The sword-edge flashed. Skarbrand barely dodged, but half a wing was hewn away; black blood spurted like magma.
"The False Emperor's avatar… die!!!" Angron roared, the Butcher's Nails erupting with a blinding blood-red glare.
In this moment, the colossal Avatar of the Emperor before Angron seemed no different from the Emperor Himself.
His twin axes hacked in a sequence that defied physics, each strike leaving a crimson afterimage in the air.
The Emperor's Avatar slipped aside; the great holy blade in His hands turned, meeting Angron's massive axe-blows with ringing blocks.
Skarbrand seized the moment, stooping from on high, his brass war-axe falling with mountain-crushing force.
The Avatar suddenly pivoted. His left hand conjured a golden shield of pure Psychic-power. When the axe struck the shield, time itself seemed to pause.
Crack!
Fractures laced the Psychic-shield's surface—but at the same time the daemonic runes on Skarbrand's axe guttered out.
The Bloodthirster was shocked to find his link to Khorne cut for a heartbeat. The Avatar snatched the fleeting chance—His holy sword flared brighter than the sun and drove straight into Skarbrand's chest.
"AAAHHH—!"
The arrogant Lord of the Bloodletters screamed. His brass armor melted like wax; sacred fire ignited his very essence from within.
But Khorne's power flooded into him at once. Lava-like blood geysered from the wound and turned midair into countless shrieking blood-crows that hurled themselves at the Avatar.
Angron lunged, his axe-edges carving great gouges in the Avatar's golden plate.
"Father, look!" Angron howled with manic laughter.
"This is the power of the son you threw away!"
Angron's axe suddenly swelled into a hundred-meter-long blade of blood-crystal, scything to cleave the Avatar in half.
At the very instant doom fell, the Avatar broke apart into a spray of golden motes and the immense strike bit only air. Rhodes' first summoned Emperor-Avatar, after pushing core output to the limit, could now dissolve into photons at will—appearing unseen, or evading a killing blow.
The motes reformed behind Angron. The Avatar's vast holy sword leveled at the daemon primarch's back.
But the skin on Angron's spine split open; a maw of jagged bone-spurs snapped shut on the blade. The daemon primarch's fighting style was feral beyond reason.
Skarbrand, not to be outdone, rejoined the assault. He and Angron pressed the Avatar together. If they could slay this peculiar Avatar and offer His head to the Blood God, perhaps their master's wrath would be appeased.
This Avatar was stronger than any before—stronger even than the greatest Greater Daemons—and even against both Angron and Skarbrand He fought with cool ease.
The clash burned white-hot. The holy sword finally tore free of the bone-maw and took Angron's left arm with a single cut.
But the geysering blood became a storm of crimson chains, binding the Avatar in place. For a moment, He could not break free.
Skarbrand slammed his axe into the ground. The battlefield's crust heaved—and a forest of spikes, congealed from blood and etched with blasphemous Chaos sigils, erupted upward. Each spike held power enough to destroy an Imperator Titan.
For the first time the Avatar's radiance dimmed. Hairline fractures crawled across His golden plate. From the widening warp-rifts more daemons crawled forth—many of them Khorne's Greater Daemons.
Overhead, the blood-clouds began to churn, forming a vortex tens of kilometers wide. At its heart, something darker than night gazed upon the field.
The weaker Greater Daemons could not join the melee against the Avatar, Angron, and Skarbrand, but they could ravage the other fronts. On the Imperial line, only Calgar—giant-sized—could meet them.
"Daemons! I'll fight you to the end of the world!" Calgar bellowed, whirling an immense power ring and battering several of Khorne's Greater Daemons aside.
Suddenly the Avatar blazed with unprecedented light. The binding blood-chains flashed to vapor. The flames on His sword shifted to pure white. Wherever the sacred fire swept, warp-filth was forced to recede. Even Angron had to give ground, half a step.
"The game ends now."
Weariness—almost human—colored the Avatar's voice. He raised the holy sword overhead; a spear of light lanced from the tip to the heavens.
Amazingly, the beam drove the blood-clouds back, and true starlight spilled across the battlefield.
In that starlight the holy blade changed shape, becoming a weapon Angron felt he had seen before.
