With the battlefield purged, the Titan fleet resumed its advance. Though Magnus was currently in no state to provide further prophecies or pinpoint Leman Russ's trail with precision, Axion decided to rely on the data derived from the previous vision to seek out the location and uncover what clues remained.
This time, Jaghatai Khan finally grasped a sobering reality: no matter how they armed themselves, the Iron Men had never truly considered them combatants. Throughout the string of battles, they had been little more than spectators, watching as the Iron Men dismantled their enemies with an unimaginable, clinical efficiency that rendered the Astartes' participation meaningless. Their presence was a silent, empty tour.
Jaghatai Khan soon opened a vox-link to Logan Grimnar, reaching a final decision.
"Order the fleet to return to Imperial space."
The Khan's voice cut through the silence. "Our strength... it is too insignificant before the war machines of the Iron Men."
He broke the silence, his gaze deep and searching. "The Imperium is beset by war on all fronts; our return would serve a greater purpose. But we..." He paused, looking toward Logan. "We remain to seek the truth, for the future of the Imperium."
Logan nodded in silence. He knew the Khan spoke only the truth, and both understood the weight of the responsibility they bore. Like migratory birds returning to the nest, the fleets of the White Scars and the Space Wolves turned away, their ion trails leaving long, luminous scars across the void.
Jaghatai and Logan selected thirty of their personal guard each, boarding four Thunderhawks that peeled away from their capital ships, streaking directly toward the Luminous Conqueror-class Titan ship designated 039.
Watching the shrinking light-points on the tactical hololith, Jaghatai absent-mindedly traced the nomadic totems etched into his sword hilt. An adjutant of the Keshig wanted to speak, but upon catching the Khan's look of weary resignation, he swallowed his words. The new power armor, retrofitted with Iron Men technology, gleamed with a cold, silver-grey light within the Thunderhawk's bay, a silent mockery. It served as a stark reminder that even with cutting-edge equipment, they were merely bystanders on a battlefield dominated by the Iron Men.
Axion supported Jaghatai's decision; after all, the less baggage there was, the easier it was to protect.
As the last of the Imperial ships vanished beyond the horizon, the Titan fleet accelerated sharply. Across the prow of every Luminous Conqueror-class Titan, tri-prismatic Warp-cutting arrays deployed. Beams of energy wove into a lattice, tearing a jagged, crimson rift between the veil of reality and the Immaterium.
"Execution check complete. Geller fields stable; shielding protocols engaged."
A torrent of data pulsed through quantum signals across every Titan. Across the surface of the massive hulls, honeycomb-shaped defensive matrices ignited, repelling the roiling tides of Warp energy surging from the triangular rift.
Guided by the fragments of Magnus's memory, Axion had acquired a trove of previously unobtainable Warp energy data. This new Warp-cutting array was an upgrade derived from the existing Warp engines. Unlike conventional drives that merely rent the veil of reality, this tech could calibrate the depth of the cut, allowing the fleet to bypass the shallows and plunge directly into the deeper strata of the Warp.
As the fleet descended, grotesque phantasmagoria manifested around their hulls. Floating mechanical wreckage coalesced into the shapes of colossal bone-dragons, while fluorescent fluids wept from fractured metallic structures. Within distant chaotic vortices, fragmented Imperial ship sigils flickered, their rusted hulls choked with twisting, violet vines.
After several course corrections, a chaotic mist of incalculable scale enveloped the Titan fleet. The ships' compound sensors blared in alarm, the readings returned a void of absolute nothingness, which was, in itself, a terrifying anomaly.
As the fleet decelerated, an immeasurable landmass abruptly loomed in the visual sensors. Through the warped light, the contours of the surface appeared like those of a slumbering primordial god. Jagged, serrated ridgelines sliced the sky, while the forests blanketing the terrain looked less like flora and more like strange, gangrenous granulation tissue erupting from a festering wound.
The depth of the landmass was impossible to measure; signals emitted by various probes vanished into it like stones dropped into an bottomless abyss.
"That... is not naturally occurring." Jaghatai's pupils contracted.
The voyage had been tedious, and the Khan and his kin had spent most of their time observing the external changes through the ships' imaging systems. He had seen xenos worlds where plant life consumed entire planets, but this forest defied the very laws of physics. The roots did not bore into the soil but hovered hundreds of meters above the ground, held aloft by some unseen force.
Between the canopies, glowing neural filaments intertwined, pulsing with ghostly light every few seconds. Most unsettling of all was that the entire forest heaved and rippled without a breeze, as if the land itself were drawing breath. The trees possessed a texture of fused metal and raw meat, their bark mapped with pulsating, vein-like conduits that expanded and contracted in rhythm with that "breath."
"Feature matching complete. Location confirmed: Locus Oris Forest."
The Titan fleet attempted to skirt the edge of the landmass with extreme caution. Sensor arrays failed to identify any boundary, but an accident occurred while they were still ten thousand kilometers from the surface.
The Titans' energy shields struck an invisible barrier. At the moment of contact, the entire space rippled with psychic waves, like a lake disturbed by a monolith.
Deep within the forest, countless scarlet pinpricks of light ignited, like a million eyes opening in unison. A deafening, piercing shriek tore through all ship-to-ship comms, the sound wave saturated with warped psychic interference.
"Data analysis complete. Unknown phenomenon. Parameters recorded."
Axion's cold, synthetic voice was, for the first time, laced with electronic static.
The Titan fleet adjusted its weapon arrays, an ocean of firepower readied for discharge. Yet, the surface of the forest suddenly split into a spiderweb of fissures, as if a pane of glass had been struck by a hammer. Countless aerial targets surged forth.
Some resembled dragonflies of colossal, monstrous proportions, while others were grotesque and distorted. Their wings were constructed from grinding, twisted gears and conduits, and their abdomens pulsed with the light of psychic runes. Wherever they passed, the very structure of the Warp rippled in distortion. Their eyes were hollow sockets burning with ghostly blue flames, and within their bodies, one could faintly discern a beating heart, not of flesh, but a crystal radiating a sinister, eerie light.
On the trees of the forest, emerald energy conduits breathed in constant flux, radiating intense currents into the surrounding space. Looking further into the expanse, one could see structure-like forms clinging to the massive trees, built from a hybrid of bone and metal. Creeping, alien creatures slipped in and out of them.
Through optical analysis, Axion caught sight of specific, unmistakable fragments embedded within these bizarre structures. On one particularly massive piece of debris, there was a clear, unmistakable sigil of the Space Wolves.
——————
This fanfic is now complete! If you want to read the entire story ahead of everyone else, check out my pat-reon: pat-re-on.c-om/magnor (remove the hyphen to access normally)