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This elite force of the Black Legion ca prepared.
They had brought heavy weapons specifically for the two Primarchs, plasma cannons and graviton guns, plus a generous supply of stasis grenades and lta bombs.
The squad on the far left, a full hundred Chaos Astartes, charged straight at Calgar and his Honour Guard, trying to batter through the stasis field by sheer weight of numbers and kill Guilliman.
The squad on the right was 20 veterans in Terminator Armour, pushing hard toward Horus's position without a shred of hesitation.
The rest crouched behind the drop pod. They pulled human-skin scrolls and blood-sared daggers from their belts and began carving the Eight-Pointed Star into the adamantium floor with quick, practiced strokes. They were going to tear open a warp portal right here and flood the sanctuary with reinforcents.
"For the Four Gods! Kill that relic of a dead age!"
The Black Legion Terminator leading the charge howled the words, graviton gun already swinging up to track Horus's massive fra.
He pulled the trigger. A sphere of ultra-dense gravitational collapse scread toward Horus's position, the kind of weapon that could crumple ceramite armour into a sheet of scrap in an instant.
It missed.
Horus was simply faster than any Astartes could follow.
One push off his right foot and his enormous body shifted several ters sideways. The gravity field slamd into the pillar behind him. The column — thick enough that ten n couldn't wrap their arms around it — twisted and ca apart.
Then the Wolf Shepherd was inside the Terminator formation.
No tactics. No finesse. Just the raw, unreasonable physical mass of a Primarch.
Horus hit the first two traitors holding boarding shields and sent them flying. The heavy shields shattered on impact. The veterans behind them had their sternums crushed flat, spraying black blood as they were hurled backward.
His left hand shot out and closed around the graviton gunner's faceplate.
"Die."
His fingers clenched.
A piercing shriek of tal filled the air.
The Chaos veteran's head, power helt and all, brain matter included, burst in Horus's single-handed grip, spattering foul ichor across the floor.
"Open fire! Ignore friendly fire! Full saturation!"
The remaining Black Legion veterans went berserk. Plasma cannons lit up the chamber in scorching blue, weaving a solid net of fire that tore through the Ultramarines and cost them badly.
"What are you standing there for?! Protect Lupercal!"
Kaelen roared himself hoarse, lasgun up, firing from behind whatever broken cover he could find. He turned and waved urgently toward the Grey Knights.
Grey Knight Grand Master Voldus stared at him with an expression of profound suffering.
He looked at Horus, currently using Terminators as throwing weapons inside the enemy formation, then looked back at the mortal captain demanding he intervene.
Does this need protection?
He moved anyway. His Nesis force halberd swept a blazing arc of azure psychic light through the air.
"Paladin Strike Squad! Purge the heretics!"
Silver blurs cut into the lee, falling into rhythm with Horus.
The scene had beco completely surreal.
Calgar caved in a lunging Raptor veteran's skull with one punch and glanced back at the center of the battlefield.
Horus Lupercal, the greatest villain in Imperial history, was fighting alongside the Ultramarines.
A Black Legion veteran had just pulled the pin on a stasis grenade when Horus kicked his shin clean through, snatched the grenade out of his hand, and shoved it into the veteran standing next to him.
BOOM!
The stasis field detonated. The traitor froze in place. Horus caught the chainsword Cullen tossed over and bisected him at the waist without breaking stride.
The Arch-Traitor Warmaster was holding the line for them.
Calgar could barely process what his eyes were telling him. Though, given the slogans the traitors had been screaming, it was clear enough, Horus was on their kill list too.
"Chapter Master! Right flank is pinned!"
Captain Agemman's shout dragged Calgar back.
"Push forward! Drive them back to the drop pod!"
He shoved the rest of it out of his head.
Whatever Horus was here for, the scum who had dared to bring a war to Fortress Hera were going to die.
Black Templars High Marshal Amalrich swung his power sword and plowed into the left flank alongside the Emperor's Champion Garin.
"et your end! You dregs who forsook the God-Emperor!"
