Saul Tarvitz observed the look of utter disbelief on Captain Ehrlen's face as he took in the massive destruction caused by the global firestorm. They had finally left the safety of their bunker and took their first steps outside after hours of hiding.
Nothing remained of the Choral City as they had known it. Every trace of living tissue had been completely incinerated, reduced to atoms by the roaring, monstrous flames that swept across the planet following the virus attack.
Every building was blackened, scorched, and collapsed, transforming the once brilliant and bustling Isstvan III into a true sad version of hell. For an Emperor's Children Space Marine such as himself, Tarvitz felt great pain, not just because so many innocents died.
The shattered ruins were still ablaze as the last combustible materials burned away. Tall tongues of fire rose straight into the sky, fueled by ruptured fuel lines and refineries that would continue to burn until their reserves were entirely exhausted. The sharp stench of scorched metal and charred flesh hung heavily in the air. The scene before them was completely unrecognisable from the cityscape they had fought across just minutes earlier.
"Why?" was all Ehrlen could ask.
"I don't know," said Tarvitz, wishing he had more to give the World Eater Captain.
"..."
"This wasn't the Isstvanians, was it?" asked Ehrlen after a moment of silence.
Tarvitz wanted to lie, but he knew the seasoned veteran would see right through it instantly. He sighed and went with the truth. If he died now... that was that.
"No," he said. "It wasn't."
Ehrlen nodded lightly, as if he wanted to confirm it.
"We are betrayed?"
Tarvitz nodded.
"Why?" repeated Ehrlen.
His voice sounded so unlike a World Eater in that very moment. Almost... lost. The question was understandable and warranted, but it was also very painful to hear, as there was nothing Travitz could say, no matter how much he wanted to.
"I have no answers for you, brother, but if they hoped to kill us all in one fell swoop, then they have failed."
...
"And the World Eaters will make them pay for that failure," swore Ehrlen, just as a new sound could be heard over the crackle of burning buildings and tumbling masonry.
Tarvitz heard it too. He looked up just in time to see a flock of World Eaters' gunships streaking toward their position from the outskirts of the city. Gunfire started to rain down in a searing spray, punching through the surrounding ruins and boring deep holes into the black marble of the ground and exploding in smaller bursts.
"Hold!" shouted Ehrlen.
Heavy fire rained down among the World Eaters as the gunships roared overhead. Tarvitz crouched at a smashed window opening beside Ehrlen, hearing one of the World Eaters grunt in pain as a heavy shell found its mark and blew him to pieces.
The gunships flew past and soared up into the sky, looping around above the shattered palace before angling down for another strafing run. Their goal was the assembled World Eaters and no one else, it seemed.
"Heavy weapons! Get some fire up there!" yelled Ehrlen.
Defensive gunfire stuttered upward from the gaps in the partially collapsed roofs. Heavy bolters boomed, accompanied by the occasional ruby flare of a lascannon blast. Tarvitz ducked back from the window as the return fire thundered down, stitching lines of explosions through the defending World Eaters.
More of them fell, blown violently off their feet or blasted apart by the heavy guns.
One World Eater slumped down right beside Tarvitz, the back of his head reduced to a pulsing red mass. The reality of it all was bleak for anyone watching from outside.
There was no organisation, no battle plan, nothing of the sort. Only heavy fire on both sides.
The gunships banked hard, spraying continuous fire down at their position. Tarvitz could see the loyalist World Eaters zeroing in on the aircraft as they flew back toward them.
Return fire lanced upward, and one gunship was hit; its engine spewed bright flames before it smashed to pieces against a burning ruin.
Tarvitz could see dozens of gunships filling the sky, surely the entire remaining arsenal of the World Eaters' Legion.
In truth, there were roughly 50 companies of World Eaters, meaning a bit over 5,000 Space Marines, were arriving at this moment on the battlefield.
The lead Thunderhawk dropped through the ruins, hovering just a few meters above the ground with its forward assault ramp down; bolter fire blew wildly around the opening, attempting to destroy it before those inside could deploy.
Shock, understanding and fear settled through the World Eaters, who knew what had come for them.
Ehrlen turned toward Tarvitz hastily.
"This isn't your fight," he yelled over the deafening roar of gunfire. "Get out of here!"
"Emperor's Children never run!" replied Tarvitz, drawing his broadsword.
"They do from this!"
No ordinary Space Marine could have survived the storm of defensive fire that blew away at the interior of the hovering gunship.
However... what walked out of that burning gunship... was no ordinary Space Marine...
...
"RRAAAAAHHHH!!!!"
A mighty roar could be heard throughout the battlefield, spreading like a sound of doom. Fear would have been the only response, followed by death.
However, this time, only hatred and anger, which the World Eaters were so widely known for, answered that roar.
A powerful thud sounded as a monstrously large figure walked through the burning gunship and crashed into the middle of the ruined city.
Angron.
The Primarch of the World Eaters Legion, sometimes called the 'Red Angel'.
He was a monster of legend, massive and terrifying. The image of night terrors that kept you awake at night and the last thing you saw if you were on the other side of the World Eaters' campaigns.
The primarch's hideous face was completely twisted in pure hatred, and his huge chainaxes, Gorefather and Gorechild, were battered and heavily stained with decades of bloodshed and already roared in anticipation of the bloodshed to come.
"COME AT ME!!" he roared.
As the mighty Primarch made landfall, thousands of traitor World Eaters dropped from the other gunships to follow him into the battle of Choral City.
They, too, started shouting warcries, which only added to the racket that was Angron's and would have reduced the morale of any other force to dust.
