"What's going on?"
Eden's heart clenched as if gripped by an unseen hand; an indescribable sense of crisis raced across his skin.
He looked up.
Through the ruptured gash in the hull, he could see the nearby Warp-tainted void turning turbid, malign energies surging as more mist swallowed the shattered superstructure.
Wraithlike shadows flickered at the edges of reality—the Chaos Gods' projections upon the Immaterium.
Clearly, having just anointed the Blackhearted King as the new Chosen of the Four, They were now granting him even more power to seal this region.
"Savior, I fear we won't break out from here. Those damned fetid deities have tightened Their grip again!"
Abaddon stared at the forming rifts around them, dread in his eyes.
Only after cutting himself off from the Ruinous Powers and setting himself against Them did he truly feel how terrible it was to make Them his enemy—how crushing the pressure became.
It made him hate Them all the more.
From beginning to end, this Warmaster—like Horus before him—ever sought to become master of mankind, to hold humanity's fate in his own hands.
His concern remained the material realm and the species of Man; he never accepted apotheosis or any path that bound him to Chaos forever.
He only ever "traded" with the Ruinous Powers, using Their strength, and once his aims were met, he would sever the tie.
But now he understood: the instant you accept their noisome benedictions, you fall beneath the Chaos Gods' strings—and escape becomes nearly impossible.
Fortunately, he had awakened to this, hacking clean through those cords and severing his ties to Them.
"So, Those things really do want me dead here…"
Eden swept their surroundings. The seal biting into both Warp and materium had grown stout enough that even souls struggled to slip its net.
The fallen were already lingering, drifting; soon they would be swept into the Immaterium.
Even he would be no exception.
If this body died here, his soul would be in dire peril—crippled, perhaps, or snatched by a Dark God.
That would be game over.
But worrying now was pointless. The only way out was through.
Eden straightened, calm as a still sea and radiating killing intent. "A trifling little lockdown—are you truly scared of Them? Abaddon, if you drop to your knees and beg—promise to be Chaos' chained cur again—maybe They let you crawl away."
"You underestimate me."
Standing shoulder to shoulder with the Savior, Abaddon snorted.
"I am the Despoiler, Warmaster of Chaos, Master of the Eye of Terror. I kneel to no one—even the so-called divine.
"And I ought to thank you for the shameless turmoil you unleashed decades ago—the Great Plunder of Savador. It let me purge the Black Legion of impurities, traitors, and the weak-willed.
"It left us purer.
"And it kept the Ruinous Powers from stealing my most loyal warriors out from under me."
Those decades-past raids and riots had been the hinge upon which the Warmaster turned.
Because of Eden's shameless raid, the Great Plunder broke out.
The Black Legion lost uncountable wealth; many warriors defected—or took up employment with the Terror Legion.
What remained were Abaddon's staunchest backers, and with a single stroke the Legion's internal chaos ended.
It also hardened them against the Chaos Gods' temptations.
Otherwise, those warriors who had drawn deeply on the Dark Gods' power would have been the easiest to bend—answering the Gods' whispers and betraying the Warmaster.
"Well I'll be—'Lao-don' actually thanking me?"
Eden blinked.
He hadn't expected the man he'd fleeced for so much to be grateful. It almost made him feel a touch embarrassed.
He flashed a friendly smile. "Don't mention it. I merely lent a righteous hand. Call me a warm-hearted soul of the galaxy."
"???"
"Did this bastard miss that I was mocking him?" Abaddon found a new plateau of understanding for the Savior's brazen, adamantine cheek.
He cleaved down the last charging Red Corsair and gave a thin, cold smile. "Savior, I could thank you for the rescue and the pep talk—but you know our pact is temporary.
"The Black Legion will slit Chaos' throat—and drive a spear through the heart of Holy Terra—killing you, the Imperium's new mock-Emperor."
With a curl of warp-tainted will, the Warmaster conjured Eden's own voice, rousing and fierce, shouting for the storming of Holy Terra and the death of the false Emperor.
Since the Savior was the Imperium's new master, to Chaos he was, naturally, a "false Emperor."
No matter the angle, a false Emperor baying for his own death was hilarious.
"Watch your slander. I never said any such thing!"
Eden's head throbbed.
He'd only just taken the Imperium's reins, and he wasn't even ruling from Holy Terra. His threat-assessment hadn't shifted its frame yet.
Regardless, he would never admit it, lest Chaos weaponize the moment as a smear.
Once he got back, he'd have the Urth Inquisition treat the incident as a prime case of Chaos disinformation targeting the Savior—the Lord of the Imperium.
Everyone needed to be warned.
Bottom line: fake. Imperials should ignore it—don't be fooled.
Soon, Eden and Abaddon finished cutting down the attackers—only to realize the Blackhearted King had vanished.
The cur had slunk into the shadows, refusing the field, tugging on deeper currents of Chaos to grind them down and bleed them out inside the sealed zone.
Not even the Savior—and the Warmaster—could sniff him out.
