Blood and Skulls (one-shot)

[Guest Vortex]

Hello. As my first piece of 40k fan-fiction that I've actually managed to finish, I'd like to know what people think of this one-shot piece of work, particularly as to how well it fits with lore, and if there's any misinterpretation here. Feedback and constructive criticism is appreciated. I don't mind if it's blunt or harsh, so long as it's civil. I'm aware this story might come across as a bit... gratuitous. Okay, a lot gratuitous. That's just kinda the way I am in my writing style.

 

A few points:

• This was written to match a theme concerning someone encountering their idol or role model, and how they would react.
• This is split into two parts because Part Two was written first as the main focus of the theme, then Part One sort of grew out of that to show what had led to that encounter. Just reading Part Two in isolation doesn't lead to missing much at all.
• I remember regarding the short narrative involving a group of Berzerkers' encounter with Khârn on page 49 of the 4th(?) Edition Chaos Space Marine Codex that someone on this forum once said that it "flies in the face of every other piece of fluff written about Berzerkers", and so as a secondary goal this also set out to portray Khorne Berzerkers accurately. You must be the judge here.
• This was originally written for people with little or no knowledge of 40k, which is why some fairly basic things which require no explanation to you are given greater detail than they would otherwise need.

 

Without further ado:

 

-PART ONE-

With one backhanded swipe, the buzzing chainaxe bit deeply into the Imperial Commissar's stomach, spraying blood and shredded viscera over Sorek's already blood-red power armour, culminating in him forcibly ripping the Commissar in half along the gaping gash in his abdomen as the Berzerker claimed his prestigious kill. Sorek flung his arms wide and let out a bestial roar, amplified over the battlefield by the microphone in his stylised helmet.

On a war-blasted world of the Forty-first Millennium, two sides had clashed. Weeks of fighting had seen innumerable casualties on both sides, but the day had been won for one. The myriad forces of Chaos were swiftly overrunning the crumbling lines of the Imperial Guard, and the loyalist lackeys of the False Emperor ran like terrified children before their rampage. Amongst those in pursuit were Sorek and the squad of seven other Khorne Berzerkers he led as their Skull Champion.

"Not enough... Not nearly enough!" Sorek muttered to himself while surveying the scene of carnage around him, and turned to face his squad. "Brother-Slaughterers! Onward! Press the attack! Blood for the Blood God!"

"Skulls for the Skull Throne!" was the reply Sorek received, followed by feral howls of frenzied bloodlust and garbled laughter mixed with the usual frantic twitching.

The Imperial Guardsmen had fought surprisingly hard with their Commissar present, but the Berzerkers still made short work of them, and Sorek and his squad charged out of the gore-splattered ferrocrete bunker and thundered off again across the grey and bleak wasteland in search of more blood and skulls to claim in the dread name of the Chaos God Khorne.


As if heralding the coming darkness the planet would suffer under the heel of the Dark Powers, black thunderheads were gathering on the horizon. Shells and munitions lit up the sky and exploded all around as the Imperial Guard fought a desperate rearguard action against the army of Chaos traitors and heretics routing them, churning and scarring the landscape with massive craters criss-crossed with Imperial-dug trenches. Through this scene Sorek and his squad bounded predatorily for blood, and they didn't have to search long before they found it, alighting on a row of lasguns lining the parapet of a trench and the group of battle-weary Guardsmen defending it. One of them spotted the Berzerkers, and the snapping sound of the lasguns began as the Guardsmen opened fire.

Shrugging off the ineffectual beams of light, the Berzerkers threw themselves into the trench with reckless abandon. Some of the defenders proved little more than boys, some were injured and couldn't walk, while others tried to scale the sides of the trench and flee, much to Sorek's exasperation.

"Cowards! Craven dogs!" he screamed, firing wildly after them with his bolt pistol as lasfire fizzled out against his armour. "Face me! Stand and die for the Lord of Slaughter!"

Sorek's followers laughed maniacally as they rent the Guardsmen apart, dismembering and decapitating with savage joy, particularly the one Berzerker they knew only by the moniker 'Bloodfever', after his penchant for yelling said phrase repeatedly, especially as he hacked his victims to pieces in the heat of battle.

