Confronted by the Lion's thunderous rebuke, Omegon's pale, featureless face remained a mask of indifference. He was not the Omegon of this linear reality, and the Alpha Legionnaires currently infiltrating the ranks of the Dark Angels and Space Wolves were mere opportunistic shadows.
In the meat-grinder of this chaotic battlefield, the XXth Legion found it child's play to slip into the fray unnoticed. Originally, Omegon had intended to put a bolt through the backs of the Lion, the Wolf, and Fulgrim alike. However, the Great Horned Rat had issued a sudden mandate: he and the Alpha Legion were to feign loyalty. Forced into premature action, he stepped into the light. Gazing upon these two brothers he had not looked upon in ten millennia, he saw they still held a flicker of fraternal kinship for him—perhaps, he mused, this was the "ultimate betrayal" the Great Horned Rat desired to witness.
"Deal with them first," Omegon said tonelessly, stepping to the Lion's side. Pledged to the Great Horned Rat, the God of Formless Distortion, and bolstered by his own awakened Warp essence, his presence was so subtly altered that not even the Lion or the Wolf could discern his true nature.
"I shall hear your explanations later," El'Jonson declared, his voice cold as Caliban's winters.
The serpentine Daemon Prince Fulgrim eyed Omegon with suspicion. He sensed a foulness afoot, a hitch in the grand design, but he was too intoxicated by his own sensation-seeking to dwell on it. He was far more eager to see what exquisite sport the Lion would provide.
"Come then, entertain me, my brother!" Fulgrim roared with a manic laugh. Across his four arms, he brandished the Blade of Laer, the Fireblade forged by Ferrus Manus, and a power whip fashioned from a spinal column. In his grip, the three weapons became a localized hurricane of death.
The Lion immediately felt the crushing weight of the assault. For a fleeting second, he sensed in this corrupted Fulgrim a terrifying synthesis of strength, speed, and technique that surpassed even Leman Russ.
The Lion Sword moved with peerless perfection in El'Jonson's hands, yet even so, his power armor began to crack and splinter. Within a few hundred nanoseconds, the two had exchanged dozens of blows. The Lion's transhuman speed was simply no match for the Warp-fueled celerity of a Daemon Prince.
Only Omegon's intervention, thrusting the Pale Spear with surgical precision, allowed the Lion to narrowly evade several lethal strokes.
"Mmm... things are becoming interesting." Fulgrim's lips, coated in heavy mauve pigment, curled into a sneer. Even in that brief exchange, he realized this Alpharius was not the Alpharius of the now. This creature possessed the divine potency of a Ruinous Power; otherwise, even Rogal Dorn wouldn't last half a minute against his current form, let alone the "Hydra."
However, Fulgrim had no intention of unmasking him. To do so would rob him of the exquisite pleasure of seeing the Lion's stoic face contort in shock when the inevitable knife found his ribs.
"Enough play. I believe I shall take that xenos goddess for myself. Don't be shy—For the Emperor! Ahahaha!" Fulgrim let out a lewd cackle, his massive serpentine coil rippling with mercurial grace as he slid between the two Primarchs.
"Stop him!" Omegon barked, drawing a plasma sniper rifle and firing a containment-field shot at Fulgrim. He turned to the bewildered Lion. "We cannot allow the Daemons to reclaim the xenos deity. My Legion acts on the Father's orders to intercept these fiends!"
"What?" The Lion's instinct was to distrust the words, but the Alpha Legion's reputation for obfuscation was legendary. He had no time to verify the claim. Seeing his "brother" lunge forward with his spear after slowing Fulgrim with plasma fire, the Lion suppressed his doubt and charged.
Omegon's spear lashed out. Fulgrim spun, parrying with the Blade of Laer, and leaned his face, haggard and horrifying from aeons of excess, close to Omegon's ear.
"You seem to enjoy this game, brother," he hissed.
"The Great Horned Rat walks among us," Omegon whispered back, a sibilant secret. Then, with a surge of strength, he shoved off, putting distance between himself and the Phoenix.
"I love your little plays, but that goddess is mine. My tail is already twitching in anticipation," Fulgrim said, flicking a forked tongue as if tasting the goddess's scent in the air. His purple tail writhed with a life of its own.
"Hah!" The Lion descended with a leaping strike, but Fulgrim parried him effortlessly with twin blades.
"Don't be tedious, brother. In your current wretched state, you are no match for me. Your sons are being slaughtered, and you are failing."
Fulgrim gestured grandly toward the battlefield where the Space Wolves and Dark Angels were desperately reforming their lines against "brothers" who had suddenly fallen to corruption. To the Lion, this was surely a daemonic glamour designed to besmirch the memory of his once-perfect, purple-clad brother.
"I will rend you limb from limb, you daemonic filth that dares wear my brother's face!" the Lion roared, charging once more. He knew he was outmatched, but the Lion had never known the meaning of retreat.
In the blink of an eye, after cutting down two Fiends of Slaanesh, Omegon vanished. He reappeared amidst the Aeldari, having shifted his form into that of a common Incubus, standing near Isha and Yvraine.
Isha, sensitive to the shifting tides of the Warp, immediately recognized the stench of the Great Horned Rat.
"The Great Horned Rat is merciful; He shall save you," Omegon spoke into Isha's mind via telepathy, his voice cold. "If you find yourselves at the end of all paths, pray to Him. He shall offer sanctuary."
"How is falling into His gnawing maw any different from Slaanesh?" Isha demanded.
"Oh... the Great Horned Rat is benevolent. He loves the mortal realms. He will protect you as one protects a seed in a deep burrow," Omegon said dismissively, as if the fate of the universe were beneath him. "Or you may refuse and struggle. He enjoys a change in the script, too."
Omegon severed the link and, acting the part of a mere Incubus, raised a jagged klaive to butcher the oncoming Slaaneshi daemons and Emperor's Children.
Just as the stalemate between the Wolf King, the Avatar of Khaine, and the daemonic forces reached a fever pitch, a shroud of blood-red clouds, dense enough to choke the skies of Dulan, manifested overhead.
Then came the piercing, soul-shattering roar.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!"
The sheer scale of slaughter on Dulan had drawn the gaze of Khorne. Or perhaps, seeing the stalemate, the Blood God could no longer restrain his fury.
A tide of Khornate daemons erupted into reality. In the northern reaches of the continent, a host of Astartes in crimson power armor charged forth with guttural bellows. Leading them, clutching twin axes and roaring with a frenzy that shook the firmament, was a Greater Daemon of Khorne that looked hauntingly familiar to both the Lion and the Wolf.
"Oh... how droll," Fulgrim sighed, looking toward the mindless, raging silhouette of the Daemon Primarch Angron and his World Eaters. He shook his head in disgust. "I have absolutely no interest in fighting mad dogs."
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