Horus had decided that before reaching the Golden Throne, he would kill Dorn first and use him as a blood offering to mark the advance.
The thought filled him with savage delight.
When the False Emperor saw the head of his own son, would he finally drown in regret?
A pity that by then, the False Emperor would already be completely bound by the Shadowlight artifact. He would be able to do nothing at all, not even extend his power outward.
"My lord!"
Seeing their gene-father facing mortal danger, the Phalanx Wardens' eyes split with rage. They threw themselves forward desperately, trying to stop Horus' attack.
But it was all futile. They could not even break through the Chaos barrier the Dark Emperor had swept out with a casual motion.
At this moment, no one could save the Lord of the Phalanx.
"No..."
Rogal Dorn was engulfed by the thick, choking stench of death.
He struggled with all his strength, yet Horus only pressed down harder, pinning him so tightly he could not move.
The power of that traitor, that Dark Emperor, was overwhelming. Even with the Redemption Armor's power system augmenting him, he still could not contend with it.
"Ah, what a delicious scent. I can smell your despair."
The black war-boot ground into his shattered breastplate, nearly crushing Dorn's chest and forcing blood from his lips.
Then Worldbreaker came crashing down, the loathsome hammer swelling larger and larger in his vision.
It was a killing blow, one that could smash his skull apart.
At the edge of death, Dorn finally felt a flicker of despair, yet even then he was filled with bitter unwillingness.
He still could not fall. If he did, who would protect Terra and their father's Golden Throne?
At that moment, only one thought remained in the Lord of the Phalanx's mind:
Big brother, save me!
Boom!!!
Worldbreaker, carrying the might of the gods and the force of ten thousand tons, slammed down violently, smashing apart the Redemption Armor's chest plating and helmet in one brutal strike.
The impact was so ferocious that even the blackstone floor beneath the armor split with thick, jagged cracks.
Hm?
But when Horus lifted Worldbreaker again, he found not a trace of blood upon it.
He looked down and saw that inside the shattered Savior-forged armor, there was nothing at all. Rogal Dorn had vanished.
A lingering teleportation sigil still clung to the wreckage.
Apparently, the emergency warding array inside the armor had transferred Dorn away at the last moment, preserving his life.
"As expected of armor forged by the Savior. Quite a few life-saving tricks built into it..."
Horus' voice dripped with mockery. "And yet this kind of cowardice, relying on external tools, will never defeat a true warrior."
He had nothing but contempt for such methods. In a duel, outside equipment could never replace raw strength of body or the experience hammered out in life-and-death struggle.
Without the resolve to stake everything on victory, how could one ever hope to win?
At that moment, Horus sensed a familiar presence - Rogal Dorn's.
He turned toward a certain direction, his gaze seeming to pierce through all obstacles until it found the gravely wounded Lord of the Phalanx.
The distance between them was short. At most, it would take him only a few minutes to catch up and finish off the one who had narrowly escaped.
"Heh. Then you can live a little longer."
But Horus did not give chase. Since he had failed to kill him in one blow, pursuing him further held little meaning.
Rogal Dorn was finished in this battle. He was no longer a factor that mattered.
There would be plenty of time to deal with him later.
Horus crouched down and studied the Savior's armor with keen interest.
Compared to Rogal Dorn, this suit of armor was clearly the thing more likely to affect the course of the siege of Terra.
"The False Emperor's bones?"
He picked up a fragment of armor and sniffed it, understanding dawning in his eyes as a dark smile curled his lips.
"Savior, so this was your purpose in desecrating the False Emperor - forging mighty wargear from his bones?"
At last, Horus understood why the armor possessed such powerful psychic conductivity and such formidable resistance to corruption.
It had drawn upon the power of that Perpetual, that False Emperor.
Fortunately, the one wearing it had been Rogal Dorn rather than the Savior himself. Otherwise, it would have been a true problem.
"False Emperor, you can no longer threaten me. There is nothing you can do!"
Horus slowly rose to his feet, lifted Worldbreaker high, and then brought it down again and again in a frenzy, smashing the Redemption Armor as if venting years of hatred.
Until it was utterly reduced to pieces.
