Raven Guard Skinwalker

‘Saboteur? Alpha scum, perhaps’, Murthen made a point of accentuating the bile when mentioning their sister-Legion, to the point that it sounded actually worse than the following insult.

‘Not likely’, Relok replied, ‘I know it pays to be prepared, brother, but let’s analyse the more probable possibilities, first. It’s not a breaching squad either, the locator system passed its maintenance earlier today and would’ve picked multiple invaders. Raven Guard makes the most sense.’

‘So soon after they were culled at Isstvan?’ There was glee in Murthen’s words, now. ‘You think Corax has gone insane and sent his chicks in suicide missions?’

‘At least them I can see fooling the best cogitator’

Crassio Relok was proud to say he was usually right in his assessments. It wasn’t that hard, really – Perturabo’s teachings of practicality were usually right. Even in a galaxy full of xenos horrors and seemingly unexplainable phenomena, the simplest explanation was often the most correct, and the most practical solutions often the best. Still, he would’ve preferred a different sign that he was right about the Raven Guard other than Murthen’s blood suddenly spilling onto the screen in front of them.

He spun immediately with a chop, his other hand going for the meteor hammer’s activation mechanism, but the attacker was already on the other side of the room – impossibly, for someone with no ranged weapon in sight.

Usually, it would’ve taken him 0.5 seconds less to have his weapon activated and ready, but this…Legionnaire…was something different from all he had seen.

The Raven symbols were everywhere, but his helm was a bone-white raven mask with no visible optics other than two small point of white light deep inside his eye-pits. In his right hand there was a long blade, seemingly made out of rock rather than metal, its upper surface a dark green, the blade itself a perfectly polished – if jagged – silver. And he wore…feathers…

The meteor hammer smashed into the machines were the Raven was perched, but it was as if the invader had never been there. Relok adapted, spinning the hammer closer to him to deny the short-range advantage of the blade wielder, but his adversary didn’t attack. He simply stood, head cocked that of a curious bird. The ridiculousness only angered the Iron Warrior even more.

Relok aimed for the head, lightning-fast. When the Raven ducked the strike, as anticipated, he altered the trajectory with a twist and went for the abdomen. The Raven evaded that too, but now he attacked. His left claw ripped Relok’s helm as if it was paper, his flesh splitting even faster, his right eye exploding from the heat of the disruption field instantaneously. The Iron Warrior growled…there was no visible circuitry on his vambrace to indicate it was a power weapon...still, he should’ve seen that coming from the sharp looks of it.

Crassio Relok, then, died in frustration. He was trying to bring his hammer up again when the Skinwalker spoke. Not with sound, but directly to his mind. Not with words, but with images of dread, of Iron Warriors dying under a burning sky, a hideous hybrid of man and bird feeding on their entrails. The look of the thing was a pain in itself, and it added that of the gruesome, jagged cut the Raven’s blade left in his neck. As he bled onto the station’s deck, Relok felt both blood and soul leaving his body...to make room for the dreadfulness of an agonizing death.

 ______________

For all of Corax’s adherence to his father’s vision of an illuminated mankind, he wasn’t above adopting totems and symbols, their curtness in conveying a message, both to his sons and their enemies, pleasing to the Raven Lord. Still, there is reason to assume the creation (or awakening, as whispered amongst the XIXth Legion) of the Skinwalkers wouldn’t have been possible before the grief of Isstvan V and its effects on the shadowy Primarch.

An old legend told to the children of Kiavahr’s slavers tells of Ruyn, born both of man and raven, specifically the giant species that inhabits the planet’s storm-struck peaks. The story tells how both of them wished fervently to know each other’s world, something impossible, and resolved to do so through the eyes, ears, taste and touch of a son, an extension of them. Their offspring, though, was a hideous creature, shunned both by humans and avians, and who never came to know anything but a damned existence, his looks causing dread to all who looked at him.