Chapter 338: The War Between Gods and Mortals
This is the Great Maelstrom, where the Warp and the real universe are churned together. That means those beings who toy with psychic power can interfere more easily here—and can better foresee the threads of fate that run through this place.
Thus They see more clearly.
But these are C'tan; Their existence alone is enough to beat up those sneaky bastards who use the Warp to peek at the future.
So those who dwell in the Warp no longer see things quite so clearly.
But that doesn't mean the ones who play with psychic power are unable to use their wits. Calculations and deductions upon the game board, pure logic—these, too, are among Their greatest weapons.
—So long as Their opponent also possesses logic.
Unfortunately, on this battlefield, someone lacks this powerful and beautiful quality.
For example: Angron, the Lord of the Red Sands, who suddenly barged in and disrupted the battle.
Hades' logic, by contrast, was complete and rigorous—though apart from Hades himself, no one had expected things to turn out quite like this.
The Angry One raged, the Schemer laughed, the Idle One glanced over, and the Greedy One stirred with interest.
The Emperor frowned ever so slightly, the long-distance psychic clash causing the golden flames around Him to blaze higher.
The Master of Mankind took a deep breath, then another.
From the moment He bestowed that fingerbone upon Hades, the Emperor had never imagined that the fate of that ill-starred little phalanx would end up like this. Hades had kept it safe for only one year, one hundred and thirty-seven days, four hours, seventeen minutes, and five seconds.
But… The Emperor closed His eyes, brow furrowing as He sensed the wavering body of His Twelfth Son.
He had just driven out the frenzy of burning rage engulfing the unlucky child.
What replaced it was not exactly gentle power—an irrational, brutal surge of faith-fueled Warp-energy roared into him instead.
The Emperor "looked" at the C'tan shard before Him, the one holding a scythe.
Khorne's chosen gift was indeed exquisite.
If Hades and Angron were to face this alone, Hades would have absolutely no chance of survival, and once Hades died, Angron would be taken by Khorne.
Even with the Emperor guiding Hades in the use of the Void Dragon's power, their odds of surviving the Nightbringer—whose nature was to devour its own kind—were vanishingly small.
Perhaps Hades had already done everything he could, even if the Emperor had not expected—nor foreseen—the situation becoming what it was now.
The Emperor carefully manipulated His psychic power. Before the battle ended, His Twelfth Son needed to maintain some state in which he could still fight.
Psychic force was, in essence, antithetical to Hades' Black Domain, so the Emperor could not directly bless him.
That was why the Emperor had hoped Hades would keep the Anathame. Even as a broken sword once blessed by the powers of the Four, it would have allowed the Emperor's psychic power to manifest its full potency.
But against the Nightbringer, it was still far from enough.
The slow-witted one had yet to awaken.
The pre-set psychic charge forcibly awakened the dull child's resonance with the Warp. It consumed a vast reserve of accumulated psychic energy—finally allowing the Head of the Silent Sisterhood to grasp a faint trace of the Dragon's power.
But still, it was not enough.
Fate moved steadily along its predetermined course. The fingerbone, drained of energy, could no longer support any meaningful attack, and the Emperor's hand could not reach across such distance.
Perhaps Hades and Angron would fall within the Great Maelstrom.
Realizing this, the Emperor emotionlessly continued approving documents. He had endured countless failures before; He could only do what could be done and accept what already had happened.
The fingerbone allowed Him to sense that Hades was in trouble, though due to Hades' own nature, the Emperor could not perceive the details.
But just as the Emperor's mind began considering how to respond to a failure in the Maelstrom, His entire body jolted!
The flow of faith-power had abruptly shifted! His psychic perception sharpened in an instant—became brilliantly clear! The Emperor felt a resonance beyond imagination—
Angron was resonating with His psychic power?!
In that moment, the Emperor understood exactly what was happening on that battlefield within the Great Maelstrom.
The fingerbone could conduct the Emperor's psychic power, but with Hades nearby, that power could not manifest its original potency. So Hades simply threw the fingerbone toward Angron—Primarchs naturally shared an extremely high psychic affinity with the Emperor.
The moment Angron touched it, that psychic resonance—far stronger with him than with Hades—instantly drove Khorne's rage out of his body!
Hades…
The Emperor found it difficult to evaluate his actions.
Objectively speaking, what he did did save their lives, but…
The Emperor's face remained expressionless.
