Chapter 231: The Eternal War
"Disgusting," Vulkan said, his features twisting at the sight of the abomination before him.
The Great Unclean One lunged first, but Vulkan deflected the blow with his warhammer and brought the weapon down upon its forehead in a crushing counterstrike.
Rotten flesh burst outward in wet chunks.
The daemon staggered backward, its cry wet and gurgling.
"What a waste. Crawl back to your garden and wallow in filth," sneered another daemon, its blood-red wings spread wide.
It descended like a meteor, battle-axe wreathed in savage flames.
"My name is Ka'bandha. Remember it well, your descendants shall carve it upon your tombstone."
Vulkan's form flickered like a disrupted hololith before reconstituting several meters away. Though the Dragonfire Engine's reality-warping protocols could not unmake these creatures of the Immaterium, they granted him unprecedented mobility across the battlefield.
"Your name means nothing to me, daemon," Vulkan replied. "I do not bury corpses, I cast them into stars."
Golden fire blazed in Vulkan's eyes as he launched himself forward, warhammer arcing toward Ka'bandha's skull.
The Bloodthirster caught the blow on its axe, but the sheer force drove it to one knee, armor groaning.
"Aren't you in the same position, Ka'bandha?" the Great Unclean One rasped, its words as corroded as its blade.
It charged Vulkan from behind, a rusted sword cleaving through the air.
At that moment, a third daemon, bat-winged and serpentine, its flesh disturbingly smooth, dove from above to join the assault.
On the far side, a twin-headed avian horror channeled the raw stuff of the warp, hurling cascading sorceries at the Primarch.
To the mortals of Cadia, the war between Imperium and Chaos was a conflict of gods made manifest.
The sky tore open. Mountains became plains. Rivers turned to scorched glass.
Everything they had built crumbled to ash.
Not that their works held any worth. The temples and shrines they'd raised to the Ruinous Powers were thorns that needed burning, not spoils to be counted by any Imperial statistician.
Only the humans themselves held value.
Every other living thing on Cadia had already been reduced to charred bones in the crucible of this divine war. No lesser creature could hope to survive when immortal powers clashed.
The entire world had become a warzone. Horizon to horizon, the flames of battle raged without cease.
The Dark Gods had sent their champions, daemons of terrible power, the world-ending evils from myths whispered across a thousand civilizations. A primitive world facing even one such creature would collapse into extinction.
For ignorant mortals, any single monster in this conflict would be an insurmountable nightmare. Only a civilization as mighty as the Imperium could face these apocalyptic horrors, and the malevolent entities that spawned them, without flinching.
Numien and his Astartes brothers roared their oaths to the Primarch, their voices raw with fury and devotion.
They formed a living wall around Vulkan, fighting without respite.
Power weapons hummed and crackled in their hands as they carved through the daemon tide threatening their gene-sire.
"Hold the line! No retreat!" Numien bellowed.
His brothers answered with blood and bolter fire.
Antimatter shells screamed into the daemon horde, each detonation tearing apart clusters of writhing abominations. When the warp-spawn closed to melee range, Numien's power sword, wreathed in crackling energy fields, carved through corrupted flesh with sharp, wet sounds.
The battlefield roared with the collision of human technology and warp sorcery.
A daemon raised its gnarled hands, scarlet smoke coiling between its fingers to form a two-handed blade as tall as an Astartes.
It brought the weapon down in an executioner's arc, intent on cleaving Numien in two.
He caught the blow on his sword, the clash of blades ringing out. His other hand swung his bolter up to press against the creature's torso.
"Die!"
He pulled the trigger.
The daemon exploded in a spray of ichor and warp-stuff.
A thunderous horn sounded across the battlefield.
Titans advanced from the rear lines, walking mountains that shook the earth with every step. The weapon batteries mounted on their shoulders and arms fired in relentless cycles, unleashing torrents of devastation upon the enemy.
The ground trembled. Mountains cracked.
They were destruction incarnate. The echo of slaughter. The heralds of ending and death.
When greater daemons approached, the Titans activated their power lances and chainswords, engaging the abominations in close combat that could be felt across continents.
The Imperial Army joined the assault, fighter craft, battle tanks, Knight walkers, all pouring their fury into the enemy.
The battlefield became a storm of fire and iron.
Artillery painted the sky in shades of violence.
The roar of Imperial guns drowned out even the hideous hissing of the daemons, sounds like billions of serpents shrieking in unison.
At the center of the maelstrom stood Vulkan.
The Primarch fought four Greater Daemons simultaneously, the Dragonfire Engine flooding his transhuman frame with reality-shaping power. Terrible energies coursed through him, causing his armored form to blaze with radiance like a descending angel of wrath.
The warhammer in his grip erupted with searing light. Each swing shattered dimensions, each impact resonating across the immaterium itself.
A wall of dragonfire materialized, intercepting the twin-headed sorcerer's eldritch assault.
Vulkan's hammer met Ka'bandha's axe with a sound like dying stars. The shockwave rippled outward, flattening everything in its path.
"Back!" Vulkan roared.
The Bloodthirster stumbled backward under the savage force, its hooves gouging trenches in the earth.
The Keeper of Secrets hadn't even reached striking distance when the firewall erupted outward, hurling it back with contemptuous ease.
The Great Unclean One's corroded blade descended toward Vulkan's head.
The Primarch shifted backward, the blade whistling past. Then he swung his warhammer in a blazing arc, wreathed in fires hot enough to unmake matter.
The Great Unclean One howled in agony.
It retreated rather than face the Dragonfire's wrath directly.
Vulkan pursued without mercy. The power of ten suns ignited in his grasp, smashing into the daemon's pestilent bulk.
A mushroom cloud of golden light bloomed upward.
The Great Unclean One shrieked in torment. The pus within its body boiled away. Its eyeballs liquefied and ran down its ravaged face in steaming rivulets. The Plague Flies and Nurglings festering in its pustules screamed once before burning to ash.
Ka'bandha charged with axe and whip, arriving just in time to save its fellow champion from annihilation.
Vulkan blocked the axe with his hammer.
Infinite power erupted from the point of contact, vast, relentless, unstoppable.
Ka'bandha snarled, daemonic flames roaring hotter around its form.
Its whip lashed out like lightning.
Vulkan dodged aside, then caught the weapon mid-strike. The barbed lash tore into his armor, biting through ceramite to rend the flesh beneath. Crimson blood welled up, hissing where it touched the burning warp-fire.
For a heartbeat, Primarch and daemon locked in a contest of raw strength, muscles straining, wills clashing.
But Vulkan's power exceeded even Ka'bandha's.
He yanked the whip hard. The Bloodthirster stumbled forward, balance lost.
Vulkan released the whip and brought his hammer around in a devastating arc, striking the daemon's skull with apocalyptic force.
Ka'bandha's horn shattered. Cracks spiderwebbed across its skull.
It screamed in genuine pain.
The daemon retreated on unsteady legs, barely keeping its feet.
As it tried to raise its head, Vulkan's fist caught it square in the muzzle, sending the massive creature flying backward through the air.
[End of Chapter]