The Chaos tide surging in like a tsunami was suffocating, and those tens-of-meters, even over a hundred-meters-tall, snarling daemon engines only made it more terrifying.
But as the mechanical fortress began to move, everyone's field of view rose.
They went from looking up at the Chaos wave… to meeting it eye to eye.
The crushing atmosphere eased considerably.
Once the ascent stopped, Lion and the others realized they were now more than two hundred meters in the air, looking down on everything below.
Which meant that the fortress, terrace and all, had risen into a flight altitude of over two hundred meters.
The sheer change left everyone in awe.
"What a colossal construct…
"Brother Eden, is this a Titan God-Engine?
"Even the largest Imperial Titans don't reach this kind of height, do they?!"
Lion's view rose along with the fortress, and he could not help exclaiming.
The sight seared itself into the hearts of the Lion and the Dark Angels of the Dark side under his command. None of them had ever seen a mechanical war-engine like this.
It was a golden colossus, over two hundred meters tall, its frame plated with layer upon layer of armor and relic-grade shielding fields.
It was a true mobile fortress, its majestic silhouette like a towering mountain of metal, its whole body shining with a holy, imperious golden radiance.
Those Titans that carried cathedrals on their shoulders could barely reach its waist; they looked like short men standing beside a musclebound giant.
Each step the fortress took sent violent tremors through the earth.
"It is a Titan God-Engine—but a unique pattern. There's only one of its kind so far. Its designation is the Redemption Bastion-pattern Titan, and its name is the Imperial Emperor."
Eden looked down at the onrushing daemon tide in the distance, his tone more than a little exuberant.
Sure enough, once your viewpoint was raised, your presence felt entirely different. The daemon wave and engines that had towered tens and hundreds of meters high did not seem so frightening anymore.
Looking at them now felt like looking at younger brothers.
He had not originally wanted to build such a super-heavy Titan.
In mass and volume, the Imperial Emperor outweighed an Imperator-class Titan several times over.
That not only consumed outrageous resources, it also limited its use cases. Just moving the thing inflicted enormous damage on the planetary surface.
Over the course of a single campaign, the area it trampled into ruin could easily exceed the damage done by the enemy.
But there had been a period when his Dominion's productive spirit had gone wild, driven by a kind of fanatical devotion to him as the Savior.
The Forge Department had decided that existing Imperator-class Titans were no longer worthy to symbolize the greatness and sanctity of their Savior, their Imperial Emperor.
They had to design an even greater, Savior-exclusive war-engine. Even the century-old 100-plus-meter Titan designs the Emperor himself had once sketched were dismissed as "not satisfying enough."
After round upon round of design meetings, the Forge Department kept upping the budget and piling on components, and finally produced this 233-meter-tall Redemption Bastion-pattern Titan.
In a word: fanatical.
In truth, if Eden had not noticed what they were doing and ordered a hard stop on budget increases,
those lunatics would have kept stacking more mass and more systems onto it until they created something so absurd that it could hardly be deployed.
You could say the Savior's Dominion's research environment was a little too healthy, and its budget a little too generous—that was the only way the gearhead cultists could indulge their building mania like this.
As long as you dared to ask for more budget, they dared to design something bigger.
Forge maniacs, through and through.
Eden later reflected that he himself had helped create that atmosphere.
He genuinely loved forging big things and megastructures. That habit went back to his days as a planetary governor.
At first he had merely commissioned hundred-meter statues. Then it was hundreds of meters. Then a kilometer. Then he had entire mountains reshaped into gargantuan holy images.
You could see them clearly from low orbit.
That kind of behavior bled into every other part of the Dominion—the architecture, the mechanical constructs, even the armor and weapons.
The power armor currently forged in the Savior's Dominion was, on average, a whole size larger than the old Imperium patterns.
As a result, Astartes in older marks of armor found themselves inexplicably shorter than those wearing the new suits.
That, all by itself, was one of the reasons so many Astartes stared longingly at the new armor. Who wanted to be the short one?
Lazarus and the other Dark Angels of the Dark side already felt awkward standing next to those in Savior-pattern wargear.
They were, on average, noticeably shorter than the warriors in new-pattern suits, and they avoided standing too close.
Many of those Dark Angels had already submitted formal requests to the Lion, asking to upgrade to Savior-pattern armor.
If not for the imminence of war, they would all have obediently swapped into the Dominion's new models long ago.
