Chapter 462: The Nightbringer's Bitter Defeat
It was failing.
The entity grew weaker, more sluggish, its ancient cosmic intellect fracturing into disjointed thoughts.
BOOM!
An explosion tore through the heart of the Calibanite jungle. A massive shockwave dispersed the unnatural fog, revealing the center of the impact: a C'tan Shard that had blundered into this metaphysical trap.
The Nightbringer slammed into a sentinel tree—a titan of wood that had stood for eons—and crashed into the root-choked soil, scattering the ancient mulch and biological remains of the forest floor.
Ironclad knights in deep emerald plate closed in.
These were the Companions of the Inner Circle, guards whom the Lion had once declared would never be replaced. They were warriors of the Great Crusade, veterans of a thousand compliance actions, carrying the weight of ancient traditions and the glory of the First Legion. To stand in such proximity to a Shard of the Nightbringer and not instantly succumb to the touch of death required more than mere transhuman endurance; it required the blessing of the Throne.
Their consummate skill allowed them to manifest the myths woven for them within the Empyrean. Their blades, which had tasted the blood of star-gods in ages past, thrust and parried, carving grooves into the Nightbringer's necrodermis shell.
Psychic light, stark and clinical, flickered around them. With every surge of Warp energy and every physical strike, they disrupted the Shard's connection to the laws of reality. Specifically, the Nightbringer's authority—the power to command any existence to literally cease all activity—was being systematically neutralized.
For the C'tan, these attacks were like a sequence of concussion grenades detonating against its consciousness, leaving the fragment disoriented and reeling.
In any other circumstance, the solution would be simple: eradicate the vermin. The individual power of a C'tan stood at the apex of the material universe.
But here, the Primarch walked with them.
To be exposed beneath the shadow of the First Hunter in this mist-shrouded jungle invited only one conclusion.
Dark Angels, wreathed in golden radiance, descended upon the Nightbringer like vengeful thunderbolts. One warrior, in a display of supreme defiance, drove his armored boot into the ancient god, treading it back into the mire as their blades began their rhythmic slaughter.
Elite warriors of the First Legion, though severed from their home by ten millennia, saw only duty and the enemy. Their fury was a cold, disciplined tide. Artificer-forged steel sang through the air, washing over the Nightbringer's living metal hull like a relentless storm.
The Nightbringer, struggling to rise from the trench, was forced back.
To the star-god, these rune-encrusted suits of plate were an eyesore; the hymns and incantations echoing in its ears were a foul, sensory filth.
It felt itself diminishing. Every slash of a power sword peeled away a layer of its essence. While it could still focus on the immediate combat, it felt its very identity beginning to hollow out.
With whom did I strike a bargain?
Mortarion, I think.
And who... who is Mortarion?
...
SCREECH—
The Shard let out a piercing, transcendent howl. The Warp energy clinging to the "daemons" before it dissipated instantly. Swinging its necrodermis scythe in a wide arc, the Nightbringer cleaved through three Astartes in a single blow.
Its final obstacle was a towering Champion clad in Tartaros-pattern Terminator plate, wearing a simple iron crown. The Shard exerted its full cosmic might, shattering the warrior's blade and snapping his neck with a sickening crunch. The Nightbringer drove its scythe through the fallen warrior's chest, pinning him to the earth.
Energy flared along the scythe's edge, forcing the warrior's limbs into the violent tremors of death. But as soon as the Nightbringer withdrew its weapon, the warrior's body knit itself back together, restored by the unnatural vitality of the jungle.
Endless! It is endless!
Just as it had been during the duel with Khaine in the War in Heaven.
Watching the Dark Angel draw a fresh blade from nowhere, the Nightbringer was haunted by a recursive nightmare. The scythe in its hand groaned as if in pain.
Warriors blessed by Isha were like leeches—they would not die. Even if their bodies were broken with exhaustive effort, they would simply rise again within this Warp-stained domain.
That ancient war had ended with the Nightbringer's scythe being banished and its physical form shattered; Khaine, in turn, had been infected by a Shard of Death, forever fearing his own end.
The Warp possessed its own power to subvert reality. These humans were not like the Eldar—players equipped with a full suite of cheat codes—but with enough "sacrifices," the Immaterium could replicate the miracles of the star-gods.
And the opponent had more than just numbers.
The Nightbringer reached for the neck of a familiar-looking Dark Angel, intending to plant the seed of necrotizing death as it had once done to Eldar heroes, but a massive blade intercepted its hand.
A presence, more powerful and more composed, stood before it.
The Nightbringer recoiled in shock at this unheralded assault, its fury stoked by the failure of its own godhood.
The Lion emerged from the mist, fully armored and silent as a machine of slaughter. He caught the Nightbringer's alien weapon on his guard, his focus absolute and suffocating.
How does he always find the opening?!
