# Renegades 13: Nucerian Sands



## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

*It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, led by the former Imperial Warmaster Horus, are beginning their campaigns against the corrupted Imperium of Man.​* ​ *Against them, the nigh-immortal Emperor of Mankind waits on his Golden Throne. Allied with him are the four Chaos Gods, eldritch nightmares thirsting for human suffering. The Space Marines, once the Imperium's finest soldiers, are divided. Some, such as the logical Ultramarines, have allied with Horus without submitting to the Warmaster. Others stand with the Emperor, but walk their own paths to salvation or damnation in his shadow.*​ ​ *Now, Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines, hears that his home of Ultramar, the jewel of Imperium Secundus, burns, and hurries to reinforce it. Meanwhile, raging Angron and conflicted Vulkan, loyal to the Emperor, seek to create a symbol of a new age. None of the three wishes to come to dry Nuceria, a world whose history is written in blood. Yet it is there that they are fated to meet, for the galaxy as it is, not as they dream it to be.*​ ​ *The screams and pleas of the innocent will have no effect - not anymore. The age of debate and enlightenment is over. The dream of empire has ended.*​ ​ *The nightmare has begun.*​
Yes, this series is indeed back! Hopefully there's still someone left here to read it....


Previous installments at:




*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/90862-renegades-alternative-heresy-tale.html*

*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/98148-renegades-2-flames-belief.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/106279-renegades-3-fate-prospero.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/110117-renegades-4-emperors-will.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/116059-renegades-5-perfections-cry.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/116893-renegades-6-bright-swords.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/117991-renegades-7-when-death-calls.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/122265-renegades-8-foundations-scarlet.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/122389-renegades-9-flesh-weak.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/122548-renegades-10-long-forgotten-sons.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/160522-renegades-11-fall-legion.html*


*http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/original-works/173554-renegades-12-heresy-lies.html*


