Chapter 232: Wings of Wrath
"Damn you!"
Ka'Bandha's roar shook the air, black smoke and bloodied spittle spraying from his maw.
"I will tear you apart, whelp of the False Emperor!"
A Greater Daemon of Slaanesh seized the moment, lunging at the Primarch from above. Vulkan sidestepped with transhuman grace, his gauntleted hand snapping out to catch the daemon's serpentine tail. With a grunt of effort, he swung the shrieking creature in a wide arc.
Bang!
Bang!
The Greater Daemon's body smashed repeatedly into Cadia's tortured earth, each impact carving deep fissures into the ground. With a final heave, Vulkan hurled the dazed creature directly into the Lord of Change that had begun weaving sorcerous flames between its taloned hands.
The two daemons tumbled across the battlefield in a tangle of limbs and wings.
The Great Unclean One lumbered forward to assist, but a War-Titan had already locked its targeting arrays upon the bloated horror. Brilliant lance-fire erupted from the god-machine's weapon mounts, engulfing the Plague daemon in a miniature sun that devoured the lesser Nurglings swarming at its feet.
The Great Unclean One bellowed in agony, its rotting flesh sloughing away in sheets. Only the Empyrean's protection spared it from complete annihilation; without that warp-born resilience, the Titan's fury would have scoured it from existence.
Vulkan charged at Ka'Bandha, his thunder hammer raised high. Each blow carried the force of colliding worlds, reality itself shuddering beneath the Primarch's wrath.
"You cannot kill me, son of the Anathema," Ka'Bandha snarled. "But I will end you."
Vulkan's hammer descended again, the impact driving Ka'Bandha back several steps, his hooves gouging trenches in the ground.
"I am eternal!" the Bloodthirster roared. "I cannot be destroyed!"
"Then let me test that claim." Vulkan's voice resonated with controlled fury. "Let us discover whether you plague-bearers, deceivers, blood-mad butchers, and perverse tempters can truly die."
Ka'Bandha attempted to evade the next strike, but Vulkan's boot caught him in the chest, sending the Greater Daemon crashing to the ground.
Before the creature could rise, the Primarch was upon him, hammer swinging upward in a devastating arc that shattered Ka'Bandha's jaw into fragments of bone and warp-stuff.
"You possess strength worthy of the Blood God's notice," Ka'Bandha hissed through his ruined mouth, his words distorted and wheezing. "Perhaps... we might parley."
"We can talk in the hells you crawled from."
Vulkan's response was ice-cold. He slammed Ka'Bandha down and pinned the thrashing daemon beneath his armored weight. The Bloodthirster's claws scrabbled uselessly against ceramite, his great wings beating frantically.
"How dare you bear wings" Vulkan's tone turned quiet and deadly. "Wings like those my brother possesses."
With deliberate savagery, the Primarch seized Ka'Bandha's pinions and tore.
The sound echoed like canvas ripping on a monumental scale. Ka'Bandha's scream was inhuman, a sound of pure agony that cracked battlements and sent mortal soldiers reeling.
Warp-fire gushed from the ruined stumps as the Greater Daemon convulsed beneath Vulkan's grip.
"This is the price of your hubris," the Primarch said. "This is what befalls those who dare threaten humanity."
He planted his boot on the barely-conscious daemon's chest.
"Be wiser in your next manifestation."
Vulkan brought his hammer down, and Ka'Bandha's skull exploded.
The Slaaneshi daemon that had been cast aside earlier recovered and surged forward, its serpentine lower body coiling around the Primarch with crushing strength.
"Die, slave of the Corpse-God!"
Pure malice twisted the daemon's features.
"You can never defeat the Warp, not in ages past, not in ages yet to come."
The coils tightened, fracture-lines spider-webbing across Vulkan's armor plating. The daemon raised its blade to drive it through the Primarch's throat—
Vulkan's hand shot up and caught the weapon mid-thrust.
Empyreal corruption clashed against technological mastery, generating cascades of electrical discharge that arced between them.
"You wish to kill me?"
Vulkan's voice held nothing but contempt. His grip was unbreakable, keeping the daemon's sword completely immobile despite the creature's straining efforts.
The Greater Daemon's eyes widened. It extended its forked tongue, hissing, exuding a cloying stench of sweet rot and corruption. Every fiber of its being strained to force the blade forward that final inch—
It could not.
Slowly, inexorably, Vulkan pushed the weapon aside.
"A pity for you," he said. "You cannot."
