You are nothing more than a beast of war to them, they unleash you to do battle then put you back in your cage until they need to call upon you again to shed more blood. But you were a mighty hero once, remember? You do remember, don’t you, Mortis Metalikus?
I looked down at the two pieces of the ivory warrior and it reminded me so much of the little pieces of the game I used to play with him, before he made me like this, when my body was my own and I didn’t hear the voices.
The voices. Thousands of them at war in my skull. They taunted me, robbed me of my sanity and amplified my pain.
I didn’t want to listen to them, never wanted to listen to them, just as I didn’t want to kill and kill over and over again just to make them stop for the briefest of moments. But the voices wouldn’t stop, every waking moment they spoke to me and when rest did come, despite being conditioned not to dream, their dying faces pursued me beyond the realm of sleep.
Still, I refused, and the voices grew louder. My brother, my true brother, argued with me, tried to reason with me. He told me that I had to kill if I wanted the voices to stop, but again I refused and they only grew louder.
You should have heeded him, you pathetic wretch. He was always the strong one, always the leader. If only you’d listened to him while you had the chance then you wouldn’t be like this now.
A planet burned.
He was already set upon his path but I would have no part of it. When I defied him, he made me his prisoner, the bonds of true brotherhood being all that prevented him from slaying me, and while the Crimson Sabres metamorphosed into the Crimson Slaughter, I rotted in a cell and slowly went mad.
Sometimes, at night, he would come to me in my prison and urge me to reconsider. The voices would add support to his words but I resisted. He told me that my mind was no longer my own, that I was no longer responsible for my actions and should give myself over to the slaughter. My brother, this true brother, could not break me, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard the voices tried.
The Eye that does not blink.
Many years passed, years in which I did not feel a sun against my skin or alien ground beneath my feet. I existed in a dark void, the voices my only companions. From time to time, he still came to see me in my cell but the visits were more infrequent and every time I saw him, he resembled less and less the warrior I once called brother. The voices were so many and so loud by then that their words no longer made any sense to me, just a dirge that served to block out his words of coaxing.
The warrior in blue, what is he doing?
I lost all sense of time, all sense of space, all sense of identity. In those scant moments when the voices were cogent they whispered to me of the horrors wrought by my brothers – and my true brother. They showed me glimpses of things as I slept: streets running with rivers of blood; children watching in terror as their parents were slaughtered, knowing that they were next for the butcher’s knife; millions of souls crying out in horror as their world was set ablaze; the new prison that was being constructed for me.
Did we show you these things, Mortis Metalikus, or were you already seeing them through your own eyes by this point?
Then they came for me.
My brothers had changed so much during my incarceration; though my madness had claimed enough of my memory that I could not remember their names, I knew that much to be true. Where once were the smooth curves of their Space Marine power armour, there were now spikes and ridges, horns protruding from helmets. Those that eschewed helmets had strange marks upon their skin and when I saw them the voices grew ever more excited. Even the ship on board which I had been kept prisoner had been altered since the last time I had seen outside my tiny cell.
They mocked me, my brothers, just as the voices had mocked me all these years and I fought them. Not because they mocked me, or because they had turned their backs on me all these years, locked me away so they did not have to face a reminder of their former glory. Nor was it the madness that drove me to do battle with them, or a desire to use their souls to bargain with the voices for silence. It was survival that led me to bite and kick and scratch them that day, as they carried me through the now organic corridors. The voices had told me what awaited me and an eternity spent dwelling in a dank, dark cell was infinitely preferable to what my brother, my true brother, had in store for me.
I wish I had no memory of what happened next, that my insanity would obscure any kind of recollection of the atrocity he committed, but the voices constantly remind me and I am forced to relive the horror every second of my existence.
We do not have to. That moment was the greatest of your life and you bask in it constantly knowing that it was the making of you.
The chamber was filled with all manner of instruments and devices and black-robed acolytes muttered prayers in dark tongues while burning vile-smelling incense over them. My brothers placed me on an obsidian plinth–
Your brothers didn’t have to, you went willingly once you knew the glorious new form you were about to take.
–and strapped me down with thick chains that burned my flesh. I fought them until the very last, biting and gouging them even as my bonds were tightened and all hope of escape was lost.
Liar! You thanked every one of them for giving you the opportunity to serve, embraced them each in gratitude for allowing you to become more than what you were.
My brother, my true brother, came to me then, having stood to one side while his Crimson Slaughter laid me down like an animal to sacrifice.
‘Brother, I have found a way to rid us of our curse, to be free of the voices once and for all. But I need your help. Will you help me? Will you help us?’ He swept his arm around theatrically to indicate the other former Crimson Sabres in the chamber.
My years of captivity had deprived me of the ability of speech but I did not need words to issue my response. With every fibre of my being, I tapped into memories long since forgotten, activated my Betcher’s gland and spat a gobbet of acid in his face. My brother, my true brother, did not flinch but the voices told me he still bears the scar to this day.
‘So be it.’
He reached down and grabbed me by the throat, pulling against my jaw until I felt bones separate and flesh tear. In one clean action, he ripped my head and spine clear of my body and turned me so that I was looking down at my bloody remains. I tried to scream but no sound came out, my mouth no longer connected to anything capable of generating noise.
‘Just as we were reborn and shaped anew, so shall you be,’ he said as he handed my silently screaming head to a black-robed priest.
I remained conscious for the rest of the procedure.
I know not if it was days, weeks or months those dark acolytes toiled in that chamber of horrors, but they took what little was left of me and interred me in the Helbrute. Pain wracked me constantly as control of my new body’s life support and weapon systems were hardwired into my brain and my spine fused to the daemonic workings that controlled my motor functions. One of the last systems to be brought online was my vocal array and the pent-up scream of agony I unleashed, once I was finally able, left half a dozen acolytes dying a slow painful death as they bled out through ruptured skulls.
The warrior in blue, what is he doing?
When the acolytes were through, my brother, my true brother, came to see me again, just as he had done so many times in my previous prison. He looked upon my new body and smiled.
‘Oh, the things we will achieve,’ he said as he circled me, inspecting me up and down. ‘The Crimson Slaughter will no longer be slaves to the dead souls we massacred so long ago.’
You will! You will!
‘No longer will we have to kill to silence their voices, to cease the waking nightmares that haunt us.’
You will! You will!
‘Together, brother, you and I will rid us of our curse and make us masters of our own destiny once again.’
Poor deluded fool.
‘But now that you are ready to take your place alongside your brethren, we shall have to give you a name.’
My name. The voices had riven my mind to such a degree that I could no longer remember my own name.
‘Your old one will not do, as in the currency the Crimson Slaughter now trade, a true name is the most valuable coin of all. Instead you shall be known as Mortis Metalikus and in time the Imperium will tremble at the utterance of those words.’ My brother, my true brother, motioned to one of the acolytes. ‘But for now, you must rest. I will come for you again when the Crimson Slaughter have need.’
I wanted to strike him where he stood, to eliminate him in revenge for the thing he had turned me into, but before I had the chance the acolyte deactivated the Helbrute’s mechanics and as my brother, my true brother, strode out of the chamber I was left only with the voices to provide any distraction from the constant pain.
The warrior in blue, what is he doing?