No screaming, no wailing.
On this depopulated planet, only an endless sea of blood had replaced what should have been a place of laments.
The crimson tide of Red Slaughter couldn't stop the demonic army — the iron-rust smell hanging in the air only further inflamed the savage instincts of the Daemon Prince of Khorne.
At this moment — the Great Daemon of Khorne, Skarbrand, was hoisting the corpse of a Blood Angel high above him, letting fresh blood pour down from the warrior's shattered skull and spread across his entire body.
Within that thick cascade of blood, he sensed information about his target.
This warrior carried the blood of Sanguinius. The one he had just killed was a Chapter Master.
"Interesting!"
"Sever his head and offer it to the Blood God — that is how I earn my redemption!"
"I shall once again become the mightiest warrior beneath Khorne's throne."
At this point, Skarbrand had taken Angron's place.
Precisely because he was already despised by Khorne, many tasks had been delegated to him for that very reason.
[Khorne: Slay Sanguinius!]
This was the only directive Skarbrand carried — to use the blood axe in his hand to utterly destroy the demigod who called himself an Angel!
Endless blessings were descending upon him.
His frame had grown immense — he could tear a Dreadnought apart with his bare hands.
In his boundless fury, he became the vanguard of the entire Chaos host.
Those Daemon Princes who preferred pleasure, farming their schemes and machinations, couldn't begin to match his pace.
"I am the greatest under the Blood God's banner!"
"Army, heed my command — charge with me!"
The enraged beast surged forward heedlessly, and the Chaos cultists and Chaos Warbands behind him had no choice but to keep pace with the daemon, continuing to hack and slash in the Blood God's name.
Skarbrand had already broken through the forward defensive lines — the Cadian shock troops and Death Korps of Krieg standing in his path were no match whatsoever for a daemon of his calibre.
Countless mortals were slaughtered. Blood had soaked into the very earth.
The entire defensive line seemed on the verge of being torn apart by Khorne's Daemon Prince.
The battlefield reeked of rust and gore from every direction.
Enormous numbers of corpses lay strewn at every angle, an entire layer of soil completely blanketed by the dead.
Caleb, at least, was now a Primaris-grade Space Marine.
Seeing such things wouldn't make him nauseous — but it still sat uneasily in his heart.
Especially when —
Caleb even spotted some of the Imperium's abhuman casualties among the fallen.
These unique abhumans, based on Caleb's understanding of genetics, were never meant for warfare.
Take, for instance, the catgirls with no fighting ability whatsoever — or the spider-girls with their six eyes.
These were all products — or perhaps creations — of the Dark Age of Technology.
They held no full citizenship within the Imperium, yet they had still given their lives in its service.
What could one say? Perhaps even the God-Emperor of Mankind himself had long since lost any clear definition of what a human being truly was.
After so many rounds of genetic modification, the Emperor had lost his grip on that definition.
"This won't do — at the rate this offensive is moving, Sanguinius will be hacked apart before she even wakes up!"
"I wonder where I'll get dumped after this failure."
[Failure Penalty: Rewarding the Host with approximately two hours of bathing in the Warp.]
[The warm Warp-sea will nourish your skin, granting you transformation — a complete and thorough awakening of non-ability abilities.]
"Get lost!"
Caleb slammed the table, cursing in furious exasperation.
This shameless way of speaking bore a striking resemblance to a certain lobster he knew — the words sounded wonderful, but in practice... anyone with sense knew exactly what that meant.
Two hours in the Warp —
Would there even be anything left of him after that?
Come back after two hours in there — turning into a Chaos Spawn would be considered getting off lucky.
Caleb paced back and forth across the room, staring at the mountain of game pieces before him, paralysed by indecision.
Too many options. No idea which to pick. And once deployed, they'd consume deployment points — making it harder to respond to crises as they arose.
"Wait, what's this?"
Caleb suddenly noticed some daemon game pieces that had been sitting in the corner. These had been continuously generated from the ongoing battle.
By now, all these daemons had been touched by a faint golden light.
"Almost forgot — I can automatically claim any daemon!"
"As long as a daemon dies, there's a 70% chance it gets pulled directly to my side!"
"Oh ho ho, that means I have an inexhaustible supply of pieces to play with?"
"Isn't that just infinite cannon fodder? How could I possibly lose?"
With that realization, Caleb grabbed an entire crate of daemons and dumped them straight in.
As he did, he also applied his Distortion ability to them.
"You are human. You are humans!"
"You will fight for Baal until the very last moment — you will protect the future God-Emperor, Sanguinius!"
With those words, a great mass of golden-glowing daemons suddenly appeared on the battlefield.
The moment they materialized, all four Chaos Gods were dumbstruck.
Because they could feel it — their supposedly immortal daemon armies were shrinking.
The ordinary daemons dying at the front line weren't returning to the Warp. The Gods felt no echo of their return, as if they had been completely and permanently annihilated.
