Chapter 886 - 22

A large door eased shut behind him and the dark swallowed the corridor.

Hashirama rolled the scroll tight and slipped it back into his sleeve. Batu stood beside him, eight feet of iron and oath-bound fury. The Astartes said nothing. He dipped his chin once and turned down the left-hand passage, boots grinding sparks from the grated decking. Hashirama went right.

The air inside the titan tasted of hot metal and stale incense. It hummed with buried engines, a steady throb that pressed against the bones like surf. Crimson lumen strips burned in broken intervals along the walls. Between them stretched panels of tarnished brass. Faces bulged from the metal—men and women melted waist-deep into the plating, mouths open in a frozen howl, eyelids welded shut. A faint keening leaked from them, part breath, part machine noise, impossible to split.

Hashirama kept the Chameleon Jutsu maintained over himself. The world around him warped and blurred, light sliding off him like water off glass. He moved with bare footfalls, a kunai in one hand, a tanto in the other.

He passed a vent that exhaled green vapor. The mist hissed where it touched the brass, etching it with crawling sigils that bled light. Within the cloud hung runes shaped like broken vertebrae, tumbling end over end. He skimmed below them, lungs held shut, and felt the vapor sear faint lines across his veil before it drifted on.

Ahead, the corridor forked. A pair of robed figures dragged a crate the size of a coffin. Their bodies were rotted thin, skin shredded by hooks stitched through shoulders and hips. Warp-tats crawled across their flesh like ink set living. They muttered litanies to gears and gods. Hashirama slipped between them. One soft blow pierced a throat, the next the base of a skull. They folded without sound. He dragged the corpses into a gap between pipe trunks and pressed on.

A ladder shaft yawned to his left. Steam belched upward. He climbed. The rungs trembled with distant recoil each time the titan shifted its vast weight. Thirty meters up he found a maintenance deck choked with hanging cables. A cult-gunner knelt at a splayed console, fingers jointed with copper wire. Hashirama stepped across the grate and let the kunai kiss the cultist's exposed spine, severing the cord. The body pitched forward. Sparks flared and died. Screens dimmed.

Did that do anything? Hashirama wondered briefly, before moving on.

He worked room by room, hall by hall. Junction boxes pried open and gutted. Optic links carved apart. Power conduits severed. Each sabotage marked silent on a map in his head. Lights flickered. Some machines he did not recognize at all, such as strange boxes that were filled with wires and other strange things that looked important enough; he destroyed those too.

Through a porthole of obsidian glass he glimpsed the outside theater: storm clouds bruised purple, trench lines glowing with muzzle-flash, distant titans wading through curtains of dust. Or stumbling over the roots of the forest he'd grown from chakra and slept with all the other titans who'd fallen victim to the chakra-induced sleep. A gun-tower on the titan's shoulder spat lances of plasma into the dark, each shot hammering a drumbeat beneath his feet. He filed the tower's rhythm away for later.

Some doors opened onto things no longer human. A swollen priest, torso fused to a column of bone and rust, chanted into a vox horn that fed the titan fresh lies of glory. Hashirama left him gutted at the waist. A machine-seer floated on skitter limbs and laughed high like glass breaking. The shinobi's blade slipped between vox grill and jaw. The laughter gurgled out and the body wheezed oil until it stilled.

A shrine blocked one passage—a simple niche carved into the hull, yet alive with rot. Melted candles bled tallow that crawled uphill, gathering into twisted human shapes that reached for him with waxen arms. He stepped back, flung a trio of kunai etched with null sigils. Light swallowed the wax. The arms collapsed into smoke.

Past the shrine, a cargo bay opened like a wound. Catwalks overlapped in crooked tiers and servitors dragged pallets of organ parts toward a maw of grinding gears. The gears sang—a dirge in iron—chewing flesh into pulp that streamed away in glass pipes. Hydraulic fluid colored the slurry crimson. Hashirama slid along the top rail, slipped a tag between the power couplings, and left without a ripple.

— —

Batu moved deeper along the core spine. The metal deck groaned under his tread. He tore open mag-locked doors with gauntleted hands. Servitors twitched in their charging racks as he passed. He smashed skulls with the pommel of his blade, then crossed furnace causeways lit yellow by reactor slag. He counted bulkheads, remembered schematics graven into the vaults of the Legion's libraria: where cooling veins ran, where void shields nested in concrete coffers, where the heart of the machine lay beating behind meters of adamantium.

Steam clouds draped him in shifting banners. His lenses cut through the haze, marking hostiles in runic red. A skirmish line of cult storm-troopers formed at the far end of a coolant bridge, autoguns braced. Batu quick-stepped forward, bolt pistol snapping. Each shell exploded inside armor, ripping torsos to smoke. A grenade bounced off his pauldron, rolling under a rail. He kicked it on. The blast took half the bridge. He jumped the gap and landed among the survivors. One swing of the blade sheared a man from collarbone to hip. Another cleaved two at once.

A door slid aside ahead of him—hydraulic hiss drowned by the pounding of reactors. From it stalked a sarcophagus fused to daemon plate, claws dripping fission glaze. It roared with the voice of a caged legionary driven mad by unending warsong. Batu holstered the pistol. Astartes met engine-beast. Steel rang. The brute hammered down; Batu ducked, punched a crack into the breastplate, bit in with a power knife, ripped wires free. The brute staggered. Batu caught the claw on his pauldron, forced it wide, and drove his blade through the sarcophagus faceplate. Sparks roared out with the trapped scream. The bestial abomination sagged. Batu heaved it off the bridge, watched it tumble into shadows, sparks trailing like dying stars.

He forged on.

Where the spine narrowed, servo-cherubs fluttered—skinless infants welded to wings of brass—each cradling a bomb. They giggled static. Batu fired a single shot. The shell burst in their midst. Limbs spattered the overhead. Shrapnel pinged his armor, scratched ceramite.

— —

Hashirama descended an elevator shaft, shinobi wire paying out behind him. Halfway down, the cable snagged. A turbine had chewed it. He cut loose, dropped fifteen meters, landed in a crouch beside a maintenance tram. A servitor pilot slumped dead at the lever, skull hollowed for circuitry. He pushed the corpse aside, keyed the tram, and let it coast along a rail through a conduit artery.

The tunnel's walls were clear crystal in places. Beyond them he saw cogitator banks stacked like termite hives. Millions of green lights winked in silent argument. Warp-echoes rippled across the glass, faces surfacing and vanishing. Whispered formulas tapped against the pane. Hashirama placed a palm on the glass; the formulas recoiled as if scalded. He drew a spiral seal. The lights inside browned out section by section until the whole bank lay dead.

The tram halted before a hatch lined with breathing tubes. Each tube ended in a mouth, lips stitched, vents exhaling cinnamon smoke. He slid through them, found himself in a gravity-null chamber. Corpses drifted in slow coils—pilots flensed open, hearts plucked out and replaced with crystalline engines. The engines beat faintly, each pulse feeding data into black cables that ran toward the command node. He hung among them, weightless, and laid charges on every crystal he could reach.

A caretaker servitor emerged from a wall recess. Its head was a cage of copper lattice inside which knelt a child, eyes blindfolded, whispering coordinates. The child's voice directed the servitor's steps. Hashirama floated behind, cut the cables, lifted the child free. The servitor stiffened, then wilted, limbs sagging in the null field. He tucked a rebreather over the child's face, set him into a sealing scroll. Not every life here would end in fire, though he wasn't sure if a child in such a state would still live.

— —

Gunfire stitched from an upper mezzanine. Cult sentries, eyes black with augmetics, poured rounds from slug rifles. Batu raised the bolt pistol once, fired twice. The first shell shredded two torsos. The second tore through a stair and dropped the last gunner screaming into the slag pit below. He strode on.

Three more decks down he found the coolant atrium—an echoing gulf bisected by vertical rivers of glowing aqua fluid. Catwalks circled each stream. Daemon-bound servitors steered cages of reactor fuel along the rails. Batu stepped onto the nearest catwalk. Alarms shrilled now in earnest. From overhead gantries swung igniter-guardians: half-man, half-flamer cannons, jet nozzles for arms. They spat gouts of chem-fire the color of venom. Batu ducked beneath the first burst, felt paint blister on his pauldrons. He sprang to the next gantry, slammed the guardian's nozzle upward. Fire carved the ceiling, slag rained. He head-butted the guardian's soft face, crushed cartilage, booted him over the rail.

He smashed an emergency valve wheel. Coolant geysered out, a freezing cascade that clashed with the chem-flames, birthing a storm of scalding vapor. In the cloud he moved unseen, blade tasting grease and flesh until the gantries fell quiet. Then he pushed on toward the terminus vault.

— —

Hashirama emerged onto a long spinal artery that ran the titan's height. Lenses dotted the ceiling, each an unblinking eye. He formed a single seal. The lenses fogged white as frost coated them inside. They cracked. Shards rattled down.

Opposite the artery stood a chamber sealed by living bronze. The surface writhed with embossed bodies, hands clawing, mouths crying prayers in silence. Hashirama traced a glyph upon the door. Bronze parted like clay beneath water. He stepped into a library of algorithm scrolls, each suspended in stasis fields. Data-priests hunched over lecterns, copying sigils onto strips of skin flayed from their own forearms.

