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Deep in the underground bunker, the adamantium isolation door was screaming.
Sparks cascaded down the twisted axle in a waterfall of dying light.
Creed tore open his greatcoat collar and dragged in a breath of air thick with gunsmoke and blood. The supre commander of Cadia had nowhere left to go. He knew the Chaos Warmaster wasn't going to let him walk away.
Beside him stood maybe a dozen Astra Militarum veterans, all of them bleeding.
One charge pack left.
Every weapon in the room was trained on that door.
The tal gave with a sound like the world ending.
The half-ter-thick adamantium blast door was ripped apart — not cut, not blown, just torn to both sides by raw, irresistible force. The panels hit the concrete floor and threw up a wave of dust that reached a man's waist.
Black mist rolled in through the breach, carrying the sharp bite of sulfur.
Heavy boots crunched over the wreckage.
Abaddon the Despoiler walked through the dust and into the last sanctuary on Cadia.
At his side, Devram Korda swung a chainaxe still wet with shredded flesh. Behind him ca a dozen Black Legion Terminator veterans, ard to the teeth and moving like they owned the place.
The shadow of death filled the tunnel in an instant.
Creed raised his bolt pistol. No words. He pulled the trigger.
The bolt round hit Abaddon's Terminator chestplate and burst into a pitiful little spark.
The Chaos Warmaster didn't break stride.
The Despoiler raised his right arm. The Talon of Horus caught the dim light and threw back a cold, nauseating gleam — that terrible weapon that had drunk the blood of an angel and nearly killed the Master of Mankind.
"Cadia's resistance ends here."
His voice was gravel and thunder. Dust sifted down from the rock walls.
The guards beside Creed roared and charged, lasguns leveled with bayonets fixed, throwing themselves at the Chaos Warmaster.
It wasn't a fight. It was a culling.
Devram stepped into them. One sweep of the chainaxe carved a crimson arc through the air. Several Astra Militarum soldiers were cut in half at the waist before they could even scream. Entrails and blood painted the walls.
Creed clenched his jaw and waited for the end.
The ceiling exploded.
A beam of pure golden light drove straight down through the rock, cleaving through ters of geological strata like they were paper. Sacred hymns rang out, high and piercing, cutting through the bone. The light hit the floor and erupted into a solid wall of fla that slamd between the Black Legion's advance and the last survivors.
Saint Celestine descended from the light, wings spread wide.
She was tired. The surface fighting had cost her — too much strength, too much psychic power. But she landed with both hands on her blazing greatsword, its tip aid straight at the Despoiler.
Sacred fire rolled outward in waves of heat, burning away the writhing black-purple Warp mist in great swaths.
"Back! Traitor!"
She surged forward, sword cleaving the air, aid for Abaddon's throat.
Once, that strike would have driven back almost any Chaos Lord alive.
Ten thousand years and the blessings of the Four Gods had made Abaddon into sothing else entirely.
He laughed. A harsh, contemptuous sound.
He could see her exhaustion. At full strength, he might have given her room. But she wasn't at full strength. So instead of retreating, the Despoiler stepped in. His left hand swung Drach'nyen.
The pitch-black blade burned with soul-devouring black-violet fire. It t her greatsword head-on.
Two diatrically opposed energies collided in midair and the detonation was deafening.
The shockwave threw every Astra Militarum soldier in the tunnel off their feet. Even the Chaos Terminator veterans were forced back half a step.
Celestine lost the exchange.
The monstrous force coming through Drach'nyen drove her lithe fra downward, bending her toward the floor.
She never got the chance to recover. Devram had already circled around her flank. His chainaxe scread as it swung for her completely unguarded back.
She beat her wings and wrenched herself upward, pulling altitude in a space barely large enough to breathe, just barely clearing the blade.
Abaddon gave her no room.
The Chaos Warmaster lunged. His speed was obscene for a man in Terminator armor, a flat violation of physics. The Talon of Horus swept upward from below, its blades shredding through the psychic shield she'd always relied on and punching straight through the golden armor on her left side.
Blood sprayed.
Celestine grunted and went flying backward. She hit the ground hard, less than 3 ters in front of Creed. Most of her wings were broken. The blazing light around her guttered and dimd.
