"This moment, I have waited far, far too long.
Hypocrite… your opponent can only be me, not any other existence."
Fulgrim's forked tongue flicked across his purple-red lips, a trace of excitement in his eyes.
"Only I, the perfect Phoenix, am worthy to take your life and your soul.
That will be the most eye-catching performance in the entire galaxy."
The Fallen Phoenix spoke, eyes showing open disdain.
"You are so cowardly, hiding your true self behind cloned bodies, like a rat skulking in the gutter."
The Savior almost never showed his true body. The one descending upon Kalisde was only a cloned shell.
"I fear that hypocrite's face is nothing but a carefully adjusted mask. His real appearance is likely too hideous to show in public."
Thinking of this, Fulgrim gently stroked his own pale, powder-caked cheeks.
To the Fallen Phoenix, anyone less beautiful than himself was a hideous creature, unworthy of being compared to him.
All this time, his beauty had stood at the very peak of the galaxy.
Until the Savior appeared and ruined everything.
Fulgrim was convinced that the Savior's handsome, seductive face was artificially sculpted, not his original appearance.
He did not believe anyone in the galaxy could be more beautiful than the perfect Phoenix.
That clone-born fraud should be despised.
Yet no matter how he mocked it, the Savior's habit of hiding behind clones was a severe problem for Chaos.
Fulgrim even suspected that man had never once appeared in his true body.
The Savior's real flesh might still be hidden deep beneath Urth.
Which meant the man was extremely difficult to kill… and even harder to strip of his soul.
"Unfortunately for you, you cannot resist the Prince of Pleasure's carefully brewed venom."
The warped "cape" of tendrils on Fulgrim's back stretched into the void, contracting and loosening as if drinking in some sort of dark substance.
Gradually, his body began to tremble, a flush rising on his face.
"Hiss…"
The Fallen Phoenix let out a serpentine hiss and suddenly spat a cloud of venom onto the sword's tip, mingling it with the deadly toxins already smeared there.
Several different poisons fused together, forming a vicious, iridescent sheen.
It was a gift from the Prince of Pleasure, a horrifying warp-venom several times deadlier than the toxin that had felled Guilliman before.
Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure, had grown ever more wary of the Savior who had begun to steal the power of pleasure.
So the Prince had decided to use this war to remove him.
Once and for all.
And to claim his soul, subjecting it to endless, ecstatic torment.
This, in turn, meant the Savior's threat had made even the Chaos Gods themselves uneasy.
They no longer wished to corrupt and recruit that entity.
They wanted his existence erased from the galaxy forever.
"Finally… it's done."
Fulgrim raised the slim sword coiled with silver serpents, not daring to show the slightest carelessness.
This venom was so terrifying that even he, a Daemon Primarch, would be easily brought low by it, let alone a Primarch who had not received such divine gifts.
The hypocrite Savior might shield himself with cloned bodies.
But the Prince of Pleasure's venom was no ordinary poison.
It was a manifestation of a certain warp concept.
Once it pierced the Savior, it could use the clone body as a conduit to strike his true flesh.
Plunging him into eternal sleep.
At that moment, the palace shook even more violently, a reaction from the warp.
The approach of several Fallen Primarchs and Daemon Princes stirred the local tides of the empyrean into greater activity.
A figure wreathed in tentacles entered with an almost aristocratic grace.
He was a captain of the Emperor's Children. His gaze could not help but linger on the twisted, blackened mass of flesh clinging to the wall.
Those were the charred remains of Lucius the Eternal.
The man had been struck down by the Savior's curse, roasted nearly to cinders.
Thankfully, the Emperor's Children had managed to retrieve some of his tissue and put it back into the regeneration cycle, instead of letting the Savior take him away and create even greater danger.
"Our Phoenix.
The Savior's fortress-engine has already reached the outer perimeter of the daemon palace. You should go out and meet the enemy."
The captain of the Emperor's Children knelt on one knee and reported.
Because of the warp rites, countless pockets of space had overlapped with the planet, and Fulgrim's palace had been projected directly onto the surface.
"The hypocrite has finally stepped into the battlefield I chose for him. I doubt he has any idea that this is a foreordained ending."
Fulgrim drained the last sip of blood-wine, rose from the throne, and fastened the venom-laden silver serpent rapier to his waist.
He descended the steps. Behind him, innumerable tendrils shrank and wove themselves into a twisted mantle of flesh.
The Fallen Phoenix had finally waited long enough.
It was time for him to march out.
