In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war...
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Acrid smoke drifted slowly through the air, rising up from the smouldering grass and burning wreckages of once mighty war machines. The sounds of battle could be heard in the distance, though they were eerily faint.
A lone, fey-like figure strode across the battlefield, lithely picking her way around the debris and bodies, her long scarlet ponytail slowly waving in the gentle breeze. As she moved, the jagged blades protruding from her jade green armour glinted as they caught the light, and the blood along the twin blades she carried glistened.
The Archite paused for moment, before beginning to sprint across the field, effortlessly jumping between the detritus on the ground.
She had found her target. The Astartes, the human that had killed her subordinates, was hunched over a fallen comrade in the distance, presumably performing some kind of primitive ritual of death that the savage creatures so fervently believed in.
Even from this distance, Archite Dezyre could see the Astartes was far bigger than her. Standing nearly 10 feet tall and covered head to toe in heavy armour plating, the Adeptus Astartes were supposedly the finest warriors of the humans. They had strength beyond measure, and were reputed to be able to shrug off injuries that would incapacitate a lesser man.
None of this worried Dezyre though, rather the opposite. It excited her. It had been far too long since she’d had the opportunity to fight a worthy opponent.
As she approached the Astartes, she raised her twin blades behind her back in readiness to strike, before screaming out a challenge to the creature.
"HUMAN! PREPARE TO DIE!"
It sickened her to speak outside of her natural tongue, but Dezyre knew that the alien Astartes wouldn’t understand otherwise.
The human clumsily rose to its feet and began to turn to face Dezyre, raising its own bladed, chainsaw like weapon as it did so.
‘Is that it? Is that as fast as it can move?’, thought the Archite, before leaping into the air, her speed easily propelling her over the last ten or so yards to her target.
She swung one of her swords at the neck of the human. The Astartes barely had time to raise its weapon to block such a quick attack, and in doing so, it left itself wide open to a strike from her second blade. Dezyre brought her blade down onto the armoured helm of the human with as much force as she could, expecting it to easily slice through.
The blade connected with the helm, but shattered upon impact. She hit the ground before skipping backwards out of reach of the human. She glanced down at the hilt of the broken blade in her hand before discarding it.
"This is going to be more interesting than I thought", she muttered in her native language, as a wicked smile crept across her face.
The Astartes swung its primitive weapon in a wide arc towards Dezyre and she responded by arrogantly raising her remaining blade to block the attack. The human’s blade slammed into her own with far more force than the Archite expected. The instant it connected, she felt her wrist fracture, shooting pain up her arm and into her shoulder, causing her to cry out in pain. She gripped the sword with both hands and put all her strength behind it. As her boots dug into the blood soaked ground, it was all she could do to the stop the whirling teeth of her opponents weapon from cutting though her body. Dezyre wasn’t strong enough to keep the humans sword away from her completely. As she fought against it, the teeth of the blade gradually edged closer to her, before making contact with her exposed upper arm. The jagged teeth began to tear mercilessly through her flesh, spraying blood across both of them. Screaming out, she began to lose her grip on her own blade.
The human withdrew its weapon and swung it around for another strike. Dezyre stumbled backwards, shaking, before desperately rolling under the blow and ending up behind the Astartes, barely managing to keep her footing when she got back to her feet. Fighting through the pain, she thrust her sword at the back of the human, but to no avail. It simply glanced harmlessly off the thick armour.
"It has to have a weakness somewhere..."
Dezyre was getting desperate. The pain and the blood loss were making it hard to focus. She knew she had to end the fight soon before she was killed.
The human turned around, searching for Dezyre, looking to finish her off. As it did so, Dezyre saw the right eye piece on the helm was cracked from her attack previously. The Astartes once again raised its weapon to strike, ready to land the final killing blow.
That was the opening she needed.
Mustering all of her remaining strength, she raised her sword and pushed forward towards her opponent, focusing solely on landing her attack. The human swung its sword in a large arc, stooping as it did so.
Dezyre drove her blade straight into the eye piece of the Astartes, piercing the glass and pushing the blade deep into the human’s skull. The momentum of the human’s blade carried the hilt of the weapon and slammed into her side. She was too close to the human’s body to be hit by the teeth of the weapon, but the impact of the hilt was enough to break several of her ribs, fracture her armour and throw her sideways onto the dirt.
The gigantic Astartes toppled backwards and crashed to the floor, blood spraying from the eye where the Archite’s blade was embedded still.
Dezyre lay on the ground, motionless.
"I have to admit... that human... was a worthy opponent...", she muttered quietly as she let the pain and darkness wash over her as she slipped into unconsciousness.