It was a perfect replica of the Sword of the Emperor, the very blade the Emperor Himself had wielded in the Great Crusade—now borne by Guilliman.
Having seen it countless times, Rhodes could reproduce it with the Avatar's divine power. Forged from extradimensional and regenerative metals, the copy might even surpass the original in sheer force.
The instant Angron beheld the blade, agony ripped through the Butcher's Nails.
Buried fragments of memory heaved up. He saw himself upon the steps of the Imperial Palace on Terra, saw a golden figure reaching out to him…
A man who called himself father—the man he hated beyond words.
"No! All lies!" Angron shook his head wildly, axes flailing without rhythm—nearly cleaving Skarbrand beside him.
The Avatar seized the opening. The Emperor's Sword thrust forth—apparently slow, yet impossible to evade. The instant the tip touched Angron's chest, time froze.
Ancient runes along the blade lit one by one. Each rune stood for a fundamental truth of the Imperium of Man. Those truths became substance, unmaking Angron's daemonic essence from within.
"Ah… AAAHHH!!!" The daemon primarch screamed, inhuman and raw. His skin crazed and split, and beneath it churned the seethe of Chaos.
At that decisive moment, a burning blood-spear streaked in from afar, striking the blade with perfect precision. The blow carried Khorne's own power—the Emperor's Sword was knocked aside for a heartbeat.
The attacker was Skulltaker, another of Khorne's Greater Daemons, second in might only to Skarbrand.
Roaring, the daemon joined the fray. If two could not bring down the Avatar—then three.
Angron staggered back. A wound burned in his chest that would not heal; golden fire smoldered within. He had almost died—after ten full millennia, he felt the real threat of death again. Even backed by his master's power, the Emperor's psychic might could kill him.
Skarbrand tried to strike from behind—but an Aeldari Death God appeared without warning and ran him through the shoulder with a single blade. Antithetical energies warred in the wound; the Greater Daemon howled in pain.
Furious, he whirled to see what craven mongrel dared such a blow.
At some point, the Aeldari Death God Ynnead had slipped onto the field. Webway gates yawned open in many places, and the Death God's chosen—the Death Jesters and their kin—poured forth.
The turn shocked even Rhodes. Why were the Aeldari here? The Death God's vessel was itself an Super Beast body—a shell Rhodes had forged in the Imperial Palace long ago.
"Three-on-one's a bit much, isn't it? How about two-on-three?" the Death God said, brandishing his long sword.
The Avatar frowned—and so did some mortal soldiers—glancing warily at the Aeldari around them. There were Drukhari, Craftworlders, even Exodites and members of various Harlequin troupes.
"Do not panic! The Aeldari are our allies—we've been allied for decades. They are reinforcements," Calgar shouted at once.
The alliance had gone well in recent years. Except for the Drukhari, there had been exchanges—and even trade of technologies. The Aeldari had obtained humanity's FTL drive.
Now the Death God's sudden arrival with his host might prove a boon for mankind.
The Avatar said nothing, only nodded to the Death God and moved to stand at his side.
For now, the Death God was indeed a supporting force. Why he appeared at this moment, none could say.
The battle shifted—from two-on-one to three-on-two. Skulltaker planted himself at Angron's side, roaring.
The field plunged into deeper chaos. Skulltaker's arrival brought more Khorne daemons, while the Death God's warriors tied up swathes of the enemy. Aeldari and humans stood shoulder to shoulder.
In the center, the Avatar's glow was dimmer than before, but He still held the Emperor's Sword high. The Death God stood with Him. Together they faced Skarbrand, Angron, and Skulltaker.
"Let me be clear, Rhodes—this time I help you, but I want a primordial-form dimensional avatar like this one. I know you've been using my divine power to secretly make a little toy."
Through the warp-link, Ynnead spoke to Rhodes.
He was here for two reasons. First, to prevent humanity's extinction and the rise of a newborn Slaanesh—else the Aeldari would face Chaos alone.
Second—payment.
He could feel it: the Death-aspect avatar Rhodes had crafted with divine power.
"Deal!" Rhodes agreed without hesitation.
The Death God's timing was perfect.