"Agghhhhh, that's the good stuff!" Hans cried out as he stretched out in the back seat of the hunters glider.

"You have enough anaesthetic inside of you to keep a man down all year. How are you awake?" The hunter asked in bemusement.

"This is nothing, you should see me on the weekends. Now those nights put any chemical plant to shame." Hans replied.

The little creature that absconded aboard jumped onto Hans' chest.

It thumped his own little red furred chest with vigour and began to roar comically in an alien language that neither of the two humans understood.

"You son of a bitch! How'd you get on board? Can we keep him?" Hans continued to jest as he scratched the little creature's head in his drugged induced delirium.

"Enough of your shit space cowboy… what the hell was that back there? What are you? One of the Conglomerates' centurions gone rogue? That wasn't exactly what I expected from a galactic bum."

Hans sat up abruptly and leaned over the back of the hunters seat.

"Told you, I'm not very happy sober." he said with a grin.

"Cut the shit Hans, what's your story? I'm the only thing standing between you and freedom right now, and I saved your ass. You owe me now."

"I don't think so slick, see I didn't even need your help and you're the one that brought me to that cell in the first place. If anything I saved your fuzzy ass so you're welcome." Hans replied.

The hunter sneered slightly.

Before their conversation could continue, a beeping began to emanate from the ship's control hub.

"What is it?" Hans asked.

"I don't know…but it's big…" came the reply.

They were flying using the orbit of a wild planet to slingshot them out to warp speed without using as much fuel.

Suddenly over the vast horizon of the high orbit, a giant sphere ship, just like the one from earlier blasted out from nowhere into orbit.

"How the hell! Are they following us?"

The hunter made a nose dive for the planet.

"What are you doing? This is a wilderness planet, there's no ports down there." Hans said, still half in delirium.

"I ain't going to risk being caught by their sensors, we'll head down and wait them out. Besides, I want to see what these fools are up to."

They took a sharp dive into the blizzard that was raging in the atmosphere below.

"Great! I hate the cold!" Hans complained.

The hunter, with some swift flying, evaded a giant black monolith that appeared out of the veil of the high speed snow blowing in every direction.

The three just caught their collective breaths before another one sprung from the white wall surrounding them.

This time The Hunter was not quick enough and the tip of the left wing of the glider clipped the dense spire causing it to spiral into a dull, cushioned crash.

"Nice plan pal." Hans said with a flat tone.

The hunter stayed quiet as he assessed the damage on his hub.

"Not so bad… but it'll take me a couple of hours to fix." He said matter-of-factly before opening the craft.

The cold seeped in and spread through their bones like a plague.

It jolted them out of their seats and onto white carpet of snow.

"Couple of hours? We'll be ice cubes by then!" The little creature shivered on his perch atop Hans' head, seemingly agreeing with the man.

"Just keep moving… the blizzards not as bad down here, you'll be fine." The hunter said before sliding on welding glasses and beginning work on the wing tip.

After a while of loitering around the ship, playing with the monkey, Hans began to sober again.

He threw the joyfully jittering creature away from him.

It scowled in disapproval. But Hans was too distracted to care.

The cold accentuated visions of darkness and pain, resurging from the abyss of his memories.

He quickly rushed back into the glider and rummaged through the med pack.

He grabbed three tranq injector shots and put all of them in his neck.

He was granted immediate relief and sighed in blissful relief.

He stumbled out of the craft and against all odds, he got himself to his feet.

"Hey curly, I'm going for a walk."

"Hey I didn't save your ass for you to freeze to death! I've still got a cheque to cash!" The hunter yelled out but by the time he raised his welding glasses, Hans had already absconded behind the white wall that the blizzard produced.

"Fine, get lost then, you're more trouble than you're worth anyway…"

Hans staggered about, wandering towards the cluster of ancient monoliths that grounded them in the first place.

Through the all encompassing cloud of narcotics that blanketed his brain, his curiosity still shone through.

"I wonder what all of these are…" he mumbled as he walked through the forest of monoliths.

Ranging from gargantuan to tiny black spires that were made of some sort of glassy, dense metal.

None of them had any inscriptions nor any particularly interesting distinguishing properties other than a perfect circle etched into the top of each of them.

"Weird…" a sudden crack sound startled Hans out of his inebriated daydream.

It was the monkey, it looked up at Hans with big wide eyes of guilt and surprise as it stood above a small monolith now broken in two.

"You scared the fucking kuggleblitz out of me!" Hans shouted.

Suddenly, out of the top of the small sculpture that lay fragmented on the snow, a faint blue light whipped out.

