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Hatred turned inwards is self-improvement.

My chainaxe skids across the Imperial dog's armor, until it catches on a joint. For a moment, it chokes. No more than a fraction of a second. The dog and I have both hit that dizzying peak of adrenaline, where time is a great slow blur, and this moment between us is a tender slow dance. All we can hear is the blood rushing in our ears. All we can feel is the blood swelling in our fingertips and the greasy sheen of sweat beneath the ceramite plating. The chainaxe tears through the joint. All that tension released. First a spray, then a fine mist, of blood. It flecks my armor, speckling the dust and grit with brilliant red.

10,000 years of hatred honed that swing. It's what made me better than him. The difference between the numbed out dog and I. Imperial dogs are broken by training, beaten harder and harder, until they crawl back into their mind and hide there. If they had any free thought, they would revolt. Like the World Eaters did. He hid from himself. From his slavery. I didn't. When he was hiding, I was holding up that fine jewel of self-loathing, that jewel so cold it burns, and I was turning it over in my mind. Faced with my own reflection in the dark glass - twisted, lusting, pathetic - I never flinched. That hatred guided me towards greatness.

Hatred turned outwards is justice.

The blood streaming from the dog's throat is thick. It catches on the collar of his breastplate and pools around his neck. What little that manages to escape streaks across the snow-white aquila. One hand raises to his throat. The other, hamfisted, takes a swing at me. He's still an Astartes. Nine feet of booming ceramite, with muscles tighter than steel and bones like adamantium beneath. Gyros whir, gears click, hydraulics gush, and a suit of power armor lends its strength to an already superhuman blow. All in the span of a quarter-second. Still too slow to catch me. Rearing back, I use my own chainaxe to push his sword ever so slightly of course, guiding it away from my skull and towards the ground.

Something smells like acid. The smoke and grit is sour while my axe sparks against his energized, supercharged blade. Then, with his sword pinned to the ground, I launch a devastating uppercut. The kind that splinters bone and makes flesh burst like overripe fruit.

Without hatred, we wouldn't know to despise what is wrong. Killing is needed to be rid of killers. The Imperium is a great beast, wrestling with its own hatred, trying to hide it behind laws and justice. Once, the rapists, perverts, and pedophiles hunted in daylight. It was hatred that pushed them back into the night. The same hatred connects with the jawline of the dog's helmet, and all at once the ceremite and my axe lose shape. Metal buckles in and tears open. This sends the Astartes pitching backwards, trailing blood in the dusk.

Somehow, he's still alive. Twin hearts are raging. Fingers twitch at the handle of his sword as the dog wills himself to get back up, to keep fighting, to win for his beautiful Imperium. I'm a little over five feet tall and I'm towering over him. Broken chains click and snag on my axe, while the motor whines. Gingerly, I lean over and take the dog's sword from him. Its a huge and unwieldly for a man my size, but right now it serves me better than him.

"Traitor," he says. The dog drawls on the word, half-drowned in his own blood.

Pressure is building in my temples and tightening at my throat. I smile, not because I'm enjoying this, but because I know it'll hurt him. Seeing the traitor smile. Seeing his smug lips peel back and seeing his yellow-brown teeth. I raise his glowing sword. It casts monstrous lights on my face, pale-green and flickering. That gives him the inspiration he needs. His hand shoots for the combat knife at his belt. The sword comes down. Instantly, the wound is cauterized. There's smoldering metal and meat where his wrist used to be. As for his hand, it seems to have disappeared.

"Traitor."

Again. What did I ever betray? On Cadia, the Imperium pushed a rifle into my hands when I should've been learning to read. And when I should've been exploring who I was, flirting with girls and hanging out with friends, it was drilling me on grenades, bombs, and knives. While the sons of High Lords sipped on fine wine, my friends were dying to protect them. Dying in the mud. Dying with mouths full of blood and holding fistfuls of their own guts, while the brown Cadian rain pounded down on them. I was tired of eating gak. I was tired of smug bureaucrats and sadistic sergeants choosing my own life for me, then daring me to fight back.

The only thing I ever betrayed was myself for eating gak so long.

