"Oh, there you are, commissar." Jurgen said, completely unperturbed by my sudden appearance, unlike Goblin Slayer beside him who froze shortly before he could thrust his sword at my neck before realizing it was me who leaped at them from around the corner. "How long have you been waiting for us?"
"Long enough." I answered, calmly watching Goblin Slayer sheathe his weapon while doing my best to fight back against a wave of terror in an attempt to recollect myself. Neither one of us had survived as long as we had by being careless, and given how we were in the midst of a goblin den filled with an unknown number of greenskins, we were not about to start taking unnecessary risks now. Still, I was curious as to how Jurgen and the equally grime covered adventurer beside him had somehow found their way ahead of us, so I waited for Jurgen to speak in the hopes he would explain himself.
"Sorry for the wait, sir. Goblin Slayer and I ran into a couple of greenskins on our way here and-."
"Four of them." Goblin Slayer interrupted. "Well armed, well coordinated, well trained." The man sounded concerned for some reason, and although I was not yet familiar with the greenskin mutants of this world, his appraisal of the goblins he and Jurgen encountered made my palms tingle in anticipation.
"Are you implying that there is something wrong with these goblins, Goblin Slayer?" I asked him, trusting the closest thing to an expert on greenskins that I could find at the moment over my own paranoia. As much as I wanted to let my aide continue his story, learning more about our enemies was far more important.
"Possibly." He said, doing nothing to make the prospect of fighting the remaining goblins in the cave any more appealing.
I was going to ask him to explain what exactly we should expect from these strange goblins, but the sound of metal rings rattling together soon drew everyone's attention to the small, fear-stricken girl who was trembling as she hid behind me. Priestess had been so quiet until then that I had nearly forgotten she was still with me, and I likely would have remembered until I backed into her had she not announced her presence to anything that might have been lurking by. I slowly put a hand on her shoulder to calm her down and prevent her from creating any more noise, and aside from the small yelp of surprise that came out of her, Priestess relaxed almost instantly. Well, as relaxed one could expect a girl her age when travelling through a den of heresy at any rate.
"Who's the juvie you brought with you?" Jurgen asked me, speaking plainly now that whatever element of surprise we had was more than likely ruined.
"This is Priestess, one of the rookie adventurers I volunteered to accompany on their first quest." Priestess had the right idea when she stepped forwards and bowed to my aide when I introduced her, and she was thankfully still looking at the ground when he grimaced at her lack of obvious weaponry.
"I thought Guild Girl said you were going to wait for us to arrive before exploring these caves?" Jurgen asked us, sounding somewhat disappointed at how we almost started killing greenskins without him.
"So did I." I replied. Rather than answering me, Jurgen gave me a knowing nod in response. Both of us were quite familiar with the brashness that most new recruits had when joining an Imperial Guard regiment, with all the chaos and casualties that would occur because the bravest and least intelligent rookies believed themselves to be invincible before quickly and painfully learning that they were anything but. That didn't make dealing with such idiots any easier, but our enemies usually took care of the most hopeless frakheads for us, saving me plenty of paperwork regarding their necessary training and inevitable infraction reports.
"Anyways, tell us more about these goblins, Goblin Slayer. We will be better prepared with the more we know about them." I said, once again turning to our greenskin expert for leadership against my better judgement.
"I see." He said, as if he only just realized informing us about our enemies could help us fight them. "Goblins are usually lazy, using only improvised weapons they are able to scavenge from nearby villages or whatever they can create with rocks and sticks. They also fight each amongst themselves almost as much as they fight against anyone they think they can beat and never lay complicated traps without a shaman or another leader directing them."
In other words, they behaved no differently than the average ork, aside from their inclination towards worshiping one of the Ruinous Powers. Not quite what I wanted to hear from the experienced adventurer, but at least I now knew what to expect during future engagements with the local greenskins. "I believe I found a shaman's totem not too far from here." I supplied, hoping that would be enough to put an end to Goblin Slayer's concerns. Unfortunately for me, they were not.
"A shaman is only able to direct the goblins in its immediate area, unless it is powerful enough to scare the entire nest into submission." He said, making me think I was dealing with an exceptionally powerful Weirdboy that was going to give me no end of troubles for a moment. "No, a shaman would never be able to get a goblin to sacrifice itself just to lure an adventurer into an ambush."
