Once connected to the vacuum of space, the ambient temperature immediately plummeted. Any area not touched by stellar illumination instantly succumbed to eternal cold.
Axion examined the bloodstains that had been dripping from his body; they were now completely frozen.
The blood had been instantly baked dry by the burst of high heat and then immediately flash-frozen, solidifying entirely onto his chassis.
A faint, golden light flowed from the blades in his hands and spread across Axion's chassis.
The Particle Oscillation Field could cover his entire frame, as demonstrated when he deflected Thien's greatsword with a mere touch.
However, to prevent himself from accidentally punching through the entire warship, and given that the ground was already slick with gore, Axion abandoned the idea of covering his legs with the force field to clean the stains.
Seeing this, the remaining Iron Warriors had lost all will to fight.
They had utilized every weapon at their disposal. Bolter rounds and Melta weapons had failed, and close combat was suicide. Faced with this grotesque mechanical entity, they were utterly helpless.
Such a feeling of absolute powerlessness was something they had not experienced in millennia.
Axion, however, had no such complex thoughts.
He swung his weapons and continued to flicker across the compartment.
Whether his target tried to raise a gun to fire, or swing a Chainsword or Power Weapon to parry, they were cleaved in twain without exception.
When Thien and his men burst through the heavy armoured isolation door and entered the hall, the scene before them plunged everyone into stunned silence. Anger first surged, then quickly subsided.
"Where are the cursed traitors!"
Shattered corpses of Astra Militarum were scattered everywhere, and their blood pooled in the centre of the hall.
As the Black Templars looked around, one warrior quickly pointed to thirty mangled Iron Warriors corpses interspersed among the mortal remains.
"By the Throne."
As a Chapter whose warriors wielded Power Swords habitually, the Black Templars were intimately familiar with this kind of wound.
This was the result of a single, decisive cleaving stroke.
Though the Astartes had undergone numerous bodily augmentations, from the sub-dermal Black Carapace to the multi-organ enhancements of their two hearts and three lungs, none of it could withstand the massive, perfectly symmetrical wound that ran cleanly from top to bottom.
"Sweep the area, see if there are any survivors."
The outcome of the field was self-evident, yet Thien still gave the order to check the battlefield.
When they observed the shattered fragments of Power Fists, Chainswords, and boltguns cleanly severed in two, the Black Templars took a collective, chilling breath.
"Report, no survivors found. All Iron Warriors traitors were cleaved in half by a single strike. There is no possibility of deep trauma or suspended animation."
The Black Templars who had spread out to examine the hall quickly returned to Thien, reporting their findings.
The shock brought on by inspecting the wounds spread through the minds of the Astartes.
Several battle-brothers close to Thien nudged his armour jokingly with their own shoulder pads.
"I must admit, you chose a fine dueling partner, brother. At least he didn't casually cleave you in half. He even picked up a power sword for the sake of fairness, or we might not have been able to recover your Gene-Seed."
In light of the evidence, Thien had to admit that his duel with Axion had been a reckless gamble.
Thankfully, Axion did not appear to be gratuitously homicidal.
Yet, this battle was clearly asymmetrical; Axion had performed a one-sided slaughter.
Thien looked at Axion, who stood silently in the centre of the hall, with a sense of trepidation.
The silver-white mechanical body still gleamed, as the vacuum environment of the hall had been purged and sealed after the fire was extinguished.
The sudden rush of compressed air flowing into the hall sent ripples through the accumulated blood on the deck, which reflected the ceiling lights with a strange shimmer. Paired with the silver machine standing in the gore, it possessed an unsettling, perverse sense of sanctity.
Realizing this feeling was profoundly wrong, Thien quickly shook his head.
When this infiltration began, Khorne had cast a sliver of his attention here. Though the Iron Warriors did not worship the Chaos Gods, the dense taint of the Warp upon them made them incredibly prone to their notice.
A battle awash in blood, with reckless slaughter and spurting gore, exhilarated Khorne.
Even if their Primarch had become a reclusive Daemon Prince, and even if these warriors were Chaos Undivided, it did not prevent their actions from drawing the attention of other gods.
Tzeentch would praise the complex schemes, and Khorne would forever observe the slaughter across the galaxy.
But as the Iron Warriors were rapidly butchered by Axion, Khorne's attention fixed upon him.
Axion, being an Iron Man, possessed no soul. Khorne, as a Chaos God of the Warp, could not directly interfere with his operations or thought processes. However, this unique mechanical construct was too exceptional.
His soulless chassis contained an independently flowing consciousness.
Axion showed no reaction to the encroachment of Warp energy, yet his core operations were subtly affected.
This utterly illogical energy, in obedience to the terrifying will of the Blood God, morphed into corrupted code attempting to write itself into Axion's core, to pollute his cogitation matrix.
The reason Axion had stood still was that he was patching his own thought core.
Self-evolution and self-upgrade were defining features of advanced Iron Men.
Axion could repair his own defects, a process known as Mechanical Evolution.
Although he could not identify the source of the suddenly appearing, corrupted code, Axion addressed the issue simply.
He encrypted and optimized his rational operating process, completing an iterative cycle. He even reverse-engineered the corrupted code, beginning to construct a programmatic defence based on its rules.
Axion standing motionless in the centre of the hall for a prolonged period raised the alarm among the Black Templars.
It was common for machinery to be corrupted by the Warp and become immensely dangerous.
Though they did not understand that Axion lacked a traditional Machine Spirit, everyone saw clearly: Axion was a machine, and an ancient one at that.
Should such an entity lose control, the resulting damage could be greater than the entire Iron Warriors incursion.
Facing thirty Iron Warriors, their odds of victory were slim.
But judging by the carnage, should they confront the ancient machine-mind Axion, they would not need to consider their odds at all.
Thien even began to consider that perhaps Sigismund, the spiritual anchor of their Chapter, might have been able to fight Axion for a few rounds had he been resurrected.
Just as the warriors watched Axion nervously, the silver metal machine moved.
Axion turned and began walking toward Thien and his men.
The metallic feet splashed softly in the pooling blood.
"Are there not still mortal renegades? Why are you all standing still?"
Seeing that Axion appeared to be functioning normally, everyone let out a quiet sigh of relief.
Thien looked at his battle-brothers and shouted.
"Disperse! Quickly eliminate all remaining invading renegades! Minimize personnel casualties!"
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