Doom Slayer
The being before him looked like an angel. Golden light surrounded her. Great white wings spread behind her, each feather edged by the fires consuming the city.
In one hand she carried a sword wreathed in flame. Her armour was scorched and stained with the blood of daemons, yet she stood straight beneath its weight.
Two more winged warriors circled above her, weapons ready.
The Slayer watched them all, though most of his attention remained fixed upon the woman before him.
Her power troubled him more than her sword. He felt it moving beneath her flesh, a radiance that pressed against reality without wholly belonging to it. It carried the same distant pressure as the force that had sustained the daemon prince. Both drew upon the unseen realm surrounding this world.
The resemblance ended there.
Urkanthos had been appetite given form. His essence had reeked of blood, bondage, and delight in suffering. The power within this woman had gathered around pain of a different kind: sacrifice endured, deaths remembered, and a refusal to let others fall while she could still stand between them and the darkness.
She was wary of him. Afraid, even. Yet there was no malice in her. She was not his enemy. So he allowed her to approach.
The woman stopped ten paces away. Her sword remained lowered, though the muscles in her arm were prepared to raise it. The two warriors above shifted to either side of him, attempting to form a loose triangle without making the movement look like an encirclement.
The Slayer let them.
"Mighty warrior, are you friend or foe?" the woman asked.
He did not answer at once.
Her words were clear. He understood the question and the warning beneath it. His silence came not from confusion, but from the strange resistance he felt when he tried to force an answer through his throat.
He could not remember the last time he had spoken. Years had become centuries in Hell. Centuries had vanished into ages of ceaseless war. Once, he had possessed a name, a home, and a voice he used without thought. Time had worn all three away until only purpose remained.
It had been millions of years since he had needed words. Perhaps it was even longer.
The woman's grip tightened around her sword.
One of her companions descended several metres, her bolter following the movement. The other remained above, watching the Slayer through narrowed eyes.
He could hear the woman's heartbeat quicken.
At last, the Slayer spoke. The first word scraped against his throat like stone dragged across iron.
"Daemons are my enemies. If you stand against them, I have no quarrel with you," the Slayer said.
His voice sounded unfamiliar even to him. It was deep, raw, and worn by an eternity of disuse. His gaze shifted from the ashes of the slain prince to the burning sword in her hand.
Some of the tension left her shoulders. The fire along her blade dimmed, though it did not vanish.
"Then we stand on the same side," the woman said.
The Slayer gave no answer. None was needed.
Vox-speakers crackled across the western fortifications before either of them could speak again. Static rolled from damaged towers, command vehicles, and the helmets of the soldiers filling the trenches.
Then a man's voice cut through the interference.
"All Kasr Kraf commands, this is Lord Castellan Creed. The western assault has broken. Enemy formations are withdrawing across every major approach," Creed announced over the vox.
The message repeated through hundreds of channels.
"Destroy all stragglers. Recover the wounded. Restore the lines. They will come again," Creed ordered.
Reports followed one after another.
The Black Legion was retreating from the northern armouries. Daemons had abandoned the southern pylon ridge. Cadian units were clearing the eastern ruins street by street. Loyalist Titans pursued the remaining corrupted engines beyond the outer defences.
For the first time since the Slayer had entered the battle, the guns of Kasr Kraf began to fall silent.
The soldiers stared across the field as if they could not understand what had happened. Then one of them raised his rifle.
"Cadia stands!" a Cadian shouted.
Thousands answered him.
The cry spread from trench to trench, growing until it rolled across the fortress-city. Wounded soldiers shouted from stretchers. Tank crews climbed onto battered hulls and lifted bloodied fists. Sisters in black armour raised their weapons while exhausted Space Marines struck gauntlets against their breastplates.
For several seconds, they allowed themselves to believe the battle was over.
The Slayer knew better.
Beyond the cheers, he heard officers calling formations back into order. Soldiers dragged ammunition crates toward half-destroyed gun emplacements. Enginseers crawled over crippled tanks while labour crews filled trenches with rubble and bodies. The living began rebuilding the walls before the dead had been counted.
They understood that victory had only purchased time. Even that understanding did not go far enough.
