On Barbarus, the loftiest Sky-Piercing Range rose above the continent's southwest.
Higher, ever higher!
The steel-clad warriors of Barbarus pressed their silent assault; the farther they climbed, the thicker the poison fog became. Vox could almost feel the air itself gnawing at their plate.
Even the Death Guard's lovingly tended armor was now visibly rusting, its anti-corrosion coating eaten away in the earlier fighting.
"Vox, fall back!" Typhon ordered.
Typhon looked at the battered Deathshroud: claws of the xenos had sheared clean through their plate, exposing the hemp-and-cotton padding beneath—once white, now a mottled weave of green, violet, and black.
"Mortarion, wait for me!" Gasping, Typhon leaned on his Power Scythe and climbed, slow but unwavering, toward the summit.
He trod a ground carpeted with pale xenos corpses and green Death Guard dead; red and green blood mingled in rivulets as he hurried after the man he followed.
This was a path of vengeance paved with the lives of friend and foe alike. Kallas Typhon would help his brothers if it cost him everything—even if only a spark of Psyker flame remained to scorch an enemy's face, it would be enough.
At the peak of the Sky-Piercing Range.
Before the fortress gate lay heaps of lizard-like xenos corpses beyond counting.
Blood-soaked, Mortarion steadied his breathing; the death-rattle hiss from his rebreather told even he was near his limit.
"Come out, Narek! Had your neck washed? Face me!" Mortarion's rasping voice mocked the silent gateway where no more xenos poured forth.
The creatures that once seemed mighty he now slaughtered like swine, certain he would lead Barbarus to final victory.
In this last hour Mortarion felt an eerie calm. He thought not of the day he slew his foster-father, but of the first autumn after he and Typhon founded the Death Guard.
The crops in Death Guard lands yielded a harvest beyond all memory. Mortarion himself took a sickle and joined the people, the plump golden heads of wheat gleaming beneath the dim sun.
Though his Primarch frame forced him to squat like an awkward ape, he laughed as he cut—until a small girl with faint freckles stood on tiptoe to dab the sweat from his brow.
That day he reaped more than ten acres alone, heart racing with joy.
While the Death Guard celebrated, xenos struck. When Mortarion arrived he found only the corpses of those who had shared the harvest.
The little girl who had wiped his brow lay in two pieces, her spilled entrails a silent accusation.
No lament, no roar—Mortarion picked up the awkward sickle and followed the xenos alone.
Next day he returned: the Death-Child reeking of slaughter.
'I should have asked her name,' he murmured at the gate.
'Mortarion!' Kallas Typhon shouted, panting as he caught up.
'Can you go on?' Mortarion's hoarse voice warned even a Primarch could not shrug off these fumes.
'End it quickly!' Kallas Typhon declared.
'Good,' the Primarch replied.
There was no turning back; Mortarion already tasted the fetid Psyker-stench of his foster-father.
The creature watched him, the Death-Child, as when he first found him.
'Mortarion, so long and you bring only one whelp? Still the same failure.' Nacrek appeared atop the high wall.
Unlike the lizard-xenos he bred, Mortarion's foster-father looked almost human—save for the monstrous head and reptilian scales.
The Primarch crouched, then his lean legs exploded with terrible force; the air cracked as he vaulted skyward.
High above, eyes once calm now blazing, he brought his Great Scythe down in a sweeping blow of Primarch might.
CLANG!!!!
The two blades met, sparks spraying where the curved edges kissed.
'Yes, that gaze—you've grown stronger indeed,' the xenos praised.
Mortarion silently forced every ounce of strength from his body, the Primarch's immense power steadily driving the enemy's scythe down toward his foster-father.
"My ridiculous son," the Father sneered, a thick, eerie green psychic ripple flaring in his palm.
The psychic burst twisted the venomous air around them. Mortarion twisted aside, his heavy pauldron absorbing the blast, the green energy leaving a deep gash across the plating.
"Your psy-craft hasn't improved at all these years!" He back-stepped, drew and fired in one fluid motion, emptying the clip and hurling the spent weapon itself as the final projectile at his foster-father.
Wummm… a pliant psychic shield appeared; the high-velocity round bored in with vicious reluctance, yearning to tear the alien inside apart.
"BREAK!!!" A voice that belonged to neither Mortarion nor the alien foster-father screamed with every ounce of strength from nearby.
Crack… the once-tough shield shattered.
The bullet slammed like a wild stallion into the alien's chest, spraying fountains of green blood.
"Die!" In fury the alien loosed a bolt of psychic lightning without even looking, straight at the gnat who had disrupted his power.
The terrifying psychic bolt struck beside Typhon and blasted him off the high wall, sending him crashing into a heap of corpses, life or death unknown.
"Still distracted?" Mortarion surged back in with thunderous force, locking blades with his foster-father so quickly that Nacrek had no time to redirect his sorcery at the damnable insect.
Mortarion's scythe cleanly severed the opponent's left arm; in return Nacrek's psychic blast shredded the mail across Mortarion's chest, and virulent poison began to spread through the exposed, mangled flesh.
Typhon felt like a rag-doll smashed by a sledgehammer—seven or eight ribs snapped, his left shin shattered completely.
"We can win… we will win!" He struggled up from the corpse pile, racking his brain for any psychic trick that could buy Mortarion even a one-in-ten-thousand chance.
On the wall the alien father-and-son pair slashed at each other with huge war-scythes; steel rang incessantly, hammering Typhon's fading mind.
"There has to be one!!" Typhon babbled, blood and gobbets of flesh spurting from his lips—whole organs already burst. "No good, Mortarion can't beat the alien. I have to act!" The Emperor, hidden at Barbarus's final battlefield, spoke in alarm.
Clearly the alien had the upper hand: though physically weaker, his psy-craft kept inflicting grievous wounds, and Mortarion was now a figure of dripping crimson.
"Don't. This is the final duel; Mortarion would forbid interference—even from his true father. Ask Corax," Swain said, blocking the Emperor's grand entrance.
"Yes, Father. Were I Mortarion, I too would bar anyone from meddling in my battle—even you!" Corax declared firmly.
"Then what? We watch him captured? Wait till he's down and then stroll in? Ridiculous!" the Emperor snapped.
"Easy. See Typhon, the one who got knocked flying? He's a Psyker…"
"That Psyker's useless—too weak to matter," the Emperor cut Swain off; he wasn't blind.
"Chill! Plant a psychic suggestion—use the power Stun—and quietly lock down the alien. Problem solved," Swain said, barely restraining a kick.
"Why didn't you say so!" The Emperor glared, then cast the subtle command onto the faltering Typhon.
"There's a way… Stun! Yes, Stun! Even a thousandth-second daze would let Mortarion lop the alien's head off!" The thought surfaced in Typhon's dissolving mind, ignoring how outclassed his gift was.
Stun works only when a high-grade Psyker imposes it on a lesser one; a weaker mind trying it on a stronger is as futile as a breeze against a mountain.
"Mortarion!!!! Stun!!!" With his last breath Typhon cried his comrade's name, draining every drop of power—including the shred that kept the toxic air from his heart.
So be it—death was better than standing by.