Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 463 Who is back? See...what?
The black sun hung high in the burning white phosphorus sky, looking down silently.

Waterfalls of corpses, blood, and filth continued to wash over the barren rock formed by the cooling and solidification of the hot magma.

In this valley, far away from the frontal attack, the skinless beasts retreated temporarily.

In fact, they immediately showed a primitive fear when Samokwan - or the creature that might have been Samokwan - raised his huge battle axe.

According to Uriel, this retreat and fear was not even due to the appearance of Samokan they saw.

Rather, it is a fear of supernatural forces that comes from a more primitive instinct.

Now standing in front of the two former Ultramarines to protect them from attack was a skinless warrior shrouded in an even larger, blood-glowing, black mist.

The thick blood-plasma-like shadow that covered him like armor had a canine head with dragon-like horns, sharp teeth on the upper and lower parts of its long snout, claws on its hands, and its legs showed disturbing signs of recurvature and claws. The strong malice and hatred became the fuel for this shadow's power. If one stared at this black shadow for a long time, one would even feel pain in the eyes as if they were on fire and tears would flow out.

This being, clad in blood-red armor and a human skin cloak, holding in his hand a supernatural weapon summoned from the flesh and blood covering his body, is tall, taller than a fully armed Terminator warrior, and almost reaching the height of those fighting soldiers of the Mechanicus.

A pair of huge bat wings were vaguely visible flapping behind him, as if they were really growing on his body. From time to time, an ominous and ferocious blood-red light flashed in the black mist lingering around his body. Under his feet was a large pool of blood, mucus, a broken arm, and half a white brain. These were all from the monster that had attacked them first. Now the severely injured skinless beast was slowly retreating back to the cautious and careful retreating battle line of its tribe.

There was no doubt that whatever this supernatural creature was now, it was clearly influenced by some of the inherent cognition in the mind of the human boy that Uriel and Pasanius knew when it attacked the skinless people.

His bone energy axe had just successfully chopped off the skinless creature's arm that was trying to block it, and then it had smoothly moved down to chop off half of its head. The attacker obviously thought that the creature would be dead if he chopped off its head until the brains fell out - but the head of this skinless monster was a fusion of three different skulls.

Apparently, there was enough obstruction between these heads that even if one was chopped off, the other two would still work normally.

Now it was standing among its kind, covering the lost half of its brain with its remaining paw, and the remaining five eyes on its deformed and huge head were staring at the three people by the pool with annoyance, while its companions were standing vigilantly in a scattered circle to prevent the three prey from finding a chance to escape.

Samokan - let's continue to call him that, swung his illusory tail, stamped his hooves on the stones in annoyance, and waved his axe threateningly at the besiegers.

This weapon summoned from the flesh was twisting, deforming, and constantly changing its shape - from an oversized version of a mortal chopping axe at the beginning to the gear-handled axe of the Iron Warrior Lord, and then began to transform into some standard weapons that Uriel was more familiar with, as if it was changing according to its master's will, but its master could not decide its final form very well.

"How strange..." Uriel said softly.

"What's wrong?" Pasanius asked, trying to keep his voice low. "Do you think that's still Samokhan...?"

Uriel made a "later, when the time is right" gesture to his latter question and shook his head.

"I find it strange. These monsters look like mutant beasts, but they seem to be very organized... They don't seem as... violent as they look."

"Oh my god, Uriel, I know you are kind, but now is not the time to observe mutants or show sympathy to them, by the God-Emperor! Look at them! They just wanted to eat you alive! They eat people!"

"I know, Pasanius, but..."

Uriel's next words were interrupted by a long, low, echoing howl.

There was a commotion coming from outside the only exit of the col, and the skinless, deformed flesh monsters began to make way for it in a disorderly and awed manner.

As the ground here was deeply shaken and trembled by the weight and kinetic energy of its landing, small stones were bounced away.

A huge mass of wet, bright red muscle and pale, strong bones leaped over the gap with amazing bouncing power and landed in front of them.