The Slayer turned his helm toward the centre of Kasr Kraf.
"You have given these people more than—" the angelic woman began.
He raised one hand. She stopped.
Beneath the smoke, the gunfire, and the celebrations, he felt them.
Daemons remained inside the city. Their presence was scattered now. Some moved through tunnels beneath the streets. Others hid inside broken hab-blocks or followed fleeing civilians toward the inner districts. Mortal servants of Chaos had concealed themselves among the ruins, waiting for darkness or weakness before striking again.
His thoughts returned to the chapel.
Thousands of civilians had crowded behind its doors. They had possessed no armour, no weapons, and nowhere left to run. The soldiers of this world could defend themselves. Its civilians could not.
The Slayer started toward the city.
"Wait. Where are you going?" the woman called.
He ran. The ground shattered beneath his first step.
By the time the two winged warriors reacted, he had crossed the western trenches. The golden woman launched herself after him, but the thunder of his movement was already passing between the ruined towers of Kasr Kraf.
He found the first daemons beneath a collapsed transit station.
Blood had been painted across the entrance in symbols the Slayer did not recognize and did not need to understand. Six cultists guarded the stairwell while something large moved below them.
The cultists heard him coming. Two raised autoguns. One reached for a detonator attached to explosives buried beneath the street.
The Slayer killed that one first.
His shotgun appeared in his hands as he crossed the final twenty metres. A single blast removed the cultist's arm and most of his chest. Before the body struck the wall, the Slayer was among the others.
The second cultist died beneath the stock of the weapon. The third fired into his breastplate and watched the rounds flatten against it. The Slayer seized him by the throat and hurled him down the stairwell.
The body struck two more cultists on the way down.
The last tried to run. The Slayer did not let him. He entered the station as the creature below climbed toward him.
It resembled the Hell knights he had killed upon other worlds, but its flesh was covered in brass plates carved with unfamiliar runes. Four arms ended in axes, and a collar of human skulls burned around its throat.
The daemon roared.
The Slayer fired the Super Shotgun into its open mouth. Its head burst against the ceiling.
It remained standing, so he fired again through its chest and drove his fist into the wound. Bone broke beneath his gauntlet. The daemon collapsed, black blood flooding the steps.
The Slayer stepped across it.
At the lowest platform, he found thirty civilians huddled inside a maintenance chamber.
A Cadian woman stood before them with an empty laspistol in one hand and a metal pipe in the other. Two children hid behind her legs. She lifted the pipe when the Slayer entered. Then she saw the dead daemon behind him. The weapon slipped from her fingers.
"Are there more?" the Cadian woman asked.
The Slayer looked through the room. Some of the civilians were wounded, but all were alive.
"No," the Slayer answered.
The single word came more easily than the ones before it.
He turned toward the stairs.
Golden light filled the station as the winged woman landed above. By the time she reached the maintenance chamber, the Slayer was already moving toward the next presence he felt.
He found three Bloodletters stalking a medicae convoy through a manufactorum district.
The first died to a burst from his heavy cannon before it could leap from the roof. The second reached the street and raised its blade over a stretcher team. The Slayer struck it from the side hard enough to drive it through an armoured transport. The third fled into the manufactorum.
He followed.
The daemon tried to hide among dead machinery and hanging chains. It slowed its breathing and flattened itself against a furnace cold enough to have gathered ash.
The Slayer entered without hesitation.
The Bloodletter waited until he passed beneath it. Its sword descended.
He caught the daemon by the wrist without turning. The blade stopped a finger's width above his shoulder. He pulled the creature from the chains, broke the arm across his knee, and drove its own weapon through its skull.
When he emerged, the medicae convoy had begun moving again.
The winged woman landed on the roof behind him.
"You could have told me what you sensed," the winged woman said.
The Slayer looked toward the northern districts.
"More," the Slayer said.
He vanished between the buildings.
For the next hours, Kasr Kraf became a hunt.
The Slayer crossed the fortress-city faster than its defenders could report his movements. Every burst of gunfire drew him toward another remnant of the defeated host. Every trace of corruption became a trail.