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

PROLOGUE 
​ The shadows appear over Nuceria gradually, as if allowing its people time to accept the truth. They are dots still, at the moment, pinpricks of darkness in the noonday sky. The nobles and the slaves and the great masses of the ordinary Nucerian people do not look up, except by coincidence. They have no reason to: the heavens hold no secrets for them. The Imperium of Man came and exacted tribute and left; the skies, they know, are filled with beings much like themselves. They are mightier than the Nucerians, perhaps, but not mightier than the Nucerians can comprehend. And there is no reason for the shadows of Astarte drop-pods to sully the Nucerian skies that the Nucerian people can conceive.​ ​ The people of Nuceria do not look up, save for one.​ ​ I stand on the summit of Fedan Mhor, not far from the site of the battle that doomed Nuceria. It has been a slow doom, to be sure. Generations believed that their ancestors weathered the storm of the Eaters of Cities. Generations reassured their children that the Lord of the Red Sand had fled, never to return.​ ​ My parents had always wondered why I was not reassured.​ ​ My parents are searching for me now, I am sure. They have been searching for days by now, but they will not have given up. Perhaps they will not give up even when the city of Desh'ea dies. Perhaps my father's last thought, before being cut in half by Captain Delvarus' axe, will be a prayer or a curse for me. Both are possibilities that I have seen.​ ​ My pack is not yet empty - there is food enough for another week, and it is not hard to find water in these mountains. The doom of Nuceria is a slow one even now. It takes time, to end a world. Exterminatus would be quicker, but it is unsporting, and so its ring in the Immaterium is wrong.​ ​ The doom of Nuceria is here, though, in the triangular shadows that litter the salt flats on the lee side of Fedan Mhor. They are moving towards me, and past me. To Desh'ea.​ ​ To kill Desh'ea, and after to kill Nuceria. Perhaps by killing every person on the surface on the planet. Perhaps not. To devour a world does not preclude leaving bones behind.​ ​ My head is on fire, if only metaphorically. The land remembers its bloody past. It remembers the atrocities that led here, the massacres, the enslavement, the mutilation of bodies and minds. All of it, convergent on Fedan Mhor.​ ​ The Twelfth Legion is coming, to eat a world. To eat my world.​ ​ I knew they would, subconsciously, even before I was born. I was not a melancholy infant, though. My parents believed I cried because I was in pain all the time, and indeed I was. To live as a high-level psyker on a world as tortured as Nuceria... it is a sort of miracle I have survived to the age of nine, though I know that 'miracle' is a term reserved for fouler things.​ ​ The others cannot feel the pain. They do not understand what they do to their own people, above all with the Nails, but with lesser implants as well, and the sheer futility of petty conflict spilling non-petty seas of blood. They believe they merely make their victims less than human, and they do not see anything wrong with that. I know, as even they do not, what they do to the Nucerian people. I know how monstrous their actions are - and yet I understand those actions as well. That is the curse. Others would hate the warlords, but I can no more do so than dismiss the slaves. They all have their reasons.​ ​ The pain of those reasons, of Desh'ea, is with me even now, even as a memory. This is not the first time I have run away, for though the land remembers its bloody past, its aura is not nearly so sore as that of a human mind, even a peaceful one. It is quiet here, usually.​ ​ Not with the triangular shadows passing above, though. No, today is a day that Fedan Mhor remembers. But it is right nevertheless, for me to be here. This is the place where a world was condemned for brutality, and sentenced to death.​ ​ It is not that I believe the sentence to be unwarranted. There is justice, to be sure, in the doom of Nuceria. But - Nuceria is more than slavery and mutilation and countless, pointless wars. It is the forested marvels of the Laegeth Boulevards. It is the stoic beauty of Ulranen Mhor. It is dances in the _merbehae_ taverns, and wild spaerhs racing across the deserts. It is books and forges and dreams, so many dreams, so many of them uncorrupted despite everything. It is the smiles of my parents, on the day that I first laughed.​ ​ I was born Gilloa Takealle, and my parents have given me nothing but endless love and support. What they have given others... well, Nuceria is an angry world. Even in moments untainted, directly or indirectly, by violence it is still angry.​ ​ Even now, it is angry. Gazing at its doom, plunging down towards it in triangular formation, it greets the inevitable end with rage. And, faint though it is, I suppose I feel some form of rage at this as well - not at the Astartes, any of them, or at anyone in particular, but only at the outcome.​ ​ But then, is not that outcome, the doom of Nuceria, the most important part of the world anyhow?​ ​ I stand atop a spur of rock and ice, the wind whipping my unnecessary jacket around me, and watch a flock of metal pyramids plummeting towards a city surrounded by sands. It is the city where I was born, as Gilloa Takealle.​ ​ I was never Gilloa Takealle, not truly, for all that my parents could never have comprehended that. I am not even Gilloa of Desh'ea. I am Gilloa of Nuceria.​ ​ And I am watching the Legion that will execute my world.​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER ONE​ ​ According to legend, the Knashchic Empire had once dominated much of the region now known as the Ultima Segmentum. Its mighty armies had been bolstered by sorceries unheard-of in this fallen age, and its fleets cut the Warp like a shell through paper, swift enough to fly from one end of the sizable realm to the other in a matter of minutes. But, supposedly, the Knashch had been threatened by enemies more powerful still, perhaps the ancient empire of the eldar, or perhaps an eldritch horror which could not even be named by human tongues. The Knashch held no hope of defeating this foe, seeing only to defend against it; and so they made a deal with the Dreaming Serpent, who dwelled beyond mundane reality, asking the Serpent to craft a defense against their enemy. And, so it is said, the Serpent obliged - yet not in a matter that the Knashch lived to appreciate. For he created a mighty and impassable Warp Storm where the Knashchic Empire had been, a great wall that sealed the Eastern Fringe off from the rest of the galaxy, and devoured the souls of the Knashch who lived in that empire.​ ​ Justinian Thexilev, Captain of the Second Company, First Chapter, Thirteenth 'Ultramarines' Legio Astartes, was not generally inclined to put much stock in legends. Nevertheless, this tale from his childhood - a common tale not only on Espandor, but on many of the neighboring worlds - now came to mind.​ ​ The Eastern Fringe was not sealed off anymore, if it had ever been. No conclusive archeological evidence of the Knashch's existence had ever been found. And the Great Crusade under the Imperial Truth, as exemplified by Thexilev's Primarch Roboute Guilliman, had been destined to prove the folly of myths.​ ​ Only with the Emperor's embrace of religion and the rise of psychic power throughout the galaxy, it was becoming clear that this destiny might never come to pass. It was not that the cosmology of the Imperial Truth was false, but it required... adjustment.​ ​ What sort of adjustment, Thexilev wasn't sure. Yet.​ ​ He suspected most of his Legion would disagree with him on this point. On Xaina, through the Linekere Cluster, and across the Tubs of Wrath, they had battled fellow Astartes, which had once been unthinkable, and his reaction to the matter had been contrary to that of others.​ ​ They had battled the Seventeenth. The Word Bearers. The Legion most devoted to the Emperor, to the point of once worshipping him as a god. Then the Emperor had not accepted such worship, and indeed had used the Ultramarines in rebuking the Word Bearers for it. Now the Emperor demanded all to call him divine, and in his madness punished all those who doubted him with death. Everything was turned on its head, and yet many of his fellow captains denied that the Imperial Truth was imperfect, even in relation to the Warp.​ ​ For all of that, Thexilev did not doubt that he was fighting on the right side. But then, he reflected as he walked the last few steps to the observation post, he had seen what the enemy had become.​ ​ "Any changes, Ixiosph?" he asked his sergeant, lowering his magnoculars. He couldn't notice any, at least.​ ​ "None," Ixiosph responded. "Final barrage incoming in two minutes. As best as I can tell, they're going to meet us inside."​ ​ Thexilev turned to the other figure at the observation post, whose blue armor was of a darker shade than his own, and topped with a psychic hood. Epistolary Bylolit shrugged. "My senses are still blocked, sir. All I can say is that they are using a substantial amount of power to achieve this."​ ​ "Power?" Ixiosph asked.​ ​ "Attention," Bylolit clarified. "And possibly blood."​ ​ The Seventeenth's newly acquired habit of sacrifice was well-known. Of all the aspects of the new Word Bearers, it was one of the few that had a distinct purpose. Fuel for psychic rituals, as prisoners had explained to them - fuel, in the form of human lives.​ ​ Thexilev couldn't trust Bylolit's power since that revelation, even if he trusted Bylolit himself with his life.​ ​ "Theoretical," Thexilev said, now speaking by a restricted vox-channel, "is to kill the Word Bearers first, worry about ritual later. Practical may be different." He turned to Ixiosph as he slipped his helmet on, counting down the seconds to the barrage. "Courage and honour, brothers."​ ​ "For Macragge!" Ixiosph answered.​ ​ With a nod, Thexilev hurried downwards to join the bulk of his men. The artillery barrage thundered overhead, ringing in his ears despite the protection of his helmet. The bastions, already battered and full of holes, nearly all its guns silenced, shook again with the additional bombardment. It was overkill, but not misplaced. Far better to waste shells than lives.​ ​ And then, with a cascading crush, a section of the wall that the fire had concentrated on came down. It had been calculated to, of course, but Thexilev felt relief nevertheless. Practical had too rarely matched theoretical, in recent times.​ ​ And in the moment that the guns fell silent, five hundred Ultramarines charged.​ ​ It was not exactly common, a situation where a foot charge (or jump-pack charge, as was the case for the foremost hundred Astartes) was the optimal resolution to a siege. But here the distance was short, the guns were quiet, and the Legion was operating with a deficit of vehicles of all sorts, maintenance being difficult in the heart of now-enemy territory.​ ​ Scattered fire pounded down around Thexilev. Some of his men went down. More bolters than heavy weapons, in that volley. Practical: they'd done even more damage to the guns than Thexilev had thought. If the Word Bearers had been short on personnel, they wouldn't be using small arms.​ ​ Another volley rippled through, a shell glancing off Thexilev's armor, chipping a crater of paint off. He continued without giving sign of noticing it. "Courage and honour!" he cried again, as the blue tide came up on the breach.​ ​ And then the first wave landed, jump-packs whining, and charged in. The fire coming at the rest of them died down almost entirely, only the odd shot coming at them. Thexilev tracked his men as they entered the besieged complex.​ ​ "Encountering high density of cultists," Heriamat voxed. At the least, that was what Thexilev inferred - abundant noise.​ ​ Cultists. They had used more respectful names, at first. 'Enemy auxilia', for instance. But there were enemy auxilia, and then there were cultists. They were not soldiers, merely cannon fodder at worst.​ ​ Most of them, that is.​ ​ Thexilev felt the gravel beneath his boots, coming up into a bloodbath. Most of the cultists had been killed by chainsword, in single strokes. Some of their decapitated heads had faces contorted in pain, but Thexilev doubted that the Ultramarines had been the ones responsible.​ ​ He advanced more cautiously from there, checking in with his sergeants as he did. They were sweeping through the building, according to theoretical. Naxigum's wing of the assault had encountered Astarte resistance, and Onill's had met genuine enemy auxilia. Bylolit reported a cultist that had been swollen with... something, but something that enhanced his capabilities, proving considerably more difficult to put down than most. Niulth's squad had been stalled by that culltist, but the Epistolary had handled it. Nonetheless, for the most part the Word Bearers had provided at most scattered resistance.​ ​ Thexilev threw up a map of the complex onto his helmet feed, as it had been determined by the Ultramarines' progress thus far, in an attempt to see the Word Bearers' theoretical. He saw the issue almost immediately. The theoretical command node was slightly off from the practical one, but not by enough to be obvious. Possibly cleverness, possibly just an error on the Ultramarines' part. The tech-adepts were less than perfectly integrated into Imperium Secundus; many had left, others had come, and the result was a lesser degree of efficiency than Thexilev was used to. He knew this better than most, given his logistics expertise.​ ​ Thexilev gave orders, calling his command squad to his side, along with Bylolit and Squad Niulth. They passed down corridors of masonry painted with blood (no, not a metaphor, not a theoretical - Thexilev had seen Word Bearer strongholds before). Grooves in the floor flowed downhill; theoretical was that they sometimes carried blood down to one of the eight doors in the apparent command center, whose blast doors they were approaching.​ ​ Sealed. Practical: Thexilev could hear chanting from behind there. The Word Bearers were doing _something_.​ ​ Theoretical: when the Word Bearers were chanting, they were doing something it was best to interrupt.​ ​ Devastator Squad Niulth came up behind Thexilev, and opened fire on the door, no verbal orders being necessary.​ ​ "Theoretical," Bylolit said, as he walked to his captain's side, "is that they're escaping."​ ​ "That matches my theoretical," Thexilev said with a frown. "Practical is that we've won the planet, regardless of this assault's practical. But...."​ ​ But Astartes tended to retreat less often than suggested by theoretical. It was the cultural legacy of two centuries of victory.​ ​ Before Thexilev could say any more, though, the door exploded inwards with the charges Niulth's squad had set.​ ​ The scene it revealed would have caused Thexilev to vomit, Astarte or no, if he had not seen its like too many times in the past few months. Underneath perfectly octagonal walls lined with artifacts, as if this was a museum rather than a command center, the floor was decorated with an intricately carved labyrinth, red with blood that had run in through the ditches and with blood that slowly dripped off the corpses impaled on spikes in a ring within the room's perimeter, whose smell was... far worse than standard. Inside that, there were actual cogitators, and at the room's very center stood the Word Bearers - sixteen of them, in two concentric circles, chanting, around a seventeenth - evidently the leader - in the very center.​ ​ No, that wasn't actually all. There were wispy shapes of more Word Bearers throughout the room, as if they were not quite there, as if they were escaping - or -​ ​ "Practical: they're not escaping," Bylolit said, having come to Thexilev's conclusion an instant before the captain. "They're getting reinforcements!"​ ​ "Courage and honour!" Thexilev yelled, charging through the room towards the enemy Astartes.​ ​ The practical encountered complications, though. The ghostly warriors that lined the room, for all that they weren't really there, swung their blades at Thexilev as he passed. Hundreds of them, enough to turn the tide of the engagement if they joined it fully, enough to be formidable even in their mostly absent state.​ ​ One blade passed through him without effect, but then his knee guard clanged against that of a Word Bearer. Thexilev swung his blade at the figure, but it had faded from this place once again. Another moment, his power-axe was moving through a Word Bearer who was not there, only to lodge in very real flesh when it reached his spine. The Word Bearer collapsed seconds later, incapacitated, but it was precious seconds that Thexilev found it difficult to extract his weapon, before the Word Bearer was gone once again. Precious seconds that the blue-helmeted Word Bearers in the circles, who were not moving from their places, could chant uninterrupted during.​ ​ Thexilev communicated all of this to his command squad, Squad Niulth, and the other Ultramarines approaching the room from various sides. There was constant vox-chatter, audible over the sound of heavy bolter fire. While Thexilev had gotten out of the straight-line path immediately, the shells weren't actually reaching the Astartes in the room's center, interrupted by the half-present Astartes in between. Thankfully those Astartes couldn't fire at all - theoretical was that they couldn't control their phasing either, so any shots would be more likely than not to hit their own.​ ​ He winced as he saw Aclgan's heavy plate fail to save him from an armored fist that materialized inside his guts. But an instant later, Silielonioclus was first to reach the center of the room.​ ​ "Theoretical: grappling," Thexilev warned, not wanting to risk spilling blood in the first moments. The memory of Glaa Linekere was still raw in his memory.​ ​ Sil did just that, wrestling the nearest Word Bearer - Urargeo, Thexilev thought he could read from his armor - down and out of the circle. Bylolit mouthed something about instability, but it wasn't a shout to stop, so Sil continued, now assisted by Lisaul as the veteran came up behind him. Urargeo tried to get back up, but was silenced by Lisaul's Terminator-armored bulk wrenching his neck until it snapped, even as Silielonioclus grabbed two more Word Bearers from the circle.​ ​ And then Thexilev was there as well, and theoretical gave way to practical. As one of the two enemies tried to rev their chainsword, Thexilev fired a bolter at point-blank range into his helmet. Not enough to kill, but enough to disable, and give him time to pull the helmet off to get the kill. Sil emptied his bolter into the other. By now there was blood, but as Lisaul charged, a battering ram, into the circle -​ ​ As a chainblade suddenly materialized within Sil's head, chopping his skull nearly in half -​ ​ As the weapons of Squad Niulth continued to thunder, killing Word Bearers even if they weren't the Word Bearers on this planet -​ ​ As the fourteen remaining in the circle seemed to accelerate their chanting in desperation -​ ​ As all that happened, Thexilev grabbed a grenade from his belt and threw it, without setting it, at the 'Dark Apostle' standing in the ritual's center, with the fullness of Astarte strength enhanced by his power armor's systems. It bounced off the leader's helmet (which, like the rest of his armor, was black except where splattered with dried blood), knocking him off-balance. He toppled sideways, uninjured, but out of position, giving an undignified screech of surprise.​ ​ And in an instant, the apparitions vanished.​ ​ That was the better of the two theoreticals that could have come out of this. The other, from Thexilev's experience, would have been an explosion. Even that would have been preferable to allowing the reinforcements to arrive, though.​ ​ "Fire!" Thexilev yelled to Squad Niulth.​ ​ The Word Bearers were scythed down where they stood, by both bolters and Bylolit's psychic power, even Thexilev's armor being slightly charred by the energy being put out. Lisaul charged out the other side of the ring, mostly protected from friendly fire by his armor, though at a glance Thexilev could see his guard's arm was injured. Of the enemy, within seconds, none remained alive. Blood trickled into the pool in the room's center, but thankfully, nothing came of it.​ ​ Silence. Sudden silence, after the din of the preceding fighting. Bylolit knelt, taking off his helmet to reveal a bleeding nose. Squad Niulth and the remainder of Thexilev's command squad cautiously walked into the room, walking over the debris from battle. Aclgan stirred, Naius calling for an Apothecary. Silielonioclus didn't. Thexilev bowed his head to his brother's body.​ ​ "Tear the bodies off the spikes," Thexilev ordered. "I doubt there's any Warp-power left here, but it is better to be certain."​ ​ "There is," Bylolit said, standing up with effort and pointing at the walls.​ ​ "Tainted?" Sergeant Niulth asked. Thexilev didn't correct him. The technical term was 'Chaos-affected', but it amounted to the same thing.​ ​ "Most of them," Bylolit said. "A few seem like inert junk, or archaeotech. The gauntlet is weakly psychoactive, a psychic focus... similar to my hood." He stopped in front of a large artifact shaped like a curling horn. "This one's different."​ 
Thexilev thought he could even feel its power, as he walked up to it. It was made of no material he could discern - a yellow-brown weave that seemed more ceramic than metallic, but with aspects of both, and that pulsed as if alive. There were rich decorations, geometric patterns but also depictions of what seemed like plant life. Perhaps also fungi. Its opening seemed to spew forth those plants, even though in practice that was also decoration, on the iridium band that surrounded the opening.​ ​ "Psychic, without being Chaos-affected?" Thexilev asked.​ ​ "I cannot detect Chaos influence, but it may be hidden," Bylolit said. "Theoretical: it's probably dangerous in either case. It's more strongly psychic than everything else in this room combined, and very expertly designed. I cannot detect its purpose"​ ​ "Surely we burn it all?" Niulth asked.​ ​ Thexilev pursed his lips, remembering his Primarch's words about legends and relics.​ ​ Few in the Legion agreed with him that there was something to look for in them, but Thexilev's most recent conversation with his Primarch - who was also his direct commander at the moment, owing to the absence of Chapter Master Gage or the Tetrarchs - implied otherwise. Roboute Guilliman had seemed more distracted than usual, though not so much that he couldn't keep track of a hundred streams of information at once. He had spoken of old tales, and of how even myths like that of the Knashch grew around cores of truth.​ ​ And if the enemy found power in those myths, there may be ways for the Ultramarines to do so as well. So long, that is, as they integrated that power into the Imperial Truth and not the converse.​ ​ "We keep it," Thexilev said. "The horn, and anything else untainted. Store it all under the best shielding, yes... but it may be a weapon, and one does not discard weapons too lightly."​ ​ Bylolit nodded; Niulth looked for a moment like he might protest, but nodded as well.​ ​ Before Thexilev could consider the situation further, a rune lit in his helmet. Before Thexilev could even process it, the voice of his Primarch was in his ear.​ ​ "Captain Thexilev," Roboute Guilliman said. "Congratulations on capturing Rav Teith. After securing the locations, depart the surface of Katha to orbit with all reasonable speed. Leave the cleanup to the Army."​ ​ "My lord?" Thexilev asked, not understanding. "What is happening?" They had been meant to stay on Katha for several more days, to ensure full compliance before moving on to the Inala campaign, confronting what was believed to be the main Word Bearer concentration in the eastern half of the galaxy. Confronting, quite possibly, Lorgar himself.​ ​ There was an uncharacteristic pause from the Primarch.​ ​ "I have received word from Ultramar," he said. "The full Third Legion has invaded. Communication difficulties... we are near enough to assist, if already late, and I will not stay away while Ultramar burns."​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER TWO​ ​ It was raining in Desh'ea.​ ​ Artellus Numeon could tell, by the land that surrounded Angron's home city, that this was a rare occurrence. Most of the water that fueled the metropolis had come from long aqueducts, for the river that it stood on was dry more often than not.​ ​ Had come. Past tense. For Desh'ea was a dead city.​ ​ There had been a time, once, when Artellus Numeon would never have stood aside and let the World Eaters butcher thousands of civilians. There had been a time, indeed, when his Primarch would not have allowed it.​ ​ Then again, even on Kharaatan they had not done much better than stand by. Unknowing, then, but how much difference did that make? So now two Chapters of the Eghteenth Legion stood, mustered, in the desert, watching the warm rain wash the blood from Nuceria's streets. And at their head, their Primarch, the warhammer _Dawnbringer_ laid across his knees.​ ​ "Angron needed this," Vulkan said with a sigh, turning away from the grim spectacle to face his sons. "But I do not think it is good for him, much less good in principle." He frowned. "You agree on that, Artellus."​ ​ "I do," Numeon admitted. "To stand by, to allow Angron to kill a city's worth of civilians...."​ ​ "They are not, in the main, innocents," Vulkan noted, his eyes glinting with fire. "Their civilization is an abomination, and should have been rendered far more thoroughly compliant than what the Empreror demanded in his first visit here. Mutilation of underclasses, internecine warfare, inhuman conditions... it would be right, for us to fight here." The fire cooled, the Primarch's eyes returning to a cool equilibrium. "But this, you are right about, Artellus. This is an atrocity, if far from the worst in the World Eaters' history. It is monstrous. And we must not forget that."​ ​ Left unsaid was that they were all monsters now. There was only room for one faith in their hearts - and faith in humanity had defeated faith in humanism.​ ​ They had killed those among them who would not follow Vulkan and the Pyre Guard to any ends necessary. They had fought the White Scars on Chogoris, and Vulkan had killed his own brother just like his sons had on Maragara. They had all acknowledged, in the end, that they were killers, that they were the Emperor's nightmares, as all the Astartes were.​ ​ But it was essential for a monster to recognize themselves as such.​ ​ The Pyre Guard stood around him. None had died or betrayed the Imperium on Maragara, but on Chogoris Ganne had been killed by the Keshig, and Leodrakk had been left in a sus'an membrane coma. Ganne had been replaced by Dranzytchon, formerly a Captain, but as Leodrakk retained his place, only six Astartes were formed up around their Primarch now.​ ​ Six was enough. Zero would have been enough. Vulkan was a Primarch; he didn't truly need a bodyguard, especially not on a techno-barbaric world such as Nuceria with nothing to challenge them.​ ​ "They are not being sacrificed as ritual," Varrun noted. "Would it not be better, if they must die, for their deaths to serve our purpose here?"​ ​ "Do you know our purpose here?" Vulkan asked.​ ​ None of them did, of course, Primarchs aside. Even Angron had been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about that. "Whatever it is," Atanarius said nevertheless, "it does not seem to be a military objective."​ ​ "It is not," Vulkan accepted. "And as you might also surmise, it is a ritual. A ritual that requires blood."​ ​ Skatar'var growled. "Why, then?"​ ​ Skatar'var had grown more confrontational, since his birth brother Leodrakk had been injured. He had always been the quieter of the two, before, but now he seemed to combine the rage of both in a single body. All the Pyre Guard had the fires of Nocturne within them, moreso than most Salamanders, but now Skatar'var's temper exploded far too often.​ ​ Numeon, though, realized the answer.​ ​ "Their deaths _do_ serve the ritual," he said.​ ​ "Blood sacrifice is required," Vulkan said with a sigh. "And this _is_ a blood sacrifice. The assault was timed quite precisely. Spirits do not demand microscopic precision. Sacrifice is an art, not a science... and the subject of this work is enough to make up for flaws in technique."​ ​ "Vengeance," Varrun said.​ ​ "Vengeance," Vulkan agreed.​ ​ They all knew the tale of Angron's finding, if only in broad strokes. He had been a slave on Nuceria, and led an uprising of his fellow gladiators. But they had been cornered and, on the brink of defeat, the Emperor had saved him from being killed together with those he considered his brothers and sisters. Angron had never entirely forgiven that. Now, he returned to the city that had chained him and had driven the Nails into his brain.​ ​ "Come," the Lord of Drakes said. "Pyre Guard, with me, save for Skatar'var - you have command over the muster if anything occurs."​ ​ And following his Primarch, Artellus Numeon walked into the murdered city. The rain washed away much of the smell, but it did not wash away the bodies. It pooled on the ground and on the roofs alike, for the city was not built to withstand storms. It was built to withstand sieges, though - high walls, mighty cannons, vast warehouses. Against the Twelfth and Eighteenth, it hadn't lasted a day.​ ​ Bodies lined the streets, lying where they were killed. Chainaxes, bolters, more arcane technology - it mattered little. But as they advanced into the city, Numeon noticed something strange.​ ​ "They're lying in patterns," he noted. "Octeds and seventeens, clearly geometrical. But I can't see the World Eaters caring enough to move them."​ ​ "They haven't been moved," Vulkan said. "This would seem to be accident, but the Pantheon's power is strong here. Spiritual patterns become real ones. And this ground has been touched by Chaos for a long time." He knelt down before one of the corpses, a young man bisected by a chainaxe, and took a piece of gravel from the pavement. "A very long time."​ ​ The piece of gravel was very nearly a perfect octagon. Vulkan crumbled one of its vertices, leaving seven unequally distributed points.'​ ​ "Come," he said, straightening and quickening his step as he walked towards the center of the city.​ ​ There were World Eaters that they passed on our way. Arranged in companies, for once, instead of being lost to the Nails and scattered across the battlefield. No auxilia - this was a Legions-only operation. One of the clear indications that it was not a normal compliance.​ ​ In the central plaza, Angron stood, surrounded by paintings of blood and the Eighth Company of his Legion. He was a dreadlocked god, but a broken one. His face was marred by erratic tics, anger he could not control even now. His face was pale in a way that suggested a skin disorder. His armor was splattered in blood, and his entire aura shone with a desperate fire that he could not still.​ ​ He had been worse, before the Emperor's ascension. Then, he had been an animal to pity. Now, though, he stood face-to-face with Vulkan's stoic, onyx visage as an equal. As a brother.​ ​ "Brother," Vulkan said, simply.​ ​ "Hhngh," Angron said. "Brother. Well, you are, I suppose." Kharn walked forward, and Numeon shook his hand in the way of Unity, while the Primarchs greeted each other with a much less codified grip. Kharn, like Numeon, was equerry to his Primarch, the one who most often spoke with a Primarch's voice.​ ​ Vulkan looked around. "They are dead. Do you feel satisfaction at that, Angron?"​ ​ The tone was respectful, but Angron still spit on the ground, only Kharn's touch restraining him from further displays of aggression. "Satisfaction? No. But I hated them, and now they are dead. That is all there is to it."​ ​ Vulkan nodded. "True enough. And now their power lingers. Kharn, Numeon, slice open your palms."​ ​ Kharn looked to his Primarch for confirmation, only to receive it. "Do as he says, Kharn. He knows this witchery better than me."​ ​ "Yet this is your part in it," Vulkan said.​ ​ Kharn lifted his head, and Numeon fixed his opposite number with a stare. Then, simultaneously, both brought knives to their palms and sliced them open. Neither winced at the pain, nor gave any sign of it. Blood dripped onto the ground.​ ​ As it did, Angron spoke syllables. They were in no language Numeon knew, and they came out as sounds no human could have made, but their meaning somehow suffused the air. Vulkan added notes, at times, but generally allowed Angron to say - spit, really, in a voice full of hate - the words. They were words of blood spilled from guillotines, of literal backstabbing, of great warmachines clashing.​ ​ And then Angron drove his black blade into his side, and before Numeon knew it, his own Primarch did the same.​ ​ Simultaneous as well, and far more blood was spilled this time; but not enough to truly wound the demigods, even if Angron was in visible pain. The bright red blood, Primarch blood, spilled out of them, around them, and -​ ​ And it seemed to infuse the world around with red, and a great blade of golden light was shining out of the ground until it vanished in the clouds above.​ ​ In a single moment, the rain stopped.​ ​ Numeon helped his father rise. Angron struggled to do so alone, waving aside Kharn's motion to do the same. The beacon remained, a cylinder of light rising from the plaza's center.​ ​ "Father?" Numeon asked.​ ​ "Don't worry," Vulkan said. "We will easily heal." Nonetheless, he held out a hand to prevent Atanarius from walking near the light, signing mortal danger for any caught within it.​ ​ "I did not want to come here," Angron said. "You asked if I was satisfied with vengeance. I lived for a century without vengeance! I could have come here, could have purged Nuceria. You know that the Emperor would not have objected. But for a century I did not. I returned for the same reason you arrived, brother. Orders, to do what we are doing here."​ ​ "So what _are_ we doing here, sire?" Kharn asked.​ ​ Angron laughed.​ ​ "We're getting the Emperor out of our hair," he said.​ ​ Numeon stood, shocked. What -​ ​ "It's not quite that," Vulkan said softly. "Though it is possible that the Emperor will take a lesser role in the Imperium should we succeed. The Emperor wishes to take his rightful place as a god in full, as a god of the Empyrean as well as in realspace. And in igniting this fire with the ghosts of two cities, we are lighting the way for his apotheosis."​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER THREE​ ​ Thirteenth Captain Ehung Zekhoros did not know what he had expected of the world responsible for his Primarch, but this was not it.​ ​ Then again, the circumstances were bizarre. Angron had performed some sort of psychic ritual, of all things, and in eighty-five Terran days Vulkan would complete it. That was it - the only reason why fifty thousand Astartes had been sent to an irrelevant world in the middle of the Eastern Fringe.​ ​ Irrelevant, except as a historical note. For it was Nuceria's fault that the Twelfth Legion had degenerated into bloody madness.​ ​ Yet the world itself was... pathetic, really. For the most part. It was at least a world of war, and a world in many ways skilled at that. And it was also a world, in the mountains, of clear and beautiful skies.​ ​ Or, rather, it had been one before his Primarch had done whatever Throne-taken sorcery he had performed.​ 
Zekhoros had been born on a desert planet, Mnamia, and clear skies were Mnamia's sole positive trait. Before the Legion, before the Nails, he'd looked up at the sky with wonder, both with his naked eyes and through the great telescopes that stood on Mnamia's mountains. Despite everything, he'd never entirely stopped. True, now his cognitive work had more to do with interfacing with the Navigators and the tech-priests, but even if the skies held no more awe - the Nails had stolen that, and to a lesser extent familiarity - they still held the memory of awe.​ ​ Zekhoros had thought he couldn't feel awe anymore, but what Angron had done to Nuceria's sky stole his breath away.​ ​ Where the beam of light coming from Desh'ea's ruins intersected the celestial sphere, a splotch had grown, a splotch of violet-tinted insanity. It was hard to describe what was inside it, because Zekhoros was fairly certain that it wasn't anything that his eyes were seeing with the normal rod and cone cells, even Astarte-version, but rather something that was directly imprinted onto his brain. But roughly, it was a striped vortex, swirling turbulently at impossibly rapid speeds.​ ​ "A Warp Storm," he said. "They've created a damned Warp Storm."​ ​ Urgara Ferran - the human shipmaster of the World Eaters' flagship _Conqueror_ - nodded, with more rage in his eyes than even Zekhoros felt.​ ​ "We're stuck here. They kept me grounded since Prospero, and now this. What am I supposed to do, sit at anchor for ninety Terran days?"​ ​ 'Kept him grounded' was an exaggeration. Lotara Sarrin, the Conqueror's previous shipmaster, had been injured at Maragara, and First Officer Ivar Tobin killed, by rebels on the crew that had declared for Horus. So Urgara Ferran, appointed from Terra, took command of the _Conqueror_ for the battle of Prospero. By the end of that battle, he was in a coma, and it was miraculous that he had returned to active service.​ ​ Not unchanged - the right half of his body was more machine than biological now. But his mind was intact. A better bargain than Zekhoros... but that was another matter entirely.​ ​ Zekhoros resented his Primarch, true. But that did not mean Ferran's rage was unjustified.​ ​ "I have no idea what anyone is supposed to do," he admitted. "We have barely a dozen Librarians, and most of them aren't even here. Even the Eighteenth is going to be bored. Even the Seventeenth would be!"​ ​ Ferran nodded. "My boredom is a small thing, compared to yours. Which is why I'm even more surprised by your decision to stay behind."​ ​ "I didn't stay behind," Zekhoros said. "I came up when you asked for Delvarus back, because the I didn't think Desh'ea was even going to fight us. Which it didn't. It just died. Waste of time." He spat. The Twelfth might not believe in the same form of honor that other Legions did, but they understood respect for a worthy opponent. That, and brotherhood - that was what mattered, in honor. Everything else was self-delusion. Killing Desh'ea... he didn't even know if it would have sated the Nails, so pointless it was. Albeit, in these days, perhaps it would have been enough. None of them really knew how the Nails worked anymore.​ ​ "Except for the Warp Storm," Ferran pointed out.​ ​ "Except for the Warp Storm." The vortex filled a quarter of the sky by now, and it was still growing, in great pulses. There was a narrow bubble forming around Nuceria of space just real enough for the _Conqueror_ and its fleet to survive without Gellar fields.​ ​ "That - "​ ​ And suddenly the storm pulsed, and Ferran gasped.​ ​ "Lehralla!" he yelled, already running, in his awkward gait, towards the bridge. "Is it going to hit us?"​ ​ "The entire planet!" the reply came, loud enough that Zekhoros could hear it.​ ​ The _Conqueror_ could currently survive without Gellar fields. Zekhoros was very glad that Ferran had ordered the Gellar fields turned on anyway.​ ​ While the storm's coming drove a spike of pain into his brain, the itch for violence in his head, strangely, dimmed. Or - perhaps it was more accurate to say that his perception of it dimmed. As he went to clean his armor, he could tell that the song was still there, in his head, because it was difficult for him to concentrate.​ ​ He tried anyway. It may have been futile, but he tried. What kind of Astarte would he be if he did not fight the impossible? The others did too, all in their own ways. Some tried to keep kindness, some joy, some self-control. Kharn tried to keep brotherhood. From watching those who had worn the Nails the longest, Zekhoros expected that all of them would fail. Many would die in battle before that point. Some part of Zekhoros hoped he would be among them.​ ​ Nonetheless, in the midst of the Warp Storm, he felt some semblance of relaxation, even as he imagined the thundering impossibilities that surrounded the small island of reality that the _Conqueror_ sat in. Enough so that he actually lost himself, for a few short minutes, to something besides the Nails, namely the repair of his left pauldron.​ ​ Eventually, when his wargear was gleaming enough that any further improvements would be worn away the instant he stepped on a world, Zekhoros relented and set off in search of his sergeants. Some part of him considered searching the fighting pits, but he'd already fought two matches today, and surely not all of them would be there.​ ​ As it turned out, it was barely half.​ ​ He found Limbeten and Zurvon in the mess hall, along with bits and pieces of their squads and, in the far corner, a Librarian.​ ​ Codicier Esca. Kharn's company. Strange.​ ​ "Any news, Ehung?" Limbeten asked.​ ​ "Warp Storm's all around us now," Zekhoros said with a shrug. "We're stranded in the middle of nowhere above our _beloved Primarch_'s homeworld, for nearly three months, I'm told. Sealed in."​ ​ "It's not his homeworld," Jaelenest, from Limbeten's squad, opined. "Not in any way that matters."​ ​ Zekhoros nodded. Angron would no doubt disagree, but the records spoke for themselves. Of all the other Primarchs, only Alpharius had abandoned his world as Angron had. Even Curze, who had let Nostramo rot for decades, had come back to restore order in the end. Nuceria's past might have held significance, but its present....​ ​ When they had burned out the traitors on Prospero, Magnus had surpassed even Angron in rage. Though that hadn't saved him from being crippled, nor his world from being destroyed. If someone had ended Nuceria, Zekhoros wasn't sure Angron would even have noticed.​ ​ "Doesn't matter," Zurvon said. "Shame, though. Ninety days is enough to take back a few worlds, then come back."​ ​ "I doubt the Primarchs would have wished that," Zekhoros pointed out.​ ​ "Since when did Angron care?" Zurvon challenged.​ ​ "Since Prospero," Zekhoros said. "Any of you know why Esca's here instead of with his captain?"​ ​ The reply was mostly disinterested shrugs, so Zekhoros went to check, Limbeten trailing along out of either curiosity or boredom. Inevitably, the Nails spiked in their heads, resuming their song of pain. Librarians had that effect, always.​ ​ "So," Zekhoros said. "Any reason you're here and not down there?"​ ​ Esca frowned. "The ritual they're doing down there.... The Nails cause pain to me, Captain Zekhoros. Whatever they're doing is a hundred times worse."​ ​ Limbeten grunted.​ ​ "Worse than the Warp Storm?" Zekhoros asked.​ ​ "The Warp Storm is a diffuse pain, and I'll grow used to it," Esca said. "What they're doing.... Lorgar spoke of four powers in the Warp, and the Twelfth has embraced worship of Khorne. Deity of war, honor, blood and skulls."​ ​ "Sure," Limbeten put in. The new cult wasn't ubiquitous in the Legion, but it was becoming increasingly common.​ ​ "I think Khorne doesn't like psykers," Esca said with a thin, forced smile. "And whatever Angron is doing down there... it's connected to Khorne. I can tell that even from here."​ ​ "Khorne's a Warp God," Zekhoros pointed out. "How can he not like the Warp?"​ ​ "Not the Warp," Esca said. "Only the majority of its uses. If I could, say enhance my strength with psychic power, that wouldn't trip the wires. More than that, and it's the same as the Nails, only worse." He paused. "I think the Nails are - "​ ​ The Codicier's words were cut off by sirens.​ ​ The Nails pounded in Zekhoros's brain. "To stations!" he yelled, running to grab his helmet. "To stations! We're under attack!"​ ​ He ran to his chambers, for his part, to put on full wargear before heading to the bridge. The three chainswords hooked to his belt were only useful in conjunction with the servo-arm that rose from the pack on his armor. It was an unusual combat style, to be sure, and required more repairs than most in the Twelfth would have accepted. But Zekhoros didn't mind standing out, and he'd tried to instill that spirit in the Thirteenth Company. They were chained by brotherhood, same as the rest of them, but if you were all the same there was no point in brotherhood. Even Breidan, who'd worn the Nails for so long he could feel nothing but rage, retained his ponytail hair and his pre-battle tattoos, even if he probably only did so by reflex.​ ​ Breidan didn't have long left. The Nails were degenerative: they'd kill him eventually. But Breidan had experienced the same resurgence as the rest of them after - logic said it should have been after the Emperor's modifications, but really the turning point was Prospero, as if breaking a Primarch was enough to satisfy the Nails' bloodthirst.​ ​ No one in the Legion actually expected it to last.​ ​ When he entered the bridge, he found it on exactly the level of alert that he had expected given the sirens. It was a storm of activity, all carried out in a state of panic.​ ​ "Captain Zekhoros," Ferran said. "You're actually here?"​ ​ "Delvarus wasn't?"​ ​ "Never," Ferran said. "Though the situation generally wasn't that dire back then."​ ​ And when Zekhoros walked up to the sensor screens, his eyes widened under his helmet, because he realized exactly what Ferran was talking about.​ ​ Awe, once again, an emotion he had thought forever lost to him. That was the first thing. The second was that this fleet -​ ​ The viewports were closed, because staring at the Warp was generally unadvisable, but the screens made it clear enough.​ ​ They were Legiones Astartes.​ ​ They were Ultramarines.​ ​ And they had them outgunned them four to one, with more ships still arriving.​ ​ The _Perfect Honour_, the second ship in the Ultramarines' fleet, shone at the assembly's center. That was good - they weren't facing Guilliman, at least. Then again, Vulkan hadn't brought the _Flamewrought_.​ ​ If he had, maybe they'd actually have had a chance. As it was, the only reason they were still alive was that the Ultramarines' fleet seemed as surprised by this encounter as their own. The Ultramarines, being Ultramarines, were nonetheless reacting much faster.​ ​ Another bout of jealousy, and rage at his Primarch for not being Roboute Guilliman.​ ​ It was probably his last one, unfortunately.​ ​ "Well," Zekhoros said, "we'll fight to the last. For the Emperor."​ ​ Then he took a look at Ferran's face, and the Nails spasmed in his head.​ ​ "Wait. Don't tell me you're -" His rage spiked, from merely incandescent to white-and-blue-hot, and a chainsword immediately sprung to life in his left hand. "I didn't take you for a coward, Master Ferran."​ ​ "Not cowardice," Ferran said, with surprising calm. "The fleet will fight. But we'll also lose. You know that, Captain Zekhoros. So it's best to prepare for losing, and save the most important thing on the ship before we do so."​ ​ Zekhoros frowned, still spiking with pain. "Which is?"​ ​ "Your Company," Ferran said.​ ​ It took all of Zekhoros's finely tuned willpower, perhaps the strongest in the Legion, for him not to kill Ferran then and there.​ ​ It took all the assistance given to that willpower by the changes in the Nails for him to even partially agree.​ ​ "They'd be fools to let us board," Zekhoros agreed. "Some of my men will want to try anyway, and I won't stop them. But some will evacuate to fight on the surface.​ ​ "And if we're evacuating non-essentials... then the first priority doesn't go to my Company. It goes to the Dreadnoughts, and above all the First."​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER FOUR​ ​ They broke into reality around Nuceria in a state of shock, insofar as such a state was possible for Ultramarines - and the events of the past year had proven that it was quite possible indeed.​ ​ The Warp was erratic and unpredictable. Warp Storms grew and shrank and moved, and even appeared from or vanished into nothingness.​ ​ But not on this scale.​ ​ Klord Empion, Ninth Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, suspected it was enemy action. He didn't know how, though perhaps the Librarians knew the theoretical, but with the Imperium evidently abandoning Nikaea just as much as Imperium Secundus had, it was the most reasonable explanation. Accident would not have been an easy explanation even without the Imperial Civil War. Enemy action... there was no shortage of either transhumans or xenos who held a grudge against the Ultramarines.​ ​ Then again, enemy action was too often used as an easy excuse, a rationalization, when accident was unseemly. So Klord Empion only suspected it was enemy action.​ ​ Until, that is, they broke into the Nucerian system.​ ​ A point of relative quiet in the storm. The entire fleet could make it, even if many of the ships were seriously damaged. They had been in transit when the storm had come, so the fleet hadn't been wiped out.​ ​ The fleet was an impromptu one, clobbered together from the units nearest Guilliman, who had been able to join him in a jump back to Ultramar. A hundred thousand Astartes. Nearly as many remained behind, under command of Chapter Master Vared, much to Chapter Master Kaen Atreus's disappointment (but acceptance - Atreus was not one to even contemplate arguing about chains of command, he merely made his opinions clear).​ ​ They had survived. That was the good thing.​ ​ What they saw in the Nucerian system was the bad.​ ​ A fleet, in high orbit around desert Nuceria. A fleet far smaller than Guilliman's, but less battle-worn, and filled with Astarte vessels.​ ​ A fleet led by a Primarch's flagship. The _Conqueror_ hung in the void, hateful and bristling with guns. Around it, lesser World Eater vessels and Salamander ships.​ ​ Once, Empion would have greeted them as brothers. Now his course of action was far different, as was that of the _Omega Unbowed_.​ ​ "To stations!"​ ​ "Courage and honour!"​ ​ "Enemies at thirty, conic formation!"​ ​ "Fire the Mauxineos!"​ ​ "No contact with the Primarch yet! Continuing hails!"​ ​ Around him, the ships of the Thirteenth Legion blinked into reality. A fleet of war, a fleet of Ultramar.​ ​ A fleet now stranded five sectors away from Ultramar. But a fleet at war, and that practical wiped any and all irrelevant theoreticals from Klord Empion's mind. He directed the _Omega Unbowed_ and the nearby ships to fall into formation, theoreticals flying to his mind from decades spent studying the doctrines of war and implementing them in practice. Empion was the youngest Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, and he knew that his temperament sometimes accentuated that, but no one became Chapter Master without a great deal of experience.​ ​ Nevertheless, he was quite relieved when the _Perfect Honour_ slid forth from the void, and Empion's Primarch took command of the engagement.​ 
The early arrivals, led by the _Omega Unbowed_, formed a scout formation. They would swing around Nuceria and the enemy fleet, obtaining crucial information about the situation, and attack it from the back after Guilliman's main force had begun the engagement. Additional reserves under Chapter Master Sharad Antoli were singled out, but they were tactical reserves rather than the strategic kind. There was no way into Nuceria, and no way out. The two fleets were engaged in a struggle that would end with only one surviving, and despite the numerical advantage Guilliman could not be certain that it would be theirs.​ ​ All of this was delivered in concise and clear commands, in a calm and composed cast, and received in the same manner. The contrast with the situation six Terran months ago was obvious, and Empion took a moment to appreciate it during a brief pause in preparations.​ ​ Back then, they had not known how to fight Astartes, much less the creatures of the Warp that many even among the Legion dubbed daemons. But the theoreticals had been missing on the enemy's side as well, and they'd learned them with the practicals, along the way. They had been bloody lessons - they'd lost thousands. But not tens of thousands. Astartes could survive a lot, and an Ultramarine that was still alive would make the enemy regret wounding him.​ ​ No, the greater difference was the calm. This was normal now. Gradually, fighting Astartes and the xenos of the Warp had been assimilated into XIII Legion strategic doctrine, becoming a fact of martial life. Yes, it was abhorrent, something that had been meant to be an impossibility. But now that it was necessary, it was possible, and - despite what had been feared - it had not somehow tainted the Thirteenth's efficiency or brotherhood. They had come through the crucible, to use a Salamander metaphor despite the circumstances, of the Linekere Cluster, and they had come out as Ultramarines still.​ ​ The _Omega Unbowed_ swung past Nuceria on a slingshot, fast enough to avoid the enemy fleet despite passing close enough to get detailed readings. There were no surprises there, though. The surface of the planet was what the reconnaissance really concerned.​ ​ Comparing the maps to the charts recorded from a hundred years ago, Empion noted significant changes, which he knew was unsurprising. The Imperium had kept a light hand on Nuceria - too light, evidently, for some of those ruined cities had clearly been destroyed years ago, long before Angron had killed Prospero. With others it was uncertain.​ ​ The locations of Astarte landing, however, could be determined with a fair bit of precision.​ ​ "City of Desh'ea, former Imperial designated capital of world," Shipmistress Inio Klevex said. "Estimated twenty-two thousand Salamanders, twenty-six thousand World Eaters. No auxiliaries. Ghanun Desert, uninhabited. Two thousand Salamanders. No auxiliaries. No other concentrations of Astartes detected."​ ​ "An impressive concentration for a desert," Empion said. "Any clues as to why they're there?"​ ​ Klevex only shrugged, causing Empion to bring up the data himself. Ghanun was quite far from Desh'ea - nearly opposite. In fact....​ ​ "Sixty degrees and twenty-two minutes north, seventeen degrees and two minutes east for Desh'ea. Sixty degrees and twenty-two minutes south, one hundred and sixty-two degrees and fifty-eight minutes west for the Ghanun muster. It's the antipodal point, Shipmistress. It's a ritual." He frowned. "As to what.... Incidentally, I don't see the visual record."​ ​ "Warp Storm," Captain Phrost pointed out.​ ​ "But we're in realspace, so it doesn't cause insanity for short exposures."​ ​ Klevex, in agreement, signaled a set of portholes to be opened up. They rolled -​ ​ "How the Taert did we not see that on the sensors?"​ ​ It was a beam of light. A beam that seemed to arise from the city of Desh'ea and rise into the sky, directly perpendicular to the planet's surface. It was blindingly bright, but it did not actually emit electromagnetic radiation.​ ​ "Close the portholes!" Empion ordered, the very moment they had opened fully.​ ​ It did not emit electromagnetic radiation, and unknown Warp phenomena were not to be dealt with lightly.​ ​ But it was guaranteed, Empion noted once the view had been shut off, that although they could not see it the beam cut straight through the planet and came out on the other side. That Desh'ea (the city, Phrost helpfully - actually helpfully this time - remembered, Angron had been kept as a slave) and its antipodal point were the locations that would be of import in the surface war.​ ​ And there would be a surface war to come. That was becoming patently obvious. A surface war, Primarch against Primarch, Legion against Legion(s). The terrain data, updated this time, for the region surrounding Desh'ea and (as best as could be determined) for the Ghanun desert was acquired, compiled, and sent to the _Perfect Honour_, as well as being distributed throughout the fleet, as the slingshot maneuver wound down. It had been successful, preserving the _Omega Unbowed_ and the accompanying ships from attack, but it had also stranded them far from the battle, for the time being.​ ​ The _Conqueror_ did not move to engage the Ultramarine fleet, Empion curiously noted. He would have expected, from theoreticals for the Twelfth in particular... but then, the Primarch was presumably on the surface, leaving a baseline human in command. Or perhaps an Astarte, but a more phlegmatic one. The _Conqueror_ did have a shipmaster according to the records - or at least had possessed one prior to the war's beginning.​ ​ Regardless of who was in command of the fleet, they clearly controlled both sets of ships, which slid into separate but mutually supportive formations. It was a textbook tactic, but skillfully executed. The Ultramarine fleet replied with a formation interwoven on several levels, some of which Empion only knew about from the vox traffic.​ ​ A stream of fighters was the first into the fight, released rapidly after having been shielded by the bulk of the _Esperian_. A moment later, the stream had split into two, and then the firestorm started in earnest.​ ​ Guilliman didn't manage everything, but he directed the bulk of the fighting, down to squadrons of attack craft. He would have been capable of micromanaging further, but there was no need, for he trusted the men under his command. That trust was repaid in full. Streams of fire intersected at the precise sites of enemy capital ships, and Ultramarine and allied ships dodged munitions by mere meters. It was beautiful to witness, a cascading dance of destruction. Yet in the midst of it, Empion did not forget his own duty. The _Omega Unbowed_ turned around and, as the minutes of engagement ticked on, prepared to enter battle.​ ​ But it seemed like it wouldn't be needed. At Nuceria Mark three hours, Empion reviewed the battle and came to the conclusion that it was, barring major impact from the ritual, already won. The enemy fleet had been cut to pieces, ships thrown about like leaves. A few of the smaller ones fell, as a rain of devastation, to the world below. Others had fled to the Warp Storm; all of those had been damaged, and it was implausible that any could survive even without the storm's own dangers, though given the pacts the Imperials had made Empion could not claim to be sure.​ ​ The last major engagement, at mark seven and a half hours, was between the _Conqueror_ and the _Perfect__ Honour_. Demands for surrender were thoroughly ignored, not that the terms were especially gracious. No love on either side, in this war. Perhaps to an even greater extent than the Great Crusade, this was a war of Humanity against Other, and so a war of hate or at the least disgust.​ ​ The engagement between the flagships took place at a point in the _Conqueror_'s orbit when it was approaching the beam at Desh'ea. Deviating from that orbit, the _Conqueror_ attempted to close, but that ship's capabilities were known - at least to Guilliman. And the World Eaters were known to prefer boarding. So the _Perfect Honour_ stayed at a distance, enough to shred the _Conqueror_ with its gun batteries but not enough to risk anything like ramming. Of course the _Conqueror_ was firing back too, but -​ ​ It was a minor mistake, but one an experienced commander would still not be expected to make. The _Perfect Honour_ feinted, and the _Conqueror_ fired its Ursus Claws, seeking to pull the other battleship towards it. But the reaction was slow enough that the claws missed, by a wide margin, and spun the _Conqueror_ so that its main gun decks faced away from the _Perfect Honour_. At that point Guilliman did close, unleashing a volley that left the _Conqueror_ nearly stranded in space.​ ​ In a last gasp, the _Conqueror_ launched pods - both drop-pods and boarding torpedoes, respectively to the planet and against the _Honour_. If the _Perfect Honour_ had been alone, the latter might even have worked, depositing a squad or two onto the _Honour_'s lower decks to kill a significant number of crew members before being annihilated. But now, at last, the _Omega Unbowed_ made its contribution, as did its escorts. The volley came from above, following a carefully timed command by Empion, and it knocked the boarding torpedoes out of the sky. Their burnt remnants fell to Nuceria, and the _Perfect Honour_ retreated again, firing shots that gradually crippled the remnants of the _Conquero_r. Additional artillery ships came in, beginning the process of pounding the flagship into scrap.​ ​ "Incoming communique from the enemy!"​ ​ "Patch it through," Klevex ordered, and so they did. The signal was a human with a noble face and a well-kept uniform, standing in the middle of a frantic bridge, wearing an admiral's insignia signed with his name and his house - old Terran nobility, Empion's training suggested from the comportment, though the 'Terran' part of this was only speculation.​ ​ "My compliments on the victory," Urgara Ferran said. "We couldn't raise the _Perfect Honour_, so convey those compliments to whoever your commander is."​ ​ "Are you looking to surrender?"​ ​ "No," Ferran said. "I won't let it be said that the Twelfth Legion's flagship surrendered. For the Empe-"​ ​ The link was shattered as a volley from the _Perfect Honour_ hit the _Conqueror_'s bridge head-on. The bridge exploded, and Empion thought he could see, on the sensors, its fragments falling as a rain of debris onto the world below, to burn up in its atmosphere.​ ​ The _Conqueror_ itself did not meet the same fate. Even as guns were broken off and engines were pounded into scrap, it sailed on in its orbital track. Even as containment was breached and the atmosphere vented into space, even as the Gellar Field was broken, it continued unswervingly on its path through the void. It would remain there, a new artificial moon in the skies of the world its destiny was tied to, for thousands of years yet if it was not salvaged. The _Conqueror_ did not die quickly, even with the firepower of the entire Ultramarine fleet pounding at it, and it did not die at an especially high cost, but it died with all the grandeur that befitted a flagship of a Legio Astartes.​ ​ The Ultramarines secured Nucerian orbit for Imperium Secundus and the Coalition in the span of eleven hours, twenty-nine minutes, and thirteen seconds.​ ​ The planet itself would be harder.​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

