Khârn looked down at Lucius, who had been launched through the air and now sprawled ignominiously across the deck plates. Beneath his helm, Khârn's distorted features broke into a harsh, mocking laugh, a grating, metallic rasp that cut through the cacophony of slaughter like grinding iron.
With a fluid, explosive bound, Khârn lunged forward, his chainaxe cleaving clean through the neck of the Ork who had just kicked Lucius aside.
Every stride he took sent a visible shudder through the deck. In his grip, Gorechild revved with a predatory whine, its monomolecular teeth continuously sloughing off thick cords of xenos gore.
"Look at you, a pathetic, crawling wretch! Tell me, Lucius, did you not boast that your blade was without peer? Did you not hunt across the stars, desperate for a worthy foe to prove your absolute supremacy? What happened? Face-to-face with these crude green skins, has your vaunted swordsmanship degenerated into the flailing of a child?"
Khârn stood over Lucius, his gaze dripping with unadulterated contempt and derision.
"You call yourself a master of the blade, yet before true force, you are nothing but fragile glass!"
He brought his power-armored boot down with shattering force beside Lucius, denting the solid metal plating of the ship's deck.
"I recall your arrogant claims that, given the chance, you would challenge Sigismund himself. Look at yourself now! You are not fit to scrape the mud from his sabatons! You truly believed that chasing the perfection of form would make you invincible? How utterly laughable! You have never even faced an opponent truly worthy of respect!"
Khârn leaned down, bringing his snarling grill inches from Lucius. The scarred visage beneath his helm twisted into a grotesque mask of battle-lust and mockery.
"Do you not see it? Every single defeat is a strike against your vanity, a testament to the sheer delusion of your obsession. But I… I am Khârn. With every campaign, I carve the Blood God's title across the galaxy. With every slaughter, I ascend closer to the apex of ultimate dominion. And what are you? A pathetic plaything to be swatted across the dirt. What does your resurrection matter if you return only to be beaten into the dust time and again?"
Straightening his posture, Khârn unleashed another bout of maniacal laughter, completely dismissive of Lucius and absolute in his own lethal certainty.
"Hmph! You think I am ignorant of your past defeat at the hands of Sigismund?!" Lucius roared back, his voice thick with wounded pride as he snarled at Khârn's retreating back. "Your entire strength is a borrowed crutch from Khorne! My artistry is mine alone!"
Under the relentless, hyper-violent momentum of Khârn's assault, the Ork bodyguard began to buckle. Their crude defensive formation was shattered into disparate pockets, their numerical advantage evaporating under the chainaxe's teeth.
By now, Lucius had finally completed his agonizing, parasitic possession of the Ork's physical form. He rose to his feet with a jerky, unnatural gait, his newly claimed eyes burning with a volatile mixture of resentment and fury.
Yet, just as Lucius prepared to strike at Khârn's exposed flank, a deafening, earth-shaking roar tore through the compartment. The Warboss, Zog Steeltoof, strode forth from the rear lines like a shifting mountain of green muscle and iron.
His colossal frame loomed twice the size of his elite guards, standing nearly four times the height of Khârn himself. His thick, improvised mega-armour was daubed in crude blue paint, and his massive power klaws crackled with the lethal, disruptive energy of an active power field.
Most distinct of all was Steeltoof's brilliant, polished alloy jaw, studded with protruding cybernetic fangs that gleamed under the harsh lumens.
With a sudden, deceptively fast sweep, Steeltoof swung his massive power klaw directly at Khârn.
The blow carried enough momentum to cleave a super-heavy tank. The displaced air shrieked violently, and under the glare of the overhead lighting, the shadow of the colossal claw enveloped Khârn in a split second.
Sensing the apocalyptic weight behind the strike, Khârn brought up his weapon in a desperate parry.
CRASH!
The impact detonated with explosive force. The sheer kinetic backload hurled Khârn backward through the air, nearly tearing the chainaxe from his iron grip.
Had his weapon not been steeped in the dark blessings of Khorne himself, the shaft would have shattered instantly.
Before Khârn could even find his footing, Steeltoof's massive form lunged forward with terrifying agility.
The brute's speed defied his immense bulk.