He crossed the space, sword whispering. Blood spattered scrolls. In the center stood a cylinder tank filled with pale gel. Within the gel floated a cluster of brains wired to filaments of gold. The brains throbbed in unison, casting waves of psychic static through the chamber. Hashirama sensed the static skim his chakra like insects. He drew a seal across the cylinder wall. Gel boiled. The brains burst. Silence dropped like a curtain.

With the static gone, he felt Batu's presence ring through the corridors—thunder of ceramite against deck, hymnal clamor of war. Time to end it. He mapped the route to the bridge in three breaths, then ran.

— —

At the terminus of the core Batu found a vault door three meters thick, sigils of the Dark Mechanicum seared into its face. He set his fist to the seal and cracked the lock like glass.

Beyond lay the plasma heart, a sphere of white light chained in place by prayer-iron and cabling. Tech-priests scurried about its base, spines plugged direct to data currents. Batu stepped into the glow. Plasma washed his armor, painting shadows like ribs across the walls. Priests turned, mouths open. He hewed them down. The caliban blade howled through air grown molten. He ripped conduits from the sphere's cradle, slammed them together, watched arcs of raw sun leap chain to chain. The heart shuddered. Containment fields hiccupped. Batu rammed a grenade into the primary coil and walked out as the timer ticked.

— —

Hashirama angled through a vent crawl and dropped to a gantry ringing the command sanctum. The room lay wide as a temple nave. Brass columns reached into black. Candles guttered on skull-hewn sconces. Incense swirled with data vox smoke. In the center stood a throne welded to the deck. Copper veins ran from its plinth through the floor, feeding farmland circuits that lined the walls in sick patterns.

And on that throne, a man.

What remained of one. Flesh sloughed down to nerve wire. Tubes pierced bone. Eyes sewn open by golden pins. He writhed, mouth torn wide around a scroll of barbed scripture. Each breath vibrated through vox amps nested at the base of the throne, spilling binary shrieks into the bridge. His fingers no longer ended in nails but in data spikes plunged into the throne's armrests. The throne twitched with him, vast servo arms translating his spasms into steering impulses that whispered down the titan's spine.

He did not command. He suffered, and the machine moved with his suffering.

Hashirama stepped across the floor, each footfall quieter than ash. The candle flames bent but did not break. He drew a roll of parchment from his belt. Explosive tags. Seventy—each one brushed with his blood, each one sealed with the glyph for cessation.

He laid them upon the tortured man. One against the sternum. One against the brow. One tucked beneath the ribcage. He worked with the cold efficiency taught to children of war. The man writhed, but no voice rose above the mechanized moan fed through the vox. When the last tag was set, Hashirama whispered a single word.

"Rest."

He turned and crossed the deck. At the threshold he formed a seal with two fingers. The tags ignited in a rippling bloom of white light. A sound like tearing silk followed after. Then the bridge cracked wide, bulkheads bending outward, fire churning from the throne's heart. Hashirama dropped into the corridor below as the ceiling peeled apart like fruit skin.

The klaxons began. Steel voices rang through every hall. Binary alarms splashed red across lumen strips. Pressure doors slammed in sequence. Somewhere deep, coolant lines burst like arteries. The titan staggered. Hashirama felt the deck tilt under his feet.

He sprinted through tightening corridors. Fire chased along the ceiling, licking paint to ash. He flipped through a hatchway as it irised shut behind him, then leapt an elevator shaft blown open by some interior blast. The world inside the titan was dying by degrees, heat rising, systems shearing from the sabotage.

When he reached the external gangway the wind outside punched at him, hot with engine exhaust and rising flames. He skidded along plating now canted at a savage angle. Down below, the battlefield swam in haze. He unrolled the scroll and struck it open with a snap of the wrist. Symbols flared.

Batu re-formed in a shimmer of blue. Armor steaming from the heat within. He saw the fire breaking from vents across the titan's back and gave a short laugh.

"You found the heart," Hashirama said.

Batu nodded once. "And you?"

"The head."

They leapt together, chakra and grav-units flaring. They fell through black smoke as Dies Irae bowed to its wounds, great plates shearing from its frame. It knelt once like a penitent and then folded in upon itself. An orange bloom blew through its chest. Towers of its back cracked and toppled. The giant came apart in a rolling thunder of ruptured metal and imploding reactors. Shock-waves rippled out across the field, bending the new forest flat for a heartbeat.

They landed on shattered ground half a kilometer away. Hashirama let the chameleon cloak drop. The wind ripped through scorched trees, carrying sparks and burning pollen high into the overcast sky.

The remaining titans saw their king fall. Engines stalled. Some turned in wide, uncertain arcs. The battlefield held its breath.

Batu drew in air thick with ash.

"More work ahead," he said.

Hashirama slid the tanto back into its sheath. "I know."

They set off across the ruin, two figures walking beneath the slow rain of burning iron, while behind them the colossus guttered out and lay still, a mountain of cooling metal beneath a sky that had lost a god. The Dies Irae was dead.

"You're with the one who's been slowing the enemy's advance?"

The voice came crackling through the vox, low and rasped, broken slightly by distance and interference. Batu stood still, helm tilted to the sky. Dust clung to his warplate. Behind him, the ruins of a shattered outpost stretched into the haze. Half a wall remained standing, scorched black. A flagpole leaned like a broken spear. Fires guttered in the rubble, low and stubborn.

That he was able to reestablish some form of direct communication with a superior was nothing short of miraculous.

"Yes, Noyan-Khan," Batu answered. "We fought together and I stand with him."

In the distance, past rusted barricades and the twisted wrecks of tanks, Hashirama moved among the wounded. He knelt beside a man with half his face missing, hands glowing with faint green light. Another soldier, legs crushed beneath a collapsed hab structure, whimpered as Hashirama pressed his palm to his chest and muttered something inaudible, given their distance. The man's cries fell away. He did the same to a wounded child.

Peace rolled from him like tidewater.

The survivors had numbered in the hundreds when they arrived. Soldiers mostly. A few civilians in bloodied coats, carrying wounded on stretchers of tarp and steel poles. Most could still stand. Many could not. A few had already given up.

Batu watched the work in silence. The same hands that had raised forests from concrete and torn apart war machines now pulled shrapnel from the lungs of children and bound wounds with glowing vines.

"He calls himself Senju Hashirama," Batu said into the vox. "He is human. And not a psyker. But I have never seen power like his. Not among Librarians. Not among the Thousand Sons. Not even from the Emperor himself."

There was a pause. Vox-static throbbed between words.

"Can he be trusted?"

Batu turned his head slightly. Behind his visor, his eyes traced the way Hashirama stood between two dying soldiers, palms pressed against their foreheads, not with command, but care. The wounded bled less. Their breathing slowed. Some slept. Others merely stared.

"I trust him," Batu said. "He fights with us. He saves where we could not. He does not hesitate."

Another pause.

"Very well," the Noyan-Khan said at last. "Do not return to the Palace. Your orders are changed. Stay where you are. Strike where they do not expect. Cut into their lines. Bleed them from the flanks. Sabotage their advance. Delay them. Dismantle them. Make them pay for every inch of ground they take."

"I understand," Batu said. His voice was firm, his eyes locked forward.

The line cut with a final crackle. Silence followed. Not quiet. Just silence. The wind moved through the broken teeth of the wall. Somewhere distant, a man coughed and did not stop. A child wept. The embers of a fire popped and curled low smoke into the grey sky.

Batu turned. He walked across the broken yard toward Hashirama, who now crouched beside a woman missing both arms, murmuring to her in that calm tone he always used. She stared at him like he was made of stars.

The First Hokage looked up. Sweat clung to his brow. His sleeves were torn. Dirt smudged his jaw. But he was still moving.

Batu stopped beside him. "Change of plans."

Hashirama nodded. "I figured that."

"We stay," Batu said. "A commander told me that we're better off attacking the enemy from behind than joining the defense of the Imperial Palace."

Hashirama did not speak. He only nodded once and turned again to the wounded. A young man lay at his feet, eyes open and watching the sky without blinking. One side of his face had caved in from some explosion or impact. Blood pooled in the hollow of his neck. Hashirama knelt and placed his hand over the man's chest. A breath passed. Then another. The man blinked. And then he wept.

"I'll heal as many of them as I can," Hashirama said. His voice was low. Barely above the wind. "Then you can guide me. However and wherever. Whatever else we can do to bleed this enemy, I will do."

Batu nodded once, helm shifting just slightly. "Do you plan on sealing them away as well?"

The shinobi sighed. He stood and wiped the sweat from his brow with the edge of his sleeve. His hands trembled faintly. His robe clung to him with dust and dried blood.

"It's not safe for them out here," he said. "Too many to protect. Too few of us to try. I don't know if safety even exists anymore. If we leave them, they'll die. They'll be found. Butchered. Or worse."

"Do you still have the strength to do it?" Batu asked.

A pause. Hashirama looked out over the field. The wounded lay like fallen leaves, scattered and quiet. Some still stirred. Some no longer did. He watched them for a moment.

"If I'm not using my chakra to save them," he said, "then I'm not worthy of it."

The words struck a chord within the astartes–for what greater purpose did he serve other than the preservation of humanity? Another nod from Batu. He looked down at his gauntlets. Ceramite stained in blood. Dried gore in the joints. Hands made for war. Not healing.

"How can I help?" he asked.

"First aid," Hashirama answered. "Anything to stabilize those close to the edge. Slow the bleeding. Keep their hearts going. Long enough for me to reach them."

