I do not own Warhammer 40000 nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.

Inspired by the Dornian Heresy, by Aurelius Rex.

TITANOMACHY

North of the Imperialis Sanctum, beyond the shaped mountains of the Imperial Palace and into the sprawling industrial hive-complexes, the infernal engines of the obliterated daemon world Eidolon march. Chaos Titans and other daemonic constructs rampage, leaving naught but ruin and misery in their wake as they go south, toward the walls of the Imperial Palace. Against them walk the God-Machines of the Legio Titanica, along with some of the most secret weapons ever designed by the Emperor's servants. Not since the Siege of Terra have Titans waged war upon the Throneworld – but now, the God-Machines thread Humanity's birthworld once more …

We see the Tyrant. It comes from the blighted sphere that the Lost and the Damned call Eidolon, unaware of either the name's Antique significance or the appellation the Children of Isha once bestowed upon that accursed place. We see the dark fire of its hunger, blazing at its core where its plasma reactor once burned with the fury of a caged star.

We see the daemonic engines of war and ruin come in its wake, fuelled by hatred and torment. They bear the scars of the wounds that killed them, before they were resurrected by dark science and darker desires. We see the beasts and the men leashed to their infernal hearts, bound to tainted iron. Living beings, reduced to the components of these monstrous war-engines, their frail souls subsumed into a hundred greater nightmares.

We see the smile on Slaanesh's lips as they descend from the wound in the sky, brought forth by fell artifice to ravage the Palace and crush all hope for the future.

NO ! We roar, lending our strength to the fading wards, carved on the stone and the skin of the world, designed by our father and made real by the hands of those who believed in His cause at the very beginning. No. You will not walk within these walls, oh towering monuments of destruction. We cast you out ! Out ! OUT !

But we are not strong enough. Strong enough to prevent them from descending directly here, yes, and preserve the fragile seed of salvation – but not strong enough to cast them back into the storm from whence they came, into the embrace of the god they claim to love, not realizing that the poison festering in their souls is anything but love.

We see them fall to the north, to lands soaked in forty millennia of bloodshed and conquest. We see the earth crack. We hear the wailing of those who die, and the terrified screams of those left alive.

We see the beast that feeds upon their suffering, who laughs even as he rages at being thwarted by us. We see Leonatos, enthroned within the Tyrant's skull. Betrayer of empires, champion of Chaos, destroyer of worlds. We see the sword in his hands, and we cannot see where the Daemon Prince ends and the weapon begins. We taste the blood he has spilled and feel the pain he has inflicted, and we would weep if we had tears left to shed.

We see the lingering shadow of the Blood Angel from whose legend this creature was spawned, little more than a fading impression now. You have fought the exalted champions of Chaos many times in your exile, brother, and we wonder : have you realized the great lie of their nature ?

The immortality that so many warlords pursue is an empty promise, the transcendence they dream of an illusion. The Princes of the Warp are not the mortals from which they emerge, but the infernal will of the Ruinous Powers shaped to grotesquely ape the form of obliterated souls. They are not the reborn chosen of the Dark Gods, but mere eidolons of their deceived followers.

Do you see the joke now, brother ? The Dark Gods' sense of humor is one of the greatest evils Chaos has inflicted upon our hapless galaxy.

The death-curse of Eidolon struck Terra like a dagger. Pillars of Warp-lightning descended from the Great Rift, their course twisting suddenly before they could strike the Imperial Palace. Even after the death of the Emperor, the ancient seraphic wards woven in the walls held fast, shielding the Palace from direct daemonic interference.

The eldritch lightning struck north instead, and the combined might of its blows shattered reality. Souls were obliterated for hundreds of kilometers, and when the too-bright un-light of the Warp faded, it left behind the towering shapes of Chaos Titans and Daemon Engines.

A full Legio worth of monstrous machines manifested, transported from the destroyed daemon world of Eidolon in the Eye of Terror by the Sanguinor's sorcery. Dozens of infernal engines, from the great Tyrant of Eidolon to the lesser, Knight-sized warmachines, were scattered over thousands of square kilometers.

Of the horde of cultists, beastmen and warriors that had attempted to follow the Chaos Titans, less than one in ten had survived the transition. More than half the remainder had lost what little sanity they had still possessed, and the others teetered on the brink of absolute madness themselves. They spread out, descending upon the traumatized survivors of the hive-collapses with perverse savagery. Thousands of them, however, rallied around the Tyrant of Eidolon, ready to give their lives in service to this great idol of Chaos.

Since the area's rebuilding after the Siege, the continental mass north of the Imperial Palace had been dedicated to industrial production. But the layered Manufactorum and hab-blocks had never been designed for the sudden addition of a Legio's weight. Combined with the planet-wide quakes caused by Light's End, the ground collapsed beneath the feet of many of the Chaos warmachines, burying them in rubble and ruined bodies. Entire sections of hive-cities collapsed, crushing millions to death. Workers who had been at their shift when the Angel War had begun, or had been trembling awake in their homes in terror, perished without warning.

The crude reality was that the hives could not bear the weight of the Chaos Titans. And they were of such scope that if the corrupted engines tried to simply destroy everything in their path to the Imperial Palace, their ammunition would run dry or they would be crushed by collapsing cities. Only a few of the smaller engines could navigate the sprawling hives, and even they had to pulverize entire hab-blocks to advance through the labyrinth of crawled streets.

For a moment, it seemed that this particular incursion of the Angel War would be stopped by Holy Terra's own terrain. But then, those warmachines that still had mortal crews cast their senses around them for a way out of this predicament, and they found one. There was a path to the south that could withstand the weight of the Chaos Titans : the Transsyberian Line.

The Transsyberian Line

All of Terra suffered during the Siege that ended the Roboutian Heresy. The hordes sworn to Guilliman's banner flooded over the Throneworld in their billions, and daemonic sorcery spread evil everywhere. Even as the Imperial Palace held, the rest of the planet was left all but undefended, for Perturabo had believed the traitors would focus their efforts on the Palace.

