"What is happening?!"
Lion, the Dark Angels, and the mortal defenders all stared at the scene before them in disbelief.
Just as the line was about to collapse and despair was descending on them, the servants of the Lord of Terror arrived.
These Chaos warriors were terrifyingly resolute.
They formed one human wall after another, standing in front of the Imperial defenders and blocking the daemonic horde's assault, holding the Imperial battle line!
"By the Emperor… what kind of…"
An Imperial war scribe gazed at the Chaos wall in the distance and was struck speechless.
Under normal circumstances, a scene like this, especially one involving a Primarch, would be worth recording in the Imperial epics and sending to the Holy Library of Terra.
When the human defenders stand on the brink of despair, powerful reinforcements descend from the heavens and form a living wall, holding the line.
They bring salvation to warriors who were already brushing shoulders with death.
If this had been accomplished by the Emperor's Angels, it would have been a moment so stirring that no quill could fully capture it, worthy of every record and hymn.
It would very likely become part of the Ecclesiarchy's holy epics, carved into the murals of the great cathedral of this world.
Yet the ones who actually achieved this… were a host of Chaos Space Marines, the Imperium's own traitors.
There was simply no way to record this. It was too heretical.
The sacred yet heretical spectacle created by the Terror Legion almost made the war scribe's mind crash.
He took a moment, then decided to record this segment as a blacked-out gap, marking it as forbidden data that could never be released to the public.
Of course, as a scribe, he still had to record everything truthfully in a separate, sealed archive.
The war scribe plucked a fresh sheet of parchment from the servo-skull floating at his side and, hand trembling, began to write furiously, documenting this bizarre scene.
Nor was he the only one left stunned.
Everyone present was nearly knocked senseless by the sheer absurdity of what they were seeing.
Their emotions were like a roller coaster, plunging from despair to elation, then into a cloud of question marks and utter bewilderment.
"Just what are these traitors playing at? Why are they helping the Imperium hold back the daemons?!"
Lion stared at the Chaos Marines dropping all along the front line, still raining down in fresh waves, his emotions complex.
These Chaos Marines were all once the sons of his Primarch brothers, warriors of the Imperium. Some even bore the markings of the Great Crusade.
They had simply become… far too twisted.
He took a deep breath and opened the command-channel.
"Librarian-mentor, are these what you foretold? The vanguard allies from your prophecy, the first wave of reinforcements?"
"Your Highness, I fear they are indeed… reinforcements. By the Emperor, why must it be like this? The Savior, he…"
So blatantly counter-intuitive a phenomenon had shaken the Librarian-mentor's confidence. Even he was beginning to doubt whether his prophetic abilities had gone awry.
But the Chaos Marines' actions left little doubt that they were allies, at least for now.
"Most likely that Savior of ours struck some kind of bargain with the traitors. We may have to remind him of what he's dealing with, lest he fall into Diablo the Destroyer's trap."
Lion thought for a moment and spoke in a measured tone.
From what he knew, the Savior, the Imperium's new Emperor, was someone unconcerned with small formalities, fond of strange tactics, and quite capable of doing what no one else would even attempt.
But even so, working with Chaos Space Marines, even making a pact with a Chaos deity, a future Chaos god…
This was beyond anything Lion had imagined.
In any case, he would have to warn or outright stop the Savior from further contact with Chaos and tell him that this so-called god was likely the Dark Lord of legend.
He could not allow that man to fall prey to a Chaos god's schemes, or to be corrupted by excessive exposure to the Warp.
Lion thought grimly.
He had seen Primarch brothers fall to Chaos with his own eyes and did not wish the Savior to follow that path.
Especially not someone who had helped him time and again.
That said, the Savior's deal had, undeniably, brought aid to Kalisde and bought them time.
At the very least, it had allowed them to hold the line for now, avoiding a total collapse of the front that would have led to a tragic massacre of every Dark Angel and mortal on the planet.
"Attention all commanders: do not fire on the Chaos Marines. We must not provoke them into turning on us. For the moment, they appear to be on our side."
Lion issued his command over the channel, then eased the tense atmosphere:
"We have no need to panic. For now, at least, the line has not fallen.
And nothing is worse than losing the line… is it?"
Given the current situation, the fall of the defensive line would mean the planet's utter doom and death for everyone on it.
They had to use every last scrap of strength they could find to hold this final fortress line.
Lion considered briefly, then transmitted a message to the Chaos Marines.
He quickly established contact with a high-ranking commander of the Terror Legion.
"Unknown commander, I am Lion El'Jonson, Primarch of the First Legion, the Emperor's loyal son."
"A Primarch? The Lion of legend?!"
The Terror Legion officer who received the Primarch's transmission still sounded gruff, but there was newfound respect in his voice.