"Bloodfever! Bloodfever! Bloodfever!"


When their work was done, all seemed satisfied with the slaughter. All, that is, except for Sorek, who appeared visibly disgruntled.

"So meek! So... SPINELESS!"

He noticed one mutilated Guardsman stirring on the floor, and in frustration Sorek grabbed him by the heel and slammed him into the ground to put a stop to it.

"By Khorne, my axe pines for a real challenge!"

Sorek forged ahead, his warriors close behind, following the path of the trenches in hopes they would quickly lead him to more blood and maybe even a worthy foe.

"I realise blood is blood, but sometimes it almost seems to me as if these CONTEMPTIBLE Guardsmen are hardly worth our time anymore," Brother-Slaughterer Fleischer remarked as they ran, power-armoured boots thudding over soiled duckboards. "I can only presume they aren't even trained to fight back once you get within carving range!"

"Even their so-called leaders are weaklings!" Sorek exclaimed. "If the best they could offer was that foppish Commissar, my axe will not be sated any time soon..."

"Just pray... pray to Khorne they brought some Ogryns with them..." muttered Zaurus, almost salivating at the thought of slicing into the flank of one of the giant, brutish abhumans with his chainsword.


The trench works were networked with more ruined bunkers and defensive positions, though each one had already been overrun by Chaos forces before they arrived, and nothing living was to be found within.

Their route eventually terminated into a maze of hollows amidst a hilly plethora of large slag and scrap heaps; the dross of Imperial mining operations. Zaurus was the one running furthest ahead, and swiftly climbed to the top of a slag pile to survey the land for fresh offerings to Khorne. They hadn't killed for a while, and the lack of enemies was starting to agitate them tremendously.

As evidenced by the smouldering Chaos Vindicator tank chassis and the bodies of Chaos followers and Imperials strewn everywhere, part of the battle had already swept through the area, the victors apparently moving on. Almost as if to mock them, they thought.

"Graaahh!" cried Akairion, pulling up a clump of bloodied dirt in his fist. "Do NOT tell me we missed the chance for killing!"

"I get the feeling... the wider bloodbath is leaving us behind!" Zaurus reported over the vox-channel from his vantage point.

His helmet display zoomed in on the flashes and commotion of war in the distance. It looked as though a second front had opened up close to where they were.

"Ah! The battle rages on to the north-west beyond these scraplands!" he informed them.

"Let us be swift," said Metzger. "The blood on my axe is all but dry!"

"Hold... Something is moving... I think--"

A sudden gout of burning promethium licked around the slag hill and drenched Zaurus' silhouette in flames. As the others were taken aback by the unexpected conflagration, he fell and rolled down to where his charred corpse met Sorek's feet. Three armoured Sentinel walkers crested the hilltop and opened fire on them.

"Damned armour! Fall back!" the Skull Champion ordered, mustering what little tactical acumen remained in him to prevent an ill-judged charge. "Fall back to cover!"

This command almost took his fearless squad mates by surprise and some nearly slipped and stumbled in their hasty about-turns, but they begrudgingly obeyed.

Crunching Zaurus' blackened body under their feet, the Sentinel Squadron gingerly traversed the loose slag and strode after the Berzerkers at speed on their articulated legs, heavy flamer spewing fire, lascannon blasts and autocannon shells kicking up earth and sending shrapnel flying in small explosions. Most of the squad made it to cover, regrouping in the giant scoop of the burnt-out Vindicator's armoured dozer blade. Akairion was not so fortunate, cut down by a burst of autocannon-fire that blasted segments of his power armour to infinitesimal fragments.

"Accursed walkers! Come out of those shells, loyalist slaves!" spat Skaldyr, taking potshots at the armoured vehicles to little effect.

Shots continued to eat away at their cover as the squadron closed in for the kill.

"Ready krak grenades!" shouted Sorek over the din of the discharging pistols and heavy weapons.


It might well have been the end of them there, but before they could lob a single grenade, their salvation came with the intervention of a Slaughterfiend Defiler. The Sentinel pilots only noticed their doom when it was already too late.

