Combat
The Word Bearers emerged through the smoke beneath banners of flayed crimson. Blasphemous scripture covered their armour, broken by the profane visages of their false gods. Their chants rasped across the vox, a discordant litany that stirred something buried deep within the Dreadnought's fractured memory.
Traitors.
The word came without effort. It had waited in the darkness longer than he could comprehend.
He levelled his plasma cannon.
Turquoise light gathered within the weapon's coils, illuminating the smoke around its barrel. Then the cannon discharged.
White-blue fire engulfed the advancing Legionaries, tearing through crimson plate and hurling broken bodies against the blackened walls of the ruined city.
Ancient masonry shuddered beneath the blast, shedding dust and fragments into the street.
The Dreadnought advanced through the settling smoke.
His armoured feet ground broken stone beneath their weight. Auspex returns flickered across his vision, marking movement among the ruins, but another image intruded upon the battlefield.
A briefing chamber.
A hololithic map suspended above a table.
Officers in black plate gathered around the representation of a world whose name had slipped beyond his grasp.
A voice issued orders, calm and precise, with the unquestioned authority of command.
The enemy will attempt to break through the eastern avenue.
He knew that voice.
Or thought he did.
Incoming fire shattered the vision.
Bolter rounds hammered against his sarcophagus, leaving bright scars across its ancient armour. Warning runes flared across his vision as impacts reverberated through his chassis.
He barely registered them.
He had endured worse.
He remembered skies burning beneath orbital bombardment. Cities collapsing beneath the guns of the enemy. Warriors advancing beneath black banners, their armour bearing the heraldry of a Legion that had known no master but the Son of the Emperor.
He remembered the thunder of bolters, the clash of blades, and the voices of his brothers rising above the din.
First Legion.
The thought surfaced with sudden, terrible clarity.
A Word Bearer emerged from a blasted doorway, its crozius raised as it chanted a prayer to its blasphemous gods. The Dreadnought turned, his storm bolter tracking the movement.
Mass-reactive rounds tore into the traitor's chest and shoulder, shattering corrupted ceramite. The Legionary staggered, its prayer collapsing into a snarl, before the final volley hurled it backwards into the doorway.
Silence returned to the Dreadnought's weapon.
For a moment, the battlefield seemed distant.
He heard boots upon polished stone. The scrape of a sword leaving its scabbard. The rustle of robes beneath vaulted ceilings, where warriors stood in solemn ranks before an assembly of their peers.
He was among them.
He could not remember their faces, yet their presence stirred a grief so profound that something within his failing memory recoiled from it.
Then came another image.
A blade descending towards a brother.
His own body moving before thought could intervene.
The impact.
Agony, blinding and absolute, as the blow struck home. The world vanishing into darkness. Yet beyond the pain, one certainty endured.
The warrior behind him had lived.
He had placed himself between death and his charge.
He had fulfilled his oath.
The memory fractured before he could see the face of the one he had saved.
A low growl rumbled from his vox grille, half frustration, half something older and less easily named.
The battlefield offered no answers. Only enemies.
Ahead, the Word Bearers were falling back towards the far end of the avenue.
Their retreat gathered around a knot of Terminators, towering warriors clad in crimson plate scarred by countless battles. Unnatural runes writhed across their armour, and the daemonic weapons in their hands whispered with voices that did not belong to the living.
The Terminators held their ground as their lesser brethren fled past them.
Then they raised their weapons.
A challenge.
The Dreadnought slowed.
He did not recognise the blades or the blasphemous markings carved into their armour.
The enemy had changed. Its symbols had multiplied, its weapons had become things of nightmare, and the passage of millennia had clothed treachery in new forms.
But the gesture was ancient.
He knew what it meant.
A warrior of the First Legion did not turn aside from such a challenge.
He charged.
The roadway shook beneath his advancing bulk.
The first Terminator met him with a two-handed sweep of its accursed blade. The weapon struck his sarcophagus with a shriek of tortured metal, driving him half a step sideways. A second blow followed, then a third, each impact reverberating through his chassis as the daemon bound within the blade howled in triumph.
The Dreadnought seized the traitor with his power claw.
Armoured fingers closed around its head, crushing ceramite beneath their grip. The daemon's shriek rose to a furious pitch as the Dreadnought lifted the Terminator from the ground and hurled it into the wall of a nearby building.
Before it could rise, the Dreadnought's storm bolter raked the ruin until the Terminator moved no longer.
Its companion came through the dust.
Their weapons collided. The impact rocked the Dreadnought's chassis, ancient servos straining as he forced the corrupted blade aside. He drove his armoured shoulder into the traitor, crushing it against the broken wall, then brought his power claw down.
The Terminator fell beneath the blow.
The Dreadnought stepped over its ruined form and pressed forward.
Advance. Strike. Turn. Fire.
His weapons answered each movement with an instinct that seemed older than conscious thought. His plasma cannon burned through the smoke, his storm bolter hammered at the enemy, and his power claw closed with the terrible certainty of an executioner's instrument.
He knew how to fight.
He knew how to kill.
Yet the battle was awakening something beyond the instincts of a warrior.
A sword held upright before a kneeling figure.
A black standard carried through the smoke.
A voice reciting his victories, not in boast, but in the solemn accounting of deeds performed in service to a greater cause.
The images gathered around a presence he could not yet name.
Then, at last, one name emerged from the darkness.
The Lion.
The name struck through his fractured memory with the force of a blade splitting open a sealed tomb.
He saw a figure standing beneath the banners of the First Legion. Tall, terrible, and utterly still. There was no need for raised voices or grand gestures. Those gathered around him stood as knights before their liege, their bearing disciplined, their weapons instruments of exquisite violence.
The Dreadnought knew them. He remembered the oaths that bound them, the traditions that shaped them, and the terrible responsibility entrusted to their hands.
He knew the price of the Legion's honour.
And he knew the figure at its heart.
His vision fractured.
The ancient hall dissolved into smoke and fire. The sound of distant voices gave way to the thunder of weapons, and the ruined avenue returned around him.
The Lion's name remained.
For the first time since his awakening, the Dreadnought understood that the darkness within his memory was not empty.
Something waited beyond it.
Something that had once been his.
*****
Dreadtober 2026: Week 3 Update
Another week of Dreadtober, and sadly, not much to report this time around, as it's been a busy one at work.
Fortunately, I've now got three weeks off using my remaining leave days, so I'm hoping to get some serious hobby time in!
As for the Dreadtober project, I mentioned at the beginning that I planned to 3D print a banner and some candles to add to the Venerable Dreadnought.
I'm pleased to report that they've now been printed and cured! They'll be primed and painted separately before being added to the Dreadnought later on.
As for the painting, I've managed to get the basecoat down on the Dread's legs, along with some additional detailing on the Plasma Cannon arm. Most of the painting progress, however, should come over the next few days.
So, while this week's update might be a little light, things should hopefully pick up considerably from here!
As always, check out the Dreadtober Blog to see everyone else's entries.
And until next time, have nice day...
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