INTERLUDE: GUILLIMAN​ ​ The skies were dusty. He was not surprised by this. He'd known the climactic data of these lowlands, and he knew their relation to the current weather. Nonetheless, it was one thing to know it and prepare for it in terms of communications equipment and the like, and another thing to feel the scouring wind on his skin.​ ​ Not that it was anything worse than discomfort, even with the gunships throwing up still more dust into the air.​ ​ Roboute Guilliman walked across the dropsite, directing the erection of the first ring of defenses. The Titans were late, albeit not far outside tolerances. In itself, this was merely inconvenient.​ ​ In the minutes before battle, it was potentially disastrous.​ ​ He'd ordered a landing near Desh'ea, on the banks of the intermittent Desh River, precisely to provoke the World Eaters. Battle was inevitable, and better to be the defender in an even slightly fortified position than the attacker. Besides which, it would be easier to limit collateral damage.​ ​ It was a risk, but it was a calculated risk.​ ​ Around him, ninety thousand Ultramarines were stationed in concentric rings, the inner ones incorporating Army units as well. Not skitarii - too few of those. The Mechanicum had not responded well to his recommendations of reform, and moreover Kane had thrown his weight behind Horus in the Warmaster's disagreement with Guilliman. But by the same token, many of those within the Mechanicum who had their disagreements with Kane - often Kelbor-Hal's allies in the old factional struggles - and who had doubts about its dogma in principle flocked to Ultramar. That set, in the practical, contained a number of Titan Legions. The entire affair was a delicate balancing act, and it could well have crippled the Thirteenth's ability to fight if not for his and Archmagos Butaran's dedicated attention.​ ​ Which was not to say that the Mechanicum's outrage at any interference surprised him. After the Emperor's repudiation of the Treaty of Mars, they were naturally suspicious of the Astartes, Primarchs, and all other symbols of the Imperium as threats to their sovereignty.​ ​ "Thexilev, Ventanus," he said, greeting his captains as he came up to the outer ring. "The Titans are still behind schedule, unfortunately. Has Monaxi run off again?"​ ​ "He's around, my lord," Ventanus said. "Just at the very front of the barricades."​ ​ He didn't have the easy camaraderie with Thexilev and Ventanus as he did with the Chapter Masters, even now. Too many layers of command between them, even if none of those layers were present now. But they meshed well enough, nevertheless.​ ​ "Impatience?" Guilliman asked.​ ​ "Irritation, I think," Ventanus said. "It's the sky."​ ​ Guilliman nodded, understanding.​ ​ The skies were dusty. Guilliman had expected they would be dusty, for Nuceria was a desert planet. He had not expected to be glad of it.​ ​ Because beyond the slight haze of dust, the noontime skies were a tapestry of madness.​ ​ He caught glimpses in it, from time to time. He was far from Magnus, but all of the Primarchs had some psychic ability. In this storm, he saw cramped corridors, dripping with the blood of slaves crushed within a furnace, their blood aflame with the pain of ages of torment that had to be paid to prevent the cannons of the equal and opposite enemy from -​ ​ Warp phenomena were not to be dealt with lightly. But Roboute Guilliman knew that the misaligned horrors of the storm were, in some sense, real. The grid defined by his psychic sight buckled and tightened within it, but it did not break entirely.​ ​ It was different from what happened within the Warp, or near the minor Fearenel Warp Storm. It was as if the storm was weaker, less absolute. That, however, only made its discomfiting effect worse, for it added a degree of familiarity to its inhuman depths.​ ​ "My lord?" Thexilev asked. "There is something we recovered on Katha."​ ​ "An artifact," Ventanus clarified, as Thexilev brought up a large leaden box.​ ​ And as Guilliman opened it, he realized that, somehow, Thexilev had found the Cornucopia of Katha.​ ​ The second piece of the Linearity.​ ​ Five systems, aligned nearly perfectly in three-dimensional space (so that a single line passed through all five stellar cores) and moving at similar velocities. The Linearity had, according to the astronomers, existed for two hundred and ninety thousand years. According to the legends, it had been longer, and each of the five systems housed a powerful psychic artifact, the five being capable of being combined into something greater.​ ​ The myth, one that had appeared on multiple worlds of the Eastern Fringe but was everywhere considered secret knowledge, had appealed to Guilliman, but he had always dismissed it as just that. With this war, though -​ ​ He had done his best to approach perfection by the logical standards of the Imperial Truth. Yet in this war, that was not enough. And so he had sought to hedge his approach, to train his own psychic power and also to delve into those aspects of improvement he had not before.​ ​ That meant the Linearity; for Guilliman could tell that some myths were evidently only myths, but about the Linearity he had always had suspicions, even if he had surpassed them. The alignment was not implausible by random chance, but it was improbable. That was why he now wielded the halberd-gun amalgamation that was the Cannon of Premioi, the first piece of the Linearity that he had found. That was why he had searched Katha top to bottom, and perhaps would have found something if news from Ultramar had not distracted him.​ ​ And it left only three worlds of the Linearity. Konor. Zilladil.​ ​ And Nuceria.​ ​ That coincidence had other explanations, but Guilliman was increasingly skeptical of coincidences where the Warp was involved.​ ​ He brought the Cornucopia up to the Cannon, but there was no interaction. Moreover, he did not truly understand what the Cornucopia did - the legends contradicted themselves on this point, as they tended to.​ ​ "Have Chapter Master Empion hold onto it," he ordered. "It'll be useful, but it's not a weapon, and we don't have much time for that at the moment. Ventanus, stay here; Thexilev and the Second, with me. We'll join Monaxi with the Third on the front lines - we'll need that, to break the Twelfth's charge."​ ​ Ventanus squinted. "They're coming already?"​ ​ "They are," Guilliman confirmed. "We have minutes before I have to kill my brother."​ ​ "My lord...." Thexilev frowned. "Will Magnus thank us or blame us if we kill him?"​ ​ "The former," Guilliman said. "It's his kill, you're right about that. But sometimes tactics isn't compatible with vengeance, and Magnus knows that."​ ​ He didn't mention the confidence in Thexilev's tone about the battle's outcome. In a sense, he shared it. True, Angron had nearly killed Magnus.​ ​ But unlike Magnus, Guilliman would not be fighting a duel after having exhausted himself in Navigating at improbable speeds. He would have a defensive position, and support that outnumbered the enemy two to one while outgunning them five to one.​ ​ Nevertheless, for all that Angron approached a mindless berserker, he was a strong one even by Primarch standards, not to be underestimated; and though Guilliman, like everyone else, wondered what could have been had the Red Angel not been broken by the Nails, in combat the breaking only made the Red Angel more lethal.
​ ​ He walked to the rampart at the very front of the outer ring, facing Desh'ea. The golden beacon was shining ahead, as if a flashlight vanishing in the storm, even if in truth it had seemingly ignited the storm; and as Guilliman took the Cannon of Premioi into his hands, he finally caught a good glimpse of the heads of the two columns, one in green and gold while the other was in white and blue, that were charging towards them. The first wave was in the main Astartes with jump-packs and vehicles - speeders and bikes alike - but at the very head of the World Eaters' column, a figure that towered over the Astartes around him ran forward, axe and sword already in his hands, spittle flying from his mouth, strands of hair swaying behind his unhelmeted head - Angron, the Red Angel. At the head of the Salamanders' column... six warriors in plate that even from kilometers away Guilliman could recognize as that of the Pyre Guard, and an onyx-headed god holding a titanic hammer in his hands leading them, a god whose eyes burned with red fire that seemed to lock onto Guilliman's own eyes: Vulkan, Lord of Drakes.​ ​ Guilliman frowned.​ ​ He gave no other outward sign of the realization that there were two Imperial Primarchs present rather than one.​ ​ But inside, he knew that he had made a very big mistake.


_A/N: Incidentally, does anyone have any comments at all on this? I know there's _some_ people still around...._
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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER FIVE​ ​ The charge hit the Ultramarine line, as it was always going to, despite the storm of bolter and cannon fire that threw up enough dust to shield it from view. The plain ahead of them was littered with debris - the ceramite of power armor, but also the metallic wrecks of vehicles that had been brought down by Ultramarine artillery.​ ​ Not as much as theoretical would have predicted, though. The Ultramarines had not had the time to fully fortify their position, and both enemy Legions seemed to have gained resilience beyond Astarte norms. And so the brunt of the World Eater charge hit the line ahead of Captain Justinian Thexilev, even as the Salamanders' own charge, slower but more heavily armored, approached the section of the line to his left.​ ​ Thexilev himself was standing some way back, on a natural rise. The hill didn't really deserve the name, but it was enough to give Thexilev some much-needed perspective on his company's section of the fight. Unlike on Katha, he was not fighting on the front line to start with, although he knew he was likely to see combat soon - less tolerance for deviation from theoretical, here. Besides which, the practical was that he was facing a much more complex battle, one whose shape he was not yet sure of.​ ​ His men buckled under the assault. They did not break, but Thexilev could see a point where they might. "Practical: take your squad and Onon's," he told Ixiosph, pointing to the segment of the line in question, "and help Ikiusido hold."​ ​ Ixiosph responded immediately, calling his men together without aid from the vox. Thexilev, for his part, saw the World Eater tide ebb for a moment - according to theoretical, for long enough to get the Nails activated - before rising again. The enemy, from what Thexilev could see, was frenzied, their blows erratic. But at the same time they fought to the full extent of their abilities, without even the slightest instinct for self-preservation, and that was a powerful practical. And what was more, those abilities were enhanced beyond reason, presumably by the power of the Warp and by the storm above them.​ ​ Ikiusido held, but in Lixas's section to Thexilev's right a few World Eaters managed to vault over the line. They might have effected a breakthrough if they'd just turned around, but instead they charged forwards, and Thexilev was able to vox Pezanzan to block their way. The World Eaters, who had been busy slaughtering Army troops, were taken off-guard by the sudden reinforcement, and quickly killed.​ ​ The same scenes were replaying themselves all across the line, the charge everywhere beaten back, if often at heavy cost. In some places gaps did open up, especially where there were concentrations of armor; Ultramarines fell back, encircling the enemy Astartes - by now the Salamander charge too had hit, though that section Thexilev couldn't see clearly - and none of those holes, of what Thexilev could see, were truly threatening.​ ​ None except one.​ ​ Thexilev called his command squad to him and headed towards the gap, but he already knew he would not be able to plug it, at most to mow down the Astartes who rushed in after him. For who could stop the charge of a Primarch?​ ​ Angron roared as he ran forward. Here and now, he appeared less a dreadlocked humanoid and more a literal bloody storm, and stopping him as absurd as Feral World shamans' attempts to control weather with ritual chants. The outer walls of that hurricane were body parts being tossed aside like refuse from the meatgrinder that was the Red Angel's advance.​ ​ Behind him, though, mere Astartes poured into the breach. "Practical: fire at Marines at will," Thexilev ordered, and the World Eaters fell, as careful shots hammered into the damaged parts of their armor - or, in some cases, simply their unhelmeted heads. Yet others, even bleeding from a dozen wounds, remained standing - and every World Eater that remained standing continued fighting. They charged, and Thexilev's squad - now joined by others, Thexilev suspecting that he saw Captain Monaxi's crest to his right, if only for a moment between the clouds of dust that were being kicked up and his own focus on the battle - stepped back, Thexilev yelling orders to ensure that they kept firing as they slowly retreated.​ ​ There were Imperial Army soldiers around, he saw, and he hadn't imagined Monaxi's presence either. The might of Ultramar, scything down the World Eaters, whose disregard for their own safety was no longer an advantage - though it would become one if they impacted the line.​ ​ They never did. Artillery shells, from some machine that had presumably just been set up, fell on the main bulk of charging Astartes, the last few being cleaved apart by the wall of Ultramarines without casualties. Most of them were not dead yet, but incapacitated was enough. Thexilev took a deep breath in the moment of respite, trying to glance around to see the state of the battle. The front line had stepped back, in many places, leaving Thexilev's company dangerously exposed. "Theoretical: fall back to second line," he voxed his company, in the certitude that he needed to say no more.​ ​ And then there was a shadow above them that was not like the others, and Thexilev looked up to see Angron's own charge. He was yelling something, perhaps about his sons being butchered by Thexilev's brothers - whatever it was, it wasn't in Gothic, or any other dialect that Thexilev knew. His axe and sword were swinging wildly like codes on a chain, and behind him the World Eaters rallied, even the ones with grievous injuries. "Fall back," Thexilev yelled, but he knew it was not enough, that he would die here. Angron bounded to the line -​ ​ And the red storm was met by a blue one, the axe blow that would have executed either Thexilev or one of the Ultramarines standing next to him intercepted, impossibly quickly, by another axe.​ ​ "Guilliman," Angron yelled, as the Astartes spread out around the two Primarchs. "I'm going to enjoy killing you, and all your Legion. Arrogant high riders, the lot of you."​ ​ "You call _us_ the tyrants?" Guilliman asked incredulously, almost but not quite masking his own fury. "With what you've become, with what you did to Prospero?"​ ​ And the Ultimate Warrior attacked. His halberd met both of Angron's strokes at once, turning them aside, and let forth a beam - not lascannon, something stronger, really - into the Red Angel's armor. Angron was forced to his knees, but parried Guilliman's blow, feinting only to see Guilliman turn and slice the armor on his arm open. With every blow the rage in Angron's expression grew, and even through the thunder of battle all around them, Thexilev thought he could hear the click as the Nails turned on and Angron's expression turned to a drooling rictus, even as his blows came faster. It was an onslaught, every blow a killing one, and it was unfathomable how Guilliman had lasted even seconds against Angron - yet he was not only parrying but weaving his way between the blows, with every step turning the Red Angel's movements against him.​ ​ Around the dueling Primarchs, their sons continued to fight. Thexilev was carried away from the duel, as he fired his bolter again and again. He crossed blades with a World Eater, parrying his attacks twice before finding an opening and carving him open; the enemy's chainsword saw its teeth catch on Thexilev's knee armor in the process, but he'd moved so that it didn't damage anything except the paint job. The Second rallied to him, at least those parts of the company not still engaged in holding the line; more Ultramarines came up from the dropsite.​ ​ And in the distance, the duel raged. Guilliman had lost his weapon, but his gauntlets proved enough to parry the remaining axe's blows. The black sword, which seemed to radiate an aura of doom, had likewise fallen. Angron seemed wounded, his strikes still fast if raw, but no longer quite as elegant as they had been, and though he was holding out against an inhuman storm, Thexilev knew his father was winning the duel -​ ​ But then a green beast slammed into the Battle-King, and Roboute Guilliman fell.​ ​ Briefly, of course. He jumped to his feet immediately, turning aside the fatal blow from Vulkan's hammer. But he was fighting alone against two Primarchs, and gauntlets were ill-suited to stop hammers - and now Angron, too, picked the Blackblade up and charged.​ ​ There was another moment that Thexilev lost sight of the Primarchs for, as he linked up with Ixiosph again. "They've been split apart," his second-in-command reported. "The assault's contained. Left flank reports the same from the Salamanders." He took a shot in between sentences, at a Dreadnought that was tearing, in a berserk fury, at an Imperial Army gun emplacement that had long since been abandoned. Unsurprisingly, the shot bounced off from the armor ineffectually. "The command center is at Height AE-1. There's a tree."​ ​ The walk there was calmer, as they rotated off the front line. Around them, Apothecaries and human medicae tended to the wounded, as Ultramarines and Mechanicum adepts cleared the route for the armor columns. Everything was proceeding with the utmost efficiency, but also with unmistakable urgency.​ ​ There was indeed a tree at the command center, of sorts: it was a scraggly, half-dry thing that had been knocked over by some especially strong gust of wind and responded by growing new roots at its tip, even as its barely connected stump grew new shoots, creating a tree that looked like the product of a teleporter mishap. There was also Chapter Master Arceas Odinathus of the Tenth.​ ​ "Captain Thexilev," he said with a nod, turning from his conversation as the latter approached. "I've assumed operational command while Guilliman is fighting. Your Company?"​ ​ "Retreated to the second line in good order, currently split between Guilliman's position and segment 23," Thexilev reported.​ ​ "Actually, a large portion has slid over to 24," Ixiosph corrected.​ ​ Thexilev nodded. "What's the practical, Master Odinathus?"​ ​ "They hit us faster than theoretical," Odinathus said, "but while they caught us less than fully ready... well, my point is, they didn't have time to get their full force. Theoretical: this is maybe half of them. Assault's been beaten back everywhere except for 21, which is Guilliman's position. Practical: as to that duel, you'd know better than me."​ ​ "Practical: Guilliman's losing," Thexilev admitted. "Vulkan is here."​ ​ "Not Angron?"​ ​ "Also Angron. That's the problem."​ ​ "Ah."​ ​ Odinathus didn't seem to know what to say to that besides continuing to direct the unloading, even as Thexilev sat down, breathing heavily. His company was being rotated off the front lines, replaced by the Ninety-First. While he and Ixiosph had not suffered more than armor damage and scratches, other squads had fared worse, and Thexilev had to get back up and direct triage. Sergeant Onon was dead, though his gene-seed had been recovered; after a brief consultation with the squad's survivors, Thexilev promoted Zan Emedekron, a young warrior who kept his black hair in a long braid, in his place. Sergeant Lixas had lost both arms, but the Apothecaries had managed to stabilize him, and he would return to duty as soon as the bionics had time to set - which, however, would not be in this campaign, leading Lixas to give his squad to Imant Lamogor for the time being. Others checked in with casualties among line Astartes. Naxigum, Onill, Niulth....​ ​ This was far from the first time Thexilev had lost men under his command. But that didn't prevent him from mourning, in the few moments that he had to spare for it. Too many good Astartes, fallen in a campaign that should never have been. Fallen sectors away from home, from Ultramar, even as that home burned, never to learn whether their sacrifice had meaning.​ ​ The fighting in 21 did not die down. Ventanus came back, a faint cut on his face and tears running along it.​ ​ "Practical: they took him," he said without preamble. "Guilliman has been captured."​ ​ Captured.​ ​ Thexilev had no idea how to react to that. It was unthinkable, for the Primarch to be defeated. Unthinkable... yet more thinkable, perhaps, than for two Primarchs to be. And yet captured did not mean dead, which was what every Ultramarine who knew had silently feared. Captured meant there was still, in the practical, hope.​ ​ Even if the theoreticals for this war said that death was preferable. Surely, Thexilev thought, even Angron and Vulkan would treat their brother with a modicum of respect. They may need his blood for a sacrifice, but surely they would not stoop to torture until that time.​ ​ "Captured," Odinathus said, softly. "What... by Ultramar, what do we do?" He fell silent, as his communicator beeped in his hands.​ ​ "We fight," Ventanus growled. "That's the practical. The theoretical, which is more involved, is that we push those bastards out of our dropsite. We outnumber them five to one, not counting auxilia. They may have two Primarchs, but we have a hundred thousand Ultramarines. This attack was an error in judgment on their part, and it's our duty to prove that."​ ​ Odinathus stayed silent. The comm kept beeping. Thexilev walked up and grabbed it out of the Chapter Master's hand.​ ​ "Captain Thexilev of the Fourth," he said.​ ​ "Princeps Antileth of the _Finis Gentibus_, Legio Vulcanum I warleader," the metallic voice replied. "We are ready to walk. Where are we needed?"​ ​ "Segment 21," Thexilev said, before handing the communicator back to a recovering Odinathus.​ ​ The Chapter Master shook his head. "I... practical: the shock must have gotten to me. You're right, of course, Captain Ventanus. We need to keep fighting."​ ​ "We do," said a new battle-brother as he came up. Chapter Master Klord Empion, of the Ninth. "Are you fit for command in the practical, Master Odinathus?"​ ​ The question was asked politely, pragmatically, asking only whether Odinathus wished to remove himself from the field in case he was still in shock - but Odinathus didn't take it that way. "Yes," he said coldly. "Master Empion, if you will - "​ ​ His next words were drowned out by the sound of thunder.​ ​ They came down the cleared highway, towards the sound of fighting, those Ultramarines who were on the path scrambling out of their way. Ten engines - ten titans, painted olive-green and white, the first wave of the seventy-eight the Titan Legion contained. Four Warhounds didn't just walk, but ran across the field, at a speed completely incongruous with their being five Astarte heights tall. For a moment, as they passed, there was - not silence, for the noise of the Titans was still a din that rang in Thexilev's ears, but a respite of the shaking that made the Ultramarine feel like he was solid ground once more, instead of what felt like sand.​ ​ And then the ground fell away entirely. Four Reavers and one Warlord, the former round where the latter was blocky, towered into the corrupted heavens. And bringing up the rear, taking Thexilev's breath away -​ ​ It was a castle on legs. It was a set of conjoined spires whose every pore bristled with firepower, except those which supported the firepower of others. It was a marvel of Martian engineering as well as a work of art, and a herald of a new age, even as the superstitious added it to their pantheon of war. And to Thexilev, who had not seen _Finis Gentibus_ walk before, it simply seemed to be too big to be reasonably supported by the ground below.​ ​ None of that was why it took his breath away. It took his breath away because of the sheer volume of dust it was throwing up.​ ​ The first salvos were fired, but it seemed unlikely that many of them would be necessary. For alongside the Titans marched Imperial Army units and newly disembarked Ultramarines, most of them keeping a more respectable distance from the Titans.​ ​ "Theoretical:" Thexilev said, "we should not have situated the command center here."​ ​ "What?"​ ​ (Of course, the theoretical was precisely to have the command center at an intersection of hgihways, and if they'd had the time to erect a covering that would even have been correct. Everything was more rushed than theoretical. They'd been complacent, Thexilev supposed.)​ ​ As the Titans moved on, and the dust cleared, Thexilev turned around to see his brothers' armor - and, presumably, his own - covered in a thin layer of gray-brown, not enough to block out the blue but enough to give it a strangely ethereal sort of tint. Three figures standing near him - Ventanus, Empion, Odinathus - and his company, and -​ ​ And a little girl that certainly should not have been here.​ ​ "Hey!" Thexilev yelled, walking towards her carefully (because who knew what hid under the visage of little girls, in the practical). "What are you doing here?"​ ​ "Captain Justinian Thexilev," she said. "Captain Remus Ventanus, Chapter Masters Klord Empion and Arceas Odinathus of the Ultramarines. I am Gilloa of Nuceria - "​ ​ "Where are your parents?" Ventanus asked, walking down with open arms and making a rather more friendly impression than Thexilev had.​ ​ "Dead in Desh'ea," she said. "But that doesn't matter, relatively. You need to listen to me."​ ​ "What on Terra - "​ ​ "She's possessed by a psyker," Thexilev guessed.​ ​ "No," the girl - Gilloa - said, and her eyes sparked with a flash of apparent lightning that left Thexilev, despite his Astarte vision, blinded for a second and a half. "I _am_ a psyker. And you need to listen to me, because the Titans are going to win this battle, but your Primarch is going to be killed unless we save him. And if he does, then Nuceria will not only die without rebirth, but drag the galaxy down with it."​


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## Lunar (Jul 7, 2017)

That is a magnificent story. How about upload it on other sites?


