=== Sebastian ===
Sebastian roared as he hurled himself forward, shield braced, Darksaber howling. Grievous lunged to meet him, his two remaining arms stabbing outward like spears of emerald death.
The Templar saw the inevitable killing thrusts, and instead of meeting them with steel alone, he drove his whole body forward. His storm shield slammed into both blades, forcing them wide as his armored shoulder crashed into Grievous' chest.
The impact toppled them both, their massive forms tumbling across the battlefield. Sparks and fire spat from their armor as they rolled, cultists and cyborgs scattering like vermin around them. Each time their bodies struck the ground, the earth itself cracked, leaving shallow craters in their wake.
Sebastian's gauntlets locked onto Grievous' limbs as they grappled in the dirt, the whine of straining servos and the grinding shriek of metal-on-metal filling the air.
Then, with a surge of transhuman strength, Sebastian twisted his torso, hauling Grievous off his feet, and slammed the abomination into the ground hard enough to pulverize a score of cultists and half a dozen cyborgs beneath them. Flesh and metal alike were reduced to paste under the combined mass of the Templar and the Necron cyborg.
Sebastian rose over him, righteous hate crackling through his vox. He lifted the Darksaber high, its blade screaming with that unnatural hum as he drove it down toward Grievous' chest.
But Grievous' reflexes were still blinding. One of his claws lashed out, catching Sebastian's blade, knocking the strike wide. The Darksaber's blade gouged a molten trench into the earth beside them, cutting through a pair of unlucky Separatist mercenaries who had been too slow to flee.
Grievous twisted, forcing the weapon away, but that gave Sebastian his opening. With a roar, the Black Templar raised his storm shield, and then brought the rim down across Grievous' faceplate.
BAM!
The first strike rang like a cathedral bell, denting the cyborg's skull-mask.
BAM!
The second strike cracked it further, green sparks bursting as the inner workings were exposed.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Again and again Sebastian hammered at him, every impact an act of holy judgment.
Grievous screeched in rage, arms flailing, but Sebastian pressed in, raining blow after blow, sparks flying, metal bending. The cultists watching wailed in terror, scattering as they realized their champion was being beaten into the dirt.
But the Necron was not finished.
With a violent twist of his legs, Grievous lashed out. One clawed foot smashed into Sebastian's chestplate hard enough to dent ceramite and crack his ribs beneath. The Black Templar was hurled back, his shield arm flaring with pain, vox crackling with a guttural snarl.
Grievous rolled to his feet with insectile speed, his cloak trailing sparks. In a single flowing motion, he lashed out with both phase blades, the twin arcs of green fire hissing toward Sebastian.
The Templar caught one strike with his shield, but the second slashed deep across his right wrist.
The world flashed white with pain.
The blade tore through ceramite, through flesh, severing nerves as it ripped nearly to the bone. Blood sprayed, sizzling on his warplate. Sebastian's gauntlet convulsed, fingers spasming, then went slack. The Darksaber slipped from his grip and fell, hissing into the dirt, its black blade sputtering as it spun away.
Sebastian staggered back, his right hand numb, the weight of his shield dragging against him.
Grievous rose to his full monstrous height, wheezing with triumph. His remaining claws reached out, clamping around Sebastian's battered torso. The Templar struggled, hammering his shield into Grievous' body, but the cyborg's strength was overwhelming.
With a shrieking roar, Grievous lifted Sebastian clear off the ground. Sparks burst as claws dug into ceramite, punching through the armored plates.
Then, with brutal strength, the cyborg hurled the Black Templar across the battlefield.
Sebastian slammed into the ground, rolling through screaming cultists and crashing through a line of Separatist droids. His impact cratered the earth, stone and dust erupting in a violent plume. His armor groaned, warning runes flashing crimson across his HUD, pain flooding his body like fire.
For a moment, everything blurred, the battlefield reduced to noise and chaos. Through the haze, Sebastian's helm picked up the sound of Grievous' inhuman laugh, that mechanical mockery reverberating across the killing fields.
The Black Templar rolled onto his knees, blood running down his armor, his right hand useless. His shield still braced on his left, dented and cracked, but unbroken. His helm turned, searching for the Darksaber, its black light guttering in the dirt some distance away.
Grievous stalked toward him, blades raised, cutting down any of his own soldiers foolish enough to stand between them.
"Is that all you have, coward? You'll need more than that to kill me!" Sebastian said, getting to his feet.
