Purgatory - A Failed Black Library Submission

A piece of fiction I wrote for Black Library's open submissions. I didn't make the grade though, so I thought I might as well post it on here. I'm not sure I really met the brief to be honest, but they say you should write about what you know, so whatever. I'm still glad I bothered though. Sometimes you have to chase your dreams right?

As I don't have an actual picture, I'm just using a Chaos Space Marine I painted.

Purgatory (500 words)

The doors finally slid open with an ominous screeching noise; revealing the darkened chamber within.  Rogar cycled his helm’s vision mode to pierce the darkness and the bridge resolved into a grainy green hue.

The remains of the command crew littered the room; they were not merely dead, but horribly mutilated. Their eyeless, flayed forms hung from steel cables that had been cut from the ceiling. Tied up in a parody of grotesque dominance; the cables were stitched through their bodies in dozens of places and their internal organs had been forcibly torn apart under the strain of suspension. Rogar took a steady step into the room and heard a wet squelch as his armoured foot entered a slowly creeping pool of jellified blood.

A figure rose from the darkness; what Rogar saw was like something from a nightmare, but this was no waking dream. A face, pale and waxy, dominated by a pair of lidless black eyes turned towards him and split open in a killers smile; exposing several rows of shark-like needle edged teeth. Rogar needed no more invitation to open fire and his bolter kicked mercilessly as he strafed the room.

“Contact” Rogar roared into the open vox channel.

The figure had already begun to move and Rogar’s shots blazed wide across the bridge, shattering the grim totems in a shower of viscera and torn cartilage. A round glanced from the heretic’s ornate shoulder guard and for a moment he seemed to stumble; disoriented by the force of the detonation. Rogar saw an opening in that split second and let his spent bolter crash to the ground. Drawing his chainsword with a true warrior’s skill, Rogar brought the blade down from his shoulder mounted scabbard with both hands in a savage, decapitating strike.

The blade bit mercilessly into the heretic’s baroque armour. He pushed down with all the force he could muster; driving his opponent to his knees with the brute strength of his enhanced physique. The sword skidded momentarily, glancing from the armoured ceramite, it was all the time his opponent needed to surge upwards from the floor and deliver a thunderous punch that rang like a pealing bell against Rogar’s Helm. As Rogar reeled from the cacophonous force of the impact he felt a hammer blow to his abdomen as the heretic landed a kick that threw him back against a stuttering command console.

The combatants were momentarily separated and Rogar took up a well-practiced stance with his sword idling.

His opponent was still moving, he slowly circled while drawing a pair of long knives from his hips with a flamboyant arcing motion, each was easily two feet in length and ended in a razor fine point. The blades were thin and Rogar could tell at a glance that they were not merely weapons of show, but a duellist’s favoured weapon.

The silence was broken by the traitor’s cruel laughter.

“For the Emperor” he drawled mockingly, his fanged mouth wet with spittle.