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

Lunar said:


> That is a magnificent story. How about upload it on other sites?


I do intend to. Renegades is currently somewhat in stasis... but it will fully awaken yet.


CHAPTER SIX​ ​ _Two Terran months later_​ ​ Artellus Numeon watched the fortifications rise, an eight-pointed star in the heart of the Ghanun desert. Unlike in Desh'ea, one of the points had been replaced with a tri-circle, leaving seven equal arrows that led in any direction but one.​ ​ Any direction but backward, as Numeon saw it.​ ​ On this path, they could yet become anything, except for what they had once been.​ ​ But the fire of faith still burned in Numeon's chest. It was faith in the Emperor, but it was also faith that they would win the war. And most of all, it was the faith that destiny lived. That this new path would bring about the final triumph of humanity that the Crusade had always promised.​ ​ "So," Skatar'var said, walking up to the commander of the Pyre Guard. "You're sure I have command of the raid?!"​ ​ "Yes, of course," Numeon said with a sigh. "Listen, brother - you know you've not been yourself lately."​ ​ "None of us have," his brother observed.​ ​ "No," Numeon admitted, "but most of us have been closer to it than you. I'm not angry at you, Skatar'var. I want to help you."​ ​ "Leodrakk - "​ ​ "Is on Terra, and getting the best care possible. He will recover."​ ​ Skatar'var paused. "Yes, but we can't be certain of anything, Numeon. Not anymore. And even if he fully recovers someday... I miss him. Especially in these times."​ ​ Numeon could only nod at that. "Just be careful out there, Skar. Your brother will not want to awake only to see you injured in his place." He did not mention death, but he knew that his brother would see the implication.​ ​ Nonetheless, Skatar'var only gave a laugh. "Into the fires of battle, brother." The implication there, too, was clear - a Salamander lived or died by his own merits.​ ​ "Unto the anvil of war," Numeon said, and saluted as the other Pyre Guard descended from the parapet to take command of the raiding party.​ ​ A raiding party. For captives. Numeon understood the dusk-wraiths now much better than he had ever expected to. They had raided merely to survive, of course, rather than - as the Salamanders now did - sacrificing a few to save the many. This had ever been what the Eighteenth did. They had always been killers; they had always been monsters.​ ​ But, as with many aspects of the Primordial Truth, that knowledge was both bitter and difficult to accept.​ ​ Numeon stood on the parapet for a few minutes, time he'd had free, to look at the ground they would fight the Ultramarines on (and that they would fight was by now clear). It was important, to know the land they would fight in, both for tactical and practical reasons, even if he'd seen it many times before in daytime rather than the present night.​ ​ Ghanun was not, all in all, a complicated land. Their fortress, at the exact antipodal point of the Desh'ea central square, stood near the edge of a great plateau. Here there was little of the dust of the lowlands; but there was still sand. Sand, in rolling dunes that came up to the wall that rose above them several kilometers to the north. The top of that escarpment held a secondary fort, so as to prevent the Ultramarines from the obvious theoretical of placing artillery there. There the ground had long ago moved, breaking the underlying layer of granite - one half thrust into the sky, the other dropped into the earth. The softer rocks above had eroded into the sands that swirled around them, but the fire-born granite - old rock, a billion years old, and tired, but still holding on to its cohesion - endured. Below that cap, Numeon could trace the layers of sediment, laid down in the seas of a world that was then still young. Those times were forever gone, but the earth did not forget.​ ​ In every other direction, where the seven arrows pointed, there were dunes, stretching out near the horizon. In the south and southeast, the distance held snowy mountains, which Numeon knew blocked the entire basin of Ghanun off from the winds off Nuceria's shallow seas. The sand was for the most part yellow quartz, but to the even drier east it faded to white gypsum that winds scoured off the mountains. The volcano of Mount Keghil rose in the west, a solitary black cone surrounded by a large patch of black and darkened sand, of magnetite and ash. Only blue holdfasts, all far in the distance, broke the monotony of the landscape - five of them, and two more on the plateau, signifying the Ultramarines' preparation for the siege. Over time they would creep closer to them, but at the rate they were advancing the ritual would be done long before. And above, everywhere, the vortex where the gods' realm intersected that of mortals. Unlike some of his comrades, Numeon did not avert his eyes from the Warp Storm, but neither did he stare into it. It was a sacred place, but not one meant for humans, and to gaze too deep into it invited revelations that broke minds. And though Astarte minds did not break easily, this test was not one Numeon believed worthy.​ ​ But the sky would change; the ground.... Ghanun would bear the scars of this war for millennia, but in the terrain and not its people, for it was a desolate place, the dryest land in a dry world. Not, like Nocturne, a land that killed with its rage, but one that killed with indifference. No one lived here, not because they would die in eruption or quake, but because they would perish of hunger or thirst.​ ​ It was a land most unlike its Legion... except it wasn't really its Legion, was it? Until this campaign, not a single World Eater had ever set foot in the Ghanun Desert, and their rage at its qualities was far from hidden.​ ​ But regardless of such conceptual connections or lack thereof, the land was desolate, and raids to the north - conducted by Salamanders and World Eaters alike - were required, for the thousands of souls required for the second sacrifice that would conclude the planetary-scale ritual.​ ​ As Numeon walked from the parapet, he saw the promise of that ritual, in the heart of their fortress. It was hard not to - already ten thousand baseline or near-baseline humans, arrayed like a great army on parade, clothed in a million shades of randomness, a pure sample of the Nucerian population... unmoving and frozen in time, bringing to mind some demented museum.​ ​ Vulkan refused to have the people he would have to sacrifice suffer through prolonged confinement. Instead, they would wake only for moments, until the day came and the statis field would turn into an entropic one, killing all of them painfully but quickly. But until then they stood there as a solemn reminder of the Eighteenth and Twelfth Legions' duty.​ ​ "Mercy," a voice said out of the shadows. "That's what your Primarch calls this."​ ​ Numeon turned to face the intruder - his armor blue and white but splattered with blood, his head bearing a pair of rectangular crests that game the impression of horns. Kharn, Eighth Captain of the World Eaters and the foremost Astarte of the Legion.​ ​ Numeon's equivalent. They got along surprisingly well.​ ​ "And is it not mercy, relatively speaking?" Numeon asked. "Better this than to herd them into slave pens."​ ​ "You can call anything good if you choose the right evil to compare it to," Kharn said, taking his helm off. "How do you truly believe it, Numeon? That we're on the right side of this war?"​ ​ Numeon frowned. "Do you not?"​ ​ "There's no right side in any war," Kharn said. "Never has been. All that matters is fighting for whatever side you fight for honorably and well."​ ​ "So how did you pick a side?"​ ​ Kharn shrugged. "One side's the loyalists, the other's the traitors. And some of us are fighting for faith, now, but we never really needed a reason."​ ​ Numeon nodded. It was a foreign mindset to him, but so much about the World Eaters was.​ ​ "And I think...." The Eighth Captain frowned. "In the grip of the Nails, we follow the path of least resistance, in a certain sense. So many of us survived the assault on the dropsite because we spent our time chasing after fleeing Army troopers and wound up lost in the scrub, but alive instead of being blown up by the Titans. And you couldn't call anyone who did so a coward, unlike the Thirteenth Company. Though I get why Zekhoros dropped either way - didn't want to die in a boarding torpedo. I can't even blame him." He paused. "When the Nails have you in their grip, modified or not, you don't have a choice. Sometimes, even when they don't, you don't realize that you do."​ ​ "Erosion of responsibility," Numeon said. "That explains a lot." None of it was good, but then the Twelfth Legion did so often - their entire history was a tragic demonstration that even the Emperor had limits. At the same time, Numeon had to remind himself not to pity them too much. They were still Astartes, and quite possibly the strongest of all the Legions.​ ​ "You never answered my question," Kharn pointed out, as they walked past the rows of motionless bodies. "Which is Lhorke's question, really."​ ​ "The former Legion Master?"​ ​ "And current Dreadnought," Kharn said. "He was recently awoken, and is cantankerous about being at war with half the Legions."​ ​ "He's not - "​ ​ "He's loyal to the Legion," Kharn interrupted, answering Numeon's question before he could ask it.​ ​ The two Astartes turned left as they descended a stairway leading below the stasis field, shoes and bare feet floating above their heads. Numeon stroked his chin as he considered his answer. "I believe. In the end, that's not a logical reason. But I believe in the Emperor, and in His grand plan. And Horus's Coalition lacks that faith. They lack any faith - any dream, except for the one of Imperial Truth that its architect has dismissed. Their goal is a contradiction."​ ​ "A Warmaster fighting for 'freedom'," Kharn said. "It's almost funny. I suppose their hypocrisy will suffice, for Lhorke."​ ​ Numeon shrugged, as they walked on in companionable silence. Above, arches stretched across the ceiling. This complex was utilitarian, but with so many Salamanders locked into a fort for a month (as the rest of the planet was under tenuous Ultramarine control, the Imperials having rapidly repeated after being repulsed at the dropsite) carvings were growing like vines across its walls and other surfaces. They were still artisans, whatever else they had become.​ ​ The World Eaters spent their free time in pit fights. Of course the Salamanders did too, but they had other pursuits as well.​ ​ As Numeon came up to the great doors of his destination, he gave a look to his companion. "My Primarch summoned me," he said. "Though he is unlikely to be angry at seeing you as well."​ ​ "I'll stay and watch then," Kharn said.​ ​ Numeon nodded acknowledgement and knocked on the door, the clangs echoing in the distance.​ ​ "Enter," Vulkan said from within, his voice deep and echoing, and perhaps a touch mournful.​ ​ Numeon stepped forward into his father's darkened sanctum, lit only by the seven dim braziers that surrounded the Primarch, carefully, with Kharn remaining outside the door. The chamber was unbearably hot, even moreso than usual. The floor was carved in stone and covered in trails of sand.​ ​ "Sand," Kharn was muttering. "Damned sand. The joints can go years without maintenance, but drop a few grains deep enough...."​ ​ (The correct resolution to this issue was to _not_ go years without armor maintenance.)​ ​ The designs were varied, and Numeon could feel the spiritual power of those carvings and paths. The ground seemed to hum with them. At times, he had stood in this room with his Primarch and the rest of the Pyre Guard, chanting litanies to turn Nuceria against their foes. Its fury, and the fury of the gods, were turned against the Ultramarines. The ground exploded into lava, or simply crumbled beneath their feet; great swarms of insects assaulted them, to inject disease into their veins or to clog the intakes of their engines. The rituals safeguarded the Salamanders' position, the disruption giving the Imperials the time they needed to finish their plans for the world, yet they could only be done so often. Even the endurance of the Pyre Guard had its limit, and the toll that the rituals took, both physical and mental, was not easy to bear.​ ​ As he stepped gingerly over the sand, as well as the occasional design in glass or bone, Numeon felt his armor systems switch to cooling. He wanted to put his helmet on, to seal himself off, but of course he endured. He was a Salamander.​ ​ Before him, the bulk of the Lord of Drakes emerged, onyx skin covered in glistening brands of victories past. Maragara was not on there, nor Chogoris. Numeon did not know if Nuceria would be. Around him, the complex geometry of the diagram stretched in rings and heptagons and arrows, but in Vulkan's immediate vicinity there was only the steam and the smoke.​ ​ "Artellus," Vulkan said. "And I see Kharn is waiting outside."​ ​ He turned to face Numeon. His face, black as if the radiation had physically charred it, was the face of a smith, an artisan, a father. It was also the face of a warrior, a guardian, and a monster. Vulkan's red eyes were no longer clouded, as they had been between Maragara and Chogoris; they shone like stars in the night.​ ​ Numeon welcomed that, for there were no stars in the Nucerian night anymore, and he strangely missed them.​ ​ "Father," he said, kneeling.​ ​ "Rise," Vulkan said. "I only meant to speak to you briefly. To you, and you alone."​ ​ "Apologies," Kharn said, and bowed before leaving. The great doors, or perhaps more accurately gates, gradually swung shut, leaving only the braziers and Vulkan's eyes glowing in the darkness.​ ​ "You're off-balance," Vulkan said. "No, don't deny it - you're disturbed, by our course. As I am."​ ​ "It reminds me of the dusk-wraiths," Numeon admitted after a pause. "But I have faith in you and the Emperor that our purpose is just."​ ​ There was a longer pause at that.​ ​ "It is easier to have faith, perhaps," Vulkan said, "than to deserve it.... Angron described our purpose here as getting the Emperor out of our hair. Perhaps there is something to that."​ ​ "You doubt," Numeon guessed.​ ​ "Horus doubts, and doubts enough to rise in revolt," Vulkan said. "But no, I do not doubt our purpose. Nor do I doubt Nurgle. He does not represent the Circle of Fire - he _is_ the Circle of Fire, every good and every bad aspect of it. To doubt him would be like doubting a volcano."​ ​ Numeon stayed silent.​ ​ "I doubt my father," Vulkan eventually said. "That is the dark truth, Numeon. I am sure that the Emperor started off on this path for righteous reasons. But he has been sacrificing pieces of himself as he advances along it, and I am no longer sure he even trusts himself. He has damned himself for humanity's sake. And with the toll it has taken even on him, I do not know whether even I am strong enough."​ ​ "The Emperor is going mad?" Numeon did not know what to say. Vulkan surely did not truly believe Horus and the renegades, else he would not be continuing this ritual, but this felt eerily like hearing one object of faith speak of heresy to another. Numeon felt the tension between his two hearts.​ ​ "Not in the sense you think of," Vulkan said. "But he has become erratic, and he knows it. He claims becoming a god will stabilize him, but I don't think he is sure." So it was as when Vulkan bore the hammer Ferrus'd forged. Or, perhaps, as a metastable state during a reaction. There was only one answer, either way.​ ​ "We just have to have faith, then," Numeon said.​ ​ Another pause. "I suppose we do," Vulkan said, bowing his head. "I did not mean to make you my confessor, Numeon. I apologize for this candor. But since you believe so truly... I have a gift for you, as it happens."​ ​ "My lord?"​ ​ Vulkan pressed into his hand a blade - a shard of flint, simple and not especially sharp, with a delicately worked golden hilt. The blade itself looked like little more than a savage's tool, to be frank, but Numeon knew appearances could deceive in these things.​ ​ "Erebus of the Word Bearers found the blade," he said, "and Lorgar broke it in half lengthwise, creating two lesser athames. The hilt is mine, and the partner weapon belongs to one of my brothers - Lorgar did not say which, but I suspect it is the Lion, as a matter of balance."​ ​ "What does it do?"​ ​ "It cuts things." Vulkan gave a faint smile. "But it cuts in the spiritual realm as well as the physical, connecting the disconnected even as it disconnects the connected, a reversal of bridges of sorts. It can be used, for example, to cut a path through the Warp, from one world to another."​ ​ Numeon took his Primarch's words in silently.​ ​ "It is not the easiest tool to use," Vulkan said, "but I still believe it is better for it to be in hands other than my own. For this athame may yet become the Legion's only escape from Nuceria."​


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## Lunar (Jul 7, 2017)

I will rather prefer you write and complete this saga by yourself. As you should have known, your writing quality is...let's be honest, a strike above other co-writers. It is almost as if I read different work, so much so it losses internal consistency.


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

Lunar said:


> I will rather prefer you write and complete this saga by yourself. As you should have known, your writing quality is...let's be honest, a strike above other co-writers. It is almost as if I read different work, so much so it losses internal consistency.


Short answer: not happening.

Long answer: no. Firstly, the saga - the seed idea, the setup, the initial incidents - all of those are not mine. To take over it entirely would be less than polite, and to give the full credit to me misleading. But more importantly, I _can't_ possibly finish this myself. The structure is set up for multiple authors. Not just in the sense of there being too much for one person to do (there isn't - the series will probably be complete at ~50 installments, times 40K words, is 2M, which is a huge amount but not completely impossible), but in the sense that Renegades' idea density, which is a core stylistic element of the series, is as high as it is precisely because of authors playing off each other. It needs to be more than one person - really, it needs to be more than two.

I'm glad that you enjoy my writing - really, I am - and thank you for the praise. And it's a fair point that I should be working on more of my own projects - there's two fics I have in the early stages right now, but neither is 40K; then there's Heresy Apatite and Phoenix Imperium, one of which I want to start for NaNoWriMo this year and the other before that, plus original story ideas, but time constraints... I have too many story seeds for my own good, to be honest. But Renegades is not in the same category as all of that.