The Savior believed that using a fortress-engine to launch a sudden assault was some sort of masterstroke.
In truth, that move had long been anticipated.
He could not escape the inevitability of fate.
Every struggle was meaningless, every step only leading him closer to his own tragedy.
For that battlefield was already seeded with traps prepared in concert by the Prince of Pleasure and the Changer of Ways: nine overlapping arrays of sorcerous mist.
Now, the Savior had appeared on the edge of the battlefield within the pre-ordained nine hours.
In the ninety-ninth second of the ninth minute, he would step squarely onto the trap and fall into an irredeemable defeat.
"The hypocrite's opponent will be me, and only me, the one who will cast him down.
The galaxy will witness this unique and perfect duel."
Such were Fulgrim's thoughts.
The Savior was not the most skilled warrior among the Primarchs.
In terms of pure technique, he was pitifully weak, relying only on the might of his warp-nature and the faith-power granted by that skeleton.
All his previous victories had been achieved by leveraging those powers to crush his enemies.
Strip away the warp-nature and the power of belief, and purely on technique he could not defeat any Primarch.
Especially not Fulgrim.
The Phoenician fancied himself one of the mightiest of all Primarchs.
So long as he prepared the battlefield, he could defeat any of his brothers.
He had taken the head of the Tenth Primarch, Ferrus Manus,
overcome and absorbed the warp-nature of the Fourth, Perturabo,
and brought low the Thirteenth, Roboute Guilliman.
These feats were proof enough.
Now it was the hypocrite Savior's turn.
Once the Savior stepped onto the trap and his warp-nature and faith-power transmission were suppressed, he would tumble into the perfect stage the Phoenix had set.
A hell of ecstatic torment.
That man would suffer beating after beating, humiliation after humiliation, displayed to the world in the most pathetic, disgraceful state, his dignity completely annihilated.
After that exquisitely entertaining spectacle of shame, the perfect Phoenix would make his grand appearance, challenge him, and drive the ordeal to its climax.
In the end, he would hoist the Savior's severed head aloft and take his final bow amidst unmatched glory.
"Ah, what a flawless performance it will be. The audience will be beside themselves, even the Gods will come to watch."
Fulgrim was thrilled at the thought, already eager to drive the venom-slick blade into the Savior's neck.
To savor, one by one, each of that man's moments of agony and disgrace.
He would strip the hypocrite of his armor, destroy that counterfeit face,
and make him die in the ugliest manner possible.
Nor would it end there. In full view of all, he would use the special relic, the Margata Stone, to draw out the man's power.
He would strip the soul of its warp-nature, reducing him to a lowly being without any empyrean essence at all.
"Now… the curtain rises."
The Fallen Phoenix's smile twisted with malice. With a flick of his flesh-cloak, he stepped into the sorcerous array and vanished from the great hall.
A short time earlier.
The outer perimeter of the daemon palace.
The region where the warp overlapped Kalisde turned out to be far larger than expected, stretching for hundreds of kilometers.
Within it, one could faintly make out decaying mountain ranges and garden-like stretches of soil.
The Redemption Expeditionary Fleet had dropped a mass of armored forces into this region to stem the steady tide of daemons.
And the number of armored units was still increasing. Their ultimate objective was to push the line forward,
allowing the Savior and the Imperial Emperor's strike forces to penetrate toward the very heart of the projected zone.
Booming thunder rolled across the sky.
Dropships dozens of meters long screamed down at high speed, burning in their tumble through the atmosphere and detonating in mid-air.
They were the Storm Army Group's troop carriers, and hundreds of similar pods dotted this airspace.
Inside one of them…
The entire pod shook violently as row upon row of armored infantry sat strapped into benches along both sides.
Each soldier in powered armor stood a bit over two meters tall, equipped with all manner of energy and bolt weaponry.
They looked brutally capable.
Their armor was fully sealed, designed by the Savior after the "fifty-credit troopers" from his previous life. The shell was somewhat rounder than Astartes power armor and cheaper to produce.
The plating of every suit was coated in a special paint, sprinkled with faint, mottled black specks.
It contained powdered Blackstone, providing limited resistance to the corruption of Chaos.
Enough to buy the troopers more time on the field.
Humanity had lost so many wars against Chaos for one simple reason: mortal armies could not stay long on such battlefields.
The warp-tainted energies saturating the front lines could make a mere half-day's fighting enough for a mortal to sprout twisted limbs and for his sanity to crumble.
But with Blackstone-infused coating and anti-corruption drugs, these soldiers could now fight for at least several days.
