The arrival of Warmaster Dukel brought an overwhelming surge of morale to the beleaguered Imperial defenders of Vigilus. The mere presence of the Primarch-kindled warrior stirred something deep within them—an indomitable courage that banished the fear and despair once sewn by the daemonkind.
Across the void, the Chaos warfleet—once a formidable tide—was now in shambles. Over seventy percent of the Black Fleet had been annihilated. Those heretics still alive under the wrath of Imperial retaliation faced two choices: flee in desperation or embrace a bitter martyrdom, dragging loyalist vessels into destruction with them.
Many chose the latter.
Warp drives were pushed beyond all safe limits as traitor vessels slammed head-on into victorious Imperial warships in suicidal rages. These final acts of spite caused brutal losses—but failed to change the tide.
Imperial battle barges, strike cruisers, and countless warships formed a noose of adamantium and plasma around the remaining heretic vessels. Trapped in a tightening web of orbital firepower, the heretic fleet paid a blood price for every second they lingered in realspace.
On the surface of Vigilus, cultists who had once devoted themselves to Abaddon and Mortarion watched their supposed gods retreat. Disillusionment spread like wildfire. They realized, too late, that they were pawns—discarded and left to die.
Some zealots called this betrayal a test of faith. Others fled, scrambling to escape the closing jaws of the loyalist advance.
At the heart of the dying world, molten rivers of lava flowed like arteries. Above them—within a hidden sanctum far beyond mortal access—Lorgar Aurelian, the arch-heretic, channeled forbidden rites. With his Word Bearers in attendance, he worked a dark liturgy woven from millennia of corruption.
In a vault buried ten thousand meters beneath the planet's crust, a runic circle surged with warp energy, pulsing like a dark and malignant heart. Reality began to unravel. The planet itself screamed.
While Imperial forces still pressed their assault on Purifier strongholds, their heretic adversaries unleashed chemical hell across the battlefield. Thick plumes of toxin turned hab-zones into charnel pits. But even this paled before what was to come.
From the corrupted soil, a maelstrom of raw warp energy erupted. The storm spun faster, feeding on itself, as psychic lightning tore through the skies. The planet's crust cracked and heaved. Vigilus itself was reshaped by daemonic will—continental plates shattered and reformed in patterns that defied natural law. Cities were swallowed whole. Millions perished in apocalyptic upheaval.
On orbiting warships, once-blinded auspex arrays and divination augurs flickered to life. With the destruction of the Black Fleet, the veil of interference lifted—just in time for them to detect something far worse.
Screams filled vox-channels as carrier-based servitors overloaded and combusted. Machine spirits shrieked without voice, their pain manifesting in flares of internal fire and broken code. The tech-priests manning the augur decks watched in horror as screens spat out impossible readings—numbers that broke logic, symbols that seared the mind.
Skin blistered. Runes of corruption branded themselves upon the flesh of the weak-willed. Many collapsed into madness, gibbering incoherently as their minds were claimed by the empyrean.
A tidal wave of chaotic supremacy surged across Vigilus.
Lorgar's gilded face twisted into a triumphant smirk. His long-planned ritual was complete. The planet had become a conduit, a dark stairway to something greater. The blasphemous sermon he'd prepared was now written in the blood and soul of an entire world.
He stepped forward.
It mattered little what the Imperium would do now. The trap had sprung.
"Dukel has arrived," Lorgar whispered, half in amusement. "I trust Mortarion and Horus won't disappoint me."
Upon the desecrated altar, the golden-skinned apostate gazed beyond the veil.
"It is time to meet my brothers," he mused. "May they prove as exceptional as I."
His smile never left as he descended the steps.
Meanwhile, as Vigilus burned, Dukel faced Mortarion in the heart of the corrupted wastes.
"Brother, I must say… I'm relieved by your appearance." Dukel studied the pallid, rot-etched face of the Lord of Death. There had been a time, long ago, when Mortarion's form was bloated with Nurgle's blessings—twisted, foul, and grotesque. Compared to that, his current visage was almost… respectable.
"You finally don't stink quite as badly," Dukel quipped with a smirk.
Despite the taunt, he held no contempt for Mortarion's strength. Though he disdained his brother's craven servitude to Chaos, Dukel acknowledged the might the corrupted primarch commanded.
And in this duel, Dukel fought like a storm unleashed—each blow a masterwork of martial skill, refined through ten thousand years of forgotten wars.
"Dukel. Ever the loyal fool." Mortarion sneered, words laced with mockery.
Ten millennia ago, Dukel had been appointed Warmaster, only for the Emperor to purge all memory of his existence. Now, across the aeons, he wore the mantle again.
