Under Axion's cold, calculated orchestration, the daemons fell with startling speed. As additional drop pods streaked through the atmosphere, swarms of Black Templars made planetfall.
The masters of Imperial swordsmanship did not even reach for their bolters. Seeing the world infested with the Neverborn, they unsheathed their power swords and plunged headlong into the carnage.
Unlike the Dark Angels or the Ultramarines, the Black Templars were the true paragons of close-quarters slaughter. Their flickering blades harvested daemonic lives with reckless abandon, and the very empyric taint of Khorne's malice only served to drive these fanatics into a deeper holy fervor. Crying out for the Emperor and the glory of Dorn, they reduced even the towering Bloodcrushers to heaps of severed limbs and decapitated heads in a matter of heartbeats.
In the center of the battlefield, the Executor Heavy Tank continued its devastating rotation, leaving the remaining daemons in a state of sensory-shattered confusion.
Suddenly, a grunt of profound dissatisfaction resonated from the Warp rift. It carried the weight of an infinite, malevolent will, causing the very souls of those present to tremble.
Guilliman, having regained his footing, leaped atop the mangled remains of the Daemon Engine that had previously snared him. He raised the Emperor's Sword high.
"Drive back the Chaos! Banish the darkness! For the Emperor!"
The blade erupted in a searing solar fire. In that instant, it seemed to every warrior present that the Iron Halo behind Guilliman's head radiated an identical, blinding flame. His silhouette flickered with the shadow of the Master of Mankind, shattering the dread imposed by the dark voice.
Amidst the fray, a single Black Templar froze for a heartbeat. His consciousness felt as though it had been cast back ten millennia; the world around him shifted. The radiance of lost ages flowed through his mind like a river of gold, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
This warrior leaped forward, his power sword singing as he solo-slayed a Bloodthirster, leading the charge as the tip of the crusade's spear. A Bloodletter's hellblade bit deep into his sword-arm during the chaotic melee, but the limb did not sever. The enraged battle-brother caught the daemon's blade with his bare hand, snapped the warp-metal, and tore the horned head from its shoulders with his off-hand. Through the jagged rent in his arm-plate, a distinct, silver metallic sheen gleamed.
Engraved clearly upon his pauldrons was the name: Thien.
As the warriors fought with holy zeal, every Khornate daemon suddenly vanished from the battlefield, flickering out of existence as if they had never been.
Axion monitored the theater via remote link through the Executor's sensors.
Every Daemon Engine had been reduced to scrap. Every tank and armored vehicle bearing the sigil of the Iron Warriors was a blackened ruin. Scattered pockets of resistance remained, as the Ultramarines and Dark Angels hunted down the fleeing traitors.
Elsewhere, the Black Templars had formed a protective circle. Marshal Gheidon looked upon Thien and his shattered vambrace with a gaze that flickered between astonishment and profound joy. Around them, the other Templars watched Thien with a mix of religious fervor and envy.
...
Axion locked the Executor's weapon systems.
Left to its own autonomous logic, the machine would have commenced a total saturation bombardment of the sector. Now that the daemons had vanished, there were no longer any optimal targets. While the main cannon could easily erase the panicked cultists and traitor Astartes, the massive splash damage would likely atomize the pursuing loyalists as well.
That was an outcome Axion found undesirable.
The Lion glanced at Guilliman to ensure he was unharmed, then scanned the battlefield where the Unforgiven and the XIII worked in seamless coordination. Finally, his gaze settled on the Executor Heavy Tank.
Guilliman, noticing his brother's stare, understood the Lion's innate reverence for martial power. However, he found himself at a loss for how to explain a machine that could spend an afternoon casually flattening high-tier daemons like a common steamroller.
As the fires of battle dimmed, Axion took the opportunity to sweep the Lion with the Executor's multi-spectral scanners. He shook his head in disappointment. While the biological readings differed slightly from Guilliman's, they still fell short of the "Standard" in his ancient archives.
It was an expected result. No baseline human, however modified, could reach the scale of a Primarch.
Soon, a strangely contoured craft descended from the heavens. It was significantly larger than two Thunderhawks merged together, possessing sleek, sophisticated armor plates and a cavernous hull. It resembled a coffin that had been flattened and fitted with wings.
This was a standard Iron Man landing craft. Its massive interior could deploy thousands of Automated Sentry-Troopers or dozens of Armored Wardens in a single pass.
As the ramp hissed open, three Eight-Legs skittered out of the cargo hold.
"Disassembly and Recovery Protocols initiated."
The Executor Heavy Tank reversed toward the craft's aft bay. The three Eight-Legs scrambled onto the tank's chassis. Crimson cutting beams erupted from their mechanical pincers, swiftly severing the main hull from the four massive drive units. Within minutes, the titanic war machine had been stripped into five independent modules and hauled into the bay.
The sudden arrival of these unidentified units sent a ripple of tension through the remaining loyalist forces. The machines bore neither the Imperial Aquila nor the cogs of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Their unique geometry and architecture were entirely alien to any known Imperial faction.
Though Guilliman had established a co-operational protocol with Axion, he still knew precious little about these "iron" units. Axion, for his part, had no intention of providing a lecture on Cybernetica history.
Nonetheless, it was obvious to all that these strange constructs and the terrestrial monster were of the same origin. Guilliman had already seen records of these entities from the Ultramarines' combat logs.
Watching the heavy carrier and the bizarre mechanical units, Guilliman felt a familiar surge of unease. Every time this ancient Iron Man left his presence, he returned with increasingly terrifying machines of unknown provenance. He still vividly remembered the chilling words Axion had spoken, relayed through Calanthus.
While Guilliman felt dread, the Lion's focus was elsewhere. Though curious about the war engine and the automata, seeing Guilliman again brought the intelligence he had gathered from the Fallen to the forefront of his mind.
"Guilliman," the Lion began, his voice heavy with the weight of centuries. "My time on Caliban taught me that we must maintain absolute martial strength to combat the shadows. And yet, you seem to have abandoned our path! You split the Legions? It is preposterous! Our Legions were the Emperor's sharpest blades, and you have shattered them into a thousand fragments."
Guilliman pressed a hand to his brow. It was the one question he had dreaded answering most.
"Lion, I authored the Codex Astartes and divided the Legions into Chapters to grant the Imperium's military flexibility and to ensure that a tragedy like the Horus Heresy could never again happen on such a scale. But now..."
He turned a weary gaze toward the nearby Black Templars.
"The Codex's intent has been distorted. Its role as a guide and reference has been lost; it has become a shackle I find impossible to break."
Hearing Guilliman admit his error, the Lion's anger cooled. He could hear the deep exhaustion and conflict in his brother's voice.
"My brother. Regardless of the cost, you have held our Father's great domain together. We still have the opportunity to correct the rot within the Imperium."
Though they had rarely been close in the past, even the Lion could not deny Guilliman's tireless sacrifice. The survival of the Imperium was owed entirely to the loyalty and selfless devotion of the Avenging Son.