=== Sebastian ===
Abeloth stood across from him, bathed in violet light, the stolen amethyst blade humming. Sebastian's Darksaber answered in kind, its black blade devouring the light around it. The two weapons sang opposing hymns, one of purity twisted into corruption, the other of faith sharpened into vengeance.
Then, they moved.
Sebastian lunged first, igniting his jump pack for a burst of speed, the roar of his engines tearing through the battlefield. He came down like a meteor, blade arcing toward her neck, a blow meant to decapitate a god.
Abeloth tilted her head.
The Darksaber passed harmlessly through her shoulder, its black blade scattering her form like smoke. She reformed behind him before he could turn, her voice a whisper in his ear.
"Faster."
Sebastian spun, shield raised, though it was nothing but his forearm now, as his relic lay shattered and slashed horizontally. She ducked under the swing, sliding across the dirt, the amethyst blade tracing a bright scar across his greave as she rose. Sparks showered the ground.
He advanced relentlessly, striking again and again, a maelstrom of fury and faith. The Darksaber screamed as it met her violet blade.
Abeloth weaved effortlessly between his attacks, her movements liquid and mocking, an unnatural elegance that belonged to something beyond mortal comprehension. Every time his blade missed, hers darted in, in return, small, surgical strikes that kissed his armor and bit into the ceramite ever so gently. Dozens of shallow cuts marked his chest plate, arms, thighs. Each one glowing faintly as they smoldered from the heat of her blade.
Still, Sebastian pressed on.
He bellowed a war cry that shook the heavens themselves, a sound born from the lungs of an Astartes and the soul of a zealot. He drove her back with a flurry of brutal slashes, his strength shaking the ground as if each swing could crack the world.
Abeloth only smiled, her laughter like the chiming of glass. "Such fury, such devotion," she purred, ducking under his next strike. "And yet… so small."
With a flick of her wrist, the Force exploded outward.
Sebastian was ripped from his feet, his massive frame hurled skyward like a ragdoll. He crashed into the earth with enough force to crater the ground, the shockwave rippling out for meters. Before he could rise, she raised her hand again.
The Force seized him by the chest, dragging him into the air once more.
Then she brought him down.
CRACK!
The ground buckled.
She lifted him again.
SLAM!
The sound of impact echoing across Mortis.
A third time SLAM!
His armor groaned under the stress, spiderweb cracks forming across his breastplate.
Still, Sebastian refused to yield.
His gauntlet reached toward her as he hovered in the air. "You cannot break me!" he roared, igniting his jump pack mid-air.
The explosion of thrust tore him from her grasp. He shot forward like a comet, shoulder-first, colliding with her before she could move. The impact sent both tumbling through the dust, debris exploding outward in a halo of violence.
Abeloth rolled to her feet, unharmed, her lips curling in faint amusement. "Better," she whispered.
Sebastian surged from the smoke, swinging with such ferocity that his armor screamed in protest. His blade locked with hers, and for a heartbeat they stood deadlocked. The black blade of his Darksaber devoured the violet light of hers, their energies snarling like wild beasts.
The world shook as she pushed him back with raw telekinetic might. He dug his boots into the ground, gouging trenches in the dirt, roaring as he resisted her unseen power. Sparks flew as he slid backward, but he did not fall.
With a guttural shout, he broke her grip and leapt again, cleaving downward, a strike that could split a tank in two.
Abeloth caught it on her own blade.
Sebastian retaliated instantly, swinging his fist like a thunder hammer. The blow connected, sending Abeloth staggering back.
Her expression shifted, the playful amusement gone, replaced by something colder.
"Do you know what I am, child of Dorn?" she asked softly.
"You are nothing but a witch, one I shall burn from this galaxy!" He bellowed, charging forward.
Abeloth's grin returned, but this time, there was madness behind it. "Then come little zealot. Burn with me."
She lunged forward.
Her movements became a blur, faster than his eyes could follow. The amethyst blade carved arcs of light through the air, cutting into his armor, his pauldrons, his thigh plates. She spun, vaulted, and twisted, her attacks relentless and cruel, a dance of divine malice.
Sebastian took every wound in silence, his focus unshaken.
One strike forced her to parry awkwardly; another drove her back half a step.
The third caught her off guard.
He drove his knee into her midsection, following with a crushing overhead bow he would have delivered to the back of her head had she not turned to smoke.
She reappeared behind him gracefully, her feet inches above the ground.
Abeloth looked down at him, her expression almost tender. "You fight like a god… but die like a man."
Sebastian raised his head, his visor cracked, his voice a growl. "Then I will die on my feet with my sword through your chest!"
He charged again, broken, battered, and bleeding, but unbroken in spirit.
His body was a ruin of wounds, his armor cracked and smoking, his once-pristine heraldry buried beneath grime, ichor, and blood.