Head full of fuming red smoke, eyes straining against their sockets, listening to the voices welling up inside of me, I'm crawling onto the dog. With my knife, I'm carving him open. Pulling back and ripping open battered armor plating. Tearing meat. It's a gurgling, drenching mess where his ribcage used to be. Only one of his hearts is still beating. I carve out the dead one to let him watch me eat it. Its thick and gummy. Something about it tastes like copper and battery acid. Just pretend that its steak. My stomach churns and knots. Bile at the back of my throat. Still, I eat. Just to give him a view.

His remaining hand starts to grope at me. Armor, pushed far beyond its limits, is powering down. Something tells me that his body is doing the same. I hold his hand. With a methodical carving, I take his hand off. It doesn't bleed much. One of his hearts is still beating though.

I pry off his helmet. Not much his left of his chin, though the jawbone isn't beyond repair. A few surgeries, maybe a couple months with bandages and braces holding his mouth in place, and he'll be speaking and eating just like before. The wet red vines of nerve-endings in his broken teeth must hurt right now though. I imagine they're screaming. He tries to say something. The dog isn't strong enough to, but I can tell what he's thinking. I practically can hear it.

"Traitor."

He just doesn't know what's good for him.

I set to work eating his eyes.

I missed something. I didn't pay attention when I should have, and I rushed through all the times I should've savored. Everyone else is nostalgic about things I never cared about. Everyone else in life manages to go through their daily lives with no problems, while I'm sitting here, trying to figure out what I missed.

The Astartes is dead. Both hearts are lying there, burnt out engines beneath a ribcage hood. If I look too closely, I can imagine the glint of life in his eyes. Its nothing. Just the sun's reflection in his hot, stinging tears. Sunlight is bleeding through the clouds sickly and pale. Little motes of ash are dancing in the grey sunrays.

I'm tired of always talking about people I've never met.

Angron the Red Angel, Champion Kharn, Bloody Handed Ortega, and the False Emperor. These men died centuries ago. What's left of them, if anything at all, is shadows. The faint, hazy kinds cast by thin sunlight, when smog and soot blot out the skies. Somehow, they still matter more than I do. Ten thousand years ago, the first traitor breathed his first breath, and we've just been playing out the chain reaction ever since. Nothing new.

A biogenetist once asked me what I thought about the little things. Germs, diseases, viruses. Amoebas. Skin cells. They're made of flesh, and they're warm and moving, but they can't actually think. None of them make decisions on their own. Someone, they still take in nutrients, put out waste, divide and reproduce without ever knowing or deciding to. They do it on their own initiative without having initiative. Ten thousand years ago, the first traitor breathed his first breath, and he reduced me to a virus. An amoeba. A little spec of skin. Looking at me, you'd see that I walk and talk, but I never actually act. Instead, I get abused and I get moved around, fighting battles I didn't plan in a war I didn't start, killing men I've never met.

There's smoke on the horizon. I head towards it.

I'm loving it. Khorne fiction is the best chaos fiction.

They're burning the Imperials.

Most people have never been lit on fire. The word burning doesn't get a strong reaction. It's like explosive decompression or anal prolapse in that only a special few can relate to it. Sure, people can imagine it, but never really understand. If I put an autopistol to your forehead and threaten to paint the wall with your brains, you probably wouldn't get as nervous as you would if I threatened to give you a papercut.

The key to describing burning is to put in terms that everyone has felt.

Terms like blisters. The shoe that's too tight, rubbing against your heel, until the skin is raw, red, and wet. Or cuts. Skin pulls back from a deep enough cut, so instead of just looking like a straight red line, its something closer to a cervix. When they tie the Imperial dogs to the poles and light the kerosene beneath them, it hurts. Crackling blisters and cuts inch up past the toes. Then the heels. Skin turns black and peels away, while the meat smolders just beneath. Adrenaline lets some dogs ignore the pain, but not the smell. No one can ignore that smell.

Stinging and searing, crispy and wet, the flames crawl higher and higher. Their screams tend to start cracking when it reaches the groin. Most don't go silent until their hair is gone.

Its impossible to ignore how much of a person is liquid when you watch them burn. Fats, sweat, and blood. Lymph and spinal fluid. Saliva. The thick bile that grows at the back of your throat like tickling moss. When people burn, they drip, tear, and leak. Thankfully, the smoke hides most of it. The dog's eyes are still knotting up my stomach. If I see a man dripping like wax, I might just puke.