The Lord of Iron was right in this, but he had underestimated what even a fraction of the heretics' manpower would inflict on the world, and did not yet understand the depths to which his former kinsmen had sunk. By the time the Siege ended with Guilliman's fall and the Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions' return, Terra's total population had plummeted. The exact casualty numbers will never be known, but they are assuredly in the hundreds of billions at the very least.

It took centuries to rebuild, even with all the resources of the reforged Imperium to draw upon, but the High Lords did not let that stop them. They were determined to remake Holy Terra into a planet worthy of being the Imperium's capital. In time, much of their work would be paved over, replaced by the endless need for more administrative space to manage the lumbering leviathan that was the Administratum, or by more temples to the ever-growing Imperial Cult. But some of the wonders they managed to have built during those years yet remained by the time of the Angel War.

The Transsyberian Line was one such great project. The continental mass north of the Imperial Palace had been all but razed to the ground during the Siege. Hive-cities had been obliterated from orbit, turned into flat expanses where the rebel forces had mustered before marching south. Billions of renegade Imperial troopers, along with the bulk of the Imperial Fists Legion, had gathered there before throwing themselves at the walls of the Imperial Palace to the south. Nothing remained there now but ruins, and the ashes of sacrificial pyres.

With the alliance between Terra and Mars renewed with the Red Planet's liberation, Kelbor-Hal had come to Terra. The Fabricator-General had been deeply wounded by the war on Mars, and it would not be long before he retired (secretly joining the newly formed Martian Collective), but his keen mind yet remained intact. Working closely with Iron Warrior architects and surviving Terran officials, he drew the plans for the reconstruction of the then-named Northern Wastes into the greatest industrial base on Terra, matched only by Red Planet's own factories. Thousands of Manufactoriums were constructed, along with the living quarters needed for their workers and the infrastructure required to support them. This continent-spanning industrial complex would be able to turn the raw resources tithed by distant worlds into the goods Terra's population needed.

And the Transsyberian Line would run through it all, from the space ports at the northern continental edge to the very walls of the Imperial Palace. It would bring the raw materials the factories needed and move their production elsewhere, ensuring that the sounds of industry need never stop. And while, across the centuries since, the factory-cities of the former Northern Wastes had suffered the same sort of overgrowth and overpopulation that afflicted the rest of the Throneworld, the Transsyberian Line itself remained intact, maintained by a dedicated sub-cult of the Adeptus Mechanicus whose devotion to the Line and the great engines that run upon it is considered fanatical even by their Martian brethren.

To call the machines that cross Transsyberian Line trains is to call an Imperator-Class Titan a servitor. They are behemoth of steel and machinery, the largest of them towering kilometers above the rails. They carry raw materials and manufactured items all across the continent, crewed by a reclusive sub-faction of the Adeptus Mechanicus who are utterly dedicated to maintaining the Line and keeping to their hallowed timetable.

In order to keep the Line from becoming a Martian enclave on Terra and festering distrust between the Imperial government and its Martian counterpart, management of the Line was given over to a branch of the Administratum. This minor Adepta holds tremendous influence on Terra, tasked with ensuring that the trains run on time and that the eternal hunger of the Manufactoriums is fed in order to keep the wheels of industry turning. So numerous are the trains running on the Transsyberian Line that years of training are required before an adept is allowed to oversee even a minor junction – for any delay, however minor, would mean that millions of workers would suddenly find themselves unable to work.

The rails of the Transsyberian Line had been designed to bear the weight of the enormous trains that ran on them : they would bear the weight of the Chaos Titans without problem. And while the Line wasn't a straight path to the walls of the Imperial Palace, it did lead there eventually, and following it would be much quicker than tearing a path through the hab-blocks and factories.

In the skull of the Tyrant of Eidolon, Leonatos smiled as he received these news. A call was sent to his dispersed forces, on the vox and through aetheric means of communication, and the Chaos Titans began to slowly converge on the Line.

They smashed aside the stopped trains, obliterating them from afar or tearing them to shreds before climbing over the debris. They marched fast, faster than things this size had any right to be. The malevolent energies of the Tear of Nightmares empowered them, and the will of the Daemon Prince leading them drove them onward. In the Tyrant of Eidolon, Leonatos was forced to exert his infernal will to keep his forces from dispersing and revel in the desolation they inflicted.

His power was like a leash around the throats of the corrupted Warhounds and daemonic engines, forcing them to continue south and only prey upon the buildings and people immediately next to the Transsyberian Line. They railed against his tyranny, but could not escape it, for the power of Slaanesh flowed in Leonatos, granting him power such as he had never known before, even when he had ruled Eidolon as a nigh-omnipotent god-king.

For all their might, the daemon engines of Eidolon did not march unopposed. Great surveillance towers that had been raised to house the security complements tasked with monitoring the Manufactoriums, and whose occupants had managed to keep their wits, opened fire on the Chaos Titans with cannons designed to flatten entire factories should the need arise. More than a few daemon engines were destroyed by these isolated defenders before, inevitably, the towers were brought low, either by the might of the Chaos Titans or by the horde of their followers breaking in and slaughtering every Imperial inside.

The Manufactoriums had been the site of comparatively less military parades, but many of their workers were augmented to better fulfill their duties, and all of them had been toughened out by a lifetime of hard labor. In addition, many of the factories were heavily guarded, and those guards, who until then had spent their lives watching for gangers and heretics, now fought against the cultists and their daemonic allies. Tech-priests turned the heavy machinery with which they had been fused against the invaders, smashing them aside with hydraulic pumps and shredding them apart with industrial saws.

All over the continent, Imperial citizens banded together to try and rescue their brethren trapped beneath the collapsed structures. With re-purposed tools and bare hands, they pulled at precariously balanced beams of metal and pieces of rockrete, trying to reach the indistinct voices they could hear coming from underneath.

