Fortunately it wasn't much longer before the Guardsmen, with Commissar Seck leading from the front, reached their destination. As the Leman Russ tank slowed to a stop and the auto-cannon team set up, Vlenn looked ahead to their primary target. The reinforced bunkers containing the power generators that ran the massive planet-to-ship cannon.

The enormous cannon was at the heart of the city; larger than any building and reaching over a mile into the sky. The generator bunkers encircled it, feeding its massive hunger for energy. Hoard of Chaos troops were guarding them. The buildings of the inner city stopped well before the perimeter of the cannon, leaving a wide, flat, open area between the current Guard positions and the final Chaos stronghold. As Vlenn looked around he saw increasing number of Imperials reach the end of the inner city, each unit stopping on the edge of the open tract of land, surrounding the ship-killer monstrosity.

Infantry, las and auto-cannons, tanks, and long range artillery pieces moved into position. Several units set up positions in buildings to gain any height and cover they could. Others, like Vlenn's, stayed outside to directly defend the Basilisk artillery guns. The final stage was set; the Chaos armies would have no choice but to charge the Imperial lines to stop the artillery from decimating their power supply. It was just a question of time until one side or the other fired the opening shots.

An eternity passed.

Suddenly, the order must have come through. Every Basilisk gun fired as one; the sky itself seemed to shatter as the shells began to slam into the enemy positions. Still, it was not enough. Fierce as it was, it would take more than just a single barrage to blast through the heretics' defensive structures. It was up to the rest of the Imperial Guard to safeguard the artillery until their job was done.

Even before the first volley had landed the forces of Chaos had begun their charge. Cultists led the way, unknowingly acting as a shield for the Chaos Space Marines and Daemons behind them.

The Guardsmen opened up with everything they had. Tanks targeted vehicles and Chaos Marines, las-cannons melted through heavy armor, auto-cannons blasted through daemon warp-flesh, and Imperial lasguns felled cultists by the hundreds. Vlenn fired ceaselessly along with the men around him, trying to focus on bringing down cultists so the heavier guns could hit the Marines behind them.

The Guard suffered casualties from Chaos fire but held firm; their well-ordered fire tore through the Arch-Enemy's charge. Thousands were left dead as they ran into the withering fire. Vlenn saw a Guardsman out of the corner of his eye load a missile launcher and decimate a light Chaos tank with a well-aimed shot.

Vlenn began to notice something odd about the Chaos charge. Instead of focusing a large number of troops at once point in the Imperial lines and trying to break through the heretic commanders were sending their troops out in every direction. Also, the majority of the more powerful Chaos warriors were advancing slower then they had during previous encounters. This massive forward charge, as crazy as it sounded, seemed to be somehow defensive in nature.

Then Vlenn saw them. Large Chaos Space Marines covered in highly decorative armor and intricate sigils. Each of them carried twisted, heavily decorated staffs. Tzeentch Sorcerers; each surrounded by a dense group of insane fanatics acting as human shields. One by one the raised their arms and directed a blast of warp energy at themselves, exploding in a mass of blood and gore; save for the last one. The Dark Gods, pleased at the sacrifice, gave the final Sorcerer a rare gift. Red, pulsing energy split through him as reality began to twist in on itself. The Sorcerer bent and moved in impossible directions, some veering of into infinity itself, as he finally tore in half as the fabric of reality itself ripped.

And what stepped through the massive rip before it faded was a towering horror.

A Greater Daemon of Tzeentch now turned to face the Imperial Guard. It was massive, a hellish beast at least five stories tall. Four powerful arms rippled from its chest; its face breaking into a fanged smile as its multitude of eyes focused on its prey. A massive set of wings spread from its back. Its hoofed feet braced as it prepared to launch its attack.

A few Imperial tanks had time to fire on the monstrosity, but their shells had no effect; either deflected by the warp current flowing around the beast or absorbed by its sheer bulk. The Greater Daemon opened it maw and unleashed an enormous wave of pure warp energy. The wave impacted the Imperial Guard lines two kilometers down from Vlenn's position. Guardsmen, tanks, artillery pieces, and Chaos warriors alike were enveloped by that terrible light; all being completely obliterated with barely any time to scream.

Every Guard weapon on the line opened up on the Daemon with everything it had. The air around the warp manifest filled with explosions as artillery, tanks, cannons, and even lasguns fired on the monstrosity. Most of the ordinance was absorbed by the warp energies surrounding the beast and some missed all together as it quickly moved to another position on the battlefield. However, some of the Guard fire managed to score a few solid hits on the Greater Daemon's form. It wasn't enough to banish the beast, but Vlenn could see red cracks beginning to appear on its form as he continued to fire at the remaining Chaos forces.

The Greater Daemon let loose another blast of warp energy; it was closer to Vlenn's position this time. He was far enough away to be safe form the main blast but a few stray bolts of warp energy crashed into the ground nearby. Vlenn dove to the ground and pressed himself flat, and not a moment too soon as a blot sizzled through the air above him where his head had been only split second before. Another Guardsman was not so lucky as he was struck and burned to cinders in a fraction of a second. After the wave had passed Vlenn got back up and resumed firing at the enemy.

Despite the massive casualties inflicted by the Daemon, the Imperial barrage refused to relent. The shear amount of firepower pouring into the creature was beginning to take its toll. The warp field around it had finally been dissipated, and without it, the monster's form was vulnerable. Large, deep craters and fissures had been gouged into its twisted body. An artillery shell blasted into a hole that had already been smashed into the Daemon's form and caused it to stumble backwards and sink to one knee. Vlenn could see the horror trying to gather its strength for another attack, but it couldn't seem to completely focus, as if its cohesion had dropped too low.

As the barrage continued the Greater Daemon's body fractured more and more; its roars and bellows becoming shorter and weaker as it clutched its wounds. Finally, in one massive flash the Daemon exploded into nothingness; its shattered essence fragmenting and skittering as it folded through real space and returned to the warp that had spawned it.

The massive Daemon was gone, and by now nearly all of the Chaos armies had been slaughtered. Caught between Imperial fire and the Daemon, which cared nothing for its pawns if they were in its line of fire, the remaining heretics had no where to take cover. The few pockets of them that remained where quickly wiped out by Imperial shells and lasblasts. With the last bit of resistance gone, the battlefield was almost eerily quiet. Twisted blackened husks of burned-out vehicles and mangled bodies, Imperial and heretic alike, dotted the landscape, while cries for medics and the groans of the wounded echoed across the ruins.