Chapter 17: The Challenger
"Blood for the Blood God, skulls for the Skull Throne!" A mob of frenzied cultists charged again, brandishing cleavers and axes. Their shields, blessed by Khorne, imbued with daemonic resilience, shrugged off every conventional round. Even scavenged doors became nigh-impenetrable barriers in their fanatic hands.
A bolter, however, is anything but conventional. Dos claimed a heretic's life with each squeeze of the trigger. With no snipers in sight, he sauntered to the middle of the street and shot without a care.
Besides bolter shells and melta blasts, there was one other way to splinter those planks: close combat.
Khorne admires courage. Blades against blades might draw His gaze. And by some twisted divine logic, those same boards that laughed off las fire could be poked to splinters by a child's finger once the melee began.
Dos slapped the spent magazine from his bolter and holstered the weapon. He fed the last of the incense to his power sword, drew a deep breath, and shouted, "Fix bayonets!"
The blade's blessing surged through him. With each swing, another Khorne cultist fell, heads separated from shoulders in clean, terrible arcs. The machine spirit of the sword exulted in the violence, and Dos felt it: that terrifying strength, that invincibility.
He moved as a swordmaster descended from legend, each motion economical, lethal.
For a moment, he felt high, 'Even a Khorne Champion appearing right now wouldn't make me stop.' He'd charge the bastard without hesitation.
"Come on!" Dos shouted from atop a mound of corpses. "Blood for the God Emperor, skulls for the Golden Throne, let me show Emperor's Wrath!"
The sight froze the pampered noble scions huddled behind him. It also froze the Khorne Champion across the square.
"Hey, YOU, are you the Khorne worshipper here, or am I? Maybe I should just hand you my Champion's crest right now." The Champion hefted a spiked maul easily, a weapon as tall as Dos himself, and pointed it directly at him.
Dos paused, he moved ten steps left, then ten steps right. The maul's trajectory never wavered.
After half a minute of silence, Dos, blinking wildly, tapped his own chest. "You... mean me?"
However, the Champion heard something different: "You dare point at me, just you?"
What Dos didn't realize was that this was the deepest insult to this Champion. Never had anyone shown such contempt!
The Champion's voice boomed across the plaza. "Yes, I challenge you to single combat!"
The Khorne Champion's blood boiled asBattle-lust roared through his veins like a physical force. At last, a worthy foe.
Dos looked him up and down, acutely aware of a thousand eyes watching from all directions: the fanatics, the nobles, the grim soldiers of Krieg. He needed time to think.
Doss's mind raced at lightning speed, fianllly he spoke, "First, strip off that power armour, come out of the tin can, you coward."
The Champion flinched visibly.
The insult detonated outrage among the surrounding cultists, their shrieks rising to a fever pitch. The young nobles, unable to stomach the jeers, hurled back every curse they knew while cheering Dos on. Only the Krieg soldiers remained silent and grim, observing without comment.
Dos was genuinely bewildered. What did he say? Was it really so offensive?
The Champion silenced his berserkers with a gesture, then began unfastening his armour with deliberate movements, almost ripping each plate away. Every piece that struck the ground made Dos's eye twitch, as he gulped as fleeting life back.
When Dos saw the brass spikes hammered into the Champion's scalp, his stomach dropped. Each one marked a kill worthy of the Blood God. This bastard had enough to fill a trophy case.
He began mentally cataloging what might constitute a dignified death.
Before he could speak, a column of blood-red light lanced skyward from the Upper Hive, piercing the clouds with terrible clarity. Crimson radiance bled across the heavens. The world dimmed, bathed in a sanguine halo that turned stone to shadow.
The Upper Hive had fallen.
A deep thunder rolled across the city. Lightning flickered behind the scarlet overcast, and for one instant, something vast and yellow appeared against the darkness. An eye? The silhouette of something that defied comprehension?
The Champion felt moisture on his brow. Sweat? Impossible. After all, Khorne himself was watching. A mortal couldn't make him sweat.
Yet his skin flushed a sickly crimson, the colour spreading like an infection. His twin hearts hammered at six hundred beats per minute, a rhythm that shook his entire frame. Surging body-heat turned his breath into white steam that wreathed him like sacred incense.
His muscles visibly swelled, tearing free of human constraint. The brass maul in his grip now exuded a baleful aura, clearly an artefact, a weapon blessed by powers beyond mortal ken. Around him, the cultists began to change, their bodies bloating like grotesque balloons, their eyes blazing with an intelligence far more terrible than mere blood-hunger.
Dos watched the transformation with mounting dread.
"Blood God, you sore loser, that's cheating. Who buffs mid-fight? He yelled over his shoulder, "Pull back, everyone, regroup with the main force!"
"No one leaves!" The Champion's voice had become something else, layered, resonant, carrying echoes of screaming voices. He charged, the titanic maul raised high.
Boom!
A drop-pod slammed into the plaza with the force of a meteor, shattering steel and stone into shrapnel. A second pod followed. Then a third.
The Emperor's angels had arrived.
A dozen Astartes descended the ramps, moving with the terrible grace of engineered perfection. Some hefted bolters; others brandished chainswords that shrieked against the air itself. Their ceramite armour bore the crimson and orange of the Salamanders Chapter.
The leading Sergeant drew his power sword with measured deliberation. The incense in his left hand was greedily devoured by the blade. When the last wisp vanished, the weapon blazed sapphire-bright.
One swing. It parried the traitor's titanic blow with absolute certainty.
The shockwave nearly knocked Dos off his feet.
An Astartes with a chainsword steadied him as he passed, his voice carrying the calm assurance. "Fall back, Commissar. This field has been claimed by Salamanders."
Behind him, another Space Marine called out: "Careful, he may be ascending to daemonhood."
The first Astartes replied without turning, his tone unchanging: "Now, you should leave very quickly, Commissar."
Dos stared after their armoured silhouettes as they advanced into the fray.
Doss neck snapped as he turned in a flash to his men, "RETREAT! What the hell are you gawking for, don't you hear what I said?"
"REATREAAAATTT!" someone shouted, and then another and another until whole regiments started backing off
[End of Chapter]