Nurgle's catastrophic defeat made one thing clear to the other three Chaos Gods.
They could not stop the Nameless One.
The Plague Father was not the strongest of the four gods, but he was without doubt the most tenacious and the hardest to defeat.
Yet he had been killed on his own home ground.
Any intruder who set foot in the rotting garden would be infected with plague and disease.
The Nameless One had not only intruded; he had destroyed Nurgle and his mansion.
Even if the remaining gods joined forces, they would be no match for him at all.
Deep within the Crystal Labyrinth, Tzeentch had used his authority to unfold every possible future at once and run the calculations again and again.
Every one of them ended the same way: with all of them killed by the Nameless One.
Only two paths lay before them.
The first was to be crushed by the Nameless One who led the Imperium.
Like Nurgle's plague mansion, their strongholds would be smashed to pieces in a single blow.
The ruined garden had already been transformed, and Nurgle's authority had passed to a new god.
The second was to escape: leave the galaxy and head for unexplored, mysterious realms.
Beyond the Milky Way stretched a vast, desolate void.
The Warp there was undeveloped, primitive, and chaotic.
If they fled into such a place, they might survive, build up their power, and wait for the day they could return.
Tzeentch and Slaanesh chose the second path.
If they couldn't win, they could at least run.
They moved their domains, took their daemons with them, and fled the galaxy overnight.
They hid in a desolate dimension far from any starlight and beyond the Nameless One's perception.
There they waited for the day the Imperium of Man collapsed, and the Nameless One departed.
Khorne did not leave. He chose to stay.
For the Chaos God of war, bloodshed, and courage, flight was absolutely impossible.
As the master of war, if he fled or bowed before the Nameless One's power, his own authority would turn its fangs on him in an instant and erase every trace of his existence.
He could not flee. If he did, he would only die sooner.
When the Imperium of Man swept away the remnants of Nurgle's influence and began assembling a host to deal with the other three Chaos Gods, it found that Tzeentch and Slaanesh had already vanished.
Only Khorne remained where he was.
The Brass Fortress still towered at the very center of Khorne's domain, and the Blood God's bloodthirsty hosts were still locked in a tug-of-war with the pariah dead zones Dorn had built along the domain's edge.
Above the Brass Fortress, the deep-crimson sky was lit by eternal blood-flame. It looked like a scab of clotted blood and gave off a constant low, growling roar.
"The other two ran, but this bastard is still here. He's clearly looking down on me."
"Fine. Looks like Khorne has found his way to die."
As soon as he heard the news, Datch summoned the army and ordered it to deal with Khorne.
Khorne had long since gathered all his daemons and prepared for war.
For the sake of courage and honor, Khorne had no choice but to die on the battlefield.
The bloodthirsty daemons and monsters who bore his blessing also fell into madness and prepared to burn up their own lives in this final battle.
Khorne's domain was nothing but endless war.
Deep-crimson clouds drifted over the battlefield, and roars rang out to the horizon.
The ground was strewn with tattered armor, bones, and blades.
Blood gathered into small rivers that flowed into a gigantic lake.
Every time the water rose, an overpowering stench of blood rolled off the lake's surface.
To the blare of war trumpets, warriors charged across the battlefield and crashed into one another under the crimson sky, all to decide a victor and win the Blood God's blessing.
These madmen repeated the same slaughter again and again.
As long as they showed courage worthy of praise, even those who died on the battlefield would be revived by the Blood God and set foot in the arena again and again.
Khorne had no interest in physical beauty. He worshipped only violence, rage, and bloodshed.
To the Skull King, nothing mattered but slaughter and war.
The earth of Khorne's domain was shattered, its surface crisscrossed by countless canyon-deep cracks.
The rock along their edges was an eerie mix of scorched black and thick red, a color found only on stone burned again and again by blood-flame.
The broken ground was pitted everywhere with holes, and inside each one lay a brutal arena.
Each arena was the ultimate stage where Chaos champions displayed their courage and killing skill before Khorne.
Here, the bravest warriors of Chaos fought endless battles, each vying for Lord Khorne's favor.
The losers' skulls were piled at the arena's edge as monuments to the winners.
