Wrote this a while ago. Part of this sort of 'universe' I'm working with, and have finally started to translate into actual story. If you're thinking "These characters sound like Nazis," it's because they are. Nazis. Concepts like that of Ultima Thule and the Hyperborean were lifted straight from Nazi mythology. This led to a rather interesting discussion when I put this through my fiction workshop.



When I grow up, I want to be a propagandist.



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Only in the glorious Empire are duty and destiny so rightfully intertwined. All of life is battle, and every battle we fight upon this planet is fought in the name of the Emperor, who himself fights in the name of cosmic supremacy. But ours is not a war of profit, nor of politics - it is a manifestation of the Will, the spirit of conquest that flows as life-force through our veins. Emperor Svastikron himself is the very embodiment of that force. It is his own word that war has neither beginning nor end, but is an eternal force in the universe that humanity has the power to harness.



Yet there was a time when Emperor Svastikron was but a Dark Lord that war was thought to have ended. There was no Empire, only fractured nation-states clinging desperately to borders that were growing meaningless as each nation lost its identity. The subhumans found themselves able to infest once-proud civilizations, and bring the children of conquerors to their knees, all in the name of something they called "equality." We know that a world in which all are equal is one where all equal zero. Like the Emperor is the bridge between man and god, so the subhuman is the bridge between man and animal. How every night was filled with their incessant barking and mewling, whether they were crying to be fed or calling at potential mates. The government was required to provide both. The Will was all but abandoned. But what did it matter to these lesser men? It was a time of peace! Though a disgusting peace. For the lack of glory, the people turned to indulgence. Gold for gratification, gratification for gold! Is it any wonder that the fools and traitors have referred to that time as the "Golden Age?" Humanity remained in stasis, with the ignorant proletarians in a constant state of infancy, suckling from the shriveled teat of government.



But Svastikron was not one of them. No, he was always a man of honor and glory, he was born an Emperor. He had greater plans than anything that the government could offer him. He had dreams of war, and dreams of cosmic supremacy, but what's more, he despised the government! He despised their talk of peace and love, when society was crumbling to pieces. One day, he swore, he would tear everything down, even if he must do so with his teeth.



"I fear the end is nigh," he said, "If man is no longer fit to rule, then let this be where the reign of man ends." He looked out the window of his concrete tower, and saw a burning sky. The cosmos appeared to agree with him that day.



And it was with the ignition of the sky that a mysterious vigilante had begun a new crusade! The corpses of degenerates were found on the ends of hooks, swinging from lampposts, sliced so their foul blood would drain into the gutters to which they belong. Then came the bombs. Dens of depravity would be razed to the ground in great conflagrations, the likes of which were unseen since the previous war!



"Who is this anonymous hero?" wondered Svastikron to himself. "What sort of superman can hold on to the spirit of conquest in a time such as this?"



"A butcher," came the reply. There he stood in Svastikron's very window, disguised as an elite guardsman, with face shielded behind a dark helmet, and his body behind a cloak. He stood tall and muscular, the opposite of the dough-bodied proletarians. A foul smell emanated from his shape. The smell of decay, and burning flesh.



Svastikron marveled at the stranger who came from the dark. "Who are you? Why have you come to me?"



"I am the Butcher, and I have chosen you, Dark Lord, to deliver mankind from this age of degeneracy." His voice rumbled from deep within his chest, rolling across tortured vocal cords like a tank over a battlefield strewn with corpses.



"This tells me nothing! Reveal yourself, you scarecrow!"



"Lord Svastikron. At midnight, you will come to me where Death is king, in the darkest veins of the earth lined with the bones of the fallen. The ancient crypt. I will reveal myself there. For now, I must wash the blood from these hands." And so the Butcher took off into the darkness, leaving Svastikron to marvel even further.



"Very well then! I shall meet this Butcher, and see for what he has chosen me." It was then that Svastikron leaned out the window of his tower, to see two bodies splattered on the pavement, clutching guns. This Butcher never stopped his work, did he? But Svastikron did not have much time.



He encased himself in armor before heading into the ancient crypt, and carried his axe, as wary of death as a Dark Lord must be. Yes, this was the sacred crypt, the network of tunnels dug out over hundreds of years and supported by the very bones of our ancestors. That night, they were all watching Svastikron, knowing that the future of their descendents depended on him. All depend on Svastikron, such is life, and so such is death. "Butcher! Reveal yourself! It is I, your chosen!"



A shape emerged from behind a pillar of bones. It had the stature of the Butcher, without a doubt, but without a mask it must have been Death himself. The Butcher had no face. Strips of rotting flesh were attached to the exposed muscle, seemingly stapled on, giving some illusion of a hybrid of mask and face. Yet he had neither. He wore armor that was a strange parody of Svastikron's, made of dismembered corpses rather than metal. And like Svastikron, he carried an axe.



