30K: When the Wall Fell

[Kuja]

Kuja returns to the era of the primarchs to deliver his own version of a story with which he's never been fully satisfied. Despite taking multiple posts, it shall all be posted at once.

Warhammer: The Horus Heresy

When the Wall Fell
(A Tragedy in Three Acts)

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"Peace is a vain wish."
-First Captain Sigismund, Imperial Fists Legion [M30]

"And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
-attributed to the Remembrancer Thomas [M2]

"I have not yet begun to fight!"
-Jon Puul Jones, Recovered Writings of the Age Before Night [M7]

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Act One

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They had slain a galaxy.

Oh, not all at once. Not instantly, to be sure.

But they had driven a knife into the beating heart of humanity and left it to stagger onwards, a walking corpse-to-be with only the barest resemblance to the hale and hearty days it had once known.

At first, he had raged. Raged almost insensibly, against the traitors that had turned against their own species, against the snakes that still infested it, against the rot he saw creeping up from all corners of the Imperium like grasping tendrils seeking to drag it down into damnation.

Then he had despaired. He did not weep, but one by one he watched as the mightiest achievements of his race slowly began to fall to creeping ruin. The golden days of humanity were waning, slipping away into the night like some stranger, and even he - demigod and primarch - even he was at a loss to stop it.

After all, what does one say, when he has carried his father to his grave and placed him in his coffin?

Where does one go, after he has given the silent body of his brother to his sons and left them to mourn?

What can one do, when the galaxy flips top for bottom and all that was once sure and simple becomes twisted and malign?

If there had been a single word that had encompassed the whole of the Imperium's early days, he would have named it 'Hope.' It had permeated the whole of his world, infusing all that he saw and touched and sought to shape. Hope had brought them forth out of the darkness of Old Night, and hope painted the skies and stones of every world upon which they treaded.

But hope had died aboard a battle barge in high orbit over Terra.

Day and night, day and night, day and night. Hope shrank and curled away and went silent as one by one all the great works of the Imperium did likewise.

The Great Crusade - a mighty expedition to unity the whole of humanity throughout the stars and bring stability to the galaxy. That had died with the treachery of his brother and the foul acts of mass murder conducted in the Isstvan system.

The Remembrancer Order - a monumental effort to catalog and record for all time the achievements of humanity in every strata from the faces of the average soldier to the words of the highest leaders. That had died as well - he had delivered the killing blow himself.
The great libraries of Terra, of Mars, of Prospero and a dozen other worlds had been destroyed. Thirty thousand years of accumulated knowledge and history had been callously burnt, irreplacable treasures of humanity's antiquity had been shattered and swept away.

And in their place came forth serpents. The Officio Assassinorum emerged from the shadows and began to operate openly, as a sword hung above the heads of the people. The Inquisition was born, paranoia replacing legalism as the preferred means to control the masses of the Imperium.

And through it all, his brothers - oh, his brothers! They bickered and fought like common gangsters, he no better than the rest as they sought in vain to stop the slow decay of their precious edifice. Guilliman pushed his agendas by fiat, preaching to the choirs of mortal men in oder to gain the supposed weight of law and populace behind him. Bereft of allies the Wolf sulked and snarled, while the Raven brooded in his dark corners.

It was as if they each held a measure of the pieces which together would make up the puzzle of the Imperium and humanity...yet some crucial few had gone missing and they could not decide on how to fit together what remained. It was humbling, in a way. Primarchs - upraised, uplifted...and now upbraided by their own petty, all too human failings.

And his sons. His poor sons. Faithful and diligent and stubborn to a fault. He had failed them, too. Some he had allowed to be taken from him, their golden hearts replaced by black and crimson. Dear Alexis, irreplacable Sigismund. They were out there, somewhere amongst the stars. Gone from him.

But they lived still. So many more were lost forever. Gone. Spent like so much coin upon the walls of Terra or in his maddened quest to capture his renegade brother Perturabo. He had made grievous errors, terrible mistakes...but he had not paid for them. His sons had done so in his stead.

And so it confounded even a primarch - from whence to draw the strength to carry on in the face of such apocalyptic doom? What did it say of him, he wondered in his dark moments, in the quiet seconds of the day, what did it say of him and of his race? Long had he and his sons alike carried the monicker "men of stone." In good times it had been a compliment to their iron resolution. In poorer times it had become an insult, an accusation of hidebound stagnation.

But he was not made of stone, not in truth, rather flesh and blood as any other man. It had long been his choice to sublimate such things as emotion, doubt, concepts of pain or pleasure; burying them beneath the weight of duty and a life of example. And others had come to believe that such things no longer existed within him - but it could not be further from the truth.

Day after day, with an empire crumbling around him, Rogal Dorn encased himself in his armor and locked his great power claw into place as if man-made steel could withstand the weight of the avalanche that pressed down upon him. He did this, because...

...because damn them all, it needed to be done. Because damn himself, but to roll over and concede to the despair that hollowed his hearts was the easy way out, and not once in his life had Rogal Dorn taken the easy way out of anything. Others - his brother, his sons, his father - had given everything to protect their people. Rogal Dorn did not believe in anything so poetic as a final judgement, but sooner let a mirror crack of its own accord rather than show his face if he would be found wanting in their stead.

To go on when all the world, all the galaxy said that it would be so much simpler to give up...that above all was the true measure of a man.

To do less was simply unacceptable.

"There they are."

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The primarch's reaction was subdued, even for a man of Rogal Dorn's predilection. He did not step forth, did not bark a demand for more information or begin issuing orders. His rough-hewn face rose slightly and he lifted one pale white brow in the direction of the sensori that had spoken.

The VII Primarch had always been of a reserved nature, but the past years had seen him withdraw more and more into himself. Perhaps an outsider would have seen little difference. Indeed, men outside the Legion - the Chapter now, the Chapter - had routinely failed to notice the subtle character of Dorn even in the early days of the Imperium.

Efried was one of those few in a position to watch the slow change in his primarch's character, having served Dorn since the heady days of the Great Crusade. The contrast distressed him. Dorn had always been a towering presence, his golden power armor like unto a mobile fortress, a living siege engine. But as the years rolled by and the Imperium found itself shifting from glorious expansion to hideous civil war, the man known as the Imperial Fist had slowly sagged until his immense presence began to feel like one of the great glaciers of Inwit - hanging over the ocean, waiting for the day it finally shudders and cracks apart. The lines in his face had deepened, his square-jawed features becoming more gaunt as hollows appeared beneath his eyes.

