The Daemon Weapon shrieked in triumph as The Leader's flesh began to disintegrate.
Chunks of tissue and shattered armor slithered up the blade of the Daemon Weapon, clinging to The Adjutant's body and forming a grotesque layer of Flesh Armor over his Indomitus Terminator Armor.
"Power! The power is surging!"
The Adjutant roared with exhilaration. He grabbed a Chaos-corrupted mber of the Inquisition Guard and ruthlessly plunged his blade into the man.
Squelch.
As he carved open the mortal's body, a shower of blood rained down his cheeks. The grueso at clinging to him swelled and multiplied, secreting dark carapaces to fill the vulnerable gaps where his ceramite plating fell short.
"Haaah..."
Taking a deep breath, The Adjutant savored the overwhelming strength coursing through his veins.
"Finally, I no longer need to hold back."
Before him, the mbers of the warband, inspired by his twisted example, began to turn their predatory gazes upon their own comrades.
They, too, had long reached their breaking point. They had watched those who embraced daemons grow terrifyingly strong, while they themselves were forced into desperate retreats ti and ti again.
What they craved was power! The power to crush their past nightmares beneath their boots!
They refused to run anymore.
So what if they had to turn to Chaos to get it?
"We can wait no longer. We must share in these Sacrifices."
The Adjutant bellowed, as nine grotesque maws suddenly manifested on his form, spewing decadent, corrupting whispers.
A dark frenzy swiftly rippled through every mber of the Terminator Company, resonating deeply within their souls.
Trampling over the corpses of the Inquisition Guard, they launched an assault on the Grand Inquisitor at the heart of the ritual.
A bloody internal slaughter erupted once more. Deep within The Empyrean, the Changer of Ways let out a sly, mocking cackle at the unfolding madness.
The imperial forces, whose morale should have crumbled, had instead twisted into a unified front under a single goal. anwhile, their enemies, facing the exact sa threat, were tearing each other apart out of selfish greed.
Such a dramatic clash of fates was simply too amusing.
"Are all these Chaos worshippers absolute idiots?"
Rases, who was currently lighting up a Daemon Lantern to use as a scrying ward, stared in blatant bewildernt.
How could these Chaos cultists fail to reach even a basic consensus in the middle of a war? The enemy was right in their faces, yet they were busy butchering each other?
"What is it?"
Romulus, who was monitoring the battlefield from afar, asked.
Arthur signaled the charging vanguard to slow their pace. A wave of searing air imdiately washed over them from behind, baking the paint on their armor until it faded.
"They are infighting. Heaven knows what they are thinking, but this is our chance," Rases replied.
Without hesitation, Rases tore open a Warp rift resembling a Vortex Weapon, utterly erasing the wall ahead along with the abominations lurking within it. He then enveloped his nearby comrades in a protective psychic field.
An inexplicable light flickered in his eyes. He seed to notice sothing, and his expression gradually grew grave.
Every second they delayed only fed the growing power of Chaos.
"Jump straight in," he commanded.
The black-clad avengers leapt into the yawning crater in unison. Harnessing a Warp Weak Point in the vicinity, Rases initiated a mass teleportation, hurling the entire squad tens of kiloters away, directly into the Calculation Array.
Bereft of a solid defensive formation, the teleporting attackers surprisingly managed to seize the initiative the mont their boots struck solid ground.
It was only when a Radiation Weapon dissolved one of their brethren into a puddle of rotting sludge that the Word Bearers—still preoccupied with slaughtering each other and fighting over the Sacrifices—finally snapped back to reality.
"Co, Dreadwings!"
The Adjutant stood up fearlessly, heavy ordnance spontaneously sprouting from his mutated flesh, and roared, "I am vastly different from the man I once was!"
Before his words could even settle, a head-on Psychic Blast violently ruptured the dark divine energies shielding him, launching his dreadnought-sized fra into the air.
A knight charged into point-blank range, driving a Blade squarely into what used to be his skull. With a brutal twist, the weapon cleaved along the fragile cranial sutures, tearing open a massive, jagged gash.
Rases quickly teleported aside to clear a firing lane for the Extermination Force. Seizing the opening created when Arthur ripped through the monster's flesh, the psyker slamd another repulsive Psychic Blast directly into the gaping wound.
Gore exploded outward, leaving nothing behind but a hollowed, mutated skeletal structure with its jaws locked in a silent scream.