"Understood."

Batu turned and scanned the ruined outpost. Most of the supply crates had been blown open or melted. Ammunition spilled across the floor. Burned ration packs. Torn bedrolls. But near the back wall, beneath the sagging frame of a crushed hab-unit, lay a medicae locker still sealed. The white paint blackened with soot but the mark of the double-aquila still visible across its face.

He moved to it and cracked the seal. Inside, rows of glass and metal and cloth, all wrapped in wax-paper or rubber pouches. Tools he did not know the names of. But he had seen medicae use them before. Field dressings. Sealing foam. Coagulants. Burn balms. Tubes with faded lettering. He took what he could carry and stepped back into the ruin.

The first soldier he came to was young. No more than twenty. One arm gone from the elbow. The wound seared black at the edge but not clean. A field tourniquet wrapped around the stump. Blood soaked his chest and belly. Batu knelt beside him. The soldier looked up and whimpered. His eyes went wide at the sight of the White Scar leaning over him.

"I am not here to hurt you," Batu said. His voice flat. No gentleness. Only fact.

He cut away the ruined sleeve. The flesh was torn ragged. He took a spray canister of clotting foam and emptied it into the wound. The foam hissed. The soldier shivered. Batu wrapped gauze tight around the arm and tucked the edges under. He checked the pulse. Weak, but there. He moved on.

He found another man half-buried under a piece of the outer wall. Only his chest and one arm were visible. The rest pinned beneath stone and steel. He was still breathing. Barely. Batu called for help. Two nearby survivors limped over. Together they lifted the wreckage and dragged the man free. Batu examined the leg. Crushed flat. Bone exposed. He sprayed more foam. Wrapped the thigh. Injected a stimulant from one of the labeled tubes. The soldier moaned. Batu moved on.

A woman had lost her jaw. A mortar shell had taken half her face and the rest of her squad. Her eyes met Batu's as he knelt. He had nothing that could repair what was gone. Only a cloth to stem the bleeding. He wrapped it around her head and soaked it with salve. Her breath came in rattling draws. But she did not look away from him. She held to his gaze as if it were the last anchor left in the world.

He gave her a small vial of morphic suppressant. Something to dull the pain. She drank it without question.

Elsewhere, Hashirama had summoned thin vines tipped with glowing leaves, wrapping them around chests and shoulders and broken arms. His hands moved quickly now, less like a healer and more like a worker fixing a machine he knew well. Crack, bind, press, seal. His shoulders hunched. Every breath longer than the last.

They worked without speaking. Side by side, across the field. When Batu ran out of foam, he tied makeshift splints. When Hashirama found a wound beyond chakra's touch, he called Batu over to wrap the body and mark it for sealing. They found twenty more who could be saved. Fifty who could not. Some cried. Some prayed. Most said nothing.

Eventually, the wounded were seen to. The walking helped the still. The children sat in a row, quiet and wide-eyed. Hashirama crouched at the center of it all and drew a scroll large enough to cover the outpost square. The paper unrolled with a sound like silk tearing. Symbols spread across the page, ink forming as if poured from his thoughts alone. He knelt and placed his hands on the center of the scroll.

"You sure?" Batu asked.

Hashirama looked up. His face pale. Eyes sunken.

"I can do it," he said.

He touched his fingertips to the ink.

The symbols blazed.

Wind burst outward from the scroll and the people vanished. One by one. They were there. And then they weren't. Gone. Stored.

The paper shuddered. Folded in on itself. And then it was still.

Hashirama leaned back and exhaled. His chest rose and fell. His hands trembled. He didn't speak. Batu placed one gauntlet on his shoulder and stood beside him, watching the dust swirl around the place where once a hundred people had waited to die. The wind moved on. The sky darkened.

They would keep moving.

And they would keep bleeding the enemy.

"I may need some rest," Hashirama said. Batu nodded. With everything Hashirama had done, thus far, rest was something he'd already earned a thousand times over.

"I'll keep watch over you while you sleep," Batu said. "Focus on recovering. We need your power."

Hashirama stared at him for a long moment. No words passed between them. Then he lowered himself to a squat, knees drawn in, elbows resting atop them. He brought his hands together and formed a symbol. Fingers locked like gears. His eyes fell shut.

The air never stilled. Even here, away from the lines. It carried with it the faint weight of ash and the sound of artillery echoing across broken ground. A soft tremble beneath the dirt every few minutes, like the world itself exhaling in pain. Somewhere far away, a mountain cracked. Somewhere else, something screamed and did not stop.

But here, for now, there was no enemy. No fire. No death. Only the sound of breathing and the grind of rubble beneath armored boots. Batu turned from the shinobi and began his watch.

He did not sit. He did not rest.

Twelve hours passed by his reckoning, though reckoning meant little now. The sky had not changed once. There was no sun. No stars. No sense of shift. Just the dull haze overhead, lit faintly from behind by the storm-rot of the Warp, and the thick black smoke that curled over the horizon like the arms of drowning giants.

He stood sentinel over Hashirama's still form. At times, he moved to higher ground and scanned the outlying wastes through the lenses of his helm. In the distance, he saw shapes. Not titans. Perhaps artillery constructs. Perhaps wrecks. The battlefield was littered with the corpses of gods and machines alike. The dead did not stir. The living did not come.

He found no movement. No enemy. No patrols.

Twice, he passed a mound of bodies. One piled high with mortals wrapped in broken flak armor. The other filled with what might have once been Astartes, their armor bloated and twisted by the ruinous powers. Neither pile moved. Neither breathed. He did not linger.

He returned to the outpost, sometimes pacing the perimeter, sometimes standing still. He watched the line of Hashirama's shoulders, waiting for a shift, a breath too sharp, a tremor. None came. The shinobi remained in that squat, as unmoving as stone, the seal formed by his fingers held with the precision of a statue.

Even at the twelfth hour he had not swayed.

And then, finally, he moved. It was a small movement at first. The symbol broke. Hands fell open. Fingers flexed. Hashirama opened his eyes and rose to his feet in a single fluid motion.

His robe fell back into place. Dust shook free. He turned to Batu.

"Let's go," he said.

AN: Chapter 20 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport469denheim15/6/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 18: New View contentdenheim29/6/2025Add bookmark#495"If we're not going to the Imperial Palace to aid in its defense," Hashirama began, his voice low, "then what exactly are we to do?"

Batu paused, armor scraping slightly as he turned his helm toward the horizon. In the distance, a pillar of smoke curled high and thick above fields of shattered tanks and twisted artillery, the ruins of battles lost or battles won. Fires flickered orange and dull beneath a sky the color of bruised skin. The giant shifted his weight slightly, gauntlets loose at his sides.

Hashirama watched him, waiting patiently for an answer, a faint smile on his lips. Not having to weigh strategy, politics, or the shifting tides of diplomacy was new to him. Pleasant, even—though pleasant felt wrong, given the ruin around them. It had always been his role to bear the weight of leadership. First, he had been the pillar that supported the Senju clan through endless conflict. Then the Hokage, whose words shaped the lives of thousands. But here, standing in the ashes of a world that was not his own, he was simply another fighter among many. It was simple. Direct. A breath of fresh air, clear despite the bitter smoke drifting around him.

At last, Batu spoke. "The traitors have an ammunition depot northeast of our current location. With the speed with which you and I move, I'd say we'll reach it in a day or so."

He pointed with one armored finger, the motion precise and deliberate. Hashirama followed it. Through the haze, he could see nothing but ruin. But he trusted Batu's sense of direction, the innate precision of the Astartes mind.

"Destroying it will slow their advance considerably," Batu continued. His voice was roughened by the vox, but clear. "Their weapons—bolters, autocannons, artillery—are dependent on constant resupply. Without ammunition, their capacity to wage war diminishes."

Hashirama nodded slowly. The logic was sound, clear-cut. Even in his own time, cutting off supplies was often as decisive as any direct assault. Shinobi weren't affected as much, but regular armies certainly were.

"Who is defending it?" Hashirama asked. "Astartes?"

"The Iron Warriors," Batu said. "Masters of siege warfare. They know fortifications better than any other Legion. Their defenses will be formidable."

Hashirama's smile widened slightly. "Well, I've climbed and slipped into plenty of fortresses in my day. Stronger walls have fallen for less."

Batu tilted his helm toward him, silent. His posture suggested curiosity, the slight tilt of the massive shoulders, the quiet hum of his armor's internal systems as he considered the shinobi's words.

"Assassinations," Hashirama explained softly. "Sabotage. Espionage. Sneaking behind enemy lines. Infiltrating keeps. Stealing documents right from under the noses of warlords. Those were the skills expected of me long before I stood at the head of armies."

He reached up, brushing away dirt from his robes with quiet ease. Dust drifted gently to the earth. His hands were steady. Calm.

"How will you enter?" Batu asked, a hint of something close to curiosity edging his rough voice.

"The same way I always have," Hashirama said. "Quietly. But, I suppose it depends on what awaits us."

A moment passed between them. Batu inclined his head, the heavy ceramite grinding faintly at the neck joint.

"It won't be easy," Batu said at last. "Iron Warriors are methodical. Precise. They do not overlook weaknesses. Their fortifications will be complex, layered."

Hashirama raised one brow, the smallest gesture of amusement. "I've yet to see a wall that was completely without flaw."

"Indeed." Batu nodded once, slowly. "I will guide you. I know their ways, their style. I have fought them before."

