Traitors!

All of them were traitors!

I couldn't trust anyone.

I took out every single grenade I had in my Inventory – frag and plasma grenades alike – removed their pins and hurled them at every conceivable direction, many of them falling into the windows of barracks buildings or through open doors. There were no innocents anymore. Or, at least, I couldn't trust anyone to be innocent. Heretics were devious and tricky. And I did not possess the patience or the ability to root out every single one of them, which led me into the inevitable conclusion: they were all traitors. None of them could be trusted. For all I knew, the city had already fallen.

I was surrounded by enemies of the Imperium – heretics and traitors. They all deserved the same fate.

Their screams were like music to my ears as the grenades began to detonate, one by one, engulfing the traitor guardsmen in fire and death and shrapnel, causing entire buildings to collapse and fall apart. Hundreds must've died in an instant. And hundreds more were horribly injured in the carnage of explosions that followed. The ground shook and trembled and craxked, bodies and limbs and organs flying every which way.

Good riddance.

They were all traitors; they were even less than xenos.

There were no innocents, only varying degrees of guilt. And, as much as I hated the idea, right now I had no choice but to assume that they were all traitors. I'd atone for the deaths of innocents later if there were any at all – I had to – but that would come only after I saved this world, defeated the Balrog, and drove back the traitor forces.

I couldn't trust anyone – not even the supposed Astartes reinforcements. Which meant I was gonna have to do everything alone, by myself.

Wait.

A thought occurred to me as I willed forth a Power Sword in my grasp and tore through a hundred traitors at once – faceless, unworthy, their screams and horrified eyes did not move me. I would not fall for their trickery ever again. More and more of them discharged their Las-guns at me, but I cared little for the tiny holes they carved into the Power Armor as I cut them down faster than they could possibly react. Some simply froze up, eyes wide with fear and dread, right before I carved them into chunks.

All traitors.

But there were a few I could trust.

Olly and his crew, the other survivors whose whole plan was to strike back at the traitors and heretics. They were on my side. I had to find them and tell them everything. Maybe, just maybe, we'd be able to turn the tide. I had to escape the Hive City, then, because there was no way to know just who was a traitor and who wasn't. It was safer to just kill them all.

My eyes narrowed. I wasn't exactly the smartest man – or just smart, in general – but it simply didn't add up.

This wasn't making any sense, because they'd already won. Why were the traitors attacking each other – one group outside and another group from within, both fighting and killing the other? To what end? What did they gain from pretending to be at war if they already controlled most of Praxtor anyway? What was their goal? Another possibility was that there were multiple factions of the traitors with their own agendas that just so happened to cause friction, resulting in a war within their little group. Whatever the case, it was in my best interest to kill them all.

The ground shook and cracked, but it wasn't by my doing. The ear-splitting roar that followed shortly after was enough of a clue. The Balrog was drawing closer.

Several guardsmen, hidden behind cover and from atop the buildings, unleashed a volley of Las-gun shots right at me, scorching the Power Armor, which I fixed rather easily with [Tech-Shaping]. They couldn't harm me – not as I was. I could kill them all, I figured, but that seemed like a waste of time. I didn't even know what I was supposed to do now. That Tech-Priest had been a traitor, which meant every Tech-Priest in Praxtor was potentially traitorous as well.

Emperor guide me, the city's destruction was preferable now; better to see it burn than fall into the hands of traitors.

And then, the world froze as a massive section of the wall outright exploded in a haze of shadow and fire, accompanied by a primal roar that shook my bones even as I stood in the form of an Astartes, covered head-to-toe in Power Armor. From the dust and smoke emerged a titan, wreathed in flame and cloaked in darkness, vaguely humanoid in form, with wings as black as night and as red as blood. The very air around it seemed to shift and warp, its very presence a blight upon reality. I paused, frozen as I stared at the creature that was to be my enemy, wondering how I was supposed to defeat such a thing. I hadn't felt the full weight of its presence the first time I saw it, but now – close as it was – it was almost suffocating. The heat was immense. Even from where I stood, I saw the walls beginning to melt around its presence, tall and short buildings alike, boiling down to burning slag, the screams of traitors and heretics filling the air.

There were no innocents here – not anymore. If the Balrog was going to burn Kuresh and all the traitors and heretics with it, then I wasn't going to stop it – not yet, at least. I was going to let that thing rampage for as long as possible. But, I knew that it was going to keep on following me, our fates bound together by the System. That did not mean, however, that I couldn't use that to my advantage. If it was going to keep on following me wherever I go, then I was going to lead to all the strongholds of all the traitors, wherever they might've been, until the whole planet was purged of its sin and taint.

Twin orbs of fire turned towards me, eyes ablaze like twin stars – the depths of raging furnaces. A flash of thought and sensation flowed between us – titan and man – a sudden discharge of will and intent. Somehow, my mind and the Balrog's mind aligned – even for a moment. And there was something there as the titan paused, glaring at me with sunlit eyes, something that I'd like to believe was some kind of understanding, an acknowledgment that it did not belong to this world, that it wanted nothing to do with anything here, that it was lost – purposeless, but filled with untapped malice and darkness, just waiting to be unleashed. And I felt only pity. The Balrog did not choose to be here. It had been taken against its will and dropped in this world – in this universe.

And between us was a very distant kinship.

