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Raldoron’s hearts stop for eight beats. His blood freezes, then ignites. A spasm lashes through him from head to toe, as though he has been cracked like a whip, and he collapses against the black adamantine doors of the Great Atrium, doors that, a moment before, he was trying to claw open.
The pain is sudden, and so complete that Raldoron is unable to consider the mystery of its origin. He slides down the doors, his fingertips leaving scratches in the black metal. Ikasati and Khoradal rush to him, and as they turn him, and see the sightless staring of his eyes and the wordless straining of his jaw, they fear the worst: the action of some assassin or some undetected enemy, poison, disease, a seizing affliction.
Then the worst hits them too, and they convulse and fall as their First Captain fell, writhing and gasping. Across the punctured floor of the Vengeful Spirit’s Great Atrium, the Blood Angels of the Anabasis company, sons of Sanguinius all, collapse in turn, brought down by shared pain as surely as by any mass-reactive round. Their bodies thrash and contort, hammering the broken deck. Weapons discharge by accident. Standards and banners topple from spasming hands. Their screams fill, and then shred the air.
Raldoron sees none of this. He sees agony, manifesting as a great, red, pumping sac that fills his vision. He sees loss as the air that his lungs refuse to draw. He sees anguish as the edge of a keening blade. He sees grief as claws that close and knife him whole. He sees a burning battlement. He sees the sky on fire forever. He sees his Lord Sanguinius broken across a daemon’s spike, pinned face-upwards like a specimen butterfly. He sees the scarlet blood, in quantities beyond measure, blood that is both his and his lord’s, and it makes him thirst.
He sees rage.
Rage is black.
Taerwelt Ikasati sees blood on his eyelashes that won’t blink away. He is face down. He stares because he cannot not. He screams, because he is only a scream. He sees his Bright Lord felled to his knees by a spike-hooked falchion, guts dragged into the air. He sees the wicked blade rise again to hack the kneeling corpse apart. All that is red becomes black. All that is black becomes rage.
Sarodon Sacre’s sight explodes. He sees the visions of his lord, and they sear his eyes. Pain peppers him like flying glass. He sees a grim tower of the lost, a tower overflowing with the roar of howling. He sees the name Amareo writ in blood. He sees a company of death, all dressed in black, a bloody saltire on their shoulders. He sees their priests, and hears the chanting of their moripatris. Their faces are skulls. They open their arms to welcome him. His rage, like their vestments, is black.
Khoradal Furio sees Sanguinius torn apart by petulant gods. The gods are vast, hunched and obese, half-cloaked in the endless night from which they have been called. They are the size of continents, of moons, of solar realms. They sit and pick the tiny golden figure apart, twisting off limbs to gnaw upon like the drumsticks of poultry. They chuckle, and they teeth-strip bones. Their feasting is inevitable. It has been foreseen and ordained in dreams and visions.
Khoradal tastes his lord’s pain in the mouths of the gods, he tastes his lord’s blood on their lips. He tastes the blackness of the rage.
He becomes the rage. In the Great Atrium, his power fist is clamped around Raldoron’s throat.
The rage expands, breathless, bloodthirsty, unquenchable. It takes hold of every brother in the IX. It is a flaw of their gene-seed, a legacy of their Insanguination, a consuming lust like the thirst that they have concealed in their shame. But it is more than the thirst, more than the corruption of modified genes, more than the yearning hunger of hyperactive omophagae, more than the mutagenic, irradiated birthright of Baal.
It is an insanity, unlocked by the death of Sanguinius, an empathic torment that flashes his life and his murder before their eyes, so they share in his memories, his dreams fulfilled and unfulfilled, his visions realised and unrealised, his nightmares. Every permutation of his pain. Every configuration of his fate. Every scintilla of his suffering. Now and forever.
The Blood Angels erupt across the tortured farscape of Terra. Their fury is uncontainable. They become senseless things, beyond reason, control utterly lost. With their heads suddenly ablaze with tormenting, hand-me-down dreams, they fall on those around them.
All of the IX Legion Blood Angels are in the field. At this fateful, final hour, where else would they be? Almost every one of them is already engaged with the traitor host when the rage hits. Their enemies become their prey. Skills, techniques, tactics, even weapons are abandoned. The exquisite martial prowess that distinguishes the IX evaporates in seconds. Mindless and feral, they kill everything around them, destroying with their hands and teeth traitors who were, moments before, holding them at bay with blade and shield.
In their insanity, the Blood Angels are no longer able to differentiate foe from friend. It is not just the blood of traitors that spills.
The Angels scream. The screaming fills the world.
The sound of Angels screaming is something no man should ever hear.
