Loyalty’s Reward

"MOVE OUT!"

The order rang with tones of distortion and screeching metal, less a voiced command than a crash of thunder. As he stepped in time with his platoon, Lendus flexed the now unfamiliar muscles of his right arm. Once a mirror of his left, the flesh now ran together in strange ripples and ridges from the elbow down. Though his forefinger remained largely the same, his other three were melded into one powerful digit, tipped with a wicked talon. His thumb was similarly altered, a stubby nub ending in a black dewclaw. He had practiced his drills with it until he could hold his lasgun steady again, but its unfamiliarity continued to press on him. Three times that morning he had reached for some item and knocked it to the ground with uneven fingers.

It did not feel unpleasant, though. This was the blessing of the gods. He was stronger now, and though the deadly arm had the misfortune to be attached to his unworthy frame, it would help him serve his masters. And if he served them well, there would be more to follow. This Lendus had seen, time and again under the Chimera Legion.

He remembered the speech he had received upon swearing loyalty to the Legion, not four hours after leaving his Commissar the farewell gift of a trench knife in the back of the head. He remembered the awe and terror and ecstasy as a Fallen Astartes himself deigned to address the deserters. "I am Sergeant Karzan," he told them, with a voice of gravel and feedback. He walked among their prostrated forms, his own right arm a mass of twisted tendrils capped with a long, cruel spike. The quake of each slow step sent a burst of shakes through Lendus's body. "From this moment to the end of your miserable brief existence, your lives are forfeit to the legion."

THUMP. A massive, armored boot sent the world to shiver.

"You will serve us without question."

THUMP.

"You will worship the Four Ruinous Powers and the Crucible of the Void."

THUMP.

"And you will die at our command."

Lendus looked back to Sergeant Karzan, whose armored squad towered over their mortal serfs, and felt that familiar rush of mixed emotions, awe and fear and shame swirled together. Since that great day, the massive sergeant had spared the cult under his command as much attention as that of a swarm of annoying insects, as had the rest of his squad. Lendus had broken three ribs when he had wandered into the path of a Chaos Marine. The immortal had swatted him away without so much as a glance downwards.

As was right. As was fitting. He was a servant. But still...

He had heard the whispers of the cult. They said that if a mortal proved himself, was devoted and loyal and brave beyond measure, they might be selected to join the ranks of the Chimera. It was one in a thousand, they said. No, one in a hundred thousand. But it was a chance.

The platoon shuddered to a halt. Lendus looked back again. Karzan stood with hand raised, eyes scouring the cliffs to either side of the narrow path. Though he wore no helmet, his face, as always, was almost unreadable.

His hand dipped down, came up again with a bolt pistol.

"DEFENSIVE POSITIONS!" he shouted. "AMBUSH!"

The world exploded into green.

They had been setting up a forward camp. Lendus was hauling a rack of promethium canisters to the command building. Careful, careful, he thought. He could imagine the kind of chaos a dozen burst cans of fuel could do, and it wasn't the good kind.

He fumbled at the latch with his free hand, finally popping it open. The topmost canister, already precariously balanced, started slowly to roll out.

Lendus could have easily caught it. It was certainly his plan. But it wasn't until his arm was already halfway up to intercept it that he remembered that his hand had been somewhat altered. The massive talon drew a long scratch across the canister, and knocked it to the ground leaking promethium. Lendus instinctively went to grab at it with his left, only to hear the heart-stopping clatter of the rack he had been supporting tip and fall, spilling canisters across the ground.

As he stood in shock, afraid to move, trying to survey the damage, a massive hand fell upon his shoulder. He was spun around with dizzying force, to look up to the eyes of Sergeant Karzan.

The sergeant looked at him in silence for a moment, his enormous face as indecipherable as ever. Finally he leaned close.

"I crafted your arm myself," he growled, "in the foolish hope that you may be of some possible use to us, and not a useless bag of blood and guts. I have invested time and energy in your miserable life, and you have an obligation to at least take a single foe down before you die. Is that understood?" Lendus could only nod. "Good." Karzan straightened. "Clean this up."

Lendus watched him walk away, blood rushing to his face in humiliation.

As he looked, though, the figure seemed to waver in the air, white fog seeping in at the edges of his vision. A sound was growing in the distance, a ringing that grew louder and louder until it eclipsed every sensation. What, he thought, what is this?

With a great effort, he pulled himself to awareness. The memory was gone. He lay across two of his fellow soldiers, bodies mutilated beyond recognition. He had been fighting, he remembered, fighting the greenskins that had ambushed them, and one had caught him in the head with the flat of a crude axe... An alien hand grasped his shoulder, flipping him to face the sky. An ork, peering at him through beady eyes, spread its fangs in a grin at finding a live victim. It raised its axe for a final stroke.

