It should have been a fatal stroke. There was no way that the veteran legionary could miss his target at such range. But then, this was Khârn.
It all happened in a matter of heartbeats. It was stunning in its brutality and its speed, leaving the onlookers wide-eyed, frozen in surprise and shock.
Khârn leaned to the side, moving just enough so that the blade of the gladius sliced by his bare neck.
His hands came up from the arms of his throne, grabbing the surprised warrior by the wrists.
He twisted, savagely. Snap.
The World Eater released his hold on his weapon, snarling.
Still seated, Khârn grabbed the gladius by the hilt as it dropped from his enemy’s armoured grip.
His arm whipped out, and he flung the gladius away from him. It embedded itself in the throat of one of the other Bloodborn, sinking deep. The warrior clutched at it, blood gurgling.
The Bloodborn were battle-hardened veterans, however. They were surprised by Khârn’s sudden revival, of course, but their instincts had been honed by endless warfare. Their reactions – already far beyond those of mere mortals – had been sharpened to a razor’s edge by constant battle and exacerbated by the Nails thundering in the back of their skulls.
Already their systems were being pumped with stimms, synapses flaring as adrenal spikes surged through them, flooding them with strength and speed.
They were not frozen into inaction as Khârn awoke. Far from it. They responded instantly and without hesitation. Blades were levelled at their singular foe. Barrels were raised.
They were five legionaries against one – four now, as the one with the blade embedded in his neck was already dying. Still, they were armed and fully armoured, they were in an enclosed space, with no way out, and they surrounded a lone, unarmoured, unarmed opponent. There could only be one possible outcome to this fight.
And yet, the outcome of the fight was anything but certain. Even alone and unarmed, Khârn was never an opponent to be taken lightly. He’d already killed one of their number in the blink of an eye. He rose from his throne, moving with ungodly speed, even for one of the Legiones Astartes. He still had a hold of the broken wrist of the warrior who had tried to execute him. He twisted it sharply as he came up, turning him. In one smooth movement, Khârn was behind him, even as a bolt pistol raised by one of the other Bloodborn fired.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space of the isolation cell. The shot struck the Bloodborn Khârn was using as a living shield square in the chest. It detonated with a concussive thunderclap. Khârn kicked the World Eater away, planting a bare foot square in the small of the warrior’s back, sending him stumbling directly into the shooter, even as Khârn claimed a plasma pistol from the veteran’s holster.
He drew and fired smoothly, straight into the back of the helmet of the warrior he’d just kicked away. An oscillating scream accompanied the stream of blinding white-blue plasma as the weapon discharged, blasting through the horned helmet and liquefying his head. Hissing coolant vapours vented from the plasma pistol’s reactor chamber.
Two down.
A movement to his left. Khârn dropped to one knee, and a hurled throwing axe, spinning end over end, sliced over his head. It embedded itself in the headrest of his recuperation throne. Khârn’s pistol came around as he dropped, swinging towards his next target.
A spiked power maul smashed the pistol from his hand, then came back around to crush Khârn into the wall. He rose to meet the blow, darting forward with blinding speed to put himself inside his attacker’s effective range. He caught the warrior under one elbow and turned him, taking the Bloodborn off balance. Using the warrior’s momentum against him, Khârn rammed him back into the armourglass wall. The sheer transparent panel shuddered under the impact.
Khârn punched upwards with his fingers outstretched, driving up into the warrior’s throat like a blade, crushing his windpipe.
Feeling a movement behind him, he swayed to the side, narrowly avoiding being impaled upon the roaring tip of a chainsword. He grabbed the legionary’s arms as he followed up on his failed strike, pulling him off balance and driving the blurred chain-links into the belly of the warrior he’d just slammed against the wall. Ceramite and plasteel were churned away in a screech of protesting metal, and blood sprayed.
Spinning, Khârn elbowed the chainsword-wielding Bloodborn square in the face, cracking one of his visor lenses. As he reeled back, Khârn spun, grabbing the throwing axe embedded in his throne. It was a brutish, barbaric killing implement, with a heavy curved blade and jagged teeth.
The chainsword roared as it swung it at him. Khârn hurled himself into a roll, avoiding the madly spinning blade-links. The legionary with the bolt pistol was rising now, pushing off the dead weight of the World Eater whose head Khârn had blasted off.