[Tzeentch: Something is wrong. This wasn't part of the plan. Why haven't my Changelings come back? How are they actually dying?]
[Khorne: Wait... this feeling is somewhat familiar. When Angron was taken out by the Minotaurs, I felt something like this!]
[Damn it, this can't be — how is this possible!]
[If Angron was the God-Emperor's trump card, then how could the Thrice-Cursed One have left a contingency for MY daemons?!]
All four Chaos Gods could feel their domains contracting.
Something was deeply wrong. This kind of thing only happened during the War in Heaven.
Upon realizing this, Nurgle clutched his pockets tighter, Tzeentch began devising more elaborate schemes, and Slaanesh grew wary.
Even the eternally war-hungry Khorne halted his advance.
The memory of the War in Heaven — that great conflict which had shaken the very Warp to its foundations — stirred across the immaterium.
This was only supposed to happen during the War in Heaven. This was a special power that only manifested on the Star Gods' battlefield.
[Khorne: No deliberation. Only mindless slaughter can solve this. That is the only answer!]
[If they won't come back, then just keep killing!]
Khorne too chose to abandon all thought and go all-in.
As long as he could cut down Sanguinius, he would unquestionably gain another SSR piece in realspace!
The army that had momentarily stalled surged forward once more. Bloodlust-filled veins continued to press inward, expanding their slaughter.
By now, more than half of Baal had fallen. The surviving Blood Angels were barely holding on, sheltering behind their remaining fortifications.
"Hold the Shrine!"
"Do not shame the honour of Sanguinius!"
"We must protect our Mother until the very last moment — no retreat until that final instant!"
"In the name of Sanguinius's blood!"
Every Blood Angel roared the cry. Even the wounded who hadn't been treated were dragged to the front.
The crack of boltguns rang out in an unbroken chorus, the heavy fire of the heavy bolters hammering down relentlessly, suppressing the daemon hordes.
Strangely enough, in the past these daemon armies had always been accompanied by Daemon Engines for siege warfare.
Yet for some reason, after that bizarre howl tore through the Warp, those terrifying Daemon Engines seemed to have all but vanished.
The number of Khorne's Daemon Engines was now pitifully scarce — only those like the Soul Grinder, whose core was a daemon in its own right, still remained.
"For the Master of Mankind! For the Emperor!" — And then, a great mass of golden-skinned daemons came flooding out from another gate!
They roared the Emperor's name, swords in hand, cutting into their own kind.
Both sides were Bloodletters — yet these golden ones fought with a ferocity and boldness that far outstripped the others.
[Khorne: DAMN IT, even my little grunts have been stolen!]
[How low will they stoop?! Even basic infantry?!]
The Chaos Gods watched it unfold — their own golden daemons going blow for blow with their original daemons — and every one of them was stunned speechless.
This wasn't how Warhammer was supposed to be played. This wasn't how you fought wars in the Warp!
You were supposed to use your own pieces against mine. By what right could the other side use my pieces against myself?!
[Tzeentch: This isn't right. This cannot continue. I will not allow another existence more cunning and treacherous than myself. This is impossible!]
At the heart of the fortress stood a towering statue of Sanguinius, still radiating the blessing-power of the Primarch.
Though this subtle blessing amounted to little against Tzeentch's sorcery.
Alpha Legion operatives embedded within the Blood Angels had made their move — working in concert with Thousand Sons Sorcerers, they had erected a summoning array nearby.
This was how Tzeentch could directly influence realspace through his spells.
And what hope did this faint little blessing have of withstanding Tzeentch's sorcery?
Lightning crackled across the sky — the jagged arcs of broken thunder hunted through the battlefield like living things, killing Sanguinius's sons one after another.
From the Chaos invasion, Baal's veil of reality had been torn open.
This battlefield was now no different from fighting within the Eye of Terror.
If Sanguinius fell here, this place would in all likelihood become the next Eye of Terror.
As the battle-situation lurched and deteriorated under the direct intervention of the four Chaos Gods —
Caleb could only keep grinding down Chaos daemon grunts while watching to see what the situation was like on Sanguinius's end!
To wake Sanguinius up, Caleb had even already deployed the Emperor in another domain!
But Caleb hadn't chosen to deploy the Emperor on the main battlefield.
He had deployed him somewhere far more important.
"Father — why does my true form look like this?"
"I can feel it. If I were complete, I would be far more terrifying, but — no, no. This is too ugly. Too hideous."
"I simply cannot accept that this is my true form. This is absolutely revolting. I refuse."
"Father, don't try to console me. I need a moment."
"I cannot be talked into accepting that I am now a human being."
A colossal eye rotated slowly.
The golden giant stood directly before Sanguinius's eyeball.
He wanted to keep doing what he always had — convincing Sanguinius that she was a human Angel.