Eden could more or less hold Imperial Astartes hostage with that one trick alone.
And it was not just Imperial forces; the new armor was coveted among Chaos warriors as well.
Some Imperial corpses were fought over so savagely by Chaos Marines that they cracked one another's skulls for the right to loot them.
Of course, bigger did have benefits—it allowed stronger motive systems, heavier firepower, and more shielding arrays.
But too much of anything was bad, and Eden understood that. Super-sizing Titans into the several-hundred-meter range, for example, was not meaningful.
A behemoth like that consumed ten times the resources of a normal Titan. For the same investment, you could build a whole cohort of Imperator-class engines.
Worse, after all that effort, there were very few battlefields where such a monstrosity could see use. It would just sit in a macro-hangar, gathering dust.
After that episode, Eden had convened a formal review session specifically to rein in the Dominion's runaway fanaticism.
He did not want to see too many resources squandered.
Were it not for the severity of this Chaos incursion across the Vostroya sub-sector—where collateral damage to the theater was of no concern—he would not have fielded this fortress-pattern Titan at all, a single step of which could split the earth.
Deploying the Imperial Emperor here was a live-fire test—a chance to see whether a Titan of such size could still function in the harshest warzones.
"Savior, our recon elements have located traces of the fallen Primarch Fulgrim."
Tarko, Eden's deputy—known as the right hand of the Imperial Emperor—stepped up to report softly.
As Chief of the Secretariat, he was responsible for funneling all major reports to the Savior.
The deputy flicked his fingers, lighting up the holo-tactical display. "The target is roughly two hundred kilometers from our present position, with large Chaos concentrations in between."
On the holo-map, it was clear that their position was not far from the fallen Phoenician.
A distance of two hundred kilometers was nothing for a strike cruiser.
But no one dared run that gauntlet. The intervening space was almost jam-packed with Chaos forces.
Charging in aboard lightly armored aerial transports would see them shot down in short order, dropping them straight into whatever trap Chaos had prepared.
Once that happened, breaking out again would be extremely difficult.
"In that case, we can only establish a defensive line first, then look for lanes where we can launch a boarding strike."
Lion frowned. This was standard Imperial doctrine: fortify first, then probe for weak points.
You took the initiative only after you found and exploited a flaw in the enemy deployment.
He had been fighting defensive actions for a long time now, under constant assault by Chaos. That had made him increasingly wary, his tactics more conservative.
Put bluntly, the man had been gang-beaten by Chaos for so long that he was a little traumatized.
Of course, he had also grown more mature and steady.
"I am afraid we do not have that kind of time. The longer we drag this out, the more reinforcements Chaos will throw in.
"That miserable turncoat Fulgrim will also have more time to lay his snares and make the situation worse."
Guilliman shook his head and offered his own proposal.
"Now that we have such a powerful bastion-engine, we should immediately mass our troops and launch a thrust straight at Fulgrim's command nexus…"
As he spoke, he traced a straight line across the holo-map, the line ending at the fallen Phoenician's central command point.
Simple and direct.
Guilliman looked to the Savior, supreme commander of this war, and urged him on.
"This is the best offensive strategy. We can rack up maximum gains before the other fallen Primarchs arrive.
"Brothers, we cannot keep hesitating like this!"
The Primarch of the Ultramarines had no interest in passive defense. He intended to ride the enemy's momentum and drive a spearhead straight in for the decapitation strike.
In other words: no matter how many they have, no matter how rabid they look—we charge first and talk later.
Even the Lion, hearing this, turned to look at Guilliman with a changed expression. Brother, since when were you this aggressive?
"That is exactly like you, my brother Guilliman."
Eden regarded him, secretly amused. This strategy matched perfectly with his stereotype of the man.
For years now, his dear brother had been living on the front foot. No matter how many times he got mobbed, he never stopped charging.
Ever since Eden had equipped him with more powerful Primarch-grade wargear and flooded him with new-pattern weapons and armor,
the Ultramarine had only grown more enthusiastic about such thrusting offensives.
You could say that the steadfast, mild-mannered image he projected in peacetime did not match his actual style of war at all.
"Very well. We'll go with Brother Guilliman's plan.
"Brothers—let's see whether this big fellow can break the Chaos lines."
Eden spoke with confidence and then gave the order to attack.
This entire formation would surge forward, driving in a straight line until they reached Fulgrim's command nexus—
and then tear down the Chaos teleportation array anchored there.