The Third Captain knew what tremendous weight hung upon the shoulders of his primarch, for much of it hung upon him as well, but Efried was no fool. It was not beyond him to realize that the great stature of Dorn was no recompense for such tribulations - surely, if anything it only increased the measure of their oppression. At a loss to draw the primarch out of his despair Efried had spent many hours meditating in the pain glove, his eyes fixed on no certain point as he bathed in the sea of artificial agony. He had emerged with renewed purpose - like the solid foundation that permitted the building of a great fortress, so too would Efried support and uphold his primarch for as long as need be.

Fists were inclined to introspection, and Efried knew himself well. He was no Sigismund, no Nathaniel Garro, no Marius Gage or Raldoron. He was neither a supremely talented swordsman nor a charismatic leader of men. He drilled his company and served his primarch loyally - that was his offering to Dorn.

Though the greater part of his attention remained upon the primarch for the moment, Efried watched the sensori's station as well as the man tapped furiously at his keys. "Six point five AU," the man reported, "bearing two-three-six degrees."

"How many vessels?" a sharp voice demanded. Efried's attention was diverted as a nearby figure turned from the position he had held the past few hours, an icy gaze zeroing in on the sensori as the man pleaded for time. Had he been a man more given to displays of emotion, Efried might have smiled. Slightly.

His name was Maximus Thane, and with his close-cropped pale hair and direct, penetrating manner, he reminded Efried almost uncannily of his one-time kinsman Sigismund. Thane had been a newcomer to the VII Legion, a mere neophyte when the Siege of Terra had erupted, but in the years since he had climbed through the ranks with almost indecent haste until he filled the very station that had been vacated by the man known as the Emperor's Champion, that of First Captain of the Imperial Fists.

In another Legion - Chapter - one more inclined to rumor and deceit, there might have been whisperings about Thane. About his ambition. About the promotion to his hallowed position and whether his uncanny resemblance to the departed Sigismund might have played a role. In another Chapter, a captain might have chafed at remaining Third while the upstart leapfrogged over him.

Not so in the Fists, and not so with Captain Efried. Thane had earned his respect with his diligence and skill, and Efried was pleased to have the hard-edged Astartes as a fellow captain.

"Returns coming in," the sensori said, breaking Efried's thoughts once more. "One hundred and sixty two ships cruiser-class or better, estimating an additional hundred ships at escort displacement or smaller."

"Have they detected us?" Thane demanded.

"Unlikely," the shipmaster replied, his own attention fixed upon his lectern. "They are cruising away from us, in tight formation. The energy signature of their combined engine wake will obscure us from their sensors."

"Show me," Dorn's voice interjected, soft and cold. The viewscreen flickered and changed to display a great panoply of vessels, so many that their hulls overlapped and blurred together as the long-range sensors worked to sort the confusing mess of information into a coherent pict.

"It seems they learned from their mistake at Centinaeus," Thane commented dryly.

For his part, Efried looked to the primarch. "Six AU is enough for a short warp hop," he said, "perhaps we might pounce upon their stragglers."

Dorn was silent for a long moment. "No," he finally said aloud. "We have done so twice already. This time we will change our stratagem. Ready First and Third Companies," he ordered, and Thane and Efried stood to attention as the primarch stepped forward to inspect the screen more closely. "There," he said, pointing with the tines of his great claw to indicate the vast bulk of one massive battleship. "That vessel was present at both of our last engagements. It is the commanding ship of the splinter fleet. We shall board it and slay whomever commands it," the VII Primarch declared, and Efried saw in him a remembrance of his old fortitude. "Their fleet shall splinter further, and they will know the folly of thinking us so vulnerable."

Dorn's last words as he left the bridge were - "if my brother needs more time, then by the Throne of Terra he shall have enough to find his own arse."

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They had named it a Black Crusade.

Not the men of the Imperium, who might have been justified in the use of such hateful terminology.

No, the traitors had so declared it themselves. It was a mockery. A deliberate jest at the expense of those that held true to the Golden Throne. A mighty crusade, sweeping throught the galaxy to bring forth not enlightenment and structure, but chaos and foul destruction. The atrocities that had been committed at Terra were repeated on a thousand planets - warpspawn given free reign to butcher the people of the Imperium while the Legions that had once stood shoulder-to-shoulder in defense of humanity now turned upon it with wanton cruelty and dark intent.

They had struck with horrific force, pouring out of the Eye of Terror like a swarm of maddened hornets and daring the forces of the Imperium to stop them. Like a dazed giant still reeling from the ferocity of Horus' betrayel and the burning times that had followed, the Imperium was slow to react. Dorn had been one of the first, his Legion's placement between the Eye and the Segmentum Solar enabling him to respond quickly to the incursion.

In his urgency, he had been forced to leave his precious Phalanx behind.

It was just as well, all told - mighty as it was, the great battlestation was slow and unsubtle. Its presence would have drawn forth the traitors like moths to flame, and there would have been no escape from that terrible onslaught. Instead, accompanied only by a handful of strike cruisers, the primarch of the Imperial Fists had masterminded a series of strike-and-fade attacks that he was sure would have made his brother Jaghatai proud of him. Unable to match the might of the traitors' fleet, the Fists had struck repeatedly at their flanks and their stragglers, wheeling them about as they danced across the inner systems of Segmentum Obscuras.

Dorn had, of course, sent for aid. He had learned from his mistake at Sebastus IV and knew far better than to go alone against the massed force of the traitor Legions. His brother Guilliman - the self-styled Lord Protector of the Imperium - had replied with disheartening news. He could not make contact with Corvus Corax, and a fleet of sufficient size to turn back the intrusion would take some time to gather, as elements of the navy had been deployed to the Segmentum Pacifica.

Dorn had tightened his jaw and sent a reply urging haste before returning to his game of death. It was defensive warfare of a kind he had rarely seen fit to employ before - a mere handful of strike cruisers snapping at the heels of a great, lumbering fleet. Death by a thousand cuts. Once, he knew, he would have been that lumbering behemoth. Just another example of the myriad ways the galaxy had turned itself about in the preceding years.