"Then what do you think we are dealing with?" I asked him, my palms starting to itch as they always did whenever my conscious mind missed something my subconscious was begging me to flee from as I waited for his answer.
"I don't know." He said flatly.
Well, that was just great. Not only had I been dragged alongside three reckless rookies determined to get themselves killed, but I now was dealing with a foe that not even Goblin Slayer knew how to deal with. Throne on Terra, things did not seem like they could get any worse at that moment, or so I thought.
"We'll still kill every goblin in this cave regardless of who's leading them. I know Cain will not rest until he finds and kills every last greenskin in this cave. He's led me through plenty of missions exactly like this, so there won't be anything to worry about." Jurgen chimed in, pointing the final part of his grandiose remarks towards the small blonde that was now clutching onto my arm as much as she was clinging to her staff for protection.
I couldn't tell if my aide genuinely meant any of what he said, or if he was just trying to help restore some of Priestess' confidence as he crushed any hopes I had of retreating once I wrapped my hands around Warrior's neck for getting me into this mess in the first place.
"Yes, we will have nothing to fear from a bunch of goblins once we regroup with the others." I declared. "We should probably head back before they think anything happened to us."
"How many other adventurers did you enter the cave with?" Goblin Slayer asked, with a tone of faint concern that instantly set me on alert. The boy didn't seem to think much for others, and I myself previously believed him to be incapable of empathy entirely, so seeing him express immediate worry my other squadmates instantly sent me on high alert.
"There were three more of us." Priestess said, barely speaking above a whisper as she finally broke her silence after we reunited with my aide.
"How many of them were women?" Goblin Slayer asked, drawing his sword as he did so.
The way he asked his questions instantly made my palms itch even worse, yet despite how obvious the answer felt, I could not think of his reason for him asking such a mundane question.
"Two of them." I replied, still confused after a moment of thought. "What would that have to do with any-"
Before I could finish asking why the sex of the other rookies mattered, a bone chilling shriek echoed throughout the caves from the tunnel Priestess and I had travelled through. I instinctively grabbed for my laspistol and flourished my chainsword as Jurgen aimed his lasrifle in the direction I had come from. None of us moved a muscle, and in the time it took for the echo to fade off into the distance I finally realized the importance behind Goblin Slayer's previously innocuous question.
Why I didn't come to my senses earlier was something I still cannot fathom and fills me with shame to this day, but once that scream reached my ears, I realized just how disastrous a mistake I had made. Sending three juvies into a xenos infested cave was bad enough, letting them explore a cave filled with chaos worshiping xenos was something I never should have allowed them to do. And since these greenskins were worshipers of Slaanesh, all of which were male...
"Frak! I told those idiots not to do anything stupid!" I shouted, running towards the newest set of high-pitched shrieks despite my ever trustworthy sense of self preservation telling me that was the last thing I should do to ensure my continued survival. More shrieks, louder and more desperate from the first, soon assaulted my ears and overrode my sense of self-preservation and gave me the will to push forward when I ordinarily would have been quite content with leaving those foolish juvies to their fate. The others followed behind me, Jurgen sprinting beside me with practiced ease while Goblin Slayer kept pace with Priestess who lagged behind as she struggled to catch up with us. I made sure to slow my pace to a respectable jog after noticing we left them behind, and it only took us all a few minutes to reach the crevice we squeezed through earlier at our adjusted pace.
The screams had stopped by then, although the ensuing silence did little to comfort us. Shouts of pain and terror would have meant that the rookies were alive and still capable of fighting back, although the likelihood of that would have been dismal at best. The silence told us nothing, but given how the dead were generally disinclined to making a ruckus, I believed that their demise was all but certain. I was about to announce their deaths to my aide and the adventurers we were accompanied by, but Goblin Slayer interrupted me before I could speak.
"Strange. This totem doesn't look right." The dirty adventurer said as he studied the object constructed out of bone, stone, and wood that I had directed the rookies' attention to early. Apparently he found the totem we stopped beside far more worthy of his attention now that the goblin's victims had fallen silent. It was a fair assessment to make, and one which I would have done too if I knew the significance of the object he was scrutinizing.
