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Carry through the familiar motion. Lunge, give-way, parry, riposte, repeat. A hundred thousand sparring matches, perfected over the Long War, come together in one perfect moment. I cut through the Chaplain's wrist. A clenched hand falls to the ground, trailing red-black smoke from the stump. Black ceramite goes white-hot where it meets the wound. The Chaplain brings up his bolter-pistol, one last ditch effort to win.

I'm in the perfect position to slash his throat and put an end to this. Initially, there would be an outpour of blood that comes cascading over the Aquila on his breasplate. Once his throat was emptied out, the pour would stop, and instead the blood would come pulsing out with each heartbeat. He would get to drown in it and I would get to watch.

But I've lost both of my hands, a long time ago, and its only fair that he should lose his.

The second wrist becomes a white-hot stump. Trailing smoke, his hand hits the ground. This is the hundredth or maybe the thousandth time I've seen this. This Chaplain is in peak-physical condition. He's heavily-built, three hundred pounds of muscle, without any fat to slow him down. Two furious beating hearts are sealed within a fused ribcage, and blood laced with dizzying adrenaline is flooding through is body. He can't hear a thing through it rushing in his ears.

Shock takes hold. His thoughts are numbed out. His arms are impossibly long roads, disappearing over the horizon, and he can't see his smoking wrists. The pain belongs to someone else. This Chaplain, stronger and faster and harder than anyone has any right to be, can't comprehend that he's lost. Not yet. He swings a stump at me. The old fighting instinct is gone though - his arms are too short and off balance, and the way he's bleeding out and the way his pain is spiking, his strength is stretched so thin. I know how he feels. He practically steps right into my blade.

I hack off his skull. At this point, he has too much fury, too much pride, and too little blood to know what's happening. Crawling back into his mind, he's somewhere else. Maybe he's back in another battle, or maybe he's at home with his mother, or maybe he's being briefed on this very mission by his commander. Maybe he's at a sparring match, like me. I don't have anymore friends to spar with. I ought to thank him. Except the voice that thanks him won't be my own. It'll be an inhuman baritone, thick with too much spit and too many teeth, half drowned in static from my vox-recorder.

Nothing about me is human. In battle, half-shrouded by smoke and grit, the orange hell-light gleaming off my armor, and hissing spitting blood running down my steaming blade, I am a god. My face is a horned skull, with narrowed red eyes. Beneath it, there is something pulpy and wet, cut through by deformed bone. I used to be human. I remember it. When I lost my first hand, I crawled back in my mind and remembered being a human.

I'm waiting for the Warmaster Horus to give out my next order. I'm waiting for his steely voice to cut through the insanity and make things clear. Except, the voice that gives me my next order isn't my father. Its Devram Korda, speaking with the Warmaster Abaddon's authority. None of my fathers are here. There's my true father, a man named Markus, there's my genefather, the Warmaster Horus, and there's my spiritual father, the God Emperor. I was stolen from the first by the second, and I betrayed the third for the second, who then killed the third only to die himself. Or something like that. The specifics don't matter.

I follow through the familiar sparring motions because its easier than doing something new. Its easier than taking a stand against the slow, creeping malaise. Three, no, four men die. One is gathering up his own ropy, slimy intestines in his hands, screaming. He doesn't know that he's dead yet. Another is thrashing on the ground, clawing at what's left of his face. Thunder is rolling in the distance, the man made kind. Missile fire splits the sky.

Abaddon is going to destroy Terra. Maybe I'm at Terra, for the second time, fighting for the Warmaster Abaddon to finish what the Warmaster Horus started. I doubt it. I would remember if this was Terra. This is just another world full of people that are now just collateral damage. Dead men are fighting for dead causes. I suppose I'm dead too. None of my fathers would recognize my face. None of my comrades know my name.

I get shot, half expecting it to cut through the haze, but instead I just feel even murkier, even dizzier. I kill someone. There is a sickly wet crunch, and the brain matter that used to be a person is now just meat. I've been shot. I wonder how bad it is.

Once, I used to make a notch in my left pauldron for each Astartes I killed. I've killed the Chaplain and I just killed another, the one that shot me, I suppose I could add two more notches. Except, that pauldron was obliterated by frag grenade that nearly cost me my whole arm, and now I'm wearing a new one. Every part of me is cobbled together. There's stolen ceramite, rusted machinery, mutant bone, and daemon flesh. All of the parts could be traced back, and none of them were ever part of the original me.

Something sickly wet with too many teeth.

An old sparring match plays out again. Someone dies. The match goes on. I might be dying too, but that doesn't matter, because there's nothing left of the original me to kill.

I welcome you back, and I must say I quite liked this. Although I was left wondering just what or whom the main characther where supposed to be

welcome back also LL. At first I thought it was a Word Bearer until Horus was mention but I guess he's just a posessed marine. Thanks for the bed tome story, it was good.

Nice work. I like the very detached feel that came through and fits perfectly for a Chaos Marine that has been fighting for so long it's nothing more than an automatic function. Similarly, something about this seemed eerily quiet, like there was a lack of any kind of physical sensation, which again works really well.

I also liked the idea of fathers that you put in there, Space Marines, let alone Chaos Marines, considering (missing?) where they came from is not something you see a lit of.

Great stuff.