---o---
With the signal for the final counterattack sounding across the field, streaks of light began falling from the sky above. If you pulled your gaze closer, you could make out the black ravens painted on their hulls.
The Blood Ravens had finally arrived — and they had put down precisely at the rear of the cultist lines.
Squad after squad of red-armored Astartes came charging out. But the moment they hit the ground, they too froze. Their heads locked up as though their internal processors had just crashed, staring at the crowd of golden-radiance-radiating Necrons before them — the expression of men who had just witnessed something that absolutely should not exist in any sane universe.
They stood there for several stunned seconds before their vox-units crackled with urgent orders, and they shook themselves back into motion and pushed into the fight. Dozens of Blood Ravens Astartes completed the encirclement of the heretics efficiently. The outcome of the battle was no longer in question.
On the battlefield itself, Zhou Ye was somewhere between Guan Yu reborn and the God-Emperor personally descending into a mortal body. He was hurling every conceivable weapon in his arsenal without so much as a second thought — hammering the Iron Warriors, the Thousand Sons sorcerer, and the Dark Mechanicum all at once, pinning the entire lot of them to the ground and keeping them there.
Above the field, several white-painted bikes cut through the sky at high speed, Astartes riders leveling their lances. Every pass they made drew a chain of blood through the packed enemy formation. The White Scars soldiers were focused, but their eyes kept drifting.
"Should we go help Tech-Priest Omega? He's single-handedly fighting the entire Dark Mechanicum, the Iron Warriors, the Thousand Sons sorcerer, and his Rubric Marines all at once. Isn't that dangerous?"
They knew this particular Tech-Priest was out of his mind. But whatever else you could say about him — when there was work to be done, he showed up. And unlike most Cogboys, he carried far too much feeling under that helmet. Still, the man was decent. A good sort.
Handing over those bikes to the Chapter had been genuinely generous. His fellow warriors were probably still gathered around drooling over them back at base.
So the White Scars held a certain residual goodwill toward Zhou Ye, and seeing him surrounded by that many hostiles at once made them genuinely uneasy. One of them had already half-raised the idea of recommending him as their Chapter's chief Techmarine if the man ever agreed to come back with them.
"Don't interrupt their Academic Exchange. Look — at least he's..."
Chris said this in a flat, somewhat hollow voice, watching.
"...happy!!!"
The God-Emperor had manifested. Whatever hidden Genestealers and cultists had been lurking in the shadows had been incinerated on the spot. And this man had come through it all without a scratch. That meant there was nothing to worry about. Besides, Chris thought, watching the deranged spectacle unfolding in front of him — if he walked over there right now, he'd probably catch a stray shot and get folded into the wreckage.
Because he'd seen enough of how Cogboys and Dark Mechanicum types operated to know the rule: when they got fully absorbed in an Academic Exchange, there was no telling what they'd pull out.
Take that pistol in his hand — it had just fired a round that opened an actual black hole. A cluster of Dark Mechanicum Skitarii standing nearby had been torn to molecular shreds by the event horizon before any of them could react.
God-Emperor. He had absolutely no idea what that weapon was.
And that grenade. Were you seriously trying to pass that off as a melta bomb? Because one throw produced a raging firestorm that expanded outward like a living thing. And that flamer — why was it venting black mist instead of flame? And more importantly: why was that mist corroding steel?
At the sight of this, every Imperial soldier on the field — Necrons included — quietly gave Zhou Ye's corner of the battlefield a very wide berth. The Blood Ravens mopping up the cultist remnants on the far side of the field were also watching Zhou Ye's continuous stream of armaments in stunned silence, though the battle was still ongoing and nobody was doing anything stupid.
After the war. When this is over. Maybe see if we can get aboard that Cogboy's ship and look around.
As for Zhou Ye himself, there was exactly one sensation in his mind: combat was absolutely wonderful.
Not purely for the violence of it, though. He had a Thousand Sons sorcerer right in front of him, and he'd been running a methodical field test — seeing what effect each of his different Authorities had against a psyker target.
The Dark Mechanicum were already fully dealt with. The Iron Warriors had been reduced to ash by the Seven Thunders of Purgation. Well — they looked that way. Their Gene-seeds had already been quietly acquired.
That left just the Thousand Sons sorcerer. The ideal weapon-test target, as far as Zhou Ye was concerned. The Rubric Marines controlling it were currently scattered across the field in pieces — in the most literal sense possible. Fragments here, fragments there.
And the sorcerer himself...
Had been driven to his knees.
He could barely maintain his psychic barrier at this point, pouring everything he had into desperate defense. And he had a creeping, horrible suspicion that the figure standing in front of him was personally insulting him.
He could have finished him off at any point. Every strange weapon in that arsenal could have ended it. But each time his barrier was about to collapse — the barrage would stop, just at the edge of his limit. Then a new weapon would appear, and the whole process would begin again.
He was an Astartes. A warrior from ten thousand years ago. Yes, he had gone to Chaos, and yes, his arm had mutated into a claw somewhere along the way — but he still had his pride. So when Zhou Ye finally produced a flaming greatsword and moved in like he was about to finish this in melee...
Hmmm...
The sorcerer just gave up. He dropped his barrier and let it dissolve. He was done. He lay down. Not that he had a choice at this point — if this were a game, the blue mana bar would be reading zero.
"...Fine. Kill me."
Flat on his back, crushed under a hundredfold gravitational pressure, the Thousand Sons sorcerer had moved past suffering and simply wanted it to end. He was through. This Cogboy was a top-tier degenerate. The sheer audacity of insulting the Sons of a Thousand Wounds like this and walking away completely unharmed meant his power was at a genuinely terrifying level.
He felt that even Ahriman arriving wouldn't change the outcome. Magnus himself, in person, might have a chance. Might.
"Then, heretic — confess your sins!!!"
Zhou Ye looked down at the Son of a Thousand Wounds he had thoroughly wrecked, decided he had made his point sufficiently, and moved on. A flash of light. One sword stroke. Clean.
With the Thousand Sons sorcerer's death, the last trace of the Tzeentchian presence on Aestia was extinguished. Zhou Ye let out a long exhale.
And then, mid-exhale, he stopped.
Because he suddenly felt that familiar sensation of eyes on his back, like a needle pressing between his shoulder blades. He'd handed those bikes over to the White Scars already. So he turned — and found himself looking at a separate squad of Astartes in red armor with white shoulder guards.
Zhou Ye's mouth moved before his brain caught up.
"Oh, for — the Blood Ravens!!!"
He moved immediately. He was already on his bike before the thought finished forming, throttle floored, gone.
What remained was mop-up work. He wasn't needed for that. If somehow things still went wrong from here, those people deserved to go eat a Great Unclean One.
He had something more pressing to attend to. He needed to do a solo run through the hive city — ahead of the Blood Ravens — or he was going to lose an entire haul to that particular Chapter's extremely dedicated form of hospitality.