His thunder hammer blazed with intensifying radiance, thick tendrils of lightning coiling around its head. Flames erupted across the Primarch's form, wreathing him in fire that burned with the purity of a forge-heart.
Even through its protective scales, the Slaaneshi daemon's flesh sizzled and charred. It shrieked and released its hold, desperately launching itself skyward.
Realizing it stood no chance in direct combat, the creature beat its wings frantically to gain altitude. When it looked back to assess the distance gained, Vulkan had vanished. Only expanding ripples in the air marked where he had stood.
"I can fly as well."
The words came from directly behind.
The Greater Daemon whipped its head around to witness something impossible—Vulkan, wreathed in flame, his eyes burning like molten gold. Wings of coiling fire spread from his back, each feather a tongue of living flame. He resembled nothing so much as a dragon granted human form.
The daemon had no time to react.
Vulkan's hammer struck with the force of an orbital bombardment, sending the creature hurtling earthward like a meteor. It cratered into Cadia's surface with bone-shattering impact, the ground buckling outward in concentric rings.
"Perish, tempter."
Vulkan raised his hammer overhead. Power gathered within the weapon, erupting in light so brilliant it briefly turned Cadia's perpetual twilight into blazing noon.
Then he struck.
BOOM!
The detonation was cataclysmic. The Greater Daemon of Slaanesh was reduced to ash and dissipating warp-essence in an instant.
Vulkan emerged from the smoking crater, hammer in hand, ash drifting from his shoulders like snow.
"Now," he said, turning his gaze upon the remaining Greater Daemons, "it is your turn."
The Lord of Change recognized its peril and attempted to flee, but Vulkan's speed exceeded even the Architect of Fate's calculations. A single stride folded space itself, and the Primarch materialized behind the fleeing horror.
CRACK!
His hammer caught the Lord of Change mid-flight, sending it tumbling. Vulkan pursued relentlessly, raining blow after thunderous blow upon the creature's twin heads until both were pulverized beyond recognition.
The Great Unclean One lasted somewhat longer, its bloated resilience buying precious seconds, but the outcome was inevitable. Vulkan's hammer found its mark again and again until the Plague daemon's skull ruptured, spilling foulness across the battlefield.
With the four Greater Daemons banished, the tide should have faltered.
It did not.
The daemonic horde showed no sign of weakening. Endless warp-spawn continued pouring through reality's wounds, hurling themselves at Imperial lines with mindless fury. The Ruinous Powers were clearly willing to expend limitless resources to thwart Vulkan's mission.
Their efforts would prove futile.
The defensive perimeter established by the Imperium held like an unbreakable dam against a storm-surge. The daemon tide crashed against it again and again, finding no purchase.
Neither side could gauge how long the slaughter continued.
Then the first Null Tower descended from the heavens, wreathed in black lightning.
The Adeptus Mechanicus had crafted these sanctified structures by combining archaeotech principles with the essence of the Pariah gene, the soulless ones whose very existence was anathema to the Warp.
The anti-psyker field generated by the tower calmed the roiling Immaterium, and daemons across the battlefield shrieked in sudden anguish.
Without the Warp's sustaining power, they could not maintain their grip on reality.
The Null Tower's presence was a slow death sentence.
A second tower descended. The daemons visibly weakened, their forms becoming translucent and fragile. They fell in droves, cut down by las-fire and bolt-rounds, their essence scattered.
When the complete network of Null Towers activated in concert, the storm that had raged over Cadia for so long finally broke.
Unable to sustain their corporeal forms, the remaining daemons collapsed and exploded into dissipating mist.
But establishing the psi-suppression network was merely the first step. Vulkan immediately ordered the construction of permanent fortifications across Cadia's surface, bastions designed to seal the Ruinous Powers' access to realspace permanently.
Simultaneously, he transmitted a formal petition to Terra, requesting authorization to assemble a grand crusade fleet. His objective: pierce the Eye of Terror itself and eliminate this cancer at its source.
Malcador's response came swiftly. The Sigillite granted full approval and invested Vulkan with complete operational authority.
While the Lord of Drakes prosecuted his campaign against the Eye of Terror, elsewhere in the galaxy, the Emperor and Corvus Corax pursued their own quarry, tracking the entity known as Unicron.
The Human Imperium, coordinating with the Autobot Primes, systematically dismantled the Quintessons' strongholds and defeated several dark powers that had allied themselves with the Chaos Bringer.
[End of Chapter]