He Is Your Champion

[Deleted]

He Is Your Champion Marassar The hammer-blow pounding of drums and twenty-thousand stamping feet; the place shook He could hear them there, beyond the darkness, chanting in chorus. Like a temple. "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" Marassar shifted in his armor, turned to look at Cruor. The old man was a hunched, gnarled piece of driftwood. "My Lord?" Cruor asked. "It is almost time." "I will wait here." The solid ground beneath them rumbled, long and low. The servos in his boots whirred and Marassar remained a statue.  From every blown-out voxhailer and crack in the masonry, a voice, shaking the wet from the walls. Cruor flinched. "The Butcher of Zarsalus! The Prince of Femurs! He Who Defiles Daughters! His titles are too great to name! He is your champion! He is: Adragar!" The crowd outside exploded. How the patchwork arena, large as it was, could sustain a crowd of such energy day in and day out was a secret lost to time.  The chanting again. "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" A single, heavy step. It was measured.  "The first to challenge him today, dragged down from the spire peaks! Son of the Emperor! Eternal Crusader! The Angel of Death!" Marassar plowed forward, armor-shod feet cracking the flagstone as he burst through the rising gate, blade in hand, out into the wide-open arena.  The thing before him was a monster. A real, genuine monster that haunted dreams and prowled shadowy places. The jeering and thrown rubble did not register. It - Adragar, he assumed - was an ogryn. Had been an ogryn, at some remote point in the past. Twice Marassar's height, a mass of polluted flesh strung up on gnawed bones like tree trunks. Adragar beat his chest for the crowd, sending ripples through his body that popped blisters and made his patchwork armor of cargo-eight chassis sway. Rocks and broken bottles pattered on Marassar's armor like spring rain. He drew his great two-handed sword up, blade resting on his forearm.  The Key Stance. Sharp. Quick. Deadly. It befit the relic weapon; nearly eight feet of adamantine blade. Marassar thumbed the activation rune. The power-field hissed in the murky air. He began to circle Adragar but the giant did not notice. The crowd still cheered. The ogryn-thing turned, a lamp post resting on his shoulder like a club.  Marassar frowned when he saw the face. A ruined mask of muscle and jagged bone, bruised and weeping decay fluid from every orifice. On his forehead was branded a sigil that turned even an angel's stomach to see: the Triad of Pestilence. The Mark of Chaos. This was why Marassar had come. Why he had subjected himself to this debasement. The cult was here.  Adragar laughed, wet like vomiting, and drew down his visor. They were dead on now, Marassar's blade a needlepoint to the lumbering monster. Adragar charged like an avalanche, barreling down on the outer wall where his prey waited. The crowd roared. They had seen it a hundred times over. The thrill of what was about to come never left them. "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" Marassar did not move. Adragar shook the ground as he came on, but Marassar did not move. There were more shouts behind him. The crowd was turning ugly. He was ruining their sport.  Adragar did not care. He brought his makeshift weapon up as he ran, prepared to bring it down and crack the space marine like an egg. Marassar shot forward, pulverizing the ground beneath him, sent his swordhand up in a clean thrust that plunged deep into Adragar's neck.  The monster waived, confused. He had been nowhere near that close, and yet - or had he? Adragar wondered where he was for a moment. With a single, heavy stroke Marassar took the beast's head off and sent it sailing to the arena floor.  The crowd was paralyzed. Had Adragar been tricked? Had the Butcher of Zarsalus, the Prince of Femurs not noticed how close he had come to the marine? Had he not noticed the length of the blade?  The arena security, gang-scum and cult initiates, dressed in black fatigues and crude, bare-metal armor, broke the stunned silence. They scurried down the crowded steps, autoguns in hand, and began to pepper Marassar with low-calibur fire. Marassar drew his bolt pistol and gave his own, answering salvo as rounds plinked against him. He turned the closest of the guards into red mist, one running down the stairs lost his legs, and a third still was decapitated by the explosive round. The crowd began to frenzy and Marassar backed toward the entry gate, the guards lost amid the human mass as they turned their guns on rabid underhivers in panic. He turned, all but forgotten in the pandemonium, and passed out of the arena where Adragar's body lay, rotting. "Are we done here, Lord?" Cruor asked, falling into step as he emerged from some little-noticed shadow. "We are. How do we leave this place?" "Little-used Mechanicus service elevator, two sub-levels away. Connects all of the critical infrastructure, but we should be able to catch a ride on it to some lower level junction and get off there." "Do you have a route?" "I am sending it to you now."  Tags: Ksenia Vail

[Ksenia Vail]

