The ash-choked skies of Gethsemane IV hung like a funeral shroud, the air thick with the stench of burning promethium and the metallic tang of spilled blood. Thaddeus Valen atop the skeletal remains of a collapsed habi-spire, his boots crunching on broken plasteel, his gaze piercing the smog. Below, the battlefield sprawled in ruins: trenches choked with corpses, fires devouring the remnants of Imperial armor, and the distant howls of Night Lords hunting stragglers. The Crimson Veil fluttered behind him, its once-proud adamantium threads now tattered and charred, as if the cape itself bore the scars of a thousand battles.
Cassian approached, his bolter slung over one shoulder, his armor streaked with soot and gore. "Sergeant. The colonel's men are regrouping at the western bunker. They've lost another two hundred."
Thaddeus didn't turn. His green eyes, glowing faintly with the precursor embers of the Red Thirst, remained fixed on the horizon. "And the reactor?"
"Still under traitor control. Kraal's sorcery has twisted the access tunnels-our scouts can't get close."
A low, resonant thrum vibrated through the air, distant but omnipresent, like the growl of a waking leviathan. Thaddeus's twin hearts quickened. He knew that sound.
"Change of plans," he said abruptly, his voice gravelly with exhaustion and fury.
Colonel Voss stumbled up the rubble-strewn slope, his uniform torn, his face a mask of grime and dried blood. "Change of plans? What plans? We're being slaughtered out here! The Night Lords are-"
Thaddeus silenced him with a raised gauntlet, pointing upward. "There."
Voss followed his gaze. The ash clouds parted, ripped asunder by the silhouette of a monstrous vessel descending through the atmosphere-a Night Lords battle barge, its hull studded with jagged spires and draped in chains, its prow carved into a leering skull-faced gargoyle. Plasma engines burned like baleful eyes as it loomed over the planet, casting a shadow that swallowed the battlefield whole.
Voss fell to his knees, his plasma pistol slipping from his grasp. "Why...? WHY?!" he screamed, voice cracking. "This was supposed to be a backwater-a nothing world! why send that?!"
Vorn clanked up behind them, his chainsword-arm still dripping with traitor blood. He stared at the barge, his face impassive. "Entertainment," he rumbled. "To the VIII Legion, this is no war. It's a game. We're the prey. The longer we struggle, the sweeter our screams."
Thaddeus's jaw tightened. He had seen this before-entire systems reduced to charnel houses for the amusement of the Legiones Astartes' traitor kin. But this time, something colder coiled in his gut. The barge's presence meant one thing: Captain Malchior Vire was tired of watching and decided to finish things faster. The Carrion Prince himself.
He turned to Voss. "If the reactor core is destroyed, what happens?"
Voss stared blankly for a moment, then swallowed. "It-it won't explode. The core's a cold-fusion array. If it's breached, the reaction... stops. The planet doesn't die. It just... sleeps. The atmosphere will freeze. The air will thin. Anyone left will suffocate. Or starve. Or burn what's left of the promethium until there's nothing but ice and darkness."
Thaddeus absorbed this, his mind racing. No grand explosion. No quick death. Just a slow, silent extinction. He glanced at Cassian and Vorn. Three Blood Angels. Three battered Blood Angels. And three thousand Imperial Army troopers-half of them wounded, all of them broken. Against a Night Lords battle barge, a legion of traitor Astartes, and a sorcerer who could bend reality itself.
Madness.
But madness was the currency of this age.
"We need to destroy that barge or damage it somehow," Thaddeus said, his voice low.
Voss laughed-a hollow, broken sound. "With what? Our lasguns? Your sword?"
Thaddeus ignored him, turning to Cassian. "The Thunderhawk's still has power?"
Cassian nodded. "Barely. But the engines are slag. We're grounded."
"I don't need it to fly."
Thaddeus nodded, and his voice was a rasp of command. "Cassian, first get to the Thunderhawk. Take the staff and use the remaining energy of the engines. Rig it; make it work somehow." He was talking about the artifact lying on the battered dropship. The Staff of Zarathul, wrenched from the cold grasp of a Necron Lord, its alien surface pulsing with a sickly, emerald light.
Cassian hesitated only a heartbeat, then nodded. He sprinted through the chaos, bolter slung across his back, his battered armor catching the flickers of burning promethium. The staff called to him, its energies whispering promises and threats in a tongue older than the stars.
Behind him, the world was ending. Vorn, the hulking marine, bellowed orders to the ragged Imperial Army troopers, his chainsword roaring as he carved a path through shrieking Night Lords. Colonel Voss, face streaked with blood and ash, rallied his men with the desperation of the condemned. Lasguns spat red fury into the gloom, bayonets flashing as the defenders held the line against the oncoming tide of ceramite and hate.
Thaddeus fought at the front, his blade a crimson arc in the smoke, his every movement driven by the iron discipline of the IX Legion. The Red Thirst gnawed at his soul, but since fighting that daemon, he could force it down, channeling it into cold, precise violence. Around him, the world was a cacophony of screams, bolter fire, and the wet, meaty impacts of war.