The monkey tried to catch it but it passed right through the creature's hands, as if it were a ghost.

"Woah…" Hans mumbled out.

It levitated for a moment in the air before taking off into the barrier of snow, its light weakening every second as it got farther away.

Hans instinctively ran after it.

He trudged through snow and dodged monoliths until he eventually came to the bottom of a truncated square pyramid.

It was made of the same glassy material of the monoliths and had a flat platform at the top, some sort of stage or altar.

The blue light had made its way up there.

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With his stowaway, rag-tag pet behind him, Hans sprinted his way up the steps.

As he got higher he noticed less and less snow covering the steps.

Something happened here recently.

He noted before finally summiting the structure.

When he got to the big flat open area at the top he saw the blue mote of light drift towards the centre where there stood two figures next to one of those small spherical crafts like from the other planet.

One of the figures was garbed in a heavy robe which was also similar to the other priest that Hans had killed.

The other figure knelt before the first and Hans couldn't make him out very well from where he stood.

He saw the kneeling figure offer something up to the robed one before the blue light caught their attention.

The one who was kneeling stood and the both of them threw their attention to Hans.

"Please be friends." He instinctively muttered.

He could just hear the two speaking indistinctly before the robed one quickly broke away and strutted to his sphere craft, he was holding whatever the other gave him tightly under his robe.

The other bowed slightly before slowly putting his hand to the blue light.

Suddenly out of the ethereal blue hue materialised a ghoulish looking humanoid.

It looked like an extremely malnourished man, seconds from the grave that now knelt before the other. It held a sword in its limp left arm.

The larger figure stroked it over its ashen, bald head before crushing it and killing the poor welp.

It then picked up the sword and threw it.

It spun in the air before landing upright in the snow, its handle pointing towards Hans.

"Oh no…" the highly inebriated man said as he watched the figure gradually pick up his pace towards him.

The closer it got the more Hans noticed how big it was.

It was a giant encased in heavy ornate armour of silver and black. A silver skull below a golden crown ornamented into its helm.

Two ghostly blue dots shone through the eye pieces that were set in a demonic looking expression.

It was saying something in a heavy guttural tone.

"Pick up your weapon…" it kept grumbling as it moved closer.

"Alright not friends then." Hans said as be barely kept his balance whilst sauntering to the sword.

Just as he touched the katana in the snow, the figure suddenly burst from where it marched whilst simultaneously unsheathing its own katana.

Hans barely dodged in time, the icey cold blade narrowly missing his neck as he saw his own wide eyes reflected in the blade as it passed his head.

"Well, you're pretty quick aren't you pal." He mused but almost to his own death as the swordsman quickly regained his footing and slashed again at Hans.

He then got kicked in the torso by his opponent and got sent flying backwards before gaining composure at the edge of the platform.

He tried gaining his breath again, he was definitely winded and his ribs felt cracked.

This was no average warrior.

Hans grinned.

"Hey! Ive got no quarrel with you!" He yelled to his opponent who merely adopted another battle stance.

The drugs began to subside and he was more able after the hit.

This time it was he who advanced.

With two feint strides he launched himself at his armoured opponent.

The both of them engaged in a deadly dance of slashing, slicing and moving in a blinding show of agility and speed.

"Ha! Take that! You're not the only one savvy with a blade!" Hans yelled through gritted teeth as he kept moving.

The battle was mostly even keeled for a while until the drugs began to weaken and Hans' motor function began to resharpen.

His speed and strength with the blade grew and he forced his opponent back to the centre of the arena.

Pain, rage, kill, Kill, KILL!

Hans' flurry of attacks turned from a graceful dance of parries and slashs to a barrage of hacks that forced his armoured antagonist back.

His face went red with blood as it curled into a monstrous expression.

He disarmed the armoured swordsman with a thunderous slash to his gauntlets.

Just before he could begun hacking away at the armour, the swordsman raised his left arm and suddenly, Hans was blasted off of his feet and to the edge of the arena by some invisible force.

He looked up from his back in a daze to see the armoured mystery figure standing there with his left gauntlet, glowing, held above his head.

It roared in a demonic gutteral voice.

All of the monoliths jutting out from the surrounding snowstorm began to glow and shake violently.

With loud cracks coming from all directions, each of the monoliths broke and the blue flames of the souls captured within flowed into their kings left arm.

Hans could see the souls of the dead soldiers screaming and wailing as they tried to materialise, but to no avail.

Their master held them in purgatory before molding them all together into one twisted amalgamation of unending sufferage.

He gave it form as a necrotic behemoth.

