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Chapter 39: The Red Angel's Chains
"You cannot treat us with such barbarity!"
The envoy's words cracked like breaking glass, terror rendering his voice shrill and desperate.
"Whatever purpose brings you here, wealth, dominion over our world, name your price. We are reasonable men. Surely we can reach an accord without... without bloodshed."
Ra Endymion stepped through the twisted wreckage of what had once been a proud spire, his auramite boots crushing pulverized rockcrete beneath their weight. Each footfall echoed with the finality of judgment rendered.
 Before him lay the sleeping form of the Twelfth Primarch, and even in slumber, Angron resembled some primordial god of war made flesh.
 His massive frame spoke of power barely contained, muscles like steel cables wrapped in scarred flesh, each breath a promise of violence yet to come.
"The Twelfth was intended as a gift," Ra spoke, his voice carrying the weight of Imperial decree.
"Every world blessed with a Primarch's arrival receives the bounty of the Imperium, resources, technology, elevation from barbarism to civilization. Kosonia was thus transformed. Nuceria could have shared that glorious fate, could have become a jewel in the crown of our domain."
His golden helm turned toward the cowering delegation, and though his features remained hidden, the condemnation in his stance was absolute.
"Instead, you made a slave of my Lord's son."
Ra's gauntleted hand closed around a Butcher's Nail, that blasphemous instrument of neural desecration, its silver filaments gleaming with malevolent purpose.
The envoy flinched as though struck.
"You would have driven this abomination into a Primarch's skull. You would have unmade the Emperor's creation for your amusement."
The general who had so recently stood triumphant upon Angron's prone form now knelt amidst the ruins, his arrogance stripped away like armor before a plasma beam.
The Custodians possessed methods of extracting truth that made conventional interrogation seem like gentle discourse.
 Every secret, every shameful intention, all had been laid bare with surgical precision.
Twelve. A gladiator-slave. The Butcher's Nails poised to lobotomize a son of the Emperor Himself.
That Ra had not already issued the order for Nuceria's complete sterilization spoke only to his restraint.
The envoy's frame shook with barely controlled terror. His mouth worked soundlessly, forming words that died before reaching his lips.
"Such desecration demands blood in equal measure," Ra continued, unmoved by the man's distress.
"By this time tomorrow, the bodies of every slave-master who participated in this atrocity will be delivered here. Should you fail in this simple task, we shall collect them ourselves."
The outcome of these negotiations cast Nuceria's nobility into the depths of despair.
 How swiftly their fortunes had reversed, from masters of ten thousand fates to condemned men awaiting execution.
 The same cruel arbitrariness they had once wielded against their subjects now fell upon them like the shadow of a descending blade.
"What recourse remains to us?"
The words hung in the chamber's recycled air like incense at a funeral. Every family present had wagered fortunes on Angron's victories.
Every house had contributed guards to his eventual capture. Now the golden-armored angels of death had come to collect their due, and none would escape the reckoning.
"We cannot yield to their demands," declared Lord Tarka, his voice steady despite the sweat beading upon his brow.
 "Better that Nuceria burn to ash than we submit to such humiliation. I propose immediate orbital strikes against their position."
"They are formidable, granted, but they possess only a single vessel. War will drain their supplies swiftly, endure their initial assault, and the initiative becomes ours. Then we may dictate terms... or continue the conflict as we see fit."
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the assembly. Fear, it seemed, could birth courage as easily as cowardice.
The vote was unanimous. Nuceria would go to war.
In the depths of Morpheus's embrace, Angron relived the day his chains were first forged.
A child still, he had stood with hundreds of other wretches in that damned pit, iron shackles cutting into young flesh, slave brands still weeping from the cauterizing iron.
The architecture of suffering surrounded them: a great pyramid rising from the pit's center, tiered seats carved into the walls above, filled with the jeering faces of those who found sport in mortal agony.
The rules were elegantly simple. Acid would flood the pit from drainage channels, rising steadily until only the pyramid's apex remained above the caustic tide.
Only one could claim that final sanctuary.
At first, the slaves maintained their humanity. They helped one another climb higher, shared what little strength remained to them, hurled curses at the spectators who fed upon their desperation like carrion birds upon a battlefield.
But as the acid rose, slowly, inexorably, space became precious. Compassion became liability.
The first death shattered whatever unity had existed. The man's screams as the acid dissolved flesh from bone would haunt Angron's dreams for decades hence.
 Above them, the crowd's euphoria reached fever pitch, their applause thunderous as a storm front.
In that moment, young Angron learned a truth that would define his existence: some beings found ecstasy in the suffering of others.
The transformation was immediate. Allies became obstacles. Desperation birthed brutality.
Bodies plunged into the acid with sickening regularity, each accompanied by screams that seemed to please the audience more than any symphony.
Even then, even as a child possessed of transhuman might that could have cleared the pyramid with ease, Angron chose mercy over murder.
Each death wounded him. Each scream carved another scar upon his soul. When he acted, it was for survival alone, never for the joy of ending another's existence.
