The Blood God's faithful surged forth in an irresistible tide. Many Resistance combatants recognised familiar physiognomies within those contorted, deranged countenances — former comrades, former associates, now comprehensively subjugated by the sanguinary imperative. They had been reduced to hollow integumentary receptacles, their sole remaining faculty the execution of homicidal agency.
"FIRE!"
The instant of this injunction, azure las-bolts were interwoven into a dense tessellation of suppressive ordnance.
The Khornate cultists' frenetic offensivemomentum was transiently arrested.
This arrestation was, however, temporary.
These deranged specimens advanced uponthe suppressive ordnance network with complete disregard for their own existentialcontinuity.
A Resistance combatant depressed his actuation mechanism. His las-bolt attained its designated target with surgical precision.
The fulgurative discharge — which should have perforated the cultist's corporealconfiguration with effortless facility — occasioned only a superficial carbonaceousimpression upon the target's integumentarysubstrate.
The subsequent instant, a crimson effulgencecascaded across the wound. The lesionremediated itself with appalling celerity.
The Blood God blesses His juvenile devotees!
The cultist's maxillofacial configurationdistended into a grotesque rictus of anticipatory ecstasy.
The Blood God's beneficence had suffusedhis vascular infrastructure, conferring upon him a facsimile of immortality.
His cephalic extremity then detonated with comprehensive precision.
"Thoracic** engagement is futile. Cranialengagement — decisive."**
The Blood God, it transpired, was disinclinedto expend His exceptional beneficence upon common cultists.
The Captain — whose enunciation had been delivered with affectless equanimity — did not accord the recumbent corpse any furthercognitive investment. He returned the ordinance to its astonished proprietarycombatant and acquired a plasma weapon of calibration appropriate to his transhumanphysiology.
Incandescent plasma fulgurations eruptedfrom his palmar extremity, excoriating the advancing cultist formations.
This engagement was, for the Captain, merelycalisthenic preparation.
With sufficient ordnance reserves, he was capable of single-handedly exterminating the entire Khornate cultist complement.
For Nyx, however — who observed this engagement from his command station — the spectacle occasioned profound affectiveperturbation.
He was cognisant that, within the Warhammeruniverse, the collision of tens of thousands of combatants constituted merely a skirmish.
The visceral registration of existentialexpenditure on such a scale, however, oppressed his sensorium with considerablegravitas.
This was not cowardice. This was the soberapprehension of his own existentialcommission.
Within this savage cosmos, warfare was the perpetual, iron dispensation.
The enfeebled were eliminated as a matter of course.
This was why Khorne, the Blood God, was frequently denominated the most puissant of the Warp's Dark Pantheon.
Perpetual warfare furnished Him with an inexhaustible reservoir of immaterialeffluence.
The accumulated corpses of slain cultistsaccreted into topographic elevations.
Their existential expenditure amplified the battlefield's ambient derangement.
These devotees registered no apprehensionwhatsoever regarding their own termination. They continued their offensive translationtowards the Resistance perimeters even as their corporeal configurations sustainedcatastrophic compromise.
The haemorrhagic effluence discharged from their lacerated vasculature coalesced with the sanguinary geometric configuration inscribedupon the planetary substratum.
Soth, enthroned upon his elevated platform, was accumulating the immaterial effluence of innumerable Khornate cultist existentialexpenditures.
He was orchestrating a Warp tempest of sufficient magnitude to rupture the membraneof reality itself.
"The Resistance presently enjoys tacticalsuperiority upon the forward engagementperimeter."
"Each cultist expenditure, however, accelerates the sacrificial protocol'sconsummation."
Nyx's regard was fixed upon the contestedfront. His affective configurationprogressively intensified.
These cultists, though their corporealconfigurations had been augmented by Khorne's beneficence, remained susceptibleto conventional ordnance.
He registered, with visceral clarity, that the haemorrhagic effluence of the slain was irrigating the Blood God's sacrificial ritual.
The battlefield was saturated with a dense, cloying crimson vapour. Every combatantpresent felt enveloped by this viscoussuspension.
"I must personally terminate that Bishop!"
The situation was deteriorating.
Nyx registered the inaugural indices of corruption in certain Resistance combatants. Their ocular organs, formerly characterised by Nostraman pallor, were acquiring a crimsoneffulgence. The homicidal impulse was progressively insinuating itself into their volitional faculties.
He could no longer countenance the protraction of this sacrificial protocol.
He must personally extirpate its provenance.
Bishop Soth.
He transferred operational command to the Captain.
His corporeal configuration then catapulteditself from the command station with the velocity of a ballistic projectile.
He transfigured himself into a fulgurant blade, perforating the hostile formation with irresistible momentum.
His objective was unambiguous:
He would personally effect Soth's comprehensive existential termination — in such a manner as to preclude the possibilityof resurrection, notwithstanding the Blood God's exceptional beneficence.
The battlefield was tumultuous. Ordnance detonations reverberated throughout the upper hive.
Nyx's cognitive investment, however, was exclusively concentrated upon his designatedtarget.
The instant he breached the hostile formation, every Khornate cultist within immediateproximity frantically reoriented their offensiveinvestment upon this singular adversary.
