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PROLOGUE

“Eat burrito mother fether!”

His head smashes through the microwave door and the Insta Dinner Microwavable Burrito™ is smooshed against his bloody face. I have him in pretty good full nelson hold, with my elbows locked around his shoulders and my greasy hands pushing on the back of his head. He’s waving his arms back and forth, trying to find someway to free himself. Just as I think I've won his arm rears back. I feel my ribs buckle in under the force of his elbow. I’m stumbling back, trying to keep my balance. Arik turns around, bits of burrito still clinging to his face, and hits me hard in the solar plexus. Located at where your very bottom ribs meet, a proper hit to the solar plexus causes a muscle spasm in your diaphragm. You know, that muscle you can’t breathe without?

I fall back against a counter, struggling to catch my breath. Arik lets his guard down for just a fraction of a second because he assumes that my inability to breath will slow me down. That fraction of a second is all I need. A swift kick to the crotch makes him stagger and the follow-through blow to the eye socket hits at just the perfect angle. It looks like I've left him with an orbital rim fracture, because all of sudden his eye socket has just crumpled in.

“Idiot,” says Glasya. If Glasya and I didn’t share the same body, I’d punch her in the face. She’s a manipulative spouse, domineering mother, spiteful coworker and micromanaging boss all in one. Oh, and she's literally a fething Daemon. “You are aware that you just broke your hand on his skull?”

I look down the see that my left hand is a bloody wreck with all of the knuckles out of place. I fall back against the counter, massaging the wound and gasping for breath. Normally I’d say something sarcastic to Glasya, but at the moment I’m too busy not breathing. Arik is clutching his eye and crying blood. He raises his free hand.

“Truce… truce…”

Arik has one of those fancy knife holders that’s shaped like a screaming person. He blew all of the money the Inquisition gave him on stupid gak like that. In his bedroom there’s a waterbed and a five foot flatscreen with a big surround sound audio system. He spends most of time whacked on Obscura, watching gakky music videos. His most prized possession is a golden screw that’s supposedly from the Emperor’s own armor. It must’ve cost him a small fortune.

I snatch one of the knives and hurl it at him with all of my strength, using the technique I’ve seen in so many cheap propaganda films. It hits him square on the heart, hilt first, and bounces off harmlessly. Arik doesn’t seem to want a truce anymore. He lunges at me, arms outstretched. Grabbing another knife, I slash blindly. He catches my wrist and pins it against the table with one hand whilst trying to grab his own knife with the other. Just as he reaches the screaming knife holder I grab his crotch with my broken hand. Ignoring the pain, as well as the repulsive nature of what I’m doing, I squeeze and twist. He spasms out, losing his grip on my good hand as well as knocking the knife holder off the counter. So I stab him in the face.

“I think he’s out,” I say, watching him fall to the floor. I set down the knife. My voice is scratchy and weak. “Holy gak. What are we gonna do with him?”

“Kill him obviously,” Glasya says. “Wait, he’s getting up.”

With slow pained breathes, Arik grabs onto the counter and pulls himself to his feet. His eye socket is quite swollen with an the skin an unusual eggplant hue. He seems asleep; it looks like he hasn’t even noticed me. With shaky hands, he opens a drawer. A revolting amount of blood is streaming down his face.

“I’m not going to kill him like this. For Throne's sack, look at him.”

“RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN”

Removing a pack of lho sticks from my pocket, I sigh and ask, “What?” I like to blame my momentary stupidity on exterior factors; I had just been in a fight. I hadn’t eaten anything in days, on account on Glasya’s latest plans for a ritual. Considering the injury to my diaphragm, I probably wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my brain. In anycase, I just stood there and found myself staring down the barrel of an M14 Cardinal Model Handgun, complete with laser-sighting and poisoned fragmentary rounds. “OH SHI-” I start to duck as he fires. The first round takes my ear off. With my adrenaline rushing and endorphins flooding, I can’t feel a thing. Despite not existing anymore, that ear is still ringing.

“RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN”

I catch the weapon in my broken hand and slam it against the counter. A hazy, stinging sensation runs up the length of my forearm. With my other hand, I grab the nearest weapon; a salt shaker. I bean him in the head with it, but he doesn’t let up. The gun fires again, shaking my hand free. I try to jump back but with an ear missing my balance is off. I hit the floor on my side and roll over onto my back, trying to crawl away. A round hits me in the back. Now my shirt is clinging to me with blood. I’m smearing blood on the floor as I try to drag myself away. Everything seems so far away; it’s like I’m watching a movie. Even though it’s in ultra high definition and everything looks real, it doesn’t feel real. I’m just sitting in the audience, watching my death.

“RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN”

Another round hits my back. My lungs are filling up with blood. Once again I can’t breathe. It’s a crying shame; I’ve come so far. I suppose it was bound to end this way though. Violent lives end violently. My entire life seems so far away now. They say everyone has two deaths. The first is when your heart finally gives out. Your second is when you’re finally forgotten by everyone and there's not a trace of you left. I have a feeling my second death won’t be for some time. How’ll they forget blowing up a soap manufactorum with twenty tons of nitroglycerin or the daring daylight robbery of an Arbites HQ? Hell, even the little stuff I did is sure to go down in history considering how infamous I’ve become. There’s probably going to be hundreds of Servitors jotting down accounts of when I forgot to sleep for a week and stacked three packs of batteries, some tomato soup cans and a bottle of gin in the microwave.

Though it’s true that I’ve erred and I’m going to die for it, in a way I’m immortal.

“RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN”

Shut up.





Yo, this is part one of a new thingy I'm writing. It's basically a novel from the perspective of a guy who is the mortal host of a daemon figurehead of a cult dedicated to the Dark Gods. It's not gonna be as weird as Worms in the Walls. I reread that story and I was like, "woah, this is fethed up. did i seriously write that." So I'm not gonna do that again.

Also, I haven't visited the DakkaDakka Fiction Section in about a week because when I have writer's block (which I've had until just now) it makes me feel bad to read other people's work. Like I'll read something really good and be like, "why the feth cant i write that."

I see my friend was correct, you do posses a uniq mind. i like it keep it comming

Tbh i think this story would benefit from the removal of the frankly tenuous 40k connection (no reason possesion can't be in contemporary fiction ). Otherwise its probably the best thing you've written.

Some things also seem underdeveloped but i'll assume that is because there is more to come.

Edit(Swear that orange text wasnt there a second ago )

Dud worms in the walls was seriosly weird, never figured out it is called worms though

I’m wearing a two button shadow stripe suit made from illegal vat grown wool of only the highest quality. It was given to me as a birthday present by one of my nameless underlings. Supposedly, “a whole shipment of ‘em fell off the back of a truck”. I assume this was after he hijacked the truck and brutally murdered the driver. My undershirt is comprised of mithril nanoweave fibers, essentially creating a light weight, highly flexible bullet proof vest. Lastly, I’m wearing black leather pants. Who the feth wears leather pants? I guess I do. That’s what kind of person I am now.

The year is 999.M41 and it seems like just about now everything’s going to gak. The 13th Black Crusade just hit and it’s the big one. Even the Imperium’s legions of screaming bureaucrats and morale officers can’t cover it up. I’ve seen smuggled footage of entire regiments gunned down by obsidian black Astartes, decked out in spikes and bloody trophies. Meanwhile, coming in from the galactic south west is a living, gnashing, screaming tide of chitin and flesh known as Hive Fleet Leviathan. It’s eaten entire planets.

I wonder if I’ll live long enough to see which one reaches Terra first.

Two men are escorting me to my car. It’s located on the other side of ‘the compound’, a kilometer length block of rusted steel that used to be a manufactorum. Most of the Redeemers, including myself, live inside its metal confines, only leaving to conduct operations. The reason two men are escorting me through a compound I own housing a cult I own is because everyone wants to kill me. They probably want to kill me too.

I see cultists performing various menial tasks. The Redeemers sell nick-nacks at tourist traps to fund our operations. Imagine professional killers being tasked with gluing googly eyes to preserved bald knob rat corpses for 16 hours a day and being paid in ‘enlightenment’. All work halts as I, they’re Messiah, passes through. The looks I get are ones of spite more than reverence.

“The Planetary Governor is a very cowardly man,” says Glasya as an automated door opens before me. It recedes into the wall with an awful clanking sound. The garage would be pitch black if it weren’t for the limo’s pale blue headlights. Conner, his rotting face hidden behind aviator sunglasses, a cheap scarf and obnoxious fedora, is holding the door open chauffeur style for me. “Especially in regard to me. Just make sure he knows it’s me talking, not you.” The limo is glaring at me with its glaring, predatorial face. “To him you’re just another faceless host, to soon be disposed of and replaced with another.”

