It was nearly a month later that Kharn had managed to find a suitable planet to resupply at. On all of his meat-wagon runs, he want alone to hack down hapless life forms on a planet's surface and then get the crew to pick up their much-needed cargo. However, this time he was in need of swift action due to those damned whores chasing him about the galaxy. He had jumped through the Warp twice already to avoid them! And if it were not for the daemons slipping them out of the Warp early, at Kharn's whims of course, then the berserker champion would still be hounded here. For now however, he was content to have a moment's reprieve from being hunted.
As it was, Kharn had sent down a task force of eight berserkers to scour a small portion of this planet for more meat to consume on their journey through the Warp. Right now, the Blooded Hand was in dire straights with very little to eat and very many furious moth s to feed. Kharn couldn't think of any other way to provide the much-required raw meat than to send down a squad to do the work. His ship was orbiting just above the huge, greenish clouds. This planet was mostly a vast series of rolling hills and rushing rivers. A few places on its surface were dotted with thick forests and a mountain rage circled almost the entire green and blue orb from end to end. Only a three-mile corridor of rocky waste and snow lay in its way.
And at the moment, Kharn was at this corridor, having a bit of sport with a creature that he had never seen the likes of before. It was a fairly large creature, almost a head against as tall as Kharn was when standing at full height. It had four gangly arms used to propel itself up rock faces and grip their rough surfaces. Its lower body was akin to a scorpion tail, with a triple-barbed tail twice as long as Gorechild. Kharn enjoyed the glares coming from its angry orange eyes, the growls from it fanged mouth. It snarled, blowing cold air from its short snout. Kharn stalked after the creature, Khoria close by his side in her now-red armor. It wasn't enough to cover anything more than the private areas of her body, but it was batter than nothing.
She tracked the beast with her mechanical eye, her gaze never leaving its trail. Her skinn was crawling with a deep chill that Kharn could almost see in her teal eye. She looked colder than corpses Kharn had slain on a few ice worlds. He almost felt sorry for her, but anger at her weakness spurned him to try and kill with beast quickly and skin it for something to wrap her up in. She needed to learn that blood was the ultimate offering. And coating yourself in the skin of another with their blood dripping from your body was something to be revered as profound understanding of Khorne's ways. Kharn hurried on, his heavy ceramite boots thudding against the rocks beneath him. He fought down the urge to draw his new bolt pistol and blow the thing's skull across the rocks and snow.
He scaled the surface of a massive boulder as quickly as possible and pulled himself to its top. Before him now stood the large creature, its orange eyes glowering down at the berserker. He snarled with fury and leapt forward. The creature swung one taloned claw at his face, the sunlight glinting off the sharp entities. Kharn raised Gorechild and parried the blow with ease. The mice-dragon teeth of his ancient weapon tore the thing's hand from its arm, and a most peculiar thing happened. As the hand fell to the ground, the stump of the creature's arm began to bubble. As quickly as Kharn had cut off the limb, there was now a sharp spike protruding as a replacement limb. Kharn grinned insanely. This would be very enjoyable.
Spinning full circle, Kharn clove a deep wound into the creature's shoulder and sheared its arm and most of its upper right shoulder into the snow. Another large spike protruded as a replacement and the creature's pronged tail swung from beneath its torso. Kharn was taken aback as the limb caught him between the legs and lifted him off the ground. This thing was indeed strong…and very dangerous. Kharn swung Gorechild down and it bit home in the creature's chest, ripping apart what seemed to be ribs and other extra bones.
The creature gave a defiant roar and slashed at Kharn with all three remaining limbs. The berserker felt something pierce his armor just above his hip and looked down to see the spiky replacement limb was lodged in his side. Kharn shouted curses as pain threatened to overwhelm his appallingly-heightened senses. But with pure rage, he released his weapon from the thing's flesh and then swung back down again, tearing more meat and guts from its body and into the snow in steaming piles. He swung down again and again, hacking away at the thing's body as a woodsman would a tree. Chunks of meat and flesh were thrown into the snow and the ground was stained red with steaming blood. Kharn felt the creature's body begin to go slack.
