Battle of Criuq (short story)

Darius turned and shot another of the foul plague zombies that had been troubling him and his men so much over the last few days in this war-zone.The bolt penetrated the walking corpse’s rotting flesh and detonated in it’s head, splattering liquified brains all over Darius’ armour. His armour was supposed to be the dark blue of the chapter Librarium, but it had become covered in the tell-tale red and brown gore of battle, his axe had become caked in a layer of blood so thick that it appeared black and his pistol’s machine spirit was beginning to suffer. As Darius looked up, searching for his next target, he caught a glimpse of the 4th Captain of the Iron Flesh, Captain Chrysaor fighting off a group of human cultists, his sword strikes landing as quickly and rehearsed as if they were performed by a robot and one, then two, then three fighters fell to the end of his sword. Darius detached his axe from it’s mag-clips as he saw Vretiel Ferrox, a former Stormbreaker of the Sniper House, pick off a squad of Iron Flesh marines with a precision rifle. The librarian ran towards the traitorous marine with leaps and bounds, using his unique gifts to increase his strength tenfold. Vretiel didn’t fall to Darius’ first blow, instead he dodged out of the way with inhumane speed and pulled out a blade of his own, coated in deadly diseases and pathogens of his own creation. He parried the loyalist’s second blow, knocking his axe out of his hand and sending it flying to the ground, the counter strike left a gash on the bottom of Darius’ face. The pain that went through his body was immense, as thousands of deadly viruses and bacteria wreaked havoc on his enhanced senses, causing his to hallucinate and spasm in pain as the screams of thousands of daemons began ringing in his ears. As he woke from his warp induced visions, Darius saw his foe, returned to his hiding spot, mistakenly having thought the quick-thinking librarian dead. Darius, having seen his hated enemy, began to feel the anger flow through his body. As he got up, fire and warp energy jumping around all over his armour, the cry “Into the Storm!” emanated from the warp and all of his pent up energy came bursting to the surface as one huge explosion, incinerating many human cultists and, in one last fit of anger, Darius tore off Vretiel’s head, proclaiming him a heretic and a coward and threw it to the ground. “Beware my wrath heretics, I am coming…”