My lessons seemed to have had more of an impact than I previously thought, as all it took was one pointed look from me to get Goblin Slayer to inform us of the oddities he had noticed. It felt nice to get a straight answer out of him without having to threaten him with insubordination for once. If only we could have been in less dire circumstances so I could actually take satisfaction from my triumph over his thick-headedness.
"Shamans usually create their totems in the image of an animal or monster that they've slain before to show that they don't fear them. I've never seen one that looked like this before." He said, looking at the idol adorning the top of the totem that looked vaguely familiar for some strange reason.
Whatever creature the goblin in charge thought himself stronger than possessed a humanoid shape, whether that was due to the accuracy of the artist or their equally likely ineptitude was anyone's guess. The creature appeared to be insectoid in origin due to the six limbs it possessed and what might have been a layer of spiked chitin covering it, if the jagged rock that made up the idol's torso was something the sculptor was too lazy to remove. Considering what little I knew about the greenskins of this world and their work ethic, a rushed construction seemed more probable than any other explanation. It certainly would have gone a long way to explain the idol's elongated head and sharp talons, the sight of which left me sweating like I was surrounded by promethium for reasons I could not explain.
Jurgen must have noticed my discomfort, responding accordingly when he let off a lasbolt to demolish both my growing unease and the unsettling totem Goblin Slayer had been studying. Priestess let out a terrified squeak which thankfully masked my own sigh of relief at his abrupt action. Goblin Slayer didn't seem to care about what my aide had done. Instead, he started studying the ground in an attempt to learn more about our enemies. His unwavering commitment to his duty in the face of Jurgen's incredibly straightforward approach to most problems was commendable, even if it seemed like the only reason behind his confidence was due to a similar disregard for danger he shared with my aide. Concerning as it was to have two Jurgens at my side, I knew I would be safer between my aide and the like minded adventurer instead of anywhere else in the cavern. I had no intention of risking my life by leaving their side to fend off a potential ambush on my own if I decided to forfeit my meagre reputation in the Guild by abandoning this quest and Priestess for whatever reason.
"Well, we better find what's left of those rookies while we still can." I glumly stated as I tried to redirect my new squad's attention to the task at hand. Jurgen and Goblin Slayer didn't bat an eye at my morbid comment, while the blonde that was practically clinging to Goblin Slayer tried her best to not throw up at the thought of her former squadmates' fate.
At least she tried to not throw up on Goblin Slayer. Her first few dry heaves gave him plenty of time to move out of the way so only his boots were splattered with the remnants of her last meal. Thankfully she seemed to be a light eater, or else he might have needed to find a new pair of pants after this quest too.
"Can you go on?" Goblin Slayer asked her, seemingly indifferent to the vomit he stood in as he asked Priestess a question I asked her and the other rookies myself dozens of times before we took a single step outside of Frontier Town.
"I'm… I'm fine." She finally sputtered as she got herself back under control.
"We can't afford to waste time checking up on you every time you feel like turning back." Goblin Slayer told her.
As much as I wanted to at least ensure the survival of one of the rookies I accompanied on this quest, I had to object to Goblin Slayer's proposal. "Priestess should stay with us. Not only will we be able to find a use for her spells if any of the others are alive, but more importantly, it would be dangerous for her to escape on her own in case there are any goblins waiting for us at the cave entrance." I advised.
Goblin Slayer took a moment to consider my words a moment before coming to a decision, or so I thought. "Is that so?" He asked in the same perplexed manner he did whenever I told him something that would have been blindingly obvious to anyone else.
"Indeed it is. Remember what I told you earlier about including your allies in your plans, Goblin Slayer."
"Urk!" The drab adventurer gasped as I brought up one of the many lessons I tried to impart with him. My teachings seemed to have left more than one impression on him judging by his reaction, but since he seemed to have learned from his mistakes all the same, I thought it best to not say anything about the fear he was harboring towards me.
"I see." He said after taking a moment to recover his unwavering composure once again. "Priestess, what miracles can you cast and how many uses do you have left?" He asked the frail blonde, sounding like a competent leader for once instead of a useless frakhead that stabbed first and asked questions later.
