Chapter 517: You're Not Happy Even When He Shows Up?
"WAAAAAGH!!!"
The roar of the Beast descended upon the world once more after ten millennia of silence.
The Waaagh! field, condensed into a physical force, erupted like a spear of pure intent piercing the heavens—a visceral proof that the ancient terror had manifested upon the soil of Armageddon.
The war-cries were deafening.
Countless Ork machines sparked and detonated in a synchronized cacophony of green arc-lightning, a chaotic salute to the awakening of the High Warlord.
The fragmented, discordant thoughts of a million greenskins were unified in an instant. To the Imperial psykers watching through the Noosphere, the psychic landscape was dominated by two titanic shadows letting out a soul-shredding shriek. Any standard mortal mind caught in that pressure would have simply ceased to exist.
Faced with the "greedy" probing of Humanity, the gods of the Orks had offered their own brutal response.
"All units, brace!"
Ragnar Blackmane bellowed, shaking off the disorientation of the first psychic shockwave.
He flicked his frost-axe, decapitating a Nob who had tried to capitalize on his hesitation, and shoved a mortal trooper in power armor toward the rear of the line.
The Young Wolf shook his head. His ears were ringing, and he could feel warm blood trickling down the inside of his helm.
The surviving mortals were hauling their comrades—those stunned or liquified by the Waaagh! surge—out of the primary sanctum. Some were screaming in a deafening silence, their eardrums shattered by the pressure. Automated support-units rumbled in to fill the gaps in the perimeter.
"Engage noise-suppression! Seals to maximum!"
Ragnar barked the orders, sensing the atmospheric pressure spiking. He turned to his Wolf Priest. "By the Allfather's beard, what in the hell is that thing?"
"Psionic resonance is off the charts. It has bypassed the Alpha-class threshold and entered the Alpha-Plus range," the Priest replied, his eyes glowing with a cold, blue fire.
Tu'Shan waited with the patience of a mountain as his mortal charges were extracted. Once the last human was clear, he heaved a massive chunk of a shattered gantry aside.
He stared into the roiling smoke at the titanic shadow looming within. A cold, righteous hatred burned in his soul.
"The greenskins have done something to the remains of the High Warlord," Tu'Shan rumbled.
Communication across the Armageddon theater was absolute. There were no "unknown variables" for the front-line troops. They were backed by a command center that provided the truth, however grim, rather than the "sanitized" propaganda of the old Administratum.
"Doesn't look like something we were meant to kill with bolters," Ragnar noted, holding his ground kilometers away from the manifesting Beast-Mech.
He had felt the weight of it. Even the lesser Orks nearby were growing taller, their hides thickening under the influence of the field.
"I believe you are correct, Wolf-Lord," the Wolf Priest agreed. He pushed his palms forward.
Two arcs of wild, savage lightning erupted from his fingertips, igniting the ionized air. The bolts lanced through a column of Orks charging down a narrow artery, throwing them backward into the molten iron pool created by the Beast's mere presence.
The strike stalled the greenskin advance, allowing the Steel Legion behind Ragnar to fortify the outer ring.
Ragnar adjusted the data-feed to his helm, signaling his pack to abandon the frontal assault. They withdrew from the inner platforms of the Beast's palace.
The space was too cramped. According to the data-archives on the High Warlord's combat capability, a direct engagement in these corridors would result in 100% casualties within seconds.
Tu'Shan hesitated for a heartbeat, his Promethean pride warring with tactical logic, before following Ragnar's lead.
Throughout the campaign, the Chapter Master had realized how far the Salamanders had drifted from the "Modern Meta" of Imperial warfare. Restricted by their low numbers, they had remained on the margins, while the Space Wolves—who had embraced the Dawnstar's military renaissance with feral enthusiasm—were operating with a fluid, lethal efficiency.
The Wolves had more than just numbers. They had integrated with the Astra Militarum, specifically the Valhallan Ice Warriors. They had redefined their role as a high-speed vanguard for a massive mechanized host. They were a Legion in all but name, and they didn't care about the Codex.
"This is Ragnar to Command. Do you receive? Command, acknowledge!"
The vox-unit sparked violently, nearly igniting Ragnar's black topknot.
The Young Wolf ripped the scorched unit from his gorget, smothered the embers on his cheek, and looked at the Wolf Priest.
"The Command Center has responded," the Priest said.
