Crack... crack... crack...
Hoarse, mournful wails echoed across the battlefield, the death-song of a dying race. Alpha-level psychic fluctuations swept over the Imperial forces like a tidal wave of manufactured grief. Behind their visors, tears streamed unbidden down the faces of the Mortal Auxiliary. A sourceless sorrow crashed against their minds, threatening to drown their sanity.
Even through their psychic shields, the alien creature's emanating despair wormed its way into the soldiers' hearts, planting seeds of doubt and remorse.
What kind of battle is this? they wondered. Why have we come here? To destroy a harmonious civilization?
The people they'd come to "save" had been living in contentment. Without alien control, or so it seemed, they'd taken up arms willingly against the Imperium. Before the Emperor's judgment descended, this world had flourished. Its people knew peace and prosperity.
And the Imperium had descended from the sky like angels of death, slaughtering citizens with bolter fire, reducing gleaming cities to rubble, shattering the beautiful lives these people had built across the stars.
Some soldiers with wavering resolve removed their helmets, faces twisted with remorse, infected by the great being's projected sorrow. They questioned the righteousness of their crusade.
Yet within the Argent Nur Auxiliary ranks, the soldiers remained unmoved. Their electromagnetic rifles barked with steady rhythm, cutting down stragglers without hesitation. Each pull of the trigger carried the weight of conscious choice and unwavering conviction.
They were no emotionless killing machines, they were flesh and blood, thinking and feeling. But the education they'd received on Argent Nur had given them clarity that lesser troops lacked. They understood the truth of what they were doing.
Beneath the facade of harmony lay the aliens' insidious enslavement. Humans were nothing but cattle to these parasites, fat to be devoured, bodies to be possessed, minds to be consumed at will. The xenos controlled their victims from the shadows, slowly devouring the host's consciousness until nothing remained but an empty puppet wearing human skin.
Family bonds. Friendships forged over years. Love between partners. Knowledge painstakingly acquired. Soul. Body. Mind. The aliens claimed it all, piece by piece, until the original person ceased to exist.
No, it wasn't theft. To the parasites, humans were property. They'd been cultivated for this very purpose across millennia. And property has no free will. Its autonomy is merely an illusion, a cruel joke.
Every Argent Nur warrior saw through this dark truth with crystalline clarity. Beneath the glittering prosperity lay the silent graveyard of a million extinguished consciousnesses, their final screams lost to history.
Therefore, this sinful world had to burn.
Tear away the facade. Expose the bloody darkness beneath. Let the Emperor's light scour away the corruption that had festered here for a thousand years.
Even if the cost was every corrupted soul on this world. Even if prosperity crumbled to dust and silence. Even if nothing remained but ashes and memory.
To excise poison that had corrupted the bone marrow itself, one must cut away the rotted flesh, no matter how much must be sacrificed to save what remains.
It was this understanding that forged the Nur Auxiliary's iron will, steadying their trembling fingers as they pulled their triggers without hesitation, without mercy, without doubt.
The emotional assault lasted only heartbeats before a roar like thunder shattered the psychic manipulation. The mortal soldiers snapped awake from their induced grief, minds clearing as if fog had been burned away by a blazing sun.
"SORCERER!"
Ferrus Manus bellowed, and the sound was a weapon unto itself. The sonic shockwave rippled outward, dispersing smoke and shattering psychic fluctuations like glass. His eyes blazed with righteous fury as disintegration lightning crackled along Forgebreaker's length. He leveled the mighty warhammer at the psychic barrier with undisguised contempt.
"Put away your parlor tricks, xenos filth. I am the anathema you deserve."
His voice dropped to a deadly growl that promised violence. "To cage humans like livestock for millennia is your original sin. To presume to covet humanity's purity compounds that sin beyond measure."
He raised Forgebreaker high, lightning arcing between its teeth. "Today, you die. In death, your hypocrisy shall be laid bare. In death, you shall atone for your crimes against mankind!"
The Primarch's declaration rang across the battlefield, humanity's wrath given voice, pronouncing judgment upon the xenos with the authority of the Emperor Himself.
Blazkowicz stood in silence beside his brother. Since Ferrus had cast the words of judgment, he would enact the sentence with deeds rather than rhetoric.
