With the roar of bolters and the shriek of lasfire, the armored wave surged through the breach. Rhinos and Chimeras barreled forward side by side, their hull-mounted weapons spitting death into the tide of greenskins that hurled themselves into the gap. Land Raiders followed in their wake, hurricane bolters and lascannons carving bloody swathes through the Orks, while the massive Spartans thundered onward, their multi-meltas and heavy bolters reducing entire mobs to ruin.
Above the din, the guttural bellows of the Orks rose in challenge, but every charge into the breach was met with storms of fire. Greenskins were shredded by the sheer wall of munitions, their crude bodies thrown back in pieces against the fortress walls.
Outside the breach, the Leman Russ squadrons remained in steady formation, their battle cannons thundering in calculated arcs to suppress the fortress towers and rear bastions. Within, Predators and Razorbacks pressed hard behind the vanguard, their lascannons and autocannons locking onto the Orks' heavier weapons emplacements and tearing them apart in blinding detonations.
As the surrounding fire slackened under the punishing barrage, the Rhinos and Land Raiders surged forward in earnest, engines growling as they drove deeper into the breach. Their hatches blew open, and from within stormed the Astartes—squads of Dark Knights, Imperial Fists, Red Talons, and Obsidian Jaguars.
Bolters roared in disciplined volleys, the mass-reactive shells tearing Orks apart in sprays of gore and crude scrap armor. Krak grenades arced into barricades and gun nests, blasting apart the crude fortifications the greenskins had hastily thrown up within their walls.
Land Raiders disgorged Terminators, their armored tread shaking the ground as they advanced in immovable phalanxes. Storm bolters and assault cannons filled the area with death, cutting down any Ork foolish enough to charge their lines.
With them, the Guardsmen spilled out of their Chimeras, fanning into disciplined firing lines behind the advancing Astartes. Lasguns blazed in ceaseless volleys, stitching red beams through the smoke and cutting down the lesser Orks in droves. Sergeants barked orders over the din, rallying their men to keep close to the armored wall of the Adeptus Astartes.
Grenadiers and engineers rushed forward with melta charges and flamers, scouring out the ruined bunkers and crude pillboxes that clung to the fortress interior. Whole nests of Orks went up in firestorms.
The Spartans rumbled ever deeper into the fortress, their armored bulk shrugging off the desperate Ork fire that still clawed at their hulls. The vox crackled with the steady rhythm of battle reports, but Atharion's transport pressed on, holding the center of the formation like a spearpoint.
With a thunderous clang, the forward ramp slammed down.
But it was not Atharion, nor the Silent Wardens, who emerged first.
From the dark interior erupted a storm of living lightning—searing bolts of silver-gold energy arcing outward in a radiant fan. The crackling storm tore through the greenskins, vaporizing the first ranks where they stood. Orks screamed and fell, their crude weapons dropping as their bodies were reduced to smoldering ash.
The arcs danced like serpents, leaping from target to target, until the entire killing ground before the Spartan was bathed in the Emperor's wrath.
Only then, through the haze of ozone and death, did the Silent Wardens march forth, Atharion at their head, thunder hammer in hand, golden eyes blazing like a living icon of war.
From the other two Spartans, the rest of the Silent Wardens advanced in lockstep. At their head strode the Librarians, each clad in Indomitus-pattern Terminator plate, their force swords humming with psychic resonance in one hand, meltaguns gripped firmly in the other. Their presence was like a storm contained within flesh and ceramite—veins of warp-lightning coursed faintly across their armor, wreathing them in a spectral glow.
"Forward." Atharion order, his voice like a cold stream through the vox.
He surged ahead, cloak snapping in the storm of fire and smoke. In one hand his plasma pistol barked, a searing bolt lancing across the courtyard to vaporize an Ork hefting a crude 'Eavy Rokkit Launcha toward one of the Spartans. The greenskin's upper body disintegrated in a burst of molten gore, its weapon clattering uselessly to the ground.
With his other hand, Atharion swung his thunder hammer in a wide, brutal arc. The weapon crackled with caged lightning as it smashed into a charging Nob, reducing the brute to a spray of broken armor and shattered bone. The impact shook the ground, a reminder to all who followed that their lord fought at their head, not from behind.
The Silent Wardens pressed forward at his flanks, storm shields raised, storm bolters roaring. Behind them, the Librarians unleashed their wrath—force swords glowing with a cold, terrible light as psychic shockwaves ripped through the Ork lines, sending entire mobs into convulsions before being cut down by disciplined fire.