Naturally. We have a direct line to the Heavens.
"Who is the lead? Is it Master Art?" Ragnar asked.
The primary directive of the Dawnstar Command was absolute: If you find a problem that logic cannot solve, petition the Sovereigns. Do not improvise with human lives.
The era of "Glorious Suicide" was over. In the past, heroes died because they lacked a signal. They fought the impossible because they couldn't wait for a reply.
But the Dawnbreakers had secured the link. To die needlessly now was a violation of the Protocol.
"He is on the line," the Wolf Priest confirmed.
"ETA?" Ragnar asked.
"Three—" the Priest held up a hand.
"Three hours?" Tu'Shan asked, standing like a wall before the palace gates.
"Three minutes?" Ragnar guessed, watching the Orks surging from the breaches, their forms pulsing with an unnatural, violent vitality.
"TWO—"
The Wolf Priest dropped a finger. His own psychic aura began to contract. Aside from the link to the "Formless Manse," his connection to the Warp was being systematically suppressed.
Tu'Shan watched as a green-wreathed Ork was flattened by his hammer, though the creature had moved with a speed that baffled his sensors.
Ragnar's eyes went wide.
"ONE!"
"WAAAAAGH!!!"
"WAAA—"
"WA?"
As the Priest's countdown hit zero, the Orks—who had been charging with a feverish, drug-like intensity—suddenly stumbled.
Mobs collapsed into the mud, clutching their heads and howling in a different kind of pain—the pain of a severed soul.
Weapons exploded in the greenskins' hands. Charging Nobz were incinerated in the backwash of their own failing psychic fields.
The Waaagh! evaporated. The momentum died.
Ragnar, Tu'Shan, and the Astartes felt the reality-shift. The world, which had been reformatted by the Beast-Mech, was being "Corrected."
BOOM!!!
An explosion thundered within the Palace of the Beast.
Ragnar stared into the smoke, his optical sensors straining.
The titanous construct, towering like a Warhound, finally opened its eyes.
It was the avatar of Gork and Mork. It was a weapon of pure, savage cunning. The twin gods had seen the "Humie" plan, and they were done playing.
The Beast began to scan the world.
BOOM!!!
The Beast's eyes went wide.
It saw.
It saw its Boyz struggling in the fire.
In its vision, the Boyz should have been unstoppable. The rusted Trukks should have become indestructible tanks under the High Warlord's gaze. The mechanical joints should have tightened, their armor hardening until it could deflect the macro-shells of the Humies.
They should have been bigger. Smarter. Wielding "Gork-tier" Dakka to krump the "Super-Cans."
But reality was failing the Beast.
It watched its warriors. They were drowning in a storm of iron. Aside from the soot and ash, there was nothing but death.
The Boyz were distracted. The massive scrap-wagons were falling apart rather than evolving.
Chassis buckled. Parts flew into the wind.
The vanguard of the Waaagh! hit a wall of fire and simply... wilted.
The Beast tried to anchor the reality of its people, searching for a sign of what had gone wrong.
First, it saw a flickering, grainy pict-feed.
Explosions were rampant. Controlled fires were spreading across the structure of its ancient palace. The fortress was no longer a mountain of glory; it was a ruin of structure-failure and plague-waste.
For a moment, that was all it could perceive.
The Boyz were fighting their own bodies, struggling against a reality where the Imperial Guard was actually winning. They were being hunted by the very machines they had looted.
"WHAT?! WHAT'Z HAPPENING?!"
"I'Z LOST ME STRENGTH!"
In the Ork rear, a Big Mek operating a "Super-Shokk" cannon noticed his Ladz were complaining.
It wasn't just their arms going limp. The cannons, which had been firing with pinpoint accuracy seconds ago, were now drifting, their shots hitting their own lines.
The Big Mek fell into a panic. Faced with the Imperial pressure, his instinct was to push his "Big Toy" to the limit.
The Shokk Attack Gun was the pinnacle of Ork logic. It replaced human plasma, kinetic, and volcano-cannon tech with a single "Theoretical": I want it to blow up.
"I RECKON IT STILL WORKS!"
The Mek shoved more Snotlings into the hopper.
But the dials on his console began to spin wildly. The vibration increased. The Shokk cannon refused to fire.
In a fit of rage, the Mek tried to override the safety valves, even as the "Idea" of the weapon began to fade from his mind.
The shaking became a violent tremor.
