Saint Celestine
The presence that had drawn Saint Celestine west was not holy. She had known it before her wings carried her through the smoke above the western front, before the pylon fields emerged beneath her amid burning fortifications, fallen Titans, and armies large enough to swallow cities.
Seeing the warrior at the centre of it all only confirmed what she had already felt.
His armour was green, scarred by wars no Imperial artificer had fashioned it to survive. A sealed helm concealed his face. In one hand he held a hilt from which a blade of crimson energy burned, its light staining the dead around him red.
The weapon's power reached Celestine even from across the battlefield. It pressed against her senses with such force that the golden fire of the Ardent Blade stirred in answer. The energy was immense, yet perfectly restrained, old, unfamiliar, and held in the warrior's grasp as easily as a common sword.
She could not name its source. She knew only that she had never felt another weapon like it.
Across from him stood Urkanthos.
The Daemon Prince towered above the ruins, horned and winged, his immense axe trailing fire across Cadia's soil. Blood moved around him in defiance of gravity. The mark of Khorne burned upon his chest, and the air distorted with every breath he drew.
Two armies watched from either side, neither willing to cross the ground between them.
For one impossible moment, the largest battlefield upon Cadia had fallen still.
Celestine descended through the ash in a column of golden light. Her armour remained unmarred despite the battles that had brought her there. The Ardent Blade burned in her hand, while the white feathers of her wings shone against the poisoned sky.
The green-armoured warrior did not look up.
Urkanthos did. His eyes narrowed when he saw her, but only for a moment. Whatever hatred he held for the Living Saint was eclipsed by the silent figure before him.
Two shapes rose from the Imperial line to meet her. Eleanor reached her first, her sword still burning. Genevieve followed with her bolter raised, its golden casing blackened by smoke. Both Geminae bore the marks of battle upon their armour, but their wings remained strong.
They took their familiar places beside Celestine.
Relief softened Eleanor's face. "My lady. We feared the eastern line had taken you from us."
"Not yet," Celestine said.
She wanted to embrace them and thank the Emperor for returning them both to her, but the western front allowed no time for either. Her gaze remained fixed upon the armies below.
"Tell me what happened."
Genevieve answered first. "Creed had them retreating. We reclaimed three trench lines and nearly two kilometres of ground."
"Had them retreating?" Celestine asked.
Eleanor nodded toward Urkanthos. "Then he tore open a rift above the centre and landed in the third trench. We lost the trench in the impact. His Titans broke ours soon after, and once the southern pylon ridge was breached, the whole advance began to fold."
"How many are left?"
Genevieve hesitated before answering. "We began with forty thousand. Perhaps twenty thousand are still standing."
Celestine surveyed the battlefield.
Cadians still filled the trenches and ruins, though entire formations had been reduced to scattered clusters. Leman Russ tanks burned beside the carcasses of corrupted war engines. Space Marines in the colours of the Imperial Fists, Black Templars, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Space Wolves held positions that lesser warriors would have abandoned hours before.
The Adepta Sororitas guarded the approaches to the pylons. Sisters of Silence stood among them like wounds cut into the Warp. Loyalist Titans traded fire with corrupted engines through the smoke.
Everywhere Celestine looked, the dead outnumbered the living.
"We thought the western line was lost," Genevieve said.
Celestine looked again at the warrior in green. "But it wasn't."
"Because of him," Eleanor said.
"What do you know?"
"Almost nothing. He crossed the Imperial line alone—no heraldry, no declaration, and no name." Eleanor's eyes remained on the stranger. "He simply entered the killing zone and began moving west."
"His weapons appear and vanish in his hands," Genevieve said. "Nothing has managed to hurt him. Not the daemons. Not the Traitor Astartes."
"He destroyed two Titans by himself," Eleanor added. "Creed saw the opening and ordered the entire line to advance with him."
Celestine studied the unknown warrior.
She had felt his presence before seeing him. It had reached across Kasr Kraf and entered the sanctum where she had stood, a fury so vast that for one breath she had mistaken its weight for the Emperor's own.
Now she understood the difference.
