The figure upon the throne raised an arm, and the runes vanished from the stasis-cage. The Rangdan Overlord's mind was no longer constrained.
Just as the Defiant Overlord assumed it would receive proper diplomatic treatment, a bolt of golden lightning erupted from the throne, striking directly into its eyes!
A blinding golden light filled the Defiant Overlord's vision. It desperately tried to contract its consciousness, but felt a sharp, agonizing tearing sensation. Its fiercely proud intellect was ripped open, and a grand, overwhelming will used the fracture to launch a brutal invasion, callously scrutinizing its soul.
The Emperor had no desire to converse with the xenos. He used absolute force to seize every scrap of knowledge contained within its soul.
The moment this battle of mind and will commenced, the Defiant Overlord fell into a total rout. The psychic might of the Master of Mankind was as vast as an ocean, surging forward like a tempest, obliterating the mental floodgates it had built. Wave after wave of psychic tides crashed down, instantly shattering the defenses and ripping the alien ruler's consciousness to shreds.
What kind of monster is this?
It questioned frantically in the depths of its mind. Even though the Defiant Overlord had imagined the Human Emperor to be an unattainable entity, it had still drastically underestimated him. Its resilient intellect and soul were parsed at the Emperor's whim, exposing every piece of cognition it possessed.
Disaster!
As its memories began to fade, the Defiant Overlord realized it had become the breach in the dam; the deepest secrets of the Rangdan race were leaking out uncontrollably. In its despair, it managed to gather a splinter of its scattering mind within the raging sea of its consciousness, forming a fragile boat to keep its soul from drowning entirely.
It gathered its fractured intellect—not to mount a counterattack, for resistance was already impossible. The only thing left to do now was to destroy itself!
The Defiant Overlord condensed its mind into a core, protecting its vital memories, intending to vanish completely from both the spiritual and material realms along with the secrets of its species.
"My thanks."
Its resolve and fearless sacrifice were answered with a declaration of gratitude.
Stunned and bewildered, before the Defiant Overlord could even question the remark, the Emperor's voice echoed through the hazy chaos: "I was just worrying about how to uncover your critical intelligence."
The Rangdan Overlord had existed for millennia, and its soul held a vast, sea-like accumulation of memory fragments, most of which were worthless to the Emperor. The Defiant Overlord's attempt to condense its memories had inadvertently gathered all the vital information into one easily accessible place, playing right into the Emperor's hands.
"A trap!" it cursed furiously, its rage venting powerlessly, but it could no longer execute any action.
Within the ocean of consciousness, the Emperor's will whipped up a cataclysmic tidal wave, converging from all directions to swallow that final, isolated boat.
BOOM!
The massive wave crashed down, smashing the fragile vessel to splinters. The fragments of its awareness scattered in all directions, dissolving into the vast, boundless sea.
In realspace, the Defiant Overlord's head convulsed violently. As the golden lightning dissipated, a total vacancy filled its crimson eyes. The soul within its foul husk had completely disintegrated; its intellect and reason were entirely erased, leaving behind nothing but base animal instinct.
The Emperor had utterly annihilated this malicious xenos at the soul level.
As the radiance faded, several artisans approached from the distance. Judging by their attire, they belonged to the Emperor's personal retinue of craftsmen. They commanded thralls to haul the anti-gravity platform away, taking custody of the Rangdan Overlord's physical shell.
As a connoisseur of rare oddities, the Emperor communicated via thought with the artisans, ordering them to preserve the Rangdan Overlord as a specimen and return it to the Imperial Palace on Terra.
Seeing the Rangdan Overlord properly dealt with, Obelisk led his Legion warriors out of the command hall. They were eager to deploy to the next theater of war.
"Issue orders to the First and Twenty-First Legions."
A Custodian herald stepped up to the Astropathic representatives, delivering a direct mandate on behalf of the Emperor himself: "Order them to redirect. Abandon their current compliance operations and proceed immediately to these coordinates."
With those words, the golden-armored guard activated a holographic projection, displaying a location in the star charts that appeared completely empty. The Astropaths raised no questions. Committing the coordinates to memory, they bowed to the Custodian and departed to transmit the directives.
Another flash of golden light erupted from the Emperor's brow, striking the stasis-sarcophagus and imprinting a section of memory directly into Ferrus's mind.
Inside the sarcophagus, Ferrus Manus's eyes remained closed, his heavy dark brows furrowing tightly as his cognitive synapses began broadcasting orders:
[COMMAND MATRIX TRANSMISSION: BLOOD ANGELS AND SPACE WOLVES ASSEMBLE]
[TACTICAL DIRECTIVE: JOINT OPERATION]
[MISSION PARAMETERS: AMBUSH AND DESTROY]
[AT ALL COSTS]
The command directives took wing, broadcasting to the operational forces through the transmission spires of the Blackstone Fortress.
Deep within the Warp storms, the shadows of the Blackstones lay concealed. The Dark Angels' fortress-vessel bore extensive battle damage, and ancient automated systems were currently cycling to repair the structural toll of their conflicts.
