DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN WARHAMMER
He sat on a munitions crate while he watched his brothers toy with one of their captives. They took turns stabbing into him, taunting him each time their blades pierced flesh. They spoke of the joy they took in killing his gene brothers.
The fun they had hunting them down one by one. Killing each as slow as they were killing him. There were lies thrown in of course. Of how his primarch, The Raven fell.
Butchered by countless blades. Now this. This was what truly broke him. The captured Raven, stripped of his amor, skin exposed to the environment, broke down into screams of pure rage and agony.
Spewing curses and crying out for his father. This just seemed to excite his brothers more.
He on the other hand took no joy in this bloody sport. It was pointless.
There was no honor to be gained. No trophies to be claimed. No true sport of it.
This was the main reason he decided to defect. What better opponent than a fellow Astartes. A fellow warrior gene forged for combat.
Not like when they sparred in the training pits..but true life or death. They would both fight with their hardest. Grit against grit. Skill against skill.
Life against life. Everything would ride on who was the better warrior.
He got his first taste on the killing fields of Isstvan 3 when he fought against those who were not swayed by the warmaster's cause. He found great enjoyment in it though since then he felt empty. Like mentally something was stripped from him after that.
When the assault on the loyalist came he thought that would feel the void. Three legions to battle through. He found great opponents worthy of the kill tallies on his armor. Yet he still felt empty inside. As if something was still missing.
An integral portion of his psych. He fought the same. He killed the same if not even greater but yet he did not feel like himself. He knew exactly not what it could have been.
There are no longer any gloryful battles to be fought on this planet anymore. The loyalist had been all but routed at the original massacre location. There was no true combat to be found anymore. Yes they encountered pickpockets of resistance but that was it. They no longer fought like the mighty warriors they were before.
Now they fought out of desperation and survival. Cornered prey seeking to lash out at the hunter in hope of living to see another day. There was no enjoyment in fighting them.
It was always the same. He would get maybe.. one or two of the number who retained some semblance of the warrior left behind and they would give him a slight challenge.
However days on edge and with no nutrition left many weary and prone to openings. The challenge they posed was not great enough to sate him.
He no longer heard the laughter of his squad. That meant one thing. They Had grown tired of torturing their captive and had moved on to their second form of enjoyment.
As if on cue he saw a massive pike being raised, with the fallen raven impaled upon it from groin to clavicle. He was still alive as was evident by the slight mons that came from his battered form. Since their defection many of his legion had taken on more sinister hobbies. He had heard murmurs of new forms of worship and praise whilst in the lodges but he paid it no mind.
Now since they had finished their mission he had the opportunity to see what the focus was all about. It was..unnerving to say the least. Weird rituals.
Mounds formed out of the corpses of their enemies. Massive festivals of debauchery and indulging of flesh. Crude ritual scarring. These were just a few to name.
His legion was shifting from dignified warriors to frenzied and maddened cultist. These were not the Sons of Horus. Not the legion once known as the Luna Wolves.
This was not them.
He watched his fellow legionaries drag in another captive for their sport. This one was a Salamander as evident by his blackened skin and fiery red eyes. It seemed they took the most enjoyment out of torturing them due to how long they took to kill.
He watched him kick and squirm as they dragged him along the ground. Like the others he spat curses and called them disgraces and traitors. Promised to gut each and everyone of them.
He heard the same thing so many times prior and he was honestly growing tired of it. It was the same thing. Day in and out.
He watched them hoist him like the others, tie him to a pole so that he couldn't move. They took their blades ready to carve into him like a slab of meat.
This was not them. This was not how it was meant to be. They shouldn't be torturing their targets like some game.
No they were Cthonians. Their call came in battle. They praised themselves on their tenacity and steadfastness.
They prided..Wait he thought to himself. That was it. That's what was lost to not only him but the legion as a whole.
Not their honor. Not their stature. Not even their glorified reputation but their pride. Their pride as warriors.
Their pride as men of Cthonia. That all had been stripped from them the day they turned their guns upon their own brothers. He was sure if the spirits of his ancestors could see him now they would be looking down upon him in disappointment.
This was the void he felt deep inside. The piece of him that had been lost when he first killed a fellow space marine. His pride.
He only knew of one way to redeem himself…
The three Sons of Horus legionaries tore into the Salamander with their blades taking great enjoyment in his torment. However their fun would cut short as a boltgun round rang out punching a fist sized hole into his chest, killing him instantly.
"Who dares ruin our-" the speaker was cut short, his head turned into a mass of skull and brain matter as it exploded.
The other two fared no better, brought down by successive gunfire.
A single figure walked forward, clad in the same sea green armor as those who lay on the ground in a pool of their own blood. Smoke still seeped from the barrel of his boltgun, hot from its recent kills. The only thing that distinguished him from the others was the icon of the Sons of Horus upon his pauldron had been etched out, completely scratched away by a knife.
He looked down upon the bodies nudging one with his boot to make sure he was still dead. He had much work to do if he wanted to restore his pride and honor as a Cthonia.
Turning his back, he walked forward, to find his next targets.
"I am a Son of Horus..no more."...
That's pretty much that. Don't forget to rate and review see ya later!