Chapter 1: Soul of the Legion
Duvette had clung to the possibility that his transmigration was a mistake.
Maybe, just maybe, he had played too much Warhammer and simply blacked out. A dream. An extremely vivid, extremely inconvenient dream.
But then: the shriek of lasfire tearing through open air. The stench of ozone layered over scorched flesh. Officers and soldiers screaming, some in fury, most in a despair that had already given up expecting rescue.
Duvette's eyes snapped open. He was gasping. His lungs did not want to work properly.
"I'm still alive?"
He must have been caught in the barrage. The shockwave had thrown him into the mud, and when consciousness finally clawed its way back, the world had rearranged itself around him. The trench to his left no longer existed. A massive crater in its place, rimmed with churned earth and things that had been men. Severed limbs and shredded flesh mixed into the muck and scattered across every surface within range.
Directly beside where he had been lying: a severed arm, grey uniform sleeve still buttoned at the wrist, the cuff dark with blood that had not yet dried.
He tested his body carefully. No sharp pain. No fractures. That was wrong. The shell had hit this section of trench directly. Every other soldier in range was dead. He was breathing.
Duvette pressed his hands into the mud and pushed himself upright. Filthy water dripped from his uniform in thin rivulets.
Distant thunder as another shell found its target. The ground shuddered. The air tasted of burning.
He drew a slow breath and made himself think.
Farrak IV. Agricultural world. He was attached to the 101st Regiment of K3192, the Ash Watchers, as a probationary commissar, fresh out of the Schola Progenium pipeline and very much in over his head.
"Throne," Duvette said, and drove his fist into the nearest puddle. "I actually got pressed into this."
The splash added another dark stain to his grey uniform with its blue trim. The badge on his chest, the symbol of his appointment, was unrecognizable under the filth.
Probationary commissar. Little better than a common trooper with extra paperwork. Wonderful.
The 6th Company's defensive line was on the edge of breaking. The Chaos traitors, the ones who called themselves the Skull Crushers, were pressing hard from every direction.
Options. He thought through them fast.
Run? He gave it one second of serious consideration. Even if he could fight his way back to a safe rear position, a lone man moving through contested ground toward a Chaos warband's line of advance would not survive long enough to regret the decision.
The only real option was to find the soldiers still holding their ground and link up with them.
Drawing on the memories the original body carried, Duvette reached into the mud and pulled out a lasgun. He checked it over. Fouled with grime from barrel to stock. Still functional.
He breathed slowly. In. Out. Let the heartbeat settle.
Panic was useless. Fear was useless. In this universe, death was not a mercy. The Warp was full of things far worse than dying, and he had no intention of meeting any of them. He wanted to live. He wanted his soul to stay his own.
Lasgun in hand, he began moving toward the sound of the fighting.
The dead were everywhere. Some wore the grey of the Astra Militarum, his regiment's own, their chests torn open by something that had punched through armour as if it were nothing, their heads missing entirely. Others were the enemy: bodies twisted into shapes human anatomy did not accommodate, fabric fused directly to skin as if both had been grown together from the start, bone-white masks locked to dead faces, unbroken even where high-powered lasfire had burned through everything around them. As if the masks had simply been part of the flesh. As if they had always been.
Every new stretch of trench arrived like a physical impact. Duvette breathed through it and kept moving.
At one of the turns ahead, shadows moved.
Three figures in the amber light of the dying sun, grappling in close. His finger found the trigger. He came around the corner fast.
A lean Guardsman was locked in close combat with two traitors. One of them was bringing a sharpened length of pipe around in a low arc aimed at the Guardsman's ribs. The lasgun cracked. The traitor's skull punched through from the inside out.
His partner froze for a moment.
The Guardsman shoved the remaining man back and drove his bayonet into the traitor's lung. The sound that came from the man's throat was like air escaping a collapsed bellows. Duvette put a second shot through his head to be certain.
His heart was hammering. His hands had a slight tremor he was working to suppress.
First kill. Well. First kill for him. This body had its own prior history with that.
"Damn lunatics." The Guardsman was breathing hard. He let out a short whistle. "Good shooting." He turned and looked Duvette over. "Figured it was you. Lucky Duvette. Where are Hiranl and the others?"
Duvette opened his mouth to answer.
A line of text appeared at the edge of his vision, clear and sharp as a hololith projection.
[One friendly Guardsman detected. Soul of the Legion has activated.]
[Good luck, my child.]
He stopped.
The soldier read something in his expression and went quiet for a moment. Then he exhaled. "Death's just part of the job out here. May they find their rest at the Golden Throne." He pulled his forage cap from his head, revealing a shaved skull with a grinning death's-head tattooed across the crown. "We got separated from the main body. We need to find them now. Come on."
He was already moving when Duvette looked at him again, and this time a cluster of green readouts appeared in the space above the man's head.
[Stroud Hammer]
[Ash Watchers, 101st Regiment, 6th Company, Lieutenant]
[Loyalty: 80%] [Morale: 80%] [Status: Lightly Wounded] [Stability: 64%] [Chaos Corruption: 43%]
So that was his cheat ability. He could read the status of other people. The battlefield, quantified.
He did not get long to process it. Stroud had already smeared a handful of trench dirt across his face and scalp, camouflage or habit or both, and set off at a jog. Duvette followed.
They moved through the trench network. Several more scattered groups of traitors crossed their path. Each time, Duvette's shots came a little steadier than the last.
"You really do shoot well," Stroud said over his shoulder, ducking briefly as a burst of fire cracked overhead. "My commissar. Not official yet, but give it a month. Actually, come to think of it..."
Duvette was not listening. New text had appeared in his vision.
[Ten Chaos traitors eliminated. Legion skill tree unlocked. Reward: 100 Emperor's Wrath.]
He stared at the interface that had opened before him, a skill tree, clear and structured, exactly like something from a game he had played in another life.
Three branches.
[Iron Discipline] [War Doctrine] [Sacred Rites]
A hundred points. Duvette looked at them, looked at the world around him, and spent the points without hesitating. First node, Iron Discipline branch.
[Steel Ring (Beginner)]
[Soldiers under your command receive a minor increase to morale and mental stability.]
[Steel within and without.]
"Is this really not some scheme of Tzeentch's?" he muttered.
Almost immediately, the readout above Stroud's head shifted.
[Morale: 85%] [Stability: 70%]
"Still with me?" Stroud's voice cut through from fifty meters ahead. The man was beckoning impatiently. "Main body's right up ahead. I can hear them. Move!"
Duvette came back to himself and picked up the pace.
The sounds of fighting were growing denser. The shouts of Guardsmen and the sharp crack of lasguns wove together into something continuous and overwhelming. The air was thick with burning and with blood. Loose earth cascaded from the trench walls with every near impact.
They came around a final corner.
Forty or fifty soldiers in grey held a section of trench that was still largely intact, pouring fire down the slope at the traitors grinding upward from below. Stroud let out a short, relieved laugh. "See? Knew we'd find them."
Duvette looked at the men still fighting. Then he looked at the glowing skill icon in the corner of his vision.
He drew one long breath and tightened his grip on the lasgun.
Survive.
Then figure out how to win.