n1nchawrites

[n1nchawrites]

World of Woe - Klod

Klod shifted uncomfortably on his feet, his left heel stung like a bitch after accidentally stepping on some caltrops, and his right boot was lost in the mud during that raid in Cobblerange. His gambeson was freshly looted, and still bore the filigree of the Papal States; the crucifixes and scripture were itchy, he thought, and he had on several occasions been too distracted by picking at the seams on the stitched in iconography to pay attention to a Master or Blooded bossing him about. He grumbled, leaning against his pike as his hairless, grotesque face squinted to the horizon - his black eyes like sharp splinters of obsidian, furrowed in concentration as he watched for movement.  Nothing.

There was never anything interesting happening, not for Klod. Klod was a Chaff, a diminutive goblin-like parody of a man, with an insatiable lust for blood and incredibly short attention span. He groaned in frustration, turning back to look at the camp: Blooded sat having their plate armour attended to by Chaff as vivacious women fawned over them, and the various Masters and Viscounts that led the company stood around a table, planning their next move. He could smell fresh meat and blood, could feel the bonfire’s gentle caress as the heat radiated from it to the very edge of the camp, could hear the laughter of the Blooded and their maidens. 

Laughing at Klod, he suspected.

He spat, grimacing as he turned back to scanning the horizon - he would have to control his outrage, for the Blooded were far too strong for him to even consider contending with: he remembered when Mrud had tried. Poor, poor Mrud, rarely could a Chaff feel pity for another living being, but his death had been most unseemly, and the carcass was rendered unrecognisable but for the extra finger on his left hand which had not been too grossly mutilated to identify. Good thing that Blooded got walloped by a Warrior-Pope of the Papal States, Klod thought, bastard had it coming for how he treated poor, hapless Mrud.

Klod chuckled raspily to himself as his lips curled into a thin, ghastly smile. He felt a little bit of thick, yellowy drool leaking from the corner of his mouth, and wiped it on his gambeson’s left sleeve, noticing a piece of scripture embroidered onto it: Klod could remember bits and pieces of how words worked when written - he knew how to say different letters, and how they sounded when they were put together, but he always struggled with the funny little squiggles and lines and dots that people would put after writing a few words. He squinted, muttering the holy text out loud with his ragged, animalistic voice,

‘“They all hold swords, being expert in war: every man ha…’ he stumbled for a minute as he tried to discern how to pronounce the word before him ‘hat… hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night.”’

This time he let out a rankled laugh, globs of stinking spit flying out from his mouth as he doubled over, cackling like some sick dog at the irony of the statement - oh, how delicious it was, “expert of war?” he had hardly been able to block Klod’s pike from spilling his guts, and “fear of the night?” against a horde of vampires? How delightful a coincidence. A tragically hilarious death, he thought, so distracted by it that he was only brought back to the present, manifest world by a sharp pain at the back of his head. Metal. A gauntlet.

'What in the Nine Hells are you doing, wretch?' A stern voice demanded, one of the Blooded leered over him, sneering down at the giggling monstrosity,

'Klod- the sleeve-' He pointed to the scripture breathlessly, still chuckling like a madman. The knight took him by the arm roughly, reading it to himself before breaking out into a sly smile for a fraction of a second,

'Ironic.'

'Mh, Klod thinks so.' He laughed, unable to contain himself despite the crushing air of authority closing in around him,

'Klod should really be doing his damned job. Laugh on your own time, fool, you are putting everyone at risk by shirking your duties.'

Klod grumbled, turning back to face the horizon, feeling the Blooded’s hand on his shoulder as he gripped tightly,

'What do you have to say for yourself, Klod?'

He grunted, 'Ghnk. Sorry, mi’lord. Won’t happen again.'

'See that it doesn’t.'

He maintained a lookout for the rest of the evening, grumbling and shuffling and giggling occasionally as he remembered the scripture etched into his armour. Nothing interesting happened. Nothing interesting ever happens for Klod.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Author's Note: Hello, anybody that's reading this! I apologise for disappearing for a while, I've not really been motivated to write as much as I used to, and trying to crank out a story a week on top of my A-Level studies and trying to balance other hobbies and helping out my friends with their own worldbuilding projects was decidedly impacting the quality of my writing in a negative manner: I decided to step away for a while and really only write when inspiration struck me, and whilst admittedly the stuff I've been writing recently has been sloppier, I've been having a lot more fun doing it. If you're still here for Warhammer 40,000 stuff, that's alright, I'm still going to write for it, but recently my friend has started up his own grimdark Pike and Shot setting called World of Woe, and I've decided to focus on doing short stories for each faction. This particular story is about a vampire mercenary company called the Black Sun, who will fight for other factions for the price of exsanguinating all the dead and looting them - the Chaff are the lowest ranking members, being fed peasant blood and thus reduced to diminutive and weak Nosferatu-like creatures as a result of the lacking potency. Blooded are their versions of knights, who range from okay looking to pretty handsome, and the Masters and Viscounts are the officers and lords of the company respectively - they are inhumanly beautiful, thus presenting a sort of bell curve of physical looks caused by the consumption of different qualities and quantities of blood.

