“I rounded the corner at speed, and saw my quarry. He was still running, going faster than his gunmetal-heavy armour would have suggested was possible. He might have been making for one of the pulpits higher up, hoping to find some vantage from which to launch a defence, but my pursuit had been too swift.
I opened up Gnosis' bolter, catching my enemy on the shoulder and sending him crashing to the ground. Above us both, banners swayed heavily, caught by the backwash from the explosion.
I raced after him, watching him twist back to his feet. He was a massive brute, crusted with ridged and tarnished battleplate. His helm-lenses glowed a dull red, like magma, and he carried a two-handed war-hammer. The stench of engine fuel hung over him. He might have even approached my own size, my weight, my strength - such were the perversions the warp had wrought on those who had once served the Throne.
We slammed together, and the impact rippled the stone around us. Our weapons crunched into a brace-lock, showering plasma over both of us. I swung away, hilt-first, and smashed him back a pace. He shoved back, aiming to ram the fizzing hammerhead into my chest.
He nearly connected. I judged his weapon was within a few microseconds of an impact that would have cracked my auramite breastplate. That interval, however, was comfortably sufficient to spin my blade over in my grip, ram the spear tip into the Traitor's gorget and fire at point-blank range.
The bolt-shell exploded instantly, blasting his head apart in a shower of blown metal-shreds. His war-hammer spun out of control, his limbs jerked apart and the momentum of my down-thrust sent his head-less corpse crashing to the ground.
I stood over him for a moment longer, breathing heavily, my spear gripped loosely. Blood, viscous as sump-oil, oozed from the rotten stump of his neck. His metal fingers twitched. The aegis of force around his warhammer flickered out. Slowly, carefully, I relaxed. The kill had been clean, with no damage taken.
I was not satisfied with how far this one had penetrated, though. On another run, I would have hoped to have downed him further out. I felt no particular emotion as I studied the body. I understood that my cousins in the Adeptus Astartes reserved an almost pathological hatred for their Traitor counterparts. I wondered if that made them more or less effective on the field of battle.
To me, the surviving members of the Old Legions were like bands of animals - feral threats to the Throne that required culling. I felt no discernible difference in my response to them than that I had experienced when hunting xenotype tyranids and eldar in these same tunnels - they were all dangerous, all worthy of study, but unworthy of expending emotional energy upon…”
— A Custodes faces a Heretic Astartes in the Blood Games. Excerpt from “Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion” by Chris Wraight.
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