Extinction 11-2
Death Korps
By the twenty-fifth hour of the Laphis Campaign, approximately seventy percent of West Ravenna was under the control of the heretic horde.
The bloodbath created by those twenty-five hours of campaign was difficult to understate.
Between ninety and ninety-five percent of all infrastructure was damaged to some degree. The energy photon-lines had long been destroyed. There was no running water anymore, no electricity, and the majority of the food stores were looted. The water cisterns were poisoned as soon as the Great Enemy found them, and the river was running red with blood. Fires were burning by the hundreds, uncontrollable as the firefighting teams had been among the first targets of the monsters.
The casualties were literally uncountable. With the bridges on the Polenta River destroyed, there had been no proper evacuation. It would be only when the 'Scorpion transports' began to ferry in the troops of the Imperial Guard that some river evacuation of civilians would be conducted.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians had died at the very least, with no doubt tens of thousands more being buried under the debris.
The Ultramar Auxilia had thrown eight complete divisions into the city. Said military formations, some of them engaged for less than seven hours, were effectively wiped out by the time Imperial reinforcements arrived.
The fighting was ferocious, extraordinarily so. Against Traitor Marines and the vilest things born of heresy they had brought with them, all pre-war definitions of 'attrition' had been rendered irrelevant.
The defenders of Ravenna fought for everything. Hours ago, each 'stronghold' could have been a bakery, or a market alley. Sometimes several regiments were lost just to lead a counterattack managing – barely – to gain fifty metres of ground in two hours, and the position would be lost again in ten minutes when the heretics threw their most dangerous weapons into the grind.
The butchery was appalling by any standard ever held by an Imperial force. But through their sacrifice, the Ultramar Auxilia had bought enough time for the 10th Korps to land and begin reinforcing Eastern Ravenna. The 12th Artillery Army was pushing forwards its Basilisk and Sphinx batteries to duel the blasphemous heretek creations. And the valiant Angels of Death of the White Thunderbolts and the Angels Vermillion were adding their strength to the Ultramarines' 8th Company.
In the middle of this devastation, there were only the dead and those who resisted in the name of the God-Emperor.
The citizens of Ravenna had been taken completely by surprise by the opening of hostilities. The Paradise World had been absolutely unprepared for any kind of invasion, never mind this one. While most of the renowned families had several ancestors who had fought and won prestigious battles, the last heroes to have won honours in the battlefield were either venerable elders surviving by virtue of extremely effective rejuvenation treatments, or long dead and buried.
The Laphisers, be they from Ravenna or other settlements of the planet, were now confronted with the horrors their predecessors had fought to gain the right of living on a Paradise World.
Be they scribes, artists, retired soldiers, or city officials, all of them were told to remember the meaning of the vows their lineage had sworn in front of the Primarch's Shrine.
Running away ,if you could still hold a weapon was inexcusable. Of course, finding a usable weapon could be difficult if there were no Auxilia forces nearby. But the ingenuity of the men and women finding their courage at long last could not be underestimated. There were armouries of old trophy weapons and relics maintained by old and new families. There were museums, some presenting vehicles and blades put under stasis fields when the Imperium was young.
And as thousands of guardsmen crossed the river to take the fight to the heretics, the Laphisers fought back for the God-Emperor, for their city, and for their souls.
And many legends and heroes would rise in the hours to come.
From Hell Cauldron: the Battle for Ravenna, by Julia Scribonius, Ultramar Rose Edition, 315M41.
"Courage isn't the strength to go on – it is going on when you don't have strength," Napoléon Bonaparte, M2.
"There never comes a time when logistics are of no importance." Primarch Roboute Guilliman, words attributed to him after the Siege of Terra, M31.
"Pharsalus must not fall." Lady General Taylor Hebert to her commanders, Cataclysm of Macragge, M35.
"You will be my Death Korps, the shield which stands between the innocent and the darkness." Quote attributed to Saint Celestine, M35.
Laphis Theatre
40 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Surviving Word Bearers: 1666
Other Surviving Traitor Astartes: 699
Surviving order of battle of the Lost and the Damned: approximately 1 million
Surviving Chaos Knights: 65
Surviving Chaos Spawns: 28
Surviving Ultramarines and Loyalist Space Marines: 347
Surviving Ultramar Auxilia: approximately 40,000
Surviving Imperial guardsmen: approximately 14,260,000
Surviving Loyalist Knights: 160
Laphis
Ravenna – West of the Polenta River
40 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Thought for the day: A weapon cannot substitute for zeal.
Singulare Publius Donatus
Publius Donatus' job as a Singulare – which, on any non-Macragge world, would be called 'senior bodyguard' – was usually well-paid and boring.
Yes, the young and foolish noble he was supposed to protect, Narcissus Hortensius, was a moron who only cared about throwing expensive parties, buying the most ridiculous clothes which could be produced on or imported to Ravenna, and trying hard to become a painter despite having zero talent for it.
But his parents paid well, and so Publius had stayed in the House of Hortensius' service. When you were paid ten times what an average Singulare could earn legally, you didn't hesitate. Basic accounting had told him that in five years, he would be able to retire and live the good life. Not bad work, given how low the crime rates were on Laphis at any given time and the modest popularity of the Hortensius name.
His Singulare duties had been an honest job, and one which made sure he didn't have to play soldier in the Ultramar Auxilia or anywhere else.
This had been true a day ago. It might as well have been a century ago.
"HA! HA! DID YOU SEE THAT?"
Publius gritted his teeth and dragged his suicidal charge back behind the protection of a damaged building, as lasers impacted on the crumbling pile of sandbags where Narcissus had been taunting the enemy seconds ago.
"For the love of the Golden Throne!" He hissed. "Do you have a death wish?"
"My anti-krag missile got at least five of them! Five!"
"No, you got one," Publius grimly corrected. By itself, it was not that unusual: all the old stories of the veterans he sometimes shared drinks with had always repeated that in war, even under the best circumstances, your kill-count was never accurate. And with the fires, the smoke, the dust, and everything including electric sparks and other devastation, it was complete hell here.
But Narcissus Hortensius did not have that problem; it was simply that this young idiot wanted to overinflate his 'heretic kill-tally', and those were his words.
"And that was the last anti-krag missile you had. What in the name of all the armouries of Ultramar possessed you to fire it when the enemy is so far away?"
"I thought I saw something big," the petulant blonde-haired imbecile replied.
"You wasted priceless ammunition. Give me that archeotech rifle you have."
"There's no point. It was gene-coded to me by a true Tech-Priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus!" Narcissus crooned like there was something to be proud of when a lot of people besides himself had done all the work. "And it's a true relic of the Hortensius line! According to the legend, our ancestor received it from the hands of a Tetrarch!"
"Let's get out of here," Publius Donatus replied, his tone making clear it wasn't a suggestion for his charge. Two new explosive shells detonated in the street, and unfortunately, there were no reinforcements coming in their direction.
He wasn't going to rely on this so-called 'relic rifle'. First off, the relic had so many grams of precious metals used in its manufacturing that the odds of it being anything else but a parade weapon were downright insignificant. And honestly, even if this rifle could be considered a reliable weapon of war, it still was a single infantry weapon.
Publius fired five times with the lasgun he had taken from a dead Auxilia soldier. The Singulare grimaced at the sheer size of the laser volley which answered.
How many heretics had he delayed on his own for more than thirty minutes? It was-
"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!"
Something enormous came out of the smoke.
Publius froze at the vision of nightmare.
It was an enormous colossus of red and brazen heresy, and it was charging towards them!
Things that massive couldn't be that fast!
No one could be that-
Narcissus Hortensius fired by his side.
It was like a sort of silvery filament was expelled from the gold-and-blue gun barrel.
The monster laughed-
The anomalous ammunition went through the heretical armour like it didn't exist at all.
One second, the monster was running towards them, the next, its chest had an enormous hole, big enough to plunge your arm through...and you could see the rest of the street out of.
The monster slowed down, meaning its pace of advance was only a rapid run by human standards.
It stopped. It stared at the fatal wound like it couldn't believe it was real.
Enormous close-combat claws shone with malevolence.
"YOU WILL SUFFER FOR-"
The second shot transformed the monster's head into a soup of blood and bones.
"Ha! Ha! The Tetrarch's gift strikes true once more!"
Narcissus Hortensius jumped in joy...and Publius seized him before he could do something even more idiotic.
"What are you...I killed it! I killed a Traitor Marine!"
"He wasn't alone, unless you forgot all his friends!" Publius barked, already trying to push the brain-dead blue-blood towards other buildings which would offer more protection.
And as he did so, he saw hundreds of heretics stop hiding. Mercifully there was no other big red monster among them. But there were a lot more than a lasgun and a relic rifle could handle.
"VENGEANCE! DEATH TO THE SLAVES OF THE EMPEROR!"
There was only one command Singulare Publius Donatus could give.
"RUN!"
Preacher Lucan Lepidus
Lucan Lepidus had not been a good Preacher.
This he had known for a long time. Chapel-Master Bones had been very insistent telling him that day after day for the better part of...was it two decades? Yes, it had to be. The old man had died six months ago...and Lucan had only realised today how much he missed his superior.
Suddenly, all the sermons, all the recounting of Wars of Faith fought by the Faithful against the forces of Darkness were all too terrifyingly real.
What had Lucan done for thirty years as a Preacher, ever since his ordination as a Priest of His Most Holy Majesty?
The answer was alas only too obvious.
Nothing. He had done nothing.
It was after all simpler to go drink a few glasses of his favourite liquors after the church was officially closed for the night.
It was way better to compliment some widows of the Jeweller's Districts, and have a few pleasurable affairs he didn't always manage to keep a secret from the other Preachers of Ravenna.
His faith, with the benefit of hindsight, had not so much wavered as it had been completely ignored when it stood between him and his favourite activities.
Lucan had believed in the God-Emperor, but in the last few decades, he had succumbed to the sins of indolence and sloth.
After all, everyone knew the Ultramarines were protecting the Realm of Ultramar above all else, right? Why would he be worried, when the vigilant Angels of Death were bastions of holy ceramite punishing every foe who dared come this way?
This was an error in judgement. No, it was worse. It was a cardinal mistake of faith.
Those long years had been a trial, and Lucan had failed it abysmally.
This he recognised with the shame it deserved...but it was far too late. Explosions were everywhere. Ravenna was burning around his church. The screams of the dying were repeated like the most odious litany, over and over, by thousands of throats.
The city he loved, the city he had loved more than the God-Emperor Himself, was shattered, a monument of ruin and trampled hubris much like his pride and certainties had been.
Lucan cried as his church's last columns broke and completed the destruction the heretical artillery had begun. He cried, but didn't stop walking out. In his hands was the Lectitio Divinitatus, the holy book he had been sworn to protect at all costs when he was ordained Preacher. This was the only thing he had been able to save. It was the only thing he could still take pride in.
"RETREAT! RETREAT! There are too many of them!"
The Preacher stared in incomprehension, as suddenly the abandoned square saw over twenty soldiers of the Ultramar Auxilia running vaguely in his direction.
"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!
"THEY FLED IN THAT DIRECTION! DON'T LET THEM FLEE! WE WILL DRINK FROM THEIR SKULLS!"
From the western street he had walked down thousands of times, the Lost and the Damned came. They were exactly like his old mentor had described them. They carried weapons of damnation, and their banners were made of human skin. Their skins were branded with the marks of Evil, and they were evil. Many had taken heads and limbs as trophies, and most were clearly recognisable as parts of Ultramar Auxilia corpses.
"BURN THEIR TEMPLES! DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!"
Lucan Lepidus heard the loathsome battlecry, and suddenly felt a great rage warm his heart.
His church had not been beautiful or opulent. He had complained endlessly about not being granted a better place to preach in.
But it had been his church.
And even if these heretics were not the ones who had demolished it personally, those damned souls were their allies and fellow Slaves of Ruin.
"By the God-Emperor, you are going to pay for that!"
"RETREAT! We will flee by the-"
Lucan punched the coward instinctively. Without thinking, he grabbed the dusty chainsword, and activated it like Bones had done a few times in front of him.
"THERE WILL BE NO RETREAT! THERE WILL BE NO SURRENDER OF HOLY GROUND TO THE GREAT ENEMY!"
"Hey! This was our Lieutenant and you punched-"
Lucan Lepidus punched the second man before realising what he had done.
Then of course his rage chose this moment to abate. He had about thirty Auxiliary soldiers around him, staring at him like he suddenly had donned a Cardinal's hat.
They were as lost as him.
Half of them must be barely adults, maybe somewhere between eighteen and twenty. They were just boys who until yesterday had believed they were playing soldiers.
Lucan hesitated for a heartbeat.
But the hesitation was discarded as the heretics continued their advance, mocking them, hurling insults and heresy in its foulest form.
"Like the Khan during the Great Siege," the Preacher felt the old sermon flow from his lips, "let us pray to the God-Emperor a last time! We are the Heralds of Hope! We are the Soldiers of the Last Dawn! We do not succumb to Despair! We fight in His Holy Name, and WE SHALL KNOW NO FEAR! DEATH TO THE HERETICS!"
"DEATH TO THE HERETICS!"
"DEATH!"
"DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!"
"DEUS EX IMPERATOR! WITH ME!"
The Preacher charged the enemy, and knew he had at last found his redemption.
Maia Numerius
Once again, Celestine and she were back on the banks of the Polenta River.
The explosions had not ceased. The surface of the water could not be less reassuring: the current was washing away corpses, wrecks of vehicles, aircars, and boats; and much of the metallic debris was somehow still on fire.
And of course there were the 'transports'.
When the survivors of the Auxilia had brought them to this gathering point, Maia had imagined someone had led ships upriver. The tourist and pilgrim ships – when they weren't one and the same – were gone, but Ravenna had a large fishing fleet in its harbours south of the capital.
Instead they were greeted by the sight of giant, armoured, very threatening scorpions.
And seeing how many guardsmen of the Imperial Guard were 'disembarking' from them once the river was crossed, there had been little doubt said insects were the 'chosen method' to get to safety.
Maia wished she was having a bad dream. Everything was so...so...so impossible.
At some point, everything was going to return to normal.
Right?
"I want the sub-contractors of the Departmento Munitorum to be fired! Fired!" A giant golden spider exclaimed about twenty metres on their left while surrounded by a large force of red-armoured women. "Do they really believe logistical support means giving us rations seven years past expiration date and ammunition which doesn't ignite half of the time? This is scandalous!"
Great, now she was having hallucinations...a spider was talking. And in intelligible, Low Gothic. Talk about a nightmare...
"We are not in your chain of command, arachnid!" a blue-red uniformed officer of the Munitorum attached to the Ultramar Auxilia replied angrily. "I don't care about the falsified 'truths' you've cooked up to convince the Imperial Saint, the Departmento Munitorum do not and will not recognise any non-human creature. This is my area of responsibility, and if this Saint accepts non-humans under her command, then she is not a Saint at all! I am-"
The 'arm' of the arachnid missed the throat of the official so nearly that the young mother at first believed it had tried to decapitate him. But the next words growled by the tank-sized insect indicated it had not been its intention.
"You. Will. Not. Insult. The. Webmistress. In. My. Presence. Is that clear?"
"Yes!" The queue advanced, as more and more soldiers debarked and more scorpions went back across the Polenta with many women and children. And as she stepped forwards, Maia saw the Munitorum official had...had suffered some indignity, by virtue of not controlling certain vital functions of his body when in a stressful situation. "But-"
"Commissar!" The golden spider shouted. Two seconds later, as if summoned by the God-Emperor Himself, one of the dark-clad representatives of the Commissariat appeared in dark power armour. "I found another one, Commissar! He is guilty of incompetence in simple logistical matters, refusal to take a perfectly functional lasgun and fight, and of course the gravest of all: doubting the holiness of the Webmistress."
"Commissar! You are not going to let this dangerous insect-"
"Your answer," the words were so cold Maia made sure Celestine wasn't looking directly at the scene and placed her hands upon her daughter's ears, "will be: thank you Commissar, for this glorious chance to join the 3rd Penal Legion."
"You are making a terrible mistake!"
"No, you have!" By some action which was difficult to understand, an enormous roll of vellum flashed in between the 'arms' of the spider. "According to my reports, the armouries of Ravenna City currently under Imperial control should have contained two hundred and fifty-six tons of ammunition more than they did. In addition to this deplorable state of affairs, an awful percentage of lasguns, mortars, and tanks were lacking the required spare parts to be truly operational! Why would you want to serve the Webmistress like that is beyond me..."
"My staff and I determined this was the best use of the funds-"
"Commissar! You heard him! Send his staff to the Penal Legion too!"
Maia would have continued to watch the exchange forever...if more explosions didn't create gigantic columns of water not far from the 'landing point' and more scorpions hadn't arrived to lead them to the eastern shore.
"Why is the spider so big?" Celestine asked as they were told to tighten their belt by a scar-faced veteran in bog-green armour.
"Err...she ate a lot of delicious soup, my treasure. Nothing to worry about."
"Oh...but why is no one as tall as she is? And where is the Saint? I want to see a Saint!"
The river crossing was a torture, and not just for the obvious reasons...
High Orbit of Macragge
Orbital Grid Fortified Command Nexus B-1
41 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Ultramar Auxilia Captain Ramius Turpilinus
Recruit Ramius Turpilinus had often wondered why the Ultramarines had felt the need to design each Command Nexus of their Orbital Grid to be protected a by a series of ten reinforced gates. It had always felt...excessive and impractical, especially compared to the rest of the standards the sons of Guilliman expected every Ultramar recruit to uphold once they swore their vows. Not to mention that if the gates were metres-thick and made from the toughest alloys known to the Imperium, the walls were thicker still.
And to remind any doubters, they were on an orbital station. Forging everything and then moving it into orbit before assembling it all must have been incredibly difficult, and the curses of the workers had likely been the stuff of legend.
Captain Ramius Turpilinus now perfectly understood the Ultramarines' motives...and regretted there were only ten gates, since the horrors unleashed by the heretics had already broken three of them.
"By all the statues bearing an Omega emblem," the Auxilia officer removed his helmet and desperately tried to calm his poor heart. "How many of their damned Chaos Spawns do they have?"
"I think the answer is 'too many'...Sir."
"Don't call me that, it makes me feel respectable," Ramius grimaced. "Our supply of Plasma Grenades?"
"Down to ten percent," the younger officer confirmed his fears. "We will likely have nothing left after another assault."
Something incredibly big shook the gate which had been decorated with the heraldry of Ultramar. The next second, there was a horrible shriek, and a blast of red sorcery struck the metres-thick defence.
It was not reassuring at all to see a small fissure appear on it.
"All right. If they use the same sorcery as last time, we have about fifty minutes to prepare. Tell the support staff to bring us everything they can to slow down the big bastards. They managed to requisition some landmines three hours ago, surely they can find something else which will be a nasty surprise for even Chaos Spawns?"
"That would certainly be a second miracle, after the first..."
The two men of the Ultramar Auxilia exchanged a forced laugh, before returning to grim expressions.
But they remained silent, to spare the men's morale if nothing else.
The Enemy was willing to burn too many Chaos Spawns to pulverise defences whose first layer had never fallen before today.
They were on the defensive...and they were losing.
If only there were Ultramarines fighting by their side...but there was a single Astartes who had managed to reach them before the battle began, and this Space Marine was currently unconscious, likely forever. It had taken more than twenty Chaos Spawns to put him down during the second gate's engagement, but the heretics had more Chaos Spawns than twenty to throw into the melee.
The preparations continued. No landmines were found anywhere, but a particularly vindictive Tech-Priest announced he had found a way to move two old lascannon-armed turrets so a proper killing ground could be made. In addition, several Melta weapons were handed to his veterans. The odds were getting better...unless they saw the vid of what was hammering the other door, and they realised the Traitors had brought more than forty Chaos Spawns, with three Sorcerers patiently waiting behind for their advance guard to wipe them out.
The fourth gate began to break. The fissures grew wider and wider, and something which looked like fire but definitely wasn't came through the interstices. The hammering was accompanied by roars which couldn't be human.
"Filthy beasts..." the voice of an Astartes reached his ears, and Ramius turned, his heart beating with hope...only for it to be cruelly dashed.
The Space Marine who had appeared had returned courtesy of the metallic stretcher on which he was lying being dragged along by a Mechanicus bike. The son of Guilliman was conscious, that much was true, and it was an improvement of sorts...until you saw the three big holes the claws and the fangs of the Spawns had made in the blue power armour. And of course, that wasn't even mentioning the fact he had lost his left leg entirely.
Given how much blood had leaked out of his body, the Captain of the Ultramar Auxilia was extremely impressed that the Ultramarine was still alive. The God-Emperor built his Angels of Death tough, he had always known, but this resilience was...well, it was something else.
"Lord," Ramius saluted, rising his arm in salute all the while keeping an eye on the rapidly fissuring Gate. "I assure you-"
"What are you doing here?" the Space Marine interrupted him. "You should already be fortifying the next Gate-"
A series of violent coughs forced him to stop for several seconds. Yes, those wounds were the real deal, in case he had had the slightest doubt about it.
"You must conduct a defence in depth." The Ultramarine commanded in a softer voice after regaining enough strength to speak. "Without any Astartes to conduct a counter-strike, you must let the automated weapons inflict as much damage as they can, and trade space for time."
"But Lord," Ramius protested. "If they break through two more Gates, they will be able to manually shut down many important energy conduits of the Orbital Grid!"
"And if you all die in two engagements, who will protect the other Gates?" the Ultramarine had not donned his helmet for now, and as such they could see that his pale face was truly corpse-like, which didn't reassure anyone present. "I wish it wasn't so, but there is no other choice."
"Perhaps there is one."
The thirty-five year old man blinked and felt his eyes vacillate as golden light bloomed, and an angel appeared.
She was magnificent.
Ramius saw many of his men fall in tears and bend the knee instinctively. A ruby burned around her throat, and her golden armour was as if it had been blessed by the God-Emperor Himself.
"You are...Weaver?"
"This is one of the names I'm using at the moment." The Gate shook and debris began to fall. Big debris. "We don't have much time."
"Can't you...kill them all?" the Ultramarine asked weakly. "Or heal me for long enough to deal with them?"
"I wish I could," the female Angel admitted, "but the effort to kill more than one Sorcerer would weaken me for too long. As for healing you...I am the Angel of Sacrifice, Battle-Brother Germanicus. I am not the Angel of Healing. There will be a price to pay."
"If it allows me to stand one last time and kill the sons of Lorgar, I will pay it."
"Do not give your agreement too quickly, son of Guilliman. I am not speaking about a favour to be repaid when this battle is over. I am speaking of service beyond death. Duty ends with one's death; if you accept, you will be denied this."
There was no hesitation, just an ugly grimace of ferocity on the Astartes' face.
"I am a son of Guilliman. And I accept."
"Then as you Sacrifice, I give you ten minutes." The golden Angel's voice rose as the golden light became more powerful. "Give them hell."
Ramius would remember what happened next for the rest of his life.
A large part of the Nexus Command's fourth gate exploded.
But before smoke had cleared a golden halo formed around the wounded Ultramarine's body. An immaterial golden leg burst into existence, replacing the one which had been torn apart and devoured by the Spawns. The enormous holes, hastily patched up by Medics and Tech-Priests, burned in golden flames.
The Ultramarine – Battle-Brother Germanicus, he remembered – stood up, right as the horde of Chaos Spawns charged.
Seizing his antique Relic Gladius, the loyal son of Guilliman charged to meet them.
It was a battle like the ones which could only exist in the tales of legend. The Auxilia survivors knew how dangerous, fast, and unpredictable the Spawns were. They had paid an enormous price in blood and tears to learn it.
But here...here the Ultramarine demolished them. He was slaughtering them.
Each blow of his blade was a strike of pure golden fire which saw at least one Chaos Spawn go down and not rise up again.
The heretics behind the abominations tried to kill Germanicus from range. But somehow, their sorcery was always blocked by the Angel's blessing.
And when the number of Spawns dropped into the single digits, it was their time to die too.
At last it ended.
The last Sorcerer fled like the God-Emperor Himself was after him, and the last Chaos Spawn took three blows which saw it collapse into a puddle of foul-smelling black slime.
The Ultramarine battle-brother went still.
Ramius ran in pursuit and suddenly noticed how...there were traces of red on the blue armour. There was gold and black too. Those were colours he was rather sure were not part of the Primarch's heraldry and-
"I see," the son of Guilliman seemed...happy? "It seems...Sacrifice...is a heavy duty. I...do not...envy your burden, Weaver. But...we can help you...beyond the Veil. No Legion of the Damned...a Legion of Sacrifice...we march...for Terra."
There was a golden flash, and the Captain thought he saw something both angelic and far too terrible...but it was his imagination. It had to be his imagination.
The body of Battle-Brother Germanicus for a second was a statue of golden dust, and then it disappeared.
"Miracle..."
Ramius would never know who had uttered the word first, but it soon spread across the defences and would soon galvanise all the loyal souls who fought to protect Macragge from the horrors of the Archenemy.
"MIRACLE!"
"BLESSED BE THE ANGEL!"
"FOR THE GOD-EMPEROR!"
Carrion-class Heavy Battleship Vox Dominus
42 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Dark Apostle Paristur
They had agreed to not hold a formal meeting of the Dark Council until the Orbital Grid of Macragge was fully disabled.
The fact they did so anyway told Paristur how badly things were going. When even the simple steps of a plan were...not proceeding according to the plan, it was really a sign this act of desperation was not going in the direction they wished. And none of their Legionnaires had yet set a foot on the Ultramarines' homeworld.
"Well," Vorrjuk Kraal began in a tone which fooled no one, "it looks like we aren't going to be taking over the Orbital Grid and turn it against our enemies in the end."
"This is Weaver's fault!" Paristur, like several of the Dark Apostles present, flinched at the sheer level of hatred in Kor Phaeron's voice. "That False Saint's soul shall be offered to the Gods and-"
"Please," Mothac gurgled, the signs of his new allegiance incredibly obvious. Over a third of his armour's red had turned into a putrid green, and his Crozius was looking more and more like a scythe the longer this reunion continued. "Weaver struck against us in a way we couldn't retaliate against. What makes you think you have the power to do what you promise, Black Cardinal?"
The Lord of Torment taunted joyously, as if their tactical and strategic inferiority amused him.
And maybe it did. It was not exactly a secret that once sworn to their God, the followers of Nurgle developed a...disturbing sense of humour.
"Mothac has a point," Paristur decided they had lost enough time with recriminations. "If we could strike Weaver directly, we would have done it before. Throwing Sota-Nul's ships against her was our best chance to inflict catastrophic damage, and it didn't work. It delayed her, but I won't pretend we hurt her seriously. She is coming now, and soon her fleet is going to be able to massacre us. Using some powers the False Emperor gave her, our enemy is capable of inspiring some Ultramarines to die like World Eater berserkers."
"Yes." Mothac spluttered in approval, pus and worse things coming out of his mouth. "Three times she intervened. Three times we lost countless Chaos Spawns and our assault forces were wiped out. It will take hours to send other forces into the Orbital Grid's command stations, and while we do, the slaves of the False Emperor will fortify their positions, having analysed our pattern of attack."
All the while a massive Battlefleet including over fifty Battleships and two Gloriana flagships was accelerating to kill them all.
"I agree." The veteran Dark Apostle grimaced internally. This meant only one course of action was left, as insane as it was. "Then we have no choice left. We must launch the full invasion immediately."
"Are you mad?" Ekodas exploded, all restraint gone. "We may have disabled about a fifth of their Orbital Grid and the damage is total over the ground theatres we wanted to deploy, but the planetary anti-air grids of the Ultramarines are intact! If we launch an orbital assault, we will-"
"We will charge straight into their teeth, yes," Eliphas interrupted his far more senior Council member. "Paristur is right. We are out of time. If we remain here, Weaver is going to destroy us. Unless someone thinks we can fight her with what we have left, unable to use most of the power of the Gods, and in the middle of a heavily damaged Orbital Grid we don't control?"
"How do you intend to proceed, then?" Jarulek asked.
Paristur shrugged.
"We intended to launch a two-pronged invasion of Macragge. I see no reason to change that. Half of our forces move against Illyrium. We planted extremely fertile seeds there, and any force which lands there is going to have a few hours to illuminate cultists and other slaves before any Ultramarine counterattack."
"I will take responsibility of this front," Kor Phaeron predictably hurried to 'volunteer'. "I will take Jarulek and Kraal with me. We will relieve you of the Knights and the majority of the slave elements."
"Don't forget," Mothac gloated, or at least Paristur thought it was gloating, "to take our failed gene-sire with you. He may be useful before the end..."
No one dared voice their discontent. In the end, the failures were so plentiful that there was enough blame for ten thousand scapegoats. It was far more convenient to blame Lorgar, especially when the Primarch wasn't there to defend himself.
"Accepted," Paristur declared. "I am going to take charge of the Pharsalus theatre. I'm taking the Vulturum Titans with me, half of our Legionnaires, and my commanders will be Eliphas and Ekodas-"
"No." The Grand Apostle refused immediately. "You may be willing to plunge head-first into another disaster, but I am not! I am staying aboard my flagship, and I will fight with the Grand Armada!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Ekodas," Jarulek began, "your Battleship has taken heavy damage, and even if we give you the time to transfer your staff aboard the Trisagion, our last Abyss Super-Battleship is not going to hold for long against the tide of the False Emperor's Battleships. Our best defence right now is to be so close on the ground to the major Ultramar forces that they won't dare strike at us from orbit. Our fleet is in no shape to-"
"I am staying. I won't run. I will fight them like a warrior should. Praise Khorne."
The Shadow of the colossal xenos had added an entire layer of darkness between them and the true Veil, but despite this, Paristur and every Dark Apostle present felt all too clearly the God's name echo through the chamber.
Damn it. First Mothac swearing himself to Nurgle...and now Ekodas pledging himself to the Blood God?
It was truly insane days they were enduring...
"As you wish," Paristur said as it was evident the Grand Apostle was not going to change his mind. "Mothac will go with me, then. The orbital assault begins in ten minutes. Send every transport we have to land on Macragge. And since we don't have the time for a second wave, we're going along too."
Battleship Enterprise
Lady General Taylor Hebert
Germanicus. Leptis. Metunus.
Three names, three histories, three Space Marines.
Three dead Space Marines, who had sacrificed everything.
There were some moments when Taylor wished she had not accepted the power of Sacrifice into herself.
It was powerful. It was useful. It had allowed her to save countless lives, and she wasn't just speaking about today.
It was a terrifying power, and the worst part was that it was seductive.
It would have been so easy to send the power she had inherited from the Sanguinor to thousands of men of Macragge.