Lion El'Jonson looked down at the astropathic dispatch in his hands. The sigil of the Emperor materialized, conveying a direct order from the Master of Mankind.
"Open the star map."
Light and shadow converged into a rotating stellar display. The tracking reticle swept across the active theater of war before locking onto an expanse of absolute void. The stellar field inverted, expanding infinitely, yet the sector remained entirely empty.
The Lion raised his hand again, verifying the coordinates written upon the parchment scroll. His brow furrowed into a deep frown as he sank into thought. The Lion did not question the validity of the coordinates; that expanse of void absolutely concealed something.
What he pondered was whether to recall his scattered fleets—because this was a joint operation, and Blazkowicz would also be participating. What manner of target required two Legions to crush it together?
He had a premonition that regardless of this strike's success or failure, the Extermination Fleets would soon be recalled to Imperial space.
"The Blackstone Fortress will advance toward the mission coordinates."
"We proceed alone," the commanding voice echoed from the throne after a long moment of deliberation, ordering the Legion to move. "Notify the detachment fleets to launch maximum devastation upon the Rangdan industrial worlds. Ignore material consumption; we will be departing Rangdan space shortly."
Speed was the soul of warfare. The Lion decided to strike in isolation; mobilizing a massive fleet would inevitably alert the Rangdan tracking arrays.
"By your command!"
The Blackstone Fortress slipped into the Warp storms, evading Rangdan detection as it advanced toward the objective. By the time the Rangdan hunter-killer packs arrived at their last known location, the Dark Angels had vanished completely without a trace.
The Rangdan pursuers were filled with fury. The human raiding forces were as slippery as eels, darting unpredictably between realspace and the immaterium. Once line-of-sight was lost, the next time the humans manifested, it usually heralded the death of a world.
At the other end of the Warp, Blazkowicz noted the beacon of the Dark Angels' Blackstone Fortress growing increasingly distinct, signaling that the Lion had made his move. Within the sensory arrays, the Blackstone Fortress commanded by Leman Russ was also in motion, its trajectory similarly locked onto the dark void.
"Adjust course. Proceed to the destination."
"Engage maximum propulsion for the Blackstone Fortress. Follow the guidance of the Ring of Chaos, slip into the Warp storms, and shake off the Rangdan pursuers to our rear."
The Blackstone Fortress dived into the treacherous storms like a boomerang, riding the tempest to vanish once more from the Rangdan tracking grids. The pursuing fleets halted outside the storm front, not daring to enter the immense horrors lurking within. To this day, the nature of Blackstone technology remained entirely unknown to Rangdan technicians; they could not comprehend how human capital ships could shelter within the storms, entirely ignoring the foul entities nesting inside them.
Time held no meaning within the Warp. After a prolonged transit, the sensors of the Blackstone Fortress grew increasingly bright as the two fortresses closed the distance rapidly. Though real-time communication could not be established, a silent understanding existed between both sides, and they adjusted their respective velocities to ensure they would breach realspace simultaneously.
At the terminal fringes of the second and third galactic arms, on the extra-galactic rim of the Rangdan Empire, an eternal darkness held sway within the gap between thriving star systems. Yet along the edge of this freezing void, the sparse starlight behaved abnormally. The light struggled to penetrate the darkness, warped and distorted by some unseen presence.
Even within the intelligence reports left by Solas, there was no record of this dark gulf. A massive secret evidently lay hidden here.
Today, all secrets would be laid bare!
The sky of realspace was torn open!
Violent Warp fluctuations shattered the quiet darkness as two Blackstone Fortresses emerged from the storms, breaking into the material universe.
"Severe gravitational anomalies detected. Power requirement for structural stabilization is rising."
Urgent alarms blared, and the immense structures of the Blackstone Fortresses shuddered under a massive gravitational drag, the rotation of their four-pointed profiles slowing by a fraction. Warp energy flooded into the blackstone cores, and a purple glow instantly stabilized the vessels, allowing the fortresses to glide smoothly into realspace.
The automated systems continued to broadcast data through holographic projections: "Gravitational distortion is extreme. Escape velocity is rated at half the speed of light."
As the fortress settled into realspace, Blazkowicz rose from his throne, tilting his gaze toward the dark void where the starlight bent. "This is..."
The Lion was similarly struck motionless. The Primarch controlled his hover-throne, drifting to the edge of the pyramid's observation portal, staring blankly into the void.
The sight before them caused even these battle-hardened transhumans to experience a profound shock, their fearless souls trembling before the display.
Could this truly be a miracle wrought by mortal hands?
Beyond the viewing ports, within the dead, silent darkness of the void, floated a hollow, artificial megastructure! It featured massive openings at its upper and lower axes, resembling a world opening its colossal maw to swallow another celestial body.
The target being devoured by this iron world was small, yet intensely radiant, emitting a blinding blue-white glare of high-intensity electromagnetic pulses and extreme radiation.
A neutron star!
The Rangdan artificial world was employing some unknown technology to bind the remnant of a dead star, dragging it deep into its interior to serve as an artificial stellar core!