Chapter 82: The Thunder Bender
Machine-spirits sang as twin cogitator arrays blazed to life within the Primarchs' neural pathways.
Lion El'Jonson felt familiar algorithms awakening in his mind. Beside him, Leman Russ's enhanced consciousness registered activation protocols flooding through his awareness.
[Anomalous cosmic parameters analysed. Underlying code reconstruction complete. Dark Engine officially activated. Related ability programs loaded.]
[Great Wolf Engine officially activated. Combat protocols engaged.]
The transmissions echoed through their minds simultaneously. Both Primarchs felt a surge of satisfaction as their capabilities were fully unleashed.
The Gene Engines had shed their final restraints.
"Mortal, choose surrender or death."
The voice carried millennia of arrogance. Both Primarchs turned their attention to the figure before them.
Zeus stood in golden armour, his lower body clad in white martial robes. Lightning danced between his fingers as he conjured a weapon from storm essence itself.
Russ studied their opponent with a hunter's calculating eye. The being's attire spoke of old powers, civilisations that had claimed divinity before humanity reached for stars.
[Target analysis initiated. Designation: God-King Zeus. Member classification: Divine Council, governing body of the City of Omnipotence.]
"And this passes for divinity?" Russ murmured, lip curling in contempt.
The Great Crusade recorded numerous encounters with countless xenos, who claimed to be gods. Each had proven as mortal as any other when faced with Imperial truth.
"You dare blaspheme against divine order?"
Zeus's fury erupted in electrical cascades. His eyes blazed with contained storm power. Lightning writhed across his form like energy serpents.
The weapon in his grasp, Thunder Lightning itself, pulsed with barely controlled destruction as he raised it skyward.
The heavens answered his call. Lightning descended in torrents. Each bolt carried a city-levelling force. The air screamed as electrical discharge sought its targets.
[Enemy weapon analysis initiated. Designation: Thunder Lightning, artefact classification confirmed.]
[Allocating processing power. Establishing a comprehensive analysis model.]
[Thunder Lightning properties: Lightning energy matrix, atmospheric manipulation protocols, genetic binding detected, soul-lock engaged.]
[Concept Modification Module activated. Initiating ownership transfer protocols.]
[Unsealing protective matrices: 1%... 2%...]
For the first time in eons, Zeus felt his weapon resist him. Thunder Lightning, forged in cosmic fires and bound to his essence through rituals older than stars, it trembled against his grip.
The impossibility sent confusion through his divine consciousness.
He hurled the weapon with all his strength, unwilling to contemplate the implications.
Thunder Lightning screamed through the air, trailing destruction. The bolt struck both Primarchs with world-colliding force, sending their forms hurtling across the crystal plaza.
[Light Energy Protection: Activated]
[Electrical Discharge Negation: Activated]
[Anti-Concept Strike Barrier: Engaged]
The Gene Engines responded with mechanical precision. Protective protocols engaged microseconds before impact. What should have been annihilation became an inconvenience. The Emperor's technology proved superior to primitive divine fury.
"Feel divine wrath, mortals!"
Zeus caught his returning weapon, rage mounting as he witnessed their survival. How could mere flesh endure thunder that had shattered titans?
He raised Thunder Lightning again, calling upon powers predating human civilisation.
[Analysis complete. Control of Thunder Lightning: Acquired.]
As the weapon descended a second time, Russ leapt with inhuman grace. His ceramite-enhanced fingers closed around the crackling shaft. He felt the weapon's spirit immediately submit to his will.
Zeus stared in complete incomprehension. His weapon, his birthright, rested calmly in alien hands as though it had found its true master.
"Now this," Russ said, his face splitting into a predatory grin that revealed enhanced canines, "is a proper weapon."
[Artifact: Thunder Lightning—Complete analysis achieved.]
[Thunder Strike: Single-target lightning summoning protocols]
[Thunderous Fury: Multi-target engagement parameters]
[Divine Punishment Protocol: Area saturation bombardment systems]
"Divine Punishment."
The words left Russ's lips like a death sentence. Thunder Lightning blazed with power, dwarfing its previous displays. The sky above the City of Omnipotence split open like a wound.
Lightning descended in sheets. Each bolt was guided by a Primarch's will, one who had tamed the weapon in moments where its previous wielder required centuries.