And now, it was time for another blow.

As he and his warriors gathered at the strike cruiser's torpedo bays, Dorn lifted a hand and spoke but a single sentence - "To the glory of Him on Earth."

"To the glory of Him on Earth," his men chorused back. With that they filed into their boarding torpedos. No rousing speeches for the Fists. No blood rituals or chants or songs of bravery. Merely a reminder of duty - that was enough for the fabled Men of Stone.

As Dorn strapped himself into the nose of the guided missile that would deliver him into the very heart of his enemy, his vox chimed softly and he flicked a finger to answer it. "Yes?"

"We've identified our target," the voice of the shipmaster buzzed in his ear. "It's broadcasting an IFF code that identifies it as the Sword of Sacrilege."

Dorn's voice was level as he answered - "Thank you," and cut the channel. The merest hint of a frown had touched his face. Another mockery. Another taunt. Another perversion of the once-lofty ideals of the Astartes and their attendant armies.

Dorn was getting tired of them.

[Kuja]

Act Two

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The maneuver was executed perfectly. As a whole, the flotilla jumped into warp and exited a mere moment later, accelerating into the aft quarter of the traitors' fleet. A storm of bombardment fire erupted, several of the trailing escorts exploding into balls of fire as their engines were pierced by the ferocious barrage.

Almost immediately the enemy fleet saw its cohesion suffer as various elements began to break and evade or else sought to turn their own weapons against the loyalists. The Astartes formation dove into the midst of the massed fleet, firing wildly as they began to peel off in opposing vectors, sowing confusion as they slipped between the darker-hulled cruisers. Chaos erupted as ships rolled, pitched, and yawed in all directions, sometimes coming dangerously close to scraping their shields against one another.

One particular battlecruiser, thinking it had a surefire kill, chose to fire the mighty nova cannon built into its prow. The projectile screamed out into the void, only to sail past its intended prey as the strike cruiser swung to one side, swapping end-for-end in a dazzling display of precision flying. By sheer bad fortune - or perhaps by the method of some dark humor - the nova round instead found the smaller heavy cruiser that had preceded its fellow in formation. The fifty-meter-wide projectile jammed itself into the unfortunate vessel's engine compartment and detonated, a burning flash like the eruption of a small star consuming the whole of the mighty ship in an instant.

The crew of the trigger-happy ship had little time to contemplate their hideous error, as their fellows nearby re-tagged the vessel as hostile and opened fire in furious retaliation.

Meanwhile, the lead ship of the strike formation soared into the very heart of the enemy fleet, twisting to slide between a pair of jagged-edged cruisers to bring its chosen prey into range. With a series of flashes the ship fired its complement of torpedos and then dove below the cruisers' line of fire before their crippling firepower could be brought to bear.

The strike cruiser had fired upon the Sword of Sacrilege's aft starboard quarter, and as the torpedos zeroed in on its vast bulk the ship went into a hard turn - not away from the incoming projectiles but rather into them, seeking to present its broadside guns in the hopes of shooting down the attack.

But the massive ship simply wasn't quick enough. An abortive salvo went sailing past the torpedos moments before they struck home, tearing through heavy armor and internal decking to deliver their fearsome payload. One struck close to the base of the ship's bridge tower, another diving into the starboard defensive array while a third slammed into its topside. With a series of hard bangs and the whirr of steel gears the Imperial Fists stormed out from the torpedo casings to lay siege to the Sword of Sacrilege.

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Rogal Dorn made his first kill before he'd even set foot upon the enemy ship's decking. As he stepped out from the shell of his torpedo he noted the presence of a nearby creature - a chittering, squealing mutant-thing with too many limbs to be human. As casually as a man might reach out and push aside a child, Dorn wrapped the tines of his power claw around the squalling thing's head and bent it backwards, snapping its spine and dropping it to the deck. A moment later, as the boot of his armored foot struck the deck he drew his bolter, firing one-handed into the shapes of more such crawling, mewling things that crammed the corridors.

Most of them, he was sure, were not human. They never had been. They were xenos in the purest sense, called forth from the roiling tumult of the Empyrean by the trecherous hands of his befouled brothers and their maniacal sons. They were hideous, disgusting things - creatures without sane form or function, but matched against the armored might of the VII Primarch they died in droves even as they swept forward with gnashing teeth and claws.

As he tore through them he wished, briefly, that he might have had but a single member of the Silent Sisterhood to call upon, as their untouchable nature rendered them anathema to the creatures' touch and will alike. Janetia Krole herself, preferably, or if not her then Eden Drogo or Amendera Kendal.

As well wish for Ferrus Manus and Sanguinius to miraculously appear around the next corner, he thought sourly, and forced such thoughts from his mind. "Report," he barked over the vox, and listened to the scattered reports of the Fists as they found themselves embroiled in fierce corridor fighting. "All forces, converge on the bridge," he ordered. "Lock onto my signal."

Then his attention was subsumed by the tide of humanity, mutation and warpspawn that threw itself at him. As quickly as they came they were cut apart by the primarch's power claw or else shredded by the explosive rounds from his boltgun. And yet as quickly as they died they were replaced by more of their fearless, insane brethren. Within moments the fight became a slog as Dorn slowly took one step after another, forcing himself through the corridors like a man standing up to a raging tide.

His armored feet crushed bodies beneath their heavy tread. His claw sliced through foes and crumpled them like cheap toys. The roar of his bolter drowned out the endless static of their gibbering. Dorn's advance was inexorable, his steps following one after another like the beat of some cosmic metronome.

His torpedo had struck the Sword of Sacrilege close to the base of the ship's command tower, and soon enough the portcullis of the great citadel yawned before him. It was guarded by more of the warpspawn creatures, horned things clad in brass and weilding great black blades. There were armored figures as well, baroque distortions of Astartes strength. Dorn ejected his bolter's magazine and replaced it with a fresh one, tearing through the citadel guard with scarcely more difficulty than that presented by the fanatical masses already left in his wake. His crimson cloak, the great cloak that had once belonged to his adoptive grandfather snapped and swirled around him as he deftly turned aside the blows that sought his flesh. He caught their blades in his claw and snapped them. He slammed one armored creature into the wall hard enough that the steel was left indented.