The Emperor's wrath was judgment. It carried purpose greater than anger, even when that purpose remained hidden from mortal understanding.
The fury within this warrior was simpler. It was hatred refined until nothing else remained. It did not spread across the battlefield. It did not burn without direction. Every fragment of it was fixed upon the creatures of the Warp.
Most of all, it was fixed upon Urkanthos.
"Has he turned those weapons upon any of ours?" Celestine asked.
"Not once," Genevieve replied.
"Has he spoken?"
Eleanor shook her head. "Not a word."
"And Creed?"
The corner of Eleanor's mouth lifted. "He did not waste time trying to figure out who or what the stranger was. He instead ordered a counterattack and for everyone else to follow that stranger's lead."
Celestine almost smiled. That sounded like Ursarkar Creed. Taking advantage of the situation was his strength.
Below, the crimson blade in the stranger's hand vanished.
Urkanthos laughed, the sound rolling across the killing zone like distant thunder.
"The corpse-saint has come to watch you die," the Daemon Prince called to the stranger. His burning gaze moved briefly to Celestine before returning to his opponent. "And now you put away your blade. Have you lost your nerve already?"
The warrior answered by drawing a gun.
Celestine did not see where it came from. Space folded around his hands, and a double-barrelled weapon appeared within them.
Then he moved. The ground where he had stood broke apart.
A green blur crossed the distance to Urkanthos. The weapon fired twice before the sound of the first shot reached Celestine.
Both shells struck the Daemon Prince's chest.
Armour, bone, and burning flesh burst from his back. Urkanthos staggered as a crater opened through the centre of his body.
The warrior was already gone.
Urkanthos swung his axe through empty air.
The blade struck the earth and released a wave of crimson force. Ruins collapsed. Bodies rose from the ground. A disabled Leman Russ rolled onto its side beneath the impact.
The green-armoured warrior appeared behind him. The shotgun vanished. A heavy cannon replaced it.
A shot entered the back of Urkanthos's skull and erupted through his left eye.
The Daemon Prince roared, turned, and swept one claw through the space the warrior occupied.
He struck nothing. The stranger had moved again.
To ordinary eyes, he seemed to occupy half a dozen places at once. Green afterimages surrounded Urkanthos. Gunfire came from the front, the rear, above, and both flanks. Explosive rounds opened the Daemon Prince's armour. Plasma burned through muscle. Rockets struck his wings and tore one of them nearly from his back.
Every wound healed.
The crater in Urkanthos's chest filled with coils of new flesh. Bone grew across the opening. Brass armour flowed over it like molten metal. His ruined eye swelled back into place, and the torn wing pulled itself together before the severed pieces reached the ground.
The warrior fired again. Urkanthos's jaw disappeared. It returned before he finished turning.
Celestine had followed bolt rounds in flight and crossed blades with creatures older than the Imperium. Even she could barely follow the stranger.
Urkanthos could not follow him at all.
The Daemon Prince attacked with enough strength to break fortress walls. His axe carved trenches through the ground. His claws passed through hab-blocks and left burning wounds in the stone. He beat his wings and released storms of blood and brass that stripped armour from nearby vehicles.
Every attack missed.
The warrior slipped beneath the axe before it fell. He crossed behind Urkanthos before a claw completed its sweep. When the Daemon Prince filled the killing zone with fire, the stranger emerged from the flames already firing.
Urkanthos could have destroyed companies with the blows he wasted. He could not touch one silent man.
A ballista of pale metal appeared across the warrior's arms. It released a bolt of argent energy that struck Urkanthos beneath the ribs and divided his upper body nearly in half.
The Daemon Prince screamed. His flesh knitted itself together around the wound. His scream became laughter as the wound closed.
"Do you understand now?" Urkanthos roared as the wound sealed. "Khorne will not let me die. Tear me apart until Cadia burns, and I will rise whole every time!"
The stranger stood motionless for the first time since the duel began.
Urkanthos charged.
The warrior waited until the axe began to fall. Then he vanished from its path.
