It turned out his gamble had paid off.
Haarken World-Eater, Lord of the Chaos Raptors, was a predator without peer even within the Black Legion—a herald of the Warmaster himself. How could such a monster, who had reaped the souls of a thousand worlds, be easily brought down by a novice like Emrys? If victory were that simple, the Inquisition or the Grey Knights would have claimed Haarken's head millennia ago. The fact that he still drew breath was a testament to his profane power.
Emrys hadn't expected a clean kill. He wasn't a Saint, and he knew better than to underestimate the Great Enemy. He remembered the old maxim: Despise the foe strategically, but respect them tactically.
To break Haarken and shatter his claim on Vigilus, one needed more than skill. One needed the resolve to die. What is resolve? It is the will to carve a path of light through a pathless wilderness of shadow.
If no opportunity existed, he would forge one in blood.
He had not forgotten his 'Heaven's Mandate.' To trigger such a blessing, one had to walk through the fire; only at the absolute brink of annihilation could one grasp the singular thread of hope buried in the abyss.
And he had succeeded. He had traded his life for power.
Reborn from the threshold of death, Emrys surged with a violent, unending battle-thirst. His entire being hummed with a power that felt alien and absolute.
Haarken felt it instantly. His hyper-acute senses screamed a warning. There was a new weight to the air, an unprecedented pressure radiating from the "resurrected" human. For the first time in centuries, Haarken felt he was facing an equal.
"This is becoming interesting!" the Chaos Lord roared, his face twisted in a fanatical grin. Fear was beneath him; instead, his own bloodlust ignited. "This is the challenge I crave! Only a soul such as yours is worthy of being offered to the Skull Throne!"
"You talk too much," Emrys replied.
He lunged. The ground shattered under his boot as if struck by a Titan's foot, sending up a localized shockwave of grit and stone. He moved like a bolt from a railgun, dragging a wake of distorted air behind him.
Haarken's eyes widened. The boy's speed had tripled, blurring past the limits of his transhuman sight. Relying on instinct honed by ten thousand years of war, Haarken parried toward a flickering shadow.
His Infernal Spear passed through empty air. An afterimage.
Realizing the deception, Haarken tried to bank his jump-pack and retreat, but Emrys was already there. Under the blessing of 'Born from Death,' the human was no longer bound by mortal limits.
Emrys threw a bare-knuckled punch. It connected with the force of an autocannon shell.
CRACK.
Haarken, unhelmeted, took the full brunt. His face buckled, and he staggered back, vision swimming with sparks. Emrys didn't give him a second to breathe. He spun, putting his entire weight into a whip-kick that caught the Chaos Lord across the throat.
Haarken went flying, crashing through a ferrocrete ruin. He scrambled to his feet, dazed and furious. How? How had this whelp become so fierce so quickly?
"Weren't you the one lecturing me on strength?" Emrys gestured mockingly. "Come then, Vanguard of the Black Legion. Is this the best the Warmaster has to offer?"
Haarken's expression darkened into a mask of pure hate. "Do not grow arrogant, worm!"
Suddenly, Emrys hurled his massive daemon axe. It whirled through the air like a blood-red buzzsaw, shrieking as it cut the wind. Haarken instinctively batted it aside with his spear, but it was a feint. Emrys was right behind the weapon.
A flying kick caught Haarken in the chest, sent him skidding back twenty meters. Emrys caught the axe mid-air as he landed, lowered his center of gravity, and leaped.
BOOM.
He traversed the distance in a single bound, trailing a gale of red energy. He gripped the axe handle until his knuckles turned white, his veins bulging like black serpents beneath his skin. The weapon ignited, wreathed in the screams of bound souls and warp-fire.
"DIE!"
The axe descended with the weight of a falling star. Haarken barely managed to raise his Infernal Spear horizontally to block.
CLANG—!!!
A translucent shockwave rippled outward, leveling the remaining walls of the ruin. The great axe sheared straight through the shaft of the legendary spear and bit deep into Haarken's pauldron, shattering the ceramite.
But Haarken was a veteran of the Long War. Even as his armor failed, he lunged forward, driving the jagged, broken half of his spear into Emrys' abdomen.
Emrys coughed blood, his pupils contracting from the agony—then they flared with a renewed, manic light. Ignoring the weapon buried in his gut, he dropped his axe, grabbed Haarken by the gorget, and began rainining blows onto the Lord's face.
"Come on, you bastard!"
It was a primitive, mindless brawl. Haarken, driven to a similar madness, dropped his own broken weapon and struck back. The Chaos Raptors watching from the periphery stood frozen. Their lord and this madman were standing in the rubble, refusing to dodge, simply trading skull-crushing blows.
After a hundred punches, Haarken felt a flicker of genuine shock. Is this creature even human? Every time he landed a blow that should have pulped a mortal's heart, the boy seemed to grow stronger. His punches were getting heavier, vibrating through Haarken's reinforced ribcage.
Finally, Haarken was the one to break. He kicked Emrys away, gasping for air, his face a ruin of purple bruises. "What... what are you?"
Emrys wiped blood from his mouth and grinned, baring stained teeth. "Me? I'm your end."
He could feel the 'Heavenly Mandate' cycling. Every time Haarken broke his body, the blessing stitched it back together, adding the Chaos Lord's own momentum to his strength. As long as his will remained, he was an unstoppable engine of slaughter.
Emrys looked down at the daemon axe and frowned. "This thing... it's too heavy. Too clumsy."
The axe flickered, its blood-flames roaring as if in protest.
"I'll melt you down when this is over if you don't cooperate," Emrys muttered.
The weapon was designed for a transhuman or a daemon prince, not a man. It was unwieldy. But as Emrys spoke, the blood-fire intensified. The souls bound within the iron shrieked in agony as the weapon's very molecular structure began to warp.
The fire subsided. The massive, cumbersome axe had transformed. It was now a long-bladed saber with a 1.4-meter blade and a hilt meant for a two-handed grip. It was sleek, deadly, and perfectly balanced.
"That's better." Emrys tested the weight, carving a line of red fire through the air.
Impossible, Haarken thought, a chill of blasphemous doubt creeping into his mind. The Blood God is supposed to be impartial. Theoretically, high-tier daemon weapons could change form, but usually only after centuries of soul-reaping. For a weapon to reshape itself on a whim... it was as if Khorne himself were personally supervising the duel.
No. Khorne is fair. He respects the martial code. He would not tip the scales so blatantly.
"I will take your head!" Haarken roared, trying to reclaim his courage. He brandished the broken spear-stub. "It will hang from my trophies as a warning to all!"
But the bravado rang hollow. The air around Emrys was beginning to smoke.
A chilling, oppressive glow enveloped the human. His face, pale from blood loss, began to warp. A brass-like visage, reminiscent of a Juggernaut's skull, seemed to shimmer over his features. His eyes were pits of molten brass, and his breath came in hot, sulfurous puffs.
"The Face of Khorne..." Haarken whispered.
He wanted to believe it was a trick of the light, but the crushing, physical weight of the Warp pressing down on him was undeniable. This wasn't just a blessing; it was an avatar of divine wrath.
Haarken looked toward the sky, toward the Eye of Terror, as if he could demand an answer from the gods themselves: Is this what you call a fair fight?