A Necron's Duel

Obyron met Imotekh on the great plaza outside of the palace, an expanse of finest marble over a mile wide. He stood and watched, a modest honor guard flanking him, as Imotekh's ornate barge descended from orbit. It came to a silent halt hovering a meter over the stone and Imotekh's honor guard marched down the ramp in inevitably perfect order, far larger and more ornate in full ceremonial apparatus. Behind them strode Imotekh himself, towering above the lesser Necrons of his guard, scroll marked with the physical seal and digital codes of the Silent King in one hand.

 

"I come bearing a message for the Nemesor Zandrekh from the hand of his liege the Triarch Szarekh," Imotekh intoned. "Where is he? The message is to be delivered to him personally."

 

"I am Lord Obyron, empowered by my liege Zandrekh to speak and act in his name," Oberon replied. "I may receive the message as though it was delivered in person."

 

Imotekh responded by releasing the scroll, which unrolled itself while hovering midair. The scroll projected columns of shimmering glyphs from its surface, carrying the force of the Silent King's will like a physical blow, subliminal command codes embedded in the hypertext.

 

You are commanded, it read, to travel to the court of the Triarchy and present yourself there to the Triarchs to renew all oaths of fealty, so that... Oberon needed to read no more to know the meaning. Submission and slavery. The command codes washed over him without finding purchase.

 

"No," he replied.

 

"You defy the will of Szarekh?" Imotekh asked.

 

"I do, and I challenge you to an honor duel to determine the matter."

 

Imotekh did not hesitate. "I accept," he declared, and in a flash of teleportation his ceremonial robes and scepter were replaced with warplate and warscythe. With the challenge issued and accepted, their respective retinues fell back to give them space, and a dome of glowing energy sprang up around the two Necron lords from the pavement. The duel was to the death; the force field would not fall until one or both of them were dead.

 

The two duelists stood motionless for a long, frozen moment. Then they exploded into motion. The basic necron warrior may be slow to move and react; not Obyron or Imotekh. Equipped with the finest bodies necron science could provide, musculature that had more in common with railguns than anything nature had ever devised, they moved like lightning. Their strikes cracked like pistol shots, the edges of their blades breaking the sound barrier with every swing. A human observer, had there been one present, would have seen nothing more than blurs as the two necron lords traded blows. Sparks showered across the arena as the exotic energies contained in their blades and armor clashed with every blow.

 

After a couple of minutes of this furious violence, the two combatants stepped back from each other. Both Imotekh and Obyron were covered in dozens of cuts, all of them already healing as necrodermis flowed back into its proper place. Necrontyr dueling tradition had always placed a strong emphasis on allowing the enemy to get in a minor hit in order to set yourself up for a more devastating counterblow. This tradition had been immeasurably reinforced now that their bodies were made of living metal instead of flesh and blood.

 

For all its furious violence, that exchange had merely been the opening bout as the two rival Lords sized each other up. Now, given a brief respite as they both strategized their next moves, neither was terribly impressed by what they had seen. In Obyron, Imotekh saw nothing more than an up-jumped street brawler, his strikes and parries devoid of subtlety or grace. In Imotekh, Obyron saw someone who, for all his mastery of the traditional forms, was unable to innovate and go beyond them.

 

Still, neither was about to underestimate the other. By unspoken agreement, the brief moment of stillness ended, and the two Necron lords charged once more.

 

The two clashed for over an hour in inconclusive battle, untiring, neither quite able to gain an advantage. The end, when it came, happened in a matter of seconds.

 

Obyron's warscythe was of the finest quality, but Imotekh's was the very best that all the armorers of the Silent King could provide. The incredible intensity of the duel pushed even Necron craftsmanship to its very limits and beyond, and it was Obyron's weapon that gave out first. Blocking another thunderous strike the haft shattered just below the head, the blade spinning away and leaving Obyron holding nothing but a useless, sparking shaft. Without hesitation he dove to retrieve the blade, scooping it up from the flagstones. But Imotekh took swift advantage of the opening, and even as Obyron turned back to face him his blade was scything down. Obyron tried to dodge, but was only able to move just enough that the warscythe only took his arm instead of his (un)life. The arm which was not holding the broken blade.

 

Expecting the strike to be a killing one, Imotekh had overcommitted slightly; just enough to give Oberon an opening. He lunged, closing in an instant with Imhotekh to absolute minimum range where the two were almost directly touching. Now, despite his missing arm, Obyron held the advantage. The warscythe, a two-handed polearm, was not a weapon for a knife fight; and though he was trained and experienced to the peak of perfection in the formal dueling styles of the warscythe, Imotekh had little experience in knife-fighting. Oberon, on the other hand, had begun his career as a duelist in the gutters armed with a shard of broken glass. Now, he was truly in his element.

 

Imotekh tried to open distance again, but his single mistake had already doomed him. Oberon drove his shattered scythe into a gap in Imotekh's armor, right into his neck, and then severed it entirely. Imotekh's head fell to the pavement, his body remaining rigid and upright, until both were whisked away by the recall mechanism. The force field enclosing the dueling circle fell.

 

None of the assembled honor guards said a word; there was nothing to say that would not have been redundant. In perfect unison Imotekh's retinue turned and filed back aboard their ship, which then rose into the heavens in the same perfect silence with which it descended. Oberon watched its ascent, hypertechnological eyes refocusing again and again to keep it in view as it rose hundreds of kilometers to reenter Imhotekh's ship in orbit. Then, a brief shimmer, and the ship was gone.

 

Oberon stood there for a couple of seconds more, then turned and strode back into the palace. He had an arm to replace.