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER SEVEN​ ​ Bolter shots split the windy night of the small mining town called Meteres Heights. A Salamander strike force, led by one of the Pyre Guard, had come to the village in order to capture its people as human sacrifices for the Imperial forces' dark rituals. Their green armor shone in the storm that was the sky, seeming to reflect screaming faces. The town's stone walls, hastily erected, had been rammed straight through, sending the gun emplacements on them tumbling down.​ ​ Yet Klord Empion had known they would come here, and so the Salamanders' raid was not unopposed.​ ​ Three companies of Ultramarines - not three full companies, but the main part of them. They had followed Empion to one of the few remaining villages in the vicinity of the Ghanun desert, and with the locals' aid had established a trap.​ ​ Empion felt ashamed, in truth, talking to those civilians. So many of them were slaves, some of those half-lobotomized with implants to enhance focus and pliability. Not most - the implants were for potential troublemakers only, for their casualty rates were simply too high. Above them, the common miners were ever fearful of falling into slavery, and so they were brutal overseers. There was no one in Meteres Heights that was not poor - even without the threat of raids, there never had been.​ ​ This was a world of the Imperium, and had been a world of the Imperium at the height of the Crusade. Yet many of Meteres Heights' people did not even know the Imperium existed.​ ​ Well. Had not known. They knew now.​ ​ Bolter shells split the night, the surrounded Salamanders - perhaps a hundred of them - refusing to even attempt retreat. Their Terminator-armored leader, marked by a massive horn protruding from the back of his armor - Skatar'var, Empion read in a glimpse - yelled at them to hold, joining his voice to the cacophony of battle and his flamer to the stream of fire the Salamanders were putting down.​ ​ "Practical:" Empion said, putting down his magnoculars, "I'll take the Pyre Guard. We need to make this quick for the plan to work."​ ​ "Practical: I'd recommend that you take your honour guard along for that, Chapter Master."​ ​ Phrost's words made Empion frown. Not the reminder to tilt the scales - for he was right that this was no time for suicidal heroism - but at the form of address, and at the reminder that served as.​ ​ What was he Chapter Master of, with their Primarch gone? The psyker child, Gilloa, claimed that Guilliman lived. None of them wanted to doubt her. But command was fragmented. Of course there were theoreticals for this contingency, but the practical was that Odinathus was not quite capable of carrying them out, but close enough to that capability as to stubbornly forge ahead with the theoretical. The end result was that the seven active Chapter Masters (Aronion having received serious injuries in the campaign's first battle, and removed himself from command for the time being) were engaged in a constant debate about the speed with which the campaign should proceed. Radorakius advocated for an immediate massive assault, while Odinathus led those who preferred a war of attrition.​ ​ The Ultramarines were, by their standards at least, paralyzed with indecision. The theoreticals had proven lacking, and the practicals were held back by the hammer blow to morale that losing Guilliman had been. And, therefore, Empion had developed a daring theoretical and acquired Antoli's support for it.​ ​ All that remained was to, despite everything, execute it.​ ​ Empion called his command squad to him and checked his weapons one last time. Of the ten, Aerent was absent - a wound suffered during the explosion at Keir had festered, in a fashion that should've been impossible for an Astarte. The Apothecaries and Librarians had successfully saved his life, but the bionic had not yet set. His place was, for this mission alone, taken by Codicier Thorastus.​ ​ Estinus nodded to signal readiness, the Terminator armor giving it an impression of sageness that Estinus's personality didn't exactly justify, in the practical.​ ​ "We march for Macragge!" Empion said into the vox, and they took off, at a speed that, in the practical, was very far from a march. On every side of the surrounded Salamanders, Ultramarine squads did likewise.​ ​ The hab-blocks grunted under their weight, and despite Empion's best efforts in a few places plaster crumbled, but the jump-packs held. A dozen blue daggers struck at the Salamander encampment from every angle, and at the end of the last roof, Empion jumped over the edge and into the fray as the thirteenth.​ ​ The hulking Salamanders reacted quickly, of course. Empion swung his thunder hammer even as he landed, neatly decapitating the first of them by knocking away helmet and skull without damaging the body armor, but another was already bringing up his flamer at him. But Estinus was already slamming his chainsword into the Salamander's arm, revving it up and dropping the flamer onto the ground. It fell with a slight thud, but seemingly intact.​ ​ That was good. All according to theoretical.​ ​ Jussyd rammed aside another Salamander, emptying his bolter into the helmet. Empion was already charging ahead, Estinus at his side and laughing under his helmet, Thorastus lagging a bit behind as per theoretical - but Empion was only dimly aware of that from peripheral vision of his retinal display as he ran towards the leader, Skatar'var, who was even now yelling out orders. For a moment Skatar'var's head turned, and he locked lenses with Empion.​ ​ And the Pyre Guard yelled a challenge, one that could have been aimed at any of the warriors around him but that Empion knew targeted him.​ ​ He rushed forward, up the slight incline, and the Salamanders parted before him - some willingly, some due to being knocked down by his weapon. Skatar'var charged downhill to face him. Shells glanced off his armor, just as they glanced off Empion's. Both ignored them. All the same, this was a battle and not an honor duel, and so Skatar'var's companions were at his side, as Estinus and Rostasthex were at Empion's.​ ​ The Salamander swung his power maul at Empion, the seemingly graceless arc nearly taking the Ultramarine's head off. But Empion had ducked in time, swinging his hammer forward past Skatar'var's shield, forcing the Salamander into a desperate block as he swung the maul at Estinus. Estinus took the blow, crumpling but - according to the retinal display - quite alive.​ ​ Empion used the moment to weave sideways, dancing out of the Pyre Guard's way and striking down one of the other Salamanders, whose shoulder pauldron had been cracked by bolter fire, in the same movement. He shifted again, his pack knocking with that of one of his brothers, as Skatar'var's return blow was blocked by the Salamander corpse.​ ​ Around them, the din of battle was dying down. The remaining Salamanders were killed carefully, the Ultramarines trying to cut open their armor in a way that did not destroy it. They wouldn't have much time for the turnaround.​ ​ Empion dodged the maul again, striking again, this time scoring a glancing hit. The movement had left him a touch overextended, but the Pyre Guard winced with a blow to his leg - Estinus's work, due to a thrown knife - and could not take advantage of it. An instant later, having recovered, he swung his weapon in a wild sweep, collecting Ultramarines and Salamanders alike onto it in the mighty strike - but leaving himself open to Empion's shortsword digging into the crack his earlier hit had created in Skatar'var's armor, and the maul flew out of his hands as the Salamander fell, his helmet rolling away and clinking to a stop.​ ​ "Leodrakk...." the Astarte croaked out, before an Ultramarine sergeant Empion didn't know, with a helm marked red for censure, drove a powersword into the Salamander's exposed throat.​ ​ There was a heatbeat of uncertainty as the Chapter Master awaited the next enemy, and then Empion realized he could hear his own heartbeat. The plaza stank - stank so badly that he could smell it even in his helmet - but it was not ringing.​ ​ Every Salamander in Meteres Heights was dead.​ ​ "Thanks for the assist," Empion said, "Sergeant...."​ ​ "Aeonid Thiel," the sergeant said, "and you could've finished him off yourself, Chapter Master. I just thought it was best not to let him talk."​ ​ Empion shrugged - in the theoretical Thiel was certainly right, with both statements. "You're with the 135th?"​ ​ Thiel nodded. "Captain Taerone has command, but he won't be on the recon mission. My squad is due to be."​ ​ Empion looked the sergeant over. He didn't look to be a scout, but this wasn't really a scouting mission, and he trusted Antoli and Taerone to have picked someone fitting the mission. That being said.... "If I may ask about the helmet?"​ ​ "For running theoreticals about reconquering Ultramar if it fell."​ ​ Empion inclined his head in question - that did not sound like something that deserved censure.​ ​ "If the Ultramarines in it turned," Thiel clarified.​ ​ Empion nodded. On the one hand, such a theoretical was hardly good for morale, and Gage was not one to return to the Emperor's side; on the other, Thiel was correct in that they would yet have to fight brothers as well as cousins, for some Ultramarines _had_ gone back to Terra. Deserving of censure, but also a sign of the creativity Empion needed. And, naturally, a source of plausible deniability for Sharad Antoli regarding his involvement in this operation, should it go poorly.​ ​ "Well met in any case, brother," Empion said, shaking Thiel's hand. "Now, as to those helmets...."​ ​ He walked around the field, looking over the dead. Most of them, fortunately, were Salamanders. A few seemed slightly rotten already, and those were immediately tossed out. Protocol was slightly unclear on what to do with them, except for applying sufficiently corrosive acids to destroy every trace of the bodies. Fire, which had been the theoretical for Word Bearer corpses in similar cases, did not work.​ ​ "Roughly thirty suits," Thorastus reported, "that are both intact and untainted."​ ​ Empion nodded, and set about collecting those suits that the Librarians pointed out. Techmarines were already at work to mask the damage, aiming to make the armor damage seem nonfatal.​ ​ The ruse wouldn't hold for long, but hopefully it would hold for long enough.​ ​ "You'll take the Pyre Guard's, I'm assuming," Phrost said as he came up to Empion.​ ​ "It's one of the pure ones?" Empion frowned, considering it. "Yes, I suppose that's sensible." He had limited practical experience with Terminator armor, but he had some, and since Skatar'var had been the leader it would preserve group dynamics to have him take that suit. "It's sized for someone half again my breadth, though."​ ​ "I'll ride on your back," came a little girl's voice.​ ​ Phrost turned with a long-suffering sigh, which Empion barely prevented himself from copying. Gilloa was an asset, and - like most psykers - wise beyond her years, but she was also a nine-year-old child, and sometimes that showed.​ ​ "Gilloa," Phrost said, "that's a terrible idea."​ ​ "I need to be there," she said. "I have to be concealed in some way."​ ​ "We'll hide you in the speeder," Empion proposed. "Their scanners would pick you up, but you said you can block them."​ ​ Gilloa pouted a little, but nodded. "That should work. But I'll need to get out...."​ ​ "A random girl stowed away on our speeder, probably looking for adventure or some such nonsense," Empion growled, "and I apologize for the oversight, but after the disaster that this raid was and barely getting out... with three-quarters of my men killed... we weren't exactly looking for stowaways."​ ​ "About that," Phrost said. "I understand why she needs to come, but my lord, _you_ are a different matter."​ ​ "She said I need to lead the mission."​ ​ Phrost looked down at the girl. "Empion, I trust her, but not _that_ far."​ ​ "I...."​ ​ Phrost was right, of course, in the theoretical. Gilloa seemed to be on their side, but there was no reason to fully believe her, and the Librarians' prophecies - while seeming to support Gilloa's point - were vague. And if prophecy was ignored, sending someone as highly ranked as Empion on this mission was far more risk than theoreticals advised.​ ​ But.​ ​ "The practical, Phrost," Empion said eventually, taking off his helmet and briefly glancing at the deranged sky, "is that I have to see this through. And in the worst-case theoretical, my death might at least serve to wake Odinathus up."​ ​ He took off his armor piece by piece, before allowing Phrost to help him into Skatar'var's Terminator plate. It was uncomfortable, as predicted, but the compensation systems helped him stay upright. Phrost handed him the Cornucopia of Katha, and with some hesitation Empion took it - the Librarians were still unsure of its purpose, but Guilliman had told him to keep it, and so he would. With Estinus injured, it was Rostasthex who stood next to Empion, picking up the plate of one of Skatar'var's companions - Vanzytar, if Estinus was deciphering the armor correctly.​ ​ The sergeants picked up armor of their own, Thiel and Reonaxan (94th Company), as well as their squads. Thorastus and two other Librarians were coming along as well, with two Techmarines. All of their movements were practiced, efficient, in a manner that Empion appreciated. It took only minutes for them to crowd into the repainted Ultramarine speeders - the Salamanders' actual speeders had been downed in the crossfire, and would not fly anywhere anytime soon.​ ​ And then ignition, and they were flying northward, first slowly along the downhill road and then, at supersonic speeds, across the flats of the Ghanun desert.​ ​ Empion was going behind enemy lines with a few dozen chosen battle-brothers, in a desperate but carefully planned mission to change the course of a conflict. The memories that dredged up were decades old - as a Scout, and as a Sergeant, he had done so often. As a Captain or Chapter Master, he fought on the front lines only rarely. Empion didn't exactly miss that past, but there was a certain romantic appeal in this recurrence. The importance of the mission had grown, to a point where it was entirely reasonable for a Chapter Master to be planning it, but... well, it was important not to forget past practicals.​ ​ The wind scourged the surface of Empion's stolen armor, the sand it picked up gouging out shallow eddies in the surface - not enough to be relevant in combat, but enough to paint interesting designs, Empion even needing to check with Thorastus and Epistolary Vezultyl to ensure it was not some sort of psychic test. The desert stretched out, nearly featureless except for a few forward forts that were too widely spaced to completely block the Salamanders' passage. The reason for this was simple, and evidenced by the ruins of several more half-built defenses in the spots in between.​ ​ The Twelfth and Eighteenth would do everything in their power to prevent an Ultramarine victory.​ ​ Not that this was a surprise. ​ ​ The sands, yellow-white in principle but lit by a night that was pink and green and colors not of the rainbow, stretched before them. The madness of the sky reigned above. In between, a narrow horizon, and the great fortress that the Salamanders had constructed with unusual speed (Empion was increasingly doubtful that the World Eaters had been involved in that construction) - even from here Empion imagined he could feel its oppressive taint. It was gold and green and blue and white, shining, its towers being artfully arranged. Even where shells had written destruction into the fabric, somehow the Salamanders had managed to make that look intentional, like an ancient time-worn relic. The bastions wore those scars with pride. And yet, for all its beauty, for all that any individual piece could inspire admiration, taken as a whole the seven wings of the fortress made a different impression entirely. The narrow windows, the massive cannons, those could be justified as merely expediency, a concession to function over form... but they came together as more than that.​ ​ Empion wasn't sure how to describe that, but when Thiel pointed out the Librarians' discomfort, he knew it wasn't just in his own mind.​ ​ "They're creating something terrible," he said quietly. "And vast...."​ ​ Out of the very center of the star fort, a beam of golden light was being emitted upwards, slicing into the storm above, scattered by suspended sand grains to light the night. The same beacon as at Desh'ea, effortlessly piercing thousands of kilometers of rock and metal to emerge on Nuceria's other side.​ ​ Before Reonaxan could reply with the inevitable cutting remark, Empion's - or, rather, Skatar'var's - vox flickered to life.​ ​ "...Skar!" the voice said. "I had feared you wouldn't come back!"​ ​ "Most of us didn't," Empion said, with the metallic voice of his armor. "The Ultramarines were ready for us."​ ​ "Bastards," the voice on the other side of the link - Artellus Numeon, Empion read, the name of the Pyre Guard's leader - said. "I should have known.... I'll meet you at the south-southeastern gate."​ ​ Empion voiced approval and cut the link, then relayed the information to his men. The speeders continued to slice through the night air, sending up clouds of dust behind them as they passed between two Ultramarine forts, getting a few long-range shots. None hit, though one artillery shell impacted close enough to knock the slightly nauseous Thorastus off his feet.​ ​ "I'm fine," he said, waving his hand. "Maintaining the cloaking, without a psychic hood, is... not easy."​ ​ They pulled up at the gates without incident, Empion stepping off first, followed by Thiel, straight onto the parapet. The wall below descended ten meters past the desert's natural level, having been dug downwards for pragmatic purposes.​ ​ A Terminator-armored warrior stood before the speeder, his drake-hide mantle fluttering in the wind the speeders were kicking up, somehow undamaged by the sandstorms. He wore no helmet, his shaved head void-black with red flames for eyes. His open expression radiated some combination of concern, relief, and frustrated vindication.
​ "Skatar'var!" Artellus Numeon said, walking forward to embrace Empion, who slightly uncomfortably returned the hug. "What happened? Let me look upon your face, brother - "​ ​ Empion pushed his knife in even as the Pyre Guard said the last word, Thiel doing the same to Numeon's companion.​ ​ Numeon toppled before Empion could catch him, but the blade had struck true, and the Salamanders' First Captain fell from the wall, leaving a streak of blood along it, silently. Any screams from the other Salamander had been silenced because Thiel had choked him before decapitating.​ ​ "That'll buy us two minutes at most," Reonaxan said, stepping up beside Empion and Thiel. Gilloa was out of the speeder as well, but Empion didn't have time to consider the implications of that. "The way in?"​ ​ Thiel simply pushed on the door.​ ​ It swung open.​ ​ They passed along a lengthy hallway, focusing on speed over silence. A few seconds in it became a catwalk, and then, as they neared the center of the complex and heard the first alarm sound, Empion gasped. They had emerged onto a ledge overlooking what was presumably the fortress's grand hall, and in it-​ ​ Before and below them, arrayed in vast and orderly rows, were people. Men and women and children, slaves and freemen, all of them in the thousands, likely every soul that the Salamanders had captured in their raids. They stood, even hovered, without even the slightest motion, and Empion could see the telltale refraction of a stasis field above their ranks.​ ​ And in a separate position, but also presumably in a stasis field, at the head of those mummified ranks, hung the cobalt-blue armor and unconscious body of Empion's Primarch, the Cannon of Premioi still clenched in his right hand, colors dulled by the field.​ ​ "That...."​ ​ "Is what we came here for," Thiel gathered the will to say. "All Librarians exhausted from the taint, we need to lower the field... but to even get there...."​ ​ "No," Empion realized. "We need to lower _both_ fields."​ ​ "Cause chaos," Thiel said, understanding. "The civilians will mostly die, but they're dead already. But how - "​ ​ Gilloa came up beside Empion and locked eyes with the Chapter Master.​ ​ "Be ready," she said.​ ​ Before Empion could ask for what, she raised her hand and clenched her fist.​ ​ And in an instant, both stasis fields fell.​ ​ The next instant, as Empion took the first step in his sprint for the Primarch, was when the screams started.​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER EIGHT​ ​ The screaming alarms signaled intruders, Ehung Zekhoros had realized the moment they woke him from dreams of blood and skulls. But he had not reacted, given the distance to those alarms, except to call his company together. The Salamanders could seal the breach, if by some chance the alarm hadn't been a false positive.​ ​ The screaming alarms signaled intruders. The screaming people, however, signaled that something was very wrong.​ ​ The remnants of his Company came to him slowly. A third of his men had chosen the suicidal boarding attempt against the _Perfect Honour_. The rest, ostracized by the Legion upon arrival for their choice not to, had charged the front lines of the Ultramarines at the dropsite first, raging to redeem themselves and throwing themselves headlong into the chance to at least die meaningfully. Zekhoros was first among them, and he was not sure how he'd gotten out alive - the first thing he knew after the Nails had receded was standing in the center of a circle of dead Ultramarines, a kilometer away from the battle. Some of his brothers had been similarly lucky. Most had not.​ ​ As far as Zekhoros had been concerned, that should have wiped away any accusations of cowardice. Kharn agreed, and Zekhoros suspected that so did the rest of the Legion, in their hearts. But for any World Eater who wanted a target to vent their rage at, the Thirteenth Company was easy to blame - and being locked up in a fortress meant that most of the Legion had spite in abundance that had nowhere to go but the undeserving. And of all the undeserving, the Thirteenth was closest to being deserving.​ ​ So while the Thirteenth was no longer despised for losing the Conqueror, they still tended to get into more than their fair share of _sanguis extremis_ pit fights. Fortunately, this trend was petering out, mostly because they had also _won_ more than their fair share of _sanguis extremis_ pit fights. When a company lost four Astartes in five, the survivors tended to be hard to kill.​ ​ The previous night, Zekhoros had fought alongside Dranzytchon of the Salamanders' Pyre Guard, against two Astartes from Delvarus's Triarii, who somehow blamed him for losing the _Conqueror_. Given how easily he and Dranzytchon had won, Zekhoros suspected that those with genuine grudges against the Thirteenth Company were down to the dregs. (Alternatively, it could have just been that he was good, and Dranzytchon was better.)​ ​ Squads Limbeten, Zurvon, Unjasth. Squads Takena, Ainai, K'wex. Squads Redorey, Sakhai, Alimborushan. Squads Meryneitand, Orr, Ztenontex. Rampager Squad Breidan and Destroyer Squads Andelesot and Muil. Ancient Lofoporus, presently asleep. Apothecaries Kerenil and Dussadol. That was all that remained - in total, one hundred and sixty-two Astartes. In just one day, he had practically become a centurion instead of a captain.​ ​ It was still a force that could kill planets.​ ​ In Lofoporus' place, one Ancient did appear to walk with the Thirteenth Company, and Zekhoros gave a shallow bow to the war machine as it emerged.​ ​ "Legion Master. You're still awake?"​ ​ "Oddly," Lhorke said, his speakers set to low volume but still echoing, "I feel genuinely curious about how this campaign goes." He paused. "I awoke to find that half the Legions had rebelled against the Imperium, and what was stranger, that we were not among them. Angron is acting like a Primarch. And the stench of corruption hangs heavy over the entire Twelfth. Not to mention the ritual."​ ​ "More than half the Legions," Sergeant Takena put in. "It's ten to eight. Or nine and a half to eight and a half, if the Alphas really did split."​ ​ "Half," Lhorke said. "Ten, out of twenty. And from what I've heard, no one can tell what the Twentieth is doing anyway, except maybe their Primarch. Anyhow, that's why I'm in no hurry to sleep. Things are finally changing, and I want to see how it plays out. And if I do sleep, I'm not sure I'll wake up again this time."​ ​ "You're better-maintained than _that_," Zekhoros said with a frown.​ ​ "No," Lhorke said, "I mean that someone'll probably rip me out of - and this is what I'm talking about. What the hell is that."​ ​ As the Thirteenth Company emerged, at a jog, into the main hall, Zekhoros could not find an answer for the Dreadnought.​ ​ The middle of the chamber was still filled by a stasis field, but someone had evidently aimed to fix it by turning it off and back on, and Zekhoros's servo-arm twitched at the mess that resulted. The captured sacrifices were for the most part still within, but they had been caught in the middle of a stampede, their neat ranks having turned into a bloody mess. Among them were more than a few World Eaters along with some Salamanders, caught in the midst of attempting crude crowd control. Around this frozen centerpiece, perhaps a thousand humans who had escaped were trying to make their way out, being intercepted - mostly lethally - by Astartes.​ ​ And while his brothers and cousins were focused on keeping the sacrificial lambs corralled, Zekhoros saw that the other stasis field had also gone down.​ ​ "Where's Guilliman?!" he shouted into the vox, scanning the hall for a sign - no, of course he'd gotten out. Probably had been carried out by Ultramarine saboteurs.​ ​ The World Eaters wouldn't know. The Salamanders probably wouldn't either. As such, it was the tech-priests that Zekhoros tried to raise, failing three times. The Thirteenth Company stood back, firing a few stray bolter shells into the crowd when it became necessary but not wading in, mostly because of how obvious it was that wading in wouldn't help.​ ​ The aim was, in principle, to knock the baselines unconscious without killing them. Zekhoros estimated that this aim would be achieved for perhaps a quarter of them.​ ​ He felt the call of the Nails as he stood there. Not merely their song that he had known for decades, but the voices, the ones coming from the god called Khorne. They seemed to come from all sides, whispering of battle and of massacre, of the eternal need to kill. They had first come when the Emperor had modified the Nails, salving their curse; after Prospero they had receded, but now, with the storm above them, they returned. Some of his brothers worshiped the voices, an instinct Zekhoros did not quite understand. It was surprisingly unimpressive, to have a god whispering in one's ear.​ ​ The again, he'd had the call to battle squatting uninvited in his brain long before that call became divine.​ ​ "So," came a voice behind Zekhoros, a powerful yet strained one. "Have we found the Ultramarines yet?"​ ​ Zekhoros did not have to turn around. He could tell when his Primarch was present.​ ​ "Are we sure it's Ultramarines?" Muil asked.​ ​ Zekhoros just looked at his sergeant, trying to make it clear exactly how stupid that question was. Lhorke did the same. Somehow, despite the lack of facial features, he was successful.​ ​ Before Angron could say anything more, the fourth adept Zekhoros had tried to raise replied. It was Lebet-Nix, a scrymaster who had been attached to the Legion for three decades and whose loyalty to the Legion and the crew had outweighed his loyalty to the Mechanicum.​ ​ The same had been true of Legio Audax, but the Emperor had not trusted the Titans enough to send them on this mission. That, in retrospect, had been a mistake.​ ​ "The south-south-western gate," Lebet-Nix said. "We brought down their speeders - they're retreating on foot. Twenty-five Ultramarines in Salamander armor, and Guilliman."​ ​ Angron grinned, baring his teeth.​ ​ "A hunt it is," he said. Then, yelling out to the Legion: "I'm going to chase my so-called brother! Try and keep up!" He gave a slight chuckle at that, even as he took off in his loping gait.​ ​ "Speeders!" Zekhoros ordered. There was no way to keep up with Angron on foot, but he was not passing up this fight. The voices called to war, and the Thirteenth Company answered with the sound of boots on ceramite.​ ​ They grabbed a few speeders quickly enough, and set off in formation. Most of the trailing pack didn't. There was more than a thousand of them, some grabbing speeders and bikes, others moving out on foot. Someone had grabbed a Rhino, whose front was carved with a massive rune of Khorne. Every vehicle and suit of armor was, beneath the dust, white and blue. Vulkan, it seemed, had ordered his Legion to work on crowd control, entrusting the hunt to Angron - likely at Angron's own insistence.​ ​ They caught them a few kilometers from the fortress. It was far enough away that the guns couldn't block an extraction, and far enough away that the World Eaters had spread out. But Zekhoros and his company were there, their speeders trailing opposite those of the Forty-First Company, behind and to either side of the Primarch. Between their two unequal formations, twelve Terminator-armored Devourers struggled to keep up. They did surprisingly well - they were actually close enough to see their Primarch.​ ​ Ahead, Guilliman was ordering the green-armored Ultramarines (and... a little girl, since apparently Zekhoros was not just hearing voices because of the damned Warp Storm but hallucinating as well) to take up defensive positions. He pointed to the horizon, and Zekhoros followed his gaze to see approaching gunships, blue gunships, enough that they would block out the storm when they arrived.​ ​ They had minutes.​ ​ Angron, realizing this, leaped at Guilliman, and the Avenging Son swung his halberd-like weapon to block it, the horn at his belt seeming to follow the motion. The metal rang, and the rest of the field seemed to freeze for an instant as the Primarchs began their duel.​ ​ Zekhoros had seen his Primarch fight before, but never like this. Never against an enemy that could actually challenge him. There was no way to see the individual blows: Angron was everywhere, the Blackblade and Gorefather surrounding Guilliman from all sides. He beat on Guilliman like waves on a seashore, and like waves each blow was turned aside.​ ​ But - Guilliman was tired, not yet recovered from his imprisonment. With each blow his defense was being eroded away, a little bit of it washed off and carried back by the waves. It was not about whether Guilliman could win, but only whether he could hold out for long enough. His halberd flashed and fired, but Angron dodged every blow that struck true, and endured through the glancing ones.​ ​ "We shouldn't have left him that halberd," Zurvon said.​ ​ Before Zekhoros could reply, his seat lurched and he was tossed from the speeder, as it went down in a ball of flame, colliding with a speeder of the Twenty-Ninth in the process. Well, it was the pilot's own fault for trailing that closely behind.​ ​ He landed on his feet, setting off in a run at the Ultramarine line. The Nails sung, but he pressed them back. Losing himself here meant getting shot down by those gunships, which were far too close now. Squad Orr was mowed down around him (down, not deceased, though Zekhoros wasn't sure about Sergeant Orr himself, the totems on whose armor fell scattered across the sand), and it was Lhorke that tore into the Ultramarines alongside him. Zekhoros's armor was cracked in five places, at least, but as he revved all three chainswords he couldn't quite care.​ ​ The first Ultramarine went down easily, his blade only able to parry one of Zekhoros's three swords as the other two carved him up. The Nails sung, but Zekhoros still pressed them back as another Ultramarine came up. All of a sudden, Zekhoros found himself surrounded by fire, as if it really was the Eighteenth he was fighting. It was Lhorke that saved him, strafing the Ultramarine in question - Rostasthex, Zekhoros thought he could discern - and pushing the flamer stream skyward.​ ​ In his peripheral vision, the captain watched the Primarchs duel, in a silence that belied the storms raging behind both of their sets of eyes. Guilliman was being worn down quickly, until finally, a strike from Gorefather connected. As Zekhoros simultaneously struck through the last two Ultramarines on the barricade, and looked forward to the next one - as he watched Breidan's squad and their speeder impact against the next barricade, spilling out directly onto the Ultramarines - as the gunships' thunder became audible, still several minutes away - as Lhorke raised a fist in salute for the taken barricade - as all of that happened, Guilliman half-jumped, half-fell back, laying prone on the ground and screaming for Gilloa, whoever he was -​ ​ As that happened, Gorefather bore down on the Ultimate Warrior, Zekhoros realizing that Angron had never had any intent of taking Guilliman alive again, and the girl he was hallucinating ran to Guilliman's side, throwing out a bolt of invisible lightning (Zekhoros was not sure how he was seeing it in that hallucination, and he didn't know if he wanted to know) that incinerated Rampager Steosp on the spot -​ ​ As all of that happened, an Astarte in green Terminator armor, with a drake's horn protruding from his back, leapt in Gorefather's way and took, albeit glancingly, a blow meant for a Primarch.​ ​ The Ultramarine crumpled, instantaneously, but Angron hummed in appreciation of the courage. It was the briefest of openings, but that was the moment that Zekhoros surveyed the battle. The front two barricades had been overrun, while on the long rear one, green-armored Astartes were still holding out. A dozen speeders had been downed, which would be a major hassle to repair - but then, the Salamanders were here, maybe they'd be so kind as to do it for them. A mass of World Eaters was charging in a long tail pointing towards the fortress. And in the center of it all, Angron, looking down on the crumpled Astarte and at the prone Guilliman beyond that like the god of war he had been meant to be.​ ​ "Hnngh," he said. "The 'honor' may be nonsense, but I guess your sons do have courage after all."​ ​ That was the moment of the World Eaters' victory.​ ​ In the next moment, Guilliman brought the horn in his right hand and the halberd in his left into alignment with the girl who, apparently, was not a hallucination after all, and there was light.​ ​ Not golden light, as the beacon above their fortress; not the Warp-touched light of colors unknown. It was simply light, which would have been pure white had it possessed any color at all. It shone in a line from the halberd to the horn to the girl, and its path went through them, as a lance that pierced Angron's head.​ ​ The world seemed to freeze in a moment of stasis.​ ​ "You know nothing of honor, Angron," Guilliman calmly said, as if he was on parade instead of just having had the wind knocked out of him by one of his brothers. "Honor does not depend on birth - and our own births, I might note, are equally noble. We are the sons of the most powerful transhuman known to history. Fortune gave you less than me, but it gave you far more than the people that make up the vast bulk of our galaxy. Honor is the limits we set for ourselves, to be better than... than primordial hate. Than your god." He stared at Angron, holding the girl in place with his free arm; the Red Angel did not move. Zekhoros tried to, bringing up his gun even though it was like pushing through sludge. "Honor is not war. Honor is what we hold onto despite war. It is the opposite of the power you have embraced since the Nails were first hammered into your head. And yet as war breaks men, honor can yet break war. Such is the alignment. This taint of endings - _it ends now_."​ ​ And the ray of light became a blinding beacon that outshone both Vulkan's beacon and the storm above.​ ​ Zekhoros was faintly aware of the gunships landing, of a limping Guilliman carrying his Terminator-armored son in his arms, of the remaining dozen Ultramarines making their stoic retreat as artillery shells were lobbed in their vague direction (more as warning shots than anything else, for the gunners, he hoped, would not wish to hit Angron). He saw his Primarch on his knees, howling in impotent rage, and Lhorke alone running to his gene-father's side as a thousand and some World Eaters twitched on the ground. Captain Ehung Zekhoros was among them. The pain was like nothing he had ever felt, like half his head had been cut away. He felt something in his hands, and turning it around through the black spots in his vision, he realized what the spikes were.​ ​ It was the Nails. The Nails had been removed from his head. According to every experiment that had ever been run, death would come in three to four minutes, and unconsciousness in seconds.​ ​ "The sky...." he mumbled, knowing those were his last words, as he rolled onto his back, for it seemed the storm itself had recoiled from Guilliman's ritual; and then darkness claimed him.​ ​ When he awoke, still lying atop that barricade with Ultramarine corpses scattered around him, the blood-covered Nails still clutched in his hand, it was because the sun was directly overhead.​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER NINE​ ​ _One Terran month later_​ ​ Klord Empion swam into consciousness through a sea of pain.​ ​ He could not see, at first. For a few moments he was alone in the dark, before his senses reconnected. He was on the deck of the _Omega Unbowed_, Nucerian terrain speeding past a porthole.​ ​ It looked strangely distorted, most unlike what it had appeared as in life. Everything looked strange now, when compared to what he had seen with his own eyes. There would be a period of adjustment. He knew that, intellectually.​ ​ It was still strange, being dead.​ ​ Guilliman had offered him, for his heroism, the choice to die in truth. Some Astartes preferred that, preferred oblivion to a frozen life, and two years ago Empion had been among them. But he had refused that offer, for two reasons. One was that he knew he still had more to offer the Legion, and he could no longer consider giving it less than everything. The other was that, with recent revelations on the nature on the universe and the Word Bearers' claims specifically, he doubted that oblivion was actually possible.​ ​ And so his broken body had been placed in the sarcophagus of a Contemptor Dreadnought. He was compatible, physically and psychologically. So the tech... not tech-priests anymore, not in Imperium Secundus... the tech-adepts, anyhow, had claimed. At first he had feared they'd been wrong.​ ​ But while in orbit around Nuceria, the other Dreadnoughts were having nightmares as well.​ ​ "Hi, Empion," said a voice that the Dreadnought recognized.​ ​ Empion - he'd probably have everyone referring to him as Empionus in a few years, but if that happened that would mean he'd have survived a few more years, which he would consider a success - slowly lowered his angle to make the impression of glaring at the psyker girl.​ ​ "Gilloa. Did you wake me?"​ ​ His dubious attempts at intimidation, unsurprisingly, did not work. "You shouldn't be sleeping right now. It's not safe."​ ​ "Due to the storm?" All things considered, though the tech-adepts would have disagreed, she might well have been right.​ ​ "No," Gilloa said. "It's because of the battle that's going to happen today. The assault on Ghanun. And also, Guilliman is coming and he was going to wake you anyway."​ ​ That child was altogether too comfortable in the company she was having.​ ​ Then again, she was as terrifying as any of them.​ ​ "Chapter Master - ah." That was a new figure walking into the room. Blue armor, fitted with new insignia. Phrostus, Ninth Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. "Gilloa - "​ ​ "Phrostus," Empion said. "You are Chapter Master now. Not I."​ ​ "Yes, but...." Phrostus frowned. "It still feels wrong. The title is new, but I will adjust to gaining it. But you never did anything to lose it."​ ​ "How fares the Ninth?" Empion asked, changing the subject because he too felt strange about the previous one. He had never been one to obsess over promotions, but his being simultaneously one of the honored dead and still conscious was awkward in a number of ways.​ ​ "Well enough," Phrostus said, before taking a heavy breath. "The assault begins tomorrow."​ ​ "On the main fortress?" As Empion talked, he walked forward, taking a few thunderous steps to look out the porthole at Nuceria below. Unfortunately, at present the _Omega Unbowed _was on the opposite side of the planet to Ghanun; instead, slightly off-center, he saw the ruins of Desh'ea and the mountain of Fedan Mhor.
​ "The secondary fortress has been taken," Phrostus confirmed, "but theoretical artillery setup has not been achieved. However, there is no time in the practical. According to the vox traffic, the Imperials are due to begin their ritual in a Terran day, and we must break them before them."​ ​ Empion rumbled non-vocal assent. He had been told, already, that he would not be part of this final assault. His sarcophagus was simply not set, not yet. He nevertheless itched to go to war, to test the seismic hammer, storm bolter, and heavy conversion beamer built into his chassis, less because of a general bellicosity and more because of the desire to do _something_.​ ​ The peaceful future they had believed in had included a place, precarious as it was, for Astartes. Empion was not sure how much of a place it had for Dreadnoughts. Yet the issue was now academic. The paths of the Expeditionary Fleets had diverged, and then reconverged in a fashion that hopelessly scrambled them together, no longer parallel but anti-parallel. And some were angled - neither fully supporting Horus nor remaining loyal to the Emperor. In a sense, Imperium Secundus itself was... not orthogonal, far from it, but deviating.​ ​ But none of them were orthogonal to the Emperor. In the end, they were all either with him, or against him. That fanaticism allowed no other choice.​ ​ "What about you, Gilloa?" he asked.​ ​ "I don't know," Gilloa said. She paused. "Nuceria is wounded, severely so. But it is not dead yet."​ ​ "We won't let it die," Phrostus said firmly.​ ​ "No," Gilloa clarified, "it has to die, and die in the right way. My people can be saved, the planet can be saved, its technology can be saved. But the union of those three things needs to die. It almost certainly will, but if its existence is prolonged it will only bring a worse ending." Empion was not sure, as his cameras were not perfectly calibrated, but he thought that Gilloa, the nine-year-old that had seen her family and her entire city die before being thrown into a maelstrom of galactic war and rescuing a Primarch from another Primarch, all without flinching, _shivered_ at that possibility.​ ​ "Do you feel their suffering?" Empion asked, seeking clarification.​ ​ Gilloa walked to the porthole, Empion very carefully laying his hammer on her shoulder in such a way that she did not actually have to support any weight. "Yes, but that was always there. Nuceria is suffering less than before. It's only the storm."​ ​ The storm. They could only see Nuceria's surface as they looked nearly straight down. But Empion could imagine what lay outside their field of view.​ ​ Empion tried hard not to think about the nature of this madness, the mirages it summoned forth, for those were conjured as much by imagination as by the Warp. But even the strategic implications of summoning Warp Storms were cause for nightmare. If the Imperium had been able to bar the way of any ship it wished -​ ​ Though the Imperium was not able to do so. If they had been, the course of this war would have been carved entirely differently. No, whatever the World Eaters and Salamanders were doing here was unusual. It was, moreover, a ritual that they seemingly had not wanted interrupted.​ ​ Neither side wanted this war - the Imperials wanted to complete their ritual, and the Ultramarines to return to their domain, which they still had no word of. The irony of all this was not lost on Empion, even if the humor in that irony was.​ ​ The sound of footsteps shook Empion out of contemplation, and he carefully turned to see, for the first time with his augmetic senses, his Primarch.​ ​ Roboute Guilliman was armored for war. Intricately decorated power armor gave a sense of stark majesty even beyond that of his face, but the compulsion to kneel was no longer overwhelming. Empion's attention was instead drawn to the Cornucopia of Katha, still attached to the Primarch's waist.​ ​ "Empion, Phrostus," the Avenging Son said. "And Gilloa, whose handlers are searching for her even now."​ ​ "Let them," Gilloa said. "This is important, and I've wasted too much time on things that are not. Also, they try to make me sleep."​ ​ The Primarch frowned. "Just how much of a problem would that pose?"​ ​ "That depends on the amount. I've been napping some, because at some point I can't stay awake anymore even with the trances, but a full night risks me, and regular full nights would risk the fleet."​ ​ "I'll talk to Uneli." Guilliman shook his head. Empion could emphasize - during the Crusade, most psykers as powerful as Gilloa were found to be mad, and this was one of the reasons why. According to some protocols, Gilloa should have been mercifully executed.​ ​ In these times, no one had even brought up the idea, a reticence born of practicality as much as morality. They needed every ally they could get. The time for paranoia about purity was long gone, except where it had been proven justified.​ ​ "Anyhow," the Primarch continued, "you're not going to have to deal with this for much longer. Empion, the Mark of Ghanun is at minus eight hours. You will transfer to the _Perfect Honour_ and take command over the fleet from mark minus four hours."​ ​ "I am honored," Empion said. "You intend a full deployment on the surface?"​ ​ "Every able Ultramarine," Guilliman said.​ ​ "Understood. What of the Linearity?"​ ​ "Ah." Guilliman smiled. "I've finally figured the Cornucopia out. It does encourage growth of sufficiently simple organisms when correctly blown, so mainly a farming and terraforming aid with secondary utility as battlefield control, but the details... it's a magnificent piece of craftsmanship, if an intentionally opaque one. The Cannon is a weapon, and the third part is Gilloa, the sensor and the thermoregulator. The fourth and fifth... a nexus and a transport, I imagine."​ ​ "Gilloa?" Phrostus asked. "My lord, what do you mean by that?"​ ​ "He figured it out during the escape," Gilloa said glumly. "I am Gilloa of Nuceria, but I always knew I was not the first of the Line of Nuceria, that this Line predates humanity's presence on my world. And this makes perfect sense. We are part of the Linearity, a weapon crafted by some race forever ago." She gripped her knees. "I'm... I'm getting worse, aren't I? I'll need to sleep for a very long time when this is over."​ ​ "Not much longer," Guilliman said - kindly, but honestly.​ ​ "I'm not so far gone," Gilloa insisted. "So, when the Linearity is aligned, it aligns unreality to its rhythms."​ ​ "And taint is burned away," Empion guessed. He had heard the first part of the explanation before, but not the second. It was illuminating, and it gave him hope that whatever these things the Emperor had allied himself with were, they could yet be defeated.​ ​ It had been too easy to doubt that, with their enemies seeming to win even in defeat.​ ​ "More or less," Gilloa said. "Whorls straightened." She walked up to the very edge of the porthole, brushing her hand across the surface, tracing out the curve of the Edear mountain range up to the Narkha Plateau, and slightly off it, the great massif of Fedan Mhor. "It is a good thing, that the Linearity exists, that it is in just hands. It is just that... I do not know what to think about it. I do not know what to think of the knowledge that I was born as an engineered weapon."​ ​ Roboute Guilliman walked up to her, putting his gauntleted hand on her shoulder. Unlike Empion's attempt to do the same, it visibly calmed her, the orbital motion of the _Omega Unbowed_ slowly pushing her hand off Fedan Mhor westwards, into the coastal plain and the Perraila Sea.​ ​ "Neither do I, Gilloa," he said softly. "Even after two hundred years.... Neither do I."​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

