Gianfranco Mancini’s Reviews > The Infinite and the Divine > Status Update

A bony five-fingered hand dragged him forward by one malfunctioning leg. Another sank deep into the ropy inner systems of his chest. Three long sickles closed on his face, one puncturing an ocular…
Connection.
Trazyn fled his surrogate body, glad to be gone from this battle of gods and monsters.

The Deceiver had lured him into combat, planning to decapitate one of the guardians’ two commanders.
‘Not today,’ Trazyn said, channelling energy into his wounds, feeling them drip with corposant as they sutured. ‘You will not leave my gallery alone in this universe.’

Orikan looked over his shoulder to the main seats, where ushers and pict-industry stars were making their way down the aisles with axes and knives, murdering their way through the passive audience throat by throat. Each kill caused barely a ripple in the brainwaves of the neighbouring victims.
‘You stupid bastard,’ sneered Orikan. ‘You got us box seats to a coup.’
‘Well, the reviews were very good.’

The C’tan have much to answer for – as does our own species. We shattered the star gods, chained them, made them no better than beasts of burden. And our species has spent eternity as soulless wanderers. Only you and I, Orikan, have tasted what it is like to be free of captivity. But you cannot be free when you are your own prisoner.

‘Let me state for the record,’ Phaerakh Ossuaria said. ‘That this is not officially a trial.’
‘Can we be executed?’ asked Orikan.
‘Yes,’ said Zuberkar, with a note of unpleasant eagerness.
‘Then it’s a trial,’ Trazyn said.
‘In a technical sense,’ said Overlord Baalbehk. ‘It is an enquiry.’

Cold green beams lanced over Trazyn’s head, sweeping the upper decks of the gargant, stripping channels in the armour as if they were fingers in clay, leaving burnished silver gullies behind. Orks ducked, growling with annoyance. One or two that didn’t get down took the beams full force and fell backward, missing the front two-thirds of their skulls.

The blast had torn away both his legs and one arm. Charred his skull and torso until he was nothing but a reactor and logic processor in a fused hunk of metal.
Trazyn did not concern himself with these details – because he had a plan.

Horus’ body was likely being venerated somewhere in the Eye of Terror, after all, and the Emperor was just sitting there on Terra. Seemed a waste, such a historic figure left to rot like that. Trazyn could do a far better job at preservation and restoration.
The humans probably wouldn’t agree.

‘I swear,’ he said, his vocal actuators grinding, ‘by the killing sun. By the stars and dust. By my ancestors and the progeny. I swear to harness these powers and open the tomb of Nephreth.’
The sky was growing dark. He could see the stars.
‘But first,’ said Orikan, ‘I swear to destroy Trazyn the Infinite.’

Once they had been nobility, soldiers, guardians of empire.
Now they were Destroyers, fallen to the madness that drove them to hate all living things. Bodies augmented with chopping blades and double-handed glaives, every angle of their bodies sharp. The skorpekh subtype, obsessed with the whorl of the melee.