The air around Vek was thick with the stench of burning oil and blood, suffocating in its weight. The battlefield was a shifting nightmare of smoke, fire, and shadows—each movement a possible death. Engines rumbled like distant thunder, the screams of the dying woven into the mechanical cacophony.
The sergeant's barked orders barely registered. Vek's legs moved on instinct, his lasgun gripped like a lifeline as he stumbled toward the bunker. Yet his mind clung to a single, terrifying thought.
'The Slayer.'
The name echoed in his skull, ancient and absolute. A force beyond comprehension. He had seen Astartes before—once, when he was a child—but this was something else. Something more.
He should have kept moving. Should have followed the others inside. But curiosity, stronger than fear, anchored his feet to the blood-slicked ground.
Through the haze of smoke and drifting embers, he saw him.
The Slayer moved with an eerie purpose, his green armor marred with filth and gore yet untouched by hesitation. Twin lasguns flared in his grasp, beams of red lancing through the swirling fog, cutting down anything that dared to move.
Then came the sound. A grinding, mechanical roar.
A shadow loomed from the smog—a war engine, massive and crude, its hulking form belching black smoke as it thundered forward. Its armor was a patchwork of scavenged steel and rusted plates, defaced with blasphemous sigils, its cannon swiveling with an ugly mechanical whine.
And riding atop the behemoth, clad in blood-red armor, was something worse.
It was too large to be a man, too monstrous to be an Astartes. Its form was a grotesque mockery of the Emperor's chosen—hulking and brutal, its crimson plates twisted with baroque corruption. In one gauntleted hand, it gripped a rusted chainaxe, its engine sputtering to life with a hungry snarl.
Vek felt his breath hitch. His fingers clenched the grip of his lasgun.
The Slayer turned to face them.
His lasguns sang in response, burning crimson streaks across the war machine's hull. Sparks erupted, metal buckled, but the monstrous tank did not stop.
With a screech of tortured servos, the war engine surged forward.
The Slayer held his ground. His weapons flared in defiance, a relentless barrage of fire, but it was not enough.
With a thunderous roar, the war machine slammed into him.
The impact was brutal, metal crashing against armor, the force sending the Slayer hurtling through the air like a broken doll. The smog swallowed him whole, his green-clad form vanishing into the chaos.
Then, the war machine followed.
A sickening crunch echoed through the battlefield as the tank's massive treads ground forward, disappearing into the swirling ash.
Vek's stomach twisted.
"No!" The word ripped from his throat, raw with disbelief.
The sergeant was on him in an instant, grabbing his shoulder, his grip bruising. "Get inside! That's an order!"
Vek stumbled back, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. His mind screamed for him to resist, to do something, but his body obeyed the order.
The bunker doors slammed shut behind them.
And the battlefield beyond was swallowed by the storm.
The Slayer landed on his feet, the impact sending a shockwave through the ground as dust and debris billowed around him. The war machine roared forward once more, its twisted bulk of scavenged steel and crude plating shaking the earth beneath it. The corrupted vehicle surged ahead, its massive dozer blade scraping the ground in a shower of sparks.
The Slayer didn't move until the last moment. As the war machine bore down upon him, he shifted his weight, planting his boots firm in the shattered earth. When the impact came, he met it with sheer brute force, his gauntleted hands slamming against the reinforced hull. The shriek of metal filled the air as the treads tore into the ground, struggling against his overwhelming strength.
Then, with a defiant roar of servos and muscle, the Slayer pivoted, twisting his entire body into the motion. The war machine's momentum turned against itself as it lifted off the ground, the Slayer wrenching it upward and over. The corrupted tank flipped through the air, twisting like a monstrous, flailing beast before crashing onto its roof with an earthshaking impact. Smoke and flame spewed from ruptured fuel lines and shattered exhaust vents.
The hulking, blood-red form atop the wrecked machine was already moving. The Chaos Astarte, a towering giant clad in red war-scarred ceramite, dislodged himself from the wreckage with unnatural speed. His chainaxe revved to life, teeth spinning hungrily as he let out a guttural war cry.
The Slayer sidestepped the first savage swing, his movements deceptively fast for his size. The corrupted Astarte pressed forward, axe carving through the air in brutal arcs, each strike seeking to cleave flesh and bone.
Then, as the heretic overextended on a downward strike, the Slayer moved. His hand shot forward, snatching a bolt pistol from the Astarte's holster in one fluid motion. The traitor roared in fury, swinging again, but the Slayer ducked beneath the attack.
Before the Chaos Marine could recover, the Slayer jammed the bolt pistol under his chin and pulled the trigger.
A deafening boom erupted as the bolt round punched through the heretic's helmet, detonating inside his skull. The traitor's body spasmed violently before crumpling to the ground, his chainaxe sputtering as his grip failed.
Silence fell, broken only by the distant rumble of more war machines drawing closer.
The Slayer turned the bolt pistol over in his hands, inspecting its weight and balance. The weapon was brutal, built for warriors far larger than men, its mechanism designed to fire mass-reactive rounds with devastating force.