Grievous' mechanical laugh grated through the smoke as he stooped, his talons curling into the dirt. He bent down and seized the two severed arms Sebastian had cut away earlier. The shattered stumps of metal met the gleaming green of necrodermis, and the wounds stitched themselves together in writhing, liquid metal.
The Templar swallowed blood and raised his shield, but Grievous' newly restored arms snapped outward, phase blades humming to life once more.
Four arms rained down on Sebastian, each strike a tsunami of speed and violence. Sparks lit the battlefield as blade clashed against shield, each impact staggering Sebastian backward, the sheer velocity of the strikes hammering his guard apart. One blade slashed his right pauldron in half, another glanced off his helm, sending his vision blurring.
The Black Templar roared in defiance, throwing his shoulder into the assault, his shield dented and burning from the constant onslaught. But Grievous was too much. The cyborg pressed closer, his four blades weaving in a storm of green fire that battered down every defense.
Then came the killing stroke.
Grievous lunged with all four arms, blades thrusting inward for Sebastian's chest after knocking his shield wide. The Templar braced for the end—
—and then, Salvation came.
From above, a thunderclap screamed across the battlefield as Maximus hurtled down in his Centurion warplate. His thrusters flared, and his massive frame crashed into Grievous with bone-breaking force. The Necron cyborg shrieked as he was lifted off the ground, blades flailing wildly as one of Maximus' massive gauntlets gripped his chest.
The Ultramarine carried him upward in a streak of fire and smoke, his gauntleted hands gripping Grievous like a predator dragging prey into the skies.
"Begone!" Maximus bellowed, his vox thunderous.
At the apex of his ascent, he spun, hurling Grievous like a comet back to the ground. The cyborg slammed into the dirt with the force of an orbital bombardment, a crater blooming around his crumpled form. Dust and bodies were hurled aside in a tidal wave.
Maximus didn't linger. His visor locked on the swirling hell of the ritual-portal in the distance, that monstrous wound in reality where the forces of Chaos were clawing to enter. He ignited his thrusters again and became a blazing spear, streaking away toward the sky's great wound.
Sebastian coughed, his lungs burning, his vision flickering with damage runes. He pulled himself up, staggering as his gaze fell on Grievous clawing his way out of the crater. The Necron was damaged, but not broken.
The Black Templar's eyes darted to the dirt nearby. There, half-buried in the mud and blood, the Darksaber still burned its baleful, black flame.
He stooped, clutching it in his still-numb right hand with the help of his left. The nerves were shot, useless, but an idea struck him. A mad, desperate idea.
Through the haze of war, he spotted him. A wall of fire advancing through the chaos, Raxor and his Pyro Drakes, their flamestorms consuming everything.
Sebastian staggered toward him, carving aside a pair of cultists with clumsy sweeps of the Darksaber. His voice thundered over the din as he approached.
"Brother!" Sebastian bellowed, crashing to one knee before Raxor. "I need you! Melt the blade to my gauntlet!"
Raxor froze mid-stride, his heavy flamer still belching liquid fire across screaming droids. He turned, his helm cocked, disbelief etched in every movement.
"You ask me to do what?" Raxor's vox growled, almost drowned in the firestorm.
"To bind it to me," Sebastian snarled, thrusting his limp hand forward. "My hand is lost. But the blade! Seal it to my flesh, brother!"
Even through his helm, Raxor's hesitation was palpable. "Sebastian, it will ruin what remains of your arm. The pain will—"
"Do it!" Sebastian roared, his voice breaking like thunder.
Grievous' shriek cut across the battlefield as he charged, his four blades igniting again, scattering cultists, cyborgs, clones, Jedi, and Mandalorians alike in his path. His cloak flared, his talons ripping through the ground as he cleared a path for Sebastian's blood.
Raxor cursed under his breath, then leveled his heavy flamer downward.
"Hold it steady, brother," he growled.
The torrent of fire came, white-hot, molten streams licking around Sebastian's gauntlet. The ceramite shrieked as it began to warp, melting, fusing with the hilt of the Darksaber. The heat crawled into his flesh, his bones, his very soul.
Sebastian screamed, a guttural, soul-rending sound that carried across the battlefield. Pain flayed him raw, but he did not falter. He slammed his shield into the dirt, pinning himself upright even as his right arm blackened beneath the weld.