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[ x ] I 25th of Svensmánaðr, IAÁ 542, Age of Dragonfyre. The midlands had been a dull affair, coagulated with the incompetence of near-immortal souls that could not properly discern the right thing to do even if you would write it out for them in great big letters. Or, at least, such is the song that echoes on and on within that Norn's skull. With the ethereal lights sputtering their last sparks, and the whispers gone, Dragomir now stood before the imposing, shadowy entrance of a cave. A suffocating gale of golden-white dust, tasting of grit and smelling of sun-baked earth, fluttered around him as the scorching tendrils of the desert threatened to consume the slopes that he stood upon. That, now, several others had stood upon. A dozen, then. Armed men, lethal men, covered in armor and with weapons bared before them and others still yet sheathed. There were only two of that group who would trek without helmets to cover their scalp, and for it, the Northman hoped their skulls would be thick enough to withstand much of any blows to be struck. It was a scrape of leather against stone that caught his attention, again, and he had released the holding of a brooch which was fastened along the front of his chest. A thumb traced the outline of a flower’s petal, and while others bantered about the depths of the caves themselves, an outlandish voice emerged from the darkness. “Mmmh,” the stuffy and nasally sound of the southron’s hum reverberates off the petty crooks found against the opening to the desert. “... Yesh - smashing, hello, Heathens!” The man possessed a grotesquely large nose, its cartilage bent like a warhammer, almost comical in its size. He referred to the fellowship gathered as heroes, and bid them to introduce themselves properly. With a flourish of mystical energy, each man performed a vibrant conjuration, a testament to their identity, before they ventured forth. The Norn tuned most of the other ramblings out, and focused more on the tunneled path ahead, as opposed to the attempts to assert command from others. In Dragomir's opinion, the events were utterly foolish, a farcical display marked by bumbling incompetence. He was unremarkable, a plain man among showy peacocks, but their posturing left him cold; he soldiered onward, a malding hypocrite. A hush fell over the nagging complaints in his mind, leaving a space for something else to take center stage. Another place, with another face, and something that he temporarily used to drone out the quips of the southron who walked with him. With others igniting their palms, the group continued its progression, their luminous weapons casting an eerie glow. They had rounded the corner, and some creatures appeared. Spiders clad in bells and bronze grazed as cattle would on the earth above the spindling tunnels fellowship stepped further into. To Dragomir, it felt oddly reminiscent of when he- Someone screeched in horror, and something wet was getting crunched and thrashed about against the ground ahead of him. The skull that Dragomir had gotten lost inside suddenly opened up his ears and eyes to what lay before him. Screams interrupted all his thoughts; that curious man, Nigel, was being ripped apart and eaten alive. He saw the monstrous Oni charge, a terrifying blur of muscle and rage, its wicked ax raised high, just as a comrade bravely stepped forward to stand with him. Then another. But only so few of them reacted to it- others stayed back. Were they afraid? Cautious? Cruelly indifferent to the suffering of their employer? The voice in his head breaks his concentration and in that split second of a thousand and one words drowning his consciousness, he discovers a breath of fresh air as he tears into a spider with his ax. One squelch turned into several, while he and the others pushed through and carried on. He realized he was the second to attack, just behind the leaping Takemura. With a resounding thud, his ax cleaved through the creature's chitinous armor, spilling thick, black-purple blood onto the stones below, staining the spot where the guide had been moments before. Those insects writhed and cried as brass bent and their husks cracked apart. Legs wiggled and flapped to no avail against the cave’s walls and steel greaves that were guiding the same heels to crunch the remains below. Dragomir fed the frosted starsteel into one-half of a third spider just as another southron stabbed into it with his javelin. Fluids leak off the unblemished metal, alongside some carapace that seemed to cling onto the frosted alloy. Their employer was little more than a ruined mess of a half-eaten meal; shreds of meat hardly clung onto the cartilage, and what organs had survived inside of the ribcage seemed to be gnawed clean through. Takemura knelt and wrenched out the man’s skull, if only to give him some absolute oath that he would see him to the journey’s conclusion. With little else to spur them back to the entrance, the group carried on, with some fool talking about how he was owed reparation for the achievement of accomplishing so little already. II These men advance with pairs of eyes tracing the winding path ahead. Every twist of rock revealed another, like an unfurling serpent, leading them deeper into the unknown. The shuffle of maille and the breath of mortals, soon turning into a melody that echoed against the cold, damp walls, only broke the silence. Dragomir could hear the choir of voices debating, quipping, and something else. Their footsteps served as the percussion to this song as they almost rhythmically tapped against the gritty floor, stirring up clouds of dust and grinding the gravelly beads left behind. Much of the air that had engulfed them was heavy with the scent of the scattered spiderwebs clinging to the walls and the dry bones and dust still held hostage within the nets. The dim light from their torched blades and palms danced and flickered, casting eerie shadows that seemed to merge with the gray and black crannies where the lights scarcely reached. A few lone figures showed themselves, barking upon the intruders with a foreign tongue that was anything but romantic. Elfish dialects rarely ever sounded more than the jumbled up mayhem of a gurgling bog, at least to such a bastard as Dragomir. Some of them hissed, arching their spear or tugging back upon their bowstring. The Oni had taken point, bantering or barking. Dragomir listens for the tone, and could understand well that the Mori’Quessir had desired to attack them at a moment’s notice. But something had caught his eye. The way their palisade was built, or whether it could even be called a palisade, caught his eye. ‘Why were they designed to-’ Others wanted to talk to the drow more, but Takemura’s cloak had settled on him. Both groups watched as the Oni disappeared into the cave’s shadowed rock. The