Only too late did they realize that these voices were often not those of their kin, but the deceptive whispers of the Neverborn. As the corrupt Titans of Eidolon shook the foundations of the world with their arrival, the ancient evils laid low in Ages long past stirred.

These were the lands of Ursh, where the great warlord Kalagann had faced sorcerer-kings and rival techno-barbarians during the Age of Strife. Blood had been spilled here then as the warlord built the empire that only the Emperor Himself would be able to break.

The sudden death of so many, along with the energies descending from the Tear of Nightmares, dragged those antediluvian memories from their slumber. Along with the daemons of Slaanesh that emerged from the rubble were figures recorded in texts that had been considered myth when the Great Crusade began. Revenants of ancient warlords, whose vile deeds had forever imprinted the land, manifested in shadow and blood. Not even a flicker of awareness remained to these wretches, but they were dangerous all the same, descending upon the human survivors with undiminished cruelty.

The war that was fought in the shadows of the Chaos Titans would have, on any other world, deserved the name of apocalypse. But in the Angel War, it was merely a sideshow, even as billions died in the dark, alone, terrified, and in pain.

While the daemon-engines of Eidolon and their hordes of corrupt followers marched south, the defenders of Terra were far from inactive. In the Tower of Hegemon, Omegon learned of the Chaos Titans' arrival. The Primarch of the Alpha Legion immediately sent messages to the Legio Mortis, sworn to the Throneworld's defense since the days of the Heresy.

The princeps and moderatii were already reacting to Light's End. Many of the smaller Titans had been dispatched across Terra as part of the celebrations, and were now fighting alongside isolated Imperial forces, providing much-welcome heavy support. But the greater Titans had been held in reserve, ironically for the same reason the Eidolon forces were suffering in the north : there simply weren't many streets on Terra that could withstand their thread.

Now, they emerged from their stations. At first, the lords of the Legio Mortis argued that they should remain at the walls, to combine the might of their God-Machines with that of the Palace's guns. But Omegon quickly pointed out that the number and scale of the incursions pointed to an over-arching plan. The Chaos Titans were not the only force to advance toward the Imperial Palace. They must be stopped before they could reach the walls and lend their support to the other heretic hordes converging on the walls.

Omegon's words and authority as a Primarch, combined with the fury burning within the plasma hearts of the Titans themselves, persuaded the princeps to follow his instructions. But in order to face their infernal kin, the Legion Mortis would need to make use of the Transsyberian Line as well.

Fragmented reports were slowly coming in at the Tower of Hegemon of the Chaos Titans' use of the Line. At their current speed, it was estimated that it would take them days to reach the walls, but the Lord of the Hydra had already noticed the disturbance in the flow of time occurring across the entire Sol system. Furthermore, the longer the Chaos Titans remained unopposed, the greater the destruction they would wreak on their way to the Imperial Palace. The citizens of the northern continent needed help, and while the Alpha Legion was already taking action, only the Titans could bring them salvation.

They were dead. They were all dead.

Adept Primus Kerion, who had overseen the operations of the control chamber for longer than Alexey had been alive. He had taken a live cable and jammed it into his eyeballs, his smoking corpse still twitching minutes after his death.

Melia, who always gave him a smile when he came in to join the shift. She had strangled herself, crushing her own windpipe and choking on her own blood.

Gregory, the sneering brute who was stationed at the entrance of the control room. He had drawn his laspistol, calmly pressed it between his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

And all the others too. The entire minimum crew of nineteen indispensable workers needed for Station Forty-Six Gamma to keep the trains going even as the rest of the Throneworld celebrated the turn of the millennium, dead. Only Alexey was left, trembling and huddled beneath his desk, desperately whispering prayers for protection that he knew, without knowing how, could no longer be answered.

Only he hadn't taken his own life in one way or another when the sky had broken apart and horrible images had filled the screens.

He didn't think this was because he was somehow braver than all his co-workers. No, it was because he was too much of a coward. Even as the screens screamed and the windows showed only madness, he had still wanted to live. And so he had huddled under his desk, shivering with terror, and tried to block everything out.

He didn't know how much time he had spent there when a different noise pierced through the terror that clouded his mind. It was a sound that was absurd in its familiarity : the ringtone of someone calling Adept Primus Kerion over the secure vox-line.

Usually, Kerion picked up such calls within seconds. This was the first time Alexey had ever heard it ring for longer than that. Slowly, he extracted himself from his hiding place, and crawled toward the dead overseer's station. Not because he was wounded, but because he was scared that if he stood up, he would be noticed by the things outside.

With trembling hands, he pushed the rune he had seen Kerion push countless times before. The ringtone stopped, replaced by a voice that was strong even through the static-laden transmission :

"Station Forty-Six Gamma, respond !"

"W-who are you ? What do you want ?"

"I am Primarch Omegon of the Alpha Legion. Yours is the only station left on the grid. Who am I speaking to ?"

Alexey went numb with shock. A Primarch. He was speaking with a Primarch. Him, a lowly Terran-born adept whose ancestors had spent generations to reach this hereditary position, was speaking to one of the God-Emperor's own sons.

It didn't even occur to him to doubt the words of the voice. Perhaps it was the shock of his entire situation, perhaps it was something in the voice, perhaps it was desperation to cling to anything resembling authority amidst the insanity that had become his universe.

"This ... this is Third-Class Adept Alexey Takarov," he managed to say through teeth chattering with fright. "I ... I'm the only one left. The others are all dead."

There was a moment of pause.

"Then you will need to suffice, Adept Takarov. Your services are required by the Imperium."

The Primarch – the Primarch ! – explained to Alexey what he needed. Alexey swallowed nervously – his saliva tasted of blood and fear.

Could he do this ? … Surely not. He was just a Third-Class Adept. He had no training in the intricacies of the Line's operation.