He dragged cultists from drainage tunnels beneath the eastern wall. He found a Black Legionnaire hiding inside a ruined command post, waiting to murder the officers who returned to it. The traitor's bolter fired once before the Slayer tore the weapon from his hands and crushed his helmet against the tactical display.
In the southern habs, a pack of flesh hounds pursued families through streets buried beneath ash. The Slayer fell among them from seven storeys above. His impact broke the first. His Doomblade opened the second from throat to belly. He seized the third by its horns and drove it into the fourth before finishing both with the shotgun.
The families escaped while he killed the rest.
In the ruins of a schola, he heard children calling beneath a collapsed roof. No daemons remained there, but the structure was failing around them. Cadian engineers struggled to lift a slab of ferrocrete while cracks spread through the walls.
The Slayer pushed past them. He placed both hands beneath the slab and lifted. The engineers stared as thousands of kilograms of stone rose from the wreckage. They pulled the children free one by one. A girl stopped before leaving and looked up at the dark visor above her.
"Are you one of the Emperor's angels?" the girl asked.
The Slayer said nothing. He held the rubble until the last child was clear, then let the slab fall.
When he stepped back into the street, the golden woman was waiting for him. Ash covered the edges of her wings. There was annoyance in her eyes now, but curiosity had overcome her fear.
"Do you ever stop?" the winged woman asked.
A distant explosion rolled across the northern quarter.
The Slayer turned toward it.
The woman closed her eyes for a moment, then released a tired breath.
"Of course not," the woman murmured.
They moved again.
She fought beside him when they reached the northern quarter. A group of cultists had seized a munitions depot and attempted to detonate its stores beneath the returning Cadian regiments. The winged woman entered through the roof in a column of golden fire while the Slayer breached the main doors.
Her sword reduced the first rank to ash. His chaingun broke the second before they could turn their weapons toward her.
For several minutes, the depot became light, thunder, and blood. They did not speak. They did not need to.
When the final cultist fell, she turned to him. He was already gone.
By the time the Slayer reached the eastern residential districts, the sun had disappeared behind the smoke. The city's fires cast long shadows between the towers.
He found no more servants of Chaos.
He searched the streets, the tunnels, the broken fortifications, and the chambers beneath the chapels. He listened past the machinery and the cries of the wounded. He reached outward with senses sharpened across countless ages in Hell.
Nothing answered.
Kasr Kraf was not safe. The enemy remained beyond its walls, and the enormous wound in the sky still bled corruption across the world. But every daemon and cultist he could sense within the city was dead. For the moment, the civilians could breathe.
The Slayer stopped beside the remains of a stone monument. Half of the figure had been destroyed by artillery, leaving only an armoured pair of legs upon its plinth. A broken aquila lay nearby.
He sat upon a slab of fallen masonry.
The action drew more attention from the Cadians than his violence had. Soldiers moving through the street slowed to stare. Some whispered prayers. Others kept their weapons close and gave him a wide path.
The Slayer ignored them. He looked toward the western sky and waited.
Golden light appeared above the rooftops several minutes later.
The winged woman descended into the street. Her two companions followed at a distance, though neither lowered her weapon. The woman landed before him and folded her wings against her back.
She studied him in silence.
He pointed toward the unoccupied section of the broken plinth.
"Sit," the Slayer said.
One of the warriors above bristled at the command. The woman merely raised an eyebrow.
"You have an unusual way of asking," the woman observed.
"I need answers," the Slayer replied.
"That much, at least, we share in common." The woman's faint amusement disappeared.
After a moment, she crossed the street and sat upon the stone opposite him. She slid the burning sword into its scabbard, its golden flames folding down to embers, though her hand remained near the hilt.
"What do you wish to know?" the woman asked.
The Slayer looked around at the impossible city, the soldiers in unfamiliar armour, and the violet wound filling the heavens.
"Where am I?" the Slayer asked.
"Cadia." The woman gave him the name without elaboration.
He waited.
She understood.
"Cadia is a fortress world of the Imperium of Man. It guards the Cadian Gate, the most stable passage between the Eye of Terror and the rest of the galaxy. For ten thousand years, the armies of Chaos have tried to break this world. This invasion is their greatest attempt," the woman explained.
"The Imperium." The Slayer tested the unfamiliar word.
