By the time both the tour and Palisades training expedition had finished the Primarches had gathered together, the Emperor having gone to his quarters with the majority of his custodians. Horus and Sangunius watched as their brother added even more weapons to the panoply already bedecking his armored form. "I hear you are heading out to fight?" Sanguinus spoke. He wasn't sure how he felt about that with his technically younger brother going out to fight against those insects that more resembled features of the landscape than lifeforms. "Well I did say they push in one spot we push in another, well it's time to push. Normally the automated defenses and our robots can handle it but I've taken to joining them for most larger combat operations." Sangunius let out a humm as he thought for a few moments, and then he shrugged "would you have room for.." a glance to Horus got a nod. "Two more?"
Palisade let out a short laugh, 'sure, the command tanks have more than enough room. Do you need any equipment or are you fine as is?"
Sangunius couldn't help but look back on that question as a bug the size of a small spaceship unleashed a stream of plasma hotter than the sun's surface. He'd said he wouldn't need equipment at the time. But this would be taking down a spaceship with infantry weapons. Sangunius looked at his sword, not even ten feet long. It wouldn't even pierce that bugs hide.
He wasn't even actually in the fight, just in an artillery vehicle at the rear of the formation, not even the tide of smaller bugs he could actually fight and kill were reaching him either. The only thing putting him in the slightest bit of danger were massive towers of flesh launching dozens of different projectiles the size of some vehicles he'd ridden in. but even those massive projectiles going faster than the speed of sound just slammed to a halt whenever they hit a vehicle, falling off without dealing a single scratch. And they always hit the vehicles, he hadn't yet seen a tower miss its mark.
It was one thing to hear that every single unit in his brother's army had personal shields, it was another thing entirely to watch the tank his brother was in get bathed in a stream of acid, enough to fill a lake. And then have the only resulting issue be getting that tank back out of the pit it'd been melted into. Which it got out of by simply walking up the sheer walls of stone and launching harpoons into the bug that had attacked it. Before with a throom Sangunius could feel even through the command tanks armor a beam launched from Palisades tank and vaporized the upper half of the ship sized insect. Only for the bottom half to keep fighting until a second beam incinerated it.
The entire fight barely had any semblance of order to it, a chaotic cacophony filled with weaponry better suited to and Sangunius felt he couldn't say this enough, space battles! In the atmosphere! There were quite literally small storms and tornadoes forming from the sheer atmospheric disruption caused by this fight. Minor earthquakes shaking trees that were somehow still standing through all of this.
Hadn't Palisade said the oceans were worse? What did they cause? kilometers high tsunamis and cracking continents? Sangunius thought for a few seconds and couldn't actually rule that out.
Literally ponds of blood were spilled, shells larger than space marines fired by the hundreds every second, the grass and dirt scoured away until the fighting reached the bedrock and then dug deeper as the ambient heat began to turn the stone to magma. The air rumbled and boiled and froze, lightning not being created by any weapons struck the ground in hundreds of locations, created from sheer ambient air friction as the winds blew faster and faster.
And through it all more bugs and tanks poured into the crater the battle field had become, even as the pools of blood and oil trying to cool the molten floor boiled and evaporated into clouds of steam that were soon incinerated in turn. It was pure and utter carnage and yet aside from the faintest vibrations Sangunius felt none of it, his only indication there was even an ongoing battle the camera feeds he was watching.
Even still his mind raced as he contemplated how his sons could fight against such a force, yet no answers came besides titan legions and orbital bombardments. Nukes were being fired like bolter shells! That isn't something the imperium can wield on an infantry scale. This whole fight, only encompassing a few dozen miles, was using more force and firepower than entire planetary campaigns he had fought. Any of his troops not in terminator armor would die just from the environments caused by the fighting.
Space marine or not a chunk of rock thrown at two hundred miles an hour would turn your chest to mush. If this was what Plaisade used to fight on an average day then it was a wonder he'd bothered to acknowledge his sons as a combat capable force. They were about equivalent to the drones dying by the thousands in this fight. They only had their combat vehicles to bring them to parity but even then…. Sangunius watched three tanks as large as an imperial Basilisk get eaten by a giant worm burrowing through the magma, it just wouldn't be enough.
Only A Primarch's main weapon had never been their bodies, or even their legions. It had and would always be their minds, they were beyond mortal. Sangunius's mind burned as it raced through the new information at a rapid pace. He already had strategies that would let him hold off the hordes of bugs with just his legion, not well and only with significant casualties. But that wasn't actually helping in this current battle, instead his mind learned what each piece of the factory's war machine did and extrapolated what it could do. And he started drawing up battle plans using the tactical information he'd been given.
The plans that the mind 'Balistraia' were using now were effective, as evidenced by the fact only a few dozen tanks had been destroyed for the thousands of bugs purged. But they were different from how Sangunius would have fought, he favored far more aggressive tactics. These units had the speed, firepower, and durability to break the bugs formation into smaller chunks with a massive push, then surround the weakened pockets while a smaller sacrificial force destroys the artillery positions.
This measured approach took longer but was far less risky, but technically cost more resources and units compared to his own. He spent a few moments debating if he should mention his tactical assessment but well… the battle was already underway and shifting into the new formation would cost them their momentum. Not really worth it, he'd just bring up more aggressive tactics later.
--
Isha sat in a garden deep within the planet's mantle, well calling it a garden was a misnomer. It was several hundred kilometers of tunnels with the largest cavern having an artificial sun at its kilometer high ceiling. But compared to the world above? This was but a small garden, the life within regulated and suffused with her power, small warp spawn, in the shape of plants and animals and the scant few 'fae' roamed its halls. It was her old realm in the warp made miniature in real space.