The territory was ringed by jagged volcanoes, and the lava pouring from them was like the earth's own blood.
Suddenly, a shrill war horn rang out across Khorne's territory.
Pudge, the great being of life, had sounded it.
At the same moment, emerald-green life energy exploded all along the edge of Khorne's domain and split it open.
Spirits of life and angels of life, transformed from Nurgle's daemons, surged through the cracks and attacked Khorne's domain.
Massive fissures appeared and spread from the edge inward.
Vivid green light burst from them, and lush plants spread rapidly across the crimson earth from every crack.
Fierce fighting broke out between the two sides at once.
Hosts of bloodthirsty warriors roared and charged the invaders, swinging gigantic axes and longswords burning with eternal blood-flame.
A greater daemon of Khorne swung its hellblade and cut a guardian angel of life in half at the waist.
The severed angel bled and screamed, but no rotten organs or diseased muscle spilled from the wound.
Instead, faint motes of emerald-green light glimmered there, still taking shape.
Within seconds, the angel's severed body had completely regrown, flesh and blood alike.
The bloodthirsty daemons who saw it were all stunned.
These spirits and angels are uncanny!
Even death itself seems to reject them!
The Imperium of Man's fleet followed close behind and plunged into the battle.
The warships were beyond counting, so many that they blotted out the entire blood-red sky.
For this battle, the commanders had gathered every available warship from every corner of the galaxy.
Necron living-metal battleships and Eldar wraithbone ships flanked the Imperial fleet on both wings.
As soon as it entered the battlefield, the fleet unleashed a furious bombardment on the ravaged, bloodstained earth.
Gigantic shells, blessed again and again by the Ecclesiarchy's battle priests, roared from the muzzles in blinding bursts of flame.
The barrage was dense enough to blot out the sky, and the crimson heavens over Khorne's domain looked like a nursery where new stars were being born.
From the main gun batteries at the battleships' prows, thick, brilliant beams fired all at once.
Every lance strike landed precisely on the front line where the bloodthirsty resistance was fiercest, setting off terrible explosions.
Within moments, the bloodthirsty daemons were drowned in concentrated fire from macrocannons, lances, plasma incinerators, and purge warheads.
Winding streams of plasma poured from radiation arrays and lit up the sky.
Container-sized missiles detached from the escort missile destroyers, trailing pillars of flame.
They carved straight and twisting ash-white trails through the deep-crimson blood mist of Khorne's domain before slamming into the ground in terrible explosions.
The Emperor's Legion of the Damned was the first to join the fighting.
They stepped out of a golden rift that seemed to open from nowhere, joined Pudge's host, and fought Khorne's daemons on the ground.
Right after that, a great wave of drop pods slammed into the ground.
Blessed Primaris Space Marines surged out like a tsunami, shouting the Nameless One's name, and charged the savage, bloodthirsty daemons.
Datch joined the fight together with the C'tan, Cegorach, Isha, Titania, and the others.
The Void Dragon and Zarhulash flew at the front, the Dominator's destructive beams precisely piercing every weak point in the bloodthirsty defenses.
The death scythe of Aza'gorod the Nightbringer cut through herds of bloodthirsty monsters, leaving straight trails of blood and gore.
Nyadra'zatha the Burning One unleashed wave after wave of dark-purple shockwaves, tearing apart the daemons that blocked the way.
The strongest members of Datch's team tore through the bloodthirsty daemons with ease and cut a straight road to the Brass Fortress.
"I'm home." Skarbrand followed behind the Nameless One.
He set foot on the deep-crimson land he had once dreamed of returning to.
His powerful hooves struck the bloodstained, scorched earth with such force that the ground around him shook for an instant.
It was the first time since his exile that he had returned to this land of massacre and bloodshed.
"I will become the war-god of the new age."
Skarbrand roared at the sky, and his terrible voice rang through the entire domain of Khorne.
Before meeting the Nameless One, he could never have imagined that one day he would replace Khorne.
Back then, all he could do was humbly atone for his sins and hope to return to the world of brass and serve again.
He had tried to return to the blood domain, offering Khorne countless lives and skulls, but he had never succeeded.
Now he stood here again, but not to atone for his sins.
