Chapter 490: It Only Takes One Bad Day to Break a Warmaster
Badab was burning.
The vast majority of its continental plates were now a sea of promethium fire. Ancient forests had been reduced to carbonized husks in the churning inferno, and pools of spilled fuel coated the earth like black bile. Even natural gas erupted from tectonic fissures torn open by the orbital bombardment, transforming into pillars of fire that pierced the soot-choked clouds.
Abaddon the Despoiler stood upon the primary command deck of the Vengeful Spirit. Iskandar Khayon stood at his left, his sorcerous senses straining against the atmospheric static.
The remnants of his chosen brothers were scattered across the fleet, coordinating the desperate evacuation of the remaining warbands. The Warmaster had issued a standing order: no ship was to stray from the formation. He knew his "loyal" subordinates all too well—given the slightest opening, they would flee with the Black Legion's assets, leaving him a king of nothing.
His sub-commanders were like sharks circling a wounded whale, watching for a sign of terminal weakness. But Abaddon maintained his mask of absolute authority. He reminded them that they only survived in this hostile galaxy through their mutual reliance on his command. The days of the Black Legion roaming the void with impunity were dead.
The burning planet below acted as a funeral pyre, its deep-red glow mocking the invaders. Abaddon's hearts thundered with suppressed rage; he could feel the veins on his brow pulsing with the pressure of his fury.
They needed unity. They needed a leader of sufficient weight to hold the fracturing warbands together, to preserve their strength while they developed new "upgrades" to rival the Primaris Astartes. They had to ensure the "Long War" continued into the dark future.
A leader was a necessity. And Abaddon still believed he was the only man for the job.
But his inner circle was a ruin. The Bringers of Despair were broken; the Wolf Brothers had been annihilated. The Black Legion had suffered losses that would take centuries to replenish. Even his God-Machine assets on the surface were being methodically dismantled. If Haarken World-claimer hadn't organized the retreat with such clinical efficiency, the very seeds of the Legion would have been lost.
I just need time, Abaddon told himself. Like every crusade before. I will return.
The Rift in the Galactic Core had been torn wide. Warp-energy was flooding realspace at an unprecedented rate. The "gifts" of the Gods would only grow more potent in the years to come.
Yet—
Abaddon stared into the hololith.
He had intended to replicate Horus's masterstroke from the Pelargomon campaign: to drop a Blackstone Fortress onto the planet like a divine hammer.
But the vox-link from the Blackstone Fortress flickered to life, and the filtered data-packet hit him like a physical blow. The Chaos Warmaster didn't know when the Imperium had become so maliciously cunning, but the image manifesting before his council was a needle driven straight into his pride.
The hololith revealed Eldar and Ultramarines standing shoulder to shoulder. The warriors in cobalt-blue plate moved in perfect synchronization with the slender xenos—a disturbing harmony of brute transhuman strength and lithe alien speed.
He had mocked Horus for his failures. He had spat upon his Father's ghost. But seeing this... seeing the "Holy" Imperium working with the xenos while the Emperor manifested miracles through his "Sons of God"... Abaddon felt a surge of unmitigated resentment toward the brothers who had died in the Great Crusade.
Why did I survive?
Out of all of us, why was it me?
Why do I have to face this nightmare alone?
Why didn't I die ten thousand years ago?!
"Our 'wretched' successors have fallen further than I thought possible," Abaddon gritted out, his eyes wide and bloodshot, forcing his voice into a parody of calm.
"And you, xenos. You, who once stormed the Imperial Palace and slaughtered the Ten Thousand... what has broken your pride? Why do you wag your tail at the feet of the Mon-keigh?"
The irony was staggering. A Champion of Chaos was now critiquing a Loyalist for "falling."
Ramesses, watching the feed from his own domain, found himself impressed. Even in this state, Abaddon knew how to seize the rhetorical high ground.
"Your insults are as stale as your crusade, Warmaster," Sylandri Veilwalker spoke, stepping forward to block Captain Titus from the vox. She had no interest in letting a stoic Astartes argue "Honor" with a snake. To deal with Chaos, one needed to use their own brand of poison.
"Serving Mankind is our primary mandate," she said, her voice a silk-wrapped blade.
I am a 'Sanctioned Human' now, she thought. And my only God is the Lord of the Dawn.
"The marinated brain of a mutated traitor—soaked in the brine of the Warp—cannot possibly grasp the nuances of this era."
"YOU—!"
Abaddon's blood pressure spiked. The wound in his scalp, held together only by the conflicting wills of the Four, throbbed violently.
An alien! An ALIEN calling me a traitor to Humanity!
