The changes in the Chaos hall drew the attention of the fallen primarchs, and they all frowned.
That fury had co from the Dark Emperor. He had evidently just received fresh intelligence.
"What happened?"
Magnus's eyes flickered with crimson fire as he finally spoke, unable to hold back the question. He feared this sudden shift might involve the false Emperor upon the Throne.
He knew all too well the magnitude of the cri he had committed. If the false Emperor ever broke free, He would never forgive him.
The other fallen primarchs also looked up toward the throne.
Anything capable of driving Horus into a rage was bound to be serious.
Whether it involved the siege of Terra or the false Emperor himself, it could not possibly be good news.
More than they had ten thousand years ago, they now wanted to win this war, step into the Palace once more, and use the relic to settle their grudges with the false Emperor once and for all.
"The campaign is proceeding smoothly. You have nothing to worry about."
Horus's voice still carried a trace of anger, but he offered the fallen primarchs no further explanation.
It was not exactly easy to explain, either.
What was he supposed to say? That a few remarks from mortal soldiers had angered him enough to make him lose control of his aura?
After hearing that answer, Magnus nodded and did not press the matter any further.
Horus was one of humanity's greatest commanders, possessed of incomparable military genius. He was not soone who would bluff or lie casually in the middle of a war.
If he said there was no problem, then there was no problem.
There was no need to keep asking.
If it were sothing Magnus needed to know, that brother of his would surely tell him.
Feeling much more at ease, Magnus once more poured his psychic might into breaking the Iron Wall's psychic defenses.
Those blackstone devices created by the Savior had caused imnse trouble for the Thousand Sons sorcerers and the daemons alike.
They made it extrely difficult to use large-scale sorcery against the Iron Wall.
Otherwise, no matter how grand and imposing the Savior's steel fortress line might be, it would never be able to hold back a Chaos storm spilling out of the warp.
Those rifts would tear through any thick tal wall as easily as paper.
"Once I break through the blackstone blockade, I'll send those ugly steel constructions straight into the warp.
"Let Chaos devour them to the last scrap."
That was what Magnus thought.
Now that the false Emperor slumbered upon the Throne, His psychic power could not even extend beyond the Palace. There was no way He could interfere with Magnus's work on the psychic level.
The only real nuisance was that the Savior's blackstone blockade line was a physical form of defense.
Trying to shatter it with warp power was extrely difficult and would take ti.
"No machine can obstruct the King of Sorcerers."
Magnus was fully confident that he would eventually pierce the physical blockade built from blackstone machinery.
That outco was inevitable.
He had broken through the veil of the Webway itself back then.
There was no reason he should be stopped by sothing as trivial as blackstone machinery.
The Crimson King, one of humanity's greatest sorcerers, turned his attention fully inward again, focusing on his warp-tainted infiltration.
It resembled a kind of code intrusion, a slow seepage that accumulated layer by layer until enough force had built up to rip every barrier apart in one stroke.
When that happened, all humanity would be laid bare to Chaos corruption, and the resulting chain reaction would be catastrophic.
The more troops the Savior had gathered, the worse the defeat would be.
That was the horror of Chaos sorcery.
No matter how magnificent the steel defenses, they could never fully resist Chaos, which slipped into every crack.
That was how the Imperium's supposedly impregnable fortresses had fallen in the past. Chaos had breached them one after another, and their defenders had descended into madness and the abyss.
Horus's gaze passed over the Crimson King without lingering.
Magnus was not the key to victory in this war.
Horus had never relied on variables that uncertain.
He reined in his emotions and no longer spared another thought for the words of those mortals.
They were not worthy of his attention, nor were their opinions of any value.
"Ignorant. Blind. It seems humanity still does not understand what kind of enemy stands before it..."
The warp-fire around Horus gradually subsided, and a cold sneer appeared on his face.
"But on one point, they were correct. I have hidden much of my strength - far more than they imagine."
In the end, humanity had still underestimated him, the Dark Emperor. Their arrogance had kept them from committing all their forces to the front at once.
Horus truly had not attacked with his full strength.
He had been waiting for an opportunity.
Waiting for the mont when he could smash the Imperium's iron line in one decisive blow.
Fortunately, he could see that mont now.
And it was drawing closer.
"Rogal Dorn understands nothing of true war. Even his troop movents are this sluggish, this clumsy, this riddled with openings."
That was Horus's judgnt.
The Imperium's current redeploynts were crude, barely worthy of the na of command.
There was no strategic vision to them.
All they did was huddle in place, never realizing that doing so would only invite greater danger.
"Dorn is hesitating. He fears us."
Fulgrim's soft, androgynous voice slithered through the chamber, dripping with mockery. The hiss of his revolting serpentine body only made it more unpleasant.
Among the fallen primarchs, he counted as one of the most naturally gifted schers.
He had toyed with Guilliman, Perturabo, Ferrus, and others alike.
Second only to Horus.
Even if the fallen Phoenician had long since slipped into madness, his instincts were still sharp enough to judge the battlefield.
Rogal Dorn clearly lacked confidence in this war. Even his troop movents were timid and pitifully sparse, as if he feared sothing would go wrong with every step.
