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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.
3) Book entries, letters etc. are in Bold Italic.
Well, here we go!
Chapter 25: Another injury for the collection
It took about 10 minutes for Soloman to make his way around the outside of the keep and back into the entrance hall. It would have only taken 5, but he was going slowly so as to listen out for any noises, especially ones of Zeena killing Slaanesh. He was unsure whether the fact that he hadn't heard any was good or bad.
Upon entering the entrance hall, he found Blud an' Gutz standing there, talking to a bloodletter. Though it had its back facing him, its skin, which was less like the usual red and closer to crimson, seemed somehow familiar to him...
"Ah, there you is, boss. What took ya so long?"
"Trouble with the daemonettes: need I say more?"
Blud an' Gutz nodded knowingly. "Well, anyway boss, this dae-man here sayz he needz to see you about some-fing important. Won't say wat to me, sayz he'll on-lee talk to you."
"I see... well then, Blud an' Gutz, you can go off and do... whatever it is you do in your spare time."
"You gotz it, boss," Blud an' Gutz replied, and he stomped off towards the kitchen, leaving a trail of blood drops in his wake.
With his departure, the bloodletter turned to face Soloman. Apart from his skin colour, he was no different in appearance to any other bloodletter, and yet Soloman couldn't shake the feeling that he'd seen this daemon somewhere before.
"Well now," he began, "what's this important thing you want to see me abo-?"
He was unable to finish the sentence because the bloodletter suddenly pulled out a large chaos space marine bolter gun with some sort of homemade silencer, aimed it rapidly at his torso, and pulled the trigger. Soloman was sent flying backwards off his feet across the room, landing sprawled out on the floor, with an entrance and exit wound the size of a dinner tray where his left lung had formerly been.
And the pain: he'd felt more than his fair share of pain over his short period as the Blood God, but this was the worse yet. It felt as though he'd been crotch-kicked by a carnifex and then tossed into an acid bath. It was so bad that he found that though his mouth was open in a scream, no sound came out.
(Typicalteenager: In fact, Soloman was screaming, but in a pitch so high no living creature could hear it. It is worth pointing out that his scream was responsible for the extinction of one of the higher planes of existence, where it caused the brains of every being on that plane to be reduced to jelly and seep out of their ears. Thus the notoriety of the Blood God increased further.)
The bloodletter walked up to his prone form, and aimed the bolter at his head.
"You may be the Blood God now, you pathetic maggot," he growled venomously, "but I assure you that even the greatest of healing powers will have to take weeks to cure being brain dead, and that's exactly what you're going to be if you don't do as I say." His voice had a posh, almost regal tone, the sort you would expect from a butler, or-
And then Soloman remembered where he'd seen and heard this bloodletter before. It had been at his first meeting with Khorne, where this daemon had read out challenge rules from a scroll.
"...Alix..." he spluttered out, blood flecks flying from his mouth.
The bloodletter gave a dark grin. "Ah, so you remember me. Well then, I won't waste time with the cliché vengeance speech. Now, this is very simple: I'm going to ask you a question –just one question- and you're going to give to either answer me, or be sucking next month's meals through a straw."
He knelt down next to Soloman, and pressed the bolter gun against his forehead. "Now, the question is as follows: where's my master?"
Now Soloman was confused. "What?"
"Where is the old Khorne?"
"How should I know?"
Alix pushed the gun harder against Soloman's forehead. "Wrong answer worm."
"Wrong answer?" Soloman gasped out. "I can't tell you what I don't know."
Alix clicked the gun back, ready to fire. "Lying isn't going to get you out of this."
"I'm- I'm not lying," Soloman wheezed, blood now running out of his mouth freely and making speech more difficult. "The last I saw of Khorne was when Mortraz... banished him, or something like that. Ask him where Khorne is, he'll know."
Alix sneered at this suggestion. "Nice try, human. Only I've already gone looking for that pansy, and he's been missing for a day now. Probably sent by you to the same place you sent my master."
"Wh- what? Mortraz is m-m-missing?" Soloman attempted to say, except he now had more blood on the floor than in his body, and he was barely maintaining consciousness.