"Humanity's empire. More than a million worlds scattered across the galaxy, all bound to Terra and the Emperor." The woman's gaze moved across the ruined city as she spoke.
"Is this what became of humanity?" the Slayer asked, looking toward the soldiers rebuilding the barricades.
Something passed through her expression. She showed pride, sorrow, and exhaustion in equal measure.
"This is what survived." The woman's voice softened.
That answer told him more than any history could have.
"What year is it?" The Slayer's next question came without pause.
"By the Imperial Calendar, the closing year of the forty-first millennium." The woman watched him closely for a reaction.
For the first time since she had sat down, the Slayer became completely still.
The woman noticed.
"That date means something to you," the woman observed.
"Earth?" the Slayer asked.
"Terra still stands. It is the throneworld of the Imperium," the woman replied.
The Slayer said nothing. Terra existed, but it was not the Earth he remembered. The stars were wrong. The machinery was wrong. Humanity's history was wrong.
He had crossed into other realities before. He had done so again.
"Where do the daemons come from?" the Slayer asked.
"The Warp, the Immaterium. It is a realm parallel to our own, shaped by thought, emotion, and the souls of the living. Our ships cross it to travel between stars, while our psykers draw power from it. Within its deepest reaches dwell the four Ruinous Powers, the Chaos Gods," the woman explained, glancing toward the wound in the sky.
"Who are they?" the Slayer asked.
"Khorne rules blood and slaughter. Tzeentch claims change, sorcery, and deceit. Nurgle spreads decay and despair. Slaanesh turns desire into excess, then excess into enslavement." The woman named them without reverence.
"Gods." The Slayer made the word sound like an accusation.
"That is what they claim to be." The woman offered no defence of the title.
She told him of the Long War, of the Traitor Legions, and of mortals who surrendered themselves to promises whispered from beyond the veil. Chaos was not humanity's only enemy. Greenskin hordes lived for war. Devouring swarms came from beyond the stars. Ancient machines awakened beneath dead worlds, while younger alien empires regarded mankind as prey, rival, or disease.
The Slayer listened without interruption.
He had known worlds overrun in days. He had known universes that discovered Hell only when it was already too late. This Imperium had endured for ten thousand years while surrounded by enemies.
It had survived. Survival alone did not make it worthy.
"And you?" the Slayer asked.
The woman hesitated, perhaps surprised that he had asked.
"I am Celestine, a servant of the Emperor and a saint of the Imperium," the woman said.
The two warriors above descended to stand behind her.
"These are Eleanor and Genevieve, my Geminae Superia," Celestine said.
The Slayer looked at each of them. Eleanor met his gaze without flinching. Genevieve held it as well, though her bolter never moved far from him.
Celestine followed his attention toward the sky.
A shape moved beyond the smoke. It was too vast to be mistaken for a ship. Black planes and impossible angles concealed sections of the heavens. Towers and weapons covered its surface, each large enough to destroy cities.
"What is that?" the Slayer asked.
"That is the Will of Eternity, a Blackstone Fortress. Abaddon brought it here to break Cadia," Celestine answered.
"Abaddon," the Slayer repeated.
"The Despoiler. Warmaster of Chaos. He commands this invasion," Celestine said.
The Slayer studied the fortress.
Hatred poured from it. The same will that had driven the daemons against Kasr Kraf gathered somewhere within that darkness. The being responsible for the armies below was there or close enough that the Slayer could follow the trail to him.
Then he looked beyond the fortress.
The wound called the Eye of Terror filled the sky. To the people of Cadia, it appeared as a violet storm spreading across the stars. To the Slayer, it was an opening.
Behind it waited an abyss that was not Hell, yet carried the same corruption.
He stared into it. Something stared back. Four presences turned toward him from impossible distances.
One smelled of hot iron and oceans of blood. One carried the sweetness of rot and the patient certainty of decay. Another shifted through a thousand shapes before he could define it. The last touched the edges of every hunger and promised that none would ever be satisfied.
Their attention pressed against reality. The Slayer did not look away. For one long moment, he stood in their sight and they in his. Then the four presences withdrew. The Warp closed over them like dark water. They had looked away first.
