Chapter 399: Terror Descends
Meanwhile, down on the surface of Forge World Primo-496a, plenty of Orks were tuning in to watch the fight happening overhead in the void. The fleet battle was close enough to the planet that the signal came through clean, and some enterprising greenskins had rigged up massive screens to broadcast the void combat live.
Ships trading broadside fire, boarding actions, one blood-pumping moment after another, the watching Orks howled and roared with excitement.
The whole point of these Ork livestreams was showing off. If a broadcaster pulled in enough attention from other Orks, he had a real shot at becoming a WAAAGH focal point himself, growing stronger and stronger off the collective energy.
At one improvised Ork movie house, cobbled together out of a scrap heap, a crowd of greenskins stood among the junk, eyes fixed on screens showing every angle of the battle, letting out excited bursts of "WAAAGH" every so often. Gretchin vendors weaved through the crowd carrying trays, hawking skewers of roasted fungus and mushroom brew.
"One big tooth, one fungus skewer! Three teeth, two skewers, buy more, save more!"
The shrewd little Gretchin hawkers shouted their prices, and the Orks, too absorbed in the show to argue, dug into their own mouths for teeth, the Ork currency of choice, to pay up. Anyone caught without teeth in his pocket just punched a nearby greenskin in the face hard enough to knock a few loose, instant cash.
Shouting, brawling, chaos in every direction, business as usual for a crowd of Orks.
Then the screen at the movie house cut abruptly, jumping from some Ork mid-fight to a giant human face filling the frame.
The watching Orks erupted in outrage. The fight had been going great, why was it suddenly switching channels?
One young Ork glared at Kian's face on the screen, stood up furious, punched the nearest Ork flat, and bellowed:
"Boring! I wants to see blood everywhere!"
"Yeah! I don't wanna see some ugly human shrimp face, I wants to see blood everywhere!"
The crowd erupted in complaints. Up on screen, Kian let out a wicked cackle. He held up the severed head of the warboss he'd just killed and gave it a shake for the camera.
"Kekekekekeke! You green scrubs have been running wild across this Forge World for a good while now, having yourselves a real nice time, haven't you? Well, today I'm here to tell you, your days of swaggering around are over. Because I've arrived."
In one Ork scrapyard workshop, a Mekboy tinkering with a pile of junked parts glanced up at a small screen nearby. Watching Kian's little show, the Mekboy got instantly furious. He hacked into the channel with a bit of his own gear and shouted back in reply.
"Damn human shrimp! Who do ya think ya are! Come fight me one on one if ya got da guts!"
Kian let out another wicked laugh, his voice dropping into something genuinely chilling.
"You ask who I am? Speak my name, and tremble. I once single-handedly fought twenty thousand greenskins at once and wiped every last one of them out, with more than enough swagger to spare. I'm also a Daemon Slayer, a man before whom daemons that terrify everyone else are reduced to playthings. And when pushed to the edge of fury, I have personally crushed a grown man's skull between my own glutes."
Down on the surface of Primo-496a, tens of millions of Orks watching the broadcast erupted at that.
"Whoa! He can crush a man's head wit' his butt cheeks, dat's mad!"
"His glutes gotta be crazy strong!"
"If dat ain't a lie, dis is a man worthy of bein' me boss!"
The young Orks chattered excitedly among themselves as Kian's introduction rolled toward its finish.
"I'm coming for you. I'm about to become your worst nightmare. The enemies who've died at my hands gave me plenty of titles. They've called me Holy Warrior of the Ecclesiarchy, Favored of the Emperor, Count of Agri-World Secundus-496b, the void-deputy, Crusher of Vermin. But down here, I only go by one name."
The young Orks fell quiet, faces growing grim as they watched the boasting human on screen, sensing this one wasn't ordinary.
What kind of name would a human shrimp this dangerous even go by?
Kian took a deep breath, mouth splitting into a wide, unmistakably evil grin.
"Get a good look at my face. From this day forward, I am the nightmare of every greenskin on this world. I am... the Terror of the Gretchin, the Gretchin Slayer!"
The channel cut out, the screen went dark, and tens of millions of greenskin brains across the planet promptly crashed.
One young Ork listening to that title dropped his fungus skewer straight onto the ground.
"Wait, what'd he say? I didn't quite catch dat!"
Another Ork nearby buried his face in his hand, at a total loss for what to say.
"He said his name's da Gretchin Slayer. Hah! Gretchin Slayer! Who's gonna be scared o' a title like dat, what a pathetic little shrimp!"
After a moment of stunned silence, the whole crowd of greenskins burst into howling laughter. "Gretchin Slayer" was immediately voted the funniest greenskin joke of the year.
But while the Orks laughed themselves silly, none of them noticed that their loyal little helpers, the Gretchin themselves, had already plunged into absolute, bone-deep terror.
"Eek! This is bad! The Gretchin Slayer is coming to this planet!"
On top of some scrap heap, thousands of Gretchin were busy picking through garbage when one of them came sprinting up in a panic, screaming the news to the rest of the pile.
Every Gretchin on that heap descended into full-blown panic.
"The Gretchin Slayer? What's the Gretchin Slayer?"
"The Gretchin Slayer is a hand made specially for killing Gretchin!"
"I heard the Gretchin Slayer kills a hundred Gretchin every single day!"
"I saw it with my own eyes, the Gretchin Slayer can crush a Gretchin's skull between his own glutes!"
"Liar! Every Gretchin who's ever seen the Gretchin Slayer with their own eyes is dead! You're making it up!"
"I'm not lying! The Gretchin Slayer already killed me once, but he's killed so many Gretchin he forgot all about it, so I never actually died!"
While the Orks mocked Kian's new title without a second thought, none of them realized they'd just triggered a planet-wide panic among their own Gretchin.
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