=== Raxor ===
The drop pod screamed through the smoke-choked skies of Mortis like a falling comet, its hull glowing red with heat, its retro-thrusters firing in defiance of gravity. The ground shook as it slammed into the battlefield amidst the writhing horde of Separatist remnants and Grievous's twisted cyborg monstrosities. The pod dug into the earth, crushing droids and flinging cultists into the air in a rain of blood and metal.
A heartbeat later, the pod's hatches detonated outward in thunderclaps of fire and steel.
The heavy bolter mounted inside the pod open fired immediately, barrels glowing red as they poured mass-reactive shells into the closest enemies. The staccato roar shredded droids into twisted heaps, pulped cultists into crimson mist, and tore cybernetic limbs from screaming horrors.
Raxor emerged first, his massive form stepping out of the burning pod. His armor was blackened with soot and lined with drake-scale motifs. In his hands, he bore his relic heavy flamer, a weapon that roared like the heart of a volcano. Behind him, the Pyro Drakes advanced in perfect formation, their Astartes captains guiding them.
A wall of fire poured outward from their Pyreblasters, the flames so intense they shimmered white at the core and orange at the edges. It washed across the battlefield in a rolling tide, engulfing everything in its path. Droids melted where they stood, their durasteel skeletons sagging and collapsing in puddles of glowing slag. Cyborgs screamed, horrible and garbled shrieks as their grafted flesh bubbled and blackened, their machine parts warping and popping under the heat until they collapsed into molten husks.
Raxor's flamer roared above them all, its gout of fire cutting a swathe through the densest press of enemies. A lumbering cyborg brute, its torso a welded mess of steel plates and grafted muscle, its jaw nothing but a steel grill belching static, charged through the flames toward him. Raxor stepped forward, leveled his weapon, and unleashed a jet of promethium so hot it turned the abomination into a pillar of screaming, thrashing fire.
"Burn them all," Raxor growled over the vox, his voice like a furnace's rumble. "Purge them all!"
The Pyro Drakes answered with fire and fury. Their Pyreblasters swept in overlapping arcs, creating an advancing curtain of flame that rolled forward like a tidal wave. Nothing survived within its reach.
Separatist battle droids tried to return fire, their blasters sparking in the smoke. Their bolts hissed uselessly against armor or vanished into the firestorm before finding purchase. One squadron of B2 super battle droids advanced in tight formation, their wrist cannons pounding out streams of plasma. The Pyro Drakes answered as one, six Pyreblasters converging on the squad. The heat was so intense that the droids didn't even have time to fire a second volley, they simply melted where they stood, their bodies collapsing into flowing rivers of molten metal.
The chaos cultists, once screaming praises to their foul gods, now turned in panic. The sight of their comrades burning alive, their flesh curling away from their bones in sheets of ash, broke their fanaticism. They fled into the smoke, tripping over one another, screaming. But there was no escape. The flames licked at their heels, caught their robes, and engulfed them one by one. They flailed and shrieked, rolling on the ground in futile attempts to smother the fire before their screams were silenced.
The Pyro Drakes advanced, the heat haze warping the air around them. The flames turned earth to glass beneath their boots, blackened stone cracking under the sheer intensity.
Raxor pressed forward through the inferno, his flamer never ceasing, every burst incinerating dozens. A cyborg spider-tank scuttled into view, its chassis mounted with twin rotary cannons. It opened fire, streams of red bolts hammering into the front line. Multiple Pyro Drakes fell under the impacts, armor sparking, but Raxor answered with fury. He walked straight into the barrage, raising his flamer, and unleashed a cone of fire so concentrated it melted the tank's armor plating in seconds. The machine shrieked in garbled binary as its ammunition cooked, and then detonated in a chain of explosions that hurled burning limbs and shrapnel in every direction.
The battlefield before Raxor was no longer a warzone, it was an incinerator.
Mandalorian armor gleamed in the infernal light. Flames reflected off burning metal, off the molten skeletons of droids, off the blackened corpses of cultists frozen in their final moments of agony. Ash and soot rained from the skies like a volcanic eruption.
Still, the enemy tried. More droids poured in from their flanks, their metal feet crunching over ash. More cyborgs screamed and hurled themselves forward, their bodies sparking as fire ate at their circuits. But the Pyro Drakes did not falter, they did not slow, and did not cease their advance.
"Forward!" Raxor thundered, his voice carried by the vox like the roar of a furnace. "We are the fire! We are the cleansing flame! We are the Emperor's will!"
The Pyro Drakes answered with a single word, shouted as one over the flames.