"I am Brokenhorn, captain of the Terror Legion's Fourth Company. What business do you have with me?"
Across the galaxy, strength commanded respect, whether among the Imperium or among Chaos.
Such were the effects of might and renown: even an enemy, when he came to kill you, would do so with greater caution and a heavier hand.
That was a form of glory warriors yearned for.
Lion spoke his mind without preamble.
"Captain, it seems our goals are aligned. We should coordinate our efforts and fight this Chaos war together."
He hoped that the Imperial defenders could establish better communications with this Chaos force, enabling more effective coordination and a stronger joint defense of the fortress line.
They needed only to hold until the Savior's Imperial armada arrived.
However, the Terror Legion's captain, Brokenhorn, rejected him outright.
"No, Primarch. The Terror Legion never cooperates with others. It would dilute our tally of kills. You hold your line, we'll revel in slaughter in ours!"
He had no intention of fighting shoulder to shoulder with mere humans. What if they died beside him and dragged down his god-granted favor?
That was something Terror Marines truly cared about, much as priests guarded the sanctity of their relics.
"Very well. As you wish."
Since they refused, Lion did not waste words and cut the channel.
He shook his head and chuckled dryly.
"So they think the Knights of Caliban would drag them down? How absurd."
The Lion had misunderstood. He thought the Terror Legion looked down on the Dark Angels' combat strength and was mildly too confident in his own.
Still, he did not take it personally. Chaos Marines were not known for clear thinking. There was little point in taking offense, especially when they were useful allies.
"Damn those arrogant curs, to question the Knights of Caliban!"
But nearby, Fifth Company Captain Lazarus of the Dark Angels heard the exchange and let out a cold snort.
He felt the sting of humiliation.
Combat capability was everything to a Space Marine, much as titles and performance were everything to nobles.
Only then came equipment.
To hear such talk from Chaos Marines was intolerable. It was no different than being slapped across the face.
"Knights, hold the line and fight with everything you have! Don't let those curs look down on us!"
"Outdo them! Show them what we're made of!"
"For the Lion!"
Once this message rippled across the command-net, the Dark Angels spoke as one. A fierce, competitive fire rose in their hearts.
Their will to fight soared.
They refused to see their sector collapse or their tally of kills pale in comparison, thereby proving the Terror Marines right.
They were even more determined to surpass those maniacs.
How could the Imperium's loyal warriors be weaker in battle than those despicable traitors?
Seeing this, Lion did nothing to rein them in. Anything that stirred his warriors' fighting spirit was welcome.
In war, slumping morale was the greatest danger of all. It could cripple a force's combat effectiveness and even trigger a full-scale rout.
Besides, he had no doubt that the Dark Angels would not lose. The Knights of Caliban were among the finest Space Marines in the Imperium.
Arguably, without equal.
While the Dark Angels were gritting their teeth and preparing to compete with the Terror Legion, the Terror Marines themselves were already gearing up, hauling heavier weapons from the racks on their backs.
Several high-ranking Terror Marines cranked every buff they had to maximum. Runes burned to life along their armor and weapons, halo after halo flaring around them.
They were entering Blood-Point Burn mode, or in other words, high-intensity war mode.
Yes, the Terror Legion's top-tier wargear was not only hideously expensive, but its operation constantly consumed Blood Point corruption. Even simply running it came with a fee.
But the power it delivered was very real.
It was addictive, and the Terror Marines could not stop themselves from going full pay-to-win.
"Hummmm—"
Countless howls, shrieks, and war cries fused into a dreadful wave of sound, pushing human hearing beyond its limits until all that remained was an unbearable drone.
The daemonic horde had launched its charge.
The horde's advance accelerated, surging toward them like a living stormfront, a great black tide.
The world beyond the fortress line suddenly went dark.
The sky was filled with flapping vampiric bat-things and floating daemons, while the ground crawled with daemon engines and bounding monstrosities of every hideous shape.
They thirsted for slaughter.
"By the Emperor, send your storm upon the heretics. Shelter your pitiful lambs…"
The mortal defenders trembled at the sight, bodies shaking uncontrollably as even their minds and spirits buckled under the pressure.
The Dark Angels gripped their weapons more tightly and drew deep breaths. Even they could not entirely banish the knot of tension and pressure in their hearts.
They did not fear death, but faced with such a swarm of Chaos abominations, instinctive dread still bubbled up.
"More daemons! Come on, more daemons! Hahahaha!"
The Terror Marines, by contrast, stared at the incoming black tide with wild delight.
To their eyes, this endless, rolling sea of daemons was nothing but an ocean of walking Blood Points.
It was like the land itself had been paved in gleaming currency.
"Praise the god of ruin and terror…"
They felt fortunate that their captain had beaten the neighboring captain half to death, seizing this deployment for their company.