[n1nchawrites]

A big thank you to everyone who's enjoyed my work so far, I'm glad I've been able to entertain so many people these past few weeks with my ramblings! You can expect much more to come in the near future; I've nearly finished the first chapter of a project that's been in my head the past few months, and I can't wait to share it with everyone. Thank you all again for 50 likes, I know it's relatively small compared to other people who post on this site, but it really means a lot :) Sincerely, N1ncham1lk

[n1nchawrites]

I am the guide, I am the beacon, I am the font - Navigator short story

I am the guide.

I kneel before the altar, I clasp a rosary in one hand and a censer in the other. Sweat greases my palms as tendons flex and lock, I concentrate, surrounded by a half a dozen others. We mutter litanies and prayers of safe voyage, though I lead the flock in our fervent whispers, for I am the shepherd to this herd.

A woman beside me keens as she bears the brunt of a psychic onslaught. Our task commences. Before me, visions of colours that should not be and creatures that never were whip and tumble. I am assaulted in every sense of the word. I feel my bones crack, my organs rupture, my soul wail in agony. I know this to be a falsehood.

I cannot discern the mundane from the abstract any longer, the keening woman has transmogrified in ways I cannot describe, her being bulging and morphing into shapes unrealised by the human mind and sounds echoed by the Urr-song of the Dark Gods.

I am the beacon.

My soul flares bright. My flock sees me, they swarm my soul, a warm, bright shroud against the lapping darkness of the unmaking waves. My soul burns with the heat of ten thousand suns, the pain of the unreal caught ablaze in the rapturous sense of communion I have with my fellow clandestine guides.

And then darkness devours us whole. I can see but two lights in this shroud of confusion, dampened like cascades of incandescence strangled by a thick-woven bag of burlap. Where am I? Where are the flock? Their radiance had blinded and captivated me so that I have been disoriented. Where is the Astronomicon? Where is my beacon? I call for my congregation to converge, but my throat is caught and sealed with cloying tar, burning it shut as I am forced to make a judgement.

I scream in frustration and fear. The tar sloughs down my throat like a slug and the sack tightens around my throat. I must decide. And so I do.

I am the font.

Energy surges through my body, it is as if my spirit is swollen and bloated. I feel my veins and innards bellowing and ballooning in my physical self. I cry out, the burlap is removed from my skull and I am face to face with a horror I can hardly describe. The tar melts away, yet my throat is still raw from screaming, bloating to impossibly broad proportions as the being grins at me sadistically.

I understand now. I am the font. This thing, it molests my very essence, it defiles my soul and uses me as nothing more than a portal. I am bursting apart as it uses me to infiltrate my flock, my ship, my charges. 

I am the end.

I do not want to die like this. For this anathema of a creature to use me in such a heinous way. I lash out, I beg for death, for release, to be stopped. I am plagued with visions of the beginning and the end, I become a mouth-piece for this being to espouse scornful truths of what is to come.

It warps my voice, I warble and gurgle each word simultaneously; several voices erupt from my throat at once as other cretins see to use my flesh as a means of breaching the realm of the real.

Please, I beg, end it.

But no righteous fate shall befall me, none of honour, none of peace. I bloat, I choke, I distend, I burst. 

I am not dead.

Luminescent rays explode from my body as I finally rupture, and from them cascades the remnants of my very being. I shatter marble and crack armaglass, bisecting one of the flock who was knelt beside me. I have failed them. My consciousness fades as the soul dissipates, all I can do is watch in silent disgrace as the daemons tear through the room, razing all in their wake.

I am undone.

[n1nchawrites]

Soulscream - World Eater Short Story

It is said that when dying, you will see a light, a beacon in the desolate midnight shroud of semi-consciousness the brain lulls the body into as it falters and fails. 

For Skranak, there was no such light.

He accepted this. Ever since the Great Crusade, he had been wary of such wretched and superstitious beliefs, and believed that he would die a noble death as one of the Emperor’s War Hounds, a notion which had been warped and carried over even in his service as a World Eater, as a warmonger of Khorne, for whom he would gladly be stuck and bled dry, if only to keep the fonts of vitae flowing perpetually through his fortress. With that said, however, his outrage outshone all other aspects of thought and reason. Felled by a ‘saint’ of the Corpse-Emperor, and from behind, no less. Flanked and beheaded. The sheer disrespect that carried with it, the sheer ignobility of planting a blade or bolt in the back of an enemy, it was disgusting.