INTERLUDE: VULKAN​ ​ War had come to the Ghanun desert, and it was just on time.​ ​ Vulkan, Primarch of the Salamanders, was still uneasy with viewing the world in a frame of reference that involved such concepts. War could be necessary or inevitable, but it had never been desirable. It was the outcome of a failed compliance negotiation, or else the defense against a xeno threat. In the former case it was tragic, in the latter, at the least, inconvenient.​ ​ But such was the way of the universe now. Humanity and his father both required him to be a being that could use war as a means for manipulation of the ether. Lorgar described it as playing a symphony. To Vulkan, whose youthful spirituality had been of a more practical bent, it was smith's work like any other, save that instead of metal it was the Immaterium he hammered into shape.​ ​ Warpcraft was a craft, in the end; and like any craft, it had tolerances. And the Ultramarines' attack, while not coming at the most fortuitous time, was comfortably within the tolerance of this ritual.​ ​ As he slipped his gauntlets on, he took a brief glance around. Varrun had arrived. Atanarius, Igataron, Dranzytchon, and Artellus Numeon, who had recovered from the injuries he had sustained the night of Guilliman's escape. A new Pyre Guard would yet be inducted to replace Skatar'var, but not until the campaign had been completed. Yet the sacrifices that escaped that day had not all been recaptured, and Ultramarine redeployments blocked further raids in brilliant designs that could only have been his brother's. To complete the ritual, Vulkan had been forced to redesign it.​ ​ "The barrage has begun, my lord," Varrun said. "Onto all walls simultaneously, aimed mainly at the third angles of each."​ ​ "The storm is coming," Vulkan accepted, walking up to clasp _Dawnbringer_. "Good."​ ​ "The west-northwest pocket," Numeon said. "It seems too lightly defended. I suspect the Ultramarines will know it for a trap."​ ​ "They will," Vulkan confirmed, "but they will spring it nevertheless. Carefully, at first, seeking to limit potential losses, but when we do not respond they will seek to exploit the gap. And they will, but the losses they take when we do close the trap will be enough to put out the beacon."​ ​ Grasping _Dawnbringer_ in his hands, Vulkan tried a few experimental swings before twirling the hammer one-handed. That was a substantial exertion, even for him, with his armor powered off. He could feel his own heartbeat, intermingled with the heartbeat of the world below him. It was not a literal quake, but a swaying in rhythm with the storm above.​ ​ The beacon that Angron had lit in Desh'ea by the power of Khorne and death would be put out in Ghanun by the power of Nurgle and life, and in the resonance in between enough power would be generated to begin the Emperor's ascension, with the favor of two of the Warp Gods. It would be Fulgrim and the Lion who would complete the ritual, likely on Caliban or Cadia, by lighting and putting out a second beacon for the other two and concluding their father's apotheosis. For now, the beacon passed through the planet's very center, and all Nuceria was suffused with its energy.​ ​ This ritual was necessary. It was also dubious. What would come after the Emperor's ascension was not an alluring topic to broach. But Vulkan had made his oaths, and besides, what would come without that ascension would be even worse.​ ​ And above all, his father had saved his life and his mind, after his failure on Chogoris. Vulkan had to repay as much of that as he could.​ ​ "Come," he told his Pyre Guard without looking back, and walked to war.​ ​ The command center was located above the fortress's center, a ring that surrounded the great beacon. The modules were manned by the few loyal tech-priests present, or else by Salamanders. One was taken by Captain Zekhoros of the World Eaters.​ ​ Somewhat surprisingly, Angron was there. Even more surprisingly, so were the Devourers, though the Primarch paid them as little attention as usual.​ ​ "Brother," Vulkan said.​ ​ "Brother," Angron answered. "They're coming. At long last, they're coming."​ ​ Vulkan took a moment to look over his brother. After Guilliman's ritual, whatever it had been, had ripped the Nails from the Primarch and a thousand of his sons -​ ​ He did not look completely healed. The skin was still pale, the eyes still yellow. The Nails had been removed, but the damage they had done was still there. A quarter of the affected World Eaters had never woken up after the attack, and if not for the modification to the Nails, Vulkan doubted that one in ten would have survived. Whatever sorcery Guilliman had delved into to support his rebellion, it was undoubtedly mighty. Even after the Emperor's changes, the Nails should have been impossible to remove.​ ​ Some of the World Eaters had spoken of hammering them back in. But Angron had forbidden it.​ ​ For if he still bore his scars, then it was because he'd at long last stemmed their bleeding. His sunken eyes darted with a newfound curiosity, and his movements had a newfound elegance to them, that of a hunter - not quite a feline grace, perhaps, but the ursine kind at least. And he stood not as a broken slave that wished to be dead, not as a wounded soul whose greatness was in equal parts glory enduring and glory lost, but as a proud Primarch, a son of their divine father, a general that could not merely break worlds but forge them. Alone of all of them, Angron of the Red Sands had not lost himself in this war, but rather been made whole.​ ​ And yet, in his eyes, Vulkan could read the same doubt he saw in mirrors.​ ​ "They are," Vulkan acknowledged. "We have fifteen minutes, if they keep to their theoreticals. Which they won't."​ ​ "I look forward to it," Angron admitted. "Even without the Nails, I still look forward to it. If nothing else, to avenge my defeat."​ ​ "You may not have the chance to duel him," Vulkan warned.​ ​ "I am aware," Angron said, glaring at him. "You plan to break him by sorcery. But I tell you, it's not so easy to break a Primarch by sorcery. Magnus tried that against me."​ ​ And Guilliman had succeeded, Vulkan silently noted. Though he was not wrong, but.... "It is not a psychic attack, Angron. It's a psychic... distraction, in effect."​ ​ He walked to the edge of the command center, and looked westward, at a sky aflame with Ultramarine munitions and behind that with the raw potential of the Warp. At sand millions of years old, untouched, holding the broken ruins of civilizations that predated humanity itself; at Mount Keghil bridging that sand and that sky, crumbling, the last memorial of a dead hotspot, layers of increasingly desperate lava flows and ashfalls vanishing towards its summit. He felt the breathing of Nuceria below him, and the pulsing of fire through his veins in beat with the blood. Warp-fire, far beyond reality but still bound to him. It was approaching - the window of opportunity was opening.​ ​ His part in this ritual was the part of Nurgle. A god of perseverance and compassion and rebirth, but also of disease and decay and fear. A god, like every one of the Four, that was a force of nature rather than even a remotely human-like being. And among the things Nurgle was the god of was despair.​ ​ In the aftermath of the beacon being snuffed out, the power of Nurgle would permeate the fortress. And in that moment, if he poured that fluid power into a mold, if he could convey to Roboute Guilliman what was happening in the galaxy outside....​ ​ Then, a moment of despair would become an eternity, and Roboute Guilliman would either die or _understand_, as Vulkan had on Maragara.​ ​ This was the only way. It was not a good way, and indeed it was a terrible way; but humanity was lost in a terrible universe, and so they would all have to become monsters. Continents would shift and worlds would die, both literally and metaphorically - but the Salamanders would walk through hell itself if necessary, and emerge damned, but unbroken. And when this time of trials came to a close, Vulkan trusted - he had to, for there was no other way he could keep moving forward - that new growth would sprout from a galaxy's worth of ashes.​ ​ Outside, the barrage stopped, and the ground came alive with a new melody - the thunder of Titans.​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER TEN​ ​ The Titans led the way. Around them, columns of tanks and troop transports. Some of the artillery continued to fire, namely that part of it that could be certain to hit the walls and not the advancing Ultramarine columns.​ ​ Justinian Thexilev was not enormously fond of being locked in a Rhino - especially not when engaged in a war as ritualistic as this one. It felt restricting. Nevertheless, he was an Ultramarine, and the theoreticals made it clear enough how to approach this specific situation. They were not, no matter how it sometimes felt, the heroes of legend; they were the heroes of reality, and that generally meant following protocol.​ ​ Of course, against another of the Legions, it was always good to keep some surprises in store. That was not even a philosophical point; it was, if anything, a rather obvious theoretical. Whether or not one held to the Imperial Truth, whichever master or cause one fought for - it was a universal law of warfare that predictability was a losing strategy.​ ​ Which was to say, in the practical, that the Ultramarines had prepared surprises for their foe, as that foe no doubt had for them.​ ​ The citadel's walls had been built well, but even so they were crumbling under the barrage. There was no single, massive breach, but there were numerous weak points. It was to one of those, in the northwest protrusion of the fortress, that Thexilev's column now advanced.​ ​ The Salamanders had gathered to meet them, under a wall of guns that was backlit by that eternal golden beacon. Yet that fire was scattered. The Titans - two Reavers and five Warhounds in their column - buckled under the blows, but did not come close to toppling. The Rhinos, especially those near the front line, fared worse. One exploded in a small fireball, taking the Astartes inside with it.​ ​ Thexilev nodded, mentally honoring those brothers and knowing they would not be the last. They were fighting a cornered foe today. Their objective was nothing less than the extermination of every World Eater and Salamander on Nuceria. And with that, perhaps, the Warp Storm that raged above them would dissipate, and they could return to whatever was left of Ultramar. It could not have been destroyed, not yet. Not so quickly.​ ​ Unfortunately, though, Thexilev knew exactly how easily the impossible could become reality in this war.​ ​ The Titans slowed as they neared their walls, turning their guns on the enemy emplacements. Those broke, but not easily. The Titans' pace allowed some of the Rhinos to ride ahead, charging towards the wall in a mad dash to dispel their cargo.​ ​ Thexilev smiled in the knowledge of exactly what that cargo was.​ ​ The void shields were down - had been down, for a time - but the Salamanders built well. For all that the Eighteenth was not a siegemaster Legion, walls and roof alike had remained mostly intact despite the barrage. And now, the Salamanders stood on those walls, laying down a field of fire. Yet the Rhinos kept charging, because of course the theoretical of Salamanders using fire was well-known, and abundant insulation had been added to the transports' interior.​ ​ Still, eventually one went up. The explosion was brilliant, rattling the ground below, and the Salamanders switched to ballistic heavy weaponry as quickly as they could, because they realized that Rhino engines were not nearly that volatile, meaning that these were not piloted Rhinos, but rather explosive rams. Bombs, driven at the walls to craft a breach.​ ​ They were quick enough to down four more at a safe distance. But the remaining transports sacrificed themselves, slamming straight into the wall and going up in great bursts. Rock and metal and more complex composites caved, in avalanches that dragged green-armored Astartes out of the safety of their alcoves and into range of the Titans' strides. It was like a rockfall unearthing veins of green ore - a metaphor that the Salamanders would appreciate, Thexilev considered.​ ​ The Titans stepped on the Salamanders, grinding them beneath their feet, and laid down a curtain of fire in front of them before lifting it to fire over the walls at the roof in the citadel's center. As they did so, Thexilev received and belayed the vox order, and the second line of Rhinos opened to reveal their Astartes.​ ​ Four thousand Ultramarines charged. Modoleo, Damocles, and Cestus with their Companies remained in reserve. The Salamanders' defense was scattered, unable to keep up. Monaxi drove hardest, his ceremonial crest (pierced by two bolter shells) already visible at the top of the rocks as he directed his company from the height, a shieldwall ahead of him. Ventanus and Auguston led their companies up as well.​ ​ Thexilev called the Second to him. "Third breach from the edge," he ordered as he jumped out of the Rhino. Then it was the climb, fire washing down around the Ultramarines, though Thexilev was shielded from the worst of it by the bodies ahead of him.​ ​ The schematics were rough, but from the exterior of the citadel it was easy enough to work out likely chokepoints. Easy enough, too, to see that many of them would be useless due to the sheer number of breaches. Coordinating with Ventanus, who held the adjacent breach, Thexilev ordered Pezanzan and Onill to lead simultaneous teams on two levels, to link up with sergeants from the Fourth.​ ​ "This seems too easy," he voxed Ventanus.​ ​ "It's bloody work," Ventanus said. "Though you might be right."​ ​ Thexilev wasn't sure of the theoretical that made this a trap, though. They had the foothold, and while he ordered Ixiosph to remain near the breach and construct counter-barricades, it seemed almost too much caution. They were taking casualties, after all, albeit fewer than the defenders, and it wasn't usually a bad sign that everything was going according to theoretical.​ ​ Still, for the sake of completeness, he tried to check in with the other attack vectors. Not much came back. From what little he got, though, the Ninth and Tenth Chapters were finding progress substantially more difficult than they were.​ ​ "Theoretical:" he voxed to the other captains, "it's a trap."​ ​ "It's gone according to theoretical," Auguston protested.​ ​ "Exactly."​ ​ Auguston, of course, understood immediately. "But the most likely theoretical if this is a trap is that we should advance quickly, to break out."​ ​ "Agreed," Monaxi said, once the aggressive captain was out of the thick of it. "Alternative theoretical is that they're concentrating in the center, for ritual purposes."​ ​ Both of those were reasonable theoreticals that agreed with their current practical. But then, that was exactly why Thexilev remained suspicious.​ ​ He called up Modoleo regardless, now that the walls were silenced. And he ordered Ixiosph to lead the further advance, while he fortified the foothold they'd earned. He briefly helped with a barricade himself, before leading Squad Idospev up a staircase in shooting down sentry turrets from a distance. As he did so, he saw Pezanzan and Onill finally link up with the Fourth, as Ventanus's men cleared the outer point of the fortifications.​ ​ And as all that blew around Thexilev in a great gale, the traditional whirlwind of battle, the Ultramarines' Second Captain walked up to the wing's abandoned command center. It was well-armored enough that doing so posed no danger, but upon entering, Thexilev observed that it had already been disconnected.​ ​ Still, the visual at least was still available, a view of the top of the spoke leading centerward, the sound of bolter fire even now marking Monaxi's and Auguston's position along it. And at the end of it, kilometers away, a dome, and from it a golden knife slicing the heavens, and making them bleed with the foulness of the Warp.​ ​ And backlit by that knife, charging down a walkway from it, at the head of a green-armored column of Astartes and vehicles -​ ​ Thexilev shouted out a warning, but it was too late. Monaxi's and Auguston's companies would take the brunt of it. The Titans were coming up, they could respond, drive them back, and against almost any number of Astartes they could have held the line even without them.​ ​ But not against a Primarch.​ ​ Vulkan had always been physically largest of the Primarchs, but now he entirely dwarfed the Astartes behind him, less a warrior and more a war machine. His hammer seemed undersized for his crackling hands. Around him, the air seemed to spark with, presumably, his psychic power. Yet his onyx form and viridian armor also seemed protean, shifting to and fro like the Emperor or the Crimson King, in a matter most atypical of the most grounded Primarch.​ ​ Around him, psychic imprints swirled. To Thexilev, they seemed to etch scenes into the air. Faint images, of a sallow-faced man holding out on his hunger strike despite his captors' indifference, of a woman's face as she slowly realizes her lover has betrayed her and taken everything she had, of bioengineered faceless swarms causing worlds' worth of painful death. Thexilev did not look at them for long - he'd fought Chaos before, he knew procedure - but he still saw, before Vulkan's column descended under cover, as they screamed and stretched in rhythm with the blows of his hammer. Ultramarine bodies flew away, throwing up bursts of sand as they fell. Monaxi was the first, buying time for his company to retreat.​ ​ A shell exploded on the roof above Thexilev, but the ceiling held. He ignored it, focusing on voxing commands to Ixiosph. The barricades would hold for long enough - there would be a slaughter before them, but the Titans were already near. Ixiosph, and Auguston who had retreated into position, would hold. That was the theoretical - but practicals with a Primarch around were never certain. Thexilev took in a deep breath, waiting for the wedge of green to drive itself into the defensive line.​ ​ It never did. The Salamanders, as Thexilev learned from vox-traffic, focused on mopping up stranded squads. "They saw the Titans coming," Auguston hypothesized.​ ​ "They're hemmed in," Thexilev said. "They needed the breakthrough."​ ​ "They're trying _something_," Auguston said. His voice was sore. The runes indicated that half of the First Company had been lost within minutes, and more of the Third. The Second had fared better, but Thexilev still had to restrain himself as the reports came in. Naxigum and Onon's deaths, along with their entire squads, stung worst.​ ​ What had they died for? Thexilev strained at the schematics, averting his eyes from the great golden beacon, in search of an answer. Nothing emerged, no strategic aim, and so his attention wandered. What had they died for? Not what they had died _against_. That was a question of an elementary answer. But what the Coalition stood _for_... that was why Guilliman's Imperium Secundus had been meant to define. Only it had not had time to do so.​ ​ Was this how primitive natives felt when the Imperium came to their worlds? A new world opened, one they did not have the base of knowledge to understand. So the savages continued according to set patterns, even when those set patterns were obsolete.​ ​ If not for Guilliman, Thexilev might even have believed that.​ ​ It was something in the air, perhaps. An ululating thrum of despair. But Thexilev knew, trusted, that his Primarch had the solution. Not all of it, not yet, but where minds like Thexilev's recoiled at all their assumptions being overturned Guilliman's was already processing the way to victory. As to Thexilev and the Ultramarines, it sufficed to hold the line in the meantime.​ ​ But still, Thexilev was too good a student of the Imperial Truth not to doubt. Yet training took over. He kept up the vox-chatter, even as Vulkan bore down on one last isolated band of Ultramarines -​ ​ And then, suddenly, it was dark.​ ​ At first Thexilev thought it was the power, but there had been no power in this room in the first place. Then, an absurd thought, that it had been the sun. It had not been, as one glance up and into the storm proved.​ ​ No, the skies above had not changed, and it took Justinian Thexilev a few moments to realize what had.​ ​ Ahead, in the center of the enemy complex designated Ghanun Fortress, the beam of golden light that had pierced through Nuceria's very core, that had shone undimmed for nearly three Terran months, had in one instant gone out.​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER ELEVEN​ ​ The skies were clearing.​ ​ Multicolored wisps faded from the heavens, coming apart in swirls as if they were sinking underneath the surface of the cerulean skies. The Warp Storm that Vulkan's ritual had summoned was collapsing, its structure coming apart and crumbling into mere reality.​ ​ "Did Vulkan plan this?" Ehung Zekhoros asked Dranzytchon of the Pyre Guard, both looking up at the sky in the brief respite from battle.​ ​ "I don't know," the Salamander answered. "The Primarch keeps his own counsel. But I believe he did, yes. I think the forging was always meant to have a finite duration, and that the lasting product of this ritual will be found in the Warp."​ ​ Zekhoros nodded. It wasn't much of an answer, but getting much of an answer would have meant that Dranzytchon was guessing. No one knew what they were doing here, except the Primarchs themselves.​ ​ It was frustrating, that this war was being fought for a purpose they didn't know. They were not owed an explanation - not from their Primarchs - but Zekhoros nonetheless regretted that they would all die without knowing why.​ ​ "Let's hope that the lasting product was worth two Legions, then," he said.​ ​ Dranzytchon frowned. "Numeon said there'd be a way out."​ ​ "Did Vulkan?"​ ​ "No."​ ​ "Then you have your answer," Zekhoros said.​ ​ The fatalism he was feeling was not necessarily due to the circumstances alone. In the last minutes before the battle, when the Titans were already walking towards their lines, there'd been a war council. Vulkan had brought the Pyre Guard and two captains; Angron had picked eight Astartes, chosen seemingly at random. Some of the names were predictable - Lhorke, Delvarus, and of course Kharn. Dreagher, responsible for the Legion's name. Captains, of no special distinction, Nordas Vyre and Edrenyyn Upiliz. Borgh Buktal, a mere sergeant, if one renowned for valor. And Zekhoros, the disgraced captain of a destroyed company, who had ended up the unofficial second-in-command, after Lhorke, of those who had survived the Nails being rent from them by Guilliman's... whatever it was. Sorcery, anti-sorcery, it made little difference, given how little of it Zekhoros understood. It had left Zekhoros ostracized from the Legion, but had also left his mind his own again - a trade he was more than happy to make, even if many in the division were not.​ ​ Yet despite this, he had been there when Vulkan had described, in vague and possibly misleading terms, exactly what he planned to achieve. They had stood, at the corners of a seventeen-pointed star, tensely waiting for the chance to go to war, and Vulkan had spoken of Nurgle, who of all the Warp Gods seemed to Zekhoros to be the least appetizing. A god of disease and morbidity and of enduring beyond one's natural end as a pale mockery of past vitality....​ ​ And, also, a god of despair, one whose distant influence they had been warned would wash over the battle.​ ​ This was Vulkan's attempt to gain the favor of Nurgle for the Emperor's ascension. A petition, written in gore. Zekhoros couldn't claim that this made any sense to him, all this talk of hammering at the Warp, but it was evident enough that it was real.​ ​ And then they had been dispatched to the walls for the desperate defense, which they were presently engaged in.​ ​ "Vulkan has said little," Dranzytchon said after a pause. "If there's a way out, it's to Numeon I'd look. But Numeon is also an optimist, that's true. Still, he wouldn't claim to know an escape route if he didn't have one."​ ​ "Yet he did not inform us what this route is."​ ​ "He didn't." Then Dranzytchon narrowed his eyes. "They're coming."​ ​ Zekhoros swept a look down from the parapet. The Ultramarines were indeed coming, on Rhinos, on speeders, and on foot. As were the Titans. As were Army auxilia, laying down covering fire with impressive resolve for baseline humans. It wouldn't have done them any good without the Ultramarines there, but in the circumstances they were in....​ ​ It was a coordinated dance, every movement carefully orchestrated. Zekhoros could see some of the patterns, but not how to break them. It was less a scalpel and more a great power maul, but it was a spiked maul where each of the spikes were scalpels. In sum, a chainsword.​ ​ Still, they were going to stop that blade, no matter if they took a mortal wound in the process. Even if Zekhoros had wanted to run again, there was nowhere to run to. Every wall was overrun, and the great clashes throughout the inner courtyards spilled in every direction.​ ​ And the beacon that had lit their way was out, as was the storm that held their daemonic allies. The skies had cleared.​ ​ There was nothing left except to fight.​ ​ "World Eaters!" Zekhoros yelled to his men - a ragtag collection of Thirteenth Company, other warriors caught in Guilliman's act and exiled from their own companies, and World Eaters that had been carried here by the whims of the Nails. "Or War Hounds, if you prefer! We haven't got long, so all I'll say is - it's been an honor." He paused.​ ​ This defeatism was unbecoming of him.​ ​ "It's been an honor," he continued, "but we all know exactly how much honor is worth in war." Some laughs at that. Good. "So let's try and not die yet, and kill as many of those traitors as we can in the meantime. For Angron and the Crusade, brothers!"​ ​ The cries came back. For Angron, for the Crusade, for the Emperor, for Terra, for Bodt, for blood, and for the Blood God. They all fought for their own reasons, but they were still brothers. In blood, if nothing else.​ ​ Dranzytchon took the left, while Zekhoros got the right. Those with the Nails would rush forward to meet their enemy anyway, so he had them hide in the intermittent walls, to counterattack the Ultramarines and hopefully break their lines. Conveniently, this also ensured they were far enough away from the shooting that they wouldn't get immediately get hit by friendly fire.​ ​ Of course, all those plans were affected by several Titan-sized complications.​ ​ "So what are your plans for dealing with those, Captain?" Limbeten asked.​ ​ "Hope Legio Audax uses the opportunity to teleport straight from Mars to here." Zekhoros shrugged. "My hope is that we can board them. They can bring down the walls, but if we fight in the ruins the Titans will have to stay back anyway."​ ​ Limbeten nodded. "We're making this up as we go along, aren't we?"​ ​ "The Ultramarines have it all calculated," Zekhoros said. "And we've been able to match them anyway. War isn't an equation to be figured out, it's an experience to be lived."​ ​ "Yes," Redorey put in, "but there's also a whole lot more Ultramarines. And they've lived through a whole lot of war as well."​ ​ Zekhoros couldn't help it - he laughed. Then he took up a long, thoughtful glance at the clear sky. "Just fight. We've done it plenty of times before. For once, it's just that simple."​ ​ He had wanted this, he considered as the Titans came closer, met by scattered fire from the emplacements. And he'd received it, miraculously enough. Freedom in his own mind, even if it was only for the last month of his life.​ ​ But none of them were immortal. Under a sky of horrors, or under a sky of blue....​ ​ He didn't hate the Legion anymore, not now that he was freed from its main curse. He hadn't even recognized that hate before, of course. He'd thought he merely despised Angron, though it'd never been so simple. Now, though, Angron was reborn, and Zekhoros was free. Free to fight - and it had been no accident that he'd been selected for the Twelfth Legion, there. They were all born of the dust of war, not the lines of a map that generals and Ultramarines took pride in but the mad uncertainty that was all most soldiers ever knew. Others fought for great dreams, or against great nightmares. World Eaters, and War Hounds before them, fought only for each other. They could have betrayed the Imperium with the others - no one could have stopped them, not even Angron. They had not. And that, too, was a choice.​ ​ Zekhoros took a deep breath of the sandy air, taking up and revving his three chainswords, and then the Ultramarines slammed into them.​ ​ Zekhoros and the squads with him were holding a chokepoint, in principle. In practice, the Titans could make holes in the walls wherever they felt like, despite the clumsy attempts to board them by Zekhoros's Nails-driven brothers. Nonetheless, he waded into the fight, parrying with two blades as the third eviscerated an Ultramarine sergeant, surrounded by enemies for a moment in a spinning circle, jumping back once Limbeten opened up a passage -​ ​ It was war. But it was war experienced in a way Zekhoros had not in a very long time. Every moment, every kill, weighed heavily on him. The sensations surrounded and suffused him, every moment poignant, every stab of panic desperate. Without the Nails to calm him, he could experience everything. Most humans would have collapsed from the shock.​ ​ Zekhoros was a Space Marine, though. He just kept fighting, stabbing and parrying and slashing and dodging. At one point he had the space to look over at Dranzytchon's section, completely bemused as to the fact that they were both still holding, and saw what looked like very large gobs of mucus charging forth at the Ultramarine lines, spewing, presumably, pestilence. A few of Dranzytchon's warriors, though distinctly not the Pyre Guard himself, fought alongside them; their armor was pitted, as if heavily corroded, something ceramite didn't do. Zekhoros didn't react to it; their allies' choice of patron was their own.​ ​ The next moment, Zekhoros realized that he was surrounded. Four Ultramarines, stabbing directly at him. Zekhoros parried their first blows, one per chainsword. The teeth of his servo-arm's blade scratched as they tried the block, and teeth flew out as shrapnel, one by sheer coincidence (or, as the case may be, by the gods' will) striking the remaining Ultramarine in the helmet seal and knocking his own strike off-center. As it did so, Zekhoros wrenched his left-hand sword, decapitating one of his foes. The other two let up for a moment, circling Zekhoros defensively. The World Eater crouched, his blades spun in a vague imitation of preparation.​ ​ Then the Ultramarines disengaged. Breathing heavily, Zekhoros walked over the pile of bodies to his company. They'd fared better than he had suspected - a solid majority was still alive, especially among the Nailless.​ ​ "Did we seriously drive them off?" he asked Limbeten.​ ​ Limbeten pointed to their left, where the Ultramarines and Titans had breached an undefended section of wall and were spilling past, leaving the meaningless chokepoint to the Twelfth and Eighteenth.​ ​ "Well, that's something at least," Zekhoros said. "We weren't the path of least resistance."​ ​ That was when his vox, inert for some time except within his and Dranzytchon's detachment due to dust-caused interference, beeped.​ ​ It was Artellus Numeon.​ ​ "Form up on my position," the First Captain of the Salamanders said, in a deep voice made scratchy by interference. "To - *khhk* - off of Nuceria."​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER TWELVE​ ​ The colors of dusk were beginning to paint the horizon. In the absence of clouds, the sunset was decorated only by dust. That dust, or rather the sand that caused it, crunched below Artellus Numeon's foot.​ ​ Yellow sand, stained red by blood. This was how Angron had earned his epithet.