The sky was the color of blood.
Run.
Sprint, and do not stop.
The wind howled in Zelo’s ears.
He must never stop.
To stop meant falling behind, being caught, becoming a slave again, and facing a new round of torment.
The xenos of this world took joy in torturing humans as sacrifices.
They drew power from human suffering.
The gates of the City of Hell had long since closed behind them.
Upon the ramparts, soldiers frantically loaded the defensive cannons.
The cannon mouths blazed with mankind’s fury, tracing thousands of brilliant contrails across the blood-red sky.
Some shells were intercepted by the psychic flames of enemy sorcerers, while others, like arrows loosed from a bowstring, pierced the winged Daemons of every size that filled the air.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Bright explosions bloomed in the sky, a grand fireworks display made of blood and flesh.
More artillery fire erupted across the battlefield, churning up wave after wave of mud and blood, blasting through layer after layer of enemy corpses.
Shells exploded all around them, blasting open a path for their advance.
Shrapnel sliced across Zelo’s face.
Through his vision, blurred by speed, the enemy surged toward him like an ocean, yet he did not swing his blade.
The lightning of psychic power roared around him, striking his foes wherever his will directed it.
Radiant light blazed from Zelo as if from a transmission tower.
The xenos that drew close to him were turned into charred corpses amid the dazzling glare, screaming as they fell, only to be crushed beneath heavy hooves with crisp crack after crisp crack.
Light danced in Zelo’s eyes.
Protected by his psychic power, his charging force surged forward relentlessly, slamming into the enemy ranks like a cannonball.
The lords and overseers screamed and roared in fury and terror, spittle flying from their mouths as they lashed their own soldiers and ordered them forward to stop Zelo’s company.
But most of them could not even keep pace with the charge.
Zelo’s goal was not them, though every single one of them deserved to die.
They swept past Mourning Lord Morgan, who delighted in cutting off people’s limbs, stuffing them with feathers, and locking them in small cages chained up like pet birds.
They swept past Gluttonous Overseer Zar, who made sons eat their fathers and daughters eat their mothers.
They swept past Pyre Lord Atros, who cut a person’s limbs to the bone, lit the exposed bones on fire, and forced them to crawl across the ground like pet dogs.
The xenos on this planet were endless.
As long as the Dominant Lord Syllax existed, it could summon endless Daemons, or twist humans into more of its own kind.
For the first three years of the uprising, Zelo had dedicated himself to cutting off the head of every lord.
But eventually, he discovered that every time he beheaded one lord, another, even more brutal lord would immediately take its place, mocking them as it deliberately tortured humans in sacrificial rites far from the City of Hell.
And so Zelo’s final and only goal became one alone, Syllax, the greatest Daemon Lord on Stoll Star.
Through years of resistance, the people had learned that only Syllax knew how to summon new kin from the void.
Kill Syllax.
End the source of this suffering.
This was Zelo’s ambition, and the most sincere hope of every Stollian.
The charging force behind Zelo followed him closely.
They were his sharpest spear.
Though a charge often meant total annihilation for everyone except Zelo, they bore no complaints.
Ten minutes and eleven seconds.
They broke out from the open ground surrounding the City of Hell.
Originally, the area around the City of Hell had been packed with dense urban districts, but under the pressure of high-intensity warfare, it had been flattened by artillery fire, becoming a graveyard of corpses and vehicles, now swarming with xenos armies.
At the edge of the open ground stood altar after altar, and upon them countless human slaves writhed in agony, fueling the xenos forces with their suffering.
Some altars were built from human bones and human skin; others used living people as building material.
Those people had been flayed and sewn together, whimpering softly in pain.
Their vocal cords had long since been cut out, or their mouths had been sewn shut, or their teeth had simply been pulled before their upper and lower jaws were pressed tightly together.
The crusted blood would keep them silent on its own.
The suffering pleased some vast entity.
The liches upon the altars sang and laughed, chanting hymns, while lanterns kindled from human souls flickered above the altars.
On Stoll Star, death was far from the end.
The souls of the dead were imprisoned by witchcraft and tortured anew until they shattered utterly into nothingness.
The light of psychic sorcery rose from hundreds of altars, bearing ill omens.
The Great Sorcerer Lord Tragern raised the scepter in its hand.
The scepter, too, was made from a living human.
Its lone eye, bulging from abuse, stared without blinking toward the direction where Zelo and the charging force ran.
The Great Sorcerer Lord Tragern marshaled its psychic power, beseeching the Immaterium, the source of its might, to answer.
The death-agony of the slaves summoned the Immaterium, and the air around the Sorcerer Lord twisted with ominous portents.
But the power gained from sacrifice was still not enough.
It had to halt the advance of ants like Zelo.
“Useless wretches!
In the name of Grandfather Syllax, I spit upon you!” It roared, cursing the siege army ahead and berating those useless overseers.
Even though Grandfather Syllax had entrusted them with its finest troops, they had failed to stop the army of slaves.
“Grandfather has no reason to keep feeding parasites like you!” Before its words faded, the bodies of those parasites began to warp, as if an invisible giant hand were crushing them.
Then they burst like squeezed fish, exploding into masses of pulped flesh in midair.
Within the Immaterium, the souls of these xenos lords tore free from their bodies, screaming in agony.
Drawn by the Great Sorcerer Lord Tragern’s psychic power, they slid inevitably into the abyss, their souls becoming fuel for the great sorcerer’s strength.
“In Grandfather’s name!
Disobedient slaves deserve execution by ultimate torture!” The Great Sorcerer Lord Tragern shrieked.
The thunderous power gathered at the tip of its scepter erupted, its brilliance briefly outshining even the sun in the sky.
Everything dimmed; only that violent crackling heralded a terrible assault.
“Thor!” On his warhorse, Zelo roared.
He drove his spurs into the horse’s flanks, and the charge, with him at its head, began to slow as a whole.
From within the formation, thirty-four warhorses led by Thor suddenly accelerated, surging to the very front of the army.
“Break the gale for us!” To break the gale.
In nature, geese on long migrations often chose a few of their number to fly at the very front, battling the sky and the wind.
The air currents flowing behind their wings would lift the flock that followed, helping the others complete their arduous journey.
“In the name of the Stollians!
Let this suffering end with our generation!” Thor roared, cracking his whip fiercely to pick up speed.
He was the knight-captain of their labor district, and behind him, every knight from that district followed closely.
They knew perfectly well what it meant to become gale-breakers.
This was their true worth.
Their pulses drummed in their ears like war drums.
Hearts raced.
The scent of fresh blood lingered in their nostrils.
Their leader, Zelo, laid blessings upon their warhorses.
The light of psychic energy flickered around them, suddenly blazing bright.
Empowered by psychic force, their speed reached an unprecedented level.
They were swift as bullets, leaving nothing but a line of iron and light upon the xenos’ retinas.
They broke away from the main force, charging straight toward the main altar.
“Heretic Tragern!” Beneath the immense pressure of exhilaration and fervor, Thor’s face twisted into a grin beneath his helmet.
“We’ve come to end you!
Do you remember me?”