Many were ready to die for their homes, their families, their friends to be safe.
The thought was there, but she wasn't going to Sacrifice them like that.
These men deserved better. And their souls...the loyal souls deserved to go to a peaceful Afterlife.
Despite the Shadow in the Warp created by the Tyranids, the Lady General of the Imperial Guard could still feel the three first members of Sacrifice now fighting beyond reality.
Taylor had told them the truth. They were imbued with the power of Sacrifice for several minutes – ten to be exact – but the price in exchange was everything.
Obviously, the Space Marines died. If you weren't prepared to handle that power, it burned you from the inside. And then...then your duty didn't end with your death. Much like the Black Templars sworn to continue their Eternal Crusade, Germanicus, Leptis, and Metunus would continue waging the war against the Ruinous Powers until the end of the Imperium or a true victory was won against Chaos.
This was the pact of Sacrifice.
The insect-mistress knew it was necessary. Yes, the Battle-Groups of Operation Stalingrad could deal with the Word Bearers' damaged squadrons, even if they were supported by an orbital Grid. But it would cost her more ships, more men, and it would be another delay, allowing the heretics to inflict more corruption and poisoned wounds.
Her intervention meant the Orbital Grid held, and would continue to hold, reaping an ever-rising toll of Traitor Marines.
Against this success, the loss of three Space Marines seemed insignificant...but it wasn't. And Taylor Hebert could only hope it would never be something she would discard mentally during a battle.
"The heretics are launching what appears to be their entire complement of Drop Pods and orbital transports, my Lady," Wolfgang Bach reported.
"The best auspexes of the fleet," Archmagos Sagami added two seconds later, "report two distinct concentrations, each including heretekal Dreadclaws, Kharybdis Assault Claws, Stormbirds, Thunderhawks, and Heldrakes."
That was not good news. Save the Heldrakes – which the Dragon Armours would have to counter – all of those forms of attack craft were specifically designed to transport Traitor Astartes. And there was an enormous number of them.
"It might be a bluff," Wolfgang suggested quietly, but in a voice which told her he believed none of it. "They might try to push us to boarding assaults while keeping their elite forces aboard their flagships."
"If so, this bluff would be countered very easily," the golden-winged parahuman smiled coldly, "I have no intention to board those ships. Most of them are Infernus Traitor designs; those heretic death-traps will be thrown into the nearest star when we have finished battering them into impotence."
Taylor shook her head.
"But no, I don't think this is a bluff at all. Look at the big things they're sending right on the tails of the Thunderhawks. Those are very big transports..."
"Magi of the Eye of Mars estimate with seventy-nine percent certainty that those corrupted blasphemies are Olympus-class Titan Landers, Chosen of the Omnissiah," Archmagos Sagami informed her.
"They're committing their Titans before having secured a landing zone?" Gavreel was really surprised, and Taylor could hardly blame him; it flew against...well, the entirety of any sane military doctrine. Titans were priceless assets. Committing them so early when the anti-air fortresses of the Ultramarines could still shoot them down...
"Apparently, they are." Fortunately, none of the damage Sota-Nul had inflicted hours ago had been done to the loyal Legios of the Adeptus Titanicus. "Inform Princeps Maximus Cyrus I place him in command of the Titan Maniples we are going to deploy on Macragge. Dragon, you will provide him aerial support."
"Yes, Taylor," the female Tinker replied from the bridge of the Falchion. "Though I will point out we have to remove the obstacle of the Word Bearers' fleet before landing anything..."
"Oh, I didn't forget," the Angel of Sacrifice 'reassured' her Minister of Industry, "Lord Admiral Neidhart Müller?"
"The battle-plan is ready, your Celestial Highness."
"Good. The extermination of the Seventeenth Traitor Legion is long overdue..."
To say the Krieg guardsmen had not been greeted with delirious jubilation when they arrived in the Nyx Sector was the understatement of the millennium.
Lady Weaver and her Generals had not been impressed, and the first thing to be replaced had been the flag officers. The equipment had followed in short order. Many Nyxian or Catachan officers had discovered – with no small astonishment – that the Kriegers had produced astronomical quantities of the Hamburg M33 lasgun, widely considered by all knowledgeable military analysts to be an obsolete piece of junk several centuries ago. Helmets, communication equipment, and food rations had been among the hundreds of items which were eventually replaced after several years of arduous training. Krieg produced quality equipment, but too often those goods went on to arm far more prestigious regiments.
Yet, after countless war games, dismissals of inexperienced officers, and six major doctrinal and order of battle reforms, there was one vehicle which had escaped the purges.
The name sounded incredibly vulgar in Low Gothic: Sturmgeschütz.
In appearance, it was even worse; the meagre consolation was that the Kriegers had discarded the purple and yellow mustard decorations as soon as they were ordered to.
But while non-Kriegers had a lot of difficulties speaking its name without major pronunciation mistakes – to the point many Nyxian men simply called it the 'Frog' – the Sturmgeschütz was acknowledged as a perfect Tank Hunter in an urban environment. Its slow speed was not as much of a drawback there as in open terrain, and its low profile made it an extremely difficult target for enemy armour-destroyer formations. Moreover, unlike a lot of other vehicles built by the Krieg manufactorums, the Sturmgeschütz was extremely cheap to produce.
It was not the Destroyer Tank Hunter and its Laser Destroyer main weapon. The Krieger Sturmgeschütz, in its first iteration as it was deployed in the Battle of Ravenna, had less armour and effective range. But under its new black-grey camouflage colours, the companies of Sturmgeschütz were thrown into the inferno with well-trained crews and extremely motivated scouts ready to risk everything so that the heretics could be baited into charging straight into an ambush.
At close-quarters, the long, 95mm-circumfence barrel of the Sturmgeschütz was a fearsome weapon even the super-heavy tanks of the Archenemy had to take very seriously.
And as the damned souls crawling before the Vile One would learn to their sorrow, the Adjutant-Spiders had found plenty of innovative ways to bring them across the river...
From Hell Cauldron: the Battle for Ravenna, by Julia Scribonius, Ultramar Rose Edition, 315M41.
Before the Cataclysm of Macragge, Laphis had ten Cathedrals, and two of them were within the city boundaries of Ravenna, its capital.
Contrary to what its name might suggest, the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor was definitely the least prestigious.
Millions of pilgrims showed surprise when they were first informed about this truth, though in hindsight, there should have been none.
Inaugurated in the last years of M31, the Laphiser Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor was truly ancient by any Imperial standard.
But those millennia of existence had proved themselves a drawback time and time again. First, when it had been built, the architects paid by the Ecclesiarchy authorities had always kept in mind that their presence was tolerated at best. The then-Regent of Ultramar had not been shy voicing his displeasure, and as such the Pontifex overseeing the project had been more concerned with building something that even the Ultramarines would find hard to demolish than with spending the Ministorum's money on sublime arches of marble and rare stones.
This had resulted in a Cathedral which looked like more an Arbites Fortress from the outside than a Cathedral meant to satisfy the ideals of a Gothic purist.
Secondly, the absence of support from the Ultramarines had led to the impossibility of acquiring holy relics from the sons of Guilliman for the better part of the 32nd millennium. When at last the Cult of the Saviour Emperor was able to influence Space Marines towards donating splendid banners commemorating the exploits of the Angels of Death, there were other Cathedrals erected on Laphis and elsewhere in the Realm of Ultramar.
Thus the painting The Scouring, an immense thirty metres-long artwork retracing the melancholy and the anger of the years after His Ascension, was the only acknowledged relic of the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor.
It still attracted a large crowd on any day, but everyone – beginning with the Priests in charge of the renovations and maintenance – knew that as far as donations were concerned, their massive Cathedral was the poor sibling on Laphis.
But when the Cataclysm came, most of those 'inconvenient facts' were turned into strengths. Unlike the Cathedral of the Martyrdom on the Aquila Triumph Avenue, the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor endured the initial bombardment of the Traitors and their heretic slaves with only minor damage, courtesy of its thick walls of ferrocrete and 'ugly' grey decoration.
If the Archenemy wanted to take the Cathedral, they would have to do it with infantry, not by pummelling the religious sanctum with artillery with ammunition they couldn't afford to spare.
And after twenty-eight hours of battle for Ravenna, tens of thousands of heretics were diverted from the other blocks to do exactly that.
But they were too late. The regiments of the Imperial Guard had arrived first, and the monsters damned for all eternity would learn all their crimes had consequences they couldn't escape from...
From Humble Beginnings and Glorious Endings, by Julius Ignatius, Ultramar Rose Edition, 315M41.
Laphis
Ravenna – West of the Polenta River
Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor
43 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Colonel Lothar Jurten
"Wait, wait..."
The explosions which resonated in the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor were extremely loud, and even with the earmuffs, Lothar wasn't sure the gunner of the Sturmgeschütz was going to hear him perfectly.
But it was way too late to change the plan.
"THE BACK OF THE TURRET! FIRE!"
For a second, the Krieger Colonel feared the gunner had indeed not heard him...but only for a second.
Because the next, the 95mm cannon roared in fury, and the enormous Cataphract sprouting an insane amount of heretical markings exploded.
"Golden Throne, Colonel-"
Lothar Jurten forced the soldier closest to him back behind the granite columns. A very good move, as in the next several seconds, quantities of mechanical shards and other dangerous things bombarded the Cathedral's blessed alley.
"What...Cataphract Tanks aren't supposed to do that!"
"They do," the Colonel of the 83rd Line Infantry disagreed with the other guardsman, "if you stock an additional reserve of fuel behind the turret."
Slowly, Lothar approached the incinerated wreck that many of his infantrymen were already busy covering in foam so that the risk of burning down the Cathedral stayed as close to zero as possible.
As he suspected, the turret of the Traitor Cataphract was now ten metres away from the rest of the super-heavy vehicle, and the closer you came to it, the more you smelled the horrible smell of burned human flesh.
"Yes, Colonel. But...the Nyxian Cataphracts didn't do that in any war game or exercise we participated in. The true war conditions didn't apply that many times, but I'm pretty sure none of the heavy armour carried fuel behind their turret...the officers of the Paragonian mechanised units loved to boast about their dedicated fuel trucks."
"As well they should," Lothar nodded, examining the carcass. "Those supply vehicles Her Celestial Highness gave to every army make sure we can sustain our offensives without lacking edible food, water, fuel, or ammunition."
Tech-Priests approached and began to vigorously spray more foam onto the incapacitated Cataphract, which quickly covered the last glyphs of the heretics.
"I think those idiots have the old models of the Cataphract," Lothar told his men. Honestly, it was the only thing that made sense.
"Colonel?"
"I'm sure it isn't common knowledge in all units, but many officers told me during the training the original model of the Cataphract was only worth its weight in scrap metal."
"I have a few difficulties believing that, Colonel. The Cataphract as it is...as the God-Emperor is my witness, it is a splendid machine. And it was many splendid machines of this design which tormented us endlessly during the war games."
"Yes," Lothar smiled, "which proves the cogboys sometimes know what they're doing when it comes to tanks and weapons of war."
"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!"
"Oh, look," the commanding officer of the 83rd Line Infantry of Krieg commented in a feigned carefree tone, "the infantry has finally caught up with the fact they shouldn't have let their tanks advance alone."
Seriously, those heretics were really dangerous because they never relented in their mad rampages and aggressive butchery, but a first-year Cadet looked to have a better grasp of tactics than them.
However, it would not do to be too overconfident. If the competent Traitor guardsmen were in the second wave...
"Tell all Sturmgeschütz to use their anti-infantry shells this time. Ambush pattern Corax. Relay to the other regiments what we've learned about these old-fashioned Cataphracts. FOR KRIEG AND THE GOD-EMPEROR!"
"TREMBLE, FOR CHAOS COMES!"
There were over four hundred heretics, all of them mutated so badly it was hard to tell if they were former guardsmen who had committed the worst sin imaginable, or simply creatures masquerading in tattered and damnation-tainted clothes for some reason.
"DIE, IN THE NAME OF THE MASTER OF MANKIND AND HIS AVENGING SON!"
The Sturmgeschütz gun fired again, and countless monsters paid the price for facing the Imperial Guard.
44 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Singulare Publius Donatus
With the nice, very nice, benefit of hindsight, taking refuge in the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor had provided neither refuge nor a few minutes of calm.
War was everywhere, from the confessionals to the alcoves, from the musical organ to His statue, and from the stained glass to the cold hard bloody ground.
The only upside of being inside instead out of outside was that he got to live, since some of the heretics had gone so crazy they were shelling everything around the religious block with chemical weapons.
The guardsmen they were fighting alongside all had their ugly rebreather masks, but former civilians like him didn't.
"GLORY TO HIM! IT IS BETTER TO DIE FOR THE GOD-EMPEROR THAN TO LIVE FOR ONESELF!"
"Where did they find this one, anyway?" Narcissus muttered under his breath.
"I don't know," one of the soldiers, one apparently part of the 'Krieg Korps' admitted, "but he's completely fearless and as high as the worst of our Autocrats on drugs after the Hour of the Emperor's Wrath!"
"THEY ARE COMING THROUGH THE CATACOMBS! WE ARE GOING TO KILL THEM ALL! THEY DARE DISTURB THE REST OF THE HONOURED DEAD, AND THERE IS ONLY ONE PUNISHMENT FOR THEM! DEATH! FIX BAYONETS!"
Most of the guardsmen didn't obey the last order, of course, since the bayonets were already ready and covered in blood.
And, Publius supposed, they obeyed people who were in a proper chain of command, which this hirsute and crazy Preacher definitely wasn't.
There were many rumours about where the Priest of the Ecclesiarchy had come from; at the moment, the leading one was that he had been a lowly religious man before the destruction of Ravenna filled him with grief and a spirit of retribution to be wielded against the heretics.
No matter if it was true or not, he certainly looked the part of the 'crazy Priest'. His eyes were deranged, his mouth was perpetually muttering or shouting religious sermons, many of them mentioning retribution and redemption. His Ecclesiarchy robe was now red, not white, and would likely be far more appropriate for a vagrant than an anointed Priest.
But the most obvious feature was what he carried. In one arm, a holy book was carried like it weighed nothing, despite being an absolutely massive tome, and in the other, a dangerous chainsword.
"THEY ARE COMING! DEATH TO THE HERETICS!"
"LET MACRAGGE BURN!"
"KRIEG, THE SAINT, AND THE EMPEROR!"
"FOR THE SAVIOUR GOD-EMPEROR!"
"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!"
"FOR GUILLIMAN! FOR ULTRAMAR!"
Hundreds of chainswords were drawn, and the defenders of Ravenna screamed their hatred for the heretics.
Publius and Narcissus screamed but didn't charge. They weren't slaves of the Darkness. While they, unlike the guardsmen, had no armour, they wouldn't lose their discipline either.
And so they advanced, methodically, their chainswords a wall of death.
"COURAGE AND HONOUR!"
The horde of heretics suddenly became far more disorganised, and in a few seconds, while they began to fight for their very lives, the Singulare realised the battlecry had come from behind the accursed tide of enemies.
"COURAGE AND HONOUR!"
"THE ULTRAMARINES ARE COMING!"
"FOR THE GOD-EMPEROR! KILL THEM ALL!"
They plunged their chainswords into heretical flesh. They struck the heretics again to make sure they were dead. Then they went on to strike other heretics. Kill the enemies of Ravenna, Laphis, and the God-Emperor. Repeat as many times as was needed.
Exhaustion began to slow down his arms. Everything ached.
Publius still found in himself the strength to continue until three giant Angels of Death in blue armour came into view and finished the slaughter of the catacomb's defilers.
Captain Aeonid Thiel
Usually, Aeonid avoided Cathedrals.
In fact, the Ultramarine veteran generally avoided the places of worship since his return to Macragge.
Ironic, wasn't it? The only thing which had truly changed here in the Laphiser cities, and he was trying to avoid it.
It was somewhat hypocritical...but having travelled across the Cathedral's catacombs, the Astartes Captain thought he hadn't missed anything. The Ecclesiarchy had chosen a very morbid place to bury its 'greatest' priests.
At least they had built a very resistant fortress-type structure. Irony of ironies, Aeonid had read the reports of the former Captains of the 8th Company, who had all agreed this was the best attempt of a Cardinal to make sure they didn't raze it in case some priest held a sermon the Ultramarines disagreed with.
The fact it was now resisting the Word Bearers' artillery, the very religious fanatics who had been the ones to introduce the concept of worshipping the Emperor as a God...well, the galaxy was full of ironies.
"Colonel," the Ultramarine abandoned his musings and saluted the officer waiting for him, who had just snapped to attention. "At ease. Your resistance against the Traitors has proven your courage and your fighting skills. And we hardly have enough time for parades."
"Yes, Sir!" The Imperial Guard officer replied in a voice which still was martial but betraying how tired the man was, "Colonel Lothar Jurten, 83rd Line Infantry of Krieg. I am in operational command of the Brigade ordered to defend the Cathedral."
"Your Brigadier-General?" Thiel already had a good idea of the problem, because a Colonel wasn't usually leading a Brigade-sized force...and the crowd around him was too small to be the reserve of a regiment. Many in fact were Laphisers who had taken up the lasguns and chainswords of fallen guardsmen.
"Dead, Sir," Jurten confirmed grimly, "the Archenemy once again tried to push three Cataphract super-heavies and armour support through the destroyed gate. Brigadier-General Waltz was killed with two-thirds of the 84th leading the counter-push."
"And you managed to hold?"
"Well, the Cataphracts they have are older patterns with a lot of weaknesses," the upper carapace armour of the officer was stained red and not the original dark green, and the same could be said about the dark grey below the black belt containing an interesting set of mini-grenades. "And we had plenty of Sturmgeschütz Tank Hunters."
Thiel had seen several of those tanks on the way to the improvised command post inside the Cathedral.
"How effective were they?"
"Anything like a Chimera or more lightly armoured, within the urban ranges we work with, if a Sturmgeschütz crew sees it, they can kill it," there was no boasting, just a vicious satisfaction behind those words, "but the heretics know that now, Sir. Their artillery is staying at least one kilometre away, and the first time the 86th Armoured tried to relieve us, they were slaughtered by three Traitor things...err...we thought they were corrupted Land Raiders. The Russ, Khan, and the Sturmgeschütz which attacked were annihilated in short order."
"Understood. But they have not brought any Spawns or Sorcerers so far?"
"No, Sir. Only one Daemonhost so far...it tried to slaughter the Priests, but several of my men gave their lives and we took it down through thousands of shots before it could succeed."
The haunted look suggested this had not been a pleasant experience...but then, all fighting against the Word Bearers since they had turned Traitor was a series of nightmares for loyalist Astartes, the non-Astartes often took their own lives.
"Good. Given your excellent defensive fighting, it is likely the Traitors are becoming impatient. They are making mistakes." They weren't in a Hive, and the Cathedral wasn't that big. Sending super-heavy tanks inside it was just an invitation to be ambushed. So yes, either a Word Bearer was impatient and closed his eyes on the casualties his slaves would take, or their tactical abilities had degraded even further in the last several years than Aeonid Thiel had thought. "I think it is time to show them this theatre has some teeth able to close upon their throats."
"Yes, Sir!" Colonel Lothar Jurten saluted vigorously, prompting an internal sigh. "Distribute the rations and water! We eat, drink, and then we counterattack!"
"FOR GUILLIMAN AND THE EMPEROR!"
Macragge System
Emperor-class Battleship Dominus Astra
44 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Lord Admiral Neidhart Müller
There had been a lot of unofficial gambling behind his back about when the Traitor fleet was finally going to stop engaging the defences of Macragge and confront the Battle Groups of Operation Stalingrad.
Neidhart had not gambled himself, of course. A Lord Admiral was above those things, and naturally should only gamble with his Admiral peers.
Still, the issue was very important, and would reveal a lot about the thoughts of the heretics commanding the corrupted warships in addition to the real damage they had taken so far. If they disengaged early, it would mean that they didn't fear the Orbital Grid's surviving weapons, and believed in lightning-fast strikes. If they disengaged too late, it would mean either the Traitors had huge difficulties determining which threat was the most dangerous to their survival, or that their ships had taken such catastrophic damage they couldn't afford to leave anything intact in their rear.
The heretics had made their choice, at last. And the answer was: they were very late in leaving the high orbit of Macragge.
"None of their Thunderhawks have returned to their motherships, Lord Admiral. For that matter, none of the boarding craft that were launched into Macragge's atmosphere returned."
"That implies unpleasant things for the population of Macragge," Neidhart didn't have the slightest idea what the dark souls controlling the heretics had in mind, but he was sure it couldn't be good at all. The heretics had eyes. They had seen the firepower of the Battle Groups coming to put an end to their monstrous existences. That they hadn't fled to the darkest corners of the galaxy and instead had chosen to attack Macragge suggested the Traitors were willing to throw caution to the Warp and continue their uncountable tally of crimes. "But that is something the Imperial Guard and our other allies have to plan for. We of the Imperial Navy have this foe to defeat and annihilate. Any changes from the last report?"
"Not really, Lord Admiral," his chief of staff shook his head, "the Chaos fleet hasn't revealed anything new at all. Unless they somehow have obtained super-cloaking devices which resist every auspex of the Mechanicus, we have seen everything they have: the eternally damned Trisagion and seventeen Battleships playing the role of its escorts, plus a small screen of flying Daemon Engines and corrupted Starfighters."
By any Admiral's standard, this was a nightmarish force arrayed in a single system. There were Sector Battlefleets which had to fight tooth and nail to have two Battleships in their Order of Battle.
On the other hand, a wise Admiral knew very well the Battleships weren't a miraculous answer to everything. If you were in need of hulls for scouting duties, the last thing you wanted was a Battleship. If you needed a small attack squadron to destroy a pirate base in a vast asteroid field, the chances were high the best solution would include Light Cruisers and Frigates, not Battleships.
Battleships played important roles in fleet-against-fleet engagements, Neidhart Müller wasn't going to deny it. But even there, skilled Admirals considered well-balanced fleets essential.
Either the Traitors hadn't been able to save their escorts at Fenris despite their best efforts, or they hadn't understood why Destroyers and Cruisers were so vital.
It was going to be a pleasure teaching them a last lesson before annihilating them.
"Per Lady Weaver's will," the naval commander of Battle Group Volga intoned, "the Eternal Crusader and the Flamewrought are going to deal with the Trisagion as soon as they enter weapon range. The rest of the Battleship Divisions, however, will focus on the other important flagships of the heretics. I trust we have them all identified?"
"Yes, Lord Admiral! It wasn't that difficult, honestly. While the core of their armada consisted of the heretekal Infernus-class, the leadership sworn to the Archenemy has kept old designs of the Great Crusade for itself. Infidus Imperator, Vox Dominus, Unbreakable Faith...they are all here. The only one missing is Hand of Destiny, but as I understand, Lord Admiral von Reuenthal is in the process of demolishing it while it tries to flee Laphis."
"Indeed, he is," and if his subordinate succeeded, all the better. The flagship of the Vile One being destroyed would mean one of the most dangerous heretics in the galaxy was cornered on the Paradise World. "But let's focus on our job. We will fire on the Infidus Imperator first. I don't know why they chose to name another hull that after the Battle of Calth, but the Imperial Navy won't tolerate its existence for a second longer. I want a full salvo of torpedoes and our new Nova Cannons in fifty seconds."
"By your will, Lord Admiral, and-"
"Lord Admiral! Auspexes fluctuations around one of the Traitor flagships! It is most likely sorcery of the foulest sort!"
Neidhart barely raised an eyebrow. Some officers had believed the heretics had no tricks left after the corrupted Ark Mechanicus was somehow teleported into the middle of their formation, but the grey-haired man had known better.
Heretics always kept nasty abominations and monsters in reserve. It was in their evil nature.
"Lady Weaver anticipated they might try something like that," the Lord Admiral reassured his subordinates, "do not worry, the countermeasures are being activated as we speak. My orders stand. Target the Infidus Imperator."
It took only thirty seconds for the confirmation of everything being ready to arrive, which didn't look that impressive...until you considered just how many ships the orders had been transmitted to.
"OPEN FIRE AND NO QUARTER!"
Goliath-class Battleship Unbreakable Faith
Grand Apostle Ekodas
They had wanted him to use the Trisagion as his new flagship.
Did they really think him so stupid as to fall into this obvious trap?
The Trisagion had been the lair of Kor Phaeron for the entirety of the Black Crusade. Taking possession of the ship would be more painful than trying to fight a Bloodthirster with his bare fists.
Assuming there weren't saboteurs and assassins ready to kill him – which wasn't the case, of course – the last Super-Battleship of the Abyss class brought him nothing.
It was huge, and its unique nature was guaranteed to make it a priority target for the Glorianas the slaves of the False Emperor had.
It was slow, and the communications were not that good for a ship its size.
But more importantly, it was not the Unbreakable Faith.
He was a Grand Apostle, and his flagship was not a simple hull, but a fortress and the projection of his will.
In addition to those benefits, if he had to leave it, he would have had to take with him the Noctilith he had found in the Eye of Terror, and there was zero doubt Paristur and Kor Phaeron among many others would be enraged he had kept this vital resource for himself.
By a decree of Lorgar, relayed by the Vile One what felt like an eternity ago, every shard of Noctilith, as insignificant and small as it may be, was to be given to their Primarch so it could be used in the great ritual which would usher in a new age of illumination.
Ekodas hadn't obeyed. Part of it was because he distrusted Erebus so much, he wasn't going to be too shy to admit it. The other principal reason was how difficult it had been to acquire the Noctilith. Time had no meaning inside the Eye of Terror, but it had taken dozens of ventures into zones most Legions stayed well-away from to acquire it. Over forty Legionnaires had been killed in those 'Noctilith Quests'. The losses in slaves and Raider ships had been far greater than that. And ultimately, the 'prize' was an amount he could hold in the palm of his hand.
But it was Noctilith. And thanks to the secrecy his efforts had been shrouded in, this Noctilith had remained Noctilith, when the trinkets of Octarite were so fragile that breathing too loudly may break them.
"I call for the Power of the Lord of Skulls," Ekodas began as he waited at the centre of an eight-pointed star freshly painted in the blood of eighty-eight slaves, "I promise great slaughter. I promise skulls, be they those of my servants, or those of my enemies. I promise to abandon sorcery, and dedicate the rest of my existence to the ways of creating more carnage with the weapons the Lord of Wrath approves of. I promise to never relent, to fight until my last breath. I acknowledge there is only war and rains of blood in this galaxy."
The words became more and more difficult as the litany was uttered. The xenos beasts may be able to remove the influence of the Empyrean temporarily, but Ekodas had artefacts of Blood aboard his flagship, and the Noctilith had been perfectly prepared. The Flesh Change Curse tried to turn him into a mindless Chaos Spawn, but his will was keeping the vengeful Anarchic curse at bay for the time being.
Soon, there was only the last and evidently most important part to speak. Instinctively, he knew the name of the Khornate Noctilith chosen by Champions higher in the God's favour than himself.
"I am your servant, and I have heard the whispers...I name this eight-blessed stone Haematia in your honour, Great Khorne."
For the first eight seconds, nothing happened.
But in the next eight seconds, it became a pulsating heart from which the God of War, Blood, and Skulls could enforce his will.
"KILL. MAIM. BURN."
The order was given, and Ekodas laughed as a red aura of bloodlust and war engulfed his Battleship.
Soon, the red cloak soaking everything in carnage and natural bloodthirst extended...and struck the golden orbs which had been cast from the ships of the False Emperor head-on.
"Not bad, Weaver...but too late...you arrive too late..."
A second later, there were monumental explosions rocking his fleet. The Infidus Imperator, one of the ships which had managed to remain relatively intact, thanks to Jarulek's general cowardice, saw its Void Shields battered so brutally they fell in less time than it took to say it.
"FIRE BACK! THE NEVERBORN WILL FEAST UPON THEIR SOULS!"
Around him the Unbreakable Faith changed. The hall became a charnel house, and a small rain of blood began to fall upon him and his Legionnaires, giving his armour a fresh and complete coat of red paint.
It didn't matter.
It didn't matter that the Trisagion was taking a heavy punishment. The warhammer of the Blood God was going to strike down the False Emperor's fleet, and disperse all the so-called 'Aethergold' into the forgotten reaches of the void.
It was-
More than twenty luminous shields went up in the Battlecruiser vanguard of Weaver's fleet, and in the course of a single minute, the onslaught of the Grand Armada attacked this cursed psy-technology, without managing to bring one down.
And as the battle continued, the unnatural insect of Weaver sang.
Ekodas didn't understand half of the thought-speak, but he could recognise mockery when it was slammed in his face.
"No..." even with the blessings of Khorne, the power of Haematia was not enough. It was going to be a psychic stalemate, leaving the fleets able to fight each other the conventional way. And with those new Battlecruisers no one had warned him about, the Grand Armada couldn't destroy a single enemy ship. "NO! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"
One minute and eight seconds later, the Infidus Imperator's ammunition stockpiles detonated, as over sixty torpedoes, three Nova Shells, dozens of Lances, and more macro-ammunition a Dark Apostle's mind could process broke through its armoured hull.
The explosion illuminated the Macragge System, and there were no survivors.
Battleship Enterprise
Lady General Taylor Hebert
"Infidus Imperator destroyed, your Celestial Highness!"
Loud cheers followed the announcement of the news.
Taylor nodded politely to the von Lohengramm twin who had spoken.
"Thank you. Congratulate our Admirals...and inform them to continue the elimination of the heretics."
"With pleasure, your Celestial Highness."
As the blonde-haired noblewoman of the Imperial Navy turned away, the Lady General idly wondered how one managed to make a blue-clad Navy uniform look that good and fashionable. It must have taken a lot of clothing designers and decades of practise.
"The Flamewrought scored five more hits on the Trisagion, Chosen of the Omnissiah," Archmagos Sagami's voice forced her to return to far less pleasant thoughts. "The heretekal hull appears to be more resistant than the initial estimates suggested."
"Well," Taylor commented lightly, "I suppose there must be some advantages to building something that big. We already knew it brought them no gains in terms of speed, manoeuvrability, or weapon range."
When she had first learned of the existence of the Abyss-class, the insect-mistress had been very impressed. As monstrous as the Word Bearers and the Dark Mechanicum were, building one of those things was a feat of engineering which had rarely been equalled.
Now? She was completely unimpressed by them. With the amount of rare materials used, one could have most likely built two Glorianas. Said hulls would not have slowed down the Chaos fleet as much as the Trisagion did.
Damningly, in practice the Abyss-class forced the rest of the Word Bearers' surviving capital ships to play the role of escorts, and needless to say, Battleships weren't designed to do that.
"My Dragon Armours have finished destroying their Heldrakes," Dragon reported joyously three minutes later. "I am tempted to call it 'the Great Heldrake Shoot'."