"The Corpse-Emperor's bride." Abaddon sneered, stepping over the wreckage and the sacred ash. "Aside from glowing, utterly useless."
He walked to her. Slow, deliberate steps.
He raised the Talon high.
One strike. That was all it would take. The Emperor's will, extended to this place, would be severed. Cadia would lose its last totem.
CLANG!
Without warning, a high-frequency energy shriek tore out of the dark passage on Abaddon's left.
Two Black Legion veterans who had been guarding the flank dropped. Their massive bodies hit the floor without their heads. The cuts were impossibly clean. The blood took a few seconds to catch up, then fountained from the stumps.
Cullen, veteran of the Dark Angels, stepped out of the darkness. His master-crafted power sword was wet with blood. The azure disruption field burned bright in the dimness.
Then a mortal voice followed him out, easy and faintly amused.
"Ezekyle Abaddon."
"First Captain of the Luna Wolves. Sons of Horus. mber of the Mournival. The gold standard for catastrophic stupidity at the Siege of Terra."
Kaelen walked out behind Cullen, lasgun in hand, looking like he'd wandered in from sowhere considerably less dangerous.
Abaddon's gaze snapped to them. The mortal. The Astartes with no Chapter markings.
The Black Legion Terminators swung their heavy bolters around instantly, barrels leveled at the two intruders.
Nobody fired.
Because sothing was coming from the deepest part of the passage. Footsteps. Power armor, but heavier than it should have been, each impact carrying a weight that had nothing to do with mass. The kind of weight that pressed against the inside of your chest.
Sothing enormous was walking behind the mortal and the Astartes.
Every step landed like a verdict.
Then the footsteps stopped.
A fra that bordered on the impossible stepped into the boundary where the light and shadow t.
Pearl-white Cataphractii Terminator armor. No Chaos star spikes. No blasphemous scripture etched into the surface. Clean, as if it had co straight off a Great Crusade production line 10,000 years ago.
He wore no helt.
That face. Sharp-featured, resolute, cast from sothing harder than steel. Exposed. Unguarded. Right there in front of all of them.
The tunnel went silent.
Not quiet. Silent. The kind of silence that falls when sothing impossible has just beco real.
The Black Legion Terminators froze. Devram froze.
These were veterans of 10,000 years. Old war dogs who had marched under the Luna Wolves banner across the stars, who had stood on the walls of Terra as Sons of Horus. They had seen things that would shatter ordinary minds.
Their breathing went ragged. The heavy bolters in their hands drifted downward, uncontrolled, as if the weapons themselves had forgotten their purpose.
That face.
10,000 years hadn't touched it. The Warp had twisted them all, warped them, remade them into sothing barely recognizable. But that face was still carved into the deepest part of their souls, unchanged, undeniable.
Their maker.
The gene-father who had given them glory. Who had led them to ruin.
The black-purple Warp mist churning through the tunnel began to dissolve the instant that white figure ca to a stop. It pulled back from him like smoke from a fla, retreating in every direction at once.
The sulfur stench went with it.
What replaced it was sothing harder to na. A pressure. A weight of authority so absolute it made your knees want to bend.
Horus Lupercal held a bolter loosely in one hand. His gaze moved past everyone in the room and settled on Abaddon.
No anger. No reproach.
Just a look that had crossed 10,000 years to land here.
The Talon of Horus stopped moving. Abaddon's arm, raised to deliver the killing blow, simply halted in midair.
The Chaos Warmaster's massive fra went rigid.
He stared at that face.
The face he had once been willing to give everything to follow. The face he had later co to hate down to the marrow of his bones. The face he had sworn to erase from existence, every trace, every mory.
No Warp corruption. No taint. Pure, to the point of being blinding.
The daemon sword Drach'nyen trembled in his right hand. The black-violet flas coiling around the blade flickered and writhed, churning with the violence of what was happening inside its master.
Abaddon's chest heaved once.
His throat worked. Long seconds passed.
Then he swallowed it all down. The madness. The killing intent. Everything.
"Father." His voice ca out rough, stripped of everything but the raw fact of the question. "You're still alive?"
The few remaining Astra Militarum soldiers on the Imperial side stared. Creed stared.
Every one of them had just heard the Warmaster of Chaos call that figure Father.
➤ Next: Father, You'd Be Better Off Dead!
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