My Life as A Death Guard
Chapter 401: The The Crusade of Steel (Part 3)
The Eye of Terror was screaming.
A deafening roar resounded across the galaxy. The Immaterium churned and surged, colossal waves crashing as different psychic oceans collided, throwing up sky-shattering tempests—
There was only this one chance!!!
From the shifting labyrinth came the first shriek; birds startled into flight in the gardens, blood pools boiled and roiled, and lingering, sinuous chants echoed through the palaces of the Dark Bank.
The Eye of Terror suddenly widened. Psychic rifts—like blood-red cracks torn from a ruptured pupil—climbed outward from its depths, surging with ominous tides.
A cataclysmic wave of psychic force slammed into the howling silver-white colossus. Dazzling, uncanny white breakers surged forth, instantly swallowing everything!
The massive torrent violently engulfed Hades as it charged toward Vashtorr!
After an enraged roar, Vashtorr grimly saw that terrifying figure swept away by the current.
Bang!
Vashtorr crashed heavily into a blackstone pylon. It slid slowly downward, the furnace within it burning dimly as rage and unwillingness gnawed upward like bone-eating worms.
Leaning against the blackstone pylon, it breathed hoarsely. At this very moment, Cadia could almost be said to have sunk into the vast ocean of the Warp.
Vashtorr felt everything that was happening now. Chaos was generously bestowing power upon it, granting it authority—but this was not what Vashtorr wanted. It should not have been a gift, but a partnership.
Yet at this moment, it had no room to choose.
Vashtorr did not even know where this fundamental power—born of machinery and research—was truly coming from!
It stared fixedly at the rolling psychic tides. It was as if a Warp nebula itself were scouring across Cadia's barren plains.
Within those endless chaotic waves, faint emerald arcs of lightning flickered.
From the tides raised by the Four Gods came a roar of agony pushed to its limit, of fury driven to its extreme.
Vashtorr drew in a deep breath and forced itself upright. Around the neck that Hades had just gripped, a ring of silver-white metal now gleamed—a collar.
Vashtorr hated all of this.
+Perturabo,+ Vashtorr murmured. This was meant to be its final contingency, not something to be used now.
In its covenant with the Four Gods, Vashtorr held "a share" of Perturabo.
The Four Gods had permitted Vashtorr to use its contract to restrain the first to betray the Emperor.
Vashtorr had once… once anticipated a far grander, far more distant future.
But now, a rasping hiss tore from its throat as it practically ground its teeth and said, +Perturabo, the time has come to pay your breach penalty.+
Yet within the raging waves, the heavy panting of two Primarchs and the ringing clash of their weapons drowned everything out. Vashtorr's words seemed like futile, empty clauses—it felt no response at all.
Vashtorr's body went rigid.
How could this be?! How could this happen?!
Perturabo! What in the Warp had he done?!
Fury—flames of being deceived—erupted around Vashtorr. Like one who had only now realized the truth of the betrayal, it roared in rage toward Perturabo's direction.
The Lord of the Forge spread its wings amid the surging tides, swelling once more—
A chaotic, formless immensity, steeped in mad Warp-power; power drawn recklessly from both future and past, laden with absolute malice. The Immaterium generously paid its down payment.
Vashtorr howled. Its massive steel wings beat the air as it rose into the heavens. Lightning stained with ill-omened bloodlust coiled around its form, accompanied by sharp cables twisting and writhing like serpents.
Faint prayers drifted through the rolling mist—but they were not desperate invocations to the Reaper.
Within the fog, silhouettes of the Dark Mechanicum emerged, shrouded in flesh and baleful psychic energies.
Though only phantasmal, their appearance alone revealed far too much—
In the future, there would be a place for Vashtorr.
Flames erupted from the furnace of hatred. The artificer's hammer gleamed with blood-wreathed energies, while something immensely heavy pressed down upon its slowly ascending body.
+Perturabo… traitor!!!+
Vashtorr roared. It extended its razor-sharp artificer's claw, blade-tipped fingers pointing straight at Perturabo.
+You have no idea what you've done!! I curse you—you will pay the price!!!+
But in the roiling tides, a sudden eruption of green lightning forced Vashtorr into silence. It raised its warhammer and began chanting softly, invoking power.
In the distance, through the mist, the colors of Word Bearer armor slowly came into view.
Upon the wastelands of Cadia, the daemon hosts and the Word Bearers stepped together onto the most chaotic front line.
. . .
The Dragon let out a cry of agony as he surged through the rolling fog. Above, there was no sky; below, no ground—the blinding white mist swallowed his vision whole.
From Hades' maw burst metal vapor of killing cold. Lightning coiled around him like a caged beast, leaping and lashing with savage fury.
