"The entire wrath of the Imperium will fall upon us," said Abaddon to the room, deep inside his flagship. "The False Emperor's pups will swarm us with their weakness. But we will break through them like a juggernaught. And your fleets will ensure that." Inside the chamber, lay eighteen chaos lords whose command extended over the locust swarm fleets of the countless heretical armies. Not even Abaddon knew how many fleets they collectively controlled. "What the Imperium will goad into our path, I do not know. But there is one clash that will stand above the others. Listen and you will taste victory. Fail to heed my orders, and you will die with the Imperium." He strode over to the table, built of planks of carved bone. Stretched out over it was a rug of parchment, its surface coated with an ancient map.

"Terra, my lord Despoiler," sneered one of the chaos lords, caressing the parchment with his three-fingered white hand. His black and pink power armor was emblazoned with the insignia of Slaanesh.

"DO NOT TOUCH IT!" yelled Abaddon. "This is one of the few of its kind, ancient even in the days of the Heresy. I would sooner replace you than one drop of ink this map shows me." It seemed a paradox that Abaddon could yell so loud without his voice tearing the map.

"As you can see, this is Holy Terra in its virgin days," Abaddon continued, "the Emperor's Palace was built here, and here is where the High Lords meet, and here is the site where the first craft is said to have launched to take mankind to Luna for the first time." Abaddon looked up at the chaos lords. "Your fleets must defend my strike force of the faithful legions as we land upon Terra's skin to build our tower, which will channel the powers of the warp into the planet. The lambs will expect us to focus our main strike the Imperial palace, but that shall not come to pass. I will go there with my most faithful and with the minions of the true gods and we will take the palace, but it shall not be the main attack." Abaddon grinned when he saw the surprise in everyones' dark eyes.

"The faithful true legions of space marines will assault Terra at a different point on the planet. Survivng ships from your fleets will support this assault," Abaddon pointed at one of the continents on Terra. "Here, off the coast of this land, called Europe upon this map, there is an island. See how she is cupped within Europe's talon, with land south and east? So shall it be with us: grasping that land in our attack." Abaddon pointed to the island. "The tower shall rise here, on the soil called Camlann in antiquity. Here, the primarchs will take their legions to deal the finishing strike onto the mortal realm."

…

They came. Drifting across the void, their numbers in the hundreds, their hulls as strong as the charge of an asteroid, their guns capable of shattering moons and ending civilizations. The ships in this heretical fleet were largely small, darting craft whose warp-tainted hulls had been fashioned by the immaterium into the likeness of a giant monstrous bat. They flocked in clouds around massive black ships, whose sides were painted with the colours of chaos. This flying tide of terror rode ahead of one of the eight daemon worlds: a vast drifting orb whose land was hidden by a layer of tombstone coloured clouds. If the whole force of the chaos armada were here to support the planet and its fleet, the small Imperial fleet would be doomed.

"Here they come," Admiral Spehrahl said coldly into his vox-com. "All wings, prepare to engage the heretics. In the Emperor's name, we fight!" From his flagship, the Starlight Pyre, Spehrahl could see the heretics breaking off into two wings. Each claw was long enough to span a continent, threatening to envelope the Imperial fleet, whose number did not exceed one hundred ships. They were outnumbered by the foe without the planet. Everyone from Spehrahl to the lowliest rating knew this battle was hopeless.

"All formations," Spehrahl ordered into his vox-set, "assume aquilla formation. Taris Gloria: take the point. Wolf of Wrath, take your escort ships left to draw their fire. Swing in from the right flank and engage their left wing if…" Abruptly, the lights on the bridge went dark, even the pinpricks of colour that lit up the control panels. Runes disappeared, the splotch of red that indicated the enemy disappeared from the radar. Even the exit sign died. His world was turned black. Suddenly, Spehrahl felt alone in a crowded room. Not even a friendly silhouette could guide him.

"Sir! We cannot get a reading on any parts of the ship! We're totally cut off!" yelled a shrill-voiced officer from her control panel somewhere in the dark. "And hailing frequencies are down!" Spehrahl was numb to the reports coming in from across the bridge as his eyes stared at the distant planet that was slowly filling the window as well as the incoming fleets: all he could see without the lights. His heart, beaten solid from a lifetime of fighting the Emperor's wars, grew cold for the first time in a generation.

"Please," Spehrahl whispered. "Just one. Let us kill just one." He brought his face to his vox-set and spoke into the piece, despite the lack of static he heard brushing from its depths. "To whoever is hearing this: fire at will." The lights abruptly came back on.

They were not alone.

