Rage, Suppressed....
---o---
The Iron Warriors Dreadnought was in a spectacularly bad state.
It was not that it was incapable of accepting the existence of Iron Warriors warriors within Imperial ranks. What it absolutely could not stomach was one of its own -- an Iron Warriors warrior in a Centurion warsuit -- standing inside an Imperial Fists formation and pouring concentrated fire into them.
And to make it worse, these fighters were, at their genetic root, its progeny. Which meant the particular flavor of this humiliation was entirely unprecedented.
Sure enough, almost the very next moment -- every person in the surrounding area instinctively turned to look at the identified "Imperial Fist" in question, who was in fact one of Zhou Ye's Iron Warriors-lineage fabricated warriors.
The man was silent for a beat.
Then he spoke in a blunt, uncompromising tone.
"I am a Son of Rogal Dorn, for the Lord of Mankind. Clad in iron without, iron within!!!"
"Heresy. Corruption. The Corpse-Emperor's dogs -- shamelessly corrupting our brothers."
That line was a mistake.
The moment that accusation left the Iron Warriors Dreadnought's mouth, the other side's composure snapped entirely. Standing there and verbally abusing a fabricated Astartes wearing Imperial colors, one could only say that even Chaos in this universe was comparatively restrained in this area. This was, at the end of the day, a British IP. Given the somewhat limited vocabulary available to it for invective, Zhou Ye privately assessed he could out-insult even Slaanesh's own devoted without breaking stride -- and they might not even keep up.
So the Iron Warriors Dreadnought simply exploded.
The sensation it felt had the precise, awful texture of being cuckolded to its face. Not because it could not accept an Imperial-aligned Iron Warriors warrior in principle -- but because it could not accept an Iron Warriors warrior in Centurion armor embedded within an Imperial Fists formation, enthusiastically raining fire on its own genetic kin.
And genetically speaking, all of these fighters were its descendants. Which made the sensation that much more visceral.
The next moment proved its instincts entirely correct.
"No Pity!"
A familiar voice rang out. A figure in Artificer Armor stepped forward from among the Imperial Fists -- wielding a long black greatsword, looking entirely unremarkable in the surrounding formation -- and made his move without warning. The thruster pack across his back fired with a howl of ignition, and in an instant the warrior was airborne, slamming down directly onto the Iron Warriors Dreadnought. The massive greatsword drove through the Dreadnought's sarcophagus plate in a single thrust, and blood erupted in a violent spray.
"No Remorse!"
A spinning reversal followed, and the blade cut a wide arc that bisected several surrounding Iron Warriors warriors clean through the midsection. Then, one against ten, the Emperor's Champion opened an utterly unstoppable rampage right in the heart of the suppressed formation.
"A Templar -- an Emperor's Champion of the false Emperor?"
Watching this suddenly devastating figure, the Iron Warriors' oldest Dreadnought finally identified what it was looking at.
That behavior. That method of fighting. There was only one tradition that produced warriors like this -- the ancient Templar Brethren. What era were they living in? An Emperor's Champion, still alive and walking the battlefield?
"Just now, those Sons of Horus, and the World Eaters.... wait, don't tell me..."
Looking at the composite Chapter formation in front of it, the Dreadnought arrived at a terrible realization.
Isstvan III.
These people -- could they be survivors from that planet?
No wonder Typhus's voice had sounded wrong when it reached him. He must have recognized something. And if this truly was that group, then every one of his Iron Warriors pressing this engagement was walking toward a death sentence. Those were warriors of a truly ancient and endless war. That they had pushed this hard and gotten any kind of favorable exchange rate at all was already extraordinary. The ones who had already been killed were probably just recently inducted replacements.
He was not wrong in his assessment. Zhou Ye had indeed specifically fabricated an exceptionally powerful Emperor's Champion -- perhaps short of Sigismund's level, but more than sufficient to serve as a Chapter's Champion in his own right.
"No Fear!"
A shattering crack rang out, and the Iron Warriors Dreadnought took tremendous damage.
Then a sound like howling wind arrived, and the Contemptor Dreadnought's colossal frame charged into the Iron Warriors' lines at a speed that left every last one of them staring in open disbelief.
Imperial Fists? Really not White Scars?
But it no longer mattered. With both figures having broken into their lines, the outcome of the battle was already written.
---o---
"You were once my brothers. But now you are nothing but treacherous, shameful heretics."
The Centurion-armored warrior walked over alongside two or three of his Iron Warriors-lineage companions, looking down at the field of corpses with a flat, measured expression.
Then, as a matter of course, he harvested their Gene-seeds and continued to advance.
To Zhou Ye, after all, these were all little snacks. Leaving them on the ground would have been genuinely, profoundly wasteful.
---o---
On the other side of the field, Typhus's decayed mind had finally caught up to what it was perceiving.
"It's you. It's you.... Spirits of ten thousand years ago, returned to this world."
Typhus had recognized them. These Death Guard -- or rather, Dusk Raiders -- warriors. They were his brothers. Brothers he knew intimately, who had been assigned to that ancient, cursed Isstvan III. They should have died there.
The last of them had issued a personal challenge to Mortarion during the Siege of Terra, and been killed for it.
And now they were back. Ten thousand years later, they had come back.
In that moment, Typhus felt a genuine flicker of something that could only be called fear. They should all be dead. Every one of them.
Then what about the War Hounds? And the Luna Wolves? Were all of these warriors....
"You were supposed to die. Why have you returned. You refused your Father. You betrayed the Legion!!!"
Typhus's voice rang out across the battlefield with a piercing force that cut through the chaos and reached every ear present. The Plague Champion strode forward, step by step, moving directly through the daemonic tide until he stood before all of them, facing the Dusk Raiders warriors.
The scythe in his hands -- coiled in layers of living pestilence -- rose high. The rotting branches erupting from his armor radiated a grotesque, wrongness-laden aura.
But then --
"Blast him!!!"
Zhou Ye was not about to give him any more speaking time. This was Typhus. Just Typhus. He was not going to exchange words with the enemy. The opposition was Chaos filth -- no courtesy was owed. He gave the order directly, and the Imperial Knights opened fire on the spot where Typhus stood.
In a blink, that position was entirely consumed.
But unsurprisingly, as a Champion of Chaos and a reasonably capable psyker, the Herald of Nurgle was not so easily killed. Within moments, Typhus stepped out of the inferno completely unscathed.
He could not be killed -- but he had no interest in remaining the sustained focus of that weight of concentrated heavy fire.
"Good. Very good...."
Typhus ground the words out through clenched teeth, then turned his gaze on the Nurgle Sorcerers standing behind him, his mutated face twisted with cold ferocity.