More blades, forged with techniques that had scarred its body millions of years ago, hacked down, scattering the Shard's gathered authority once more.
The Nightbringer was incensed. This opponent was a "lesser god," yet he possessed an intimate familiarity with the Shard's combat rhythms and power application. Whenever the Nightbringer attempted to break the deadlock by killing the warriors who formed the ritual circle, the Lion was there to intervene.
The Lion poured his strength into protecting his sons, sacrificing his own offensive opportunities to ensure they could continue "bleeding" the Shard. It was like watching a pride of lions slowly taking down a cornered elephant, one superficial wound at a time.
He was patient, unhurried, adapting to every shift in the Nightbringer's posture as if he had fought this specific star-god ten thousand times before.
A C'tan was not a creature of the Warp. It could not replenish itself with Empyrean energy. When shattered, it remained shattered. As fragments were separated, the consciousness of the C'tan became increasingly dim and primitive. This was one of the reasons the Eldar, led by Khaine, had triumphed in the past.
But back then, the Necrons were the C'tan's slaves. If a body was destroyed, they would simply forge a new necrodermis shell and inject the consciousness back in. Now, the Shard was a prisoner of its own fragmented form.
Though this era held no shadow of those ancient days, how did this strange god understand its nature so perfectly?
Just like Khaine—
Wait... who was Khaine?
Hatred extended like a shadow, only to be replaced by a brief, agonizing confusion. But the Nightbringer, used to being shattered by the Necrons at the end of the War in Heaven, quickly adapted to the mental fog.
It cast aside the irrelevant thoughts and focused on the enemy before it.
And that cursed, flickering movement.
CRACK!
With a silent snarl of frustration, the Lion's sword, The Lion Sword, sheared through a massive tree instead of the C'tan.
The Nightbringer rolled clumsily through the dirt to avoid a vertical strike that would have split it from head to toe. Realizing it had lost several more pounds of necrodermis mass, the Shard felt as if it were perpetually drowning in the Lion's shadow.
Eight days of ceaseless, grinding warfare.
It had come seeking a feast, and had instead plunged into a cesspool of attrition.
No—
Confusion gripped the Nightbringer again.
Why did I come here?
In the preceding days, the Nightbringer had lost count of how many assaults it had repelled. But now, as its consciousness blurred, it began to lose the very reason for its presence.
The defenders' resistance finally broke the Shard's resolve.
It wasn't just the annoying Dark Angels or the physical "Lesser God" before it. There were the Watchers in the Dark—familiar little robed things—and the entities formed of pure psychic essence that served this new deity.
A tide of strange gods, fanatical believers, and an ever-growing horde of grotesque daemons within this domain...
This conglomerate host had begun to blur the barrier of the Veil, dragging the defenders' long-range weapons—which previously couldn't touch a star-god—into effective range. Roaring Daemon Engines began to lob malefic shells at the Shard.
They held the numerical advantage. They held the fire superiority. And they felt the time was right.
"Come then! Old Ones! And your wretched, inferior spawn!"
Rising once more from the dirt, the Nightbringer faced the encroaching army and bellowed:
"I shall grant you the gift of Oblivion!"
It felt the authority of Death coiling in its hands. With a simple gesture, it could erase these lower lifeforms. It felt the tether between these sapient beings and the Sea of Souls, and it prepared to plant the seeds of extinction within them.
It was as if the War in Heaven had returned.
With a wave of its hand, it felt it had snuffed out countless lives, yet the enemy remained undiminished.
It was time. It would bury these pests once and for all!
The Nightbringer raised its hand again, forgetting that it was still reeling from the impact of Khaine's artifacts.
It was time.
Noticing the Nightbringer was beginning to slurring its cosmic intent, its movements becoming predictable and desperate, the Lion moved.
Using himself as bait, the Lion tested the Shard's defenses several times. Then, he lunged forward, seizing the Nightbringer's necrodermis throat and hurling it away from the support fire. The Lion's form blurred, teleporting to the other end of the forest to intercept the Shard's attempt to flee. His blade pierced through the opponent's chest.
The others did not hesitate. They swarmed the fallen god, ignoring their own safety, using every ounce of their strength to land a strike. Each knight stepped forward with grim joy, hacking at the star-god just to shave away a fraction of its power—a minor contribution to a victory that was now within their grasp.
"Excellently fought," Cegorach chuckled, hidden behind Ramesses' psychic veil. Beside them, the Harlequins—the last shining remnants of a dying race—stood watch over the battlefield.
If the Dark Angels had faltered, Ramesses would have stepped in.
After all, he had been worshipped by the Eldar in "The Park" for quite some time, and no one understood the Immaterium better than he—or at least, no one was better at hijacking the Eldar's local area network.
"Much easier than anticipated," Ramesses remarked.
The star-god had been beaten into a state of cosmic senility.
While studying the protocols for Guilliman's resurrection, Ramesses had been scouting the battlefield.
