Bathed in firelight, Horus's daemonic body, wreathed in warp power, looked even more imposing and fearsome.
He had gathered the Chaos Gods' power without reservation. He was stronger now than he had been ten thousand years ago.
"Traitor!"
A captain of the Blood Angels Legion clawed his way out of the ruins, eyes bloodshot as he roared at the Warmaster of Chaos, hatred overflowing in his heart.
Igniting his power sword, he hurled himself forward in one final charge.
He knew he would die here.
But even if he were reduced to dust, a son of Sanguinius would still leave a wound on his enemy!
"Sanguinius was just as overconfident back then."
Horus looked at the red-armored warrior charging him, as though remembering something.
He paid the incoming attack no mind at all. To him, it was no more than a nuisance, like the buzzing of a mosquito.
Boom!
The monstrous, spiked Worldbreaker swung down so fast the eye could not follow it, smashing the Blood Angels captain's head and half his torso apart in a single blow.
His raised hand dropped limply. His power sword clattered to the ground. He died on the spot.
That battle-hardened Blood Angels captain had not so much as touched the hem of Horus's garment before he died. He had not even seen how the attack was delivered.
The two of them no longer existed on the same plane of life. With the Chaos Gods' blessing, Horus's power had already surpassed that of any primarch.
He stood infinitely close to another level of existence.
Hummm...
A terrifying metallic roar rolled through the air, the sound of some colossal mass of metal grinding violently against the atmosphere. It carried the low, crushing pressure of a moving mountain, while the battered hull shrieked and rang against the turbulent currents.
Horus looked up.
High above, a burning metal leviathan was plunging toward him, descending at all costs.
It was a Blood Angels warship.
Driven into a corner by endless darkness, it had chosen to launch a suicidal strike against this fortress.
It meant to grievously wound Horus and his evil army, to slow their advance on Holy Terra.
This was loyalty to the very end.
"For the Emperor and Sanguinius!"
"Kill! Let the Blood never be shamed!"
Resolute battle cries rang out from the warship's communication channels and vox-casters.
Then it unleashed its final broadside. Torpedoes and lance fire screamed toward Horus's position at point-blank range, radiating the threat of death.
"Ah, what a pitiful assault. Like moths throwing themselves into the flame.
False Emperor upon the Throne, hypocrite... do you see this?"
Horus fixed a savage gaze on the incoming bombardment. He could feel the heat of the lance beams and the dreadful energy churning within the torpedoes.
They were Cyclonic Torpedoes.
And yet such paltry attacks could not affect the future Dark Emperor. They were not even worth guarding against.
At Horus's gaze, a warped curtain of empyrean power spread across the sky.
Every attack from that ship slammed into it like it had struck an indestructible wall, and the ensuing blossoms of fire were swallowed and erased by Chaos energy.
Now that the Solar System was deeply linked to the warp, this Dark Emperor had obtained unstoppable power.
He could ignore nearly all physical attacks.
Shadow swept over the ground as the descending warship compressed the air, whipping up a gale. Dust and rubble rippled outward in waves.
Facing the burning warship diving straight at him from above, Horus lightly raised Worldbreaker in his hand.
In that instant, a terrifying crimson beam lanced in from the distance and swept across the Blood Angels warship in mid-dive.
It was a dreadful attack launched from Xinlonglin, enough to destroy any Imperial vessel.
Nothing could stop it.
This planetary Chaos fortress, vast enough to rival a world, now stood at the boundary between the warp and the galaxy. Under the influence of Chaos energy, its shadow expanded without end.
It was as though it had blanketed the entire Solar System, dimming the stars.
It was also Horus's stronghold, the core fortress of the Chaos assault on the Solar System. Deep within it was the Shadowlight artifact, capable of sealing the Emperor's power.
The moment Xinlonglin appeared in the Solar System, it began disrupting the sacred sun's power, allowing the Chaos warp to ravage the heartland of the Imperium without restraint.
Boom!
The moment that horrifying crimson ray swept across the ship, its armor melted away in milliseconds. The beam sliced the vessel in two on a slant.
The battleship came apart under the attack, then erupted into a chain of explosions, becoming burning wreckage in the void.
By then, Horus had already turned away, no longer paying attention to the sky, as though he had casually swatted an overreaching insect.
Behind him, the heavens had become an ocean of crimson.
Every Imperial warship had been destroyed. Wreckage stretched to the edge of sight. Even the void itself seemed to be burning.