The Black Templars' fanaticism matched anything the Orks could field. Their bellowing and savage fighting style tore through the traitors with brutal efficiency.
The entire sanctuary had beco a at grinder.
Bolter rounds everywhere. Severed limbs on the floor.
The Living Saint Celestine joined the battle, soaring high before slamming down into the Black Legion veterans like a cot wreathed in fire, carving through their ranks and leaving ruin behind her.
The elite force was visibly shrinking. But the few who had stayed behind at the drop pod had finished their work.
Warp energy churned. Reality began to fray at the edges. A blinding burst of dark violet light tore open the air, and more Black Legion veterans poured through into the sanctuary, this ti carrying even heavier firepower, specifically for the Wolf Shepherd and every loyalist in the room.
The traitors' fire hamred the loyalists back.
In the chaos, Chief Librarian Tigurius led Archmagos Cawl and Emissary Yvraine to the edge of Guilliman's stasis field, the device in hand.
Calgar had just finished a Terminator veteran when the corner of his eye caught the movent near the throne.
His heart seized.
Cawl's chanical apparatus was opening like a great beast baring tal fangs, slowly consuming the stasis field around Guilliman.
And Yvraine, the xenos Emissary, had raised the Cronesword high, its blade flickering with cold, ghostly light.
"No!"
Calgar's voice tore out of him, raw and hoarse.
"I command you to stop! Brother Tigurius! In the Emperor's na — stop them!"
Silence.
He stared across the battlefield and found his own Chief Librarian looking back at him.
Tigurius slowly shook his head.
"Do it." His voice was sharp as a blade.
Calgar raised his bolter, muzzle swinging toward Yvraine, driven by pure desperation.
Too late.
The Cronesword beca a pale bolt of lightning and cleaved down.
The energy conduits feeding the stasis throne were severed in an instant. Sparks cascaded across the floor.
Surging energy detonated in a roar. The auto-sanctum slamd shut.
From inside it ca a sigh, a sound of such extre agony, as if a soul were being torn in two, that it burrowed into Calgar's marrow like a serpent and coiled there.
On the far side of the room, Horus went rigid. Sothing deep in his chest lurched, a blood-pulse palpitation like the onset of suffocation.
His brother, Roboute Guilliman, was dead.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
Calgar's eyes were red. The sound that ca out of him was not a shout. It was sothing worse.
Every son of Guilliman in the room lost their mind at once.
They abandoned cover. They abandoned tactics. They charged straight into the Black Legion's fire net with nothing but grief and fury driving them forward.
It cleared the pressure off Horus.
The Wolf Shepherd and Cullen drove into the traitors' center like two blades, shredding through every Black Legion veteran in their path. But more kept dropping from above. Fortress Hera had beco a front line. In the crush of it, Calgar was surrounded, a knot of Black Legion veterans closing in, hamring him from every side.
Kaelen crouched behind a broken wall and kept pulling the trigger until his last magazine ran dry.
He looked toward the throne.
The Archmagos's auto-sanctum had shifted from red to green.
His heart started pounding.
Like the toll of a bell, a single pure note rang out, clear and crystalline, cutting through every sound in the room.
The auto-sanctum retracted. White mist drifted and thinned.
What it revealed stopped the breath in every throat.
At that sa mont, Horus reached Calgar's position, tore through the veterans surrounding him, and closed one hand around the last one's skull.
Everyone looked toward the throne. Including Horus.
The revenant form that had sat rigid on that throne for ten thousand years was gone.
In its place stood the Master of Macragge, clad in magnificent new battle armour, his fra vast as a god's.
Golden flas roared to life and swallowed the blade whole.
The Avenging Son, Roboute Guilliman, opened his eyes.
He gripped the burning Emperor's Sword. His gaze cut through the thinning mist and swept down across a battlefield soaked in blood.
Then it stopped.
Locked onto the right flank.
There stood Horus, one hand holding a still-dripping Black Legion head at his side, his own gaze already tilted upward.
Their eyes t.
➤ Next: My Brother, Is That You?
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