"Let's not get overconfident," the golden-winged parahuman warned the draconic Tinker. "They may have sent their best abominable engines against Macragge."
"In which case, we will do the same." The Mistress of the Hornet rebutted theatrically.
"Indeed. Very good work, Dragon."
The Battle Groups continued to fire, and Taylor mentally told Lisa to strike for a second time.
Much like the previous time, the red halo surrounding one of the enemy ships refused to buckle, but the attacks of her Titan-Moth were powerful enough to ensure that the heretics didn't launch a second attack again.
The psychic shields of the Aegis-class Battlecruisers stayed activated nonetheless, of course.
What she had said to Dragon about being overconfident was true for all of the components of the Imperial war machine assembled under her command.
The insect-mistress didn't say it out loud, but things were going well.
Maybe too well. The heretics were being hammered and taking an enormous amount of damage.
Undoubtedly, they were going to resort to more sorcery and abominable deeds to give her a nasty surprise.
This was why she was letting Lisa bombard them. No need to exhaust herself and realise later that ultimately, her strength would have been needed elsewhere to save hundreds of ships and millions of men.
But the heretics' counterattack didn't come.
"Infernus-class Butcher of Stars destroyed, Chosen of the Omnissiah!"
When it was over, they were probably going to have to refine their doctrine. Telling over forty Battleships and their Cruiser squadrons to focus their fire on a single target was a bit too much...
Ten minutes later, another Infernus-class died, just as the Trisagion took forty more hits and at last began to shed an impressive quantity of debris.
"Infernus-class Ruination of Hope destroyed, my Lady!"
It had to be a trap. This was...this was too easy.
Was she satisfied that trillions of Throne Gelts in new ships, deployment reschedules, repairs, and much needed maintenance had been judiciously spent? Yes, she was.
But Taylor had not expected this... It was a one-sided extermination.
It couldn't even be called a battle. The Infernus Battleships and the Trisagion were unable to reduce the power of the Aegis-class Battlecruisers by twelve percent.
They couldn't be that outclassed...could they?
"Yes! My Lady, we have-"
There had been several monumental explosions already as the Eternal Crusader and the Flamewrought proved why the Gloriana Super-Battleships had been dreaded by countless human and xenos foes during the Great Crusade.
But this time, one surpassed them all.
One moment the Trisagion was still advancing towards the Enterprise like a crawling slug bleeding to death. The next the Black Templars, Salamanders, and countless other gunners hit the Traitor flagship with everything they had, and most of the shields and sorcery close-defences were gone.
No one would be able to properly count how many hundreds of hits had struck the Trisagion within fifteen seconds.
But one thing was sure.
The Abyss-class Super-Battleships had been thought up by heretics, but they weren't designed to endure such punishment.
The ammunition stockpiles of the Trisagion detonated just as the furious salvoes of the Astartes and Imperial Navy ships ravaged it.
The folly of the Word Bearers and the Dark Mechanicum disappeared forever in the apocalyptic explosion, and if the destruction of the Infidus Imperator had been celebrated, this was nothing compared to the roars of victory echoing right now.
"Super-Battleship of the Abyss-class Trisagion...destroyed. My Lady."
Taylor abandoned her command seat for a while and went on to examine the strategic situation. The Word Bearers were invading Macragge, which wasn't good at all, but within the hour, she could organise a Space Marine strike force which would relieve the parts of the Orbital Grid which still held against the Ruinous Powers' cultists and other tainted forces.
The Imperial Guard was going to have to prepare for another campaign, and then-
It was only when she saw the location of the three black dots that Taylor paused. As the pressure of whatever the Words Bearers did had attracted her attention, the mental pressure of the Tyranid had faded...and now the black-haired Lady of the Enterprise wondered how clever 'Behemoth' truly was.
"Archmagos Sagami, please immediately confirm the location of the three Tyranid bio-ships!"
"Chosen of the Omnissiah...by the Great Cog! They have..."
"Yes," the Lady General grimaced as the laughs and the celebrations abruptly died down. "They have changed course. They aren't trying to attack Macragge anymore."
Laphis
Ravenna – West of the Polenta River
45 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Lord Commander Lucius
Lucius hated the Eldar.
No, this was an expression far too weak to describe his disgust.
Before Commorragh had been destroyed, he had loathed those perfidious and blinded long-eared fools.
But now that they had been defeated through their own sheer incompetence, and in their internal struggles failed to protect the Goddess of Excess, the Lord Commander of the Third Legion's foremost desire was to find them and lengthily torture each surviving xenos until they begged him to be his slaves.
It was going to begin here and now, with this grinning clown.
"You will know your masters," Lucius hissed as his armoured hand tightened around the throat of the multicoloured Eldar buffoon. "Oh, yes. I will teach you why you should have knelt to Slaanesh when you had the chance!"
The clownish xenos didn't make a sound of pain. In fact, the loathed long-eared creature didn't make any sound at all.
Lucius didn't dare show weakness in front of his fifty or so subordinates, but he was wondering what drug the Harlequin had consumed. He had severed both legs, and one arm! The xenos should be in agony right now!
As the long-ear finally opened his mouth to reply, Lucius relaxed his hold upon the long-ear's throat.
"My soul belongs to Cegorach," there was no pain to be heard in this alien voice. And there was no suffering either. "The joke is on you, Eternal Traitor."
"No! Your soul is going to be claimed by the daemons! And the pitiful thing you call a God won't dare save you! It is too weak to save anyone!"
"Cegorach was...strong enough...to end...Slaanesh..."
Lucius couldn't control his fury, and struck the xenos several times with one of his favourite torture-daggers.
Immediately, he regretted it. It was going to kill the Eldar far too quickly, and the buffoon didn't deserve that.
To his surprise, while the torso wounds were absolutely fatal, the xenos' eyes remained clear. A second later, it spoke again.
"The joke's punchline is coming for you, Eternal Traitor. A Perpetual has no need to be a slave of the Primordial Annihilator to be eternal. But you debased yourself before the Abomination...and for this gift, She tainted your immortality with conditions. The lives stolen were the Goddess' gift...but do you know what they call a divine present when the God is no more? A Curse! You are Cursed, Eternal Traitor!"
Lucius tried to crush the throat of the clown once more...but as soon as he did, the flesh of the xenos suddenly became extremely malleable. His armour was sprayed with something syrupy and...was this substance corrosive?
Lucius threw the Eldar away and took several steps back, smelling that there was something incredibly different in the air.
"All of you, don your helmets now!" The Lord of the Perfect Legion snarled while obeying his own command. "I don't know how the perfidious long-ears did it, but-"
The entire ruined plaza exploded. Not because of artillery shells, but in less than a second, blue smoke was everywhere, and with his transhuman vision, Lucius saw the slave-troops were laughing hysterically...and then laughing louder.
Something laughed. Something far away laughed and mocked him.
"The eternal dance is about to end. Laugh! Laugh, and contemplate what you have done!"
Thousands of Volscani troopers laughed hysterically...and then before Lucius' very eyes, as the unconventional chemical effects faded away, they began to fight each other.
Maea Teallysis
The Queen of Blades was a confirmed sadist.
Unfortunately, her words were right more often than not when it came to battlefield wisdom.
Khaine's bloody hands, all right, Lelith Hesperax was always right.
It was better to think that way, or she would be due another beating – also called a 'training lesson' – when this battle was over.
When seeing this battle, three 'lessons' immediately came to mind. Don't underestimate the humans. Don't rely on your psychic powers, for they can be neutralised by an overwhelmingly powerful opponent. And don't fight near a Harlequin, unless you want to be the prime target of their jokes.
Maea had believed in all of them before today, Isha was her witness.
But it was an illuminating experience to see it before her eyes.
The humans were fighting like they were mother Gyrinxes defending their cubs. At first it had appeared the sheer violence of the Primordial Annihilator's slaves was going to win the day. But it had not lasted. From basements half-buried under the rubble, thousands of humans, young and old, had emerged, and immediately engaged their tainted enemies.
It didn't matter that they were slow, clumsy, and that none of them had Spirit Stones to protect their souls. All of them were giving their lives to protect those they cherished.
Would the Guardians of Malan'tai defend their halls with such vigour should a dreadful day like this one come to the Craftworld?
The Apprentice of the Queen of Blades was honest enough with herself to admit she wasn't sure.
If the psychic powers of the Seers, Farseers, and Warlocks were absent...no, they wouldn't hold. Maea could ignore the ugly hungry noises that comprised the Shadow Cacophony, but not every Aspect Warrior would be able to do the same.
You needed some experience fighting on battlefields with nothing but your blade and your mind.
The former Seer – one could hardly say she was on that Path anymore after all – had gained this experience in death and pain.
And then there were the Harlequins. They were spreading strange gases and bizarre bombs wherever their flimsy whims desired. Maea had seen the troops of the Primordial Annihilator fight each other with maniacal laughs howling from their throats. She had seen human houses succumb to strange gravitation-cancelling devices and crush quantities of 'Chaos Space Marines' like the former were giant boulders and the latter were bugs waiting to be reduced into paste. Many of the great and lesser daemonhosts refused to move from their positions as long as their 'masters' didn't give them the correct answer to their riddle.
Ordinarily, Maea could have sworn this was nothing but another joke of the followers of Cegorach.
But this time, the young Asuryani of Malan'tai knew that their actions made sense.
Even with her talents inactive, Maea still had her eyes. And she could see two enormous forces of humans amassing north and east of the city-battlefield she was fighting in.
The human leaders knew what they were doing. They were pushing as much of their infantry across the river to make sure the Primordial Annihilator's slaves were stalemated for the better part of the day, before launching their encirclement operation.
By disrupting everything inside the city, including the enemy's brutal and chaotic hierarchy, the Harlequins were making sure the trap would close with implacable teeth and no means of escape.
It was...not what she had expected from the followers of Cegorach. Not after Commorragh. Not after the Second Fall and Slaanesh's death. Not after everything that happened lately.
Maea closed her eyes, and touched the hilt of Asu-var, the Crone Sword of the Silent Screams.
All the while she repeated in her mind what her sadistic mentor had said.
She was not to draw no energy from beyond this reality.
She was not to make a single sound.
She was to listen to where Destiny wanted her to strike.
Otherwise Asu-var, as befitting the reputation of one of the Crone Swords, would drain her of her life.
Maea jumped.
The first was no drawback here on this bloody day. The second was incredibly obvious given the number of enemies. The third had pushed her to remain here on this world, while Yvraine left it.
She closed her eyes again.
"LET THE GALAXY BURN!"
Maea struck, once, twice, and a third time.
When she reopened them, she saw the three bat-like servants of the Primordial Annihilator.
Night Lords, the humans had called them.
Armoured in their dark blue carapaces of corruption, they looked redoubtable.
But they were blind.
Asu-var was sheathed again, its duty fulfilled for as long as the Dead Goddess wished it.
The Night Lords still tried to mock her as their heads fell, decapitated, and several of their limbs and body parts spurted black blood.
Maea raised an eyebrow at the last injuries. This wasn't what she had intended. Truly...truly she needed more training.
The Apprentice to the Queen of Blades shook her head and jumped onto the roof of a palace which had seen better days.
Fortunately, something pulled her towards the south as her right hand caressed the hilt of the Crone Sword.
Maea ran. Chaos would not be victorious as long as she fought.
Ancient Rylanor
Battles were rarely well-ordered, the fog of war made sure of that.
Even then, Rylanor was sure this battle was going to be an example of chaotic melee when the military academies went on to study it.
The Krieg forces were advancing street by street, and taking horrible casualties doing so, for the hordes of berserk cultists and the bastards brainwashing them were not willing to retreat even a single step.
"I am ashamed to confess we have lost the Eternal Traitor in that...that mess, Sir," one of his White Thunderbolts admitted after removing his Power Katana from a Word Bearer's corpse.
"No matter." Rylanor made a dismissive gesture. "He's still in the city, we will kill him eventually."
His determination to permanently kill the last Lord Commander who had prostrated himself before the Naga had never been greater. Rylanor had believed his motivation to rip off Lucius' ugly face was huge, but that had been before seeing that depraved hedonist personally.
How was it possible the Eternal Traitor could look at his own reflexion and believe himself to be an Astartes?
No, his vengeance was going to have to wait. He had been given command of the Laphis Astartes forces – minus the Ultramarines' Company of course – and he wasn't going to shirk his duties. Killing Lucius, as satisfying as it may be, would not bring victory. The sad excuse for a Space Marine didn't appear to be in command of more than sixty Astartes at best. It was better to help the Krieg guardsmen progress through the devastation of what had been the city of Ravenna.
"Since the enemies which aren't the Night Lord elements don't use the roofs and much of the airspace," Rylanor declared after analysing his surroundings to be sure one of those wretches wasn't trying to ambush them again, "Squad Triceratops are given the sniper duties. Squad Ankylosaurus, you are the Wall."
"Understood, Sir." The young White Thunderbolt before frowning. "What are...oh they're beginning to sing again."
Indeed they were.
Proof of how far the Word Bearers had fallen, they no longer behaved like a proper Legion, but more like a religious mob advancing towards their enemies.
They looked, in Rylanor's opinion, absolutely ridiculous.
Unfortunately for anyone who wasn't an Astartes, the 'songs' tended to induce madness, hallucinations, self-mutilation, and a whole lot of mental problems that badly affected the morale of the men.
Rebreather masks or not, Rylanor could feel the despair of plenty of the guardsmen. And the enemy wasn't even visible.
"We will stand here."
The effect wasn't exactly the one he wished for: two men tried to flee, and one was promptly shot by his regimental Commissar.
"WE WILL STAND HERE!" He was forced to return to the 'booming mode' – and yes, he hated that nickname. "MEN OF THE IMPERIAL GUARD, I WILL FIGHT BY YOUR SIDE!"
"For the Emperor!" Some voices answered, but it felt forced. Hesitant.
"YES. FOR THE EMPEROR. I MET HIM, YOU KNOW." The Ancient Dreadnought, veteran of the first battle of the Heresy, revealed. Using it to raise morale was something he had not wished to do before this campaign, but victory was everything. "I MET HIM. I LISTENED TO HIM AS HE PROCLAIMED THE TRIUMPH OF ULLANOR. I SAW HIM. I FOUGHT BEHIND HIM. I KNOW HE WANTED MANKIND TO HAVE A PROSPEROUS AND BRIGHT FUTURE."
Pointing his weapons towards the Spawns and the dogs of Lorgar had never felt so righteous after admitting it.
"AND THOSE MONSTERS YOU FACE TODAY DID THEIR BEST TO DESTROY THAT FUTURE. THEY ARE RUINING CITIES. THEY ARE THE DESTROYERS OF HOPE."
"LET THE GALAXY BURN!"
Rylanor avoided the first shots with the disdain they deserved.
"BUT TERRA STILL STANDS. CADIA STILL STANDS. LAPHIS STANDS. MACRAGGE STANDS. KRIEG STANDS. AND AS LONG AS THE LOYAL WORLDS STAND, WE WILL REBUILD EVERYTHING. THE EMPEROR WALKED AMONG US MILLENNIA AGO. HE WILL DO SO ONCE MORE. AVE IMPERATOR!"
"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!"
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
The familiar noise of engines roared behind them, and Rylanor could finally greet the Leman Russes he had asked for two hours ago.
The old battlecry drowned the Warp's corrupting whispers.
The troops screamed the Emperor's name, their morale revitalised.
"WE SHALL KNOW NO FEAR! FOR THE EMPEROR!"
And Rylanor charged with his men to kill the Word Bearers.
Macragge
Pharsalus Military District
45 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Forty kilometres east of the Pharsalus Fortified Line
Dark Apostle Paristur
Paristur couldn't hide his surprise at seeing the column of ruined tanks the Legionnaires of the Seventeenth Legion had just ravaged.
"They're still using Malcador Tanks?"
Even with the evidence in front of him, the member of the Dark Council had difficulties believing it.
"They're using all variants of the Malcador," Eliphas confirmed sarcastically, "the standard pattern formed the majority of their counterattack, but there were plenty of Annihilators, Defenders, and Infernuses among their companies."
"And I thought the Volscani were bad with their obsolete Cataphract Tanks..."
The Volscani were still awful, of course. No Legionnaire was going to claim otherwise after watching their monumental failures from Cadia to here. And that didn't even take into account that their mental resistance to the whispers of Anarchy was no better than a grox's sense of restraint at feeding-time.
But fielding a Malcador on a battlefield was a move reeking of desperation. Those wastes of metal were already being scrapped in favour of the far more adequate Baneblades and their variants before the Word Bearers realised how duped they had been by the False Emperor's lies.
Some slaves might say a Malcador could still engage Leman Russ Tanks and make a good showing of itself. This ignored the fact the Malcador was a Heavy Tank, and thus could not go to half of the locations a Leman Russ did. Its turret had a pitiful traverse. It was extremely slow, to the point most of the time infantry could leave it in the dust. It consumed startling amounts of fuel, and for this, offered only a ridiculously short range.
In conclusion, a Malcador built on the M'khand pattern or one of its numerous variants was far too likely to arrive late to the battlefield, but if it didn't, it better prayed it could win because otherwise, it would be too slow to flee.
"I suppose that means you aren't going to order the Volscani to salvage the lightly-damaged hulls before driving them against the Ultramarines."
"By the Gods, no!" Paristur exclaimed. "I want to use them as cannon-fodder, not have them trail fifty kilometres behind us like they are frozen in a stasis field!"
"I was just checking." Eliphas cleared his throat. "The Grand Armada is being slaughtered as we speak. Ekodas is not able to do more than delay the inevitable."
Paristur gritted his teeth. His two hearts beat harder. While everything had gone wrong during this campaign, the fact remained that the great battle had always been supposed to be fought against Weaver. Yes, the Grand Armada was only a shadow of itself by now. Yes, Weaver had not had to fight the macro-scale space battles they did at Cadia, Fenris, and lastly against the Ultramarines.
But it was still galling to see the ease with which the Navy and Astartes forces of that infuriating pest were decimating Battleships which had been the Seventeenth Legion's for millennia.
The Trisagion in particular had often been seen as a symbol that, no matter what happened at Terra, whether their homeworlds were razed or reduced to radiation-saturated nightmares, the Legion would endure.
Now the last of the Abyss-class Super-Battleships was gone. And as it died, Paristur could not shake the feeling the bell tolled for them all.
"Then we must hurry and strike Pharsalus and its defences as quickly as possible. Mothac and his Plague Marines will take care of the Spaceport. Once we break that defensive line, we must head about one hundred and two kilometres west, and then it's another hundred kilometres north to Macragge Civitas. We will assault Guilliman's home from the south, while Kor Phaeron and the others arrive from the north."
"Given how much has gone according to Kor Phaeron's plans lately," the younger Dark Apostle remarked with dark humour, "should we not worry about breaching the Pharsalus Line first? We have only seen pitiful counterattacks so far, but an expansive set of fortifications, especially one designed by the Ultramarines, is really not something to take lightly."
The ground shook beneath their feet.
"No," Paristur bared his teeth. The ground shook again. "The Titans are going to break the Pharsalus Line and the dogs of the Ultramarines."
Their last tech-specialists were not as fast or gifted when it came to technology as Sota-Nul's acolytes, but they had obeyed their orders.
In mere hours, they had awakened the dangerous spirits of the greatest weapons of the Mechanicum.
Eighteen Warlords – for this part of the Legion's landings alone – roared their fury, and Macragge itself seemed to cower at their presence, the enormous mountain ranges no longer seeming so tall or indomitable.
Then a roar drowned all the others, and the Warlords moved aside in a hurry, for their alpha would tolerate none of them entering the fray before it claimed first blood.
During the Great Crusade, it had been implacable and the doom of billions. But now, it was truly something bestial. The Artisans of the Mechanicum had repaired the old wounds by plating it with black scale-like metallic plates, and as more and more xenos technology was added to it, what had been an Imperator gained a terrible reptilian aspect.
The maw designed in the Eye of Terror was a monstrous cannon the power of which had never been seen before in the Seventeenth Legion's arsenal. Spikes of bones and metal had been emplaced both on its back and around each weapon.
It was Tyrannosaurus Rex, greatest weapon of the Legio Vulturum.
"LET MACRAGGE BURN!"
Macragge
Illyrium Military District
Epirus City
Coryphaus Kol Badar
Days ago, the thought of killing the wretches clad in the blue and gold of the useless Macragge Auxilia would have filled him with joy.
Today?
It was a chore, nothing more, and a dangerous one at that.
It wasn't because they were dangerous, oh no.
As he charged several hundreds of those idiots, his armour's paint was barely affected before he was fighting them at close-quarters.
Then the holy butchery began.
Kol could have slaughtered them several hundreds of metres away, of course, but Jarulek had ordered them to conserve their ammunition, and the Coryphaus knew the wisdom of his Dark Apostle's argument.
"COURAGE AND ARRGGHH!"
"Shut up, and may your soul feed the Neverborn!"
Immediately he regretted the outburst, as he waded through the ranks of Guilliman's mortal slaves. Those wretches didn't matter. They were insignificant. They were dead, or soon to endure a long and tortuous agony.
"Advance!" He told his troops. "They can't stop us, and we need more sacrifices for our Lord's rituals!"
"Yes, Coryphaus!"
"By the will of the Gods, it will be so!"
Only hidden depths of self-control kept Kol Badar from decapitating the imbecile who had dared utter these words.
The will of the Gods? Who was stupid enough to believe it was a blessing for the Seventeenth Legion?
Who was delusional enough to keep their faith when abandoning the mental struggle meant transformation into a Chaos Spawn?
Who was so ready to believe they had won when their own ships died one by one not far from Macragge, winning mere hours while they had barely landed?
Kol Badar struck down the last blue-clad mortals before throwing one of their own grenades into a Chimera where most of the surviving cowards had taken refuge.
Several more strikes of his fists finished mopping up the enemy resistance, even if it was giving them a level of attention the dogs didn't deserve.
The Coryphaus examined his surroundings with obvious disgust.
The city of Epirus, the cultists Jarulek had used to spread illumination. Interestingly, unlike most of the Ultramarines' cities he remembered from the Shadow Crusade, it looked like an extremely poor settlement, with none of the golden paint, marble columns, and grandiloquent statues the fools of Guilliman's gene-line lived for.
Now it was a ruin, as the forces of the 1st and 2nd Great Host had released countless Chaos Spawns before joining the massacre. Leman Russ and Malcador Tanks littered the streets, along with Chimeras, Salamander Scout Tanks, and countless other things like supply trucks.
This vehicle graveyard proved how decadent and incapable the leadership of Macragge was. Building thousands of tanks and transports for your slaves, honestly.
No wonder the False Emperor's domains were ruled by weaklings when the Legionnaires should be the Lords and Masters.
"Don't slow down!" Kol Badar barked as once again, the thought forced him to remember he hadn't been able to anticipate the insolent cur's betrayal. He had been denied the pleasure of strangling Marduk, and this alongside the current efforts to keep the Curse at bay put him in a very sour mood. "Illyrium must be ours before sunset! This is the will of Dark Apostle Jarulek and the Dark Council!"
It was also necessary if they wanted to have enough sacrifices to ensure the Noctilith Crown was properly activated.
"Yes, Coryphaus!" Several of his Legionnaires shouted as he killed the insolent dogs in blue which fired their pitiful lasguns at him. "Death to Macragge! Death to Guilliman!"
"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!" He roared and went on to kill more weaklings.
Laphis
Ravenna – East of the Polenta River
Adjutant-Spider Erbina
Erbina was frustrated. There was so much fun everywhere around Ravenna, and she wasn't allowed to participate!
Several of her sisters were searching for the incompetent locals like those useless Ministorum vellum-lovers, the aristocrats who had fled at the first opportunity, and every oath-breaker of Laphis.
Other Adjutant-sisters had the privilege of overseeing the Ambulls digging tunnels and the Scorpions crossing the rivers.
It was a noble duty. It was really useful. It was fun.
She had thought her assignment would be just as fun as the duties her sisters enjoyed!
But no. She was the gatekeeper of the Webway Gate.
Yesterday she had thought this would bring her plenty of very nice opportunities to eat some long-ears and taste if their flesh was truly as delicious as their Helspiders cousins claimed, but Ilmarina had relayed the Webmistress' orders; the Eldar weren't to be touched as long as they didn't fight against the Imperial forces.
Erbina was of course a good obedient Adjutant-Spider. And the Webmistress had a far better understanding of the war situation than hers, of course! But...it was frustrating to stay here, doing nothing to help save boring guard duty.
After all, the Ultramarines had been clear this Webway Gate had been inactive for millennia until the two recent arrivals of long-ears. What were the odds a third time would happen while she was the guardian?
"The heretic artillery's rate of fire is not decreasing in the slightest," the young Adjutant-Spider spoke to her Sororitas protectors, "I wonder if they're trying to hit precise targets with all this smoke, or if their purpose is just to destroy everything they can before our counterattack destroys their guns."
"I would say it's the latter, not the former, Erbina," one of the 'Claire' sisters answered. "I'm more worried about the number of planes trying to support the guardsmen which are destroyed by the Archenemy. Her Celestial Highness was confident the Marauders were tough bombers, but the Traitor Astartes' anti-air batteries have killed dozens of them as far as we can see and-"
The words stopped in the Templar Sororitas' mouth, and Erbina turned right in time to see many xenos runes shine on the construction of wraithbone and other Eldar materials.
"Webway activation! Webway activation! Beta-level emergency alert! Take position but do not fire! If those are Eldar-"
But the loyal servant of the Webmistress didn't even have the opportunity to finish her speech, which was just rude.
The Webway Gate flickered once, twice, and then a silhouette staggered through it.
Erbina didn't know what to think. It couldn't be a human coming through the Webway, no? The Webmistress had told them how treacherous this labyrinth dimension could be.
"Don't fire!" she ordered the Sororitas warriors next to her as she saw the armour of the newcomer was bearing the sigil of the Inquisition. The Webmistress wouldn't be very happy if she killed a true Inquisitor, oh no.
The unknown potential Inquisitor removed the unconventionally-shaped helmet, and one of the Sororitas gasped.
"You recognise her?"
"Yes, Erbina...I think it's Inquisitor Contessa!"
"Silk and Bacta, what is she doing here?" Erbina had been informed by the Webmistress herself of the disappearance of the Inquisitor before Operation Caribbean destroyed Commorragh. Many had gone missing assuredly, but most had been retrieved dead in the days after, and this had been at Pavia. "Never mind! I'm going to ask her myself!"
And she rushed towards the Webway Gate, taking care to disarm the turrets...
"Beware...the enemy...is not far behind..."
Erbina stopped a few steps away from the female Inquisitor, and she saw blood trickling from her mouth. That wasn't a good sign, for humans...and neither were the three large feather-shaped weapons which had impaled her in her back, despite being protected by what was a very good power armour.
"Hospitallers!" the Adjutant-spider immediately called out. "I want a squad of Hospitallers and plenty of Red Bacta immediately! Quick! Inquisitor Contessa is severely injured! Hospitallers! Medical personnel! Bacta! Hurry up, I am a spider, not a medic!"
Erbina almost couldn't believe that the poor Inquisitor had the strength to continue to advance.
"I must...arrive in time...complete the mission..."
The healer-specialist Sororitas were arriving, and right in time, because the young spider didn't know if the Inquisitor was trying to push her away, or was simply leaning on her head to avoid collapsing.
"No, no..." Erbina wasn't going to tolerate that sort of evasion. "The Hospitallers are going to heal you, and don't worry about those enemies coming by the Webway Gate. We are ready for them!"
At last, being the guardian of the Webway Gate wasn't boring anymore.
Now quick, she had to send the news to all her sisters, before writing a few reports for the important officers of the Webmistress...a lot of paperwork, in paper and digital form, true, but absolutely worth it!
Ravenna – West of the Polenta River
Sister Alice Gaius
Ravenna was hell.
Alice had thought her previous battles were bad, but they had been nothing like the fight the capital of Laphis was proving itself to be.
The Imperial Guard was advancing, yes.
But it was slow, and by slow, the young Sororitas meant they could count the number of steps they were making.
And the number of casualties they were taking for each of them.
"Where is the air support I called for thirty minutes ago?" Ilmarina shouted next to her, and Alice had to touch her to remind her that in this abandoned museum, an Adjutant-Spider had to be careful if she didn't want to hit her own bodyguards. "Oh, sweet honey! Another one lost..."
Alice stopped trying to look outside as another aircraft crashed. And as she had learned quickly, when a war engine slammed into the ground with a lot of promethium in its tanks, the result was spectacular.
By this, she meant a spectacular column of fire and smoke devoured the street. Meagre consolation, the Imperial pilot had fallen upon a heretic position.
So the enemy infantry was definitely dead.
"We need to neutralise the anti-air weapons of the enemy," the stupendous golden spider they were sworn to protect declared imperiously, "and this won't be done by staying here!"
Alice sighed. This conversation came back every five minutes, and didn't get easier any time.
"Adjutant Ilmarina, we know how eager you are to kill the enemies of Lady Weaver, but a lot of coordination, both with your sisters and the different theatre commanders, depends on you. Where you stand, you run little risk. But if you fight in the streets, the Traitors are going to notice your presence and they still have a lot of firepower available."
The young woman had to stop her speech to fire her bolt pistol at three haggard heretics running out of the smoke.
Alice fired six times, two per enemy. Experience gained in the last hours of war had suggested that when in doubt, it was better to give any daemon-worshipping scum a double-dosage of life-terminating medicine.
Sometimes, it simply didn't pay to be miserly with your las-cells or your special bolt shells. You didn't know if the heretic was on his way to whatever hellish pit tainted souls deserved? Then it was better to shatter his head or transform his body into a large red pile of splattered meat.
"Nice shot," Ilmarina complimented her.
"Thank you."
"General Schwarz is sending two new regiments our way," the Adjutant-Spider changed the topic of conversation without warning, "I think we will try to cross the street in twenty minutes. We need to gain ground again. The Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor is a dangerously exposed salient in our defences. If they are encircled, many Ultramarines and loyal servants of the Webmistress will surely perish."
"Err...yes, Ilmarina. But two Brigadier-Generals tried to push towards the Cathedral in the last hours, and-"
Her argument was interrupted by the heretic artillery bombarding the city block with extreme prejudice.
It wasn't a methodical attack like the ones the Imperial Guard constantly threw against the abominations' heads; no, it was like the Archenemy simply had a lot of shells and rockets, and was relishing in demolishing Laphis stone by stone.
Smoke once again became their whole world. New small fires were born. Aircars and the city infrastructure were torn apart and transformed into wrecks. Devastation reigned everywhere. When the systems of her power armour were once more able to see further than the walls of the very damaged museum, long lines of burned vehicles and eviscerated habitation quarters were the new norm.