And so he screamed.

Not a scream of the throat, for he had no lungs with which he could bellow out air, nor the larynx through which he could shape this wind into biting words of hatred, but instead a scream of the soul. He raged in the Immaterium, a thrashing flare of malice and indignation. 

There was no light, and so he would forge his own.

The light swelled and bulged like a pus-filled blister, burning brighter in the maelstrom and catching the eyes of countless unknowable beings. His raw rage was a white hot globe in the Immaterium, and soon enough his hellish wails were heard by the God of Gore and Carnage himself. He was impressed, watching the mass expand and distend, seemingly consuming all that it touched in a baleful act of phagocytosis.

Skranak was not finished.

His death-keen only became louder, deafening the beasts of the Warp that dared venture too close in curiosity or cunning, seeking to consume the raw mass of energy before being sundered from the very plane, adding to the kindling of his burning soul.

The Gore Lord snapped, and there was silence.

Skranak was kneeling before a great throne of bone and obsidian. The air was thick with iron and ash, similar to that of Isstvan V’s great smothering blanket of battle-smog in the wake of the massacre. Fond memories. His mind wandered too far - the tight pain of the Nails, he noted, seemed strangely absent - and he was brought back to the present by a great clang of a pommel on stone. The beast seated on the throne was encased in a set of infernal plate armour, the cracks glowing a rich crimson and the helmet twisted into a scowling abstract rendition of the skull of a great horned animal unknown to the World Eater. It wielded a greatsword forged of the same material as the throne and armour - lined with jagged black rock and the bones of countless foes.

“Your soul.” The monster boomed, its voice a deep enough timbre to rumble through the veteran’s very bones, “Your essence belongs to me. Only now has its strength truly been revealed to myself. Your death-howl was strong. Strong enough to burn a hole in the fabric of the Immaterium. Your rage is satisfying to me, to know that a man in my ranks can be so outraged by such a deceitful death at the hands of a cowardly foe venerated by the Slaves of the Anathema. This will not be your final demise, World Eater. Rise in my name, and I will see you returned with a hatred burning in your heart as it would your mind. Your strength will be enhanced tenfold, and you will be known as the harbinger of the end.”

The Lord of Battle hammered his sword’s pommel into the ground once again, and Skranak’s face began to burn. He felt his choler rise dramatically, and he fell to his hands as he roared in agony and wrath. He felt scorches forming on his flesh, smoking and cindering before turning into licking flames of anguish. The God of Blood looked on impassively as the man’s face melted, his screams turning into the savage roars of a blistering inferno. Once he was fully transmogrified, all that remained of his visage was a bleak, black skull shrouded in smoke and flame. 

The God took the blade into a one-handed reverse grip and lanced the tip into the ground, fracturing it, forming a very tear in the fabric of reality. Skranak looked into the baleful eyes of his patron Lord and nodded, standing to his full height before charging headlong into the rift. He fell through centuries and planes of existence, the madness consuming him wholly as he glimpsed pasts that never were and futures which shifted hypnotically as a tide on a shoal might  - whilst he had some control over the bloodlust that the Nails wrought, this was a different lunacy all together, brought on by visions of total galactic annihilation and the paths through which conquest could be assured - this was a malady of the very soul, a madness spurred on by the reassurance that he could guarantee domination over every foe in every theatre of war. This was the plight of a man who was destined to destroy the universe.

He was returned to his mortal body, his head bursting into a great ball of fire and blazing with the fury of a forge upon which the very winds of hell had been bellowed. Skranak - a name which had sloughed away with his very countenance - charged at the saint, their presence an unmistakable glow in the haze of ash and fire. He tackled them, roaring as he bore his fists down in a mighty rage. Blow after blow, their skull shattered and broke, their screams of confusion and abhorrence quickly transforming into those of terror and excruciation. They were gargling on their own blood and meat when he pulled them back up to their feet.

He dragged the barely alive saint atop a hill, presenting them to the carnage that reigned below - to all that would watch this final act of desecration, he martyred the man in a callously swift act of brutality, tearing their disfigured head from their twitching body before throwing both into the field of battle to be ground into gobbets and gore beneath the grinding advance of the forces of Khorne, howling a furious warcry all the while, one which shook the very souls of his foes.

Today he had not seen the light, but the future, and by Khorne’s Teeth, it was bound to be bloody.