His every movement put the lie to the longstanding perception of the VII Primarch as a ponderous creature of glacial movement and inflexible stature. He moved with dreadful speed and irresistable power, a dynamo of energy, and his opponents had no choice but to die, and die, and die at his hands. His overwhelming skill and dreadful strength soon saw him penetrating more deeply into the command citadel, his wake a churned mess of bodies and blood.

He took the stairs of the central hall seven at a time, ascending entire levels in a mere two or three steps. Even if the ship's guardians could have hoped to stop him in combat they had little chance of catching the superhuman in his rapid ascent. Before long the stairwell emptied out onto a wide landing, beyond which lay the great adamantine doors of the bridge. Without hesitation, like a living siege engine Dorn lowered his shoulder and barreled through the implacable barrier. Steel screamed as the hinges tore and the massive doors toppled with a series of ringing clangs like some great bell.

The sight of the bridge was a thing to stop even Rogal Dorn in his tracks.

He had seen atrocity. He had seen horror. He had seen butchery and barbarity. At the Siege of Terra he had witnessed the shocking enormity of the cruelty and fiendishness his traitor brothers and their massed Legions had inflicted upon the homeworld of humanity. And yet the bridge of the Sword of Sacrilege was still a sight to give him pause.

Bodies covered the walls. Literally covered the walls, to the extent that he could not see the steel beneath. Without exception, they had been violated in some manner - many of them vivisected, eviscerated, cut with the foul runes and markings of which the traitors had become so fond. And without exception, all of them had been decapitated. The room was full of crimson light, and there was a sound, a sound like the sucking of air, as if through a hull breach. It was accompanied by a kind of distortion, a warble in the pitch that made Dorn think of innumerable voices screaming in unison.

There was a final flight of stairs beyond the bridge doors into the command chamber proper, and as Dorn ascended them he was treated to the full sight of the throne room like a page taken out of Dontay's 'Inferno' and its mythical Hells. Only the forward viewport and the vista of space beyond remained untouched by the insanity that had transformed the place.

He discovered what had become of the heads taken from the people that now lined the chamber's walls. Grinning skulls, most with dried blood yet clinging to them covered the floor, and as he stepped from the stairs he felt them crunch beneath his armored boot. In the center of the room, where the central pedestal should have been, a vortex had been opened in the floor, and from it sprang a thing like a tornado that was the source of the terrible sound. It was like...it was like a whirlwind of blood that reached from floor to ceiling, spinning counter-clockwise in place and siphoning impossibly upwards. Its surface shifted as it turned, and in it Dorn saw it form shapes like human faces, human bodies, stretched into grotesque distortions as they whirled about.

"I wondered if you would have the guts to show your face," an impossibly deep voice ground out. Dorn whirled, raising his boltgun and putting his finger to the trigger as a bestial form stepped out from amongst the twisted corpses and piled skulls that lined the aft wall of the chamber. The primarch initially wondered how he could have missed a creature of such gigantic frame, but its inhuman build and the way it had rested against the tangle of carnage had camouflaged it.

It wore brass armor that strained to cover its vast musculature. Ropes of skulls hung from its belt and from bandoliers around its breastplate. Its hands were tipped by wicked talons and great, leathery wings sprouted from its back. Its eyes were sulphurous, its features bloated and distorted into the visage of a beast rather than a man. A mane of crimson hair intercut with long, winding cables sprouted from its head, and in one great claw it carried a weapon, a massive chainaxe that no creature but a primarch could ever hope to lift.

Dorn felt a pit more vast than the gulf of the void open in his stomach. He recognized the creature, though when he'd last set eyes upon him during the Siege of Terra he'd not yet become quite so distorted. Externally, at least. Internally, he had always been a raging beast of a man. With great effort Dorn found his voice and gave name to the savage creature that stood before him.

"Angron."

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Bolter fire was so omnipresent as to become a continuous roar. The scream of chainswords was accompanied by the tearing of flesh, the sound of combat drowning out the howls of the tainted creatures as the Imperial Fists sought to widen their makeshift beachhead. They were opposed by a veritable sea of foes that forced even an Astartes onto the back foot, but with no retreat the Fists did what they did best - squared themselves and stood shoulder to shoulder
against the tide.

Their opponents were human. Mostly. Ostensibly. In his spare moments during the past few years, Efried had quietly wondered just how well that term still applied to some the creatures he had become obligated to stand against. 'Inhuman' was too tame a descriptor for the nightmares that threw themselves against his warriors.

There were older words, of course. Pre-Imperial terms like blasphemies. Grotesques. Daemons. Even thinking of them brought a foul taste to his mouth. To think that Efried, Third Captain of the VII Legiones Astartes, servant of the Imperial Truth could even consider applying such terminology...and yet he was hardly alone in the practice. Daemon had come back into the vernacular of the Imperium despite the primarchs' attempts to quash the practice. The growing Imperial Cult had fed the fires of rumor and scandal, accelerating matters entirely beyond control.

Efried shunted the thoughts aside, chastising himself for dwelling upon such things in the midst of battle. Third Company's torpedo had struck the target nearly amidships, far from the objective of the bridge tower, and as a result they found themselves besieged on all sides by the keening masses that made up the ship's crew. Third Company wasted no time in setting up a perimeter amongst the series of cavernous chambers that ran along the topside of the Sword of Sacrilege, slowly advancing up along the great vessel's spine in a cohesive unit, rotating their outer guard to give each Astartes time to reload and redress themselves before returning to grinding battle.

"Next pair," he ordered over the vox. "Squad Romel to left, Fischer to right. Dieter and Kanig on fire-support." His men chorused a series of crisp yes-sirs. As the formation reached the next pair of corridors that split off from the main concourse the named squads shifted, the Astartes stepping in to plug the width of the entrance with their armored bodies. Meanwhile the forward line continued to slowly advance, bolters and heavy weapons roaring steadily, the muzzle flashes glinting off the long, beaked helms of the Mark VI armor they wore.