"False Emperor, your armies are still as laughably weak as they were ten thousand years ago. A pity you can no longer rise from the Throne to stop me."
Horus sneered.
Whether ten thousand years ago or now, he had always commanded the Imperium's mightiest armed strength. Even the Imperium itself had been conquered step by step by him and the brothers who once stood beside him.
And yet that Emperor, that monarch who had betrayed them all, had wanted to cast aside his sons like tools after getting everything he wanted.
The resurrected Luna Wolf, the Dark Emperor, had already decided to crush every last hope the Emperor still held.
He would force that man into endless pain and regret.
"My lord."
Erebus stepped forward, a trace of slyness flashing unconsciously through his eyes before vanishing again. He spoke with grave seriousness.
"That was only Imperial reinforcements, not the Savior's core armed forces. Perhaps we should treat this war with greater caution."
Hmm?
Horus turned and swept the dark apostle, the Hand of Destiny, with an icy stare that made him involuntarily take a step back.
Besides the scar the Savior had left on his face, Erebus now bore a new one.
The two scars were glaringly obvious, marks of humiliation.
The newer one had been given to him by Horus. After regaining his senses, Horus had brutally punished this self-important fool.
He had made the sly clown understand who the true master was.
Under Horus's cold and savage gaze, Erebus trembled inwardly and lowered his head in humiliation.
He was afraid. He knew he could no longer manipulate this Dark Emperor, who had grown both stronger and clearer-minded.
Horus shook his head, his tone thick with displeasure.
"I only find it disgraceful that while I was absent, all of you were suppressed by that so-called Savior, that blond little brat.
How pathetic."
For centuries, Mortarion, Magnus, Fulgrim, Angron, Erebus, and the other former traitor primarchs and higher beings had all been suppressed and toyed with by the newly arisen Savior.
They had scarcely been able to fight back.
To Horus, that was absurd and shameful. Had they spent all those years fighting wars for nothing?
The former Warmaster and newly crowned Dark Emperor could barely bring himself to say it aloud. He was only a step away from saying that everyone present was trash.
Erebus drew a deep breath and said nothing. In the distance, Mortarion and the other dozen or so resurrected fallen primarchs breathed heavily, but none of them spoke either.
They had no way to refute it.
It was proof of Horus's authority. After his resurrection, he had once again dealt harshly with those brothers of his, completely establishing his absolute status.
He was more intimidating and more worthy of leadership than he had been ten thousand years ago.
In truth, this had always been what the former Imperial Warmaster excelled at. Otherwise, he could never have led half the Imperium's armies into rebellion against the Emperor in the first place.
???
Within the Chaos-churned void, Horus's words caused the shadows of the Chaos Gods to tremble faintly with a touch of anger.
They felt rather uncomfortable, as though their chosen champion had just taken a veiled jab at them.
No matter what, they were wary of the Savior's existence. They had even gone so far as to spend enormous effort luring him out of the Solar System.
Those words from their chosen one had, without intending to, stabbed the Chaos Gods right in the heart.
Even so, the Chaos Gods continued to favor Horus without the slightest displeasure, and allowed him to retain clear consciousness.
That was an essential condition for winning this war. They needed an exceptional proxy to split the Imperium apart.
This time, the Chaos Gods had learned their lesson.
Ten thousand years ago, they had corrupted Horus's mind and ultimately reduced him to a mad puppet, which had caused countless problems.
It had also given the Emperor room to breathe, allowing him to gather even greater strength through the vast population of humanity.
From a certain point of view, the reproductive power of the human race was even more astonishing than the insects beyond the galaxy. Their numbers were beyond imagination, and they were the most delicious faith-cake of all.
So tempting.
They were desperate to win this war, remove the Emperor as a threat, and feast upon that delicious faith.
Everything was within reach.
Now that Horus possessed clear thought, whatever he wanted, they gave him. He could command all the armies of Chaos and all warp power. Even the greater daemons had to obey his orders.
His authority towered over all.
The military ability of this chosen champion was not inferior to the Emperor's own. He was, in every sense, second only to the Emperor.
As for whether he might eventually slip out of control and rebel against their will, the gods did not care.
Once the Emperor's threat was gone, there would be nothing in the galaxy or the warp capable of defying them.
And Horus had not disappointed the Chaos Gods' investment or expectations. The moment he arrived in the galaxy, he used Chaos power to split the entire Solar System apart, leaving many regions isolated strongholds.