Hashirama tilted his head. "Then we'll need your knowledge to find the weakest point in their fortress. Once we breach it, destroying the ammunition won't be difficult."

He paused, eyes thoughtful. "You've learned my language so quickly. Remarkable, really. Perhaps when the fighting eases, you could teach me some of yours."

Batu shifted again, ever so slightly.

"If the fighting eases," he said quietly.

Hashirama looked away, toward the endless ruin beyond. The wind whispered softly around them, stirred dust into tiny spirals that rose and fell like ghosts. The horizon held little but smoke, and yet somewhere out there lay another fortress, another enemy stronghold to breach. Another chance to strike at the heart of those who had brought ruin to this place.

"If the fighting eases," Hashirama echoed. "Yes. If it does."

For a moment they stood in silence. Each man contemplating the distant battle yet to come. Each preparing himself in the quiet, careful way that soldiers did, the way warriors had always done.

Finally, Batu turned his body to face the northeast. "We should move. The Iron Warriors are static fighters, but I'm quite certain they'll have to haul out the ammunition soon enough and we might not reach it in time."

Hashirama nodded. "Lead the way."

Together, they began walking across the broken ground, stepping over rusted casings and the bones of soldiers whose names no longer mattered. Batu's stride was powerful and relentless, heavy boots crunching through charred earth and shattered stone. Hashirama moved silently at his side, stepping lightly, his robes brushing softly through the smoke-choked air.

Above them, the sky darkened. Thunder growled softly, distant, like a beast waking from sleep. The ash drifted in slow, lazy spirals. Fires still burned in the distance. War, as always, carried on beyond the horizon.

But for now, in this moment, there was only silence. Only the two warriors moving toward another fortress, another fight.

There was a certain simplicity here. A purpose stripped bare, unburdened by command or leadership, free of politics and village squabbles. His only responsibility now was survival—and destruction of the enemy. It felt clean, unclouded. He moved forward into it willingly.

"If it ends, huh?" Hashirama said softly.

Batu did not reply. But the pace of his stride quickened slightly, armor plates shifting and humming as he moved toward their distant target. Hashirama matched him step for step, breathing steadily, eyes set forward, fixed on the horizon and the next fortress to fall.

Where possible, they skirted the great killing fields. Wide plains turned to graveyards of men and armor, stretched far under the choking sky. Firestorms rolled across the ridgelines. At night, the glow of artillery lit the low clouds like lightning trapped in a jar. They saw the distant flashes of void shields collapsing, the rising bloom of orbital strikes, the brief glint of Titans firing across kilometers of scorched dust.

They did not go there. They followed ravines carved by old shells, gullies where corpses sank into the red-black mire. Where the hills rose and offered no cover, they crawled. When the wreckage allowed, they moved like smoke between burned-out tanks and shattered rhino hulls. Once, they passed under a crashed Thunderhawk, its wings torn off, fuselage cracked open like a ribcage. The smell of fuel and meat lingered.

They did not linger.

Far off, war waged unbroken.

The fields were alive with killing. Men in flak armor screamed and bled in the churned earth, their lasguns clutched tight, held like relics. The beams snapped through the air in bright, flat lines. Red light blinked between trenches, carving holes in armor, flesh, and bone. One man had his head taken clean, and the body ran three steps more before falling. Another was caught in the hip. He crawled until the ground gave way and swallowed him whole.

When the charge failed, they ran at each other with shovels and blades and whatever else could be wielded. Some carried bayonets taped to broken rifles. Others had only bricks or clubs wrapped in wire. The field was soaked through. The dirt turned to mud, and the mud turned to blood. At every step it clung and pulled. Men drowned face-down, screaming, flailing. Others sank with silence, mouths full of earth.

They saw none of it up close. Only from afar. And even from a distance, the stench crawled across the wind.

Over the rise, a daemon galloped through the ranks. Its skin like oiled flame. Its legs bent wrong, hooves sharp and clicking. It sang as it moved. Not with voice, but with motion. Each swing of its blade painted the battlefield anew. Men burst apart like fruit dropped from height. Their screams chased the thing, but it never turned. It moved on, slaughtering in silence.

Behind it came more.

One daemon walked through a tank like it was smoke, and the crew inside screamed until their voices stopped. Another rode upon a chariot made of screaming skulls, its wheels grinding over the wounded who tried to crawl away. Its tongue trailed behind it like a banner of meat.

Batu said nothing.

Hashirama lowered his gaze. He placed one hand on the ground and let the world breathe through him. He felt the shape of the soil, the pull of broken roots, the groaning of the battlefield as if it were alive. His fingers twitched once. Then he stood and moved again.

There was killing to be done. But not here. Not now.

They passed that stretch of ruin by the low routes, through tunnels carved by old water lines and downed pipelines. They stepped over sparking cables that glowed like veins beneath the skin of the world. Once, a body stirred as they passed. Its hands reached for Hashirama. The face was gone, burned clean. He paused long enough to place two fingers on the man's chest. The body stilled. He left no mark.

They moved without rest.

In the third hour, they came to a long ridge. Beneath it, the remnants of a Mechanicus convoy lay broken. Massive machines on wheels twice the height of a man. Great treads snapped and smoking. Servitors frozen mid-motion, their limbs still reaching for tools they would never hold again. The convoy had been hit by something massive. Perhaps shellfire. Perhaps something worse. Hashirama picked through the remains. Batu watched the hilltop.

A box still sealed lay in the dirt. Inside, rations. Dried meat. Compressed fruit. Hashirama ate in silence. Batu did not eat.

Further down, they found the remnants of a chimera transport. Its rear gate torn open. Blood along the walls. Shell casings littered the floor. The bodies were gone. Dragged or consumed. No way to tell. They moved on.

They did not speak much.

Once, Hashirama asked, "Do your people have a way to fight the daemons?"

Batu shook his head. "Some. Not enough. Not nearly as effective as whatever it is you do."

That was all.

They walked through the dead and the forgotten. Through valleys carved by orbital fire and ridges lined with the bones of tanks. They moved past cathedrals crushed by falling ships, their stained-glass windows shattered across miles of dirt. They passed shrines drowned in blood and shrines raised in blood. They passed children clutching the hands of corpses and men praying to gods that never answered.

They did not stop.

The war was everywhere. But their path was forward. Always forward.

Nearly two days passed beneath the heavy pall of smoke and ash, days measured not in sunlight but in steps taken and breaths drawn. They moved carefully through fields littered with burnt-out tanks and broken soldiers, where crows picked at flesh and shells glittered brass in the dirt. They climbed past emplacements long abandoned, trenches lined with fallen men, faces pressed deep into mud that still smelled of sulfur and fear.

On the second day, near dusk, they reached the depot. The sun was gone behind black clouds and a dim twilight bled across the sky. The ridge where they stood was broken stone and rusted wire, earth scorched by old shells and scarred by fire. Hashirama knelt low. Batu crouched beside him, his warplate matte and stained with the journey's toll. Together they peered down into the enemy's stronghold.

Walls rose like cliffs below them, grey slabs of ferrocrete crowned with razor-wire coils. Floodlights swung slow arcs over wide courtyards piled high with ammunition crates and fuel barrels. Towers pierced the sky, topped by autocannons and missile pods scanning the dark horizon with glowing red eyes.

Figures moved in ranks below, mortal soldiers in flak armor, dragging crates and assembling barricades. Among them stood the towering forms of enemy Astartes, clad in dull iron armor that swallowed the weak light and gave nothing back. Their ceramite plate scarred and battered, their shoulders broad as doorways. They carried bolters slung loose in one hand, blades as long as men hung at their hips. Their helms reflected nothing, black lenses staring blankly forward, unmoving, implacable.

Hashirama's gaze shifted to the figure at the heart of it all, pacing slowly across the central yard, barking commands with a voice that carried clearly even over the distance. The voice was deep, iron-hard, edged with contempt.

The figure stood taller than all others. Twice the height of the tallest Astartes, towering over men who themselves stood giants among humanity. Armor thick and layered with weaponry: cannons at his shoulders, launchers on his gauntlets, guns lining his armor like thorns. The air rippled around him with barely-contained power, a searing, restless force, as though gravity itself feared to touch him. He wore no helm. His face was visible even from afar: broad and stern, features carved from granite, eyes that burned coldly beneath brows dark and furrowed.

Batu went still beside Hashirama. The White Scar's breathing slowed. He leaned forward slightly, helm canting downward, fists tightening at his sides. One word slipped from his lips, quiet, hard-edged. A name.

"Perturabo."

AN: Chapter 22 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport440denheim29/6/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 19: New View contentdenheim6/7/2025Add bookmark#514Hashirama raised a brow, eyes narrowing slightly as he studied the massive form pacing the fortress below. Perturabo moved with the certainty and precision of someone who knew exactly where he stood in the universe. Each step struck the earth with deliberate force, yet the giant pivoted and gestured with an ease that defied his bulk. The sheer amount of spiritual energy pouring from him was staggering; it rolled off the armored form like heat from molten iron, almost visible in its intensity.

Hashirama glanced briefly at Batu. The White Scar stood utterly still, gauntleted fists clenched, armor unmoving. The lenses of his helm stared unblinking toward the massive figure, silent and focused. Hashirama's eyes returned to Perturabo. There was physical energy within him as well—dense, tightly packed, coiled deep beneath layers of ceramite and machinery—but it was overshadowed by the raw, overwhelming surge of spiritual power that dominated his presence.