The two warriors then pressed forward side-by-side, backed by a relentless barrage of radioactive beams and Phosphor Streams tearing past them.
Ahead of them, the Word Bearers Terminators instinctively scrambled out of the way, inadvertently exposing their gun-toting comrades in the rear to the searing baptism of fire.
How could such fractured enemies possibly stand against them?
Fury. Only the fury of pure vengeance would annihilate them!
Welco to the Inferno.
An iron boot rcilessly crushed a Word Bearer's brittle bones.
Traitor.
"Breach the interior!"
Having swiftly eradicated the remaining Word Bearers, the avengers stord the inner sanctum of the Calculation Array.
Thanks to the Word Bearers' prior massacre, the old Inquisitor's personal guards offered virtually no resistance.
"Welco, warriors of the Imperium."
The old Inquisitor stood safely concealed behind a shimring psychic barrier, flanked by the crumpled forms of several fallen Word Bearers Terminators.
He appeared completely unruffled, radiating a sickening sense of control.
With a sharp gesture, Rases ordered a newly summoned Blade-Flyer to fire a volley.
The torrential blast of energy was instantly absorbed by the barrier, then violently refracted, punching clean through the Blade-Flyer and destroying it.
"Arthur."
Rases commanded in a low shout, and the black knight surged forward without a hint of hesitation.
Hum—
Throwing his entire imnse weight behind the Blade, Arthur drove the weapon squarely into the shimring barrier.
Crack—
The shield's automatic repulsor flared to life, yet the violent kinetic backlash rely phased right through the knight, as if the two entities existed on completely different planes of reality.
Arthur relentlessly pushed forward against the crushing pressure.
"Diocletian! In the na of the Source Tracing Conclave, I hereby strip you of everything granted to you as a Hand of the Emperor!"
The very instant Aglaia laid eyes on The Seeker, she decisively pulled out a tallic insignia, triggering it through a thod unique only to her Conclave.
Contained within it was a sliver of The Seeker's own soul. Splitting off a fragnt of one's soul into an insignia upon joining was a mandatory initiation rite that every mber of the Source Tracing Conclave had to endure.
Spurt!
Massive quantities of blood erupted from The Seeker's physical form, his body visibly beginning to break down.
Capitalizing on the faltering shield, the black knight rapidly closed the distance, continuing his slow, unstoppable advance.
"Dammit! You actually found my true insignia?"
The Seeker cursed under his breath. He then noticed the knight steadily bearing down on him—a lifeless puppet devoid of all emotion, a relentless killing machine programd with the singular goal of severing his head.
The formidable barrier, forged from the agonizing suffering of nearly a trillion souls, might as well have been thin air. The black knight simply shrugged it off as he marched through.
Panic finally seized the old man.
"Do you have any idea what you've done?! You've dood the future of the Imperium! I've foreseen Armageddon plunged into the fires of war twice over! The Beast shall return!"
"I have seen Orpheus swallowed whole, and the ancient undead awakening from their slumber!"
"I have seen Cadia destroyed! I have seen the Rift tear the Galaxy asunder, leaving the Imperium with barely half its territory!"
He scread at the top of his lungs.
"I spent countless lifetis searching to find this sanctuary! I know the way to rewrite these tragedies! I was prepared to sacrifice myself and leave all the glory to you, my proudest disciple!"
"How could you do this?!"
Aglaia remained entirely unmoved. She wouldn't believe a single word of this old bastard's bullshit!
Having witnessed far too many of Chaos's vile, deceptive parlor tricks recently, she had absolutely zero intention of ever involving herself with the ruinous powers for the rest of her life.
Realizing his pleas were falling on deaf ears, The Seeker frantically turned to the surrounding Adeptus Astartes.
"Adeptus Astartes! If you do not wish to beco traitors to the Imperium a second ti, let finish this calculation! Let use the fuel rendered from the Imperium's citizens to buy humanity a bright future!"
The knight drew even closer, the cold edge of the Blade now kissing the skin of his neck.
"No! You can't kill ! The ritual will be ruined! The minions of the Chaos Gods will take this world!"
The Seeker tried to scramble backward, but the very barrier he had built from countless souls now served as his inescapable cage.
"Kill him!"
The black Blade swept out in a vicious arc.
"I—"
His head hit the floor with a dull thud.
HOWL!!!
At almost the exact sa mont, the four Supre Deities of The Empyrean unleashed a deafening roar, hungrily extending their claws toward this fragile planet.
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