Diving on it with its four mechanical claws, the clanking war machine crumpled one Sentinel like a tin can, leaving it burning and horribly mangled as it passed. The Daemonically-possessed machine's frontal armour turned aside shell and flame and the remaining Sentinels pulled back. But it is a fleet thing indeed that can surpass the preternatural speed of a bloodthirsty Slaughterfiend. Broad sweeps of its arms reduced the Sentinels to little more than pummelled scrap for the scrap piles.

"Such unbridled rage!" said Brontos, admiring the destruction as the Slaughterfiend stalked off in search of more prey.

"Hm, that one's master seems to have misplaced his pet," said Metzger, commenting on the absence of a Berzerker Champion that normally tamed and rode these types of Defilers to battle.

"Now, you shall see some sport!" cried Skaldyr as an idea hit him, and to some astonishment jumped on to the metal frame of the Slaughterfiend.

He shambled up the turret section of the diabolical construct and took hold of the shackling, rune-etched chains slung around it, all while the incensed machine-beast tried to unseat its would-be rider, thrashing around like a mad grox.

Try as he might, Skaldyr couldn't find a steady foothold with the wild rocking and twisting of the turret, and soon the flailing of its claws swatted him to the ground. He fell with a thud, and it wasn't long before the rampaging Slaughterfiend snatched him up in its colossal claws and began wringing him dry like an overripe fruit.

"Well, that went exactly to plan, did it not?" jibed Brontos.

Sorek began thinking to himself. Perhaps this was the challenge he had been longing for, sent to him now as part of some providential circumstance. Skaldyr had obviously been too weak, but Sorek believed he possessed the force of will to prove himself to the Blood God and seize such a reward for his own. He was sure greater prestige would now be his.

"The Blood God has delivered us, that we may pile the skulls ever higher in his name!" he rather uncertainly declared in a fit of bluster.

Even before the Slaughterfiend was done beating Skaldyr's body flat into the ground, Sorek leapt upon it with a triple jump, climbed atop the turret, and speedily grabbed the chains like a pair of reins, attempting to bring the Daemon-machine to heel. It flew into a frenzy of bucking and mechanical roaring again, but the more it resisted him, the sharper Sorek yanked the chains.

"SUBMIT!"

Ducking and leaning to stay on his feet and avoid the crushing claws, Sorek finally outlasted his quarry, and it began to yield to his dominance. When the Berzerkers saw that their leader had managed to bend the Slaughterfiend to his will, they eagerly clambered aboard with little prompting. Grinding their axes into the barbed hull or otherwise latching themselves to it, they hung on for the ride, howling in triumph, while Sorek began egging his new steed onwards to further massacres.

"Now, FASTER! Faster into the fray! No mercy! Kill, kill, kill! Trample, crush, rend, break, annihilate! Never ceasing! Never relenting! An eternity of slaughter and death awaits!"


They rode the Slaughterfiend across the hillside of refuse and debris until it gave way to more wasteland, but now they had at last caught up to the main force of the Chaos army. The towering rockcrete curtain wall of the Imperial fortress dominated their vision as they moved through the ranks of Chaos laying siege to it. A line of Chaos Vindicators repeatedly battered the wall with their demolisher cannons and fork-shaped Chaos fliers wheeled in the sky, swarming around the inner keep, dropping their payloads on Imperial gun emplacements.

As Sorek's Daemon-engine still frantically threw itself and its howling passengers towards the front line at great pace—not wishing to be last to the bloodshed—a Chaos Reaver Titan loomed above them, striding its way over the army with giant sweeps of its tree trunk-like legs. The ground shook with each step. The corrupted god-machine hammered the wall with its volcano cannon and wrack upon wrack of apocalypse missiles, blowing huge chunks out of its incredible thickness. Once in reach, it raised its gargantuan power claw, and with one uppercut, smashed the wall asunder, casting flying rubble into the midst of the inner keep itself.

"Looks as though we are just in time!" laughed Brontos with elation.