[n1nchawrites]

Quarter

“They are to be granted quarter!” Shir’var demanded, gesturing wildly to the blown out Imperial bunker which sat nestled within a trench swamped in mud, blood, and death. The war had been raging for months now, and Shoal, the Shas’ui and leader of their Fire Warrior strike team, shook his head,

“You do not know Gue’la as I know them, they will take a hand offered in peace and use it to pull you onto a concealed blade treachery.”

Shir’var blustered, shocked at his leader’s callous and jaded regard towards humanity, “Shas’ui, how can you say that? The T’au’va serves to unite us all, not divide us! The men and women in that bunker need to be shown that we are not as barbaric as the Imperium makes us out to be! Shas’el J’Kaara has that we are to spare those who throw down their arms, or have you forgotten your oath sworn on the Code of Fire?”

Shoal visibly twitched, “You watch your tone, youngling. I have faced the Gue’la, the horrors of the Startide Nexus are fresh in my mind - fetid, unyielding G’el… And before them, Mu’gulath Bay. Do you know how bloody that conflict was? Do you know the means through which the gue’la had torn into us? We won, but at a cost so dire it set us back immensely - the Fourth Sphere of Expansion had to be entirely reworked; the Gue would carve off their own arm if it meant that the T’au would fall into oblivion.” “And what of the Gue’vesa that seek to join and spread the T’au’va? How do they factor into this logic of yours?” “They are the anomaly in the set of empirical data before us. Nem’sha’shi’vre against the N’lan’vash.”

Kais’yon looked down into the trench, half-sunken corpses of rotting Imperial Gue’la bobbed in the stagnant waters of the furrow. She poked one with her pulse rifle, then turned them over to reveal their sunken, torn features. Their sex was indeterminate, at least to the eyes of the Fire Warrior: both out of a mixture of unfamiliarity with the species of the Gue, and because of the state of disrepair they were in; the boggy water had preserved their features fairly well, though there was little left to preserve in the first place - the majority of their features were scorched away by a lancing plasma burst from a T’au weapon,

“Looks like they haven’t even had the time to bury their dead - this kill isn’t fresh enough to be from the last engagement.” “These ones don’t bury their dead,” Another Fire Warrior - M’Lath’Kir’Quath - commented, “They put them around emplacements and heavy weapon positions. They take the heads, usually, seemingly as a show of respect. I’ve seen these Gue’la carry the skulls of their comrades on their belts.”

Everyone was silent for a moment, Kais’yon looked over at Shir’var,

“Do you want to spare these G’el?”

Shir’var was quiet. Now that it had been pointed out, he could see various clusters of bodies piled up against fortifications, their necks ending in rough stumps where their heads had been sawn or hacked off with dull equipment. He shuddered. Not even the Kroot’la’vesa had displayed such tasteless traditions: yes, they would devour the fallen, but that held a practical purpose alongside a cultural one; this was just wrong,

“I… The T’au’va states that we must embrace all that come to us seeking union or alms. I will not let a cultural difference get in the way of our Tam’ya’vash!”

Shoal sighed, “Enough! Shir’var, M’lath, take the bunker. Kais’yon, with me. We’ll hang back and make sure these two breach and secure the Gue’la without a problem, then retrace our steps to find Shi’Na’San’Tel’s body.” 

The T’au all nodded in agreement, with Shir’var and M’lath moving into position, opening the steel bulkhead door from behind cover as M’lath spoke out in fluent High Gothic, “Be not alarmed, for we come in peace. Rejoice, your message was intercepted by one of our communication specialists, and we have come to extract you.” Shir’var turned the corner, followed by M’lath. The interior of the bunker was lined with shelves carved into the ferrocrete, packed with skulls hollowed out and loaded with candles or incense sticks. The emplacement reeked of holy oils and gunpowder, and the source of these scents could be traced either to the skulls or the bowls skirting the points where the floor met the walls: they were filled with petals, oils and powders, and all of them were formed from the caps of the same repurposed skulls of the soldiers’ former brothers in arms.

Shir’var raised his pulse carbine instinctively, fighting to keep it lowered and minimise his presence as a threat. M’lath did not do the same, keeping his carbine raised as he scanned the room. There was a small huddle of haggard looking Gue’la in the corner, some of whom looked uncannily young, and could have been mistaken for children if the dirt and blood caking their faces had been wiped away.

Shir’var carefully approached the cluster of grizzled and shell-shocked deserters, extending a hand to the one nearest to him, who had initially recoiled out of fear. They murmured something, and he leaned in closer,

“Pardon?”

“For the Emperor,”

It was then that he saw the grenade in her hand.