absence of such a large thing going invisible prompted a panicked response from the drow. Dragomir was not holding his breath, and when the arrows became nocked, he hurled the javelin of low-density volatite. Other projectiles also flew, and within seconds, they cleansed that checkpoint in a mess of flame and iron. Dragomir overheard the conversation with others once the rest had settled. He adds nothing to it, electing only to preserve his silence and walk forward. Always forward. They continued, for the slain soldiers of the Underdark had no distinct papers or even a fraction of rations that might be staunch. “A waste of volatite,” some southron quipped behind Dragomir’s back, while the rest of the fellowship moved onward through the rocky pass and smaller pool of water. While that one and another attempted to scrounge up some sort of rewards for themselves from amongst the dead, the rest of the group had formed themselves up properly. Just after that, came a larger room. The gathering of drow had either been deaf or wholly worried about something much more important than the sounds of the sentries meeting a horrific fate. Dragomir heard the dispute of strategy, the shuffling of armored personnel, and with one of the folk having bellowed out some Canonist incantation, the host of drow turned. The Drengr could not determine if they had seen what was to hit them. He assumed that if they could, that they would have likely done anything but stay in place. Two blasting potions erupted into the skulls and eardrums of one gathering of archers, while two men braved the center. Some of the Mori’Quessir had charged forward to meet them, with Takemura strictly holding most of them at bay. Dragomir heard another jump up, and then either slip or stumble into the Oni’s arc of the weapon. The clash of steel and wet sounds of pulverized meat bounce off walls through the cavern, with the sparks of iron and steel illuminating the darkness. More screams, more ripping, more tearing. In the dark atmosphere of those caves, the Norn felt almost everything irked him - even when a man next to him checked up on his person. More bickering, more grinding of the stone underfoot. There was a simple pause, and Dragomir had realized how he was staring at the sign upon a stone arch, an arrow pointed right. SREEN HAGGAN. Danger ahead. III Another wind, another small bend. In the narrow tunnels, the others’ conversations, a low hum of voices, became increasingly prevalent. They huddled together, whispering about their strategy, their voices low. It did not stop bothering that Drengr, who in his limited perception, felt like they were all just rehashing the same thing, again and again. An urgent caution pushed the Drengr onward, though it was not only alchemical solutions destined to serve as his only hope against the approaching foe. Silently, his worn soles glided along the stone while he surely trailed near the front, almost instinctively. This did not hinder him, however, as he was, in fact, somehow among the select few bearing a shield. White flame escorted them on, wielded now only in the weapons gripped in their fists. As one of the leading three, Dragomir owned the right flank, the familiar rasp of his chainmail a welcome contrast to the chirp of the birds behind him. The recognizable feeling, an excitement he knew all too well, encircled his heart slowly; this time, however, he had not tried to defend himself from the spiritual calamities that would inevitably follow from He who had graced his soul with such a blessing. And then he sees them. It was a small group of Mori’Quessir warriors, who noticed the sounds of the fellowship and were already nocking their bowstrings. Dragomir hurled himself forward, while those behind him prepared mixtures. In truth, the action was incredibly reckless and showed a disregard for potential consequences. With impeccable timing, an arrow lodged itself into his shoulder. The others had missed him, and the wound only made him angrier. During that forced pause in his advance, someone behind him flung two potions, hitting two of the Mori’Quessir on the left. It was the third drow which had met a brutal end as Dragomir’s axe hacked through him; the singular blow was vigorous and energetic, causing the poor man’s chest cavity to split open like a hot knife through butter. A forceful boot to the hip and a wrenching twist of the axe released the body, letting viscera drip freely. The next curl of rock was smooth, and in silence Dragomir saw more men deliver more potions, forcing those drow soldiers to melt and burst with gut-wrenching sounds. Another clear passageway was entered afterward, leading the warband further up and to the mouth of another formation of rock- only this one carried some earthy scent with it. Fresh, grown earth. An oasis of life within these spider-infested catacombs. At a glance, Dragomir could tell that they still didn’t care for the messy sounds that led up to them. ‘Not even questioning a rumble? What was so much more important than their backline being eradicated?’ The drow, oblivious to the carnage that had unfolded, continued their conversations and idle holding of the position, unaware of the danger that had been lurking in their midst. A few were checking their quivers, while others leaned against wooden ramparts strutting out from the jagged rock on the slopes and what pieces of healthy soil that stood out. The men behind him were speaking again, louder, more eagerly. Who was to serve a roll? Who was to step up and to act? Who? That word echoed in Dragomir’s head. Who? He saw Takemura get antsy near the mouth of the cave, his axe fidgeting in the right palm as he seemed close to just screaming and charging forward. A funny thing, the Uruk mind. So simple. Blunt as a club, and for the right reasons in times like these. Correctly or not, Dragomir had assumed that he was riled like he was- and the Mareno stepped up afterward, too, reaching for a potion. A divide in the planning, it seemed, and with little else hesitation Dragomir advanced up to where the Oni loomed and made to climb up the rock and enter the center of the archway. Boots plant, and the white wisps of righteousness encircled him. They had noticed him off sound alone, suddenly, those foemen. Armor that rattled and spurs that jingle carried in a pristine and sharp sound as those behind the Norn scurried into position almost immediately. There was no quipping at this moment, he realized. No disputes of strategy or uncertainties of planning. Had the pride of his heart festered even more? “ARVELLAS!” It had. Invoking his mother’s name, he unleashed a blinding, white-hot flash of light that scorched the unprotected eyes of the warriors, leaving them momentarily helpless and gasping with the pain of their senses. The surprise and disorientation from the assault left the enemy in