At this exact mont, within a clandestine ergency escape tunnel.
A chaotic clattering of heavy footsteps echoed off the bulkheads.
The Chaos Lord, Malvin, clad in artificer power armor, was among them, traversing the corridor at a rapid pace.
He was not maneuvering alone; six Chaos Astartes bodyguards entirely encased in Terminator plate moved in lockstep with him, securing his periter.
Having clawed his way through the brutal at grinder of the galaxy for several centuries, Malvin was absolutely not foolish enough to remain in the crossfire as a spectator.
It was true that if he chose to remain and support Miriael, he could provide substantial tactical advantage. Were the two of them to combine their might, the threat level would skyrocket exponentially, highly likely resulting in the total annihilation of the intruders.
It sounded like a flawless scenario.
However, there was one microscopic flaw in this logic.
That flaw being... this course of action offered him absolutely zero tangible benefit, while simultaneously exposing him to catastrophic peril, where a single microsecond of negligence could result in his absolute demise.
Malvin would naturally never commit such an idiotic blunder.
Did anyone genuinely believe that reliable camaraderie existed among the forces of Chaos?
Furthermore, his relationship with Miriael was strictly bound by a transactional covenant. Malvin had even deliberately concealed vital intelligence in order to lure her to this vessel.
What if Miriael decided to exact vengeance upon him after the slaughter concluded?
It was infinitely more prudent to go to ground, locate a secure bolthole, and wait for the carnage to subside.
If the Prince of Pleasure so willed it, the optimal outco would be the lapdogs of the False Emperor and Miriael achieving mutually assured destruction, or at least crippling one another permanently.
Unfortunately, events did not unfold as smoothly as Malvin had anticipated.
Suddenly, the Chaos Lord halted his advance, freezing in his tracks.
The six Terminator bodyguards instantly ceased their movent in perfect unison, turning their optical sensors toward him, awaiting orders.
"A warp fluctuation?"
Possessing his own mastery over the immaterium, Malvin frowned. Purple witch-light flared within his eyes as he extended his psychic senses to their absolute limit.
Swiftly, he detected a localized warp rift slowly tearing open within the corridor behind them.
"Hah!"
The Chaos Lord sneered internally.
Attempting warp teleportation in the imdiate presence of a Sorcerer-Lord?
How has a psyker this catastrophically stupid managed to survive this long?
Without a sliver of hesitation, Malvin raised his sorcerer's staff and slamd it violently against the deck plating. An invisible wave of psychic force erupted, coalescing into a massive, ethereal hand that violently slamd toward the spatial anomaly.
Subjected to this degree of psychic interference, the teleportation coordinates would undoubtedly suffer catastrophic deviation, directly embedding the intruder inside the solid ceramite bulkheads.
Wait, what is happening?
Malvin was montarily stunned.
The spatial rift seemingly ignored the interference entirely. It slowly tore open, and a blinding flash of teleportation light illuminated the dim escape tunnel.
As the light dissipated, a young woman clad in a military greatcoat, wielding a force sword, materialized upon the deck.
It was Inquisitor Cybia!
The exact microsecond her figure materialized, the six Chaos Terminators reacted without hesitation, raising their heavy weaponry.
"BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!"
Heavy bolters and assault cannons roared in deafening unison, spewing tongues of muzzle flash as a torrential storm of mass-reactive rounds and solid slugs descended upon her, entirely engulfing her form.
However, this apocalyptic volu of fire achieved absolutely nothing.
A hardened, impenetrable kine-shield manifested before Cybia, locking her within an impregnable psychic bastion.
Countless munitions flattened and shattered uselessly against the barrier, while Cybia herself remained perfectly unblemished, her deanor absolute, devoid of even a trace of fatigue.
"Cease fire!"
Malvin ordered, halting the blatantly futile bombardnt. He stared at Cybia with a grim, heavy expression.
Facing this uninvited guest—one whose hostile intent was blindingly obvious and whose psychic reserves were seemingly unfathomable—Malvin, despite knowing the probability of avoiding combat was astronomically low, attempted a final diplomatic maneuver.
"...Can we negotiate a truce?"
The Chaos Lord discarded his usual arrogance, ticulously choosing his words. "From my perspective, there is undoubtedly sufficient animosity between our factions. However, right now, your decision to pursue is entirely devoid of tactical logic."
