EN ROUTE TO THE MAELSTROM:
It was a standard rule of Perturabo to never look to his past, but looking to his brothers and his Father in direct presence or via Hololiths was a moment of unprecedented power sufficient to break that rule. In particular looking at the determination of the Warhawk and the Lord of Drakes gave him an aching emotional pain he was unfamiliar with, save the grief of fighting against Magnus the Red and Horus in days gone by. Memories of a brother fallen to madness, before his fall. In his last days as Warmaster.
In this spirit, he thought to the last time that he'd fought by the Lord of Drakes and the Avenging Son. It was the War of the Beast, when the Beast had raised Prime-Orks to fight Primarchs, the last war that multiple of the Emperor's Sons had fought together, before Fulgrim had sent Guilliman to destruction and Sanguinius, the last of the Lost Ones, had vanished with the promise to return at the End of Days.
ARDAMANTUA, M32:
The Lord of Iron looked upon the Avenging Son with a skeptical eye.
"It must be a serious crisis for the Warmaster to call my Legion."
Roboute nodded, face less robotic than usual. Well, not that he'd been especially emotionless since Horus had fallen on the Vengeful Spirit and the Great Scouring. He was like the old Roboute Guilliman, the Rebuilder of the Five Hundred Worlds.
"It's Greenskins, my brother. They've changed. Grown."
Even then the Lord of Iron had had premonitions that this, the greatest challenge of Guilliman's time as Warmaster might be his last. It was in the down-cast gaze of his brother, the sigh of all too human weakness and exhaustion so bizarre in the Avenging Son.
"They speak Gothic now, my brother."
Perturabo straightened, his Trident likewise. The Circle of Iron remained immobile around him.
"Gothic? From Greenskins?"
Roboute nodded. That weary grimace and that all too human sigh again.
"And they have tactics. I have activated the Calth Protocol to muster my Legion again, Brother. They have tactics."
Roboute looked haunted.
"It is a grave crisis that faces us, my brother. One I do not know how the Imperium shall recover from."
Perturabo released a breath that had held for some time.
"Roboute," he sighed "Warmaster," and sighed again.
"Do you know if He will come to the battlefield? I have not seen him in a thousand years."
The Avenging Son gave a pained smile.
"I don't know, brother. He's trusted us and the Great Angel the Scouring and keeping our traitorous brothers and Ezekyle's new Legion contained. The Wolf King is gone, the Warhawk vanished into the Webway. Corax fled into the Eye, Vulkan…."
He sighed. "He may be found, perhaps, in the course of this war but he said that he would return at the Last War so I doubt that. Once there were twenty of us, then eighteen."
He placed a hand on Perturabo's shoulder and the Lord of Iron stiffened, not used to affection.
"Now there are three of us. You, Lord of Iron, me, and the Great Angel."
He looked downcast again.
"I had the dream again, Brother."
Perturabo looked at him.
"Fulgrim."
His jaw tightened and he glared, again surprisingly human for someone Perturabo used to see as an iron fisted mental warrior.
"I faced the Phoenician in that monstrous form of his that ravaged Terra and while I banished him and nearly destroyed him, he cut my throat and I a museum piece for others to gaze upon as a red haze forms around me."
Perturabo remained stoic even as Roboute finished:
"This may be our last war together, brother."
He looked at him.
"You may end up Warmaster and the last of His sons in the field, for as long as the fates decree it."
Perturabo gave him a wry grin.
"They haven't claimed me yet, brother. They won't start now."
As he gestured to the arrival of his Legion's ships, the Avenging Son and the Lord of Iron stepped into the Teleportation Chambers together with their bodyguards.
"We go to the engine room of this damned thing and we cripple it. Our Legions will fall upon it from the outside. They have tactics."
Again that grimace.
Then a small wry smile.
"But against two sons of the Emperor, what will that avail them?"
They vanished in that flash and then they appeared in the Battle Moon, the Trident communicating with their Grand Battalions, co-ordinating precision orbital strikes in the finest and remorseless style of the Iron Warriors, even as the Circle of Iron and the Praetorians maneuvered behind the Emperor's sons.
The Avenging Son's Power Fists crackled into life and the Lord of Iron removed Worldbreaker from his shoulder, the two sons of the Emperor surging into the battlefield, demigods of war facing the monstrous new Orks. Perturabo was surprised that facing two such targets these Orks proved to not only understand fire and maneuver but even to try to set ambushes.
Against his speed with Worldbreaker and the Circle of Iron and Guilliman's efficient baiting of his own traps it availed them better than expected. Both of their armors were chipped, which had never happened before, and the battles with the individual Orks lasted longer. As the Lord of Iron shielded the Avenging Son by slamming his hammer through the leg of one of the Orks, bringing it down with a triumphant shout, his bolters tore open the face of another.
It was when they finally reached the engines, preparing to disable it that they met the greatest surprise. The Warboss of this Moon was waiting for them clad in proper armor, and spoke in accented but understandable Gothic.
"I will take your surrender now."
It was a massive beast, not to the size of Urlakk Urg but enough to give him a passable bodyguard. The creature moved to them. "I serve the WAAGH Beast. I am slaughter!" With this he hurled himself at the Sons of the Emperor, who maneuvered themselves with full speed and strength in a battle that lasted hours and drew in the Iron Circle. Roboute bled from puncture wounds to the stomach, Perturabo had a shattered pauldron and a bleeding wound in his leg, and both visibly panted with the exhaustion when the haze and mandate of combat had passed and the Ork lay beneath them, alive and with legs broken.
It had been seamless and a battle neither of them, even with eidetic memory would fully recall, merely the swingings and boomings of the Thunder Hammer against the Ork's armor and the monstrous creature's enduring punches and stabbings from the power fists repeatedly until the armor finally gave way, having to dodge the Ork's strikes, and that it had been a lucky pair of shots by Perturabo that tore into the beast's eyes and blinded the monster, at which point it reverted to the more animalistic kind of Ork they were familiar with from the Heresy and Crusade eras.
Perturabo looked at Guilliman. Since when had a mere Ork Warboss been able to give the Sons of the Emperor a real fight?
THE MAELSTROM:
Kor Phaeron was surprised to see the nature of the entity that stood before him. It was a monstrously oversized rat with more than a resemblance to a mockery of the human form. Great ram's horns hung from its side and the creature looked at him with a keenness that made him visibly uneasy.
"What in the name of the Four are you?"
I am-am Grey Seer Thanquol, servant of the Horned One.
"I know not which God that is."
The Horned One is-is the greatest of all-all the Gods. We are-are the servants of Him, Lords of Decay.
"We?"
Another monstrous rat-thing strode out, clad in spectral raiments like that of a monstrous skeleton of its own kind. The Verminlord pointed to his fellow.
Dead-Lord Verrteek, Lord-Lord of Clan Mors. Emperor-Manthing comes to you now-now. We rip-rip Man-Meat for you. Show you power of Horned One. Suggest-suggest you accept-accept, man-thing.
Kor Phaeron snarled.
"I am a Dark Apostle of Lord Aurelian, beast. You have no power to give orders to me."
Then the Grey Seer slammed its staff into the ground, a burst of raw Warp Force knocking Kor Phaeron back.
That-that is where-where you are wrong-wrong.
The Grey Seer strode toward him, green balefires lit in its eyes…..