To the Terror Legion's elite, the more enemies and the more dangerous the battlefield, the more worth it the fight. Otherwise, a battle might not even earn back the Blood Points they spent to gear up.
What they truly adored were those rare engagements that were both thrilling and wildly profitable.
Especially a high-intensity, apocalypse-scale battlefield like this one. It was enough to make them feel that even dying here would be worth it.
Facing the daemonic tide, the Terror Marines knew no fear and no tension. There was only naked, greedy battle-lust.
Their eyes were truly terrifying.
So many greedy, murder-hungry gazes gathered together that they looked more daemonic than the daemons themselves.
Their combined presence became a kind of aura of terror all its own.
"???"
The daemons leading the charge faltered as they met these eyes, a prickle of foreboding creeping into their cores.
Their steps slowed, hesitation finally reaching even them.
Too late.
The next instant, those foremost daemons were flung backwards like rag dolls.
The Terror Legion's hell-forged heavy munitions tore into them, tracing dark-red chains of metal through the air.
Within the kill-zone of those crimson bullet-curtains, the daemons screamed and toppled like harvested wheat, one wave after another.
Since invading this world, this was the first time the daemonic horde had faced such overwhelming firepower, such an impenetrable wall of guns.
Fortunately, there were enough daemons to make up for it in sheer numbers.
Step by step, corpses piling in their wake, they pushed forward, inching closer to the madmen who dared oppose their gods.
Their talons and blades would tear through those Chaos Marines' armor and flesh.
They would make them regret ever coming to this battlefield!
"You chaos-addled bastards, light up your weapons! The sweetest Blood Points are waiting to be harvested!"
To the daemons' bafflement, the Terror Marines did not fall back into their prepared defenses. Instead, they stowed their heavy guns and drew flaming power swords, reaper axes, chainblades, and all manner of ostentatious melee weapons.
"Offer ruin and terror to Diablo the Destroyer!"
Roaring, the Terror Marines surged off the defensive line, charging straight into the heaving black mass of daemons.
Their will to charge was like a physical force. Heads down and blades swinging, they plowed a bloody furrow through the horde.
"Are those lunatics insane?!"
Captain Lazarus of the Fifth Company finished off the enemy before him, then looked up just in time to see the Terror Marines' counter-charge. The words slipped out of him before he could stop them.
A small force charging headlong into a great tide of enemies was a sight to stir the soul. Even the Dark Angels could not match this level of madness.
It was almost suicidal. And yet, it was deeply exhilarating.
This was war in its rawest form.
"Besides… someone still has to hold the line…"
Lazarus muttered, half to convince himself as he pushed down the urge to lead the Knights of Caliban in their own wild charge.
He could not deny that he envied the Terror Marines' ferocity… and their wargear.
He found himself respecting their battle prowess, and that respect only deepened when he saw what happened next.
Because the troops that had landed earlier turned out to be only the vanguard of the Terror Legion.
Even stronger warriors and deadlier fire support were on the way!
A dragon's roar shook the sky.
Daemons in the air came apart like chopped meat, falling from the heavens like dumplings into boiling water.
Something monstrous was churning through the black cloud of daemons overhead.
Then the Dark Angels saw them: hulking, molten-metal draconic machines tearing their way out of the daemon-cloud.
Each Hell Drake-like construct stretched at least twenty meters from snout to tail, burning with flame and mounting heavy weaponry as it screamed through the sky.
"Hell Drakes?!"
Lazarus stared, eyes wide.
They did resemble Hell Drakes, but twisted and refitted into something closer to true dragons, their bodies flowing with lava.
More importantly, every Hell Drake carried a towering Terror Marine on its back, riding it like a flying mount or attack craft.
It was an awe-inspiring sight.
These were Infernal Dragon Knights. Only high-ranking warriors were allowed to pour the ocean of Blood Points required to obtain one of the Terror Legion's heavily modified Hell Drake mounts.
With them, they could carve through the battlefield in three dimensions, slaughtering with impunity.
Above the black clouds, a figure of even greater presence descended, finally entering everyone's field of view.
Captain Brokenhorn of the Terror Legion, now a Chaos Terminator and Fifth Captain, rode a dark-red Hell Drake nearly thirty meters long, a massive gore-stained warhammer in his grip as he radiated murderous intent.
He had entered Diablo's service as a Chaos Terminator, then secured his captaincy through a record of peerless slaughter and destruction.
After that, he had fought through two full apocalypse-class wars in succession just to scrape together the down payment for the Hell Drake beneath him, becoming an object of envy to every other captain.
Every time he appeared, his presence alone was a shock to the battlefield.
Like now.
Brokenhorn ignored the gazes of the mortals completely, his crimson eyes fixed only on the churning mass of daemons below.