A rocket struck the Daemon Prince's knee from behind. The joint burst, and Urkanthos collapsed onto one leg. A second rocket entered his spine. A third detonated inside his throat.
He fell forward.
By the time his hands struck the earth, his knee had reformed. His spine straightened. New flesh closed around his throat.
The stranger allowed him to rise.
Celestine felt unease settle beneath her breastplate.
The warrior could not kill Urkanthos. That much seemed clear. No matter how much flesh his weapons destroyed, the Daemon Prince restored it. Ammunition that might have broken an armoured regiment accomplished nothing that lasted longer than a heartbeat.
Yet the stranger did not appear frustrated. He did not rush. He did not repeat his attacks carelessly.
Each time Urkanthos healed, the warrior chose a different weapon. Each shot found a more sensitive place. Joints. Eyes. Throat. The exposed tissue beneath the wings. He sometimes paused after wounding the Daemon Prince, waiting until the ruined flesh had completely reformed before destroying it again.
The weapons were not killing Urkanthos. They were still causing him pain though. And the stranger had noticed.
Urkanthos lunged again. The green warrior moved aside, almost lazily, and fired the double-barrelled weapon into the Daemon Prince's face.
The head vanished above the lower jaw. The body remained standing while a new skull forced itself into existence.
The stranger waited for the eyes to return. Only then did he fire again.
Eleanor's brow tightened as she watched. "The wounds mean nothing. Why keep firing?"
"They mean something to Urkanthos," Celestine said.
Genevieve watched the Daemon Prince scream through another regeneration. "You think the warrior knows?"
Another shot tore both legs from beneath Urkanthos. The stranger stood over the fallen daemon and waited for them to grow back.
A cold understanding settled over Celestine. "Yes," she said. "I think that is why he keeps letting him heal."
The stillness between the surrounding armies finally broke.
The Hounds of Abaddon moved first.
Their master's pain became an insult they could no longer witness without answering. Black-armoured warriors surged into the killing zone, chainaxes raised, while Bloodletters and Juggernauts rushed beside them.
Cadian guns opened fire.
Thousands of las-bolts crossed the battlefield in disciplined volleys. Heavy bolters followed, tearing gaps through the daemonic charge. Leman Russ tanks advanced from the trenches and fired over the infantry. Basilisk shells descended among the Chaos formations, lifting bodies and broken armour into the sky.
The western front erupted back into war.
Celestine raised the Ardent Blade. "Enough watching. Eleanor, take the left. Genevieve, stay with me."
She folded her wings and descended. Eleanor and Genevieve followed.
The three of them struck the Hounds of Abaddon before the traitors reached the Cadian line.
Celestine drove the Ardent Blade through the first warrior's breastplate. Golden fire filled the traitor from within. She tore the sword free, turned beneath a descending chainaxe, and removed its wielder's head with the returning stroke.
Eleanor landed beside her and met two Black Legionaries at once. Her blade caught the first chainaxe and guided it into the second warrior's shoulder. Genevieve descended behind them, her bolter firing in measured bursts. Each round found an eye lens, a throat seal, or a damaged joint.
The Adepta Sororitas advanced beneath them.
Hymns rose over the battle as flamers poured fire into the daemonic ranks. Sisters of Silence moved through the flames without a word, their null presence weakening every Warp-born creature near them. Bloodletters flickered. Juggernauts stumbled. Cadian soldiers followed and finished them with volleys at close range.
Across the northern ruins, the Space Wolves crashed into the Hounds of Abaddon. The Black Templars struck beside them, answering the servants of Khorne with rage of their own. Blood Angels descended upon the enemy artillery. Dark Angels held the exposed flank with walls of bolter fire, while the surviving Imperial Fists reclaimed the approaches to the first pylon.
Titans resumed their war above them all.
A loyalist Reaver fired through the smoke and broke the shields of a corrupted engine. Two Imperial Warhounds raced beneath its guns, circled the larger Titan, and tore into its weakened armour. The traitor engine toppled into the Chaos host, crushing hundreds beneath it.
Yet at the centre of the storm, the duel continued untouched.