'Blood for the Blood God!' Kharn yelled, hacking a clean strike deep into the thing's core. Its eyes glared at him for a moment more before withdrawing into a cold, vacant stare. Its body went slack and began to slump to the snow. Kharn dropped to the ground, kicking his foe in the snout as a final, angry attack. It was a deadly finish, seeing as bone crunched on impact with his foot. The creature's snout was forced into itsskull and brains were mashed into a goopy mess that spilled out into the snow. Kharn slammed his axe into its chest and clove the creature in twain, kicking aside one half and stomping upon the other. New flesh tried to assimilate itself, but stopped far short of its objective as life left the creature for good.
Khar growled as he realized that there would be no flaying of this beast, and that Khoria might as well be freezing to death if she couldn't find anything on her own. Kharn stepped off the boulder and when his feet toughed the ground, his knees gave out and he fell into the snow. The ground rose to meet his face and his helmet slammed against the ground. He furrowed his brow. This was very angering! Kharn pushed himself to his knees and shook his head violently, snarling as he struggled to his feet. What was wrong with him? His body had never done this before! Even on Terra, he had died standing! He looked down at the hole in his armor, finding that green ooze slithered out of it instead of blood. He growled.
He had been poisoned! And this wasn't an ordinary poison either. It was much more potent than just about anythgin the Imperium had thrown at him. They had used toxic bombardment on his forces and still lost. This was some vile concoction to be reckoned with if his body couldn't produce any sort of anti-venom for it in this amount of time. His vision became slightly blurry and he yelled with frustrated rage. He slammed a fist against the ground and felt a hand upon his neck. The ground suddenly collapsed beneath his feet and he tumbled through thin air for a few seconds before hitting the ground yet again. Kharn howled with frustration and threw himself to his feet. He looked around wearily, vision blurring at random.
All around him was darkness, illuminated by green patched of light that glowed oddly. Next to him lay the confused form of Khoria, and she shook her head in confusion. Reaching up to Kharn's wound, she looked concerned. Kharn snapped at her and raised Gorechild to her neck. He could so easily lop her head off and kill her. But somehow, since the day he had found and recruited her…he did not want to kill her as much. The urge still burned his blood and made his body cry out in rage, but the feeling was diminished slightly. He shrugged off the pain of his wound and trudged forward, uncaring of where he was going. He simply needed to walk around for a bit until his body had grown used to the venom flowing through his blood.
Khoria looked up at her master with dismay. He didn't look good at all in this state. His body movements were jerky at best, as if he were forcing himself to move through sheer power of will. He was in pain, and she knew it. But he wouldn't accept help form her, nor anyone else. Khoria had no plans to give him help because of her allegiance o Khorne. If one was unable to take care of themselves, then they were not favored by Khorne and deserved to die of their own accord. But Kharn was a champion, one of Khorne's most favored and worthy conquerors on this plain of existence. He wouldn't die here, Khoria was sure of that.
Still, it wasn't something that she wanted to see, her master in pain. He leaned against the wall of this cave-like structure, panting as if he had just been subject to heavy and extended combat. But in his pants, there was no chuckle of satisfaction, no sort of superior hints. He sounded so weak and defeated and angry! Khoria's brow knitted tightly and she fought down the urge to try and heal his wound with the available knowledge and supplies at hand. She knew that he would heal, but it didn't make her feeling of helplessness diminish at all.
She sighed uneasily and followed Kharn down the uneven and broken path down into the bowels of the earth. To their left was a wall that stretched up about twenty strides and then converged with a ceiling covered in hanging stalactites and strange chittering creatures with glowing blue eyes. Khoria leveled her pistol at one of them and it scurried away quickly. She smirked. Cowardly creatures at best, they wouldn't pose any hindrance to Kharn's movements. Khoria cracked her neck and looked about the massive cave complex. Nearly two thousand strides across, there was another pathway that led down through the huge natural antechamber and into another cave.