Hashirama exhaled slowly, measuring his words with care. He spoke in a low, calm voice, almost conversational despite the scene below. "I take it that this Perturabo is, like you and your kin, physically enhanced—but far beyond any other we've encountered?"

Batu's helm turned slightly, the slightest nod confirming Hashirama's observation. The White Scar's stance did not relax, shoulders tight beneath the weight of his armor.

"Yes. Perturabo is a Primarch," Batu said quietly. "One of twenty beings created to lead the Emperor's Legions. What I am to an ant is Perturabo to an Astartes. He commands the Iron Warriors."

Hashirama tilted his head, eyes still fixed on Perturabo, noting the intricate machinery woven into the giant's armor, the intricate weapons arrayed upon shoulders, wrists, and chest. The Primarch paced with a deliberate rhythm, pausing occasionally to bark orders at the Astartes and mortal soldiers scurrying beneath his shadow. Those soldiers flinched each time he turned toward them, movements sharp and hurried, desperate to fulfill his commands. Hashirama's gaze moved over Perturabo's features: cold eyes set in a hard, broad face, unyielding as stone, scarred by wars both known and unknown.

He studied the movement, the posture, the aura. Chakra was absent entirely, its absence an emptiness amid the surging energies radiating outward. Hashirama's lips pressed into a thin line. The Primarch had all the potential elements for chakra—an immense reservoir of physical strength paired with overwhelming spiritual power—but they lay unmixed, raw, separate. A waste, perhaps. Certainly unusual.

The shinobi rose slightly from his crouch, fingers drumming briefly against his knee as he considered the implications. Without chakra, Perturabo's abilities would be raw, unrefined, immense in scale but lacking subtlety. No manipulation of elements, no precise jutsu—just brute force amplified to monstrous levels. Effective, certainly, but perhaps vulnerable to methods he had long mastered.

Hashirama turned his head slightly toward Batu again. "He's strong. But strength alone rarely wins a fight."

Batu hesitated a moment, helm tilting just enough to convey a quiet, thoughtful caution. He glanced back toward Perturabo, armor humming softly, the faintest shift in his stance betraying his tension. When he spoke again, his voice remained low, steady, devoid of any doubt. "He is strength and intellect together. Perturabo has dismantled entire worlds with strategy alone. He will have accounted for nearly every weakness. Every vulnerability."

Hashirama's eyes flickered briefly downward, considering, before returning to the Primarch pacing far below. His voice remained calm, steady, faintly amused.

"Nearly every vulnerability," Hashirama repeated softly.

He settled back into his crouch, gaze narrowing again, studying the fortress layout. Towers lined with heavy guns, reinforced bunkers, trenches cut with geometric precision into the earth. A fortress built by minds obsessed with detail. And at the center of it all, Perturabo, still pacing, still radiating power, confident and utterly assured.

"The Primarch of the Iron Warriors is a fortress onto himself," Batu said.

Hashirama exhaled quietly through his nose. He had dismantled fortresses before. Walls shaped like mountains, citadels rooted in bedrock, keeps bristling with traps and blood-fed seals. Fortresses built by men who believed their greatness insulated them from the inevitable. Who thought themselves eternal because they stood atop high towers or commanded legions with words alone.

They were all wrong. Eventually, all things broke. Foundations cracked. Walls fell. Flesh gave way. All that lived died.

"Will it be of great strategic importance," Hashirama asked, his voice quiet and even, "if we eliminate Perturabo?"

Batu turned to him, armor groaning faintly as he shifted his stance. He did not hesitate.

"Yes," he said. "The Iron Warriors are more than just one of the rebel legions. They are the foundation. Their siegecraft enables the traitors to advance. Their fortresses hold the supply lines together. And none of them operate without his direction."

He gestured again with a gauntlet, indicating the lines of mortals unloading munitions, the defense patterns forming in concentric rings around the Primarch's position. "Perturabo commands not only the Legion, but the very shape of the war. Remove him—and the assault begins to fracture. Their unity dies with him."

Hashirama nodded once, gaze returning to the target below. The firelight danced on the plates of the Primarch's armor. A living weapon forged not just for war, but for domination through order. His aura pulsed with raw spiritual force, a pressure that pushed even from this distance, heavy and unnatural. But it was not limitless. Nothing was.

"Then our objective is clear," Hashirama said.

He adjusted the bindings on his bracer, tightening the strap with a quick pull. The kunai at his hip shifted slightly. His tanto rested across his back, tucked beneath the folds of his robe. He reached up and brushed a smear of dust from his brow, the motion practiced, thoughtless. When he spoke again, his voice did not change. "I will assassinate Perturabo."

Hashirama greatly disliked performing assassination missions, even during the Warring States Era. He did it because he had to, because duty demanded it. Sure, he'd grown cold to the killing after the twentieth or so target fell to his kunai, but his dislike of it never ceased. He understood the necessity, of course, especially when he became Kage, which was why he strictly implemented a law that limited Assassination Missions to those of the Jonin and ANBU.

Batu said nothing at first. He only turned his helm forward again and watched the distant colossus move among his ranks like a blade weaving through stone. "You're no mere mortal, Hashirama. I've seen what you're capable of. I have no doubt in your power. But do exercise caution. Perturabo may not be the greatest or the strongest of the Primarchs, but he is still a Primarch. In him lies a power that places him far above the likes of mortals and into the realm of gods."

That was not the first time he'd heard anyone claim divinity. And this probably won't be the last. "Well then, I guess we'll just have to pull him back down to earth."

The wind stirred the ash between them. Batu nodded. "I like the sound of that. What's your plan?"

The fortress itself would not pose a challenge. Not truly. Hashirama crouched low along the ridge, gaze sweeping the outer defenses. The walls were vast, slabs of ferrocrete layered with void shield emitters and long coils of razorwire. But walls meant little to him. He could leap them. He could pass through shadows, slip between the cracks, disappear into the lines. Basic ninjutsu was enough.

The difficulty lay elsewhere.

He narrowed his eyes.

The problem was Perturabo.

The Primarch stood near the center of the compound, surrounded by sentries and servitors, a colossus of armor and discipline. And unlike the others—unlike the Astartes or the human officers or the vox-bound adepts—Perturabo would feel it. His eyes would see where others failed. His awareness reached like a net.

Hashirama drew a slow breath.

Stealth would not be enough. Not here. Not now.

A diversion then. Something to tear their attention away, even for a moment. Something loud. Or better—something that put them all to sleep.

Hashirama's hands came together. Fingers locked and shifted. The seal formed.

"Same thing I did to the titans," he said quietly.

The wind dragged the words off his tongue.

"Wood Release: Advent of a World of Flowering Trees."

The ridge buckled. The earth split.

Roots surged outward from beneath his feet, fat and thick with chakra, blackened bark splitting as they grew. They poured over the edge of the ridge like a wave, tearing down the incline with the force of a flood. They reached the fortress wall and did not stop. They plunged beneath it. They rose above it.

The first tanks were flattened where they sat. The barrels of macro-cannons crumpled inward. Sandbag walls and metal barricades disappeared under thickets of climbing vines and twisted bark. Iron Warriors turned, too late. Gunfire crackled. Flame bloomed. Some brought up meltas and volkite chargers. Others fired plasma. The roots burned in places. In others, they shrugged off the heat and kept moving. One tree broke through a watchtower, roots twisting around the legs and dragging it down like prey into deep water.

Hashirama stood still, hands pressed together, as the world shifted around him.

The vines tangled through artillery lines and climbed towers. Where bolter fire slowed them, more roots came. They reached for Astartes and humans alike, seized them in armored fists of bark and dragged them to the ground. Screams rose, high and short, and then were silenced by the thickening canopy.

Then the flowers came.

They bloomed in quiet waves, petals unfurling with a faint glow. A thousand blossoms opened at once across the fortress. Their scent filled the air—thick, cloying, unnatural. The pollen drifted like fog, caught in the floodlights and refracting gold.

Gunfire slowed. Then ceased.

One by one, the Iron Warriors fell. The mortals dropped where they stood. Some collapsed mid-stride. Others slumped behind battlements. The Astartes resisted longer, but their bodies swayed, movements slowed. A few sank to their knees before toppling over entirely.

The whole fortress sagged under the weight of silence.

Then something moved.

The roots shuddered.

A roar broke the quiet.

It tore through the ground like thunder, a sound too vast to be only voice. It shook dust from the ridge, sent birds spiraling out of the dead trees. Hashirama's gaze shifted, sharp.

The roots split apart.

Wood cracked. Bark flew in splinters.

A figure emerged from the wreckage. Metal gleamed in the glow of the flowers. Plates of armor scorched and scored by the binding wood burst outward, flung aside like paper. One step and the ground cracked beneath him. Another, and the roots shriveled at his touch.

Perturabo.

His face was bare, smeared with blood and pollen, eyes wild beneath the dark of his brow. His chest rose and fell, breath drawn deep and fast. In his hands, a massive hammer, its haft thicker than a man's torso, its head glowing with cackling energies. However, that was not his only weapon. Four-barreled cannons jutted from his wrists, the belt of bullets extending from them forming a cape of sorts.

The Primarch stood alone in the ruined center of the fortress, his legion asleep around him.

He turned his head slowly.

He saw the ridge.