"I really hope the heretical leader has an enormous bounty!" Ilmarina commented in an exasperated tone. "Do you have an idea how expensive it is going to be to rebuild the city so it can be a jewel reflecting the generosity of the Webmistress?"
Battleship Enterprise
46 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Lady General Taylor Hebert
The space separating the fleet of Operation Stalingrad from Macragge was a cauldron of dying ships and lifeless wrecks.
This didn't bother the Lady General, since most of these hulks had belonged to the Word Bearers in the first place.
"Carrion-class Battleship Vox Dominus destroyed, Chosen of the Omnissiah. Only three heretic ships are left."
"Very good, Archmagos."
By any measure, this battle continued to be a one-sided humiliation for the Traitor Astartes. Evidently, this wasn't exactly something to rejoice about for the short-term. The Chaos-worshipping bastards had deliberately sacrificed all their naval assets, betting on their ability to conquer Macragge before she could rescue the Ultramarines.
"Wolfgang. Have the Tyranids changed course again?"
The tactical display didn't say so, but with this dangerous and remarkably intelligent threat, Taylor wasn't willing to underestimate the danger they posed.
"No, my Lady. The trio of bio-ships continues to rush away from Macragge."
"And their ultimate target?"
"We're still unable to determine if the xenos intend to strike Thulium or Ardium, unfortunately," the Rogue Trader admitted. "Given the information the Space Wolves transmitted in the short time available, both planets can be appealing for a species which thrives by genetically corrupting the fauna of the world they invade. Thulium is covered in jungles; if the Tyranids decide to throw forces there, it is unlikely we will be able to purge them without burning half of the planet from orbit. As for Ardium, I'm sure the beasts would love feasting upon billions of humans."
"And can the fleet catch them if I give the order to pursue them now?"
"Immediately?" the blonde-haired man shook his head, "if Thulium is the target they have chosen, absolutely not. If it is Ardium, we may have a chance...but it would be extremely close." Wolfgang grimaced. "I don't recommend it by the way, my Lady. Leaving an enemy alive in our back-"
"Oh, we aren't going to leave any Word Bearers free to rampage at will in this system," Taylor assured. Even ignoring the fact that this was Macragge and that the military and political consequences didn't bear thinking about, it would indeed be a stupid thing to do. "But this fleet will have to pursue the Tyranids when the Word Bearers' threat is neutralised. Behemoth can and will destroy all the planets of the Macragge System if given the chance, and we don't need to park fifty Battleships in orbit of Macragge to launch precise orbital strikes and protect our transports."
"You have a point, my Lady."
No, there was no doubt the Tyranid trio of void-capable bio-ships had to be killed at all costs. And since the assets of the Ultramarines were not up to the task, it would have to be her Battle Groups which did it.
The real question was: should she go with them or not?
On the one hand, the threat of the Word Bearers who had landed on Macragge was absolutely terrifying. They must still have tens of thousands of Chaos Marines, supported by millions of cultists, and at least a demi-Legio of Traitor Titans. There was no denying that unleashing her swarm here, in addition to her new powers, would make the fight way easier.
On the other hand, for all the golden energy burning inside of her, the insect-mistress couldn't fight two major battles at once. And the images of Fenris, the psychic attacks of Behemoth, and the sizeable damage it had handed to several Gloriana Super-Battleships...it was something the Imperial Guard may not be ready to handle if not properly supported by millions of her insects.
What was she supposed to do?
On the hololithic display, another Word Bearer Battleship died.
That didn't in any way solve her dilemma, and-
A pool of shadow flowed onto the bridge's floor from...somewhere she couldn't look at?
All the members of the Dawnbreaker Guard instinctively raised their weapons...and 'Elena Kerrigan', aka Sophia Hess, aka Shadow Stalker, swam out what appeared to be a miniature lake of darkness.
No, swimming was not the appropriate description of her actions.
The currently red-haired assassin-parahuman was not swimming; she was riding the enormous Fenrisian feline which had been seen licking her hours ago.
"Lower your weapons," Taylor ordered her Honour Guard before raising an eyebrow and addressing her former enemy clad in a black Synskin bodysuit. "That is an interesting ability. What do you want?"
"You need to deal with the Tyranids," the shadow-shrouded assassin declared as the officers on the bridge tried to stay as far away as they could from the enormous feline super-predator. "You're the only one who has a chance with your insects to fight them once they land on a planet. No one else can do that. I can deal with the Word Bearers' Dark Apostles. This is my purpose."
Taylor wasn't exactly convinced. Yes, she hadn't felt 'Elena Kerrigan' coming, but the power she had was attuned with the gift of one of the Emperor's own sons; it was a perfect furtive system against the Light of Sacrifice she wielded.
But the same couldn't be said for the Traitors. Their leaders were damned souls, forged anew into the fires of Hell.
"The heretics will be able to feel your presence long before you strike. The Ruinous Powers will warn them of your coming, and even if they don't, they will have placed lethal contingencies to stop any would-be assassins from terminating them. And as far as I can see, you're not as advanced as I am on the path all Angels must walk upon."
The assassin gave her a simple nod.
"I know. This is why I went to your Battleship first. I need help if I am to kill them all. I need Noctilith."
"Noctilith?" In the last few hours there had been no massive surprise besides the Tyranids changing their strategy, but this definitely qualified as one. "Why do you think it is going to help you? Aethergold, per the power imbued in it, is more a hindrance than a help to the Raven Guard who tried it. Their shadow-walking abilities, which are similar to yours, were significantly decreased any time they tried to use it when shards of Aethergold were in the same compartment."
"What led you to believe," Elena inquired with an infuriating smirk, "that Aethergold is the only modified Noctilith loyal servants of the God-Emperor can create?"
Goliath-class Battleship Unbreakable Faith
Grand Apostle Ekodas
The battle had begun disastrously, and was ending in a thoroughly humiliating fashion.
The Eternal Crusader was only firing sporadically by now, and was skirting around the most distant debris of Battleships with a large escort of Strike Cruisers and Navy Destroyers.
Ekodas was almost certain this was the prelude before the fanatical dogs in white and black launched their own decisive assault so as to save what remained of Macragge's Orbital Grid.
Seeing how badly the day had gone for the Seventeenth Legion, the Dark Apostle sworn to Khorne knew they were going to be successful.
The Grand Apostle should say he cared what was about to happen, but it would be a lie.
Relying so heavily on the power of Haematia had been his only chance.
A chance, which, in the end, had been no chance at all.
Now he was trying to stay still as the level of the blood lake his ritual chambers had become reached his armpits.
He didn't have to be concerned about the Flesh Change Curse anymore.
Then again, he didn't have much to be concerned about anything, especially if it was a matter which didn't involve the Warp.
The raw power of the Lord of Skulls had sunk into his soul, and as each of his Battleships was destroyed, Khorne was getting closer to claiming everything he was.
When the Unbreakable Faith was be destroyed, and it was now a matter of minutes, not hours, Ekodas would be lost body, soul, and mind.
For all his attempts to avoid thinking about it, the member of the Dark Council was unable to forget the terrible fate which awaited him. Of course, the daemons crawling out of the blood lake and taking position in a morbid cohort against the twisting charnel house were not helping matters.
There was a meagre satisfaction in all of this.
The Haematia relic had worked relatively well...within limits. Weaver had been forced to use her Battleships to destroy his one by one, instead of utterly annihilating them in a fraction of a second with the False Emperor's power.
As such, Ekodas knew Khorne and his favourite Bloodthirsters had acquired a great deal of information about Weaver's new toys. The next Admiral sworn to the Gods who would fight this blasphemous daughter would not be taken by surprise nearly as much as he was.
Haematia would likely be the key to improve new ships. How, the Grand Apostle hadn't the faintest idea...and he didn't really care.
His vision was not improving, and most of it was focused on the Haematia relic.
It was terrible and magnificent.
It was a crystal of eight sharp edges, almost but not quite the shape of the blessed eightfold star.
The Haematia was so potent bloodthirst and rage came from just looking at it.
And in its depths, eight shades of red coalesced and fought with each other.
Ekodas knew he contemplated the eight Aspects of Khorne, though even pledged to the Blood God, he wasn't able to distinguish and name them.
Pain increased, and the blood sang.
The blood sang and the order came.
"Weaver..." Ekodas knew his voice was carrying through the immensities of the void and obeying the will of Khorne. "I challenge you! Come and fight me, servant of the False Emperor!"
"Once purified, each final form of the Noctilith gives us a lot of information about the strengths and qualities the God-Emperor expects of us. And each of the Living Saints is the ideal soul one has to use as guide on that path." Words attributed to Inquisitor Kryptman before the Sangua Terra Conclave, 800M41.
Battleship Enterprise
Callidus Assassin Elena Kerrigan
Elena had not known which shape the Noctilith would take after being imbued with her power.
Her best guess had been that it would be black in colour – since her powers continued to be all about shadows, this was a logical assumption.
But after walking next to rows upon rows of brilliant Aethergold cubes, the young Callidus assassin had unconsciously expected that the 'shadow Noctilith' would be the same too, only in a black form.
This wasn't the case.
Instead, where an enormous cube of Noctilith had stood, there was now a floating globular shape.
Yes, it remained levitating without support. It didn't flow onto the ground.
And it wasn't completely black in colour. Though there was a very powerful night shade visible, there were brilliant silver patterns changing on the surface of the orb.
Elena had to admit she instinctively loved it.
"Warm and smelling of metal, yet soft and malleable," Taylor Hebert commented as her bare hand caressed the substance she had just created. "It's...interesting. It's very unlike Aethergold, to say the least."
"Had you considered the fact that since our powers are complete opposite, the Noctilith substances we're able to create may be diverging on a fundamental manner?"
"No," the Angel of Sacrifice admitted, "but now you say it, I can see the merits of this perspective. Aethergold is hard, a light in the darkness, and particularly unyielding once I have forced it into the form I want."
Glad to see it wasn't just her imagination running wild.
"Do you have a name for this Noctilith, by the way?"
"No," Elena admitted. "I have...several on the tip of my tongue, but it is almost as if there's something missing."
Her right hand touched again the transformed Noctilith, and once more the black-silvery substance shifted, and answered to her will. Her curiosity led her to push hand and arm further into the globular shape, and the shadow-wielding parahuman activated her powers.
The phenomenon was fast and intimate.
Something in her blossomed, and Elena closed her eyes, letting the Emperor's will guide her.
When she opened them again, the evolved Noctilith had changed shape, flowing upon her Callidus synskin, and covering her body in a new layer of shadows with some silver markings at locations where they could easily be hidden.
This wasn't the only modification made to her attire. There was no mirror, but Elena touched her face, and instead of a Callidus mask, there was a feminine version of the Mark VI helmet the majority of the Raven Guard used.
"Well..." Taylor Hebert must have a pretty high tolerance for surprises, because her expression of surprise didn't last more than three seconds. "That's a change of look, alright. I hope you will be able to write a post-battle report describing the abilities granted by your globular Noctilith-"
"Umbralshroud," Elena spoke. "Its name is Umbralshroud."
"Umbralshroud? It...isn't a bad name. I suppose you want another block for your Frostlion?"
An enormous purr rumbled behind the two Chosen of the God-Emperor.
"I think that's a yes." The Callidus replied humorously.
"Weaver! I challenge you! Come and fight me, servant of the False Emperor!"
The imprecation was that of an abominable heretic, and a powerful one at that, to be heard in a compartment which was so heavily warded, behind powerful Gellar Fields...
"Your first catch of the day, assassin," the mistress of insects snorted, before releasing a secret mechanism of her armour, which revealed...a Phase Sword?
"How in the name of the Golden Throne did you manage to-"
"Unfortunately, I don't have the time to tell you that story...Elena. Just know that you aren't the first Callidus I met." The green blade was thrown to her hilt first. "Please make sure to keep some material evidence to prove you have killed the Dark Apostles. The senior warlords of Lorgar all have monstrous bounties upon their heads."
"So the rumours you have given heart attacks to half of the Almitas' Adepts are true?"
Goliath-class Battleship Unbreakable Faith
Grand Apostle Ekodas
Ekodas waited.
The blood lake had almost reached his mouth, and the pain was excruciating.
And he couldn't even open his helmet for the suffering to end. It was-
The Haematia flared dangerously. Before he could react, a green blade bisected it into two neat fragments.
The blood levels instantly fell lower than his chest, and Ekodas rushed forwards.
This, he reflected, a fraction of a second before seeing an enormous explosion of crimson slam straight in his face, had been the wrong reaction to make.
Everything became pain again, but this time it was truly old-fashioned physical suffering, not the Lord of Blood destroying his soul slowly and methodically like a grinding machine.
One moment the Grand Apostle believed that at least whoever had dared strike at the emblem of Khorne had paid the price for this odious heresy.
This thought abruptly ended as something huge struck him from behind, and with an atrocious sound, one of his legs was ripped from his body.
For all his transhuman body and the pacts carved in his armour, the realisation came fast that the pain he had felt before was merely the prelude.
The pain, however, did not seem so problematic when he saw the giant feline shrouded in shadows and silver which stared back at him. The blood lake was gone. The artefact-weapons he had offered to Khorne were nowhere to be seen.
But Ekodas' rage knew no bounds.
When he could see the beast had his missing leg secured in its opened maw, hatred was an inaccurate word to describe what he really was feeling.
"Give my leg back! Stupid cat, give it back!"
"Strange last words, but who I am to judge?"
A blade sliced through his neck, and Grand Apostle Ekodas died screaming.
Laphis
The Skies of Ravenna
47 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Commander Freya Brasidas
The skies of Commorragh had been extremely dangerous.
The skies of Ravenna were just as dangerous as them, whether you were an Imperial pilot or not.
The big difference, Freya knew as she launched her last decoys and made a brusque change of course to avoid several missiles certainly not destined for her, was the anti-air artillery.
According to the rumours they heard every time they landed, the heretic tanks of the Archenemy were pure crap if they weren't crewed by Chaos Marines. Unfortunately, this didn't apply to their anti-air defences. The Volscani Traitors and all sorts of cultist bastards weren't good pilots – most of them had been killed by now – but they had brought a lot of Hydra Flak Tanks with them.
As if things couldn't get any more 'interesting', the Imperial Guard which was supposed to help them was shooting their own Hydra Flak Tanks too, and their goal appeared to be to kill everyone who flew over the battlefield, enemy and ally.
And last but not least, after a good day of seeing airfields overrun and tens of thousands of aircraft crashing into ruins, only the better pilots survived. For the Aeronautica Imperialis, this translated into Commorragh veterans and the most brilliant pilots who had trained like there was no tomorrow in the months before Operation Stalingrad was launched.
For the Archenemy, those survivors were Traitor Astartes, most often piloting Xiphon Interceptors and some improved machines straight from Great Crusade holo-recordings.
"We have a trio of Xiphon at eleven o'clock."
"I see them on my auspex, Red-Two."
You couldn't see them with your own eyes or anything else anyway, thanks to those gigantic amounts of clouds rising from the city of Ravenna. It was like they were fighting over a sea of fire, with the kills they made sometimes adding to the pyrotechnic displays.
"This is White Leader. Reform on me, we have some Xiphon machines to kill."
Freya emptied the bottle of water they were so graciously given at the beginning of each flight, and prepared herself. It was not going to be pleasant.
"Missiles! Missiles behind us!"
"Orange-Three is gone! Orange-Three is gone!"
"One more Xiphon behind us! It's a modified Xiphon, certainly the Jackal!"
Great. Not only they were fighting the aces of the Traitor Marines, the Archenemy had also sent one of their very best sky butchers to kill them.
Freya cut off the thought and launched her own missiles at two of the Xiphons she had first locked onto. That it had been a trap didn't mean she couldn't kill those bastards.
"White-Thirteen is down! There were no time to-"
"White Leader got one! A second has been damaged!"
"Target the third!" Usually, she would not stop until a whole wing was destroyed, but there was a bigger danger which had already destroyed one Brunhilda and two Thunderbolts. "I will deal with the Jackal myself."
Aerial duels didn't last very long. It felt like hours for the pilots involved, of course, but once they were back at the base and had the opportunity to review what they had done, they generally were forced to admit the whole period of life-or-death struggle was over in thirty seconds.
This time the impression didn't feel any different, but somehow, the Nyxian noblewoman felt it was lasting far too long. Every manoeuvre she made to gain the advantage on the heretic was countered by another manoeuvre. Feints became counter-feints. They expended more and more of their ammunition until they were limited to the close-quarters cannons.
All the while the skies continued to be in fire, and the anti-air batteries of both sides tried to shoot them down.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the modified Xiphon painted with crude glyphs of damnation turned away.
One look at an important gauge informed her it was likely for the same reason she was going to have to return too: lack of fuel.
"All members of White Squadron who can hear me, the Jackal is in retreat," Freya said in a tone trying to hide how tired she was by that fight. "I am returning to-"
The edge of her beloved White Lance's left wing disappeared in an explosion, and suddenly Freya fought with her yoke to keep it somehow stable.
When the smoke dissipated, the damaged wing looked like one of those disgusting cheeses her father loved so much. The ones which had plenty of holes.
Freya didn't need to be a genius to know a Hydra Flak Tank had just effectively 'killed' her fighter.
And as if nothing good could ever happen to her, several missiles flashed onto her auspex as, one by one, the lights of the Brunhilda cockpit went crimson.
"This is White Leader, my Brunhilda is severely damaged and about to be destroyed. I'm ejecting."
One glance at the ground below, and yes, the leader of White Squadron could confirm she was flying right above a very contested war zone...of course that described most of Ravenna today, but still.
This was, as the good old proverb said, going to be unpleasant.
Ravenna – West of the Polenta River
Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor
Colonel Lothar Jurten
"Where is our damn artillery? We need them to kill that heretic Land Raider!"
"To cover! To cover! They can't hold-"
"The walls of the Cathedral can't protect against this sorcery! Kneel and fire back!"
It was complete madness.
And the worst part was that it had come so fast after the first victorious counterattack led by the Ultramarines.
The Ultramarines had helped them turn a small number of Traitor Marines, a lot of Cataphracts, and even one big Chaos Knight, into fuming carcasses and incinerated flesh.
And the calm had lasted long enough for Captain Thiel and his men to move to reinforce other regiments of Krieg.
Then the heretic counterattack had arrived.
This time it wasn't just a few super-heavy tanks acting without infantry support. The Volscani Cataphracts had thrown several of their close-assault bombers, many Leman Russ Tanks, and a couple of Cataphracts along with at least five thousand shock troopers into the grind.
By a succession of bloody sacrifices and thousands of Plasma Grenades, they had managed to stop that counterattack two hundred metres away from the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor. In strategic terms, they had lost pretty much everything the previous counterattack had gained, along with at least half of his 83rd. The four other regiments deployed had suffered worse.
"Where are our reinforcements?" Lothar repeated. "We can't hold this Land Raider back by ourselves!"
Once more he fired his lasgun, and his men, imitating him, fired everything they had against a single Chaos Marine. The monster laughed...before it began to explode in size, sprouting a second head, and its limbs turned into pincers and other horrible things.
"Another Spawn? Colonel, what the hell is wrong with them?"
"Don't know, don't care," Lothar snapped, as three of the other Traitor Astartes, caught by surprise, were trying to put down the monster which had fought by their side until a second ago. "Do we have any Sturmgeschütz able to intervene?"
"Colonel, with all due respect," the heretic hull of damnation continued to advance and fire, and it incinerated two more buildings, killing the God-Emperor only knew how many snipers, "the Sturmgeschütz's gun is not powerful enough to kill a Land Raider!"
"Maybe not when firing at the front," the Krieg Colonel acknowledged, "but from the rear, we might have a chance. I don't know if the bastards intend to enter the Cathedral, but there's plenty of narrow alleys where our Tank Hunters will be able to move and prepare an ambush."
"This...fine, Colonel, but I don't think it's going to work."
To be honest, Lothar didn't think it was going to work either. Conventional Land Raiders, according to the documentation every regimental commander had been given in pre-campaign reports, were extremely tough beasts. They had two twin-linked Lascannons, and a twin-linked Heavy Bolter. This one had two big sorcery-filled guns which made Lascannons look inefficient, and the enormous replacement for the Heavy Bolter was a daemonic head sprouting Warp-cursed fire.
"THE GOD-EMPEROR PROTECTS!" Oh no, not the mad priest again. "THE GOD-EMPEROR PROTECTS!"
Lothar crawled between the debris of what had been a Cataphract Tank, and signalled the closest Sergeant to stop the madman. There were a lot of tactics which were utterly suicidal when a Land Raider had slaughtered its way across the main avenue, and charging while screaming sermons was perhaps the most insane of all.
"WE ARE HIS SERVANTS! WE DO NOT FEAR DEATH! WE ARE THE HAMMER OF THE GOD-EMPEROR! CHARGE!"
"DEATH TO THE HERETICS!" The bald and mad-eyed Priest was leading a crowd of about a thousand, which included Laphisers, soldiers from a variety of Krieg regiments, and plenty of Auxilia personnel brought back into line by the threat of summary execution.
They were poorly armed, most of them had not properly cared of their carapace armours – when they had begun the battle with one – and they had all a pathetic air of militia and unruly military remnants.
Still, they charged. Baying religious hymns and fanatical battle-cries, they ran out of the Cathedral and rushed to get in range of the heretical Land Raider crewed by the Great Enemy's elite.
The problem was...the Traitor Marines were not blind. Their Astartes outside the Tank were busy subduing the Spawn with chain-weapons and corrupted Bolters, but there was nothing to divert the attention of the Land Raider's crew.
For several seconds, it was just an atrocious butchery.
"COLONEL! RUN!"
Lothar trusted his own men enough to obey the order. Ignoring everything prudent in his mind, the Colonel of the 83rd ran towards one of the ruined buildings which were still standing, and took cover.
Before he could breathe twice, an aircraft fell from the sky and crashed into the Land Raider.
The explosion as heretical ammunition collided with Aeronautica promethium was extremely satisfying...satisfying and a just expression of utter annihilation for everything that was close enough to be impaled by thousands of metallic splinters or torched by inflammable substances.
Never had Lothar been more pleased to wear a rebreather mask, given how filled with smoke and poisonous substances the avenue's air was right now.
However, the most striking feature remained the huge crater 'decorating' the fastest and least defensible path to reach the cathedral.
"The Priest was mad, but he wasn't wrong, Colonel...there was a miracle coming."
"Maybe...I am not saying it was a miracle, but we had the God-Emperor's luck with us." Lothar cleared his throat. "Try to find the pilot of this aircraft. I didn't have much time to observe it, but I think it was one of ours. If he ejected, we owe it to him to locate and repatriate him back to the mustering grounds near the river."
"Yes, Colonel! Err...do you want to cancel the request for reinforcements?"
"No. We have lost so many of our men we won't be able to counterattack without them..."
Ravenna – East of the Polenta River
48 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
General Jack 'Death' Schwartz
"It is butchery," the Nyxian liaison to his artillery didn't look like a man whose stomach was easily shaken, but right now, his face looked like he was about to violently retch, "and you want to keep firing? Why? Most of the city is already nothing more than rubble and a graveyard of vehicles! And we likely kill more Krieg guardsmen than the enemy does!"
Mentally, Jack promised himself to inform the promotion board to not even consider giving one more rank to this Colonel for the rest of his career. While it spoke well of the man to care about fellow guardsmen who weren't of his world, he had completely missed the strategic implications. For a Colonel of the Imperial Guard, this could be tolerated. If you wanted to command a formation larger than a regiment, it couldn't.
"Because," the Catachan General replied, "the artillery is pinning down the Chaos Marines as long as it fires. When the Basilisks, Sphinxes, and Vermilion rocket-launchers are bombarding their positions, the Traitor Astartes must take cover or dig in like everyone else."
There were countless reports of the transhumans worshipping the Archenemy shrugging off hundreds of lasguns shots. On the other hand, a few dozen artillery shells saturating their positions were in general enough to calm their heresy forever.
"We are still losing tens of thousands of men!"
"One hundred thousand and forty-three men have perished in the name of the God-Emperor and the Glorious Webmistress so far," Ilmarina the Adjutant-Spider informed the Nyxian. While there was no sign of injury on her metallic 'skin', the loyalist insect was far more subdued than she had been when this battle began. "We are trying to cope with the influx of more than fifty thousand wounded, many of them requiring immediate hospital attention."
"You see-"
"But it does not matter." The golden spider interrupted the Colonel in a tone which was as terrifying as a Commissar's, if in a different way. "My sisters have made the necessary requisitions to take over seventy hospitals already, and the Queens of our ant partners have quintupled the production of Bacta. Medical services will be given to all of those who are in need. The edicts of the Webmistress will be respected."
"Anything else I must know immediately?" the holder of a Star of Terra inquired, making sure the smile he wanted to express was not seen by the spider or his subordinates.
"We have recovered twenty-two veteran pilots in the last hour, thanks to the bravery of the Krieg scouts." Ilmarina reported quickly. "Including three Aces of Aces who began their careers at Commorragh. It is good, the Webmistress and her officers had a bet about Freya Brasidas and Kurt Nils. It would have been a shame for their tale to end here. Incidentally, the Aeronautica commanders report having neutralised about seventy-three percent of the original aerial forces of the Word Bearers."
It had not been a hundred hours since he was given the Adjutant-Spiders to help the war effort, but Jack Schwarz could see how tempting it was to fire everyone in the Departmento Munitorum and replace them with the talkative spiders, who, for all their personality quirks, combined efficiency and clarity.
"The tunnels?"
"They have opened twenty-four minutes ago, exactly where you ordered, General Death. The Mechanised Infantry is taking position around the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor, the Museum of the Great Crusade, the Iota Artistic Academy, and the Caesar Thermal Complex."
This was far better than his own predictions had dreamed possible. The training exercises of past years had confirmed the Adjutant-Spiders could control Ambulls and thus pave the way for underground assaults with or without Lady Weaver's presence, but the speed of progress had to be seen to be believed.
It left a last point, in a way the most important.
"How certain are you that there are no reserves of Word Bearers at the western periphery of Ravenna?"
"Reasonably confident, General Death," a small spider arrived and threw a stack of pictures in his direction before leaving as quickly as she had arrived, "not only did the pressure the Krieg guardsmen are exerting ensure they tried to counterattack as ferociously as possible, Captain Thiel and Ancient Rylanor are ambushing them in dozens of small engagements. This forces the heretics, in turn, that we believe to be led by the Vile One himself, to use more and more stupid gambits in order to break the deadlock."
"Good." If the numbers were accurate, the last twenty-four hours had seen between four and seven hundred Word Bearers and other Traitor Astartes die in the streets of Ravenna.
"The perfidious and treacherous enemies of the Webmistress have kept an armoured reserve, which is both serving as a rearguard and a place to...to do all sorts of horrible and monstrous activities in, General."
"Yes, they have a reserve..."
Apparently, for all the heretics' lack of talent in military strategy, they weren't so stupid as to not keep a force in reserve in case the Imperial Guard had a nasty surprise for them.
"But it is a small force, and we are going to attack them from the north and the south."
The Vile One, assuming it really was that heretic in command, would face the dilemma of sending his reserve either north or south, or divide it in two to delay the pincers of the encirclement closing around this horde of Spawn and mad cultists.
"We have waited for long enough. Transmit the attack orders to the Lances of House Terryn."
Macragge
Pharsalus Military District
The Pharsalus Line
49 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
General Grumio Catullus
The realm of Macragge, as every General of the Ultramar Auxilia knew, had signed many offensive and defensive pacts with different Legios of the Collegia Titanica. Some of them were as old as the Great Crusade itself.
Every General also knew there was not a single Titan on Macragge. A small Maniple had participated in the parades for the recent celebrations and reviews ordered by Regent Valens so that the ceremonies of the Second Founding's birthday were memorable, but those Titans must have made their Warp transition by now.
To be clear, the sons of Guilliman, whose orders Grumio Catullus was duty-bound to obey in every matter of military importance, could summon Titans without demanding for the wider Imperium's assistance. Konor and Gantz supplied the Legio Praesagius, and the True Messengers were a reliable ally even when the political situation was tense.
None of it was of great comfort at the moment, since no Astropathic call had accomplished anything but kill the psyker who attempted it.
The Loyalist Titans weren't here.
Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said about the enemy.
"I count twenty of them," his chief of staff reported quickly as he lowered the magnoculars. "In the first attack formation."
"Yes...and they have three more coming right behind it," the Ultramar General didn't even try to use a magnifying device. It would not tell him something else besides what he already knew.
To keep it blunt and simple, his men and himself were all going to die.
What was the saying, again? What Titans had to fear were hubris, and another of its own kind?
Well, the saying was true.
Watching them advance on the horizon, it was like mountains had suddenly taken life and gone to war.
Alas, the reality was far more horrible than that.
"Ignore the Imperator monster," Grumio ordered, wincing at the sheer scale of the massacre the tallest and most dangerous gigantic walker was going to inflict on the four defensive layers of the Pharsalus line. "The Shadowsword Tanks must go after the Warlords and the Warbringer Nemeses they have. Those their Volcano Cannons can kill if they play it smart."
"I don't think that's a good idea, General," the man he had known since they enlisted at Macragge Civitas protested. "That Imperator is an enormous threat, and is hardly going to stay idle-"
"But we don't have the guns to bring it down. Not if the energy readings are true."
The Void Shields of an Imperator were theoretically capable of enduring the Exterminatus of the planet they walked upon, but the readings his command centre got from this heretical abomination were twice as powerful as the maximum output of the most dangerous asset of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
"Deploy all the troops which have managed to reach us. Contact the regiments who haven't, and tell them to adopt a Kappa-Omega deployment in the valley leading to the capital."
That was more than one hundred thousand men who wouldn't come to reinforce his order of battle, but this was not as much a hindrance as he had feared hours ago.
If the Archenemy truly wanted to lay siege to Macragge Civitas, they would have to fight the Ultramar Auxilia in a series of deadly ambushes, and many of the delayed Brigades possessed old vehicles which could pierce a Titan's Void Shields provided the crews were skilled hunters and luck was on their side.
"We are going to fight with less than a million men, General."
"We are going to die with less than a million men," Grumio Catullus corrected. "The heretics have brought ninety-four Traitor Titans. That's ninety-four more than we have."
The Magos in charge of the maintenance of the complex technology the halls of the Pharsalus command bunker contained came back as he finished speaking.