That had been a change, as well. Throughout the whole of the Great Crusade the better part of the Imperial Fists - the whole of Third Company included - had elected to retain the distinguished Mark II armor that they had worn since first setting out from Terra. Horus' rebellion had forced the difficult choice to leave the Mark II behind and upgrade to the sleek, efficient new design - though it had rankled briefly at Efried to see his men, proud Fists all, donning a suit bearing the name 'Corvus Armor' in homage to the XIX Primarch.

"Captain," the machinised voice of Techmarine Bernd interrupted. "I believe I have located First Company."

"Patch me through," Efried said immediately. The vox channel flickered and the Third Captains ear was filled with static. Behind his helm he frowned, concentrating in an attempt to discern voices from the white noise. 'Two down-' flashed by in a brief flash of clarity, followed moments later by 'advance by fireteams' and then very distinctly a stern voice ordering 'no mercy, slay them all.'

"That is definitively Captain Thane," Efried said dryly. "Can you give me a bearing?"

"Two point five kilometers aftwards," Bernd replied.

Efried lifted his head, sighting in on the tiny reticle laid over his helm display, a green box that represented the locating signal from primarch's armor. "We are falling behind," he said.

"A small wonder, half the bloody ship must be up here," Fischer snarled as he cracked the skull of some horned thing walking on all fours.

"Belay that excuse," Efried replied crisply. He opened his mouth to say more, but the words never came.

"I know you," a guttural voice said.

"Who was that? Identify yourself," Efried said immediately. The voice had come in over an open broadcast.

"Imperial Fists, Third Company," the voice said. "Captain...Efried, wasn't it? Efried the Do-Nothing. I didn't think you ever left your primarch's side," the gutteral voice taunted.

"Lock signal and target," Efried subvocalized into his helm. A flashing reticle appeared in the corner of his visor as his vox system began to home in.

"At least your brothers Sigismund and Pollux had the courage to come out and fight on Terra. Where were you, no doubt hiding somewhere on the walls? Small wonder that a mouse like you remains a mere line officer after all this time. Come, tell me you remember me."

A red bracket appeared on Efried's visor even as the crowd of squaling warpspawn parted to reveal the figure that had spoken. It was - it had been - an Astartes. Its Mark IV armor was crimson, crowned by great metal spikes upon which the skulls of human and xenos alike had been impaled. The great ceramite plates had been cut over and over again with a triangular symbol, as had the great axe clutched in the traitor's hands, but even amongst the defacement and the gory trophies Efried could make out the shape of a pair of steel jaws emblazoned upon the shoulder, and the designation XII-II at the collar.

"Dreagher," Efried said aloud, motioning with one hand for his warriors to stand aside.

"You still remember me, Efried. I cannot help but be touched. I-"

Without further preamble Efried shouldered his bolter and fired. The World Eater was too close to react, and the bolt round struck Dreagher at the top of the chestplate, deflecting upwards into the bottom ring of his helm. The Mark IV plate had become infamous amongst Astartes for its vulnerability at the neck - a small error in the terms of design, but a dreadful one. Only a perfect deflection shot, a one in a thousand chance could exploit the 'trap' created by the space beneath the helm's speaker grille. Efried's shot was texbook, the precise angle that saw his bolt round detonate just below Dreagher's chin. He'd put in a great deal of practice perfecting that shot in the past few years.

The headless World Eater fell. Had he been a more vain man, Efried might have seen the moment marked by some quip, perhaps some witty observation. Instead he racked his bolter and ordered, "next pair. Squad Horst to left, Ervin to right. Mathis and Kobb, back them up."

Like the slow but steady progress of a road-paving machine Third Company continued their advance down the vessel's spine.

[Kuja]

Act Three

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Angron took a step forward and Dorn cautiously took an equivalent step back, keeping his boltgun trained on the distorted body of his one-time brother.

"After that humiliation Perturabo handed you I thought for awhile you might never leave that box of yours again," Angron said. "And then splitting up your precious Legion to please that fop Guilliman. I imagine that must have stung quite a bit."

Rogal Dorn frowned slightly, but refused to rise to the daemon-primarch's baiting. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the bodies of the citadel's guard that had pursued him filing into the room, pressing back against the walls so as to leave plenty of space between themselves and the two titans.

"Nothing to say, brother?" Angron prompted after a long moment.

"If there was ever kinship between us," Dorn replied in a gravelly voice, "it ended long before now."

The Red Angel let out a choking laugh. "You haven't changed, Dorn. Still the stiffest arse this side of Terra."

"I would rather be that," Dorn ground out between his teeth, "than be counted as an atrocity like you and yours have become."

Angron took two sudden steps forward and Dorn backpedaled once more, the pair of them slowly circling around the howling vortex. "This whole galaxy is an atrocity, Dorn, some of it just hides it better than the rest," Angron replied. "He hid it from us. I saw the look on your face when you came up the stairs. It's so easy for you, isn't it, to just dimiss it all as atrocity and madness." The daemon-primarch's face twisted briefly with rage and Dorn prepared himself, but a moment later Angron had mastered himself and spoke once more. "Did you really go through all of this, everything, thinking all the while we just started doing this for fun?"

"I know that there is a power in the warp behind it," Dorn said softly. "It has taken you, twisted you-"

"WRONG!" Angron bellowed. Again the pair of them moved several steps. "You idiots, you and Guilliman both, you think you have it all figured out," the XII Primarch snarled. "But the truth is you are the ones who've been gulled. You think you know how things work when you don't even have the first clue about the truth. He fed you a pack of lies about how psykers work, how the warp works, how everything works. That whole Imperium...you think it some grand monument to humanity but it's nothing more than a hollow lie."

"And your vision, this savagery, that is the true way of things?" Dorn challenged, lifting his chin.

"How do you think Horus stood against the Emperor for longer than a heartbeat?" Angron snapped in reply. "Look around you, Dorn, use that set of walls you call a brain! Where do you think he found the power to match the greatest psyker in the galaxy?" Angron nodded his head towards the ever-screaming vortex. "It's the pain. The sacrifice itself is the thing. This world runs on pain and murder, Dorn. You think that your Imperium, your sacred Truth, your precious code of honor, all of it amounts to nothing. In the end, there is only blood," the daemon-primarch intoned. "Blood. For the Blood God."

Rogal Dorn stared rigidly into those glowing eyes, his face a mask as he matched the Red Angel's accusatory gaze. "Then so be it," he said aloud.

Angron reared. "Eh?"