utter confusion, clambering and staggering like drunk men. Dragomir heard a metallic clang as something tumbled down, striking the cave floor with a dull thud before coming to rest. Chaos erupted. As the drow’s screams of pain or command echoed, Dragomir’s senses sharpened, with his heart pounding in his chest and muffling all the rest. Behind him, Dragomir heard a man speak, a woman reply, and another ask a question, which Dragomir took as a sign of their head injuries. Here were the first three into the chamber: Sakis, Takemura, and Dragomir, with the last man blinding the enemy. Charging the enemy. Striking the enemy. How bitter that hypocrite from before still felt, but he would not slow down. A kiss of pride upon his heart blossomed into a fiery garden of emotions, a powerful breath of fresh air that ignited his soul. The man barreled onward, metal rattling and spurs jingling as he passed one foe and made his way for the target in the middle: the bulky dreadknight. Monstrous and clad in some fel-alloy, it was still blind by the time that the Norn was upon him, swinging his hammer. He was too slow, he realized, and by the time that the flare had cleared the blinding of foes, that adversary, a monstrous creature of nightmares, gazed into the son of Arvellas with a soulless purple hue along its visor. Its great maul was hefted up in preparation before it swung out toward Dragomir’s chest. The behemoth missed the Norn narrowly, his two-handed club of metal striking the ground and kicking up earth and dust. Dragomir lunged, the Dreadknight turned to meet him with a gauntleted fist. The Norn felt the bitter frame of the knuckles glide through the air close to his armored snout and winced pre-emptively to a strike that would never land. The hammer wielded by the Norn struck into metal, tearing open a jagged line of the cuirass’s backplate and threatening the outlandish energies within that kept the thing alive. THU’UM cried Sefa, that gentle woman made from the high-density volatite. The metal of the plate creaked, while Dragomir again narrowly avoided a horrible strike. All-around him was a glistening pool of mayhem. Blood spilled somewhere, with more of the iron musk mingling with the shadows, and as the battle raged on, Dragomir could hear Takemura open up with fury. Someone else hollered for help, and another barked a curse when bashing a foe with their shield. He heard more glass shatter, and a whirl of air from somewhere on his left. Bones crunched, and a throat choked on thick fluid. Someone died, he realized. And then another, too, but that pyre which engulfed his heart revoked any sort of reprieve. He must move, or he would die. In a final, devastating blow, the Drengr’s warpick pierced the back of the Dreadknight’s plate, a second THU’UM sung out into that grassy-floored haven. The sound shudders in the air, a burden on the ears of all who could hear it. Two more similar noises cracked off the cave’s frame, elsewhere from the second Dreadknight. With ragged breaths, Dragomir witnessed the monstrous figure’s collapse; the earth consumed its enemy, while others remained defiant in their efforts against this considerably stronger host. Although dust had gotten into his visor and was causing significant eye irritation, he could still see clearly enough to determine that they were winning the battle. He realized yet again that his boots had indeed carried him further and further away from the others at his party. The very center of the room was the focal point. In a heartbeat’s length, a clever remark occurred to him; however, before he could utter it, a glint caught his eye from his peripheral vision. Upon seeing the archer, Dragomir made a beeline for him. The transition from his hammer to his axe was seamless and swift. He traded the dull, charcoal-grey instrument of violence for a gleaming one that seemed to hold the light of the moon within it. The Mori’Quessir met its end at the hands of a lone warrior, who with his mighty axe cleaved first the elf’s hip and leg from its body before delivering a decisive blow that cleanly separated its head from its collapsing neck. As an arterial spring spurted blood, staining the rock and earth below, he clutched the scalp in his right palm. The silence of the cave returned, broken only by his heavy breathing, and the final twitching of armored bodies and stamping heels. With a flick of his wrist, he shook the blood from his axeblade, which still had yet to even so much as chip against the foe. He would need to take it to the grindstone again, however, as he could tell that the collarbone he had gotten it stuck on earlier helped to dull the metal itself. ᛐᚱᛅᚾᚴᛦ
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Madius beheld it all. Propped up against a broken pillar, he watched his Praetorian’s wrath unleashed.
‘Your pretty wall is broken, Rogal!’ Fulgrim declared. He lashed his blade into Dorn’s shield, and drew splinters. ‘Your famous fortress is undone! It-‘
Dorn’s blow knocked the next words out of his mouth. Fulgrim stumbled. Dorn’s greatsword tore into his ribs. Fulgrim struck back, but found only shield again.
‘You are a man in a broken tower!’ Fulgrim taunted, and spat out blood. ‘You stand so proud, and so defiant, ignoring the fact the tower is falling around you! It will-‘
Another blow. Fulgrim staggered away, then spun, head lowered, hair billowing, keeping his distance. Dorn lunged anyway, driving his shield into body and face. Fulgrim threw him off, and leapt aside.
‘So silent, Rogal,’ he crooned. ‘No words of denial? No pleading for me to change my foolish ways and come back to you? You can tell me it’s not too late. You can promise me sweet forgiveness-‘
Dorn blocked into him, broke his guard with his shield, buried his blade in Fulgrim’s shoulder meat, then body-smashed him across the platform.
‘Deeds are my words,’ Dorn said.
Fulgrim nodded, and spat blood again.
‘Always,’ he agreed, licking blood off his teeth. ‘You were never the wit. Never one for fine conversation. Just hard at work and-‘ Dorn broke his guard again with another lunge, carving a chunk of plate from Fulgrim’s flank. Fulgrim surged, and hammered out nine rapid blows, each one a master kill-stroke. Dorn blocked each one. Their blades flew, ringing against each other, drawing sparks.
Fulgrim danced backwards. Dorn advanced. Fulgrim wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and smeared blood across his cheek.
‘Are you really not going to try and convince me,’ asked Fulgrim, ‘that I have made a mistake? Talk me back into the fold, where I can make amends?’
Dorn surged, and threw two rapid blows that Fulgrim only blocked with effort.
‘No,’ said Dorn. He struck again, a low slice that Fulgrim parried, then a high back-cut that tore through Fulgrim’s gorget, and scattered broken rings of golden mail.
‘I’m just going to kill you.'