HE IS YOUR CHAMPION KSENIA VAIL To the people of Corinthe, their planet was their home. For others, it might be seen as an opportunity, a place to turn a profit, and for the more nefarious, a perfect place to spread their own vile corruption. Whether it be  home, an opportunity, or merely a stopping point in galactic travel, Corinthe was called many things by many people, but one saw it differently. To Ksenia Vail, Corinthe has always been a test. For millennia she has watched over the planet, managing every aspect of the sprawling forge and towering hives until it became what it is today, one of the most powerful planets in the Imperium. To Ksenia, Corinthe's operation is a vast, nigh incomprehensible series of complex equations, and balancing each and every one of them yielded the ideal results. Nothing went unnoticed, everything was accounted for, and it all, always, went exactly as she planned. Her methods often remained shrouded in mystery. Abnormal events that would normally bear great concern occasionally went unheeded. individuals whose criminal nature caused strain and brought hardship to large swathes of the hives were let be. Even the odd follower of chaos or two were allowed to roam the underhives despite the risk such characters could pose. They were all part of her equations. She did not care who was harmed in the short term, what barons were inconvenienced, what merchants were plunged into debt, or what fools decided to throw their lives away on the promise that evil entities would give them the power they needed to cast of the shackles of their life and become something greater. Ksenia was only concerned for the end results. Her equations needed to be maintained, protected, and constantly assessed. Sometimes, it required a little bit of a hands-on approach.  "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" Incessant, raucous chanting. Ksenia didn't care for it. However, such fervor, excitement, and bloodlust was expected. Bread and games had been staples of humanity since before they could even breach Terra's atmosphere, and could always be relied upon. This unsanctioned arena was just one of many on Corinthe, and like the others, Ksenia was all too aware of it's existence. It served a purpose. It satiated the people. Thousands came to these matches to release stress, partake in the tribal urges of humanity, throw away their livelihoods on poorly-judged bets. However, to Ksenia, it served other purposes. Opposite from where she sat in the stands was a shrouded box, it's occupants hidden from view. Despite their best efforts to remain in the shadows, Ksenia knew who they were. They were the ones in charge of this show, and each of them was steeped in gifts of chaos.  "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" Ksenia's hooded head turned slightly as the chanting intensified and the combatants took to the field. She had seen many try their hands against the champions of the foul arena over the last month, but Corinthe whispered to her of something worthy, a new champion — a space marine. The angel of death, a newcomer in the arena, was not well received. However, as he drew his immense sword, the corner's of Ksenia's lips curled up into a mischievous grin. The whispers had told her true. An opportunity stood in the arena, a new variable — a tool that could be used to influence her equations.  "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" "Adra-Gar!" The best charged to the delight of his fans. The roar of their bloodlust reached a peak as the mighty ogryn raised his makeshift club, and then fell into a brief hush. None had expected their champion would be defeated, and certainly not so soon. No one, but Ksenia, that is. The moment that astartes stepped into the arena Adragar's fate was sealed. However, true to the template, those with the most to lose did not handle it well. Whether out of self-serving impulses or a deep-seated desire to assuage the fury of their shadowy masters, dozens, maybe even hundreds, flew into a frenzy. Most was directed at the space marine, but soon enough the arena devolved into a wild melee that threatened to consume the entire crowd.  Ksenia shifted and slipped through the enraged onlookers and picked her way towards the exit. She was a nobody to them, and most let her pass. A few bumped her but otherwise left her alone. A small woman like her was no threat to anyone, after all, and she was certainly not the target of their ire. She found her way out easily enough, but kept close to the entrance. Ksenia had to wait only a few moments before the heavy footfalls of astartes power armor drew close, and once her eyes fell upon the angel of death, she approached. "Leaving so soon?" She quipped. "After all, we cannot imagine a simple plague ogryn like that was a suitable challenge for someone like you — nor the reason you stain the halls of our world with diseased blood." With little more than a simple off-white dress, her humble black and red robe, and a pair of boots, the dark-haired woman didn't look all the different from the typical hiver. Undoubtedly cleaner, though. Either way, the proxy form of Ksenia Vail wouldn't normally draw the attention of anyone for more than a brief moment or two before she ceased to be remarkable in any way. For an astartes like Marassar, who had fought countless enemies across numerous theaters, faced down powerful champions of chaos and deadly enemies of the Emperor around the galaxy, she might warrant a second glance. There was something off about the young woman. Anyone with even a basic sense for danger would pick up on the level of threat this unarmed and unarmored woman posed.  "If you leave now, the masters of this arena will undoubtedly hunt you down for spoiling their sport and their profit," Ksenia continued, and during a brief pause, she smirked ever-so-slightly. "We believe that the inverse should be true. It should be you who are the hunter, and they who are the prey."   Tags: @plannedexponent