My eyes widened as I looked towards the burning titan. "So, that's why you're looking for me."

"We're similar... you and I." I whispered, the sound of my voice never even leaving the helmet. But I was certain of it; the Balrog heard me – listened to me. It was truly a shame that we stood on opposite sides. We were enemies. Even if it wasn't evil or bursting with malice, it wasn't human and that alone was enough. And then, the Balrog reared back its hand, raised its flaming sword, and brought it down in my general direction. Entire sections of the city were vaporized almost instantly, rock and stone disappearing in a haze of immense heat. Bunkers and regimental barracks became naught but ashes and dust that scattered in the wind. Not even the traitors and heretics had time to scream as they simply ceased to exist. I couldn't avoid it. The Balrog, despite its immense size, had swung the blade too fast for even my Astartes senses to properly follow.

Eyes wide, removed my helmet, sent it into my Inventory, before I turned my back to the approaching onslaught of fire and death, ripped off my own head, and threw it as hard and as powerfully as I could over the wall, before the flames came and reduced my body, Power Armor included, to slag and ashes. My head hurled across the open air as fast as it could, just barely moving ahead of the fire. Perceiving shapes and colors when my head was, quite literally, spinning, was not a very pleasant experience. I would've hurled if not for the fact that I was literally just a head and had no actual stomach.

The flames eventually dissipated, however, and the freakishly strong winds the blow generated only served to carry my head even further away. I caught a quick glance of the devastation; that strike with its flaming blade had reduced a large portion of the Hive City to ruin and flames. Millions must've died instantly. But, there was a silver lining. Inexplicably, the air was flooded by a stream of pure [Warp Energy]. I didn't know where it came from or how it was suddenly there, but I drank to my fill, devouring as much of it as I could until my Warp Energy Reserves were full – almost bursting. Even then, the air was still full of it, just waiting to be seized.

I could probably fight the Balrog now, using the [Reaper Form]. With all the ambient [Warp Energy] in the air, I'd last extensively in that form, long enough, perhaps, to defeat the Balrog. However, as it raised its burning blade, I realized that I didn't want to – not yet, at least. The admittance left a bitter taste on my tongue, but with the presence of traitors and heretics, there was only one thing to be done. After all, the enemies of the Imperium all shared the same fate.

Death.

Kuresh was lost. There was only one thing left for it.

"The city must be purged." And the Balrog was doing it for me. As my head flew over the wall, the Balorg turned away from me and turned its attention, instead, to the Hive City as more and more artillery shells exploded over its fiery form. Was it invulnerable? Impervious to harm? Definitely, physical battles would get me nowhere, even with the Reaper Form, which was probably the only power I had that might be enough to harm the Balrog. I could drain its essence with [Warp Shaping], but I'd have to get painfully close and I was rather certain of the fact that, if I was within touching distance, then I'd just burn to death in the Balrog's fire. Thusly, for now, my only trump card was the Reaper Form.

But, I wasn't going to worry about that just yet. The Balrog was going to destroy that traitor-infested city, while I made myself scarce.

My head landed on the other side of the wall, into a crater on the ground that'd likely been formed from the explosion of artillery shell or a landmine. There were no enemies anywhere around me. The siege lines had been broken and most of the heretic host was scattered to the winds. I still saw and heard plenty of them, but they were so far away as to simply no longer matter. More importantly, the Traitor Astartes were just... gone. I hadn't noticed them attacking the Balrog when it arrived. In fact, it seemed as though they just packed up and left, which was – fair enough – the smart thing to do when faced with overwhelming odds; it wasn't brave or noble of them, but I couldn't expect much from spineless traitors who turned their backs to the Emperor of Mankind.

I rebuilt my body right there, using the Astartes template, after which I simply donned a new suit of Power Armor, of which there were still a few left in my Inventory, though I'd rather not sacrifice more of them if I could help it. Once I was finished, I simply ran forward.

I wasn't quite sure where I actually was, at the moment, relative to that small entryway I crawled through to get to the city, and I also wasn't sure just where I was actually going. I recognized a few of the mountains, however, which meant I had a general idea of where north probably was.

That's where I was headed. Hopefully, I'd run into Olly and his crew again, but I was doubtful. They could be anywhere by now.

I just kept running.

Honestly, I hoped I'd get some sort of guidance from the Emperor, because I... know longer knew what I was supposed to do. The STC was still with me, but I couldn't now give it to any Tech-Priest, because I couldn't be certain of who was traitorous and who wasn't. Even that Colonel had been a traitor; so, I couldn't be certain of the Command Structure, either. The only people I believed weren't heretical or traitorous were Olly and the others, but I had no idea where they were now or how to find them.

I stopped after a while and just... stood in place. I was in a desolate ruin, a former village that'd been reduced to rubble and debris, corpses strewn about, mutilated and butchered. There were no enemies around me. My senses picked up nothing alarming – not even the barest scent of life. I glanced around until my eyes fell upon the partially-collapsed structure of what was a chapel, a place of worship and prayer, where the citizenry could find solace in the God Emperor's light. It hadn't been entirely reduced to rubble, however. I walked towards it and began pulling away the shattered rockrete that was blocking the entrance. The interior was still mostly intact, but the bulk of my Astartes form was preventing me from entering.

I willed myself back into my Enhanced Human form and crawled in.

I... I needed to pray.