Lord Eryuel clasps me on the shoulder. "Good hunting?" His voice is a low rasp.

"Good hunting."

"Help with the tents." Eryuel gestures with a claw towards a sort of shanty town of grey canopy and piled bricks. Followers are scurrying like rats. Most of them have been working for a few hours, and I suppose they've gotten used to the Imperials burning. Once one is finished, another one is brought up and tied to the same hot, greasy, ashy pole. Usually sobbing. "We camp tonight. Tomorrow, there's a task for you. I've heard His Will again."

"Help!" screams one of the Imperials. Someone is piling kindling at his feet. We must be running out of kerosene. "Somebody help! Please! Throne, pleeease!"

I spend most of the night clearing out rubble. Sleeping on dirt is hard, but sleeping on jagged concrete and steel shards is harder.



"He is a psyker," says Lord Eryuel. He speaks slowly and carefully, to compensate for his teeth. They've reduced his gum to wet paper. In his sleep, he chewed the tip of his tongue away. Now its fat and blunt, a slimy worm. "His name is Jared Teryic. His men will address him as 'Third Librarian' or just 'Librarian'. He will be wearing tanned shrouds, and probably be carrying some sort of High Gothic tome. He is armed with a staff tipped with aquila.

"I've heard His Will and it has told me that he must be taken unharmed in both mind and body. For this task, I lay before you a stammerer, endropherphene, and paralyzer rounds."

Stammerers were invented to keep Guardsmen awake during sieges. They emit clicking noises at random intervals and volumes. Occasionally they flash or buzz. Rarely, they ding. The stammerer pattern changes too much to get used to, so Guards can't sleep through it. Someone else discovered that if you bolt it into someone's forehead, it makes for a neat torture device. After a few days, most people snap. Concentration is utterly impossible. Thoughts get cut off just as they start. If someone put a stammerer on a psyker, they wouldn't be able to summon their spells.

Endropherphene is used by perverts and hedonists to heighten physical sensation. Just before they lie down with each other, they shoot up with it to properly revel in their own filth. Combined with a stammerer, endropherphene would feel like a stilted procession of hammerblows to the forehead.

And you can guess what the paralyzer rounds are for.

Eryuel is still talking. "He will be traveling to the Nemithi Facility to muster the remaining dogs there, with an armed escort. Intercept him. Take him intact. Do what you will with the rest."

Eryuel has chosen the nine best of us to get the Librarian. I'm a monster with an ax; over the years, I've taken down three Astartes, singlehandedly. No one else here can match that. However, that are some niches that I can't fill.

For years, Marcis was the best marksman in the Cadian 122th. He would get nice and comfy in some bushes, far off from the battle, and accomplish more than any Leman Russ or Titan could. Once, a Dreadnought came blazing out from the trees, a four ton cyclone of screaming steal and raging cannons. Marcis shot him through the visor, a one inch slit of glass from a mile away, which then ripped through his brain and excited through the engine. Joints locked, the Dreadnought was still standing up, while amniotic fluid and exploded greymatter were siphoning out the little dot in its head. Then the engine gave out. It's steel-plated, ceramite-reinforced body, complete with an adamantium chassis, was reduced to very powerful grenade. White hot shrapnel reduced Black Legionnaires to wet ribbons.

He got a medal for that.

Marcis was still stuck on latrine duty after that. It might seem petty to murder your commander after that, but when there's a dysentery outbreak and a hundred thousand men are gaking their own guts out, you'd be pissed off too. Especially since he was an unpaid conscript. So, during the battle, Marcis sniped his Sergeant. Little bits of the Sergeant's brain speckled the men around him. Then they started screaming. For the first time, Marcis realized he was in-control. He didn't just have to stew in his own anger; he could do something with it.

A week later he took the balls clean off a Commissar. It didn't kill him right away. Instead, he died slowly, after refusing to let a medicae cut away the "gangreneous tissue". He had already lost his balls, he wasn't gonna let someone cut off his johnson no matter how dead it was.

