Chapter 350: Fulgrim! Give Me Back My Legion!
It turns out that Slaanesh never disappoints when it comes to being disappointing.
Whenever you think they might actually pull off something grand, they manage to screw it up in a way that's even more consistent than Nurgle's decay.
Perturabo had naively believed the Emperor's Children could be his fatal ace in the hole, hoping these flamboyant warriors would pin down the toughest enemy at the critical moment.
The Chaos faction also had high hopes, planning to use the ground forces they provided to tear open the defense line, allowing the daemon army to erode the planet's shield matrix and anti-air network through the breach.
Once the orbital defense collapsed, those space warships, which couldn't win a void battle anyway, would fall under the temptation of daemons, contributing to the expansion of the Gods' domain on Cadia.
The plan was ideal. After all, no matter how ridiculous the Emperor's Children were, they were still Astartes, a Legion led by a Primarch. No matter how fallen, they should have retained some of their prowess from ten thousand years ago.
That existence, top-tier even among Daemon Primarchs, showed a rare serious attitude this time.
Fulgrim got serious!
And Fulgrim lost.
Lost decisively.
Grandiose words at the start, silence in the middle, gibberish at the end.
Perhaps one shouldn't have expected anything from these junkies in the first place.
Why did so many beings, who hadn't wrapped their heads around the situation, expect such a group to beat the Dark Angels in an equal environment, or even hope they could trouble the anomaly that suddenly added new rules to this universe?
With the colossal failure of Perturabo's decapitation strike, the outcome of this decisive battle was all but certain.
"Fulgrim! Give me back my Legion!!!"
Lord Commander Eidolon—the true leader of the Emperor's Children in the post-Heresy era, the 'Soul-Severed'—roared in his heart, his soul bleeding.
He crawled painfully in the darkness, fingers digging into the crevices of metal ruins, moving along the tilted wreckage of the hull towards a location in his memory.
His breathing was rapid and disordered, low gasps lingering in the dark.
This used to be an Emperor's Children escort ship; now it was just another pile of twisted scrap metal on the edge of the Pavo Bastion.
At the beginning of the invasion, the rift Slaanesh tore open with Khorne's power was large enough for warships to translate, and that's exactly what the Emperor's Children did.
In fact, not just Fulgrim, but all Emperor's Children, including Eidolon, knew very well that in their current state, fighting small local skirmishes was fine, but fighting the Dark Angels head-on was a pipe dream.
Not to mention the composition of these Dark Angels was highly questionable.
Compared to other Chapters where meeting an old acquaintance was rare, the Dark Angels seemed to have a basketful of old relics from ten thousand years ago. And every one of them was in exaggeratedly good physical and mental condition, making Eidolon suspect they had been marinating in the warp just like them.
So naturally, the relatively sane Fulgrim chose to bring the warships over, while the rest assisted Perturabo in the breakthrough decapitation strike against the Dawnbreaker Fleet. The Pride of the Emperor remained lurking in the warp as a final insurance.
Teleportation platforms on several warships were ready, Terminator squads assembled, hangar bay doors blasted open.
Those motley air formations, due to long separation from Imperial supply, screamed into the sky, macro-cannon arrays and lance weapons charging up.
The plan was perfect. No ground force could withstand such close-range naval bombardment.
But—
Clang!
His foot suddenly stepped on empty air. Eidolon relied on his superhuman reflexes to grab the molten metal edge. Searing pain came from his palm. Gritting his teeth, he forcibly swung himself to the other end of the wreckage.
Thud!
The landing was heavy. Eidolon hurriedly looked down the rift.
Beneath his feet was a fracture zone a hundred meters deep.
This escort ship had been severed from the midsection, the cut incredibly smooth, taking the supposedly indestructible adamantium keel with it.
Eidolon took a deep breath, filled with fear.
He had seen his share of monsters in the warp. Greater Daemons casually destroying a Daemon World was common. Eidolon envied them, but also knew these Greater Daemons could only look up to him in realspace.
But how could a creature withstand a field that sealed off warp influence and still cut down an escort ship in realspace? Even a Primarch—
No, that thing wasn't a Primarch at all! It had nothing to do with the concept of humanity!