A Brass Scorpion war engine scuttling between the Titan's legs spearheaded the assault into the compound as the tide of Chaos swamped through the breach. At Sorek's direction, the Slaughterfiend ploughed its way—quite literally—through and over the lesser scum of Chaos, boldly trampling and goring them with impunity, and it brought Sorek and his followers great satisfaction to see their Chaos Space Marine peers diving aside or moving with reluctant deference out of their path.

Once in the compound, the Imperial Guard fought defiantly against the army of heretics, but it was only a matter of time before the fortress would be wrested from them. Immediately the Slaughterfiend contemptuously knocked over a Chimera APC and blew it apart with its battle cannon at practically point-blank range, the pealing of the bound Daemon within's grating wailing giving the impression it was rejoicing with delight. Sorek drove the Slaughterfiend on to fleshier prey; prey that bled.


They descended into a large crater, where they happened upon a squad of psykers providing support to the surrounding Imperial troops with their psychic powers.

"Blooooooood! Finally!" cried Metzger.

"Blood! Blood for Lord Khorne!" Fleischer added.

"GUT THE WORMS!" barked Sorek. "Attack! Attack! Attaaaaack!"

"Bloodfever! Bloodfever! Bloodfever!"

Sorek's squad jumped from the Slaughterfiend and ran ahead. But almost the moment their feet hit the ground, Sorek noticed something was amiss. His vision was becoming nebulous, and strange, kaleidoscopic colours swirled in front of his eyes like grimacing visages crying out in agony. At the psykers' command, an outpouring of Warp energy was whipped up into a flurry and Sorek and his monstrous chariot were engulfed in the roiling broil. Bolts of purple lightning wracked the Slaughterfiend's turret section, throwing its master to the ground and melting several of its legs and claw arms to pools of molten metal. A final strike punched clean through the hull. With a metallic creak and a plangent death scream ululated from gore-choked vox-grilles, the Slaughterfiend collapsed to the ground in a heap of twisted wreckage and exploded in a death-blast of daemonic flame as the storm dissipated around it.

Unfazed—yet unsure if their Skull Champion lived—the Berzerkers charged on at a furious pace towards the psykers and the grim, stern-faced Overseer with them. He was the first to die. As the round from Brontos' bolt pistol smashed its way through the Overseer's face, the diamantine-tipped mass-reactive shell detonated inside his head, splattering the psykers in blood and skull fragments and disrupting their gestalt synchronicity.

"Warpcasters! VERMIN!" Brontos roared as he bolted towards them in his zeal, well ahead of the others, but his utterance of hate did him no good.

A powerful psyker-lord emerged from amongst the psykers, not so wizened as the others, and having far more experience with his abilities. His force staff began crepitating with conjured power and Warp lightning suddenly leapt from his fingertips into Brontos' face with unerring accuracy. Several prongs forked around him, knocking the other onrushing Berzerkers off their feet. Brontos fell to his knees in searing pain and one pass from the psyker-lord's staff not only bisected him down the middle, but also stripped his agonised soul from its fleshy vessel; his cleft, barbecued husk crashing lifelessly to the ground.

The three remaining Berzerkers picked themselves up to face their enemy when Sorek sped past ferociously, chainaxe whirling over his head.

"Get off the ground and back in the fight!" he snapped over the vox, and they recommenced the assault with him.

The psyker-lord's lightning arced outwards again and struck Sorek in the chest. The fulguration played across his armour, but then simply died away. Another blast, and the same result. The psyker-lord attempted throwing Sorek back with telekinetic force, but that also failed, and now it was too late. As the psyker-lord fumbled for his laspistol along with the other psykers, Sorek swung his axe. The psyker-lord's staff would no longer channel his powers, and Sorek's chainaxe bit through the brittle rod of metal and wood as though it were nothing at all. Next, it swept through the psyker-lord's neck in a gratifying shower of red ribbons.

His recompense taken, Sorek gave praise to Khorne that he wore one of the Blood God's gifts that champions such as him might earn themselves: a spiked, talismanic collar, and complete anathema to hated sorcery, without which he would never have survived the psychic onslaughts.

When they were within reach, the remaining Berzerkers of Khorne erupted into a storm of mindless butchery. Like wolves amongst lambs, they fell upon the shrilly shrieking psykers with murderous glee. The need to slay these vermian wretches was even more overwhelming than usual, for there is little the Blood God despises more than the chicanery of psychic powers and the practitioners of such cowardly methods.