"I can cast two spells, Minor Heal and Holy Light. I can only cast three miracles per day, and I haven't used any yet." She said, clenching tightly onto her staff as she did so.
I never bothered to ask Priestess about her capabilities as I was still trying to come to terms that the psykers of this world were so unskilled that they couldn't unleash the power of the Warp as often as they pleased. It shouldn't be much of a surprise that I never thought to ask Priestess this after Wizard took the time to brag about her own personal achievements in Warpcraft, something which was far more hilarious now that I know Priestess was just as capable as her and didn't think of her own ability as anything special.
"How about you Commissar, Gunner Jurgen? How many more projectiles can you fire from your 'laz-goons'?" Goblin Slayer asked us. His gothic was more mangled than an orks' when he tried to put a name to our weapons, but we were still able to make sense of what he was asking.
"I can fire at least one hundred rounds from my laspistol before I need to reload, more if I can find a strong enough source of energy to recharge my laspistol. Jurgen can easily match that, and we have three spare power packs between us." I told him.
"What about that wall melting weapon you showed off in the Guild?" Goblin Slayer asked immediately, and suddenly it became all too obvious why he suddenly seemed to have taken an interest in us.
"Ah, the meltagun, how could I forget." I said, as if a deranged looking adventurer whose face I hadn't seen yet knowing about a weapon that could burn a hole through flesh and ceramite alike wasn't enough to make me want to never associate the two together. "It's currently loaded and Jurgen can fire five short bursts or one long spray before needing to reload with the same ammo we use for our lasguns, maybe more if we are fighting unarmored targets."
I hoped that the prospect of limiting the number of goblins we could kill with every use of Jurgen's melta would discourage Goblin Slayer from including it in whatever plan he seemed to be coming up with. It turned out that informing him of the meltagun's ravenous consumption of our resources was the right decision after all.
"I see. Commissar Cain, you and I will take the front. Jurgen and Priestess will follow behind us until we reach the chamber the goblins are using to hold their prisoners. We'll decide how to purge the entire nest once we see how many goblins we are up against." Goblin Slayer declared. His plan appeared to be sound, keeping the two of us with the best scouting capabilities up front while Jurgen and Priestess, who would act as our heavy artillery and support respectively, covered us from the back while carrying enough firepower to protect themselves as well. There was only one detail that he had yet to mention that could make his entire plan fall apart, and I was not about to go through with his plan before learning whether or not he had a reason for what seemed like a baseless assumption.
"How do you know all of the goblins will be attending their prisoners instead of guarding other parts of the cavern?" I inquired.
Jurgen was the one to answer me instead of Goblin Slayer. Apparently I wasn't the only one that had been taking notes on Goblin Slayer's lectures during our short time together previously, and he apparently remembered far more than I did. Considering that he was a Valhallan and every one of his people loathed greenskins more than any other xenos, it was hardly surprising that he would remember almost everything Goblin Slayer had to say about the mutant strain of orks on this planet.
"Those greenskins are too lazy to stay on guard duty when they have something new to eat or play with. Every goblin in the nest will be trying to get in on... whatever it is that these daemon worshiping scum do." Jurgen said, careful not to go into explicit detail as to the other rookies most likely fates after realizing there was still one of them in our midst, and a young girl at that. For their sake, I could only hope that the goblins were ecstatic enough to accidentally kill their prey before violating their bodies any further. I doubted it, but I was not about to sour my squad's mood by voicing my pessimistic presumptions unless we could somehow benefit from it.
"In that case, we should move cautiously until we finally find our enemies' main forces. There's no telling if there are any more goblins or other mutants that might be waiting for us in these caverns." I said.
I was feeling quite confident as I took the first step to lead what I believed to be an ill-advised expedition into the unknown, which just so happened to also be my best bet for escaping with my life and reputation in fact. That confidence was soundly shattered by news I found to be equal parts reassuring and damning from Goblin Slayer.
"To have found a nest this large and gone unnoticed until recently, there can be no less than ten and no more than thirty goblins in this nest." He said, giving us the first definite numbers any of us had to work with after reading the scarce information given to us from our 'urgent' quest's description. "Four of them are already dead, and other than the shaman, there is also a wanderer that the nest has taken in with them for additional protection."