“Isn’t that what I am?” I say. The faces on cars are intentional. See, the human brain looks for faces in things. This is a neurological phenomena known as pareidolia. “What am I, the twenty second host?” Car manufacturers purposefully position the headlights and grill as to resemble a mouth. “Or is it the twenty third?” Thus, fancy sports cars, limos and bigass trucks meant for men with erectile dysfunction are built to have intimidating faces. It gives your subconscious impressions about the car that may or may not be false, but in any case will increase your odds of buying it. You see the vicious predator that you want to be without even knowing it.

“Well someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today,” says Glasya as I step inside. I savor the ‘new car’ smell as I sink into the plush leather seat. The ‘new car’ smell is caused by an amalgamation of chemicals, three of which, benzene, cyclohexanone and styrene, are carcinogens. The only reason I know all this gak about cars is because Glasya told me. Same reason why I know that ammonium nitrate, found in fertilizer, and gasoline make one helluva explosion. Same reason why I know that if you slit someone’s femoral artery, located on the inner thigh, they’ll pass out in less than thirty seconds and have bled to death in three minutes which is two minutes shorter than the average Arbites emergency response time. “You have people tending to your every whims, calling you ‘the Messiah’ and ‘my liege’, but you aren’t happy with it.”

Who knew that learning could be so fun?

When Glasya first came into my head, it wasn’t a very pleasant experience. The psychic ripples passing through my brain caused me to vomit up blood after every meal, like some sort of bulimic vampire. It was impossible to concentrate because she was always talking, responding to everything I said even when I wasn’t talking to her. She kept demanding that I meet up with her cult, the Redeemers. Even worse, I was tormented by the knowledge that if anyone learned about the Daemon in my head that’d be it.

I tried to ignore her because that was the rational thing to do. When you hear voices, you probably shouldn’t interact with them. I couldn’t keep it up forever though. Glasya incorporated lots of cryptic mentions to ‘the warp’ in her tantrums and rants. Curiosity got the best of me, so I asked, “What the feth is the warp?”

“Oh, now you’re talking to me,” she said. “So you admit you can hear me?”

“Alright, I’m sorry I asked.”

“I’m not mad; I’ll answer your question. Alright, what’s the worst experience you’ve ever had?”

“Answering a question with a question is the most obnoxious thing in the ‘verse.” I cracked a smile. “That’s what my boss does.”

“Do you want to know what the warp is or not?”

“Okay, my worst experience… So I was a stereotypical fifteen year old angsty teenager. After failing a test, I told one of my friends, ‘I wish I was dead’. He took it way too seriously and told my dad that I wanted to kill myself. My dad told my mom that I was planning to kill myself. They decided to stage a ‘suicide intervention’. That meant gathering up all my extended family and friends and teachers and ambushing me when I came home from school one day.

I open the door and I see them all sitting in a huge circle in the living room. I’m told to sit down, which I do because I’m terrified. My mom says, ‘DON’T KILL YOURSELF’ and then she starts bawling. Then other relatives start crying. One of my friends starts crying. And my dad, he’s super-pissed, he starts yelling, ‘HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO US? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THIS WOULD DO TO OUR FAMILY?’ I say I have no clue what they’re talking about, so my dad smacks me, hard.

Now I’m crying. So it ends up as just a big circle of everyone I know, taking turns bawling and yelling at me. By the end of it I actually was planning to kill myself. Throne, I can’t believe I’m telling you this. What does my ‘suicide intervention’ have to do with the fething warp?”

“Everything. The warp is powered by emotion and I wanted to use your worst experience as an example. Your mother’s despair, your father’s rage, your own confusion, all fed into it. More than that, they helped create and tend to life within it. Creatures of the warp, Daemons, are emotions in their most refined state. I assume that answers your question.”

After that, Glasya and I were much more open. We had a great deal more trust for each other, seeing as we had both shared somewhat personal things. She eventually talked me into meeting the Redeemers, a decision I’m not entirely sure if I regret. I mean, all the drugs and beautiful women and people calling me 'the Messiah' are great, but I somewhat dislike the assassination plots. Glasya and I know for a fact that my driver is currently negotiating with the Kingpin to kill me for a small fee. Until the day that he plans to kill me comes up, we'll keep using him as a driver. He knows the best traffic free routes.

If we got rid of everyone of questionable loyalty, there'd be no one left.

Conner is stinking up the car.

That's because Conner, in his own words, has finally gained the favor of Nurgle he aspired to for so long. Essentially, his body is rotting away and rebuilding itself. As his skin flakes off, the filth encrusted scales and blackened, rigor mortis stricken muscles growing beneath become ever more apparent. Though my ever loyal guard doesn't mind this, he does mind the attention that it calls to him. He's taken to hiding his form under a pair of bulky cargo pants, a trenchcoat, a hand patched scarf, oversized aviator sunglasses and an obnoxious fedora. Despite all this, if Conner sits in one place for too long, he leaves a pile of decaying matter not unlike especially dark mulch.

