He'd have been a handsome man, if he wasn't dead. A hard face softened by creamy white skin. He scrapes a razor across the back of his head, removing the last of the dark fuzz. The helmet, which he slips over is head now, gets hot and bare skin makes it more bearable. A demonic visage states back at the dark room, now illuminated in the blood red glow of the helms activated eye lenses.
He stands and servos whir with the movement of his joints. There is a thrum in the room as his armour's reactor spools up. He takes his axe from its slot on the wall and sheaths it at the small of his back, then takes his rifle from the table, and steps out of his chambers.
Hoards of dead men shamble around the encampment, shaking the ground with their collected mass. Not undead like him, but truly dead. Reanimated by the viral nanomachines that send the right electrochemical pulses to the muscles across their rotting corpses. Not a single thought passes through what is left of their brains. They simply obey the impulses of the necrotech. And the necrotech is slaved to his will.
These corpses are mostly a company of recently revived soldiers. They still carry much of the equipment they were holding when they died, either at his own hands or that of his dead minions. That last battle did much to replenish his dwindling forces in this long war.
The other benefit is that the position he marches on now is composed of living soldiers from a cousin company to the dead that march at his will. How it drives dispair and terror into the living to have to cut down people they knew, or be cut down by people they know.
Their knights are hardened to such things. They care about as much for the living people at their command as he does for the dead ones at his command. But they can be dangerous, even to him.
Which is why he skulks in the stinking ranks of these dead creatures. He knows the knights will not shy away from an opportunity to burst through ranks of brainless chaff, gleefully cutting their way through former underlings with their plasma blades. The smart thing would be to stay back and slice away at the hoard from range with auto rifles and artillery. But that's not glorious enough for a knight.
And that's where they will find him. A viper, nesting amongst the corpses. That's where they will hear the high pitched whine of armour powering up to maintain his unnatural speed, and see the brief flash of a plasma-heated axe blade, as it slices their necks in two. And in the moment before they die they will know they should not have come here.
Paddy Dobson
29th August 2022