Warhammer: Start with a dog

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"Eat something, sir."

Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Leonid leaned against the shadow of a dirty machine. If it weren't for the slight rise and fall of his chest, he would have been indistinguishable from a corpse covered in mineral dust and coal ash.

The lieutenant colonel's legs were spread apart and lifelessly placed on the ground, his hands hanging down at both sides of his body, and his head also drooped.

His original sky-blue dragoon uniform was stained with oil and dust to the point where the original color could hardly be seen. It was worn out. His once neat golden hair was now unkempt and sparse, and had become gray and dry due to the torture of poison from friendly forces, malnutrition from the enemy, and extreme fatigue.

"You must eat something, sir."

It was his adjutant, Elad, who carefully brought him a little of the thin, turbid nutrient soup mixed with the black and gray of the sweatshop floor with his rough hands. The sergeant looked at the highest-ranking prisoner still alive here with his equally exhausted and bloodshot eyes.

"What are you eating it for, Sergeant?"

"Survive, sir."

Lieutenant Colonel Leonid felt a new wave of fatigue and dizziness hit him, and he subconsciously licked his cracked, dry lips.

"But we didn't live long anyway, Elad. Do you remember what Captain Eshara told us at the time? Those Mechanicus bastards deceived all of us, those carcinogenic drugs... If there hadn't been an invasion, we would have died later as they planned."

"I know, sir. But we are members of the noble and unyielding Jouran 383rd Dragoons Regiment (Note 1), sir, you have to eat something, get up, lead us to survive, and resist, escape, and revenge."

"Resist, revenge? Who? Count on them?" Leonid seemed amused, he raised a thin arm, and pointed with his coal-stained finger at the hell scene behind Sergeant Elad that was happening and had happened countless times.

In the huge forging workshop filled with high-temperature steam and toxic exhaust gas, the main engine roaring and outputting huge power is being driven by the anger of the bound giant demon.

Under the gaze of the demon's scarlet eyes like fireballs, the driven forging hammers and machine tools are panting and emitting steam and black smoke. The furnace full of scorching hot iron opens its fiery red mouth with steel teeth and iron jaws, and an unburned human limb is still hanging between its teeth.

The alien runes etched on the ground that emit energy fluctuations form a huge formation, binding the red demon inside the engine, making its power here the main driving energy source for the entire forging factory.

In the distance, a tall and tyrannical monster is patrolling back and forth. He is wearing black iron power armor, and yellow and black stripes are painted on the dark steel. His roar is more like a harsh mechanical noise. The smelly black grease seeps down from each hinge of his power armor. The hoses that look hideous and excessive in number burst from time to time with his steps, spewing out hissing steam.

As they watched him, the Iron Warrior slave master was using his chain saw axe to chop a slave who had unfortunately fallen to the ground and blocked his way into two pieces, and threw the latter, who had no strength to wail, into the mouth of the demon forge that was constantly spewing bright red boiling steel.

Anyway, there are still many slaves, and slaves are everywhere.

In this dark forge factory managed by the Iron Warrior Obex Zakayo, there is never a shortage of labor consumables.

If there is a shortage of one hundred slaves, there can be a thousand slaves to fill their positions, and the same is true for the vacancies left by the thousand dead, and so on. The cycle will keep the forge burning forever.

Those who died or those who are still alive were either fed to the demons early, becoming firewood or some raw materials, or like Leonid and Elad, drinking thin nutrient soup at the feet of the mutant foreman every day, working to death in the forge workshop, slowly consuming in hunger and exhaustion, until one day they fell to the ground and died.

There may be three thousand Yolan Dragoon prisoners who survived the battle of the Heart of Hydra and were driven onto the dark Chaos barge to this demon planet with a black sun, but Leonid didn't know how many of them were left now. However, not all slaves in this forge were Yolans, at least those who were fighting for food were not.

The lieutenant colonel and sergeant in the shadows saw this Iron Warrior bastard turn his head and walk towards them. The long whip with evil energy extended from the mechanical arm behind the Chaos Warrior lashed at the other slaves around the trough, and shouted at these lazy bones to work quickly, otherwise they would be thrown to feed the demons - while the latter were busy snatching the thin and turbid nutrient soup in the troughs that were dragged over.

The slaves howled and tried their best to avoid the whips of the slave owners. They squirmed their bodies and gathered around the three bulldozers dragging the troughs like livestock. They fought for the rotten liquid residues and even murdered their former co-workers.

They turned their eyes away from the slaves.