And he bared his teeth and roared and raised his left hand at them. Hashirama and Batu lept backwards just as a storm of explosions and bullets and shrapnel tore through the ridge, vaporizing solid rock. Hashirama brought his hands down. "Summoning: Rashomon!"

The emergence of the Rashomon gate shielded them from the shrapnel and the debris, though Batu likely did not need it with his armor.

Hashirama turned to Batu. "I'll handle this."

Batu nodded. "I'll deal with the sabotage then, though there's not much for me to do at this point. Good luck… my friend."

Hashirama nodded. "Good luck to you too."

The First Hokage's eyes narrowed. Perturabo had both long-range and melee prowess. He was heavily armed and armored and, based on what Batu said, would be a highly intelligent and creative foe. Hashirama would not underestimate him.

AN: Chapter 23 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport471denheim6/7/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 20: New View contentdenheim13/7/2025Add bookmark#562Among Shinobi, there was a simple solution when facing a powerful foe. Not necessarily an overwhelmingly powerful one—those were rare—but dangerous enough to cause injury. And no Shinobi, not even the boldest, welcomed the idea of being maimed. No one did. The answer was to ensure such an opponent never had the chance to use their power at all.

It was a lesson taught early. Before the first mission. Before the first kill. Every single clan knew it, etched into the bone of every single Shinobi.

Not all battles were meant to be fought. Most were meant to be ended before they began.

Silence was the best teacher.

Stealth, the best weapon.

What use was a jutsu that could tear mountains in half if its wielder never rose from his bed? Hashirama had known many such men. Brilliant, arrogant, lethal. They mastered storms. They spoke in fire and blood. But their corpses still twitched the same when the blade slid through their throats.

In the First Shinobi World War, legends died with their pants around their ankles, strangled in outhouses, faces frozen in surprise. Others fell mid-kiss, mid-moan, their lovers slipping poison between lips instead of tongue. Some died in their sleep. Some never even stirred. A thousand jutsu learned. Not one of them mattered in the end. Though he was infamous for his Wood Style, Hashirama barely ever made use of it in most of his missions. Most of the time, no one even knew he was there–or realized it before it was too late. He'd drawn more blood and taken more lives with a simple kunai than any of his Wood Style Techniques. It was a simple kunai to the back that had ended his duel with Madara in the Valley of the End.

Immediate force. Sudden and overwhelming. That was the way. A tree did not argue with the axe. It cracked, it fell.

Even when Hashirama knew he was stronger, he did not leave things to chance. Confidence was a slow poison. A tiger might be stronger than a wolf, but strength did not guarantee survival. Not if the wolf knew where to bite. And even in death, it would leave the tiger with debilitating injuries.

Fighting fair was for fools. Victory was survival. And survival didn't care how clean the kill was. Life and death were both inherently unfair. A Samurai might argue, but–at the end of the day–Hashirama was a Shinobi. Honor was best reserved for the innocent, for those who could not defend themselves, for friends and family–not enemies.

Hashirama had no idea who Perturabo was–not really. He knew that Perturabo was incredibly powerful, incredibly important, incredibly intelligent, and supremely dangerous. All the weapons and armor would render basic taijutsu pointless. The same was true for elementary ninjutsu. Beyond that, Hashirama knew little else. Honestly, he didn't need to.

Perturabo charged.

Guns raised. Muzzle flares spat fire. The earth exploded in staggered bursts as shells tore through stone and shattered bark. Hashirama blurred sideways, feet skimming the ground, hands moving faster than sight.

"Wood Release: Wood Dragon Jutsu."

The ground split open. Roots tore free. A dragon of bark and vine erupted, its roar lost beneath the thunder of gunfire. The creature coiled mid-air and snapped forward, jaws wide. It slammed into Perturabo, clamping down over chest and arms, dragging him from his stride and slamming him into the dirt hard enough to split the ground.

The Primarch twisted. Gun barrels on his gauntlets swiveled, locking onto the coils tightening around him. But Hashirama's hands moved again—twelve seals in a single breath.

Three more dragons tore from the soil, each larger than the last. One clamped over his left leg. Another seized his right. The third wrapped around the arm still aiming, jaws locking down just above the elbow. Together with the first, they lifted him clean off the ground.

Perturabo's limbs stretched outward.

The dragons pulled.

Armor creaked. Stone beneath them cracked from the strain. Servos groaned inside the Primarch's warplate. The vines reinforcing the dragons' coils thickened, knotted tighter, twisted against steel. Sparks flew from beneath his pauldrons where metal met force.

Perturabo thrashed.

One cannon arm wrenched free with a shriek of torn metal and fired point-blank. The shell punched through a dragon's neck. Sap sprayed, the head twisted sideways—but the jaws held.

The others tightened.

Bark split. Roots dug deeper. The limbs of the Primarch were pulled wider with each passing moment. Steel strained at the joints of his warplate. Vents blasted heat. Pistons groaned.

Hashirama formed another seal. The fifth dragon burst up from behind and bit down over Perturabo's head. The fangs drove through the helm. Wood cracked against alloy. The primarch's armor was too thick to puncture with his Wood Release. Any wood he created was enhanced far beyond natural, but they weren't very sharp no matter what he did. And the First Hokage did not have the time to enter Sage Mode for a more elaborate and more powerful expression of Wood Release. The only solution was to bypass the armor entirely.

Hashirama moved.

He blurred forward, feet slamming into the churned earth. Chakra surged into his right palm. The air around his hand twisted, screaming.

A rasengan bloomed—dense, coiled, white-hot. The size of a boulder. It spun with a deafening shriek, tearing wind into itself. The pressure warped the ground beneath his feet. Just before he closed the gap, he shaped the chakra again, lacing it with wind chakra.

Edges grew from the sphere. Blades. The rasengan cracked into the likeness of a massive spinning shuriken, wobbling once, then stabilizing.

He slammed it into Perturabo's chest.

The dragons let go the instant it struck.

The impact launched the Primarch.

His body twisted through the air, limbs flailing once before locking rigid. A streak of blood flew from his mouth. He spun twice, then crashed into the side of a mountain. Stone split down the slope. The impact punched a crater into the rockface, scattering gravel and steel.

Then the rasengan detonated.

The blast lit the sky for a moment.

A column of wind and chakra screamed upward, shredding trees from the valley floor, snapping trunks, ripping soil from roots. The side of the mountain broke apart under the force, a wave of stone and debris cascading down in a roar until a stone avalanche came to life. Giant boulders and hundreds and thousands of tons of rocks poured into the impact crater, creating a swirling cloud of violent dust, stirred by the residual energies of the rasengan.

That, Hashirama thought, should've killed the Primarch. The only people who could survive such a thing would be immortals. But, given Batu's immense healing and regenerative capacity and his claim that he was an ant compared to a Primarch in terms of prowess, it wouldn't hurt to make certain.

Hashirama leapt.

He cleared the shattered wood dragons in a single bound, dust whipping around his robes as he landed atop the uneven heap of stone and scorched metal. The mountain slope was gone, reduced to a broken crescent of boulders and debris. Chunks of ceramite armor lay half-buried in the rubble. Blood soaked the rock in thick spatters. Ash clung to everything.

He dropped to one knee.

The ground pulsed beneath his hand—heat, pressure, weight. Faint, but present. Spiritual energy, dim but dense. Still alive.

Hashirama formed a seal.

The chakra surged down his arms and into the earth. He inhaled once. Exhaled.

"Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld."

The stone groaned. Cracks opened in the ground with sharp, splintering pops. The rubble shuddered, then sank. Rock turned soft. Soil churned to sludge. A hundred meters in every direction liquified, sliding into itself like boiling tar. Stone towers folded. Metal girders twisted and vanished into the mire.

The ridge collapsed.

The slope caved inward with a deep, dragging roar, as if the mountain were exhaling. The mud frothed as chakra bled through it, dense and binding. Air pockets burst. Broken plating surfaced, then vanished again. One armored gauntlet reached up, straining, fingers clawing through the muck.

Hashirama stepped backward, sandals firm on the only dry ground left.

The hand disappeared.

Down below, something writhed—slow, massive. A groan rattled through the swamp, too deep for a human throat. The mud rippled in waves. A metal thing breached for a moment. Then it sank.

Mud bubbled.

Hashirama stepped forward.

He slammed both palms onto the ground.

"Lightning Release: Thunderbolt."

The chakra snapped into his arms and arced outwards. Twin bolts shot from his hands and lanced into the swamp. Light flashed white-blue across the mud, the heat curling steam into the air. A sharp crack followed, like ice fracturing. Then another. Then dozens. The swamp churned.

The mud lit from within.

Electric arcs threaded through the muck in frantic webs. Bursts of light flared across the surface. Metal glinted for a second. Then a jolt of movement rolled outward—massive, unseen, something thrashing deep below. The ground shook underfoot. One of the larger stones still above the mire cracked down the middle and sank.

Hashirama didn't blink.

He kept the stream steady, palms pressed to the ground, lightning flowing. The chakra fed through his hands in a continuous current. The air turned sharp, the scent of ozone thick in his lungs. Sparks danced up his arms. The surface of the swamp popped and boiled. More bubbles surfaced—black, slick, trembling—then burst in silence.

The ripples slowed.

Movement faded.

One last convulsion rolled through the muck. A tremor, faint. And then, nothing.

No rising breath.

No glint of armor.