The fighting quickly spread across the entire fortress as wave after wave of Guardsmen poured through the breach, their banners whipping in the choking wind. Vox-networks crackled with shouted orders, the thunder of heavy bolters, and the endless roar of lasguns fired on full auto.
Amid the tide of mortal soldiers marched smaller spearheads of Astartes from the other Chapters—squads of Imperial Fists methodically clearing bunkers with melta charges, Red Talons driving their assault squads over the battlements in jetpack-borne strikes, Obsidian Jaguars anchoring chokepoints with relentless volleys of heavy fire.
The fortress became a labyrinth of brutal close-quarter battles. Every corridor, every shattered stronghold was contested, the greenskins counterattacking with savage abandon. Nobz led mobs of Boyz in reckless charges, slamming into shield walls of Guardsmen. Entire platoons were swallowed in the press, only for Astartes to carve their way in and relieve them with merciless efficiency.
The Terminators pressed forward with implacable aggression, their ceramite-clad bulk smashing aside rubble and Orks alike. They moved with the inevitability of an iron tide, intercepting the Nobz before the hulking brutes could reach the fragile Guardsmen lines.
Storm bolters roared in disciplined volleys, cutting swathes through the lesser Boyz that swarmed at their heels. Then the clash came—power fists and thunder hammers meeting crude cleavers and jagged choppas in bone-shattering impacts. Power swords cut arcs of blue-white light through thick plates of scavenged armor, while lightning claws tore Nobz open in fountains of gore.
Before long, the outer bastions of the fortress lay in ruin, their walls collapsed beneath the fury of bolter, blade, and cannon fire. The Terminators, drenched in blood and smoke, pressed onward without pause, driving deeper into the greenskins' stronghold.
The push into the inner layers of the fortress was slower, more grueling. Corridors narrowed, chokepoints multiplied, and every breach was met with mobs of Boyz hurling themselves into the teeth of disciplined fire. The air grew thick with the stench of burning flesh and ozone, the thunder of explosions shaking the very foundations.
Terminators pushed steadily ahead, forcing their way through corridors and chambers, clearing each with storm bolter fire and the crushing weight of their wargear. Their advance carved the path, but behind them, the war machines pressed on as well. Spartans and Land Raiders ground deeper into the fortress, their armored hulls shrugging off everything the Orks could muster. Guardsmen and Astartes alike clung to their sides, advancing in their shadow as though behind moving walls of steel.
Heavy bolters and sponson-mounted lascannons blazed from the vehicles, cutting open the killing grounds ahead so the infantry could press forward without being annihilated in the choke of greenskin fire. Every meter of progress was bought with blood and ammunition, but slowly, inexorably, the Crusade was pushing into the Warlord's domain.
Yet while the Crusade inched forward, Atharion did not. He drove ahead like a spear thrust, his thunder hammer rising and falling in arcs of lightning-wreathed fury, every swing reducing Nobz and armored brutes to mangled wreckage. Around him, the Silent Wardens fought in perfect formation, their storm shields locking into an impenetrable wall as they pushed deeper into the fortress.
But Atharion's mind was not wholly in the battle. Psychic energy rippled from him in unseen waves, his golden eyes gleaming as he cast his will into the howling storm of the immaterium. Through fire, steel, and the psychic stench of Ork war-madness, he sought.
Then—he found it.
A vast hall buried deep within the fortress, its walls thick with crude glyphs daubed in blood and filth. From it bled a torrent of sickly green light, pulsing with chaotic resonance. The warp itself snarled there, thick with the gestalt fury of thousands of greenskins, all their belief and madness drawn into one locus.
Focusing on the psychic beacon of that hall, Atharion turned sharply, his golden eyes narrowing.
"This way," he commanded, his voice reverberating through the vox with a finality that brooked no question.
The Argent Wardens shifted formation instantly, storm shields locking into a wall of adamantium and ceramite. With Atharion at their head, they surged forward like a silver-clad spear.
They punched through everything that dared to stand before them. Boyz fell in droves beneath the disciplined roar of storm bolters, their bodies shredded into ruin. Nobz that hurled themselves into the Wardens' wall were dashed aside, their choppas shattered against shields before thunder hammers and power swords caved in their brutal forms.
A Dreadnought-sized Deff Dread lumbered from a side chamber, claws whirring and belching black smoke. Atharion's hammer met it head-on. One swing—crackling with chained lightning and psychic energy—smashed through its arm, another tore open its hull, and the third reduced it to a molten wreck. The Wardens marched over its smoking carcass without breaking stride.
Every step carried them closer to the heart of the beast's lair. The psychic presence of the Warlord grew stronger, more oppressive, clawing at the edges of Atharion's mind with crude, brutal hunger.