Of the hundreds who entered the pit, barely a dozen reached the pyramid's upper tiers. Only one could claim the summit.
Angron was that sole survivor. Not through malice, but through a Primarch's refusal to embrace the darkness that his captors demanded.
Escape proved futile. The slave-masters wielded technologies from humanity's golden age, devices that could humble even a son of the Emperor.
Chains of energy and neural subjugation rendered his incredible strength meaningless.
Thus began his servitude in the fighting pits, a living weapon for the masses' entertainment.
The dream shifted, and Angron found himself remembering Oenomaus, the gladiator who became more than trainer, more than ally. Father, in all but blood.
The man who spoke of worlds beyond Nuceria's poisoned sky, who offered comfort when the arena's brutality threatened to break what remained of Angron's humanity.
But dreams have a way of becoming nightmares.
In his sleeping mind, Angron saw himself changed, neural implants driven deep into his skull, sanity bleeding away like life from a severed artery.
He watched in horror as his own hands ended Oenomaus's life, as madness made him desecrate the corpse of the only father he had ever known.
Around the arena, the nobility laughed and wagered, counting profits earned from patricide.
"No!"
"I will not let them take you as well!"
Angron's cry of anguish tore through sleep's veil, dragging him back to consciousness.
His hand moved instinctively to his skull, searching for the dreaded implants that existed only in nightmare's realm.
"You have awakened, Twelfth."
The voice carried authority absolute, not cruel, but implacable as gravity itself. Angron turned to find a figure in gleaming auramite, a warrior whose very presence spoke of power beyond mortal comprehension.
Ruins surrounded them, the shattered remains of some technological spire, debris scattered like offerings before an altar of destruction.
"Who are you?" Angron demanded, his voice hoarse from sleep and torment. "Where are those bastards who held me?"
"I am Emp, "
Ra's words were cut short as another Custodian descended from the broken heights above, his landing causing the rubble to shift beneath augmented weight.
"Ra. Missile formations detected. Inbound."
Ra's helm turned toward the gaping wound in the spire's wall, his enhanced senses already tracking the approaching threat.
In the distance, exhaust trails painted the sky with lines of impending doom.
"I know not what delusion grants these fools the courage to bare fangs at the Imperium," Ra spoke, his tone carrying dark amusement.
"Signal the fleet. Deploy all available forces. This world requires... cleansing."
He turned back to Angron, drawing a massive power axe from his belt, a weapon whose disruption field hummed with barely contained destruction.
"Twelfth, there is no time for lengthy discourse. Take up your weapon. Battle comes to us."
Ra raised his Guardian Spear, and from its blessed mechanisms sprang a dome of coherent energy, a barrier of light that could turn aside the fury of stars themselves.
The other Custodians followed suit, their combined shields creating an overlapping aegis of protection.
The weapons of the Legio Custodes represented the pinnacle of human achievement, technologies that merged the wisdom of multiple eras into instruments of divine wrath.
Each Guardian Spear could serve as both devastating weapon and impenetrable shield, crafted by artisans whose skills bordered on the supernatural.
Their shields formed an inverted bowl of radiance, sheltering all within from the storm about to break.
Seconds later, hundreds of missiles shrieked earthward, their exhaust creating a canopy of fire above the ruins.
The explosions came like the fists of angry gods, nuclear fire blossoming in perfect spheres of annihilation, turning sand to glass and air to plasma.
The heat was such that it should have reduced flesh to vapor and bone to ash.
"Are they dead?"
"Those warheads carry compressed fusion charges, enough destructive force to atomize a hab-block. They may be superhuman, but they are still creatures of flesh. Nothing could survive such bombardment."
High above, in the safety of their orbital platforms, Nuceria's nobility watched through augur feeds and sensor displays. Their hands trembled as they waited for confirmation of their enemy's destruction.
When the smoke cleared to reveal twenty figures in gleaming gold, and beside them the towering form of Angron himself, despair settled over the watchers like a burial shroud.
They knew, with the certainty of the condemned, that their world's fate was sealed.
From the void came judgment.
The Imperial warships hanging in Nuceria's orbit spoke with voices of plasma and promethium.
Lance batteries carved through the planet's defenses like scalpels through flesh, while macro-cannons reduced military installations to craters of molten stone.
Torpedo spreads bloomed against population centers, each explosion a star birthed in violence and dying in seconds.
Fighter craft swarmed from the fleet's bellies like insects from a disturbed hive, their engines screaming as they dove toward the surface.
Behind them came drop-ships and assault landers, carrying the instruments of the Imperium's wrath.
Within half an hour, every major city on Nuceria burned.
Angron moved through the chaos like an avatar of vengeance, his path leading inevitably toward the slave pens where his brothers and sisters in bondage awaited liberation.
Each step carried him closer to the reckoning that had been too long delayed.
His first target was clear: the Tarka estate, where his torment had begun.
The wheel had come full circle. The slave had become the destroyer.
And Nuceria would burn for its sins.
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