Warhammer 40K
Soloman the Blood God
By typicalteenager.
Disclaimer: I do not, and never will, own 40K, the characters etc.
Important: 1) This is only my second ever fanfic, so it may not be that good.
2) Thoughts are in Italic.
Well, here we go!
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Chapter 2: When human meets Blood God
(Please bear with me: I know I posted this as a comedy: but I need time to set the scene first).
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Back on the planet Tenalp, all was (mostly) quiet. Although many victory parties still went on, the majority had ended, mostly due to drunk soldiers collapsing into unconsciousness.
Personally, Soloman was glad of this. It meant he no longer had to hear the chanting and hailing of him as "the true Blood God!" As flattering as it was, it had become irritating once it reached the 5-hour mark. Thankfully the vast supply of booze had finally managed to shut them up, leaving them passed out on the ground, bottles still in hand. Now he was heading for his tent, intending to get some well-needed rest, and be ready for tomorrow, when the regiment would receive its next orders.
Upon arriving at his tent, just inside the ruined wall of some major hall, he spotted Balez, one of the regiment's three psykers, sitting perfectly still right next to it, staring into space. Nothing unusual there: Balez spent a lot of his time like this. And so Soloman ignored him, heading for the entrance of his tent, and was then caught off-guard when Balez suddenly grabbed his arm.
"Aaaaahhhhh! Damn it Balez: you almost gave me a heart attack".
But Balez seemed oblivious to this. He just stared directly at Soloman, making him very uneasy: after all, who knows what runs through the mind of a psyker? Then Balez spoke, in a strange monotone voice:
"Soloman Castern, I bear news for you. I have gazed into the Warp, and I have seen the most incredible thing."
Slightly worried, Soloman replied "what news is this you bring?"
"That you have incurred the wrath of a god. He will challenge you in anger, assuming a victory. But you shall bring him low, and you..........." and Balez whispered the last of his speech, "you shall become the new god in his place."
Soloman stared at Balez, as if his mind was unsure what to say, shocked at what he had heard.
In fact he knew exactly what to say, and said it 2 seconds later, with a slightly annoyed look on his face:
"Okay Balez: how much booze have you drained down your throat?"
" 'Tis not 'booze' that brings this about, trooper, but the whispering of the Warp which my mind forces me to painfully hear."
"Yeah, no doubt aided by a few bottles."
Now Balez stared silently at Soloman. Then he replied, in an angry voice that caught the trooper completely off-guard:
"Well then **** you, and I hope this god kicks your skinny ****ing ass!" And with that Balez got up and stormed off.
Soloman watched him storm off with bewilderment. Psykers were usual either silent or spooky: they certainly never got pissed off. Then his body reminded him how tired he was with a yawn, and so he gave up caring, and went into his tent. Within 5 minutes, he was fast asleep.
Fast asleep, and unaware that he had just had his last conversation with another human.
And that 10 minutes later, when Balez came to apologise for his outburst and admit that he had been at the bottle, he found that the tent, and its occupant, had simply vanished without a trace.
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Soloman was having an interesting dream involving himself, a plasma cannon in his hands, and two dozen very scared cultists staining their pants brown on the dangerous end of said cannon, when he was awoken. He looked up, still groggy, to see light pouring through the tent flap, and so got up, grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste, and went outside, thinking it was day.
When he got outside, his face dropped into a open-mouthed stare of someone who's just been majorly owned, one hand dropping the toothbrush, the other squeezing the toothpaste so hard that his hand was soon covered in blue, white, and red striped toothpaste.
(Typicalteenager: this is because it was Aquafresh toothpaste, which, thanks to awesomely irritating cheap budget advertising at every opportunity, was now celebrating it 4200 and something-th birthday, and was the official toothpaste supplier of the Imperial Guard.)
He was standing in the middle of a large dome-roofed room, which was both windowless and door-less, and seemed to be made entirely out of bronze. The light he had seen was not from a sunrise, but a large lamp on the ceiling giving off a red glow. The room was otherwise completely plain, apart from three other features: the first being his tent, now laying crumpled just behind him: the second being the floor, which, to his added horror and almost made him vomit, was made out of millions of gleaming, polished skulls from every race in existence (and some that were extinct, due mostly to a certain Blood God's intoxicated teenage years).
The third feature was the two beings standing about 30 feet in front, and both staring at him.
The 1st being was obviously a blood-letter of Khorne: he had seen pictures during regimental indoctrination and training, in class 259, lesson 12- Know Thy Enemy (he particularly remembered the images of blood-letters since those images had been the ones up when some bright spark pulled the pin of a grenade he'd smuggled into class, thinking it was a dummy, to scare the teacher with: as far as Soloman knew they were still scrubbing his puree remains off the ceiling). But it was the 2nd figure that drew his attention, for it was.........
a man. But with three major differences: humans don't have red skin, they don't have vampire-like fangs, and they sure as hell are not four times taller and three times wider than normal humans, with a dirty fanged grin plastered over their massive faces, and an axe the size of an Ogryn ripper gun hanging from their hand.
Soloman heard the trickling of water, and realised he'd pissed himself, made more embarrassing with the discovery that he was wearing his white pyjamas, which looked pink in the light.
Trying not to make things worse, Soloman managed to squeak out in a shrill voice word-by-word: "Um.... hello. Can........ I.......... help........... you?"
In response, the blood-letter grinned and, unrolling a piece of parchment that had appeared out of thin air (or whatever passed for air in this dome), and read in a clear and authoritative voice:
"Soloman Castern, a.k.a your average pathetic human: you see before you the great blood god himself, his bloodiness the lord Khorne. You have been brought here because other average pathetic humans have dared to claim that you could face his bloodiness and win. This test is your chance to be humiliated and for them to be proven wrong. You will compete with his bloodiness in three challenges, with his faithful manservant Alix- that's me- as the judge. You will undoubtedly lose, after which your soul shall be smashed to shards and scattered to the depths of the void."
The blood-letter/Alix rolled up the parchment with a smirk. "Any questions?"
But Soloman didn't answer, since only half his brain was registering what was being said.
The other half was conjuring up an image of Balez, looking very smug and amused, repeatedly chanting "I told you so, I told you so, I told you so......"
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Typicalteenager: And so, with Soloman finding himself royally screwed, will he be able to survive this nightmare he is now well over his head into? What are these three challenges that will determine his victory or soul-smashing? And why does Khorne have such a massive axe: is he compensating for something- who knows? I sure don't.
All will be revealed (well, the 1st two points at least) in chapter 3 of Soloman the Blood God!