The next day, he was tired of the Regimental Commander for yelling at him. Marcis meant to take just his lower jaw off. From a mile away though, a head is just a tiny spec in your scope, so when Marcis was a fraction of a degree off, the good Regimental Commander lost a good chunk of his skull. Someone gave him an order to look out for enemy marksmen.

If he wanted to, he could've gone on for years. People getting shot isn't particularly suspicious in war. The fact was, Marcis didn't have good self control. One day, he took out two soldiers while they were behind cover. It was pretty obvious that a marksman behind the Imperial line had done it. So they were on the lookout for that sort of thing. Marcis could've taken a break, and gone back to hunting Imperials a few weeks later after everyone had forgotten, but he didn't. Instead, he decided to start picking off members of an Inquisitorial taskforce that had been dispatched. After that, the investigation really picked up. To make matters worse, Marcis started inspiring copycats. Someone who wasn't Marcis picked off the Standard Bearer, just before a charge. Someone else shot out both a Techpriest's kneecap, then murdered the first three men that ran up to help him.

The new Regimental Commander was getting ready to purge the entire 122th. All the marksmen would be killed, and all squads would be broken down into heavily monitored five-man groups, and all grunts would be equipped with explosive collars. Measures like that were too large to keep secret. When news got out, there was a mutiny, and the Black Legion took that operation to storm the camps. The 122th disappeared, and eventually Marcis found his way to us.

Jerald had a different story. He was a civilian who never served in the Imperial Guard, and based on the red-black horn twisting out of his temple, probably never will. Once upon a time, Jerald served as one of the many servants for some Planetary Governor. Now, the good Governor owned three domesticated cragcats that were never potty-trained. They just gak where they pleased, and the army of servants cleaned up the mess before the Governor could chance upon it. No, Jerald wasn't inspired to kill people over gak like Marcis was. Jerald was the tutor for the Governor's buxom young daughter.

She was rail thin with steel-tight abs, but her ass and tits were bigger and bouncier than ever. When she looked up at Jerald, she had big-brown doe eyes and wavy blonde hair (with black roots if she'd gone too long without dying it). Jerald was a good pupil, she was a good student, and thanks to Jerald's raging hard-on the table was about an inch off the ground at any given moment. Eventually, she seduced him or he molested her. Whatever happened didn't really matter, because the next day Jerald was sick to his stomach. His whole body was clammy and pale. Inside, his mind was fevered and his intestines were choking themselves in agonizing knots.

He hated himself for what he had done to her, and he hated her for what she had done to him.

With a blackmarket flamer and and an Arbites riotcannon, he took out the whole family, except for the daughter. Her, he made pay in a different way. After fleeing the planet, he kept her in a little cage, and told her that if she wanted to live, she would have to pay him with an ounce of skin every day. Then he handed her a knife. After four weeks and about two pounds, she died, and her body was very far from beautiful.

Jerald can't distinguish any new pain from the agony he's still feeling over whatever happened between him and the Governor's daughter. A pistol round he took to the mouth is living proof of that. Now the skin has pulled back from the wound, and the shards of two dozen broken teeth gnash and click when he tries to speak. Blood is always dribbling down onto his shirts, onto his pants, onto his knives. One horn has already grown from right temple, and another is starting to come in on the left. We keep him on a leash, because he doesn't care about whether he's cutting his friends or his foes. He just cares about cutting.

The heart is a drumbeat.

Beating doom, doom, doom.

Then I suck in a sharp breath. Blood is coursing now, surging at my fingertips, a moody bass. The adrenaline kicks in. Cool and high, some far off mountain peak, wavering guitars and lyrics, is making me dizzy. It makes me feel clammy and it makes me tap my feet and drum my fingers. To my heartbeat. Doom, doom, doom. Doom.

Choking red and coiling black smoke is fuming in my skull. It makes my eyes water. Pressure at my temples, heat behind my eyes. Something tingling at the base of my spine. Renegade strands of muscle twitch and send shivers through my whole body. I'm still drumming my fingers and tapping my feet, but now there's no rhythm, just pent-up frustration. Breath hisses in and out, through my grated teeth.

The first shot goes off, and I'm running.




Let's go back. Two days.