As Khârn came up, he threw the axe. It whipped across the isolation cell, spinning end over end, and took that legionary in the head, embedding deep in his helmet, square between the eyes. It did not penetrate, but the force of the impact snapped his neck back, the back of his helm smacking hard against the armourglass wall behind him.
The chainsword came in at him again. Turning and stepping in close, Khârn chopped the legionary’s weapon arm at the wrist, forestalling the blow, and drove his fist into the warrior’s helmet, bloodying his knuckles but driving his foe back.
The warrior at his back was not dead, though his windpipe was crushed and his abdomen was a mess of ruined armour and blood. He came at Khârn, growling like an animal, swinging his spiked power maul. Khârn turned and dropped to one knee, arching his spine and throwing his head back. The crackling power maul frizzled through the air, centimetres over him, passing so close that the weapon’s power field scorched his throat and chin.
Khârn grabbed hold of the exposed cables of the legionary’s Mark III chest plate with one hand, the other between his enemy’s legs, and surged to his feet, lifting the warrior clear off the deck. He roared, muscles straining, and hurled the legionary head-first across the cell.
He hit the deck hard and slammed into the corner of the cell, crunching against the armourglass walls. Khârn was instantly moving, whipping around with preternatural speed.
A bolt screamed by his head, centimetres away, and detonated against the wall behind. A second shot boomed, making the gun smoke swirl in a horizontal vortex behind it, but it too failed to find its mark, though it did score a bloody line across Khârn’s chest before it detonated against the cell wall.
Khârn feinted to the right and broke left, avoiding another shot. He took one step, up onto the seat of his throne, and leapt at the shooter, who still had the throwing axe embedded in his helm between the eyes.
The legionary’s bolt pistol barked twice more. The first shot screamed through the gap between Khârn’s left ear and his outstretched arm. The second caught him just above the collarbone. He was lucky. Had it hit the collarbone the bolt’s velocity would have slowed enough that it would have detonated within his flesh. That would have likely torn his arm off, and possibly his head. As it was, the bolt-round drove straight through him, exiting out through the thick, corded span of muscle between his shoulder and his neck before exploding, tearing his back to shreds of meat and burned flesh. Still, it did not stop him.
Khârn hit the armoured legionary with his shoulder, slamming him back into the wall. The warrior slipped on the blood-slick deck and went down on one knee. The two fighters were locked together in a deadly clinch. Khârn’s foe drew a saw-toothed knife from the scabbard strapped around one of his greaves, holding it in a downward, stabbing grip. He drove it deep into Khârn’s side, just under his fused ribcage. Khârn roared his fury and pain and broke away, snapping the legionary’s wrist with a savage wrench, leaving the dagger embedded to the hilt in his flesh. He followed up with a brutal elbow to the side of the legionary’s helmet that snapped his head sidewards. Before he could recover, Khârn took the warrior’s helm in both hands. He thrust his thumbs through the glowing visor lenses, shattering them and driving them into the eyes beyond.
The blinded legionary roared. Khârn placed one foot on his chest, and using that as leverage, he pulled free the axe still embedded in the forehead of the warrior’s helmet. The legionary tried to bring his bolt pistol to bear on Khârn, but Khârn swatted it aside with the flat of the axe blade, then wrenched his opponent’s helmet to the side, exposing his neck.
He hacked into it, once, twice, three times, each strike fast and brutal, chopping first through flexible ribbed under-armour, tightly wrought fibre-bundles, cables and servos, and then hacking through into the meat of the neck. The axe blade was blunted on the legionary’s iron-hard spine, but not before it had severed arteries that squirted hot, gene-rich blood liberally across the room, splashing the armourglass walls and Khârn himself.
Three down. Two remained.

The savage attack was over in a heartbeat. The brutalised legionary fell to the floor, and Khârn rose swiftly, turning, blood dripping from the axe. In the same movement he tore clear the gladius impaling his first victim to the wall. Blood bubbled from the wound. He wasn’t quite dead, not yet, but Khârn finished him, stomping down hard on his neck, ending his pitiful gurgling.
With axe and gladius in hand, he turned to face the last two living World Eaters locked in the cell with him. He spun the two weapons, loosening his wrists.
They came at him from both sides, rounding the iron throne in the centre of the cell. Khârn looked straight ahead, keeping both of them in the periphery of his vision.
They attacked as one; a chainsword roaring in to cut him from shoulder blade to hip, a power maul sizzling in a downward arc to crush his skull.