-
---
Ardentor’s anti-infantry bolters spat their tracer fire at the prone primarch. The first burst chewed glass, spraying fragments everywhere. The second two punched home in the scorched armour, blasting the fallen Emperor’s son onto his back – a vessel of cooked, punctured meat.
‘We just killed a primarch.’ Kei swallowed. ‘We just killed a primarch.’
Delantyr’s grin showed almost every tooth he had. ‘Crush him. Leave them nothing to bury.’
Ardentor walked. Its backwards-jointed legs hammered down on the steaming, downsloping glass, breaking it underfoot as it staggered down into the crater. When it reached the primarch’s body, Ellas raised the right claw-foot, and steered both control levers to slam the limb back down. The Warhound shook, unbalanced with one leg in the air. Great gears in the war machine’s knee and hip protested with rough, mechanical coughs.
'Get the leg down,’ Delantyr ordered. ‘Finish it.’
Ellas gave the control levers another wrenching shove. ‘Something’s obstructing us.’
Kei lifted his targeting visor again, looking out of the Warhound’s left eye-windshield. He took a slow breath, and glanced back at his princeps.‘My princeps? The World Eaters in the ruins… They’re cheering.’
---
The bleeding demigod had torn his way through the ground, giving voice to his resurrection with a bellow nothing short of ursine. Gore sheeted him, painting him in dark, rich red wetness. He threw his axes away, ruined and never to be wielded again, and breathed freedom into his lungs. It smelled of melted glass and felt like sunburn.‘Lorgar.’ He spat blood as he said the name, rising to his feet at last. The Word Bearer lifted a scalded hand, not for aid, but in warning. Angron had no time to lift his mutilated brother, sprawled at his feet. The sun went dark, as dark as night falling in an instant. He turned, raising his arms, and took a god-machine’s weight on his shoulders.
Every muscle in his body locked tighter than the iron trying to crush him. Drool stringed through his metal teeth, skinned knuckles white as he defied the will of a Titan. He gave a bear’s roar as the foot lowered another half-metre. Sinews crackled in his shoulders. His broken boots skidded back on the patch of unglassed rock; something cracked in his spine, something else cracked in his left knee. The compression of his bones sounded like twigs breaking underfoot, which was a vivid burst of imagination he didn’t appreciate.
But he could hear his men cheering. He could hear them howling as they killed, and crying his name. He blinked to clear away his sweat’s greasy sting, and dug his boots into the ground. With a smile slitting across his broken-angel face, he shifted his slipping, blood-slick grip on the Titan’s clawed foot, and started pushing back.
‘Lorgar.’ Angron spoke in something that wasn’t quite a growl and wasn’t quite a laugh. ‘Get up. I can’t hold this forever.’
-
They move up through the deck gantries, past the massive airgate and mooring assemblies where ships are docked. The interior superstructure is brightly lit and filled with a vast network of chrome pipes, rods and cablework.
Word Bearers open fire on them from above. Shots rip past them, exploding against the bare metal and ceramite fabric of the yard. The blasts and impacts make huge booming sounds inside the artificial structure.
Two Ultramarines, Pelius and Dyractus, die in the first hail of shells. They are cut apart by sustained fire. Then Brother Lycidor topples over a rail, headshot. His cobalt-blue figure drops into the assembly area below, arms outstretched.
The Ultramarines fire back, covering the structures above them in a cloud of bolter blasts. Word Bearers topple, but there are more to fill their places. Many more.
Guilliman roars a challenge to them. He condemns them to death. He condemns their master to a worse fate.
He hurls himself at them.
The primarch is, of course, their greatest asset, Thiel realises. Not because of his physical superiority, though that is hard to overestimate.
It is because he is a primarch. Because he is Roboute Guilliman. Because he is simply one of the greatest warriors in the Imperium. How many beings could measure favourably against him? Honestly? All seventeen of his brothers? Not all seventeen. Nothing like all seventeen. Four or five at best. At best.
The Word Bearers on the upper structures see him coming. They are kill squad strength at least, the best part of a full company. At least a proportion of them are the vaunted Gal Vorbak elite.
But they see him coming, and they know what that means. It doesn’t matter what cosmic dementia has corrupted their minds and souls. It doesn’t matter what eternal promises the Dark Gods are whispering in their ears. It doesn’t matter what inflated courage the warp has poured into their veins along with madness.
Guilliman of Ultramar is coming right at them. To kill them. To kill them all.
Even though they stand a chance of hurting him, they waste it. They baulk. For a second, their twisted hearts know fear.
Real fear.
And then he has them.
And then he is killing them.
‘With him! With him!’ Thiel yells. They surge forward. Mangled Word Bearers fly overhead, or crash into the decks around them. When Thiel reaches his primarch’s side, Guilliman has slain a dozen at least. His boltgun is roaring. His power fist crackles with cooking blood. It is brutal close quarters. Thiel has the exotic longsword that has served him so well on this darkest of days. Two-handed, he wields it, cutting crimson ceramite like silk. Word Bearers blood looks black, as if it is sour and polluted. Thiel flanks his primarch, advancing steadily with the press of the assault towards the primary hatch.
They lose eight men. Eight Ultramarines. But they break through into the master control room leaving a carpet of enemy dead in their wake.
The real fight awaits them there.
-
The hoplites kept firing. The Gehenned kept firing. Diaz kept firing. Bright pink beams seared into the onrushing mass. Rotary blasts mowed into armour and flesh. Bolter shells detonated World Eaters burst, burned through and fell, crushed beneath the following tide. Goat-kin were torched. Swooping, bat-winged monstrosities caught fire and plunged into the gully like meteors.
