Boom-boom-boom—
Across the stretch of void in Eden's field of view, explosions of fire bloomed everywhere.
It was like chains of fireworks going off in the depths of space.
The Imperial fleet groups and the Terror Legion were working together to hammer every Chaos fleet that blundered into the trap, smashing their defensive formations and burning out their void shields.
Then came wave upon wave of large-scale boarding runs, seizing Chaos warships one after another.
Over a hundred thousand Astartes were howling with glee as they launched themselves into ship-to-ship boarding, more excited than the next.
This might be the largest boarding campaign in the history of the Imperium.
Never before had they had such an easy opportunity to slice up and dismantle Chaos fleets like this.
"By the Emperor, why are our lords not fighting for a boarding slot?"
"Boarding ops! We're petitioning for boarding ops!"
"This could be the greatest disgrace since our Chapter was founded—to have to sit here and watch our brothers board instead of joining them…"
The Astartes who had not been given boarding slots were like ants on a hot griddle, all thinking the same thing—when would it be their turn?
Worst off of all were the Chapter Masters who had failed to secure any boarding slots at all.
Even they themselves felt utterly humiliated.
"What, you didn't qualify for that glorious boarding action on the outskirts of Vostonia?!"
Years from now, they would probably be asked that question—and greeted with doubting stares.
For an Astartes Chapter to be absent from the largest boarding operation in the Imperium's history… what a regret. What a shame.
Those who hadn't taken part might be judged as "not up to it," the way mortal soldiers were mocked for being "not up to it" in certain other respects.
It was one of the most sensitive topics for an Astartes.
In that atmosphere, every Astartes who hadn't been chosen, stuck in their ships watching instead of boarding, exploded into a frenzy of requests for boarding assignments.
The clamour grew so loud it ended up on the Saviour's desk.
"Why are those guys so obsessed? I even told them to rest, and they still won't…"
The Dark Prince's monstrous talon fished out a comm-unit. Eden poked at it as delicately as he could with a claw-tip, afraid he'd crush it and then have to go back to burning his own psychic power for communications.
He frowned slightly.
A message had just come in from the Imperial fleet. Every Chapter Master was apparently shouting for boarding ops, terrified their Chapter would be left out.
"There aren't that many boarding slots to go around… this whole culture of treating 'not boarding' as bullying needs to change. The way they sulk about it—honestly."
Eden sighed.
But he understood.
Opportunities like this were rare. Of course they wanted to fight for them.
In a normal war, the Astartes would already be knee-deep in blood and meat. There'd be no time for stylish boarding tricks and showing off.
Every Chapter was treating this mass boarding run as a chance to flex. Their tactics were getting more and more outrageous, each trying to outdo the next.
Those who didn't get to take part were basically being told the match had been cancelled for them before it even started. It stung.
And both Guilliman and the Khan had happily taken their own sons along to do boarding runs.
At this point it was practically an Imperial traditional festival.
"Well, since they're here already, let them board in rotation. It won't hurt the overall situation and might even speed up the fighting.
"Tarko, have the Departmento Munitorum draw up a plan and handle the scheduling."
After some thought, Eden finally gave the order. Those Chapters that had applied for boarding ops would get their chance, so they wouldn't feel like they were being picked on.
This was a one-sided space battle. A little extra flourish wasn't going to hurt anything. It might even boost Astartes morale.
And more importantly, this might be the easiest engagement in the entire Vostonia Campaign.
Once the fallen Primarchs, the Greater Daemons, and the enemy's main forces arrived, the war was only going to get harder.
"For the Saviour!"
"Long live the Saviour!"
"Victory!"
Sure enough—
As soon as Eden's order went out, cheers from high-ranking warriors flooded the open vox-channels.
Immediately afterward, even more Astartes hurled themselves at the Chaos fleets by every means available, swarming them like locusts.
Watching over that sector, Eden saw all kinds of boarding styles in play—
Boarding torpedoes, assault boats, sorcerous teleportation, grav-pack space jumps… even naked boarding.
"Man, they're really going hard. I hope this doesn't backfire…"
Eden swallowed as he watched.
But he did not stop them.
The Imperium hadn't seen such a one-sided slaughter in a very long time.
Its warriors had been repressed for too long. Their wild side needed an outlet.
Aside from the Saviour's own domains, the Imperium's default setting for the last ten thousand years had been misery and suffocating pressure, punctuated by unending, brutal wars.
It was always defeat or near-defeat—victory bought only through oceans of blood and sacrifice.