"So, Dark Lord. Shall I tell you now who I am?"



"You," said Svastikron. "You have no face."



"My face was my first sacrifice in the name of justice." His skin mask contorted in a way that almost resembled a smile.



"Even though we have the technology to restore it?"



"No need. Many have tried to give me a face. None have succeeded. Forever shall I be an invisible, faceless force of judgment."



"Very well then. What makes you call yourself a butcher?"



"Have you ever stood before the window of a butcher shop? The cuts of meat hang there, fresh. Fresh meat, pulled from the bones of fattened animals, to be fed to other fattened animals for the right price. The world has its sheep, its pigs, its chickens without heads. I see the public pushing itself towards the slaughterhouse like ignorant cattle. The illusion of choice is reduced to thus - feed from the trough, or become a cannibal. I see before me a world hungry for justice... but there is only meat. No, I decided I would not join the herd, for it so badly needed culling. I decided that I would be a butcher."



"Who were you then, before you became this Butcher?"



"No one. I was always so. Let the illusion end here - I am not one of the masses. I was not born, rather I rose from the viscera of fallen patriots."



"So you are not human."



"No one is any more."



"Why is it now that you come to us?"



"The time of man is coming to an end, is it not? The cosmos has no use for a stagnant humanity, and so, the sky burns! But I come to you, from the distant Ultima Thule, giving mankind a warning to redeem itself before it is too late."



"Ultima Thule is not merely a legend? The land of the supermen, the land of infinite power? I cannot believe it! I stand before a Hyperborean!"



"Yet Ultima Thule exists outside of your reality as you know it. In Ultima Thule, reality is meaningless. It is a universe unto itself."



"I do not understand."



"I did not expect you to. No human is prepared for Ultima Thule. Humans are too corrupt, too occupied with the worship of flesh to understand that there is an entire world beyond. Yet Ultima Thule is the answer to your burning sky, the chance of escape from a solar system that will one day surely die. When I say that the time of man will end, I also say that the time for greater man will begin. Dark Lord Svastikron, I trust that you will purge the filth from your kind, and through the fires of war create this greater man! As man has conquered earth, the greater man will conquer space and time. When the very laws of physics become as tools in your hands, then the greater men will become gods, and earn passage to Ultima Thule! You will be one with the cosmos."



"I accept my destiny as conqueror, dread Butcher! I will go forth and purify the human race. My war will not end so long as there are men left to fight! Let the lesser man fall, in the name of the greater man!"



"And that is why I have chosen you, Lord Svastikron! Of all the warriors left in the world, the spirit of conquest flows strongest through you."



"Warriors? I thought that they all had become extinct, or been absorbed into the masses."



"They are alive still, but hidden from sight. Imprisoned, and forced to do the work that the subhumans should be doing. They had dared to question the laws put forth by a government that would do anything to suppress the fire of the great warrior and the great thinker. The great thinker did not accept the versions of science and history that would benefit the subhuman, and thus, he was imprisoned. The great warrior, why, all he had done was look the subhuman in the eye and say 'I am a warrior!', and so, he too was imprisoned. And so the conquerors become slaves, all in the name of -"



"Equality. I know too well of my masters' evils. But I am fortunate enough to be a free man. Therefore, it is my duty to liberate my brothers... Butcher, might I make a request? You are a freer man than I, and can do things that a man with a face can not. Lay aside your pursuit of the criminal and the degenerate for only a short time, so you may direct your fire unto those who have imprisoned my kind. Do this, and I will fight at your side."



"For you, the savior of man, I will be sure to obey your every command."



"No. You will not follow me, for no superman is my servant. We fight together, as brothers in arms."



Dark Lord Svastikron led the bloodiest revolution in the history of mankind. Men with a thirst for glory, men who had long been rejected by the ignorant masses, men who we thought had become extinct eons ago, took up arms with Svastikron to purge society of those who are not worthy of being called human. When Svastikron took control of the nation, he declared himself a Dark Lord no more, but an Emperor, for then it was time to march across the earth and unite all of his noble kind under one banner. No longer would he stand to see his fellow warrior subjugated by the subhuman. The noble warriors would forsake all former allegiances, for the banner of the Empire was one that promised a greater purpose than gold, a greater purpose than flesh-worship.



"For the Empire! For the Emperor!" they cried, as the enemies of the greater man fell before them. They held within them the eternal force of war, so that the Emperor may fight eternally.



So question not why we fight, or why we kill. We are a race of warriors, the gate into the realm of gods, as the Emperor had made us.



Eternity Be Ours.