Soldiers and daemons died within metres of Urkanthos and the stranger, but none entered the ground between them. Some instinct deeper than reason warned every living thing away.
Celestine fought through the Hounds while stealing glimpses of the battle within the battle.
The stranger became a green streak beneath Urkanthos's axe. A chaingun roared in his hands, its barrels spinning so quickly that the air before them glowed. Thousands of rounds crossed the short distance between the warriors and stripped flesh from the Daemon Prince's bones.
Urkanthos healed.
The stranger burned him with plasma.
Urkanthos healed.
Rockets shattered his ribs. Argent bolts opened his spine. The double-barrelled gun erased his face again and again.
Each wound closed.
Each wound hurt.
Urkanthos's laughter disappeared.
His attacks became wilder. He no longer fought like a lord of war. He hacked at afterimages, tore apart ruins, and roared threats at an opponent who offered no answer. Every miss fed his fury. Every regeneration forced him to experience the same agony anew.
Celestine killed another Hound and turned in time to see the Daemon Prince spread both wings. The mark of Khorne blazed across his chest.
Blood rose from the battlefield.
It came from the dead first, streaming from bodies in thin red lines. Then it came from the wounded. Cadians and cultists alike cried out as droplets were pulled from open wounds and drawn toward Urkanthos.
The blood formed a sphere around him. The stranger disappeared inside it.
Urkanthos closed both claws. The sphere collapsed.
The resulting blast cleared the killing zone. Bodies vanished. Tanks slid backward. Celestine planted the Ardent Blade in the earth and spread her wings around Eleanor and Genevieve as the wave passed over them.
When the crimson light faded, Urkanthos stood at the centre of a new crater.
The green-armoured warrior stood before him. Unharmed. Not a plate had been broken. Not a drop of blood marked his armour.
For the first time, Celestine saw uncertainty enter the Daemon Prince's face.
The stranger raised another gun.
Celestine's unease sharpened into frustration.
How many times could he repeat the same failure? How much ammunition would he spend proving that Urkanthos could heal? The Daemon Prince was suffering, but suffering was not victory. While they fought, Cadians died. The pylons remained under attack. Cadia did not possess the luxury of an endless duel.
For all the stranger's impossible strength and speed, even he appeared unable to overcome immortality.
Then the warrior lowered the gun. The battlefield seemed to contract around that single motion. Space folded, and the weapon vanished.
Urkanthos drew himself upright. His body was whole again, but his breathing had changed. Each breath came raggedly. Pain remained in his eyes even after every wound had closed.
The stranger opened his right hand. A hilt entered his grasp.
Celestine had felt the weapon's immense power from the moment she arrived. What she had failed to understand was its purpose. She had mistaken the shape of that purpose for the fury of the warrior holding it.
Now, with his full purpose fixed upon Urkanthos, the weapon awakened.
A blade of crimson energy erupted from the hilt. The Crucible's light passed across the battlefield.
The weapon was not a relic of the Imperium. It carried no blessing she recognized, no psychic resonance of a saint, and none of the shifting corruption of the Warp. Its power was older, harsher, forged from energies that resembled the domain of daemons yet had been mastered, chained, and turned against them.
It did not promise banishment. It promised an ending.
Urkanthos felt it too. The Daemon Prince shivered.
It was a small movement, almost lost beneath the thunder of the battle, but Celestine saw it. So did the stranger.
Urkanthos stepped backward.
"Khorne!" Urkanthos bellowed, raising his axe. "Your chosen calls for…"
The stranger moved faster than before. There was no blur this time.
There was only one moment in which he stood ten metres away and another in which he stood behind the Daemon Prince.
The Crucible completed its arc.
Urkanthos's axe struck the ground. His arm remained attached to it.
For a heartbeat, the Daemon Prince stared at the empty space beneath his shoulder. Fire poured from the wound. Flesh twisted around the severed bone.
Celestine waited for the arm to reform.
Nothing happened.
The flesh strained. Warp energy gathered. The mark of Khorne burned brighter.
The wound remained open. Urkanthos screamed. The cry travelled across the entire western front.