"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR! HAHAHAHA!" They were Astartes, but in dark blue and sporting bloody-red bat wings from their helmets. From their armor hung the mummified remains of their past victims. Spehrahl spotted the blank stares of shrunken heads and the shriveled joints on human hands cruelly fastened by jagged chains to them. Around each, red crackling energy: leftover residue from when they teleported aboard.

"Curse you heretics!" Spehrahl yelled as he drew a platinum plated autopistol from his holster. His yell of defiance was swept away under the screams of his staff and the cackling heretics. Bolterfire ripped through the chamber. Control panels bled sparks when they were hit, pale spider webs fractured their way across display screens. Commanders and officers were punched off their feet, getting thrown to the ground in hails of explosive fire as the heretics slaughtered with impunity. No one had even a chance to fire back.

"THE NIGHT HAS COME! HAHAHAHA!" cackled a maniac as he threw a battered commissar to the ground and began to ruthlessly kick him with a boot that could shatter stone. Spehrahl raised his autopistol and fired. His marksmenship was rewarded only by a trail of leaping sparks from the heretic's armor. Spehrahl couldn't even reload before he was hit to the ground from behind.

"BLEED YOU OLD MAN! SCREAM! I WANT TO HEAR YOU SCREAM!" laughed an unstable voice over Spehrahl's head. Paralyzed with pain, Spehrahl could not stop the giant from lifting him up. By now, the bolterfire had stopped, leaving the room full of the heretics and what few of the command bridge they'd chosen to spare. In the corner, standing over a bruised comms technician, two of the heretics argued violently over who'd earned the pleasure of killing her. The others were chaining the five brutalized survivors of the short massacre to their seats.

"Tell your men to stand down, to the Night Lords," the heretic said as he forced Spehrahl into his seat. Spehrahl felt cold shackles close around his ankles, though he didn't care. He looked out at the approaching planet.

'Please, let us kill just one.'

"Admiral? Do as you are told!" In the corner, a woman's scream told Spehrahl the arguing heretics had made up their minds.

"I will not obey your words, heretic," Spehrahl said blandly. He looked into the man's helmeted face, into the red-tinted eyepieces. "I wil never obey a creature like you." He looked back to the planet, which grew closer.

"Then you will watch your fleet die, before I torture you to death." From the corner, another voice spoke.

"No, please…please…stop…AAAAHHHH!" cackles from the heretics joined the scream.

"Then I die faithful, unlike you, traitor," Spehrahl said blandly as he saw the enemy fleet seem to light up. Red flashes, countless ones, thousands per second, one after another, flickering like a dying light. It was beautiful in its own way. Then, the flickering stopped.

"Sir," buzzed the vox-set. "They're firing. Returning…" The voice went dead as a flickering lights grew into a blazing storm. If a hurricane were made of fire, it would look like what came towards the bridge, though not directly at the window. Spehrahl could not guess how many ships might have fired, but the ship shuddered violently as some of the heretic's shots impacted against the Starlight Pyre, soon to be a blazing wreck: a funeral pyre to Spehrahl and his brave fleet.

"Sir! The Luna's Wrath is down…the…taking hits…locking on…"

'Just one, let us fight back,' Spehrahl thought. He could see, through the fire, nine flaming imperial cruisers, each taking fiery meteors to their hulls. Beautiful towers that had taken years to build were shattered like glass under rocket fire. Each of his ships, aflame, battered and cracking, their command decapitated, their crews commanded only by their immediate superiors.

"What?" the heretic near Spehrahl asked. "Damnation. Night Lords! Return!" Spehrahl heard the sound of energy crackling, thickening the air, as the Night Lords withdrew. What had summoned the madmen's attention? What did it matter?

The second barrage of enemy fire came his way…

…

Asurmen could see the imperial fleet, as vast as it was, dwarfed by the chaos swarm. The Imperials were an armada. The heretics were a cloud, the twin claws of an entire planet. From the Hand of Asuryan Asurmen watched the orange glows spread like a virus across the imperial formations as every ship was dashed and broken by the waves of torpedos and lance blasts. Each little fleck of white-prowed green, each floating imperial castle, represented tens of thousands of brave humans apiece, giving their lives selflessly for a chance to stall this massive fleet for but a moment. Though these times were waning, the heroics of the Imperium had not diminished.

Flash. An imperial ship exploded into a miniature sun. Its bulk disappeared in a burning nebula of billowing inferno. Another ship went apart, taking with it every crewman who stood in its city-sized quarters.

'A worthy sacrifice,' Asurmen thought as his mind hummed as softly as the flutter of a feathery moth.

"My lord. The beacons are placed. The hive fleet comes," said an ethereal voice that existed only in Asurmen's mind.