"Sorcerers always lack the stomach for a real fight," Fleischer said mirthfully to himself.

Chainaxes rose and fell in bloody arcs as they split their withered bodies or even simply beat them to death with their bolt pistols just for variety in the injuries they could inflict, dispatching them with gusto.

After cracking the last psyker's spine over his knee, Bloodfever was about to spill his entrails.

"Bloodfever! Bloodfever!"

The psyker gibbered and let out a hysteric laugh, then threw his head back, eyes glazing over as Chaos Daemons clawed at his mind.

"The Great Eye of the galaxy... OPENS!"

A blast of psychic energy hurled Bloodfever away, and the psyker flopped to the floor like a grounded fish. Sorek quickly stepped in to finish the job, shoving the others out of his way. He clasped his armoured hand around the limp psyker's scalp and hoisted him up. Barely regarding him at all, the Skull Champion promptly reduced the psyker to chunked flesh and a red stain on the ground. He briefly looked around at the corpses, kicking one of them.

"Robbed of my hard-won servant... Grah! These worms have surely blunted an ascent to greatness this day!"

Bloodfever soon came back up to him, apparently dismayed someone else had got to his prey first.

"Bloodfever!"

"..."

"BLOODFEVER!"

"Shut up!"


There were just four of them left now. Though the battle continued in the compound, the inner keep was the true target, the bulk of the Chaos army having already forced itself inside. He ordered them there next, but on the way, Metzger chimed in with grave news.

"Artillery salvo inbound from the north-east, Skull Champion! The recreants are sweeping the field!"

Sorek could hear the explosions gradually getting louder as the earth-shaking artillery barrage edged methodically nearer. Metzger dared to take furtive glimpses at the bombardment sweeping the breadth of the compound to their right, making a bloody mockery of both Imperial and Chaos forces, the firers uncaring as long as they killed more invaders than defenders.

"We must get to cover!" Fleischer affirmed.

"No cover out here will withstand that!" Sorek replied, his words dripping with contempt. "There will be nothing left of us if we remain in the open! We must get to the keep!"

With Sorek in front, they made a break for the shelter of the inner keep. But they didn't get that far. The signature shriek of distant Basilisk earthshaker cannons careened over their heads, and before they knew it they were engulfed in a cataclysmic upheaval of earth and fire.

-PART TWO-

All was dark around Sorek, and it took effort to move his limbs. His helmet display flickered and crackled, reeling from the impact. Only by some unholy miracle had he survived. Gradually he dug himself out from under a mound of dirt and dragged himself free. He was caked in filth and what he presumed to be the pulped leftovers of his warriors. A jagged shard of ceramite was wedged in his greave. Ripping it out, he saw it was part of a shoulder pauldron he recognised as Metzger's. He callously discarded it with a snarl and a curse under his breath. Now he had lost his squad, as well as his Slaughterfiend. All he could think about was revenge, and inflicting it on anything in his path. The towery yet ugly spire of the inner keep still soared over him, plumes of black smoke billowing from its lofty heights. Perhaps within he would find foes actually worthy of him.

On his way Sorek slid down a gravel slope into an open area with an outbuilding at the foot of the keep, weapon-fire lighting up the window from the outside. He was about to kick the doors in when he heard cries—both terrified and murderous—and the roar of a chain-weapon.

"Kill, maim, burn! Kill, maim, burn! Kill, maim, burn!"

A crimson spray showered the inside of the window, preventing him from peering within. Sorek prepared to ram the doors again when he heard what sounded like a wall collapsing. Quickly he hid himself in the archway of the building, anticipating the possible emergence of an enemy. But instead out from around the corner ran a fellow Khorne Berzerker.

Sorek would have been ashamed to call himself a World Eater if he hadn't recognised the figure, but certain telling features of this individual were unmistakable to any member of his Legion. The figure carried a chainaxe and a plasma pistol, and his somewhat-bare arms were wrapped in chains festooned with hooks, flails, and trepanned skulls. Sorek's blood almost ran cold and a name echoed around his skull, but manifested itself only as a faltering whisper.