But … but he didn't need to worry about collision, now did he ? The entire Line was dead.

The last train to move had been the 7939564-Secundus, whose pilot had gone mad and rammed it into one of the things that stalked the Line with enough strength to destroy them both. Alexey had heard the woman's ranting over the vox-speakers, despite trying not to. That had been … an hour ago ? Two ? And since then, no train had moved along the entirety of the Line.

He turned to look at the screens. There were many of them, but he didn't need to look at all of them at once. And there were many buttons, many levers and many prayers he hadn't been taught, but knew from years hearing others recite them.

"I ... I think I can help you," he said, moving to Kerion's seat, pushing the corpse aside as gently as possible. "There are trains stationed at the walls that have the necessary carrying capacity. I don't know what state the crews are in, though."

"We can provide our own replacement for them if necessary. What we need, however, is guidance through the Line in order to avoid the unpassable sections and reach the enemy as soon as possible. Can you do this, Adept Alexey ?"

Alexey swallowed. His spit tasted of blood and ash.

"I ... I can do it. I will do it."

With the help of the last surviving Adept of the division of the Adeptus Administratum tasked with overseeing the operations of the Transsyberian Line, the engines of the Legio Mortis embarked aboard the stopped trains located nearest the Imperial Palace. Along with them came tech-priests and their cohorts of servitors, more than capable of replacing the dead or missing crew of the great trains. Shipments of raw resources and manufactured goods were thrown out to make place for the God-Machines, and the spirits of the noble Titans grumbled at the indignity of such transportation.

Imperial Knights from various Households, drawn to Terra by the celebrations of the millennium's turn, were summoned by the Legio Mortis. Though many Knights were scattered across the Throneworld, few were able to reach the walls in time, gathering in an ad hoc lance.

In order to reach the enemy, the bigger Titans of the Legio Mortis had to gut the inside of the trains to make enough space for them to enter. The sheer size of Dies Irae forced the Legio's magi to cut open two different trains, with the Imperator having one foot in each as they advanced on parallel lines in strict synchronicity. The sight would have been comical, if not for the sheer menace that emanated from the ancient God-Machine.

The God-Machines of the Legio Mortis didn't go to war alone. The Legio's strongholds at the Imperial Palace also housed many phalanxes of skitarii warriors, and while many had been dispatched on the parades when Light's End struck and still more were redeployed to help defend the Imperial Palace or provide support on other fronts, thousands of augmented soldiers were packed in the trains along with the Titans. With the aetheric disturbances raging across the Throneworld, the noospheric communication network of the skitarii was thrown in complete disarray, forcing their tech-priest overseers to authorize the use of squad-level only tactical links and personal decision algorithms reserved for the most dire of circumstances.

The great trains rushed north, following the quickest path through the disturbed Transsyberian Line. Despite the desolation ravaging Terra, the Line itself was almost intact ahead of the Chaos Titans. The princeps didn't know whether this was because of the sturdiness of its design, or because it had been spared on purpose by the enemy.

Despite the need for caution and the unusual cargo of the trains, they moved far faster than the Titans could have on their own. Within a few hours, the auspexes of the Titans detected the presence of their hated foe. Not long after, the trains stopped, letting the Titans and their allies disembark to finish the last stretch of their journey on their own thread. The skitarii ran between the legs of the God-Machines, alphas shouting order that would usually be transmitted across light-speed noospheric connections.

The Knight Paladin Glory of Indrik earned the first engine kill of the Titanomachy. His prey was an exemplar of the Daemon Engine type recorded in the blackest records of the Ordo Malleus as the Slaanesh Subjugator. As the cruel machine toyed with a group of human survivors it had found, Glory of Indrik opened fire with its mighty Battle Canon. The shot obliterated one of the daemon engine's pincer claws, and it turned towards its new foe with a nightmarish shriek that caused half of its intended victims to drop dead, their brains pouring out of their ears.

Glory of Indrik struck again before the Subjugator could return fire. Its Reaper Chainsword cleaved the daemon engine in two, destroying the sorcerous fetters keeping the Neverborn within anchored to the Materium.

The Knight did not have long to enjoy his kill. Soon, he was surrounded by three six-limbed walkers that resembled a cross between mechanized spiders and fleshy tanks, and ripped apart by their claws. A volley from the rest of the Knight lance tore them apart – the first engagement of the Titanomachy had gone to the Imperials.

Soon, however, more of Eidolon's forces approached in great number. The engines of the Legio Mortis were badly outnumbered, but where Leonatos had to impose his will upon his forces, the Princeps Marshal could rely on his subordinates' obedience and competence.

The rails of the Line became the battleground of Titans. In that network of megastructures, the colossi fought like the carriers of an infection and an immune system inside the veins of some planet-sized host. The wrecks of destroyed trains and the rubble of collapsed buildings provided cover large enough for Titans. Augur readings were turned all but useless with the static and scrap-code filling the noosphere, forcing the princeps to rely on what they could see through the immense eye-lenses of their God-Machines. The Transsyberian Line became a battlefield of ambushes and sudden confrontations, with weaponry capable of obliterating a target kilometers distant being used at point-blank range.

Julius Turnet, Princeps Marshal of Legio Mortis, tried his best to keep his forces coordinated, knowing that their discipline was the greatest edge they had over their heretic foe. By the grace of the Omnissiah, Dies Irae's venerable transmitters had been proofed against daemonic interference long ago, and the Princeps Marshal could communicate with his forces with little difficulty. From their reports, he was able to construct an accurate picture of the enemy's disposition, and sought to turn their lack of discipline against them.

At his command, the engines of Legio Mortis began to give ground, regrouping in a vast expanse of open ground created by a few shots from Dies Irae's long-range weaponry. Scores of Daemon Engines pounded after them, unholy instincts compelling them to pursue what they saw as retreating prey, and fell directly into the Princeps Majoris' trap.