The muscular muscles that had grown excessively and abnormally to the point of bulging displayed their movements and the direction of their force in a glaring manner. The mass of flesh squirmed, and then surprisingly supported its hunched body to stand up. The observers were even more shocked to find that this newly emerged skinless deformed beast was so strong and huge, even much taller than Samokan, who was now taller than the Terminator.

- To put it more intuitively, this newly emerged beast, which is undoubtedly the leader of this group of monsters, is about as tall as one and a half Space Marines and as wide as three Space Marines. Because of its overdeveloped shoulder and back muscles, it has extremely spectacular and powerful shoulders and arms, and its head is squeezed between its shoulders by the muscle mass.

When it turned its noseless face, dripping with yellowish tissue fluid, completely towards them, Uriel clearly heard the figure in front of them gasp and mutter something in a low Gothic dialect that sounded not very elegant - very boyish - thank God, it seemed that they might still have a chance to talk to Samokan later.

What a face this is!
Compared to the unfortunate monsters around it, this face strangely retained more disturbing human skull features. A pair of terrifyingly bright yellow eyes were looking out from the bloody skull's eye sockets. Without the skin and other expressions brought by normal facial features, its face only showed terrible cruelty and the fear it brought to others. Its nose and lips had completely disappeared, leaving only two bloody holes, one vertical and one horizontal, on its face. The densely packed fangs, dyed yellow by "food", were exposed from its lipless mouth.

As the former Ultramarines Captain's gray eyes met those sickly yellow eyes, his stomach began to feel as heavy as if it were filled with lead: unlike the eyes of other beasts that were more filled with instinctive desires and deprived reason, Uriel was horrified to see in these eyes the remaining intelligence and the pain that came with it.

This creature, who is undoubtedly the leader of this group of skinless monsters in terms of physique, strength or wisdom, may envy his subordinates the only thing that the minds of other unfortunate victims have been destroyed to the point where they are unable to recognize the pain and torture they have suffered, and how unacceptable their current appearance is to humans. But this creature, who is fortunate enough to retain some intelligence but is even more unfortunate, undoubtedly knows what kind of cursed appearance the cruel fate and chaos have turned them into.

"The blood of the Primarch..." he whispered, barely able to suppress the emotions surging from the depths of his soul. He watched the fearless creature formed of twisted flesh and blood move towards them. Samokwan vigilantly tightened his grip on the weapon, which continued to take on new forms in his hand.

Then the leader of the Skinless Ones spoke to them, his voice low but his words unmistakably clear, and a shiver once again rolled down the back of Uriel's neck.

"This is our hunting ground," he said. "Show up here, abandon? Your prey? Join?" The two former Ultramarines looked at each other, but soon realized that this sentence was said to Samokwan in front of them - through the increasingly black mist, silver streams of psychic energy were constantly rushing through Samokwan's skinless body, skinless, too.

What would a creature in such a situation do when it found a fellow creature that had also retained cognition?
Samokan didn't know.

In the yellow irises of the Skinless King, the eyes of his "fellow" shrouded in strange mist were reflected, emitting a pair of boiling silver light.

Damn it. Why can't my weapon stabilize? I don't know which weapon to choose! An axe? The axe at the beginning is very sharp, but I always feel that it shouldn't be an axe...

The boy in his new body glanced at the weapon in his hand, which was still unstable, with the corner of his eye. What should I do? If I turn around and ask Filhammer what to do now - no, he said his name is Uriel - won't he be attacked? There are a hundred enemies here... I'm not sure if I can protect the two of them if we fight... Have they recovered their fighting ability... No, they don't have weapons...

The blood flowing in his veins became hot again, and the hatred that wanted to kill at all costs and the pain that was forcibly suppressed came together - a cool feeling came from his neck, they clashed in his body, and something that no one else could see appeared because of the tear in his soul caused by this clash, it crawled cautiously and took the opportunity to crawl across the surface of his body, making the boy shiver several times, but he couldn't even get goose bumps because of it - he had no skin and hair follicles!
Samokan almost wanted to cry. Why? Why me? Why did all this happen to me? My father is dead! I'm just a child! I don't care or know what will happen to this galaxy! I just want to... go home... home...