Then the air grew colder, fouler. Shadows twisted, and a figure emerged from the swirling ash-a sorcerer in midnight armor, his eyes burning with warp-light, his gauntleted hands wreathed in crackling, unnatural flame. The traitor's laughter echoed across the ruins, a sound that curdled the blood and made the bravest men falter.
Thaddeus sighed-an old, weary sound, the exhalation of a soul battered by too many horrors. "Not now," he muttered, exhaustion dragging at his mind.
Vorn spat a curse, revving his chainsword. "Damn these warp-spawned bastards! Come and die, then!"
The battle became a maelstrom. The Imperial Army broke and reformed, men dying by the score as the Night Lords surged forward, their war cries a symphony of terror. Thaddeus met the sorcerer's gaze, feeling the weight of eons pressing down on him, the madness of the age made flesh, but he felt it weak, not as strong as the SwarmLord or daemon of Valthrex Prime or the Necron Lord Zarathul...
Meanwhile, Cassian reached the shattered Thunderhawk, its hull blackened and pitted, its engines dead. Inside, the staff lay on a makeshift altar of broken plasteel and shattered cogitators, pulsing with an unholy rhythm. Cassian's hands trembled as he seized it, the alien metal burning cold against his gauntlets.
He worked quickly, feverishly, splicing power lines, jury-rigging the Thunderhawk's dying reactor to the staff's crystalline core. The plan was madness-use the last dregs of Imperial technology to unleash the Necron artifact's wrath, to fire it like a cannon at the Night Lords' battle barge. The staff pulsed brighter, its energies building, but it refused to release its power.
Cassian snarled, sweat mingling with blood on his brow. "Come on, you xenos abomination... work!" He forced more power through the conduits. Suddenly, agony ripped through him-lightning arced up his arm, green fire searing flesh and ceramite alike. He screamed, the pain blinding, his vision swimming with emerald afterimages.
Still, the staff would not fire. "FUCK! FUCK! IT FUCKING HURTS! F-king staff!" he howled, his voice ragged, the pain beyond endurance.
Teeth gritted, Cassian slammed his fist onto the activation rune. The staff shrieked, a sound that was not a sound, and unleashed its fury. A spear of green lightning tore from the Thunderhawk's ruined hull, lancing through the ashen sky, striking the Night Lords' battle barge with apocalyptic force. The Thunderhawk's system overloaded, the cockpit erupting in a storm of emerald fire. Cassian's body convulsed, green veins bulging and bursting across his face as he screamed, "AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
His left arm disintegrated in a flash of light, flesh and bone atomized by the unleashed energies. Darkness claimed him. The Staff of Zarathul clattered to the deck beside his unconscious form, its glow guttering, the Thunderhawk's interior a charnel house of melted metal and scorched ceramite.
And above, the sky burned with unnatural light as the battle barge reeled beneath the wrath of a weapon not meant for mortal hands.
---
On the command deck of the Night Lords battle barge, Captain Malchior Vire-the Carrion Prince-stood wreathed in the gloom of flickering hololithic displays and the stench of ozone. The bridge was alive with panic: servitors shrieked error codes, cogitators spat sparks, and the hull itself groaned as the systems struggled to recover from the unnatural emerald lightning that had just torn through the void.
"Damage reports!" Malchior barked, his voice slicing through the chaos like a chain blade. Officers scrambled, their faces pale in the sickly light.
"Plasma relays overloaded on decks six through nine. Void shields flickering but holding. Auspex arrays... scrambled, Captain. Something's still interfering with the sensors," rasped the chief tech-adept, his bionic eye twitching erratically.
Malchior's gauntleted fist clenched on the rail. "What was that? That emerald lightning..." He stared at the main screen, where static and afterimages of the unnatural blast still danced. "It can't be. If those fools have awoken and this planet is one of their tombs... His thoughts recoiled from the idea-Necrons, the undying xenos whose weapons could unmake the soul itself. They had come to this wretched, insignificant Getshemane IV for sport, for terror, not to cross blades with the immortal legions of the ancient enemy.
The vox crackled. Sibilant kraal's voice slithered through the static, thick with the taste of sorcery and spite. "Captain, we have Blood Angels here, some lost veterans. They killed Dread Talovar-the Contemptor is ash." There was a pause, a hiss of static and malice. "There is one with a cape, who seems to be the leader, but I only see two of them now... he might be dead."
Malchior's eyes narrowed. "Sibilant Kraal," he said, his tone both accusation and warning. "We were struck by that emerald beam. Can you position its origin? Our systems are a mess; it will take time to recover."
"I have seen it, but cannot say for certain, Malchior. I think we should retreat. This 'fun' was your fucking idea," Kraal spat, his voice trembling with more than just anger.
Malchior's lips curled in a sneer. "And you fucking agreed. Fine. We retreat. Gather the best-let the others destroy the reactor. These 2 loyalists will die in the dark."
"No," Kraal snapped back, "we have to go after them. Malchior, we need strength. That weapon-if it is what I fear-"
"You!" Malchior's voice thundered through the vox, silencing the bridge. Then Kraal snereed, "You want to go and fight the Salamanders, late and with fewer men? Oh, what will THEY think, hmmm?" His voice dripped with sarcasm and venom, invoking the dread gods who watched their every move.
