Chapter 225: Hello, Xenos, Your Scourge Has Arrived (Part 5)
On that day, the Lord of the Underworld brought death and salvation.
The Lord of the Underworld led His armies, tearing open a bloody path toward the capital. The flesh of the xenos withered beneath His feet, their wretched wails silenced in the realm of the dead. Darkness descended, yet hope remained.
The living bore witness to His feats, and the dead could finally rest.
May the glory of Omnissiah be eternal. We witness the miracle. We are the missionaries chosen by Him for the new era.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Black sky, yellow sands, a dust storm raging, turning day to night.
A violent explosion erupted from the wasteland they had long since lost. The sky trembled. The xenos fleet had assembled, but beneath the sandstorm, no one knew what was happening over there.
Fat mixed with shriveled flesh littered the sand, every inch saturated with corpses. The metal skeletons of the Tech-Priests lay together with the xenos' metallic husks, resting in eternal slumber.
He curled up trembling in the trench—they were all dead, it was all over, the line he had defended had already collapsed. Tall xenos were searching the trenches for the last survivors, the occasional scream rising from beyond the yellow sands, constantly reminding him that he too would soon meet death.
Blood and rust mingled, the rancid iron smell overwhelming his senses. He felt chaos welling up inside him, bad thoughts crawling up like mad things.
Footsteps echoed. He could picture the four-legged creatures walking through the sand. He tried to inhale as silently as possible, clutching the melta bomb to his chest. He was shaking, the coarse sand scouring against his back.
For Omnissiah. For Omnissiah. He kept repeating it in his heart. Death was not frightening, death was not frightening.
The xenos footsteps drew closer. He was ready.
Bang!
A gunshot rang out, followed by a strangled cry that was abruptly cut off, and the whoosh of a blade slicing through the air.
[Hey, Tech-Priest, reinforcements have arrived. Put down that bomb.]
The incoming vox carried data with it. He opened his mouth. It was a brand-new legion name—Death Guard?
He stood up, trembling, as a hand helped drag him out of the trench. His sensors told him there was a wall standing before him.
A bright light from the distant wasteland pierced through the swirling dust, shining against the armor of the Space Marine, bearing the sigils of the Mechanicus and the Death Guard intertwined.
Behind him, the bodies of the xenos piled high, blood seeping out drip by drip.
A strange feeling made his soul shiver. Suddenly, he felt calm, the boiling water of his mind stilled, replaced by a repressed, icy chill.
It was like his soul could breathe out at the bottom of the deep sea, surrounded by pressure and suffocation, but the malice above the water had receded.
[I am Hades, commander of the Death Guard. I am ordered to purge the xenos. I need you to guide me, Tech-Priest.]
Omnissiah...
As Hades' forces advanced, a ragged, broken-down group hung along the outskirts of their formation—the surviving Tech-Priests. In the grinding slaughter that had passed like a slow millstone, most had been crushed. The rest stumbled along in a daze, their spirits broken.
What worried Hades was that these Tech-Priests' souls were all showing more or less unstable areas. As a precaution, he had kept his Black Domain at its most diluted, which inevitably made their already fragile souls even more unstable—but under the current circumstances, there was no other choice.
Among the Tech-Priests, fainting was common. Their companions dragged them onward, their machine parts and red robes trailing on the ground, leaving a long smear behind them.
With the guidance of the Tech-Priest, Hades led the Seventh Company straight through the xenos army encircling the capital—
Or so they thought.
Hades looked silently at the carcass of a Mekanic. The thick rust clung to it like a second skin, breathing, growing.
As they advanced closer to the capital, the traces of rust became ever more apparent. The orange-yellow corrosion had all but replaced rivers of blood, creeping and writhing as it climbed over the metal of both the Tech-Priests and the xenos.
Those still fighting here—human and xenos alike—had already lost all clarity of mind, slaughtering each other in a daze, unaware that the creeping rust under their feet was the true fatal threat. In the areas where the rust was thickest, even a single wound could allow it to latch on, eagerly consuming a soul.
That was also why Hades' advance had been so unopposed; both sides in this battle were clearly delirious and directionless.
Hades frowned, trying to probe the rust with his Black Domain—and as he suspected, there was a thick Warp taint clinging to it.
[Caution—there's presence of psychic entities.]
Hades voiced a warning, while further expanding his Black Domain. As his forces advanced, swathes of the yellow rust withered and dried up wherever they passed.
He looked up. Amidst the swirling yellow sands, the silhouette of the capital loomed, blurred and emanating a sinister aura.
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Mortarion frowned.
"The units in close combat with the enemy—their armor is corroding rapidly?"
"Are they quarantined?"
The apothecary Leo nodded, confirming Mortarion's question. The Primarch fell into thought. It sounded like some kind of disease, but why bother to spread a disease that did not directly kill humans?
In the feed transmitted by Leo, the isolation chamber was already covered with a thick layer of rust. Those spore-like flakes of corrosion even floated in the air, bobbing and drifting, stubbornly surviving even in the disinfectant the apothecaries had prepared.
And from their contact with the enemy, Mortarion could tell this was not something the xenos had deliberately deployed—in fact, they were just as badly affected.
If it had been the old Mortarion, he would have left this to the apothecaries and the techmarines to resolve. But he remembered that strange ship from before—now was no time for even the slightest complacency.
"Garro, you will command the current fleet engagement. Remember to watch for Hades' signals on Rust Prime—do not let the xenos fleet reinforce the planet."
These xenos still could not comprehend or even imagine tactics that involved deliberate sacrifice, so Mortarion had easily allowed Hades' fleet to break through, paying with just a handful of lighter cruisers to confuse the enemy.
"Summon the Zero Company. Apothecary Leo, take me to see the situation."
The forces responded quickly—or rather, Hades had trained the Zero Company well.
Led by the Grave Wardens, with a few towering dreadnoughts, a squad of silent Blanks, and two bizarre Mechanicus Tech-Priests, there could hardly have been a stranger group.
Ignoring the faint unease of the mortal Blanks, Mortarion silently observed the towering dreadnoughts. A familiar yet alien sensation echoed through his soul—revulsion, yes, that was it.
[Lord Mortarion, we answer your summons.]
A strange female voice came through, and Mortarion felt a satisfied recognition in the boundless wrath carried within that voice.
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