One of the warriors slings his weapon and reaches forward, waving some arcane glowing device over the heavy gauge restraints that cover the Battle-Brother's gauntlets.

The manacles fall away and the Marine's hands are instantly wrapped around the throat of the first warrior.

A weak neck snaps like a twig and the armoured giant wheels round, swinging the dead alien by the throat like a club.

The second Warrior lets out a yelp before being hit in the face by his companion's corpse and bones crunch under the impact, leaving two mangled bodies by the Space Marine's feet.

The crowd roar in approval and the Wyches leap into action, spreading out to maximise their angles of approach.

I watch them and analyse. They are supremely skilled but fragile, keeping out of the Imperial's reach as they cut and thrust.

They see themselves as artists, not weapons, and their fighting styles reflect this important fact.

They pirouette and somersault around, putting on a dazzling display for the adoration of the crowd as they wear the noble giant down, nicking armour joints and weak spots with poisoned blades and spinning flails.

I see none of their artistry or skill as they commit to the performance, staining their canvas of dirt with the blood of one the Emperor's blessed sons.

I see weakness.

Kill them

Millennia of injury and habits are revealed to me as they move. Here, one favours his left leg, compensating for a knee injury that never healed completely, another only strikes with her left blade despite carrying two, exposing her weaker side to an observer.

Kill them

Yet another positions her fighting stance too far in the diagonal, betraying a flaw in the peripheral vision of one eye.

Most importantly of all, they all betray habits.

Being biological creatures they are prone to favouritism and repeat behaviour, and each of the five aliens before me fight in the way that they prefer, such specific ways that it is like reading an open tome.

Kill them

Being a weapon, I do not suffer these weaknesses.

The Space Marine drops to his knees, vitae pouring from the numerous wounds across his massive frame, senses dulled by poison, body weakened by blood loss.

A female Wych, Kill her the obvious leader, prances up behind him and delivers the coup-de-grace with her wickedly serrated blades, effectively decapitating the giant in a jet of arterial spray.

She basks in his fading life essence as the crowd's cheers reach a fever pitch.

Almost immediately, ancient gears grind into action, retracting the bars in front of me into recesses in the floor as the Wyches KILL THEM ALL turn to face me, looks of amusement on their faces.

I close my eyes.

And unleash. Myself.

Maximum velocity attained: .06 seconds

Prioritise targets: #01 Wych cult leader. Engaging

Burst of bolt fly mid-sprint, adjust, fire again. She avoids first hail of bolts and dodges into the second, confirming projected estimation of intended movement.

Soul sucking bitch dies in pieces, exploding violently over her companions.

Prioritise targets: #02 Wych (armed trident +net). Engaging

Next wych has longest range weapon. Rest of magazine empties into him, torso erupts like a burst bag full of rotten meat.

Prioritise targets: #03 Wych (armed flailed blades) Engaging

He has predictable attack pattern, feint with flail, dodge left favouring strong leg then attack on flank.

He feints with flail, dodges, lands heavily on left leg. I dart in, blade punches out, stabs through flimsy breast plate and xenos heart. Don't stop as he falls.

Prioritise targets: #04 + #05 (#04 knives #05 spiked gauntlets)

They Use the milliseconds it took to kill their kin to time their strike simultaneously.

Left hand side of me, one faints with right blade and strikes with left.

Butcher blade deflects strike into the throat of right hand assailant as her spiked knuckles cut into my flank.

Injury: right side, 2nd/3rd rib. flesh wound. poison detected. neutralising.

Damage Assessment: negligible

Execute short side kick to left side, leg pistons into alien ribcage. Feel bones break and lungs puncture as she lets out gasp of surprise.

Both xenos drop to the ground, don't check to see if dead, look up to Dais.

I wrest control of my senses back from the howling machines in my head and stare with hate filled eyes at the Archon Primary Target lookingback at me, accompanied by its unholy bride. The dried out skin stapled to its helmet is fixed in a leering grin, seeming to mock me.

The crowd have gone silent for a moment. Nobody expected this. Five celebrated Wyches, they have been dispatched in the time it takes for one to draw breath.

I fancy it's now that they realise the threat I represent.

Their interest is roused Line of thought irrelevant, PURGE THEM.

Maximum velocity attained: 0.9 seconds

Run, reload pistol, calculate vector for best landing. Jump.

Sensation of flight is fleeting, clear distance to stands before hearts beat again.

Xenos wire reaches out to catch me as though alive, writhing. Cuts, electrocutes, pain receptors alive.

Injury: Legs, multiple flesh wounds, poison detected, neutralising, electricity detected, minor burns.

Damage assessment: negligible, boost Terminus levels, cauterise nerve endings.

Land in crowd. Smell fear, sweat, excrement. Add smell of blood.

Butcher panicking Xenos like cattle, carve path to Archon Primary Target

Pistol bucks in hand, screaming aliens die. Mesmerised by chopping motion of arm.

Up

Down

Up

Down

Up

Down

Hate them.

Kill them.

Clear cache. Prioritise targets: #01-04 Dark Eldar sub-group Incubi (armed power weapons) Engage based on unit proximity.

Enemy well armoured but slow. #1 goes down under hail of bolts. Pistol clacks empty.

Throw pistol at #2, #2 dodges and swings sword. Parry, energy sparks between blades, switch parry into stab, pierce throat. Sword stuck, let it go.

Push kick #2 at #3, 3# stumbles, faceplate cracks against knee, #3 goes limp.

#4 stabs with halberd, dodge, trap shaft under armpit, control with right wrist. Smash shaft with opposite arm, continue momentum into spin, reverse grip on broken halberd, swing.

#4 loses head. Continue spinning, track next target, release.

I silence the machines and watch with satisfaction as the blade rams itself through the Wych bride's chest and throws the vile creature off the Dais with a crack of shattered bone.

The Archon steals one glance at his forlorn love before losing it forever, the female xenos tumbling to an ignoble death.

Oblivious to the carnage all around him he howls, Aeons old lungs retching up the raw emotion of loss in an alien tongue.

It is a pitiful sound, one born of an animal that should be long dead.

I look around me at this perverse city which has claimed my mortality, at the panicking things nearby that clamour in their attempts to escape and the armoured monstrosities that flit among them, preying on the weakness.

I hate this so much.

So I roar back.

It is a guttural, too human sound, all my hate and rage and anger spilling out in one long note of defiance. My mouth fills with blood as flesh tears, the mask attached to my face ripping fresh wounds in me as muscles move but I don't stop, my vocal chords are on fire but I don't stop.

The Eldar do. A race sensitive to emotion, they cease their panicking and turn to look, look at this monster in their midst and be reminded that there are things much older and more dangerous than the power they fear, the purity of my hate fixing them to the spot.

The blade penetrates deep. I feel it glance from a vertebrae before exiting my lower back in a spray of gore.

My blood hisses and burns at it runs down the serrated edge, hated Archon leaning in close to savour the killing blow.

I laugh as I stare at the dried mask of my own skin, stretched to obscurity across the enemy's helm.

I'm laughing at the Alien's stupidity. None of these Blasphemous animals has the mentality of a weapon, all make the same mistakes.

The Archon is too fast, too skilled for me to fight. So I bring him to me.

I laugh as I drag him to the ground, blade protruding painfully from my back as my hand grips his wrist tightly.

I laugh as I tear the helmet from his screaming head, and as the talons of my gauntlet peel the flesh from his skull.

I laugh as I drape the xenos' face over my mask, it obscures one eye as the bloody mess slips down my face.

I look up to see a cadre of warriors standing over me, weapons raised, the spindly butcher one step behind.

I'm still laughing as they open fire.