A drop pod was a horrifying thing.

It was a heaving, screaming thing that sizzled through the sky as it rained down from the heavens into the heart of Target-1B.

I waited alone in my pod, along aside from the Stalwarts communicating through the vox of my helmet and the grey data-streams running across my warhelm.

Data had been collected from the boarding parties of the legions and the initial descent forces had told us much of the foe which we hurled towards with a murderous speed.

The world was called Rhea by its inhabitants, the heart of a 'vast' empire of thirty systems which had been taken by years of bloody warfare.

To us their world was Four Twelve. The Twelfth world which would fall to the Fourth fleet.

And the Rheans had earned a new name, the Cyclopeans.

"Three minutes to impact," Stalwart Gold reported in his childish voice.

I blinked my recognition of the warning while summoning up the display of the hive-cluster below.

There were precisely thirty-two targets around Four Twelve which were slatted for assault, centers of political and military importance to the Cyclopeans which would fall in a series of orchestrated attacks which would silence resistance quickly.

That had been an obvious deficiency in our foe.

They were an unfortunate mix of cruel and self-confident.

They had all but begged for the rain of white and bronze bullets falling towards the high teardrop shape of the central spire.

So I was not altogether that worried about the fall of my pod towards the capital of Four Twelve.

My brother rode in another pod racing through the fiery sky.

Against our rain was a war between to endless barrages of sickly oranges beams racing through the heavens.

The Onyx had claimed the central command points of the Cyclopeans' rings and turned their weapons against the planet below. It had not even required a great deal of creativity to do so, they had merely activated the punishment protocols in place to quell slave rebellions.

I was vaguely guilty for forgetting that many of mankind's shards in that era had turned to feats of cruelty and savagery.

That guilt was a second to the growl of anger threatening to thrum from my throat.

There would be no guilt.

This was a world of cruelty, of foul masters controlling worlds of slaves by virtue of some scraps of knowledge that they themselves merely aped.

The shaking became more violent as the pod thrummed from blasts which stained and charred the hulls of the pod.

I was somewhat certain that the pod would not break.

"One minute to impact," Stalwart added. "Initial breaches have penetrated the central spire. Communicating resistance encounters, forward to Designate-Horus?"

"Yes," I confirmed while bracing my fingers around the hilt of Calyburne.

Soon it would be time to make war.

Soon it would be time to fight.

Soon it would be time to kill.

I idly communicated the data of the foes which were unknowingly rushing towards us.

"Activate Oath-Song," I whispered as a minute undertone filled the legion vox.

Most legions committed themselves to Oaths of Moment, specifically swearing themselves to their mission before a battle as a means of reassurance.

I had enacted a different custom myself.

The song started as the quiet beating of drums before rising horns joined them with an eager vigor as the shaking became more violent.

I had claimed that I had found the song in a ruin during my years on Calengwag and had even properly accredited it to its original maker before making the changes needed to suit their purpose.

The song had been sang on the decks of the Avalon before the ship exited into realspace and as the shaking grew into a burning quake as the force came crashing down as the twelve-thousand voices of the legion came as one.

Out of the skies and from over the waters they come to bring slaughter-to all mankind, the thunder of the legions deep bass rang as my pod broke open and I lunged forward into a ruined hall of gunmetal walls and plexiglass shards.

They were already there their grey skins and great red eyes which lent them their name began to react.

Soldiers of fortune, administer torture they rip out your heart-and leave you to die. Calyburne split through three of the men in a single sizzling strike, splitting past the inhumanity of grey-steel graft and the bulky armour shard in the way did not even slow the white-steel's passing. The red flesh beneath rained out in arterial gore but I paid it little mind as I absorbed the moment with a spinning step and bit diagonally across another three.

The Red sphere which was the head of the first split as it was bitten through, then the arms and torso of the second and the wrists and waist of the third.

It had been less than a heartbeat.

And it did nothing to deter the remaining thirty from charging.

Plunder and pillage, and rape of the villages, towns, and the cities-burnt to the ground.

They charged because they had no more a capacity of fear than I did, portions of brain matter excised from them in a much cruder way than my soul was molded.

I continued my advance.

Step and slash through three, parry with enough force to split arms and send a short-barreled rifle through the head of another, crimson liquid draining and leaving the sphere colorless save for the augmented brain within.

Banish the nation, till their occupation means nothing is left of the old world order...

Seem to overcommit with one strip and when they attempted to level their weapons my free hand would reach out cleave through the offending arms to the once-human's shock.

The remaining masses were dead around me before the next line of song came.

"Ninety-percent successful breach," The Stalwart continued with the first embers of anger matched by the snarl on my mouth. "Additional operations matching presented precedent, confirming all Sect-Masters and superiors accounted for, gathering data for Sixteenth."

I spared the gore around me no further as I charged forward and into the snaking halls, following distant heart beats and the mapping data trickling into my feed as Stalwart reconciled the data of his sister's scans and the reports of every other warhelm.

Cyclopeans.

The name was an insult.

The people of Rhea saw eyes as a sign of enlightenment.

Two eyes were those of the slave-masses, the most basic increment of humanity who served menial lives in the factories of their masters under the eyes of overseers who had a third eye overlaid onto their forehead.

The triclops overseers were also commands of their slave soldiers.

I made that observation as I crushed the head of one with a vicious kick while cleaving through his surprised squad with Calyburne in monstrous facsimile of a summersault.

Out of the skies, and from over the waters they come to bring slaughter-to all mankind.

Horus had made the mistake of assuming that the oath song was a boast when it was in truth a curse.

It was a condemnation to the splinters of humanity that had embraced barbarism of one brand or another.

Soldiers of fortune, administer torture they rip out your heart-and leave you to die.