"So, will you stand up and lead us to revenge? Or will you give up? Sir." Sergeant Elad still held the nutritious soup in his hands. Some liquid dripped from his fingers into the black dust on the ground and immediately disappeared without a trace. He stared closely at the man in front of him who was once the deputy commander of the fortress.

Leonid straightened up weakly, stretched out his sore hands and took the half-fermented soup with the smell of sewer from the sergeant.

He took a quick glance and found that there was a layer of grease floating on it, and there were even some solids at the bottom, but the lieutenant colonel decided that he didn't want to know and shouldn't think about what materials these solids that might be meat pieces came from.

"You are right, Elad. The glorious Yolan Dragoons never give up unless they die."

Frowning, Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Leonid of the 383rd Yolan Dragoons lowered his head and drank the soup in his hand, and resisted the feeling of his stomach churning and wanting to vomit them together with the gastric mucosa.

Perhaps it was Sergeant Elad's unusual behavior that attracted the attention of the Iron Warriors. This black iron monster emitting hot air strode towards them, and the rest of the slaves separated in fear.

"What?"

This monster, this monster who had fallen into Chaos and was once a warrior of the Emperor, leaned down, his full-face armor hissing out hot air that smelled like burnt protein from the gaps. Leonid couldn't see his eyes at all, only a glimmer of light like the fire of a forge or the light from the bloody mouth of a demon was peeping at the loyal Yolan people from behind.

The lieutenant colonel's eyes were madly tilted in his eye sockets, and stimulated physiological tears flowed from his eyes - normal mortals simply couldn't look directly at this tainted eyepiece for too long, just like all the crazy things on this planet and the black abnormal sun couldn't be looked at for too long.

"You don't have to rob food, someone will give it to you." The Chaos Iron Warrior glanced at Sergeant Elad and turned to Leonid. "Are you the leader of this group of people?"

"I used to be their deputy commander." He did not say what happened to his commander. May his superior Paster Woben and other colleagues rest in peace beside the throne of the God Emperor. Lieutenant Colonel Leonid found that he could not deny that he was a little envious of them who had died in battle a few months ago.

The Iron Warrior laughed as if he was entertained, and the slave master's pronunciation grid was mixed with the harsh crackling of static electricity, "And you, became our captive, slave, in front of the Blood God, the honor of a guy like you is worthless, you and your rank are only worthy of being fed to machines."

The lieutenant colonel's courage, which was originally like a smoldering coal, was blown up by anger and hatred again when the other party insulted his legion and honor, so that he dared to mock him in front of a Chaos Space Marine who was taller than him. He tried his best to straighten his painful and screaming joints, clenched his fists that were sore and swollen like burning muscles, and looked directly at the other party's forehead. "That's better than becoming a half-human and half-ghost like you. You are not even as good as a little finger of the Yoran Warrior!"

However, Obex Zakayu was a little proud, as if he felt that such a direct and positive offense was a kind of affirmation for him.

"Ha! Boy! Not bad, you have some courage. Maybe you should join us! The God of War will like guys like you. Look, what He has given me! An immortal body and powerful strength! And look at you! You are so weak now, as long as you... something!"

The slave owner turned his head in time, but the attacker who was close enough to him was still successfully sneaking up on him because of the banging of the huge forging hammers in the factory, the sound of the machinery turning, and other deafening noises.

The tip of a steel hammer that was as thick as if it had been premeditated hit the helmet of the Chaos Astartes, making a dull sound like a rolling stone falling, interrupting the next words that the Iron Warrior was about to say.

Leonid saw several ghostly thin figures flashing from the edge of his vision with his tear-blurred eyes. He vaguely recognized the sky blue color of their uniforms covered by dust.

The lieutenant colonel jumped back two steps in the joy of hatred-the Chaos Iron Warrior who was attacked actually knelt on one knee, as if he was stunned for a while by the club.

At the same time, he also realized in his mind that this was a possible, fleeting chance to escape.

"Open the door! Kill them!" The lieutenant colonel shouted at the crowd, and because of too much force, the stinking thing he had just eaten was almost vomited out of his nostrils. The pain of cancer swept through his internal organs, but he held it back.

Sergeant Elad moved faster than him. The thin but still strong man squeezed out his last strength, running and roaring at any captives with vehicle driving skills to drive those tracked molten steel transporters.

The Yolan attackers cheered in victory and responded to the commander. These big guys weighing dozens of tons when fully loaded were their only hope to break through the door closed by the mutant supervisor.

