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 4: Chess- daemonic style

(Note: Sorry for lack of activity. Hopefully I'll be able to do quite a few chapters during the summer).

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After a moment of complete darkness, the technicolour bubbles reformed into the room of the second challenge. If you could call it a room.

Here, everything was completely void of colour and empty, stretching as far as the eye could see and beyond: an endless mass of white. The only objects in the room were three wooden chairs of different sizes, a round wooden table, and........

A chess set.

Soloman felt a fresh wave of disbelief hit him, and before he could stop himself exclaimed "What the ****? The second challenge is a game of chess- you must be joking."

Khorne simply ignored his outburst, and went to sit in the largest chair. Mortraz on the other hand raised an eyebrow at Soloman, and replied "Well little beef-cake, I guess you've never played a god's version of chess then. Please, sit in the chair opposite darrrrling, and all will be revealed."

Still disbelieving what was happening, Soloman went and sat in the smallest chair, now wondering how the hell they were supposed to play since he now discovered that there were no pieces to use, while Mortraz went to the final seat and sat down: cross-legged of course. But as he did so, the mass of white all around them seemed to fade away, like the effect of a flash-grenade dying away, and when it had completely gone, Soloman's jaw dropped in complete shock.

They were now sitting in the air of some planet, the sun blazing down indicating that was midday, about 50 feet off the ground. The ground in question was a barren grey landscape of some moon, with a valley directly below them. And on either side of this valley were two armies: one of chaos space marines, the other an ork horde.

Mortraz reached over and pushed Soloman's still open jaw shut, then he made his second speech: "Second, a god must have power over the material universe, and be able to bend it to his will. This challenge shall be a game of chess: darrrrling shall play as the chaos marines, and little beef-cake will play as the orks. The winner of this game will win the challenge."

Confused, Soloman's gaze returned to the chess board, and found that he now had playing pieces, but which resembled the orks below him. The king for instance was represented by a mega-armoured ork warboss, and his 'queen' was a rag-clothed orc weirdboy. Khorne's pieces too were modelled on his force: his 'king' was a chaos terminator commander, his 'queen' a chaos sorcerer.

Mortraz smiled at them both. "Well now: good luck gentlemen, and...... begin."

Khorne now looked at Soloman for the first time since the beginning of the previous challenge, and the black voids he called eyes were filled with loathing. "You may have won the first challenge human," he muttered,his voice full of barely-suppressed rage, "but here you will fail, and you will trouble me no more." And with that 'charming' remark, Khorne made the opening move, pushing one of his pawns (which looked like chaos tactical marines) forward.

As he did so, Soloman heard the clunks of metallic footsteps. Looking down, he saw that one of the chaos tactical squads was marching forward, bolters held up towards the green tide of orks. Now Soloman understood what Mortraz had meant by 'a god's version of chess': they were not just playing a game, but also controlling the actions and fate of thousands of lives below them, as well as the outcome of the battle.

However, this time Soloman was feeling calmer and more confident about his prospects of winning this challenge. During his childhood, his father, hoping to drum some etiquette into him, had made him do a variety of dull yet 'socially-advantageous and pleasing' activities. One such activity had been to learn to play chess, every Sunday afternoon having to play games with the old man. It had been a dull, never-ending gauntlet, and once he'd been accepted for basic training in the Imperial Guard, Soloman had shoved away the chess set and not touched it since.

He never thought he'd be grateful to the uncaring bastard, but yet now he was. True he hadn't practised for just over a year, but it would be a lot easier winning this than the previous challenge.

So, taking a calming breath, Soloman moved a pawn/ork mob, and the game began.

On the planet below, the orks moved to battle as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10 minutes past, 20 minutes passed, an hour, 2 hours......

Three hours after the game began, and still both battles raged, above and below. The game seemed absurdly long, but with Blood God and human trying to play with various strategies to beat the other, and both armies below constantly regrouping and returning to the fight, 3 hours was actually relatively short compared to some games of chess played by Gods.

(Typicalteenager: The record for the longest game was between the minor Chaos God of Intelligence and another minor God of Crusades from some long-forgotten religion. They began a game during the 38th Millennium with a twist: whenever a piece was destroyed, it returned to play in its starting position 5 turns later. The two gods have never been seen since: most reckon they are still playing to this very day.)

Both players only had three pieces left: their kings, queens, and a castle each (or rather, the castles being an ork nob squad and chaos raptor assault marines). As the next turn began, Khorne moved his queen and took out Soloman's castle. On the battlefield below, the chaos sorcerer simultaneously roasted the ork nob squad with a giant fireball.

His nostrils twitching at the stench of barbequed ork, Soloman tried hard to concentrate. He had two options here to play: either play safe and keep the king back whilst using the queen to win, or risk the king in offense and hope he outplayed Khorne.

It was then that Soloman once again realised how absurd a situation he was in. Here he was, thinking of how to outplay the Chaos Blood God in a game of chess that was directly linked to a battle below in order to win three challenges so as to avoid his soul being smashed apart, because the Blood God was angry with him because of what his fellow guardsmen had said. If anyone had told him that such a situation was possible, let alone that he would be in it, he'd have asked how long they'd been on the run from the mental asylum. He wasn't even that worried about the soul-smasher anymore.

He found himself deciding for the riskier move, and so attacked with king and queen together. Khorne retaliated with the same move. Each fought the other with the same move for a few more turns before they ended up taking out each others' kings.

Both simply stared at the board, then each other, then at Mortraz, who'd been dozing in his chair for the last half-hour. When rudely awoken by Khorne (by his usual method of yelling in their ear) he simply grunted with annoyance, and muttered something about a tie.

"What do you mean a tie? How does that fit into the rules?" bellowed Khorne, evidently pissed off at having spent the last 3 hours on this game and only managing a draw: if the other Gods found out he'd never live it down (particularly since he was immortal).

"Well darrrrling *Yawn* since you've neither won or lost, the little beef-cake don't count as winning, but you don't get to smash his soul either. So, the last challenge means everything" muttered Mortraz, unnaturally calm considering he was talking to the Blood God in a foul mood.

"Well then let's get the third ****ing challenge over with already!"

"Fine, fine" grumbled Mortraz, and with a lazy click of his fingers, the world dissolved into technicolour bubbles once more.

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Typicalteenager: And so ends Chapter 4. With summer holidays on their way, I should be able to do chapter 5 and then some soon.

P.S. Sorry for very little talk of the actual challenge: I don't know that much about how to play chess.

P.P.S. I have had typos pointed out to me. You should know that any typos in Mortraz's speech are intentional: Since there is no audio to give his camp voice, I've altered some words (mainly turning darling into darrrrling), so read them as they are (so read darling/darrrrling with emphasis on the r) to get across how he sounds when he's talking.