"If things are truly as you say, if I am to take you at your word," Dorn said slowly, "then I will stand for the Imperium not as the way this world is, but as the way it ought to be. I hear your doctrine and I reject it wholesale. Because if this-" he let the barrel of his boltgun waver slightly to indicate the room about them, "is the truth of things, then I will do everything in my power to protect humanity from the Chaos that would see their lives spent and ruined for the sake of wanton desecration. If I cannot rightly stand for the Imperium, then I will yet stand against you."

The daemon-primarch snorted. "I suppose I should have expected nothing different."

"You should not have," Dorn agreed.

There was a long moment of silence between the pair as each of them came to the realization that there was nothing left to say.

Angron exploded forward in a sudden movement and Dorn's boltgun roared as he pulled the trigger. The daemon-primarch was too fast, however, and the round tore through nothing more than a few stray hairs as Angron swung his axe, the weapon roaring to life as he gripped the weapon. It came up in a broad, full-bodied sweep and smashed into the gun Dorn held, adamantine teeth chewing through the ornate weapon.

Even as the boltgun was rent asunder Dorn was already letting the weapon fall from his hand, reaching to draw forth his sword and thumbing the power weapon to screaming life. He deflected a cut from Angron's blade, swiping at the XII Primarch with his claw, but his opponent was too quick and leapt back from the blow, sweeping with his great axe once more. Dorn was driven back, giving ground before the ferocious assault as sparks flew with the meeting of the howling weapons.

Angron's speed and strength were dreadful, and where their weapons intersected Dorn could feel the shock of the impacts all the way up his shoulders. He was nearly wrong-footed by his astonishment. He had seen the XII Primarch fight in the years of the Great Crusade, but that was proving to be a pale shadow beside the raging creature that pressed at his defenses now. Dorn had once estimated that he could defeat Angron in a fight by frustrating his initial attack and taking advantage of his impetuousness, but here and now he was hard-pressed to do more than stymie the Red Angel's furious assault.

He attempted to close the tines of his power claw around the haft of the daemon-primarch's weapon in an effort to wrest it from his hands. Even as he began to pull, a sudden pain exploded in his jaw as Angron headbutted him, driving the VII Primarch backwards and tearing his weapon from the grip of Dorn's claw. He kicked out, catching Dorn in the chest and disrupting his guard long enough to lean in and swing, the blow defacing the golden armor with a screech of metal that barely shrank from tearing open Dorn's stomach.

It was a horrifying realization to know that he was in over his head. Angron was unstoppable, and though Rogal Dorn fought with the best defense he could muster, again and again the massive chainaxe scraped and bit his armor. His grandfather's ancient cloak tore as the whirring blades cut through its material and pain exploded in his side as the daemon-primarch claimed first blood, his weapon slicing through Dorn's armor's to cut a gash in his midsection, already beginning to heal the moment the adamantine teeth left his flesh.

Angron roared in triumph and whirled, the axe sailing in toward's Dorn's neck. He lifted his sword to block and the sheer strength of the blow tore the weapon from his hand, sending it flying end over end across the bridge. Angron redressed, lifted the weapon and, with a hideous grin brought it down in an overhead smash. With no time to dodge out of the way, Rogal Dorn did the only thing he could, lifting his hands and catching the steel head of the weapon between his armored palms, the furiously whirling teeth mere inches from his face. Angron stepped closer, his arms bulging as he brought his terrible strength to bear, and the weapon slowly inched closer as Dorn attempted to lean his head back from the roaring weapon. Sparks erupted as the greataxe cut into the golden Aquila that haloed Dorn's head, sputtering all around his shoulders.

He tried to force the axe aside, but Angron's grip on the weapon was like iron, and Dorn could scarcely turn it more than a few milimeters. The Red Angel slid his foot forwards and choked up on the haft with one hand and pressed, and the VII Primarch could not stop him. The screaming blades tore into the flesh at the side of his face and Rogal Dorn howled in pain and fury alike as the sight went out of his right eye and his head buzzed with the sensation of the axe's teeth as they chipped at his skull.

He was saved only by the fact that the curve of his brow deflected the weapon just slightly, and it tore along the side of his head, blood leaving a crimson shine upon his golden armor as the savage axe tore flesh from bone. As it reached the collar of his armor the teeth squalled and jammed, and Angron tore the weapon out as he took a hand from the haft. His taloned fingers took hold of the breastplate at the neck and with a monumental display of strength the daemon-primarch hefted Rogal Dorn into the air, holding him aloft where the pair of them stood before the thrumming vortex.

"You're more pathetic than I even imagined!" he roared, shaking Dorn as the VII Primarch groaned. "Imperial Fist. I expected some kind of fight from you. You and your kind are like bugs, crawling around in the dirt before my boot comes down to crush you. You blind yourselves to real power and shackle yourselves to those mewling masses of humanity and delude yourselves into into thinking that it makes you strong?" The daemon-primarch grit his teeth as Dorn weakly lifted his clawed hand in an attempt to grasp at the arm that held him aloft, shaking him once more before he could do so. "I thought your skull would make a fine trophy, but to take it would only be an insult to my weapon," Angron snarled. "You disgust me. Get off my bridge!"

With that the Red Angel turned and hurled Dorn across the room. Metal screeched as the primarch's armored body came down, tumbling over and over with the strength of the throw until he finally slid to a stop, half-curled where he lay facing the center of the chamber.

Despair welled up to fill Dorn's hearts. Truly, it was so. Angron was undefeatable. The traitors and their Chaos backing were irresistable. Rogal Dorn had tried - had put everything, every once of strength and will into turning back the black tide, and he had failed.

"The sacrifice is the thing. The world runs on pain," Angron had said. How could Rogal Dorn hope to stand, when faced with foes that would sink to any depth, bring themselves to any depravity to achieve victory? How...how could he hope to oppose a power that filled a universe, inscrutable and inexhaustible?

"The sacrifice is the thing." What hope was there, when such power, such terrible and unstoppable force could be summoned with torture and betrayal? When entire armies of nightmares could be brought to bear, could besiege even a world like Terra itself and inflict itself at leisure upon humanity?