"Mortals, fall back to a safe distance." He established a security perimeter with economical hand gestures, addressing the Librarians who'd teleported in with the assault force. "If there's an unexpected development, raise your barriers immediately."
The Librarians bowed slowly, acknowledging the order with practiced silence. They remained vigilant, ready to isolate the battlefield should the situation demand it.
The "unexpected development" Blazkowicz referenced was the potential manifestation of Warp entities. Under no circumstances could such abominations be witnessed by the Imperial forces, the risk of corruption was too great.
Reassured by the Librarians' readiness, Blazkowicz nodded curtly and turned toward the psychic barrier. The Custodian Guard and Doom Slayers fell into formation around him with lethal precision.
Ferrus signaled his Legion to hold position while the mortal forces withdrew to safety. He hefted Forgebreaker, fully intending to personally execute the alien leadership.
The two Primarchs advanced side by side. Broken rubble crunched beneath their power armor boots, pulverized to powder under their wrathful tread. Their killing intent was so palpable it seemed to shimmer in the air like heat haze, forcing nearby aliens to retreat and cower among the ruins.
"Parasitic vermin," Ferrus spat with such venom that his saliva hissed against the ground, sending up wisps of acrid smoke. A Primarch in battle-state was a living weapon, his very biology hostile to the enemy.
"The xenos are fundamentally barbaric," Blazkowicz agreed, his voice carrying easily as he advanced with shield raised. His gaze swept across the ruins toward the distant towers. "They possess no honor. Everything about them is counterfeit."
"The Ganas worms parasitize humans, inherit human knowledge, then perpetuate themselves through human hosts. Everything they are derives from humanity, even their species bears mankind's indelible imprint."
His tone dripped with contempt. "They have no authentic culture. They understand neither art nor true creation. Strip away everything human, and the xenos are revealed as merely savage primitives. Barbaric. Backward. Without the capacity for shame or honor."
"So..." Blazkowicz's voice echoed through the ruins as they walked, disparaging the very existence of the Ganas parasites. "Don't expect them to charge out for an honorable duel. They haven't evolved that far yet."
"Indeed." Ferrus chuckled darkly. "I overestimated them. They're not worthy of even that much consideration."
The two Primarchs strode through the devastation, bathed in harsh sunlight filtering through unsettled dust. They looked like mythic heroes emerging from primordial mists, terrible in their beauty.
The aliens who dared not show themselves cowered in shadows, not daring even to raise their awareness, fearing their consciousness might be seared by the Primarchs' radiance.
The Mother, hidden in darkness far below, connected to her offspring through silken psychic threads, listened without feeling anger. She tried to comprehend concepts like "honor" and "belief," but found only emptiness where understanding should be.
A ripple of displeasure did pass through her alien consciousness. The Son of the Emperor's words seemed to prod at something nascent in her awareness, something she couldn't quite grasp.
But in the next instant, that flicker of self-awareness vanished without leaving any impression.
The Mother thought only of survival. How to deceive the human leadership. How to secure respite for her species. How to continue existing in the galaxy despite humanity's hatred.
Soon, the Primarchs and their retinue reached the psychic barrier. Nothing dared obstruct their path.
"Humans! Can you not spare us? Must you exterminate us completely?"
A voice emanated from within the barrier, attempting sorrow. Its tone shifted from firm to weak, becoming almost plaintive, tinged with desperate pleading.
"Ha!" Ferrus barked a harsh laugh, genuinely amused by the audacity. He gestured at the devastation surrounding them. "Do you see the ruins around you? Is our sincerity not sufficiently clear?"
"I cannot imagine what manner of foolish creature hides behind this barrier, still unable to comprehend the situation. You commit atrocities without number, then beg for mercy when judgment arrives."
"My brother speaks truth, you possess neither shame nor conviction. You are a despicable species that will embrace any degradation to survive."
Ferrus raised his chin in contempt, then slammed his iron fist against the barrier experimentally, testing whether brute force could breach the psychic energy.
While his brother's vision was obscured by the shimmering field, Blazkowicz's sight pierced through effortlessly. He observed the interior clearly, two Alpha Psyker worms, their consciousnesses detached and empowered by Warp energy, leading elite guards in preparation for the final confrontation.
