Undercity, Holy Terra, 0 853.999.M41
The last thing that the millennial had expected during his visit to the third location - the Adeptus Arbites - was to find himself being sent out by the Grand Provost Marshal on what was considered to be a "standard exercise." Apparently, there was some sort of Chaos death cult in the undercity that was threatening to spread, and to prove that he was worth something in this day and age, the High Lord had sent him along as part of a squad to handle the situation with the authority of an Arbitrator of the Adeptus Arbites - complete with an ill-fitting suit of carapace armor, a power maul, and a suppression shield. He had barely learned how to use his weapons while riding the Repressor to the site of the cultist-infested building when he and a half-dozen others were released from the vehicle, along with a Senior Judge named Traggat. In the event that anyone came out of the situation wounded(almost a guarantee), a Samaritan ambulance was on the scene to provide medical care.
"Alright... Boson and Higgs will stay to the sides of the door." Traggat planned out the entrance strategy on how best they would engage the murderous assassins within, ceasing their pernicious rituals in the name of Khorne. "The rest of you will flood in after me. And you..." He pointed directly at the ancient human. "You will break down the door."
Considering that this man was one of the most ruthless judges in the entire Imperium, possibly even the entire galaxy, he had very little choice in the matter. Mumbling quietly under his breath, glad that he had no idea how to turn the vox caster in the helmet on, he stepped forward and prepared the power maul for action.
Let's see... Pull the handle out... Rotate to the highest setting... Push the handle in... Turn the weapon on...
Once the mental run-through of activating the power maul had been completed, he took the suppressor shield and slipped it over his back, grasping the energy field-covered weapon with both hands before swinging it at the door. What happened next was something that the Arbitrators did not expect.
Ordinarily, the door was expected to be sent back only a short distance after a couple of swings had damaged the hinges. The millennial's way of doing things having been oddly traditional, smashing a target with the hardest swing you could make before it broke. The energy field, in concert with the resulting amount of physical force used, busted a tremendous hole in the door, whose edges glowed white hot before the blockage slowly fell to the ground, the hinges unable to maintain integrity. On the far side of the wall was one of the assassins, a man garbed entirely in a leather bodysuit from head to toe. He was dead, as fragments of the door were sent flying down the hallway, perforating his skull and torso while pinning his fresh remains to the wall. He appeared to be the only one there - which meant that the others were inevitably hiding.
There was a hallway in the back of the room. Higgs was sent around the corner first - and came across a quartet of female assassins who grabbed him, blood and gore rushing from around the corner as the Khornate cultists devoured his still-living flesh. His screams became gurgled, a sign of his throat having been slit, as the millennial moved towards the corner.
Let's see... They're around the corner, and they know I'll be coming... They're waiting for me... But what if I..?
Well, it was worth a shot. Grabbing the power maul with both hands once more, he slammed it at the corner, sending chunks of plasteel and concrete flying through the hallway. He quickly brought up the suppressor shield, activating it just in time to electrocute a wounded assassin into unconsciousness. Two others were dead, along with the headless corpse of Higgs, and a blood trail indicated that another, though wounded, had escaped further into the building. It was a simple single-story place, and the Arbitrators began to spread out through the building, looking for any other assassins that had hidden away, storm shields at the ready.
Traggat and the millennial followed the blood trail through a winding pathway in the building before it stopped at a seemingly solid wall. Before he could pound it into dust, however, Traggat took out his shotgun and cocked a hellfire round, burning away the 'solid' wall with a potent acid and revealing a pathway down into the basement of the building. A faint noise and eerie purple light could be seen - though what these were signs of, no one knew. Well, he didn't know. Traggat and the others more than likely would recognize it for what it was.
He was cautious now, having pressed the button to turn his power maul off for the time being while inching down the hallway, looking over the suppressor shield as he moved as quietly as he could down the hallway. He was forced to move a more manageable speed, though, as Traggat shoved him forward, tired of 'wasting time,' as he viewed it. Eventually, the two would enter the basement to find a horrifying sight.
Higgs' head was at the middle of a circle of a half-dozen cultists, including the wounded one, whose blood flowed on top of the cranium. A strange energy seemed to pulsate as the head's eyes looked around, jaw opening in senseless agony as flesh was soon burned away. The other remaining Arbitrators soon caught up to the pair in time to watch as the head cultist touched a crude metal rod with a crystal sphere on the end to the skull, mouth open, bone bleached as though it had been left in the desert for years. A glowing essence seemed to come from the mouth of what had once been the top of a noble Arbitrator, entering the gem before it was pressed against the wounded cultist, her blood seemingly conducting the arcane sorcery that was being practiced.