There was a thunderous crack, followed by a deathly silence. Kais’yon was the first to react, sprinting inside of the bunker, only to be met with dust and the sound of bone cracking beneath her hooves. There were hundreds - maybe thousands - of fragments of skull littered throughout the shelter, crunching with every step. There was a red smear in the corner of the room, with smoking piles of gore exploding away from it. All that was left of Shir’var was his lower half. A leg twitched as it sent a nerve impulse to a spine which simply wasn’t there, and the sight twisted Kais’yon’s stomach into a dreadful knot of grief and horror. 

M’lath lay a few paces away from him. He was alive, but badly wounded; fragments of shrapnel and bone littered his form, and a gaping wound cracked through his nano-crystalline carapace. She moved to patch his wound and stabilise him with a concoction of chemical stimulants in her medkit, injecting them directly into his bloodstream with a syringe. 

Shoal followed closely behind, his gait faltering as he made his way into the chamber and saw the remains of Shir’var. He had hoped this wouldn’t happen, but knew deep down that it would: for after years of diligent service in the Fire Caste, he knew that this was the result of giving animals quarter.

[n1nchawrites]

Dissection

Her eyes. They were beautiful, opal in colour and patterning; bionics perhaps? No, that couldn’t be it; he had met with Cadians before, perhaps her homeworld was touched by the Warp, too? It was a fascinating thing to see the human form adapt and lash out at hostile environments, changing to reject change. Her fingers were lithe, nails clipped; she was a menial, that much was obvious; why would they restrict such a natural beauty to such a tedious and expendable position? The Magos was brought back to reality by the menial letting out an uncomfortable cough. She gestured to the cryo-pod she had hauled with her from the loading bay up to the laboratory of the Biologis. She spoke, her voice light and smooth: the Magos detected no abuse of inhalants. Queer. Typically a serf would be exposed to solvents and noxious gasses from ages as young as eight - sometimes four, if their hab unit is compromised,

“Sir, the Lady-Inquisitor wants to know when you will have the report on the dissection ready to be submitted to her for review.” The Magos scoffed, of course that fool would rush his art. He felt the connective strands of his optic fibres strain and shift, as if trying to make the bionic eyes in his skull roll at the boorish request,

“Tell the Inquisitor that my report will be finished when I deem it thus. She selected me for my talent, not my ability to precisely predict a time where my genius will reach its apex. She ought to hire a Theomancer if she wants these sorts of forecasts.”

The menial looked confused, and he became frustrated to the point of an artificial sigh escaping his rebreather,

“I estimate five hours.”

It was obvious, now, why the servant had not been promoted to a higher position within the ranks of the vessel - she was far too dense for the Magos’ liking. A pity such a fine form had been wasted on such a dull specimen. 

Distracting himself from the blunt-brained serf, he turned his attention to the cryo-pod, pressing the deactivation runes in a reverential sequence before the lid split open with the hiss of compressed and sealed glasses. A foggy white smoke trailed out from the crack in the covering, and spilled out of the machine as the great maw of it opened up to reveal a Xeno.

The first thought that the Magos had was one word. Hideous.

The skin of the creature - if you could call it that; beast was a more apt description - was coarse and knobbly, like the craggy rock of a textured moon. It had a shaggy coat of fur on its back, resembling the ancient scavenger canids of Sa’afrik and the Papuan Deserts. It had a stubby snout and pin-prick eyes, with yellowed and cracked teeth, and a grizzly tongue which had likely never been exposed to sudsers or abrasives of any kind; he had to turn off his olfactory sensory array as he gazed into the gaping maw of the the thing, disgusted by the extent of the rot which had taken root inside of its oral cavity. The limbs of the thing were long and gangly, ending in five squat digits (the middle two of which seemed to be subject to a syndactylous mutation, joining up until their tips) with rough pads in the palms and heels.

He picked up the creature and dumped it unceremoniously onto a dissection table, picking up a scalpel and getting to work on opening the chest to analyse features of the digestive, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems. The blade clinked. The skin was too rough to break through with the precision tool, so he placed it back on his neatly organised tray and acquired a bonesaw. He was in no mood for a delicate approach with such a beastly organism.

The saw carved a neat vertical line through the monster’s torso, releasing a revolting stench of meat and microbes. The Magos cut another line horizontally across the midsection before using his forceps to peel the layers back and reveal the extent of the chest cavity.

What crude mockery was this?

It was a disgusting facsimile of the human form. Twenty-four ribs, twelve on each side, except funneling downwards into a triangular shape. The intestines were packed uncomfortably tightly in the bottom of the rib cage, and the chest was given too much space, giving it an uncannily broad appearance; the thing was a brute, evidently, using upper body strength to crush and rend its opponents - before the Magos Biologis could even move onto the arms, he had postulated that the strength of the arms could be found in tendons rather than muscle mass, similar to the barbaric Kroot of the weedy T’au and their infirm ‘Empire.’ Empire! Even they could not resist wishing to emulate the superiority that humanity held over them! He could see why, for he contemplated that if he too belonged to a species as pathetic as theirs, he would aspire to the unattainable glory of humanity, let alone the certain infallible purity of the machine.