In a synchronized volley, the missile pods of Legio Mortis emptied their lethal cargo into Terra's smoke-choked air, and the light from their detonations briefly outshone that of the Tear of Nightmares. The noise of the explosions was joined by the shrieks of the great Neverborn that had been bound within the Chaos engines brought low by such concentrated firepower.

It had been a good manoeuver, the kind that would be studied in the training schools of the Adeptus Titanica for generations, but it wouldn't be enough. The infernal machines destroyed were lesser engines, those that had run ahead of their betters, their hunger for the hunt overriding all pretence of discipline. Behind them came the corrupted husks of Reavers and Warlords, and the towering shadow of the Tyrant of Eidolon.

Leonatos laughed as he walked, feeling the venerable rails of the Transsyberian Line crack under the weight of the Tyrant's mighty feet.

This world had much changed since the last time Leonatos had been there, during the Siege. Or … had he been there ? It was difficult to distinguish between the memories of his own mortal life, those of the other Blood Angels and Astartes he had devoured, and the shattered recollections of the Tyrant itself.

When they had descended on this world from the Tear of Nightmares, only to be turned aside, Leonatos had recognized the psychic spoor of the one responsible. It had been a surprise to find Magnus the Red on Terra, but he supposed it shouldn't have been. It made sense that the last sons of the False Emperor would be here, at the end.

Their deaths would serve as a fitting marker to the end of an age and the beginning of the new one. Once, the mere thought of facing a Primarch would have caused him to feel as close to terrified as a Space Marine could feel, but now ? Now, he felt invincible, like he could take on the entire might of the failing Imperium and triumph.

This was power, greater than anything he had ever known. The energies of the Warp coursed through his daemonic form like never before, fuelled by the favor of Slaanesh. He was Exalted, elevated above the rest of the Courts of Pleasure and Pain. Only the knowledge that he shared that privilege with five others across Sol slightly diminished the joy he felt.

On a whim, he twisted the Tyrant's around, and plunged his great blade into a hab-block that grew out of a Manufactorum on the side of the Line. The daemonic weapon cut through the rockrete, crushing those who cowered inside. The Daemon Prince tasted their final moments, full of terror and pain, as the sword drank their blood and souls. He drank it all, sighing in pleasure like a man emptying a glass of fine wine ahead of a still greater feast.

Then he sensed them. He felt the vibrations of their advance, tasted the shifts in the aether at their approach, the disturbance in the wondrous symphony of horror his host brought with them.

Titans, and leading them … Oh. Such an opportunity. He felt the part of him that was enmeshed within the Tyrant roar in recognition.

Dies Irae. Legend among legends, one of the oldest and greatest Titans of the hidebound Adeptus Mechanicus. Truly, Leonatos was blessed by the Dark Prince.

This was a worthy prey, but Leonatos hadn't survived the perils of Eidolon and risen to daemonhood by taking foolish risks. He wouldn't engage the Imperator until he knew everything there was to know about its abilities.

With a pulse of will, he sent a command into the corrupted machine-brains of a pack of Chaos Warhounds. He burned the image of the Dies Irae into their daemonic minds, and they ran ahead, throwing themselves against the Imperator while Leonatos looked through the eyes of the Tyrant.

All the bravery and skill of the Legio Mortis wasn't enough. The daemon engines hurled themselves at their foe, and in close proximity the void-shields of the Titans were rendered useless. The superior numbers of the Chaos warhost, along with the ruinous blessings of their dark patron, were slowly but surely carrying the day. God-Machine after God-Machine fell, their husk either cruelly obliterated by their vanquishers or swarmed by hordes of cultists and daemons, who dragged the surviving crew out of the Titan's shell so that they might witness their failure before killing them.

The cold and merciless arithmetic of war didn't lie. The initial estimates of the Chaos Titans' numbers had been erroneous, or perhaps Omegon had known that he had no choice but to send the Legio and hope for a miracle. The Legio Mortis continued to fight, led on by the Dies Irae. They did not stop their advance, even as their numbers diminished, coming ever closer to the tipping point where the odds would guarantee their annihilation.

But not all hope was lost, for even as the God-Machines of the Legio Mortis had raced toward the foe, a meeting had taken place in a section of the Imperial Palace whose existence was known to only a handful of souls.

Kay wasn't with her. The old ghost would have been destroyed had he entered this room. Even she could feel the deadly cold of the psy-null pressing on her, far more oppressing that the total darkness that surrounded her beyond the small patch of light her lantern produced.

The trick she had used to anchor Kay's existence to something other than herself wouldn't last long, however. She needed to be quick – not that she needed another reason for that.

"I am Lady Morgana of the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition," she called out to the darkness. "I am here because Terra is under attack, and yet you remain in hiding instead of striding out to its defense."

For several seconds, there was only silence. Then a voice came from the darkness, deep, devoid of emotion, and utterly artificial.

"We are the last Chamber," it said. "The others are all dead, lost to the Imperium's endless wars. One by one we fell, but we believed we were doing the Emperor's work. Even as we were despised, even as we were distrusted by every other part of the Imperium, even as we tainted and damned our souls with the forbidden and the unholy, we knew that He found worth in us. And now He is dead. Worse than that, for if He had perished, we could still throw ourselves onto the cause of vengeance. But He chose death, Morgana. He chose to escape His pain, to escape His duty. He was all we had, and He abandoned us. Why then should we fight ? What do we have left to devote ourselves to ?"

"NO !" she shouted, slamming her staff into the ground. "He did not abandon you ! He did not abandon us !"

There was silence. She pushed forward, drawing upon emotions she only rarely allowed herself to feel in order to ward off the cold of the psi-null and the creeping despair that permeated this entire place :

"He made the choice to die, so that we would all have a chance. He died so that there might be hope ! You will not insult His memory with your doubt !"

