This is the bonus chatper for reaching 250 Powerstones.
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Outside the grand hall of the Conmo Dynasty in the City of the Holy Anthem, Azkaellon was hauled out of the heavy alloy doors, supported by two Sanguinary Guard Terminators.
The armor on his left arm was completely melted away, exposing the fractured bones beneath the charred and blackened flesh.
His power armor's life-support systems shrieked with piercing alarms as painkillers and coagulant foam were continuously pumped into his bloodstream via internal injectors.
"Commander! Your injuries—"
"Shut up! Keep falling back!"
Azkaellon shoved the supporting warriors aside and gripped his power sword tightly with his remaining right hand.
Behind them, the massive doors of the grand hall closed silently, as if they had never been opened at all.
But the blue-purple Warp energy oozing from the seams, and the hideous, overlapping laughter of the nine Daemon Princes echoing in the air, served as a stark reminder to Azkaellon:
Father is still inside.
Trapped in that cage of absolute logic.
"Advance at maximum speed!"
Azkaellon's voice was hoarse from the excruciating pain, but he maintained the icy calm required of a commander.
"Our next objective is to link up with Captain Tobias and the main force of the Second Company. Proceed east along the Seventh Arterial of the Upper Hive. Bypass all known major corruption nodes. Anticipated resistance level: Extreme. Do not get bogged down, do not pursue, break through at maximum speed."
The twenty-seven Sanguinary Guard Terminators responded in unison.
Despite bearing the immense weight of Terminator plate, their movement speed remained terrifying. Every footstep shattered the paving stones, leaving deep impressions in their wake.
All sorts of bizarre, grotesque corrupted entities poured out from the buildings lining the street.
They were things that used to be hive citizens. Now, their skin was covered in crystalline purple patterns, their eyeballs transformed into swirling blue-purple vortexes.
They threw themselves from windows, crawled out of sewers, and leapt from rooftops, appearing like ghosts, impossible to guard against completely.
But the moment they showed themselves, they were torn to pieces by a hail of storm bolter fire.
The Sanguinary Guard Terminators didn't even need to consciously aim. The instinct of war was literally written into their genetic code.
Their storm bolters fired on full-auto, unleashing thousands of .75 caliber mass-reactive rounds every minute. Every single bolt packed enough punch to penetrate light armored vehicles.
Against firepower like this, the fleshy bodies of the corrupted were as flimsy as wet paper.
But there were simply too many of them.
"Left flank! Three large warp entities!" a Guardsman roared.
The 'large warp entities' he referred to were three constantly shifting mounds of flesh, each the size of a Land Raider, their surfaces writhing with runes.
"Meltas, prepare!"
Azkaellon didn't even break stride.
The shoulder-mounted multi-meltas of three Terminators charged and fired simultaneously.
Three blindingly white beams lanced across the street, vaporizing the three colossal entities along with the three buildings behind them.
The superheated plasma triggered secondary explosions, the shockwaves blowing dozens of corrupted citizens into the air.
But the instant the meltas fired, the ground cracked open once again.
Hundreds of purple tentacles erupted like venomous snakes, lashing toward the Terminators' leg armor.
"The exact same trick!"
Azkaellon sneered, raising his power sword with his remaining hand.
But before he could strike...
Four Terminators simultaneously activated their back-mounted heavy flamers. A twenty-meter torrent of promethium fire wove into a net, reducing the tentacles to ash in a heartbeat.
The adaptive learning capabilities of the Astartes were terrifying. They would never fall for the same trick twice.
"Keep moving!"
The formation pierced through the purple wall of corrupted flesh like a razor-sharp blade.
The roar of storm bolters. The scream of chainswords. The shriek of meltas. The bellow of heavy flamers.
These sounds coalesced into the Blood Angels' symphony of war.
And the backdrop to this symphony was the endless shrieking of the corrupted, the humming of Warp energy twisting reality, and the agonizing wail of an entire hive city slowly sliding into the abyssal depths of Chaos.
--
Standard Terran Year 976.M30, Day 318, 15:47.
Three point seven kilometers from the grand hall. The intersection of the Seventh and Thirteenth Arterials in the Upper Hive.
Tobias Fane just emptied his current magazine.
It was his thirteenth magazine of the day.
"Ammo!"
He roared, the action of his bolter clicking empty as it locked back.
A warrior tossed him a magazine. It wasn't fresh; it had been scavenged from a fallen brother.
Tobias caught the magazine, dumped the empty one, slammed the fresh one home, and racked the charging handle.
The movement was buttery smooth, perfectly fluid.
And then he instantly resumed firing.
The main force of his Second Company—one thousand three hundred Blood Angels—now numbered... one thousand two hundred and twenty-four.