He focused himself, now was not the time for idle conjecture. Taking his bonesaw to the ribs, they took considerable effort to break, and he decided to set them aside for analysis later: perhaps their strength was packed into dense bones and then complimented by a broad torso? What pitiful creature is so starved of resources that it requires strength to be found in the bones, rather than the muscle? Humanity was the perfect balance of this in the realms of biology; tendons, muscles, bones, all working in harmony to create the apex of organisms, destined to rule the stars before shedding their old skin and replacing it with something even greater. These things likely didn’t even know what a laspack was. They certainly didn’t know of toothbrushes. Or soap.

He took a syringe, taking a sample of tissue from the heart before taking a fresh needle and repeating the process until he had quantities of each organ’s chemical and biological composition. He then took a look at the heart and was repulsed. Six valves. Six! Needless! Were these things trying to outperform humanity on a cardiovascular front? Pathetic! Four is the perfect number of valves! Not too many, not too few, enough to be running at peak efficiency for a biological organism.

He took his scalpel and removed the heart, dumping it on a tray carelessly before moving onto the lungs. There was an abhorrent, gangly, vestigial lump of tissue between the two swollen sacks. A third lung? Frivolous. What purpose would it even serve? No wonder it was vestigial, likely forgotten as they aspired to a form resembling that of a human’s. He split a lung open with a pair of surgical scissors, peering inside to analyse the interior. His enhanced vision picked up an estimate of five-hundred-million alveoli. Once again, they seemed to wish to surpass humanity in numbers alone, an evolutionary level of jealousy, perhaps?

He snipped them away from the trachea and placed them alongside the heart, moving on to the liver. He split it open with his scalpel, analysing the interior. This was worse than the mouth. Cirrhosis was apparent on the exterior, but inside, it was black with rot. How could a creature live like this? The answer was simple: it was inhuman. It was being punished for its pitiful existence. Punishing itself, most likely, drinking noxious elixirs and beverages which damage and corrupt the self: not as a means of repenting, but as a means of numbing the pain of a life spent in the body of a wretch.

He stepped away from the table. This filth was not worth his time. It was not worth his tools, it was not worth his thoughts, it was not worth being remembered. Inquisitor be damned, that woman could get a report on how to kill these things, but not an entire bloody autopsy; the answer to the question she always asked came to him as soon as he pierced its flesh: chainswords and explosives. Knives would do no good, nor would regular ballistic weapons. Toxic gasses would work, at least if the vestigial lung was to be believed: there had been less of a biological focus on respiration as the third lung withered and they held an uncanny resemblance to their human counterparts - the extra alveoli would do nothing in the face of gaseous weaponry, dichloroethyl sulfide would prove to be a great method of flushing them out of any emplacements, and they seemed primitive enough to have little grasp on gas mask or respirator technology.

He stepped over to his cogitator unit and wrote up the necessary details, leaving a pointed reminder for the woman to not bring him specimens that were beneath him. If she tried to do so again, he would reject the order entirely; he was above carving up whatever curiosity the Inquisitor demanded he inspect. He was above this.

His gaze drifted back to the foul creature sprawled out on his table. The thing’s tiny, mocking eyes gazed emptily off into the ceiling. Disgusting. He stomped over and began to tear his various tools out, uncaring of whether or not he damaged the specimen; it was broken when they brought it to him, anyway. He lifted it off the table, carrying it in both arms, careful not to let the contents of its chest cavity spill out onto the open floor. There, he opened the hatch to the medical incinerator and dumped the beast inside of it with a dull thud, returning to the table and tossing the contents of the tray atop the thing before slamming the hatch shut and setting the incinerator onto its highest setting. The filth would burn.

He didn’t care whether or not the Inquisitor wanted to keep the body for further investigation, they should have brought him a subject of the species less pathetic and arduous to work with: he had little enough patience for the alien and inhuman as already was, them causing him trouble in death felt even more insulting than in life. He felt the rest of his remaining organic body running hot with rage. The serfs would clean his instruments and laboratory (and by the Omnissiah’s grace, they would do it well, lest they want to end up on that table next) whilst he went to calm himself. A moment of meditation over the Universal Laws sounded like exactly what he needed right now, and he was decidedly not in the frame of mind to allow for any further trivial or asinine utilisations of his genius.