Eyes beyond three were the upper castes, five for scientists to name an example.

The Nine-Eyed Tyrant was whom we sought.

One eye?

Plunder and pillage, and rape of the villages, towns, and the cities-burnt to the ground.

They were the criminals, the slaves and the defeated that the Cyclopeans had made into something less than human.

At the time I had thought them to be something like Servitors.

Banish the nation, till their occupation means nothing is left of the-old world order...

But even then, I was not sure that was true.

Servitors did not reek of fear and pain.

I eventually emerged into a courtyard of statuary and piles of corpses piled around a cyclopean bred into the size of a giant, bundles of artificial muscle bloating it to great proportions. The chamber seemed to bare the marks of a mustering point and so easily accommodated the two thousand Astartes gathered within.

Resting against the shattered brain-casing of the giant black-iron skull was Trystane while idly meditating while Alten'lo stood to his side and spoke to the gathered Masters of the Second and Captains of the Sixteenth.

I leapt from the third story window and came down easily enough much to the surprise of the men.

Aquilla will rise and conquer.

"Status?" I asked while I approached them after making my declaration of Grandmastery.

Warlords downtrodden.

"Not too bad," Trystane chuckled before shaking his head. "The casualties have been minimal but as to the objective…"

"Four possible locations," Alten'lo concluded while resting the steel of his Paragon Blade over his shoulder and nodding his dismissal to the gathered Masters. "Lord Lupercal has Morien with him and is moving towards the central communications array."

with the battle won.

"We will do likewise then," I nodded while making the symbol of unification to the Luna Wolf captains. "Will you concede to join me in this then?"

It was a formality, Horus and I had agreed that there was no sense in being fickle with regards to who used which elements, we took what landed near us and worked with it. But I knew he would be making the same request to my sons and returned the favor.

They matched the gesture and one spoke, "It would be an honour, Lord Ailbe."

I tilted my head at the richness in his tone but decided that I would look into later as the sound of bolt-fire renewed in the chamber. I could hear the hiccupping sound of the Cyclopean weapons as more formations neared and attempted to trade fire.

"Hold the courtyard," I turned to Trystane who saluted me with a lazy nod before leaping back to his armoured feat and unsheathing his combat knife to match his white-hilted Moraltach.

"I'll be exceptionally dead before you see more come from this direction," he chuckled over the vox as he charged again.

I resisted a snort before turning to Alten'lo, "We take three Oaths and move to the objective, three hundred Luna Wolves as well."

Can this be a new beginning?

"We Bring the Dawn!" My knights shouted while "Lupercal!" rang in lesser but no less passionate numbers.

Bring an end to all the killing?

We charged farther into the hive like a flood of bronze and white. We matched each other in a way, where the Luna Wolves reached forwards to bring down the triclopses with precise efficiency the Dawn Knights formed a charging line of boltgun and blade, scything down rank after rank of cyclops as one brother would parry to open room for another to finish with bolt or shell.

Human indecision.

Casualties did rise when the triclops warriors began sending in their mightiest units.

Corridors and intersections became carnal houses as great cyclops-ogres were brought down by wolf-packs like their namesakes brought down ancient bears. A brother would be crushed in a massive hand while fearlessly shooting into the reinforced eye only for another brother to bring his great blade onto an armoured leg or another to through a grenade into the other.

Rife with cruel suspicion.

Where the wolves hunted like packs the Knight Parties were a single mechanism, one might bait while remainder would arc past to cut both legs from under it. They were methodical in cutting down extremities, then bodies and then necks like cleavers selecting meat. Eyes born of the acceptance of fighting something greater than themselves looking for the crushing blows and the slight delay in their reaction time.

While the Age of Strife continues.

They brought forth three-eyed warriors with overwhelming strength and speed which could fight Astartes as equals.

Their sizzling blades of electrified energy wreaked a butcher's toll on us but ultimately fell short as we continued to march forward.

Aquila will rise and conquer.

But their masters had stripped them of creativity, programmed algorithms unable to think enough to question or rebel. They lacked the creative spark that saw new masteries of savagery and skill unfurl behind the war-masks of white and bronze as weaknesses were exploited to brutal effect.

The monsters had no brothers to avenge them as they fell under the furious might of the Angels of Death.

Warlords downtrodden.

We roared as we pierced layer after layer of the hive, with each death my son's anger rose like a violent tempo in time the eager beat of the drums and horns echoing in their vox.

Until we reached our goal.

With the battle won.

We breached through tall gates of gene-cultivated bone with a chorus of bolters and walked into the palace of the Nine-Eyed Tyrant.

Can this be a new beginning?

The halls of bones, steel and eyes starred at us as we heard the High Gothic screams, cries of the fates that awaited us and the heresies we committed by stepping on sacred grounds.

Bring an end to all the killing?

We fought our way through layer after layer of monstrosity as we delved deeper, a hemisphere of Astartes bolts and blades cutting through gargolyes of steel and flesh. Alten'lo felled a behemoth with three heads while I watched with pride and rage as my sons did not shirk from their duty, dying holding their place or saving the life of a brother.

The grief strengthened us as I split a witch of lightning and iron from sculp to heel before cutting through her brothers.

Wolves flung themselves against three-eyed men grafted onto great spiders of steel.

We marched through the parade of human depravity.

Until the centuries of war have ended.

It only came to an end when Calyburne erupted through a corpse-throne of screaming technology and countless eyes and around the planet millions the drones fell like lifeless puppets.

Can the battle-scars be mended?

It would be hours longer until all of the battles were reported over.

When the centuries of war have ended, can the battle-scars be mended?

I wondered at the final words as I embraced Morygen the following morning, long after the war song had been deactivated.

Compliance.

That was the hard part.