"Coward's cunning. Is that what a Chaos 'leader,' a Chosen of the Four, does now?"
Eden drew in a long breath.
From long experience, no matter how bad things went for the Imperium, a timely teleport-board decapitation strike could reverse despair—pull victory from the teeth of annihilation.
Kill the Chaos leader, the enemy's advance collapses.
But if every Chaos warlord started copying Huron—refusing the duel, lurking behind the curtain while throwing endless waves forward—how was the Imperium supposed to win?
Was this even allowed?!
He had no time to dwell on it. More hulking daemon engines were lumbering out of Warp-rents all around them.
Murder in their gait.
Chaos Knights and Daemonic Engines advanced in a mixed phalanx, the onslaught terrifying.
"I was once the Imperium's sword; now I'm Chaos' thirst made flesh—your meat and blood will be the offering of my rebirth!"
A towering Chaos Knight stamped forward, a red chainblade cleaving an Apostle of Despair in Terminator plate clean in half, then pulped another Chaos Space Marine under an adamantine foot.
A ten-meter war-engine that regular troopers couldn't handle in a fair fight.
And there were more than twenty of these.
Worse, a tide of daemon engines followed—Soul Grinders scissoring with crab-claws, spider-like Venomcrawlers, tank-profiled Defilers, and four-legged brutes like Forgefiends, to name a few.
These machines—each several times larger and stronger than common heretics—smashed the line in minutes.
Slaughter ensued.
The Chaos infantry and daemon-engine cohort locked the net, encircling the Savior and the Warmaster.
"How are we supposed to fight this?!"
Eden slipped past the Forgefiend's barbed tail-spike, flipped the many-ton daemon-tank, and hammered its hull again and again—until it was scrap.
He'd burned through or broken every weapon on him; this was bare-handed work now.
Normally, war-engines like these were nothing to him; a casual order would drown them beneath a steel tide.
But nothing about this was normal—the Chaos Gods' seal and alien jamming choked off his ability to gate in heavy machine cohorts.
So he had to muscle it out.
Eden ripped the Defiler's plasma mouth apart at range with a lash of psyker force—only to be tackled by a scorpion-shaped Helstalker.
Worse—one of the Chaos Knights was already bringing its chainblade down, ready to bisect him and the Helstalker both.
"Filthy thrall!"
Abaddon crashed in at the crucial instant, parrying the blow and scything off the Knight's piston-leg with the daemon blade in his fist.
"You're nothing but rusting junk."
He rammed his sword into the Knight's carapace coffin and snuffed the howling spirit within. "Tell your masters this—They shall never fell a king."
"Thanks, brother."
Eden pulped the Helstalker, rose, tore out a spiny length of reinforced vertebra from the wreck, and wrapped it around his fist.
Standing atop a hill of wreckage beside the Warmaster—piles of scrap ten meters high—they watched more engines scrabble up toward them.
"How many damned things have we put down?"
Numbness crept into Eden's thoughts.
This might be his most exhausting battle since leaving Urth—fist-fighting Chaos Knights and daemon engines.
Pure, uncut, no-additives violence.
If anyone ever dared claim the Savior lacked combat prowess—let them come here and try, and we'd all see who the galaxy's real brick-house was.
"Savior, I've downed six Chaos Knights and thirteen daemon engines. Your tally trails mine by a fair margin."
Abaddon's eyes weighed him. This new Imperial overlord—his temporary ally—was still a notch beneath him in raw output.
"Only for the moment."
Eden didn't waste breath; he launched again, meeting a charging Forgefiend head-on.
The Warmaster roared into a stalking Knight Desecrator, his aura crushing even the machine twice his height.
Eden spared Abaddon a glance, then locked in again.
He picked daemon-engine targets on purpose—it saved stamina; who was dumb enough to measure sword-swinging endurance against that pointy-headed show-off?
Besides, he'd noticed the man's stamina was insane now—hips even fuller than before. As the Warmaster bragged: go all day without flagging.
After another spate of ferocity, Eden and Abaddon finally put the last engine down and all but collapsed atop the scrap.
Yet even then, there was no joy.
Because… a fresh wave of Chaos Knights and engines marched in—endless, inexhaustible.
"Your prowess is great, yes—but so what?"
Huron's voice drifted like smoke. "My Chaos host is inexhaustible. How long can you still fight?
"War is not brawn. It is wisdom.
"Admit it: you two fools are already in our masters' trap—pathetic insects with nowhere to crawl.
"You'll be trapped here forever—until you die."
"Traitor—come out and face me!"
Abaddon bellowed, hunting the Blackhearted King. "Or will you cower like a coward to the bitter end?"
"Savor the suffering, fools."
Huron ignored the taunt, postured, and vanished.
He'd never be idiotic enough to give away his advantage with a fair fight. Not when the Dark Gods' lock promised a certain end.
As long as the seal held, no one could save them.
"Save your barking, Lao-don. Your trash talk's not moving that clown."
