Out in the void, Horus's hateful shadow continued to swell, looming over the war zone below.
His presence was overwhelming, like an abominable king none could resist.
As the balance of war tilted, the power of his authority steadily grew, bringing him ever closer to another dinsion.
"I am the fire of vengeance, the galaxy's true grim darkness. All who stand in the way of this revenge will be buried..."
Horus's will spread in an unnatural form, stirring even fiercer tides.
He made no attempt to hide his ambition or his strength, and he truly had the right to speak that way.
As the Dark Emperor, he too had stepped onto one of the ascending paths to godhood in the warp, a path known to all.
It was one of the purest forms of Chaos, a terror so absolute that most could scarcely keep their sanity before it. It would advance without rcy and drive all mortal things toward their destined end.
Whether creatures of the warp or lives in the material galaxy, all would be reduced to dust beneath its will.
Corrosion. Destruction.
The Emperor, that false Emperor, was the forerunner on that path, a tyrant-god who had devoured countless lives across the galaxy in the na of "unity."
The false Emperor was hypocrisy incarnate. He had clearly reached the end of the ascending path and grasped abhorrent authority, yet still claid to be human and refused to beco a god.
And yet at the sa ti, he occupied that position and refused to step down from the stairway, to the point of falling utterly out of control.
Now Horus intended to seize the Golden Throne and claim that supre power for himself, to carve it up and take it.
The false Emperor's power ca from the Imperium of Man and from the Golden Throne, which embodied His dominion over humanity and His absolute supremacy.
If Horus, in the na of the Dark Emperor, could conquer and destroy Terra, then use the artifact Shadow of Light on New Longlin to seal and seize the Golden Throne...
He could reduce the false Emperor's power to a level of weakness never seen before.
After that, the faith power stored within the false Emperor's sacred sun would be stripped away and divided between Horus and the Chaos Gods, leaving Him forever unable to threaten Chaos again.
And the false Emperor himself would beco nothing more than a prisoner of the warp.
Judging by the current war, that day was not far off.
It was already within reach.
The mont the Chaos coalition conquered this war zone, every arrangent the Dark Emperor had made would erupt at once and trigger the collapse of the Imperial defenders.
"You hesitated, didn't you?
"You're regretting it. You're afraid. You fear that you can no longer control that power. You're old now. You are no longer that tyrant who could rule over everything."
Horus turned his gaze toward a certain direction, and it burned like fire.
Though all he could see was the cold Iron Wall stretching endlessly into the distance, he knew Terra and the false Emperor lay that way.
He sensed a certain being's weakness and helplessness, and his voice grew colder and more mocking.
"Father, I have seen your cowardice and your impotence. You cannot refuse our coming.
"When the ti arrives, no matter how much you regret, no matter how much you suffer, no matter how much you beg, you will not be able to stop our revenge.
"Ah, what a pitiful thing. The once-mighty tyrant has fallen to this state, forced to watch helplessly as all his authority and power are stripped away.
"All those high-sounding excuses and false worship will never protect you again."
Horus had nothing but contempt for the Emperor. Not even the horror of the Dark King's shadow had shaken that contempt.
That false Emperor had been reduced to dry bones, yet humanity still burned incense to Him, lit candles before Him, and worshiped Him as sothing great, to the point that even Chaos feared Him.
How ridiculous.
Humans did not dare blasphe the false Emperor. Even the fallen primarchs trembled before that skeleton.
"But that does not include . Not everyone fears a beast that has lost its claws and fangs. At most, he is just an old thing clutching a doomsday weapon and threatening everyone with it.
"False Emperor, I do not fear your pathetic majesty!"
A savage gleam passed through Horus's eyes, thick with hate and grim malice.
Then he spoke words so terrible that even the Chaos Gods would be shaken by them.
"Soon, I will bring all those you abandoned to the Palace. I will drag your loathso bones down from the Throne, tear them apart, grind them into powder, and cast them into the fire to burn!"
Horus knew that aside from himself, no one else would dare do such a thing.
It would be the most despair-inducing and shocking blasphemy humanity had ever seen, across both the warp and the material galaxy.