"Khârn the Betrayer..."


The Skull Champion now found himself before one of the galaxy's finest warriors, and, to his unsettlement, he almost felt himself stagger at the very sight of him. He had heard the rumours, the vague and uncertain whisperings that dared proclaim the Betrayer himself had joined the fight, but such apocryphal assertions were not altogether uncommon. He hadn't even entertained the thought that it could be true. His mind was thrown back into regions he hadn't sought fit to visit in years.

Sorek had never known the feeling of crusading in the name of the so-called "God"-Emperor and bringing light to the dark corners of the galaxy. He had never been a loyalist Space Marine at all, and had served the Dark Gods of Chaos for but a few scant centuries, and only a portion of that time spilling blood in the name of Khorne alone since undergoing the lobotomising psycho-surgery of the World Eaters' Berzerker-Surgeons.

Yet even so, Sorek knew fully well the history of his Legion; Khârn HAD once been a loyalist, well known as a brilliant but particularly volatile warrior in the Great Crusade. During the turbulent events of the Horus Heresy, Khârn trod Terra's holy soil even as a traitor in defiance of the Master of Mankind, fought at the forefront of the assault, and piled the False Emperor's mewling lapdogs high within the hallowed halls of the Imperial Palace itself. His rampage was finally halted there, whereafter he was thought dead and borne away in the retreat only for the Blood God to ordain that his champion's time was not yet come.

Sorek had also heard of what occurred shortly thereafter; how Khârn's notoriety had grown in propensity for his actions on the Daemon World of Skalathrax; how, ere the long and lethal night fell upon that world, Khârn had torched the Legion's shelters at the mere thought of postponing the final assault on their enemies and for the weakness of the World Eaters themselves in abandoning the attack so readily; and how the World Eaters fought amongst each other to survive that ensuing night of madness, forever sundered into rival warbands, never again to fight as a unified whole. Thus had Khârn earned his title as "the Betrayer".


Those events were more than ten millennia ago now; ten millennia of unremitting slaughter, of slaying anything within reach—even those he once called allies—in Khorne's dark name, and Khârn's legend had only spread further and become more storied and infamous as a result.

Yes, many in the Legion hated Khârn. Many, but not all, and not Sorek. To Sorek, Khârn was more than just a physical embodiment of the Blood God's multi-faceted quiddity, a psychotic madman and indiscriminate killer. He represented that which Sorek respected most greatly: immaculate, undiluted oneness with the Blood God.

Sorek held only two others in yet higher esteem; the Primarch-turned-Daemon Prince of the World Eaters Legion, Angron, and the Blood God Khorne himself. But insofar as the wholly mortal is concerned, Khârn was peerless. Though the ignorant slaves of the False Emperor would brand him simply another thrall of Chaos, Khârn was, at least in Sorek's eyes, truly free in the single-minded service of Khorne; free from all mortal trifles, responsibilities, and petty delusions of the intellect. The only thing he need truly concern himself with was where the next sacrifice to his master would come from, and how soon. Khârn was indeed Khorne's mortal champion, if irrevocably crazed in the extreme. But perhaps, in some roundabout fashion, Khârn had chosen the wisest path of all. He was one man quite literally against the universe, and he lived to see it drown in blood.

All of this flashed through Sorek's mind in an instant. He could barely fathom the thought that this pariah or paragon of his Legion was actually standing right in front of him, and once the fleeting reverie was lifted and he snapped back to reality, he noticed: Khârn had turned back and was coming at him. In that brief moment, Sorek thought he could feel the dark depths of the Betrayer's stifling madness wash over him like a wave; his very countenance instilling in Sorek an unbounded rage more intense than he had ever felt or thought it possible for mortals to feel. He rapidly appraised Khârn with his eyes, particularly the Betrayer's six-foot chainaxe—the monstrously-named Gorechild—and one thing became inescapably clear: it was bigger than his.