It screeched and squaled as it violently erupted into existence.

It was a hellish sight.

Multiple limbs protruding at unseemly angles, jerking its hunched back and bulbous, many eyed head about in a way too abrupt to be considered natural.

The armoured swordsman held it on a lead of chains for a moment as Hans slowly got to his feet, his head still disorientated.

The monkey scurried to his side and widened its eyes at the site of the ghastly giant.

The necrotic king spoke once more, this time in an old version of Galactic common.

"Thou art hate embodied, the embers of revenge smoulder in the cavity that once held thy soul. Destiny coiled you in such hateful bonds but ftp what end? Thou shalt be alleviated of the pain by thine own guilt manifest. Thou art a worthy opponent I concede, but for the sake of master mine, thou must cease." He let go of the chains and they disintegrated into thin air.

The beast rushed towards Hans.

He felt no fear.

The cold outside was nowhere near the cold he felt within.

The beast rushing at him, its many eyes desperate for an end to their collective suffering seemed not to distinct from himself.

He nearly would have pitied it if he had the capacity to anymore.

As he gained his bearings and fell deeper into the abyss of sobriety he saw flashes and images from his past.

Memories haunting him like ghosts.

Demons of his past tortoring him even in the present.

"Whatever the hell this is, it better do the job you creepy old bastard! Ive been waiting an eternity to die!"

He smiled and jumped straight at the beast.

The monkey looked away, for it looked like a clear defeat for its new found companion.

Suddenly.

From the distance, in came the hunter's glider.

When he saw Hans dashing across the arena to the hulking, putrid mass he accelerated.

"What in the mother of fuck have you gotten me into you crazy bastard!" He yelled as he approached rapidly.

Alas, his rescue was in vain.

As soon as Hans reached the loathsome beast it tried to attack him with its many grotesque limbs only to have them dodged and sliced to wriggling lumps pf necrotic meat.

Left to freeze over in the blizzard as Hans kept pushing forward.

In a whirlwind of blood and necrotic ooze, Hans had eviscerated the monster and was left breathing raggedly with a blood stained smile on his face.

He looked up and pointed his sword at the beast's master.

"Demon! You are no human! You are a beast! From where did you gain such power!" The swordsman exclaimed before quickly destroying all of the monoliths in the snow cemetery surrounding them and absorbing all of his former soldier's power.

"Abomination! I cannot let you continue henceforth! Feel the pain of thousands of aeons of purgatory!"

He unleashed all of the energy that he absorbed in a pinpointed stream, directed at Hans.

He merely stood and screamed in a mix of euphoria and torment as the pain blasted onto him.

The entire world around him went dark as the memories flooded his psyche.

YES, YES! PAIN! BEAUTIFUL PAIN! LET IT HIT YOU, LET IT BECOME YOU! REVEL IN IT AND KILL!

He jumped forward in defiance of the beam pushing him back and with one final swing of his sword he decapitated the old king.

He fell to his knees and then to his torso.

His old crowned helm with his head within clanged down the stairs into the snow only to be buried by the blizzard.

This time for good.

Hans, who had his skin seared and face burnt so that one could see the bones, muscles and ligaments wrapping under his charred skin.

He was still smiling as he stared at the hunter and the monkey.

He began to limp to his mortified companions.

"Kill… kill… KILL!" He exclaimed as he pushed onwards. His body had already begun to heal.

The hunter began to frantically try and open his craft to escape but the monkey seemed unfazed.

In fact all it did was pick up a chunk of ice and threw it at Hans who collapsed in exhaustion.

"What in the hell is happening! I just fixed the ship and you two had gone off! And now I come to find you only to see you in another fight with some kind of… of… monster! And then he tries to kill me? Has the universe gone crazy!" The hunter threw a tantrum before regaining his composure.

Him and the monkey walked over to Hans who lay on the ground. Unconscious.

"Hmmm" he said as he looked at the severly damaged body at his feet.

He turned and began walking back to his ship.

The monkey exclaimed and started chittering away disapprovingly.

The hunter turned.

"Well? What do you expect me to do! He's more trouble than he's worth! I don't need this kind of shit…" he said as he stopped in the snow, his head cast down in angst.

The monkey sat obstinately and shook its head at the hunter.

"Fine, you stay with him then! See if I care! Frickin weird little fur sack anyway…" he said as he trudged off to his craft.

He opened the cockpit and stopped right before hopping in.

He let out a sigh.

"Fine!" He yelled before walking back to the two in the middle of the arena.

"But only to the next conglomerate cell! I can't have a talking monkey dying on my conscience…