But for everything that fell, split or seared or ignited or hollowed out by loyalist gunfire, there were more behind, trampling the dead underfoot, filling gaps, bearing on, heedless. Diaz saw a World Eater lose an arm, sliced clean off by a plasma beam. The arm tumbled away like debris. The World Eater kept coming, oblivious. A volkite shot tore away one horn and half the face of another. It did not stop.
The charge did not falter. The charge would not falter.
The berserk mass engulfed the defensive line at the head of the bridge.
The vast spans of the Pons Solar shuddered. In the final few seconds, Diaz clamped his emptied bolter to his thigh plate, and wrenched his longsword out of the ground where he had staked it. He screamed the war cry of his Legion, but it was drowned out by the howling and the mass collision.
From the moment the charge began, time had seemed to speed up. Diaz noticed that, as he gripped his blade and hoisted his shield. The experience of mass combat usually had the opposite effect. Time usually slowed to a dreaming ballet where battle became a detached eternity. But on the Pons Solar, time had run berserk, infected by the World Eaters’ mad urgency. It accelerated, almost comically, like a pict playback jammed on fast-wind, devouring seconds as greedily as the World Eaters devoured distance and pain. Time ate itself, gorging on moments with a maniacal appetite that matched the World Eaters’ deranged hunger to reach and obliterate their prey.
Frenzy followed. Skill was banished. Lunatic, hyperactive time allowed no opportunity for technique.
Camba Diaz was strong. As strong as any Imperial Fist. He judged that every single World Eater coming at him was stronger by far, enhanced by rage and the warp beyond even transhuman limits. His only real weapon of value was his mindset, the heritage of the VII, the unquestioning, indoctrinated will to stand and deny. That focus kept him planted like a rock. The discipline, that praetorian defiance, branded on his genetics and reinforced by decades of intense training and the voice of Rogal Dorn, stripped all fear from him, annihilated doubt and hesitation, erased any notion that what he faced was better or stronger or faster or bigger than him. The mindset fixed him. It anchored him like extreme gravity. It locked Bleumel and Thijs Reus too. It pinned them in place, though time around them had unhinged, and become a psychotic blur that permitted no skill.
Diaz stood, in the name of his Lord Dorn. He brought his siege shield up. It held firm, absorbing the first impact, demolishing a roaring face. His sword swung, carving a World Eater through the chest and throat. A chainaxe struck his shield in a welter of sparks.
He cleaved the face and shoulder of its owner. He hooked a keening goat-thing off its hooves, and cast it tumbling through the air. Blood sprayed. Torn meat spattered. In the name of his Lord Dorn, he shield-smashed a World Eater aside so hard it broke neck bones.
His longsword speared into a howling maw, punching through the back of the skull. It tore free through cheek and ear and mastoid and occipital bones. Metal fragments spalled, glittering. A falx tore a chunk off his vambrace. A blade cut his ribs. He took a head off its shoulders, and sent it spinning like a ball. A piece of severed horn bounced off his visor. He broke a World Eater’s jaw with his shield rim, and gutted him as he staggered aside. He split a head down to the lower teeth. In the name of his Lord Dorn.A beam of pink plasma screamed past his ear. A Gehenned fell against him, his face bitten off, and slid down his hip and leg. Diaz kicked. He disembowelled. He broke a power lance with his shield, and scythed off the arms wielding it. Diaz hacked. He carried a charging World Eater over his head on his shield, and cast him off the bridge rail. He impaled. He chopped a darting witch-dog through the neck and spine. Blood and black ichor filmed his plate. He barely noticed the chainsword gash across his right thigh, or the broken spear-tip protruding from his hip.
Focus. Maintain focus.
Diaz swung. In the name of his Lord Dorn.
Broken teeth flew up, a cracked tusk, a whole eyeball ejected by crush-force. Chainblades screeched. Cinders. Arterial jets. A hoplite thrashed, burning alive. A plasma gun overheated, detonating. A dozen figures in the blast zone vaporised, or staggered, ablaze. Diaz struck off an arm. A face, on a downswing. Another head. A grasping hand. In the name of his lord. His Lord Dorn.
Focus.
A mist from steaming innards. Corpses lolled, still upright, unable to fall in the density of the press. An Excertus trooper flew overhead, flailing, eviscerated. Diaz swung. Blood erupted. The concussion of a mace. Unremitting impacts. Bleumel, at his side, mashed faces with his power hammer, swinging like a smith. Feet caught on unseen corpses. A carpet of bodies and parts of bodies. Diaz ripped his sword through ceramite and meat. Split a skull. Sliced a throat.
Thijs Reus, in the name of his lord, struck with a captured falx, another falx impaled clean through his torso. The reek of death. Broken chainblade teeth pinged out like bullets. The stench of blood. The cloud of rage. A frenzy in him that matched the frenzy he fought. In the name of Dorn.
Blurring violence. Diaz struck, sword buried deep in plate and black carapace. Thijs Reus on his knees, stabbing. A Gehenned screamed. A rotary cannon fired blind, point-blank. Blood on everything. Bleumel, one pauldron gone, drove his hammer into a monster twice his size, hair braids whipping and snapping at the impact. Diaz struck. He struck. Again. In the name of his Lord Dorn.
Again. More. His longsword snapped. He drove the broken blade into a throat, to the hilt. He punched, empty-handed, breaking face bones. He killed a World Eater with his shredding shield, wrenching the purring chainaxe from the traitor’s hands, rotating it, making it his own. He swung. He struck. Thijs Reus knelt, headless. Diaz drove the squealing chainaxe through World Eaters plate. A fountain of gore. Thunder. Carnage. Time rushing, headlong. In the name of his lord.