Then, without warning, the left wall of the corridor vanished in a thunderous blast. Shrapnel and fire tore outward, momentarily engulfing the Wardens in smoke. Atharion raised his storm shield, the psychic wards of his presence scattering the debris before it could cut them down.
But what emerged was not another greenskin warband.
Through the breach strode the Red Talons, their heraldry jagged and scarred from the battle, Terminators at their head. With them marched the stoic yellow of the Imperial Fists, bolters already barking as they cleared the chamber. Behind the Astartes, squads of Guardsmen poured in—bayonets fixed, lasguns snapping with disciplined volleys.
The Orks roared in fury at the sudden flank assault, mobs turning to meet the new attackers with reckless abandon. For a heartbeat, the press of greenskin bodies shifted away from Atharion's path.
He did not waste it.
"Wardens—forward!" Atharion thundered, his voice carrying like a commandment of steel. Cloak flaring behind him, he pressed through the chaos, golden eyes fixed on the pulse of green warp-energy deeper within the fortress. At his sides marched the two Librarians, force swords aglow with psychic fire, and behind them the Argent Wardens advanced in a wall of shields and disciplined storm-bolter fire.
They punched through the shifting melee like a blade through flesh, carving a direct line toward the beast's lair while the Red Talons and Imperial Fists kept the flanking mobs entangled.
The psychic pull of the Warlord grew heavier with each step, a suffocating tide of rage and hunger pressing at the mind. The air thickened with it, like wading through a swamp of raw, violent will.
And then—at the end of the hall—it awaited.
A colossal gate of scrap metal, daubed with crude glyphs and crude banners of flayed hide, stood before them. Behind it, the green glow throbbed like a heart, each pulse hammering against Atharion's skull.
Atharion lifted his thunder hammer, the weapon crackling with pent-up stormlight. "Breach it."
The Argent Wardens moved as one. Melta charges were slammed into place along the crude gates, the storm shields locking together around their bearers in an unyielding wall. The Librarians raised their hands, warp-fire sparking in their gauntlets as they poured their will into the metal, weakening its structure.
A blinding detonation followed. The gate ruptured in a roar of fire and shrapnel, its jagged remains hurled inward with the force of the explosion. Smoke and heat washed out into the corridor—followed by a guttural roar that shook the bones of all who heard it.
The chamber beyond was a cathedral of madness. Crude iron pillars, stacked skulls, and the twitching remnants of slaughtered beasts decorated the vast hall. In the center stood the Warlord.
A giant even among his brutal kind, the Ork loomed in a mountain of scrap-armor bristling with spikes, glyphs, and scavenged Imperial plating. A klaw the size of a Dreadnought's arm crackled with stolen power, each movement spitting arcs of green lightning. In his other hand he hefted a chain-choppa, its crude engine growling as the teeth screeched and sparked, belching smoke with every snarl. His scarred hide was daubed with crude war-markings, and around him the air boiled with raw psychic pressure—an aura of violence and madness, like a warp-storm given flesh.
The Warlord's tusked grin split wide beneath a helm of riveted iron plates. Each breath wheezed through a grill choked with smoke and oil, and every step he took thundered like a siege engine, shaking the hall.
His bodyguards swarmed around him—Nobz encased in slabs of iron and scavenged plating, their eyes blazing with the same green fury that pulsed through the chamber. Behind them, mobs of Boyz screamed and stamped, the psychic gestalt of their frenzy bleeding into their master, swelling his presence to something greater than mere flesh.
The Warlord bellowed, swinging his choppa in a wide arc that cut sparks from the floor.
"DIS FORTRESS IZ MINE, HUMIE! AN' SO WILL YER SKULL!"
"It was never yours." Atharion answered coldly, his thunder hammer raised, its head glowing with restrained fury. He leveled the weapon at the towering beast, his golden eyes unflinching. "Not before. Not now. Not ever. You belong beneath the earth, greenskin—fertilizer for those who will endure."
The Warlord's jagged grin split wider, tusks glinting in the haze.
Without warning, Atharion's hammer erupted with silver-gold lightning. A storm of searing arcs lashed outward, vaporizing knots of Nobz and whole mobs of Boyz where they stood. The thunderclap shook the chamber, charred corpses collapsing into smoking ash as the stench of ozone filled the air.
The challenge was given. The lines were drawn.
With a roar that shook the walls, the Warlord charged, his klaw crackling with stolen power, chain-choppa revving like a beast unleashed. At the same moment, Atharion surged forward with his Silent Wardens, shields raised, bolters barking. The hall became a maelstrom as both sides crashed together in a storm of steel, fire, and lightning.