Cold sweat—or the fungal equivalent—leaked from the Mek's brow.
The 'Think-Field' is broke!
"BOOM!!!"
The massive cannon detonated. The shockwave consumed the Big Mek and popped the brains of several nearby Weirdboyz.
Wreckage and bone-ash flew.
The "Mortal Logic" of the Imperium was sticking to the unshielded Ork gear like a virus. Machines wreathed in the Emperor's light were overloading the xenos tech, causing a chain reaction of failures across the palace.
Then, the Beast saw it.
Every soul within a hundred kilometers of the palace saw it.
In the center of the greenskin territory—in the western sector not yet held by Man—a sickly green, translucent orb manifested. It expanded with terrifying speed, before erupting into a corona of brilliant, solar-gold lightning.
A second later, the shockwave hit. A roar of displaced air was followed by the screams of a thousand Orks being snuffed out.
The thermal gale threw them toward the hive-walls.
The Beast was shaken to its core.
The entire Ork-held sector was sliding, collapsing, shattering into planetary-scale slabs of rockcrete. Everything was being submerged in an infinite, blooming tide of emerald and gold.
Then came the secondary explosion—the psychic backlash.
The Imperial Guard units retreating under command saw the spires of the fortress toppling, descending with a slow, clinical finality. A hurricane of debris, moving at hundreds of kilometers an hour, tore at their uniforms and shrieked in their ears.
Through the tremors, Ragnar saw something burning in the ruins. It was a radiant, blinding light—a star that had fallen from the asteroid belt to rampaging through the dust.
The collapse settled into a mountain of soot. The western flank of the Beast's palace was a jagged void, kilometers wide, lit by the secondary fires of a total tactical wipeout.
The Ork counter-offensive was dead.
Killed by its own logic.
The Waaagh! field had failed. The technology that relied on it had surrendered.
The power of the Warp had been evicted from the world.
For the first time in its existence, the Beast was speechless.
The roar it had been preparing died in its throat.
It uttered the first words of its new life. A curse of absolute disbelief.
"WHOT IN DA ZOG IS THAT?!"
It was the elite of the First Legion.
Cold, unstoppable, and blinding to the eye.
Sonic booms like rolling thunder swept across the sub-continent. Clusters of brilliant white rifts snapped open within the Webway-anchor zones secured by the Guard. Figures descended amidst the shriek of reality being torn.
They stepped from the apertures, the rifts puckering and closing behind them like the petals of a white rose, leaving behind only the scent of ozone and ancient dust.
Clatter.
A figure landed in the center of the broad curtain-wall platform.
He landed in silence. His form flickered and blurred, his position shifting with a celerity that made him look like a phantom walking through the wind.
He was taller than any of the others. He wore Artificer-plate of deep obsidian and crimson, etched with tracing-lines of gold. He stood in a half-crouch, casually tossing the head of an Ork Warboss aside. In his right hand, he gripped a heavy, black longsword.
The Knight looked around.
The warriors of the First Legion were already through the Wall of Mork. Acting on the directives of the Supreme Command, they were reaping the scattered Orks atop the Wall of Gork.
More warriors were descending from Stormbirds, filling the gaps in the encirclement, narrowing the greenskins' world until it consisted of only a few square meters of dirt.
The First Legion had arrived. They were the masters of this field now.
Arthur rose slowly to his full height.
His crimson cloak billowed out behind him like a banner of blood in the gale.
He looked up at the devastation before him, his expression one of absolute focus.
His eyes glowed with an emerald fire. His golden hair whipped in the wind of a thousand explosions.
"I have arrived," Arthur said.
The voice resonated in the ears of every soldier, every Astartes, and every pilot on the planet.
"I am here."
A single, calm declaration. A wasteland of ash. A host of terrified enemies.
By His mere presence, the greatest threat to Humanity on this world was concluded.
The most important fact:
Arthur looked at the countless humans who were still alive to enjoy the victory.
They had made it in time.
A billion souls erupted in a cheer that shook the stars.
"Throne... I wish Russ could do that," Ragnar whispered, his voice full of a sudden, fierce pride for a brother he had never met.
"Talk about an entrance. You'd think Master Art was our own Sire."
One of the Wolf-cubs squeezed his fist, basking in the sudden, absolute sense of security.
"When is Lord Bjorn going to find our Old Man?" someone grumbled, his impatience reaching a fever pitch.
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