​ ​ They were contracting to an ever-smaller ring. Sentry turrets and barricades and walls and layers of void shields - all cracked, broken precisely along the weaknesses of the material. It was beautiful, truly. But it was also too late. If the Ultramarines had attacked two weeks earlier, they would have taken far more losses, but Nuceria would have been theirs. As it was, Vulkan had completed the ritual, and the victory was already predestined to fall to the Salamanders.​ ​ Numeon still felt sadness and resolve both, of course, at the horrendous losses that his Legion had suffered. But he also recognized those as partly external, as caused by the spiritual imbalance that ruled over Ghanun. Leftover heat, from the fire Vulkan had stoked.​ ​ He doubted, of course. Knowing why didn't prevent it. This was tainted earth, and the edifice in the Warp that Vulkan had built was hardier than its real-world analogue built by the Lord of Drakes' sons. And besides, faith was nothing without doubts to overcome. Numeon had always been able to keep in mind the ways in which he could be wrong, and keep fighting for his beliefs nevertheless.​ ​ And Numeon clenched his fists, choking that last moment of weakness. He would do what he needed to today, and what he needed to do was insure the retreat.​ ​ "Atanarius," he called to the wall. "How is it up there?" The swordsman was one of two Pyre Guard to have answered Numeon's call, Igataron being the other. Varrun and Dranzytchon had not responded, and as to Skatar'var... Numeon felt the month-old knife wound stab at the memory.​ ​ The power of Nurgle could resurrect. Numeon had sworn an oath of moment to find, when he had the opportunity, a way to bring the Pyre Guard back to life, even if Skatar'var would never truly be the same Salamander he had been. Not for their brotherhood, deep as it was; death was a part of the Circle of Fire. No, his resolve was driven by a need to atone for his failure.​ ​ He hadn't protected his battle-brother when he had needed to. From, admittedly, himself, but that too was part of his duties as a leader.​ ​ "Ultras are getting closer," Atanarius yelled back. "It'll be tooth-to-tooth soon. Varrun's voxed in."​ ​ Numeon nodded, and with one final nod to the shrine and a reverent brush of the athame at his belt, walked up the staircase towards Atanarius's position.​ ​ "Artellus...." Atanarius frowned. "You're dwelling on Skar again."​ ​ Numeon stayed silent.​ ​ "It shows on your face. Numeon, we all return to the earth. Skatar'var's death wasn't your fault, or his. It was a well-executed ambush. It could've been any of us."​ ​ Numeon shrugged. "Perhaps I would have done the same for any of you."​ ​ "Any of us would give our lives for each other," Atanarius said. "All of us would love to have Skar back. But you're letting your emotions drive you. The dead do not come back easily, nor as they were." His voice turned suddenly pleading. "Let us help, First Captain. It will be a mountain road, but if there is a way... Skar is not the only brother we have lost. Nor the only one we will. Just, please, don't rush this."​ ​ He was right, wasn't he? He was First Captain. His duty was not to Skar alone. With a sigh, Numeon relented.​ ​ "We will talk when this is over," he said. "You likely have the truth of it. For now there's a battle." Numeon looked up at the sky, which now seemed somehow drained and empty. "Eye-to-eye, Atanarius."​ ​ "Tooth-to-tooth!"​ ​ Before them, the Ultramarine forces were arrayed in an elaborate grid, beyond a no man's land that occupied only by spaerhs - local three-horned lagomorphs - that refused to move from their burrows despite the war around them. The enemy's armor was dusty and scratched, but their formations and discipline were still immaculate. From this vantage, as indeed from any vantage, the full scope of the enemy could not be seen. This was not a set-piece battle - or, insofar as it was, it was a battle where Guilliman understandably preferred to keep the arrangement of his pieces secret from the Salamanders.​ ​ Numeon had carved wards into the walls precisely to counteract that, but only so many of them remained intact. The Ultramarines had targeted them, going out of their way to disrupt the energies of the fortress. They knew what they were doing - if they had not, those very flows would have erupted like volcanoes, and buried the Ultramarines instead of crumbling before them.​ ​ As it was, only some of those flows were venting, assisted by the fog Vulkan's ritual had spewed. Only some - but some was enough.​ ​ It had to be.​ ​ And having resolved that, Artellus Numeon waited. He waited, at first, for marksman Varrun and silent Igataron to join them, and after that for Dranzytchon. "We did not hear your vox, at first," the Pyre Guard's newest member said.​ ​ "We?"​ ​ "Myself and Captain Zekhoros, and our forces," Dranzytchon explained.​ ​ Numeon liked Dranzytchon - of course he did, the hammer-wielder would not have become a Pyre Guard otherwise. Everyone liked Dranzytchon. There was no doubt to his combat skill, or his experience, but it was his geniality that had earned him that spot. It helped, too, that Dranzytchon was Terran. The Pyre Guard had always been selected from their ranks, though it would not be long now before a Nocturnean was inducted. Skatar'var's place, most likely, would be filled by the first.​ ​ The Legion was changing. But not quickly. No, it would not do to rush Skatar'var's return. The tempers of the Pyre Guard could run hot, but building... building always took more time than destroying.​ ​ And then, at last, the true leader of the Pyre Guard came forth.​ ​ Vulkan looked bigger than he had ever been, and even to Numeon's eyes it was clear why. The energies of the Warp surrounded him, blazing inside him with a quiet but grand fire. He was not ascending past reality, as some beings did; it would not do, he had said before. If he ever became a god, it would be in realspace. He would not abandon the ground, even if he now walked it with a new lightness.​ ​ "My sons," he said. "So we have come here. An ending, and a new beginning." He turned to the Ultramarine advance, even while handing Numeon a datapad with corresponding schematics. "All lines are in a lull. Seven courtyards are still holding. Guilliman is preparing for a final push... and he is here. In the wing to our right."​ ​ "You can sense him?" Varrun asked.​ ​ "The sands can sense him," Vulkan said. "The sands... they are Angron's by right, but he has rejected them. Until he returns to that inheritance, the Nucerian sands are _mine_. Ready yourselves, Salamanders. Into the fires of battle!"​ ​ "Unto the anvil of war!" they chorused back.​ ​ And with that, Vulkan jumped over the parapet.​ ​ Not alone, of course. The remaining armor began to roll out upon his signal. Lines of guns began their firestorm, slicing the neat Ultramarine lines apart. And the Pyre Guard, on Numeon's unsaid command, leaped after their Primarch.​ ​ The Ultramarines had meant to unleash a final push. This was the Imperium's answer.​ ​ Vulkan's stride through the battlefield was calm. Nothing around the Primarch was. The counterattack, seemingly suicidal, had stunned the Ultramarines - but not for long. In every direction Numeon could look, he saw the clash of blades, bodies falling, storms of projectiles, and fire.​ ​ And sand. For even as Vulkan swung _Dawnbringer_ with his right hand, slamming Ultramarines into the ground, his left gestured to make the ground of Nuceria obey his command. Prepared faults opened, cleaving vehicles in half. Foundations the Ultramarines had destroyed rose back up in pillars that blocked their line of fire. And in great, scouring gales, sand rose in every direction, blocking the auspexes and distant views. It hammered at blue armor like countless shells, leaving some Ultramarines in cratered armor. Those were the survivors. Others felt sand crawl into every bodily cavity, choking them and carving them open at the same time. It consumed them, like a great amoeba of some sort. The world itself swallowed them.​ ​ Yet the Ultramarines fought back. Numeon thrust his pike again and again, stabbing and blocking every blue-armored Astarte that tried to lay hands on his Primarch. Around him, the Pyre Guard did the same.​ ​ The Ultramarines tried to lay into them, knowing that the Pyre Guard presented softer targets than Vulkan, but they fought for each other as much as they fought for their Primarch. Stepping on a spaerh, Numeon pushed Dranzytchon out of the way of a heavy bolter shot, moments before Varrun's shot took the emplacement out. As he did, Igataron took out a powersword-wielding Ultramarine that had swung at Numeon's newly exposed position.​ ​ In the distance, Numeon heard the klaxon of a Titan through the sandstorm. It seemed hoarse, perhaps because of that sand, perhaps because of the distance.​ ​ "Roboute!" Vulkan yelled, as he swept aside an entire squad with one swing of Dawnbringer - injured, not killed, but World Eaters now rushing in (if in small numbers) for support would change that. "Let us settle this!"​ ​ "Very well," came a voice, and then, suddenly, he was there.​ ​ Roboute Guilliman was surrounded by a dozen of his sons - not a formal honor guard, merely Astartes who had been nearby. One of them, a sergeant - Aeonid Thiel, Numeon read - even had his helmet marked red for censure. Numeon knew he'd seen the Ultramarine before, something in his movements... something he couldn't place.​ ​ Roboute Guilliman was surrounded by scattered warriors, his once-shining armor pitted by scratching sand, his eyes blazing not with hatred or hope but only cold determination. He raised his halberd, even as Vulkan raised his hammer, and the Primarchs began to circle each other. The Astartes to either side made no movement, mute spectators to the confrontation before them.​ ​ "Angron is not coming," Guilliman said.​ ​ "I know," Vulkan quietly answered. "He's holding in the southwest. But he was the one that needed me, not the reverse."​ ​ "I've beaten you before," Guilliman pointed out.​ ​ "In spars," Vulkan said. "But I held back."​ ​ "As did I."​ ​ "As did we all. But it does not matter how this ends, Roboute. While we have been fighting for Nuceria, your dream has already died. Imperium Secundus is gone."​ ​ Guilliman stumbled. It was a minute thing, one that even Vulkan could not take full advantage of; in the moment after, Guilliman leveled his blade and, inexplicably, shot a lasbeam at Vulkan, but the pulse seemed to bounce off the Lord of Drakes' plate, or rather off the Warp power beneath it. Vulkan answered with a blow of _Dawnbringer_, which Guilliman dodged, but which prevented his return stab from connecting. Metal rang as the two weapons clanged against each other and held, and suddenly, the Primarchs had disengaged and were once again circling.​ ​ The entire clash took only seconds. The watching Astartes did not even react until it was done, a flurry of desperate shots rebounding off both Primarchs' armor.​ ​ And then, with each other's measure taken, the Primarchs resumed their conversation.​ ​ "Ultramar stands," Guilliman insisted.​ ​ "Ultramar stands," Vulkan agreed, "but it is already doomed, and Imperium Secundus is lost. Let me show you - "​ ​ He raised his gauntlet to his face and blew, swirls of sandy air coagulating into images. Of proud Terra. Of mighty battlefleets.​ ​ Of Catachan's skies. Horus Lupercal and Sanguinius stood before charts, planning their path forwards. The Council of Catachan would succeed. The Coalition was plowing onwards without Guilliman's input, a new rebellion taking shape that firmly rejected his dreams. A rebellion that acknowledged the Mechanicum's monopolies, that placed Astartes in a place of only war, that made willing compromises with xenos. Horus had made Guilliman unnecessary.​ ​ Images of the Olympian chokepoints. Images of eldar treacheries.​ ​ Images of Calth.​ ​ Calth burned. The world that had been meant to signify Ultramar's future was lost to the fires of war. Fulgrim had come, and brought devastation. And Marius Gage, waging a desperate defense for a city no longer named in Guilliman's honor, cursed his Primarch's name for abandoning him and Ultramar. On every lip beneath the deep blue helmets of Calth's defenders, there was only scorn for their Primarch.​ ​ "You have lost your home," Vulkan said. "You have lost your Legion."​ ​ The darkness, the nihilism, were palpable. Numeon could barely remember that Vulkan was on his side, such was the pressure of the end of a dream. The Ultramarines had been meant to be the best of them, but instead their own ideals had split them apart. That was the nature of the galaxy, to answer kindness with cruelty. That was why the Salamanders had become what they had.​ ​ And then the lord of Ultramar laughed, and the spell broke.​ ​ "You think to scare me with _this_?" Guilliman asked. "Aye, Terra stands, and some of my sons are dead. But I never thought otherwise. Horus, for once, has listened to my advice. I will need to set things right with the Warmaster, after... but the Coalition is now built on a foundation that is not quicksand. In these days, that is enough. And Ultramar stands. Calth burns, but it stands, and my pride is nothing compared to that. And you did not show me Macragge."​ ​ Guilliman smiled as he spoke, leveling the halberd-like contraption. As he did, his other hand delicately drew the horn hanging from his waist, and he blew.​ ​ Numeon's flamer was already in his hand for whatever Guilliman had summoned, but there was nothing. Only a little girl, running out of the sandstorm -​ ​ And for an instant, Numeon hesitated. Because there was a time when Salamanders had not killed children. Because his first instinct was not to shoot.​ ​ By the time Numeon saw that the girl's eyes were sparking with psychic power, it was too late.​ ​ The child and the two artifacts in Guilliman's hands aligned, and there was light.​ ​ The fog of despair seemed to boil away in bubbling clumps, the fog of sand doing the same. And, Numeon realized with growing horror, Vulkan was doing the same. He seemed to be pulled into the light, the Warp-power clinging to his body diving in and dragging the rest of him along with it. It was as if watching a vortex drain, Numeon seeing his Primarch's body vanish into - where?​ ​ He did not know. But Vulkan lived. Surely, he lived.​ ​ Numeon still had faith.​ ​ But at the moment, that was not enough.​ ​ Guilliman lowered the relics in his hands, letting the light go out, and the sand settled to the ground. The sounds of battle returned. Numeon took only one glance around the field before knowing it was lost. The Ultramarines were scattered and scarred, but their formations had held, and the Titans were now walking forth unencumbered once again. Beneath them, tanks and transports.​ ​ Numeon took a final glance at the Ultramarines' Primarch, who was breathing heavily, and the psyker child at his side.​ ​ "Retreat," he ordered the Pyre Guard and the Salamanders.​ ​ They did. Only there was nowhere to retreat to.​ ​ Reports came in, scattershot, through the voxnet. The Ultramarines had broken through in the southeast. Even Angron was being pushed back, by a concentrated Battle Titan assault. And Vulkan was gone.​ ​ Numeon knew it was not over. Not the war, not Vulkan's tale. But Nuceria -​ ​ Nuceria had never mattered, so it did not matter if it was lost.​ ​ The athame seemed to almost fly into Numeon's hand, and he cut a hole in reality.​ ​ "Varrun," he ordered. "You have command of the Pyre Guard until I return. The portal leads to Bodt."​ ​ "You want us to leave you?!" Dranzytchon exclaimed, incredulous.​ ​ "I'm the only one who can lead us out," Numeon said. "Now go!"​ ​ They clambered through the wound in reality. Igataron was first, giving only a nod to his commander. Then Dranzytchon, with a "good luck", and Varrun with an embrace, and last of all Atanarius.​ ​ "We endure, Artellus," the swordsman said. "From the ashes of this battle new hope will spring. For the Emperor."​ ​ "For Vulkan," Numeon said, but Atanarius was gone.​ ​ Other Salamanders followed them. The evacuation was calm, despite the storm of battle behind them. Numeon cut again and again, as realspace sealed itself; he made longer incisions, allowing for squads to return to Bodt at once. Desperation fueled his cuts, but still they were too slow. Hundreds of Salamanders were coming through every minute, but they only _had_ minutes.​ ​ But then, there were so few left.​ ​ They came through, ever more wounded, ever more scarred. The 22nd, 23rd, and 24th were holding the line, and the World Eaters - mainly the World Eaters. Angron had ordered a retreat, for perhaps the first time in his life, but many of his sons were in the grip of the Nails.​ ​ Numeon cut like the paintwork of some demented artist, even as shells fell around and above him. Armor was abandoned, bikes at most being taken along. He did not see the Red Angel come through, but Kharn reassured him, as he passed through, that Angron had done so.​ ​ "Khorne's call or no, we can understand when a battle is lost," he said. "We'll take more skulls in later days. I'm sorry about Vulkan."​ ​ "He lives," Numeon insisted.​ ​ Kharn only shrugged as he stepped through to Bodt.​ ​ Numeon turned away, starting a new incision -​ ​ And, suddenly, pain in his shoulder, and the knife falling helplessly from his hand. The world spiraling around him - trying to get up, but it was too late -​ ​ "How?!" he tried to yell. It came out as a whisper. "How did you get in?"​ ​ He saw, on the floor - no, on the ceiling. It was him lying on the floor, upside-down, in a pool of his own blood. The evacuees were getting massacred, far too many Ultramarines mowing them down. Those that remained... would be surrounded.​ ​ Some had gotten away. Thousands. Perhaps as many as ten thousand, overall.​ ​ Ten thousand, out of fifty thousand that had come to Nuceria.​ ​ He saw, on the ceiling, mag-locked to it, two dozen Ultramarines, who had opened the gates to their brothers. And - that was how they'd gotten in initially. If one used spaceship boarding tactics, and - perhaps they'd left a way. The Ultramarines had been far in enough, and with Vulkan's disappearance -​ ​ No. He needed to focus. Numeon grunted and got up, forcing himself to keep going, grasping his spear. He stabbed at the closest Ultramarine, who hadn't been expecting it, piercing the helmet, as his Terminator armor's servos struggled to keep him upright. He opened his mouth, to vox a call for reinforcements - there were less than a hundred Ultramarines here, they still could -​ ​ He saw the red helmet an instant before Aeonid Thiel drove his powersword through the First Captain's skull.​ ​ Thiel started to say something, but Artellus Numeon did not live to hear it.​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN​ ​ The war for Nuceria had ended in a tactical Ultramarine victory.​ ​ The Ghanun desert had been subjected, afterwards, to a localized orbital bombardment. Theoretical was that the Salamanders and World Eaters had left some surprise behind, or at least some form of 'taint'. The Librarians detected little of it, and none after the bombardment.​ ​ But if Nuceria was at peace, what that peace meant had yet to be defined.​ ​ Justinian Thexilev stood on the slopes of Fedan Mhor, alongside his Primarch and the other surviving captains of the First Chapter, looking at the scattered bones of the ancient gladiators. Angron's comrades-in-arms, in a time before the Imperium. The wind was still. That would not last; in the distance, to the west, Thexilev already saw thunderstorms.​ ​ Yet they were the only storms in the sky. The great Warp Storm that had stranded the Thirteenth Legion on Nuceria had all but entirely dissipated.​ ​ Their Stormbird waited on the slope, like a gem vein hidden in the rock. Within hours, it would depart, headed, surely, to Ultramar. Thexilev yearned to see it again, above all to see for himself that it still stood, to feel the air of his home realm on his skin. The monuments of Macragge, the seas of Talassar, the ruins of Setterane, and above all the forests and farms of Espandor - distant, half-forgotten, but _his_ birthplace. Gilloa had said that Ultramar stood, and there were astropathic signals that implied as much, as well as the vision Vulkan had supposedly shown Guilliman... but none of those sources were fully trustworthy, and more importantly, while all said that Ultramar stood, all also showed it under siege.​ ​ Guilliman was most eager of them all, even though he did not easily show it. Ultramar was Thexilev's birthplace, as it was for most of the Legion, and for all of the Legion it was their home - but for Guilliman, it was not just his world, but also his life's work.​ ​ Yet for all of that, in these last hours while the machinery of war was being loaded onto the ships in preparation for the battle to come, it was to Fedan Mhor that the Ultimate Warrior came.​ ​ "We don't know any of their names," Guilliman said. "The Nucerians did not care to record them, and Angron did not speak of his past unless prompted."​ ​ "You still respect him?" Modoleo asked.​ ​ "I pity him, or rather what he could have been," Guilliman said frankly. "He was a shattered ruin of a Primarch, and even now he is broken, fundamentally, because of what happened here. I learned of his tragedy, and I put it out of my mind. There was nothing to be done, it was not my concern, and it seemed hardly a worse case than Mortarion or Curze. No, I do not respect Angron. But while I forgot Angron, as did many of my brothers... the Emperor did not. And we should not have, either."​ ​ "The Eaters of Cities...." Cestus paused. "They are remembered as monsters, and not for no reason. Their cause may have been righteous, but they were monsters, even if it was not by choice."​ ​ "They fought against a tyrannical regime," Lusbraeth, Auguston's second-in-command, said. "But they didn't really fight for anything, did they? Only to destroy, with no consideration of what came after. Because they were incapable of that consideration."​ ​ "And that," Guilliman said, "is the reason I came here."​ ​ There were always imperfect echoes, and fundamental lessons, to be found in the bloody scrolls of past monstrosities. That was no surprise to Thexilev. History rhymed - but it did not repeat.​ ​ "Justinian," Guilliman said, presumably because Thexilev had been silent for some time. "What do you think we should do with Nuceria?"​ ​ "Practical is straightforward," Thexilev rattled off, as he had been thinking about precisely that for the past several minutes. "Treat it as newly compliant, leave an Astarte garrison, end slavery, integrate into the Imperium... perhaps even Ultramar. Theoretical for analogues is a different matter. Allying with monsters is a line we have crossed before, and will cross again. Doing so without becoming monsters is often trivial, but far from always."​ ​ Guilliman nodded. "We will need," he noted, "to leave half a Company to garrison the planet - and the surrounding subsector - and protect them from Imperial retaliation. There is the additional purpose, however, of observing for residual taint. Some of the archaeotech is suspicious. So, Captain Thexilev, would you take the honor of leading this garrison?"​ ​ To stay behind. To build a rampart instead of reinforcing Ultramar. The theoretical was clear in that someone needed to take command. Thexilev wished it had been someone else, but he knew his duty. Less clear was why him, and that he asked.​ ​ "It had to be someone from the First Chapter," Guilliman said, "and someone with a low but nonzero respect for Nuceria as it was." So he'd be able to work with them, but without letting them forget that he was part of an occupying force.​ ​ Well, it would not be the first time.​ ​ Memories of the Great Crusade played out in Thexilev's mind as they returned to the Stormbird, and took off once more, heading to orbit before Thexilev and half his company were to be dropped to Iela'kamm, the city designated as Nuceria's new capital. This was a compliance - theoreticals were well enough established. There were goodbyes, and Ixiosph's assumption of command for the portion of 2nd Company that was remaining on the_ Perfect Honour_, and funerals for the far too many brothers Thexilev had lost in the war for Nuceria, and Gilloa briefly waking up from her enforced hibernation to wish Thexilev good luck and give him a gift, a shell carved in the shape of the Linearity - five stars, and the ray connecting them.​ ​ "It carries some part of my power," she said, "some measure of sensory ability for the worst or best of the Warp."​ ​ "It senses taint?"​ ​ "It senses power, and something of that power's nature," Gilloa said. And when Thexilev clasped it to his neck armor, he found that indeed it did - Gilloa seemed to blaze with a brilliant white flame, whistling through chimneys as light to illuminate the world around. Yet there were dark cracks in that fire, flaws introduced by the girl's exhaustion.​ ​ "Thank you," Thexilev said, unsure what else to say. "For the gift, but mostly for your aid to Guilliman. You shouldn't have had to...."​ ​ "You don't think you should have needed my help," she said. "But all of us need each other." At the moment, with her eyes shining with that silver gleam of the furnace inside her, her diminutive size felt like a lie - she stood her ground with the aura of not merely Thexilev's equal, but his superior. "I feel like I shouldn't have needed you all either. But I did, and more importantly, I will again."​ ​ Thexilev nodded. "And I thank you for all of that. You're leaving with Guilliman. Leaving your world behind." He thought back to his own induction into the Legion at that, wistfully, though of course the circumstances were different.​ ​ "No," Gilloa said. "My world is dead."​ ​ But it wasn't, not really. As the gunship carried him down to the island city of Iela'kamm, shining with its golden flame-shaped towers, black beach sand scattered to every side, with people even now visibly crowding those beaches - both to catch a glimpse of the Ultramarines' departure and simply to swim - and the plazas under giant screens, as the sea breeze caused the gunship to gently sway in its descent, Justinian Thexilev knew he was not looking at a dead world. The lords of Nuceria were terrified of the Astartes, as Cestus had promised, and its slaves looked forward to freedom, but Nuceria lived.​ ​ He was greeted with an honor guard, as he walked up the steps of the Union Hall. Thexilev suspected he could kill them all alone, if necessary - the soldiers standing to either side were armed with clobbered-together guns, and some were visibly trembling. Iela'kamm had surrendered to the Ultramarines willingly, but only because some of its surrounding villages had not.​ ​ That would have to be fixed. Thexilev did not actually want to be overly feared. Obeyed, yes, but there was much more to leadership than fear. Then again, for this moment of revolution, perhaps fear was inevitable.​ ​ The carpet they had rolled out to him was silver and blue, the latter color being recently painted in long stripes. President Mavangar, the ruler of the city-state, prostrated himself and all four of his chins before the Ultramarine captain once the latter had ascended the steps to the palace.​ ​ "A bow is sufficient," Thexilev noted.​ ​ "As you wish," Mavangar said, clambering to his feet. "As you know, Iela'kamm has never practiced Nails implantation - " it did, of course, have its own, admittedly lesser, slave implants - "but we have captured several slaves from nearby states who were fitted with the Nails. They are in the basement of the Union Hall - you understand, they're uncontrollable. After a while they always become so. The sorts of monsters who would do that for simple entertainment - why, if only we could...."​ ​ Thexilev blocked out most of Mavangar's droning. The president was doing his best to deflect blame, and Thexilev would not stop him from doing so. If Mavangar had not been among the best of Nuceria's petty dictators, he would not have been left in charge. And while insufferable in supplication, he was supposedly a competent administrator.​ ​ "They're held in stasis," Mavangar said.​ ​ "Was there no other way?"​ ​ "Not reliably," Mavangar said, and Thexilev thought he caught a glimpse of real regret behind the false sadness.​ ​ Thexilev looked at the four pods. The humans within did not, even when so frozen, look to be at peace. Their closed eyes seemed to blaze with pure hate, and their unmoving lips seemed to tremble with mute curses.​ ​ And there was an itch at the back of Thexilev's neck, one that took a few moments to identify.​ ​ He came closer to the pods, to check. The itch strengthened, and with it came emotions. Not felt - seen. It had not just been his imagination, when he heard curses from those silent lips.​ ​ The Butcher's Nails stole away peace. But they did more than that. They instilled anger and hate, war and death -​ ​ Blood, and skulls.​ ​ "Throne," Thexilev said on reflex. "How the Warp did you people make those things?"​ ​ "We didn't - "​ ​ Thexilev tuned out the rest of Mavangar's words, as he was too focused on the implications of what he had learned.​ ​ The Butcher's Nails were more than monstrous. They were directly tainted by the power of the Warp - by the power of the false god that the Seventeenth called Khorne.​ ​ For how many centuries had that power waxed, on Nuceria?​ ​ For a moment Thexilev wondered about Exterminatus, but... but the Line of Nuceria had not failed. But Gilloa had still been born, here, and surely many others that deserved to live. Most of them, in frankness.​ ​ There was still something to be saved.​ ​ Even if Nuceria truly did have to die.​ ​ "Practical," he told Mavangar. "All implants will be removed from every slave on the planet, as soon as possible, and any future attempts to use slave implants will be punished by death, effective immediately."​ ​ "The end of slavery must be a gradual process - "​ ​ "You've had three months to prepare, and short-term disruption is inevitable and even desirable. But I'm not talking about economics right now. I mean _specifically_ the implants."​ ​ "They cannot be removed," Mavangar noted.​ ​ "Many of them can, at least hypothetically," Thexilev said. "We'll get together teams to find the ways for those. But the Nails, and perhaps a few of the other worst ones...." He looked at the bodies in the stasis pods. They were stuck in time... but he was not sure that the Nails were. "They may have to be killed. There is no other way."​ ​ Mavangar blanched, but nodded. And as he did -​ ​ As he did, Justinian Thexilev understood the truth he had been searching for, subconsciously, those past months.​ ​ There were daemons in the universe - whatever one preferred to call them. There were heroes, too, including psykers like Gilloa, but also scholars, artisans, and warriors that did not have any special link to the Warp. There existed, in them, the ability to hold the powers of hell at bay. But the line between the realms of good and the realms of evil, while not a thin line, was from a distance clearly visible, as the line between good and evil themselves was not. It was a great struggle at the outer rim of civilization, against treachery and entropy. And myths... myths were nothing more than forgotten legends, which were themselves forgotten histories. They had power, because knowledge was power, but for that same reason their power was nothing compared to the clarity of understood truth.​ ​ The daemons themselves... they understood, in their alien way, what they were doing. Perhaps some xenos did, as well. And Guilliman and Horus and the others had in the days of the Crusade, and would, in time, even in these mad hours - at least Thexilev hoped so. But the Word Bearers and the Salamanders and all the others, who sook refuge in myths, were doomed by that very fact. They fogged their mind with superstitious devotion, and expected that devotion to be rewarded. It never would be. They looked to the past, and were thus blinded to everything that mattered in the future.​ ​ "Should I convey that order to every city on Nuceria?" a recovered Mavangar asked.​ ​ "Not yet," Thexilev said. "I'll deliver a formal address this evening, to every city...." He paused. "No, not on Nuceria. That world is dead. I will speak to the people of Empioea, about the future that we have not yet lost."​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