At the base of this huge room, there was a lake with large ice flows sitting still within it. Khoria guessed that they had been formed sometime during the night, and then begun to melt during the daylight hours. Khoria wasn't focused on the ice itself, but what slinked across the surface of each artificial landmass. Black creatures scurried away from the light of her electronic eye, its green lens flashing bright flashes every now and then and allowing the cybernetic portions of her brain to take photographic memory data on this place. Already, she could walk the current path she and Kharn walked with eyes closed and under fire. Unfortunately, the Warmaster was far from able to do the same.
Kharn stumbled dangerously close to the edge of the path and only caught himself after his body swayed haphazardly back to the wall. He leaned heavily upon it, his entire body trembling with fatigue. Khoria was genuinely worried for his safety now. If he made a mistake, then he could drown, or freeze in the water. Khoria could only guess at the water's depth, and things did not look good for the Warmaster if he fell. Khoria would be helpless against the freezing waters below. And not for the first time, she shivered in a vain effort to warm her cold body.
The power armor Kharn had stolen for her warmed her a bit, but she had yet to tamper with its systems, or even integrate some of the energy output from the electoo on her left breast into the ancient armor. She wasn't at all worried about freezing, because a chemical addend in her blood would prevent it from coagulating due to cold temperatures. Her body was unable to freeze unless in the most dire of situations. She followed Kharn for a few more steps and then saw him stop and pressed his fingers to the side of his helm.
'Gather whatever you've hunted and return to the ship. Avaron, secure the landing zone and wait for me. I have…been delayed,' Kharn spoke calmly. There was quick chatter over the vox net, over several channels, and then there was silence as Avaron complied with the berserker's wishes. Khoria stepped beside Kharn and he growled softly, almost unable to summon the strength to shove her away or give her a crude remark like he usually did. It was perfectly fine both way though. He had allowed her to enjoy the taste of battle and blood, and she was his warrior. He was the Warmaster, she was under his command. That is how it would remain, and Khoria was satisfied with it.
'Warmaster, maybe we should return to the location where we entered this cave and get out that way. We may only get lost the further we go…' the young woman tried to persuade. Kharn snarled back at her, dragging Gorechild against the rock floor as he stumbled, still leaning fully to the wall for support to keep himself upright. He was not about to be stopped, and she knew that.
'We keep going. There is something living in this cave, and I will have its blood,' Kharn rasped wearily.
'There are many creatures in this cave, Warmaster. I have found none worthy of your blade,' she commented, knowing her efforts were in vain.
'No, woman. There are things residing here, ancient…familiar things. I will have their blood, and you least of all can stop me,' he grunted, continuing forward with green puss and slime oozing from his wound. Khoria was relieved that he still had his wits about him. A least he wouldn't be caught without a fight in his body, that was for sure. Khoria looked around the cave once again, realizing that there was a large bridge that looked as if it had been carved from the rock by the hand of men. Kharn seemed to have noticed some time ago, because his gaze hadn't left the tunnel it led to for some time now. Khoria wondered what could be there.
And she also wondered what sort of things could be residing upon this most remote of planets. What could be here that Kharn had seen or fought before? Had the Imperium's hand grown this far and bold as to strike out into the Centarus Arm of the galaxy? Khoria suppressed the trembling that had crept up upon her form and steadied her nerves. She understood why Kharn was always so hostile and spiteful and fully of fury. Fury and rage outweighed any thoughts of fear, and if one trembled, it was with rage that they had even been challenged. She had a very slight understanding of Kharn's mind, but she had an enormous length to go before understanding the insane berserker in full. She looked worriedly at Kharn. He wasn't looking any better than he had been earlier, and in fact, his breathing seemed more ragged and labored. Things didn't look good for him…