"MAXIMUM** SUPPRESSION — COVER THE SPACE KING'S ADVANCE!"**
The Captain's percussive enunciationpropagated throughout the Resistanceformation.
Every cultist who attempted to interdict Nyx's trajectory was immediately reclassified as disarticulated corporeal fragments by concentrated ordnance discharges.
Nyx's offensive translation remained unimpeded.
"ASSAY** my investigative acquisition, formidable juvenile specimen!"**
Techmarine Bryce — who had, throughout this engagement, been assiduously pursuing his esoteric research and developmentalinitiatives — suddenly disgorged from his dimensional receptacle a super-heavyordnance specimen of dimensionsapproximating those of a diminutive cargoconveyance.
He loaded this formidable implement into a grotesquely configured trebuchet apparatusand discharged it at the most denselyconcentrated sector of the hostile formation.
...Is that a nuclear ordnance specimen?!
This super-weapon — suffused with Bryce's idiosyncratic 'I Think' effluence — inscribed a singular parabolic trajectory upon the firmament and attained its designated impactcoordinates with surgical precision.
The subsequent instant, a fungiform vapourconfiguration ascended towards the celestialexpanse.
The detonation's effulgence and its thermaldischarge comprehensively exemplifiedBryce's comprehension of the Space King'spuissance.
Thousands of cultists were simultaneouslyreclassified as particulate suspension.
"EXCELLENT** CONTRIBUTION!"
Though the detonation's magnitude had been somewhat attenuated relative to his projections, it had nevertheless excavated an unimpeded trajectory for Nyx's offensivetranslation.
The concussive effluence could not arrest his momentum.
The obstacles before him had been comprehensively eliminated.
His corporeal velocity was such that he extruded a fulgurant afterimage.
Within minutes, he had traversed a distance of hundreds of miles.
"ACQUIRED!"
Nyx elevated his power sword.
The azure disruption-field effluenceenshrouding its blade underwentinstantaneous chromatic recalibration. It was now saturated with incandescent goldenfulgurations.
He directed his regard upon Bishop Soth, enthroned upon his elevated platform.
He discharged his fulgurant blade.
SHHK——!
A muffled acoustic signature — the soniccorrelate of integumentary and vascularsubstrate undergoing catastrophic laceration.
Nyx's power sword had not merely perforatedBishop Soth's corporeal configuration.
It had simultaneously transfixed Corset, who had been cowering in concealment behind the Bishop's imposing physique.
"AAAAAAAAAGH——!! "
A piercing vocalisation propagated throughout the battlefield.
Corset's regard descended, with incredulousdeliberation, to the fulgurant blade now occupying his anterior thoracic compartment.
He was, at this juncture, immobilised upon this weapon — transfixed in concert with Bishop Soth.
He resembled, in this configuration, the innumerable wretches he had tormentedthroughout his protracted aristocratictrajectory.
I... am expiring?
Registering the progressive dissipation of his vital essence, coincident with the dischargeof his haemorrhagic effluence, Corset expended his residual volitional faculty upon a final interrogative:
"Why have I not yet been emancipated from this mortal integument...?!"
"The sacrificial immolation of an entireplanetary populace — this magnitude of offering is insufficient to effect my transcendence...?!"
He recollected, at this terminal instant, Soth's disclosure:
The authentic objective of this sacrificialprotocol was the entity who had justtransfixed him upon this fulgurant blade.
"Keh... The faithful of the Blood God do not dissimulate, Corset... The final iteration of the sacrificial protocol is imminent!"
Soth, even as he enunciated this declaration, commenced his translation — and his transfixed aristocratic associate's translation— towards the epicentre of the sanguinarygeometric configuration.
Before they could attain their designatedcoordinates, however —
GOLDEN FULGURATION ERUPTED.
Soth's affect — which had, until this instant, been characterised by unperturbedequanimity — underwent comprehensivecatastrophic recalibration.
"I have not GRANTED you permission to PROCEED!"
Nyx's corporeal configuration enveloped both transfixed specimens.
The oppressive effluence emanating from his transhuman physiology occasioned, in this veteran Khornate Bishop, his inauguralexperience of somatic trepidation.
"This is our inaugural proximate encounter. By what appellation should I address you?"
"...'Revolutionary Sovereign'. 'Space King'."
"...Or, more precisely — 'Khorne's BELOVED'."
This terminal designation occasioned in Nyx's affective configuration immediate, catastrophic recalibration.
To be designated as Khorne's 'beloved' was incompatible with existential continuity of any extended duration.
He dispensed with further discursiveelaboration.
His manual extremity secured the hilt of his transfixed power sword. He then committed a savage lacerative translation through Soth's abdominal compartment.
"...A judicious determination. Your apprehension, however, is misapplied... The culmination of this ritual is no longercontingent upon my existential continuity..."
Haemorrhagic effluence cascaded from his bisected corporeal configuration.
Corset — whose corporeal configuration had been simultaneously bisected by Nyx's fulgurant blade — descended into the sanguinary geometric configuration.
The innumerable filaments of haemorrhagiceffluence constituting this geometricconfiguration immediately resonated with his fractured corporeal substrate.
The ritual of transfiguration commenced.