Sefirot's voice hummed in his mind as the acrane systems of the Praetor suit analysed everything about the objects inducing it's foreign history.
"Bolt Pistol, Pattern: Umbra-Ferrum VII. Standard-issue for Astartes forces, now defiled by modification. Firing system intact. Bolt caliber: .75, mass-reactive, high-explosive payload. Maximum effective range: 50 meters with decreasing accuracy. Moderate recoil mitigation system due to gyroscopic stabilization."
The Slayer turned his gaze to the fallen Chaos Marine. The armor was a corrupted mirror of its former glory, its once-proud heraldry defiled by dark sigils and organic growths. The exposed flesh, visible through cracks in the plating, pulsed unnaturally, tendrils of warped muscle twisting as if alive.
Sefirot analyzed further.
"Astartes physiology detected. Genetic modifications intact but severely degraded. Warp corruption present at critical saturation—mutagenic instability beyond threshold tolerance. Necrotic tissue coexisting with regenerative anomalies. Subject's biomass is sustained by non-Euclidean bio-energies."
The Slayer's attention shifted to the weapon that looked the most playful. He lifted the chainaxe from the corpse, its grip still warm. The teeth were stained with gore, some of it fresh, some ancient and blackened.
Sefirot provided another assessment.
"Chainaxe, Pattern: Mutilator-Class. Modified for single-wield functionality. Power source: Lesser Daemonic Essence, supplementary chain drive enhancement. Durability: Extreme. Cutting potential: High because of monomolecular edge teeth. Operational stability: Reduced—weapon degradation accelerated due to chaotic entropic influence."
Then the enemies broke through the smog. The battlefield trembled with the approach of the warband. Their presence was a storm of madness—power armour clashed like drums of war, and the ground itself quivered beneath the weight of their Juggernaut-mounted leader. The air reeked of blood and fire, the scent of slaughter woven into the very fabric of reality.
The Khornate Berserkers surrounded the Slayer, their red ceramite gleaming with fresh gore. Many bore massive glaives, their blades humming with the tormented essence of bound daemons. The weapons pulsed, screaming without sound, their agony translating into the barely restrained savagery of their wielders. Others carried chainaxes and chainswords, their whirring teeth eager to drink deep.
And then, their leader.
A towering figure sat atop a Juggernaut, a monstrosity of living metal and molten blood. The beast's breath came in thick clouds of burning vapor, each exhale searing the earth beneath its hooves. Its rider was a warlord draped in talismans and trophies, crude relics of past slaughter dangling from his armor. His helmet was a horned, skull-faced visage, his crimson pauldrons adorned with Khorne's mark, etched deep as if carved by the god's own hand.
He surveyed the battlefield, gaze falling upon the headless corpses of the Berserker who had ridden ahead of them—felled before they could even revel in their slaughter.
His laughter was a guttural, metallic rasp.
"You are too small for an Astarte… yet too strong for a mere Guardsman." His voice was iron and fire, his words carrying the weight of countless battles. "And your rage—your rage sings."
The daemon within the chainaxe quivered, its essence rippling in elation. It felt the Slayer's fury, drinking deep of it like a parasite gorging itself on an endless feast. The weapon whispered in delight, its voice slithering into the Slayer's mind.
"Yesss… you are one of us. You are already His."
The warlord raised his axe high, and his warriors answered with a thunderous chant.
"Blood for the Blood God! Blood for the Blood God!"
They beat upon their armour, a ritualistic cacophony that turned the battlefield into a war drum. The sound resonated through the Slayer's bones. The daemon in the axe screamed in exultation.
And the Slayer? He said nothing. He only burned.
The rage within him was not the wild, frenzied bloodlust of the Berserkers. It was not the ecstatic madness of Khorne's chosen. It was something else. Something deeper. A rage that had no name, no god, no limit. It did not seek blood for the sake of blood, nor war for the sake of war. It was pure, boundless wrath.
The Berserkers felt it.
The daemon felt it.
It was too much.
Where it had once drank greedily, the bound entity now recoiled. It tried to retreat within its weapon, to shield itself from the tide. But the Slayer's fury was absolute. It did not invite. It consumed.
The daemon shrieked.
The chainaxe convulsed in his grip, its power flickering, the glow of its infernal core twisting into a withering blackness. The entity's cries became a wail of something almost impossible—true, final death. And then, in a single, horrifying instant, it was gone.
Not banished. Not exorcised. Destroyed.
The Berserkers staggered back, their ritualistic chanting faltering, their war cries silenced by something they did not understand.
Even the warlord's Juggernaut snorted, steam billowing from its nostrils as it took a cautious step back.
The Slayer exhaled, the chainaxe now lifeless in his grip. Without hesitation, he tore free the weapon's ruined power core and cast it aside. The void left behind did not remain empty for long.
He pressed his gauntleted fingers into the exposed chamber, and with a sudden surge, a new power flooded into the weapon—a searing, argent brilliance that burned with something greater than a lesser daemon. The teeth of the axe came alive once more, but this was no daemon's hunger. This was something else. A weapon reforged, no longer bound by chaos, no longer an instrument of worship of Khorne.