The battlefield was a fusion of vegetal hell. Charred tree trunks cracked under the heavy tread of armored feet, and the thick air was a nauseating mix of smoke, superheated plasma, and fluorescent green xenos blood. The fire of the Rak'Gol, sickly green plasma bolts, streaked across the Legion's advance, striking with lethal precision.
The advance was a steamroller of metal and will. In the front line, the hulking CMC armor of the Terran troops formed a moving wall, their C-14 Impalers spewing a hail of rounds that shredded the aliens' stony chitin. Alongside them, the soldiers of The Hunt advanced with a silent, methodical fury. Their black armor and exoskeletons made them look like mechanical demons. They did not scream; they saved their breath for the kill. Their weapons, often modified and overpowered versions of standard models, barked, turning Rak'Gol into projectiles of flesh and cybernetic fragments.
Behind them, Helldivers in powered armor bounded and used cover, their versatile weapons adapting to every threat. And in the rearguard, the stoic, impeccable Todd clones mopped up pockets of resistance with disciplined DC-15A blaster fire, forming a rolling barrage that never faltered.
Tanks and war machines advanced in support, Goliaths crushing everything in their path under metallic feet, their multi-barreled cannons pulverizing enemy concentrations.
The Rak'Gol did not retreat. They knew no fear. They were merely biological killing machines, programmed for annihilation. Wave after wave, they threw themselves at the Legion's lines. And wave after wave, they were shredded. Chalk-white bodies, broken and smoking, piled up, creating macabre barricades. But this was war. A relentless reaper that did not distinguish between the valiant and the coward, leaving behind only meat and steel.
At the heart of this chaos, Julius was a god of death.
Two Rak'Gol leaped at him from a burning thicket, their cybernetic claws gleaming. In one fluid motion, Julius spun his black lance-sword. The red-engraved beskar blade traced a perfect arc in the air. There was no sound of metal cutting, only a whoosh followed by two dull thuds. The two heads, their red eyes still glowing, left their bodies, which continued their charge before collapsing.
A third, more massive one, tried to pounce on him from a tree. Julius simply raised his free hand. The air around the Rak'Gol thickened, seized by the force of his thought. The enormous creature was ripped from its trajectory, its eight limbs flailing helplessly as an invisible power squeezed it in a vise. Julius, without a glance, clenched his fist. The beast's bones cracked. With a sharp gesture, he slammed the agonizing mass into the ground before him with terrible force, crushing it like a rotten fruit. The muffled crunch was drowned out by the noise of the battle.
Then he resumed his advance, his lance-sword now held in two hands. He moved with a deadly grace, every step calculated, every movement of the blade a promise of annihilation. The lance split carapaces, severed cybernetic limbs, and impaled bodies with terrifying efficiency.
His guard, the Sentinels of Braveheart, was his perfect shadow. They formed a circle of destruction around him, their midnight blue beskar armor deflecting enemy fire like pebbles, their own weapons reducing to rubble any Rak'Gol foolish enough to approach. They did not speak. They did not need to communicate. They were an extension of his will, a storm of steel advancing at his same pace, crushing everything in its path.
The war roared, swallowing lives by the hundreds. But at the center of this storm, Julius Braveheart and his Legion were not participants. They were the storm itself. And they would not stop until there was nothing left to destroy.