The war on Prospero was still raging.
Though the Sixteenth Legion and the Eighth Legion had managed to smash the Thousand Sons in the opening stage through a sudden strike and overwhelming morale, the battle gradually spun out of control as it dragged on. They were even starting to feel the strain.
Neither legion wanted to admit it, but there was one fact they had to face:
Prospero was a nightmare to take.
Especially after the Thousand Sons clawed their way out of the initial chaos and united in defense of their home. At that point, a swift victory was no longer possible.
Despite being at a relative disadvantage, the Thousand Sons, with far fewer men, managed to force an astonishing three-to-one casualty ratio against the two invading legions.
The Sons of Horus had brought only around thirty thousand warriors in total. Against the ten thousand or so Thousand Sons currently concentrated on the front, that was just enough for the defenders to trade every last one of them away.
Every Thousand Son was not only an exceptional Astartes warrior, but also a powerful psyker. The psychic arts they unleashed compensated for many of their disadvantages, to the point that they had nearly managed to push the allied ground forces back in places.
At this point, both sides were frantically throwing elite troops into the same battlefield, one after another. For a time, neither side gave an inch.
The Eighth Legion's Kenkat Companies and the Black Guard, as well as the Sons of Horus' vaunted First Company, had all but become line infantry by now. The only goal was simple: whoever ground the other side down first would win.
If the allied elites won, then the Thousand Sons would have no chance of turning the tide.
If the Thousand Sons won, then with their terrifying psychic arsenal and taboo ritual formations, they could roll the entire front line back in one massive counteroffensive.
And beyond that, in this city-wide street war, the Thousand Sons held an absolute advantage: a god-machine. A Warlord-class Titan.
That thing had originally been little more than a ceremonial relic. No one had expected it to actually start moving.
Of course, even the Thousand Sons were not insane enough to let the Titan fire at full power. Setting aside whether that would provoke the Titan Legions and the Mechanicum, the real issue was whether it would reduce Tizca itself to rubble.
That single Titan was giving the allied forces a massive headache. They had already dispatched troops multiple times to fix its coordinates and call down orbital bombardment on it, but the Thousand Sons' psychic interference was maddening.
In the end, the Sons of Horus had no choice but to request aid from the nearest Titan Legion and ask them to deal with the problem.
The trouble was, that help would take time to arrive.
Until then, both sides could only continue battering each other in a battle of attrition with no end and no meaning.
The fighting lasted from day into dusk. The so-called City of Light had become a hellscape. At least a third of it had been leveled by heavy fire from both sides, and countless precious books and artworks had been reduced to ash.
And even so, neither side had the slightest intention of backing down.
Much of the water along the coast had been boiled away. Huge swaths of the desert encroaching on the City of Light had turned into fields of glass. Endless bones and flesh had paved over crater after crater.
Tens of millions of mortal soldiers were poured into the line without pause. Human lives had been reduced to numbers, then to shifting blocks of color on command displays.
Yet even after all that, the battle had only just begun.
Once the allied god-machines arrived on the field, that would be when the war truly became one of annihilation.
Because neither side could decisively crush the other, the two armies were forced into a brutal push-and-pull across several fronts. They fought from city blocks to ruins, from ruins to crater fields, from crater fields to shattered hills, until impact basins spread across the planet's surface one after another.
By nightfall, with all three forces red-eyed from slaughter, they each made their own most extreme decision.
The Sons of Horus decided to overload one of their ships and crash it down from orbit to smash the Titan.
The Night Lords decided they would no longer distinguish between combatants and noncombatants. From that point onward, they would unleash full-scale terror attacks to shatter the enemy's morale completely.
The Thousand Sons decided to let their god-machine fire without restriction, hurl it forward in a fearless charge against the enemy masses, and prepare forbidden psychic rites to take the entire enemy with them in one final blast.
And just as all three sides were about to launch their final gambits, the Pyramid of Light—the landmark structure of Tizca—suddenly erupted with a surge of psychic radiance.
Then two voices began broadcasting over the entire battlefield in alternation.
"Cease fire! I am Konrad Curze! In the name of the Eighth Legion's lord, I order all forces to stop fighting!"
"Cease fire! I am Magnus! In the name of the Fifteenth Legion's lord, I order all forces to lay down their weapons and stop fighting!"
"This war is over!"
"Stop fighting!"
