With Prospero thoroughly obliterated, Magnus found himself with a surplus of power liberated on Sortiarius. Chaos energy coalesced once more above the Sorcerer Planet, morphing into an elliptical structure that mimicked the appearance of a great, cyclopean eye. A torrent of violet-red energy, a volatile cocktail of azure psychic power and crimson warp-essence, erupted from this aperture, surging directly toward the Void Sword's severely mangled hull.
Yet, a brilliant, pale-blue glow gradually enveloped the Void Sword. A massive psychic shield manifested around the vessel's exterior. Countless vents along the ship's flanks erupted with thrust, maneuvering the titan to present its relatively intact broadside to the onslaught of the terrible warp-sorcery.
This section of the hull had sustained only light damage and was sufficiently repaired that the vast majority of its shielding systems were fully operational. However, the energy distribution within the compromised hull was erratic; several internal conduits, hidden beneath the surface, were structurally unsound. As automated valves and control arrays attempted to re-route power, a number of these lines leaked energy far beyond projected estimates.
The Chaos energy successfully pierced the psychic shield, but the Void Sword's evasive rolling maneuver allowed the strike to graze just above the ship's midsection, dissipating into the void. The Void Sword accelerated once more, its hull shimmering with a visible, silver radiance, the refraction of nanite swarms rapidly patching the ship's wounds.
A deluge of energy beams erupted from the titan's arrays, hammering the surface of Sortiarius. Attack was, indeed, the finest form of defense. Magnus was forced to divert the chaotic energies he had intended for offensive sorcery, repurposing them to fortify his planet against the relentless bombardment.
The resilience of the Iron Men's titan-class vessel far exceeded his understanding of void-faring craft. No one in the galaxy could have conceived that a ship, having just plowed through an entire planet, would still possess such terrifying combat efficacy. In truth, the resources required to construct a single titan-class ship would necessitate the refining of several mineral-rich worlds. In its essence, it was more formidable than a solid, metallic planet. Given the ship's mass, if not for the Federation's staggering mastery of gravitational technology, the vessel would have collapsed into a neutron star, the chain reaction of which would have manifested a singularity.
The Void Sword maintained a dense blanket of fire, battering the shields of Sortiarius while closing the distance at high velocity. Warp-teleportation technology was liable to be intercepted by foes of such immense psychic stature, and the method of dropping reconnaissance units previously employed was clearly ill-suited for large-scale deployment.
Axion, however, had other means.
Nearly one hundred million mechanical units filled the dozen outer compartments flanking the ship's prow. The nanite swarms had already partially severed the internal structural ties between these outer compartments and the ship's inner armor. A single, precisely calculated collision was all that was required for these two hull segments, stretching dozens of kilometers back from the prow's breach, to be shed from the main vessel. Such an operation might claim a portion of the machines, but calculations confirmed that at least tens of millions would remain combat-ready. To ensure the delivery of his force, the titan had to graze the planet with surgical precision.
Magnus, in his foresight, had indeed seen visions of the Iron Men landing on Sortiarius, but the glimpses were devoid of detail; he had no clear understanding of how they would achieve it. Watching the maimed titan-class ship charging toward Sortiarius, his composure wavered. It was, after all, a planetary-scale vessel; if the Iron Men attempted another collision with Sortiarius, he would not be able to withstand the tectonic catastrophe.
Deeply unsettled, Magnus immediately channeled the power of Chaos, forcing Sortiarius to attempt an evasive shift through the void. He did not know that this reaction had been entirely factored into the Iron Men's calculations. Axion knew that for a planet to have been moved from the warp to its current location, there must be a mechanism for planetary transit, perhaps similar to the one used on Prospero, or some other unknown art. Regardless, the world was mobile.
In such a scenario, there were only two solutions: destroy the target or evade it. The Void Sword's fire-saturation had never ceased, and it was evident that the enemy could not gather enough energy to retaliate. Furthermore, based on an analysis of the warp-energies involved, the idea that the foe could destroy the entire titan with a single sorcerous strike was a fantasy.
Magnus's attempt to shift the planet played perfectly into Axion's design. As the planet drifted toward the upper-left of the ship, the nanites frantically reinforced the structural connections of the right-hand compartment while simultaneously devouring the remaining links of the left. The Void Sword tilted its hull once more, and the left compartment of its shattered prow gently grazed a massive crystalline plain.
The colossal impact successfully tore through the already-thinning structural connections of the prow. Some of the remaining, undamaged Reaver-Eviscerators immediately uploaded their ground-impact data analyses as the segments separated. As the Void Sword slid past the right side of the planet, a massive hull-section remained embedded in the planetary surface.
The outer armor, several meters thick, served as an effective buffer, shielding over ninety percent of the combat units from the trauma of the impact. As countless machines began to pour from the wreckage onto the surface of Sortiarius, Magnus finally understood how the scene he had witnessed in his prophecy would come to pass.
Though his dominion over the Sorcerer Planet was absolute, this vast fragment of the ship, dozens of kilometers in diameter and spanning hundreds of square kilometers, was beyond his ability to simply vanish. The surface of Sortiarius could bend to his will, but to cleave the planet open enough to swallow such a massive structure would result in the total collapse of the planetary defenses.
When Magnus confirmed that the number of machines swarming the surface had exceeded ten million, his single eye narrowed. He turned his gaze toward the Void Sword as it streaked past the planet.
Combat on the ground would be impossible; they could not prevail against these machines of slaughter, regardless of the odds. Even with the empowerment of Chaos, the fervor of his mortal followers would not be enough. Compared to the Iron Warriors, the Thousand Sons were few in number. Even after Perturabo's sons had lost ten thousand in the warp, another sixty or seventy thousand had descended from across the galaxy to protect their Primarch. Despite the casualties of the previous battles, nearly fifty thousand Iron Warriors still remained on Sortiarius. The Thousand Sons Legion totaled only sixty thousand Astartes; at present, fewer than thirty thousand were on the planet.
Since the Great Heresy, the Legion had fractured into nine cults, each divided into nine sects, each governing nine thrall-bands. Each band consisted of one high-ranking leader, nine sorcerers, thirty Rubric Marines, and thirty members of the Scarab Occult. This was, of course, excluding the cultists, mutants, and bound daemons.
The Iron Men's determination to eradicate every Chaos traitor in their path unnerved Magnus. His bond with his sons was not as fractured as Perturabo's, and he could not afford to lose them.
Beyond boarding actions, Magnus could see no better course of action. There were fleets beneath the planet's veil, but if Sortiarius itself could not fend off the titan as a weapon, these pathetic vessels stood no chance. As for fleeing, that was a last resort. If possible, he still wished to seize the Iron Men's titan-class ship. After all, having deployed so many forces to the surface, the defensive capacity of the ship must be diminished, surely?
Carefully analyzing the battlefield, Magnus made his choice. Countless strands of chaotic energy surged toward the Tower of the Cyclops. A new spell was taking shape.
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