A casualty rate approaching ten percent.
These were Space Marines, not ordinary Solar Auxilia. Every single one was incredibly precious, and the war had only just begun.
"Captain! Building on the right! Psychic signature!"
Tobias didn't even need to look. His combat intuition told him exactly where the danger was coming from.
He spun around, leveling his bolter at the third window of the five-story residential hab-block on his right.
He pulled the trigger.
A three-round burst.
The first round shattered the window.
The second round struck the corrupted psyker weaving a spell behind the glass dead in the chest.
The third round flew straight into the psyker's open mouth.
The corrupted psyker's head popped like a melon, but the corpse didn't fall. The Warp energy amassed within its body violently detonated out of control, blowing the entire third floor and everything above it to pieces.
Debris rained down.
Tobias didn't dodge. Several chunks of rockcrete smashed into his pauldron, failing to leave even a scratch.
"Conserve ammunition!"
He barked over the company vox. "Prioritize psychic units and large warp entities! Deal with standard corrupted using melee weapons! I repeat: conserve ammunition!"
Because everyone knew the grim reality.
Their supply lines were already cut.
The standard ammunition loadout for a drop assault was calculated based on standard hive pacification protocols: expect light to moderate resistance, establish a secure perimeter within six hours, and receive orbital resupply within twelve hours.
But now?
The resistance they were facing from these heretics was Exterminatus-class.
As for establishing a perimeter?
The endless tide of fallen citizens made it completely impossible. The entire hive city was the frontline.
As for orbital resupply?
Every single ounce of the fleet's transport capacity was being utilized to deploy troops. There were no spare drop pods to ferry ammunition.
Therefore, every single mass-reactive bolt, every canister of melta fuel, and every tank of promethium gel was a non-renewable resource.
Every shot fired was one less shot available.
"For the Emperor!"
Tobias roared, his chainsword cleaving a lunging corrupted citizen cleanly in half from shoulder to hip.
Blue-black blood sprayed out, sizzling as it hit his power armor with highly corrosive acidity.
But he didn't care.
The power armor of the Blood Angels possessed a self-cleansing function, and the anti-corrosive coating applied to the ceramite plating was capable of resisting most acidic substances.
As for Warp energy residue?
That might require the armor to be completely smelted down and reforged.
But the prerequisite for that... was that they actually made it back alive.
"Captain! Dead ahead! It's our men!"
Tobias snapped his head up.
At the far end of the street, twenty-seven suits of crimson Terminator armor were breaking through the encirclement of corrupted citizens, charging straight toward them.
The armor of the warrior at the very front had its left arm completely destroyed, the charred, blackened wound a gruesome sight.
But Tobias recognized the heraldry on the pauldron.
Commander of the Sanguinary Guard, Azkaellon.
"Covering fire!" Tobias immediately ordered.
Over a thousand Blood Angels fired simultaneously, using a hailstorm of mass-reactive bolts to tear a path through the tide of the corrupted.
Thirty seconds later, the two forces linked up.
"Commander!" Tobias rushed up to Azkaellon, not even bothering to salute. "Where is Father?!"
Azkaellon remained silent for two seconds.
In those two seconds, Tobias's heart plummeted to the absolute bottom.
"Father... is trapped within the grand hall."
Azkaellon's voice filtered through his faceplate, carrying a weight Tobias had never heard before. "Nine powerful warp entities burned their own souls to construct a cage of… absolute logic. Father is temporarily unable to break it."
Tobias froze.
"So..." Tobias's voice dropped to a terrifyingly low whisper. "...you just left Father there? Alone?"
Those words stabbed like a knife into the hearts of every Guardsman present.
Azkaellon did not offer any defense.
He merely straightened his spine, allowing the bright red blood to trail down from the wound near his left eye. "It was the Primarch's order, Tobias. The final command I received was to evacuate the hall, link up with you, and then..."
He paused, choking on every word.
"...to execute purification and judgment upon this world."
A deathly silence instantly fell over the area.
The only sounds were the distant, rhythmic thuds of bolter fire, the scream of chainswords, and the inhuman shrieking of the corrupted echoing vaguely from nearby streets.
Tobias stared at Azkaellon's face.
He had known the Commander for emperor-knows how many years, ever since the conscription trials on the third moon of Baal.
Together, they had bled on the training grounds. Together, they had hacked down Ork Warlords. Together, they had executed purges on countless worlds tainted by xenos or heretics.
Azkaellon was not a man who feared death.
If Sanguinius had ordered them to hold the hall to the last man, he would have fought until his power armor's energy reserves ran dry, fired his bolter until the last round was spent, swung his chainsword until every tooth shattered, and then used his bare fists and his burning soul to pass judgment upon the enemy.