"A wanderer? What kind of goblin is that?" I asked him, the term not ringing any bells and Jurgen failing to supply me with any additional information.
"They're survivors from other nests that managed to hide from the adventurers that killed their comrades or one of the lucky goblins that managed to kill a creature that wiped out enough of their numbers to force the survivors to look for a new home. These survivors learn, adapt, and grow while they wander the world looking for a new nest if they don't die before then." Goblin Slayer explained.
"Hence the name, I take it." I finished for him. "What kind of wanderer do you think we are dealing with? Did those tracks give you any clues as to what we might be up against?"
"I think it is hobgoblin, one of the 'orks' you believed we found during the quest we completed together." He said, referencing what would be a tiny ork that was still a head taller than myself and clad in an armor-like layer of thick muscle. "It might also be a goblin I have never encountered before. The tracks I noticed were the same size as a hobgoblin's, but the shape of the foot and size of its talons were wrong." He said.
"Maybe this hobgoblin got stuck mutating into the next largest variant of greenskin?" I supplied, hoping my answer was enough to satisfy him.
"Possibly." Goblin Slayer conceded, instantly letting me drop my concerns about this unknown enemy at that very moment. If I had known the consequences my lack of foresight and momentary lapse in memory would have, I would have ran back to Frontier Town to gather every available adventurer that was there to complete this quest.
Instead, I was to remain blissfully unaware as to what that totem Jurgen destroyed was meant to represent and the other horrors hidden within this cave for quite some time.
Our journey through the tunnel the rookies had rushed through earlier went better than expected. There were no signs of carnage in the first half of our journey to the holding area Goblin Slayer expected us to come across, and a distinct lack of side tunnels made it far easier to relax knowing that the odds of an ambush from behind were incredibly unlikely. I could tell that we were moving deeper underground at a fair pace thanks to my old hiver senses, the tunnels forming a spiral that seemed far less likely to have been made naturally as I had previously believed them to be.
I still was unable to see any signs of tools being used to expand the tunnel in any capacity, but that didn't mean they disappeared due to the natural passage of time or a sudden flood decades beforehand. The tingling in my palms refused to let me believe in such a fortunate coincidence, and since my well-earned paranoia had kept me alive decades longer than most people I have had the pleasure of serving with, I made sure to keep both of my weapons held in case the source of my unease revealed itself. I doubted I would find the answers behind the unnaturally large cave's formation any time soon, but on the off chance I did find it, or it more than likely found me, I would be prepared to fight back against it long enough to give me a running start for the exit. From there, I wouldn't need to outrun the xenos that lived in these tunnels. I would just need to be marginally faster than Priestess or Goblin Slayer to survive, if my pessimism proved to be warranted.
It was while I was making plans for a grand escape that only Jurgen and I would ever know about that we came across Warrior, or rather, the bits of him that the goblins weren't interested in. Goblin Slayer was the first to identify the smear of blood and bone as the late adventurer. Although I was the first one to spot them, the lack of any identifying traits or migraine that usually accompanied the sight of the ill-prepared brat made me overlook his corpse at first. Priestess was at least kind enough to hack up the last remainder of her breakfast away from the rest of us as we studied what was left of Warrior for any clues as to how he died and how many goblins it had taken to overpower him.
His remains gave us no hints, although considering how only a few scraps of cloth and a Porcelain tag were all that remained of Warrior, it seemed that there was a possibility that the goblins were far too hungry to use the other rookies for anything other than a meal. For their sake, I can only hope that they met their ends quickly if that truly was what happened to them.
"Looks like some 'nids got to him, doesn't it, sir?" Jurgen asked me. Apparently we were thinking the same thing, as I too felt that the carnage before us was far too reminiscent of one of the more pressing dangers facing the galaxy.
"It does, but I doubt anyone could mistake an ork for a hormagaunt." I said, quickly trying to dispel the thought of this planet facing a Tyranid incursion when it was so woefully under-equipped to fight back against a single Hive Ship, let alone a splinter fleet.
"What's a 'hormigant'? Is it a type of goblin?" Goblin Slayer suddenly asked as he tried to pronounce the xenos word, apparently deciding that the potential of learning about a greenskin he had yet to encounter was more than enough to finally start a conversation with me.