"Let me guess- you didn't know about that either," Alix sneered. "Please. I've been manservant to a Chaos God for several millennia: do you think I would fall for such simple tricks?"
"Oh for f***'s – I. Don't. know. where. Khorne. is!" Soloman spat, one word at a time, his vision steadily going black, and his hearing making every sound echo.
Alix just shook his head, almost as if he felt sorry for what he thought was a poor attempt at deceit. "Pathetic," he muttered, staring at Soloman, though to the steadily dying Soloman it was now just a load of noise. "This must be the worst pack of lies ever told. How someone as weak and idiotic as you ever beat my master I will never-"
Soloman was unsure of what happened next, as his vision had narrowed hugely and gone blurry. Some strange noise suddenly roared through the air, and Alix suddenly stopped, something gold and orange appearing on his chest and then disappearing just as quickly. His head seemed to tilt to the right, something warm and wet seemed to fall from him and land on Soloman's waist, and he slumped forward and landed sprawled over Soloman. Something large and green appeared at the edge of his darkening vision, and uttered something, but Soloman never heard it, because at that moment what little blood remained in his body trickled out, and the world descended into a silent, black void.
Whoever said that dying was a painless, calm, and peaceful process, Soloman thought, was either completely plastered, higher than a planet's atmosphere, or simply talking b*llocks. For an indeterminable period of time, Soloman seemed to float in a massive ball of pain, vague images, memories, and sounds passing about him.
"Hang in there sweetheart: you've got to hang on, do you hear me?"
"Q-wik: get to me larder and nab all the meats and lic-wids, day-monz!"
"How did Alix get here? What did he want, Blud an' Gutz?"
"Ooooohhhhhhh... would this be a bad time to say that my belly is suddenly hurting really badly?"
Eventually though, the memories and images faded away, and the sounds became less frequent. For a short while, everything was still. And then slowly, sight and sound returned, and Soloman found himself staring at the dining-room ceiling, lying on the table, aching all over.
"Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww" he moaned.
"Boss! You're awake!"
Soloman forced himself to sit up, and turned to look at Blud an' Gutz. "Oh God-Emperor," he moaned. "What is this, 'murder the Blood God week'? What did you have to replace my lung with?"
Blud an' Gutz gave a toothy grin. "A tau's stomach, interwoven with that blood-letter's kidneys."
Soloman rolled his eyes. "Why didn't you use his lungs?"
"Well, they waz all pulped up by me chain-sword when I gutted him."
Soloman simply rolled his eyes again. "How long was I out?"
"A week, boss."
Climbing off the dining table, Soloman looked down at his chest, running his finger over the criss-cross of stitches that covered the left side of his torso. "Anything interesting happen whilst I was out?"
Blud an' Gutz stopped and thought about this, a dopey grin appearing on his voice as a result. "Um, yes, there was two fings. The first was that the day-mon ladies went out to look for that Mortraz, after I told them wat I heard dat Alix saying."
"I see. Am I then to assume that you were the one who saved me?"
Blud an' Gutz grinned further. "Yes boss. I took me chain-sword and I gutted him good."
"Well then, Blud an' Gutz, you have my thanks. Consider your wages tripled as of now."
The ork looked stunned for a moment, and then crossed over and gave Soloman a bone-crushing hug.
Soloman tentatively patted him on the back. "You're welcome" he wheezed. "Oh, by the way, what was the second thing?"
Blud an' Gutz, in response, gave yet another grin, let go of Soloman, and crossed the room to the door that led to the corridor. Opening it, he stuck his head out of the doorway, and yelled out "Arita!"
Soloman looked at him in confusion. "Arita? Who's Arita?"
Blud an' Gutz didn't respond, but simply went off into the kitchen. Meanwhile, the sound of someone running down the corridor came clearly to Soloman's ears. Curious, he went out into the corridor and turned to the right to look.
He was greeted with the brief image of a young human-looking girl with bubble-gum pink hair, barefoot, dressed in a white shirt and blue dungarees, running down the corridor towards him, before hearing a squeal of "DADDY!" and he found his legs suddenly being compressed in a very tight hug that rivalled Blud an' Gutz's in terms of bone-crushing power.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me.