Zeus bore the brunt of his own divine wrath. Bolt after bolt sent his golden form tumbling across shattered marble.
When he regained his footing, his face showed a being whose understanding of reality had crumbled. The weapon he had mastered through the ages now obeyed another with perfect submission.
Had the Cyclopes forged it wrong? Had he been found wanting by his own birthright?
The questions ate at his psyche like acid. It reminded him of discovering Hera's betrayal, how she had feigned disinterest for millennia until the right mortal awakened passions Zeus never suspected she possessed.
Divine punishment consumed the City of Omnipotence with ruthless efficiency. Palaces that had stood since the dawn of consciousness crumbled into smoking ruins. Temple guards with power and authority were reduced to scattered atoms in lightning's embrace.
From their sanctuaries came other gods, drawn by the scent of genuine threats.
They emerged like living nightmares given form. The blue-skinned God of Magic with pristine white wings. Quetzalcoatl in bronze magnificence. Lion-goddess Sekhmet with predatory grace.
Ninny-Nonny of the Kronan worlds. Bastet of the panther-cults. The Moonlight God with glowing wings. Each being whose blessing could elevate mortals to superhuman status. Their combined might could sterilise galaxies.
Against lesser foes, their united pantheon would have been unstoppable. Against Primarchs with fully awakened Gene Engines, divine authority proved insufficient.
The battle that followed was less a conflict than a systematic dismantling. Lion El'Jonson moved with lethal precision. His blade-work was a study in perfect violence as he claimed Ares's war-sword and turned it against his divine kin.
The weapon sang through the air in a perfect arc. It pierced Bastet's divine form before separating her head from her shoulders in a spray of golden blood.
The panther-goddess's corpse struck ruined ground with finality echoing across dimensions.
Far away on a lost colony world, T'Challa felt the divine connection that defined his bloodline suddenly cease.
The heart-shaped herb's power, drawn from Bastet's essence across dimensional veils, guttered like a flame in a vacuum, as generations of accumulated strength were drained from his enhanced physiology in heartbeats.
"What happened?" he whispered to the empty air, unaware that his patron deity lay headless in a realm beyond imagination. "Did the Goddess abandon Wakanda?"
The City of Omnipotence burned around the two Primarchs as they carved through divine opposition with methodical brutality.
Zeus's Thunder Lightning had become their instrument of destruction. It turned the gods' seat of power into a charnel house of smoking rubble and cooling corpses.
When surviving deities finally retreated to lick wounds and plot revenge, Lion and Russ commandeered one of the pilgrim vessels that had brought worshippers to witness divine glory.
The ship's engines screamed as they drove it beyond safe parameters. They fled into cosmic deep while gods howled impotent fury behind them.
In the Shadow Realm, where colour was a forgotten concept, three figures materialised from a dimensional breach.
The Emperor of Mankind stood between His companions. His golden presence was the only thing retaining radiance in this place of eternal grey.
"You will provide an explanation," the Emperor said. His voice carried absolute authority as He turned to Raven. "Where are my sons? Where are all of them?"
Raven lowered his head with genuine contrition. The easy humour he displayed elsewhere was nowhere to be found.
"Big Guy, you know dimensional travel isn't exactly precise," he said, falling back into casual speech patterns that marked him as distinctly non-Imperial.
"Tzeentch followed us through and caused some complications. But the Primarchs are fine. Scattered, but safe. We just need to track them down."
"The Ruinous Powers have discovered our methods," the Emperor observed. His tone was grim with implication. "Our next translation will require more comprehensive preparation."
"What kind of preparation?" Raven asked.
The Emperor's response was cut short as his physical form began to dissolve. Golden light scattered like windblown sand. The cohesion holding His material presence together stopped.
Raven stared in shock for several heartbeats before comprehension dawned.
"Oh, crap, I forgot about the purple nutjob and his finger-snapping!" His voice carried genuine alarm as he watched the last motes of the Emperor's form fade. "
"Big Guy? Tell me you're not actually dead! Please tell me you've got some backup plan for this!"
"What the fuck will I do without you, man, BIG GUYYY!!"
The Shadow Realm offered no answers. Only endless grey silence of a dimension where hope itself had been drained of colour.