No pulse of power.

Perturabo's spiritual presence faded like a dying fire.

Hashirama stepped back.

Steam rolled off his hands. The air above the crater shimmered with heat. Beneath him, the mud had hardened—cooling into jagged, black stone that gleamed in patches. The swamp was gone. In its place lay a solid tomb of chakra-forged earth, dry and unmoving. The last traces of spiritual energy had vanished.

He exhaled once and turned away.

Behind him, the fortress ruptured.

The first explosion came from deep inside—a dull thud beneath the stone that kicked up dust in a perfect ring. A second followed, sharper, and then a third that tore through the outer wall. Cracks split the towers. Fire leapt through broken walkways. Whole sections folded inward. Then the heart of the compound erupted, a thunderous blast that split the structure in half. A massive shockwave rolled across the ridge, flattening what trees remained and driving hot wind into Hashirama's robes.

Debris scattered across the sky.

Then, through the fire and dust, something emerged.

A pale shape on two wheels, streaking over the charred ground. A trail of smoke behind it, engines howling, the frame glowing at the edges from recent fire. Batu rode low, hunched, both of his hands holding the antler-like protrusion on the very front of the vehicle, which Hashirama figured was how the contraption was steered. His white armor was stained with soot and streaked with blood. He hit the ground hard and kept going, the machine roaring over the broken plain until it skidded sideways and halted in a low cloud of ash.

He stepped off before the wheels stopped spinning.

"What of Perturabo?" he asked.

Hashirama gestured downward.

The rock still hissed faintly. Thin threads of steam rose in lazy spirals. No movement. No sound.

"Dead," Hashirama said.

Batu didn't speak. He stared at the ground. His helmet remained on, the lenses fixed on the blackened stone.

"You're certain?" he said finally. "Primarchs are—"

"As close to immortal as living things can be," Hashirama said. "I know."

Batu said nothing for a moment longer.

Then he gave a slow nod. The fingers of his gauntlet curled at his side. His gaze didn't leave the crater.

"And so ends the tale of the Hammer of Olympia," he said. "I would celebrate and with you if I could, but we don't have the time for such a thing."

"Where next?"

The sky rumbled overhead. Smoke curled above the smoldering ruins. Fire crawled along the bones of the fortress, flickering in the cracks. The wind stirred the dust again, and the mountain went still.

Everywhere they stood, the Iron Warriors broke.

It began as a ripple, too faint to mark—a flicker in the soul, the sudden hollowness where a voice once echoed without pause. Then came the weight. It dropped like a hammer inside their chests, sharp and final. Every warrior of Olympia, every son of Perturabo—whether upon the ramparts of the Lion's Gate, deep in the trench lines outside the Petitioner's City, or crouched silent in half-crumbled hab blocks—felt it.

A stillness.

And then, pain.

They fell by the thousands.

Some dropped their bolters mid-aim, spasming violently, arms rigid as iron before twisting backward at grotesque angles. Others clawed at their temples, blood leaking from their ears in steady rivulets, lenses cracking as pressure burst vessels beneath. Some screamed—short, hoarse, choked—as if something had been torn from their spine mid-battle. A few simply went silent, standing motionless for the briefest of moments, before collapsing into the dust like puppets with their strings cut.

In the Iron Warriors, discipline was dogma. Pain was irrelevant. Death was expected. But when Perturabo died, their discipline shattered like cracked stone under a siege breaker's maul. Entire units dropped to their knees, armor rattling, hands pressed to helms or drawn claws scraping furrows into their own faces. Vox-casters buzzed with static and half-formed screams. Legion commanders wept blood behind their masks. Some tore at their own augmetics in a frenzy. Others slumped forward, unmoving, slack-jawed, eyes blank.

And the Loyalists noticed.

In the labyrinthine kill-zones of Hive Calyx, a squad of Salamanders who had been pinned down for three days straight saw the Iron Warriors manning the gun nests collapse in tandem. The heavy stubbers went still. The autocannons jammed mid-turn. The heavy iron clanged as gunners pitched sideways. The Salamanders rose as one and charged, fire in their fists.

On the battered walls of the Imperial Palace, a battalion of White Scars launched a full assault along the trench line where Iron Warriors had held without falter for twelve straight weeks. But now the defenders stood dazed, eyes dull, firing wildly or not at all. The White Scars swept through them like fire through dry grass, blades flashing, bikes roaring.

Outside the crumbling data cathedrals of the Mechanicum Archives, the Raven Guard melted from shadow to shadow, severing the heads of Iron Warriors who no longer reacted to movement. One crouched behind a barricade, muttering the name of his father in looping monotone, voice flat, as a combat knife slid silently between the seals of his helm.

In orbit, aboard the gun-rig Ferrum Maledictus, the Iron Warriors tech-marines manning the defense turrets suddenly froze. Sparks danced from their servo-harnesses. One let out a strangled cry before collapsing backward into a vat of molten slag. Seconds later, a lance strike from a loyalist cruiser burned through the station's flank.

Across Terra, where the Iron Warriors had once held superiority through fortification, through unyielding presence, through cold, mechanical force—they crumbled. Not all of them died. But enough fell to cause holes in the line. And for the first time since the siege began, those holes widened.

The Sons of Dorn surged through them. The fists of the VIIth Legion slammed into half-manned gunlines and shattered bunkers. Crimson fists. Yellow fists. Flesh and ceramite, fury and retribution. Thunderhawks dove low, missiles screaming. Drop pods fell like nails into coffins. Landspeeders scorched the horizon.

What was once a static, grinding stalemate flared into motion.

The Iron Warriors did not retreat.

They could not.

Most simply failed to respond. Some kept firing long after their targets were gone. Others turned their guns on each other in mindless rage. A few began muttering strings of binary nonsense, their implants short-circuiting as their brains tried to process a reality without their gene-sire. And a few others—perhaps the worst off—stood very still, heads tilted skyward, hands hanging limp, as if listening for a voice that would never speak again.

A Primarch had died.

And the echo of his fall tore through the gene-threads of his sons like a rusted chain gone taut. They had been built to obey, to follow, to function as extensions of his will.

Without that will, they broke.

One by one, warzones tilted.

And Terra breathed. Not freely. Not yet. But it was the first breath in a long time that did not taste entirely of blood and ash.

Trees.

Everywhere Lord Commander Cyrius looked, there was nothing but trees. Immense trunks twisted upward, bark rough as iron, branches woven thick and high enough to blot out the grey sky above. Roots rose through shattered ferrocrete, coiled around twisted girders, broke through streets like fingers grasping from beneath the earth. They creaked gently in a wind he could not feel, whispered among themselves in a voice he could not understand.

Cyrius stopped in his stride, armored boots crushing blackened stone beneath him. He tilted his head, golden helm reflecting the greenish twilight filtering through leaves larger than tanks. He raised one ceramite-clad gauntlet, tracing with a finger the deep gouges in the bark. His claws scraped, drew sparks, but left no mark. The trees had grown impossibly fast, impossibly strong. The vox crackled, distorted, as if the leaves themselves mocked him.

Behind him stood hundreds of his brothers—gleaming ceramite, polished gold and violet, painted faces hidden beneath masks wrought from silver and bone. Daemonettes coiled between their ranks, clicking talons and whispering in tones both seductive and furious, their inhuman gazes narrowed, impatient. Engines idled low, growling softly, tanks and transports left stranded by roots thick as fortress walls. Bombers and fighters screamed uselessly overhead, unleashing torrents of plasma and fire that scorched bark but did little else, the flames hissing away harmlessly, leaving the great trunks untouched and indifferent.

Cyrius reached again, pressing his palm flat against the bark, leaning in with his armored weight. He pushed harder, servos whining, muscles straining. Nothing. The tree stood unmoved, unbent. Slowly, he lowered his hand, fingers curling into a fist, claws gouging thin furrows into the metal of his palm.

He turned sharply, cape flaring out behind him, the violet silk now tattered and stained by ash and sap. The city had been meant to fall easily—a hive ripe for plunder, a chance to display his greatness, to bask in the adoration of his Legion. Instead, there was only silence, mocking and absolute, broken occasionally by the distant groan of roots pressing deeper into foundations, by the whisper of branches shifting restlessly overhead.

No bodies.

No screams.

No glory.

Only damned trees.

He walked forward, anger simmering in his limbs. He lifted one foot, slammed it down, splitting a slab of ferrocrete. His warriors stood silent behind him, motionless, uncertain. He glared at them through the darkened lenses of his helm. Their stillness rankled. He wanted to punish them, blame them for the absence of resistance, punish them for the failure this day had become—but he knew, bitterly, it was not their doing. The humiliation was his alone.

Cyrius turned his face skyward. Branches stretched endlessly above, mocking, closing off any glimpse of the clouds beyond. His fingers tightened. His breath grew ragged, heavy, filling the interior of his helmet.

He threw his head back, opened his throat, and let loose a roar that shattered the stillness.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

It echoed off the trees, carried upward through the towering forest of impossible growth, reverberated through the empty avenues of what had once been a thriving city. Insects scattered from the branches, wings beating rapidly, distant silhouettes fading into the gloom above. Roots shuddered beneath him, responding—or perhaps merely mocking—as if amused by his impotent fury.

He lowered his gaze slowly. The echoes of his roar faded, leaving behind the mocking whisper of leaves and the idle growl of engines. He stood among the trees, fists shaking slightly, armored chest rising and falling in rapid rhythm.

