Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The Silver Rathalos had lived a very long time — so long that even he himself could no longer say how many years had passed. None of his kin lived as long as he had, but ever since his mate had been killed by those tin-can creatures barely taller than a fist — slain in some inexplicable explosion — his world had never been the same.

He had pursued those tin-cans in a fury, hunting down and killing as many as he could catch, and in doing so he had found himself growing stronger and stronger. His flames burned fiercer. His talons struck harder. Even in flight he had grown lighter, swifter than before.

Already possessed of a dim, nascent intelligence, he came to understand that every one of these changes had begun after he started hunting the tin-cans. The growth of his power felt like a reward — recognition of his vengeance, and of his fidelity to his mate. So he had simply taken up residence atop the great heap of wreckage that those tin-cans had once guarded.

Outside of hunting for food and resting, he spent most of his time seeking out and running down those tin-cans. Even after his strength had long since stopped growing from the act of killing them, the vengeance never stopped.

By his usual rhythms, this stretch of time should have been when he went out again to make trouble for the tin-cans. But strangely, the growth that had been dormant for so long had resumed — and with an urgency he had not felt in years.

More than that: beyond his ordinary appetite for prey, he had developed a craving he had never known before — a hunger for metal.

This strange change had forced him to alter his habits, turning his attention to feeding and building up his strength. Yet deep in his heart, the hatred born from the loss of his mate had never faded. He was still planning — once this growth ran its course, he would go out and make those tin-cans pay — and the memory of the explosion that had devoured his mate still burned in him…

A faint sound at the edge of his hearing made the Silver Rathalos, who had been sleeping to accelerate his growth, open his slit pupils. He saw several small creatures — smaller even than the tin-cans, with strange ears and tails — moving around near his head, setting down barrel after barrel.

Yes. Things like that. Back then, it had been a tin-can clutching something just like that who had charged under his mate's body, and then — a cataclysmic explosion.

…Hm?

The Silver Rathalos snapped alert and made to raise his head — but the Felynes, who had already spotted that he was awake, let out rapid yowling cries of alarm, their agile bodies vanishing from his sight in an instant. And the oversized bomb barrels, fuses already lit, sat there hissing right in front of him.

BOOM!

He didn't even manage to lift his head before the blast from the oversized bomb barrels swallowed his skull and body in a wall of flame. The barrels, loaded with the explosive gland fluid of the Bazelgeuse, detonated with spectacular force. Lin had chosen the darkest hour before dawn for the first surprise strike — yet the fire that roared into the sky lit up half the heavens as bright as midday for one blazing instant.

But even with an explosion that enormous, Lin allowed himself not a shred of complacency. He knew all too well how high the Silver Rathalos's resistance was; he had never once believed a single ambush would be enough to tip the whole battle in their favor. He gave the order plainly:

"Proceed as planned. Don't hold back on firepower."

The Astartes, already in position at their pre-selected firing lines, opened up without mercy into the light of the flames. But moments later, what greeted them was not the Silver Rathalos's agonized shriek — it was a roar of fury. As the Bazelgeuse gland fluid burned itself out, the Silver Rathalos lifted his head back out of the inferno. The only marks the blast had left were scorch burns along his underbelly; his hardened skull and heat-resistant wings were virtually unscathed save for a layer of smoke-blackening. He swept the assembled Astartes with a slow, wrathful gaze of his needle-thin slit pupils, as if demanding to know why they had come here to throw their lives away.

"Surface resistance is higher than we projected," Lin reported quickly, scanning the Silver Rathalos's condition. The creature's intact state surprised him — though only slightly; it was not beyond what he had expected. "But the speed at which he raised his head was slower than before — the concussive blast from the explosion should have rattled his internal organs somewhat. Not a lot, but something. No matter. His evolution isn't complete yet. The silver plating from the metallic element reinforcement is mostly limited to his head and torso; the rest isn't hardened enough. We need melee to open him up… Admir!"

Lin's shout carried clearly. Lieutenant Admir understood instantly and leapt backward. Sure enough, the Silver Rathalos stormed forward in a fury, immediately lowering his head and belching a gout of flame — a massive fireball barreling straight toward the Astartes who had advanced into melee range. Lieutenant Admir and his squad dove clear with room to spare.

Seeing his first attack fail to land, the Silver Rathalos threw back his head and bellowed. His voice lacked the raw sonic-damage potential of a Tigrex's roar, but the wrath of an apex predator was not something any warrior could simply shrug off.

Several of the Astartes who were closest found themselves disoriented, their balance faltering for a few seconds, rooted briefly to the spot. Only Lieutenant Admir, clad in his Tigrex-set powered suit, surged forward against the current — swinging his longsword Red Leaf, pressing into the roaring Silver Rathalos rather than retreating.

Admir's advance felt to the Silver Rathalos like a direct affront to his dignity. He cut off his roar, dropped his head low, and lunged his neck forward to bite at the charging Admir. Admir twisted nimbly aside, and in the same motion swept Red Leaf down onto the Silver Rathalos's head.

He channeled the flame-force running through Red Leaf's blade and unleashed a burst of detonating fire in the swing — the blast itself dealt no decisive injury to the Silver Rathalos, but the Disintegration Field concealed beneath the flames carved a long, narrow wound across the creature's brow.

This was the perfect fusion of Monster Hunter weaponry and Warhammer arms: Red Leaf was first and foremost a Power Sword, and secondarily a longsword forged from Rathalos materials. The devastating lethal discharge of a Power Sword driven by its energy cells meshed seamlessly in this moment with the flame-force locked within its materials — and together, they delivered a stunning blow square to the Silver Rathalos's face.

The Silver Rathalos reared back with a hiss of pain, eyeing Admir and his weapon with wary suspicion, his slit pupils calculating. He was clearly reassessing, preparing to fight this enemy who could actually hurt him with far more caution.

But then he registered what Admir's weapon was made from — and the fury that erupted in him was something beyond rage entirely. The flames churning in his chest blazed with a searing, white-hot light, as if hot enough to melt steel. He didn't even wait for that fire to finish building before lunging his head forward again to snap at Admir!

"What is wrong with this Rathalos?!"

The relentless flurry of attacks left Admir no opening to regroup and counterattack; all he could do was dodge frantically, one desperate weave after another. "I thought you said he wouldn't enter a rage state this fast at the start, that he wouldn't be throwing out strings of attacks this insane?"

You're carrying a weapon made from the man's wife and swinging it at his face — if he didn't try to swallow you whole, he could ascend on the spot, float up to the Warp on the power of positive emotion alone, and personally redeem the Four Chaos Gods through the sheer force of his forbearance. And you still need to be fighting him tooth and nail?

Lin had his private thoughts on the matter, but he wasn't about to say any of that out loud. "Maybe this Silver Rathalos just has a bad temper. Hang in there a bit longer."

Let Admir suffer through it a little more. The Silver Rathalos can take the blame.

He stopped paying attention to Admir's suffering and shifted his gaze to the far reaches of the sky. There, at the edge of the distant horizon, the first pale light of the day had appeared.

He had deliberately chosen the hour before dawn for the opening round of combat. Now, after a stretch of fierce and grinding fighting, the moment of daybreak had quietly arrived.

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