"Burn!"
=== Sebastian ===
Sebastian stood tall at the head of the Obsidian Crusaders as they marched forward. All around him, the battlefield raged, drop pods slamming into the ground, pyres of flame from Raxor's Pyro Drakes consuming thousands, Maximus descending like a falling star in his Centurion warplate. But Sebastian's gaze was fixed forward, locked on the endless tide that lay before him.
The horde stretched across the blasted plains, cyborg monstrosities clanking in mechanical lockstep, columns of Separatist droids armed with blasters, Chaos cultists screaming prayers to their dark gods, all packed together into a seething wall of steel, flesh, and madness. But Sebastian did not waver.
And then he stopped. Just for a heartbeat. His crimson lenses scanned the battlefield, searching. He wanted to find him.
But the blasted Cyborg was not there. Not yet.
Sebastian snarled, vox amplifiers twisting the sound into a guttural, thunderous growl.
"No matter. The rest of you will die!"
With a flick of his wrist, the Darksaber ignited, its shrieking hum filling the air like the scream of a howling soul. Then, without hesitation, he charged.
The ground trembled beneath his armored bulk as Sebastian thundered forward, his Crusaders roaring their own oaths as they followed. The Black Templar shattered the first rank of cultists like a hammer through glass. The Darksaber carved a wide, sweeping arc, cutting through dozens in a single swing, devouring flesh, bone, and armor alike. Cultists fell apart in ragged chunks, their bodies bisected or reduced to cinders.
Sebastian didn't slow.
He was a force of pure, unrelenting hatred, his every step driving him deeper into the horde. Bolter fire rattled from his Crusaders behind him, each round exploding bodies apart. But Sebastian didn't need guns. His weapon was terror itself, carried on the black blade of his Saber.
"By Dorn's blood! By the Emperor's wrath!" he bellowed, his voice booming across the field. His words were not just a cry but a curse, a holy condemnation spat into the faces of his enemies.
Droids opened fire, red lances of plasma streaking toward him, but his storm shield drank them all, hissing with each impact. He answered by cleaving straight through a block of them, the Darksaber slicing through durasteel like parchment. Ten, twenty, thirty fell in moments, their severed halves crashing down in showers of sparks.
The cultists screamed prayers to their gods, but their gods did not answer. Sebastian did, however. His fury was their judgment, his blade their damnation.
Bodies piled at his feet as he pressed forward, his armored bulk coated in blood and oil. The stench of scorched flesh and ozone clung to him, but Sebastian knew no pause, no fatigue. His zeal was endless, his hate inexhaustible. Every enemy slain was a hymn sung in the Emperor's name.
He struck again, this time with a brutal upward swing that carved through a cyborg's torso, bisecting both its mechanical half and human half in one grisly instant. The Darksaber howled as if savoring the kill.
And then, something strange happened.
The tide broke.
The cultists began to falter. They had screamed and charged and thrown themselves at him in madness, but now? They saw their comrades turned to ash, their droids in ruins, their cyborg champions hacked down. They saw the Black Templar, standing amidst a growing mountain of corpses, wreathed in hatred and unyielding faith.
Fear took them.
At first, they hesitated. Then they pulled back. Then they ran.
Sebastian roared, his vox projecting his voice across the plain.
"Run, heretics! Flee, cowards! Your false gods will not save you! You will die screaming, every last one of you!"
He advanced still, but the tide parted around him. Those who remained kept their distance, unwilling to meet him head-on. They made a circle, wide and trembling, around the lone Black Templar. He stood in the center like a black sun, his Darksaber raised high.
And in that moment, Sebastian began to laugh.
The battlefield thundered all around him, bolters, lightsabers, cannons, and flame, but where he stood, there was silence. None dared approach. A lone Templar of the Emperor, surrounded by a sea of enemies too afraid to close the gap.
"You fear me? Good! But fear alone will not save you. I will cut you all down. And then after… your maker will follow you into the abyss."
His vox-amplified voice cut through the chaos like thunder.
"Pathetic wretch!" He called to his most hated enemy that still refused to show himself. "You dare call yourself a warrior? You cower before the Emperor's judgment, before a single blade of His righteous wrath! Where are you, you disgusting filthy Xeno?"
He raised his shield high, letting plasma bolts ricochet harmlessly from its shimmering surface. "Show yourself, coward-machine! Or will you hide behind slaves and vermin forever?"
