Finally, the battle with the Barghesi was over. Finally, the soldiers of the Blood God could rest. The Blood God himself would bless them and the Blood God knew that. "Well done, Commander Glucon," Khorne said from his realm. "This is your greatest victory after a long line. In exchange for the blood you spill, I elevate you. Welcome to daemonhood."

On a rogue planet by the Grendel Stars, the Space Marine leader, his armour lost and his body seeping with fluid, laughed. His mortal, albeit enhanced, shell cracked and shivered as the energy of the Warp spilled into him. In a blink, a 12ft crimson behemoth stood where Glucon had been lying and roared, "THIS IS MY WORLD! IN THE NAME OF KHORNE, I DEDICATE THIS WORLD TO SLAUGHTER! MY FRIENDS, GO! ENJOY YOURSELVES ELSEWHERE!"

"Commander?" an Berserker asked.

"YOU MUST LEAVE ME! I AM THE GOD OF THIS PLANET. ITS PEOPLE ARE MINE! WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE! GET OUT!"

Khorne smiled at the gain of a new servant. Sure, the new servant was lower than his new peers, not that many of them would tell him that, but good work must be rewarded. The colossal warrior sat back on his throne, built from the skulls of the fallen, and gazed over his realm. How satisfying to see the red skies, the beasts in the cages, the eternal forges, and the rivers of blood. The flow was steady, the power strong. Blood came to the Blood God. What could possibly go wrong. "Avicenna! How dare you intrude!"

The transparent form of a bloated, green-brown, lump of flesh hovered before Khorne's eyes. "Greetings, Joan. I have a proposition. I will decay and infect an agri world, or would if my minions had been useful."

"Why should I care? Will there be blood? Have you asked the other two?"

"Jeremy and Sun Tzu both refused. In fact, I think Tzu's planning something big."

"He's always planning something big and planning for the plan to fail."

"Yes, he ignored me. However, he is Tzeentch so he probably wouldn't help anyway. Bentham just refused but I think he secretly wants to send his Daemons to slaughter farmers."

"Nurgle, you and Slaanesh can slaughter all the farmers you like. Will there be proper enemies?"

"Yes, Joan, there will. There's Arbites, PDF, Sororitas, and the Vorpal Swords are nearby."

"I will give you aid. However, I will consult my sources first to see what your situation is."

Khorne sighed as Nurgle vanished. His mouth opened and sever hundred Imperial Astropaths died at that moment. "Doombreed! Skulltaker! Ka'Bandha! Angron! Thorgar! Valkia!" The Blood God paused and two more words came out, unusually cautiously. "Gork! Mork!"

With the help of his splinters, his raised mortals, and the two green brutes, Khorne could now simulate in his mind what happened. He entered his mind.

"Oh no," he said as he looked down at himself or rather herself. "I'm Joan the Maid again."

In the body of a human teenage girl encased in armour and carrying a banner showing 5 lilies, Khorne walked through the vision. She was on a farm, an abattoir. Beasts, some with hooves, some with horns, and some resembling cows, made their last journey. The animals became meat, sliced into bits, and their blood drained into buckets. Khorne smiled but she would've preferred the cows to have a decent chance of survival. They were in a battle they could not win. The gain of blood would be less.

"How the konx are you late again?" someone screamed. Khorne saw that the speaker was a slight man wearing a blood-stained apron. "You must be the laziest ufer on Gheistos!"

Khorne again smiled but with reservations. The show of blood was great but leaving an apron unclean was unhygienic and so could empower Nurgle. But she remembered that Nurgle had attacked this world first, so waited to see what happened. "Hold on, that headache that boy has. He's a psyker. If that boss beats him, he could... He has."

The boy, a twelve-year old weakling, swore. Khorne winced- Joan hated swearing and that was the third swear word- but realised that the boy hadn't sworn in Gothic. It was a Daemon portal activator.

Millions of flies materialised as the air took the form of shattered glass. In fact, reality itself had shattered. The flies, massive and with a face like that of the boy, surrounded the pair of mortals. Seconds later, they were nothing more than a heaving mass of flesh. The first green cyclops emerged.

Khorne stepped outside and took a seat. She recalled that Joan had never shed blood but was still responsible directly for the deaths of thousands and indirectly for millions. She still wondered if Doombreed should have been Khorne, since he was around two hundred years before Joan, and if she should have become a simple Daemon, but that was the way of the Warp.

It was ironic that for all the Daemonic snobbery about Daemon Princes not being real Daemons because they were once human, that the Daemonic progenitors were once human themselves. The swirling energy from the War in Heaven and, millennia later, the Fall of the Eldar had indeed formed into intelligent beings but that energy needed a solid basis. Humanity may have been a bunch of apes on a small blue dot but the psychic potential made human souls perfect. From throughout time, the Warp turned at least 4 human souls into the Chaos Gods. All except Tzeentch- formerly Sun Tzu- had formed before their human selves had been born. Two versions of the same being coexisting- that was nothing special in the Warp. Such paradoxes happened all the time.

Joan would have preferred being a mere Daemon- they get to go into realspace- but she was happy being the Blood God himself. It helped that she knew Joan of Arc could never have become a Khornate Daemon Prince due to her low kill rate compared to Angron and the others. The only way for Joan of Arc into the realm of Khorne other than becoming Khorne himself would have been for her to become one of the lost souls slaving in the Daemon Forges.

Khorne's concentration broke as she saw that the flies had turned everyone in the abattoir and the nearby homes into Plague Zombies. Again, Khorne had a problem. Nurgle was depriving mortals of their free will. Khorne loved everyone having free will, except Spawn scum. Nevertheless, the Plaguebearers and the Zombies would soon break through the complex perimeter.

"ALERT! QUARANTINE! THIS FACILITY IS UNDER QUARANTINE!"

Khorne knew that in minutes, the Adeptus Arbites would turn up. The Blood God knew that the toy soldiers probably could delay Nurgle's troops but that they'd need the real soldiers of the Planetary Defence Force to truly defeat the Daemon hordes. "Ah yes, the Order of the Bloody Rose is here. I like them."

Indeed, the regular soldiers massacred the Zombies and kept the Daemons out of the town centre. Blood red power armour and white helmets heralded the arrival of the Sisters of Battle. Flame and bolts banished the last of the Daemons, with help from sinners swinging chainswords. "I love these girls," Khorne whispered. "They remind me of someone else."

Returning to the present, Khorne found himself back in his normal form and pointed to the planet Gheistos in the Map of Violence. This parchment of numerous mortal flesh showed in blood whatever Khorne wanted to show his children. "I will aid Nurgle in opening up a larger portal. Prepare to attack."

Several Bloodletters looked at each other. Khorne decided to put everything in another way. "Go! Enjoy yourselves!"