"The sacrifice is the thing." Why fight? What was the point, when such blackness took roots even in the deepest hearts of men and turned them from their very brothers, turned them upon their very fathers, upon their very species, turned them from stalwart guardians into rampaging avatars of slaughter?

"The sacrifice is the thing." Rogal Dorn looked into the whirling storm of blood, and in its churning depths he saw everything. He saw into the very heart of the Empyrean and the unknowable forces that lurked within. Beings old as time, of nightmarish intellect and impossible strength. Beings that preyed upon unfulfilled dreams and unspoken desires, bringing out the animal soul of mankind and bolstering with their foul might, reveling in the resultant sorrows and exultations as if they were a delicacy. He saw the Warp, infesting everything, down to the last iota of being in symbiotic existance. And in that whirling vortex of insanity, he understood.

"The sacrifice is the thing."

Rogal Dorn briefly closed his remaining eye, his brow furrowing as he grimaced and shifted his weight, reaching out one hand to flatten his armored palm against the deck and slowly push himself upwards. He groaned, wiping blood from his face as he rose to his feet, standing there ragged upon his feet.

Angron turned in surprise and reared, like a beast. "What, are you ready for more?" he said. "Still have an ounce of strength left in that shell of yours, do you?" Dorn did not answer, taking a moment to catch his breath as he lifted his hand, watching the way the crimson light played over the tines of his power claw. He turned his gaze upon Angron, then, and extended his arm as if to enact a scene from ancient literature.

Then, with a speed too fast for mortal eyes to follow Dorn plunged the blades of his claw through the ceramite of his own armor, sinking them deep into his flesh, and he could not help a hoarse scream of pain as he felt his rib plate shift, his internal organs punctured and crushed beneath his own relentless strength as he drove the grasp of his claw up into the meat of his chest. The blades of the weapon scraped against the inside of his rib plate in a deliberate pattern, for even in the midst of his own self-inflicted agony the VII Primarch retained the presence of mind to keep his intentions clear. Then he pulled, his forearm emerging from his torso coated in blood and gore, and Rogal Dorn faced his brother, his own heart held in the palm of his hand.

"What is this, some kind of last-moment denial?" Angron questioned with contempt.

Dorn coughed, blood running down his chin as it welled up from his punctured lungs. "The sacrifice is the thing..." he growled. "And you...you traitors, you murderers, you self-aggrandizing sowers of Chaos...who sought to overturn an empire because you didn't find enough glory in it for yourselves...because you weren't satisfied with all that you had already been given...you will always be willing to sacrifice...someone else."

And Rogal Dorn closed his hand, the talons of his power claw cutting through the flesh of his heart and crushing the organ to pulp.

Angron howled and charged forwards, raising his axe to strike, but as the great weapon came down Dorn lifted his hand and punched forward. The axe met his bloodied claw and the teeth screamed as they shattered upon the weapon's fingers. The structure of the chainaxe exploded as Dorn struck right through it, lunging forward to seize the Red Angel's throat in his talons. The great axe's remains clanged to the deck as Angron thrashed and snarled, reaching out to try and grasp at Dorn's face; but the VII Primarch seized his wrist and held his arm away, and this time it was Dorn who lifted Angron from the deck, holding him helpless in midair.

"Shoot him!" the daemon-primarch snarled, kicking fruitlessly at Dorn's armored body, and the citadel guard that had until now watched in breathless silence opened fire. Las-rounds, bolt rounds and solid shot sparked from Dorn's golden armor en masse. As if heedless of the murderous barrage he stepped forwards, one slow, deliberate motion after another as he carried the struggling Angron towards the great vortex.

"Hear me now," he growled, and Angron's sharp ears did so as clear as day even above the noise of gunfire and the keening of the warp. "Like the daemon you so wish to be, I banish you. And hear this, betrayer," he ground out. "No matter how you rage, no matter how much blood you spill, no matter how many skulls you take, you shall never know true victory. Not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand, not so long as there is one man of true heart amongst my sons or amongst the sons of my brothers. If it is as you say, and the sacrifice is the thing, then you shall never topple the Imperium; for no matter how depraved your acts of murder, you shall always find yourself outmatched by those willing to lay down their own lives for the sake of others. Because that is the ultimate sacrifice."

Angron howled in impotent rage.

Dorn snarled. "Now get out of my galaxy."

And he hurled the daemon-primarch into the whirling vortex. All his bulk, all his strength proved futile as Angron was swept upwards, thrashing and tumbling as he was carried by the bloody winds further and futher aloft, his howl of outrage continuing on until he was carried into the apex of the whirlwind and there the peak of the warp's gathered energy.

--------------------------------

From the outside, it seemed the bridge of the Sword of Sacrilege suddenly erupted in a halo of crimson light, like a cloud of blood diffusing into the water of the ocean. As quickly as it appeared it began to fade, but the effect it had upon the nearby ships was undeniable.

The traitors' fleet began to scatter almost immediately, ships reorienting in every direction in a chaotic scramble, a disorganized every-man-for-himself panic. Aboard the strike cruisers astropaths began to scream and weep tears of blood, bucking in their harnesses and rambling incoherently, some foaming at the mouth in a mass seizure. The navigators screamed in horror and tore themselves from their sockets, breathlessly describing a sudden torrent of insensate rage and overwhelming agony so potent that it overloaded the senses.

Aboard each ship, men made the sign of the aquila and some even quoted passages from the Lectitio Divinitatus as a ward against the horrors of the warp.

----------------------------------

Efried was the second man into the room, right behind the First Captain.

Third Company had caught up to their brethren at the mouth of the ship's command citadel. They had ascended together, double-timing it up the stairs as they chased the primarch's locator. A brief feeling of satisfaction at the sight of the wrecked bridge doors vanished as they ascended the last flight of steps and saw what lay in wait for them.

The walls were aflame with the heavy smoke of burning flesh. Shattered bone covered the floors, and in the center of the room a great pit yawned wide. But it was not these details, however terrible, that drew Efried's eye. A mass of bodies was gathered next to the pit, a tangle of limbs and torsos as the warped men and creatures screamed and battered at a prone figure garbed in golden armor.