"What did you see?" Celestine asked, rising slightly from the stone.
"They were watching," the Slayer replied.
"Who?" Celestine asked.
"Your gods," the Slayer said.
"They are not my gods," Celestine said sharply, golden fire flashing along the edges of her wings.
"The four you named," the Slayer clarified.
Celestine looked toward the Eye. Whatever she felt there caused the colour to leave her face.
"You felt all four of them?" Celestine asked, her voice quieter than before.
"Yes," the Slayer answered.
"And what did they do?" Celestine pressed.
"They merely eyed me and left," the Slayer said, returning his attention to the Blackstone Fortress.
Silence settled between them.
Only the sounds of reconstruction remained: shouted orders, grinding machinery, and the scrape of rubble dragged across stone. Not a single gunshot disturbed the night. Around the monument, Cadian soldiers worked beneath portable lamps, carrying ammunition and wounded comrades through the darkening street.
The Slayer watched them for a time.
"Tell me about the Emperor," the Slayer said.
Celestine's expression changed.
Until then, she had spoken as a soldier explaining a battlefield. At the mention of the Emperor, something warmer entered her voice.
She told him of the man who had united Terra and carried humanity to the stars. She spoke of the Great Crusade, of the Primarchs he had created to lead his armies, and of the son who had betrayed him. Horus had turned half the Imperium against the other half. The war had ended upon Terra, where the Emperor destroyed his fallen son but suffered wounds no mortal could survive.
"For ten thousand years, he has remained upon the Golden Throne. His body is broken, but his spirit endures. His light guides our ships through the Warp, and his will shields humanity from horrors that would otherwise consume it," Celestine explained.
"Does he still live?" the Slayer asked.
"His body endures. His spirit does more than live," Celestine answered.
"And you call him a god," the Slayer said.
"The God-Emperor of Mankind," Celestine replied without hesitation.
The Slayer shook his head once.
Eleanor and Genevieve exchanged a glance.
"You doubt his divinity," Celestine said, her eyes narrowing.
"He was a man," the Slayer replied.
"He was never merely a man," Celestine insisted.
"He was born. He bled. He was wounded," the Slayer countered.
"And still he reaches across the galaxy. I know because I have felt his hand upon my soul. I have died, warrior, more than once. Each time, the Emperor returned me to life and sent me back to defend his people," Celestine said as she rose from the plinth.
Her wings opened behind her, and golden light moved through the ruined street.
"I stand before you because he wills it. If that is not the act of a divine being, what would you call it?" Celestine asked.
The Slayer looked up at her.
"A long time ago, I was mortal," the Slayer said.
The words quieted even the two Geminae.
"Before the machine. Before the power. I could bleed. I could die," the Slayer continued.
"And?" Celestine prompted, her expression guarded.
"I did," the Slayer answered.
The Slayer remembered death as a door he had crossed so often that it had ceased to possess meaning. Torn flesh. Failing breath. Darkness. Then Hell.
When he had died as a mortal, no divine hand had reached down to restore him. He had awakened among the damned, taken weapons from the first daemons foolish enough to approach, and fought until he found a path back to the living. Every death had cast him into Hell. Every time, he had torn his way out.
"Many times," the Slayer continued.
"You escaped death by fighting your way out of Hell?" Celestine asked, staring at him.
"Yes," the Slayer replied.
"By whose will?" Celestine asked.
"Mine," the Slayer said.
He leaned forward, forearms resting upon his knees.
"If returning from death proves divinity, what did that make me?" the Slayer asked.
Celestine did not answer.
"Nothing. I was still a man," the Slayer said.
For the first time, uncertainty entered the saint's eyes.
Only for a moment.
"Escaping Hell is not the same as being restored by grace. I remember what lies beyond death. I have stood in the Emperor's light and heard his voice. I return because he commands it," Celestine replied.
"That proves he has power?" the Slayer said.
Celestine's hand came to rest upon the hilt of her sword.
"Power beyond any mortal soul," Celestine countered.
"Even so, power does not make a god," the Slayer replied.
The temperature in the street rose. Golden flame crept along Celestine's gauntlet and curled around the sword's guard.