When I first met Conner, I admit I didn't like him. Back then, he wasn't rotting as much. He could just be mistaken for someone who was too busy collecting toenails and homemade dolls to shower. That kind of creep. Glasya introduced him as my driver, receptionist, butler, personal assistant, body guard and escort. Conner had served countless past hosts faithfully and would continue to do so until his death. I avoided talking to him.

One day he was driving me on a long trip through the mountains to meet some Imperial Ambassador. The Ambassador was an uppity dude who wanted me to bribe him in person. After getting bored of listening to Glasya's stories (one of her past hosts had multiple personalities in his head prior to meeting her), I tried to talk to Conner. "So," I said in the most awkward fashion possible. "Conner. Erm... ummm.... so...." I've never been good at making small talk. "What are your life goals? I mean, like, what do you want to do with your life?"

"Not much," said Conner in a wet, slurping voice. He talked with his mouth wide open and you could see that his tongue was like some sort of hyperactive eel, worming and slipping around everywhere. "I follow the path of Nurgh-leth. Like many of his other followers, we live only for life."

"Uh.. what does that mean?"

"Life is reason enough for itself. We seek our own immortality, as well as to promote the welfare and defend the lives of others. Nurgh-leth values every living creature, from the smallest bacterium to the most cunning Xenos."

"So you have no goals for yourself beyond to live?"

"Yes, I suppose that's one way of putting it."

"Please," Glasya said. "Don't push this. Just let him be a good little guard."

"None at all?"

"No."

Thunder boomed in the distance. From my window I could see that driving along the edge of a cliff, a river roaring below. There was an ominous air and I was in a bad mood. So, against Glasya's sage advice, I pushed the issue. By drawing my handgun. I slammed in a fresh clip of ammo, pulled the hammer back and put it against his head rest. He knew what was there, but he didn't even flinch. Keeping his eyes on the road ahead, he kept on driving.

"So if I shot you right now" I said. "You'd have no regrets?"

I could hear the wiseass smile in his voice. "Beyond dying."

And that is why Conner is still my guard. He's not my driver anymore, because his feet have gone numb and sometimes he gets mixed up about what they're doing. Conner is a liability in that aspect. But otherwise, he's the best damned guard I have. Morally, he's probably the only Redeemer with any redeeming qualities. The rest of us, including myself, are too caught up doing whatever the feth it is we do. Snorting drugs, extorting banks, bribing officials, fething hot chicks, praying to dark gods, recruiting teenage gangers, stealing gak and scheming amongst ourselves

The sad thing is, Conner's whole Nurgh-leth enlightenment thing is built on a fething lie. No one is really happy just to live; no one. Even germs want to fething reproduce and gak, they aren't content to just sit around.

He wants something, he's just afraid to show it.

The driver parallel parks against the curb. Conner gets out and holds the door open for the Prophet chauffeur style, just like he did for me. If I had a wife (or a girl friend for that matter) this would be like watching someone feth her. The Prophet is a scrawny black guy with a shaven head and a neatly trimmed goatee that he probably obsesses over every morning. He has a very feminine frame, to the point that he wears oversized, stuffy business suits to try and make his shoulders look broader. No one knows the Prophet's real name or the extent of his psychic powers. The Prophet rarely uses them, but when he does.... I saw a man's head driven so far down his neck hole that it ended up lodged somewhere in his pelvis.

"Sup," I say as he scooches in alongside me. "You ready?"

"Of course," he says. "I'm always ready." His voice is so restrained, yet so confident. It doesn't seem like he's bragging, but rather stating a simple fact. "So, here's what's going to happen-" A red sedan, glaring at us with its bright predatory eyes, swerves in front of us. The driver lets out a shrill scream as he veers off the road. My beautiful limo plows through the glass doors of a nearby building and into the reception area. A fat man we may have hit crashes through the windshield. With my adrenaline pumping, I don't really have the time to process things. I see things only on their most rudimentary level. This is a car crash. This is a red sedan. This is a person. This a glance at two gunmen exiting the red sedan through the rear view mirror of my precious limo. "gak!"

Glasya says, "Don't panic." Conner is pinned under the fat man's bloody bulk, squirming and thrashing in vein. It looks like the Prophet and the driver are in shock.

gak man ill finish this later