Hallucinations.
Overwhelming, all-consuming hallucinations.
Yarrick felt as though he were falling endlessly into a bottomless abyss. Chaotic, violently shifting lights and psychedelic, swirling patterns dominated his entire field of vision, leaving him completely disoriented and unable to discern reality from illusion.
He didn't know how long this freefall lasted.
Finally, the chaotic maelstrom began to dissipate.
He slowly opened his eyes, realizing he was lying flat on the ground.
Pressing his hand against the surface, he quickly vaulted to his feet, his brow furrowing deeply.
The ground beneath his boots didn't feel like normal earth, rock, or steel. The texture was closer to so kind of highly resilient, spongy plastic. He stomped his foot experintally; this ti, it felt bizarrely like heavily calloused, living flesh.
No, now is not the ti to focus on such trivialities.
The grueling, uncompromising training ingrained into every Imperial Commissar allowed Yarrick to rapidly reassert control over his mind.
In the next microsecond, a deafening cacophony of violence assaulted his ears.
The sickening crunch of choppas biting into flesh, fanatical roars, agonizing shrieks, the staccato rhythm of gunfire, the heavy thuds of artillery, the concussive blasts of explosions, the guttural howling of monsters... Every conceivable sound of violence intertwined, composing a chaotic symphony titled "War," instantly igniting his martial spirit.
Yarrick scanned his surroundings. As far as the eye could see, it was a landscape entirely consud by unending conflict.
An unfathomable horde of Greenskins—a concentration so massive that it left even a veteran Commissar who had spent half his life fighting Orks genuinely staggered—were locked in ecstatic, fanatical combat. Wielding an absurd array of crude weaponry and heavy ordnance, they were enthusiastically and rcilessly slaughtering their own kind in a joyous frenzy.
Why not revel in the violence? After all, it is the sole entertainnt available in this grimdark galaxy!
Yarrick's tactical mind imdiately began to process the situation.
Where in the Emperor's na am I?
"Oi, wot's dis? A zoggin' humie!"
An Ork Boy, having just decapitated a rival with a whirring chainsword, was scanning the chaotic lee for his next victim when he spotted Yarrick. The Commissar's immaculate Imperial uniform stood out glaringly against the sea of green and rust.
How'd a squishy humie get in 'ere? Did Gork and Mork throw him in for a laugh?
The thought flashed briefly through the Ork's crude mind before being entirely discarded in favor of violence.
Revelling in the bloodlust, treating Yarrick as yet another glorious gift from the Twin Gods, the Ork Boy roared and charged recklessly toward the Commissar.
Yarrick rely spared the charging xenos a cold, indifferent glance. He remained entirely motionless, displaying not a shred of panic.
Even entirely unard, a veteran Imperial Commissar was absolutely not an opponent a rank-and-file Ork Boy could easily dispatch.
In a blur of motion, Yarrick stepped into the charge. His speed was so terrifyingly abrupt that the Ork completely failed to react. A surgically precise, bone-shattering palm strike slamd directly into the Ork's knuckles, forcing its grip to violently release. The chainsword tumbled toward the ground.
With his next step, Yarrick swiftly kicked the falling weapon upward. The Ork watched in dumbfounded horror as the humie seamlessly snatched the revving chainsword out of mid-air.
A flawlessly executed, impossibly lethal arc of screaming teeth flashed. The chainsword roared, violently tearing a massive, fatal fissure across the Ork's torso.
The Ork Boy swayed for a second before his heavy carcass crashed to the ground.
Having secured a weapon, Yarrick felt a asure of tactical reassurance settle into his mind.
This also signified that he had fully adapted to his current, inexplicable circumstances.
At this exact mont, Yarrick officially joined the hunt.
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
"I AM COMMISSAR SEBASTIAN YARRICK! THE EMPEROR'S WILL BE DONE!"
He roared, the chainsword screaming and dancing in his grip, painting wide arcs of crimson blood across the green tide.
Ever since he accepted that golden fla and that pale white orb from Rowan, Yarrick distinctly felt that his physical constitution had undergone a profound tamorphosis. His sensory perception, kinetic strength, and transhuman reflexes had been elevated to a level vastly surpassing his previous limits.
His off-hand now gripped a looted Ork slugga. He systematically discharged heavy caliber rounds, clinically executing any Greenskin that noticed his presence and attempted to charge him.
No matter when or where he was, as long as he drew breath as a human, and as long as he bore the sacred duty of an Imperial Commissar, he would slaughter these xenos without hesitation.
Only in death does duty end!
He fought endlessly. Ti lost all aning.
