Chapter 339: The Falling Rain
The tempest struck him, determined to tear him down from the heights.
He remained unmoved. A billion voices rose around him.
He felt the pulse of metal.
He heard power armor shrieking as it shattered in the killing cold, heard gears roaring within the priests' skeletal frames, heard the detonations of overheated engines within galloping Knights, heard the furious screams of Titan pilots within their colossal war-machines.
Bolters buried beneath corpses groaned low; fallen helms cried in soundless grief; chain-axes whirred helplessly on the ground, their wielders already dead.
Voidships in planetary orbit whispered to him, their voices clear and ethereal, like distant tide-waves beyond a shoreline. Stormbirds tumbled through the gale, struggling as gravity seized them, smashing into the earth—each crash blooming into a tiny yellow flower of flame upon the filthy red-brown soil, vanishing in an instant.
Hades lowered his gaze. Gears and cables unfurled the battlefield before him.
He began to arrange his pieces.
Even though a greater fire burned in the dimensions closer to him—where the golden giant and the shattered black-robed death-god clashed like avatars of war itself, red-gold brilliance and muted darkness drawing the focus of all existence—this war was far larger than that duel.
He watched the warriors charging forward.
He raised his hand. The floating metal and crackling lightning became his ceremonial robes; the radio waves, his conductor's baton.
The first signal trembled through the air. The scattered World Eaters and Skitarii—disrupted by the Nightbringer and the Necrons—received his coordinates. The masses began to regroup, flowing like streams, merging into the sea of fire and artillery.
Heavy war machines, mired in mud and blood, roared as the god pointed the way. Load. Aim. Fire. Countless shells traced perfect arcs through the sky, crashing into the Necron ranks.
Within the ocean of radio waves, the god released a long, ancient sigh—like the call of some primordial whale. Ripples spread outward. The mechanical behemoths heard His summons and charged into the fray, some plunging straight into death, others veering toward distant, overlooked battles.
There, the Necrons the Nightbringer so arrogantly dismissed were being devoured in madness. The aftershocks of the god-war erased tens of thousands. Dragon-born wisdom suppressed the Reanimation Protocols. Green lightning rose in silence and struck the xenos.
Hades wielded his conductor's baton, answering the cries rising toward him. Soft murmurs whispered into the ear of every Tech-Priest; he scattered the necessary wisdom among them, even though the price of receiving such knowledge was often the breaking of the vessel that held it.
He could not see life, nor the fragile organic beings. He could not hear souls or intellects screaming up at him. But he could see the gears turning—advancing relentlessly, never retreating.
This task had to be carried out by them.
The Dragon was being watched; the hidden act must be executed by those whom all others dismissed.
Countless Tech-Priests fell along the way, but countless more crossed the forbidden threshold of life itself. Shattered and mangled, they never stepped back.
At last, the thirty-seventh Magos to reach the blackstone construct succeeded—
Space twisted violently. Brutal force seized the chains binding the Nightbringer, and with a resolve that brooked no refusal, the prison began to reclaim its inmate. Slowly, inexorably, it drew back Its power.
The Nightbringer let out a shrill, agonized wail. The broken god began Its final, deranged struggle.
Absolute, overwhelming physical laws descended upon the field. The King upon the Skull Throne roared in fury, and the Master of Mankind's tightly furrowed brow eased at last.
Across from the Nightbringer, Angron—blood streaming down his face—gave a final, furious roar. The son of a god raised his axe and brought it down in one last blow upon his enemy.
Then he staggered and collapsed.
The floating metals caught him.
In the darkness, violent arcs of searing green power coiled and churned. The black scythe hung low as metal melted, dripping onto the blade—tears falling along its edge.
Hades, expressionless, raised the scythe.
The sky shook. Another voidship hurled itself downward, crashing toward the Nightbringer.
From afar, Khârn stared at the center of the battlefield in disbelief.
A towering mushroom cloud rose. The next instant, shrieking darkness surged from within the smoke. A vast, tortured silhouette writhed in the sky, howling its fury and despair. Darkness bared its fangs at darkness—scythe struck scythe—
Then, suddenly, the world flickered black and white.
The screams cut off.
In the distance, the Dragon's roar faded away.
As if someone had pressed a pause button, everyone stopped in stunned silence. All impact ceased. They heard engines spinning idle. They heard the quiet burn of distant fires.
The soldiers who had been charging with rifles raised looked toward the battlefield's center. The blinding red-gold light was slowly fading—like a god departing. Black clouds rose gently, faint green flashes pulsing within.
Tap
Khârn blinked, startled. The sound of liquid dripping was crisp and clear.
Tap. Tap
The Magos trembled as he reached out his hand. A drop of silver-white liquid fell onto his half-severed palm. Obedient and merciful, it slipped into the broken gears and wires, coating the wound.
It was raining.
The Omnissiah had shed His tears.
The rain grew heavier. Pale green thunder split open the storm, washing the land together with the downpour.
It was over.
Upon the wasteland, the survivors began to cheer.
. . .
"Help… help me up."
Hades spoke weakly, but the Custodians and the Sister of Silence beside him visibly hesitated.
You couldn't blame them, Hades was currently lying sideways on top of the deeply unconscious Angron. Faint green lightning flickered around Angron's body. They could clearly see the metal flowing upward toward the nails embedded in him. Those nails were no longer ringing—quiet now, like dead serpents resting upon Angron's head.
Angron was on the brink of death; if Hades hadn't said he was alive, no one would have believed this Primarch—whose blood had all but drained—still lived.
Hades let out a small cough.
"I said… someone help me up, please."
Charon and Sister Nera exchanged a glance. After a moment, Nera raised a hand, and little Herila stepped forward hesitantly.
"My lord, are you certain you can stand right now?"
"…"
Hades sucked in a breath.
"Have none of you realized that I've been lying on top of Angron this whole time?! I can't just keep pressing down on a wounded man!"
Only then did the Custodian and the Sister suddenly grasp the concept that Primarchs might have something like human rights. They quickly moved Hades aside and carried Angron with him to the fleet already waiting in orbit.
Inside the Stormbird, Hades silently looked out the window.
Under his orders, the army was now deployed around the prison-cage that held the shattered Nightbringer. People struggled to stand atop layers of metallic remains, chatting loudly and casually, showing off the wounds covered in liquid metal, occasionally nudging corpses with their boots.
Hades looked toward the center, though the twisted form of the bound Nightbringer was not worth his attention. He shifted his gaze to the side.
There stood the body of a Magos, perfectly upright. The activation of the extradimensional cage had frozen his life at that moment, and even if he had miraculously survived, he would have died shortly after from the overwhelming knowledge violently forced into his mind.
Within five steps of him, no fewer than twenty Magos lay quietly on the ground.
And within ten kilometers, the dead were more numerous than raindrops.
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