Horus's will for revenge churned the warp into a frenzy, stirring even greater changes in the Solar System, a region deeply linked to the Immaterium.
Under the influence of unnatural power, his gaze seed to transcend ti and space and reach the Golden Throne itself.
And then, this son of the Emperor, this Dark Emperor, saw the Golden Throne.
He saw the skeleton upon it.
"False... false Emperor?!"
Horus's pupils contracted violently, only to fill with even deeper hatred the next mont.
It was the first ti in ten thousand years that he had seen the Emperor, that father of his, that greatest enemy of his life.
The once-fearso tyrant, unstoppable in all things, had beco a dried and withered thing.
That shriveled skeleton sat with its head tilted to one side. Against the vast grandeur of the Throne, it looked strangely small.
Even a little absurd.
And yet the pressure radiating from the Emperor's bones still made Horus wary. But the thought of trampling all of it only made him more excited.
He wanted to slay that father of his in body and in spirit.
He wanted to tear apart, trample, and desecrate those dry bones worshiped and feared by all, right before everyone's eyes.
The image of that ultimate blasphemy would spread through the warp and the material galaxy alike, so that all would see it.
Even the Chaos Gods had never accomplished such a feat.
It would completely cent his supre authority as the Dark Emperor.
And all those loyalist primarchs and all of humanity would be left helpless and despairing.
"The false Emperor's bones don't seem complete. Am I imagining things?"
As Horus stared at the skeleton of the one who had once ruled the cosmos and forced him into submission, he sensed sothing was wrong.
But before he could react, a figure in golden armor appeared beneath the steps of the Golden Throne, moving in an oddly sneaky way.
"The Savior? Wasn't he lured out of the Solar System and trapped by the Chaos Gods? How could he be inside the Imperial Palace on Terra?
"Could there be so sche behind this? Is that Emperor of the Imperium preparing so insidious strike?"
The instant Horus saw the Savior, he beca wary, and a flood of possibilities rose in his mind.
A being who should not have been there had appeared in the most vital, most central location of all.
That alone ant so kind of failure in intelligence, sothing that could affect the entire arrangent of the war.
More importantly, after this long siege of Terra, Horus had co to understand the Savior more deeply.
That man might not compare to him, but he was still stronger than the likes of Rogal Dorn and Guilliman, enough of a nuisance that dealing with him would take real effort.
But very quickly, Horus stopped worrying.
He realized what he was seeing was not the Palace and Golden Throne of the present, but a phantom of the past.
Once the Solar System beca deeply linked with the warp, many physical and temporal laws had fallen into the sa kind of disorder as the Immaterium, giving rise to all manner of unnatural phenona.
It was entirely possible that the warp had captured a phantom of the past and projected it anew, like a mirage from a higher dinsion.
While continuing to command the war, Horus directed more of his attention toward that phantom of the Palace's past, wanting to know what arrangents the Savior had previously left behind within the Palace.
He knew full well that, given the Savior's caution, the man must have hidden so sort of trap or backup plan there.
In the phantom image, the Savior glanced furtively behind him, as if checking whether anyone was watching.
Then, with absolutely no reverence whatsoever, he climbed the steps of the Throne and walked toward the Golden Throne, all the way until he stood directly before the Emperor's skeleton.
"What is he trying to do?"
Horus grew cautious. The Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium, was acting in a way that was impossible to read.
Bzzzt.
Right before Horus's baffled gaze, the Savior suddenly pulled out a small alloy chainsaw and viciously started sawing into the Emperor's skeleton.
At once, sparks flew everywhere.
???
"No... that's impossible..."
Horus stared at the sight, his scalp tingling, stunned speechless for a mont.
The Savior followed up with a hamr and began dismantling the sacred bones of the Emperor with loud, repeated blows, removing quite a few pieces.
Bang.
Flas rose.
"Whew. The old Emperor's bones are pretty hard. Might not burn too well. Wonder if this'll work?"
Muttering as he worked, the man tossed pieces of the Emperor's skeleton into a blackstone crucible he had brought with him.
Then he pulled out a special lta torch and started blasting away until the bones inside had turned to ash, only then looking satisfied.
