The two men locked in combat came to an unspoken halt, their attention drawn to a Chaos Space Marine in blood-red battle plate who had suddenly materialized on the battlefield.
Khârn stared in disbelief at the warrior before him.
The figure was immense, clad in a unique pattern of battle plate he had never seen before. Yet, it emanated a potent stench of blood and a terrifying chaotic power.
At almost the same moment, the two warriors removed their helms, revealing two faces that were startlingly similar.
The loyal Khârn wore gleaming golden armor, the symbol of the Golden Legion. His hair was also gold, and his body was wreathed in a fiery, golden aura.
The other Khârn was a stark contrast.
His face was far more savage, even sprouting a pair of demonic horns from his brow. His eyes were a solid blood-red, and the massive cables of the Butcher's Nails coiled from his skull, whipping behind him like grotesque dreadlocks. He looked exceptionally malevolent.
"Who are you?"
"Who are you?" the two Khârns demanded in unison.
Lorgar, who had been taking a brutal beating, took the opportunity to clamber to his feet.
He did not understand the situation, but it appeared he had been saved. If the fight had continued, this twin-axe-wielding warrior would have killed him at any moment.
For a Primarch to be defeated by a mere Space Marine was an unbearable humiliation. This Chaos Space Marine who looked so much like Khârn had to be a boon sent by the Chaos Gods to help him.
Did Horus have another plan in motion? Perhaps Horus had used some method to clone Axis's most powerful son, but why implant him with the Butcher's Nails? And the aura of Chaotic corruption on him was so dense, it was like that of a Greater Daemon.
"Lackey of the False Emperor!" the Khârn in red armor demanded, "You are a trick of the False Emperor. What scheme did the corpse on the Golden Throne use to clone me?"
"No! You accursed monstrosity," the loyal Khârn roared back, "!Your very existence defiles me! You defile my pure faith! I am a loyal warrior of the Emperor, my father's strongest and proudest son!"
How could this monster, reeking of malevolent Chaotic energies, possibly be him?
This had to be a conspiracy cooked up by the Chaos Gods. They sought to shatter his conviction with such tricks, but it would be useless.
His belief was unshakable.
"Ha! How amusing. A loyal warrior of the Emperor? How long has it been since I heard those words? And you claim I defile you," the red-armored Khârn sneered, "Where is this place? Why have I suddenly appeared here?"
This golden version of himself made him uncomfortable.
The aura emanating from him was incredibly strong, a blinding golden light that seemed to pour from every inch of his being. He even began to suspect that this man was the Emperor's Chosen, his very champion.
"I will shatter you! You are nothing but an illusion of the Chaos Gods," Khârn bellowed as a golden light erupted from his form, a terrifying aura bursting forth with even greater intensity than before.
The combination of his recent battle with a Primarch and the complete Tree of Might Fruit that Axis had given him days ago had made Khârn unbelievably powerful.
The fight with Lorgar, followed by the sudden appearance of another version of himself, a traitorous, Chaotic version, had thrown him into a deep rage.
The S-Cells in his body churned out energy at a maddening pace, activating the Saiyan gene for rage and amplifying his Golden Transformation.
He finally shattered the limits of the ten-fold transformation, reaching a power twelve times his base.
Seeing the warrior engulfed in golden light rushing towards him, the red-armored Khârn did not dare to be careless.
He hefted his power axe and charged to meet him. The axe was etched with the corrupted runes of Chaos, a sacred artifact gifted to him as a Champion of Chaos.
It was a boon from the True Gods.
"Blood for the Blood God!!"
In the very first clash, the Khârn in blood-red armor was sent flying backward like a cannonball, smashing through several compartments of the ship.
The sight left the corrupted Chaos Space Marines who had arrived with him utterly stunned.
It made no sense. Their leader, the true Legion Master of the Twelfth Legion World Eaters, a man more beloved by his legion brothers than even Angron himself, was Khârn the Great, the Champion of Chaos. Yet he had been knocked down in a single blow.
"You wretched impostor. You cannot even use the Golden Transformation," the loyal Khârn snorted, "You are just a corrupted fake. I will take your head."
His entrance had been impressive, but his actual strength was laughable. In that single exchange, he had gauged the immense power gap between them.
