Within the berserker's mind, thoughts swirled around like dragonflies over a stagnant pond in a summer season. His head throbbed like something from the Warp was pressing a taloned hand against his head in quick and intermittent ways. He growled low in his throat, suppressing the rage building up within him. Why did this pain feel good?! He was infuriated by this anomaly! Pain was supposed to hurt! It was supposed to feed his rage and then fuel his fury to make the bloodshed faster and bloodier! This was not how wounds were supposed to feel!

Kharn was most displeased with how this was turning out. He had been hunting for a creature's fur and was now wandering around cave, in virtuall darkness and with his senses leaving him. He stuck a finger into the wound in his belly, removing it to find that the flow of green pus and goo had lessened considerably. With a snarl, he whipped his head around as something reached his withered senses far too late for him to properly prepare himself. If this was what he thought it was, then he was in for an extremely challenging fight.

Fortunately, he had Khoria with him at the moment. If anything, she could be a very nice distraction until he could saw someone's skull into mush and pulverize their body soon thereafter. With a snarl, he brought himself off the wall and stood on his own two feet, the dizzying feeling returning ten fold and his legs trembling with the strain. The visage before him swirled like an ocean during a hurricane, twisting and turning like nothing he'd ever seen before. He dropped to his knees and growled with frustration. He wasn't getting in a good fight any time soon. Kharn glanced up at Khoria's swirling outline and growled something to her, but it sounded as if he were trying to tear someone's arm off and speak at the same time.

Khoria turned to him, brushing a lock of stray black hair from her teal eye. He couldn't see the look on her face, but he could already tell that she was worried. She had been so for the past few minutes while they had been slunking around this damned cave at a snail's pace. Suddenly, she sensed the thing that had been steadily approaching them while Kharn had tried to urge himself forward. The berserker's vision blurred so badly that he couldn't tell anything more than a few blobs. Tears welled up in his eyes and he slumped against the wall in a sitting position, panting heavily. He could feel sweat beading at his brow, something that was very rare for him.

'Show yourself, so that I might better kill you,' Khoria threatened the intruder. Soon, the unknown presence made itself visible to the berserker and his fledgling convert to Khorne. Kharn's vision suddenly cleared and he grunted, head still dizzily spinning. He saw a woman, in a tight indigo brazier and long, slender violet boots. Her skin was a dark, ashen gray color and her eyes like orange flames. Running from her fingertips to her neck and collar bones were bright yellow-orange runes that curved up her arm in a tangle of curved and geometric shapes and patterns. Her flowing scarlet hair floated around her head as if she were submerged in water. A wicked smile was worn upon her black lips.

'I see your comrade is in trouble,' the woman commented, floating over towards Kharn with her smile widening. Kharn struggled to raise his chainaxe to block whatever sorcery she might be trying to use on him. Khoria put herself between the champion and the sorceress, growling and revving her chainaxe menacingly. Her pistols were pointed directly at the woman's head.

'Another step, and I'll take your skull as a trophy,' Khoria snarled. The floating woman waved her hands in an intricate pattern in front of her face, afterimages of her fingertips leaving bright streaks in the dark gloom. Kharn wanted to warn Khoria of the oncoming magic being used, but the woman didn't move, her sights trained on the sorceress' head. Kharn could feel a strange feeling overwhelming his senses and rage boiled within him like nothing he had ever experienced before. He trembled visibly, armor clinking as he struggled to fight this odd magic. He couldn't believe what was happening to him?! He tried to roar, but his jaw felt like it had been cemented shut.

'I am here to help your comrade, and heal his grievous wounds. I can take you two to a sanctuary where his wounds may be healed and his life rekindled in full. Would you like me to take him there?' she asked slyly, poison in her tone as her invisible magic worked its way into Kharn's veins, breaking his ability to reason with this menace. He tried to snarl, but no sound emerged from his throat other than a wheeze. Khoria looked back at him worriedly, and hen stood down, keeping her pistols aimed at the woman's skull.

'If you do anything to him…you'll have less brain matter left than an ork speared through the eye socket,' she threatened. The floating woman turned to Kharn with a leer that Khoria didn't see. Kharn heard a voice in his head that made his entire form boil with rage and fury that couldn't be unleashed while he was under this woman's magic influence. He glared daggers at both women before him. One was a damned sorcerer! The other was clueless!