Abeloth danced still, her movements fluid and effortless, each parry a stroke of artistry.
Their blades met mid-swing. Abeloth's expression twisted as sparks erupted between their weapons.
Sebastian's right arm buckled, then surged.
With a roar that tore his throat raw, he pushed forward, black lightning exploding from his blade.
CRACK!
Abeloth's amethyst saber shattered in two.
The violet plasma guttered, flickered, and then died in her hand, its light devoured utterly by the black blade of the Darksaber.
For the first time, she looked surprised.
Sebastian did not waste the moment. He twisted, pivoting on his heel, bringing the Darksaber around in a brutal, sweeping arc meant to carve her in half from shoulder to hip.
But the playful goddess was gone.
Abeloth's head tilted slightly, her face falling into perfect, unnatural stillness. Her eyes became pools of endless white, depthless, soulless, ancient.
The Darksaber came down.
She caught it.
Her bare hand closed around the blade as if it were nothing. The black plasma hissed and screamed, devouring everything it touched… everything except her. The light flickered and spat against her palm but refused to harm her. She held it there, inches from her chest, her gaze never leaving his.
"Enough," she said softly, her voice carrying across the battlefield like a whisper of doom.
Sebastian strained against her, pouring every ounce of strength, fury, and faith he possessed into forcing the blade through her hand, but it would not move.
Abeloth leaned closer, her forehead nearly touching his own. "You've been delightful, my little zealot. Truly." Her tone was almost fond. "But playtime is over."
She released the Darksaber and stepped back.
Her right arm began to twist and elongate, her flesh warping into something inhuman, pale skin stretching, reforming into a tendril thick as a tree trunk, covered in faintly pulsing veins of light. The transformation was silent but horrific, the sound of it like silk being torn.
"I've lingered here long enough," she said. "The Warp calls to me, and I mustn't be late."
Sebastian raised his sword again, roaring as he charged, every step shaking the earth beneath him.
Her tendril shot forward like lightning.
It pierced his chest clean through, bursting from his back in a spray of blood and armor fragments.
The force of the blow lifted him from the ground, impaling him mid-charge.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then he gasped, a wet, ragged sound, and reached up, wrapping his gauntleted hands around the slick, writhing appendage that had skewered him.
Even now, he tried to fight. Even now, his arms strained to pull himself off the tendril.
Abeloth tilted her head, watching him with something that might have been admiration. "You mortals… you never know when to stop."
He spat blood, his voice a rasp. "By… the Emperor's… will…"
With a final roar, he swung upward with his blade, cutting into the tendril that held him.
Abeloth flinched, the first true reaction of pain she had shown. The tendril recoiled, tearing free from his chest as it withdrew, leaving a gaping hole behind.
Sebastian fell.
He hit the ground hard, dust billowing up around him, his armor cracked and leaking blood. His chest plate was caved inward, a hole the size of a fist burned straight through the ceramite and into his flesh. He twitched once, tried to rise, then collapsed.
Abeloth looked down at him for a long, silent moment.
Then she smiled.
"I'll remember you, little Templar."
She turned, her body shimmering as it began to distort, growing larger, tendrils unfurling behind her like the wings of some nightmarish angel. The air around her rippled and tore, reality itself buckling as she approached the massive warp portal in the distance.
Her laughter began softly, a giggle at first, and then grew louder, echoing across the battlefield in a cacophony of madness and mirth.
Every soldier who still drew breath turned toward the sound. Some screamed. Others fell to their knees, clutching their heads as her laughter clawed into their minds.
Sebastian's vision blurred. Through the haze of pain, he could just make out her silhouette, a goddess of horror walking toward the veil between worlds.
He tried to move. His fingers scraped at the ground.
But his strength failed him.
His hand fell limp.
And the last thing he heard before darkness claimed him… was Abeloth's laughter fading into the sound of the Warp opening.
=== Maximus ===
The world was breaking apart.
The ground heaved and groaned beneath the weight of the Warp's intrusion, the air itself screamed as reality twisted into impossible geometries. Maximus pushed himself up from the earth, coughing blood through the vox-grille of his shattered helm. His vision swam, the golden horizon of Mortis splitting into colors that no mortal eye was meant to perceive.
He blinked through the static in his lenses, struggling to find his bearings, and then he saw it.
Sebastian.
His brother, the Black Templar whose faith had never wavered, hung impaled upon Abeloth's writhing limb. The Witch's tendril had burst clean through his chest, glowing with a foul, otherworldly light as it pulsed and coiled.
"No…" The word slipped out, trembling through the vox like a prayer and a curse all at once.
Then louder, a roar that shook the heavens.
"NO!"
Maximus lurched forward, fury boiling through his veins like liquid promethium. His jump pack screamed to life, the turbines coughing and sputtering before erupting into a thunderous blaze. He tore across the battlefield, wings of fire trailing behind him as he hurtled toward Abeloth.
