Chapter 18: The Laughing Gods Play Their Hands

Chapter 18: The Laughing Gods Play Their Hands

POV: Leon

A low hum vibrated in my throat as I peered down from our perch, watching the carnage unfold beneath us. The streets had turned into a slaughterhouse, a swirling vortex of blood and shrapnel where the two warring bandit factions, the Flesh Cutters and the Gun Rats, tore into each other like rabid animals.

The air stank of cordite, charred flesh, and the sweet, cloying scent of spilled viscera. Below, war cries mingled with the wet crunch of bones shattering under crude weaponry, punctuated by the booming retort of heavy artillery. It was a massacre in motion—feral, unrelenting, and all too predictable.

We had positioned ourselves atop the highest hab-shell we could find, overlooking the killing fields. I, along with Varn, Merah, and Goss, observed the battlefield, each of us preoccupied with our own tasks.

Goss, our resident tech-maggot, was hunched over the *Banshee*, fine-tuning its inner workings. The old machine-spirit within the craft had been temperamental as of late, requiring a more delicate touch than usual. Inside, Margaret—Darot's wife—lay restrained. Her face was twisted in an eternal rictus of agony, her eyes bloodshot to the point of hemorrhaging.

She still screamed, but the sound was mercifully muted by the voice modulator that had now morphed into a grotesque mask, a request from both Merah and me. Neither of us wanted to hear her shrieks, and the last thing we needed was for the bandits below to notice our presence.

Varn was beside me, sniper rifle poised against his shoulder as he monitored the battlefield through his scope. His usual sharp focus had dulled in recent days, his movements sluggish, erratic. Ever since he had nearly turned me into a red mist with an explosive round during a deal with Darot, he'd been… off.

At first, I chalked it up to lack of sleep—I'd caught him sneaking away at night, venturing to some forgotten ruin to practice with his explosives. Where he got the munitions was anyone's guess, but I let it slide. His skill was improving, though his mind was clearly fraying.

More concerning, however, was his habit of *muttering to himself*.

At first, I assumed it was simple stress, a side effect of fatigue. But it persisted. Even when he thought no one was around, I'd catch him arguing—sometimes in whispers, sometimes in outright shouts. The topics were *questionable*, to say the least.

The most absurd case? A heated debate about the *size of his manhood*.

I hadn't confronted him directly, but I had started taking over some of his workload, hoping the extra rest would settle whatever daemon had wormed its way into his brain. It helped. *Somewhat.*

Merah sat in the corner, rubbing her temples. She hadn't been as active lately, and I couldn't blame her. As our designated field-medic, she only ever saw action when someone needed to be patched up. But her recent complaints of *headaches* had me concerned—especially since they seemed to intensify whenever she was near Varn or me.

She brushed it off as stress, but something about it *didn't sit right*.

Yet, none of that mattered right now.

Because below us, something far worse than our petty problems was unfolding.

Darot—the bastard leader of the Flesh Cutters—had survived the initial chaos. That alone was troubling. What *truly* sent a cold spike of dread down my spine, however, was the sickly pink energy writhing around his form, his flesh twisting into something *unnatural*.

I cursed under my breath.

"*Warp-damned fool got possessed.*"

Varn shifted beside me, his rifle lowering slightly. "*That bad?*"

I exhaled sharply. "*Worse.* Daemon hosts come in two flavors. The first is when some poor wretch dies with so much regret that his soul tears open a gap for a daemon to slip in. The second—*"

"*—is when someone makes a deal with one willingly,*" Varn finished, voice grim.

I nodded. "*The former? Dangerous, but cut off from the Warp. Limited power. The latter? A walking cataclysm.*"*

I focused my scope back on Darot's *new* form. "*This one? Definitely the first. His mind is gone—just a puppet now.*"

Varn let out a relieved sigh. "*Well, that's good, yeah? Means he's only running on fumes—*"

I clenched my jaw. "*It's still a problem, but one we can manage…* as long as no more *variables* show up.*"

Varn stiffened. Slowly, deliberately, he turned to face me.

"*You know,*" he muttered, "*there's an old saying—something about not tempting fate…*"

Before I could reply, a deep, *wet* roar split the air.

My blood ran cold.

I *snapped* my scope toward the far end of the battlefield—toward *Pete the Cannon*, the monstrous leader of the Gun Rats.

And I saw *it*.

Pete's body convulsed, flesh sloughing away in *ropes* of putrid decay. Muscles *twisted* into bloated, grotesque shapes, his arms stretching into massive, diseased limbs. His cannon-arm *melted* into a festering, organic tumor, spewing clouds of noxious gas. His *entire form* became an altar of disease—of filth and decay, *blessed by the Lord of Rot himself.*

Varn let out a nervous chuckle. "*So, uh… you were saying about variables?*"

Merah groaned, rubbing her temple harder. "*Oh, for fuck's sake.*"

Goss, still hunched over the *Banshee*, waved a dismissive hand without looking up. "*Yeah, yeah, keep your britches on, lads. The bloody thing's almost done.*"

Varn cleared his throat. "*Might want to hurry that up, mate. We've got a full-blown daemon war kicking off down there.*"

I kept my eye pressed to the scope, watching Pete's *new* form lurch forward, bile and rot trailing in his wake.

"This just went from bad… to outright heretical"