The Darksaber hissed, its black Beskantium steaming as the molten metal sealed into his gauntlet. When the fire died, the weapon was no longer a tool, it was a part of his warplate, forever fused to his ruined flesh.
Grievous leapt, all four blades descending towards the two Astartes.
Sebastian's head snapped up, eyes blazing through the pain. His right arm jerked upward, the Darksaber igniting in a roar of black blade and white lightning.
CLASH!
The Darksaber caught one blade, burning through its edge in a spray of molten sparks.
CLANG!
The shield caught another, hurling it wide.
The third scraped across his left pauldron, the fourth carved a shallow gouge across his chest, but Sebastian held.
With a bellow that shook the heavens, he shoved forward, the Darksaber locked to his gauntlet howling with holy fury.
Sebastian ducked under another vicious, whistling strike, four phase blades cutting the air above his head. The hiss of necrodermis meeting nothing was answered by a sudden upward sweep of Sebastian's Darksaber. He drove the weapon sideways, shearing through one of Grievous's clawed legs. The cut sent sparks, molten metal, and necrotic essence spraying into the air as the cyborg staggered forward with a shrieking roar.
"XENO FILTH!" Sebastian bellowed, his vox amplifying the roar so that it thundered across the battlefield. "THE EMPEROR JUDGES YOU UNWORTHY!"
He did not relent. His armored bulk surged forward on roaring jump pack thrusters, closing in before Grievous could regain balance. With a brutal sweep, Sebastian hacked through the Necrons right-side arms, sending two blades clattering to the earth.
Grievous shrieked, a blend of machine distortion and living rage. He reeled backward, screeching orders in every direction, summoning his remaining Necron-Cyborg legions to his side. But the battle was collapsing around him, the Imperium's wall of flame and bolter fire shattered every wave of reinforcements, and Raxor's Pyro Drakes unleashed torrents of burning promethium, holding back the tide.
Grievous turned, dragging himself backward, his remaining limbs twitching desperately. He tried to flee. To escape. To survive.
But Sebastian was already in the air.
The Black Templar ignited his jump pack, roaring forward like a burning comet. He came down with the force of a falling star, smashing Grievous into the ground with his entire armored weight. Stone cracked. Metal screamed. The cyborg flailed, his remaining arms whipping up in a storm of blades, sparks flashing against Sebastian's storm shield.
But Sebastian had already transcended pain, had already embraced the holy fury of his Chapter. He bared his teeth, snarling behind his helmet grille, the Darksaber flaring like a shard of midnight flame.
"You will not flee me a second time, abomination!" he growled, driving the saber down in a brutal arc.
One by one, the arms fell.
The first was severed at the elbow. The second at the shoulder. Sparks rained like fireflies as Grievous wailed and thrashed. Sebastian pressed forward with every ounce of fury, pressing him down into the dirt like a knight pinning a serpent.
"For Jarek!" Sebastian roared, his voice a crack of thunder.
And then, he discarded his shield.
The Relic fell to the ground at his side. Sebastian lunged forward with his bare armored gauntlet, his left hand gripping the side of Grievous's reinforced skull. Sparks hissed as his fingers dug into the Necron-forged plating.
Grievous screeched in panic, the sound reverberating like through the battlefield. His remaining leg kicked, his metal claws scraped against ceramite, but Sebastian didn't falter. His grip tightened, powered by faith and centuries of hatred.
Sebastian strained, ceramite servos screaming in protest as he ripped with his entire being.
Grievous shrieked, ordering his cyborgs to come, to help, to save him. But they could not break the wall of fire, could not reach their master. Bolter shells tore them apart, and Raxor's flames reduced them to glowing slag.
Slowly, inevitably, Sebastian pulled.
Metal groaned. Necrodermis shrieked. Cables tore loose like snapped tendons, green sparks spilling out like blood.
With a thunderous roar, Sebastian tore Grievous's head and spine from his body in a single, brutal tug. The body below collapsed in a heap of smoldering wreckage. Sebastian rose, holding the grisly trophy aloft in his bloodied robotic hand, green sparks cascading down his armor.
The battlefield froze.
Even amidst fire and ruin, the sight was undeniable.
Astartes and Mandalorians roared in triumph. Republic soldiers cheered. Cultists wailed in despair, their faith broken at the sight of their champion undone. The cyborg legions faltered, their programming stuttering without their master.
Sebastian raised the skull-spine high into the air, his vox booming so loud it seemed the Emperor Himself spoke through him.
