The two didn't waste words. They clashed again: the Sword of Death against the Chaos Demonblade.
High above the skies, two figures collided at supersonic speed. Each exchange tore open the boundary between reality and the Warp, detonating terror in the heavens.
It was as if the whole sky roared and split apart, turning black and violet. Many mortal soldiers dropped to their knees, praying to the Emperor.
Fulgrim's daemonic wings thrashed wildly behind him, violet Chaos energy coiling around him like boiling poison fog. Wherever his blade swept, reality was torn and left with pink-violet corrosive scars. The Alien Empera, by contrast, was like an ebon war-god, the Empera Blade wreathed in annihilating dark matter—every strike carried cosmic oppression.
Where the edge passed, space twisted and collapsed; even light could not escape that abyssal darkness.
Fulgrim suddenly accelerated, his form becoming a violet afterimage as the daemonsword lunged at the Alien Empera's throat from a vicious angle.
But the Dark Emperor reacted faster. The black blade parried with precision. Two utterly different dark energies collided, detonating a deafening thunderclap. Shockwaves swept for kilometers, shredding the cloud layer.
At the instant the two divine weapons met in the upper air, the warning world's atmosphere was ripped open into a vacuum vortex thousands of kilometers wide.
Where the sword-light passed, space was hewn into a pitch-black rift. One of Fulgrim's daemonic wings was severed, and he was forced into a rapid plunge.
Just before impact, he flipped, skidding twin furrows hundreds of meters long with his feet.
The Alien Empera followed like a meteor, descending with his blade aimed at Fulgrim's skull.
Fulgrim bared his teeth in a snarl and raised the daemonsword to block. When the forces met, the ground for a kilometer around collapsed with a roar, and the shockwave leveled the surrounding ruins.
Fulgrim's blade twisted and morphed, becoming a roaring serpent of violet energy that sank its fangs into the Alien Empera's wrist.
The Dark Emperor snorted coldly, seized the serpent's neck with his left hand, and unleashed dark energy, crushing the Chaos construct to pieces.
Fulgrim seized the opening and thrust at the Alien Empera's heart. But the other's speed was greater—the Empera Blade whipped back at an impossible angle.
The ebon sword-light carved a perfect arc, not only nullifying Fulgrim's attack but also rending a savage gash across his chestplate. Chaos blood sprayed.
High above, the battle raged on. Each collision warped the heavens; thunder tangled with darkness, Chaos danced with destruction. Fulgrim's assault grew more frenzied, his blade splintering into countless afterimages, while the Alien Empera unraveled them one by one with absolute dark power, counterattacking relentlessly.
Chaos power and dark energy slammed together. Fulgrim's serpent pupils contracted. He snapped his wings to withdraw, left hand conjuring a pink-violet hellfire orb that he hurled hard at his foe.
The Alien Empera neither dodged nor flinched. Black-red lightning burst from his palm, black and crimson energies grappling.
Dark energy and Chaotic divinity erupted in midair. The entire warning world began to tremble. If this continued, the aftershocks alone might destroy the whole planet.
Some mortals were already at their limit. If not for the Emperor's avatar shielding them, either dark power or Chaos might have warped them into mutants on the spot.
Seeing this, Rhodes immediately ordered the Alien Empera—to take Fulgrim into space to fight.
"But, master, if we battle in outer space, I can't be sure I can keep him pinned. He might escape," the Alien Empera said.
"Don't worry. The Emperor's power, Aisha's power, and Tartarus's power have locked down the entire star system. You can fight in space with no problem," Rhodes said.
There was no helping it; the planet could not withstand the battle. Neither the Dark Emperor nor Fulgrim—now fused with a Chaos god-weapon—could be contained by a small world.
"Understood, master. I'll draw him into space now." The Dark Emperor nodded, and again swung the Empera Blade at Fulgrim.
Ultimate dark energy surged along the sword. As the black sword-light cleaved Chaos divinity, Fulgrim's daemonsword twisted again.
The blade became a screeching, violet-scaled serpent that coiled around the Empera Blade, pink-violet light flaring in its eyes as Chaos god-power wrestled with dark energy.
