Enter Chaos

[Grapejuice555]

The silence was near absolute.

Nothing stirred, and the absence of sound that filled the usually noisy manufactorium had very potent, violent connotations.

A sporadic dripping sound was all that could be discernable, and against a backdrop of nothingness even that was difficult to pick out.

Red industrial lighting threw a halfhearted glare into the space underneath, never really picking details out, leaving much to the imagination.

There was only one certainty… the building was demolished.

Chunks were torn with ferocious force out of the wall, leaving gaping holes where a pale morning light was desperately trying to claim space over the harsh lights of industry.

Broken, smashed machinery littered the floor in a mass of twisted iron and tangled wires, looking more like bodies that the giant creation devices that forged for the Imperium.

Half emerged from a pile of rubble, illuminated by the intrusive beams from the lights, was a human arm, clawed in agony and fear.

More evidence is evident of the bloodshed in this place, a dark stain of body matter on a smashed wall, a slowly coagulating pool of blood that had spread from a body pierced with broken metal and other wounds of a more sinister manner.

A body hung from a vicious hook, which was attached somewhere near the roof.

The chest was bare, and a symbol was carved into it with what appeared to been a dull knife.

The skin surrounding the wound look as if it had been sawed at, and in parts was sloppily done, as if the victim was struggling as the blade bit into his skin. Blood was running down the figures feet, and dripping onto a small piece of corrugated steel.

Drip… Drip.

Energy was electrifying in the air, pulling into the center of the room, where the eight-pointed star was etched into the man’s chest.

His dead fingers twitched, seeming to be guided by some string, flexed, cracked, broke.

The room was filled a deadly silence, and the figures eyes started to glow, pulsating with every drip of the blood running off its toes.

The eyelids flicked open, revealing eyes that were empty, empty of pain, emotion, even pupils.

The tension on the chain started to relax, as if the figure was losing mass.

Slowly, it drifted against gravity, toward the ceiling, the chains clinking sounded like the loudest engines against the staggering silence.

As the figure disappeared from the lights, and moved into shadow, there was a hollow clunk, and the chains fell to the ground, dispatched from the ceiling and the figure, landing in a shallow pool of blood that had been dripping from his feet.

 

Men were shouting.

It was far away, but it still pierced the silence, projecting a sense of fear and panic into the room.

Running footsteps announced a lone refugee, splattered in blood and crying quietly to himself as he ran.

Spittle slipped from his mouth as he coughed, and clutched his lower abdomen.

Fresh blood spilled from a shrapnel wound that had spurred his flight.

The shrapnel wound and the gushing blood of his comrades.

The blood that for the most part covered him now, his comrades, men he had served with for decades, men who he had made oaths with, men who he had broken those oaths with.

He glanced down at his left hand, seeing the eight pointed star of Chaos tattooed into his flesh.

‘This is my test,’ he thought.

‘To see if I am worthy of the gifts the gods can grant me.’

His heart lifted at the idea of any endowments, and he set his jaw, preparing to return to the fight.

He glanced around the room, taking in the machinery, the bodies… and then the chain in the random pool of congealed blood.

Something inside of him was screaming for him to flee, but he felt himself drawn into the center of the room.

Some unknown force was compelling him to stay, to seek understanding.

He stood over the pool, watching the surface.

In the blood, in the pool of dark red liquid, a face stared back at him.

He recognized the curve of the nose, the cleft in the right eyebrow, the distinctive green eyes, the scar where he had fallen as a child.

But the face had a look for pure fear on its face, a fear born of damnation of an eternal scale.

As he watched, the face stretched, and ripped, and a skull grinned out at him. The skull cracked and split, and a pure, undulating darkness flowed out.

He screamed.

There was nothing else he could do.

He screamed and turned for the exit.

Eyes.

Pure white eyes.

Eyes of evil, eyes of pain.

Eyes of insanity.

Eyes were all that stood between him and the exit.

But as he completed his turn, there was no more momentum to his flight.

His body refused to move, captured by the power of those hateful, knowing eyes.

The figured before him leaned forward, and whispered, “Here is your promised reward.”

Unable to move, the man watched as the figure before him pulled back an arm, and pressed a finger to his forehead.

With a sharp cracking sound, the arm was extended, and the man felt horrific pain.

He knew he was dead, but his consciousness was not leaving his body.

Finally he understood.

Pain.

Pain was the answer.

Pain was all he had waiting for him.

 

The figure looked at the man before him, bemused at the look of fear on his face, and slowly pulled the man completely in half.

But rather than blood gushing out, a black substance stretched from his two halves, keeping them connected by a thin membrane.

A strange guttural chanting emanated from the substance, and very slowly, an arm reached through.

The arm was followed by a body, a body encased in layers of thick armor, covered in strange symbols and dancing lights that hurt the eyes to look at.

A great horned helm sat on the massive armored body, with eyes that burned with a fiery glow from deep within his helm.

He calmly scanned the surroundings, and watched over the portal he just stepped out of.

The chanting continued, and more heavily armored bodies followed the first, spreading out across the room, and covering all angles of attack.

As the small strike team finished crossing the immaterium, the first armored being through turned to the catalyst for this incursion, the figure with a vicious meat hook pierced through his body, and growled, “Close it now, demon,” and strode off, heading for the entrance to the room, going toward the shouting of the weaklings that fear death so absolutely.

The Demonhost turned to the still pulsating portal he had created from flesh and bone, grinning crazily to itself on dead lips.

The separated eyes of the bisected man were rolling in agony; his body still contained the spark of his life, his soul.

Blank eyes in a dead face considered him for only a moment, before sweeping a hand through the black membrane that help the two halves together.

The darkness separated, letting the man fall apart, his soul departing with a last wail that echoed around the room, leaving the vestiges of a past self for the demonhost to savor.

As it let the dying scream wash over its newly acquired physical body, it inwardly smiled in anticipation for the death yet to come.

With its purpose completed, it turned and left the room, following the path the fallen armored demigods had taken.

 

 

 

Just to straighten a few things out.... my Chapter is a Loyalist chapter. this is just a means to introduce the antaganist.

 

Comments on content, style, and format are by all means welcome