The Conquest of Hate
A Warhammer 40k fanfic. The genre have been on my list for a long time and it will be my focus for a while.
Enjoy the adventures of an angry war-rabbit suffering the human feelings under Butcher's Nails. More indepth description later.
The Screams. They are loud. They are distant...they grind and teeth at my skull. It was a pleasure like a itch finally tended after hours upon hours of its irritating presence. I can feel the blood. It splash like fresh water on my mutated skin. The roars of my weapon. Roar, my precious axe. Roar to your content, I love your song as much as I love directing it. Hack. Slash. Rip. Tear. Maim. All these words and more can describe what I do to my enemy and more. Khorne encourages. Khorne wants. Khorne demands. And I, a Devourer of Worlds, must deliver or the Nails will eat at me again.
Ekthra snarled under his crested helm, swinging his long-time companion with one powerful muscle-cored arm. It was so weightless to him, but the power that he deliver hammered into the freshest kill's flak armor like useless wet paper to a finger. His teeth chewed ravenously, hurling chunks and gore everywhere as the blade hewed shoulder-blade, ribs, and out from the lower corner in one gruesome sweep. Before the body even fell, the savage warrior of Khorne turned on another. His axe still downward, returning with its pick-blade hammering itself into the exposed side. The unfornate man of the Corpse-Emperor screamed as loud as humanly possible in the killer's face. However, the shrieking pitch did nothing for the mutated man. For those bulging eyes were staring at a creature that have almost shedded what could have been a man.
Where skin should be, there was the coarse thin field of timber red fur crested in numerous scars and splattered of his kills. His blood-red armour was of the fallen Astartes belonging to the once glorious Legion of Angron's War Hounds, no more...that was ages ago. To their time, nine thousand years ago. To him, but centuries - he thinks. The converted war-prince do have the care to recall anymore. There is only War. Always War.
The constant scold of his helmet stared with its green eye-shaped visors glaring with pinpoints of its wearer's daemonic bloodlust before ending the scream with a skull-fragmenting headbutt. Letting the body fall and tear itself from his axe, causing a wide gap for a easily fatal bleeding, the World Eater seemed to lose track of what he was even doing. His hands constantly flexing his clawed fingers around his revving, red-smoking axes. His head shook the gritting sensation pounding in his skull. Something was off.
Something in the air was changing. Ekthra could feel it.
He can still feel it. The Winds of Change that caressed the fabric of reality. That insufferable threads of Tzeentch's web touching everything he could reach. Once upon a time, the Lord of Fate touched upon him.
Librarian Ekthra. That was my name. Why now do I recall such a sickening weak title? In the middle of my sermon of bloodletting? Why am I reminded of the far begotten past, where I screamed in the greatest pain one could forsake? It clings to me still, I know. Like a insignificant leech trying to indulge its host as slow and savoring as it can, giving a foresight that damns me of my Blood God.
The mutant's ears twitched under the crest of his allegiance, listening. Not to the war whirling around him - warriors of his small band and horror-affiliated cultists against former brethren - but the whispers. He can hear them in this madness and the Nails punished him, making his hearts beat harder. The blood flooding the veins of his ears, it made him scream. It made him roar!
“DAMNATION AND SALVATION! THE CONSTANT FLOW!" The Red-Lepus hollowed as lasgun projectiles zipped by him, many missing as if they were too afraid to even touch his armoured hide. Launching through the blood-soaked fields of this world, the entrenches did little to save the Imperial Guard stationed to protect. Dreadclaws and falling destruction rained from the sky above, crushing earth, bodies, and steel. It mattered not who and Ekthra charged through it all.
His burning skin paid no heed to hot metal and debris sliding on its surface. His armour flung it aside, notionless to the elements of war that the Adeptus Mechanicus forged in the command of the Emperor that he - and all Legions - once faithfully served. The Berserker's vocal cords were raw. His hearts sang and his chainaxes' engines belched its smog. The filters in his helmet couldn't halt the delicious aroma of battle. The discharges, the musks, the copper, the singed remnants. Ekthra couldn't even recall himself laughing as he hurled himself into a trench that protected a lascannon. The only reason he even considered it his objective was the fact that it killed one of his battle-brothers. His skull obliterated, unable to be given to their Blood Father.
That he can not forgive.
Two screaming heads were hurling into the air before his boots even touched the ground. Spinning and swinging, limbs were barbarically severed, weapons were cut in hew, and screams were a symphony around him. A sting of pain. A deep wound?
Blinding away the red haze, Ekthra found himself panting like a thirsty dog and from the feel of his vox-grill's inner containment, he was drooling like one too. Looking down from his thousand-yard stare, he couldn't find him looking at a figure different from these wondrous sports of meat. Tall and proud, fearless and shining like a aspect of the Corpse-Emperor's righteous subjugation with the red sky's sun rolling off the archaically respectable plate.
Adepta Sororitas. Order Militant. Sister of Battle. The incorruptible maidens of the Emperor's purity. They have come to cleanse the affront that is Chaos. Oh, Sister of mine. For your constant battles for your Emperor, you serve Khorne regardless.
Her black surcoat flowed in the air and rose-scarlet armour already tasted battle, face grim and disdainful upon the creature in the bloody pit. His weapons so gore-filled that it looked like they were unable to revv anymore. Her bolter still smoked from her last round, but the strike only punched a inch into his arm before some fell mutation threw it out. Even from her position on a slight hill, she recognized the zoological change that fell upon this berserker. A unusual classification if she had a care to note.
The Astartes of Chaos will be dead soon either way and in her hand, her blessed blade hummed its energetic field. The moment, she fired her second bolt, the bloodied astartes sprinted right down the trench with a sudden burst of speed. For men of their sizes, the Astartes - faithful or not - were children of war and speed was not elusive for them. For the Daemon-caressed, even more so...but he is not her first. The reports of her fire felt running, getting closer and when it seemed her clip was out, the Child of Khorne made a turn and prepared to bounce from his position.
A smirk passed her lips and that cunning last bullet shot straight at his skull. His head snapped back and body slumped back with a heavy thump. “Burn in your damnation…" The sister muttered, turning to join her troop in the battle and report about the most recent kill. Until a bouncing thunk sounded by her feet.
A glance and her breath sucked in. Krak! Her legs moved on instinct and jump-pack flared its wings in preparation to fly even further flinging herself away but the deadly explosive roared at her back. Her ears rang and her own scream drowned in the thunderous release. Vision was rounding end-over-end and shot black when her body crashed into something. In and out, the Seraphim's vision went. The war-torn ground was a hellish view. Boots crushing over debris and kicked her discarded weapon aside. She could barely hold consciousness as her sight rolled up the hovering daemon clad in his red armour. Hateful visor glowing their glowing pins at her before starting to reach down for a finishing grasp.