He did not particularly care about the condition of His Twelfth Son's mouth or esophagus, though He understood why Hades had made sure the fingerbone ended up in the stomach.
Aside from Hades' own stubbornness, Angron was in no condition to wear the bone in any other manner.
…Still, Hades could have chosen something far more normal—something easier for everyone to accept.
The Master of Mankind took a long, steadying breath, hoping to remain calm.
The desk splitting apart beneath His hands clearly disagreed.
Meanwhile, in the center of the Great Maelstrom—where fate had already been shattered into unrecognizable fragments, under the gaze of the gods—within the cold wind and the ruins where Hades had collapsed, black mist began to spread, and arcs of searing green lightning crackled through it.
The restraints had been removed.
An instant later, the shadow of a Dragon rose.
. . .
This was a war of gods.
Countless flames fell from blood-red, churning clouds. Even the colossal Knight war machines on the battlefield were nothing more than playthings barely fit for beginners; only Titans and voidships willing to dive from orbit into the ground could add even a trace of true firepower to this war.
At the center of a vision trembling on the verge of collapse, the red-gold War God raised his axe and roared. Every swing tore at the sky itself, splitting heaven and earth with pure fury. He hacked at his foe with restless, unending wrath, even as wounds gaped wide across his body, his blood so drained that it could scarcely drip anymore.
The giant of red gold wrestled and clashed with the darkness. Another mass of shadow followed closely behind the battle, constantly disrupting the Nightbringer's attempts to move elsewhere. Twisted metal stabbed into the C'tan's darkness, machine-spirits chanted in cascading binary, and the Imperium's engines of war hurled themselves into the fray—using their massive bodies and explosions to add even the smallest weight to the scales of this demigod's battle.
They died without regret—for the Omnissiah had returned to the world!
Explosions made the ground tremble without pause; no one could remain standing.
Facing the Omnissiah, a Magos dropped to his knees in reverence, then rose again with firm resolve. He began to run forward—straight toward the center of the vortex of death.
Faint arcs of green lightning danced around his body as he staggered upright.
The ground shook again and he nearly bounced into the air as a vast shadow fell over him. A Titan thundered past above his head, charging slowly but implacably toward death. Sparks from its god-cannon rained onto his tattered red robes, burning holes through the fabric.
A voice far holier, far more beautiful than even the purest binary hymn resonated within the Magos's thought-engine. It exceeded the engine's maximum capacity by orders of magnitude, yet as the unimportant components inside him began to melt, liquid metal flowed into the thought-engine itself, forcing him to comprehend.
His thought-engine trembled violently.
Another voidship—misled by warped space—exploded beside him. The massive shockwave flung him into the air, his broken, ruined body twisting as he flew. He saw beneath him a vast metallic graveyard, the densely layered corpses of aliens and of the Mechanicus alike.
He tumbled to the ground, slamming hard into the earth, but he had succeeded in moving closer to the true center of the battlefield. Black metal shards floated aimlessly around his feet.
"Omnissiah!"
He shouted and surged forward again. Green lightning flared violently beside him, and for a brief instant, his world went black. When sensation returned, the Magos realized his lower body was gone—completely erased—and behind him yawned a massive crater, as though someone had scooped a chunk of the earth away with a gigantic spoon.
He had been discovered. He had been attacked.
But the Omnissiah had spared his life—because the god still needed him!
The Magos struggled forward, dragging himself across the ground. Streams of flowing liquid metal gathered beside him, forming tiny rivulets. They tried to heal him, but with their master still locked in a titanic battle—both sides contesting authority and dominion—they could not manifest true miracles. All they could do was clumsily plug the oil-rich blood pouring from his ruined body.
The Magos crawled across countless corpses—xenos and Tech-Priests alike. Every Tech-Priest had died in the same posture: reaching forward in pilgrimage.
His entire body felt cold, yet his thought-engine blazed. He saw the xenos machinery before him—and he knew. He knew exactly how to operate it. The Omnissiah had granted him authority.
He pushed aside the heavy corpse before him, the one clutching a crimson scythe. The Magos strained, reaching for the control console—but after several attempts, his chest slid against the blackstone surface, and he slowly slumped down.
His indicator lights flickered… then went dark.
The silver-white liquid metal weakly pooled around him, like the Omnissiah's cold tears.
Five seconds later, another Magos shoved his corpse aside, slammed his hands onto the controls.
The battling Nightbringer let out a shrill, horrific scream.
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