She took a deep breath, feeling a chill spread through her. Her time was running out. The psychic void was penetrating through her flesh, and soon, it would reach the arcane workings that kept her alive. She had taken an enormous risk in coming here – if she died, there would be nothing left to keep her father's great spell active, and her adopted brother would be unleashed upon the galaxy in the fullness of his awful power. But what choice did she have, when Chaos Titans marched toward the Imperial Palace ?

None. And now, she would know if this gamble she had taken would pay off.

"And so I ask you again. Will you walk ?"

"… Very well, Lady Morgana. You have convinced us. We shall see whether there is still something worthy to fight for in the Imperium without Him."

Crimson lights gleamed in the darkness, and she heard the noise of starting engines.

"The Ordo Sinister will walk."

The Transsyberian Line had been almost completely cleared by the transport of the Legio Mortis and the damage inflicted by the Eidolon warhost. The same adept that had arranged the delivery of the loyal Titans, who was still in Station Forty-Six Gamma awaiting rescue, received a new message, containing new orders.

The adept protested at first, saying that he had already dispatched all the heavy carriers that were still usable amidst the madness of Light's End. But for that final transport – the final run of the Transsyberian Line – only a single train would be needed.

As if by the Emperor's providence, one such train remained stationed near the Palace's walls. But while its carrying capacity met the requirements, there was no pilot left to drive it. One hour later, Adept Third-Class Alexey Takarov was inside the command station, with a crew of hastily replaced servitors programmed to obey his every word.

Had someone asked him how he had ended up here, he wouldn't have been able to answer, except by saying that the woman who had talked to him over the crumbling vox-network had been very convincing. He had never piloted one of the trains he had spent his life monitoring – he had never even been aboard one. But, as the woman had said, he was the closest thing they had got.

And in the end, it was good enough. The train ran up the Transsyberian Line at full speed, carrying within it the last engines of the Ordo Sinister. From the start of the ride to its end, Alexey was terrified, even as he directed the largely automated process. He was terrified of the speed; he was terrified of the sounds of the train; he was terrified of the possibility of failure; he was terrified of what he was rushing into.

Most of all, though, he was terrified of the train's cargo.

This last train went further than the ones that had carried the Legio Mortis' God-Machines, coming to a shrieking stop mere scores of meters from the Titanomachy's frontline. Even as its great engines stuttered and died, their machine-spirits having given all they could, its cargo doors were blasted open, revealing the reinforcements that laid within.

We see the Ordo Sinister. They are not Titans, brother, not as the Mechanicus understands them, though they were first born in the tech-priests's forges. Our father remade them into something else, back in the days where He knew the horrors that dwell among the stars and we did not. If the Mechanicum of those days of innocence had known what He did to their creations when they were delivered to Terra … But no. Let us not dwell on such dark might-have-been. Our present is sinister enough.

We see their weapons, tools of war and murder whose very existence was scrubbed from records during the Great Crusade. Theirs is the legacy of the Age of Strife, weaponized into the Imperium's service. Theirs is the tamed abomination. Psi-cannons and null fields, arcane control spheres and pariahs strapped into half-sentient machines. Choirs of psykers shackled to the Ciricrux Anima, their power ripped from them to fuel weapons that sunder reality with very shot. Theirs is the path of the monster made to fight monsters.

Do not be blind to the hypocrisy there, brother. Father made terrible choices in His life, all to reach His vision for Mankind. Why do you think He was so relieved to finally end ?

And now the last Titans of the Ordo Sinister march to war. Their chambers were decimated during the Heresy, laying down their lives in the Webway. I saw them, brother. I saw them hold the line against the infinite hordes of Chaos. It is possible for the daemons to fear, and they were terrified then, as the whip of their masters' will hurried them forward toward oblivion.

I saw them fight and die, and knew this then : even the soulless can be heroes.

Only a few remain of the twenty-five that were given to the Emperor in Oblation. Of four chambers, only one yet stands. But oh, such terror they will inflict !

Seven Titans with featureless face-plates in verdigris livery, Warlord-Class one and all, emerged from the hollowed inside of the transport, their heraldry that of snarling silver lion face. A pall of supernatural terror descended upon the Line, affecting all from the adepts labouring within the engines of the Legio Mortis to the soulless Neverborn crawling in the wake of Eidolon's Chaos Titans. The human survivors who hid in the ruins felt the dread fall upon them, yet even this unnatural terror was preferable to the whispers and insidious madness it drew away. Men and women sobbed prayers of thanks as their minds were freed from the horrors of the Tear of Nightmares. Skitarii of the Legio Mortis looked upon them in awe, feeling the shriek-data of the Chaos Titans that had battered ceaselessly at their senses recoil.

The Ordo Sinister did not hesitate, nor did it hold back. From the moment its warmachines entered the battlefield, they opened fire with their full complement of awful weaponry. An already tormented reality buckled and screamed as beams of energy that had no place in our universe erupted from their shoulder cannons, cutting through the corrupt void-shields of Chaos Titans and causing their Warp-tainted molecules to implode. Inside their hulls, mind-shackled psykers screamed in agony as their power was forcefully extracted from them by technology forbidden to all but the Emperor Himself.

Of course, for all their eldritch capabilities, the Psi-Titans of the Ordo Sinister were not invincible. Their powers were dwarfed by the might of the Tyrant of Eidolon, bloated as it was with the energies of the Exalted Daemon Prince of Slaanesh that had bounded with it. The presence of the Tear of Nightmares also forced the Untouchable pilots of the Ordo to refrain from using the full potential of their engines, lest their hexagrammatic protections be overwhelmed by the Warp's rancid corruption.

The Psi-Titans spread out around Dies Irae, striking at the lesser engines that sought to weaken the Imperator and leaving it free to focus on its duel against its infernal equal. With Sinister Claws that blazed with fell power, they tore through the hulls of Chaos Titans, every hit inflicting unspeakable agonies to the daemons within. What damage the daemonic machines inflicted in return soon vanished from the Psi-Titans' hull, torn metal knitting itself back together under the influence of minute telekine pulses directed by the God-Machines' cogitators.