After that, he gathered the full strength of his profane power and exhaled black fire, burning the remains of the armor.
Within those dark flames, the gods' power continuously eroded the False Emperor's bone dust still hidden in the wreckage, stripping it of every remaining property.
Horus was cautious enough not to leave anything to chance. If he did not use the Chaos Gods' power to completely annihilate this armor and the remnants of the False Emperor's bones, he would not be able to rest easy.
By the time the black flames died away, the Redemption Armor had become nothing more than a scorched, fused mass, indistinguishable from any other heap of melted mechanical debris.
It no longer had any use at all.
"That unstable variable has now been completely removed. The path to Chaos' victory is secured."
Horus nodded in satisfaction.
Judging by the False Emperor's skeletal remains in the palace vision, the Savior could not possibly have stripped enough bone fragments to forge more than a single suit of armor like this.
Because Rogal Dorn had activated it ahead of time, that one and only supreme weapon had now been utterly destroyed by Horus and reduced to a pile of defiled scrap.
That meant the Savior had lost his strongest wargear, and his combat strength would suffer a massive decline.
Horus looked toward a distant region, his voice brimming with blasphemous pleasure.
"False Emperor, the next thing to become useless ash will be your damned bones."
He turned and led the fallen primarchs and Chaos elites toward the blackstone engine at the core of this sector.
With the Lord of the Phalanx no longer guarding the line, the remaining Imperial defenders were hopelessly outmatched.
In only a minute, the Dark Emperor smashed through the defenses and used Chaos sorcery to destroy the blackstone engine.
The moment that core blackstone engine was destroyed, the Warp interdiction network collapsed entirely, and the whole blackstone fortress began to convulse violently.
It was breaking apart before their eyes.
"Our line has fallen!"
Ansemor and the other Imperial defenders stared at the collapsing positions in utter helplessness.
They could not stop it.
Though the defenders still fought on, the dark rifts had already spread inward, tearing through every physical defensive line.
Together with the splintering blackstone wreckage, they were hurled into the lightless void. In such a chaotic battlespace, even returning to the platform had become a distant impossibility.
Horus and the Chaos entities, however, suffered no such hindrance.
With the help of the dark rifts, they continued to cut through the Imperium's final line and charged straight for Terra.
On a shattered blackstone platform somewhere nearby:
"Father, we have failed you..." Rogal Dorn looked at the dark rift spreading in the distance and sank into profound despair.
He struggled to rise, but even standing had become incredibly difficult.
He had been the Imperium's last wall, and yet he had failed to stop the assault of the Chaos traitors.
Now Horus and the others could use the Chaos passageways to reach the Imperial Palace directly. The Golden Throne was in extreme danger.
Turning toward Tarko's communication image, the Lord of the Phalanx asked with difficulty, "Did our emergency defense measure activate?"
Tarko's brows were tightly knotted, and he too was mired in deep anxiety.
He shook his head, his voice a little hoarse.
"We already activated the final measure. Perhaps the Warp interference was too severe, because the related machinery failed to start.
The Archmagi are still attempting a restart, but based on the current data, the chances are slim.
At this point, all we can do is leave everything to fate..."
Those words from the Savior's chief secretary plunged Rogal Dorn and everyone around him into silence.
Helplessness and despair spread through them.
The battlespace had become too chaotic. They could not even return to Holy Terra to mount a defense.
And even if Dorn and the remaining defenders somehow did make it back to the Imperial Palace, it would not change much.
At best, they could only delay Horus for a little while before dying in service to the Emperor and the Savior.
Yet just as despair took hold, a new signal suddenly appeared on the radar channel.
More importantly, it was a highest-priority signal.
It came from the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium!
"Big brother is back!"
"By the Savior, we still have hope to turn everything around!"
"Victory! Victory!"
Rogal Dorn, Tarko, and the other Imperial loyalists stared at that signal, their eyes lighting up as fresh hope surged through their hearts.
Word of the Savior's return spread quickly across the Solar System. The Imperial defenders, cut apart by dark rifts and stranded across scattered battle lines, were filled with excitement.
"The Savior..."
"Ah, the holy sun shines upon us once more!"
