be around again.

yawn

>>4920860
It does suck that the best guardsman ever doesn't even exist

>>4920897

>>4920901
Not even close. I mean sure, he's awesome, but still.

FUck yeah Ollanius Pius.

This is good and you should feel good.

>>4920604
Does Scriptarius do commissions?

I would love to have a bodyguard look like that.

I have to say that the only awesome part in this writefaggotry is that it contains Ollanius Pius. Otherwise it's rather insignificant piece of work where nothing much happens.

>>4921280
General Black Library quality, I'd say.

>>4920848
It used to be canon, until GW retconned it and replaced Pius by an Imperial Fist terminator, then by a Custodes.

The EMPRAH wasn't a god.

>>4921511

Did you say something?

>>4921576
No sir!

>>4921511
For the guardsmen he was. And is.

FUCK YOU I'M AN INQUISITOR!

>>4921511
Not that he couldn't manipulate a nobody guardsmen into distracting Horus because of it.

Seriously, Emprah planned everything.