It rose above artillery, aircraft, and the war horns of Titans. It shook ash from the pylons and made the air vibrate inside Celestine's lungs. Vox systems screamed with it. Windows shattered in ruins kilometres away.
The battle faltered.
Bloodletters stopped with their blades raised. Hounds of Abaddon turned from the enemies before them. Even the corrupted Titans seemed to hesitate as the agony of their master rolled through the Warp.
The servants of Chaos had heard Urkanthos roar in triumph and rage.
They had never heard him scream in fear. The Imperial defenders heard it too.
They understood before any order reached them. The immortal could be wounded. The immortal could be afraid.
The stranger did not pause to admire what he had done.
The game was over.
Urkanthos swung his remaining claw. The Crucible passed through the forearm at the wrist. A second stroke removed it at the elbow. The third burned through the shoulder.
Each severed piece struck the ground and dissolved into black ash. None returned.
Urkanthos beat his wings and tried to escape into the air.
The stranger leapt after him.
The Crucible cut through the left wing at its base. The green-armoured warrior twisted in the air and removed the second before Urkanthos began to fall.
The Daemon Prince struck the earth on his knees.
One red arc passed through his right leg below the knee. Another removed the rest at the hip.
The stranger crossed behind him and repeated the cuts upon the other leg.
Urkanthos collapsed.
The being who had broken Titans, shattered the western line, and condemned thousands to death had been reduced to a horned head and a torso upon the ground.
He no longer roared. He no longer cursed. He stared up at the silent warrior and begged in a language older than humanity.
The stranger showed him no mercy.
The Crucible descended.
It cut through Urkanthos's torso below the chest. The severed flesh burned before it touched the soil. Another stroke passed higher. Then another.
The Daemon Prince diminished piece by piece.
Each cut removed more than flesh. Celestine felt his presence shrinking within the Warp, not withdrawing from Cadia but ceasing wherever the red blade passed.
At last, only Urkanthos's head remained. His eyes moved toward the sky. Perhaps he searched for Khorne. Perhaps he expected the Blood God to reach through the veil and reclaim what belonged to him.
Nothing came.
The stranger placed one boot against the daemon's horned skull.
The Crucible entered between the horns.
Urkanthos vanished.
There was no explosion of Warp energy. No spirit tore free from the ruined body. No presence fled screaming into the Immaterium to wait for rebirth.
Celestine had destroyed daemons before. She knew the psychic recoil of banishment. She knew the sensation of a Warp-born soul being driven from reality.
This was different. There was nowhere for Urkanthos to return from. The Crucible had not banished him. It had erased him.
For one breath, every daemon upon the western front felt the empty place where their lord had been.
Then Chaos broke.
Bloodletters fled first. Some threw themselves into unstable Warp rifts. Others abandoned their weapons and ran west, only to be cut down by Cadian fire. Juggernauts trampled cultists in their need to escape. Winged daemons climbed toward the smoke in disordered swarms.
The Hounds of Abaddon followed.
Their formation collapsed as warriors turned from the Imperial line. Black Legionaries fired while withdrawing, but discipline could not survive the knowledge that their commander had been destroyed beyond resurrection.
The corrupted Titans began to retreat. One turned its back upon the loyalist Reaver. The Imperial engine fired every weapon it possessed. The traitor Titan disappeared inside a white sun.
"They are breaking!" Genevieve shouted.
Celestine raised the Ardent Blade toward the fleeing host. "Then give them no time to recover. Forward!"
Her voice joined the orders already spreading from Creed's command tower.
The western front surged after the fleeing enemy.
Cadian armour rolled over the abandoned Chaos trenches. Infantry followed with bayonets fixed, violet eyes bright beneath bloodied helmets. The Space Wolves and Black Templars hunted the retreating Hounds through the ruins. Blood Angels descended upon the broken columns from above. Dark Angels and Imperial Fists secured the reclaimed pylon ridge.
The Adepta Sororitas advanced beneath banners blackened by fire. Their hymns rose louder than before.
