~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter! Your votes keep this climbing. Thanks!
The battlefield at the crater's bottom had gone completely to hell.
Kaelen crouched behind a massive boulder. He looked up. Hundreds of ters overhead, in the airless void, three masses of energy were tearing into each other with savage, relentless fury.
The psychic shriek cut straight through his helt's noise-canceling system and buzzed inside his skull like a drill.
Crimson wings blotted out the sky.
Magnus's true daemonic form had fully unfurled. Every beat of those vast wings whipped up materialized Warp storms that hamred the ground below.
Blue-violet lightning raked across Luna's rock strata in wild, jagged arcs, blasting out crater after crater.
"This is absolutely insane." Kaelen poked half his head out for a look, then yanked it back imdiately.
Rubble hamred the cover in a relentless clatter.
Kullen stood guard directly in front of him, Power Sword gripped in both hands, not moving an inch. The old knight's breathing was perfectly steady, his full attention locked on the Pink Horrors that might lunge from any direction.
Overhead, Horus and Guilliman were showing their forr brother absolutely no quarter.
The two loyal Primarchs, one on each flank, had launched a kill-box at maximum intensity.
Magnus swung his massive Staff of Writhing Uncertainty. A thick beam of psychic energy smashed straight toward the Lord of Ultramar on the left. Guilliman didn't dodge. The Sword of the Emperor blazed in his hands as he swept it upward from below with savage force. Golden sacred fire and violet psychic power collided head-on and erupted in blinding, searing light.
On the right, Horus seized the opening while Magnus was casting. His massive Terminator fra bulldozed through the outer psychic storm and cut into the inner circle. The Power Axe, psychically enchanted by the Lupercal himself, howled with a high-frequency power field shriek as it drove straight for Magnus's flank!
The One-Eyed Red Daemon let out a bizarre cackle. His free left hand clenched in a phantom grip.
The laws of reality warped in an instant.
Horus's charge froze dead in midair.
An utterly alien Warp-spell bored directly into the Lupercal's mind. A blood-soaked vision, a special delivery from the Crimson King.
Agonized howls detonated inside Horus's skull!
The virus bombs of Isstvan III were devouring his loyal sons. Torgardon's mutilated corpse lay at his feet.
On Isstvan V, Ferrus, his toughest brother, the one with a will of iron, was beheaded by Fulgrim.
On the Vengeful Spirit, Leman Russ, the Wolf King, his face a knot of fury and grief, drove the Spear of Russ at him.
And once more, the beloved Angel Sanguinius lay fallen in a pool of blood. The Emperor of Mankind crumpled on the steps of the Wolf God's throne like hunted prey...
And his most beloved son Loken, kneeling beside his own corpse, drenched in blood, weeping without a sound.
"Look at you, Lupercal! You are the biggest joke of all!"
Magnus's venomous curse followed right on its heels.
The sa old trick. Also the most effective one.
This kind of sorcery, striking directly at the deepest sins of the soul, would have sent the Horus who had just awakened spiraling into profound self-doubt and exposed a fatal vulnerability on the battlefield.
The Lupercal of now was different.
Abaddon had already used this move on him. He would not fall for the sa trick twice.
He was a commander of unyielding courage.
"Stop shoving that past garbage in my face!"
A roar that shattered the surrounding air tore from Horus's throat.
That tornted face held nothing now but pure killing intent.
"I've already walked through hell, Magnus! Your trick is obsolete!"
The axe haft creaked under his grip. Horus tore himself free of the psychic restraints by sheer force. His body dropped hard on the montum, both hands swinging the axe in a full arc, eting Magnus's slashing crimson claws head-on and chopping down with brutal finality!
CRACK!
The power-field blade cleaved through the Daemon Primarch's Warp-shield and bit into Magnus's right pauldron without resistance. The Power Axe rampaged through the corrupted flesh. Bright-red Primarch blood sprayed out on impact.
Magnus let out a howl of agony.
His colossal form staggered for a split second.
That was the fatal opening.
Guilliman, who had been grinding down the frontal pressure the entire ti, seized the chance.
The Lord of Ultramar launched off both legs and shot upward. The Sword of the Emperor traced a precisely lethal arc and punched straight through the last layer of psychic shielding on Magnus's chest.
SQUELCH!
The broadsword, wreathed in golden flas, impaled the Daemon Primarch through the torso. Guilliman threw his full body weight onto the hilt and drove Magnus's enormous fra straight down into the surface below.
A thunderous BOOM. The lunar rock strata caved into a massive depression.
Magnus was pinned. The golden sacred fire consud his daemonic body in ravenous waves, releasing a choking stench of charred flesh. The One-Eyed Red Daemon flailed desperately with his remaining left arm, trying to claw at Guilliman's throat.