Countless Chapters had fought themselves down to bare nubs, losing so many Marines they didn't even have enough gene-seed for replenishment, forced to risk their lives to recover it from the front lines.
Now, the Imperium had finally recovered a little strength.
For the first time in an age, its Astartes could taste that heady, triumphant momentum humanity had enjoyed during the Great Crusade.
No wonder they were burning with battle-lust.
"By the Emperor…
"The Imperium hasn't seen a scene like this in so long. It feels like I'm back on the Great Crusade, fighting at my Primarch's side…"
On the public vox-net, a hoarse, ancient voice spoke.
He was a former Chapter Master of the Raven Guard successor Storm Talons—one of the sons of the XIX Legion Primarch, the Ravenlord.
This high-ranking veteran, who had spent millennia trapped inside a life-support sarcophagus and then been dragged back from the Warp by the Saviour's realm, was a living fossil of the Imperium—a man from the age of the Primarchs.
His words brought a brief, solemn silence to the vox.
"Brother, let's go board. Let's butcher those heretical vermin!"
Then the voice of Dante, Chapter Master of the Blood Angels, rang out. It sounded like he was standing right beside that ancient warrior.
Even this legendary salted fish of a man had been infected by the fever in the air and roused himself.
"…That's wonderful."
Noticing the shift, Eden couldn't help but smile.
This was the change he'd wanted to see.
The Imperium had borne its shame and suffering for too long. It was time for it to wake up and be reborn.
Its warriors needed confidence again. They needed a real belief in victory—a firm conviction that the Imperium would flourish once more.
Not just a bleak obsession with a dark future and the idea of trading lives for a little more time.
An Imperium like that had no future.
Before long, Eden pulled his awareness back from the Imperial side and focused on the Terror Legion.
He barely needed to rouse them. Their battle-fury was already blazing.
They were all boarding—no one could stop them, and no one had the right to.
For a Terror Warrior, war was a fundamental part of both life and power.
And a boarding action in a one-sided massacre like this was a rare treat.
Most of them had already burned through their blood-points in advance to upgrade their bodies and gear, each warrior carrying an enormous blood-debt on his back.
They were ravenous for glory, the hunger in their eyes scarier than simple bloodlust.
The Terror Warriors who owed blood-points were desperate to hack down xenos and heretics to pay them off—and then earn even more blood-points to exchange for Diablo's gifts.
In the Terror Legion's evaluation system, the more blood-points you owed Diablo the Destroyer, the stronger you were.
In simple terms: the more savage your record, the more blood-points you had. The more blood-points you had, the larger your blood-credit line. The more you could borrow, the more you owed.
Which meant more evil-energy, more power—endlessly escalating with no ceiling.
The very top Terror Warriors were all carrying astronomical blood-debts to Diablo, living permanently on the edge of default.
If they actually defaulted, if they couldn't possibly fill in the blood-point crater they'd dug, they might lose everything and have to start over from nothing, with no hope of ever crawling back.
In that situation, how could a Terror Warrior even think about stopping?
They were practically perpetual-motion evil-energy fighters; they'd fight twenty-four hours a day if they could.
Even Khorne's berserkers couldn't match that.
The way they looked at the battlefield, hungry for war and blood-points, was enough to cow the Blood God's own warriors.
Even Eden felt a bit uneasy watching them.
He had the distinct feeling that if he used Diablo's power to stick health-bars and reward-markers on the Blood God's armies—"rush forward and you get a bonus," "one clean hit earns you a shower of blood-points"—
These lunatics, who didn't care if they lived or died as long as they got blood-points, would happily grab their weapons and charge in for that one swing.
In that light, how could you possibly stop Terror Warriors from tearing into Chaos heretics?
The whole system would fall apart.
Of course, Eden could always use the Dark Prince's authority and Diablo's power to suppress the Terror Warriors, or even strip them of their right to earn blood-points.
Then he could just give orders and expect obedience.
But that would inevitably erode the Legion's overall battle-frenzy and momentum, hurting its growth in power over time.
The Terror Legion was one of his more extreme instruments—"terrorists" among Chaos warriors, specialised for raiding Chaos and xenos alike.
It was better to keep using the blood-point system, and the evil-energy they represented, to motivate and steer them.
Too many rules and shackles would only dull their killing edge.
As long as the blood-point blessings stayed generous enough, those warriors would naturally grow fiercer and fiercer.
That was one of the reasons why Eden's shadow-identity Diablo was more competitive than Khorne in certain ways.
Khorne ran on a cash-back model, skimming off the top. No matter how favoured his servants were, their "rebate rate" was never going to break a hundred percent.