"No, it's not." I told him, hoping he would drop the subject there. Goblin Slayer unsurprisingly lost all interest once I told him we were not dealing with any greenskins, but that did not stop Priestess from trying to learn far more than she should ever know if she wanted to ever sleep peacefully again.
"What is a 'hornicant'?" She asked, trembling at whatever horrible image she associated with the creature's butchered name, blissfully unaware as to just how much worse those creatures and its kind truly were. "Do they usually do… this to people?"
Wanting to end this line of thought here and know before I could worry anymore about a completely unrelated threat to the task at hand, I answered the timid girl in the same way I would all frakking new guys when I wanted them to know how terrifying the galaxy was beyond their homeworld. "A hormagaunt is an awful, murderous xenos that exists solely for the purpose of consuming all biomatter it can find alongside millions upon millions of other identical creatures that share its same insatiable hunger." I told her, noticing her clutch her staff so hard that her knuckles turned white, well whiter than her already ghostly pale skin, and continuing anyways. "No, a hormagaunt wouldn't just stop at eating a single idiot that thought he could charge down one of the weakest drones a Tyranid army can produce. In fact, the only reason it would stop trying to consume everything in sight is if it were either dead or had stripped the entire planet down to a barren rock completely devoid of life. We should be very thankful that I have no reason to believe they are anywhere close to this system."
Of course, I had no reason to believe that they weren't close to whatever system this planet resided in either. The only reason I refused to believe that such a possibility existed was because I would have been better off eating the barrel of my lasgun and pulling the trigger rather than fighting a doomed battle where the only future I would have to look forward to would be getting eaten alive. As much as my mind liked to wander to the worst case scenario possible, there were things too sickening for even me to consider for more than a scant few moments at a time.
Before I could say anymore about the Great Devourer, Goblin Slayer interrupted me. His stubborn refusal to spare time for anything that didn't have to do with goblins came as a blessing for once, and I was glad to let him interrupt me and cover Jurgen's mouth before he could object to the perceived insult against me.
"These goblins must be desperate. I can see a few other bloodstains, but no bodies." He said, allowing the rest of us to come to the same disturbing conclusion he had already arrived at.
I could barely see the gleam of several different weapons that reflected the light off of my luminator which we had been using to guide ourselves until now. In addition to the six crude and dirty looking weapons that looked like they had not seen a cogboy in decades, I could also see the longsword Warrior had been carrying earlier was split in two. The mangled weapon was sitting beside a stalagmite that the tip was firmly embedded in, while the majority of the blade itself was less than a meter away.
If I was a betting man who didn't only gamble when he knew he was amongst friends or bound to turn a profit by the end of the night, I would have wagered my hat on the idiot swinging his weapon around with no regard to his squadmates or environment when disaster, or rather the stalagmite, struck. Losing his weapon in such a sad, pathetic way seemed unlikely, but considering I had made a career out of countless escapes that were just as improbable, I was inclined to believe that he met his end in the most ignoble way imaginable, undone by a simple miscalculation when swinging his weapon which left him unarmed against a horde of greenskins baying for his blood. That certainly would have explained the first few shrieks that drew my attention to him.
"Do goblins usually resort to cannibalism if they are desperate for food?" I muttered in disgust at the vile xenos barbarous actions, noticing the distinct lact of greenskins corpses accompanying their discarded weapons.
"Orks would eat each other just to prove that they were the biggest and meanest greenskin around. It makes sense that a couple of mutant Chaos worshippers would do it too." Jurgen said. I was somewhat surprised to find my aide supplying me with this knowledge instead of Goblin Slayer, but considering he was a Valhallan, it was no surprise that he knew so much about his ancestral enemy.
"That's awful! I hope the others are okay." Priestess said as she finally found the nerve to speak once more.
I personally hoped that they were put down with an arrow to the throat or a fast acting poison as opposed to being 'okay' as Priestess put it. The only reason Wizard and Fighter would be alive was if something worse was in store for them than death, and although I knew this was the case, I did not feel inclined to share this information with Priestess in the event she panicked and put my life at risk as a result. A juvie like her needed hope when facing the savage xenos we were up against, and I was not about to take that away from.