"???"
"We're not waiting for the rest of the forces to concentrate?"
The Savior's command took Lion aback. Guilliman himself was a little startled too.
He distinctly remembered saying they should wait until the main forces had concentrated—it would only take twenty minutes at most to bring them up.
But apparently the Savior was even more reckless than he was.
"This fortress-pattern Titan carries a major locator beacon array. It can mark our position throughout the engagement.
"That will let reinforcements mass-drop or teleport directly onto our location."
Eden explained calmly. "This way, we advance first and buy everyone more time."
"But…"
Lion's frown deepened. He still wanted to argue.
Launching a consolidation under encirclement was extremely risky. If the first contingents to arrive failed to hold the line, the units following behind might not have time to form up before being hammered over and over again.
That could easily spiral into a total collapse of the line.
But seeing none of the other Primarchs object, he held his tongue.
The Lion chose to trust his Savior-brother, the overall commander.
He believed his brothers understood such basic principles—especially the Savior.
Once Eden had settled the plan, he and the other Primarchs made their way to the observation deck atop the Titan's "head."
That section was wrapped in dense layers of shield fields and offered an even clearer, more comprehensive view of the battlefield.
For the Primarchs, it was a novel experience. Previously, they had always watched battles through holo-maps in a command center.
Now they were literally looking down on the battlefield in person. With Primarch-grade eyesight, they could pick out details ten kilometers away.
And beyond that, the observation deck boasted precision augury equipment that extended their view even further.
A true 360-degree panorama of the war.
They could see the surrounding Titan battlegroups beginning to move.
Ten Imperator-class Titans, five Psi-Titans, and numerous lesser classes were shifting from defensive to offensive formations.
They formed up around the Redemption Bastion-pattern Titan Imperial Emperor as the spearhead, taking shape as an arrowhead thrust formation.
Vmm—
The Imperial Emperor ramped up to full power, dozens of smokestacks on its back belching thick plumes into the sky.
They shot up like the smoke columns of erupting volcanoes, blotting out the heavens above.
No need to guess—that reeked of Belisarius Cawl's handiwork. The mad Archmagos adored oversized exhaust stacks.
In this kind of theater, nobody worried about environmental pollution. Chaos itself was pure pollution.
Everything was to be burned down in the name of destroying Chaos.
Boom, boom, boom—
The super-giant mechanical feet struck the ground, tearing ever more cracks in the crust and shaking the earth to its bones.
The Imperial Emperor led the Titan host out through the Imperial front line, stomping straight toward the tens-to-hundreds-of-meters-tall Chaos wave.
…
A short time earlier, on the Chaos coalition front.
Terrifying shrieks filled the sky as masses of malignantly colored entities rolled forward, with a vast number of great daemon engines in their midst.
Khorne's horrific Skullhammer Bastions spewed lava-like flame, followed by Brass Scorpions and Blood-edge Butchers.
Nurgle's Plague Meat-Giants dragged their trailing guts behind them, surrounded by hordes of Plague Crawlers and plague-bladed engines.
Slaanesh's wicked blade-chariots spun their cutting wheels without pause, while ranks of two-legged, crab-clawed Conquerors trotted alongside them.
Finally came Tzeentch's colossal floating eyeball engines—the Doomcalamities—with flocks of fleshravens circling, spreading unease.
Some of these abhorrent daemon engines stood just over ten meters tall. Others reached a hundred meters or more, no weaker than any Imperial god-engine.
They advanced without restraint.
Any lesser daemons they crushed underfoot, any unlucky creature sucked into their meat-grinders, were of no concern at all.
A hammer blow like this was enough to crush any Imperial fortress.
"Children of Chaos, fate has given its final decree. Shatter the Imperium's lines and strip the souls from every human!"
A two-headed humanoid giant raven beat its wings, hovering in the air as it swung its staff and barked the order to attack.
The great Tzeentchian daemon's eyes glinted slyly as it gazed toward the distant mechanical fortress.
It had spotted where the Primarchs were.
Such an assault might not be enough to kill a Primarch outright, but with endless waves of daemons they could still envelop them and slow them to a crawl.
Then they would weave sorcerous wards to lock them in.
Once that was done, the Primarchs would be mired in an infinite Chaos ocean. No matter how mighty they were, there would come a day when they collapsed from exhaustion.
In the meantime, Chaos could gorge itself on Imperial lives, feeding and growing fat until the Daemon Princes arrived to harvest the Primarchs' spent lives.