Kharn was willed to walk of his own accord, but his senses were dulled so much that he could barely maintain his grip on reality. Colors of every kind flashed all around him, some of them swirling as if caught in great whirlwinds on a desert world. Others drifted or wafted slowly by, passing over him to leave a cool kiss of hated magic upon his armor and flesh beneath. He looked at the woman floating just beyond the reach of his hand and sighed with discontent. He couldn't remember why he was so angry! What fury did build inside his body at the thought!

He growled angrily and squeezed the hilt of his ancient Gorechild, the weapon moaning with anguish at the fury flowing between them. Kharn couldn't remember the time his lust for blood hadn't been slaked at its every beck and call! He snarled and trembled with hatred. Turning his head to the wary Khoria, he felt some of his more human…primal, urges begin to surface. And for the first time in his life, he couldn't remember to suppress them within the masquerade of rage. He turned his eyes away from the woman and back to the path ahead. He hadn't noticed it before, but this room was well lit by the swirling magical streams flowing all around. The water below shimmered with some sort of reflective properties and he could see tiny life forms writhing beneath its surface, long and serpentine.

His heavy boots thudded with little haste across the natural bridge of stone that connected this side of the huge, cavernous antechamber to the far one. The bridge was barely wide enough for two marines of Kharn's width to cross and its breadth looked to be nearly a hundred strides. Kharn looked back at Khoria for a moment before watching the floating woman dip down in the air beside the bridge, her hand caressing the well-worn stone and gentle tendrils of purplish and blue magic running along the places where her hand touched. Her head was about hip level with Kharn, and she had one of the nastiest looks on her face that Kharn had ever seen before in his entire millennia-spanning life.

'Woman…what is your name?' he growled. She tilted her head to the side and sun around, still floating above the glimmering water below.

'I am Alicia. And you are about to enter my wonderland,' she said, a leer in her eyes. Kharn's right arm tensed and cables of muscle and sinew flexed to break the previously unnoticed spell wrapped around him like a thick shroud. His arm flexed as much as it possibly could and Alicia's brow furrowed. She floated up so that her face was only a hand's length away from the angry berserker's face.

'What?' Kharn barked.

'You are a very strong willed one indeed. Yours will be a very enjoyable breaking,' Alicia explained as she floated ahead, humming lightly. She still wore that snide, nasty look on her face. Kharn's blood boiled at the thought of being broken in like some dog. A glance at Khoria told him that she had no idea what was going on. If she had even registered that the woman had spoken, she gave absolutely no sign of it. All she had was a vacant stare on her face, servo-arms dangling limply at her sides. She looked like something had her under a powerful mind-controlling spell.


After wandering through the maze network of tunnels and passageways for nearly half a hour, Kharn was feeling worse than he had at Terra. The wound he had obtained earlier no longer oozed green slime and ichor. It now was covered with a purplish and pink substance, crusty and gooey in different places. Kharn snarled, feeling something inside of him begin to resurface after a great many years. His right hand gripped Gorechild as tightly as it possibly could. Kharn could feel the adamantium trembling in his grip.

The berserker glared forward at the woman smirking back at him, her body floating gracefully above the set tiles of the floor. Kharn had noticed a change in their surroundings as of late. They were no longer in any natural cave of any kind. The walls were all lined with a strange pink stone that permeated a sweet, sickly smell into everything that moved nearby. The walls were angled slightly, so that the ceiling was wider than the floor. It gave this place a sort of look to make it seem bigger, grander than it actually was. Still, the pink and purple ripples in the ceiling didn't lessen Kharn's unease about this place. What manner of hall was this?

He had to be wary of this place, for there were most definitely things running about the place that did not think him as friend or ally. Gorechild shrieked in agony, and for the oddest reason, Kharn couldn't think why. He simply kept his guard up, following the floating Alicia down the widening hallway. The hallways suddenly opened up into a grand, vast room lined with lighter pink stone and a large crystalline protrusion, catching and spreading out light all over the large room. Sickly figures loomed above from orifices cut into the walls high above, sitting on platforms made of bluish metal, riveted and molded to the wall with some manner of powerful magic. Faces seemed to appear, shift, and then sink back into the ceiling thirty strides up.

Kharn didn't like this place at all, not even at his first glance. That had shown him something very strange about this place. All around were altars lined in a circle whose circumference encompassed most of the room. Most of them had a man and a woman atop them, locked in a lover's embrace. Many of them shouted and mewled with lust and other emotions of sick satisfaction and depravity, Kharn noted. A few of them looked like they were being torn to pieces with sharp claws and hook dug into their skin. The looks on their faces belied any pain at all, and in fact, showed that they were possibly getting a thrill out of such pain. Kharn found it very strange indeed.