Not only that, after he finished, he brushed away the remaining residue and ash from the floor.
He even shifted the Emperor's skeleton slightly to one side, sat down right next to Him, and rested on the Golden Throne.
Ground the bones and scatter the ashes?
Damn it!
Watching the Savior's utterly blasphemous conduct in the phantom, Horus trembled all over, his face even going a little red.
The revenge and desecration he had nurtured for ten thousand years had been done ahead of him by the Savior.
No wonder the false Emperor's skeleton was incomplete. The man was clearly a repeat offender.
This act of beating him to it left Horus feeling bitterly stifled, as if he had only just declared rebellion while the other man had already desecrated the old king and planted himself on the Throne.
It turned his grand declaration from monts ago into a joke.
So things an nothing unless you are the first to do them.
Even if he, the Dark Emperor, truly desecrated the false Emperor's bones in the future, he would only be copying what the Savior had already done first.
Worse, it might even be seen as a clumsy imitation.
He could practically see the Savior's mocking expression.
"Damn it. Damn it all!"
Horus ground his teeth.
He had never expected that the most blasphemous figure hidden within the Imperium would be the Savior himself.
What a wolf-hearted ambition.
By desecrating the Emperor first, the Savior had robbed Chaos of the very act of desecration.
Horus himself felt a little broken by it. Even his montum weakened.
He could feel just how troubleso the Savior truly was, like a ghost that would not go away, even when the man was not physically on Terra.
"What blasphemy!"
The Dark Emperor grew still angrier, clenching his fists as terrifying warp power nearly spilled out of his control.
He was truly enraged to the point of losing composure.
For a mont, he even wanted to expose and denounce the Savior's desecration of the Emperor, to let humanity see what kind of ugly face their Emperor of the Imperium truly wore.
If that blasphemy were made public, it would surely shake the faith of the Imperial defenders, lower morale, and cause further internal conflict.
It might even provoke the loyalist primarchs into turning on the Savior.
And that, in turn, would allow the Chaos coalition to win the siege of Terra even faster.
But after hesitating for a mont, Horus still chose not to do it.
Instead, he erased that phantom of the Palace entirely, ensuring no other being would ever see it.
Revealing the Savior's blasphemy might lower the Imperial defenders' combat effectiveness, but it could also increase the Savior's prestige within the domain of Chaos.
That was ultimately too uncertain a factor.
The correct choice was to remove it from the battlefield altogether.
"When the ti cos, I will not only trample the false Emperor's dry bones. I will make the Savior crawl at my feet as well!"
Horus drew in a deep breath and fixed that resolve in his heart.
He had collected plenty of recordings of the Savior's previous battles and knew well enough that the man was not his equal.
Whether borrowing the Ork network or the Emperor's power, the Savior's strength was too mixed and too unfocused, his combat technique far too crude.
Especially in realspace, the man could not possibly resist the power Horus now possessed.
Still, the Savior had indeed weakened Horus's montum sowhat. Even the growth of his authority slowed.
That was the effect of the warp's will-shaped power.
But Horus was not overly concerned.
As long as the war kept going smoothly, that influence would soon vanish.
Yet just as Horus was thinking over all this, new changes appeared on the battlefield in Sector Eight.
The Chaos tide was still surging, but Imperial firepower kept rising, and one unit after another arrived to reinforce the line.
"Brothers, let these daemon bastards see what we can do!"
Drenin and his n arrived in a tense mood, only to discover that the Imperial defenders had more firepower than the daemons had numbers.
That drove his armored squad to unleash even more combat strength, an endless stream of fire pouring into the lines of the Chaos abominations.
Drenin and his squad were equipped with the finest single-soldier combat armor, and over the heart of each suit was mounted a breastplate forged from auramite.
That was a special piece of armor only Honor Warriors of second rank or above could receive. The more honors and battlefield rits they accumulated afterward, the more auramite they could earn.
Every veteran dread that one day he might fully replace all parts of his battle armor with auramite components.
That would be the highest honor imaginable.
And it would also an stronger defense and stronger firepower.
"So Rogal Dorn has improved at least a little over these ten thousand years. He was able to sense the danger and move reinforcents in ahead of ti..."