This was it. Sorek dared even to suppose that the eye of the Blood God himself might be upon him and his hearts-rate began to spike. To flee was literally unthinkable. To fight; the instinctive response. But how could he hope to fight Khârn the Betrayer and live? Chances were he couldn't, but he would disgrace himself and his god if he didn't at least try. Just as Khârn's chainaxe roared in readiness, Sorek threw himself with all his superhuman might in a galvanic charge at the unparalleled ravager he admired so greatly as words automatically passed his lips and broke the silence between them:

"Fight me, Chosen of Khorne!"

As the two madmen clashed, the clouds above them burst.


Sorek swung his chainaxe but Khârn easily wove around the slipshod blows. Before Sorek knew what had happened, Khârn was behind him. Sorek ducked just barely in time to avoid the swing of Khârn's chainaxe, but he soon felt the Betrayer's arm around his neck and foot on his back. There was a loud crunching sound and Sorek was spurned face-first to the floor.

In the nick of time, Sorek managed to roll himself over to face his opponent. Khârn was coming in fast with another swing. Quickly Sorek reached for his bolt pistol and fired. The bolts failed to find fault in Khârn's armour, but one ricocheted against the adamantium haft of Gorechild itself and dislodged the weapon from Khârn's iron grasp. It landed with a wet splat in the mud behind him. Sorek thrust his legs into the air to bring himself to his footing. He had to strike as his foe doubled-back to retrieve his weapon... Except, before that, Khârn brought his plasma pistol to bear and fired a white-hot burst. The blistering shot sped past Sorek, only narrowly missing him as he stumbled to avoid it. Behind him the outbuilding exploded as the plasma blast ignited the stockpiled ammunition stores within. The blaze roaring to his rear, Sorek promptly lunged forward, intending to slam his chainaxe into Khârn's back... but nothing happened.

And it was only then he noticed his arm was missing. Looking around, he saw it lying on the ground in a red puddle, still grasping his chainaxe as it revved and sputtered futilely. He felt little actual pain, the adrenalin surging through his veins and the intoxicating effect of apoplexy stymying his nociceptors.

Still, he might not get another chance, and though it seemed embarrassingly diminutive, he launched himself at Khârn brandishing the chain-bayonet fastened to his bolt pistol. The Betrayer had just laid a hand on his chainaxe when Sorek was nearly on him. With his left hand, Khârn quickly slapped the pistol out of Sorek's hand, and slammed his right into the centre of Sorek's face. He staggered back, his vision reduced to intermittent glimpses of the outside world through the shattered eye lenses of his Arx Death Helm as his auto-senses cut out. One clear swing was all Khârn needed now.


Gorechild issued a Hellish shriek as its literal teeth—torn from the heads of the mica-dragons of Luther Mcintyre—ground through its armoured target. The whirring teeth tore apart the Skull Champion's ceramite breastplate with contemptuous ease, biting right down into his fused ribcage and ripping open one of his hearts. Sorek was knocked clean off his feet by the blow, and a follow-up swipe severed his legs at the knees.

Khârn's wrath had outdone him. He lay disarmed and dying, his lifeblood haemorrhaging from his wounds. He was bleeding; bleeding for the Blood God.
In the end, Khorne cared not whence the blood flowed; only that it flowed.

The Betrayer placed his armoured boot firmly against Sorek's ruined chest, pressing him into the softened dirt. As Khârn stooped and took hold of his bested victim's helmet by one of its Khornate crests, Sorek bethought himself wholly unworthy of such a distinguished privilege as this.
With an underarm swing of Gorechild, Sorek's head was liberated from his body.

Khârn removed Sorek's severed head from the helmet, and looked down at the chains dangling between his legs and the bare skulls affixed to their ends. He shifted his gaze back to the skull he had just claimed for Khorne's throne, and dropped it without a second thought. With a mighty kick, he sent it spinning off into the distance. Hardly a worthy trophy. Just another paltry increment on his death-counter.

As the Ruinous Powers tightened their grip on the planet, the rain was turning to blood. Khârn the Betrayer stood there but briefly beneath the crimson overcast, letting the refreshing downpour wash over him. With a swift gait, he pounded onwards to further the glory of Khorne, bellowing that eternal war cry which rendered down a philosophy of hate and murder into ten simple words:

"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!"