But now that Sanguinius had seen her true self, it was genuinely difficult to accept that she was a human.
Because it was utterly abstract. There was nothing remotely human about it.
[Caleb: Let me handle this.]
Truth be told, Caleb had been watching the Emperor fumble this for quite some time.
This man with the emotional intelligence of a rock simply could not talk Sanguinius around in her current state.
You show Sanguinius her true nature in the Warp, and then try to tell her that she's still a human being.
This child was no longer the infant she once was — how could she possibly be fooled so easily?
[Deployment Points Remaining: 5,000 / 15,000]
[Emperor deployment successfully cancelled.]
[Deployment points recovered.]
[Caleb: Sanguinius — you are human. You are simply human!]
[You must always believe in yourself as a human being. And besides, "human" is just a concept. As long as you believe yourself to be human, you are human!]
[Any existence can call itself human. Any intelligent species can call itself human!]
[As long as you hold an open and accepting heart, you could even point to the strange creatures of the Warp and call them human!]
In the sky, a great golden hand seemed to point its finger toward the Chaos domains.
Right now, the four Chaos Gods were converging on Sanguinius from four different directions.
Sanguinius could feel her Warp-nature in precarious danger. Her small patch of domain within the immaterium was utterly insignificant.
[Sanguinius: Those four... do they count?]
[They don't even have a fixed form. How could they possibly?]
[Caleb: Anything is possible. Don't worry about Warp business — all you need to do is believe!]
[Besides, a physical vessel in realspace — you can shape it into whatever you like.]
[Maybe one day when you've defeated those four Chaos Gods, how about I reshape them into human forms to keep you company?]
[Skill Activated: Mind Warp!]
[Sanguinius's mind has been successfully distorted. Sanguinius had no defences against this whatsoever and has completely accepted this notion.]
To make the impression even more vivid, Caleb had even given Sanguinius concept sketches of the four Chaos Gods.
In reality, these images were fan-art of the Four Gods — all of them charming, adorable, and soft-looking girls.
In terms of physical form, they could even be classified as a subspecies within humanity.
The enormous eye stared intently at all four concept sketches, and the countless pairs of eyes lining the surrounding rings all imprinted the images deeply.
In that moment, Sanguinius looked toward the domain of the Chaos Gods, then looked back down at the images in hand.
In an instant, Sanguinius's confusion evaporated — replaced by a brand-new objective.
[Sanguinius: Father, I WANT these!]
[If those four wretches could actually end up looking like this... that would be perfect. I must find a way to make them acknowledge themselves as human beings. That is my life's mission from this day forth!]
Sanguinius committed the human forms of the four Chaos Gods to memory, burning them indelibly into her mind.
And with that, she resolved to return to her human body and resume her role as Primarch — fighting for the sake of her children!
Since Father had already demonstrated such capability, why not pursue this very goal?
Besides, the human forms of the Four Chaos Gods looked terribly sweet. Almost good enough to eat.
If she could one day confine all four of them within bodies like these — Sanguinius wouldn't mind being carved to pieces one more time.
Consciousness gradually blurred, and Sanguinius began to stir from within her long sleep.
Yet almost immediately, she heard a strange voice — then another — and another.
It sounded like Dante speaking.
"Mother, you must wake up — this is the seventh morning kiss I've given you!"
"My Sanguinary Guard has been entirely wiped out. Only I remain now, the last one standing. I swear I will guard you until the very last moment!"
"Until my blood runs dry!"
Soaked head-to-toe in blood, Dante prepared to make his final farewell to the Primarch.
He desperately wanted to keep following his Primarch into battle, to continue receiving her morning kisses.
But things had reached this point now. As the de facto commander of what remained of the Blood Angels, he had to lead from the front — one last charge.
The Chapter Masters too had already filled in as squad leaders, patching the gaps at the frontline.
The entire fortress's core defensive ring had shrunk to this single tower — the Babel Spire, a thousand metres high.
All of Baal now resembled a Daemon World — and not an ordinary one. It was a world where all four flavours of daemons co-existed.
No Daemon World had ever seen such a convergence as Baal now hosted.
On a single Daemon World — four different Greater Daemons all at once.
"Dante — were you just secretly kissing Mama?"
"Tsk tsk tsk, you naughty child."
"...Hm?"
Dante, who had been bracing himself to march out and die, spun around.
There, the Primarch who had been lying in an unbroken coma was standing perfectly upright on her own two feet — her eyes dancing with amusement and gentle teasing.
Like a kind mother who had just caught her mischievous child in the act.
"Oh — uh —"
Faced with that warm and gentle gaze, Dante was instantly at a complete loss.
He had assumed that today, after giving Sanguinius one final kiss goodbye, he would go to the front to seek an honourable death in atonement — but against all expectation, Mother was alive again!
Could fairy tales really be true? Had his Mother just been playing Sleeping Beauty this whole time?