Chapter 20 Blood for the Blood God
The Emperor entrusted Yuki with a shock formation composed of five companies from the First Legion of the Legiones Astartes, the Sixteenth and Nineteenth Thunder Warrior Legions, and a cadre of fifty sanctioned psykers.
Their mission was singular:
Break the enemy line.
Break it fast.
Break it violently.
The assault force would strike the Ursh front in a concentrated thrust, creating a breach through which the main Imperial host could advance — while simultaneously forcing the enemy to reveal their hidden capabilities.
Yuki's formation doctrine was simple and brutal.
The psykers would form the core of the wedge, projecting layered kine-shields and null wards.
The Astartes and the Sixteenth Thunder Warriors would form the spearhead, punching through resistance and ensuring the psykers' protection radius encompassed the entire assault front.
The Nineteenth Thunder Warriors would operate on the flanks, conducting sweeping attacks to prevent envelopment and collapse counterattacks before they could form.
Yuki herself would occupy the tip of the spear.
Anything that stood before the formation would be broken.
The ten Custodian Guards assigned to her protection did not remain idle observers — they would strike where resistance threatened the cohesion of the assault.
At dawn, Yuki addressed the assembled warriors.
"I believe nothing I say now will matter more than what comes next.
So I ask you only this:
Will you claim this victory for the Emperor… and for humanity?"
Thunder Warriors and Astartes alike answered with a thunderous roar:
"For the Emperor!"
Yuki had long wondered about this.
What force did the Emperor — and beings like the Primarchs — exert upon human hearts?
She walked among the people and saw tears of reverence.
She heard prayers whispered in her presence.
Even these warriors, ascetic and tireless, driven beyond human limits, displayed a fierce devotion that bordered on religious fervor.
She resolved, not for the first time, that discipline within the Imperial war machine must one day evolve beyond zealotry.
"Advance!"
Alpharius moved along the formation's outer edge, stealing glances toward Yuki, though the mass of armored bodies blocked his view.
"Brother, are you from our company? I've not seen you before," an Astartes beside him asked.
"I am Sada, newly inducted," Alpharius replied smoothly.
"Oh. We've had many new recruits. I heard some have already drawn the Princess's attention. Do you think I might—"
Alpharius nearly lost his composure.
When had his sister ever favored random recruits?
That was him.
What nonsense.
"Silence."
The company captain's voice ended the conversation instantly.
At that same moment, Alpharius felt it — a shift in the air, like pressure before a storm.
Across the formation, helms received the command rune.
Combat commenced.
The assault wedge advanced with machine precision.
Bolt rifles thundered.
Explosive shells tore through the Ursh front ranks.
At the formation's heart, the psykers chanted in measured cadence, projecting a shimmering kine-barrier. Psychic discharges from Ursh resonance engines struck the barrier and dissipated in cascades of harmless light.
At the spear tip, Yuki was devastation incarnate.
Her movement was neither flamboyant nor wasteful.
It was efficient.
Purposeful.
Lethal.
Her twin blades traced arcs of annihilation, severing armor, bone, and machinery alike.
With a beat of her wings she surged forward, descending like a raptor. A towering psi-amplifier tower began to pulse—
It split in two before activation.
Ursh soldiers howled and charged.
They died before reaching her.
The Primarch's strength surged through every strike; the massed enemy became little more than debris before her advance.
Then the psychic barrage came.
She had advanced beyond the psykers' protection radius.
A storm of telekinetic force, warp-laced energy, and resonance shockwaves converged upon her position.
Yuki crossed her blades.
The impact detonated outward, scattering attackers like leaves in a gale.
More strikes followed.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Her blades blurred into luminous arcs, turning aside psychic force through sheer speed and transhuman precision. Shockwaves rippled across the battlefield, hurling enemies aside.
When the barrage ended, devastation radiated outward from her position.
No enemies stood within thirty meters.
Yet unease gnawed at her.
Her precognitive instinct — a fleeting glimpse two heartbeats ahead — showed only violence and motion.
Nothing beyond.
Nothing clear.
Then she felt it.
"Thunder Warriors — withdraw! Immediately!"
Too late.
Reality tore.
A ragged wound split the air ahead — a warp breach ripping open like a blade through flesh.
Within the roiling aperture burned two colossal crimson eyes.
Warp entities poured through.
Twisted shapes clad in scavenged Ursh armor, flesh fused with iron, brass sigils hammered into mutated forms.
The mark of the Blood God burned upon them.
Now the truth was clear.
The Ursh Empire endured not through strength alone…
…but through the patronage of Chaos.
As the warp-spawn emerged, a tide of rage flooded the battlefield.
Bloodlust.
Violence.
Unreasoning fury.
The Thunder Warriors faltered.
Their genetic instabilities and crude psycho-conditioning left them dangerously vulnerable to warp corruption.
"Astartes, hold formation! Thunder Warriors, fall back now!"
Yuki launched skyward and descended upon the warp creatures. The Custodians at last reached her position and entered the melee without a word.
Alpharius fired controlled bursts at an oncoming creature. The mass-reactive rounds struck… but failed to detonate with proper effect.
The thing kept advancing.
"What is that?" he murmured, drawing his chainsword and severing its head in a single stroke.
As Thunder Warriors withdrew, pressure on the Astartes intensified.
The psykers' barriers proved unexpectedly effective against the warp entities, dampening their momentum and blunting their charge.
Company captains ordered a defensive contraction, protecting the psykers while advancing toward Yuki's position.
Yuki understood, in that moment, why the Emperor sought humanity's escape from the warp.
Fighting these entities filled her with a visceral revulsion — not mere disgust, but a deep spiritual rejection of their existence.
She channeled her psychic power along her blades. The disruption fields extended outward, lengthening the weapons into luminous arcs of force nearly five meters in reach.
No human swordsman could wield such weapons.
Yuki spun.
She became a storm of cutting light.
The Custodians withdrew a step, recognizing the expanding kill radius.
Warp creatures fell in waves.
The crimson tide broke.
The last of the lesser daemons fell in severed ruin.
"Withdraw! Everyone withdraw!"
Yuki's gaze locked on the still-widening breach.
Something vast pressed against the veil.
A colossal hand forced its way through.
Then another.
The rift tore wider.
A towering figure emerged — towering over men and Astartes alike.
Skin like coagulated blood.
Armor of brutal brass plates.
Wings of leathery shadow.
Cloven hooves crushed the ground.
In one hand it bore a massive hellforged axe.
In the other, a chained hammer dripping warp-fire.
Its horned visage split in a roar that shook the battlefield.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"