Diablo, on the other hand, not only gave top-tier followers full rebates—he let them spend in advance. Massive lines of evil-energy credit, for all who followed.
Stick with him and he'd shower you with power.
He was practically the greatest philanthropist in the Warp.
As for where all the extra evil-energy for those huge credit-lines came from?
Naturally, from Eden's other sources of faith-power.
If there were too many of them to subsidise personally, he'd probably have to start using his little sun's devouring aspect to quietly siphon some dark-energy from the Emperor himself—pure one-way borrowing. No repayments.
Just to bankroll a hundred-billion-level subsidy programme for his own Terror Legion.
Risky, sure. There would be side-effects.
But as long as it weakened the Ruinous Powers' hold on their worship and made his own side stronger, the risk was worth taking.
He could even ease some of his Father's corruption pressure in the process.
"Looks like they've run into something tough in that void-sector…"
Suddenly, a signal came in from the Terror Legion. The flames in Eden's eyes burned hotter.
He'd be boarding next.
Those Chaos warriors—especially the Blood God's berserkers—would not submit that easily.
Some of the higher-ranked ones would rather die on the spot than surrender.
At times like that, it fell to the Dark Prince himself to act.
He'd crush them with overwhelming power and then bring them to heel.
Ordinarily, those Chaos warbands were scattered all over the galaxy, roaming like pirate fleets. Tracking them down one by one was hard.
But now, lured in by false distress calls, they were marching to his doorstep.
It was a gift from the heavens.
Boom—
The eye-shaped observation tower shook violently, its armoured plating warping inward under two deep, twisted footprints.
Eden had pushed off from the deck.
He flared his demonic wings, his blazing bulk shooting up from the tower and out into space.
He didn't need a void suit.
"This Chaos clone-body really is more convenient… the Warp-energy is always running at full tilt…"
Out among the stars, Eden felt nothing but exhilaration.
His eight-metre-tall frame sliced through the void like a small attack-craft, his blade-edged wings snapping incoming rounds in half as easily as paper.
Compared to his human body, this Chaos form was far better suited to moving through sectors rattled by Warp-storms, and far better at channelling large-scale evil-energy to warp the material galaxy.
It was the advantage of the Chaos side: greater raw impact, at the cost of heavy expenditure, poor sustainability, and vulnerability to specialised sorceries and holy psychic powers.
It wasn't long before Eden stomped a Chaos engine out of the sky, riding it down to slam into the armour of a Chaos battleship's command-deck.
He tore the deck plating apart by brute force and ripped his way into the ship's interior.
Like some molten iron colossus, his entry was pure, brutal violence—terrifying to behold.
…
Chaos battleship Blood-Binder.
Within the command-deck security zone, the roar of bolt-shells, chainswords, and tearing flesh mingled together. Wreckage and gore flew in all directions.
The warriors of the Blood God were surrounded and beaten down, falling one after another.
"Blood God…"
Arno, a warrior of the Blood-Binders, collapsed to his knees.
Helplessly, he watched the scene unfold, his faith on the verge of shattering.
The Terror Warriors closing in on him were encased in monstrously heavy armour, murder-runes glittering all over them, Warp-flames sputtering everywhere.
They were almost dazzling.
They were butchering Khorne's warriors the way he had once butchered ordinary soldiers—effortlessly, casually.
Their weapons and armour were at a level his own gear simply couldn't withstand.
Arno had always believed in power. Only power could give him control over his own life.
Back when he'd been just another hab-rat in the underhive, he'd realised early on that he was no different to any other Imperial citizen.
Worthless.
He was just one coin in the Imperium's enormous currency-hoard, one token among uncountable others that would be spent and used up.
As one of those coins, he received no respect and no attention. No matter what the situation outside, he still had to drag himself through grinding, lethal work every day.
His job at that grim, polluted factory had been bought with favours by his father. It was a "precious opportunity."
If nothing unusual had happened, Arno's life would have passed in murky grey, his body breaking down after a decade or so of poison-laden labour. He would have died.
If he was lucky, he might have passed the job on to one of his children.
But things hadn't gone that way.
The planetary governor, under orders from the Imperium, had hiked the Eleven Tithes again, and their factory had been plunged into endless overtime.
The overseers told them they were doing this for the Imperium—for the survival of the world.
But their people were dying.
They were dying in waves, one after another. Arno's lungs began to fail, and he started hacking up mouthful after mouthful of blood.
He knew he didn't have long.
He started to ask himself a question—why did he have to bear all of this?
Why couldn't those nobles in the upper hive do this work instead?
In the end, Arno reached a simple conclusion—power.