The Princeps Marshal of the Legio Mortis didn't recognize the heraldry of these unexpected reinforcements, but Dies Irae did. Knowing that the time for question would be later, the Princeps Marshal commanded his forces to fight alongside the Ordo Sinister, while he strode forth to confront the head of the beast that had come to Holy Terra.

Through the eyes of the Tyrant, Leonatos saw this, and roared in fury. The Chaos Imperator picked up his rage, and charged ahead, all thoughts of letting its lesser siblings weaken the foe forgotten in the throes of rage.

As Dies Irae and the Tyrant of Eidolon approached each other, lesser engines hastily moved away from the confronting colossi lest they be caught and crushed in the battle between the two God-Machines.

One of the most powerful men on Terra was little more than a skeletal torso and an exposed brain, held aloft in a life-sustaining tank, linked to the great machine surrounding them by hundreds of cables.

Such was the fate of Julius Turnet, Princeps Marshal of the Legio Mortis. He had served the Legio for over seven hundred years, first as a moderatii and then as a princeps, climbing the ranks through sheer skill and strength of will. He had not, no matter what some of his rivals had claimed, ever relied on the fame of his family name. Yes, his line had served the Legio since before the Great Crusade itself, and one of his distant ancestors had piloted the Titan he was now forever bound to in service to Warmaster Horus himself – but Julius had earned that rank.

He had fought for the Legio, for Mars and the Imperium, holding each of these loyalties equally dear. He had crushed countless enemies of Humanity, from the Titan-equivalents of the Eldar to the enormous monsters of the Tyranid Hive-Fleets. He had been a lord of the Imperium's armies, participating in strategy meetings that had decided the fate of entire Sectors.

He still remembered the day he had known he would never be separated from Dies Irae again. He saw that moment every time his awareness faded, exhaustion and the ministrations of the tech-priests forcing him into the twilight sleep that was all the rest he was now capable of. The sight of the Chaos Titan's cannon as it powered up, so close to his – to Dies Irae's face. The blaring of alarms. The pain of his mortal body shattering in sympathetic torment to the Imperator's own damage …

Legio Mortis had won the day, though Dies Irae had required decades of repairs before being sent back out on the battlefield. Julius had required almost as much, and the two of them had emerged from the quiet of healing together. In exchange for that pain and entombment, Julius' connection to Dies Irae had become deeper than ever before, and he had inflicted great punishment upon the enemies of Humanity against whom he had been deployed before being recalled to Terra in order to rejoin the Legio's vigil over the Imperial Palace.

He hadn't thought there would be anything to fight there. As Dies Irae marched over the blasted ruins of the Transsyberian Line and Julius saw the face of the enemy through its eyes, he wished with all the heart he no longer had that he had been right.

Julius had fought Chaos Titans before, but never one as powerful as this – never one who was the equal of Dies Irae in size and potency.

He knew the legends, of course. As princeps of Dies Irae and Prince Marshal of the Legio Mortis, he knew more about the shameful history of the Titan Legions than almost any other soul in the Imperium and the Mechanicus combined.

The knowledge flowed into him from Dies Irae's data-banks. At the dawn of the Imperium, the Omnissiah had welcomed the Martian cults into His empire, and granted great honor to the Titans who had fought to help the Martian orders survive the madness of the Age of Strife.

They had been named the Triad Ferrum Morgulum, and been set above all the other Legio that would either be built or found on distant forge-worlds. They were the first of the Collegia Titanica. Three Legio, tasked with safeguarding the Red Planet, and later, after the coming of the Emperor and the union of Terra and Mars, lending their might to the new Great Crusade.

Of the three, only the Legio Mortis remained. They had stayed loyal to the Fabricator-General, instead of trusting the promises of Guilliman's envoys. The names of the traitor Legio had been expunged from all but the most secret of records, among which Dies Irae's own data-banks were counted.

It was from this knowledge that Dies Irae, and through it Julius, knew the name of their foe.

Amidst vox-shrieks of scrap-code and daemonic howling that echoed into reality from the Immaterium, the creature broadcast its identity as the Tyrant of Eidolon, and it had changed enough, and fallen low enough, to no longer deserve its old name. The hallowed cathedrals on its back had been replaced by a garish palace, which was the least of the transformations it had undergone. Its original armaments had been replaced by a monstrous hellcanon and a blade of black crystal etched with unholy sigils. The foul iconography of Chaos covered almost every surface of the Imperator-sized engine, and what wasn't covered was festering with fleshy growths.

But Dies Irae recognized it all the same. Its sensors saw the underlying structure of metal beneath the madness, and knew it of old. Once, that daemon-ridden husk of a God-Machine, that walking desecration of the Omnissiah's bounty, had been the Exemplis, of Legio Ignatum. During the Heresy, it had walked alongside the hosts of Guilliman the Arch-Traitor, and its weapons had exterminated entire Legio loyal to the Fabricator-General and the Emperor.

As far as the Princeps could tell, there wasn't anything left of its original machine-spirit, which had been defiled long ago by the forebears of the hated Dark Mechanicum, turned from a protector of Humanity into an instrument of wanton destruction. But the debts of blood were still owed.

With the voices of dozens of his predecessors screaming in his skull, Julius shouted his challenge, his mouth opening on his withered flesh even as the horns of his Titan howled. He opened fire as he charged, but Dies Irae's weapons – weapons that were more often mounted on starships – could not pierce the Tyrant's shields.

The Tyrant strode forward, opening fire with its own ranged weapon. Julius screamed as he felt Warp-fire boil Dies Irae's void-shields, the unholy energies feeling like a knife in his own guts.