Horus dropped from the sky. The Lupercal stomped down on that flailing wrist without a shred of rcy. His power boot crushed the wrist bones to splinters.
The battle-axe rose high, aid at that horned skull.
Victory.
Kaelen, still crouched behind cover, let out a long breath. Battles between Primarchs truly allowed not a single mont of distraction. Horus and Guilliman's coordination had been flawless — they'd dismantled this sorcerer in one clean, continuous sequence.
"Sothing's wrong." Kullen's low bark ca without warning. His Power Sword snapped up across his chest.
Kaelen looked back toward the center of the battlefield imdiately.
In the instant before Horus's axe split Magnus's skull, the pinned Daemon Primarch stopped struggling. Across that pain-twisted face, a deeply unnatural smile split open.
"Your brains still don't work very well."
The mont the words landed, Magnus's body on the ground disintegrated.
No explosion. No spray of blood and flesh.
That colossal daemonic form simply collapsed into a pool of foul-slling sludge, which a burst of ghostly blue fla then incinerated completely. The Sword of the Emperor was buried in nothing but a patch of charred black soil.
An illusion. A substitution trick.
Guilliman's expression went cold and sharp.
"Where is he?!" Horus whipped around, his gaze sweeping the battlefield in rapid, desperate arcs.
Then his eyes found Kaelen's position, and the horror on his face was plain.
Behind the cover, the light died.
An impossibly dense shadow of death materialized out of nothing directly above Kaelen's head.
The temperature plunged to absolute zero. Even the dust drifting in the vacuum was ground into finer powder by the sudden, crushing weight of that presence.
Kaelen looked up.
Magnus's true daemonic form had teleported directly to the rear of the expeditionary force's formation, ignoring every physical distance and defensive line between them.
That massive single eye looked down at him from on high. The depths of its gaze held nothing but cruelty.
This was Magnus's true target.
From the very beginning, the Crimson King had never intended to fight his two Primarch brothers to the death.
Kill the variable, the one who had triggered this entire cascade of butterfly effects — and every problem resolved itself.
"Got you, variable!" Magnus's sneer split into a savage grin. His colossal daemonic claw, wreathed in berserk Warp energy, slamd straight down toward Kaelen.
"Traitor! Let him go!"
A roar that shredded his vocal cords tore from Kullen. The old knight didn't think. His black power armor hurled itself headlong into that descending giant claw. His Power Sword flared with maximum-output power field light and slashed viciously at the daemon's palm.
But the resistance was nothing. This was a Primarch, and a Daemon Prince blessed by a god besides.
Magnus didn't even glance at Kullen. He simply crooked one finger and flicked it.
BANG!
The old knight, along with his master-crafted Power Sword, was sent flying by that contemptuous force. The black ceramite shattered in midair. Kullen crashed into a distant pile of tal wreckage and went instantly silent.
"Kullen!" Kaelen shouted.
The Imperial loyalists around him surged forward, trying to stop the Crimson King. Every single one was blasted away by Magnus's arcane energy without exception, including the Living Saint Celestine.
The Lupercal's eyes were wild with fury.
Guilliman wrenched the Sword of the Emperor free and sprinted back like a madman.
The distance was too great. There was simply no ti.
"KAELEN!" Horus let out a grief-torn howl that split the silence of Luna. His voice was thick with panic and despair he couldn't hide.
The giant claw closed over Kaelen's body completely.
No miracle. No help. Magnus seized him with contemptuous ease and clenched his hand shut.
SQUELCH!
A muffled, visceral crushing sound.
Kaelen's body offered no resistance against that absolute power.
His skull burst open. Bright red blood mixed with white cerebrospinal fluid splattered in every direction. The crack of shattering bone rang out with terrible clarity across the silent lunar surface.
Magnus opened his hand. A lump of mangled flesh dropped from between his fingers to the ground.
The Crimson King raised his head and laughed, a triumphant, manic sound that declared victory to the void.
He looked at the distant Horus, plunged into the deepest agony, and savored the exquisite taste of annihilating all hope.
Then a burst of blinding golden light erupted from that lump of mangled flesh on the ground.
Magnus's laugh died on his face.
The light grew brighter and brighter, stabbing painfully into that massive single eye. He looked down.
That was no blood. No shredded flesh.
It was a tal card, its edges stained with crimson.
The Emperor's Tarot. The Wheel of Fortune.
➤ Next: A Deal with the Changer of Ways
— .—— .—— .—— .—— .——
Enjoying the story?
Read 60 chapters ahead on Patreon.
Join the free community tier for early access to the latest updates:
patreon(.)com/DarkGolds
Reviews
All reviews (0)