Nothing moved. Nothing changed.

Cyrius breathed slowly, deliberately, fury pulsing in every measured exhale. He stepped forward again, crushing brittle stone beneath his tread, as if the next step would somehow reveal a hidden enemy, a foe worthy of his rage.

But the trees remained.

Silent.

Indifferent.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!"

The roar tore through the walls of the Vengeful Spirit's shattered echo-chamber, a bellow not merely of anger but of something deeper—wound and betrayal and the collapse of certainty. Horus Lupercal, former Warmaster of the Great Crusade, former favored son of the Emperor, chosen of the Four Gods, dropped to one knee, power claw gouging rents into the obsidian floor beneath him.

The air around him rippled.

Reality bent.

Veins of unreality spiderwebbed across the walls, distorting the chamber into something almost organic—pulsing, sweating, writhing beneath the skin of this broken place. Light dimmed. Shadows deepened. The warp surged outward in a pulse from Horus's body, a tide of mutating power that coiled around stone and steel and flesh alike. Servo-slaves exploded where they stood, their bodies stretching into writhing tendrils of shrieking nerve and melted iron. An Astartes beside the door dropped his bolter and screamed as his legs twisted into hooves.

Horus rose.

Worldbreaker hung at his side, scraping molten furrows into the black stone with every twitch of his arm. His breath came out in long, slow gusts. Each exhale warped the air, each inhale drew the stink of ozone and old blood deeper into the lungs of everyone nearby.

He turned.

The messenger—some thrice-blessed herald of the Warp, marked and mutated beyond recognition—quailed beneath his gaze, though it bore no expression. Horus's face was pale and still, as though carved from marble, but the power flowing from him said everything.

"Perturabo," Horus said. The name was a rasp. Not a question. A verdict.

The messenger could not answer. Its mouth had fused shut, sealed by the energies pouring off the Warmaster. It dropped to its knees, trembled, and fell forward. It did not rise again.

"Gone," Horus whispered, the word a curse.

He turned from the corpse. Eyes like broken stars swept the chamber. Tactical hololiths shimmered in the dark, flickering with the latest reports. A thousand fronts. Ten thousand battles. The Iron Warriors—fortresses abandoned, siege lines shattered. Loyalists surging forward like a tide. And the Ultramarines were still en route.

Too soon. Far too soon.

He clenched his jaw, and Worldbreaker rose in one hand. He brought it down into the stone with a thunderclap, shattering the floor in a plume of debris. The echoes of the blow rattled through the walls and out across the surface of Terra. Civilians ten kilometers away felt the tremor. Some fell. Some wept. Others clawed at their faces, howling as the Warp brushed against their minds.

Horus stood motionless.

Only Perturabo had held the line.

Only Perturabo had maintained discipline. Fulgrim was lost in excess, impossible to rely on. Angron was a beast with no leash. Lorgar preached endlessly but achieved nothing. Curze skulked in shadows and left only blood in his wake. Mortarion could be trusted only to spread rot and disdain in equal measure. And Magnus, for all his power, had no interest in the siege.

No. Perturabo mattered. He was, perhaps, the only one that mattered.

And now he was gone.

Not to Guilliman. Not to the Khan. Not to Dorn. Not to the Wolf King. Not even to Sanguinius.

But to a mortal.

A mortal.

A man without gene-forging or legion-bond. No enhancements. No warplate. Some primitive sorcerer who wielded the elements. Not even a Custodian. Not even a psyker of the Emperor's chosen order. Some nothing. Some whelp who dared to touch one of the Emperor's sons.

Horus's lips pulled back from his teeth.

He would not allow it.

The Warp twisted tighter around him, reacting to his will. The four gods pressed closer, their whispers rising in his ears. Khorne screamed for vengeance. Tzeentch whispered futures. Nurgle chuckled wetly in the back of his throat. And Slaanesh crooned of delicious revenge.

He raised his head.

"I will break this sorcerer," he said, voice steady now. "I will burn him across eternity. I will pull him through the Eye and bury his soul so deep in torment that even the gods will pity him."

He turned away from the broken floor. The chamber around him was still changing, shaped by his will. Flesh bloomed in the corners. Chains twisted from the ceiling. Vox units howled nonsense, then fell silent. His war council awaited him beyond the next chamber. The siege needed redirection. The plan needed reforging. The traitor legions needed a spine once more.

If none could lead, then he would lead alone.

If Perturabo would no longer hold the wall, then Horus would break it himself.

He paused at the threshold. Above, the sky tore with another quake, the ripple of his fury still echoing in the immaterium. Ships died in orbit as the warp surged, their Gellar Fields faltering. Daemons screamed into reality in places they were never meant to enter. The gods watched.

AN: Chapter 25 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport447denheim20/7/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 22: New View contentdenheim3/8/2025Add bookmark#686Hashirama sneezed.

He sniffed once, rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand, and frowned slightly.

"Someone's probably cursing me right now," he muttered.

Batu nodded. "Plenty, I think."

Hashirama shrugged. Wouldn't be the first. Plenty had done so over the years—shinobi, warlords, old rivals, ghosts. None succeeded. Except maybe Madara. But even with him, it had never felt like hatred. It's hard to think of Madara ever cursing him. Their battles were never born from spite. Just from the world that demanded the strong stand on opposite sides. Different paths. Same destination. In another, more peaceful world, they might have still been friends. He liked to think that.

He adjusted his stance, one foot pressed to the edge of the vehicle's seat, the other braced near the rear end. The contraption Batu rode was vaguely horse-shaped, long and narrow with high handlebars, but ran on two wheels that screamed across the scorched plains with unnatural speed. It jolted and roared with every bump in the ground. Hashirama stayed perfectly upright, feet bound to the seat with a thin layer of chakra.

He didn't like sitting. Especially not when the road moved under him. He liked to see, to feel the air on his face, to watch the land stretch out and breathe.

They passed through the shadow of a crumbling overpass, then under a broken aqueduct spilling rust into the wind. Nothing but ash, ruin, and twisted wreckage as far as he could see. A thin shimmer pulsed around them. The outline of the vehicle, their bodies, their shadows—everything softened and bent with the light, blending into the terrain. Dust kicked up behind them, but no figures could be seen riding through it. The technique wasn't perfect, but it would do–an improvised version of the Chameleon Jutsu.

After a while, he spoke again.

"This Fulgrim," he said, voice low, steady above the hum of engines. "He's like Perturabo, yes?"

Batu didn't respond at once. The wind caught his cape, pulling it to one side. He angled the vehicle slightly, weaving around a jagged hill of collapsed ferrocrete. The front wheel bounced once, twice, then steadied.

"Yes and no," he said finally. "They're both Primarchs. Born from the same hand. But Fulgrim…"

He trailed off.

Hashirama leaned forward slightly, watching the way Batu's fingers gripped the strange antler-like handlebars. Almost like riding a horned horse and directing it by its horns, instead of reins.

"He's changed," Batu said. "I don't know how or why, but he has become monstrous, much like the other Primarchs who betrayed the Emperor. Perturabo was still bound to purpose. Still tethered to reality. Fulgrim… cut the tether. He became something else."

"What kind of something?"

They passed the remains of a downed skycraft—half-buried in soil and covered in thorny vines. Twisted metal bones jutted from its spine. A helmet lay cracked in the dirt nearby, faceplate shattered.

"Fulgrim gave himself over to the same powers that spawned the daemons," Batu said at last. "And he has become something far more than his old self, but also far less. Most of the reports claim that he has become a gigantic serpentine thing with the torso of a Primarch, wielding four blades. Some claim he has wings. All I know for certain is that he will be far more difficult to eliminate than Perturabo, who was a being of flesh. Think of the strongest daemon you've ever fought and multiply its strength by a hundred."

Hashirama frowned slightly. The 'daemons' he'd already faced were not terribly difficult creatures to fight. The trick was to render them corporeal by infusing physical energy into their form and forcibly transforming them from purely spiritual creatures into beings of flesh, which can then be destroyed. Assuming Batu was correct in that Fulgrim was about a hundred times stronger than the strongest daemon Hashirama had already fought, which was that colossal thing with four arms and hoofed legs, then the only way he could possibly win was through Sage Mode.

Batu's voice cut through the wind. "But, Fulgrim is not an important target at the moment."

"He and the Emperor's Children," Batu continued, "dangerous though they may be, have withdrawn from the war in earnest. They're preoccupied with… indulgence. Pleasure. Theater. They kill, but only for sensation. Not strategy. They've become irrelevant to the broader siege."

The White Scar turned, swerving around a toppled shuttle engine lodged half-buried in the earth.

"All things considered," Batu said, "they are not participating as much as the others. If at all. That is why Perturabo's death was a hard and painful blow against the traitors. With him gone and the Iron Warriors all but incapacitated, a great pillar of their rebellion is no longer there to support their efforts. Horus, that treacherous cur, must be raging impotently at this moment."

"I believe your Ninjutsu Powers," Batu went on, "will be of greater use elsewhere."

"The northern orbital defense platforms," Batu said. "They were among the first things disabled during the traitors' initial strike. With them offline, the enemy had free access through the planet's upper atmosphere. It let them bring in drop fleets uncontested through the northern hemisphere. The facility that controls them is buried beneath the northern ice shelf, a place called Skyfall Anchorage. We retake the facility and I reactivate the defenses."