Finally, Yarrick's relentless tempo broke for a fraction of a second, allowing him to draw a slightly ragged breath.
It wasn't due to physical exhaustion, but rather because the surrounding Orks had abruptly ceased their suicidal charges against him. The chaotic lee in his imdiate vicinity ground to a halt.
They rely stared at Yarrick with gazes filled with absolute, primal reverence, continuously chanting his na in a guttural rhythm:
"Yar-rick! Yar-rick! Yar-rick!"
Then, the chant seamlessly transitioned to a different na:
"Ug-hard! Ug-hard! Ug-hard!"
Yarrick calmly raised his head. A colossal behemoth aggressively pushed its way into his field of vision.
It was a towering Ork Warboss. Its impossibly broad fra was packed with grotesquely swollen muscles. Its right arm had been entirely replaced by a terrifyingly massive chanical power klaw, while its left hand casually gripped a heavy shoota.
The beast was entirely encased in thick, crude adamantium plating. Its exposed face was a tapestry of hideous, crisscrossing scars. Its vicious, predatory eyes locked onto the humie Commissar who had inexplicably invaded its domain.
"Heh heh..."
The Warboss bared its razor-sharp fangs in a cruel grin. It contemptuously tossed the heavy shoota aside and took slow, heavy, earth-shaking strides toward Yarrick.
"Yer zoggin' head is gonna make a right proppa trophy for pole!"
Ughard roared, its massive fra accelerating into an unstoppable, mountainous charge.
The colossal power klaw sparked with the lethal blue glow of a disruption field. The sheer kinetic force of its swing generated a sonic boom that violently buffeted Yarrick's ears.
Yarrick threw himself into a desperate roll, narrowly evading the devastating strike by a hair's breadth. In that microscopic window of opportunity, he raised his slugga and pulled the trigger.
Two heavy rounds barked out, but the beast displayed agility entirely incongruous with its massive bulk, ducking under the fire. In a fluid counter-motion, it swung its power klaw upward, forcefully parrying Yarrick's downward chainsword strike.
The adamantium teeth of the chainsword scread and threw off showers of blinding sparks against the chanical klaw, but failed to bite even a milliter deeper.
The Warboss let out a mocking snort. It violently surged its strength and swept its arm outward.
In a contest of pure, raw kinetic power, Yarrick was fundantally outmatched. He was violently thrown off balance, stumbling backward.
Damn it!
He had no ti to recover his footing. The colossal chanical klaw swung in a devastating arc, surgically locking onto Yarrick's right shoulder. The blinding light of the disruption field flared violently.
SHHK—
THUD—
A severed right arm hit the ground with a heavy thud. Blood geysered outward like a ruptured pressure valve. Unimaginable, agonizing pain instantaneously violently flooded Yarrick's nervous system, forcing him to his knees.
"No... it will not end like this!"
Relying entirely on his ironclad, unyielding willpower, Yarrick forcefully fought back the suffocating darkness threatening to consu his consciousness. He slowly raised his head.
He had not lost yet.
His remaining hand still maintained an absolute, death-grip on the revving chainsword.
"UGHARD!"
The Warboss, currently swaggering about and triumphantly displaying Yarrick's severed arm to the roaring crowd, heard the sudden shout. It turned its head in confusion.
What filled its vision was the blindingly fast, screaming arc of a chainsword.
It was the final image the Ork Warboss would ever perceive.
Yarrick ground his teeth together, entirely ignoring the hot blood spraying across his face.
He rely focused every ounce of his remaining strength, pushing harder, and harder, until Ughard's colossal head slowly slid from its neck, hitting the ground with a heavy, hollow thump.
The surrounding Greenskins stared in absolute, dumbfounded silence. They watched this tiny, one-ard humie slowly stand upright, his cold, indifferent gaze sweeping across the horde.
Dat is so zoggin' WAAAGH!
That was the singular, unifying thought echoing within every Ork's mind.
"DA BOSS IS DEAD!"
"WARBOSS YAR-RICK! WARBOSS YAR-RICK!"
They erupted into deafening cheers, roaring and fanatically chanting his na in absolute reverence.
But it wasn't just these specific Greenskins.
Across the vast, boundless expanse of the galaxy—on every single battlefield, aboard voidships, within burning Hive Cities, across death worlds, deep within space hulks... countless Orks suddenly paused, tilting their heads upward to stare at the sky.
An inexplicable, instinctual premonition—a bizarre psychic resonance—simultaneously blood within the crude minds of billions of Greenskins.
It was a na.
—SEBASTIAN YARRICK!!!
And accompanying that na was the booming, joyous, earth-shattering laughter of Gork and Mork echoing from the Warp.
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