Their despair began to melt away. Some even felt a faint, gentle holy light brushing against them.
The morale of the Imperial defenders recovered. Even if they could not reinforce Terra, they held the remaining positions firm.
At the very least, they would not be annihilated entirely.
They believed that the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium, would defeat Horus and the Chaos abominations before the Palace itself.
And by doing so, win the battle for Terra.
That was the role of a leader. That was the Savior's authority.
Even now, with him having done nothing yet, his mere appearance on the battlefield was enough to shift the course of the war.
"Ha. So the Savior finally made it back. Right on time, too."
Horus looked toward a distant region of space, his tone edged with ridicule.
"That one is exactly like the False Emperor - always arriving at the very last moment to gather the people's hearts.
Hypocritical to the core."
The Dark Emperor tightened his grip on Worldbreaker. There was not the slightest trace of fear in him. On the contrary, he was eager.
He had long wanted to test the Savior's strength for himself.
Perhaps taking the head of the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium, would hurt the False Emperor even more. It would mean the utter extinction of everything the other had built - humanity's empire and its ideals alike.
"Savior."
In the Warp, the Chaos Gods felt deep unease at the Savior's return to the Solar System.
They were even more concerned than Horus.
After all, the Dark Gods had poured far too much into this war. Even their domains had shrunk. They simply could not afford the consequences of defeat.
They had unconditionally bankrolled Horus, spending lavishly across the Solar System, and the cost had left them unprecedentedly weakened.
If they failed at this stage and the Dark King were born instead, then all their investment would be lost, and they themselves would end up trampled into the dirt again and again.
"Hrrk... that pestilent wretch returned even earlier than we anticipated..."
Grandfather Nurgle slumped on his rotting plank-bed, panting, thick phlegm catching in his throat.
His vast, void-filling, mountain-of-flesh body had visibly withered, and the revolting folds of upturned meat around his belly had shrunk away.
Countless Nurglings dozed listlessly inside the holes in his decayed flesh.
The Plague Lord had truly been hurt, and had even slimmed down quite a bit.
Nor was he alone. The other Chaos Gods looked much the same.
Khorne felt drained, and even the perfect form and face of the Prince of Pleasure had begun to show the first faint flaw.
"We must stop him and ensure Chaos' destiny remains on its destined track."
So said the Changer of Ways.
Even as he spoke, he looked with aching regret upon his increasingly desolate secret library, where forbidden knowledge was fading into nothingness.
The God of Intrigue had lost tens of billions of schemes at once. As a result, conspiracies, betrayals, and disorder across the galaxy had all been reduced significantly, and people had become more sincere with each other.
Worse still, as more regions returned to peace, that in turn further weakened his divine authority.
Only by winning this war could the Crystal Labyrinth continue spawning fresh plots and chaos.
The Chaos Gods came to a swift agreement.
They immediately began sealing off the region where the Savior was located, using every possible method to prevent him from reaching Terra.
The battle had now reached its critical moment. If Chaos could only stop the Savior or delay him for a little while longer...
Victory would be theirs.
Buzz...
The void roiled violently as a loathsome Chaos storm swept over the region, plunging that sector of space into utter disorder.
Even more terrifying, at the same moment the Chaos storm manifested, the abhorrent planet suspended between the Warp and the veil of the galaxy - New Dragon Forest - began moving closer to Terra by way of the dark rifts.
Its abyssal shadow spread outward, plunging the outer reaches of Terra's orbital space into total darkness.
Everything stood on the edge of disaster.
...
At the outskirts of the Solar System:
The Eternal Soul bucked violently under the impact of the Chaos storm, like a tiny sailboat being battered in a raging sea.
Fortunately, the vessel was sturdy enough that the storm the gods had created did not rip it apart.
"Hah... we finally made it back..."
Eden let out a long breath, some of the tension draining from him.
If he, the Savior, had failed to bring the Eternal Soul back in time, then only two outcomes would have remained for the Imperium:
Either the old man's toilet - meaning the Emperor's Golden Throne - would explode completely, or the old man and his toilet alike would be taken out by some Chaos artifact.
Humanity would lose its sacred sun.