The battle aloft had reached a fever pitch. Behind Fulgrim unfurled four pairs of daemonic wings studded with eyeballs; each beat cast down maddening phantasms, stirring humanity's most primal desires. With most of a godshard integrated, Fulgrim could now channel part of Slaanesh's portfolio.
But the dark magic around the Alien Empera shut out all psychic pollution. His black armor glowed with dark energy utterly unlike the Emperor's runes.
With a sudden burst of speed, he appeared before Fulgrim, clamped his throat, and dragged him straight into hard vacuum, away from the planet and into space.
Once in space, Fulgrim tore free of the Alien Empera's grip. The two became streaks of black and violet light that slammed together.
Boom! Boom!
World-shaking detonations echoed.
In the cold void they collided—no air to buffer, no gravity to bind—only pure darkness and Chaos smashing together.
Fulgrim's daemonic wings spread wide in vacuum, Chaos energy swirling like a boiling violet nebula. Each swing of the Sword of Death cleaved pink-violet arcs kilometers long; meteor belts dissolved to dust where they passed.
The Alien Empera seemed the incarnation of darkness itself, dark energy congealing at his feet into a field that devoured light. Each slash of the Empera Blade drew pained cries from space itself.
A band of purple-black sword-qi met a jet-black blade-flash in the void. The resulting energy storm shredded a nearby minor planet.
Laughing madly, Fulgrim pressed in, his blade splitting into hundreds of afterimages, each strike laced with reality-warping Chaos divinity.
The Alien Empera parried with absolute precision; every counterstroke of his ebon blade targeted Fulgrim's vitals.
Suddenly, Fulgrim's rhythm changed. The Sword of Death elongated in a snap into a purple-black light-blade spanning a world, scything at the Alien Empera's waist.
The Dark Emperor did not dodge. His left hand thrust forward, manifesting a shield of pure dark matter that blocked a blow that could have split a continent.
At the instant the forces locked, dark-red lightning burst from the Alien Empera's right-hand blade. One diagonal cut blazed like a supernova, driving Fulgrim back hundreds of thousands of meters.
Fulgrim stabilized in the void. His wings jetted purple-black flame, propelling him forward.
The Alien Empera snorted and burst forward as well, black energy surging underfoot.
They became twin streaks—one violet, one black—each pass sending spatial ripples. Nearby asteroid fragments crumbled in the wake.
Fulgrim threw his arms wide. The Chaos sigils on his chest flared with eldritch light, coalescing into a storm of razor violet spears that rained toward the Alien Empera.
The Dark Emperor spun his blade, a jet-black energy tornado forming about him to shred every projectile.
But in that instant, Fulgrim flashed in, the Sword of Death thrusting straight for the Alien Empera's face.
Clang—!
At the last split second, the Empera Blade parried true, but the impact sent them both skidding apart.
Before the Alien Empera could fully recover, blazing witchlight burst from Fulgrim's left eye—a hyper-concentrated Chaos ray.
The Dark Emperor tilted aside; the beam grazed his pauldron, corroding the dark metal with a vicious sizzle.
It was no serious wound for him. Fulgrim, however, fared worse.
Cracks had begun to spread within his body. Violet light leaked from beneath his skin. The brutal, sustained combat was straining his vessel to breaking.
Chaos divinity seemed ready to detonate from within at any moment.
"You can't control power this great. Your body can't withstand it," the Dark Emperor said, lowering his blade.
Fulgrim's expression turned ugly. Damn it—this vessel was at its limit. From the start, this black giant had pressured him beyond imagination.
He had never seen such terrifying power. Even using Chaos to the limit, he could not take the advantage—he was even being suppressed.
"This useless body can be discarded at any time. Soon I'll obtain a more perfect flesh," Fulgrim sneered.
On the planet below, the preparations he'd made with Lorgar had already begun. With the Emperor's avatar Guilliman and everyone else fixated on the duel between him and the black giant, this was the perfect chance.
If he could seize that extradimensional avatar, he would withdraw at once. Once fully fused, with a perfect body, he would no longer fear Chaos power running amok.
The Alien Empera snorted and swung the Empera Blade, diving at Fulgrim again.
On the planet's surface, a squad of elite Chaos Astartes led by the fallen Primarch Lorgar launched a lightning raid on Guilliman's ship's cargo hold.