Without the Golden Transformation, he could probably fight his counterpart to a standstill. But once transformed, even a two or three-fold increase would have been enough to dominate him, let alone his current twelve-fold power.
"This is impossible! You… how can you possess such power? Is this a gift from the False Emperor? That desiccated corpse, that rotting monster," the Champion of Chaos, Khârn, demanded as he rose from the wreckage of the ship.
"I can sense it. You don't even have our father's gene-seed. You're just a monster created by Chaos," the loyal Khârn replied.
"Gene-seed? I noticed something was wrong just now. Your gene-seed is not from Angron. Just where is this place?" the Champion of Chaos asked.
"Angron, that traitor! How could he possibly be our Father?" the loyal Khârn sneered, "We are the sons of the great Golden King, Lord Axis, master of the Golden Legion. We are the Emperor's loyal warriors, the Twelfth Legion, the Golden Knights."
Angron was a thing of the past. Their War Hounds had long since been integrated into the Golden Legion. They were the sons of Lord Axis.
"Impossible! This is ten thousand years ago! I have never been implanted with another's gene-seed. And who is this Axis? What is the Golden Legion?" the Champion of Chaos asked with a deep frown.
He was certain this was the past.
Lorgar had not yet ascended to become a Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided. Even the Chaos Space Marines with him bore only faint traces of chaotic power, making them barely distinguishable from loyal Space Marines.
This had to be the time of the Great Heresy. But if that was so, shouldn't the Lorgar of ten thousand years ago be attacking Guilliman's Ultramarines? And what was this about a Golden Legion? Why had his own Primarch been replaced? Where was that monster, Angron?
"What nonsense are you spouting?" Khârn asked.
"Tell me, who is this Father of yours, Axis? What is the Golden Legion? And why can you and your brothers transform into this shining golden state?" the Champion of Chaos demanded.
"Axis is a Primarch modified by the Emperor. Unlike the others, he was not created by the Emperor from scratch, but was instead a special human transformed by Him…" It was Lorgar who spoke up from the side, providing the details about Axis, "…Afterward, Axis became a Primarch, master of the Golden Legion, and Angron became a traitor."
The situation felt very wrong. At first, Lorgar had assumed this new Khârn was from the future, a fallen version of the man who had just beaten him. But now, it seemed far more complex.
As a Primarch, he was familiar with the theory of parallel universes. Lorgar astutely realised what was happening and recounted Axis's history. His survival might depend on this newcomer, whose arrival had to be the will of the Chaos Gods.
Upon hearing the story of Axis and the fate of this alternate Twelfth Legion, the expression on the Champion's face froze, then twisted into a mask of pure rage.
Why? That bastard, why!
Why did his counterpart in this other world get to live so well?
When he had first met his Father, Angron, he had been brutally beaten, almost to death. Several of his company captains and battle-brothers had been slain at their own Primarch's hands.
In the end, to gain their so-called father's trust, most of the Legion had been implanted with a modified version of the Butcher's Nails, turning them all into bloodthirsty madmen.
The Twelfth Legion World Eaters held no affection for their Father. For ten thousand years, Angron had cared for nothing, and he, Khârn, had been the Legion's true leader.
But this other self had it so much better.
He had not been subjected to the Butcher's Nails and had even received fatherly love, something he himself had only ever dreamed of.
And his combat power was even greater than what he had achieved after falling to Chaos. That golden aura of his was not the Emperor's power. It was gold, certainly, but it was not from the Emperor.
By now, a large number of Golden Legion members had surrounded them. The Word Bearers legionaries had been almost completely wiped out.
"Captain Khârn! Who… who is this?" one of the Golden Legion members asked.
"He is a scheme of the Chaos Gods, Klemont," Khârn replied.
"You're Klemont? Hahaha, this gets more and more interesting. Wouldn't you agree, Klemont?" the Champion of Chaos said, suddenly turning to a Chaos Space Marine at his side.
The Chaos Space Marine nodded, removing his helmet to reveal a strikingly similar face, though one far more wicked and bloodthirsty, showing clear signs of daemonic corruption.
"That's impossible!"
In that moment, similar counterparts became visible among the veterans of both legions. Most were from the old War Hounds, but even some of the new recruits had found their doppelgangers.
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Ps?