Human souls were highly bound to the Sea of Souls, so even the Emperor had to obey the laws of realspace. Without sufficient sacrifices or rituals, without relying on psychic power, even Corax couldn't do anything to a warship.
Eidolon threw off his helmet. With his senses distorted, he really couldn't stand the scraping of the interior lining.
Was this still the galaxy he knew? He felt something was wrong from the moment Fulgrim changed his usual style. Where had the warp tides taken him?
Scorching air scraped across his face, stiff as a mask, making him grimace in pain.
His whole body ached.
The members of his warband were all dead.
The Lord of Knights had cut the escort ship intruding onto the surface directly in half. All plans turned into empty dreams.
The whole thing, the whole operation, was lost.
He lost.
The thirty thousand gene-seeds he sent Fabius Bile to retrieve—although Bile chose to run away with the goods, although Abaddon intervened in the middle—the Legion that cost him, Eidolon, so much effort to rebuild was gone just like that.
Buried in the ruins of warships because of another one of the Primarch's whims.
As for the remaining living people?
Like a flock of sheep with their bones removed, picked up casually by the Avengers, necks snapped, thrown down casually, and then all dead, without even decent resistance.
Then came now. Fulgrim failed, and he was forced into this hunting game initiated by the Avengers.
He even saw familiar faces among those Avengers.
Ancient Rylanor, Knight-Errant Rubio... warriors who had fought alongside the Emperor on Terra before he even joined the Legion.
Too many familiar faces.
Lunar Wolves, Death Guard, World Eaters.
Those he killed, those he got killed.
They came with the vengeful fury accumulated over ten thousand years, and Eidolon didn't want to fall into their hands.
Because he would really die.
Even Lucius would die if he came here!
He carefully watched those members of the 'Shattered Legions' chasing the remnants of the Emperor's Children disappearing into the breach below, then breathed a sigh of relief and continued to flee.
Eidolon considered finding a shuttle in the ruins.
He had been to several areas, finding only piles of scrap metal.
Crews addicted to pleasure rarely cared about things outside their interests. Those passages that could ensure shuttle and torpedo launches even under Ork ship ramming during the Great Crusade eventually rotted with time along with the machines themselves.
Gold on the outside, rot on the inside.
Bang!
A sudden impact startled the Lord Commander. He jumped up from the floor. Because the movement was too large, the neural needles embedded in his body pierced his spine, making him stumble a few steps.
Things that used to bring him pleasure became instruments of torture.
Only now did Eidolon realize he never could endure pain.
Tremblingly pointing his blade at the area where the sound came from, Eidolon looked closely and found it was just a damaged pressure relief valve.
Probably because his movement jumping over the 'cliff' was a bit big.
Clang~
A gear blown off by high-pressure gas bounced back and forth in the passage, metal clashing echoing in the confined space, finally rolling to Eidolon's feet.
He stared at the finely carved patterns on the gear, then stepped on it, crushing it into the charred, oily carpet.
If he could get out alive, he would tear the souls of those maintenance personnel apart.
Eidolon tightened his grip on his weapon and picked a new location.
A gap below the fault line. Eidolon remembered it was a passage to an abandoned hangar.
He could continue exploring from that location, maybe find some leftover vehicles, and leave.
He began to slide down, carbonized debris peeling off under him.
Suddenly, he heard a sound.
Clank—clank—clank—
That was the sound of metal contacting metal, the sound of a Kill Team marching.
How could there be—
The moment the shadow approached, Eidolon turned abruptly, endured the severe pain, and stumbled towards another passage.
Then his body froze. His body, bloated compared to ordinary Space Marines due to Chaos blessings, began to tremble the moment he passed through the first corridor.
Trembling from pressure, trembling from pain.
Smack!
A hand wrapped in purple and gold landed on the back of his neck on the right side.
Creak—
Knuckles dug deep into the ludicrously decorated armor. Eidolon was in so much pain he almost knelt, knees subconsciously curling.
But that hand forcibly held him standing.
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