Eleanor took a step forward. Genevieve's bolter shifted toward the Slayer.
He remained seated.
"You know nothing of him," Celestine warned.
"Then tell me," the Slayer said.
His gaze fixed upon hers.
"What keeps him alive?" the Slayer asked, holding her gaze.
Celestine's fingers stopped against the hilt.
The pause gave him his answer before she spoke.
"The Golden Throne sustains his mortal form," Celestine said.
"What sustains the throne?" the Slayer asked.
"Few living souls understand its mechanisms," Celestine replied.
"What feeds it?" the Slayer pressed.
Celestine's jaw tightened.
"Psykers are brought to Terra. Their lives maintain what must not be allowed to fail," Celestine said at last.
"How many?" the Slayer asked.
"A thousand. Every day," Celestine answered quietly.
The Slayer became very still.
"A thousand a day. Three hundred and sixty-five thousand every year," the Slayer calculated aloud.
"It is a cost the Imperium has no choice but to bear," Celestine said.
"Innocent lives," the Slayer replied.
"Lives spent to preserve uncounted trillions," Celestine answered.
The Slayer stood.
Celestine's sword came several centimetres from its sheath before she stopped herself.
He towered over the broken monument, fists clenched at his sides.
"Your god is a skeleton upon a machine, fed with the souls of the innocent," the Slayer said.
The sword cleared its sheath by another fraction.
"He suffers upon that throne so humanity may continue to exist. Do not mistake sacrifice for appetite. He does not consume those lives for pleasure. Without him, the Astronomican would fail, our ships would be lost, worlds would become isolated, and Terra itself could be swallowed by the Warp," Celestine said, anger strengthening every word despite the weapon she kept lowered.
"And that makes it right?" the Slayer asked.
"It makes it necessary," Celestine replied.
"Hell calls every sacrifice necessary," the Slayer said.
Celestine flinched as though he had struck her.
"I have watched entire worlds die when the Emperor's light could no longer reach them. I have seen daemons pour through the bodies of children and cities descend into madness in a single night. If the Throne fails, that fate will not come to one world. It will come to humanity," Celestine replied.
Her anger faded, leaving something older and more exhausted behind.
"Do you think I do not understand the price? Do you believe faith makes me blind to the dead? I remember every life I fail to save. I do not call those deaths good. I call them terrible. But if a thousand must die so that trillions may wake to another dawn, I will not pretend the two choices are equal," Celestine continued, her anger giving way to exhaustion.
The Slayer's fists tightened.
He had seen civilizations turn souls into fuel. He had watched Hell build empires from the suffering of the innocent. The thought of humanity feeding lives into a throne awakened a rage so old that the stone beneath his boots began to crack.
Then he remembered the worlds behind him.
He remembered cities he had freed and never seen again. He remembered portals closed, armies broken, and survivors left among their ruins while he followed the next scent of Hell. He did not know how many of those worlds had rebuilt. He did not know how many had fallen when the daemons returned.
He had saved their people from extinction, then abandoned them to continue his war. That had been his choice. Perhaps others had paid for it.
The Slayer slowly opened his hands.
Necessity did not make the sacrifice pure. It did not turn a powerful man into a god. But the Slayer knew what choices looked like when every path ended in death.
The stone stopped cracking.
Celestine watched the anger recede from him. Her hand left the sword.
Neither of them apologized. Neither had changed the other's mind. But they understood one another better than before.
Celestine returned to the plinth.
"You have asked much of my world. Now I would ask something of you," Celestine said.
The Slayer waited.
"Who are you?" Celestine asked.
There had once been several answers to that question.
A marine. A man from Earth. A soldier who had disobeyed an order to murder innocents and had been sent away for it. Later, the people of Argent D'Nur had given him another name. Hell had given him many more.
Only one had survived.
"The Doom Slayer," the Slayer answered.
"The Doom Slayer," Genevieve repeated quietly.
It sounded less like a name in her voice and more like something carved into a tomb.
"Where did you come from?" Celestine asked, keeping her attention fixed upon him.
"Hell," the Slayer answered.
The fires along her wings stirred.
"The Warp brought you here?" Celestine asked.
"No," the Slayer replied.