"Infernal Knights! Full charge!"
The high-ranking Infernal Dragon Knight hauled on his mount's reins, sending the great Hell Drake into a screaming dive. Dozens of Hell Drakes followed, ripping apart every airborne daemon in their path.
They rained lethal bombardments down on the daemonic tide below.
Brokenhorn forced his mount down to ground level, the Hell Drake scything through the hordes like a living bulldozer. Razor talons and steel wings swept wide, shredding anything in reach.
They tore through the daemons like wheat in a harvest.
Moments later, the Terror Legion's heavy Dreadnought walkers and other daemon engines charged forward in concert.
Together, they slammed into the Chaos tide in a massive hammerblow.
"Szzzzz—"
Arc after arc of molten energy scythed across the battlefield.
Superheated lances from the Hell Drakes' maws vaporized daemon engines wholesale.
"Such terrifying mounts…"
Lazarus watched the Hell Drakes and their riders with naked envy.
Especially once the smell of scorched flesh reached him, he could barely stop himself from sighing aloud. Who wouldn't want to ride a dragon like that into battle?
They were all knights, but while the Knights of Caliban had to content themselves with bike squads and standard vehicles, the Terror Legion's knights rode Hell Drakes.
The gap was painfully obvious, leaving the captain quietly dejected.
He was not alone. Many Dark Angels found themselves shaken by the Terror Legion's superb gear, overwhelming firepower, and ferocious combat strength.
One Dark Angels Dreadnought, seeing a Chaos Dreadnought execute a corkscrew leap, land in the middle of a mob, then rip out its own pilot to go on a personal killing spree, sank into deep depression.
He could not fly.
Nor could he tear himself out of his sarcophagus to start hacking people up.
"Sapphon, did you not say those traitors were cut off from supply after they turned on the Imperium and that, in terms of firepower, they lagged far behind us?"
Lion watched the Terror Marines running wild across the battlefield, his voice actually trembling a little.
He had discussed the traitors and Chaos Marines with the chaplain Grand Master earlier. Sapphon had given him exactly that assessment.
Yet looking at the scene before them… these damned traitors clearly possessed gear far superior to anything the Imperium had in theater.
"Y-Your Highness, I… I don't understand it either. It might be the influence of the Great Rift…"
Grand Chaplain Sapphon was just as bewildered. He felt as though he no longer understood the galaxy at all.
He had only spent a little over a century in the dark, and the times had already changed this much?
Lion himself felt a pang of frustration.
Not only were the Terror Marines ahead of the Dark Angels in equipment and firepower, they were also doing more to shield humans in combat.
Space Marines rarely went out of their way to take bullets for mortals.
But the Terror Marines did. In the midst of the battle, they positioned themselves to intercept incoming fire aimed at the mortals whenever possible.
It was practically an act of loyalty.
Which meant that in protecting human lives, Imperial Space Marines were losing to the Terror Legion as well.
Defeated across the board.
Lion's face fell.
"Librarian-mentor, I am beginning to doubt the prophecy. Is Diablo the Destroyer truly the Dark Lord who will annihilate everything?"
Judging by the behavior of his servants, there was not the slightest hint of them seeking to destroy the Imperium. They looked more like… friends of the Imperium.
No answer came.
The Librarian-mentor, shattered by the sheer cognitive dissonance and unable to reconcile what he was seeing, had fainted dead away.
For now, the fortress line held firm under the Terror Legion's support. Yet the darkness continued to surge. The Chaos gods had already noticed the shift in the battle and were sending even more claws and fangs into the fray.
Including once-beloved sons of the Emperor.
…
The Warp.
Aboard the Dreamweaver, on the command deck.
The armored shutters over the observation dome remained open, revealing the swirling, chaotic colors of the Immaterium and the unknown shadows roiling within.
Three towering figures stood side by side, gazing out into the Warp as if watching something specific.
"Brother, do you see anything?"
Roboute Guilliman stared for a while, but could make nothing of the Warp's mad currents and finally turned to the figure in the center.
"Roboute, your powers of observation are worse than mine."
Jaghatai Khan replied with easy confidence, taking the chance to jab at him.
"At the very least, I can sense a descending danger. I suspect it's headed straight for us."
"Indeed."
Eden said solemnly:
"All of us are in danger. Lion in particular. The Chaos gods have dispatched multiple Greater Daemons and several traitor Primarchs against us."
"As expected of you, brother.
"I can't believe you can read such precise details out of this chaotic Warp torrent."
Khan was honestly impressed.
"To be precise, I just received an encoded transmission from our seers."
Eden rubbed at his dry eyes, then clasped his hands behind his back and turned away from the viewing dome.
"It's time to arm up. We should rendezvous with our brother Lion as soon as possible…"
(End of Chapter)
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