Seraphs of the Emperor’s Judgment

Chapter 41: Bloodbronze Claws

This was the eve of the harvest, the time to satisfy the thirst for slaughter.

It was also a time for Morinit to savour.

He looked out from the main observation window of the orbital station, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. It revealed the tips of his steel teeth and the massive brass-colored brand of the Blood God upon his chest.

The wraiths in the void smiled back.

He let go and looked past that nightmarish figure, his eyes focusing on the dark sphere shrouded by his shadow.

Makand II, a small planet, a green and rugged ball of rock on the fringes of the Segmentum Pacificus, a place easily forgotten, yet more than enough to satisfy the needs of the Bloodbronze Claws warband.

Morinit had once been a Captain in the elite third-line forces of the Twelfth Legion. Back then, they had been known as the War Hounds, bringing terror to the enemy on the battlefield with their battle axes and ferocious offensives. They had been unstoppable berserkers and insatiable slaughterers.

They too had once been part of the Imperium of Man, swearing an oath of loyalty to the Emperor and humanity until their Primarch was discovered.

Angron, the Primarch of the Twelfth Legion. After he was dragged from a slave world by the Emperor, the War Hounds of old vanished, leaving only the World Eaters, driven to madness by the Butcher's Nails.

Due to Angron's pathological hatred for the Emperor, they had been among the first to join the rebel forces when the Horus Heresy erupted.Subsequently, they unleashed their bloodlust and madness unrestrained upon Isstvan III, Isstvan V, Nuceria, and Terra. The World Eaters Legion even spearheaded the assault on the Imperial Palace, and it was said that one of their champions—Kharn, the Captain of the Eighth Assault Company—was the first to breach the walls.

But when the Emperor slew Horus on the flagship "Vengeful Spirit" at the cost of being grievously wounded, the rebel forces scattered, and the World Eaters had no choice but to retreat alongside the other traitor legions.

After their defeat, the survivors fled into the Eye of Terror along with the traitor legions.

As early as the Shadow Crusade, Angron had already been elevated to a Daemon Prince by Khorne, the Blood God. Thanks to the efforts of the World Eaters' senior commanders, they continued to operate as a legion, but most of their warriors fell to the Chaos Gods, becoming exceedingly bloodthirsty Chaos Space Marines.

It wasn't until the fratricidal slaughter provoked by Kharn finally fractured the entire legion into countless warbands that the history of the World Eaters Legion truly came to an end.

It was from that time that Morinit struck out on his own. He gathered a warband of a hundred men and named them the "Bloodbronze Claws". Riding aboard a cruiser named the "Flesh Ravager", they served as enforcers for various factions within the Eye of Terror in exchange for necessary supplies.

Wars in the Eye of Terror were as common as drinking water for a mortal, but most of the time, he managed to lead his warband to escape unscathed.

However, recently, while assisting a group of Dark Mechanicum cultists in excavating some ruins, they had been ambushed by a warband from the Third Legion. At a crucial moment, their employers had also turned coat, resulting in the warband suffering a crushing defeat and the sinking of the Flesh Ravager.

In the end, only nine members of the warband, including himself, were left. They barely managed to survive by escaping on a lifeboat, but they had lost their means of travel, and dying in the Warp was only a matter of time.

But it seemed the Blood God had not abandoned them. In their moment of despair, an Imperial transport ship had appeared. There seemed to be an issue with its Geller field, so Morinit was completely undetected as he piloted the lifeboat close.

By the time they boarded the transport ship, the crew, having just repaired the Geller field and suffered heavy casualties, ceased all resistance immediately.

Morinit hadn't killed too many of them, because they needed people to pilot the transport ship. And so, over an unknown period of time, they had converted the vast majority of the crew into Chaos cultists, and gleaned a crucial piece of information from them.

There was a Sword-class frigate nearing the completion of its repairs on Makand II.

This was vital information. Though they had temporarily secured a foothold, Morinit had never entertained the thought of rebuilding his forces with just a transport ship; he needed a frigate at the very least.