Eleanor and Genevieve flew beside Celestine as the three of them drove the remaining daemons from the lower fields. The Sisters of Silence sealed the nearest rifts, trapping Warp-born creatures in realspace long enough for Imperial guns to destroy them.
The army that had appeared endless became a mob fighting for the same narrow paths of escape.
Artillery found those paths. Titans closed them. The Cadians filled them with fire.
By the time the surviving Chaos forces reached the western ruins, they were no longer an army.
They were fugitives.
The western pylon fields belonged to Cadia once more.
The Imperial defenders did not celebrate immediately. Too many had died. Too many wounded still called from beneath the ruins. Titans burned upon the horizon, and the Eye of Terror remained open above them.
But the servants of Chaos were retreating. Urkanthos was gone. And Cadia still stood.
Celestine turned back toward the killing zone.
The unknown warrior had not joined the pursuit. He stood where Urkanthos had ceased to exist.
The Crucible still burned in his hand. Red light moved across armour that remained unbroken despite everything the Daemon Prince had unleashed against it. Daemonic ash circled his boots in the hot wind.
All around him lay the evidence of his passage through the western front: thousands of dead daemons, broken Traitor Astartes, and the cooling remains of war engines and Titans.
He showed neither triumph nor exhaustion. He simply stood among them without a word.
Menacing was too small a word for him.
Celestine had faced greater daemons and creatures whose names had survived from the oldest wars of mankind. She had died beneath their weapons and returned to face them again. She carried the Emperor's light within her, and fear had never been permitted to decide where she stood.
Yet as she looked upon the green-armoured warrior, terror moved through her, not because he had threatened her, but because she had witnessed what happened when he decided something should no longer exist.
Beneath that terror stirred something equally powerful: curiosity and admiration.
He had crossed an army to defend people he did not know. He had drawn every daemon toward himself and given the Cadians the opening they needed to survive. He had ignored Imperials who fought beside him, neither seeking their praise nor accepting their command.
He possessed power that felt born from damnation, yet every expression of it had been turned against the damned.
Celestine needed to know what he was. More importantly, she needed to know why he had come to Cadia.
"My lady, wait," Eleanor said as Celestine spread her wings.
Genevieve held her bolter ready. "If you mean to approach him, let us come with you."
Celestine looked at the silent warrior below.
"No. If he meant us harm, he would have done it already." Celestine glanced between them. "Stay close, but give me room."
She descended.
Eleanor and Genevieve remained above, near enough to intervene and wise enough to understand that intervention might mean nothing.
Celestine landed ten paces from the stranger. Her boots touched ground covered in black ash.
Up close, the fury within him was almost unbearable. It pressed against her senses without reaching for them. It was not directed at her, yet standing near him felt like approaching the open door of a furnace large enough to consume worlds.
Only at that distance did Celestine understand what had troubled her since entering the western sky.
She reached toward him with the part of herself that could feel the Warp.
Nothing answered.
It was not the dead silence of a blank. The warrior was anything but empty. His power was there, vast, coiled, and held behind a will harder than iron, but it cast no reflection in the Immaterium.
Celestine pressed her senses further. For the briefest instant, she touched the edge of that power. The contact forced her back.
The energy within him did not belong to the Warp, but neither had it been born in realspace. It came from somewhere beyond both, from a place untouched by the laws that governed her reality.
His armour bore no mark of any forge she knew. His weapons obeyed principles she could not recognize. Even his soul felt as though it had crossed a boundary no Imperial vessel could ever reach.
He was not merely a stranger to Cadia. He was not of her world or any world within the reality she knew.
The Crucible vanished from his hand. Space folded around the hilt, and the red light went out. The warrior turned toward her. The dark lenses of his helm revealed nothing.
Celestine kept the Ardent Blade lowered. Golden fire still moved along its edge, but she made no threat with it. She forced her wings to remain open and her breathing steady.
The battlefield seemed to quiet around them.
He waited.
Celestine met the gaze hidden behind his visor.
"Mighty warrior," she said, "are you friend or foe?" Celestine questioned.
…
Doom Slayer Kill Count: 7,429