"Our blessed data-vaults have confirmation on the enemy Legio." The Tech-Priest hissed after saying the words, making a noise which was entirely mechanical. Not that it was enormously surprising, normal humans did not have six mechadendrites and a body which looked like an assemblage of ten aircars combined with a toaster. "It is the Legio Vulturum we are facing. The noble Engines have been defiled and modified, but there can't be any mistake in our cogitations. The Imperator is the twelve-times accursed Tyrannosaurus Rex."
"And what sort of armament does this Tyran-"
There was a mighty roar.
It shook...it shook everything.
Walls fissured. All around him, Ultramar Auxilia officers began to giggle, ate their own laspistols, or began to bash their heads against the nearest hololith.
The air was filled with terror. It was so hurtful Grumio had difficulties just trying to think. There was an urge to flee. There was the sensation he was nothing but a tiny, insignificant thing in front of the apocalypse.
"Psychic sonic weaponry," the last General of the Catullus line heard the Magos say, but it was as if the words were spoken far away and under water. "How did the hereteks manage to-"
Tyrannosaurus Rex roared again.
Dark Apostle Mothac
Mothac laughed as the slaves of the False Emperor died in their thousands.
You could say a lot of things about Sota-Nul, but the Mechanicum's Hell Forge-Mistress was hardly incompetent when it came to designing and building destructive weapons. If anything, it didn't do her justice. The former Apprentice to the Fabricator-General had reverse-engineered the weapons of Eldar Titans, and somehow developed models which could be carried by the Legio Vulturum.
Theoretically and for the non-initiated, that didn't sound too difficult a challenge. Mothac, infused with the wisdom of the Grandfather, knew how massive a technological achievement it truly was.
Xenos walkers had nothing in common with the machines the Imperium had and continued to use. The Eldar ones had even less than most disturbing nonhuman empires, since they used massive amounts of psychically-reactive materials.
So where did Sota-Nul-
Ah. Of course. The Hell Forge-Mistress must have taken inspiration from the Legio Sinister of the False Emperor.
Naturally, finding Blank Princeps had been impossible in the Eye of Terror, but somehow, she had been able to rebuild entirely new Titans without this vital piece of control.
And now it proved its worth.
Blasts of psychic power echoed, and the mortals panicked, detonating their minefields before a single Titan approached them. Underground assault teams revealed their positions long before they had any chance to surprise the Titans.
The roars had fundamentally destroyed this pathetic fortification before the first shot was fired.
Yet Mothac wasn't truly satisfied. It was an enjoyable moment, but this was not Holy Decay at work.
They were destroying the Pharsalus Line with reverse-engineered weapons and overwhelming firepower. Some of his Legionnaires had tried to spread a few plagues, but there was obviously no time for the disease to spread and deliver even a few of the Grandfather's blessings.
The mortal auxiliaries were dying quickly, and the Dark Apostle knew this was part of the plan. It was just...he could freely admit that his new self, which had been granted the great honour of a glance at the holy sight of the Garden, was displeased by this spectacle.
Missiles coursing with flamboyant blue lightning were tearing enormous gaps into the ten metres-high walls. Red blasts of energy melted turrets and whatever was hiding inside the trenches. Thousands of the False Emperor's blinded fools were buried under the rubble or vaporised by the sheer power of Legio Vulturum.
Mothac still didn't like it.
It didn't get any better, for as the Titans' Void Shields shrugged off the feeble efforts of the enemy artillery contemptuously, the Volscani and the other slaves they had mustered screamed either the names of the Brutish Slaughterer or the Architect of Lies.
They weren't praising the Grandfather.
And this didn't please Mothac at all.
"I will make see them reason, oh Grandfather," the plague-afflicted Dark Apostle gurgled. "I swear-"
"Mothac! What are you doing? You should be in position with your forces, piercing the line on its southernmost sections and directly assaulting the Spaceport behind it!"
"Calm yourself, Paristur," if only the other veteran had been able to abandon his ridiculous stance of not swearing himself to a single God, he would have been a great servant of Nurgle. "Everything is in position. My men are already spreading many diseases as we speak."
"I DON'T WANT THE ENEMY TO DIE BY DISEASE!" The scream almost deafened him. And this frightened him, for this was unlike Paristur to show that much hatred to a peer. "I don't want them to die by your plagues and your diseases," the other member of the Dark Council repeated less forcefully, "Ekodas is dead, and that means Weaver is on her way to kill us personally. We don't have the time to spread an epidemic which is unlikely to work anyway."
"I am consternated by the lack of faith you have in the Grandfather's blessings, Paristur."
One second later, part of the sky behind the Pharsalus Line turned to gold, and Mothac felt the Plaguebearers behind the Veil scream angrily as many holy seeds were destroyed, as infernal light burned them to dust.
"I am showing you the faith you deserve, Mothac." The remark infuriated him, but for the life of him, the new Plague Marine didn't have a reply. "Attack the Spaceport and make sure Weaver and her forces can't use it. If you fail, I will kill you myself."
Mothac grunted and took his scythe back in his hand.
This turn of events was extremely inconvenient...especially as it confirmed the other members of the Council couldn't be trusted to accomplish the Lord of Decay's will.
Laphis
Southern approaches of West Ravenna
50 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
High Queen Esmeralda Terryn
General Jack Schwarz may be an uncultured brute of Catachan who had no appreciation for the heroic tales of House Terryn – a trait a disturbing percentage of the Guard shared – but his timing was impeccable.
When Esmeralda led the one hundred and thirty other Knights of her House past the ruined village they had just burned alongside the regiment-sized formation of heretics occupying it, it was to catch over two hundred Traitor tanks manoeuvring on the flat, verdant fields separating her Lances from the city of Ravenna.
Elena felt the excitement of her beloved Sapphire Lance, and memories of uncountable battles flooded through the Throne Mechanicum's connection.
Be they Leman Russ or another type of armoured vehicle the heretics had corrupted for their fell purposes, they couldn't escape her.
"Baron Jasper, I give you the honour of leading the Lance to my left. Duke Balthazar, the honour to protect my right is yours."
"Yes, High Queen!"
"They do not deserve the honour of knowing our names!" The young red-haired noblewomen bared her teeth. "Annihilate them!"
And joining her deeds to her words, the Volcano Lance and Plasma Decimator of Sapphire Lance fired and killed two heretical targets.
Powerful emotions flooded her immediately after, and Esmeralda had to control herself. This...it felt good , but she had to be careful. Yes, the Dominus Pattern Knight Castellan was a beautiful partner to ride, but Sapphire Lance had a temper and the repairs the Nyxian Mechanicus had made had increased her rebelliousness at the same rate they had improved speed, system efficiency, and firepower.
"Two kills confirmed, High Queen." Her Herald announced. "Are you sure you really need us?"
"Well, we will have to see..." Esmeralda chuckled before returning to lethal seriousness. "We have yet to reach Ravenna. Let's advance, my Lances."
And so the House of Terryn marched northwards.
It was completely unlike the awful fighting they had done in the depths of the Throne of Oblivion, where two priceless Knights had been lost and thirteen had been damaged so badly they were currently undergoing extensive repairs in the Star-Forge Galleons.
No, this time it was a straight-out massacre.
The Questoris Patterns were not as exceptional at long-range as Sapphire Lance was, but it didn't make any difference. Once or twice, a tank shell hammered the ion shields of a too-confident Knight, but this audacity was punished by her Lances immediately, often with the one of her nobles who was 'hit' being teased by her Barons.
Some heretics tried to flee.
House Terryn's Lances pursued and methodically tore them apart.
One by one, missiles and energy weapons transformed each enemy vehicle into a wreck.
"Colonel Mondragon and his Khan-equipped regiments are one kilometre behind us, your Majesty."
"They've advanced fast," Esmeralda let a touch of humour be heard in her royal voice again, "or is it some of us are getting a bit slow in their old age?"
"I wouldn't dare slow you down, High Queen," Duke Balthazar grumbled, her honorary uncle making the appropriate sounds of grouchiness.
"Enemy forces reported leaving the boundaries of the city, High Queen! They are still far away from maximal engagement range, but we confirm at least one hundred armoured super-heavy tanks!"
A mechanical alert from her long-range enemy-identifiers she had only heard once before when taking the field in person chimed.
"Not just super-heavy tanks, Baron. There are Traitor Knights out there."
The green-eyed High Queen smiled instinctively. There was no greater enemy to kill in the name of the God-Emperor and His Saint.
Some might say that Traitor Titans deserved this position, and they wouldn't be completely wrong, but hunting a corrupted unit of the Titanica was a pack-hunt, where improvisation and individual skill held little importance. Knights had to work together to have a chance against a single Titan, even if they were as powerful as her Sapphire Lance.
But Traitor Knights...they were a stain upon the honour of the Loyal Questoris Houses. They were a reminder that, when the time had come to choose between loyalty and vile treachery, many oath-breakers had preferred sipping the poisoned chalice of the Traitor Warmaster than do what was right.
"Let them come," a noble whose voice she didn't recognise proclaimed, "those heretics we destroyed on our way here were barely enough to chase away the drowsiness."
"High Queen! Identification of the Traitors...we see over fifty Traitor Knights, and most of them seem to be painted in the colours of the Devine Traitors!"
House Devine. The name was infamous, even by the awful standards of the Traitor Houses. Their initial betrayal had ensured their homeworld's sizeable garrison was massacred to the last, and during their march to Terra, the unholy betrayers had committed so many atrocities that the numbers of grudges against them from Loyal Houses was worth a one year-long period of lamentation in its own right.
Esmeralda, like many young Knights, had thought House Devine would never be seen again. They had fallen to a Ruinous Power which was dead, after all.
Apparently, she had been wrong.
"Barons! It appears House Devine has survived the Hour of the Emperor's Wrath!" The red-haired noblewoman suppressed the urge to attack coming from the Throne Mechanicus. "I do not wish to explain to Lady Weaver that they have survived the might of House Terryn!"
"Yes, High Queen!"
"By your will, your Majesty!"
"DEATH TO THE TRAITORS!"
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
One hundred and thirty-one Knights of House Terryn went to war.
Ravenna – West of the Polenta River
Leviathan super-heavy assault transport Legion's Eye
Chaos Lord Moefranc
Five minutes ago, the sorcerers had foretold a massive attack on the southern flank, one which would be an enormous peril if left unchecked.
And since the visions had included Knights loyal to the Corpse decaying on the Throne of Terra, Moefranc had sent the Knights of House Devine.
It was the most logical solution...and it was honestly the only force he felt could counter this new threat in time to do any good.
While he wasn't going to admit it inside the Legion's Eye or anywhere else, the fighting inside the capital of Laphis was consuming available assets at an insane rate. Legionnaires and slaves alike were dying so quickly that several times when he had moved closer to the frontlines, he was met with piles of corpses.
All these hours, Moefranc had tried to convince himself that while they weren't exactly winning, the slaves of the False Emperor were hardly triumphing either. Most of Lord Erebus' Champions had kill-counts in the tens of thousands by now.
At some point, the mortals and the Space Marines helping them were going to break. They had begun this battle watching their civilians be slaughtered, and there were countless reports signalling the summary executions were continuing hour after hour.
The morale of the potential slaves was low. They would soon break the threshold of one million casualties, and his artillery had, after a period of adaptation, killed plenty of those big scorpions. In the last thirty minutes, the river traffic was more or less interrupted.
This confidence had been threatened by the southern offensive, though he had believed at first this was the blasphemers' last attempt at delaying the inevitable.
It did not survive the appearance of a massive army on his northern flank.
Worse, said military force had already crossed the river, despite the fact there were no standing bridges in that direction for more than three hundred kilometres. The initial orbital strikes had made sure of that.
"Status of this new army?"
"We are counting twelve hundred Chimera-type vehicles," the daemonhost in charge of the surveillance of the plains croaked. "They are followed by five hundred pieces of artillery. We see over forty columns of trucks trying to keep pace with this vanguard."
"How by the feathers of all Lords of Change did they manage something like that in so little time?" Moefranc asked in exasperation.
"Maybe because unlike you, the Imperials don't suck at organising their logistics?" the creature suggested with undisguised relish. It earned it a well-deserved fist to the head.
"We need to counterattack immediately!" One of the few Captains who wasn't on the frontlines vehemently interjected. "I can lead my Company-"
"Your Company is understrength with...what thirty Legionnaires? All are wounded and currently being patched up by our medical specialists."
"We have five Chaos Spawns too!"
"That is no advantage. It is a noose threatening to strangle the entire Legion."
While the Spawns had proved an efficient weapon to use when you felt you could point them at the enemy without trouble, every Legionnaire 'handling' one of the former Astartes had quickly learned that if the Chaos Spawns could 'misinterpret' the orders or escape their fate as defence-breaker, they would not let the opportunity go to waste.
"I won't stay here doing nothing! You might feel confident staring at defeat doing nothing, but I refuse! I am going to launch a counterattack northwards, and the mortals will rue the day they tried that strategy!"
"What a glorious idiot," the daemonhost kept in a kneeling position by eight great chains of the finest illuminated metals of the Eye of Terror commented.
"Silence."
"Let's consider the positive consequences of his actions. He won't have to suffer the transformation into a Chaos Spawn, these new forces are going to wipe him out before the Flesh Change fulfils its purpose."
"I said SILENCE!" Moefranc immediately regretted the loss of control. The entity was born of the Warp; it was never a good idea to let it know how enraged and lacking in options he was. "Show me the battlefield where the Knights duel each other."
"As you wish. I must say, with House Devine outnumbered more than two-to-one, your chances of stopping this encirclement don't look good...what are those fools doing? Ha! Anarchy strikes again!"
Southern approaches of West Ravenna
High Queen Esmeralda Terryn
Once they were back at Furion Peak, Esmeralda would admit to her little brother she had been a bit worried when the Traitor Knights launched their first sonic bombardment at long-range. It had nearly taken out the Ion Shield of Sapphire Lance, after all.
But House Terryn had returned fire and killed four of them in a devastatingly accurate counter-barrage, Esmeralda personally claiming one of those engine-kills.
Given the enormous disparity in numbers, the High Queen had thought she had a massive advantage, even if those 'sonic bombardments' would surely kill several of her nobles before being vanquished.
But then the abominable-looking pink machines – who could tolerate fighting in such a ghastly machine, the young noblewoman sworn to the God-Emperor had no idea – had not reloaded and fired again. Five of the Devine Knights had suddenly screeched loudly and turned their close-quarters weapons against their fellow Traitors.
In the span of three heartbeats, what had promised to be a hard-fought battle against Extremis Traitoris heretics became a one-sided extermination wrought with the name of the God-Emperor on their lips.
As anything looking like order abandoned the ranks of the eternally-damned Knights, Esmeralda and her Lances were reloading their weapons, all taking their time to make sure there was no escape, and then with perfect accuracy, unleashed volley after volley against the heretical oath-breakers – or their descendants, with the Warp Storms' shenanigans, it was always difficult to know if you were fighting a veteran or a new mutant having delusions of grandeur.
Naturally, neither her nobles nor she fired at the two surviving Traitor Knights which had turned against their own masters.
The Devine Knights took care of them before being all killed...but not fast enough to not reveal that the pink paint was being replaced by white-and-black colours.
Esmeralda was going to have to send an urgent message to the rest of the High Command of Battle Group Volga. Lady Weaver had told them to keep an eye out for any Anarchic manifestation, and this definitely was one, she was ready to stake half of her tapestries on it.
"That...that was far, far easier than I expected this fight to be," Duke Balthazar commented as the last Devine Knight exploded under the combined fire of no less than ten Terryn Knights. "What next, your Majesty?"
"General Schwarz wanted us to open the way so that the heretics inside Ravenna could be encircled. I think," Esmeralda grinned, "that it is time to finish this not-so-arduous task..."
Macragge
Fortress of Hera
51 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Captain Gaius Pompeius
"Fabius, please tell me you have good news."
The Master of the Recruits, commanding officer of the 10th Company of the Ultramarines Chapter, gave Gaius a thin smile.
"As it happens, I have some good news. The Black Templars have been unleashed on the Orbital Grid and the stations the bastard sons of Lorgar managed to capture, and they're making excellent progress. We're still short of having orbital superiority, never mind orbital supremacy, but with the Word Bearers' fleet entirely wiped out, it is only a matter of time."
"Theoretically and practically, that can only be good news indeed." The de facto Chapter Master acknowledged.
"Yes. And Captain Cestus is on his way with most of the 7th Company. They're deploying as we speak, so we should see their Thunderhawks landing in a few minutes. And we have received confirmation our Chapter Master has been healed, though naturally the Apothecaries won't allow him to leave their sight for at least a few more hours."
Gaius was not surprised. He had seen the wounds Regent Cato Valens had taken before they evacuated the doomed flagship of the Ultramar fleet, and frankly, miraculous healing substances or not, it was a miracle the Chapter Master was still among the living. That damnable Chaos Spawn had gutted him before going down.
"And the bad news?"
"There are significant problems finding enough Astartes Power Armours to replace the lost suits of Mark VII aboard Weaver's fleet."
Of all the problems the Captain leading the 1st Company had thought he would hear today, this wasn't one of them.
"I thought our cousins had been totally reequipped with some brand-new Power Armour...the Mark IX, if I remember correctly."
"They have." Captain Torquatus Rebilus, Master of the Rites, confirmed. "Though 'totally reequipped' is really stretching the truth further than the practical allows. According to the preliminary figures I checked, the Blood Angels' Successors alone replaced only sixty percent of their Mark VII with the Mark IX. And of course, we mustn't forget that the fleet that they came with fought a considerable number of battles before reaching Macragge."
Gaius was not an expert in power armours, but he could see where this was going.
"They have taken significant losses, and thanks to their large supplies of Bacta, the Space Marines present aboard this huge fleet often survived despite their equipment being crippled or suffering heavy damage."
Now that the problem was pointed out, the commander of the Warriors of Ultramar's Company acknowledged this was a problem that Weaver and all her Chapters had perhaps underestimated and whose full implications they had not completely recognised until right now. Before Bacta became a reality, the injuries which destroyed Power Armour typically left the battle-brother protected by the high-quality ceramite grievously wounded or dead. Either way, the Chapter was given the time to replace this tragic loss by ordering the armoury to produce proud Mark VII armours, a process which could take between several months and several years, depending on the demand of the Chapter and the rest of the Successors of the Thirteenth.
If the Space Marines came back to service before they had the time to commission a new Aquila suit, however...this was definitely a problem.
"You understand the problem." Torquatus grimaced. "And it just so happened we held a great celebration on the Second Founding's birthday, where we gifted several new armours to the battle-brothers. Thus we have far fewer replacement armours here than I would like."
"Solutions?"
"The Tech-Priests present aboard Weaver's fleet are doing their best to find armours without owners and return them back to proper war-fighting condition, but it is going to take time. In the meantime, some thirty Mark VII armours have been found for our recently healed battle-brothers who survived the butchery aboard our destroyed Battle-Barges. The payment...well, we will likely pay a heavy price for them, but it can wait the end of the battle."
"True," Fabius Decius agreed. Now we can speak of the real bad news. The Pharsalus Line has fallen apart completely in the south. And if it's possible, the situation is worse in the Illyrium military district."
"It couldn't be helped." Gaius declared grimly. "They threw a lot of small detachments around the planet, and our anti-air defences couldn't destroy them all. We couldn't leave regiment-sized forces free to rampage at their leisure and prey upon our civilians. Moreover, I don't think we could have stopped the two main assaults from landing even if we threw everything we had at one heretic aerial muster."
If they survived, Gaius swore he would triple the number of anti-air guns available for the Macragge defences...and likely kill at least twenty officers of the Ultramar Auxilia, for their performance couldn't be described as anything but abysmal.
"Yes. Practical: we still have to admit we lost Illyrium completely. And I don't like the reports we received from the Scouts I deployed five hours ago at all. Unlike at Pharsalus, the bastard sons of Lorgar seem to use the ruin of one of our cities to build one of their damned temples."
Macragge
Illyrium Military District
Outskirts of Epirus City
Sergeant Albinus Opis
"Theoretical: As the Primarch said, a Scout must rely on stealth, not brute force."
Albinus emptied his Bolter magazine into several cultists before replying.
"Practical: the Primarch isn't here, and if he were, he would likely be furious you would quote his words out of context."
A new wave of frothing madmen wearing tatters of military uniforms charged them, and the Ultramarines Sergeant drew his chainsword, physically explaining to the stupid heretics why you didn't try to go on the offensive against a battle-brother of the Adeptus Astartes.
"There is no way to go into a deep infiltration when there are so many enemies in- and outside the city, recruit," Albinus Opis, Sergeant of the 10th Company, continued when all the opposition close to them was finally dead and their blood decorated houses and statues.
"But the Codex Astartes says-"
"The Codex Astartes does not have a course of action ready for 'invasion of Macragge', recruit. Now stop distracting me. Avitus?"
"On the roof of the green residential building, Sergeant." The elite sniper of his squad informed him. "I think you must come and see for yourself what the heretics are doing."
"I'm on my way."
"Sergeant! I must protest! We have been involved in no less than seven violations of the Codex-"
"You can obey your orders, recruit, or I will strive to discover if the Codex Astartes of our beloved Primarch permits an officer to send his unworthy Scouts to a Penal Legion! Am I clear?"
By all his ancestors, how had they failed so badly?
Macragge was on fire and some of their Space Marines still persisted in thinking a book held the answers to all questions, even when it was clear the enemy had read it and was now using it to anticipate their actions, sometimes before the orders were given.
Fortunately, many of the training cadres had acknowledged the truth following Chapter Master Valens' void defeat; if they continued to fight like mechanically-programmed servitors, the Word Bearers were going to kill them all, and the sons of Guilliman would inflict little damage in return.
"Avitus?" He asked as he reached the roof, and saw no sign of the sniper.
"West, Sergeant."
It still took him four seconds to find the foremost sniper of the 10th Company, hidden in an alcove between several heavy-looking cubic boxes, his Camo Cloak and his natural camouflage skills making him almost invisible.
"I was using my rifle to explode a few heretic heads," the younger Ultramarine explained as Albinus seized his magnoculars, the designated target being several kilometres away, "when the Traitors began demolishing everything in that direction and levelling the ruins on top of that. And now they're installing this strange ring of black stone. None of the archives of the heroic battles of the Library of Ptolemy mentioned anything like it, and practically, I felt I needed your wisdom."
"If only I had more Scouts like you," the Sergeant half-joked before his face turned grim.
As Avitus Legundus had rightly remarked, this was a sizeable ring-shaped structure the Word Bearers had brought here.
The 'here' appeared to be what had been the heart of Epirus City before over a third of the population revolted against the Ultramarines' rule, the Auxilia failed to strangle this rebellion in the cradle, and the main host of heretics landed.
Albinus Opis didn't think it was a coincidence. According to his memories, there had been a large plaza. In the middle of it, a splendid four metres-tall aquila of gold atop a marble column could be admired since its inauguration on the day of the Second Founding.
And there had been a small church of local Ultramar priests next to it too.
It was definitely not a coincidence. And the more he observed the ring-like structure, the more the Ultramarine Sergeant saw how sinister and threatening the thing was. Its outer edge was covered not in spikes, but in human bones, and the support base of the ring was made of loyalist corpses the Word Bearers had piled up.
And of course, after a few seconds, other heretics began to sacrifice the lives of more prisoners in one of their eternally-damned rituals.
Albinus instantly determined that this thing, whatever its real purpose, had to be destroyed immediately. The problem was how to do it. At this distance, an Astartes-portable missile would be as useful as a Bolter, and likely intercepted well short of its target by some sorcery or another kind of protection.
"I am going to call Captain Pompeius, see if we can risk some aerial assets for a bombardment and-"
It was as if all light was instantly sucked out of their surroundings. Many Scouts immediately swore or changed their hold on their weapons as dark whispers echoed everywhere. Albinus had fought plenty of abominations, but this was something else.
This was the corruption of the Warp. This was the evil of the Word Bearers.
The black ring was now a circle of damnation, and in the space where there should have been nothing but air was now a conduit channelling the infernal energies of the Empyrean.
And all around the razed plaza, there were daemons emerging from the blood pools.
Despite the problems created by the Shadow in the Warp, the heretics had found a way to summon their masters.
"The assets will definitely need to be risked, Sergeant."
"Yes," Albinus Opis nodded, "I only hope it's not too late..."
High Orbit above Macragge
Battleship Enterprise
52 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Lady General Taylor Hebert
Taylor was speaking with Werner Groener when the new senses she had barely learned to use in the last hours went to full alert.
"My Lady?" The Cadian asked warily.
"Your expose on the logistical issues of deploying the Vostroyans is quite clear," the Lady General reassured her Quartermaster-General. "But we have a new problem. The Traitor Seventeenth Legion has activated some new infernal device on Macragge."
The female parahuman requested the strength of hundreds of her ants and spiders, and the Swarm gave it to her.
As the light of Sacrifice bloomed in her soul, it became easier to see what new abominable trick the Sorcerers enslaved to the Ruinous Powers had played.
"It looks like an enormous ring-shaped structure...an enormous ring of Chaos-saturated Noctilith..."
That was a very unpleasant surprise. The Inquisition had given her preliminary reports that by their best estimates, the Word Bearers' supplies of Noctilith were close to insignificant.
How could they have been so wrong? The ring-shaped structure which was tearing apart the Veil and the Shadow at the same time had to weigh a few tons, it wasn't a trinket or a seat!
"How?" Werner Groener asked in the same tone of disbelief she must have used a few seconds ago. "By the love of the Golden Throne, this doesn't make any sense..."
"Enormous empyreal disturbance in Epirus City, Illyrium Military District," Friar Achelieux informed her. "This nexus of heresy allows them to open a passage through the Warp, your Celestial Highness."
It was real, all right. The poor Navigator looked like his psychic glance at the situation was something that'd emerged from the darkest nightmares of humanity, and he wasn't wrong at all.
Still, Werner Groener had a point. It didn't make any sense at all.
If the Word Bearers had that sort of immensely powerful artefact at Fenris, then why the hell hadn't they used it before? Between the moment the Primarchs led their counterattack along with Warmaster Trevayne, it wasn't like the Space Wolves garrisoning the Death World could have stopped them from using it.
This ring-shaped structure...this...this Octarite Crown...and how in the name of all that was holy did she know the name by the way?
No, she had to stay calm and collected.
Taylor closed her eyes. The Word Bearers didn't have the Octarite Crown when they came to Fenris. Otherwise they would have used it, and transformed the Wolves' homeworld into a Daemon World. Of this the insect-mistress had no doubt.
But if they didn't have it when they fought the defenders of the Fang, did they dig it up from Fenris itself?
No, that didn't make any sense either. If the Word Bearers were so knowledgeable about Fenris in the first place, then how the hell had they managed to lose their battles there so disastrously?
But once they came to Macragge, they hadn't gained anything. Okay, no, there had been the Titans of Sota-Nul, and-
"Sota-Nul," Taylor reopened her eyes. "This infernal device is hers."
"But, Chosen of the Omnissiah," Archmagos Sagami cleared his mechanical throat, a sound he wouldn't have made a decade ago, the Basileia noted absently. "I agree Sota-Nul is an Arch-Heretek of considerable skill capable of building gigantic and extremely dangerous tainted heretekal conduits, but how could she gather so much Noctilith in the first place, never mind corrupt it without the substance becoming unstable and mutating uncontrollably?"
"That is an excellent question," Taylor conceded. "And I think the most likely answer is: Sota-Nul never worked for the Word Bearers. Her true allegiance was never with the Seventeenth Traitor Legion."
Otherwise she would have unleashed this infernal Octarite Crown at Cadia or at Fenris, ruining one or two planets in the process of activation, using the chaos of war to inflict catastrophic corruption damage.
As for the identity of Sota-Nul's benefactor...they would have to investigate after this battle was over.
For now, there were far more urgent concerns.
"Position Lisa's carrier above Illyrium immediately," Taylor ordered. "It's time to show those heretics that the Emperor's radiance can banish all darkness."
Laphis
Ravenna – West of the Polenta River
52 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Lord Commander Lucius
The artillery was relentless, but during most of the day, Lucius had taken comfort in the knowledge that, for all their willingness to bombard their own infantry, the False Emperor's slaves couldn't hit everywhere they wanted.
There were limits to what long-range guns could do, especially when they were on the wrong side of the river.
But now the enemy slaves had placed their artillery north, south, and east.
And it was only a matter of time before the mortal fortified the western bank of the river and emplaced cannons there too.
This was galling, Lucius had to admit, but there was only one order-
"FOR KRIEG AND THE EMPEROR!"
Shells exploded all around his new headquarters – a former artist quarter obeying the whims of useless aristocrats – and the battle began anew.
"WE ARE PERFECTION!"
Blades lopped off pathetic limbs and heads, but the transhuman shock didn't terrorise the troops like it should have.
The green-and-grey uniforms threw two or three grenades each, and then ran away through narrow streets filled with rubble, many of them far too narrow for a Space Marine to pursue them.
Lucius gritted his teeth as he cleaned his blade again and looked around. They had killed more than fifty of these infuriating slaves in mere seconds, and for what? One ex-Night Lord of his warband lay grievously wounded and was promptly put down, for there were no Apothecaries here, and certainly no wish to waste time on someone who was going to die anyway.
"Lord Commander, I think-"
The artillery shelled their positions again. A Bomber flew over their heads and dropped an enormous payload. Lasers and Plasma lit the streets before creating more devastation.
Lucius rushed back into his headquarters as the avenue and more or less everything he could see was turned into an ocean of dust and smoke.
"This is getting out of hand!" The Emperor's Children officer snarled. "Where is that useless cretin calling himself Dark Apostle Marduk? Where are the reserves?"
Once again, Lucius tried to access the communication frequencies of the Seventeenth Legion, but again he was rebuffed without being given the opportunity to say a word.
"It is like they are deliberately jamming everything which doesn't belong to a Word Bearer," the sole Iron Warrior he had been able to recruit grumbled as he played with a technological device hissing and projecting drops of red acid everywhere. "What are they playing at?"
"They need us." A Night Lord affirmed. "Without our help, they're going to be even more outnumbered by the regiments of the False Emperor. They took monstrous casualties trying to assault the biggest Cathedral, and they didn't even take it before the enemy counterattacked from the north and the south."
"They need us, yes," Lucius acknowledged. Why then did he feel something was wrong?
A second later, explosions rocked the building, and this time there were no misses.
"GET OUT! GET OUT IMMEDIATELY!"
The enemy artillery had the accurate coordinates for his headquarters.
This was why they had launched this stupid attack before. It had been to make sure that he was there...and he would stay there as the guns saturated both his refuge and all accesses to it.
Lucius was fast, as befitted a perfect Legionnaire.
He wasn't fast enough to get through one of the exits as the exquisitely decorated ceiling fell upon the Perfect Legion's warband.