——A strange feeling came from his back. At first, Samokan almost thought that it was the palm of his father, mother or Old Stone soothing his back. When he was screaming, sweating, struggling and drowning in nightmares and unable to wake up, if one of them was by his side, they would follow the sound and stroke his back with their broad and warm hands, allowing the child to gradually return to the peaceful and sweet embrace of sleep.

But this warm comfort soon turned into a bone-chilling pain, like a sharp weapon stabbing him from behind.

He opened his mouth and cried out silently at the sudden pain, and a voice sounded in the boy's soul, carrying anger at the whole world and a tremendous hatred for certain betrayers.

I am back!

Hold your sword!
Samokan flapped his wings subconsciously, feeling a new power flowing into his body again, and then the air was filled with a strange and greasy sweet smell like spices that had been left for too long. He blinked, and Uriel made a surprised sound behind him.

The huge monster opposite, like a flesh and blood fearless creature, stretched out its claws cautiously and curiously and pointed at his right hand.

Samokan looked down.

A sword, a huge sword of ancient style was held in his clawed hand.

At the same time, a sound like an animal's hissing, growling or a person's talking rang in his mind.

Samokan listened for a while, met the eyes of the Skinless King who had been staring at him for a long time, then cleared his throat and began to try to talk to him.

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"Can we really trust him?"

When they had at last left the spot where they had fled from the fortress of Kalan-Gol, and had trudged for some time amid mountains of steam, sharp rocks, and smoldering lava, surrounded by a hundred deformed skinless ones, Pasanius once more quietly questioned Uriel.

"We should at least ask him to take us out of the mountains so that we can meet up with Soltarn and the others."

The sergeant's blue eyes swept from the huge Skinless King who was leading the group, whose back muscles bulged like a male Grox beast, to Samokan, who was walking on his hoof-like black mist-like boots and had a pair of bat wings on his back.

Uriel glanced at his sergeant and exhaled a breath of dusty air from his lungs that were beginning to recover. "Samokan!" he shouted directly.

Pausanius was surprised, but the creature that was so close to a demon and was walking in front of the team actually stopped and turned towards them.

The two warriors were relieved to see that the eyes that were originally like boiling mercury had now returned to their original storm gray, but the whites of the eyes were covered with fine bloodshot, showing that the owner of the eyes was not actually at ease. "What's the matter? Phil... Uriel? Can't you walk anymore? Maybe you can ask them to carry you for a while." He raised his hand and pointed his claws at a skinless conjoined monster with a broad and strong back. This monster looked like a twin, but only one of them was developed, and the other was very thin and weak. A thick flesh-colored umbilical cord connected him and his twin brother, and his brother had been carrying him on his back from beginning to end.

“No, no.” Uriel pulled the corners of his mouth and revealed a smile, while trying to let the King of the Skinless and others see this smile. “Don’t underestimate the recovery ability of Guilliman’s son, Samokan. It may have given you some excellent qualities.”

"What do you mean... Oh, that's it." The boy named Samokan, who was now covered in a layer of translucent skin that looked like a demon with black and red aura, nodded. Uriel found it difficult to ignore certain facial features of the skeleton under the demon's skin when he was facing him, but he tried his best to ignore this feeling at the moment. "What do you want?"

"Where are we going?" Uriel asked in a sincere and friendly tone. "Now that we have finally escaped, should we go back to Soltarn and the others to discuss the next plan?"

Samokan showed a stiff and evasive expression when he heard Soltarn's name, but he quickly answered, "It's like this, he—" he pointed to the King of the Skinless who was staring at them and listening to their conversation, "He said we must go to him first, and then he will tell us how to get out."

"See? See what? What could be more important than returning immediately?"

Samokwan turned his demonic mist visor and stared at Uriel, causing the latter's fists to clench and unclench, before speaking a short but irresistible set of words that neither former Ultramarines could refuse.

"He said, look, the Horde, the Emperor."

(End of this chapter)