In that state, he would never be able to respond effectively.
He would only make matters worse.
"What do you think, my flawless brother?"
Fulgrim turned toward another primarch, his soft serpent tail coiling forward as though he intended to "embrace" him.
But the other primarch said nothing.
A flash of light swept out, and an elegant blade cut a deep line across the fallen Phoenician's tail.
Had he been any slower to dodge, the tail would have been severed in two.
"Hiss... Are you asking to taste my punishnts, sweetling?"
Fulgrim exploded in rage at once, baring his fangs and drawing his venomous blade as he lunged at that primarch.
But before he could strike, he froze.
At so point, Horus had already appeared in front of him and seized him by the throat, pinning him completely in place.
The warped tentacles writhing around him were scorched black by dark fire.
That terrifying speed and strength sent cold sweat beading on the brows of the fallen primarchs throughout the Chaos hall.
They realized that none of them could easily resist the Dark Emperor.
He could probably kill them outright, overwhelming them by sheer force.
Horus, the Dark Emperor, had already risen far beyond the level of a primarch.
He was now stronger even than he had been ten thousand years ago, when he had grievously wounded the Emperor. (Lexicanum)
"Hkk... Hkk... Horus, I offer you my apology. Forgive ..."
The bones in Fulgrim's neck cracked one by one beneath that monstrous grip, and he had to force the words out.
Even the fallen Phoenician, who had once defeated several primarchs, could do nothing now but yield beneath Horus's pressure and obey his command.
Otherwise, in the very next second, that Dark Emperor would rip his head and spine right out through his body.
"Fulgrim, I'm glad to see you can still control your temper."
At last, Horus released the fallen Phoenician as if nothing had happened, then casually patted him on the shoulder.
His sheer intimidation was sothing not even primarchs could resist.
Then he turned to the other primarch and said in a tone that allowed no argunt:
"Sanguinius, perhaps you too should show so restraint, rather than drawing your blade in my presence."
At that mont, the Angel's sword had nearly thrust forward.
But in the end, he stopped.
He drew the blade back.
That primarch was perfect.
Every inch of his body conford to a golden ideal, as if he represented the absolute limit of what humanity could ever beco.
Even the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium, at most could only rival him with the aid of sheer spectacle.
And yet now, foul warp power ran across that body, and even his once-white wings had turned into a dirty grey.
It could not erase his perfection.
But it had stripped away sothing else.
Loyalty.
Sanctity.
As the Angel looked toward Horus and Fulgrim, a trace of disgust flashed through his eyes, but he could not resist Chaos's control.
No matter what, hatred for traitors remained in his gaze.
It was sothing buried in the soul itself, sothing that could not be erased.
"Heh. I wonder what kind of expressions Rogal Dorn and the others will wear once they see you."
Horus's face held a trace of mockery.
He had no respect whatsoever for the Angel he himself had once beaten into a pulp.
At the end of the day, Sanguinius was just another defeated foe.
More than that, he was now a puppet of the Chaos Gods.
Using a fragnt of Sanguinius's true soul and cloned flesh, the Chaos Gods had resurrected him and bound him firmly under Their control, reducing him to a slave of Chaos.
They believed that once the Angel appeared on the battlefield, it would deal a savage blow to Imperial morale.
It would hit the Blood Angels defending the Iron Wall even harder.
Of course, Their more important goal was to desecrate the Angel as a way of humiliating the loyalist primarchs and the Accursed One.
"That's enough. All of you, prepare yourselves. Before long, we will return to Terra and stand before the false Emperor once more."
At so point, Horus had already returned to his throne.
With astonishing ntal speed, he resud issuing orders to the Chaos host. Tens of thousands of commands were transmitted across the battlefield in milliseconds.
In an instant, the howls of daemons outside and the roar of artillery intensified severalfold. Even the thunder of the war engines fell into an eerie rhythm, as if the entire formation were a perfectly tuned machine.
Now that Horus had gathered enough intelligence and found the opening he wanted, he committed all of his forces without the slightest hesitation.
The chance for victory had appeared.
Based on the defensive intelligence he had obtained so far, the Imperial troops stationed within the Iron Wall were no longer enough to stop the Chaos armies under his command.
This was true offense.
This was the art of war.
An onslaught enough to crush Rogal Dorn outright.
...
In the distant void around Terra, countless shells and beams nearly lit the dark heavens from the base of the gigantic star-ring all the way to the skies tens of thousands of ters above.
Nearly every part of the battlefield had descended into brutal fighting.
Now and then, platforms fell.
Tens of millions of tons of steel plunged into the endless abyss, while daemon corpses and tallic wreckage carpeted the sky.
Sector Eight.
Massive defensive platform.
The Chaos daemons were closing in, a black tide rolling forward in disciplined waves.
Any frontline commander who saw that scene could not help but feel fear and crushing pressure.
"Damn it, all the daemons are coming our way. How did they get around Sector Nine's defensive line?!"
The commander of the Storm Sixteenth Army drew in a breath, his voice trembling.
"Those damned daemon armies know this war zone better than we do. They know every weakness in this sector.