[n1nchawrites]

Ancient Agony

The pain of a needle on skin. A black tear, on the right pectoral. He is a boy turned man; he has killed his first man today in the name of the Bethnals - the gang he has pledged his life to. Only eight years of life, and yet he has been wizened by life on the streets of Quintus.

The pain of a blade breaching flesh. The euphoria of a killing blow. The agony of a botched surgery in an alley. The pride of a second tear. He stands tall, carries himself with certainty and confidence; he believes he is invincible.

The weight of a pistol in his hands. The fear of discovery. The shadows cascade across his features. He rises from his hiding place. Four men fall to four cracks of an stub pistol. The thrill of carving off their tattoos with his pen knife. He returns to the Bethnals. His four tears were earned well that day.

The shame of discovery. The guilt of a conscience warped by five years of bloodshed. The shooting cramps of hunger. He sits in a cell. He waits. He hammers on his door and demands to eat, it has been days. The guard comes in. The raw agony of a boot to the jaw. He cries out, a hail of stomps and baton whacks rains down upon his form. He is left shivering and cold. There will be no food for the rest of the week.

The confusion of being selected. The strange dichotomy of feeling free yet caged. Bound by obligation. The training begins. He is stronger now, his senses sharp. The scalpel splits his flesh, he sleeps a dreamless slumber. The implant is placed within his body. He awakens new and improved.

They ask his name. He answers with his old name - his gang name. They beat him. They ask again. He answers with Alkhun. They ask who he is loyal to. He answers with the Bethnals. They beat him. They ask who he is loyal to. He answers with the Eighth Legion. With pain, obedience is reinforced.

They carve him open. New scars appear. Years pass. Decades. He is wearing the battle-plate of his Legion. He is a scout now. Pain holds a new meaning now; pain is not something to fear, it never was, but it has become something to relish: it tells him what he is doing wrong - not what he should fear, but what he should scorn.

The pain of a needle on skin. Over his left pectoral, the numeral 'VIII', and on his left shoulder, the fearsome symbol of his Legion, the baleful skull on demonic wings. He stares at his bare form in the mirror. Sick pride burns in his heart. He is a God amongst men.

He is an Astarte. He is proud to serve. He loves his brothers, despite how deranged some may be. The Bethnals are forgotten. He has found a new gang. He has found a new family.

Ambush. The bolter barks. A Xeno falls dead. Smoke trails from the gaping wound in its chest. He walks over to it. He notes tattoos plaster its grotesque form. Deja vu. His hand moves to his power blade instinctively. He shudders and walks away.

Hundreds of battles. Hundreds of wounds. Hundreds of agonies. He screams, he is lifted over the stubby body of the machine. He screams again, hate burning in his heart. The Xeno inside cackles maniacally, drunk on the power which the ramshackle contraption provides. He screams, feeling tension around his waist.

He awakens in the infirmary. The apothecary is speaking to him. He cannot focus over the pain. Where are his legs? He looks down. He sees tubes, cables, needles, and machines of healing. A word breaks through the haze of confusion and hurt. It makes his stomach - what is left of it - tie itself in knots. Dreadnought.

This pain is different. The cables run from his back to the various systems of the machine. Life support is offered by a giant node connected to his heart and running alongside the rest of the cables. His rebreather manually pumps air into his lungs. He feels weak. This agony is not just one of the body, but of the soul.

He enters a dreamless slumber. He is awoken. He kills. He enters this deep sleep once more. Is this all life has to offer anymore?

He is awoken. Hate burns inside of him. Life is naught but pain and distain. He is bitter. The Legionaries speak to him. They speak of abandonment, of betrayal. He agrees. The Emperor forsook him long ago. It would have been better to die a hero than live a husk.

He watches Nostramo burst apart. It is a strange feeling. Meaningless words bubble up to the forefront of his mind. Quintus. Tattoos. Family. Bethnal. Bethnal? A nonsense word. A nonsense word, yet he cannot help but feel the prickle of a tear rolling down his haggard face as he remembers it.

He slumbers. He wakes. He kills. He slumbers. He wakes. He kills. He slumbers. He wakes. He kills. He loses himself to the maelstrom of hatred which festers inside of him. He doesn't even bother to know who or where he is fighting. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters.

The Legion wakes him up. They are at the gates of Sol. He fights with contempt the likes no man can rival. He is invincible.

He marches on Terra. He stands atop a mound of bodies. Their armour is drenched in blood, he cannot tell who their allegiance was with. Around him, chaos reigns. Thousands die by the minute. He takes a moment to bask in the atmosphere. A war horn blares distantly. The Dies Irae. He cannot count the men that have fallen to his weapons array on this day alone. He can hear something. The muffled weeping of an infantryman. He lies bloody, pinned by a corpse, presumably a brother in arms. He looks up to the Night Lord and begs for mercy, or at the very least a swift death. Alkhun grants him that wish.