My aide also had no intentions of crushing her optimism. "We'll do everything to save those partners of yours if we can, cadet. I promise you that the commissar and I will do everything in our power to save your friends' lives." Jurgen told her in an attempt to comfort her. If he had known just how much of an annoyance they had been to the both of us, I'm sure he would have fed them to the goblins himself, an act we would have all been thankful for in due time.
"Let's move on. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that the goblins realize we are here." Goblin Slayer chimed in, interrupting the tender moment Jurgen was having with Priestess.
I for one was in full agreement with Goblin Slayer, although I was able to convince him to wait long enough for Priestess to send off the soul of one of The Emperor's faithful, as unwitting as Warrior's service might have been, to the local aspect of The Emperor that she venerated. Apparently there were dozens, if not hundreds, of different aspects of Him on Terra that the people of this planet worshiped according to one of the books I requested from Guild Girl. I was disturbed to discover that the population of this planet did not know of The Emperor by name, but considering that they had enough sense to treat the forces of Chaos with the same disdain as any good Imperial citizen would, I was willing to overlook any glaring holes that went against my roundabout explanation for why this planet was not full of heretics and in need of immediate purging aside from my presence amongst them. Regardless of my personal feelings on the matter, I made sure that we all waited for Priestess to finish her prayer, Jurgen muttering a common benediction under his breath alongside her that I dutifully mimicked, before pushing further ahead towards the final chamber in the cavern.
I didn't bother turning my luminator back on, as not only would it have been a fool to have exposed myself to a group of cannibal mutants that could see in the dark, but not long after we left Warrior's remains behind, the faint light of a bonfire ahead of us provided all the light we needed to proceed.
When we drew closer to the light, it became obvious that we would be in for a tough battle, but thankfully for us, Goblin Slayer already seemed to have a plan in mind. I was more than happy to let the resident expert on all things goblin to take the lead, comfortably settling into the role of an informed advisor as I tended to do as we started discussing the final detail to purge this nest of goblins once and for all.
Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, following the loss of one of his vaillant companions stages a desperate rescue attempt to save the remainder. Only the Imperium's greatest hero and the champion dedicated to purging every last greenskin from his planet stands any hope of saving the two damsels in distress, if they aren't already too late.
"Carre" once again: (Regarding Cain's assumption towards the world he is stranded on.)
Thanks for the suggestion, but in this instance I will not be making an amendment to the story. As of this chapter, Cain still has some hope he is on a lost agri-world he has an extremely unlikely chance of leaving without outside help. Admitting he is stranded on a Feudal World is akin to acknowledging his chances of being rescued or returning to the Imperium are about as likely as finding a friendly Necron. I hope this explains the mindset I was going for here.
Brother Bov: WAIT, what happened the last time Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, ran out of tanna tea?
To make a long story short, Cain single handedly defeated aWAAAGH! and liberated a planet from Ork control by himself, with Jurgen, of course.
By the end of the war, he liberated several hundred enslaved civilians, turned them into a semi-competent army, defeated several roaming Ork war bands, drowned thousands of Orks by destroying a nearby dam, and beat an Ork Warboss in single combat after launching an assault on the Warboss's war camp. This is, as we all know, a perfectly natural response to running out of your favorite beverage. Is it any wonder why Jurgen always kept a thermos full of tanna tea on him after that campaign?
If you want to enjoy the full story/legend/series of lucky accidents, please check out Death or Glory if you care to see the first true mark of greatness that first marked kick-started Cain's career as the HERO OF THE IMPERIUM.
A Sleeping Moon: (Regarding Several typos and missed punctuation marks in previous chapters.)
Frak, that's embarrassing. This must be the work of a mischievous machine spirit. I'll get a tech priest on that right away! Thanks for the catch!
A possible heretic named "Guest" too afraid to login and comment: (Regarding monsters other than goblins and greenskins)
Oh, I know. Cain and Jurgen will not exclusively be fighting goblins. The things I have planned are something that would make a worshipper of Tzeench proud… possibly… not that I would ever know how to do that or anything.
Also, your comment has been forwarded to your system's local Adeptus Arbites representative. May you make a fine servitor!
Ah well, that's enough of me clowning around in the comments. Thank you all once again for your support, you lovely people! I hope to see you all again for the next chapter!