Maximus Thane screamed a denial, and Efried was only a step behind him as the First Captain rushed the attackers, hewing through flesh and bone with his greatsword. The rest of the Fists were quick to join in pulling the struggling creatures off the primarch, snapping necks and crushing skulls as they surrounded his fallen body. He lay upon his right side, a pool of blood surrounding him, his armor punctured a hundred times the worst of which was a great, gaping hole in his left side. His prized cloak was in tattered ruins. Half of his face had been destroyed.

"My lord! My lord!" Thane called out as he fell to his knees, sword clattering to the ground with his helm immediately following. He grasped Rogal Dorn's hand and for a heart-stopping moment Efried feared the primarch would not respond. But then, with a slight cough Dorn opened his good eye and managed a thin, watery smile.

"My sons," he said, and the gathered Fists breathed a sigh of relief.

"My lord, we are here," Thane replied.

"Are we successful?" Dorn questioned, his voice soft.

Efried stepped forward to take a knee beside the First Captain, removing his own helm to look upon his primarch. "We are," he confirmed. "The traitors' fleet scatters in all directions."

"Then that..." Dorn said slowly, pausing to take a breath, "is all too the good." He lifted his free hand - the great clawed hand - and pointed a finger. "Maximus," he said. "I have a task for you."

"Of course, my lord, anything for you," Thane said.

"Dear Maximus," Dorn said with the hint of another smile. "In all the years that you have served me you have risen to every challenge, and you have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the quality of your leadership. As such, I must ask you to take my place as Master of the Imperial Fists."

A shock of horror went through the gathering, marked by the massed intake of breath. Thane denied- "no, my lord, you need not, we can heal you, you can recover-"

"Shhh..." Dorn murmured, the soft hiss of breath cutting off Thane's protest as easily as a hand against his mouth. "I am sorry, my sons...but I cannot," he said with terrible solemnity. "I must leave you now."

"How will we go on without you?" someone questioned.

Dorn lifted his hand and shook his finger. "The Blood Angels..." he said slowly, "and the Iron Hands have endured the pain of this loss, and you are no less strong than they. You will...continue. As I have taught you. Hold fast to your honor. Serve the Emperor. Protect humanity from all that would see it undone."

"We will, my lord," Thane replied, his voice thick with emotion.

"Efried..."

His voice was growing softer, and Efried had to lean in to hear him, blinking as he realized that his eyes were wet. "My lord?" he questioned.

Dorn reached out his hand and rested it upon his shoulder, the weight of it nearly overcoming Efried's balance. "My faithful captain of the Third," Dorn said fondly. "You have been at my side through all these years. Ever content to do your duty rather than seek accolades."

"It has been the highest honor," Efried murmured.

"Do this for me. Support Maximus as you have supported me. Be as fine an officer for him as you have been for your primarch."

"I shall, my lord," Efried replied, bowing his head. Dorn's gaze held him transfixed for a long moment more, as if something unspoken passed between them, and Efried nodded.

"Be strong, my sons," Dorn said as his hand slowly slipped from Efried's shoulder to rest beside his midsection. "And more than that...be just in your actions. For all the strength in this galaxy is worthless before a man of pure heart. That...that is my final lesson for you."

"We shall remember, my lord," Thane said, his voice urgent.

"Then I shall rest easy in the knowledge that the Imperium is yet safe without me," he replied. With that, Rogal Dorn's eye slid closed and, as if by his own will, the primarch's chest rose and fell one final time before going still.

The quiet in the cavernous chamber was enough to hear a pin drop. A few of the gathered Fists stifled sighs, a few hands opened and closed as the infamous men of stone felt their resolve cracking under the pressure of tremendous sorrow. Swallowing hard against the lump in his throat, Efried looked to Thane beside him, the First Captain's face still fixated upon the primarch's silent features.

"You are now Chapter Master," he said, his laden tones breaking through the silence. Maximus Thane nodded once, and issued his first order as commander of the sons of Dorn:

"Imperial Fists," he said gravely, "you may take five seconds to mourn." There followed several moments of quiet sobs, and tears shone upon every unhelmeted face. But when Maximus Thane gathered his sword and his helm and rose, every man present squared himself and stood to attention.

"Leberecht and Veit squads. Take him up," the Chapter Master ordered, and the chosen men filed forward to surround the fallen primach and lift him from the deck. "First Company on escort duty. Third in the vanguard," he said, his voice becoming crisper. "Efried," he added, turning to fix the captain with his gaze.

"Sir," Efried replied smartly.

"Call for stormbird extraction and tell the strike cruisers to ready firing solutions upon this vessel. I don't want a single piece of it to ever leave this system again."

"Yes sir," the Third Captain said with a nod.

"And Efried..."

"Yes?" he asked, raising one brow.

"Tell them why," Thane said, his face grave. Efried nodded. Thane lifted his hands to place his helm upon his head once more. "Primarch-progenitor, to your glory, and the glory of Him on Earth," he intoned.

"Primarch-progenitor, to your glory and the glory of Him on Earth," the Fists chorused.

No rousing speech for the Imperial Fists.

No blood ritual. No chant. No song.

Merely a reminder of duty.

And that was enough.


------------------

End

[LadyTevar]

BRAVO!

[Eternal_Freedom]

Indeed, BRAVO!

[drakensis]

A cup of tea to you, sir.

[White Haven]

I again deliver unto Kuja the White Haven Thumb of Approval; it's always a pleasure to see you writing more 40k. Additionally, this thread spawned a conversation with a friend of mine over the most-bad and least-bad Primarchs to have step out of a boarding torpedo on your ship.

[Kuja]

Woot. Thank you for the compliments folks.

Additionally, this thread spawned a conversation with a friend of mine over the most-bad and least-bad Primarchs to have step out of a boarding torpedo on your ship.

Assuming you are you, and your ship is being boarded as a matter of course, worst would probably be: Angron, Curze, Russ, and Mortarion. Best (as in most likely to listen to you) would probably be Guilliman, Dorn, Sanguinius, and maybe Horus. Maybe Alpharius, but you're going to end up working for him.

That's assuming they're not on the warpath, of course. If you're an enemy of the Imperium and a primarch sets boots on your ship, you're already dead and it's just time to lay down and accept it.

[White Haven]

I think, Kuja, that by the time a Primarch is stepping out of a boarding torpedo...well, the 'warpath' ship has already sailed, as it were.

[Kuja]

Some primarchs just love to greet people very, very enthusiastically.