"BY THE EMPEROR'S WILL, VENGEANCE IS MINE!"
His Obsidian Crusaders roared in reply.
And in that moment, Sebastian was more than a warrior. He was a living beacon of wrath and faith, a knight ablaze with holy fire.
For one glorious heartbeat, it felt as though the tide had turned.
And then the sky tore open.
The portal, until now a distant, seething wound in reality, shuddered and split with a scream that shook stone and soul alike. Warp-light speared through the heavens, bleeding across the battlefield in impossible colors. The very air seemed to burn. A second sun was born above Mortis, but it was no sun, it was hunger, madness, and damnation incarnate.
From its yawning mouth, the forces of Chaos began to pour forth.
First came the warp-lightning, cracking down like god-smitten spears, rending men and machines alike into ash. Then the air split with laughter, mocking, mad, and infinite. Out of the storm surged figures clad in twisted ceramite, their armor bearing the marks of gods best left unnamed. Spined and bladed, trailing daemonic fire, the Traitor Astartes charged into the fray, bolters roaring, chainblades revving. Behind them boiled hordes of cultists, more numerous than the sands of Mortis's deserts, their eyes glowing with unholy zeal.
And above them, daemons screamed into being, shapes of living fire, shadow, and claw. Flesh that dripped like tar, wings that blotted out the sky, talons that cracked stone. Every heartbeat brought more of them, spilling into the world like a tide that could drown suns.
The battlefield's roar dimmed beneath the immensity of the threat. Even the victorious Imperium and Republic troops faltered, their weapons raised but hands trembling as they saw the true enemy unfurling from the portal.
Sebastian did not falter.
He looked to Raxor, his brother wreathed in fire and smoke, the Pyro Drakes standing behind him.
He attached Grievous's skull-spine to his waist with a savage tug, securing the grim relic like a saint's icon. The sight of it alone rallied those who saw, proof that monsters could fall.
His vox boomed across the battlefield, drowning out the Chaos warcries.
"IMPERIALS! REPUBLIC! BROTHERS OF HUMANITY!" he bellowed, his voice a hammer of faith. "BEHOLD THE TRUE ENEMY! GRIEVE NOT, FOR THE EMPEROR WATCHES! FALTER NOT, FOR THE EMPEROR PROTECTS!"
He picked his shield back up from where it lay, the aquila scorched but still gleaming through the ash.
"TO WAR! TO VICTORY!"
A single, earth-shaking cry followed from the Imperial forces.
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
The combined armies answered. Astartes slammed their weapons against their armor, the sound like thunder rolling across the plain. Mandalorians roared, jetpacks igniting. Republic clones, bloodied but unbowed, raised their blasters and echoed the warcry with their own. Jedi lit their sabers, forming shining beacons among the legions.
Sebastian turned to Raxor, flame still dripping from the Pyroclast's weapon. His brother gave a single nod, firelight dancing in his visor.
And then Sebastian charged.
The ground shook beneath his armored bulk, every stride devouring the battlefield as he ran directly into the growing tide of Chaos. Raxor thundered at his side, his Pyro Drakes forming a wall of flame that carved a burning path toward the portal. Together, they were a spearhead of wrath and fire, plunging straight into the teeth of the oncoming storm.
Daemonettes hissed and darted toward them, Sebastian split one in half with the Darksaber in a single sweeping strike, black ichor spraying across his armor. Cultists surged like a wave, screaming their profane prayers, but bolter-fire from the Obsidian Crusaders and the Pyro Drakes cut them down in droves.
Every step was agony. Every breath was fire. Yet still Sebastian ran.
Above them, Maximus streaked toward the portal in his Centurion suit, a blazing comet leading the way. Around them, the armies of the Imperium and the Republic surged forward, battle cries intermingling. The ground became a meat grinder, Chaos crashing against the wall of mankind in a storm of steel and blood.
Sebastian didn't care. He had eyes only for the portal, only for the gaping wound that vomited forth the ruin of worlds.
"THE EMPEROR IS OUR SHIELD!" he roared, crashing into a towering daemon of Khorne and driving his storm shield up into its chest, splintering bone and ichor alike. "AND WE ARE HIS SWORD!"
With Raxor beside him, with the fury of the Imperium and the Republic at his back, Sebastian hurled himself headlong into the abyss, one final cry splitting the skies.
"EMPEROR, GUIDE MY BLADE!"
And then, shoulder to shoulder with his brother, he plunged into the storm.
===
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