That dramatically increased humanity's ability to wage war against Chaos.
So this technology had been applied first to the armored corps.
These armored troopers were vastly superior to ordinary Imperial Guard, with genuine capability against daemons.
The atmosphere inside the pod was heavy. The troopers were all somewhat tense.
A drop like this was dangerous. If the fighter wings in the atmosphere failed to secure the airspace,
daemon flyers could slip through and the pods might be shot out of the sky.
"Huff…"
"Savior above…"
Old York drew in a deep breath, fingers gripping his dog-tag tightly to steady his nerves.
This veteran who had re-enlisted had been assigned to the 13th Armored Regiment and was about to step onto the most dangerous battlefield.
He was not afraid of dying.
If he had chosen to enlist again, he had already accepted that he might fall on the front lines.
His only worry was not racking up enough kills.
That would be worse than dying.
"Wonder if that brat back home is going to cry when I'm gone… if he'll miss this old fossil."
Old York suddenly thought of his grandson.
Yet he did not regret coming back to war.
After all, he was here to protect that little grandson and countless other children like him.
If he ended his days in a hospital bed in some convalescent zone, the comrades who'd gone before him to the Throne would laugh themselves sick.
"Ah… radiant in holy light, blade of the divine, he marches without fear at our head and leads us to the far shore of the dawn…"
Outside, the roar of artillery and the stirring hymn of the Savior's litany could now be heard faintly, the chant resounding with sacred power.
The sacred music instantly shattered the gloom inside the pod,
and one could not help but feel inspired.
It cut off Old York's wandering thoughts. The other armor troopers also came back to themselves and began to ready their gear.
Hearing the hymn meant they were nearing the battlefield.
"Listen up, lads. This is the first time our squad has faced those heretic abominations, and it might also be our last battle as a bunch of old relics."
Old York racked his heavy bolter and grinned.
"Even if you have to use your teeth, you make sure to tear down as many daemon bastards as you can.
Don't you dare get scared and disgrace this squad. If you do, when we all return to the Throne, I won't let you off."
Old York was this squad's leader.
The Storm Army Group's armored troopers had all undergone full simulation training.
They had studied the fighting styles and weak points of various daemon breeds, along with the proper counters.
But this was still their first time on a real Chaos battlefield.
As soon as the words left Old York's mouth, the pod filled with rough, hoarse laughter.
"We fought through the Apocalypse battlefield together, you think we can't handle a few daemon whelps?"
"Old man, we've walked through a sea of bugs. You tell me, who are we supposed to be afraid of?"
They joked with their mouths, but their hands didn't slow. One by one they checked their weapons,
hooked into their visor feeds to pull down battlefield data, and finished their readiness checks.
Thunk.
The drop-pod slammed hard, clearly hitting ground.
With a hiss, the pressure valves vented steam and the hatch began to slowly open.
In a heartbeat, the roar of artillery, daemon shrieks, and the swelling hymn of the Savior flooded in.
"For the Savior!"
Old York roared and led his squad charging out.
His field of view exploded open. Above loomed rotten, upside-down mountains. In the distance, a black-and-red battlefield burned with constant detonations.
He could see clouds of black drones studded with crimson lenses and brutish, hate-filled machine-forms.
Long-range automated gun-servitors and servo-drones, tasked with handling the first waves and tearing apart the densest daemon swarms.
The ground trembled under his boots, a steady percussion.
That was the marching stride of Titan engines.
Every kilometer of the battlefield held at least one colossal Titan, dividing the front into segments and providing overwhelming fire support.
More importantly, every Titan's back carried a beacon-like device emitting a faint, holy glow.
That sanctified light washed over the front, somewhat dampening the influence of the warp energies.
And the hymn of the Savior poured from amplifiers mounted on those Titans.
Together, they bolstered the fighting spirit of every soldier.
In just this one square kilometer, countless Astartes and hundreds of armored squads were already engaged.
Guns thundered everywhere. Shrapnel rained. The Titans hammered distant daemon engines with ceaseless barrages.
"Heavy weapons!"
Old York roared over the squad channel.
Once they reached their assigned zone, he immediately ordered the squad into a fire-line.
He had already sighted a pack of Bloodhounds racing toward them, jaws slavering.
At his command, five troopers lugging heavy twin-linked bolters stepped forward.
They hefted their massive barrels and unleashed streams of fire like serpents. The onrushing Bloodhounds were caught head-on and shredded into meat paste by the bullet storm.
The rest of the squad also brought their weapons to bear on the enemy.