The blade of black crystal came down, and Julius barely managed to turn it away, smashing his own arm – no, not his arm, Dies Irae's arm – into the flat of the blade. Except that the flat wasn't flat at all : it was covered in small spines, each the side of man's arm, that bit into the metal of the Imperator's Plasma Annihilator. Bruises formed on the stump of Julius' arm in sympathetic pain.

Slowly, realization crept in, and Julius understood that he couldn't defeat this foe. His weapons, which had never failed him or any of his Titan's princeps before, were unable to breach the Tyrant's Warp-tainted shields. Perhaps a close-quarters weapon would have been more effective – but then again, perhaps not. Foul sorcery was at play here.

But there was still a weapon he could use that might work, loath as he was to even consider the option.

At the orders of Princeps Julius, the tech-priests overseeing Dies Irae's reactor core prepared to trigger an overload. Employed on a core as big as that of the Imperator, this most desperate measure would obliterate everything for kilometers. Hopefully, not even the heretek shielding of the Tyrant of Eidolon would save it. The Princeps Marshal knew that his order would doom both the Legio Mortis and the Order Sinister, but this was a sacrifice he was willing to make to fulfill his mission and save the Imperial Palace from the Chaos Titans.

As the magi began their rituals and a new flow of energy coursed through the damaged body of Dies Irae, however, the Tyrant of Eidolon stumbled. With its blade of black crystal held high and ready to finish its foe, it briefly paused.

Julius didn't question where this miracle had come from. With a tremendous effort of will, he rose Dies Irae's Hellstorm Cannon, channelling all of the excess energy the tech-priests were drawing from the reactor core into the weapon. The backlash fried the minds and brains of half of the Imperator's moderatii, and Julius's own flesh sizzled and blackened inside his life-sustaining tank – but the shot hit its target.

At nearly point-blank range, the Hellstorm Cannon impacted with the fury of a newborn sun. Even as the tremendous energies left its barrel, the ancient weapon detonated, unable to withstand the power it had unleashed straight into the chest of the Tyrant of Eidolon.

In spite of the pain, Julius Turnet smiled, and spoke through Dies Irae's mouth.

"Engine kill."

Leonatos screamed as he heard the declaration of victory from his foe, a foe that until moments ago, he had held at his mercy. No he could feel the Tyrant dying all around him, could feel his own incarnation fade away. He screamed and raged, clawing at the power that had been bestowed upon him, reaching out for the Exalted might that Slaanesh had granted him …

But it wasn't there. It was gone. He could still feel it, but he couldn't reach it. Without warning, the power had been stripped from him, leaving him flat-footed, giving his foe all the opening he had needed.

In the final moments before the daemonic essence of the Daemon Prince was hurled back into the Realms of Chaos, Leonatos realized that he had been deceived. He hadn't been sent to this world to break the walls of the Imperial Palace. Instead, all he had been was …

With the destruction of the Tyrant of Eidolon, the Chaos Titans scattered. No longer bound by Leonatos' will, their infernal intellects turned on closer prey than the distant and warded walls of the Imperial Palace. Some of the Chaos Titans controlled by mortal crews still tried to advance south, but the Legio Mortis dealt with them with the help of the Ordo Sinister, before beginning to hunt down the ones that had dispersed.

Dies Irae had been badly damaged by the Tyrant before its miraculous victory. Down one weapon and with its generator barely brought under control by the tech-priests, the Imperator was forced to step back from the frontline. Many other God-Machines of the Legio Mortis had laid down their lives, and the slaughter on the ground was still ongoing as the skitarii fought against the mutated hordes of Eidolon.

Meanwhile, across the entire continent, assets of the Hydra that had been activated by the Damocles Protocol struggled to evacuate as many of the survivors as possible, leading them away from the collapsed sections of the hives and toward makeshift shelters where Alpha Legionaires had linked up with local forces. The defeat of the Tyrant and banishment of Leonatos had sent ripples through the aether that had crippled many Slaaneshi daemons, but the old horrors unleashed by the Tear of Nightmares were unaffected and still hunted for living flesh and souls.

Though the leader of one of its sides had been slain and the other removed from the field, the Titanomachy would rage for some time yet, tying up both the Legio Mortis and the Ordo Sinister far from their assigned position in the Palace's defense.

AN : And here we are, back in business. Thanks to Jaenera Targaryen for beta-reading this.

The God-Machines walk, Morgana's activities after escaping the Cells are revealed, and a clue as to the over-arching scheme of the Angel War is unveiled.

The idea of the Transsyberian Line was when this chapter clicked together for me. How do Titans even fight in hive-cities ? Answer : they don't. By the time the Titans come to blow, there isn't an hive left for them to fight over. But on Terra, where the hive-cities go so deep, and cover the entire planet ? Well, what happened to the Eidolon Chaos Titans was pretty much inevitable, I think. The Transsyberian Line gave me a way to have the fight on somewhat solid ground. Also, it let me write really big trains, and everyone likes really big trains.

In other news, the plan for the Angel War has changed slightly. There won't be an "Other Battlefields" section : we will go straight to [ACCESS DENIED].

Disclaimer : Magnus' musings on the nature of Daemon Princes at the start of this chapter are his own opinion, and in no way reflect those of the author. He is just, after all, the Crimson King, Lord of Prospero, mightiest psyker of the Emperor's Sons, who studied the Empyrean at His side. What does he know that the Slaves to Darkness pursuing immortality through the Path to Glory don't ?

The next chapter of Warband of the Forsaken Sons should be up next. Normally, the next part of the Angel War shouldn't take quite as long as this one.

As always, please tell me what you thought of this chapter and what you think is going to happen next. Also, if anyone can think of what to do with Alexey Takarov, I would be grateful for your suggestions. By the end of this chapter, he is very much still alive, but I have absolutely no idea what to do with him.

The last time something like this happened, Marius Gage turned out to be Aeonid Thiel in disguise. Who knows what will happen this time ?

Zahariel out.

Next : The Battle of Olympus Mons