Mortarion's words cut like his scythe—taunting reminders of betrayal and abandonment.
"We all carry our burdens," Dukel replied calmly.
The serenity in his voice unsettled Mortarion. He had expected fury. Regret. Not this… peace.
The two demigods clashed across the scorched plains of Vigilus, near a mine drowned in noxious fumes.
Mortarion's massive scythe spun with elegance—an eerie dance masking lethal intent. With a sudden flourish, he aimed for Dukel's neck, seeking a swift decapitation.
But Dukel met the blow with a flaming sword, the two weapons colliding in an eruption of raw force. Mortarion stumbled back, boots skidding through ash and slag.
That exchange told him everything.
Dukel had grown stronger.
But Mortarion knew that brute strength wasn't everything in war. There were other ways to win.
As he retreated into the industrial labyrinth, weaving between toxic vats and shattered foundries, Dukel followed—relentless and unwavering.
A rusted bulkhead loomed before him. Dukel didn't slow. He crashed through it like a meteor, shattering it in a single charge.
The hunt continued. The storm had only begun.
Like an armored juggernaut crashing through enemy lines, Dukel erupted from the dust-choked ruins, his burning blade cleaving toward Mortarion.
The Daemon Primarch braced himself, gripping the haft of his scythe with both hands. Even with all his might, the force of the blow hurled him backward. He twisted midair, crashing into yet another shattered structure before vanishing into its crumbling depths.
Though Mortarion had deflected the strike, the sheer kinetic force echoed through his corrupted frame. His limbs trembled. His chest tightened with weight—not from injury, but from the undeniable pressure of the Warmaster's wrath.
As he maneuvered through the fractured structures of Vigilus, Mortarion studied his adversary. Dukel was unlike any foe he had faced in ten millennia: immeasurable strength, martial prowess forged by gods, reflexes honed beyond comprehension, and an unrelenting will. The more Mortarion observed, the more he realized that Dukel fought not as a Primarch returned—but as a god of war incarnate.
Still, Mortarion, master of patience and poison, had begun to formulate a counter.
His thoughts were interrupted when the floor beneath him lurched violently. The platform groaned, then tilted. Mortarion caught himself just in time, wings unfurling slightly for balance.
Dukel stood below, his flaming sword planted into the earth as leverage. With both hands, the Warmaster grasped the steel foundation and heaved. The reinforced structure—tons of adamantium and plasteel—screamed under the pressure, then tore free like parchment.
The section of the ruin Mortarion had occupied was wrenched from its foundations and flung skyward, collapsing upon him in a tidal wave of debris.
"Emperor's blood—this madman!" Mortarion spat, launching himself clear with a powerful flap of his wings. He avoided the brunt of the destruction, but his tattered cloak was shredded by the shrapnel storm.
He rose into the ash-choked skies, smoke curling around him like ghostly serpents. The sight stirred unpleasant memories—visions of Colchis and Barbarus, of firestorms and broken brothers—but there was no time for retrospection.
Dukel ascended like a meteor, closing the distance with terrifying speed. Their weapons clashed midair, thunder booming across the ruins.
Mortarion gritted his teeth as he faltered. His defenses began to crumble under the onslaught. Each of Dukel's strikes carried the fury of a world, and even when Mortarion attempted to catch him off-guard with elusive warp techniques, Dukel reacted as if guided by divine instinct.
No feint could fool him. No shadowed blow struck true.
Mortarion's defense slipped. Dukel saw the opening.
With a brutal roar, he drove a plated boot into Mortarion's chest. The blow ruptured the corrupted ceramite, and the Death Lord was launched like a missile across the battlefield. He crashed through a ruined wall, embedding deeply into a mound of steel and rubble.
Pain blossomed through Mortarion's warped flesh, but he didn't wait to assess the damage. Rolling instinctively, he narrowly avoided Dukel's descending sword, which carved a canyon into the masonry where he'd just lain.
Mortarion retaliated, leaping to a new perch and taking a defensive stance atop a shattered cathedral spire.
Dukel, relentless, pursued.
But this time, Mortarion was ready.
The Lord of Death crouched low, tilting his scythe. Warp-tainted energies crackled around him, and a thick miasma oozed forth. The air soured, warping with the raw essence of entropy and decay.
As Dukel landed with a meteoric crash, Mortarion absorbed the impact. Then—like a plague detonating within the soul—the cloud erupted.
The Death Fog exploded outward, the force of it shoving Dukel back for the first time in their duel. The Warmaster was hurled into the wreckage of a manufactorum, his body crashing through ferrocrete and steel.
Mortarion allowed himself a grim smile, shadowed by mist.