He had no power. No right to be respected. So he was forced to shoulder it all.
But how was he supposed to gain power?
As an underhive nobody, he had no right to gene-modification, no access to augmetics.
Even the simplest carapace armour and low-grade weaponry cost more than his entire family's lives were worth. They could barely afford enough food to stay alive, let alone "health."
Still, Arno refused to give up. He kept searching for ways to get stronger.
He wanted to make something of himself. He wanted respect. He wanted to change his family's fate.
He tried anything he could find to eat. He tried exercising.
All it did was accelerate his decline.
But he didn't stop. He kept at it.
Until one day, his body simply couldn't do the work anymore.
The overseer came to punish him.
And Arno snapped.
He shoved the overseer.
For a moment, strength surged into his limbs. The leaden weight vanished from his legs.
He straightened up and realised he had seized something.
"You can't order me. You don't have the right!"
He grabbed a tool and brought it down hard on the overseer's skull.
He didn't remember very clearly what happened next.
Only that the factory went up in riot.
People smashed the machinery and ran, scattering into the hive.
When Arno's senses returned, he was in a back-alley somewhere, drenched in blood.
Then they came for him.
A group calling itself the Blood-Binders. They wanted this brave man to join them and help change the fate of the world.
They told him his strength would be recognised, and that he would receive everything he deserved. The parasites ruling the planet would pay in full.
Arno agreed, becoming a warrior of the Blood-Binders.
For the first time in his life, he was needed. He was respected.
Every raid and slaughter in the underhive brought waves of cheers and worship from the people.
His body grew stronger and stronger.
Horns even began to sprout from his skull.
He liked that change. It was a sign of power.
From the underhive factories to the hab-stacks, from the mid-hive to the spire, all the way to the governor's palace…
Slaughter. Nothing but slaughter.
Arno finally held the power he'd longed for.
The insects he'd once looked up at now whimpered under his boots.
Soon enough, the planet was dead.
But Arno didn't care.
He'd been remade, blessed by a great power. He had personally slaughtered an Angel of the Emperor.
Then more Angels followed.
He became a champion of Chaos, was given even heavier armour, and went to war among the stars.
Arno believed that as long as he kept on worshipping the Blood God, he would keep gaining power, and nothing could stand in his way.
But now, that hope had shattered.
The Blood-Binders' warriors of the Blood God lay groaning under the Terror Legion's boots.
The terror he'd felt as a weakling under the overseer's lash rose up from the depths of his soul.
"Blood God… I need more power!"
Arno trembled with fear and thirsted for greater strength—but the Blood God did not answer.
Of course not.
For a follower of the Blood God, the initial gifts were large and the price was small. It was easy to gain evil-energy at first and burn your way across the stars on a tide of fury.
But soon enough, the Blood God expected more and more in return.
The blessings were no longer gifts; they became demands.
Now that Arno had been beaten, he could count himself lucky if his power wasn't stripped away on the spot.
How could he possibly expect a new boon from Khorne?
Just when he was about to fall into complete despair, another god's presence brushed across the battlefield.
A power seemed to call to him, inviting him into its flock.
It was Diablo the Destroyer, King of Terror—
Diablo.
"Brother, you looking for a loan?"
A brutal voice sounded in Arno's ears, like a devil's whisper:
"Join us, and you'll gain even more power.
"The great Diablo the Destroyer will bless you unconditionally, give you strength and gear.
"Just like me."
The Terror Warrior fixing him with that terrifying gaze looked ready to execute him any second.
In reality, he was just following recruitment protocol.
Every new brother he brought in earned him a blood-point bonus. If the new recruit fought well in future, the points he earned would also kick back a trickle to his sponsor.
In that setup, the Terror Legion had a very strong culture of recruitment. Veterans liked bringing rookies along. They even loaned them gear, fronting the blood-points themselves.
High-ranked warriors could build their own battle-gangs through recruitment, and the atmosphere was lively and surprisingly cooperative.
It massively boosted the Legion's own enthusiasm for expanding its ranks.
In private, the Saviour and his Dark Prince called this evil-energy transmission chain: Enhanced Tier-Three Multi-Level Distribution.
"What power…"
Arno stared at the Terror Warrior's ornate, gore-soaked super-heavy armour.
A surge of desire rose in his heart.
He desperately wanted to accept Diablo's favour and wield that power himself.
But just then, Khorne stirred in the Warp.
The Blood God seemed to have sensed Diablo poaching his followers, and chose to strike back—
He poured a new wave of evil-energy blessings down onto this region of space…
(End of Chapter)
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