The last Lord Commander of the Emperor's Children – even if Eidolon was alive, the head-severed imbecile was unworthy of that rank – didn't die. Astartes Legionnaires were tough, and it wasn't a little debris which was going to endanger him! Why, there were confirmed reports of other Champions of the Gods falling through several Hive levels and surviving.
The problem, however, was this damned artillery. Even as the entire museum collapsed onto them, the artillery continued its bombardment.
And it was hard to fight your way out when more and more rubble hammered you. His incomparable power armour was deflecting the blows, but the shocks were extremely violent.
Lucius didn't know how long he struggled to free himself.
Seconds? Minutes? Hours?
The Astartes swordsman sworn to the cause of Chaos didn't know.
The important thing was that, eventually, his hand got free, and soon the rest of his body followed.
"I AM ALIVE!" Lucius shouted as he tore himself free from the pile of metal and stone which had been his base of operations inside Ravenna for a few hours. "Is this the best you can do?"
"No." A shadow loomed, and the dust gradually cleared, revealing the Dreadnought he had tried to avoid for too many bloody hours. "We have just begun your punishment, Traitor."
Ancient Rylanor
Rylanor could be honest with himself: he felt a lot of satisfaction as he watched the Eternal Traitor crawl out of the mountain of broken marble and mosaics like the worm he was.
Lucius had been incredibly ugly when they had first met on the Polenta's shores, and this hadn't changed in the last few hours.
The same couldn't be said about the pink-black corrupted armour. There were far fewer screaming faces, and everywhere those abominable things had been seen, the debased Astartes protection was now scorched lifeless.
"So the ghost returns," hissed the monster which had been a Legionnaire long ago. By another act of sorcery, his long spiked whip materialised in his right hand. A second later, the very cursed blade which had started the final downfall of the Third Legion appeared in his left. "Are you going to try to let your minions fight your battles again?"
"No." Rylanor had intended to do so a few minutes ago, but every time he had tried to give the orders, some clownish Eldar had interfered and scrambled his communications. In the end, the commander of the White Thunderbolts had decided on letting the better part of a Krieg regiment encircle the museum quarter while the Astartes finished the other Traitors surviving the artillery bombardment.
And if he was honest with himself...it was better this way.
For thousands of years, he had awaited the opportunity to accomplish his revenge, and though the Naga may be beyond his reach now, the symbol of everything treacherous was still there.
"I am going to end you personally."
"Foolish ghost! I can't be ended! I am perfection incarnate! I am eternal!"
Rylanor didn't speak one more word. It was useless to waste his rhetorical skills on the Eternal Traitor, and he had told Lucius everything he wanted to.
Rylanor moved.
The whip struck.
It struck too slowly.
For countless months before Operation Stalingrad began, Rylanor had trained with the new weapons Forge-Temple Fafnir had built to his exacting specifications. It was all very good to be recognised as one of the most formidable veterans of the galaxy, but fame was useless compared to proper training.
In this instant, it proved its worth. The ancient soul triggered a secret compartment, and a miniature shield activated for three seconds, denying the vile weapon the right to scratch his white paint.
And three seconds were all he needed to fire his Plasma Gun. The blue bolt of energy struck the Traitor directly in the chest, and then Rylanor was upon him at close-quarters.
"What-"
Had the arrogant idiot truly learned nothing?
Rylanor activated another secret compartment, which expelled a Volkite Grenade directly into the massive hole he had just made into Lucius' armour.
Then he punched him. Hard. So hard the bastard proclaiming himself the most perfect swordsman of the Legions went flying across the devastation.
Lucius screamed, and this time Rylanor was confident there was no pleasure, only agony in the Traitor's voice.
The grenade exploded, and the scream turned into an incoherent expression of torment. In five more seconds, the Eternal Traitor became a burning corpse.
Rylanor didn't let his guard down.
If he was right-
There was a flash of purple light, though it remained far weaker than the one he had seen before.
Lucius returned, displaying none of the injuries his efforts had inflicted in the last minute.
But there was a major difference. There weren't any more screaming faces on the pink armour, which incidentally, looked less and less pink, and more like a scorched ruin.
"I told you. I am eternal."
"As eternal as this blade, I suppose," Rylanor retorted, his right foot landing on the cursed Laer Blade his Primarch had seized from the xenos temple. Despite the Naga being gone, the former Master of Rites could sense the evil radiating from this weapon. He kicked it in Lucius' direction...before shooting at it five times.
Maybe the vector of damnation had grown weaker, or maybe most of its power had gone when the Naga was no longer there.
Anyway, the third Plasma bolt destroyed it right as it was a foot away from Lucius' breastplate.
There was a small column of putrid purple smoke.
But there were no metal splinters. There was nothing at all remaining. The Laer Blade was at long last gone.
"MY BLADE!"
"Don't worry," Rylanor promised, "wherever it went, you are going to join it soon..."
Lord Commander Lucius
Lucius summoned the Lash of Torment and attacked again.
He had destroyed the Laer Blade! His blade! The very symbol of his supreme prowess with a blade!
This was no ghost.
This was a spirit of vengeance bound to destroy him!
Lucius struck with the Lash. He smiled as the Plasma Gun of his enemy was severed in two. Whatever this revenant Dreadnought was, he could-
An enormous Flamer emerged from the Dreadnought's back via an unfolding mechanical arm, and the Lash received its attention.
Lucius was forced to abandon his second prized weapon as it turned into flames and ashes.
This couldn't be!
Deep inside, the Lord Commander felt something that he had completely forgotten while he was inside the Eye of Terror and during his previous battles.
It was that poisonous feeling he had so loved to inflict upon those who weren't Astartes.
It was fear.
Lucius then felt it. The landscape was changing. The few buildings around them looked like they were aging hundreds of years per second.
Everything was even more scorched than it had been seconds ago.
And the smell...the Emperor's Children memories told him he knew this smell.
It was the lingering 'taste' of the Life-Eater Virus the sons of Horus unleashed so often when they decided to exterminate a world.
The sounds of battle reached his senses.
And then Lucius saw them again. The ghosts of that day had returned.
They were back at Isstvan III.
He was seeing the day again where he had-
His enemy moved.
Lucius drew a new weapon, and to his complete surprise, it was his Legionnaire blade. But that couldn't be possible. The blade was no longer in his possession; he had lost it long ago and-
The Dreadnought was no longer white.
It was back in the colours of the Emperor's Children.
Colours they had changed after Isstvan III for they no longer represented the Legion's allegiance.
Lucius screamed and attacked.
The golden fist of the Dreadnought stopped the blade a fraction of a second after it scratched the paint.
Lucius struggled. Lucius roared.
The Dreadnought didn't move. It towered over him.
It was-
"Rylanor..."
It wasn't a ghost. Or were they all ghosts on this battlefield?
"Lucius."
The Legionnaire's blade broke.
The Master of Rites' gun-fire tore through his right arm.
And it hurt.
Slowly, so slowly that the move lasted an eternity, a blade shining like a sun appeared.
Lucius felt everything abandoning him.
The cries...he was hearing his battle-brothers calling for his help.
But he was...why had he betrayed them? Why did his ambition matter so much?
Isstvan III. They were bound for this world...they were...they were...
They were the Emperor's Children.
And he was not eternal.
"For the Emperor, Rylanor?"
Ancient Rylanor
"For the Emperor, Rylanor?"
They were back on Isstvan III, where it had all begun.
They were back, and the Legion was dying around them.
Rylanor didn't know how it was possible.
But he had waited a very long time for this moment.
And the moment had come to end the past and begin a new future.
"For my brothers."
Rylanor struck.
The head of the Eternal Traitor was neatly severed from the rest of his body.
And this time Lucius didn't rise again.
Ravenna – West of the Polenta River
Leviathan super-heavy assault transport Legion's Eye
Chaos Lord Moefranc
Catastrophe.
Moefranc had somehow tried to find another word to describe the situation.
But there wasn't anything that could give him a chance to reverse the litany of bad news.
The Hand of Destiny in orbit had stopped transmitting battle-damage reports hours ago, and its silence was an ominous omen about what a sally on an open plain would mean for his troops.
The communications were jammed, and his few vehicles dedicated to coordinating an Army on the move were destroyed one by one.
As a result, Moefranc honestly didn't know how many soldiers he had left, be they Astartes or slaves. He was however certain it was a paltry number compared to what they had entered Ravenna with.
"Where are Lucius and Kaluk? Open a link with their warbands!"
"We aren't able to contact them, Lord!"
Moefranc gave a look in the direction of the daemonhost that should have answered his questions, but the thing had begun to writhe and mutate uncontrollably, and had to be put down before it shattered its chains.
"Estimate of the situation to the north-east!" He barked.
"We have at least five new divisions of infantry attacking us there!"
"What?" That couldn't be right. They had just reduced two divisions of mortals into an oversized regiment. How in the name of Khorne had the enemy reinforced themselves so quickly?
"Captain Kol Jyar reports he has discovered Ambulls digging massive tunnels. The enemy is coming through them to assault our forces directly inside the city."
"DAMN YOU WEAVER!"
This was that bitch's fault. Ambulls, Death World's ants, and his forces weren't going to forget giant spiders and scorpions anytime soon.
What was it going to take for this unholy swarm to finally stop springing impossible surprises on the Seventeenth Legion?
What was it going to take for her to recognise the Gods were going to be victorious and die?
"Regroup our forces south of this obsolete Ultramarine aqueduct," Moefranc spat. "Once they have disengaged, they will-"
"Belay that order."
Power erupted in the room as his Lord made his presence known.
"You have failed me, Moefranc."
"I know, Hand of Destiny...I have no excuse."
"Fortunately for you, with your failure, you have advanced my goals. As the slaves of the False Emperor encircled my army, their vigilance has wavered where the Webway Gate is concerned. Gather the Legionnaires worth saving. We are going to bypass the river and assault their insignificant defences next to the entrance directly. Now."
"Yes, Hand of Destiny!"
No second was wasted. Moefranc roared new commands, and all Legionnaires, sensing their very life was at stake, rushed to meet them in front of a ruin which had been one of the churches where blind mortals worshipped the False Emperor.
Now it was consecrated anew to the true Gods.
The Chaos Warlord stayed stoic as line after line of the Seventeenth Legion reformed, though it was quite difficult. There couldn't be more than nine hundred Astartes waiting for Lord Erebus to open their escape route.
Of course, many were still no doubt trying to fight their way out of ambushes and the battle raging everywhere, or trapped under the debris created by the unending artillery bombardment.
Nonetheless, they had taken heavy losses.
But the Hand of Destiny was right, as much as he had failed, this would be all worth it if they managed to escape the trap.
"RUN!" the greater Dark Apostle of the Dark Council shouted as the athame cut through reality and a far smaller reddish scar than the last burst into existence. "This passage isn't going to last long!"
A thousand Legionnaires ran, though they maintained enough discipline to rush in three columns.
It was worse than the last time.
During the first use, Moefranc had seen the scar get smaller and smaller, but the phenomenon had been big enough to let warships get through. This time, despite it being no bigger than a large street at the beginning, it shrank incredibly quickly.
So quickly in fact that, when they arrived on the other side, it was pure chaos, as several Legionnaires were unable to get out before the scar closed.
The Neverborn immediately went to feast those unfortunate souls.
"Don't slow down! The Gate is close!" Their Lord encouraged them. "The Gate is behind this palace! Neutralise the defences!"
"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!" The Word Bearers answered, and they charged.
Their battle-cries weren't answered by the usual stupidities of the Ultramar Auxilia or any mortal. There wasn't any massive insect counterattack either.
Something was wrong. Something was deeply wrong...but also right.
Around them, the eastern blocks of Ravenna were in flames. Mortals fought with cultists and weaklings screamed for salvation.
The forces they met on their way were easily dispatched, when the slaves of the False Emperor realised they were honoured by meeting their deaths at the hands of the Word Bearer Legion.
It was when the Webway Gate became visible that Moefranc understood why their progress to reach it had been so easy.
The Webway Gate was already activated.
For how long it would remain the case...he didn't know.
The Eldar structures were shivering and looking halfway to the point of collapse as a small blood cascade rained on it.
And before the Webway Gate itself, approximately three hundred World Eaters were waiting in complete silence.
For those who knew the sons of Angron and their natural ferocity...seeing them like this, still like the Rubricae of the Thousand Sons, was far, far more frightening than any butchery they could have done.
"World Eaters!" Lord Erebus' power thundered as Marduk and the other Dark Apostles of his Coven supported him faithfully. "We share the same purpose today and-"
The ranks of the Twelfth Legion opened, revealing two figures most of the Word Bearers were familiar with.
The first was Lotara Sarrin, the mortal commanding officer of the Conqueror. And she was clearly...changed. The favour of Khorne shrouded her like a large aura cloak, and the air seemed to grow thick with violence and the promise of slaughter as she drew closer.
There was however no time to observe her in detail.
Not when the second figure was Khârn the Betrayer.
And just like that, Moefranc knew escaping via the Webway Gate was going to be a nightmare.
Like every Legionnaire of the True Legions, he was aware of the immense hated between the Hand of Destiny and the Betrayer.
"Fighting here today will serve no purpose! You are helping the slaves of the False Emperor by your deeds!"
"Do you really believe that we care?" the white-and-red female laughed, and it was a hungry sound that was definitely more terrifying than ten thousand shells of artillery. "The Vile One's head belongs to Khârn. Have fun with the others, berserkers."
"KILL! MAIM! BURN!"
Hundreds of World Eaters charged them, and the Word Bearers' veterans tried to survive for as long as they could.
Macragge System
The void between Macragge and Ardium
Mass Conveyor Farmer's Privilege
52 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Exalted Shipmaster Sertorius XXX
"Exalted Shipmaster, I respectfully suggest we change course. Or failing that, we try to convince the Tech-Priest to repair the vox that-"
"That disrespectful assemblage of oily and smelly parts dared to insult me!" Sertorius the Thirtieth immediately rejected the idea of his Second warning him to not cross the red line. Unfortunately, the stupid young man failed to heed his warning, like he had done for everything else, so far.
Ah, if only he had his true second-in-command! Exalted Lieutenant of Agriculture and Deliveries Parilius was a true Second, one which could be counted on to obey his orders without question. Unfortunately, the poor soul had had a violent disagreement with some ugly brute member who was part of a Rogue Trader's retinue some weeks ago on the Ardium dockyards. Said disagreement had resulted in his trusted Second being led in front of a tribunal, condemned in record time for manslaughter and other completely trumped-up charges, and led away for a lengthy prison sentence.
Sertorius had known the God-Emperor sent trials from time to time, but it was highly inconvenient. The Ardium authorities had insisted, against all of his ship's traditions, to force upon him an outsider. And then given him the pointed warning that if this spy-in-all-but-name's reports weren't complimentary when the ship returned to Ardium...there would be consequences.
"The Tech-Priest will come here and recognise the errors of his ways."
"Exalted Shipmaster, I doubt the death of the ship's Astropath was in any way connected to what the cogboy did. To begin with, he was on the other side of the ship when it happened. No, the cogboy was just rude as usual. Now please-"
"Silence!" Several members of his bridge-court smiled at the obvious insult; Sertorius had not even spoken the rank of the foreigner. "You forget your place! For two thousand years, the Farmer's Privilege has nobly fulfilled its duties, bringing the finest grox steaks and the most exquisite grain of Nova Thulium to the markets of Macragge, Ardium, Laphis and the garrisons of Mortendar and Thulium! Thus it has always been! Thus it will always be! What does it matter if some feeble-hearted Astropath died and some communications are silenced! The Farmer's Privilege began its system rotations under my venerable ancestor Sertorius the First, praised be his name!"
"Praised be his name!" All his officers repeated with the respect his flawless ancestor deserved...all his officers, save of course his Second.
"And his Merchant hereditary commission was given by the Trade Minister of the Primarch Guilliman himself!"
The Ardium idiot opened his mouth to answer, predictably.
But then his face turned from a cold professional mask to an expression of sheer terror.
Sertorius XXX turned his head to look at what had disturbed the younger man...and froze.
Something was close to the Farmer's Privilege.
No, no, and no. It was a hallucination, nothing more.
But the vision refused to disappear.
It increased in size.
How could it be that big?
How...this was impossible! No living being could endure the void like that! It was unnatural! And its size! It was bigger than the Farmer's Privilege.
"Exalted Shipmaster...maybe...maybe it is a peaceful xenos life-form?" The Exalted Lieutenant to the Hydroponic Plant half-asked, half-suggested.
As if it had heard the words, the void leviathan opened its immense maw, revealing natural weapons beyond anything the famed carnivorous wildlife of Thulium had ever been able to create.
"CHANGE COURSE!" Sertorius XXX screamed, completely panicking. "CHANGE COURSE!"
Thousands of souls screamed.
And then it got worse.
High Orbit of Fenris
Newly created 'Mountain Star Fortress' the Fang
Primarch Magnus the Red
"What do you think brother? Ardium or Thulium?"
"Oh, Ardium," Magnus answered, knowing very well he was not the one who was supposed to answer the question. "Definitely Ardium."
Surprisingly, he didn't immediately get a 'shut up!' for his audacity.
"Elaborate."
See Father, they were definitely making progress in their brotherly relationship!
"Of course," the Primarch of the Fifteenth Legion assured while caressing one of the baby Frostlions on his seat-jail. "This thing has proven it is hyper-aggressive and eager to feast upon everything it can possibly digest. We just saw it attacking a Mass Conveyor which undoubtedly contained a lot of food. It wants to feed, and a Hive World is perfect for its purposes."
"Thulium is covered in forests and not exactly lacking in fauna which could serve as lunch for the Tyranids." Corax mused.
"Yes," Magnus agreed, "but a Death World does not show the lights or any signs of industry and civilisation a Hive World possesses. Thulium is likely a world which would allow the xenos to easily replenish their forces, but there are no signs of it before this psychic monster arrives in its high orbit. When offered the choice between an uncertain breakfast and a sumptuous dinner, I think the Tyranids will go for the latter."
"This is still speculation," Russ growled.
Magnus just shrugged.
"This is a war. If your true plans are still on course one hour after meeting the enemy, you're either a liar or falling into a trap." An idea came to his mind, one he could have easily verified while a Daemon Prince...and now he couldn't. As tolerable as his newfound mortality was, it had serious drawbacks in other aspects. "Incidentally, would you mind pointing some of your specialised auspexes near Weaver's ships?
"Are you thinking about something in particular?" the Lord of the Wolves, predictably, didn't take a step forwards, but his brother the Ravenlord did.
"Eldar ships," the little furry cat which would one day become much bigger purred as he caressed it. "I think someone is going to be hunting."
It took more than ten minutes for the picture on the gigantic hololith to change its status, but when it did, Magnus couldn't help but smile.
There were indeed Eldar warships in the Macragge System.
There were only three of them around the Imperial Armada, though. Strange, but not totally unreasonable. Weaver's main claim to fame in intergalactic massacres was the destruction of Commorragh.
It was interesting...and one of those warships was definitely accelerating on a course towards Ardium.
"Interesting, very interesting," Magnus muttered as he caressed the baby Frostlion who was definitely not his pet. For the record, yes, he was aware of the stereotype of men on thrones petting adorable white and furry creatures. Why not indulge in it for the last time in millennia? "It seems we're going to see a memorable fight in a few hours. The Queen of Blades against the Tyranid entity 'Behemoth'. I wouldn't want to be on the same planet to be sure."
"Surely you don't subscribe to the theory this female gladiator was able to defeat Rogal using all her skill?" Russ growled threateningly, once again beginning to pace furiously around all the command sections of his new super-Starfort.
"Of course not," Magnus replied, rolling his eyes. "Rogal is alive somewhere in the Webway. Logically, that means the Queen of Blades didn't use all her might. Otherwise his sons would have collected his mangled corpse, not just a severed hand."
"She's that powerful?" Corax at least was far more prudent than his wolfish brother.
The no-longer Daemon Prince chuckled.
"One of the reasons I suspect Father didn't launch a raid against Commorragh during the Great Crusade was the fact no one was sure if the 'Queen of Knives' fighting in the arenas there was truly Aenaria Eldanesh, last true blade-mistress of the War in Heaven. For a fight so dangerous, Father would definitely have needed to lead the attack in person."
"You're joking. And stop caressing that damned feline creature!"
Magnus didn't obey the latter. And his expression must have made clear that for all his attempts to rile up Russ fiercely, one didn't joke about the danger represented by the Queen of Blades.
"Weaver is likely going to follow the Eldar ship in a few hours." The Fifteenth Primarch continued. "It isn't like she really needs all those Battleships now that Lorgar's chaotic armada has been annihilated. They will pour troops onto Macragge until there isn't a Word Bearer alive. The massacre is going to be spectacular."
"Wasn't he supposed to be your ally?"
"We have never been allies, Corax. We were at best...fighting the same enemies in the same war zone?" The worst part was there was truly no need for misdirection or telling lies there. "As tense as the relationships of the nine of you who stayed by Father's side were, believe me, your relationships were close to unconditional love when compared to our war meetings. The majority were raving mad by the time of the Siege...and those who weren't dead after it became worse."
"You chose the side of the Traitors." The Master of Fenris' voice, of course, held no sympathy whatsoever. "It is far too late for the regrets, Magnus. Don't forget that until I drag your inflated head to Terra."
"I assure you, brother, I am unlikely to ever forget that." Magnus replied levelly. He didn't add the truth that the meeting with his Father terrified him far more than he would likely admit to anyone.
"Good." The ever-so-loyal Executioner of their Father turned around and went back to ignoring him. "Rickard! Contact the Tech-Priest in command of that Ark Mechanicus! I want to propose a new course of action to him!"
Oh, by the malicious humour of Tzeentch. What kind of ultra-risky gambit had Russ planned inside his wolfish head this time?
Now that he thought about it, was this how the Ruinous Powers felt when they watched him committing a few mistakes?
Corax stared at him. Magnus stared back.
Well, they had tried several times to convince Leman 'Stubborn' Russ.
There was nothing to do but listen to the communication, and wait for the spectacular destruction to start.
Macragge
Illyrium Military District
Ragusa Fortress
53 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Captain Brutus Cestus
The Ragusa Fortress, as every son of Guilliman knew, had been built on the order of the Primarch himself so that the forces of Ultramar always had an entrance inside the Illyrium military district no matter how rebellious the population proved to be.
Unfortunately, neither the Primarch nor its architects had expected the fortress would need to be defended against daemons.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"
"DECAY IS UNAVOIDABLE!"
"CHANGE WILL CLAIM YOU! TZEENTCH WILLS IT!"
"EMBRACE ANARCHY!"
"COURAGE AND HONOUR, BROTHERS!"
Once again, the Space Marines of the 7th Company and the two squads of the 3rd Company reinforcing them counterattacked.
The Heavy Bolters of their vehicles and long-range Devastators caused a massacre, as a good third of the abominations were busy fighting each other well before they climbed over the ramparts.
But it was little damage compared to the sheer killing they did with their blades and other personal weapons.
Each Ultramarine fought without restraint, both a hero and an indomitable part of the Ultramarine force.
It wasn't enough.
No matter how many thousands of daemons were banished every minute, they couldn't kill enough of them.
Even the fact that those strange creatures which looked like starving horned bipedal rats were attacking the daemonic horde from behind wasn't enough to turn the tide.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"
Brutus fired into the head of the creature which shouted the battle-cry before decapitating it with his Gladius when that proved insufficient.
"Captain, the Gate is breaking! They are using some sorcery to melt it, it can't hold any longer!"
As desperate as the situation was, the Ultramarine officer suddenly realised it could become far more unpleasant.
"Fighting retreat, brothers! We must evacuate before they-"
Lascannons were pulverised, turrets flew impossibly high in the air, and the enormous doors of metal which had been marked with the omega sigil collapsed in a thunderous crash which sounded like the end of Macragge itself.
"LET THE GALAXY BURN!"
From where he was, Brutus could only see the vanguard of the horde about to enter Ragusa, but he knew it alone would be enough to kill his battle-brothers and himself no matter how perfect their tactics.
"COURAGE AND HONOUR!"
"COURAGE AND HONOUR! FOR GUILLIMAN AND FOR THE EMPEROR!"
They were the Ultramarines, the Primogenitors of the Thirteenth Legion. If they were to die here so that hundreds of thousands of their citizens could reinforce the defences, then it would be lives well-spent...and to be fair, encircled as they were by the daemonic offensive, fighting until they could no longer was his first, second, and third choice.
"THE ARCHITECT OF FATE IS ALL-KNOWING! HE PREDICTED YOUR-"
The scream of a blue Horror was violently interrupted as the black skies to the far north which had appeared out of nowhere for the last hour were shredded by golden light.
"DEATH TO THE ANATHEMA! DEATH!"
"HATE THE LIGHT!"
"THE CONDUIT WILL ENDURE!"
For the briefest of moments, the Ultramarine Captain doubted.
It was like a tornado of darkness surged up from Illyrium's corrupted soil and tried to erect some sort of black daemonic shield against the power of the Emperor.
But it was only for a second.
The assault of the golden light gained in strength and radiance, and the longer the skies burned golden, the more the daemons around him seemed to lose their strength.
Of course, the 7th Company and all Ultramarines present exploited the opportunity. They had banished countless daemons before; now they removed twice as many in the same amount of time.
In the skies to the far north, about where Epirus had stood before this monumental tragedy began, the golden energy appeared to take shape in the form of bursts of golden flames and an ever-growing great orb. Brutus had to turn his eyes away from it, for even transhuman eyes were not meant to see some things.
And then it struck.
The Ultramarines were too far away to see its fall.
But they saw the result all too clearly.
Instantly, all the daemons disappeared as if they had never existed.
"Look at that," one Devastator Marine laughed, as a horde of cultists was suddenly revealed, having no daemons left to hide behind. "One could say their chance has abandoned them! Praise the Emperor and Weaver!"
"Let's be vigilant and not too enthusiastic!" Brutus warned as the sons of Guilliman brutally avenged their losses and recent defeats on the heretics. "Ragusa is nearly entirely destroyed, and we sent away the few loyal troops we could save. We are going to hold the ramparts until the Traitor Astartes arrive, doing more would be careless, given the strategic situation..."
Illyrium Military District
Epirus City
Octarite Crown Activation Zone
Coryphaus Kol Badar
They should be dead.
Kol Badar couldn't pretend he understood much about what had just happened, but he knew that.
When the sky had turned gold and the atrocious power of the False Emperor's Saint had bombarded them, they should have all died.
Yet the Coryphaus breathed. The same was true for all the Legionnaires by his side.
One of the main reasons they were not was undoubtedly the dark aura shrouding their bodies from this infernal radiance.
Otherwise, they would have suffered the same fate the Neverborn did. Total disintegration until nothing remained of them, not even their bones.
But if they were alive, this didn't mean the attack had spared everyone.
Where the Octarite Crown had been activated, the enemy's power had struck its harshest glow.
The ground was not blessed with blood, skulls, or any of the symbols of the Gods anymore.
It was a seemingly placid smooth surface of gold.
It seemed completely harmless...if one ignored the fact that countless bodies of Legionnaires were currently being dissolved where it expanded.
It was as if it was a lake, and the Octarite Crown's location was an island about to be submerged, surrounded by gold on all sides.
What remained of the Octarite Crown, the Coryphaus corrected inside his mind.
The incredible ring-forged structure which had almost won them the keys to Macragge was a ruin. One-third of it had been completely vaporised, and what was still there was fuming and disappearing centimetre by centimetre at an alarming rate.
It was as if the Octarite was some sort of degradable material, and the golden corruption was its natural bane.
A body twitched not far from the soon-to-be disintegrated Crown, and to his complete stupefaction, Kol Badar heard the weak voice of Lord Jarulek resonate in his mind.
"My Coryphaus."
"Lord! Thank the Gods, you are alive! Hold on, I am going to call your Thunderhawk for immediate evacuation and-"
"Kol Badar," a mental message resonated through his mind again, and this time the Word Bearer's warrior tasted a fragment of the torment which was inflicted upon his master's life. How was the Dark Apostle still alive? "You can't save me."
"Lord!"
"Weaver and her cursed Moth killed me," the Dark Apostle's enunciation grew more and more laboured, as one of his legs was hit by several drops of gold, and the blessed ceramite and holy flesh disappeared leaving massive holes behind. "Against Aethergold...there...is...no cure."
"We will avenge you."
"I know...you will." Despite the pain, there was something there which could be identified as pride. "My ritual should...give you...about...twenty-four hours. You will...kill the Ultramarines...don't let...the False Emperor...win."
"Yes, Lord Apostle!"
The Octarite Crown's structure began to collapse, and the fragments of molten Octarite consuming themselves began to rain down on Jarulek, dousing him in golden fire.
Kol Badar had seen horrible deaths, but for once, he was utterly taken aback, and not just because it was a respected member of the Dark Council dying before his eyes.
"Death...to...the...False Emperor."
The mental communication ended and Kol Badar knew it would be the last time he would ever hear the Dark Apostle who had made him Coryphaus.
There was only one thing he could do.
Fulfil the last order.
The officer of the Seventeenth Legion turned his gaze south and grabbed a chainsword from the ground which had somehow survived the end of countless Astartes Legionnaires.
"IN THE NAME OF DARK APOSTLE JARULEK! LET MACRAGGE BURN!"
High Orbit over Macragge
Battleship Enterprise
Lady General Taylor Hebert
Helping Lisa pulverise the Octarite Crown had been way more exhausting than Taylor had thought it would be.
Fortunately, her Dawnbreaker Guard and large staff were there to tell her to rest and bring her a very nice lunch.
And in a few minutes, she would allow herself to rest. There were only some minor things to deal with...like a full council of war.
"I will be brief," the Lady General addressed the hundreds of senior commanders listening to her words. "As I warned you during our last meeting, the Tyranids have not changed course. This means they are most likely going to attack Ardium as soon as they can. I am going to pursue them with the majority of our Battleships and escorts. Only one squadron of Battleships and two squadrons of Cruisers, as well as the entirety of our Bombardment Cruisers and half of the Guard transports will stay in high orbit of Macragge."
The first point was not completely related to military operations, but it had to be spoken.
"Lord Inquisitor."
"Yes, Lady Weaver?"
"I have destroyed the Noctilith-corrupted weapon of the Word Bearers. However, since their troops apparently continue advancing towards Macragge's capital, it has not been sufficient to eradicate all corruption. The daemons have been banished, and the heart of the corruption sterilised. But we will likely need to quarantine the zone and...enforce the proper procedures."
This left a very bad taste in her mouth. Most likely, only a minor percentage of the Illyrium population had supported the heretics, and it wasn't like they would have stood a chance against ten thousand Chaos Astartes.