But now, he had walked out alive.
That meant...
Tobias slowly unfurled his fists.
"Father ordered us to retreat," Azkaellon continued. "To link up with the main force, transmit a distress signal to the Departmento Munitorum, and if he has not broken free within seventy-two hours, to initiate the Crimson Protocol and execute the Final Purification."
The Crimson Protocol.
Tobias knew exactly what that meant.
He had personally witnessed a cyclonic torpedo turn a rebel planet into glass.
But he had never imagined... that one day, that torpedo might fall upon his own father's head.
"No..." Tobias muttered instinctively, but quickly gritted his teeth. "What else... did Father say?"
"He said... for the Emperor. For humanity. And for the souls we could not save."
Azkaellon raised his remaining right hand and placed it on Tobias's pauldron. "Tobias, Father gave this planet three days. What we must do is use absolutely everything we have to purge this city within these three days, even if it is just to buy Father a one-in-a-million chance to break free."
Tobias closed his eyes.
Three seconds later, he opened them.
The eyes behind his visor were filled with absolute, unyielding resolve.
"I understand."
He turned around, facing the Blood Angels warriors gradually gathering around them—the thousand-plus men of the Second Company, the twenty-seven Guardsmen, and the dozens of tactical marines who had just fought their way over from adjacent blocks.
In total, they had roughly one thousand three hundred combat-capable Blood Angels.
"All units!" Tobias's voice boomed across the street via his external vox-casters. "Our Primarch father is engaged in a bitter battle! And we, the Blood Angels, the Ninth Legion of the Emperor, will do what we must do!"
He raised his chainsword high, the blue blood of the corrupted still dripping from its teeth. "Judge the heretic! Purge the unclean! For the Emperor!"
"By the Blood of Sanguinius!!!"
He roared the final sentence with pure, unadulterated fury.
Immediately, the thousand-plus Blood Angels surrounding him roared back simultaneously:
"For the Emperor! By the Blood of Sanguinius!!!!"
The shockwave of their voices crashed like thunder, momentarily drowning out the shrieks of the corrupted.
The roar carried to the far end of the Upper Hive, reaching the ears of the Second Company Lieutenant currently commanding another force of over a thousand Blood Angels holding the line.
He froze for a fraction of a second, then instantly understood what had happened.
He raised his power sword high.
"For the Emperor! By the Blood of Sanguinius!!!"
The thousand-plus warriors under his command responded in unison.
The roar continued to spread.
In the Mid-Hive, Nassir Amit, Captain of the Fifth Company, had just cleaved a large warp entity in two with his power sword.
The future founder and first Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers heard the distant roar, and a smile spread across his face beneath his helmet.
"So... it has finally come to this?"
He flicked the rotting gore from his blade and roared to the two thousand-plus warriors of the Fifth Company and the tens of thousands of Solar Auxilia still fighting around him:
"Brothers! The Primarch is watching us! For the glory of the Imperium! For the glory of the Blood Angels Legion!"
"The Blood Angels..."
"...SHALL NEVER YIELD!!!"
"SHALL NEVER YIELD!!!"
Roars of defiance erupted from every corner of the City of the Holy Anthem, rising and falling like a ceaseless tide.
It was an unparalleled battle-lust. It was the glory of the Ninth Primarch's Legion. It was the unbending, unbreakable pride of the Blood Angels when facing the Warp.
Azkaellon watched the scene, his remaining right hand clenching into a tight fist.
"Tobias," his eyes hardened with resolve. "I am returning to the fleet. To transmit the distress signal to the Imperium, organize supply drops, and coordinate the overall theater." He paused. "And you... will lead our brothers in the fight. Three days. Just three days."
Tobias nodded heavily. "Go with an easy heart, Commander. I have the line here."
The two men locked eyes, then simultaneously slammed their right fists against their left breasts in the salute of the Blood Angels.
Azkaellon turned and, escorted by ten Guardsmen, charged toward the nearest extraction point.
Tobias turned to face the remaining thousand-plus warriors, racking the charging handle on his bolter.
"All units! Reform ranks! Consolidate and redistribute ammunition! Critically wounded are to fall back and establish a triage point! For everyone who can still fight..."
He pointed his chainsword toward the grand hall.
"...advance with me! Every meter we gain buys another second for Father! The Blood Angels take not one step back."
"NOT ONE STEP BACK!"
The battlefield was instantly drowned in roaring responses.
Tobias looked in the direction of the Conmo Dynasty's grand hall.
Father, please hold on.
Your sons will never bring shame to your name.
"Blood Angels!"
"ADVANCE!!!"
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Next Goal = 500 Powerstones.
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