Fortunately, there was still a chance to turn things around.
"Our third brother did well. He dragged this war out until now instead of letting it collapse entirely."
As Eden spoke, he scanned through the battle report that had just been transmitted to him.
But the moment he saw that the Redemption Armor and its matching weapons had been destroyed, his heart ached.
That had been his strongest wargear.
And it would not be easy to replace any time soon. To make another, he would have to shave off another batch of the Emperor's bones. At this rate, he might actually strip the old man bald.
More importantly, it meant that in this battle he had lost his most powerful equipment. He would have to face Horus, the fallen primarchs, and even more greater daemons with nothing but his own flesh and strength.
As for his other gear, in front of those Chaos monsters, it was probably about as durable as paper.
Just thinking about it made Eden feel numb.
But there was no helping it. If Dorn had not used the Redemption Armor, Holy Terra probably would not have lasted until Eden's return.
At least under the present circumstances, there was still a sliver of hope.
"Old G-Man, we're probably walking into a brutal fight in a minute," Eden said, stretching his body as he spoke to his good brother beside him.
No matter how bad things got, he, the Savior, still had to step forward.
"As long as hope remains, we fight to the very last moment." Guilliman was already fully armored and brimming with battle intent.
At last, he had managed to make it back in time to reinforce Holy Terra. This time, he would not allow the Emperor, his father, to be harmed again.
"Bzzt...
Father, our course is being disrupted by the spatial storm. We may not be able to reach Holy Terra before the rift arrives.
And also... that planet-scale planetary weapon has already breached the boundary between reality and the Warp. It's moving toward Holy Terra now!"
The Machine Goddess' light, agile voice rang out, sounding as if she were on the verge of tears, deeply worried for her Emperor-grandfather.
Eden and Guilliman's expressions changed at once.
They looked toward the dark rift spreading toward Holy Terra, then turned to the spherical shadow covering the void. Both fell silent.
This was bad...
"The battle plan changes now. I go first. You follow after. We split up."
Eden made his decision and turned to clap his good brother on the shoulder.
He was going to take a risk and jump straight into the Chaos storm, using it to find a faster route to the target.
That meant Guilliman would have no way to keep up and would have to continue on by the Eternal Soul.
Besides, whenever he stuck together with this good brother of his, he always had the feeling things would turn unlucky.
What if they ended up late?
"Brother..." Guilliman frowned, seeming as if he wanted to say something.
But before he could get the words out, Eden had already blasted open a hole in the hull.
He drew a deep breath, then leaped straight into the Chaos storm, relying on sheer physical strength to tumble through it in a butterfly-stroke sprint.
Very quickly, the Savior's figure vanished from sight.
"No time to explain. Whatever it is, we'll talk later!"
His voice rode back on the unnatural gale pouring through the breach, whipping Guilliman's golden hair into chaos.
The storm outside was terrifying. Without the protection of a field, even heavy vehicles would be torn apart.
Only the Savior could probably endure an environment that extreme.
"Brother... I think you went the wrong way."
Guilliman stared at the breach in silence, his voice trembling slightly.
Even the Lord of Ultramar, a complete psychic dullard, could tell that the direction the Savior had jumped in was the exact opposite of Holy Terra.
Getting lost inside a Chaos storm was far worse than losing one's way in realspace. It could make the distance even longer.
"Webby, get me to Holy Terra immediately!"
The Lord of Ultramar did not hesitate. He immediately ordered the Machine Goddess to steer the ship toward Holy Terra to stop Horus.
Even if Eden ended up arriving late, Guilliman still might have a chance to reinforce the Imperial Palace and protect the Emperor, his father.
"I can make it. I definitely can..." Guilliman murmured, his gaze hardening with unshakable resolve.
???
Meanwhile, Eden tumbled through the Chaos tide with tremendous difficulty.
"Oh no."
He looked up at the distant battlespace and the pitch-black sphere, his scalp tingling.
"Why does it feel like Holy Terra is getting farther away? But this direction somehow feels better. Should I just switch targets?
Also, the plan over there shouldn't fail, right? If something goes wrong, then we're really screwed."
(End of Chapter)
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