But they weren't facing another enemy. They were facing their former battle-brothers, the World Eaters and they were filled with more rage. Rage that reached new heights, fuelled by the sharp betrayal of their gene-father and brothers.
...
It had often been said that a Space Marine knew no fear. While that statement wasn't literally true, an Astartes possessed the rigorous training and intense psychological discipline needed to master his terror, preventing it from ever affecting his performance in battle.
Captain Saul Tarvitz was no exception to this rule; he had bravely faced blistering storms of gunfire, fought monstrous alien horrors, and even caught fleeting glimpses of the insane predators lurking within the Warp.
But at this very moment, Primarch Angron crashed to the ground and charged directly at him; Tarvitz turned and ran.
The massive Primarch smashed through the stone ruins like an unstoppable juggernaut. He bellowed with insane fury that was a paradoxical mix of anger, happiness, pride and disgust.
A single sweep of his chainaxe Gorechild violently carved two loyal World Eaters in half, while his off-hand axe, Gorefather, came down to bite cleanly through the torso of a third.
One truly understood the names of those chainaxes only by witnessing the Primarch in battle.
Behind him, his traitor World Eaters dived over the scattered and burnt rubble, firing frantically with their bolters and stabbing blindly with their chainblades.
"Die!" roared Captain Ehrlen as the surviving loyalists launched a desperate counter-charge, throwing their weight into the enemy ranks as a single, unified force.
Tarvitz was deeply accustomed to the tactical elegance of his Legion's Astartes warfare, fighting with clever feints, coordinated counter-attacks, overlapping fields of fire, and sweeping through enemy ranks with absolute grace and precision.
The World Eaters did not fight with that polished perfection of the Emperor's Children. Oh, no.
They fought with raw anger, unadulterated hatred, overwhelming brutality, and a pure lust for complete destruction. Worse still, they fought with more hatred than ever before because their weapons were turned against their own people, against the very battle-brothers they had warred alongside for years.
The pain one could feel in the loyalists' movements was staggering. It was like a raging storm; they tried to use and kill those in front of them, but if they stopped and thought about it, they would be confused and hurt. So they couldn't stop, couldn't stop killing, couldn't stop fighting and shouting... if they did, they would lose their drive and it would all be for nought.
Tarvitz scrambled backwards away from the initial carnage.
Desperate World Eaters shouldered past him as they charged headlong at Angron, but the butchered bodies quickly piling up around the Primarch's feet showed exactly what grim fate awaited them.
And yet, that didn't stop them. Not in the slightest. If anything, it only seemed to serve as fuel and encouragement.
Lowering his shoulder, Tarvitz hammered his armoured weight through a ruined wall, sprawling heavily onto the floor of an open courtyard filled with statues that had been scarred and beheaded by the day's earlier fighting.
He glanced back over his shoulder, like you would if you were being chased and wanted to see how far behind the predator was.
Thousands of World Eaters were locked in a terrible, swirling hurricane of carnage, clawing and scrambling just to get at one another's throats. At the absolute centre of this bloody maelstrom stood Angron, looking massive and terrible as he brutally laid about him with his twin axes.
Suddenly, Captain Ehrlen crashed down onto the ground a short distance away. The wounded World Eater's eyes briefly locked onto Tarvitz before he rolled onto his back and forced himself up to his feet.
His face had been completely torn open, reduced to a horrific mask of red blood where his eyes were the only recognisable feature left. Before he could stabilise, however, a pack of traitor World Eaters descended on him like a pack of wolves, pushing him to the dirt and hacking away at his body as though they were carving up a side of game they had hunted.
...
Volleys of heavy bolter shots thudded violently through the stone walls as the wider battle spilt directly into the courtyard. Space Marines wrestled with one another in the dirt, forcing gun barrels upward to fire at point-blank range or disembowelling their own battle-brothers with spinning chainaxes.
Tarvitz kicked himself up to his feet and ran as a nearby wall collapsed, allowing a dozen traitors to surge forward into the open.
He threw his body behind a heavy marble pillar just as a barrage of bolt shells blasted chunks of stone from it in concussive impacts. The overwhelming roar of the battle followed his every step, and Tarvitz knew with absolute certainty that he had to find the Emperor's Children. Only by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his own fellow warriors could he hope to impose any form of military order on this chaotic, lawless fight.
He ran as hard as he could, quickly realising that incoming gunfire was being directed at his position from nearly every angle. His purple armour was now not something to be proud of, as it made him stand out like a bright beacon. He charged through the debris of a grand dining hall and sprinted into a cavernous, stone-walled kitchen.
He kept running, smashing his way through the rubble until he finally broke out into the open streets of the Choral City.
Above him, a burning gunship streaked across the sky, crashing into a distant building in a massive plume of orange flame. Constant gunfire continued to stutter throughout the ruins he had just escaped, and Angron's psychotic and animalistic shouting easily cut through the deafening racket of the wider battle.
The magnificent dome of the Precentor's Palace rose high above him, looking down on the violent conflict unfolding across the blackened, skeletal remains of the city.
As Tarvitz navigated his way through the ongoing slaughter toward the location of his beloved Emperor's Children, he made a solemn promise to himself: if he was fated to meet his death on this blasted, cursed world, then he would meet it standing among his true battle-brothers, and in his final moments defy the deep hatred the Warmaster had sown among them.
Tarvitz was experiencing only one of the four different battles that had taken over Choral City. The World Eaters under Captain Ehrlen, where Tarvitz had managed to get them to bunkers, were roughly at the centre-north of the palace, while to the west, northeast, and inside the Palace itself, the battles raged on as well.