Terra in particular had been cut off and left without aid.
Aside from a small number of Imperial reinforcements, the rest of the Imperium's forces had either been delayed or blocked outside the Solar System.
The advantage was clearly theirs.
"Heh. Those prisoners of the warp are truly impatient."
Horus sensed the Chaos Gods' stirrings and sneered inwardly.
He had willingly accepted their power for only one purpose:
Revenge.
He would carve a path to the Throne, use the Shadowlight to drag that father of his, that False Emperor, off the Throne by his bones, and listen to his confession.
"A pity the Savior isn't in the Solar System. Otherwise I would deal with that so-called Emperor of the Imperium at the same time."
Horus felt a trace of regret, but only a trace. He had never regarded the Savior as his opponent.
He had only one true enemy: the Emperor. And that man was already nothing more than a skeleton upon the Throne.
As for Guilliman, the Lion, Rogal Dorn, and the other loyal primarchs of the Imperium, they posed little threat. That had already been proven ten thousand years ago.
Once the Emperor had fallen, Horus looked at all of them as though they were no more than heads waiting to be taken, unworthy of fear.
"Kairos, I require a more detailed strategic deployment map of the Solar System."
Warp power twisted in Horus's eyes as he received fragments of intelligence, information concerning the defensive lines around Holy Terra.
But it was too vague.
Faint displeasure rose in him, and he issued a fresh order to the Architect of Fate's foremost greater daemon.
Though this Dark Emperor looked down on the Savior and the Imperium's loyalists, that did not mean he was arrogant enough to become careless.
Not enough to allow mistakes to breed.
Horus was determined to commit all his strength, smash through every defensive line around Holy Terra like dry branches and rotten wood, and then stride into the Throne Room of the Imperial Palace.
He wanted to terrify the whole Imperium of Man.
He did not want any mistakes, nor did he wish to become bogged down in a stalemate the way he had ten thousand years ago.
"Forgive us, our Dark Emperor. The Cursed One and the Savior's blackstone machines have obscured our vision."
Kairos's two heads spoke at the same time, tripping over and contradicting one another.
"Perhaps we cannot obtain more intelligence. You may choose to believe that.
Of course, this may be false information. The Savior may be hiding greater military strength while we know nothing.
No, what we see is the truth. Those pitiful defensive forces are not worth fearing."
Horus gave no reply. He simply cut the communication link in silence. These creatures of Chaos were no different from madmen. Very few of them possessed anything resembling a normal mind.
He now had a rough idea why, after he had become a puppet back then, the Traitor Legions under his command had failed and thrown away such overwhelming advantages.
How could a war possibly be fought well with vermin like these?
Fortunately, this time he had regained a sound mind and could control everything himself. He would never again sink to such a pathetic state.
Afterward, Horus contacted the Chaos enginseers under his command and used dark machinery to conduct another scan of the Solar System.
This time, they obtained much more intelligence, but it was still hazy, as though some invisible barrier were blocking the scans.
"It seems the Savior and the Emperor of the Imperium have poured quite a bit of effort into the Solar System's defenses. It's much stronger than it was ten thousand years ago."
That was Horus's conclusion.
It had caught him somewhat by surprise. It seemed the Savior did have some real ability and was no mere pretender.
Still, defenses of this level could not stop the power he now commanded.
At least in Horus's eyes, the current defenses were still crude. They contained far too many fatal weaknesses.
He swiftly absorbed all the maps and intelligence regarding the Solar System's defenses and projected a full holographic map of the system into the air.
Upon that warp-forged map, one red point after another was marked out, along with the regions that needed to be broken and the corresponding attack routes for the armies involved.
Every route pointed toward the weakest parts of the Solar System's defenses, and each was paired with a tightly structured assault plan.
"This is a war, not meaningless slaughter."
Horus's gaze was terrifyingly clear, yet filled with boundless authority.
The Chaos armies under his command would strike like a surgeon's blade, cutting precisely into the arteries of the Solar System's defenses.
What would follow would be mortal pain and helpless screams.
The stars would burn out, and blood would flow across Terra's skies!
Within the vision of this Dark Emperor, one outer space fortress after another fell. Soot-black Chaos fleets, like monstrous evil beasts, lunged toward Holy Terra's defensive lines.
Drop pods and daemons filled the heavens like swarming insects, plunging from the void toward the defense network.
(End of Chapter)
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