The journey inside the Chimera was a study in contrasts. The Monarch sat in a state of silent contemplation, his eyes closed. The mind of the Ultramarine Sergeant was a vast, ordered library of brutality, and he was its new archivist. He sifted through a century of warfare, tactical doctrines, technical schematics, and the intricate, dogmatic lattice of the Imperial Creed. He learned of starships that tore holes in reality to travel, of weapons that could crack planets, and of a million worlds held in the grip of a dying god's tyrannical faith. This universe was built on a scale of conflict his old world could barely comprehend. It was a furnace, and he had been dropped into its very heart.
Opposite him, Officer Kasran and his handful of surviving Guardsmen were a knot of quiet terror. They spoke in hushed, frantic whispers of "the Golden Throne" and "the Emperor's protection," their prayers a desperate shield against the impossible reality they now served. They glanced nervously from the silent figure of the Monarch to the obsidian form of the First Knight, who stood unmoving at the rear hatch, a sentinel of their new dominion. To them, the Knight was the ultimate perversion of their most sacred icon—a Space Marine, an Angel of Death—reforged into something their catechism had no word for.
Kasran was the most composed, though that wasn't saying much. The turmoil in his thoughts was a raging storm. His faith told him to die fighting a creature like this. His training told him to obey the orders of a superior force. But his instincts, honed by years of thankless trench warfare, screamed one simple, overriding command: survive. This pragmatism was the only reason he and his men were still breathing.
"Approaching the outer perimeter, my... lord," he stammered, his voice tight, refusing to look directly at the being he now served.
The Monarch opened his eyes. Through the grimy vision slit of the Chimera, he saw it.
Hive Primus was not a city; it was a geological formation of industry and despair. A man-made mountain that clawed its way into the toxic clouds, its peak lost in the perpetual smog. Countless spires, like the teeth of a dead god, studded its upper reaches, while the base was a sprawling, armored scab of plasteel and rockcrete, kilometres thick. A faint, miasmic yellow light emanated from within, the glow of a billion souls living and dying in crushing proximity. It was a monument to tenacity and misery.
As they drew closer, the vox-caster in the Chimera crackled to life, the speaker's voice laced with panic. "...unidentified force, xenos origin... no, it's... By the Throne, it's marching with them! The ghosts of the fallen! Sergeant Albrect's platoon is gone, no survivors..."
Another, calmer voice cut through the static, filled with cold authority. It was the voice of a man whose mind knew no doubt, only dogma. "All units, hold the line at Gate Aurelian. This is Commissar Validus. The entity is designated Anomaly-Umbra. It is a psychic construct of the Archenemy. Show no fear. Steel your souls. The price of cowardice is a bolter shell. The reward for faith is martyrdom. For the Emperor!"
The broadcast was met with a ragged chorus of battle cries, the sound of men convincing themselves they were not about to die.
"They will not simply let us in," the Monarch stated, the observation obvious.
Kasran flinched. "The Commissar… he will have them fight to the last man."
"That is his choice," Jin-Woo said, rising to his feet as the Chimera ground to a halt. "Let us see how strong their faith is when their god remains silent."
He pushed open the top hatch and climbed out, the First Knight following a moment later. They stood atop the armored transport, a hundred meters from a gate that could have withstood a naval bombardment. The walls bristled with heavy weapons, and thousands of soldiers aimed their lasrifles at the lone figure. In the distance, the low rumble of Leman Russ battle tanks positioning themselves echoed through the grime-choked air.
A vox-horn, its volume deafening, boomed from the wall. The mind of Commissar Validus was a fortress of hate, seeing only a daemon to be purged. "IN THE NAME OF THE GOD-EMPEROR OF MANKIND, I, COMMISSAR VALIDUS, ORDER YOU TO SURRENDER, DAEMON! LAY DOWN AND ACCEPT YOUR PURGING FIRE!"
Jin-Woo did not grace him with a verbal response. His shadow army, a silent sea of several thousand soldiers, had arrived, forming perfect ranks behind the Chimera. Their presence alone was an answer.
The Commissar took this as defiance. "OPEN FIRE! PURGE THE UNCLEAN!"
The world erupted in a storm of light and thunder. Heavy bolter shells, las-beams, and autocannon rounds converged on the Monarch's position. It was a focused, overwhelming display of firepower designed to annihilate anything caught within it.
It was also completely useless.
The Monarch's will extended, creating a dome of invisible force around the Chimera. Every projectile, every beam of energy, stopped dead in the air a few feet from him. They hung there, a shimmering, lethal cloud of suspended ordnance, their kinetic energy utterly negated.
On the wall, the firing sputtered and died. A collective gasp of disbelief and horror rippled through the defenders. Their ultimate expression of force had been rendered a static piece of art.
He gestured languidly with one hand. The First Knight blurred into motion. It leaped from the Chimera, covering the hundred-meter distance in two bounds, landing at the base of the gate with a ground-shaking impact that cracked the rockcrete. Its greatsword of solidified darkness, humming with chilling power, scythed through a heavy bolter emplacement, bisecting the weapon and its gunner in a single, silent stroke. It moved with the grace of an assassin and the force of a wrecking ball, a spectre of death amidst the ranks of the living.
While the Knight sowed targeted chaos, Jin-Woo turned his attention back to the cloud of frozen projectiles. With a thought, he turned them around. He didn't aim for the soldiers. He aimed for their weapons.
The bolter shells and las-beams shot back toward the wall with unerring precision, striking turrets, weapon mounts, and vox-arrays. A series of controlled, percussive explosions rocked the gatehouse, silencing their heavy armaments and plunging their command structure into disarray.
Then, and only then, did he speak. His voice was not carried by the air but was impressed directly into the mind of every living being within the hive's outer perimeter, from the lowest trooper to Commissar Validus himself.
"You have seen a fraction of my power. It is nothing to me. I have no quarrel with this city or its people. I require a voidship. Grant me the use of your primary spaceport and a vessel capable of interstellar travel, and I will depart. Your hive will be spared."
He let the offer hang in their minds for a moment before delivering the alternative.
"Resist, and I will raise every corpse in your city's catacombs. I will turn your billion dead into my soldiers and scour this hive from the face of the planet. You have one hour to prepare my vessel and clear a path. The choice is yours."
Silence. The echoes of the mental broadcast faded, leaving only the terrified thoughts of thousands of soldiers. On the wall, Commissar Validus could be seen, his face contorted with rage, raising his bolt pistol to execute a nearby officer who was hesitating.
Before he could, a deep, groaning sound echoed across the field. With a shudder of ancient machinery, the colossal Gate Aurelian began to open. A path was being cleared. It seemed pragmatism, born of sheer terror, had won out over faith.
The Monarch gave a simple nod to his First Knight. His legion of shadows began their silent, orderly march, flowing like a river of night into the gaping maw of Hive Primus.