He said nothing. Instead, he handed his shield to Ferrus, the super shotgun riding at his hip. He extended both hands toward the barrier.
Ferrus, about to inquire how they would breach the field, closed his mouth. Holding his brother's shield, he stepped aside to observe.
Blazkowicz's arms, without encountering any resistance whatsoever, passed through the psychic barrier. He pushed forward slowly, permeating it like a diver descending through water.
Ferrus's eyes widened incrementally, disbelief warring with acceptance. He pressed his own hand against the barrier experimentally, confirming what he suspected.
He shook his head, concluding that his brother possessed extraordinary gifts, perhaps comparable to Ferrus's own living metal hands. Some abilities defied conventional understanding.
Billions of tons of earth below, the Mother thrashed in her cocoon. Her neural tendrils writhed violently. Her segmented body spasmed instinctively, attempting to break free from the mental grip that had somehow pierced through material reality to seize her consciousness through the psychic connection itself.
That magnificent human, his arm passing through the materium, had impossibly grasped her mind directly.
"What's wrong?" The Father on the Mother's back projected concern through their bond. Feeling his mate's distress, he ceased his efforts to spawn new offspring and lowered his head to nuzzle her soothingly.
Before the Mother could explain, her elongated body convulsed in agony so intense it flung the Father from her back. Her ovipositor spasmed, expelling countless eggs prematurely.
The Mother's body twisted violently. Silk sprayed from her mandibles. Her face contorted in absolute terror as she fell heavily among the tangle of psychic threads, her head thrashing wildly within the cocoon as she tried desperately to translate mental agony into physical pain she could comprehend.
Outside the psychic barrier, Blazkowicz's expression darkened like a gathering storm. His hands closed around something invisible to mortal eyes. His entire body sank lower, veins bulging along his arms like cables.
He roared a single word: "OPEN!"
RIIIIIP,
The psychic barrier split down the middle!
The barrier, woven from mental will and immaterial psychic energy, was torn apart by Blazkowicz's bare hands as though it were physical cloth! The sound of rending psychic fabric echoed impossibly across the battlefield!
The barrier before the strike team violently parted. A demigod had literally torn apart the boundary between realities!
Whoooosh
Instantly, clarity returned. The confusion and psychic pressure vanished. Beneath where the barrier had stood, ugliness was revealed in its totality: a mountain of writhing insects, an ocean of chittering xenos flesh.
Ferrus hadn't even begun to marvel at his brother's impossible feat when the sight before him made his expression twist with visceral disgust.
The alien leadership stood revealed, two massive worms, male and female, over thirty meters long. Their raised upper bodies towered ten meters high, dwarfing even the Primarchs.
Their translucent bodies displayed a variegated, nauseating coloration reminiscent of the Warp's sickening brilliance, chaotic hues that provoked instinctive revulsion in any sane observer.
The Father raised his bulk, body language conveying warning and threat. His proboscis hissed with alien menace. The human-like face grafted onto his insectoid body somehow made him more repulsive rather than less.
The Mother writhed and convulsed on the ground, clear evidence that the barrier Blazkowicz had torn open had been her creation, and its destruction had caused her tremendous psychic backlash.
Surrounding the alien progenitors were tens of thousands of "guards", specimens noticeably larger and more formidable than the worms encountered on the battlefield proper.
Blazkowicz's expression remained impassive as he reached out to reclaim his shield from Ferrus. His eyes, devoid of mercy or hesitation, swept across the two supreme beings of this parasitic species.
He observed the human faces grafted onto insectoid heads and sneered. The birth of the Ganas worms was absolutely connected to the Warp, the evidence was undeniable.
These two progenitors were Real Universe creatures corrupted by Warp contamination.
They'd existed for a millennium, raising humans as livestock. And across that thousand years, they'd been influenced by their human cattle in turn.
After Warp corruption, the worms had acquired a characteristic property of Warp entities, their physical forms shifted to reflect their beliefs and the beliefs directed at them.
The symbiotic relationship between the worms and their human victims ran impossibly deep. Some humans, even knowing the full truth, had chosen to collaborate with the parasites. The faith and yearning born from this twisted relationship had reshaped the worms' original forms.