Although an intense desire urged him to rush to Makand II and seize the frigate at once, Morinit analyzed the situation with utmost calm.

First of all, his warband had been heavily devastated. Including himself, there were only nine Space Marines, and all they had was a transport ship.

Meanwhile, the enemy possessed a fully intact orbital defense station, built and controlled by the Adeptus Mechanicus. If they charged straight in like this, the probability of being blown to smithereens halfway there was a hundred percent.

Since victory could not be achieved through void warfare, the critical problem became how to board the orbital station.

Morinit wasn't a man given to deep thought, let alone with the Butcher's Nails constantly interfering with his mind. But on the eve of his warband's annihilation, he still forced himself to devise a scheme.

Lure the enemy onto their ship first, hijack their dropship, and then use that dropship to rapidly infiltrate the orbital station.

He was taking a gamble, betting that their defense systems wouldn't activate that quickly, betting they would issue a secure identification code to their own dropship, and betting the Imperials there weren't particularly bright.

And then, under the Blood God's favor, he had won the gamble.

The ensuing spoils of war would be immensely rich!

"Blood for the Blood God!"

Not far away, a Khornate warrior was dismembering a man in a regimental uniform, using his thick blood to paint blasphemous words and symbols on the wall.

Given how starving the warband was for new victims, it was understandable.

Even Morinit himself felt a shudder crawl up his spine when he thought of those screams.

However, despite controlling a section of the orbital station, the situation hadn't decisively changed. Slaughter was an entertaining pastime, but such a pastime was non-essential for now.

The orbital station's starport was where they needed to go.

As he pondered, Morinit felt a sharp twinge of pain in his skull.

He indulged the sensation, imagining the jagged teeth of a combat blade tearing deep into flesh.

The Butcher's Nails. The curse and blessing of the World Eaters, brought to the Legion by their Primarch Angron. Its essence was a neural implant that inflicted intense stimulation upon the victim's brain. Only blood and slaughter could dull this torment.

Some said the World Eaters' descent into damnation began with the Butcher's Nails. Morinit remained uncommitted on the matter.

Suddenly, the dreadful silence was shattered by a noise—the harsh, grating blare of an antiquated alarm bell.

"What happened?"

Morinit withdrew his gaze from the distance and turned toward the horrific slaughterhouse. Thousands of mutilated corpses carpeted the floor, and eight massive, crimson giants stood amidst the mountain of bodies and sea of blood, each breath releasing plumes of mist from their helmet grilles.

Every World Eater was draped with skulls and severed heads, worn like medals to show off.

"The weak Imperials are trying to seal us off from them."

A World Eater wrenched his battle axe from the gaping chest of a victim, bringing with it a sticky spray of blood and viscera.

"They won't get their wish."

Morinit knew full well the importance of time. The Imperials had many options; they could even choose to blow up the frigate, or wait for reinforcements from the Adeptus Mechanicus on the surface.

Any of these scenarios would be extremely disadvantageous to them.

And so, they immediately began moving toward the center of the orbital station, leaving a trail of endless slaughter in their wake.

Before their victims could even collapse onto the blood-soaked floors, the Chaos Space Marines were already surging toward the station's control nexus.

Atop the guarded structure, a cluster of void teleporter spires stabbed into the air, crowned by a crackling sphere of energy rods and erect relay nodes.

From a distance, an officer could be seen racing against time, grappling with the rotary lock of the nexus's southern blast door.

"Blood for the Blood God!"

Donning his helmet, fashioned in the style of the Blood God's crown, Morinit unleashed a terrifying war-cry. The officer staggered, disoriented by the sheer force of the roar. The very next moment, the World Eater descended upon him, his gauntlet smashing through the man's skull to grip his spine.

Then, like plucking a radish from the dirt, he ripped the pale skeleton, along with a sticky mess of internal organs, clean out of the chest cavity.

"Skulls for the Skull Throne!!!"