Malvin continued, his tone a calculated blend of conciliation and threat. "Your comrades are currently engaged in a desperate struggle. While I concede that a disparity exists between our respective psychic masteries, if you harbor the delusion of executing swiftly in order to reinforce your allies, you are catastrophically miscalculating."
"It would be vastly more prudent to allow to depart, allowing you to return and assist your comrades against the true threat. Do you not agree this is the optimal choice?"
Entirely ignoring the heretic's honeyed lies, Cybia rely raised her force sword in silence.
By all conventional logic, the heretic's assessnt was tactically sound.
As an Inquisitor of the Imperium, Cybia had initially arrived at the exact sa conclusion.
If the four of them pooled their absolute might, even if it necessitated certain sacrifices, they possessed a genuine probability of banishing the Slaaneshi Daemon Prince back to the warp.
After all, sacrifice was the bedrock upon which the Imperium was built, and human life was the currency of the Emperor. So long as the objective was achieved, the concept of "acceptable casualties" was never questioned by an Imperial commander.
Furthermore, banishing a Greater Daemon of that caliber—even if it cost the Inquisitor her own life—would unequivocally be considered a highly profitable exchange by the Imperium.
However, just prior to initiating the engagent, when she had voiced this tactical assessnt, Rowan had vetoed it, issuing an exceedingly bizarre directive.
Rowan had commanded her to execute the fleeing Chaos Lord Malvin with absolute maximum velocity, promising that upon the completion of this task, victory would naturally follow.
Thus, despite harboring a degree of tactical bewildernt, Cybia would obey his command with absolute, unyielding devotion.
"To harbor heretical thoughts is the zenith of treason; to execute the treasonous is the zenith of justice."
Cybia calmly recited a passage from the Fables of the Ecclesiarchy. Brilliant azure witch-light ignited within her eyes as boiling arcs of psychic lightning began to aggressively coil around her form.
This martial posture signaled to the Chaos Lord that all hope of a peaceful resolution was dead.
"Fine! I pray you do not regret this!"
The veins bulged violently across Malvin's face as he unleashed his psychic might to its absolute limit. A sorcerous hurricane, birthed from the Empyrean, howled through the claustrophobic tunnel, its sheer force capable of flaying flesh from bone.
Simultaneously, the six Chaos Terminators drew their power swords and charged toward Cybia in a thunderous, ground-shaking sprint!
Facing this lethal onslaught, Cybia rely held her breath, centering her focus.
Every sanctioned psyker within the Imperium was subjected to agonizingly brutal training. Regardless of their raw potential, they were indoctrinated to never channel more than a microscopic fraction of their true power, thereby minimizing the catastrophic risk of warp-backlash.
Since her induction as an Acolyte of the Inquisition, Cybia had never once unleashed her psychic reserves without the suffocating restraint of those ntal shackles.
This act, which would have been tantamount to suicide in the past, had beco entirely viable following her elevation by the reality architect known as Rowan.
Casting aside decades of deeply ingrained conditioning and microscopic control, Cybia embraced her true nature as an Alpha-class psyker. Her hair whipped wildly in the psychic gale as overlapping, blinding halos of psychic bleed-off aggressively expanded outward from her form.
She opened her mouth and delivered a roaring decree:
"PURGE! PURGE! PURGE!"
The sheer volu of psychic energy infused into her voice manifested as an apocalyptic tidal wave of telekinetic force. Like a boot crushing insects, the telekinetic tsunami impacted the six charging Terminators, instantaneously compressing them into indistinguishable masses of mangled ceramite and pulped flesh.
"Impossible!"
Under Malvin's terrified gaze, the sorcerous hurricane he was so profoundly proud of was effortlessly dispersed, vanishing without a trace before the telekinetic tsunami like a pathetic joke.
And Malvin himself, having rely stalled the tsunami for a microscopic fraction of a second, was subjected to the exact sa fate, reduced to a pulverized slurry indistinguishable from his veteran bodyguards.
The azure telekinetic shockwave carried on with undiminished montum, tearing down the length of the tunnel before effortlessly obliterating the heavy blast doors at the far end—doors rated to withstand direct bombardnt from a Baneblade super-heavy tank.
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