EPILOGUE​ ​ "We shouldn't have run," Dreagher said.​ ​ "We didn't run," Zekhoros protested. "We... well, okay, we ran. But what use would there have been in staying behind to die? The battle was more than lost."​ ​ "I must agree," Upiliz said. "Why bother with the heroic last stand when you have a back port out? Let the Fists or Ultramarines take pride in those."​ ​ "Not all of us made it out," Kharn said, more melancholy than usual.​ ​ Angron, Lord of the Red Sands, the Red Angel and the Emperor's Executioner, harrumphed at his sons' bickering. It irritated him, residual pain from residual wounds. But, perhaps, it was to be expected.​ ​ The Twelfth Legion did not run. They were the Emperor's shock maul, striking again and again until their enemy was destroyed at whatever cost. To take a step back, except to reload, had been anathema to them. Yet Angron had ordered his sons to take Numeon's way out.​ ​ Of course, the reason he had was not to run.​ ​ "You're all missing the point," Angron said with a grunt, turning to his sons. "We ran, yes. But we didn't run because we were beaten. We ran because we'd won."​ ​ "The beacon," Zekhoros said, almost immediately. "Was it truly more important...."​ ​ "It was the objective," Buktal said.​ ​ "We ran." Dreagher spit. "We ran, and we let our Legion's homeworld be taken by the damned Ultramarines, of all Legions. Next thing you know they're going to build it up in blue grids and put up giant statues of Guilliman all over the place."​ ​ "Let them." Angron almost growled with - not pure rage, now, but frustration. "Let them have Nuceria and rename it Roboutia if they want to. It was never my home! And the Legion's home is not there. It is here. On Bodt."​ ​ And with that, Angron swept a demonstrative hand around and, considering his point made, stalked forwards, through the muster field that stretched ahead of them and to the crude-looking citadel of Tredhimmia, rising before them in crossing bars. Gray hab-blocks crouched close to the surface to either side of the ground, in something resembling a rectangular grid, and the volcanic pinnacle of Morradhim looming in the distance was silhouetted as a black triangle against polluted red skies.​ ​ The warriors of his Legion, armored in white and blue, saluted as he strode past. He gave no sign of noticing. Let them fawn if they wished, or let them hate if they preferred that. They were his sons either way.​ ​ It was one of the many bonds he was now realizing he had entangled himself in, and not the most worrying.​ ​ As he came to the head of his column, however, he narrowed his eyes in recognition. Something was there - something on the edge of his vision, but -​ ​ No, not his vision. Something on the edge of reality.​ ​ "Out with it, daemon," he told the presumable messenger. For a moment he considered the chance of it being Vulkan miraculously returned - but no, wherever Guilliman had sent him would not be so easy to come back from. It was a messenger of one of the two powers they had paid their respects to on Nuceria, and Angron was not sure which he wanted to see less at the moment.​ ​ Yet when the form materialized, he frowned in surprise, for it had neither the bloated form Nurgle's appendages took nor the glazing of blood Khorne's servants tended to be drenched in.​ ​ It was humanoid in shape, perhaps even a faint mockery of one among the Adeptus Astartes, if sized nearer Angron himself. Yet it was clearly not a being of regular space. For one, it had four arms, each of them seeming to smoothly transition from the metal of its 'armor' into something like flesh. For another, the golden glow surrounding it had an unnatural stink. And in addition, there was its face, below its white crown. It was a human face, yet its features were as protean as those of his father, every motion of its not-muscles an incitement - to create, to betray, to tyrannize. The figure wielded four staffs topped with various animalistic symbols, one in each hand, and behind its shoulder blades a knife of leaden metal - the only ***** in its overbearing goldenness - protruded from its shoulder blades.​ ​ "Angron," it said. "So crude, always, even now.... I only come to give thanks."​ ​ "For what?" He did not trust this being. He could, he imagined, be forgiven for that. It as good as screamed that it was not to be trusted, even by daemons' standards. (In these moments he almost wished to be talking to a servant of Khorne, for those were at least straightforward. Yet the words rewound themselves in his mind. 'I will be free, you will not.' And with the words, as ever, swirled the doubts he did not wish to confront.)​ ​ "Do you not see what you have achieved?!"​ ​ "The beacon," Angron said. "You are not of the Four, yet I presume you are linked to the beacon."​ ​ "I am," it said with a cruel smirk. "Though still you do not see.... I am the Forgotten Pharaoh, and I am the first."​ ​ "The first what?" Angron asked, suppressing a yawn. These games were so pointless, yet they had to be maintained.​ ​ "The first of the Emperor's court," the Forgotten Pharaoh said. "The first Empyrean foreshock of His impending ascension. As to the rest... all that, you will know. But I thank you nevertheless, for letting me emerge."​ ​ It vanished with a flourish, and Angron watched it swirl into nothing. That was what it was, then - his father was creating a court of daemons of his own. New sons. What of the old ones?​ ​ All this did nothing at all to chip at Angron's unease. The Emperor had elevated him, called him to Terra for that first revelation when most of the Primarchs had been let be to accrete into Horus's rebellion. He had been formally named executioner, had been given the honor of illuminating Vulkan. He had accepted that at the time as merely his due - but when had his father ever cared about his due, before?​ ​ _I will be free. You will not._​ ​ "Zekhoros," Angron sent by vox. "Walk with me."​ ​ As the Thirteenth Captain caught up with his Primarch, Angron strode up the steps to the citadel's ceremonial entrance, the guards hurrying to open the gates. After that he headed immediately to the vox suite, to reacquaint himself with what he was meant to be doing now that the whole adventure with the beacon had ended - about as well as could be expected after the Ultramarines had shown up, really. Guilliman had been delayed, giving Fulgrim the time to ravage Ultramar if he had that strength (which Angron privately doubted). And whatever the beacon was had been a triumph.​ ​ "Sire?" Zekhoros asked, once caught up.​ ​ "Take all those of my sons who do not have the Nails," Angron simply ordered. "Including Lhorke and the Librarians and whatever other flotsam is around, plus the batch that Guilliman... cured. That should be a thousand Astartes or so. You have command of them, as an independent Chapter. The War Hounds if you want to call them that, or you can come up with a new name if you want."​ 
Zekhoros was silent, in shock, perhaps at the responsibility. "Why me?"​ ​ "Lhorke will be asleep most of the time," Angron said. "Who else would it be? As to me... even freed from the Nails that I forced onto them, I am bound to the World Eaters. They are my sin now, to steer to unknown ends. My only command to you is this - your Chapter must not be dedicated to the worship of Khorne, or any one of the Chaos Gods. Let some of my gene-sons at least be free of those chains. Follow the path of Chaos Undivided, as Lorgar calls it... and may it lead you better than it did him."​ ​ Zekhoros bowed and took his leave. Angron proceeded onwards.​ ​ His melancholy was not an echo of Kharn's. The Eighth Captain had merely lost friends, Numeon first among them, and was now reflecting on those sacrifices. But it was not the first time, and Kharn would recover in time - from that, at least.​ ​ But the chains -​ ​ Magnus had not lied, then. He had truly believed that Angron had not merely damned himself, but enslaved himself. And if for now Khorne and Chaos were happy with the tally of skulls he was reaping, the day would come when he faltered. What was to be his fate, on that day? What was to be his Legion's?​ ​ "Primarch Angron," the tech-priest's words came, and the Primarch realized he had arrived in the comms room without realizing it. "A ship has arrived in orbit, class unknown, claiming Imperial codes."​ ​ "Bring its bridge through," Angron answered absentmindedly, before taking a look at the measurements and reeling in surprise.​ ​ That was not an Imperial ship. It could not be, for the Imperium did not have ships that large. Perhaps some xeno ruse - perhaps some relic of the Dark Age of Technology, at best. From the auspex it was ornately decorated, a cathedral, or three cathedrals stacked on top of each other, yet Angron could see from the heat plumes that the decorations were only a foil layer atop a machine of war.​ ​ And then the bridge came through, and the order to activate the planetary defense grid died in Angron's throat.​ ​ "Report," the Primarch said, with a smile, to a friend he had feared would never be able to return to the line of duty after Maragara.​ ​ "Since that Terran oaf managed to lose the _Conqueror_," Admiral Lotara Sarrin answered, "the Emperor, or rather Lorgar, has seen fit to dispatch a new flagship for the Twelfth Legion. You have full liberty to rename it, of course - but the name that it was built with, in the secret dockyards of Mars, is the _Furious Abyss_."​


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

TO BE CONTINUED....

But not only on this site since, unfortunately, it's a bit dead around here, and gothik has left. The new primary home of Renegades is on Spacebattles here; if you want to join the project, please contact me there. There is also a FFN page for the saga. Both of them are running a bit behind Heresy Online at the moment, but they'll catch up, and if things go to plan get ahead.

I will continue posting my installments here, though; the next one will be titled Wyrd of Fringes. I also intend to repost other authors' work here, if I have permission, though at the moment things are a little stalled in general with the project. Heresy Online is where Renegades was born, and I'm not abandoning it entirely unless the site shuts down.

But for now, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

Or apples, as the case may be, since I've always been more elephant than dolphin.


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