"They're like a scorpion's venomous tail, striking exactly where it hurts most, trying to poison us to death!"
He turned toward the adjutant handling communications beside him, his tone urgent.
"Tell Holy Terra Command that Sector Eight needs more reinforcents. Otherwise this sector will fall within half an hour!"
The adjutant's bionic eye flickered with lines of data, and he nodded.
"Commander, your ssage has already been sent. Our brothers in the Fifteenth Storm Army are also about to arrive."
"Hah. Those bastards got here pretty quickly. Guess they were tired of waiting, huh? Good. They ca at just the right ti."
The commander of the Storm Sixteenth Army felt noticeably better at that.
Chaos had suddenly bypassed the neighboring sectors to slam into this one. The situation was dangerous, and any extra force was welco.
Even as they spoke, dense waves of artillery hamred into the tide of daemons, blossom after blossom of fire erupting through the black mass.
It was saturation bombardnt, unbroken and relentless.
"For the Emperor!"
"We do not retreat! Stop those vile abominations!"
The Imperial soldiers roared as they stood along the line, pouring fire into the Chaos host.
Even under tension and fear, they held fast to one defensive line after another.
And although trenches, bunkers, and hardened emplacents gave them so protection, the sheer scale of the daemon assault still put them under imnse pressure.
Above them, the void had also filled with warships, attack craft, and abominable flying units, while wreckage rained down without pause.
Any human, especially an ordinary mortal soldier, would have felt their nerves seize up at the sight.
Fortunately, they were still holding.
They had not yet broken.
"Grandfather... are these humans insane?
"Are they actually about to charge out at us?!"
A greater plague daemon was knocked flat by heavy bombardnt. Then more giant shells ca screaming in one after another, forcing it to cover its head and curl up defensively, unable to move.
Its mountain-like body was blasted open and rotting, suffering devastating wounds, and terror rose inside it.
This plague creature had never faced firepower this horrifying before.
The other Chaos daemons striking at the line were in even worse shape. Many of them were smashed by multiple bombardnts before they ever got close enough to see what the human defenders even looked like.
They were blasted apart, slaughtered in agony, in a miserable reversal of the old Imperial Guard's fate.
The daemons could not even understand what the humans were yelling about.
They were the ones getting shot to pieces.
Did those humans think ammunition was free?
In so places, there would be only a single daemon left alive, and still the humans would fire another full volley at it.
"Blood God... this isn't fair..."
On one section of the line, a lone surviving daemon, half-dead and collapsing, stared at the massed artillery and lta fire pouring down from above.
It shut its eyes in pain, muttering hoarse and obscure curses.
It was cursing the Savior.
On top of that, each key strongpoint was garrisoned by large numbers of Titan god-machines, Imperial Knights, Iron n battle automata, and fully organized Space Marine forces.
Their firepower was even more savage, almost without pause.
Gunfire and shells were being poured out in sheets.
Every elite warrior was having the ti of his life.
It was like mowing the lawn.
The vast black flood of Chaos daemons had been stopped by the flood of human firepower.
They could not advance even a single step.
Human soldiers felt imnse ntal pressure when facing daemons.
But the daemons felt even greater pressure when facing the human lines.
So much pressure that fear had begun to creep into them.
If not for the horrifying coercion of the Chaos Gods, many of them probably would have turned and fled long ago instead of continuing to smash themselves against this nightmare of a defense line.
Even so, Horus, the Dark Emperor, had organized literal execution squads to force those Chaos daemons forward under the threat of sinister doom, driving them through the human artillery storm to burn away the Imperium's firepower.
Now those daemons could only tremble and charge into the bombardnt.
So of the ones that broke down completely even cursed the Dark Emperor as a butcher.
But in the end, all of them were cruelly destroyed by the execution squads' warp-fire.
It was a scene never seen before.
Chaos daemons were not hurling themselves eagerly at human defenses.
They were afraid.
They even needed execution squads behind them.
Still, Horus's strategy was correct.
He truly had placed the Imperial lines under imnse pressure.
As for how many daemons and how much warp power this would cost along the way, he did not care.
Those costs were being paid by the Chaos Gods anyway.
The only thing he needed to do was win.
In truth, the Chaos Gods had been watching the Iron Wall line the entire ti, and inwardly They were twitching.
Grandfather Nurgle was clutching His heart and collapsing onto His rotting plank-bed again, green light practically shining off His face. The daemons and warp power were being burned away far too fast.
If He had not seen that the daemons were at least inching closer and closer to the human line, producing visible stage-by-stage gains, He might have passed out from sheer heartbreak.
"This crude style of war, this mindless abuse of firepower, is only effective against diocrities.
"Logistics is indeed the Savior's greatest advantage. But it is also his deadliest weakness.
"In at most half an hour, we will shatter this line, cut off the entire supply network, and trigger a cascading collapse across the Imperium."
That was what Horus thought as he watched the battlefield.
At this mont, he was tracking tens of thousands of Chaos and Imperial front lines at once, along with countless units, guiding the war toward the end he desired.
The scales of war were tipping.
Victory was near.
(End of Chapter)
[Get 30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]
User Comments
0 comments from readers