Further on, there was a large doorway lined with gold and purple, a large stone symbol fixated just above its arched pinnacle. The symbol was a circle lined by a crescent moon. From the circle's side protruded a large, rectangular shape tipped with another crescent. In this smaller crescent rested a glowing orb of swirling energies, feeding out into the room like a wave of exuberant fog, lashing out in all directions as if it were a chained beast. Kharn cringed slightly as a tendril of the stuff found its way to his wound and finished the previously growing patchwork of pink and purple stuff that had healed him. Kharn walked silently with Khoria beside him, a rebreather set over her face. Was this toxic gas? It mattered not. Kharn's enhanced body had seen much more dangerous poisons, this was nothing.

The Khornate berserker looked back to the arched doorway and saw that there were four armored Chaos marines standing astride the large metallic structure. They were garbed in the traditional armor that all Chaos Marines wore, save the fact that it was place with pink paudrons and helms. Each carried a weapon with a long, cylindrical barrel reminiscent to that of a flamethrower. They all wore the same insignia on their shoulders, a leering daemon face with a tongue emblazoned with the same symbol as the one above the door. Kharn could see that their helms, around where their ears were located, had triangular devices set upon them. Each marine shuddered with every step of Kharn's heavy boots.

'Come now, Kharn. Let us hurry to our destination great warrior,' Alicia said, finally letting her feet touch the ground. She gracefully lowered her feet to the floor, stepping inaudibly with a nimbus of magic dust and light shimmering around her head. Her hair continued to flow around her like a living thing, slowly wafting around her head like a big, fiery halo. With every step of her feet, the Chaos Marines shuddered and trembled with some sort of excitement. Kharn grumbled.

'Warmaster…I don't like this place," Khoria said before he could even utter a sound. Kharn tried to agree with her, but Alicia seemed to have a more powerful spell over him than before, because nothing reminiscent of sound would leave his mouth. Khoria looked at the berserker worriedly. His face was twisted into a visage of rage and fury, but beneath his helmet, she couldn't see. Kharn wanted to tear her head off and drink her blood for this foolishness of truly epic proportions! Could she not see that this was a…a…

Kharn's eyes went wide with horror. What was happening to his mind? How could he have forgotten what this was? It had been of such importance not a few moments ago. He had been planning to tell Khoria to strike with him, or at least strike Alicia and release this spell placed upon him and hope that Khoria would follow his lead. His mind filled with images of destruction and death all about him…and his surrounding were in stark contrast to what he had desired nearly his entire life.

The doors ahead began to open up, as if by a simple whim of hers. She turned her head slightly, just to keep a watchful eye on Kharn and his companion. A malicious grin spread across her face and the doors continued to part, a shrill noise echoing from the other side, which was illuminated by a deep purple glow surrounded by an otherwise back aura from further in. Kharn felt a very unpleasant chill crawl up his spine like a multitude of tiny spiders. Kharn could do nothing but wait for the door to open wide enough for him to get through with Alicia, who now had a look of malign intent to match her grin. Kharn cursed the gods a thousand times again for his companion's stupidity. What he would do to her when they were done with this place…

And then his thoughts came to an abrupt stop. His thoughts had not gone directly to slaughter and killing the woman this time. No…indeed they had been somewhere far away. Images of their naked forms pressed against one another had flickered through his mind, and he began to visibly tremble with pure infuriation. What was this woman doing to him?! What was this place doing to him?!

'And now, please be kind to the benefactor of your journey here, Champion Aurinis the Decadent One,' the evil woman announced. The arched doors came to a rest, only half way open and still with enough space to fit three of Kharn abreast through it. The Khornate berserker unwillingly stepped forward and a cool, unpleasant air of strange scents washed over his armored body. Where his bare flesh showed, it tingled felt increasingly warm. Just as Kharn thought it might be over, his eyes fell upon the form of Khoria. Her entire body wracked with an unknown emotion, shuddering violently. The servo-limbs on her back seemed to have frozen in place, weapons remaining unmoved in their cold grips. The fellow berserker looked as if she was going to crumple to the floor and be consumed in a fit of seizures.

'I see your friend has already accepter her fate. Come now, berserker, and do the same. Alicia can see to it that you are most grateful,' a smooth, silky voice purred from behind the dim purple glow. Kharn grimaced. This man, whoever he was, was going to have to die. Khoria was not going to be taken by some scum such as this. Kharn would make sure that Khorne's chosen follower would remain in Khorne's hands, no matter what he'd have to do to ensure it.