The progenitors' bodies held symbolic significance. Their forms remained fundamentally insectoid, representing that their core nature persisted, the species hadn't deviated from its primitive origins.
Yet their heads had become human, representing how the worms' cultural inclination had been completely subsumed by humanity. Millennia of coexistence and parasitism meant that human symbolism had eroded even the worms' most fundamental shape.
Blazkowicz gripped his super shotgun with lethal intent. What he observed aligned almost precisely with his predictions. The progenitors' bodies were saturated with Warp energy, they were the source of mankind's calamity on this world.
"What... exactly... are you?"
A voice of infinite, false gentleness emerged from the Mother's human-like face. She spoke like a loving matriarch, but her gentle tone carried profound disbelief. "How can you tear a psychic barrier with your bare hands?"
She couldn't accept that something in the materium could, through brute physical force, shred a barrier composed of consciousness and psychic energy!
It violated physics. It violated Warp logic. It should be impossible.
"I am your death knell!" Blazkowicz roared, offering no explanation. He announced the arrival of death to the xenos and cocked his shotgun one-handed with a sound like breaking bones.
As he prepared to charge the alien leadership, an iron hand pressed against his chest, stopping him.
Meeting his brother's questioning gaze, Ferrus raised his hand like a blade and placed it between himself and Blazkowicz, bisecting the space between the two massive worms.
"Half for each. One head apiece."
Half referred to the insect guards. One head apiece meant the progenitors themselves.
Blazkowicz nodded agreement. He raised his weapon and aimed at the Mother, selecting his target.
Between the two Alpha Psyker-level creatures, the division was logical: The Father focused on physical enhancement, powerful, but primarily corporeal. Ferrus would face no disadvantage against such an opponent.
The Mother would be Blazkowicz's prey. She excelled at psychic manipulation, her techniques were strange, varied, and extremely dangerous in actual combat.
"Come then, humans!" The Father's majestic voice issued challenge. Both sides carried immense hatred with zero possibility of reconciliation. Only death could end this war.
"IRON WITHIN!" Ferrus roared, brandishing his lightning-wreathed Forgebreaker as he charged forward. "Morlocks! Follow me to slay the xenos!"
"FLESH IS WEAK!" The Morlocks Terminators bellowed in perfect unison. They activated their melee weapons with a chorus of power-field ignitions, advancing with thunderous steps, following their Gene-Father to deliver the Emperor's judgment.
Blazkowicz moved in silence. He flicked his left wrist, activating his shield. Its internal engine hummed to life, causing the monomolecular teeth around the shield's rim to spin into a blur as he strode toward the Mother.
"We shall judge the enemies of mankind!"
Shield-Captain Odysseus roared, leading the Custodian Guard to follow the Primarch's advance. The Doom Slayers fell in beside them, forming a golden spear aimed at the heart of the xenos guards.
The Primarchs could have accelerated far beyond their troops' capability, but they moderated their pace deliberately. This allowed their forces to maintain formation coherency and prevented their attack rhythm from becoming dangerously disjointed. At their true speed, even the Terminators would be left hopelessly behind.
"A fight to the death with humans!" The Father declared, his majestic face set with ruthless determination. He'd cast aside all concern for survival.
The Mother tilted her head skyward. Her mandibles chattered rhythmically as she chanted psychic incantations in the worms' native syllables, strengthening her guards' inadequate bodies.
Without technologically-crafted armor, they could only rely on psychic reinforcement for even basic protection.
Pale purple psychic energy descended upon the insect swarm like benediction, forming egg-shaped shields around individual worm guards. Greatly encouraged, they hissed from their proboscises and surged forward to meet the human advance.
The Imperial response was a thunderous barrage of self-propelled bolt rounds.
The devastation was apocalyptic. In literal eyeblinks, thousands of worm guards were shredded into component molecules.
Only elite veterans earned the right to wear Terminator armor in the Astartes Legions. Those chosen for Primarch honor guards were the elite among the elite, the finest warriors humanity could produce.
To maintain pace with their Primarch's charge, the Morlocks Terminator vanguard carried composite bolters in their left hands, providing suppressive fire that would make titan-class weapons seem restrained.