The Black Domain that once extended outward was smothered, but in its place spread merciless emerald lightning, greedily probing farther and farther.
He saw corpses—countless corpses, tens of thousands of soulless dead.
From within the dense fog came the shrieks of innumerable grotesque creatures.
Crimson, uncanny blue, seductive violet, putrid green—the daemon armies of Chaos stood on the far side of the mist.
Come… come… come—come and fight me!
Hades thought. He raised his hand. Space itself began to twist, and silver-white fragments flaked away from his palm—
Boom!!!
The tide was violently overturned. Cowards scattered along with the white fog, dissolving into nothingness. In the brief instant where the mist rolled back, the Dragon's gaze caught sight of that blasphemous usurper—
Suddenly, a crushing pressure of immeasurable weight slammed down upon space itself. Suffocating pain seized his throat. Without the slightest hesitation, Vashtorr hurled itself violently to the right.
For an instant, it saw the silver-white monster that filled it with bone-chilling dread, staring at it as though gazing upon the most loathsome abomination in existence.
Flames erupted from Vashtorr's furnace as the scorching fires of hell roared back to life.
Even as it felt that unbearable pressure standing over the entire space—
But no longer—no longer was there the underworld domain! At this moment, Vashtorr would not be instantly suppressed by it!
Vashtorr's mouth split wide, as if laughing.
Two beings clawing at the same authority, false gods conspiring together to deceive all sentient life—one Machine-God standing on the side of the Warp, one on the side of physical reality…
Vashtorr knew that it, too, must now be staring at that being with utmost hatred. Even as fear gnawed at it, even as unease churned within, rage and loathing drowned everything else!
This monster! This greedy thing that had seized and squandered endless faith!
Warp-tides rolled beside Vashtorr as it swung its axe at its mortal enemy without hesitation—
And Vashtorr watched in horror as the straight axe shaft twisted in midair!!!
That thing wielded dominion over space itself!!!
Vashtorr shrieked in terror.
Lightning lunged straight toward its face, accompanied by a silver-white blade flickering with green light. With the underworld suppressed, had that thing finally abandoned its ridiculous little black dagger?!
Vashtorr raved and cursed madly, denouncing those deceitful beings that had toyed with it—Chaos, Perturabo! Not a single one of them had kept their promises!!
A burst of blue light flared, striking the white gale that stabbed toward Vashtorr. It heard the monster's enraged roar. The Creator laughed aloud as cables as thick as giant serpents lashed straight at the charging foe.
A furious draconic roar echoed out. In a split second, Hades' peripheral vision snapped toward the source of the blue light. Within the dense fog, he saw four distinct figures.
Kairos Fateweaver slowly lowered his staff, uncanny blue light writhing and dancing around it.
Now Hades was attacked from both sides!
A roar—one powerful enough to shatter stars—erupted forth. From Hades' body flowed silver-white tears. These metallic droplets, impossibly heavy in appearance, slowly began to float—
They fell, then rose, then rose again, ascending into empty reaches no one could see.
Thunder exploded!
In that instant, emerald light illuminated a face so cold and terrifying it could strike fear into daemons themselves. Flesh peeled away; silver-white liquid spread across the visage like a mask, crowned with merciless reason and logic.
"…So," came a voice, soft—so soft it could not possibly be softer—yet like a non-human hiss.
Every Warp-born creature present heard it with perfect clarity. The Plague Father meant to wipe away cold sweat with his stubby hand, but found himself unable to move at all, able only to stare at that being—
—A C'tan shard.
No.
Feeling the psychic field around him being constantly churned and torn apart by the Black Domain, Ku'gath knew this was something far more terrifying than a mere shard of a Star God.
For a fleeting moment, across the entire battlefield where Vashtorr stood, there was a brief void.
Silence.
Like the final stillness before the storm.
Hades let out a sigh.
For a fleeting moment, he felt as though he had become that "Chaos," that familiar presence described in the Primarch intelligence reports.
But every Warp-born creature present knew the truth: by forcibly suppressing the Black Domain and then allowing this being to activate a C'tan shard, the entity now floating in the air could not possibly still possess reason.
It was nothing more than a sliver of an old habit made manifest—a monster formed from concepts and the Black Domain, wearing Hades' memories like a skin!!!
And yet the voice remained calm, even carrying a trace of ease as it spoke,
"Everyone's here… good. The more, the better. The more, the better…"
Almost in perfect sync with the tail end of those words,
Above Cadia, a torrential downpour began to fall.
Silver-white tears.
Hades raised the scythe once more.
"Let's die together."
. . .
"PERTURABO!!!"
The Eye of Chaos churned into towering waves. Perhaps the Primarch would be the last being still standing when this war finally ended.