The words hit across the ranks. The cyborgs snarled in distorted tones, the cultists screamed louder, but still none advanced. Then… the horde shifted. A ripple ran through the enemy lines. Soldiers scattered, cultists shoved one another aside in terror, and even the monstrous cyborgs staggered back.
Then, he appeared.
Through the smoke and fire, Grievous emerged. His form was a grotesque union of Necron necrodermis and chaos sorceries. His frame gleamed with metallic bone, crackling with sickly green energy. His four arms unfolded, each clawed hand shifting into four Necron phase blades, each one shimmering with the eerie distortion of matter-phasing tech.
Sebastian's vox growled with sheer hate. "Finally."
Grievous did not hesitate. His rage was clear as he tore through his own forces, cutting down cultists and cyborgs alike as he advanced, his phase blades slicing through their bodies as though they were mist. Their screams echoed as their bodies simply fell apart, consumed by his fury. He wanted no barrier, no shield of flesh between himself and his enemy.
Sebastian began to walk forward. Then jog. Then sprint. His thunderous footfalls cracked the earth beneath him as he charged, his storm shield braced, the Darksaber raised like a black sun.
Grievous mirrored him, his mechanical limbs propelling him with insectile speed, his cloak of smoke and sparks trailing behind.
They met with the force of two meteors colliding.
Clang!
The Darksaber met the first phase blade, sparks and black fire erupting in a blinding arc.
Clang! Clang!
Sebastian's shield caught two more strikes, his arm trembling as the phase blades bit into the field's energy and crackled against it.
The fourth blade came low, but Sebastian twisted, smashing it aside with a sweep of his Darksaber, the black blade howling as it clashed with Necron energy.
"I will tear out the spark that animates you, abomination!" Sebastian roared.
"You will die here, Templar!" Grievous' snarled. "I will avenge the shame you brought on me at Zygerrian!" His four blades blurred into a storm of strikes.
Sebastian gave ground, his shield absorbing blow after blow, each strike strong enough to cleave tanks. He answered with vicious counters, the Darksaber cutting arcs of annihilation. One strike took a cyborg's head as it stumbled too close, another cleaved through a line of droids still trying to fight, caught in the storm of their master.
Grievous spun, his four arms weaving an impossible pattern. Two blades locked against Sebastian's saber, one came down on his shield, and the fourth lashed out toward his legs. Sebastian snarled, planting his foot and slamming his shield forward, the impact throwing Grievous a step back. With that instant, he swung the Darksaber in a two-handed arc, its black blade hissing across Grievous' chestplate.
Sparks erupted, molten metal spitting from the wound. Grievous screeched, the sound like shearing steel.
But he did not fall.
He came back with a whirl, his body twisting unnaturally, his four arms striking from impossible angles. One blade screeched across Sebastian's pauldron, cutting deep into ceramite. Another clipped the rim of his shield, sending energy rippling across its surface. The third would have taken his head had Sebastian not shoved upward with sheer brute strength, locking the blade against his shield's rim and countering with a crushing shield-bash.
The impact hurled Grievous back into a cluster of his own cyborgs, his blades flashing as he cut them apart in fury to regain footing.
Sebastian advanced, roaring.
"Your gods are false! Your body is a mockery! Come coward, face the Emperor's justice!"
Grievous answered with a lunge, all four blades thrusting like spears. Sebastian turned, his shield catching two, his Darksaber intercepting the third, while the fourth punched through his shoulder plate. Warnings screamed in his helm as his armor cracked, blood spraying inside the suit.
Sebastian howled in rage. He clamped down on the blade with his storm shield's field, trapping it. With his free hand, he drove the Darksaber down, severing one of Grievous' arms in a spray of molten necrodermis.
Grievous shrieked, stumbling back. But he had three arms still, and they moved like lightning.
They fought like titans amidst a sea of terrified mortals. Every swing was death, every clash thunder. Droids and cultists fled screaming, unwilling to be anywhere near the melee. The very ground beneath them split from the sheer power of their strikes.
Sebastian's faith was fire. His hatred was endless. Each wordless roar, each vow spat in defiance of the abomination before him, fueled him further.
And still, Grievous pressed. Faster. Stronger. His blades a blur of emerald death.
Sebastian locked one in his shield, caught another with his saber, ducked under the third, and with a roar, slammed his shoulder into Grievous, driving him back. Then his Darksaber came in a sweeping arc, a black crescent that tore through another of Grievous' arms, sending the severed limb spinning into the dirt.
The machine screamed.
The Black Templar bellowed his holy hate, his voice booming across the battlefield:
"This ends with your corpse at my feet, monster! By the Emperor, I swear it!"
===
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