Blood flying. Bone snapping. Flesh tearing. Impacts. Collapses. Swinging. Striking. Pinned. The name of Dorn.
Frenzy. Glory. Diaz. Smoke blind. Blood blind. Striking. Again. Camba Diaz. Thrusting. Cutting. Gutting. Striking. Slaying.
In the name of his lord.
Pinned. Unmoving.
Unmovable.
The line he had sliced in the rockcrete of the bridge between the lion plinths still lay behind him.
-
With a wordless shout, the Angel twisted his arms, his hands tearing at the strange, grisly material of the axe-head. A sickening crack broke about the room like the snapping of a spine, and Ka’Bandha’s weapon shattered across its length, scattering pieces of shrapnel. Before the creature could react, Sanguinius grasped one of the Bloodthirster’s curved horns and jerked it forwards with all his might. The primarch brought up his fist to meet the beast’s snout and landed a flurry of quick blows from the knuckles of his gauntlet before Ka’Bandha shoved him away.
Spitting out gobs of black, fuming blood and broken teeth, the daemon growled.
'Look at you. Where is the noble angel now, abhuman? Better the sweet blood to smother you!’ Ka’Bandha’s arm swung back, the brass cords of its whip scraping across the bone floor, flicking up into the air for another lethal blow as powerful as the one that had struck down the Angel upon the Plains of the Damned.
Sanguinius reacted faster than the eye could follow. He flashed into the air, wings crackling, and caught the razored tips of the whip before they could reach him. The cords burned where they touched the ceramite, pennants of vapour issuing from between his armoured fingers. The primarch dove at the Bloodthirster, dragging the lash with down him, and before the creature could react, he pulled the whip into a loop across the howling monster’s throat.Angel and daemon collided, crashing to the floor. Ka’Bandha released its grip on the lash, but it was too late; the brass cables pulled tight. Sanguinius gave the whip a violent tug and the Bloodthirster’s howls became strangled, frenzied barks. The beast tried to break free, swatting at the primarch, grasping at air. Its bat-like wings unfurled, the talons at their tips, scratching gouges in Sanguinius’s armour. With cold and lethal precision, the primarch arrested the wild, beating motion of one of the freakish wings with his free hand.
‘Only angels may fly,’ he said darkly, tearing out the black pinion. The sound was like the splitting of a great sack-cloth sail, and the daemon Ka’Bandha screamed loud enough to shake the walls. Warpfire gushed from the stump of the wing and it shuddered in agony, a sensation it had only known previously from the cries of its enemies.
With the whip still coiled about its neck, the Angel dragged the spitting, wounded fiend to the lip of the pit in the middle of the chamber, then lifted it up so he could look it in the face. The daemon cackled through its pain, convulsing as it tried to shake free.‘I will take your skull yet.’
The primarch’s eyes flashed with a powerful hatred. ‘If you truly do hail from the realm that men once called Hell,’ he intoned, ‘... when you return there, tell your kindred it was Sanguinius who threw you back.’
With a grunt of effort, the Angel took hold of the beast and shoved it over the spiked edge. Ka’Bandha’s curses echoed all the way down, before it finally vanished, shrieking, into the warpflames.
-
I am falling through the light of a newborn day alone. Behind me, the Host of Destruction falls with me.
Clouds whip past. The mountain city grows beneath us, fog peeling back from its flanks. I can see tiers of buildings set behind curtain walls. I can see roads, and people moving in the last shadows of night. The lights of domed force-fields glitter as the fog passes through them. The guns on the high towers do not turn to greet us. We are too few and too small for their machine systems to notice. Those that set them to watch the skies have made the mistake that ancient kings made before their realms burned for pride - they forget the oldest lessons.
The first gunship comes into view high above us. The tower guns see it. Barrels sweep up. Energy flushes into charge chambers. Calculations race through silica.
We fall on, and the city rises. The guns fire. Columns of blinding light rise into the sky, burning cloud banks away. The air shrieks. The gunship corkscrews through the burning energy.
I can see the force-field beneath us, a glittering skin. There are figures on the roads and ramparts looking up, and one of them raises a hand and points. I spread my wings, the dew-heavy air catching in the feathers. Above me, my sons trigger their jump packs. Fire cuts their fall just as we touch the force-field dome and pass through.Above us, the air is burning; beneath us the waking city sees us. My wings are spread, and my spear is raised in my hand. I can see the condemned. I can see their faces. I can see the terror in the face of a soldier as he steps into the light beside his squad. I can see his eyes. I can see that he was not a soldier until the coming of war. I can see that he has killed. I can see his fear of death and his cruelty in the tremble of his rising gun. I can see his love of life in the eye behind the gun. I can see all humanity in that look. The tip of my spear strikes him in the middle of the forehead.
The first blood of this reaping sprays up to fleck the beat of my wings as I land.
-
Vistario watched the viral fire spread over the Dreadnought's carapace, slipping inside his buckled plates of armour. Rylanor did not care whether he lived or died, only that Fulgrim went with him.
'Do. Not. Do. This!' barked the Dreadnought.
'Why not? I am your your master - - I can do whatever I like. I can can crush you or or I can raise you up. Return to the Legion. Accept the gifts of the Dark Prince and and you will walk at my side, clad once again in in flesh. You can be anything, old friend! I will sculpt you into something beautiful - a god to these mortals!'