Lendus lashed out with a shout of revulsion. The talon of his right hand buried itself in the side of the ork's thick neck. It paused, eyes glazing for a moment, then clearing again as it brought the axe down. Lendus twisted and sent the blade deep into the corpse behind him. He heaved with his powerful arm, pulling himself upright and tearing the ork's throat out in one motion. It fell to its knees, then to the ground.

He looked about in dazed confusion. Battle still raged around him, though human and ork corpses were strewn about in equal number. The fighting now seemed contained to a few small groups around the dead.

He saw Sergeant Karzan, standing over two of his fallen brothers, dueling furiously with the largest ork he'd ever seen. Beset on all sides, the sergeant whirled to fire his bolt pistol through an ork's gaping mouth. His tentacled arm tensed, then pulsed, the mass of tendrils sending the spike bursting out with force enough to punch straight through another's chest. The maneuver cost him, however. The massive ork brought down a great chainfist in a heavy blow, grinding through Karzan's pauldron and digging deep into the flesh beneath. Karzan staggered backwards.

Rage bloomed in Lendus's chest, flooding his body with a terrible pounding heat. He found himself sprinting towards the ork, growling some inarticulate noise as he ran. As the beast bent to grab the sergeant, Lendus leapt onto its back.

The impact drove the breath from his body. Still wheezing out a low scream of rage, Lendus scrabbled for handholds among the scraps of rusted armor as the creature straightened in consternation. He grabbed a wedge of crudely welded metal at the ork's shoulder, heaving himself up, and swung his clawed arm across the other shoulder, grasping blindly.

One tremendous arm came back to pry him off. It crushed him against the sharp points of the beast's armor, but its fingers could not find him. Lendus grabbed again, and this time was rewarded with a howl of pain. His talon had hooked into the ork's mouth.

He held on grimly as the creature staggered backwards, holding tight in a cruel fish-hook. The chainfisted hand came up to grab him, but in the ork's agony he only gashed himself across the face with the whirling blades.

He became aware of Sergeant Karzan, upright and attacking once more. His bolt pistol barked, firing again and again, as his monstrous arm tensed and pulsed, driving the spike into the beast a dozen times.

Then the chainfist came up again, and found him. Lendus felt a tearing, excruciating pain along his side. Then he was up, and down, as the ork flipped him away. He lay on the ground. His arm and his leg were gone, chewed away by the metal blades. His skin was burned and raw, layers of flesh disintegrated by the power field. He could see the shiny wet meat of his intestines, burst out of the terrible wound the fist had drawn across his body.

He saw Sergeant Karzan, standing over the slain ork. The sergeant looked at him, his face a tide of strange emotions.

And then he saw nothing.

Lendus faded in and out of the world.

The pain was still there, flaring up in steady, regular bursts. Each burst came with a great, shaking noise, a concussive THUMP of steel meeting earth.

THUMP.

THUMP.

He drifted into coherency for a brief moment, enough to identify a curious sensation: that of being carried, almost cradled, in two enormous arms.

THUMP.

THUMP.

Again he regained his senses for a moment. He saw the flared tents and emblazoned symbols of the forward camp. He saw faces, many faces of soldiers. They gazed up at him, with awe and fear and ecstasy.

He struggled to pull his head up. On one side he saw the face of Sergeant Karzan, closer than ever before. He looked down at him, still with that strange mix of emotions.

To his other side, approaching slowly, was the chirurgeon's tent.

THUMP.

THUMP.

­

He thought he had felt pain before. He was wrong. Fire coursed through his veins, spiraling inwards and outwards in strange patterns. His bones creaked and groaned as they moved in unfamiliar ways. His head was a nexus of agony.

He could feel his body convulsing on the table, and he could hear his own piercing screams. But he heard something else, as well. A voice like gravel and feedback, constantly speaking, even through the worst pain. He could not make out the words, but the tone was calming. Almost soothing.

The voice would return him to sanity. And then the agony would resume.

­

He awoke. The tent was dark and quiet. The spindly arms of the medicae equipment hung in the air, unused for the moment.

He struggled to sit up, and fell off the table. Everything felt different. His arms would not move the way they should, nor his legs. His eyes struggled to focus, overlapping in queer ways.

A figure sat at the edge of the tent, watching him. Who was he? Lendus struggled to find the name, but it was so hard to think. His mind ran down strange paths, impossible to pull together into a coherent thought. Who is this, he thought. And who am I?

The figure stood up, and walked to him. Lendus felt no fear, only a certain sense of expectancy.

The towering man knelt down, and put his hand to Lendus's head. He was silent for a long time.

"I am Karzan," he said finally, "And you are Lendus." He stroked Lendus's head with a thumb. The gesture was surprisingly comforting. "From this moment to the end of your life, you are mine."

You will serve me without question."

You will hunt down my enemies, and drag them from dark and hidden places." Lendus tried to speak, but all that came out was a peculiar whine.

"And you will be loyal to me until the end."

Lendus pawed at Karzan's arm, then slobbered happily at him.

Karzan smiled.

THE END