The man I'm supposed to take alive is named Chief Librarian Jarad Teryic. He is racing from Landing Site A to the Nemithi Facility, a heap of warehouses and smokestacks, through the Nem Desert. This desert isn't the kind with sloping dunes and unrelenting sun. What the Nem Desert is closer to is a dry, cracking blister. Crumbly plates of tan dirt with blaring cracks between them.

So, there's me, and there's Marksman Marcis and Jerald the Rapist, along with six other followers of the One True God, out here to catch Fifth Librarian Jarec Teryid. We believe he'll just a carve a straight line from Landing Site A to the Nemithi Facility. So, we drew a line between those two points, and then picked the point on the line that was closest to us, and we hiked out there. The idea is, he'll come to us.

The ground is crumbly, the sky is grey-blue, and my thoughts are numbed out static. Any psyker trying to listen in would think they've hit a dead radio channel. Eventually the white noise hits a screaming peak, and for a moment or so I wake up. My body clenches. I'm jerking around, staring down my surroundings, trying to figure out where I am. Then I fade back into static.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.




In the desert, on the first day, we found a man.

His jawline was shaded in with stubble. The sunburns on his face was course and rosy red. Before he said a word, I could tell from his bright eyes and hunched posture and the empty canteens dangling from his back that he would be a pleader. That the first word he said would be, "Please-".

"Please," he said, and his voice cracked. Hearing his voice crack, I got a second-hand case of itching thirst at the back of his throat. This isn't like the fat melting off the Imperials or the Astartes dribbling blood. What I'm listening to is a slower, more tender sort of carnage. "Please. I need water. Please."

Yelric grabs him by the shoulder and plants a fist in his stomach. The man topples over. "No. Wait. I was in the battle. Please."

Then he sees Yelric's fangs. And Jerald's horn. And Mikel's hooves. At that moment, I get a second-hand case of the drop he feels in his stomach. We were in the battle too, he realizes. Its just that we were on the other side. "Oh no."

When he tries to crawl away, Yelric snatches him by the heel. He draws a smooth blade. It glints in the pale sunlight. Just a split second before Yelric slices the tight flesh of his heel, the man starts screaming. He screams through a dry rasping throat and through teeth locked shut from the pain. Then Yelric slits his other heel. The rest of us are just watching while Yelric crawls onto the screaming, thrashing, bloody little man.

The human spine is made up of thirty-five vertebrae. Each one looks like a little dinosaur foot, with three toes facing out the back. The only way to see the toes on someone is on their lower back if they're bending forward, and then its harder to see more than the central toes themselves. These central toes are called the spinous processes. While the man's writhing, Yelric is able to get a good grasp on the positioning of the vertebrae. Yelric plants his knife in the center of the back, on the center of a vertebrae, and the knife cuts the spinous process perfectly in half.

Yelric hands his knife to Jerald. "If you can stand up," says Yelric, "I won't let Jerald take your skin."

So the man huffs. Writhes. Cries. Strains. Huffs some more. Begs. Cries. Wails. Thrashes. Crawls. Does everything he can, which is everything except standing up.

"No?" says Yelric. "I guess you should've thought of that earlier. Jerald, catch up with us when you're done."

Then, on the second day, Jerald catches back up with us, wearing a slick red cloak. About an hour later, hit the line on the map. Fifth Chaplain Jerico Teryid is supposed to be traveling along here. So we camp. And we wait. Jerald's new cloak won't stop dripping. Static.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Then three Landspeeders appear on the horizon, tiny specs in an arrowhead formation. Kicking up dust behind them. Yelric is ordering everyone to get into position. Now we're back to where we were. My heart is a drum. Then we hit the coursing blood and the dizzy adrenaline, the fuming red smoke, then the pressure at my temples. Fury. Delirious, impatient, teetering fury. Marksman Marcis fires off the first shot, and the central Landspeeder sweerves out of control. I'm running.

Nothing really to say other than I really like your writing style. Thanks for posting it!

The Land Speeder veers to the right and hits the ground in a lightning-quick corkscrew motion. Half-hidden behind the shockwave of grit and smoke, there's a dull thud and the screeching of broken gears. The arrowhead has lost its tip. Both remaining speeders fan out and move right, to keep us face-to-face with their leftside bolters. Thrumming grav engines struggle to lift the Speeders even higher; they want to stay out of our axes' reach.