All his movements, his feigned retreats and staggered defense—they had been to set up this one moment. If he had been facing Guilliman, it would have ended here.
But this wasn't Guilliman.
This was Dukel.
Even as Mortarion savored his brief reprieve, he heard it: a roar like a dragon's cry, rumbling from deep within the rubble.
From the broken carcass of the manufactorum, Dukel emerged.
Unbroken. Unrelenting.
The Warmaster seized a shattered structure and hurled it toward Mortarion. The building—a collapsed spire weighing hundreds of tons—sailed through the air like a missile.
Mortarion dodged, only for another ruin to follow.
A battered bastion, three stories high, was flung next. It struck home.
The Daemon Primarch was driven into the side of a Gothic edifice. The wall buckled and collapsed beneath the weight, swallowing Mortarion in a tide of dust and stone.
Mortarion lay buried beneath layers of shattered ruin. Dukel approached slowly, the Sword of the Mind gripped in one hand.
Flames coiled around the blade, crackling with apocalyptic energy — a weapon now primed to kill gods.
A surge of dread, a warning of utter annihilation, surged through Mortarion's soul.
Trapped beneath debris, every fiber of his being screamed in agony. His mind, attuned to the psychic echo of death itself, was overwhelmed by an ominous premonition.
He moved.
Pushing aside slabs of broken ferrocrete, Mortarion used his scythe to cleave a passage through the rubble. Driven by pure survival instinct, the Daemon Primarch escaped — all in the span of seconds.
And then the fire came.
A pillar of crimson flame erupted where he had just been, vaporizing the building above into a storm of molten iron and boiling air. Steel was hurled skyward, melted mid-flight, and rained down in glowing fragments.
The inferno died as swiftly as it came.
What remained was a smoldering crater — a scorched wound in the city's corpse.
Mortarion stumbled back, breathing heavily. He knew, with absolute certainty, that had he hesitated even a moment longer, he would've been annihilated.
"Brother," came a calm voice through the dissipating smoke, "do you know what surprised me the most?"
Dukel emerged from the fading blaze, untouched. His armor gleamed as if fresh-forged, and the flame upon his sword still burned with undiminished fury. The fury of a god made manifest — calm, controlled, and merciless.
In stark contrast, Mortarion was a ruin. His baroque armor hung in tatters. His once-majestic cloak was shredded and scorched. Even the pestilent mists that clung to him wavered and hissed in agitation, no longer steady — a reflection of his injuries and turmoil. Chipped pauldrons, cracked plating, shattered chains — the signs of defeat were plain.
Dukel's voice was low and steady, cutting like a blade through the silence.
"Mortarion, I thought you would call for help. I waited for them. Truly, I did."
He tilted his head slightly. "But none came. You've disappointed me."
He took another step forward, voice cold as the void.
"My foolish brother... did you really think you could face me alone?"
Mortarion stood motionless, trembling slightly. The tremor wasn't merely from the physical toll — it came from somewhere deeper. Rage, humiliation… and fear. A fear he refused to name.
He opened his mouth to answer — but another voice cut in.
"And me."
The battlefield stilled.
A golden light flashed beside Mortarion, the unmistakable flare of a teleportation array. Reality bent and cracked — and from it emerged a towering figure, radiant with psychic power.
A giant of gold-steel and carved runes stepped forward.
It was Lorgar Aurelian — The Great Speaker. The Prophet of the Word. Smiling with smug satisfaction, he entered the scene as though it had been orchestrated for him.
Both Primarchs — Dukel and Mortarion — turned toward the newcomer. Lorgar relished their attention, standing a little straighter.
A meeting of three Primarchs. Rare. Momentous. Mythic.
And yet…
In the next breath, both Dukel and Mortarion turned their attention away from him — returning to their own conflict as if he were little more than background noise.
Lorgar blinked.
Dukel's eyes narrowed. "Mortarion," he repeated, voice even harder now, "do you truly believe you can defeat me alone?"
Mortarion: "…"
He had believed that. And until the battle began, he had never doubted it.
He said nothing.
Lorgar's face reddened.
What in the Eye is this!? Am I not here? Am I not… significant?
"Dukel!" Lorgar snarled, jaw tight with frustration. "You will pay for your arrogance. You will see, soon enough — I am not who I once was! I am different now!"
No reply.
Dukel's gaze remained locked on Mortarion, as though Lorgar's presence was but a mild distraction.
"Mortarion," he declared, flame roaring anew across his blade, "if you truly dare to face me alone, then mark this moment — for today, you shall be utterly destroyed!"
Lorgar: "AHHHHHHHHHHHH—!!!"
...
TN:
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