Down on the planet’s surface, the world’s defense force was struggling to hold back the assault of the World Eaters and their Khorne-worshipping cultists.
For a backwater agri-world like this, fighting off a local uprising was one thing, but facing Chaos-blessed Space Marines was another matter entirely; they simply had no answer for it.
The world had no Hive City.
Every defensive position had been built to fit the terrain itself, and thanks to the region’s food production and a local ruler who’d actually put in some effort, they’d managed to raise a sizeable defense force.
The human lines were a maze of trenches and gullies, riddled with fortifications the defense force had dug and built by hand.
The defenders gripped their weapons with white-knuckled tension, glancing up now and then at the smoke-choked battlefield in the distance.
Khorne’s cultists had been attacking for days now.
Every wave was cut down, but they’d still managed to chew through no small amount of ground.
Worse still, supplies were starting to run thin in the rear.
Ammunition and manpower kept bleeding away against the cultists, and reinforcements were nowhere in sight.
As the situation grew more desperate, the defense force started fielding whatever equipment they could scrounge together.
On some parts of the line, soldiers had drawn blades and were hacking it out with the cultists hand to hand.
“Damn it!
Weren’t we supposed to get resupplied every three days?
It’s been a whole week now.
Where the hell is our supply run?
What are those people even doing back there?!”
But somewhere out of sight of the front lines, a World Eaters warband had already dropped in behind them, tearing through fuel depots and logistics installations without mercy.
When the Slaanesh warband’s own Chaos Lord arrived and saw what the World Eaters had done, even he was caught off guard.
“Lunatics who think of nothing but hacking people apart, actually running a strategy?
Guess there’s a sharp mind or two hiding among them after all.”
“My lord, so, are we still doing this?”
The Chaos Lord backhanded the man who’d asked.
“The hell kind of question is that?
What did we come down here for if not to fight?
Smart or not, there’s five hundred of us.
You think we can’t handle a handful of World Eaters?”
Ever since Khârn’s betrayal had shattered the once-unified World Eaters Legion into warbands of every size, the Slaanesh warband Andrallo belonged to was, by sheer numbers, a genuine giant among them.
With a substantial force of Daemonettes at the Chaos Lord’s side as well, he had every reason to look down on the World Eaters.
Still, there was one thing he couldn’t quite work out.
Not one had stayed behind on the ship to torment the slaves, and that made no sense to him at all.
Still, the Chaos Lord couldn’t be bothered to dig into it.
If every daemon had come down, all the better for the fight ahead.
Guided by their sensors, the Emperor’s Children soon located the World Eaters warband.
These Khorne-devoted lunatics were still busy slaughtering the local population, while their cultists dragged people off left and right to set up summoning rituals.
Without a word, the Chaos Lord snatched up his weapon and charged straight in, and Khorne’s followers and Slaanesh’s collided in an instant.
Both sides were dirt poor, so it came down to blades from the very first clash.
The Slaanesh warriors’ swords took heads with precise, elegant strokes, and the Chaos Lord himself practically danced through the crowd, savoring every flicker of pain and despair on his enemies’ faces.
The World Eaters, once they caught up to what was happening, gave no ground either, swinging their chainaxes down in brutal arcs, driving into the Slaanesh warband on nothing but raw strength and fearlessness.
The fight turned into a bloody meat grinder.
Cultists and civilians caught in the crossfire died first, and the defense force nearby could only watch in horror as these superhuman warriors tore into each other, praying to the Emperor and little else.
Whatever hatred these Chaos worshippers held for the Imperium, it was nothing compared to what they held for each other.
Neither side took prisoners; both wanted nothing less than to tear the other apart limb from limb.
Up in orbit, Andrallo had already led the uprising to seize the bridge.
Between Maen’s reconnaissance, Charlotte’s divination, and Andrallo’s own strength working together in perfect sync, all fifty of the remaining Chaos Astartes were wiped out before they ever had a chance to fight back.
With every Chaos Astartes dead and not a single daemon detected anywhere aboard, the cultists left behind stood no chance at all against the uprising.
Andrallo had already stripped off his armor and handed it to a craftsman for repairs.
He needed to land on the surface to help, and going down there with armor that left half of him exposed would have been nothing short of a joke.
Maen, listening to reports coming in from the family’s servants and the ship’s crew, asked with visible worry:
“You’re going down there alone, against two entire warbands?
Isn’t that pushing it a little too far?”
“If I don’t go, does this planet have any other way of dealing with Space Marines?”
At his question, both sisters shook their heads.
They knew mortals could beat an Astartes given enough heavy firepower, but the agri-world below obviously didn’t have that kind of arsenal, or it never would have sent out a distress call in the first place.
Andrallo looked out toward open space.
According to the sensors, a World Eaters ship was still lurking out there somewhere.
“Could we use this ship’s own weapons to take down their vessel?”
“That won’t work, my lord.” A House Westminster attendant stepped forward. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
“The weapon systems need a huge crew to operate them, more than we have.
And this ship’s been badly corrupted by the Warp.
Not all of us can walk through it unafraid the way you can.”
The fighting had already done wonders for Andrallo’s standing among them.
Watching Chaos Astartes drop to their knees under the weight of his psychic power and bare their necks for the killing blow was enough to make even the most skeptical among them admit Andrallo really was the God-Emperor’s herald.
What else could drive back Chaos corruption itself, if not the God-Emperor’s own power?
Andrallo looked out at the people rallying together and shot Charlotte an approving thumbs-up.
If she hadn’t gone and wrapped him up in the Emperor’s own reputation, he’d still just be some disgraced traitor to all of them.
Seeing Andrallo’s approval, pride bloomed openly across Charlotte’s face.
She felt, in that moment, like she’d truly lived up to her duty as one of the God-Emperor’s own children.
Veteran crew set charges at key points across the ship.
Once everything was ready, the group boarded transports and began their descent, while Andrallo dropped alone in his own landing pod, straight down to the surface.
Down in the city districts, the fighting had reached a fever pitch.
The Emperor’s Children and the World Eaters had already wiped out every mortal auxiliary on either side.
What remained was pure Astartes-on-Astartes slaughter.
The World Eaters threw themselves into the fray without a shred of fear for their own lives, while the Emperor’s Children reveled in sonic weaponry, lost in indulgence.
Both sides had turned the battlefield into a stage, each savoring their dark god’s gifts in their own way.
The Slaanesh warband’s Chaos Lord casually took the head off a World Eater, the toughest opponent he’d run into all day; the fight had dragged on a full four minutes.
He lifted the dripping head, running his palm across the World Eater’s rough cheek and the Butcher’s Nails embedded in his skull, then pressed his lips to the dead man’s mouth in a kiss.
Blood and sweat ran into the Chaos Lord’s mouth, and he savored every drop, tongue curling in open ecstasy.
“Ahh!
Fresh blood, still burning with rage and defiance, how beautiful, how sweet!
Who would have thought I’d find a taste this exquisite on a world like this.
Well worth the trip.”
This depraved display enraged the surrounding World Eaters.
Ignoring how badly they were outnumbered, driven on by the Butcher’s Nails burning in their skulls, they charged in.
Just as the Chaos Lord prepared to indulge himself further at his “cousins'” expense, a shriek tore through the sky, and a Dreadclaw drop pod came screaming down, slamming into a nearby building.
Before the pod’s hatch had even opened, violet light poured out through the seams.
A moment later, with a deafening crash, the Dreadclaw’s side panel blew outward entirely, crushing one of the Emperor’s Children mid-performance on the “stage” below.
And then everyone watched a Space Marine in armor of every clashing color step out of the wreckage, a low, unsettling laugh trailing after him.