That was Horus's thought as he watched the Imperial forces arriving to reinforce the sector.
Judging by how quickly the Imperial reinforcents had arrived, Rogal Dorn must have noticed the possible routes of the daemon advance and sent troops in advance to guard against it.
Otherwise they could never have reached the area so quickly.
"That man barely counts as a competent commander now. At last this war is becoming a little interesting."
Leaning back on his throne, Horus focused every shred of his will and continued issuing hundreds of thousands of command orders, manipulating the Chaos armies on this battlefield.
Under his control, the Chaos daemons sohow managed to withstand firepower several tis their own number. Not only did they avoid collapse, they even pushed forward little by little, enough to leave any commander astonished.
This was the art of war.
Even if the Emperor Himself still walked, He could not have done this.
"Heh. The Imperium's reinforcents are still increasing?"
It did not take long before Horus once again felt the suppressive weight of Imperial firepower.
Without question, the Imperium's side was frightened as well.
Perhaps Rogal Dorn had realized the Imperium's fatal weakness and was throwing every last force he could into motion in an attempt to save the situation.
That was troubleso, yes.
But Chaos was increasing the stakes too.
The daemons poured into this war zone in wave after wave, as though entering a bottomless abyss with no end in sight.
Then it would co down to who could outlast the other.
Because of the sheer intensity of his command, Horus's eyes had filled with bloodshot veins, and his entire being entered a state of total concentration.
No holding back.
The other fallen primarchs also poured all of their strength into the battle.
They knew the mont that would decide the course of the war was drawing near.
Whether Dark Emperor, fallen primarch, or Chaos creature, all of them were going all out without reservation.
This was the final assault.
Advance.
Advance again.
...
Holy Terra Command.
The command hall was busy with people moving to and fro, but everything remained orderly, almost quiet.
Still, everyone could sense that thread of anxiety spreading through the air.
Then ca the sound of a sigh.
Rogal Dorn set down his cup of extra-strength recaf and let out a long breath.
Frowning, he rose from his seat and began pacing up and down the command area, looking faintly restless.
After that, the Lord of Iron Bulwarks walked over to the tactical sand table, leaned in to examine the dense spread of red lights marking the battlefield, and let out another long sigh.
He looked like he wanted to say sothing, then held it back.
After hesitating for a while, Rogal Dorn asked once more,
"Any new intelligence? Has Horus begun the general offensive yet?"
"My lord, I'm afraid not.
"At present, only Sector Eight is under sowhat heavier pressure. Fortunately, the reinforcents are arriving according to the prior plan. There is no risk of it falling for the mont."
The intelligence officer at command shook his head and went right back to analyzing the incoming data.
He did not dare relax for even a second.
Lord Dorn had already asked that exact sa question three tis in the last hour.
And he was not the only one.
The entire command center was worried about the sa thing, afraid that that powerful Dark Emperor, Horus Lupercal, was brewing so terrifying sche.
Based on earlier projections, they had ntally prepared for half the defensive line to fall.
But Chaos's calm, deliberate pace only made them more uneasy.
The enemy commander was putting enormous pressure on Holy Terra Command.
Rogal Dorn nodded at that answer, then returned to his station with furrowed brows and resud drinking recaf while waiting for more news.
This was the first large-scale war he had ever fought that felt this easy.
From the mont the battle began until now, all he had done was sit there drinking coffee.
There was barely anything for him to command.
When the spaceborne Iron Wall had been built, all the corresponding defense plans had already been laid down, and now everything was still operating steadily according to those plans.
Orderly.
Stable.
Unless one of the relevant defensive lines was completely destroyed, there was almost no room at all for him to intervene with command, or even for the entire command staff to do much.
"Sigh. My big brother's troop reserves are a little too generous. There's basically no room for to show what I can do..."
Rogal Dorn swallowed a mouthful of sowhat bitter recaf and muttered to himself.
Still, that was a good thing.
At least there was no danger of the line being overrun.
The only real concern was Horus.
The man still had not launched his general offensive, and no one knew what exactly he was waiting for.
(End of Chapter)
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