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*The Fifth Horseman* · 24-01-2005, 01:06 PM

Oww... short story, you say... oww... it took me so long to write...

Anyway, here is another piece you might like. Longer too.

Chapter One: Gathering storm

The Warp. Source of many myths and legends, all equally composed of lies and truths. Eternally changing, realm of raw psychic energy. Home of many ghosts and spirits. Of daemons and angels, devils and gods.

Now within there, something stirs. A being of great power awakens. Aeons ago it was one of the Pantheon of Chaos. Now it is an outcast, exhausted by its eternal war against the four others. The power that unites against a common foe and tears unities apart. God of Balance. God of Chaos turned upon itself. MALAL.

Long millenia passed since it was almost defeated by the Four Powers united in the cause of its destruction. Yet a tiniest part of his essence survived and gathered power once more, unnoticed by the Ruinous Powers so far...

Now it has awakened, thirsting for vengeance...

Chapter two: A soul forever damned

The resurrected god is still too weak to face the Powers of Chaos on his own. Yet he can fight a war from the shadows, striking at vital points, altering the course of events to suit his needs. For this purpose he must find a champion. An avatar of his power....

He needs a creature of power, yet powerless, one that can be bargained with to do his bidding...

A weakened god, but a god none the less, Malal begins searching the universe for a being that will suit his purpose. Sending fragments of his own consciousness through time and space, searching through the billions of soul-lights faster then any mortal creature could, he is utterly dissatisfied with those beings he finds within this segmentum, the galaxy and then universe itself.

Then, Malal turns his mind to search within the multitude of other, alternate realities that are all parts of the multiverse...

Many they are, in some Malal has been born as the first god of Chaos, in others he is the only one that exists, there is one where his defeat was absolute, finally in a few he is dominant power of Chaos, to whom all the other gods have been forced to submit themselves to his will...

Not distracted by these compelling images, Malal continues of his task, setting his eyes on a faraway reality, where Chaos as we know it did never even exist...

Where devils and gods are weaker then where he came from, where they walk amongst the unaware mortals, altough displeased by the inherent weakness of this world, he found the being suited to his plans...

The daemon has once been close to godhood in his own universe. However, defeated by united powers of his rivals, he was forced into service of one of them. Millenia ago, he was bound to a human being to hunt others of its foul kind... To become something that was a daemon no longer... to become an avenger... a dark knight of justice... Then he was cast out again, like a discarded tool...

Now the creature has been offered a pact. A pact where he will be given greater power then he ever possessed before and an entire universe to exact his vengeance on. Unsurprisingly, he accepts it without even a second thought...

Now that the god has found part of what he needs, he searches for a second element... a vessel for the daemon, which will bring him to the champion...

And the vessel he has found. A steed, one perfect for a knight in time when knights are no more. Imbued with a fraction of the god's power and with his Mark placed upon it, the machine becomes far superior to others of its kind, gaining abilities that can bend the laws of material realm themselves...

Now the god seeks a Champion in this universe which for times untold has been the greatest battlefield between forces of Light and Darkness, however were they called... Order and Disorder... Chaos and Justice...

A Champion that will become one with the daemon, thus gaining power far beyond the sum of its components...

Yet a Champion must meet three requirements to be worthy of the god's attention. He must hate his enemy... hate himself... hate his god...

Chapter Three: Last man standing

He dodged another missile, and another. He did it so many times that he lost count. His superhuman reflexes never failed him so far. But his confidence in owen skills was going to be his greatest mistake now...

Incoming was another missile. He dodged it as well... just to find himself straight in front of another one. He could not avoid it this time, not at this speed...

Antonius was hurled into the air and then hit the ground hard as his bike exploded into a fiery ball of flames, his helmet torn off his head by the impact. Then darkness took his senses and he knew no more.

When he regained consciousness, the first thing that he noticed were bodies. Dead bodies. Scores of dead bodies littering the battlefield as far as one could see. Every one encased in powered armor, most bore black and white livery of Raven Knights Chapter. His Chapter.

He noticed familiar faces amongst those who wore no helmets. Velius, Aries and many others. His friends.

He could not believe that they were dead. He shook the motionless body of Lucius as if in hope of awakening his friend. But that did not happen.

Mindlessly, he knelt on one leg and touched one of countless puddles of liquid on the grounds. These were not filled with water. They were full of red, human blood.

He hated. Hated the Traitors for their evil, hated himself for his failure, hated the Emperor for allowing such a disaster to happen. He roared into the sky, calling for revenge. Unknown to him, his call was heard and answered.

Antonius looked ono the blood smeared over the gauntlet of his right hand, and understood that as the last man of his Chapter, he could do but one thing - follow the murderers of his battle-brothers and kill them, or at least die trying. He could not succeed, not against hundreds of foes equal and sometimes even superior to him.

Shapes of the chaos horde were still to be seen on the very edge of the horizon. Antonius looked around, and noticed a beautiful bike, laying in the mud on its side. Strangely, it looked completely new and entirely undamaged. He could not comprehend, how it made its way into here nor did he care about it. He knew only that it was a way in which he could reach his enemies and exact revenge upon them.

He pulled the bike to an upright position, and mounted it. Then he noticed that the fuel intake cap was splattered with mud, even as the rest of the bike was perfectly clean. He swept it away with his right hand, uncovering a strange rune: a bi-sected circle holding a stylised black and white skull, left half being white over black, the right half holding same colors but reversed.

He traced the shapes of the symbol with a finger, as if trying to understand its meaning. While he did so, a drop of blood from his hand touched the symbol.

Suddenly, the rune began to glow with hellish light. Antonius tried to dismount the bike, but found his legs unable to move, as if frozen in place. He could only cover his face with his arms in vain attempt to protect himself from the blinding radiance...