The anger and hatred accumulated from months or even years of living in fear, torture and abuse at the hands of the powerful erupted like a volcano, causing many other slaves here to immediately recover from their numbness after a brief surprise and join the crowd seeking revenge or trying to escape. They began to rush towards the mutant overseers wearing rubber breathing masks, attacking and tearing each other apart frantically with simple work tools, fingers and teeth until their shapes could hardly be distinguished.

The captives and slaves, who were as skinny as starvation, waved their branch-like arms and legs, bursting out with unprecedented power, and charged towards the forge and workshop doors - Leonid saw with relief, cleverly composed In the team, the one who went to try to drive the fully loaded molten steel transfer tanker was the prisoner Yolan, while the ones who couldn't wait to rush towards the gate of the Devil's Factory were the other slaves.

He was also about to start running to support and lead his soldiers - suddenly his heart clenched tightly because of the incident he witnessed, almost suffocating him instantly - the lieutenant colonel was horrified to see the man who had eaten The Chaos Iron Warrior, who was hit so hard on the head that the head in the helmet with a flat hole should be deformed in ordinary people's terms, has stood up again, and began to sneer from under his hot visor——

"No!!!! Stop!!!!" Leonid let out a desperate cry and threw himself desperately at the slave owner who had begun to lift his arm full of cables and hoses.

Although severely twisted, what was now raised on the latter's wrist must be a Space Marine-sized twin bolter. The gunfire spit out more than a foot from the muzzle, and the angle of the slaver's movement was nowhere. The escaped demon factory workshop is like a sickle formed of flames and metal, harvesting the lives of resisters and escapees wantonly.

Large swaths of blood and minced meat filled the entire workshop in an unrealistic instant like splashed paint. The engines, machinery and lathes seemed to be more happy when they were watered with fresh blood and flesh. The imprisoned devil was in its cage. Watching all the chaos happening, it laughed maniacally, inspiring Orbecks to sacrifice more blood and souls to it and its master.

The slaves fled in all directions to find shelter from this deadly storm of revenge, while the lieutenant colonel was grabbed by the throat and lifted up by another iron hand of the Chaos slave master, so that he could see the single land more clearly and desperately. Panoramic view of massacre.

"Watch carefully! Slave! I'm not happy!" roared the Iron Warrior, "There are many of your people here! They fight for you! And I want you to watch them die for you!"

"No-!!!!" Tears mixed with sweat, blurring and stinging Leonid's eyes again. He saw that the entire heads of the soldiers who had just climbed into the driver's seat were gone, and some of them were still there. The contents of the body were almost evenly "smeared" on some lathes and anvils.

But the brave Yolan vehicle driving team had achieved their goal. Under the inertia of the last kick of the accelerator, a fully loaded tank car rushed out of the transportation rail track and rushed into the center of the forging factory.

Realizing what was about to happen, Orbecks roared loudly, threw away the prisoners in his hands and rushed towards the forge engine.

But it was too late. Under the huge impact of weight and inertia, the fence around the engine began to bend and deform, and then the tanker overturned——

The tank burst, and scorching hot molten steel flowed out from it, instantly vaporizing anyone around who had no time to avoid it into a plume of green smoke. Then, as the Iron Warrior cursed angrily, it flowed onto the rune formation on the ground. , the etching spells were destroyed one by one by the molten steel——

The demon was released, and in an instant the dark, indescribable thing swept across the entire factory floor. It was ancient, hungry, and fed on fear, pain, and hatred. The unborn stretched out their black engine oil-like claws, killing the approaching humans. In an instant, it turned into charred fragments separated from flesh and bone. Screams and desperate moans filled the place. The ground was filled with high-temperature molten iron. Demons roared above to suck out souls. This scene became more and more like a living hell. Lieutenant Colonel Leonid screamed in his heart for the blessing of the God Emperor while desperately searching for Sergeant Elad and the others.

Because the slave owner had just hurried into the depths of the factory, there were no guards at the gate. These few seconds might be the difference between life and death.

He coughed into his injured throat as he hunched over and rushed to the door, relieved to see Elad running towards him from his hiding place. There's no time to call everyone, there are only a few who can escape.

When they pushed open the door together, their eyes were stung by the abnormal burning and pale light of the sky outside.

Lieutenant Colonel Leonid suddenly realized that perhaps there had never been a suitable time.

A neat team of Iron Warriors stood silently outside the door. They held weapons and stared coldly at the opened door of the Demon Factory and the slaves inside.