Inside the Vengeful Spirit, the bridge crew tensed. They had been called traitors for ten millennia. Every time they executed an Imperial governor, they were cursed. But to hear it from a xenos...
"What do you have to say, 'Warmaster'? What logic can your fevered mind produce?" Sylandri continued, her tone clinical. "Mutation? Chaos? Treachery?"
"Before you mock your 'loyal abhuman' cousins for their alien nature, perhaps you should consult a mirror?"
Sylandri maintained the poise of her race—calm, logical, and devastating. She ran a hand over her own smooth, unblemished skin, then extended her fingers toward the camera.
"Our genetic code is stable. Reliable. Elegant. How many of your men can still count to ten on their own fingers? How many still possess two eyes in the correct sockets? Oh, my dear 'Traitor Kin'... perhaps you simply cannot find a single set of functioning limbs among your entire host."
It was a low blow. The Aeldari possessed a triple-helix structure—one more than a human—and their cellular matrix was built of interlocking triangular geometries. The Old Ones had engineered them for stability.
Ramesses, who was busy spamming Abaddon's private "Jester-Channel" with psychic lightning-emojis and countering Tzeentchian counter-spells, let out a delighted cackle.
Lethal.
The Black Legion prided itself on Abaddon's doctrine of "Purity through Will." They loathed the warped, gibbering spawns of the other Legions.
In their downtime within the Eye, the Black Legion lived like warriors. They ate sparse meals prepared by slaves.
The Slaaneshi members would dust their rations with Warp-dust.
The Khorne devotees would ritualistically slaughter a slave to provide "fresh sauce" for their meat.
The Nurgle cells would brew stews of void-rats, roaches, and the "living carpet" of filth that grew on the decks of the ancient ship.
The Tzeentchian cadres would randomly redistribute the food, or steal it through minor temporal shifts.
Disobedient slaves were flayed by Khorne-worshippers and forced to walk until they died of blood loss, their remains then being offered as furniture to the Slaaneshi or as petri dishes for the Nurgle-ites.
Beyond the daily rituals and the mockery of the "Corpse-Emperor" in the canteens, the Legion's primary feature was the "Bed of Spikes."
Every barracks was equipped with sensory-plates. Each morning, every Legionary was scanned for mutation. If the "rot" was found, it was surgically removed. They claimed to be the most "pure" warriors in the Eye—sons of Horus who used the Gods as tools, rather than being used by them.
But a man only obsessively guards what he lacks.
Look at Abaddon's advisors. Look at the "Bringers of Despair." One only had to look at their armor to know what horrors lurked beneath the ceramite.
As Sylandri's insults echoed through the Vengeful Spirit, the Black Legionnaires exchanged uneasy glances. Haarken donned his helm to hide his rows of shark-teeth. Others shifted their weight, hiding limbs that had grown too long or too many under the shifting tides of the Empyrean.
They looked at Abaddon's current form—his bald, bulging skull and the leaking ichor.
"ENOUGH!" Abaddon screamed.
"He's triggered," Sylandri noted with a smirk.
Ramesses laughed out loud.
The Eldar were "content-creators" of the highest tier. The Astartes were just too stiff for this kind of psychological warfare.
As an immortal who had lived through the fall of a galactic empire, Sylandri knew that Abaddon's insults were nothing compared to the threat of racial extinction.
In the past, the Eldar had no choices. Slaanesh was the toilet; Ynnead was the sewer. Cegorach was a strategist who used the God of Death as a tactical threat against the Dark Prince, and the Harlequins were the ones caught in the middle, trying to summon a miracle from the wreckage.
The miracle was the Dawnbreakers.
It had been less than a standard century since the Laughing God had struck his bargain with the Lords of the Dawn.
In human terms, it was a heartbeat. Just long enough for one generation to grow from infancy to childhood.
Yet in that window, the Dawnbreakers had opened "The Park" to the Harlequins and any Craftworlder willing to submit to their protocols. They established standardized KPIs. They signed labor contracts. Every drop of effort was quantified and rewarded.
The "Park" was effectively a restoration of the Eldar Pantheon—a return to the safety of the ancient days. But under the pragmatic rule of the four Dawnstar Lords, faith was now more efficiently managed than it had been ten thousand years ago.
It was a paradigm that no God in the Warp had ever conceived of.
Even the Eldar whose psychic potential had regressed over the millennia found a place. The Imperium's military might was already at "saturation" levels; they didn't need more soldiers. They needed technicians. Scribes. Vox-operators.
Beings that had previously been used as "fuel" for the Warp Gods were now earning wages and securing private living quarters in a sanctified Warp-domain.
Ramesses—the architect of this plan—held a status among the Eldar that bordered on the messianic.