But the Inquisition's Ordos, the Malleus in particular, would insist there were rules for something so disastrous, and they would be right.
Moreover, daemonic infestations of that power left ugly scars. At least with Aethergold, distinguishing who was a heretic and who wasn't would go far faster.
"The Ordo Malleus will not fail."
Taylor nodded and turned towards the Chapter Master of the Salamanders.
"Chapter Master Ta'Phor Hezonn. It seems the plan we discussed a few hours ago is completely obsolete."
"So it seems," the words were neutral, but the look in the red eyes were not. The Regent of Nocturne was eager to destroy the Traitors who dared to attack the homeworld of Ultramarines and slaughter millions of defenceless civilians.
"The Pharsalus Spaceport must not fall." The golden-winged woman commanded. "The communications of the Ultramar Auxilia's survivors have made clear the Traitor Titans are far more dangerous than we expected. We need to land our own Titans to oppose them."
And with the damage Astorum had taken in the long fighting on the Ymga Monolith, deploying their Titans wasn't an option.
Oh, they still had an impressive number of nominally 'semi-operational' Titans ready to fight...and if she threw them against a full Legio, the Princeps of Lucius were going to die without achieving anything.
"The Legios are ready to march." Princeps Maximus Cyrus Maximus smiled carnivorously. "Is Ignatum granted command?"
"Ignatum is given supreme command, yes." Taylor confirmed. There was simply no other Princeps with the experience and seniority to forge what was going to be a Titanomachy of mountain-sized machines into a unified and coordinated whole. "Lady Magos Dogma Dragon will command all aerial assets of the Pharsalus Theatre. The Traitors appear to be relatively weak when it comes to aerial elements, let's exploit that vulnerability. General Rokossovsky will be my personal representative on the ground and will lead the Guard elements as support to kill the armoured elements which have committed the cardinal sin of obeying the Word Bearers."
It wasn't going to be an easy victory. In fact, victory was far from assured, despite the might of the reinforcements which were going to land on Macragge.
But.
But according to her own experience, the data available, and the sixth sense the Emperor had given her, Taylor knew that if she went to fight the Macragge campaign, then there would be no one to fight for Ardium.
Assuredly, the Indigan Praefects were still there to slay Tyranids, but her Swarm was by far the most potent weapon available.
Still, she had to find something. Something that would tip the odds of the campaign in Mankind's favour.
And as she thought about it, Taylor felt the power Hanzo Hattori had given her before dying react.
This was...this was very risky.
And there could be enormous complications, assuming it brought victory.
Why couldn't she have a nice campaign with no world-ending threat?
Laphis
Ravenna – East of the Polenta River
53 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Maia Numerius
The nightmare was beginning again.
"Flee!" A guardsman screamed. "Flee! We're going to deal with them!"
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"
The line of soldiers didn't hesitate and stood its ground.
"FOR KRIEG! FOR THE EMPEROR!"
Lasguns were fired by the thousands, and shrieks echoed in a cacophony of pain and suffering.
Maia ran.
She didn't know where she was going.
The Laphiser woman had never visited these hab-blocks of Ravenna, and even if she had, given how many fires and explosions rang all around, it was possible she wouldn't be able to recognise her own home.
Everything was a nightmare of smoke and death.
Corpses littered the streets, and heretics attacked as if summoned from the Hells.
How could they be here? The Archenemy was supposed to have been stopped short of the river!
Maia ran, Celestine in her arms, trying desperately to find some exit, something that would allow her to escape this nightmare.
It would be too much to ask for Ultramarines to appear in a flash of light, but surely there had to be more guardsmen coming to fight those monsters!
The next street proved how naive this thought was. There were countless mutilated corpses of the Imperial Guard, and two...two things fought each other, one clad in red with a monstrous chainsword covered in gore, and the other one of the huge 'Spawns' she had seen from up close and from far away.
The fight was a concert of hateful screams, and blood sprayed everywhere. Fortunately, they didn't care about a civilian and her child.
Maia Numerius ran, and passed in a few narrow streets before re-emerging on a plaza where silence reigned.
Celestine cried, and Maia opened her mouth-
"Did you really think you were going to escape me?"
The scent of flames and blood arrived to her nose.
Blood rained on the empty square, and from the very darkness of the night, a lone silhouette marched directly, making sure there was no escape but going back on her steps.
Maia was paralysed. This was not one of the Traitor Marines or one of the 'Spawn'.
In fact, it seemed the enemy was a woman...but as the distance decreased, all her hopes died.
The top of the woman's clothes may be a pure white, but there was a large bloody hand as a sigil dirtying it. And the rest of her garb was crimson red, with sigils which were definitely not approved by any Adeptus of the Imperium.
This woman was a bloody heretic, and the long and cruel spear she carried casually was something which somehow appeared alive and bestial.
"Only a child?" The cold merciless eyes stared at her for a few seconds, but she must have been found wanting, for the heretic's mouth twisted in a cruel smile. "The Emperor should know better than to use paradoxes after what happened to Change and Excess."
The spear rose.
"No matter. You are a nuisance. The Guardian of the Throne of Skulls will not be challenged by the likes of you anymore."
Maia saw two deaths coming, both her daughter's and her own...and then shots rang out.
The spear struck nonetheless.
Maia closed her eyes, pressing her daughter against her.
But no pain came.
When she reopened them, there was someone tall in dark armour parrying the long crimson spear. After a period of stupefaction, Maia recognised the sigil of the Inquisition in the form of a rosette necklace.
"Well if it isn't the favourite bitch of Malcador and the Anathema," the heretic hissed. "And here I thought that your doom had caught up with you."
"Mighty words," the female Inquisitor with long dark hair replied as if this was a nice market day, "for the favourite bitch of Khorne. You are very far from your hunting grounds in the Calyx Expanse."
"I go where my God sends me."
Maia could hear the sheer anger boiling behind those words.
"Yes, killing innocents and those who can't fight back against the Conqueror."
"You and I both know that the girl isn't innocent. You know what she will become in time."
"I know," the Inquisitor laughed, and to Maia's surprise, it appeared to be a genuine laugh. "I know why your Master and his other slaves are so afraid of her. Weaver is the nemesis of the Angel's Bane, but the greatest threat she poses is to Decay. The same isn't true for this girl."
The spear struck again.
"In that case," the heretic hissed again, "you shouldn't have come alone!"
But before another attack could be made, an enormous shadow fell from one of the nearby buildings collapsing in flames.
"By the Webmistress and the Great Bacta! Inquisitor Contessa! Wait for me! You are not yet recovered...and what is happening here?"
Maia gaped. She had seen several of the huge golden spiders from hundreds of metres away, and heard the rumours of them being the favourite animals of a Living Saint.
But seeing one so close was something entirely different.
"This heretic is attacking innocents. She must be stopped." The Inquisitor replied with obvious relish.
"Absolutely!" The enormous arachnid agreed. "Prepare to die, heretic scum!"
The Blood Rose
Lotara was displeased. This was supposed to be a simple kill, and it was already proving to be anything but.
When Contessa had not been anywhere near the Gate, the likelihood of an ambush had increased, of course.
The Captain of the Conqueror had expected her to arrive with a squad of the Deathwatch or some other Space Marines.
Not...not an enormous giant spider.
"Prepare to die, heretic scum!"
"A spider that talks?"
In hindsight, Lotara would acknowledge it wasn't the most brilliant thing to say.
"Ha! Ha! Ha! No imagination whatsoever, these heretics!"
The arachnid clicked something unintelligible with her mouth before rising to a quadrupedal position. And almost faster than she could perceive it, the 'arms' of the spider seemed to lengthen.
That wasn't the case, of course. The insect, no doubt a servant of Weaver, had 'only' revealed her hidden blades.
Lotara snorted and fired the Bolter hidden inside her primary weapon. There were times for a duel, and this wasn't one of them.
But the red shells, instead of killing the spider, were stopped by a translucent shield.
"As one of the favourite arachnids of the Webmistress, we have been given Refractor Shields, heretic scum!"
Lotara had never heard an arachnid gloat before, and she realised she really, really hated that tone.
"Fine. I am going to duel you. Prepare to die, insect."
"I have been taught swordsmanship by the great Kratos himself!" the golden spider exclaimed. "I am Erbina, heretic! Remember my name before I send you to the Hell you deserve! For the Webmistress!"
"For Khorne!"
The first clash of blades told Lotara this wasn't going to be an easy fight. The spider, despite being tank-sized, was extraordinarily agile, and while the boast had been infuriating, she was clearly trained to use the four blades of her 'arms' to their utmost potential.
And Lotara had only her double-bladed spear...
The duel was barely in its twentieth heartbeat, and she was already on the defensive-
The Conqueror's commanding officer's senses went into overdrive, and she made an acrobatic jump to her right.
A second later, the corpse of a World Eater smashed into the pavement where she had just been fighting.
Two seconds after that, before the duel had any chance to resume, over fifty Word Bearers stormed the plaza.
No, 'stormed' was the wrong word. They were fleeing. And...the Legionnaires were surrounding Erebus.
Damn it, that cockroach was really difficult to put down!
And this was not part of the plan.
"BETRAYER!" Lotara shouted. "THE VILE ONE IS HERE, IF YOU HAVEN'T KILLED HIM WITHIN THE HOUR, I WILL SEARCH FOR A NEW CHAMPION!"
"That's really high motivation there." The spider complimented her. "Now let's return to our duel. I was beating you like a drum, in case you've forgotten-"
Lotara snarled and did something she had hoped to avoid, and not just because it would likely warn the Tzeentchian parahuman in the Calyx Expanse ahead of schedule.
She deactivated the stasis field she had kept on her back, and grabbed the eighth-pointed star of Haematia.
"Blood for the Blood God!" the female veteran proclaimed, and a powerful blast of red energy was summoned. The tank-sized arachnid was not expecting this and was thrown against a house's facade like a broken puppet. "Your power be praised, Lord of War. Now-"
Her spear barely parried the blow which would have severed her hand, and to achieve it, she had to let the Haematia stone fall upon the bloody pavement.
For a few seconds, there was only survival...fortunately, her new opponent did not have the number of blades the arachnid did, nor the weight.
Nonetheless, Lotara was unpleasantly surprised when blades were finally locked and she could truly observe the new duellist.
All around her, the battle escalated as more and more World Eaters arrived to battle the fleeing escort of Erebus.
But the eyes of Lotara were ignoring them.
By the Rage of the Brass Throne, what was an Eldar doing here?
"Remove yourself from my presence, long-ear," the Khornate warrior began, giving a wary look to the weird sword the xenos was wielding. "And I will try to ignore that I want you dead."
This was no ordinary sword to be sure. This was...this is a Cronesword.
The Eldar, a female which had light black armour similar to many Drukhari female gladiators when they dressed for one, yet lacked their cadaver skin, didn't say a word. She just attacked again.
"All right. I am going to kill you too."
Maea Teallysis
The servant of the Primordial Annihilator was impossibly strong.
Maea had thought at first the spider of Maelsha'eil Dannan would have won handily if the corrupted Haematia wasn't used, but the Carnage Aspect of the Primordial Annihilator had poured a lot of power into this damned soul.
This human was not a gene-evolved monster like the ones which were fighting all around them, but she still managed to be as fast as Maea, and her skill with her double-bladed spear was...formidable.
Maea was relatively healthy, and she had thought that once she forced the enemy to abandon its most dangerous weapon, her blade skills and the death touch of the Sword of the Silent Screams would do the rest.
This, the Apprentice of the Queen of Blades now knew, had been a very dangerous and completely wrong assumption.
This slave of the Primordial Annihilator, despite looking relatively frail, was a monster having far more potential to threaten the existence of every Craftworld than all of the other abominations sullying this planet with their very presence.
"We will make sure to burn every planet and holdout we will find. Unlike the pathetic domain of the False Emperor, our armies will not tolerate your existence! We will pile up mountains of your skulls!"
If she hadn't been so busy with duelling, Maea would have rolled her eyes. The Massacre Abomination was many things, but it wasn't noted for its investigation skills. The Farseers of Malan'tai had stopped counting the number of occasions they had been able to hide their Craftworld from the Slaughter Fleets thousands of cycles ago.
Though, since she had been wrong before, precautions would still have to be taken.
This 'Haematia' was something new and unpleasant.
As her sword and the enemy's spear clashed in a beautiful dance where speed and elegance tried to overwhelm brutality, Maea tried to hide her displeasure at the realisation she wouldn't be able to push her opponent away from the corrupted stone.
Worse, the entire battlefield they were fighting on favoured her opponent.
With every breath, deaths were offered to the Primordial Annihilator and torrents of blood were shed, attracting its attention.
The Shadow of the Devourer should have normally kept this influence at bay, but...but the Primordial Annihilator used the single connection of the Webway its slaves had somehow been able to tear away from the Harlequins' control.
And, slowly but noticeably, the Blood Champion's speed and strength began to increase.
Maea was forced to shift into a completely defensive pattern of attacks.
And thus she was completely unable to do anything when her enemy recovered the Haematia stone.
"You. Lose."
A cascade of crimson flames burned.
Maea jumped to avoid them-
And the raw, nauseating blast of the Annihilator's flames was blocked by a violent ray of golden flames.
"NO!"
The Champion of Carnage had turned first, but the young female Asuryani of Malan'tai saw the same thing a heartbeat later.
And her heart wept with joy.
A second enormous spider of Maelsha'eil Dannan had arrived. And unlike the first one, this one had brought a sceptre of Aethergold to the fight.
The arachnid was not alone. All around her stood dozens of red-armoured females. And from every street, the roofs, and other possible openings to access the square-shaped battlefield, there were thousands more humans revealing themselves and opening fire on the slaves of the Primordial Annihilator.
"You shall stop attacking the Eldar, heretic!"
Maea smiled.
"We are the only ones to have the right to disparage, humiliate, and punish them!"
Maea grimaced.
"I will deal with this perfidious heretic who hurt my sister, General Death! You can deal with the others! By the Webmistress' will!"
"Your blood will make an excellent offering for Khorne!"
Thousands of blades and guns of different sizes were drawn, and a tall and scarred human roared the first and only order for the battle to come.
"You heard the Adjutant-Spider! Kill the heretics!"
"FOR THE GOD-EMPEROR!"
Macragge
Pharsalus Military District
Pharsalus Spaceport
53 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Dark Apostle Mothac
Paristur had worried too much.
Mothac used his scythe to kill over thirty miserable mortals unable to realise the sheer magnificence of the Grandfather's plans before giving his next order to his Plague Marines.
"We will make sure this Spaceport can bring no reinforcements to the slaves of the False Emperor! Destroy all machinery you come across! If you can easily convert more souls for the Lord of All Decay, convert them! Kill everyone else!"
"FOR THE GRANDFATHER! FOR NURGLE!"
"OUR PLAGUES ARE UNSTOPPABLE!"
Hundreds of Plague Marines advanced, supported by an artillery barrage which delivered six hundred and sixty-six blessed gasses.
For all the cover the macro-containers provided, the mortals of the 'Ultramar Auxilia' could do nothing but pledge themselves to the Grandfather or die.
The contagion grew by the second, and all his Legionnaires decisively moved to spread rust and disease on every piece of machinery they could see.
"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!"
"LET RUST REIGN SUPREME!"
"THE CURSE WAS A TEST! WE HAVE NOT FAILED!"
"PLAGUE AND DISEASES!"
"Situation!" Mothac felt his mood continuously improve as many foolish mortals agonised where they had tried to form a line, their faces ravaged by the sixth Nurglite Pox.
"We estimate more than three quarters of the Spaceport garrison is dead, Lord Apostle!" To his sorrow, the Legionnaire who had spoken had barely any green his armour. No, not even that. There were still traces of red, and no contagion had truly settled in his flesh.
"It is not enough!"
"My Lord?"
"You must embrace Decay, Captain, if you truly want to be freed from the Flesh Change Curse! What did I say before corroding the gates of this very Spaceport! Muttering some words is not enough! Agreeing with me is not enough! You must truly support your words with your very soul and your deeds! Only then will the Grandfather save you!"
Next to them another mortal died, his body contorting and writhing as his mouth continuously vomited another fascinating quantity of disease-touched blood.
"But my Lord..." the Captain hesitated, then spoke bluntly. "What good is this cure to the Flesh Change Curse, if we are in effect the Rubricae of the Thousand Sons with a disease theme?"
Mothac didn't use his scythe to strike the blasphemer down, but this was because one of his gauntlets had already struck the bare-headed officer.
"Do not utter those heresies in my presence ever again!" The member of the crippled Dark Council snarled. "This has just proven you aren't a true servant of the Grandfather! The Great Nurgle has not only cured us of this terrible Flesh Change Curse, he has also saved us from this odious belief 'Chaos Undivided' could somehow be a pleasing thing for the Gods. This was wrong!"
As his conviction increased, more machines collapsed and fell apart, looking like they had aged thousands of years in mere seconds.
Truly the power of Decay was something that could not be defeated.
"We were wrong! The Gods play the Great Game, and while they may acquiesce to truces when fighting the slaves of the False Emperor, they value their loyal servants above everyone else! The Grandfather has saved us from the Flesh Change, and it has given us something even more valuable with it! By the power of the Garden we were saved from the curse of HOPE!"
Several Legionnaires of his Honour Guard gurgled in approval, and the cloud of flies grew thicker.
But then when loud battle-cries began to echo in the Spaceport, they were not the words he wanted to hear.
"OBLIVION WILL NOT CLAIM US, BROTHERS! INTO THE FIRES OF BATTLE!"
"UNTO THE ANVIL OF WAR!"
Chapter Master Ta'Phor Hezonn
"UNTO THE ANVIL OF WAR!"
The battle-cry was thunderous and no doubt all the heretics inside the enormous infrastructure built by the Ultramar Tech-Priests and architects had heard them.
But since they had already smashed apart a third of a Traitor company after teleporting into the structure of the Pharsalus Spaceport, this wasn't as important as it should be.
"Advance, brothers! Freedom Squad! Unleash the wrath of the Obsidian Chariot!"
"By your will, Chapter Master! VULKAN LIVES!"
The Plague Marines defending the approaches of the Maximus-pattern elevator were extremely resistant to the overwhelming mass of Bolter-fire the Salamanders, Magma Drakes, and all their cousins were using against them.
Those Traitors were definitely not succumbing to wounds which would have killed a normal Space Marine a dozen times over.
But then the Obsidian Chariot fired.
The masterfully-crafted Volkite Carronade had been tested and given ten times the care and attention it required after Lady Weaver enabled its rediscovery during Operation Caribbean.
Those efforts proved their worth now.
One shot was all it took for more than thirty plague-infested Traitor Astartes to die screaming in brilliant pyres of flames briefly reminding him of the volcanic eruptions of Nocturne.
Then one thousand Astartes, many of them from Imperial Fists' Successors to support the too-limited Salamanders' numbers, arrived at close-quarters.
They were incredibly disciplined, and armoured with the cumbersome but far more resistant Mark IX.
It was a one-sided massacre.
Ta'Phor Hezonn claimed kill after kill, his thunderhammer pulverising the heads of the heretics who had dared defile Guilliman's homeworld.
"VULKAN LIVES!"
"DORN LIVES!"
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
The line of Plague Marines didn't cede ground; it simply ceased to exist.
Immediately behind the main thrust of their advance, Nyxian and Vostroyan guardsmen arrived and sprayed anti-fire foam so that the damage to the Spaceport remained minimal.
As much as Ta'Phor Hezonn wanted to kill all the Traitors on this planet for their crimes, the preservation of the Spaceport's integrity was vital to achieve this goal. And obviously, the Salamanders weren't going to be strong enough to deal with an entire Titan Legio by themselves.
"Main force of the Traitor Seventeenth?" He asked his main liaison with the forces in orbit.
"They're busy slaughtering an Army Group of the Mediolanum District which tried to flank them from the north, Chapter Master."
The Regent of Nocturne grimaced. No one could say the Ultramar Auxilia and the Ultramarines were not fighting with an admirable determination, but...but they weren't fighting very intelligently. Part of this was due to how many casualties they had taken in the initial assaults, and how mangled the original chain of command was after one third of it was lost in the first hours.
Still, this war revealed a lot of weaknesses the sons of Guilliman had tacitly permitted to continue, from obsolete battle-tanks to suicidal tactics.
"Squad Caldera! Repair the control room we have just reclaimed! All remaining forces: we advance! Purge the heretics! Volcano pattern of attack! VULKAN LIVES!"
"VULKAN LIVES!"
An enormous gurgling sound was heard, and at the other end of the eastern hangars, Ta'Phor's armour's machine-spirits recorded the arrival of enemy reinforcements.
All were Plague Marines, with thousands of contaminated cultists and Traitor guardsmen preceding them, playing their role of cannon-fodder for the possibly first and definitely last time of their lives.
And many of the Plague Marines, for all the pus and their ridiculous grotesque mutations made it difficult to judge correctly, looked like they were clad in some form of Terminator armour.
"Use your Volkite Blasters and every special Flamer you have, brothers," the Chapter Master of the Salamanders commanded coldly. "These heretics really deserve to be burned by Vulkan's flames!"
Laphis
Ravenna – East of the Polenta River
53 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Sister Alice Gaius
"FOR THE GOD-EMPEROR!"
Alice shouted with the other Templar Sororitas, of course, but she didn't fire her gun.
The young woman was too busy pouring Golden Bacta over the grave wounds of Adjutant-Spider Erbina.
"Webmistress...I failed the Webmistress..." Alice was taking it as a good sign the huge spider still had the strength to moan.
"Sshh." Claire reassured her, the despair of the arachnid visibly causing her a lot of distress, the same which could be said about all of the members of their Honour Guard. "You are going to be as good as new once her Celestial Highness transports you to a Hospital Ship!"
At least Alice hoped so. They had been forced to immediately amputate two of Erbina's legs near-completely so that the corruption didn't continue its deadly work on the rest of her body. And at least two dozen doses of Bacta had been used.
They weren't Hospitallers, but you didn't need to be a particularly skilled medic to pour Bacta over a spider's wounds.
Hopefully, it would be enough. The Hospitaller Sororitas weren't here, alas. Given how off-guard they had been taken by the sudden onslaught of two forces attacking Eastern Ravenna without warning at the very same time, the healing specialists of the Silver Rose were needed elsewhere, and preferably in locations where they weren't at risk of being slaughtered while they healed the wounded.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"
"I AM A SERVANT OF THE WEBMISTRESS! YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"
Ilmarina chose this moment to unleash the full power of the Aethergold upon the heretics.
Alice had been there when her Celestial Highness had told the Adjutant-Spider to do it only in the gravest of circumstances.
The fact that the metal-forged golden spider had chosen to unsheathe the holy gift from the very start said quite a lot about how dangerous the heretic and the cursed Noctilith she carried truly were.
This was like the sun deciding to concentrate in a single ray, a source of light as night had fallen and the fires of countless ambushes and counter-ambushes burned all around them.
This was solar magnificence burning in golden flames, and the female heretic countered it with an infernal beacon of crimson light.
When the holy and unholy attacks collided, reality seemed to come apart.
All around them golden fire rained, but before it touched the ruined pavement of this princely Ravenna block, the molten fire turned into splendid angels which went on to charge the heretics and provide desperately needed succour for the guardsmen of Krieg and Catachan who struggled against the Traitor Astartes.
Of course, the same thing happened for the crimson blood drops of the heretic.
Beastly red daemons were summoned by the struggle, and they wasted no time using their black blades upon the loyalist guardsmen.
"Yes! Kill the heretic, Ilmarina! She really deserves it!"
"Save your strength, Erbina," Alice had to calm the over-excited spider, especially as she tried to struggle and prevent the application of more medical substances and bandages upon her very large body. "And let us take care of you."
The divine confrontation, far from diminishing, seemed to double in intensity.
The rays of salvation and damnation continued to push against each other relentlessly, but the rest of the plaza fell into complete chaos as the gold and crimson summonings tried to kill the opposite side.
As much as Alice wanted to say Ilmarina was winning, the battle was frankly a stalemate for a moment...and that wasn't a good thing, as the Power of Sacrifice was beginning to eat at her legs holding the sceptre of Aethergold.
The power of Sacrifice was a holy weapon, but Her Celestial Highness had made clear this was a weapon of last resort, and only for Ilmarina; because while holding a shard of Aethergold was no great burden, being willing to use its radiance to smite down the enemy was something else entirely.
Was Ilmarina ready to-
And then something extremely surprising happened.
Chaos Lord Moefranc
That whelp of Marduk had always disdained the arts of the battlefield, insisting the greatest strength of a Dark Apostle lied in his power of illumination, not battle-prowess.
Today this boast was put to the test.
Gorechild, Khârn's monstrous chainaxe, met Marduk's damaged helmet.
The helmet didn't win.
In a shower of gore, the Betrayer claimed another life.
Immediately, Moefranc had no choice but to close in and strike as fast he could, before the greatest Champion of Khorne had the opportunity to use his Plasma Pistol.
His chainsword was Possessed by a powerful Neverborn. It was a weapon which usually cleaved mortals in two effortlessly.
But when Gorechild struck it, the Word Bearer Warlord truly feared it was going to break at the second or the third strike.
And though it didn't, it was evident his weapon wasn't going to survive the monstrous battering delivered by the 'lesser' chainaxe twin for very long.
Moefranc gritted his teeth and attacked again.
But his attacks were parried before they could pose even a shadow of a threat.
Still, it could be enough. He was surviving long enough for his Lord to see an opening!
"Hand of Destiny! This is your chance!"
His encouragement was only met with silence.
Moefranc struck and struck so as to live for several more seconds.
And no matter what he did, no matter how seriously Khârn fought, Lord Erebus didn't strike.
"My Lord! I can't-"
And the chaos of the battle allowed him to see the section of the plaza which was burning in psychic power, Moefranc at last found out where his Lord was.
It was nowhere near him.
In fact, for the Hand of Destiny to have traversed the battlefield so quickly, he must have left immediately after Moefranc started duelling the Betrayer.
But this was fine. No doubt the greatest Dark Apostle to ever live had found something to convince Lotara Sarrin to stop her ridiculous vengeance and turn the tide against the slaves of the False Emperor and-
"YOU WON'T ASCEND! I WIN!"
Erebus plunged his dagger into Lotara Sarrin's unprotected back.
Every battle-cry stopped.
Every imprecation went silent.
The carnage stopped, as if no one could believe what had just happened.
Moefranc gaped.
Even by the treacheries which were common in the ranks of the Legions...this was absolutely...absolutely...absolutely vile.
The crimson light died, and as it did, the light of the False Emperor surged forwards.
The Haematia stone was thrown forwards in a last effort to stop the assault, but when it came into contact with the golden flames, the explosion was absolutely massive, and fragments of the changed Noctilith were blasted everywhere on the plaza and possibly further away.
But it had done its role. The light decreased in intensity, for all that golden flames ravaged many parts of the battlefield.
"Say hello to Argel Tal for me, pathetic female! Maybe I will take the Conqueror as my flagship? It would the height of irony, don't you think?" Khârn abandoned their duel to run towards the Hand of Destiny, and Moefranc, in shock, let him go.
After centuries, the Word Bearer officer was finally acknowledging the horrible truth.
It had never been about the Seventeenth Legion.
It had never been about the Long War.
It had always been all about Erebus.
The Dark Apostle known as the Hand of Destiny was unwilling to let anyone rise where he had not.
And he wouldn't hesitate to kill his allies, no matter how disastrous the defeat would be in the aftermath.
"I am going to kill you, Sarrin!"
The dagger, the last athame of the Seventeenth Legion, rose, covered in the blood of uncountable victims.
It never struck.
A machete crackling with energy, one Moefranc recognised as typical for the warriors of the Catachan guardsmen, separated hand from arm.
A second later, over a dozen power blades impaled Erebus.
"I believe a change of program is in order," the scarred Catachan who had struck first grinned. And then he brutally kicked the body of the Hand of Destiny aside.
Normally, the very thought of a mortal trying to push a Space Marine, even from behind, even by surprise, was completely laughable.
And as Lotara Sarrin barely avoided him while rolling away using her last reserves of strength, it was proved again true.
Erebus had barely been forced to make a step forwards, and since most of the blades had plunged into his back, it caused some damage, but most of the bayonets were removed from his flesh.
"You will never suffer enough, Vile One, for all the lives you have corrupted! Die in the name of the Webmistress!"
The ocean of golden flames reappeared and struck the Dark Apostle, and for the first time in an eternity, Erebus screamed in agony.
His armour melted in the blink of an eye, and the power of the Aethergold burned everything, flesh, ceramite...and likely his soul as well.
The mortals who had wounded the Dark Apostle took several steps away as the Dark Apostle staggered in excruciating pain and the gold dissolved him limb by limb.
And then Khârn was on him.
There was no time to say anything.
Gorechild was the holy weapon of the Blood God at that moment.
And in one, terrible blow, it decapitated Erebus, First Chaplain of the Word Bearers Legion.
Moefranc didn't know what to do anymore. He felt his will being crushed, he felt the great curse of the Flesh Change mutating his veins-
An enormous stinger impaled him, shredding his eight-times-blessed armour like it was made of paper instead of multi-layered ceramite.
And his existence came to an end.
Maea Teallysis
The head flew through the air as if it were a grotesque toy, not the head of a slave of the Primordial Annihilator.
For an instant, the Asuryani believed it was going to fall and become one more bloody remain on the ground of the human city.
But before it could, the Carnage Champion grabbed it in its ever-bloody armoured hand.
Then crimson light burned around the monster, and the severed head changed.
The skin and everything which was flesh were flayed in an atrocious second, and in less time it took her to seize her sword, the head was reduced to the state of a skull.
And that was only the beginning.
A ghostly image formed around the corpse of the creature the galaxy had been forced to call Erebus.
It was a dark, vicious thing, one having nothing but maws and claws.
It was the soul of the monster.
Crimson light surrounded it, and the soul was unable to escape through the Aether. It immediately reminded Maea of the pets her Craftworld preserved by freezing them in amber statues after they died of old age.
There was a flash of red lightning, and the soul was inexorably dragged back into the skull.
The Apprentice to the Queen of Blades acknowledged that, contrary to what she had predicted for some of her enemies, death would not be a relief.
It would, apparently, be the beginning of unimaginable torment.
For anyone else, Maea would have felt a twinge of pity. For this monster? There was none.
"Now that a good deed has been achieved," the spider of Maelsha'eil Dannan piped up in a smug tone, "I am afraid I am going to be forced to demand you lay down your arms and surrender, heretic scum. And please give me that skull too, while you're at it. Claiming important bounties is a recent but much cherished tradition of the Swarm. Now-"
"No Surrender. No peace. No respite. The war is eternal."