Khârn broke left, avoiding the screaming chainblade and blocking the downward swing of the maul with the short-handled axe, simultaneously ramming the gladius up through the already compromised armour covering the legionary’s stomach. The downward force of the power maul drove him to his knees.
Hearing the wailing roar of the chainblade sweeping in behind, Khârn threw himself into a roll to the side, leaving the gladius embedded in the legionary’s gut. The chainsword caught him a glancing blow, ripping up the flesh of his shoulder, churning it instantly to the bone, spattering blood.
The warrior lifted the roaring blade to finish him, but Khârn came up quicker, sweeping up a bolt pistol lying on the deck. He planted the barrel of the gun under the legionary’s chin and fired. The top of his helmet exploded, drenching the ceiling with blood and brain matter.
One left.
Khârn swung around, levelling the bolt pistol on the last remaining member of the Bloodborn kill-team. He squeezed the trigger.
Click.
The chamber was empty, the clip dry.
The warrior swung at him, roaring. Khârn caught the haft of the power maul in both hands, dropping his throwing axe. The two warriors fought for control of the weapon, struggling against each other. Unarmoured, they might have been of equal strength. Bedecked in full war-plate, his already prodigious strength considerably augmented, the Bloodborn warrior vastly out-muscled Khârn.
He turned, driving Khârn up against the cell wall, a grinding roar crackling from his snarling vox-grille as he pressed the haft of his power maul into Khârn’s throat. He lifted the unarmoured warrior off the ground, driving his weight against him. Khârn’s face began to turn purple, the veins in his neck and temples bulging. He tried to lift his legs to thrust away, but the Bloodborn drove in close, not giving any room for leverage.
The warrior’s snarling helmet was only centimetres from Khârn’s head. Drawing his head back, the legionary slammed his armoured forehead into Khârn’s face, smashing his nose into a bloody smear. A second headbutt fractured his skull. Khârn roared his defiance, spittle and blood spraying his opponent’s faceplate.
Khârn reached to his side, tearing free the dagger embedded in his flesh, and drove it up into the gap under his enemy’s armpit. The legionary hissed in pain, the sound emerging from his vox-grille like a burst of static, and his grip loosened, dropping Khârn to the floor.
Khârn broke free, and turned his hips into his opponent. In the blink of an eye, he flipped the World Eater, driving him to the deck. He went down with him, driving his knee hard, pinning him down. Scant centimetres away, on the other side of the armourglass, Dreagher watched the final moments of the shocking, brutal fight. Khârn’s face was twisted into that of a beast, all traces of humanity gone. His teeth were bared, stained red with blood.
He tore loose the knife embedded in the legionary’s body, and stabbed it down into his opponent’s neck, both hands clutched around its blood-slick hilt. The legionary struggled to grab hold of his arms, but dark, gene-rich blood coated his skin, making purchase difficult.
The knife came down again and again. Finally, the legionary managed to catch a hold of the blade in one of his gauntleted hands, twisting it away from Khârn’s grip, but the damage had been done. Blood was pooling beneath them.
Shifting his weight, Khârn’s scrabbling fingers caught the release catch of the legionary’s helm and, with a roar, he tore it off, hurling it aside. The face within was ruddy and broad-featured, eyes burning with the madness of the Butcher’s Nails.
Pinning the warrior down with his knees, Khârn began to pound at his exposed face, raining blows upon him in a berserk flurry.
Five blows and his skull gave way. Three more and he was unrecognisable. Another four, and his enemy was still, the front of his skull caved in.
Khârn continued to strike, roaring, blood dousing his face as he pounded the legionary’s head into pulp. He knelt over him, lifting both fists high into the air, his chest rising and falling with each fast breath, then brought them both down together, crushing the last of the warrior’s head like a sodden, rotten fruit.
The whole violent episode had taken less than thirty seconds from start to finish.
For a time, Khârn did not move. Finally, he lifted his head. His gaze locked on to Dreagher, staring unblinking through the blood-streaked armourglass.
He looked barely human. His refined, angular face was covered in blood, making the whites of his eyes stand out, like twin moons against the void. Those eyes contained such violence, such fury, that they made Dreagher’s breath catch in his throat. He was lost to the Nails, utterly, completely.
Dreagher felt his blood run cold, yet he could not break Khârn’s unblinking gaze. It was like staring into the eyes of an imprisoned apex predator. He was left in no doubt as to what would have happened to him had there been no barrier separating them.
Dreagher smiled.
Khârn was back.