Gorechild revved for the first time since its rebirth, eating air with the throaty snarl of an apex predator. That interruption was the only answer Khârn would give, and Erebus raised his crozius in reply.

‘Come then.’

Three blows. The first: Khârn smashed the maul aside with the flat of his new axe. The second: he cannoned a headbutt into Erebus’s nose, breaking cartilage with a wet crunch. The third: Gorechild tasted first blood, ripping across the Chaplain’s chest, carving a canyon of flesh over the dense subdermal armour of the warrior’s black carapace torso implant.

All of this happened in the time it took Erebus to blink. No one could move as fast as Khârn moved. No one human, and nothing mortal. The Chaplain threw himself backwards, crozius up high to guard.

Khârn walked forwards, gunning Gorechild’s trigger. The crowd was silent now. This was a Khârn they’d never seen – not even on the field of battle.

Another three blows, delivered with the same blinding speed. Erebus’s maul clang-skidded across the deck; he took a fist to the throat and a boot to the stomach, knocking him back with enough force to send him crashing onto the bloodstained iron grillework.

He looked up at Khârn from the ground and saw his death in the World Eater’s eyes. He’d never seen this before, not in any of the paths of possibility. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t end like this. He was Destiny’s Hand.

Khârn looked down at him, clearly allowing time for the Chaplain to recover his crozius.

‘Get up.’

Erebus rose, his mace in his hands again. He attacked this time, showing the speed and skill that had allowed him to hold his own against Lucius of the Emperor’s Children, and Loken of the old Luna Wolves. His crozius trailed killing lightning, buzzing furiously as it thrummed through empty air again and again. Khârn weaved aside from every blow, quicker than a blink, surely quicker than muscles could ever allow.

Their weapons crashed together. Khârn had parried the last blow. Erebus expected accusation in the World Eater’s eyes, or surely anger. He saw neither. Worse, he saw a bored indulgence. The captain even sighed.

Three more blows. Erebus was on the deck before he knew how. Pain flared across his chest, hot and urgent, matching the thick throb of his smashed face. He reached to touch the wound with a hand that was no longer there.

His hand. His hand was on the deck, several metres away. Blood leaked from the chewed veins nestled in the meat of his severed limb. Turning unbelieving eyes downwards, he saw where his arm now ended at the wrist.

‘Going to need an augmetic for that,’ Kargos said from the crowd. Several warriors laughed, but few with any real relish. They were too fascinated by what was unfolding.

Erebus looked up at Khârn again. He was just waiting.

‘Get up.’

The Chaplain rose. Khârn didn’t wait this time – the blows were bloody blurs of whining motors and tearing chain-teeth. Pain bloomed across Erebus’s body, and he was face-down on the deck again before he’d managed to fully rise from the last time. Even without his armour’s pain nullifiers and chemical stimulants, Erebus suppressed the pain by whisper-chanting a sacred mandala. Khârn interrupted it.

‘Get up.’

Erebus actually tried, but he froze when he felt Gorechild’s teeth against his spine. The idling chainblade was purring and breathing out its promethium fuel-stink, the axe’s stilled teeth kissing Erebus’s vertebrae.

Never, not even in fragmentary glimpses, had he foreseen this duel.