Sol System, Mars,
544.M32
Jaghatai Khan
Jaghatai gazed at the battlefield from Jormungand, the largest Titan they had deployed on Mars. The planet's surface, especially the area centred around the Mechanicus Headquarters, was engulfed in fire, explosions, and laser and plasma beams.
Their attack was more effective than he and Sanguinius could have imagined, and the Mechanicus, in its arrogance, was more unprepared than they could have dreamed. The first wave of the attack had already crushed most of the defence forces, and by the time the Mars Priests' Titans were brought into the fray, nearly half of them were repairable.
Jaghatai did not participate directly in the fighting; it was too risky given the scale of destruction. Instead, he took command of the entire operation. He also couldn't shake the thought that if they had had such a force on Terra during the Heresy, they would have crushed the Traitor Legions, and some of his brothers and sons would still be alive.
Through his limited psychic powers, he sensed fluctuations in psychic energy to the northeast. He knew perfectly well who was doing it.
"What are you up to, Angel?" he muttered to himself, then glanced at the screen displaying the terrain in that direction. Suddenly, he had to close his eyes to avoid momentary blindness, as an explosion of white light covered the entire horizon.
A moment later, a shockwave reached them, shaking the gargantuan titan, and even with its shields activated, the temperature gauges showed a critical rise in the armour's surface temperature.
Jaghatai felt that his brother had already limited the effects of the explosion on the planet itself, though in his opinion, nothing could have harmed the planet more than the red priests had done, except, of course, Chaos.
Seeing the aftermath of the explosion, he couldn't help but feel that Sanguinius had overdone it a bit, as the former Mechanicus headquarters complex was practically wiped out, leaving only a massive crater several miles across.
Jaghatai had to admit he was impressed by this display of force, as this place must have been one of the most heavily shielded and armoured in the galaxy. However, when they discussed plans and broached the subject of some kind of distraction, he hadn't suspected that Sanguinius had anything like that in mind.
Knowing that his brother would now likely head to the location where Shard C'tan was imprisoned, he decided to focus once again on inflicting as much damage as possible on those annoying red bastards.
The next few minutes passed at a steady pace, as he issued commands and analysed battlefield reports. But only for a while. The sudden blare of alarms interrupted his thoughts, signalling an unexpected surge of energy. He glanced at the tactical display, his mind racing as he realised that the situation was about to escalate dramatically.
For once again, the entire northern horizon exploded, blanketing the sky in red with ejected sand and rock. The ground began to shake so violently that they had to activate safeguards to prevent the Titan from toppling over.
A moment later, a sinister aura reached him, carrying an energy so powerful that the hairs on his arms stood on end, signalling danger. Something had gone wrong, and his brother would have to deal with it.
He knew one thing: according to Sanguinius's orders, he had to evacuate their forces. As he quickly relayed the command to his unit, the oppressive atmosphere thickened, intensifying the urgency in his voice. There was no time to waste; they needed to retreat and regroup before Dragon could unleash its full fury.
He activated his main comm, announcing, "All units. This is General Jaghatai Khan. I am ordering the immediate withdrawal of all forces to the previously established assembly points, except those to the north and northeast."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sanguinius
They struck Deimos's surface with tremendous force, shattering its surface. The force was so great that they not only created a crater but also ripped it apart. The tiny moon stood no chance.
Fragments scattered in all directions, some destroying the fleet and shipyards floating in the void of space, but the vast majority, caught in Mars' gravity well, hurtled towards the planet. As the debris rained down upon Mars, it ignited a chain reaction of destruction, setting off alarms across the planet. Panic erupted as the Mechanicus scrambled for shelter, aware that the very ground beneath them would soon bear the scars of this cosmic calamity.
The sheer impact, though slightly dazed, allowed him to break free from the C'tan's grip, or rather, a fragment of it. His right fist, enhanced by psychic energy, struck his opponent's head with a force that would likely have caused shockwaves in the atmosphere.
But Dragon paid no attention. His body of living metal absorbed the blows without a trace of damage. He had expected this effect, however, as his wraithbone spear shattered upon contact with Mag'ladroth's body.
As much as he hated to admit it, he was weaker in the Materia than his opponent, who, even in such a limited form, was part of a being called the God of Matter, and that had to mean something.
Sanguinius learnt this firsthand, as virtually all of his psychic attacks were blocked or countered, either by the Void or by simple manipulation of matter.
All he did was use the energies of the Immaterium to influence the real world, something the C'tan could do much more effectively, as the matter and energy of the Materia were as flexible as clay.
Sanguinius began to realise that to defeat the Void Dragon, he would have to think outside the box and use his powers more unconventionally. But now the question remained: how?
While his mind searched for a solution, he was increasingly forced onto the defensive, and his opponent was clearly gaining momentum, as his attacks grew more confident and powerful, as if he were remembering how to control his body.
And so it must have been, since he had been imprisoned for thirty thousand years. A powerful blow from Mag'ladroth's fist finally broke his guard, striking him square in the face, and the Void within him caused Sanguinius's corporeal shell to suffer at the point of impact.
