Led by several Knight suits, the Imperial forces slammed into the rat-horde in a display of pure, unadulterated meat-grinder warfare. Even with millions of Skaven already entombed beneath the earth, the sheer weight of the vermin tide made the defenders of Holy Terra feel as though they were being crushed by an ocean of filth.
In the 41st Millennium, war remained a brutal simplicity: point your weapon and charge. Just as the ancient pict-logs of the 10th Edition era showed Battle Sisters and Astartes braving the gauss-reapers of the Necrons just to close the distance, the Astra Militarum now fixed bayonets, trading lives for the chance of a loyalist's strike in melee.
The Skaven, bolstered by their overwhelming numbers and the shrieking commands of their Chieftains and Warlords, surged forward with rusted knives and bayonets, firing wildly as they closed the gap.
As the lines blurred, the air grew thick with warp-rounds and las-bolts. Charging Guardsmen were riddled with emerald-green projectiles and fell, only to be outpaced by the sheer volume of Slave Rats and Clanrats being mowed down by disciplined las-fire. It mattered not if a soldier, man or vermin, lived or died upon impact; once downed, they were instantly trampled into the muck by the relentless press of their own kin.
Seconds later, the musk of the rat-kin reached the Imperial ranks. The stench only fueled the humans' fury, and they lunged forward, driving bayonets into the fray. The emaciated frames of the front-line Slaves offered little resistance to the steel, but for every rat skewered, a dozen more lunged forward, and for every Guardsman who fell to the Golden Throne, another took his place.
Beyond the infantry, the mechanical terrors clashed. Looted Imperial hulls and Skryre-engineered Doom-Wheels and Doom-Flayers traded blows with Leman Russ, Baneblade, and Rogal Dorn battle tanks.
Towering over the carnage were several Hell Pit Abominations, their massive, distorted bulks stitched together with Warp-tech and extra limbs used to haul their unnatural weight across the battlefield. These horrors utilized the flickering ion shields salvaged from fallen Knights and grafted into their pale, flabby hides to shrug off incoming fire. From their dozens of mismatched heads, a symphony of agonized shrieks erupted; some heads spat caustic bile onto those below, while others, driven by eternal hunger, gnawed at their own necrotic flesh.
"For the honor of House Sterlund! Xenos, I grant you a glorious release!" a Knight Pilot bellowed over the vox. His suit lunged forward, a Reaper Chainsword roaring as it bit deep into an Abomination's flank.
The Abomination didn't flinch. It was a creature born of pain; a missing chunk of fat and muscle was merely a nuisance. A massive arm, grafted from some forgotten titan-beast and armed with a Warp-flayed gauntlet, swung in a devastating arc. The Knight, sensing the lethal energy of the blow, boosted backward in a desperate dodge.
The Abomination pressed the advantage, its mountainous body rolling forward like a flesh-and-metal juggernaut. Above, the Knights dueled the Hell Pit horrors; below, tanks and infantry ground each other into a bloody slurry. Every second, thousands of souls were snuffed out and trodden into the soil. The Tibetan plateau was no longer a landscape, but a world-spanning abattoir of screaming metal and spurting blood.
Roboute Guilliman stood amidst the chaos, the Armour of Fate sealed. The Emperor's Sword burned with a brilliant, purifying light. A century of Legio Custodes stood behind him, treating his presence as though the Emperor Himself walked the earth once more. As the Lord Commander, Guilliman remained a pillar of strategic calm; though he knew he could strike down any foe before him, he would not overextend until the enemy's heart was exposed.
In the Empyrean, Lucius watched this meat-grinder as if observing his Skaven pieces clash with the Emperor's on a galactic game board, dice rolling in the dark.
Suddenly, a voice of tectonic fury shattered the silence.
"Hahaha! How could such a feast be complete without me? I shall add fuel to this fire!"
Lucius and the Emperor turned simultaneously toward a sudden blooming of crimson mist. It was Khorne, the Blood God, whose thirst for slaughter outweighed all other concerns.
"This is a matter between the Great Horned Rat and myself. Stay your hand," the Emperor commanded, maintaining his towering, golden form.
Khorne manifested from the red haze as a gargantuan, brass-clad entity, his canine visage split into a gore-slicked grin. "I would see you try to stay me, Anathema! Where blood flows in such rivers, there must the Blade of the Blood God strike!"
Regardless of the Emperor's or the Great Horned Rat's designs, Khorne was like a gamer who had spotted his favorite map being played. He would not be denied his fun.
Khorne gripped the air, and his personal daemonsword, Woebringer, the End of All Things, materialized. Legends whispered that when Khorne swung this blade, he could cleave the very veil of reality. True to the myth, Lucius watched as Khorne struck downward, tearing a jagged wound through the timeless reaches of the Warp.
On Holy Terra, the sky split open like a tattered shroud, revealing a bleeding rift of absolute red.
From this wound in the sky, eight roars shook the firmament. Eight legions of the Blood God, led by eight Greater Daemons, spilled into the mortal realm. At the vanguard was none other than Ka'Bandha.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"
Khornate Bloodcrushers, mounted upon steam-venting Juggernauts of brass and iron, plowed into the thickest part of the melee like living battering rams. Behind them, Bloodletters swung Hellblades in perfect, murderous unison, harvesting the heads of human and Skaven alike with total indifference.
The sudden intrusion left both Guilliman and Whitesick stunned.
"Hahaha! This is it! This is a real man's war!" Khorne roared with laughter.
The Emperor and the Great Horned Rat exchanged a momentary look. Though the Skaven were currently infesting the Imperium, the Emperor knew that the Blood God was the ultimate existential threat to all life.
The Emperor turned to Lucius. "The interloper is the greatest nuisance. Shall we break Him?"
Lucius looked at the laughing Blood God and nodded. "Him first."
For gods, the command of their followers requires no spoken word; they need only move the pieces, forged from the souls of the mortal realm, to effect change below. Under the weight of the Khornate onslaught, the Skaven began to break and flee, while the Imperial lines were being hacked back by the sheer ferocity of the Blood God's daemons.
The center of the battlefield was rapidly becoming a Khornate domain, the soil itself mutating into a mire of sentient blood.
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