"Withdraw the ship. The bane of Iyanden will claim this planet now," Asurmen assured the two farseers flanking him. "And pray that the sacrifice of human lives was enough." Quickly, before the chaos fleet spotted them, the solitary eldar ship fled the scene.

…

"It looks eldar," said Korsequleq as his taloned fingers caressed the archway. Its structure was built of bone, much like the pale trees that rose from the grey soil of the Night Lord's daemon world. "it was not here before. The aliens must have brought it here." He turned from the archway to the other five bat-faced men behind him. Flexing his scorpion tail, the overseer considered his options. "Our weapons have failed to bring it down. When the Night Lords arrive…"

An unearthly roar behind him drowned out the rest of the man's words.

…

The nurse closed her eyes in dread and whispered a prayer to the Emperor. In her early years, this kind of work was rewarding and pleasant, to help a newborn take her first breath of life. Mutant or not, the babe was a blessing and a single small hope with so much potential. Unfortunately, deliveries were unpleasant affairs, especially now that the sky had turned that colour after the strange-voiced man made his ethereal speech across the planet. The last words of his speech still rung in her ears.

"Let the galaxy burn!"

Her world had once been fertile and civilized. When mutations occurred more and more often, the demographics crept towards a mutant majority and not even a genocide against them could stop their numbers from swelling, fattening, like a maggot feeding on human flesh. The conflict attracted orks by the hundred millions and soon the world was boiling in a three-sided war of total attrition. This had all happened even before the old nurse's time and its effects were visible upon the planet. There were few cities left standing and those that did were crumbling heaps of bomb-blasted decay. Food was scarce and mutants were always increasing.

When all the orks died a few months ago, there had been no cause for celebration. The orks had burned to ash, releasing a speck of red mist. Astropaths across the planet died in the psychic shockwave. It had opened a tiny rift in the warp over their world, and reports from their neighbors told the same story. Everywhere where the orks died as one, a tiny warp rift opened, like the sheer power of their deaths was enough to tear reality apart. She had no reason to disbelieve that it had happened across the Imperium. She had no reason to disbelieve that the largest concentration of greenskins in the galaxy had birthed nothing less than a new Eye of Terror. And since that warp rift opened, the warping powers of chaos had subtly manifested on this planet, most cruelly, in the unborn.

"Well done, madam," the nurse said joylessly as she left the whimpering woman in her hospital bed while the other nurses tended to her.

"Is it…is it alright?" asked the woman. The nurse didn't have the heart to answer and left for the nursery, carrying...it.

'Not a single live birth in months. Not even a mutant,' the nurse thought. Though she would be obliged by Imperial law to put a baby mutant to death, she still secretly yearned for at least one child to fill the nursery. Stepping into the nursery, she closed her eyes and walked to the nearest empty table and set it down. Bravely she opened her eyes.

Their flesh was like cooked meat. Their bodies knotted and twisted. Random, horrible growths spurted from each. Some were half-formed limbs or extra heads filled with empty eyes that were bright red. Some were vaguely humanoid, but some, like the one she had just set down, more closely resembled tree branches in their general shape. Fused feet and countless growths…

The sickened nurse fled the deathly quiet nursery, leaving behind the jagged, misshapen piles that might have been children.

…

The blade was short but elegant, like a leaf. Its glistening edge was still keen after thousands of years. Even the symbols written into it were untarnished.

Vashuss turned the gladius over in his hands. He rose it into the air and chopped down with it, then flicked it into an arc and stabbed at the air, into the gut of an invisible astartes. He drew it back and thrust again, widening his stance and balancing himself.

The sound of the door behind him opening put a stop to his practice. Turning around, Vashuss confronted Lord Paskatera the Envenomed, the hated butcher of Oporotiss X. The eloquent man's footfalls echoed through the daemonic palace upon the world that had once been Cadia. Writhing statues of monstrous serpents watched him pass by as he approached his fellow lord with a hungry glare in his yellow eyes.

"Hail to the Dark Gods, Vashuss," sneered Paskatera, his fangs gleaming with every word. "The despoiler predicts we will soon be near Terra itself. However, matters beg our attention, lord."

"I know," Vashuss replied darkly, "my advance fleets have already reported to me the damnable obstacles these sheep have propped up in our path. A massive Imperial fleet, built of all the Navy and Guard forces freed by the destruction of the two xenos species. The High Lords themselves must have ordered the fleet's assembly."

"The despoiler is gathering our own fleets to engage the Imperials," added Paskatera as Slaesh stepped in, his horned helmet obscuring his staring eyes that were no doubt concentrated on Paskatera.