Chapter Four: Burning vengeance

The light exploded with a strength of a thousand suns. Both Antonius and the bike were engulfed in hellfire.

When the flames went out, Antonius was no more.

On the black bike stood a figure encased in black power armor, on his chest and shoulders the same skull-runes were emblazoned as the one on the bike's fuel cap. Where the being's head should be, there was a fleshless skull wreathed in a mane of hellfire. In his right hand, he wielded a spiked chain burning with hellfire.

Antonius was dead, and from his death an avenger was born.

The being spoke, its voice loud and inhuman.

"THE SOULS OF THE DEAD THIRST FOR VENGEANCE!"

It turned it's head to where the dust and smoke marking the Chaos horde's position could still be seen.

"TODAY, VENGEANCE WILL BE SERVED!" 

Then he gunned the bike and drove off in pursuit of his foe, the blazing wheels of his bike leaving a trail of fire in his path...

Meanwhile, not far away, the Dark Apostle ordered his foul charges to stop for a prayer and a sacrifice to the Dark Gods... little did he knew it was to be their last...

Chapter Five: Trial by hellfire

Berzarael ran through the night, his heavy breath showing the scale of his effort to get as many miles of wasteland between him and that... that... that THING as possible.

Just a few minutes ago, they began preparing the sacrifice to the Powers of Chaos, those few Raven Knights who were unfortunate enough to survive only to become the Word Bearers' captives.

When Razhaar began chanting the Litany of Chaos, they heard an unearthly howl, and then a scream. The source of the scream soon came into the light as the body of Ardragan, one of the guards, was thrown directly into the middle of the assembled ring, knocking the Dark Apostle off his feet. Flesh of the corpse was horribly burned, and even so there was no mark of fire on his armour.

"Who dares to interrupt the Hymns of Chaos!?!?" shouted Razhaar getting to his feet. No word was spoken, the only answer being in form of a long chain burning with pure hellfire that tore right through armored bodies of several Traitors as if their armour was like thin paper and not the ancient Ceramite that has been blessed with the unholy strength of the Dark Ones themselves.

"What fool attempts to stop the ritual!?!?" shouted the Dark Apostle again. And this time the answer presented itself when a black armored biker whose head was a skull wreathed in hellfire emerged into the circle of light created by the pyres.

"THE SOULS OF YOUR VICTIMS CALLED FOR VENGEANCE. I AM THE ANSWER TO THEIR CALLS." the creature said in a voice that sounded like something a tombstone could have spoken if it had a voice.

"Brothers, the foul unbeliever has uncovered himself! Destroy him for the greater glory of Chaos!" the Apostle called upon his brethren.

Spurred to action by his order, dozens of figures in dark red armour threw theselves onto the being, each eager to earn the attention of Powers that Be by being the one to kill the rider. For a moment, they seemed to succeed as the black-armored creature was completely obscured from view by their sheer numbers.

Then there was a burst of light, a bright flame and stench of brimstone in the air. Traitor Marines were cast away in all directions as if smote by a mighty fist, many of them screaming as they were consumed by fire. Even their suits of power armor were ablaze, even though the ceramite was supposedly inflammable. Some of the Word bearers were running away, while the being turned its attention towards the corrupted Chaplain.

"You shall be destroyed by my power! Feel the strength of Cha..." the Dark Apostle did never complete the sentence as the creature flung its chain through the air, its weighted end crashing right through the deamonic icon that once was Crozius Arcanum. Razhaar caught a glimpse of a flaming shape with a horned head and twin red eyes staring at him with a rage at the thing's millenia-long incarceration within the Crozius. Then the flame seemed to liquefy as it passed into his body, melting away a piece of ceramite that stood in the way.

The traitor's eyes filled with shock which quickly turned to sheer horror as his armour began to warp and crack when the daemon toyed with his flesh, chaning its shape at whim. He turned his bloodless face to his assailant "...wha..t...ha..ufe...y...don..." he barely managed to mumble through his rapidly mutating lips.

"DEATH WAS TOO GOOD FOR YOU. THIS WAS WHAT YOU DESERVED." 

Razhaar was no more. In shreds of red armour a gibbering creature whose form defied recognition flailed with its many limbs, mouths opening and disappearing within its constantly mutated flesh, the soul of the Traitor howling through them in rage and despair at its imprisonment. The daemonic knight looked with a measure of satisfaction at the Apostle's plight. This was a suitable vengeance for what the ex-Marine has done to so many righteous warriors.

Whatever sanity remained within the mutated frame of the Chaos Spawn, it was quickly gone when the chain tore the thing's warped flesh apart in an explosion of gory viscera. Somehow, the flesh and blood did not fall onto the ground in a naturally random way, forming a red shape of a skull in a circle, its left part drawn in blood, the right being drawn by the areas of the ground that were not covered in blood filling its half of the symbol.

Seeing the fate of their former master, the remaining traitors, Berzarael amongst them, broke and ran into the night, screaming in fear. They did not escape far, as Berzarael could ascertain from the flames and cries that soon pierced the jet black darkness of the night.

He thought that he managed it, that the creature has not noticed him. His hopes were shattered as a burning chain grasped around his legs, knocking him to the ground.

The daemon-rider hurled a blazing ball of fire onto the traitor Marine with his right hand. It passed right through the Word Bearer's armor and into his flesh. For a few seconds nothing seemed to happen... and then Berzarael suddenly began to scream and convulse.

"What! - Uugh! - The! - Aghh! - Eye! - Ghhhh! - Are! - Aaaaarrgghh! - You!" the traitor shrieked as the purifying fire spread through his body, burning flesh and soul alike.

"I AM ZARATHOS. I AM VENGEANCE." answered the Champion of Malal to Berzarael's charred corpse.