Clatter-clatter-clatter
The crisp percussion of spent casings, each inscribed with oaths of moment, striking the ground merged into a metallic waterfall of sound.
The composite bolters' twin barrels delivered double the fire rate of standard patterns, emptying drums in seconds. They tore through psychic shields like tissue paper, killing xenos by the dozens with each trigger pull.
As the vanguard reloaded with practiced efficiency, their brothers in the rear ranks opened fire, ensuring continuous fire saturation. Not a single moment passed without death raining upon the enemy.
The Morlocks coordinated with supernatural precision, their decades of warfare together creating an unstoppable advance. Worm corpses fell like grain before the scythe. The xenos couldn't even slow the Space Marines' momentum.
Ferrus led from the front, his power armor backpack unfolding like mechanical wings. It began unleashing firepower comparable to a god-machine!
Servo-arms extended from his backpack, each mounting master-crafted weapons personally forged by the Primarch himself. Energy streams of different colors created a light-show of death, firing into the charging worm formations with unrelenting precision.
He was a humanoid titan! Entire swaths of worms were vaporized instantly. Nothing living existed in front of his charge, only charred remains and gelatinous carcasses marking where xenos had been.
In heartbeats, an incomprehensibly brief span for mortals, the honor guard personally led by a Primarch erupted with devastating combat power. They treated the aliens as mere animals for slaughter, painting the ruins with rivers of alien ichor.
Before contact was even made, one-third of the charging worm formation had been annihilated. The Space Marines' killing efficiency transcended mortal comprehension.
Yet the worms surged forward, equally fearless of death. They used their bodies to buy distance for their fellows, desperately closing to effective range.
They spat silk threads like living weapons, attempting to envelop the Imperial forces. These biological filaments, empowered by psychic energy, possessed terrifying cutting capability, sufficient to pierce ceramite under sustained pressure.
Ferrus reacted with supernatural speed. His iron hand seized a silk thread mid-flight. With a powerful backward yank, he tore a five-meter worm completely from the enemy formation and casually hurled it skyward.
It never reached the ground intact. The creature fragmented mid-air, reduced to a rain of gelatinous chunks.
The worms' razor silk pierced the outer ceramite layers of Terminator armor but struggled to penetrate deeper, unable to tear through inner seals and threaten the Space Marines' augmented flesh.
The Morlocks, led by their Gene-Father, killed with methodical efficiency. They cleared obstacles from their Primarch's path, forming an armored wedge driving toward the worm leadership.
BOOM!
A thunderous detonation drew Ferrus's attention. From the corner of his eye, he saw golden fire erupt from Blazkowicz's double-barreled shotgun. Where his brother's weapon pointed, a semi-circular vacuum tens of meters wide appeared instantly, every xenos within that radius simply ceased to exist.
Blazkowicz broke the ancient firearm open with a practiced flick. Two golden casings ejected, trailing smoke as they tumbled to the ground.
Ferrus looked closer at the spent shells. They were densely inscribed with layered runes, each bullet personally blessed by the Emperor Himself.
He clicked his tongue silently, gaining new appreciation for that archaic weapon with its exaggerated bore. It must have been personally forged by their Father, with each round receiving individual benediction.
From that weapon alone, one could measure the Emperor's regard for Blazkowicz, a favoritism none of his other sons, including Ferrus himself, possessed.
He shook his head, dismissing the distracting thought. The enemy before him demanded full attention.
The two forces collided in brutal melee. The churning mass of xenos flesh crashed against the steel bulwark of humanity, each side employing every advantage to kill the other.
The worms spat acid from their proboscises, corrosive enough to eat through ceramite layers, finally posing genuine threat to the Morlocks.
But the Space Marines' counter-assault was devastatingly swift!
Power swords. Power fists. Lightning claws. Melee weapons wreathed in disruption fields carved through xenos flesh like it was water. Biology couldn't withstand humanity's technological superiority.
At point-blank range, the heavy flamers mounted beneath Terminator gauntlets revealed their fangs. Promethium flames burned with hellish intensity.
The worms writhed in the inferno, their shrieks reaching ultrasonic frequencies before they finally crumbled to ash.