"SEBASTIAN!" he bellowed, his voice breaking through the chaos, raw and desperate.
Abeloth turned her head, and smiled. That same serene, unbothered smile, as if killing one of the Emperor's chosen meant less than crushing a flower underfoot. She slid Sebastian's corpse from her tendril and let him fall to the earth like discarded armor.
The sight broke something inside Maximus.
He drew the only weapon he had left, his combat knife, a crude, mortal thing compared to the relics he'd wielded before.
The Ultramarine slammed into Abeloth with the force of a meteor as she grew, his jump pack igniting in a blazing arc that sent shards of stone and ash flying in every direction. He drove the knife forward, plunging it into her side, but her form dissolved into smoke, his blade passing through her as though she were mist.
"Damn you!" he roared, spinning, slashing again and again, his blows carving through the fog that refused to bleed.
Abeloth's laughter was soft, musical, and unbearable. "Oh, the little son of Guilliman," she purred, her voice echoing inside his mind.
Her form coalesced again behind him, impossibly fast. She caught his wrist mid-swing, her touch searing cold. Maximus felt the bones in his gauntlet grind together as she squeezed, forcing his fingers open. The knife clattered to the ground.
He struggled, his jump pack sputtering, flames licking against the earth as he tried to wrench free. But she only smiled, leaning closer until her ethereal face filled his vision.
"You should rejoice," she whispered. "Your brother is with your Corpse-Emperor now. You will join him soon enough."
Maximus snarled through his helmet, and with a guttural roar, drove his free hand forward, a punch that could shatter ceramite, aimed straight for her throat.
It passed through her. Again, she was smoke.
"Pathetic," she murmured, before flicking her wrist.
An invisible force seized him, and in an instant, he was hurled across the battlefield. The world spun, sky and ground trading places, until he slammed into the dirt beside Sebastian's body with a bone-crunching thud. His armor split, his breath catching in his chest as the taste of iron filled his mouth.
He pushed himself up onto one knee, his vision blurred.
"Brother…" Maximus rasped, reaching out a trembling hand.
Above him, the sky tore open.
The Warp's gateway had widened, an immense, roiling wound in reality itself. Lightning the color of madness streaked across the heavens as millions of lesser daemons poured through. Their howls echoed like the screams of a dying galaxy. Horned monstrosities, winged abominations, crawling horrors, a tide of hatred and teeth and claw.
Behind them, came hundreds of Greater Daemons.
They all parted for Abeloth as she continued to float towards the portal.
Maximus knelt amidst the storm, every instinct screaming that it was over, that this was the end of all things.
He looked down at Sebastian one final time, then reached out and grasped his fallen brother's combat knife.
"I will not yield," he whispered. "Just as you did not brother. Rest now, in the Emperor's embrace."
He turned toward the oncoming tide as stood, planting his boots firmly in the blood-soaked soil. The daemons came screaming toward him, a living wave of claws and fire, and Maximus raised the knife in defiance.
He looked about himself, and saw that there were still Republic and Imperial forces fighting, cleaning up what remained of the Separatists and cyborgs. He watched as Jedi and clone killed waves of daemons, and now that Abeloth was leaving, the massive arena like circle that had formed around them began to collapse as daemons ran towards his from all directions.
The daemons howled in delight, eager to tear him apart.
And then… A second portal tore open behind him.
Maximus turned, expecting another horror, another wave of nightmares to descend, but what came forth was something else entirely.
The air shimmered with light, pure and blinding. Aetheric runes burned into the ground, forming perfect geometries that the Warp recoiled from.
And from that rift stepped unknown Astartes in silver plate.
"FORWARD!" Screamed a man who held a massive sword in his hands. The man ignored Maximus as he passed, and met a snarling daemon head on.
Their silver armor gleamed even beneath the red skies, each etched with holy scripture that glowed with sanctified fire. Incense burned from their pauldrons. Psychic energy rippled around them like waves of living flame.
The mass of Astartes slammed into the Daemons host, and the world seemed to split in that moment.
The air itself felt lighter in their presence, the corruption retreating in agony from their purity.
Maximus fell to one knee next to his brother's body before one of the Silver Astartes took notice of him.
The Grey Knight's voice cut through the chaos, calm yet thunderous.
"Stand, cousin of Ultramar. You have not failed." he said, shoving a Thunderhammer into the Ultramarine's hands.
Maximus rose with the help of the unknown Astartes, blood running down his armor.
"Let us slay these Abominations in the Black Templars name!" The warrior shouted, turning from Maximus before entering the battle himself.
Maximus stood there for a moment, looking back as he stared at the massive portal still pouring out unknown Astartes.
He was a lone Blueberry in a sea of Silver liquid.
He looked down at his brother's body once more, then to Abeloth as she continued to float towards the portal.
"For Sebastian!" He roared, jump pack igniting once more.
===
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