For Chaos, this war had nothing to do with honor. All they cared about was taking the souls of the Primarchs.
Khorne grumbled at the plan, but still agreed to the encirclement—on the condition that his legions served as the vanguard.
His dozen or more Greater Daemons were already slavering with bloodlust.
Caw—
But as the host advanced, the Tzeentchian great ravens suddenly felt a mortal threat. They snapped their heads toward the mechanical fortress.
The colossal fortress they had planned to besiege… was standing up.
Then came the earth-shuddering vibrations.
Before their eyes, the fortress rose, extending its arms, becoming a two-hundred-plus-meters-tall war-engine of pure dread.
Then that unprecedentedly huge engine marched out at the head of a whole cohort of Imperial Titans, stomping out of the Imperial lines in their direction.
Its killing intent rolled across the battlefield.
The Tzeentchian greater daemon stood at the very front of the Chaos tide, and the charge behind it did not slacken.
A massed assault on that scale was almost impossible to halt once it started.
Even though they sensed the danger, they could only watch as the massive engine of war drew closer and closer, their view shifting from distant to towering.
Suffocating dread rippled through the ranks.
The ordinary daemons charging in front felt sheer despair. In the middle of their frenzied rush, they suddenly saw a mountain of metal belching black smoke thundering toward them.
The intimidation was beyond imagining—for the Imperial Emperor stood more than twice as tall as an Imperator-class Titan, and four or five times as broad.
The visual impact was overwhelming—especially when its shadow rolled over them.
Each stride ate up dozens of meters, and its closing speed was terrifying.
"No!!!"
The daemons looked up in horror at the giant foot swinging down upon them, completely unable to dodge.
Splat.
They were mashed into pulp beneath the mechanical titanic feet, their ichor and pus seeping into the cracks in the earth.
The daemon engines finally opened fire. The Skullhammer Bastions thundered first, hurling volleys of massive solid shells. Then came all manner of vile cannonades and energy beams.
All of it broke against the mighty fortress-engine's shields. A larger frame meant more robust shield arrays.
This Titan carried whole suites of fortress-scale shield projectors and relic-grade barriers in layered nets.
Its armor plating itself was ship-grade material, staggeringly thick. A salvo like this barely scratched it.
Boom!!!
The colossal war-engine smashed into the Chaos line, shoulder-checking the foremost Skullhammer Bastion and sending it crashing down in pieces.
Those lethal chunks of wreckage crushed still more daemons, and the toppled furnace spilled magma like a burst artery.
Even more daemons died shrieking in the flood.
Gulp—
Not far behind the shattered tower, a Plague Meat-Mountain felt the danger, turned, and tried to shuffle away.
Too late.
A massive mechanical siege-ram swung down.
The plague giant popped like an overfilled bladder, rotted flesh bursting outward in a filthy rain.
The mech-arm's promethium flamers roared to life, washing the splattered meat in fire until it was nothing but ash.
"Now that's what I'm talking about."
In the Imperial Emperor's observation deck, Eden watched the scene below, feeling a bone-deep satisfaction.
He had not expected his Redemption Bastion-pattern Titan to be quite this ferocious.
It had not been a waste to mount a relic plasma reactor from the Golden Age of Humanity at its heart.
Golden Age tech really was on a different level.
And on top of that reactor, the Titan carried a host of relic systems and the latest research prototypes.
It was the fullest possible expression of the Savior's Dominion's technology.
You want to know what "forge maniac" means? This is it.
Perhaps only the Savior's Dominion could pour this much material into one frame—and break all the old rules—to build such a monstrous war-engine.
With this much resource dumping and stat-stacking, the result was inevitably glorious.
"This is the Imperial offensive I've always wanted to see…"
Lion murmured, staring at the wreckage and the scattering, screaming daemons below.
His heart was pounding in his chest.
The Savior was not the only one feeling a rush. The fiercest shock assault in years had every Primarch keyed up.
The Lion, who had been on the receiving end of constant encirclements, felt his blood surging.
But he also sensed the danger. The Imperial Emperor was getting very close to the Chaos line.
In fact, because of its speed, it had briefly pulled ahead of the main Titan battlegroup.
Now more and more daemon engines were closing in, including airborne daemon-craft.
For a Titan God-Engine without its full complement of scout and escort elements, that was extremely dangerous…
(End of Chapter)
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