"You said you came from Hell," Celestine said.
"Not your Hell," the Slayer clarified.
Celestine sat in silence for several seconds.
"Then explain it to me," Celestine said.
The Slayer looked toward the Eye of Terror.
Speaking continued to feel unnatural, but the unnaturalness of it had lessened. Each answer pulled memories from depths he had sealed long ago. He had expected only anger to wait there.
Instead, he found Earth.
He found Mars. Deimos. Phobos. Argent D'Nur. He remembered human skies before they burned and the faces of people whose names had been lost to time.
"Hell is infinite. It exists outside the worlds it consumes. It touches different universes, different Earths, and different ages. It opens a path, sends its armies through, and turns the dead into fuel," the Slayer explained.
"You are describing the Warp," Celestine said, her eyes widening slightly.
"I have felt your Warp," the Slayer replied.
He looked directly at her.
"It is not the same," the Slayer added.
"Another Immaterium?" Eleanor asked.
"Maybe," the Slayer replied..
"And you fought this Hell?" Celestine asked after absorbing his answer.
"Yes." The Slayer gave a single nod.
"On your world?" Celestine asked, leaning forward slightly.
"At first." The Slayer looked toward the Eye of Terror.
"Where were you born?" Celestine asked.
"Earth." The Slayer's answer was immediate.
"Are you speaking of Terra?" Celestine repeated, her wings drawing closer to her back.
"I'm not speaking your version of earth." The Slayer held her gaze.
That answer disturbed her more than the rest.
The Slayer told her of an Earth that had entered the stars in another age. He had been born when humanity still measured its history in millennia rather than tens of millennia. He had served as a soldier before the first gates opened and the daemons came through.
He spoke of the battles that followed, though he gave her no names for most of them. The names no longer mattered. Hell invaded. He entered it. The invasion ended, and another began elsewhere.
World after world passed beneath his feet. Universe after universe opened before him.
"How many?" Celestine asked.
"I stopped counting." The Slayer's tone remained flat.
"And all of them were connected by this Hell?" Celestine asked.
"Yes. All of them." The Slayer gave her no room to misunderstand.
"How long did you fight as a mortal?" Celestine asked.
"Long enough to die many times," the Slayer replied.
Celestine studied the armour, the scars upon it, and the body within that had endured the Daemon Prince's attacks without injury.
"But you are no longer mortal?" Celestine observed.
"No," the Slayer said.
"What changed you?" Celestine asked.
"The Divinity Machine," the Slayer replied.
The name meant nothing to Celestine. He saw that in her expression.
"What did this machine do?" Celestine asked.
"It put my creator's essence into me," the Slayer answered.
"Divine essence?" Celestine asked, her wings stirring.
"It's merely Power. Nothing more," the Slayer said.
He told her enough to understand. The machine had remade him for a war without end. Strength, speed, and endurance had ceased to possess mortal limits. His body no longer aged and could not be injured. Blade, flame, sorcery, and force could strike him, but none could damage the flesh beneath the armour.
His immortality was absolute. His essence could not be severed, consumed, corrupted, or erased. He could be restrained. He could be entombed. He could be forced into an ageless stasis, as he had been after the Dark Lord fell.
But even stasis could not hold him forever. Seals failed. Prisons opened. Eventually, he always returned to his war against Hell.
He could not be killed.
He could not be contained.
"Not even your body can be destroyed?" Celestine asked, staring at him.
"No." The Slayer answered without hesitation.
"Then the armour is not what protects you," Celestine said, her gaze moving over the scarred green plates of the Praetor Suit.
"No, but it helps." The Slayer glanced down at the suit.
"But you do not need it," Celestine said.
"No." The Slayer's answer did not change.
"Then why wear it?" Celestine asked, her brow furrowing.
The Slayer looked down at the familiar weight of the suit. It carried his weapons, sharpened his senses, and had crossed more battlefields with him than he could remember. It was nearly indestructible in its own right.
But none of those reasons was the first that came to mind.
"I like it." The Slayer saw no reason to explain further.
For a heartbeat, Celestine could only stare. Then the faintest trace of disbelief crossed her face.
"Of course you do." The corner of Celestine's mouth almost formed a smile.