The Harlequins had struggled for ten thousand years. If Abaddon and his ilk had known this level of stability, they might have returned to the Imperium as easily as the Ashen Claws.
Abaddon's "Crusade" was built on the slogan of "Freeing Humanity from the Tyrant." Now, he was watching a God who actually did love humanity, who was actually dismantling the Imperial tyranny, and who was actually liberating Mankind.
Abaddon was the redundant jester.
"Your own hubris and ignorance caused this," Sylandri shouted, drawing out the moment. "We had a chance to stand together, but you were too foolish to see the path. Now, the true Gods stand behind us, while you grovel at the feet of greedy slave-masters, swinging your blade at your own kin!"
"Traitor to Man! I spit on your name!"
CRASH!
BOOM!
Abaddon hammered his fist onto the console.
His mutated left hand gripped the "Hand of Darkness" and the "Eye of Night"—artifacts gifted by Chaos to control the Blackstone Fortresses. They remained cold and inert, just like the Warp-entity "Daughter of Abaddon" within the fortress walls.
The Black Legion was seething. They looked like they wanted to ignite the atmosphere through sheer anger.
To be mocked by an alien...
To be called "Traitors" by a xenos!
If it were just the insults, they could have endured. They were warriors of Chaos; they had discarded the opinions of the "un-enlightened" long ago. They believed they walked the path of ultimate truth.
But look at the screen.
Look at the defenders. Their armor was clean, ornate, reflecting the beauty of advanced industrial civilization.
Their bodies were inscribed with runes that didn't consume the soul or invite daemonic possession.
Every face in the Imperial ranks was full of confidence. They didn't understand the Warp-lore of the Black Legion, but they knew they were part of a unified, winning team. They were not alone.
Clean. Disciplined. Confident.
If both sides used the Warp, why was the Imperium so well-fed and dignified? Why didn't they have to fear their own teammates turning into monsters? Why was their God giving them protection for free?
What were our ten thousand years of suffering for?
Are we just... more hungry?
The Chaos traitors fell into a collective, silent fury.
Ramesses chuckled as he bridged the connections. He decided to bundle these recordings and broadcast them on an infinite loop across the entire Empyrean the moment the war ended.
Within thirteen hours, every maggot in Nurgle's Garden would be watching Abaddon get roasted by an Eldar!
Captain Titus stood by, watching the farce with a twitch of his lips. He had much to say, but he remained the stoic veteran.
From an emotional standpoint, these xenos had resurrected his Primarch—an achievement that had moved the entire XIII Legion to tears. From a practical standpoint, the opening of the Webway was a strategic win that ensured the High Lords could not refuse the Eldar's presence.
Furthermore, these "Sanctioned Xenos" basically vanished into the Dawnstar Sector after the fighting was done. They didn't raid. They didn't play "riddler" with prophecies. They just worked to please the Dawnbreakers. They weren't a headache.
Titus reviewed the operating manual in his mind. He looked at the data-streams surrounding Sylandri—ancient Eldar ciphers he now partially understood.
Astartes brains were optimized for processing. Their gene-seed gave them a visceral connection to the Warp. As Ramesses had noted, every Astartes was a "potential daemon army"—the perfect unit to integrate with Eldar technology.
The Eldar had taken a liking to training the Astartes. To them, teaching a baseline human was a disaster of patience.
They just don't get it.
But the Space Marines... they had the "stats" to handle the tech.
Arthur was pushing this research. The Dark Angels' fleet, anchored by Arthur's presence, was a mobile laboratory for the future of Mankind. No one knew what advancements were being forged in those dark holds.
Titus shook his head. Focus, Captain.
He returned his attention to the Blackstone Fortress.
Beyond facilitating Warp-transits, the fortress had one primary function: Abaddon's favorite trick.
It could draw energy directly from the Empyrean—replacing the need for sacrifice—and vent it as a wide-area strategic weapon.
Once fully primed, the Blackstone Fortress could tear the veil between the material and the Warp, creating a beam of pure annihilation that erased everything in its path.
During the 12th Black Crusade, Abaddon had used two of them to delete the planet Fularis II, and three of them to turn a star into a supernova.
Now, the busy crews were preparing to give the Warmaster a taste of his own medicine as he attempted to flee.
Abaddon, you pig!
In the Warp, Kairos Fateweaver—having been sent by Tzeentch to "assist" and currently trading psychic lightning-bolts with Ramesses—screamed in frustration.
If you can't win the argument, fight! If you can't win the fight, talk back! If you can't talk back, RUN!
Why are you just standing there being useless?!
Do you actually think you've survived this long through your own skill?!
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