The war continues. The Great Angel lies dead. The Warmaster has perished. The Astarte retreats with his Legion, fleeing as the tide turns. What was once burning hate is now sorrow. He reflects on himself as they evacuate. This pain he feels. This hate he feels. This grief he feels. What kind of monster has it made of him?

[n1nchawrites]

Shells

The room is sparse. Sergeant Ryland prefers it this way, for too much clutter can break his concentration during his meditations or brief periods of rest. The only ornamentation to be found sits on the utilitarian slab of a workbench that lies adjacent to his cot. In the low candlelight of his quarters, six pips of brass shine beautifully. They stand evenly partitioned, proud and stout as veterans in parade formation. Each one is etched with fine engravings inlaid with pure silver, depicting Chapter heroes and the Emperor in various engagements against the foes of mankind.

A servitor clicks and hisses as it lumbers towards the table, placing a seventh, freshly polished round on the table, careful to not plant it at an incorrect distance from any other shell; this bolt has just been reloaded, carefully sealed and refurbished by the machine-slave over a period of several hours. The servitor had once been a master artificer, slaving over weapons and tools of war for every day of his life before being condemned to his fate as a thrall. It shows its talents, however, in the deft skill and speed at which it can repair such a fine and unique shell, and Ryland values its presence - it was committed to him some time ago by the Techmarine of his company as a dedicated means of repairing the rounds; they took up too much valuable time for the Chapter artificers to recycle, especially if they were to be kept in perfect condition, and thus a compromise had been met.

Five of the twelve original shells have been lost. The first shell had rolled into a pit of magma during a conflict who's climax was fought in a volcano, Ryland petitioned to have the Chapter recover it, yet the hope for its survival was slim, and the resources spent to recover it simply were not worth the effort, especially for somebody as low-ranking as a Sergeant. The second had been jetted into space during an incursion as they coasted the Immaterium, their Gellar Fields failing and exposing them to the horrors of the Warp - similarly, the third had fallen into the gaping maw of a Daemon during his defence of the vessel, returning to the Warp with the beast as they entered realspace once more. The fourth was lost during a boarding action, during which they had overloaded the enemy ship's reactors and Ryland did not have the time to return to the core of the frigate before it went critical and erupted in a cascading array of plasma bursts, triggering the Warp core to create a massive vortex and devour whatever was left entirely. The final shell was lost in the last engagement, stolen by a damned Grot as it infiltrated enemy ranks, only to be obliterated by one of the heavy weapon specialists whilst it made its escape to tell the Orks more about the Astartes emplacements.

The value of these shells to Ryland cannot be understated. To him, they are not mere rounds, but relics, and a capsule in which his proudest memory is stored. They were a gift from the Chapter-Master himself.

Ryland remembers that day fondly, a crystal clear sequence of events in his mind. It was his first engagement - already a defining moment in an Astarte's legacy - and he was fighting in the same platoon as the Chapter-Master. They were pinned by the enemy, and Ryland had drained his magazine entirely, leaving him dry and without any back-ups, for the spare two were used up on the initial advance. Wordlessly, the Chapter-Master extended an ornate bolter magazine to him; lead-coloured inlaid with gold. He took it in awe, hammering it into his weapon and fighting with a zeal the likes of which even he did not believe was possible to possess. From that day forth, he made it a principle to collect the spent shells and only use the magazine as a last resort, should the very worst come to pass.

Ryland sometimes wonders if the Chapter-Master ever notices he kept the magazine, if he is as proud as Ryland to have access to such beautiful resources and dispense such swift death with them. He wonders if the shells could speak, what stories they could tell; would they speak of great foes vanquished with their blistering diamond tips and explosive cores, of the honour to have been in service for such a long span of time, of the sweeping fields of battle and tight voidship corridors they had sped down and across, or something else entirely?

Ryland feels himself smile. He picks up one of the rounds, looking at his reflection in it - his features become warped and exaggerated, and cracked as the etchings on the brass cylinder carve and arc their way across his visage. He smiles wider, it is as if the rounds are joking with him; they are, after all, his closest and only assets, and as strange as it is to assign personality traits to something inanimate, he cannot help but do so with these treasures.

He sets the shell back in its place and steps away, a smirk still playing on his face as he takes the gilded magazine from his ammunition pouch on his leather belt and feeds them in, loading them in the exact sequence he had done countless times before, and holstering the crescent-shaped magazine back where it belongs. He is to go to war soon, and he would not be caught dead without his relic. Without his shells.