The looming shadow of the Warboss instantly overtook the airborne champion.
Whuff!
With a sickening crunch of breaking ceramite, Steeltoof's primary power klaw clamped hard around Khârn's torso. Suspended mid-air, the Chosen of Khorne thrashed with furious desperation.
His eyes blazed with unmitigated wrath. Gorechild screamed at maximum revs, its teeth throwing blinding sparks as he hacked at the restraint, but every frantic struggle only caused the crushing hydraulics of the klaw to dig deeper into his chest plate.
Steeltoof's voice boomed across the deck like the firing of macro-cannons.
"Haha! Dis humie's got some fight in 'im! I like 'im! Propa hard to break, ain't ya? Ain't fought a humie dis tough in ages!"
The Warboss bared his metal-shod maw in a terrifying grin, thick strings of saliva spraying from his tusks.
Rather than offering any grim satisfaction, the praise sent Khârn into an absolute, apoplectic frenzy. He thrashed and howled, his voice vibrating with a hatred so pure it caused the very air to warp.
"Release me, you foul greenskin! I will flay the meat from your bones! Your lifeblood will gorge the Skull Throne!"
Harnessing his transhuman strength, he brought Gorechild down in a vicious arc aimed squarely at the Ork's exposed arm.
Yet, a microsecond before the monomolecular teeth could bite into xenos flesh, a crackling, emerald field of raw psychic energy flickered into existence.
The chainaxe struck the barrier with a deafening screech, throwing off brilliant cascades of green sparks, but failed to leave even a scratch on Steeltoof's arm.
Khârn's pupils contracted, an expression of sheer disbelief momentarily breaking through his rage. He had not anticipated this brutish warlord to be shielded by such a potent warp-shield.
"Heh, thought ya could chop me, did ya?"
Steeltoof snorted disdainfully.
"I ain't stupid. Ya know dat weird, skinny humie, so dat makes ya weird too! I brought da weirdboyz just to deal wiv ya lot who finks yer cleva!"
From behind Steeltoof's massive bulk, several large, eccentrically dressed Weirdboyz emerged, cackling and pointing at the trapped Astartes. One of them, sporting a copper crown shaped like a giant cog, shrieked in a high-pitched wail:
"Look at 'im go, still wigglin'! Dis is gold, dis is! Da git didn't reckon on us keepin' da Boss safe!"
Another tall, skeletal Weirdboy, festooned with a chaotic assortment of copper wiring and bizarre mechanical regulators, chimed in with a rasping cackle:
"Hahaha, dat's roight! Da Big Mek went to a lot of trouble to keep our noggins from poppin' just so we could krush gits like you! Propa test subject, dis one!"
Listening to their crude banter, the fury in Khârn's veins boiled over into blinding madness. He strained every fiber of his genetically engineered musculature, twisting and turning to find a structural flaw in the psychic barrier, but the green shield remained an unyielding bastion, redirecting his strikes into nothingness.
Steeltoof held him fast, lifting him high like a prized kill, his bestial features alight with triumphant malice as if declaring his dominance to the entire sector.
Then, with a sudden, casual snap of his power klaw, Steeltoof sheared Khârn clean in half at the waist.
"NO!!!"
With a final, echoing roar of unmitigated fury, a flash of violent warp-light erupted, and Khârn's essence was violently banished back into the depths of the Immaterium.
…
The Realm of Chaos.
Within the shifting tides of the Warp, Khorne watched the material display from his throne of brass and bone. The moment his chosen champion was cast back into the ether, an all-consuming rage gripped the Blood God.
Yet, before his wrath could manifest as a storm across the stars, a grating, thunderous cackle echoed through his domain.
The mocking, boisterous voices of Gork and Mork reverberated through the warp-space, dripping with playground malice.
"Look at yer shiny 'Chosen' git! Dropped like a sack of squigs da moment he ran into real boyz!"
Khorne's roar boomed through the empyrean like the tolling of a billion doom-bells. Snatching up his colossal, blood-red blade, the Blood God charged out from his brass citadel, hurtling directly toward the twin, towering green nebulas that manifested in the cosmic dark.
And down in the mortal universe, the slaughter ground of the material realm continued to burn in absolute, unbridled chaos.