The group moved immediately to the high ramparts of the defensive bastion. As they passed through the threshold of the command sanctum, Alexei took the mutated head of Koda and nailed it to the reinforced wall—a grisly trophy that served as a silent testament to his victory.
On the distant horizon, countless plumes of oily black smoke began to rise, an atmospheric anomaly caused by the advance of a massive armored spearhead. A swarm of Chaos engines—primarily Land Raiders and Predator tanks—surged across the wastes toward the Cadian lines. Behind them followed a staggering tide of heretical cultists, charging like mindless beasts and brandishing the defiled Eight-Pointed Star of Chaos. Overhead, squadrons of Thunderhawk gunships and Heldrakes screamed through the smog, providing a lethal canopy for the ground forces.
The true strength of the Black Legion had finally arrived. The daemon hosts on the flanks had merely been the "chaff" used by Abaddon to bleed the defenders' ammunition dry. The hammer blow was now falling directly upon the northern defense line.
The heavy batteries along the bastion began to roar in response, and the anti-aircraft emplacements wove a dense tapestry of flak across the sky. In the forward trenches, the Kasrkin held their breath, their hellgun capacitors humming as they sighted the charging heretics.
At the Lord Castellan's command, thousands of scorching las-beams tore through the air. The temperature rose instantly as the high-velocity fire evaporated flesh and bone; the heretics fell in rows like wheat before a harvester. Yet, the tide did not falter. The survivors trampled over the cooling remains of their comrades, driven by a suicidal madness toward the Cadian trenches.
Under Creed's orders, the 133rd, 147th, and 185th Cadian Heavy Armored Regiments roared out from the gates, their Leman Russ tanks forming a steel wall to cover the Kasrkin in the forward lines.
On the high wall, Baron Vardus turned to depart. The Knights of House Taranis had endured for this singular moment. With the thunderous roar of plasma engines, more than a hundred Knight suits, led by the Baron, thundered onto the plains. They operated in lethal coordination with the Cadian armor, launching a devastating counter-assault.
It was the largest armored engagement in the history of the world. The Knights of Taranis waded into the thick of the Predator tanks, their reaper chainswords and thermal cannons carving a path through the smoke and fire, though every yard gained was paid for in blood.
Suddenly, a beam of light so intense it blinded those who looked upon it erupted from behind the Black Legion's lines.
The beam punched through every obstacle in its path, vaporizing several Knight suits in an instant. The thermal lance only stopped when it struck the bastion itself, collapsing an entire section of the high wall. From the settling dust emerged a nightmare: a Warlord-class Chaos Titan, its rampaging machine spirit howling for the destruction of the Emperor's servants.
"The Legio Vulcanum..." Creed's heart sank at the sight. He knew that as a Premier-tier Titan Legion, the Vulcanum still possessed at least a hundred God-Machines, even after ten millennia of attrition. This was the most catastrophic news the defenders could have received.
While the expressions of the officers around him were heavy with despair, Alexei remained unmoved. He had known Abaddon would play his strongest card to break the stalemate.
This was the moment the Aiur fleet had been waiting for. If the defenders could hold the line for just a few minutes more, the ancient foundations of the Legio Vulcanum would be dismantled in a single strike.
Even the smallest Warhound-class Titan was a predator beyond the capabilities of a Knight. On the front lines, House Taranis launched a desperate, almost suicidal offensive. Their numbers were dwindling rapidly, yet they could not halt the relentless stride of the God-Machines.
Blessed—or cursed—by the Dark Gods, these Chaos Titans shared a collective data-link that allowed them to coordinate with terrifying precision. Under the command of the Vulcanum elders, the hundred God-Machines functioned as a single, multi-headed organism.
Their coordination was so refined that they cycled their Void Shields in perfect rhythm. When one Titan's shields reached the brink of collapse, it would step back into the formation, allowing a fresh machine to take its place at the front.
Baron Vardus, piloting his crimson Knight, the Red Devastation, charged into the heart of the mechanical gods. He danced between the ponderous strikes of two Warhounds, his machine soul screaming in sympathetic pain with his brothers.
The Red Devastation nimbly closed the distance with a Warhound, using the larger machine's own bulk to shield itself from the heavy batteries of the backline. With a precise, brutal swing of his Death Chainsaw, Vardus severed the Titan's support struts.
The God-Machine collapsed, its massive chassis hitting the earth with seismic force. Baron Vardus jammed his molten lava cannon into the Titan's command deck and fired. With a deafening explosion, the first casualty of the Chaos Legio was claimed.
Upon the bastion, the massive macro-cannons of the Adeptus Mechanicus fired ceaselessly. Unless they achieved a perfect, concentrated volley on a single Warhound, their shells were largely ignored by the overlapping Void Shields.
The few casualties the defenders managed to inflict were negligible to the massed Legion. The core of the force—the Warlord and Reaver-class Titans—remained untouched. When the lead Warlord raised its Volcano Cannon, the entire battlefield trembled under the weight of the plasma build-up.
Scores of Leman Russ tanks were reduced to molten slag in a single sweep of its laser batteries. Even the legendary Baneblade super-heavy tanks were like playthings to the Vulcanum. A beam of searing white light swept the line, vaporizing the armor of three super-heavy tanks and raining droplets of liquid metal onto the scorched soil.
Countless heroes of Cadia charged forward in a vain attempt to stall the wrath of the God-Machines, only to be crushed beneath their tectonic footfalls. Even the Astartes found themselves humbled; against the scale of a Titan Legion, the superhuman warriors were as fragile as infants, their power armor crunching like dry leaves under the march of the divine machines.
High above, Saint Celestine darted through the air, weaving between Titan-scale anti-aircraft fire while dueling swarms of Heldrakes. She was a golden blur of holy fire, but she could not be everywhere at once.
BOOM!
The Red Devastation took a direct hit. The battered Knight stumbled, the Baron feeling the agony of his machine soul as if it were his own flesh. He knew his end had come.
But just as the shadow of despair threatened to swallow the command center, a phenomenon appeared in the sky. The thick, Warp-stained clouds began to churn violently, as if something gargantuan was pushing through the veil.
Suddenly, rays of pure, untainted light pierced the gloom, illuminating the battlefield. Creed, standing in the radiance, looked up and let out a roar of triumph. "Look up! Our reinforcements have arrived!"
Captain Garadon watched in awe as more than a dozen massive warships broke through the cloud ceiling. They descended with the sun at their backs, casting mountainous shadows over the entire Legio Vulcanum. Their laser batteries flashed incessantly, sending Heldrakes and Thunderhawks spiraling toward the earth in flames. Their heavy Void Shields didn't even flicker as they absorbed the Titans' retaliatory fire.
"Where did this fleet come from?" Garadon muttered. "To enter the atmosphere and engage at this altitude..."
Aboard the Battlecruiser Gorgon, Captain Brand watched the tactical hololith with a predatory grin. "Who called for the fleet? Well, it doesn't matter. Your doomsday has arrived."