"He will no doubt try to keep them from striking our planets," Vashuss replied. "Much faithful blood will be shed keeping these lapdogs on their leashes. Still, even if they do destroy the fleets we send at them, what matters is we have enough power to assault Camlann when we arrive."

"Which is what concerns me, lord. The Night Lords have allowed their planet to fall behind the main fleet. There are reports of the tyranid beasts unleashed on it. By Khorne, what fools those shadow-stalking…" Vashuss quieted him with a steely glare.

"The Night Lords are expendable. Their primarch does not stand with us. They may die and their souls offered to the dark gods for all I care. All that matters is Camlann. And we can have faith that Abaddon has gathered enough faithful to strike down the Imperials that rest between us and our prize."

"It is like a serpent's bite," Slaesh added as he stepped up beside Paskatera. "The serpent slides towards its prey through the grass, silent and swift, silence his friend, the shadows: his life. Then, he gifts a single small bite. It is small, but it is enough to kill the whole beast no matter its size. One quick flashing bite to the unexpecting."

"So it will be with us," Vashuss said, "nothing matters except the attack on Camlann. Now, do not bother me with matters as insignificant as the sighting of a massive Imperial fleet." He smiled sharply at Paskatera's confused look.

"Be off, Paskatera," Slaesh demanded, "I need to speak to Vashuss alone."

"You think to order me!" shouted the other traitor. He felt something on his neck and turned to realize Vashuss had the blade of his gladius against his throat.

"I suggest you do as he says," Vashuss stated lazily. Paskatera cursed and stomped by Slaesh, giving his a threatening look as he left the daemonic chamber through its only exit. With the other man gone, Vashuss seemed to relax. He stepped over to a statue of a leaning serpent and sat against its tail, looking down at his gladius, staring darkly. Not even Slaesh could guess what memories were playing out behind his piercing eyes.

"The troops are gathered as you requested, my lord. On the fields of blasted Cadia, the Alpha Legion is finally mustered in full, ready to join the force that heads to Camlann," Slaesh stated. "All nine heads are accounted for in full."

"Then we must make the sunderings," Vashuss replied. "I plan to be there when we deal the death-blow to the Imperium, the venomous bite. You too, Slaesh, you must lead the first head alongside me."

"What of the two heads of the legion that we cannot afford to take to Camlann? Third head and sixth head?"

"They will remain behind on Cadia."

"What lie shall you tell them to tether them here?"

"I shall not lie to them, I'll tell them the truth: they stay to protect my palace from the Imperium while we take Camlann." Vashuss looked up at Slaesh, his piercing stare now turned on the marine. "But you did not come all the way to the summit of the Serpent's Lair, my palace, to tell me that we are all ready to join the despoiler's legions?"

"No, not only." Slaesh looked over his shoulder and turned back to Vashuss. "The prisoner pit, where we keep the captive astartes, one of the guards was murdered and his uniform missing."

"So? Mutants swarm across Cadia. One billion of the dregs would have killed for his flak jacket…"

"It was an astartes bolt that slew the guard. The rumor is that there is an assassin out to kill you, my lord." Vashuss' brow creased in some worry. He looked back at his gladius.

"The Imperium would not be so foolish," Vashuss insisted. He stood up. "There are dozens of warring mutant gangs across Cadia, killing for favor and for thrill. Do not drone into my ears with rumors of assassins ever again. The astartes bolt? Even these mutants could have such things. I shall be in the command wing." He sheathed his gladius.

…

The heretical fleet drove ahead of the daemon worlds to engage the Imperial fleet in the depths of space where the worlds would not suffer the wrath of the conflict. Armada was too small a word to describe the wave of ships that soared across the void towards its powerful prey. The lights of the heretical ships were a manmade galaxy. Their long hulls bristling with cannon, had consumed the equivalent of over a dozen planets of all the metal they had. Crewing each of these ships were millions upon millions of debased heretics, pirates, and traitors. Around each ship was a personal fleet of small attack craft: fierce locusts of iron that turned space red with their angry engine flares.

All this space faring might showed up upon Imperial sensors as a tide of crimson signatures. An ocean of blood had come to sweep the fleet away.

Armstrong looked at the signatures that designated the friendly ships. He could easily imagine, but knew it was not so, that the whole might of the Imperial navy had been brought into one concentrated pocket. From his command post upon the bridge of his ship, waiting now as a mere captain of a single ship inside a vast body of Imperial craft, he watched the empty stars, awaiting the arrival of the enemy. All around his ship, hundreds of Imperial cruisers prepared for battle, dearly hoping to stall the spear of chaos and its implacable drive towards the thumping heart of humanity.

"ALL SHIPS PREPARE TO ENGAGE!" beeped the shrill voice of the admiral of this colossal fleet over Armstrong's earpiece.