"How old are you?" Celestine asked at last.
The Slayer looked back across the ages.
Time had flowed differently in Hell. Entire civilizations had risen and vanished while he fought beneath alien skies. Periods of entombment separated wars that might have belonged to different creations. Numbers had become useless long before he entered this universe.
"Millions of years stopped mattering long ago," the Slayer said.
Celestine did not seem to breathe.
"Then give me a measure I can understand," Celestine said.
"Eons." The Slayer gave her the closest answer that still held meaning.
The answer left Celestine shaken. Had her faith in the Emperor been any less absolute, she might have mistaken the being before her for a god worthy of worship.
The Slayer could see the question forming behind her eyes. Her Emperor had lived for tens of thousands of years and reshaped the course of humanity. She called him divine. Before her sat something far older, carrying a creator's essence and possessing an immortality that no weapon, realm, or passage of time could overcome.
"I am not a god." The Slayer spoke with absolute finality.
"I did not call you one," Celestine replied, her gaze snapping back to him.
"You were considering it." The Slayer had recognized the thought before she could hide it.
He recognized the look in her eyes. He had seen its kind before, in survivors who mistook overwhelming power for holiness.
Yet Celestine's awe held little fear now. She had watched him pursue Hell without rest, but she had also watched him lift rubble from trapped children and cross a city for people unable to defend themselves. Because of this, if he were truly a divine being, a little part of her did not recoil from the thought of worshipping him.
"Then what are you?" Celestine asked without denying the accusation.
He remembered Earth before it burned. A uniform worn before the Praetor Suit. A life in which he had been only one soldier among billions of human beings.
"A man," the Slayer replied.
"No man is what you are," Eleanor said, her composure finally cracking.
"I was a man before the Divinity Machine. I am one now," the Slayer replied.
"You carry the essence of your creator. You are ageless, invulnerable, and beyond death," Celestine said.
"Power changed what I can do, not what I am," the Slayer said.
He had met beings worshipped as gods. They demanded obedience, fed upon sacrifice, and hid behind armies of slaves. He had killed all of them. Divinity was a title the powerful used when they wanted their will placed beyond judgment.
He wanted no temples. No prayers. No kneeling servants. Immortality did not make him holy. It only meant the war could never outlast him.
The Slayer looked away.
He had spoken more in the last hour than he had in ages. His voice remained rough, and each sentence still felt like forcing open a door that had rusted shut. Yet the weight behind that door had changed.
There was something strangely relieving in being heard.
Celestine had not fled from his history. She had neither bowed nor offered worship. She had challenged him, argued with him, and listened when he answered.
For a brief moment, he remembered what it had been like to speak as a man rather than exist as a weapon.
Above them, the Blackstone Fortress remained fixed against the sky of Cadia.
The Slayer rose from the broken monument.
"Can it be destroyed?" the Slayer asked.
"The Will of Eternity?" Celestine asked, following his gaze.
"Yes," the Slayer answered.
"Blackstone Fortresses have survived weapons that would break lesser vessels, but they are not invulnerable," Celestine said.
"Can it reach the planet?" the Slayer asked.
"Yes. If Abaddon means to bring it down, millions, perhaps billions, could die," Celestine answered, her expression darkening.
The Slayer studied the distance between the fortress and Cadia.
He knew what came next.
Abaddon commanded the invasion. He would die.
The Will of Eternity threatened every life upon Cadia. It would be destroyed or driven away before it could reach the planet.
Below it, the people of Kasr Kraf were already rebuilding walls that might not survive the night. They had endured one assault. They would not face the next alone.
The Slayer looked into the Eye of Terror. Somewhere beyond it, four false gods watched from behind their legions.
There was a warlord to kill. A fortress to break. A world to save. And after that, an eternity of daemons to erase.
…
Doom Guy Kill Count: 10,367
…
Author's Note: This story uses the lore version of the Doom Slayer rather than limiting him to games. Because of that, I am taking some creative liberties with the scale of his abilities, the length of his life, and how his immortality will function within the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Also Doom Guy had a long conversation in a million years. Lastly, Big E and DG would be great friends, both hate being worshipped and being seen as gods.