The last time he spoke with Wolf Lord Bloodhowl, Bloodhowl was throwing a fit, demanding that Zeke find his Primarch, Leman Russ, and claiming he was rushing to Terra immediately.
Zeke had been wondering why there was no sign of him after so long. It turned out he had crashed and been trafficked to Commorragh.
For a reckless brute like Wolf Lord Bloodhowl—who was capable of charging into a Blackstone Fortress alone to duel Abaddon—Zeke didn't even need to think hard to figure out how he ended up in this state.
Blood rushing to his head, losing his reason, accidentally stumbling into Commorragh while chasing down some enemies, and then getting captured.
"Do you know who his opponent is..." The Dark Eldar in front of him was still chattering away, trying to make a sale.
He led Zeke through dark, winding streets that resembled intestines, until the view suddenly opened up.
It was an arena shaped like an ancient Roman colosseum, its outer walls forged from scorched bones and spiked black steel.
The arena dominated the Sprawls, drawing bloodthirsty Dark Eldar from kilometers away. These twisted xenos used daily deaths to fill their worthless lives.
"Kill them!"
"Blood, more blood!"
Just standing before the towering gates, even before stepping inside, Zeke could hear the frenzied roars echoing from the arena seats.
"For just this amount, you can sit in the very front row and observe the despair in that Astartes' eyes up close as he is torn apart." The tout extended a withered finger, quoting a greedy sum.
"I don't have money." Zeke shook his head straightforwardly. He didn't even know what currency Commorragh used.
The tout froze for a moment, his originally fawning smile peeling away inch by inch.
He suspiciously sized up Zeke's sturdy physique.
In Commorragh, young, strong Dark Eldar youths like this usually had some spare change in their pockets.
Seeing that Zeke had no intention of joking, the Dark Eldar's attitude twisted into a mean and spiteful sneer.
"Tch, where did this lower-class pauper come from? Piss off! If you don't have money, why are you wandering around here?"
Seeing that he had been pitching for so long only to find out the guy was broke, the Dark Eldar's face darkened. He shoved Zeke squarely, gesturing for him to get lost immediately.
Zeke looked at the spot where the Dark Eldar had pushed him; there was a dark handprint.
"Did you just hit me?" Zeke said evenly. "I hold grudges more than anyone. You hit me once, so I'm going to hit you once. Very fair, isn't it?"
"You dare cause trouble in the arena? Do you know whose turf this is? You dare provoke Queen Lelith?"
An arena guard noticed the scene. Cracking an electro-corrosive whip, he approached with malicious intent.
The tout grew even bolder. As a nobody, relying on the power of others to bully people was his rule of survival.
Zeke glanced around. The guard had already stepped into optimal execution range, forming a perfect arc with the tout.
"The distance is just about right. I can take them all out at once," Zeke muttered softly.
A pitch-black scythe materialized in Zeke's hand out of thin air. It slashed through the space, leaving behind only a dark purple phantom trail.
With Sharpness 10, plus its base damage, the health bars of these Dark Eldar couldn't even withstand a single hit.
The tout's arrogant screeching came to an abrupt halt. His head, like a comical rubber ball, rolled off the smooth cut of his neck with a thud and landed on the ground, face up.
Commorragh's sky was a gloomy, dark crimson, resting heavily upon the jagged spires of the arena.
Immediately after, the thing that made these xenos' souls tremble the most occurred.
Following the hunger within the scythe, the tout's soul let out an incredibly shrill, agonizing scream.
He felt an irresistible force reaching out from the void, forcibly dragging his soul into it.
Slaanesh.
"That is mine..." the tout shrieked. It reminded him of the most terrifying thing to their race.
His soul was completely extinguished amidst the screaming.
A large chunk of soul energy was added to the Reaper's Scythe. Zeke clicked his tongue in wonder.
No wonder Slaanesh targeted the Eldar. For a race so adept at using Warp energy, they certainly provided a massive amount of soul energy.
On average, one ordinary Dark Eldar was worth fifty or sixty Villagers.
Zeke put the Reaper's Scythe away. Everything here had happened too fast, too cleanly.
In this city where thousands of lives faded away every single second, the disappearance of a few specks of dust wouldn't even cause a single ripple.
–
To dodge the ticket fare, Zeke applied an Invisibility effect to himself. He walked through the archway of the arena, plunging into the cheering sounds of slaughter.
The entire gladiatorial arena was packed without an empty seat. They sat in ascending circles, row after row, looking down at the very center of the fighting pit at the bottom.
The audience spat out curses in fragmented syllables, their thin lips twisted. Their faces were filled with a loathsome frenzy, shoving and screaming at each other. The violence of the arena spread right into the spectator stands.
Zeke wasn't swept up by the fanatical audience. At a single glance, he spotted Wolf Lord Bloodhowl in the center of the arena.
A fierce battle had just concluded.
Wolf Lord Bloodhowl blinked to clear the blood from his eyes. His braided hair was soaked in gore, and at his feet lay six Ur-Ghuls.
Bloodhowl tossed his fiery red mane back and let out a victorious howl toward the sky.
But the taste of victory turned sour in his throat. The roar of the Dark Eldar crowd drowned him out, reminding him exactly where he was.
Fury erupted in the Wolf Lord's chest. He stumbled across the black sand of the arena, vaulted over coils of knotted razorwire, and leapt onto the high wall separating him from the Dark Eldar masses.
He wanted to crush the throats of these loathsome xenos, one by one.
However, Commorragh never granted hope to its prisoners.
As usual, whips coiled around his arms, legs, and throat, crackling with profane energy.
The slavemasters dragged Wolf Lord Bloodhowl back into the arena. He rolled on the black sand, twitching helplessly, coughing up foam and flecks of blood.
Wolf Lord Bloodhowl knew that struggling against his captors was futile, yet, shrouded in rage, he did it every single time.
Bloodhowl rolled a few times on the ground and lay there weakly. A memory flashed through his mind.
When Bloodhowl had first arrived here, another prisoner—an unkempt Imperial Guard soldier—told him that he would never see another sky for the rest of his life.
"Then the rest of my life is going to be damn long," Bloodhowl had boasted.
But Bloodhowl never saw that guardsman again.
In a daze, Wolf Lord Bloodhowl seemed to hear a sigh amidst the shouting of the audience—a familiar sigh.
Bloodhowl sharply raised his head, looking toward the origin of the sound; there was nothing there.
Is it my hallucination?
He wasn't given any more time to think. The audience boiled over once again, and the heavy gates behind Wolf Lord Bloodhowl opened.
A massive Talos Pain Engine drifted toward him, its anti-gravity engines churning the surrounding sand into swirling clouds.