Chapter 2: Brothers in Misery
Slaughter. Blood. Death.
A power sword cleaved through flesh, driven by a soul that had already fallen into hell, yet was possessed by an urgent, desperate need.
A desperate need to send everything in its sight to an even crueler hell.
The heretics were fleeing. The xenos were screaming. And the daemons...
Where were the daemons?
Arthur, now in a state akin to a battle trance, listened to the hum of his power field disintegrating flesh and bone.
Subjectively, he still felt a sense of revulsion and horror, but it didn't translate into fear or anxiety. All he felt was the sublime simplicity of cutting down his foes.
No need to contemplate a hazy, unknowable future. No need to dwell on his terrifying present. All that mattered was the slaughter of these inhuman monstrosities, carving a bloody path through the tide of flesh with his sword and shield.
In this moment, he was the master of all he surveyed.
So this is how the Orks and Khornates feel.
In this universe, the ability to find joy in righteous slaughter was, perhaps, a gift in itself.
Arthur didn't even bother to question where his flawless combat skills had come from. He focused only on the enemy before him, his sword-and-board style flowing like water through the narrow corridor. He found the digital counter that ticked up in the corner of his vision with every kill to be a rather thoughtful touch.
Wait, have I really killed that many?
The brief flicker of confusion was quickly extinguished. As his blade, which had been dancing through the enemy ranks like a work of art, paused in mid-air, Arthur was forced to confront a new problem.
An unfamiliar figure had appeared before him.
It was a Space Marine in Artificer-wrought blue power armor, his height matching Arthur's. He wielded a multi-melta fed by a backpack ammo-shrine. Upon his power pack, an iron halo emblazoned with the Omega symbol of his Chapter gleamed in the dim light.
At that moment, the Ultramarine held up one hand in a warding gesture. A centimeter from his gauntlet, Arthur's power sword hung frozen in the air, the crackling blue nimbus of its disruption field gently scraping at the ceramite's paint.
"..."
Their helms turned, and they locked gazes.
FWOOM!
The multi-melta unleashed a torrent of molten energy, clearing a vast section of the corridor.
At the same time, Arthur's power sword slid past the iron halo. A Chaos Sorcerer who had used some fell sorcery to get close was impaled against the bulkhead. With an upward flick of his blade, Arthur bisected the psyker and, in the same motion, cleaved an approaching Genestealer in two.
CLANG!
Ceramite scraped against ceramite as the two giants went back-to-back.
"Arthur?" the Ultramarine asked in perfect Mandarin, a tongue from the ancient homeland of Dragon-kind. The familiar language pierced through the bloody haze that had consumed Arthur's mind.
His transhuman brain allowed him to process vast amounts of information in an instant. He recalled the details of the Ultramarine's wargear, blocked a heretic's leaping strike with his shield—the concussive force of the blow rupturing the organs of several nearby mortals—and then asked, tentatively:
"Romulus?"
Romulus. Arthur's best friend, his brother-in-arms in all things Warhammer. They had fought together from the depths of the Darktide to the battlefields of Space Marine 2, from the Old World to the 41st Millennium. They had known each other since they were children.
And in the games, this specific suit of armor was Romulus's favorite cosmetic loadout.
"The one and only," the Ultramarine replied softly. He tapped a few runes on his vambrace, and a 3D tactical map materialized in Arthur's vision. "You take point, I'll provide fire support. Straight down the corridor. Watch your step, don't fall to the lower deck."
"Got it."
Both understanding perfectly well what kind of universe they'd fallen into, they tacitly avoided using their real names. Arthur surged forward.
Romulus casually tossed his multi-melta aside. As he raised his hand again, a heavy bolter materialized in his grip.
"Have you been blessed by a Chaos God?" Arthur couldn't help but ask as he dealt with the toughest monsters in the horde, narrowly avoiding the stream of bolter fire that zipped past his head.
Anyone with a basic knowledge of Warhammer knew that spontaneously spawning gear out of the void was the signature move of entities like Vashtorr the Arkifane, the demigod of malevolent artifice. What kind of loyalist Space Marine could swap weapons like that?
"Blessed?"
Romulus actually laughed. "It costs thirty points. You can buy one too. Go on, try it."
"Huh?"
A line of bullets stitched across the corridor. Arthur frowned, raising his shield to cover Romulus.
"Have you not noticed the... anomalies?" Romulus tossed a krak grenade, eliminating a heavy weapon team in a forward emplacement. "A safe zone in the middle of the Warp. A counter in your vision that goes up when you kill things with souls. And haven't you noticed that the daemons you kill stay dead?"
Arthur paused. He suddenly remembered that after he had taken down the first few daemons, he had only been swarmed by xenos and heretics. The daemons had, indeed, kept their distance.
It was common knowledge that daemons were creatures of the Warp. Besides being devoured by other Warp entities, there was almost no way to truly kill one. Nothing inspired fear in a daemon except the threat of true death.
"Er..."
The two continued their advance, and a look of embarrassment spread across the face beneath Arthur's helmet.
"All I was thinking about was the killing," he admitted, slightly chagrined. "Figured if I was going to land in this cesspit, I might as well drag a few bastards down with me to swim in the filth—you know how it is. Just being dropped into Warhammer and not crying like a Gretchin already means you're mentally tough, right?" He was trying to justify his rampage. It definitely wasn't his fault.
"...Khorne would love you." Romulus sighed, then began to explain. "I haven't figured out the specifics yet. What I know is this: we seem to have a personal domain in the Warp, like a safe house. Killing beings with souls seems to strengthen us, which our subconscious interprets as a point system. And we can spend these points to influence reality, like manifesting objects out of thin air."
"You don't think... we've become Warp entities, do you?" Arthur asked, his face twitching as he cleaved an Ork that was climbing up from the lower deck and watched his point counter tick up.
That didn't do much to allay his fears. All he knew for certain was that he'd been reincarnated, and the starting conditions weren't terrible—a Fallen Angel was still a Space Marine, after all—and he'd been given what looked like a cheat system.
Honestly, given the treacherous nature of the Immaterium, this so-called "cheat" was probably tied to some malevolent entity. It would be a cruel joke to rely on it, only to step out into realspace, meet a Blank, and find the connection severed.
He even began to suspect his best friend might be a daemon in disguise, a tool designed to guide him towards some nefarious goal.
Yeah, that's not impossible.
His grip on his sword tightened. Arthur suddenly felt a new wariness towards the brother-in-arms at his back.
Come to think of it, his ability to instantly accept such a gory scene and carve his way through a horde of monsters without much revulsion was also highly unusual. He had to be cautious.
"Who knows?" Romulus shook his head. "We'll have to get out of the Warp to know for sure." From a logical standpoint, he reasoned, the ability to exchange a few kills for a full-fledged Space Marine body was something not even the four Chaos Gods were capable of. Otherwise, the material universe would have been carved up five ways long ago.
But now was not the time to discuss it.