Flesh cracked, as she vomited blood and gore, her body stretching, twisting, changing... The power of Chaos flowed through her as she surrendered herself to the will of the Blood God, the cult's offering accepted as a daemon slowly took its place in the mortal realm. What had been a lowly human was no longer - there was only a crimson red creature, elongated skull capped with tremendous horns. Spikes stabbed from its flesh, hooved legs hinged further back than a chicken's as a weapon of truly horrific proportions materialized in its hand - a blade that looked as though it had been forged in the very fires of hell itself. With a horrifying roar, the daemon rushed forward, preparing to engage Traggat.
The judge was not a man to enjoy close combat - he brought up a chainsword to engage the blade of the Khornate abomination before attempting to fire a spread of shells from his shotgun into the creature, who quickly dodged it as though it had phased out of existence for a brief moment. Grabbing Traggat with a claw, the devilish monstrosity tossed him against the far wall, and would've engaged him had the millennial not shoved his shield into the daemon's back. Electricity arced over the Bloodletter's flesh as it cried out in agony, giving the most senior Arbites an opportunity to slowly recover as the beast turned to engage the carapace-armored figure.
A pound on the shield with the Hellblade was resisted. Then two, then three. On the fourth try, though, the Bloodletter stabbed, piercing the electroshock unit and effectively neutering the bulwark's protective capability. Another slash tore most of the upper portion of the shield away, and the millennial found himself standing with only a power maul to protect himself with. The daemon growled before rushing towards the human who was far older than he appeared - a maul was hardly the weapon to fight a sword with.
With the power having been turned to full, he swung the power weapon at the floor. The resulting shockwave caused the Bloodletter to trip, falling forward in its charge as he ducked to the side. Seeing an opportunity, however, he snagged one of the seven foot tall beast's flesh-spikes, using the leverage to get on top of the fallen daemon as he, again and again, slammed the maul onto the creature's head, trying desperately to kill it. The horrific beast was similar to the most grotesque creatures of his time all wrapped into one, and it needed to die.
But the power maul simply couldn't cut it. Soon its power died, leaving the millennial as well-armed as a primitive with a stick, the daemon rearing up and sending him flying back a ways off the back of Khorne's servant. As it turned around, though, the blast of glowing shards of metal went through its head, and it fell lifelessly to the ground. This was certainly Traggat's doing, and indeed it had been. "Cryptus shells... Only that which is holy can properly send the servants of Chaos back to the Warp where they belong."
The few surviving cultists found themselves being dragged to the front in various stages of physical condition. Many had broken or bruised ribs, and one was paralyzed from the waist down thanks to the strike of a power maul to the middle of his spine. Lined up in front of the building, the Judge looked them all over, nothing but contempt found on his face for their heretical actions.
"By the laws of the Most Holy God Emperor of Mankind's Imperium as eternally bound within the Book of Judgement," he took his shotgun in one hand, "I sentence you to the appropriate punishment for your crimes." Raising it, he fired at the head of the first cultist, blowing it into a mass of brains and other gore before doing the same slowly and surely down the line. Once the corpses in question were made permanently dead through driving the Arbitrators' Repressor over them several times, the bloodied paste was left in front of the building as a sign to those who would commit heresy against the Emperor - their fate would be sealed, the same of all traitors.
Two of the Arbitrators were left in front of the building, to await a team that would begin the process of purging all Chaos iconography. A priest of the Ecclesiarchy would eventually be brought in to reconsecrate it to the Emperor, making it a suitable residence or place of commerce once more. And as he pondered over the distressing thought that daemons were even more horrifying than history had recorded, Traggat eyed him with a stare he couldn't ignore, even in carapace armor.
"You performed... adequately, considering that this was your first experience in the field. Your handling of the daemon was somewhat impressive, though the destruction of that suppressor shield means we will need a new pair of weapons. And thanks to that, you may keep your power maul, though you will return the armor before leaving. The Grand Provost Marshal was impressed by your performance and complements you - his favor is my favor." So it seemed, anyways - he didn't seem to enthused by what the millennial had done.
This is even worse of a future than Stephen Hawking predicted...
But was it truly? He had predicted the destruction of the human race - and in a way, he had been correct. Humanity as it had once existed was no more, a twisted mockery of its former self forged by adapting cultured from the anarcho-primitive existence of what had been the techno-barbarian tribes. But while Hawking believed there to not be angels or demons, the millennial's encounter certainly seemed to have disproved that theory. Apparently, there were places, even on Earth, where the most barbaric of rituals were still conducted, rituals considered anathema even during his time alive.
And it was only going to get worse.