Eden sighed, frown deepening.
If they couldn't break the game soon, everyone would die in this pit—spent to the last spark.
But who could shatter a seal laid by the Red Corsairs and the Chaos Gods together? Not even the Emperor could reach this far.
As for the Sacred Ash Shells—they couldn't crack something so vast, not when it was set by the Dark Gods Themselves.
Which meant… the new toy would have to earn its keep.
"What's that?"
Abaddon was winding up to curse again when a squad of Thunder Custodians on anti-grav skimmers blasted into the throne-hall approaches—
Dragging a massive hover-casket behind them.
"Now that's the good stuff. Whether we get out or not hangs on it—protect it!"
Eden's grin flashed as the strike-team pierced the seal.
His relief column had finally broken through.
He'd planned this before boarding and jumping straight into the Omen Ark's interdicted zone.
Huron's forces got the order to focus-fire the Savior's personal guard the moment they appeared.
Too late. Sheltered by the Savior and the Warmaster's combined defense, the hover-casket thudded down, irised open—
And revealed the machine within.
All eyes fixed on the armored idol of interlocking Blackstone segments.
Even Abaddon cut a glance at Eden, doubt creasing his brow.
"Forget the look. Focus on what it does."
Eden coughed, a shade abashed.
Because the Blackstone machine's casing was—well—a half-bust of the Savior, and the base beneath it was a colossal drill-auger of Blackstone.
He didn't love the aesthetic either, but hybridizing Blackstone engineering with Ork-tek had produced a ridiculous quirk—change the shell, the output dipped for no good reason.
So… it stayed.
Vmmmm—!
The Savior-idol's massive Blackstone drill shrieked to life, spun to a blur, and shot skyward—
Winking out mid-flight as though it punched through into somewhere else.
KR-KATHOOOM—
A muffled detonation rolled the bones of reality. The Blackstone drill detonated inside the "in-between," setting the Warp-veil and materium quivering.
Space buckled in waves; sealed strata fractured, cracks spider-webbing through the lock.
Patches of the void looked like panes of glass punched by a fist.
"We're in!"
Eden whooped.
This was Blackstone's gift: stabilize—or break—the warp-geometry itself; dampen or rewrite the malefic influences the Dark Gods had laid down.
And this device's sole job: rupture bespoke daemonic field-locks.
The stone's potency had been worth every throne he'd poured into it; worth the years of research he'd forced into it.
Someday, Blackstone would be the spearhead of his counter-invasion—his conquest—of the Immaterium.
Now that it had opened a wound in the seal, he could light the beacons.
VMMM—VMMM—VMMM—
Thunder Custodians popped psy-beacons one after another—lances of brilliance stabbing the dark.
Gates flowered open.
"Impossible. Impossible! How could the masters' seal be broken?!"
Huron Blackheart—dragged half into sight by the Blackstone's interference—could no longer hide.
Even the Gods' looming visages rippled in doubt.
The Savior's Blackstone tech had troubled Them—sharply.
Before the Red Corsairs' and Chaos Knights' wide eyes, scores—hundreds—of Redemption Knights slammed into the zone and opened fire.
THOOOOM—
Colossal machine-feet stamped, crushing daemon engines like beetles. A hundred-meter Redemption Titan strode down into the throne-complex, making the metal mountain shake.
Its void-shields enveloped the Savior—and its batteries vomited doom.
"—Who approved teleporting that inside a battleship?!"
Eden stared up at the auric Savior-pattern Redemption Titan above, lancing beams and storms of shells into the Red Corsairs and daemon engines until they were howling for their mothers.
"Your Majesty," Tarko said over the command-net, voice properly respectful, "our plan is aggressive, yes—but it is for your safety. Only overwhelming firepower will break the enemies of Man."
They wouldn't have done it without exhaustive sims and hard math.
Still—out of caution—they'd restrained themselves.
They'd only ported in a single Emperor-class Titan, lest structural collapse take the entire region with it.
"Fine. It's not my ship. Do what you must."
Eden rode a grav-pad up onto the Titan's shoulder and let the professionals work.
He glanced at the Warmaster. "Right?"
"That's my flagship!"
Abaddon watched entire sections of his Ark crumple—and screamed in his heart.
But then he looked down at the Redemption Knights locking down the core, massacring Red Corsairs and daemon engines by the company—
Then up at the Titan beneath his boots.
He swallowed.
"You are… not wrong. Tactically sound."
Eden nodded and keyed the net.
"You hear that? Even the Warmaster agrees. Open up. Don't be shy."
He could hear Abaddon gritting his teeth.
This Omen Ark was done for.
Suddenly, both Eden and Abaddon snapped their eyes to a far gantry—Huron Blackheart was running.
Blackstone interference made a mockery of the boons Chaos had woven into his flesh; he could no longer keep to the shadows.
He looked… ragged.
Eden and Abaddon met eyes—and shared the same wicked grin.
(End of Chapter)
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