"Shields up! Load concussion grenades!"
They had barely cleared out the hounds and some scattered daemons when Old York spotted a traitor warrior and tagged him.
An Emperor's Children marine.
Thud, thud, thud.
The shield-bearing troopers had only just raised their barriers when the Emperor's Children's fire swept into them, pounding deep dents into the plates.
The immense kinetic force nearly drove the troopers back.
But a moment later, the squad replied in kind.
Concussion grenades and torrents of fire forced the traitor marine into a panicked retreat.
He was fast, but no man could cope with twenty streams of fire at once.
The concussion shells sapped his speed further.
A 25-man armored squad that coordinated properly could annihilate any ordinary Astartes.
Combat data showed that, at maximum performance, such a squad could hold off three Astartes at once.
Any higher than that and the squad would crumble quickly and be wiped out.
The Storm Army Group's solution was simply to send in more squads, using sheer numbers to offset the disparity in individual strength.
It wasn't long before the Emperor's Children marine was riddled with wounds, his movements sluggish.
At last, an armor-piercing sniper round ended him, followed by a fusion grenade to finish the job.
His corpse went up in searing flame, a grisly sight.
"Hahaha! Another bronze medal for our squad!"
Old York laughed over the comms, and the others joined him with hearty chuckles.
Suddenly, he paused as fresh orders came through, then barked a new command.
"Lads, shift five hundred meters to the flank, right now. We're clearing a lane for the Titan cluster to pass!"
He led the squad in a mad dash to the side.
They had barely reached their new position when the ground began to quake fiercely, as if an earthquake had hit.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
On the horizon, a walking mechanical fortress loomed, a black, crushing mass blotting out the sky.
As its shadow rolled over them, the armored troopers seemed as tiny as ants, like a mountain was moving toward them.
Old York felt as if a fist had seized his heart, his breath suddenly constricted.
Yet a heartbeat later, his expression turned fervent. He could not stop himself from snapping into the aquila salute.
"Emperor above… It's His Majesty the Savior…"
The veterans had spotted the colossal golden banner snapping atop the central spire of the fortress.
It was the honor-standard of the Savior.
It burned in the reflection of the shell-fire.
The Savior, the Imperial Emperor, had arrived.
High atop the fortress-class Titan, the Imperial Emperor, in the observation tower.
"How long until we reach the enemy's core?"
Eden stood at the parapet, gazing over the battlefield below. The human fireline was grinding forward, a river of flame hundreds of kilometers long.
Countless Imperial warriors and machines of war fought there in blood and steel.
"At our projected rate of advance, we will reach the daemon palace in… nine hours."
His adjutant, Tarko, hesitated a moment as he read the report, then deliberately repeated the time.
He knew His Majesty the Savior was a bit touchy about that number.
"Nine hours. That's an ill-omened figure."
Eden murmured. He did not know why, but a nameless sense of crisis gnawed at him, a feeling that his own life was under threat.
"Order the army to push as hard as they can. It'd be best if we reach it in less than nine hours."
After giving his orders, Eden walked back to the viewing gallery to survey the front again, and his eyes fell on nine upside-down mountains hanging in the distance.
He stared at them for a moment, then silently returned to his seat.
"This is way too ominous…"
Eden sighed, his unease mounting. A prickling intuition told him that his life was in danger.
"Brother, are you feeling unwell? What happened?"
Guilliman, seeing that his brother did not look right, stepped closer in concern.
"Nothing… just feels off."
As Eden spoke, his gaze slid to the plate of pastries on the table, meant for energy.
There seemed to be nine of them.
Irritated, he picked one up and popped it into his mouth.
He did not actually want to eat. He simply wanted to break that unlucky number. Just looking at it bothered him.
Only after he swallowed did he realize he'd been wrong. There had been ten pastries before.
Now that he'd eaten one, there were nine left.
"???"
Eden stared at the nine pastries on the plate, then glanced at the plates in front of his other Primarch brothers.
They also held nine apiece.
"Hiss…"
He sucked in a sharp breath, sprang to his feet, and strode toward the exit of the observation tower.
"Brother, where are you going?" Guilliman rose as well, even more puzzled now.
"It's fine. I just have something to take care of. I'll be right back."
Eden waved to his brothers, signaling that there was no problem.
Then he headed for a special compartment within the fortress.
This was all far too ominous, downright uncanny. He had to go consult the Emperor, or the Buddha, or God himself to suppress this bad luck.
Time to fix his fortune.
(End of Chapter)
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