A C'tan Shard could stabilize reality around itself and was highly sensitive to Warp signatures. Tossing a free-roaming Shard into the Warp to destroy it was nearly impossible.
Fortunately, the Lion had Caliban. By manifesting a ritual circle in realspace to cage the Nightbringer, the "stinking Warp-dwellers" wouldn't have to beg for a foothold in the material world; they could fight the star-god on their own terms.
"It is but a fragment. No matter how 'complete,' it is still a shard," Cegorach said, his spirits high. He had seen that the Lion could truly hold his own against the Nightbringer.
The four strange, inscrutable "Evil Entities" of the Dawnbreakers were outliers, but seeing the Lion lead his Dark Angels to "solo" a C'tan Shard—even with Eldar training and artifacts—was heartening news for the Laughing God.
"Indeed. It seems that with sufficient sacrifices and reliable vassals, a Primarch-level combatant can reliably contain and defeat a C'tan Shard," Ramesses agreed, watching the Nightbringer pinned beneath the Lion's boot, too weak to resist.
The greatest flaw of a shattered star-god was that its passive abilities became active ones. Under the EMP-like bombardment of Khaine's artifacts, it couldn't even trigger a single cosmic skill.
Ramesses didn't rush to collect the fragments that had been sliced into "mincemeat," nor did he immediately erase the fragmented consciousness within.
With so many witnesses and high security, he needed to test whether a human army, led by a stable Primarch like the Lion, could maintain short-term containment of a C'tan Shard.
After all, there were nine Loyalist Primarchs, and only four Dawnbreakers.
When the others were eventually retrieved, they would all be put to work. Especially someone like the Khan, who already understood the essence of his own power; they would be sent out to safeguard the Warp and realspace security of entire sectors. They couldn't all be like a certain someone who needed to be rescued every time they were targeted by a Warp-beheading strike or a material-universe duel.
With the data gathered from the Lion, future Primarchs would have a standardized procedure for dealing with such monstrosities.
Furthermore, since every Primarch was highly bound to their homeworld, Ramesses planned to carve out a piece of each world to serve as a mobile domain—a home-field advantage they could carry into any battle.
Hm, I suppose I should thank Erda.
Although the Mother of Primarchs had committed her fair share of blunders—postpartum depression leading to her scattering the Emperor's hand—her providing each Primarch with a homeworld fit perfectly into the Dawnbreakers' long-term strategic deployment.
Ramesses quickly noted down his straying thoughts.
While formulating plans based on these sudden inspirations, he signaled Arthur that work could begin on his end.
Arthur was currently stationed at the Pharos beacon on Sotha. Corax, after escorting them, had rushed there to prepare for the containment of the Supreme C'tan housed within.
With the experience gained from the Lion's battle, they would essentially be following a proven template.
As for the Nurgle domain previously overseen by the 19th...
Ramesses glanced at the Warp.
Good grief. Tzeentch and Nurgle were still tearing into each other with abandon.
The current strategy was not to push Nurgle too hard, lest the Plague God do something truly desperate.
They were all of the Four. In the Warp, Nurgle couldn't do much to Tzeentch, but he could certainly make life difficult for a Lesser God who dared to linger in his Garden.
Nurgle's state was currently "off," showing a disregard for consequences. The Dawnbreakers wouldn't gamble with lives; if an accident occurred, there would be no one left to weep for them.
The troops at the "Warp Probe" had withdrawn. Currently, the Custodes and the Sisters of Silence held the gate, observing the conflict.
According to reports, the pressure was minimal. The daemons of Tzeentch and Nurgle were focused on each other. Tzeentch was working surprisingly hard, almost as if the Lord of Change cared more about the outcome of this war than the Dawnbreakers did.
For now, everything hinged on the duel between Karna and Mortarion—to see upon whom the fires of war ignited by Nurgle would ultimately fall.
As the Lion finished dismantling the Nightbringer and began the recovery process under Trazyn's guidance, Ramesses pondered if there were any omissions in the Immaterium.
It wasn't complex. Everyone was waiting.
For the humanity that now worshipped the Angel in massive numbers, Karna's victory was crucial.
To the humans of this age, Arthur was the insurance that everything could be reset; Ramesses was the pioneer of Warp knowledge; Romulus ensured their every hypothesis was grounded in reality.
And Karna was the Torch.
He was responsible for taking the combined efforts of the other three and wielding them in a way that was widely accepted and practical for this universe. In an age where no living thing could truly escape the Warp, he handed a torch to every human living in the dark forest.
The battle with the C'tan proved that a Primarch possessed the power to independently solve the most terrifying threats of the material world. The struggle between Karna and Mortarion—or rather, against Nurgle—would determine whether that torch could finally be passed into the hands of all mankind.
The Emperor was waiting. A humanity craving revenge was waiting.
Waiting to see how brightly this fire would burn.
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