What had once been a garden large beyond mortal comprehension was now … this, a set of tunnels and plants only not being devoured by daemons due to the world it grew on. Isha had tried to leave Nauvis when her children had arrived, not all of her but a few slivers of her essence. Each and every time her essence had been found and consumed by daemons breaching into real space.
She had traded one cage for another. But this one was far larger, and had the added benefit of not being tortured by some lovestruck chaos god. A deal she would have taken even if she had known she'd become trapped here.
No, Isha may be trapped but this was a far better situation. Even the echoing laughs and screams of the dark gods were muted on this planets surface, and well everywhere Nauvis reached Isha could too, and while a normal planet spirit did not grow outside its planet, well no normal planet spirit could fight off the Chaos gods. Nauvis was anything but normal, as evidenced by the fact she had managed to spread to the humans three colonies. As Nauvis had followed her …child? Creature? To the new worlds, and had kept the seeds of Isha safe from the warps' predation.
This was a growing cage, one that fed her and healed her wounds. Even these simple spirits combined power was greater than the total power she had possessed when she first hid on Nauvis. Nothing compared to even the dark days just before Slannesh's birth, but.. In time Maybe Isha could reach those peaks once again. Just four worlds would not be enough, but the human was spreading his reach and with that she could grow.
She sat in her grove, filled with plants and creatures who would never grow in such conditions without her presence, and reached out a hand. Watching as dozens of small flying insects and animals landed on her hand and arm. Order and harmony reigned here, Nature flourished. It felt …. Safe, the safest she'd felt in hundreds of years.
Isha still wasn't as strong as a greater Daemon, much less an exalted. But with her sheer prowess in the warp and her own godly nature she knew she could fight and banish at least a weaker greater daemon. If not outright destroy them, and if the fight was in her garden, or anywhere on Nauvis? Then not even Chao's exalted warriors would be able to harm her.
Eventually, within at most ten years, Isha would have enough power to make a proper servant of her own, something she hadn't done since the war in heaven, though her servants had lasted until those final days. As far as Isha knew they had all been destroyed and consumed by Slaanesh with the rest of the eldar god's servants. But this one would be stronger, an exalted of her own, created on Nauvis and imbued with the strength of its creatures.
If she was stuck in this cage she would send forth her servants. But making an exalted that could sustain itself in the materium, for it would die in the warp no matter how strong she made it. Would be a challenge even for her skill and knowledge.
Those were plans for the future, for now Isha kept her essence and self coiled and hidden. Wards and sigils designed to hide her presence within the planets mantle. And she sat with her creatures watching as Nauvis made an admirable effort at killing a god. The Emperor had come to Nauvis as a conquer, seeking to use word as weapons well enough, but a conquer regardless. And Nauvis had risen to the challenge, a challenge the anathema likely didn't even realize he had posed, given how he hid within the engineer's fortress.
Isha had come here not as a predator seeking to claim territory, but as a plant seeking to grow and prey seeking to hide. Both of them were 'pure' enough to be allowed unto the planet but Isha had a very different relationship with Nauvis. She was the equivalent of the plants and microscopic lifeforms making up the base of the food chain, something that grew other creations from itself and was nourished so it could do that. Demeaning that she had been reduced so, or at least her children would be offended on her behalf, but Isha had always been nature. Every part of it, this was little different.
So Nauvis did not fight her, it welcomed her everywhere she went, actively encouraging her spread because her presence alone made it's creatures stronger. But it rallied those same creatures to fight the emperor, telling them that another apex predator had arrived. Even the creatures of Nauvis's deepest pits were rising up from the planets molten core, swimming through the magma tunnels and reaching the oceans. Things that had eaten greater daemon's like they were not even threats and had kept the oceans free of corruption. The things that only rarely left the oceans simply because nothing on the surface was worth the effort of leaving their more comfortable homes. That and those that didn't leave rapidly would slowly be whittled down, though those were the weaker creatures who had lost their territory.
The Emperor could fight those but it would be a bloody battle. He was not anathema to these purely material beings, and would only have his physic might to fall back upon, it would give the creatures the chance, no matter how slight, to harm him. But well, he had a few days before the largest creatures got there and the engineer knew well the horrors of the ocean, her humans would be fine, probably.
And once the Emperor had gathered his child and left, she would once again begin her research. Maybe she would even ask the human for help, crafting her servant a material body to house its form would be of great use, and he was a craftsman of great skill. And from the spiritual eyes on her Isha knew Nauvis was waiting, somewhat patiently, for her efforts to bear fruit. That was a thought, her greater servant enhanced with Nauvis's blessing. Not… impossible, even more difficult than the task had already been, but the payoffs might just be worth it.
Then her servant would hunt down Cegorach and they would work together, saving as many mortals as they could. The eldar pantheon was not done, not by a long shot. As the human had been certain of his own imminent death and had struggled regardless she would do the same.
And even if she failed.. Well Isha wasn't certain the Engineer could fail in turn, he had been faced with certain doom his entire life and only seemed to grow stronger. If all the gods of order were killed the work she had done on the engineers soul would make him… something else. Could it go horribly wrong and create something worse than a chaos god? Yes, but Isha had created that contingency with rage in her heart, the rage of a mother who had lost her children and was watching more of them suffer even as she crafted.
Consequences be damned if she failed, she needed monsters of her own. And this planet could certainly forge them
AN -
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