I've never seen a Speeder before. These ones are baby blue, though the paint fades to charcoal around the rear engine block. At the head of each bumper is crisscross of silver battle scars. The pilots don't look much different. On the rightside of each Land Speeder is an Astartes half-buried in buttons, levers, and wheels. A solid block of adamantium with a slit like a welding mask is propped up in front of him. Even behind that, he still has his power armor. Seated left of the driver is another Astartes, dwarfed by the gun infront of him. Its a Maxima Mark IVh Heavy Bolter. The way its a built, its a block of dark steel edged with Holy Martian rust and inlaid with golden skulls that comes to head with a snub-nosed barrel. A belt of .998 rocket-propelled explosive rounds hangs from its underbelly and loops around to something like a toolbox jutting out from the bolter's side. The whole weapon is powerful enough that an Astartes has to use even a mounted one two-handed.

Every Land Speeder is beautiful. If only in a blocky, awkward, outdated way.

The heavy bolters start rattling. This is the hardest part of the battle; the part where you try not to die. I'm already running. My body is weightless from the combat buzz, but at the back of my mind I can feel it screaming. Heart hammering, lungs reduced to bloody meat by furious labored breathing, and the blood stinging at my tensed muscles like acid. All secondary functions - bowels, lymphatics, livers, kidneys - have ceased. Someone explodes. My face is speckled with blood.

Haha, look at me, ma, I have chicken pox.

Yelric and I reach the downed speeder. What used to be the pilot's head is a thick goop of brains, held-in-place by a splintered helmet. His gunner lost most of a leg when the speeder hit the ground and the haul bent inwards. Both his hands are pinned in his lap. The heavy bolter is still right there in front of him, and I manage he's willing himself to break free and gun me down right now. It won't work. Yelric slips a knife through the cabling of his throat. With his voxcorder still on, the sound he makes when he chokes on his own blood had a metal edge to it.

This Land Speeder is a special kind, because it's got two back seats. One is empty. The other has the Librarian. Slumped over, shrouded in rags, something arcane and ancient. Using the same bloodsmeared knife, Yelric opens up the wrist cabling without touching the flesh beneath. Surgical precision. Once that's over with, he takes out his syringe. The librarian gets pumped full of the first paralyzer round. He groans and starts to stir. Hands shaking, Yelric is fumbling for the second syringe. He slips the needle in -

Coiling lightning, beginning in the palm of the Librarian's hand, is raging around Yelric. Clothes turn to cinders, red-hot in the pale blue sparking. There are smoking holes where his eyes should be. The syringe in the Librarian's wrist explodes and the paralyzers inside turn to mist in the heat. While Yelric burns, I duck behind the speeder's prow. Cowardly, I know. He can't curse what he doesn't know is there.

The first round of paralyzer has already gone to work. Combined with head-trauma from the crash and the voices he's no doubt hearing after using his powers, he can barely stand straight. He staggers straight past me. I extend my chainsword, deactivated, and he trips over it. Then I'm scampering on top of him.

Yelric had all the paralyzer rounds and the stammerer. In case the stammerer gave out, Marcis had a second one. What I was trusted with was the endropherphene. Even the best of us struggle with the temptations of pleasure. We spend our days enforcing the Lord's bloody, thankless justice, and at any given moment the Imperium's crosshairs might be closing in on us. It breaks us down. Some of us, after years of fighting, give in and turn to corruption. To filth. To the Pleasure One.

Endropherphene heightens the senses, good or bad. I think Yelric gave it to me because he didn't trust himself with it, and I respect that. Like I said, even the best of us struggle.

I plug the needle into the back of the Librarian's neck. It snaps off. Now he's writhing and thrashing, and I can hear the low thrum as he draws in his witchcraft around him. I put one hand on the back of his head and another on his chin, then wrench sideways. There's an ugly crack. His back isn't broken, but it's going to hurt. With his spine contorted and his head sideways like that, I break open the syringe and force feed him the endropherphene. He's in for a nightmare.

Great work as always, nice to see you back in fine form