Most of the crimson butchers of the Primordial Annihilator had disappeared, and those who hadn't lay dead alongside the 'Word Bearers' they had come to kill.
Thousands of humans were encircling the two Blood Champions, and the female was severely wounded. The blade used to injure her was a truly awful thing. Surely they weren't going to fight at such a massive disadvantage...not that it would be a fight, as the spider focused again to unleash the power of Maelsha'eil Dannan.
"In that case, you are going to be exterminated. Now that I think about it, there was someone looking a lot like you among the hundred most wanted beings...you wouldn't happen to be Khârn the Betrayer, would you?"
"I am."
The axe-wielding butcher then uttered a word which hurt her ears and made the planet shiver.
A river of blood flowed towards the wounded female and threw itself at the spot where the cursed dagger had struck. Instantly, the white-carmine warrior's skin ceased to be deathly pale and her breath became steady again. The wound mended itself in mere heartbeats, though the scarification was impressive.
"You aren't going to get away!" One of the human officers shouted.
"Humans...you have won a battle here." 'Khârn the Betrayer' rumbled. "Mighty Khorne approves of the carnage you unleashed against the cowards and the Vile One. But our true war remains to be fought. Tell Weaver we will wait for her at the end of the Red Path. If you are true warriors, I will meet you there."
Far away, Maea would later learn that this was the moment the Harlequins had begun an impressive ritual to purify the contaminated tunnel of the Webway.
An ocean of blood was summoned, and blinded even her superior Asuryani eyes.
When she was able to see clearly again, the two slaves of the Primordial Annihilator were gone.
"It is going to be somewhat difficult to pursue them..."
The enormous arachnid really had a gift for understatements...
Macragge
Pharsalus Military District
Pharsalus Spaceport
54 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Dark Apostle Mothac
Mothac was really annoyed by the resistance his opponent was giving him.
Nurgle's blessings allowed him to gain the upper hand, and the enemy was a son of Vulkan, and their Chapter Master at that.
It was nonetheless annoying to see his scythe be denied the glory of claiming the kill again and again.
It was annoying. It was frustrating.
And it was very bad news, as even a cursory glance during the fighting told him a lot of the Spaceport's orbital-to-ground machinery was active once more.
His forces of Plague Marines had done enormous damage to the cargo warehouses and the vehicles which should have transported food and other things to the cities of Macragge, something that would eventually make Grandfather Nurgle be very happy, since millions of people would eventually starve.
But it did nothing to stop the flow of regiments of guardsmen with grav-chutes and Valkyries who were landing and progressively repelling his slaves while the Plague Marines were busy trying to break through the Salamanders.
"We heard your father scream for countless nights when he was in the care of the Night Haunter, son of Vulkan!"
"And we," his opponent delivered him a terrible counterblow with his Thunderhammer which nearly splattered his head before his scythe parried in extremis, "heard your father mostly survived the heresy by hiding behind someone else every time he found an opponent too challenging. The Seventeenth Legion must have an infinite amount of pride, to lick the boots of such a disgrace."
Before this Black Crusade, the Dark Council member would have found this retort so offensive he would have unleashed his sorcery, whether it was an attempt to bait him or not.
Today, he knew better.
"Your insults are no longer sufficient to break my resolve, Salamander!" the Lord of Torment gurgled, before channelling more of the power of Decay into his arms. "Let me show you-"
The shadowy fangs struck so fast he didn't see them until the decay-enhanced ceramite was destroyed by the attack.
Less than a second later, Mothac was sent barrelling against a container by something enormous.
The Dark Apostle sworn to Nurgle tried desperately to assess the situation and summoned his scythe...only to realise it had remained in his right hand.
His right hand which was now several metres away, out of his reach, as his blessed armour was suffering enormous malfunctions, and the power given by his God was fading so quickly it couldn't be anything but a sign of disgrace.
"No! I refuse to-" The shadowy creature revealed its true self, and it was an enormous Fenrisian feline.
However, Mothac instinctively knew the real threat was the False Emperor's slave clad in the garments of an assassin that was riding the beast.
In her hand was a green blade all Word Bearers had learned to dread over the last millennia since they began the worship of the True Gods.
How could something so dangerous be hidden from the Dark Council's sight for so long?
Weaver. This was all Weaver's fault. Damn her. Damn her for all eternity.
The assassin dismounted the beast.
"Dark Apostle Mothac." The son of Lorgar tried to stand up, but his strength abandoned him completely. At least, the Flesh Change Curse was not felt anymore. "Oath-breaker. Liar. Murderer. Heretic. The Emperor has a message for you."
"And what...does the corpse of the False Emperor thinks I need to hear?" Mothac asked derisively.
"I promised something once, faithless bastard," the assassin's shadow grew larger and larger, and his eyes widened. No! Not another one! "No enemy shall be beyond my wrath."
The green blade took his first heart effortlessly.
And then Mothac truly saw what was awaiting him on the other side of the Veil.
The Dark Apostle screamed.
Chapter Master Ta'Phor Hezonn
Ta'Phor Hezonn didn't like assassins. He never had.
This was something very common among all Space Marine Chapters, as he had swiftly learned after leaving Nocturne for the first time.
But the sons of Vulkan had this distaste well before becoming Space Marines.
To put it in basic, simple terms, Nocturne was so dangerous that the prohibition of assassins was one of its most ancient and deeply respected laws, and woe to any who tried to break it.
That before the arrival of Vulkan the people had to endure the Drukhari raids which had delighted in murdering anyone able to stand against them on the battlefield by poison or blade had also played a major role.
Nocturne didn't need assassins, not when their fiery homeworld tried to kill them every day. When you lived near a Salamander's lair – and the planet had so many of them you were never far from one – your community and your family had to be united, ready to close ranks and stand against any great beast or other form of aggression directed at the tribe, village, or city.
If one Nocturnan began to assassinate another, unity would be lost in short order. And once disorder and mistrust reigned, survival would become unlikely, at best.
Still, the female assassin before him had killed ten Plague Marines, undoubtedly saving many of his brothers, and possibly his own life, since Ta'Phor didn't think his chances against the corrupted mass of pus and slime that was Dark Apostle Mothac had been particularly great.
"You have my thanks for the intervention, Elena Kerrigan." The Salamanders' Chapter Master ignored the tank-sized black feline purring on his left. Once you had fought a Salamander of Nocturne, all other animals were unimpressive in comparison. Though admittedly, he would not try to fight that super-predator bare-handed. "What are your intentions now?"
"I am going north." The black-and-silver themed woman replied. Interestingly, the sort of silver-black helmet over her head was a sort of hybrid protection between the typical tightly-fitting Callidus masks and the Mark VI shape so favoured by the Raven Guard. "I can sense two of their Dark Apostles coordinating the Traitor Titans."
"Good. We will follow you soon."
"What does 'soon' mean?"
The immense gates behind him opened once more, and as the Regent of Nocturne turned his head, the first Titan of Legio Ignatum officially marched on Macragge.
It was not the first time the Chapter Master saw one. This model was a Mars-pattern of the Warlord class, and he had fought on the same battlefield as those in no less but nine occasions before today.
It was true that it was the first battle with Legio Ignatum, but then again, Nocturne and the domains they were sworn to defend had not been getting frequent visitors from Mars before Commorragh changed so many things for the better.
"'Soon', in this case assassin, means exactly the time we need to transfer all the Titans and point them in the direction of the enemy."
Macragge
Southern border of the Illyrium Military District
Vergil Fort
54 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Captain Brutus Cestus
Brutus had really hoped the massive transports he had seen in high orbit would have disgorged their millions of soldiers onto Macragge and reinforced them by now.
Unfortunately, a certain Captain of the Brazen Consuls had just arrived to inform him it was not going to happen.
"If we don't stop the Traitors here-"
"Oh, please Cestus," Captain Hadrian Septimus Niger Severus interrupted, "don't be ridiculous."
"Excuse me?" Brutus growled, his fury raised.
"I said, please don't be ridiculous." The officer of the Brazen Consuls repeated calmly. "Trapping the Word Bearers inside the Vergil Gullet would only work if we had at least an Army Group of the Guard and a minimum of two thousand Space Marines here. May I remind you that the enemy, aside from this spectacular vanguard of Land Raiders, may have more than twelve thousand Traitor Astartes to pulverise you with?"
Brutus grimaced. The worst part was that yes, he had thought about it. But he had hoped...
"If we abandon Vergil, they're going to enter the Macragge district itself. And once they do, there aren't a lot of defensive positions for any army until the Valley of Laponis."
"Yes." The other Captain nodded. "Theoretical: I think the Chapter Masters of the Blood Angel Successors Weaver sent to support the Imperial Guard want to position forces at the entrance of the valley."
"I wish you would use a practical, not a theoretical."
"It is a strong theoretical," the Brazen Consul commented. "After all, as you have noted so aptly, there are no defensive lines between the Enemy and Magna Macragge Civitas after this one. But between there and the Laponis Valley, the evacuation of civilians is complete. The same unfortunately can't be said about the capital and the rest of the valley it is set in."
Brutus Cestus sighed. His honour told him to hold the fort here and kill ten times his Company's number of Astartes before any of the bastard sons of Lorgar was able to set a foot inside the Macragge Military District.
Practical: since he had lost twenty battle-brothers so far – seventeen dead and three gravely wounded – his eighty Space Marines would kill eight hundred members of the Seventeenth Traitor Legion before perishing.
Eight hundred out of maybe twelve thousand.
The fifty-plus Brazen Consuls Captain Hadrian Severus had brought here would be able to kill more...but they wouldn't stay here to partake in his defiant last stand.
And as Brutus looked around, the Ultramarine officer was forced to admit the Vergil Fort was far from an ideal fortress to stop any enemy who fielded Traitor Marines and Chaos Spawns in its order of battle.
The Gullet was a massive breach in the mountains which had been created several millennia ago by means the Ultramar citizens had forgotten, but the threat of Illyrium had never been so severe a true state-of-the-art citadel needed to be built.
"Theoretical: if we had built a true citadel here..."
"The theoretical is right. But unless you have a practical to realize this particular theoretical in...about ten minutes, I suggest your Company and yourself prepare to self-destruct the Fort so that as many of the Word Bearers are killed in the explosions."
"I...I will do as you suggest."
This was a decision that was likely going to haunt him for the rest of his life, but-
"Guilliman's Laurels!" The outburst escaped his lips when the smoke made by the Traitor Land Raiders vanished. The Warp-tainted vehicles had stopped their progression so as to begin a formal bombardment, and behind them was revealed to be a mass of Chaos Spawns...several dozen at the very least.
But his attention was not on them.
It was on...on the unnaturally massive abomination the Word Bearers had chained to one Traitor Knight. It was that horror the Chaos Spawns were following.
Even by the standards of repulsiveness of the Traitor Legions, it was truly disgusting to merely glance at.
"Lorgar..." one of his battle-brothers shivered next to Brutus. "Captain, I think that it's Lorgar!"
The...that thing was the Primarch they were sworn to kill at all costs?
Emperor, Guilliman, and the ashes of Calth...how was this possible?
"Evacuate the Fort immediately. We return to the capital! Immediate evacuation! Techmarines, prepare the self-destruction sequence of the Fusion Reactors for a blast in ten minutes!"
"Yes, Captain!"
Magna Macragge Theatre
55 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Surviving Word Bearers: 12,088
Chaos Spawn Primarch: 1
Chaos Spawns: 388
Surviving numbers of the Lost and the Damned: approximately 4,000,000
Chaos Knights: 88
Surviving Ultramarines and Successors Present: 710
Other Loyalist Space Marines: 1136 (majority of Black Templars and Blood Angels Successors)
Surviving Ultramar Auxilia: 2,500,000
Imperial Guard reinforcements: approximately 20,000,000 (first wave)
Loyalist Imperial Knights: 160
Macragge System
High Orbit above Ardium
Strike Cruiser Lord of Vespator
55 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Captain Falco Tullius
Practical: it was a minor miracle in its own right that most of the 9th Company aboard the Lord of Vespator and the Defence of Talassar was able to arrive before the trio of xenos void monsters.
Second Practical: it was probably not going to change anything about the situation.
Falco did not have the entirety of the 9th's full strength available at Mortendar when the alarms shrieked that Macragge was under attack. At the time, it had sounded like a logical move; the anti-Imperial rebellion wasn't going to be crushed on its own.
Theoretical: as always, hindsight was a fantastic and terrible thing at the same time.
"Practical," the Master of Rites of the Ultramarines began, "we have exactly seventy battle-brothers to defend Ardium from a conventional assault by a xenos bigger than a super-battleship and which will have the capacity to generate an unknown number of Astartes-killer lifeforms."
"Theoretical," his Champion replied, "we should begin by landing and telling the shipmasters to stay out of range of that xenos abomination's psychic blast. The Chapter has already lost too many Battle-Barges and Strike Cruisers in the last few days. Our shipyards have suffered critical damage as well. It should be best to prevent the Lord of Vespator and the Defence of Talassar from sharing this unpleasant fate."
"You are right."
Why couldn't this 'Tyranid' charge towards Mortendar instead of Ardium? The Fortress World had considerable defences, and Falco Tullius knew all its strengths and weaknesses. More importantly, he knew the men manning said defences. And since he knew them, he was confident the vehicles had been correctly maintained in peak condition, that the surprise inspections were not faked, and that the average divisions of Mortendar had a superb degree of professionalism, as it should be for the elite regiments of the Ultramar Auxilia.
"How many of the Hive Prefects have already been relieved of their titles, privileges, and lives?"
"Six, Captain."
The Captain of the 9th Company didn't scowl, but it was because after learning Macragge was directly attacked by the Traitors, there was little left which could increase his anger.
It still was an unacceptable number of high-level officials who had proven they had been promoted way beyond their actual capabilities.
"How long until the Imperial Fleet is able to relieve us?"
"Theoretical: based on their course and their acceleration, I estimate between twelve and twenty hours, Captain." His senior Techmarine answered. "The margin depends primarily on what strategy the Admirals will want to use to deal with the 'Tyranid' xenos."
"If the annihilation of the Traitor Seventeenth's fleet is any indication of their Battleships' firepower, they can deal with the entity codenamed 'Behemoth." The one-sided massacre had brought a smile to his lips before the situation forced him to rush to Ardium in the hope some defence could be organised. "Good. Theoretical: let's be pessimistic and say we have to hold for twenty hours."
"Not counting our battle-brothers, what do we have to defend Ardium?"
"Captains Cassius Bacurius and Maxellus Dacius respected the tenets of the Codex to the letter."
A month ago, this answer of the Company's Chaplain would have filled Falco with enthusiastic approval.
Now that the two Ultramarine officers were confirmed dead, and under circumstances which had proved their Codex adherence had played a great part in their demises, it was inspiring a large amount of consternation.
"And what does that mean, exactly?" He asked acidly.
"Err...there are about eight hundred million troops of the Auxilia on Ardium, Captain. They are divided into thirteen Army Groups, one for each Hive. They have the standard equipment and vehicles the last reforms the predecessor of our Chapter Master's predecessor pushed for."
Internally, Falco Tullius sighed in relief. Maybe he had been too harsh towards the memories of the two Captains, then.
"Eight hundred million is a respectable number, especially if they adopt a defensive strategy," and playing the role of a son of Dorn was the only thing to do here; there was definitely not enough time to think of a plan of immediate counterattack, and the vids sent by the Dark Angels and the Wolves showed quite clearly that you didn't want to go on the offensive against these repulsive creatures with soldiers unprepared for the cruelty of such a fight. "I suppose they are the first echelon and behind them are the reserves? How many of them have been mobilised so far?"
Silence was the only thing he heard for several seconds.
"Please tell me they have mobilised the reserves, or as the Feast of the Second Founding we just celebrated days ago is my witness, I will kill all the Ardium nobles by pulverising their skulls with the original Codex Astartes of our gene-sire!"
"It..." The Champion of the 9th Company cleared his throat. "It isn't that bad?"
"Are you comparing it to the complete ineptitude Bacurius showed when it was time to fight the bastard sons of Lorgar, or the reports of abyssal nullity we were given about Laphis' Auxilia?"
"When you phrase it like that," the Chaplain interjected, "it is that bad. For all our attempts to curb the smuggling and impose an orderly society, Ardium is a Hive World, Captain, and this means the immense reserves of vehicles are often subjected to...various forms of illegal trade."
"More and more I begin to understand why the Chapter Master didn't want me to conduct my surprise inspections."
Seriously, aside from Thiel who had the chore of guarding an indefensible world in the first place, was he the only Captain to rely on good sense and the Codex rather than the Codex alone?
"The reserves have been ordered to mobilise. But it's been only...fifty-five hours since the Archenemy and the Tyranids have entered this system. And the communications being down have of course hampered our existing war plans."
"Very well. You will give me the rest of the information as we descend on Ardium."
He had a feeling that the administrative governors of the Hives of Ardium were not the only people he was going to have to remove before any Imperial reinforcements arrived.
"We launch in five minutes. Shipmaster, the moment we are gone, take all the ships out of range of the xenos abomination. And make sure everyone has received the message! I don't want another Mass Conveyor devoured by those xenos!"
Ardium Theatre
55 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Surviving Ultramarines: 70
Surviving Ultramar Auxilia: approximately 803,000,000
Surviving civilian population: approximately 81,196,000,000
Surviving void-capable Tyranid life-forms: 3
Laphis
Ravenna – West of the Polenta River
55 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Captain Aeonid Thiel
It had been three hours since most of their communication network went down, and Aeonid had spent most of it reorganising the forces on this side of the river and launching quantities of assaults as the resistance of the Word Bearers inexplicably faltered.
No, this wasn't quite correct. Aeonid knew why the majority of the Word Bearers had gone missing; they had certainly gone after the Webway Gate.
It was relatively logical...provided of course you had a method to cross the river without using a ship and break through the hundreds of thousands of guardsmen in the way. And evidently, as long as you were willing to let most of your army play the role of bait.
Aeonid decapitated three more heretics and trampled the two he had merely maimed.
That was one more regiment or similar treacherous force wiped out. But it was unimportant strategically.
There had been a major reserve in Ravenna East, but was it really strong enough to stop the sneak attack of several hundred Word Bearers?
Aeonid didn't know, and the wait made the ignorance worse minute by minute. He had sent messengers, of course, but none of them had-
"Lord Captain! Lord Captain!"
A Krieg guardsman ran towards him, and began to remove helmet and rebreather despite the battlefield killing its fair share of brave and courageous fools every hour when they did exactly that.
"Lord Captain! Great victory!" The man was out of breath and panting after the effort he had made.
"Please take a few seconds, Private, you are-"
"The Vile One is dead, Lord Captain!"
Most of the Ultramarines present stopped searching for new enemies to destroy. Officers stopped relaying orders. Guardsmen had difficulties keeping their weapons in their hands.
Even one of the Hospitaller Sisters treating a wounded Auxilia soldier paused for a second before resuming her medical support.
"The Vile One...Erebus of the Traitors is dead?" Aeonid managed to utter.
It was-
It was-
"Yes, Lord Captain! Adjutant-spider Ilmarina torched him with the Aethergold power of Her Celestial Highness! And one Traitor Astartes decapitated him as the Light of the God-Emperor burned that abominable monster body and soul! We have the vid-casts and everything to prove it!"
Erebus was dead.
Erebus was dead.
And this meant-
Calth's destruction was half-avenged – no one had announced Kor Phaeron's death so far.
But it was a really great day.
Without this vicious betrayer, the Word Bearers were surely going to be even more disorganised and leaderless.
Without him, Ravenna would survive.
And all his brothers at Calth had their dreams of vengeance fulfilled at last.
Aeonid drew the Gladius he had taken as a replacement when his former weapon broke four hours ago against a cursed weapon of a Champion of the Traitor Legions.
"THE VILE ONE IS DEAD! FOR CALTH AND FOR THE EMPEROR!"
"MAY HE ROT IN HELL FOR ETERNITY!"
"SO PERISH ALL TRAITORS!"
"DEATH TO THE WORD BEARERS!"
"VILE AND COWARDLY TO THE VERY END!"
"DEATH TO THE HERETICS!"
"AVE IMPERATOR!"
Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor
Colonel Lothar Jurten
The night had fallen, but the battle for Ravenna continued.
In the distance, they could see the colossal explosions as the artillerists of Nyx continued to pound the hab-blocks the heretics still controlled.
According to the rumours, High Command had decided to slaughter as many of them as possible for the rest of the night.
Lothar had no idea how long it was going to be. His watch had broken a few hours ago during a round of savage fighting in the ruins of a market, and the opportunity to replace it had not materialised.
It should have bothered him, the watch had been a nice expensive gift...but it didn't.
After this brutal battle, everyone who survived was happy to be alive. You learned to enjoy the simple stuff, like the Nyxian rations they had received by scorpion transport five minutes ago.
"We're very lucky to have the Saint as a commander," Erwin told them very seriously as the main meal was warmed and the group of guardsmen sat around the small fire. "With the rations the Autocrats wanted us to eat, we would have died before meeting the first heretic."
"You always exaggerate, Erwin!"
"Who was complaining he couldn't remove the taste of Ration X45 for two days?"
Many chuckles resounded around the fire.
"Okay, I will admit the rations were...pretty bad."
"Especially the F35 one...affordable and tasty, they said."
Erwin shivered theatrically. Lothar groaned. He had eaten one of those, and the experience had been...memorable.
"Now we have real grox meat for the menu, and some cereals with it. I definitely call that progress."
"Don't get too used to it," Lothar warned with amusement. "Our military service is far from over, and it isn't guaranteed we will have Generals who care as much as the ones we currently serve under."
"Yes, Colonel!"
The food conversation didn't stop there, of course. As they had been withdrawn from the frontlines by their superiors, there was free reign to speak about subjects which weren't able to kill people, and food was a safe subject.
It didn't last, of course. Soldiers were by their very nature more curious than any civilian he had ever met.
"Are you going to be promoted, Colonel?"
"I don't know," Lothar admitted honestly. "Plenty of Brigadier-Generals died, so I suppose it's possible...but I won't pretend I'm eager to jump in those shoes. Not much of a Brigade left, after all."
The mood was contemplative for several minutes. Ravenna looked like it was going to be a victory, but by the God-Emperor, the Krieg regiments which had held the lines had been shredded. The Krieg 83rd was down to four hundred combat-ready men. They might – might! – recover two or three hundred wounded when the miraculous Bacta did its work.
"The Brigade is in the same state as the Cathedral."
"Don't insult this ugly pile of stones, Sergeant! It saved our skins a thousand times!"
"Ah...yes, my apologies."
Everyone ate. And yes, the warmed meal was delicious. Good meat, good cereals, good sweets, and plenty of tasty, nay delicious things that eased the sheer exhaustion they felt in their bones a bit.
"What are we going to do about the regimental flag, Colonel? Bastard heretics were unable to seize it from us, but they shot it so many times..."
"We're going to repair it, of course." Lothar replied, having already thought about it. "The bureaucratic forms are going to be a headache and a half, but if we want something to prove we are really the victors and deserve to be included among the best regiments, I will gladly spend a few hundred Throne Gelts!"
"Count me in, Colonel!"
"And what will be our colours?"
"Laphis is an Ultramar planet, right? We will use some blue..."
"And gold! Gold is for the Emperor! Did you see the golden fireworks east of the river when the communications were cut?"
"We weren't even there!"
"It's the principle of the thing!"
"How do you see it, Erwin?"
"A rectangle of blue atop a rectangle of yellow maybe, Colonel? And at the heart, the battle-cry."
Goblets were raised like a single man.
"For Krieg and the God-Emperor!"
Macragge
Pharsalus Military District
Fields of Pharsalus – ten kilometres west of the Pharsalus Line
55 hours after the Mark of Oblivion
Dark Apostle Paristur
The plain was a graveyard of burning vehicles.
Most of them belonged to the slaves of the False Emperor.
But 'most of them' wasn't good enough, not when one was speaking of thousands of losses, and the Word Bearers' were irreplaceable. Every Legionnaire who fell or transformed into a Chaos Spawn couldn't be replaced.
Khorne's throne, they couldn't even find proper substitutes for the Volscani Cataphracts, and those slaves were as useless as a mortal could possibly be.
"By my estimate," Eliphas announced, "we have killed or utterly routed more than two million mortals of the Ultramar Auxilia and destroyed somewhere in the vicinity of forty thousand tanks and other armoured vehicles. We have also destroyed the secret tunnels this 'Mediolanum Army Group' used to flank us when we believed we had a mountain range between our forces and theirs."
"For all the good it will do," Paristur grimaced, looking at the dark skies still filled with the psychic disturbances Jarulek had powered with his dying will. "They have cost us the most precious commodity we can't afford to lose: time."
Paristur didn't know how long the sorcery preventing the Bombardment Cruisers from annihilating them would last, but he was ready to bet his soul it wouldn't be more than a few days at best.
And once the False Emperor's slaves could use their Lances in an accurate matter, every asset they had ever mustered in the service of the Seventeenth Legion would die.
"It's worse than that." The younger Dark Apostle informed him. "I have pushed one of the Volscani's fastest regiments deeper into the western pass. They were ambushed with a multitude of anti-tank weapons and more Auxilia companies. Since we did such an excellent job of destroying the Army Groups here, that suggests-"
"Someone not completely idiotic realised we were going to destroy the Pharsalus Line and told them to wait where their inferior firepower would do the most good."
That was extremely bad. As powerful as the Legio Vulturum was, they were still vulnerable at close-quarters if the enemy found out where their weak points were. Moreover, a Titan could not power its Shields at full power for all eternity. Sooner or later, they were going to need spare parts and dedicated Mechanicum teams.
Paristur had neither the former nor the latter to give them.
"They intend to bleed us every step of the way towards their capital." Eliphas uttered a curse which was best not spoken in the presence of any ally of Kor Phaeron. "Please remind me why we thought this plan was a good idea."
"I never thought this was a good idea," Paristur was prompt to remind him. "It was that all the alternatives were worse."
"We have lost, so everyone must lose with us." Eliphas muttered before clearing his throat. "I felt Erebus' soul screaming as the Betrayer claimed it."
"I felt it too." Paristur smiled. "At least we can say there was some good news in the last standard day."
The Vile One had finally begun to suffer the punishment he had so richly deserved for millennia.
If the situation wasn't so bad for him personally, the veteran Dark Apostle would have been the first to shout it was excellent news, not merely good.
But the Flesh Change Curse was still a monumental struggle to mentally fight against. Therefore Erebus' death, while the highlight of the day, was only temporarily celebrated before moving on.
"Yes. We don't know what happened to Mothac."
"I told him that embracing Decay was slowing him down and forcing him onto a path where tactical mistakes piled up." Paristur sighed. "Well, he's dead, and I am not going to wait for whoever killed him to come here."
"We march our forces through the western valley, then?" Eliphas asked for clarification.
"We will. And we do it as quickly as we can. I don't care if the Volscani can't keep up with our pace; nothing matters more now than storming the walls of the Fortress of Hera before Weaver's Admirals slaughter us with orbital fire. We take the citadel and finish off Guilliman, or they annihilate us from above."
"Very well, I will give the orders. Where do you want our Rhinos and-"
Sirens and a loud clamour were heard from far away.
Paristur turned his head south and gritted his teeth.
The explosion of noise rang out a second time.
And then a third.
Finally, as the light of the sun faintly pierced some of the dark clouds, the transhumans' eyes saw them.
They were like mountains over the horizon.
They were mountains on the move, surrounded by a sea of ants.
They were the Titans of the False Emperor, and they towered over a gigantic army of mortals.
They screamed in fury; both challenge and domination claim in one.
"We will-"
Tyrannosaurus Rex roared back.
The Alpha of Legio Vulturum could not let this challenge go unanswered, and it didn't.
A second later, the other ninety-three Titans of Legio Vulturum shrieked or screamed out their hatred.
Metallic legs taller than many fortified walls ignored the command of marching west and turned southwards.
"To the death, then," Eliphas summarized fatalistically before his voice was filled with hatred once more. "Let's try to kill as many of them as we can."
"Agreed." Paristur nodded. They couldn't fight their way through to Macragge Civitas, not with this kind of opposition stabbing their back every step of the way to it.
They had lost strategically. All that remained was to kill as many of them as they could before it was over.
"REFORM THE LINES! ALL UNITS ARE TO MOVE SOUTH! LET MACRAGGE BURN!"
"LET MACRAGGE BURN!"
The battle-cries were almost drowned under the roars of the Titans.
The plains had already been burning, and now the Fields of Pharsalus looked like they were covered in blood.
There was fire. There was smoke. And the faint sun continued to breach through the dark clouds as the two greatest contingents of Titans ever mustered in a single location during the 35th millennium advanced to fight each other.
The Battle of Pharsalus was about to begin.
Pharsalus Theatre
Mark of Oblivion: 55 hours after Mark Zero
Surviving Word Bearers: 11,666
Chaos Spawns: 177
Surviving numbers of the Lost and the Damned: approximately 1,888,000
Legio Vulturum Titans: 94
Loyalist Legios Titans: 128
Loyalist Space Marines Present: 1976 (majority of Salamanders and Imperial Fists Successors)
Surviving Ultramarine Auxilia: approximately 350,000
Imperial Guard reinforcements: 15,000,000 (to be continuously reinforced by the Spaceport)
Dragon Armours Present: 292
Author's note: So ends the second chapter of the Extinction Arc.
The Cataclysm of Macragge will continue in Extinction 11-3 The Battle of Pharsalus.
Terra has not been forgotten, and before the end, the greatest weapons of Mars will have their Titanomachy.
The other links for the Weaver Option if you want to support or comment on my writing:
Alternate History page: www . /forum /threads /weaver-option-thread-3-the-5th-black-crusade-story-only.506948/
TV Tropes: tvtropes pmwiki/ / FanFic/ TheWeaverOption
Hi everyone, I'm Thanathos, one of Antony's betas. As some of you may have noticed, there has been a delay in the release of this chapter. I take full responsibility for this, because it's entirely my fault. Now some might get a sense of deja vu, as I myself did, because something similar happened once before. At that time I was writing my midterm-exams. Well, last week I wrote my finals, the culmination of the last three years of my life's work (don't live in the U.S., so my use of the terms midterms and finals may not be entirely correct, but close enough), and the things that entirely decide my final grades. As you can probably guess, it was a big deal for me, because basically everything I learned the entire three years I had to study because it might come up in the tests. So I had to make priorities, and RL had to come first. However, they are over now, and since those were the finals, there should not be another delay like this one again, ever.
So I apologize to everyone for the delay in release I caused. At this point I'd also like to extend my gratitude to Antony444, who was extremely patient and understanding about the whole thing. So again, I'm very sorry, and I'm fairly confident it won't happen again.