Ferrus' blood-choked roar dissolved into the heavy fog. Titans, Knights, Iron Hands—none of them remained. At his feet lay only corpses: the bodies of his sons, the bodies of Perturabo's sons. Steel and flesh were tangled together, until only the two of them were left.
Rust crept across iron. On Ferrus' Terminator armor, an unnatural orange-red scar was starkly visible, the plating bulging and warping like swollen flesh around a wound.
Opposite the Lord of Medusa, Perturabo was also grievously battered, yet the Lord of Iron showed not the slightest hesitation. The pale yellow fire in his eyes burned ever brighter.
From beyond the vast fog, Ferrus seemed to hear the roar of boiling furnaces. He faintly caught venomous curses—but they did not seem aimed at him.
The crazed smile at the corner of Perturabo's mouth grew wider, as if a mask were finally splitting open along a crack.
"Cough—cough!!"
Hearing Vashtorr's curses, Perturabo burst into laughter.
"No one can be trusted! Poor Vashtorr!!!"
"Ridiculous traitor!!!" Ferrus shouted.
"You even betrayed the Warp-creatures you allied with—Perturabo, I despise you more with every breath."
Perturabo answered Ferrus' roar with an even more ferocious strike.
"You understand nothing! Pitiful Ferrus!"
Perturabo laughed.
"Have you ever been abandoned?! Have you ever been deceived?! They made me what I am now—only so they could use me better!!!"
"Deceit, lies, honeyed words, so-called necessary cooperation, betrayal—I have tasted every kind of falsehood this world has to offer!"
"It is you who does not understand trust and loyalty!!"
Ferrus roared in reply. He swung Forgebreaker, the howling wind exploding beneath the hammer's arc. He wanted nothing else now. The battlefield had become something the Lord of Medusa could no longer comprehend—but Ferrus knew this much:
He only needed to kill Perturabo.
That was his sole desire. His only task.
He only needed to kill Perturabo!
He would kill Perturabo—this traitor!
Ferrus felt the sting of pain from his wounds, a dull ache creeping through him like rust spreading across steel. But he felt no fear. Hades was with him; he could sense the black mist trying to shield him.
He was fearless. To him, these wounds were nothing more than child's play!
When Perturabo realized that Ferrus was far less affected than he had expected, his expression darkened further.
From within the fog came the faint tolling of bells. Rust crawled like a living thing, spreading over the bodies and steel of the battlefield's grave.
From far off to one side, a heavy, labored breathing could be faintly heard.
Perturabo laughed once.
"Ferrus, it's over!"
Ferrus' peripheral vision instinctively flicked toward that corner. He saw a bloated green monster—shaped like an Astartes. He even caught a glimpse of that smile—
Before him, Perturabo brought down a killing blow. But Ferrus could take it. He felt no fear—
Slash!!!
Ferrus turned his head in shock, slowly, toward the direction completely opposite the green-armored Space Marine—
And he saw Lorgar, smiling.
A blade pierced through his chest, straight through his violently beating heart.
Within those chaotic violet eyes rolled a light Ferrus could neither grasp nor name. Trembling, Ferrus parted his lips. He wanted to say something, but in the end only a few faint words escaped him:
"…Traitor."
Lorgar's smile only grew brighter. He smiled gently, though the corners of that smile were trembling ever so slightly.
The Primarch of the Word Bearers suddenly wrenched his hand free. Blade and blood blossomed together. Ferrus still tried to struggle, the Primarch attempting to raise his hammer and fight again—but the Lord of Medusa, surrounded by two Primarchs, was already a spent bow.
He tried to rise for one last battle, but the prepared Lorgar smashed him down with his crozier, and he fell completely.
Perturabo erupted into earth-shaking laughter. He paid no heed to the smiling Lorgar standing beside him; he felt wonderful.
"Ferrus—oh, Ferrus!"
"To slave away for the Corpse-Emperor, you're nothing but a joke in other people's mouths!!"
Perturabo stepped forward. It seemed as though he wanted to approach Ferrus—what was he planning to do?
Light flickered in Lorgar's eyes as he looked at Perturabo. Ingethel's mad whispers echoed in his ears.
Drip
Lorgar stood there like a smiling doll. The first silver raindrop fell upon his face, sliding down from the corner of his eye.
It was raining.
Lorgar thought so, as he slowly raised the dagger in his hand, staring at Perturabo's back. The light of the Four Gods blazed upon him, scorching his soul.
"Perturabo," Lorgar lowered his gaze.
"You angered Them. So, this is returned to you."
The rain came down in a deluge.
Along with the slow spill of blood.
Perturabo looked at Lorgar in disbelief. Beneath the pouring rain, Lorgar wept silver tears of mercy.
"Betrayal, my brother—you know. This is how it works."
Crunch!!!
<+>
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