'Never! All we have left between us is that we will die together!' roared the Dreadnought, the upper portion of his carapace burning with blue flames. 'I am Rylanor of the Emperor's Children. Ancient of Rites, Venerable of the Palatine Host, and proud servant of the Emperor of Mankind, Beloved by all. I reject you now and always!'
Fulgrim laughed and said, 'I'm sorry, did it sound like I was offering you a choice?' The primarch wrenched his hand from Rylanor's sarcophagus, dragging a sopping mass of fluid and matter with him. Glutinous ropes dripped from his fingers; he was like a midwife holding a mewling newborn. Ruptured cables spilled amniotic fluid so stagnant it must surely have been poisoning Rylanor with every passing second.
'I will remake you, brother,' said Fulgrim. 'You will be my crowning achievement.'
Though his body was little more than rags of wet meat, Vistario sensed Rylanor's horror at this last violation. An inescapable destiny where he would become that which he hated most.
+What do we do?+The question was Murshid's, and the connection between the Thousand Sons was so strong that the Athanaean's perception for emotion spread to all three of them. Vistario felt Fulgrim's infinite malice, his cruel enjoyment of Rylanor's anguish and the helplessness of the Thousand Sons. The primarch of the Emperor's Children revelled in his over-weening pride, a trait Magnus had more than once told Vistario had been present long before his fall. But more than anything, stronger even than Fulgrim's spite, Vistario felt Rylanor's pride and honour, the unbending core of greatness that had set him against his brothers and seen him descend into obsessive madness beneath the surface of a dead world.
Vistario took the measure of Fulgrim, seeing nothing worthy in him. His warriors felt the moment his decision was made.
+ Primarch Fulgrim! + sent Vistario. + Rylanor deserves better than you. +
The primarch looked up, his once bright eyes now black and filled with the darkest poison.
+ He deserves better than all of us. +
He raised his bolter and fired a mass-reactive into the back of Akhtar's skull. The Raptora's head exploded and with his death, the psychic force holding back the warhead's detonation ended. Vistario saw fire.
And once more, all life burned.It took much less time for the Life Eater to burn out on Isstvan III's second death. Its first ending had claimed eight billion lives, snuffed out in a matter of hours when Horus launched his bombardment from the Vengeful Spirit. With such plentiful mortal flesh to fuel the bio-killer's fury, the psychic scream was said to have eclipsed the Astronomican itself. A shadow emerged from the undercity, a serpentine outline of cinders, held together by a web of neverborn energy. Not even the viral toxins wrought by ancient science could unmake that which the darkest powers of the warp had raised up.
The Phoenician's form was already weaving itself anew, but his soul was broken. For no pain, no hurt and no injury could wound such a being as much as denial of its magnificence.
That was Ancient Rylanor's final victory. -
[ X ] "Hark! O' Devil Prince! Damn that quill, damn that parchment, and draw your steel!" "Remember, Varyag, the weight of your words; you cannot disparage this contract's holder." "Then observe as I disparage your entrails, cur, with the weight of my tooth and claw!" - Fourteenth stanza, Björnsöngur (Songs of Björn) TO THE ONE HAILED AS VICENZO: Perhaps your survival is a miracle, given your consistent manipulation and abuse of the weak. So few people notice your actions, and those who do lack the integrity to hold you accountable. Your soul is a festering blight upon this world, oozing cowardice and deceit—a miasma of wickedness. The maliciousness in your soul mingles with utter foolishness in the wasteful rhythm of your life with extraordinary skill. You have stalked my wife and daughter; you insult the latter and declare her a demon and no greater than what you would have seen as Iblees. Disparaging her, attempting to coerce her into following you, and yet you flee the moment I arrive. All that declared righteousness before you went off, vanishing into what is likely your chambers of torture that you’ve embedded yourself into. You are a creature, lesser than half the wicked souls whose barrows I have sacked, and you carry yourself with fewer reasons to consider your presence anything above what a poltergeist might contribute to this good earth. This disdain towards your continued existence extends beyond my people; even others of your faith, which you profess yourself to champion and spread, loathe and despise you. You do naught but raise issues for your own church, knowing that they lack the means to put a stop to your instigations without bringing trouble upon themselves. I challenge you to a holmgang where we will fight to the death. Sharpen your steel until it gleams, don your armor, and prepare your soul for judgement; the powers that be await to claim your withered soul. May it be that the Archaengul, Saint Raguel, oversees this fight on the soil of his choosing so that you might not die in the shadows. This will be your only chance to die as a warrior ought, and refusal will declare you to be weighed as no man, but to be hunted down in Norland and treated as no more than a wolf’s head. Make peace with GOD, for I will do the same. Konan-Thegn.
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I know you've probably gotten this before, sorry. But erm.. I saw your profile, and I just thought you looked cute in your picture; I wanted to tell you that :)) It's rare to see m'ladies playing video games, haha! I wonder why it's a guy thing. Honestly, I'm really against misogyny, and I'll be the one in the kitchen making sandwiches. We should play l4d2 sometime~!! It's an excellent zombie game with many scary moments, but don't worry...!! :3 I'll be there to protect you. Sorry, that wasn't flirting. I swear I'm just trying to be friendly. I like your profile picture; sorry, was that too far?
Sorry, I'm really shy. >,>
I don't go out much; haha, add me on Skype. We should talk more you look really nice and fun xoxoxo
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don't go for him incel, he's not trad enough
i'll hit you up on discord bbg @M1919
i miss the sensitive touch of my lips against yours
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