A fine network of cracks began to cover the left side of his face. Equally dazed and suddenly even a little frightened, he pushed his own Void energy to fight the one that had entered his body, using psionic energy to seal the cracks.
What chance was there of surviving another such blow when his corporeal shell itself was on the verge of collapse?
Then it dawned on him. 'A chance.' This is it, he thought with growing excitement. What was the most absurd psychic ability he knew? Of course, the Waargh Orks, or even more so, the "Art of War", as the Krorks called their ability.
The ability to bend reality itself to one's will, one's very perception of it, and even the laws that govern the world. The idea might have been brilliant, but attempting to replicate this ability in combat was madness.
'And what else is left for me to do in this situation but madness?' he thought, narrowly avoiding the Compressed Void beam that the Dragon fired at him.
Although he dodged the attack, the same could not be said for Phobos, the second moon of Mars, floating in space behind him. The Beam of Void struck its upper half, disintegrating the entire planetoid.
Sanguinius breathed a sigh of relief. If the same attack had struck Mars, the planet would likely have survived, as it was much larger than its tiny moons. However, the same couldn't be said for his units on the surface, whose retreat he couldn't be certain of.
He tried his best to draw their fight away from Mars and toward the Warpgate, which the three Old Ones had opened with their technology and through which they had arrived earlier.
He wanted to lure Shard there, hoping that the Webway would make their fight more even, and Dragon himself seemed to have no qualms about heading away from the rift in space hanging before them.
Moreover, he seemed as eager to enter it as Sanguinius himself. Could it be that he sensed the Old Ones' technologies and powers and saw an opportunity to unleash his fury on his old enemies?
Sanguinius gave everything he had to survive this fight, not only polishing his control over the Void but also elevating his psyker potential to a whole new level.
Both were surrounded by vortexes of energy: fire burning in the emptiness of space, energy discharges, and warping space and time. Anyone looking from the side would not even notice them, overwhelmed by the cosmic phenomenon before their eyes.
They exchanged blows faster than the human eye could observe, and with each one, Sangunius began to understand and execute Krorks's ability more and more effectively, which he tried to emulate.
He began by manipulating the probability with which the C'tan would hit him with one of his attacks, then tried to increase the chance with which his own blows landed.
At first, nothing came of it, but over time, it seemed to become increasingly effective, to the point that his opponent, despite his fury, also managed to notice, as he froze for a moment, ceasing his attack entirely.
Sanguniu wasted no time, striking Shard's head, trying to increase the probability of inflicting more damage. He willed to inflict more damage.
And indeed, when his fist connected with the Dragon's metal body, the blow was so powerful that the space at the point of impact shattered like a mirror, and the stricken Shard shot towards the Warpgate, hurtling into it with Sanguinius hot on his heels.
The gate hurled them both into the Webway, near Ilmarin, but still too far for him to utilise the Eternal City's powerful weaponry, which was practically tailored to combating the Star Gods.
Now that the C'tan had been stripped of the advantage their presence in the Materium had afforded them, their fight not only became more evenly matched, but Sanguinius began to gain the upper hand.
His attacks began to land more frequently, producing the desired effect and forcing the Dragon onto the defensive. He then added more visible psychic attacks as he began to warp and reshape the very space of the Webway around them to confuse his opponent.
Their fight began to drag on, warping time and space around them to such an extent that they could fight for as long as seconds or years, and Sanguinius couldn't tell.
When he saw the outlines of Ilmarin looming on the horizon, he knew the fight was drawing to a close. He began pushing the C'tan towards the Eternal City, giving it more of himself than ever before, even while defending Terra.
However, the Void Dragon, sensing or knowing the place Sanguinius was pushing him to, tried to move in the opposite direction, but Sanguinius wouldn't let him.
"Forget you're going to escape now! Too late!" Sanguinius shouted, pressing harder against Shard.
"RAAAARRRGGHH!" The Dragon's roar echoed through the Webway, and the space around them began to twist even more with its desperation and anger.
Sanguinius grabbed one of its wings and, spinning it, sent it flying toward the city. Then he teleported and struck it with compressed psychic energy, sending a fragment of Mag'ladroth directly into the golden dome that had suddenly appeared, protecting Ilmarin.
The sound of the impact echoed through the Webway, but the barrier remained unbroken. The same, however, could not be said for the C'tan, for at the moment of impact, the Eternal City's defences were activated.
Thousands of beams of psychic energy slammed into the Dragon's body, and hundreds of runic arrays flared around them, trapping the Shard in place and covering it entirely in a cocoon of interwoven inscriptions made of pure Immateri energy.
A display of Old Ones' knowledge and technology in its purest form. The Void Dragon tried to defend itself, but a massive amount of Void exploded from its body, disintegrating some of the spells and bonds, but even more appeared in its place, a moment later completely trapping the Shard and then dragging it beyond the barrier into the city itself.
Sanguinius hung in midair, exhausted. The full weight of the fight fell upon him now that he had allowed himself to relax.
The knowledge that he had nearly paid for this fight with his life weighed heavily on him, but it was worth it. The greatest of Mag'ladroth's Shards was finally in his hands.