He had come to replace his arrogant former master.
The Brass Fortress towered high above Khorne's desolate domain. Its scale was beyond imagining.
Even stacked on top of each other, the blade-like volcanoes ringing the edge of the blood domain would reach only the base of the fortress's outermost wall.
That magnificent Brass Fortress was proof of the war-god's power.
Its gigantic walls were stained with the blood of the defeated and gave off a heady stench of blood.
The spires of its towers pierced the dark clouds rising from its forges.
Beneath terrible iron hooks, burning braziers lit the surrounding wasteland. Their flames were fed by the souls of cowards who had lacked the courage to fight.
The fortress walls were shaped like blades and hung with countless iron gallows and cruel iron stakes, where the corpses of countless warriors defeated in the arena were displayed.
Their limbs were bound and their heads cut off. Crimson blood ran down the smooth walls and filled the fortress moat.
Khorne's most powerful Blood Legion was stationed inside the fortress.
Every member was a mighty warrior who had climbed to the top through endless slaughter.
To rise from the lowest worshipper to a fighting post inside the Brass Fortress, each of them had offered at least 88,888 skulls.
Each contender had to defeat 88 opponents in a row in the arena.
Every time they failed, they had to start over from the beginning.
This rule had always been in force and had never once been broken.
Through this brutal selection, the Blood Legion had gathered the most powerful warriors in Khorne's domain, and its fighting strength was formidable.
At the center of the fortress towered Khorne's gigantic skull palace.
The air there was thick with the heady stench of blood.
At the center of the palace rose a mountain of skulls.
As Khorne's worshippers kept offering sacrifices, the skulls piled higher and higher.
Atop this terrible mountain stood a gigantic brass throne.
The Blood God himself sat there, looking down on every living thing.
He was taller than the Brass Fortress's highest spire, and every time he breathed, two thick red flames jetted from his nostrils.
Datch led his subordinates across the Crimson Land to the Brass Fortress, where they clashed with the Blood Legion and cut down the defenders.
The Void Dragon and the other C'tan struck first, unleashing a torrent of pure void energy that shattered and annihilated the defenders in an instant.
Skarbrand joined the fight. He swung his war-axe, cut his former bloodthirsty comrades in half without hesitation, and roared, "I am the war-god of the new age! Out of my way!"
Cegorach, Isha, and the T'au goddess also unleashed their strongest attacks and swept aside the daemons of Khorne in their path.
The members of the Blood Legion who tried to stop Datch and his party were utterly crushed by that unmatched power, their souls vanishing without a trace.
"Grrrr…"
When the Nameless One appeared before him, Khorne let out a roar of rage.
He rose abruptly from his brass throne and towered over them, full of majesty, like a mythical giant of creation.
Khorne stretched out a gigantic hand and drew an unimaginably large bloodstained axe out of thin air.
With one light swing, the axe split the crimson sky above Khorne's domain.
Seeing this, Cegorach and Isha's expressions changed slightly.
Khorne's power was far more terrible than Nurgle's. If that axe struck them, they would probably be wiped out completely, never to exist again.
If not for the Nameless One, they would never have had the courage to come here and face such terror head-on.
They were simply not on the same level.
"I'll go look for Khaine's fragments first," Cegorach told Isha, glancing at Khorne.
Long ago, Khaine had been fought over by Khorne and Slaanesh and finally shattered to pieces.
Khorne had taken the largest fragment.
If Khaine was ever to be restored, now was the time to find it.
Datch stared at the Blood God with an excited expression and took the Spear of the Saint-Slayer from his in-game inventory.
Since the defeat of Nurgle, the dark-gold spear had taken on an even more ancient look and carried a killing intent beyond words.
Holding it, he could feel the spear's elation, its longing to reap gods and taste their despair before they died.
A unique slaughter rune that had appeared after Nurgle's defeat was carved into the spearhead, and it held special symbolic meaning.
The golden rune pulsed very slowly, and each pulse sent out a faint golden aura. Datch leveled the spear at Khorne. The two dry, dark-red smiles carved into his jester's helm dimly reflected the deep-crimson glow of the skull mountain. "Right. This time, it's your turn."
...