As that psychic broadcast spread, soldiers who had still been trying to kill one another a moment earlier all stopped almost at once. Weapons stayed raised, but both sides simply stared across the line at one another.
No one knew what had happened, but—
their primarchs had spoken.
At the same time, the void war raging above the planet also came to a screeching halt the moment those two commands were received. Only the enormous belts of drifting wreckage remained as proof that it had ever happened.
Still, only two primarchs had issued the order to stand down.
The Sixteenth Legion was still burning with anger.
Because Warmaster Horus had not yet given a command, the Sons of Horus did not fully disengage. They merely held their fire for the moment.
That uncertainty was answered soon enough.
At the very center of the battlefield, in full view of both armies, four figures appeared.
And the moment they did, both sides lowered their weapons entirely and simply stared.
Because what they were seeing... made no sense.
Curze was dragging the Crimson King forward with both hands.
Behind her came Horus, carrying Bruce in her arms.
The sheer absurdity of the scene left many of them completely stunned.
How was that even possible?
How could a little girl drag a seven-meter giant along the ground?
And Magnus looked like she had beaten him so thoroughly he could barely move.
As for the other sight, that was even stranger: a little rabbit-eared girl carrying a full-grown Astartes in a princess carry. Wasn't he heavy? How was that happening?
The whole thing was so bizarre that even soldiers who had been half mad with battle fever found their minds going blank.
And that brief lull in thought finally let the frenzy drain out of them.
"F-Father!"
The moment they saw their gene-father, the Thousand Sons rushed toward Magnus. They had fought until now without any idea what was going on, and they needed answers.
Why had the Warmaster's forces launched an assault on Prospero?
Why had it taken so long for Magnus to appear—and why in that condition?
There were too many questions pressing down on them, and the weight of them was exhausting.
"My sons..."
Magnus looked at them, his voice thick with bitterness.
"We lost this war..."
"Surrender unconditionally."
Though Magnus could see that his sons had done everything they could, that only made it hurt more. Some of them had thrown themselves into battle without even donning power armor. Some were fighting with limbs missing, still trying to defend their home to the bitter end.
But defeat was defeat.
The Thousand Sons' hearts sank with equal bitterness.
A tiny handful, unable to accept reality, tried to continue the fight anyway—but they were swiftly put down and killed. Magnus watched that happen, and it hurt him even more. But there was nothing he could do about it.
In the end, he could only turn to Curze and make a request.
"Curze... my brother... could you allow me to cast one psychic technique?"
"I don't want to see any more casualties."
"Please."
There was real pleading in Magnus' voice now.
Only at this moment did he truly understand how cutting Curze's earlier words—Are you satisfied now?—had been.
And instead of focusing on that, he had gotten hung up on being called an ogryn.
If they had boarded his ship and talked in the first place, maybe none of this would have happened.
"I don't decide that." Curze said sourly, glancing sideways at Horus, who was clearly enjoying herself far too much.
Damn it. Horus was holding Bruce already, and on top of that her hand was resting on his backside without the slightest shame.
"Cast it," Horus said seriously. "But I'll be watching."
"If you try anything at all, Curze and I will kill you immediately."
"I understand... Thank you, my brothers."
With the support of his sons, Magnus shakily forced himself upright with the help of his staff. Then he raised a beam of light into the sky, and his voice thundered across all of Prospero.
"Sons of Prospero! My sons! The war is over!"
"All forces, accept the surrender! There is no reason to keep fighting!"
"I, Magnus, willingly submit myself to any punishment decreed by Warmaster Horus and by Curze, lord of the Eighth Legion!"
"Anyone who continues to resist from this point onward is a traitor to the Fifteenth Legion!"
Once he finished, something seemed to go out of him. His back, which had only just straightened, slumped again, and he nearly collapsed forward onto the ground.
At the last second, Curze reached out and caught him before he could smash face-first into the earth.
Magnus looked up at her in surprise and disbelief.
Curze merely gave him one flat reply.
"Whether you're a traitor or not isn't for me to decide. Only Father has the right to judge you."
"At least for now, you are still the lord of the Fifteenth Legion."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
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Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 150)
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TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
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I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter222)
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Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
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Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 215
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My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
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Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 130
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 105
I Can Copy Unique Skills 100
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Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 81
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Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
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Checking In in Demon Slayer 65
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 80
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 66
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 58
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 65
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 63
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 59
Why did they assign me to Uma 55
MYGO Beauties 56
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 45
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 49
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 26
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