---
Thaddeus watched the emerald beam lance from the ruined Thunderhawk and slam into the Night Lords' battle barge, its impact painting the ashen sky with sickly green fire. His face remained inexpressive, the storm of violence reflected only in the hard set of his jaw. Cassian did it, he thought. Against all odds, the plan had worked.
Colonel Voss, standing beside him, stared wide-eyed at the spectacle. "Emperor's blood... what was that?" he breathed, awe and terror mingling in his voice.
Vorn, ever the pragmatist, didn't pause to marvel. He kept his bolter pistol roaring, cutting down stunned Night Lords who reeled in confusion from the sudden cataclysm. Even the sorcerer, Sibliant Kraal, was momentarily distracted-his warp-twisted grip on an Imperial soldier faltering as the world shook.
But Thaddeus felt a chill crawl up his spine, a sense of wrongness lingering in the air, because Cassian didn't came back. "Vorn!" he barked over the din. "Check on Cassian. Now!" Without waiting for a reply, he voxed Voss. "Colonel, that plasma pistol-put it to use. Aim for the sorcerer."
Voss's hand trembled as he drew the battered weapon, but his eyes blazed with sudden resolve. "Yes, Sergeant!" he shouted, heart pounding with a mix of fear and exhilaration.
Thaddeus surged forward, golden hair streaming behind him, his tattered cape snapping in the wind. His eyes, sharp as emerald blades, scanned the chaos for his quarry. Night Lords staggered in his path, still reeling from the aftermath of the strike; he cut them down with brutal efficiency, his blade flashing, each kill a step closer to his true target.
A searing bolt of plasma arced through the smoke-Voss's shot, aimed true. It struck the sorcerer full in the side, eliciting a snarl of pain and rage. "Fucking-!" Kraal spat, his concentration broken.
Thaddeus closed the distance in a heartbeat. The sorcerer turned, eyes blazing with warp-fire, his lips curling in a sneer. "You persistent ant," he hissed, summoning a corona of unnatural flame in his outstretched hand. The battle erupted in a maelstrom of violence.
Thaddeus drove in, his blade a crimson blur, heedless of the warp-lightning that crackled around him. Kraal unleashed a torrent of sorcerous power: arcs of warp lightning lashed out, melting plasteel and incinerating hapless guardsmen; tongues of warp-fire roared from his mouth, setting men and earth ablaze. Yet Thaddeus pressed on, every blow driven by the fury and desperation of the IX Legion.
Voss and a knot of Imperial soldiers lent their fire, las-bolts and plasma shots hammering at the sorcerer's flickering forcefield. Kraal's laughter turned to a snarl as he lashed out, hurling a guardsman aside with a contemptuous gesture, draining the life from another with a clawed, warp-wreathed hand. Still, the mortals pressed him, their courage a thin but unbreakable line.
Thaddeus fought like a berserker, blood streaming from a dozen shallow wounds, his armor scorched and battered. He ducked a blast of warp-flame, rolled beneath a crackling arc of lightning, and slammed his blade into Kraal's side. The sorcerer howled, his form flickering with raw, uncontrolled power. Around them, the ground cracked and warped, reality itself buckling under the straing of Kraal's rage.
But Thaddeus was relentless. Even as pain lanced through his body, he pressed the attack, his sword singing, his eyes wild with the Red Thirst. Kraal staggered, his blood and ichor pouring from his wounds, his spells faltering beneath the onslaught. The guardsmen's fire found its mark, burning through his defenses, forcing him back.
At last, battered and bleeding, Kraal spat a curse and raised a claw to the sky. "Fall back!" he shrieked to the Night Lords. "We are not finished here!" With a final, spiteful glare at Thaddeus, he vanished in a storm of warp-light, leaning only scorched earth and the stench of sorcery behind.
Thaddeus stood amidst the ruins, chest heaving, wounds burning but not mortal. The sorcerer was gone, but the battle was far from over. He glanced back at Voss and the surviving guardsmen, their faces smeared with ash and blood, yet alive-still fighting.
---
The last of the Night Lords fell beneath Thaddeus's blade, and the monstruos battle barge, battered and smoking from the emerald lightning strike began its slow, reclutant retreat into the ashen sky. Around the shattered battlefield, the surviving Imperial Guardsmen erupted into screams-some raw with disbelief ,others trembling with tears of relief and joy. They had done the impossible. THey had made the traitors retreat.
Voices rose in a ragged chorus, chanting Thaddeus's name, a beacon of hope amid the ruin. Ye, beneath the swelling tide of celebration, a few faces remained shadowed, eyes haunted by a silent dread. Something was wrong.
Colonel Voss approached Thaddeus cautiously, his own expression torn between awe and concern. He opened his mouth to speak, but the harsh crackle of the vox interrupted him.
"Brother... Cassian is... in a bad shape... a really fucking bad shape..." Vorn's voice came through, heavy with exhaustion and pain.
Voss's face tightened. "Send some men to secure the reactor and evacuate the civilians," he ordered, his voice steady despite the storm inside. "The rest of you, with me. We follow the Sergeant."
They moved through the wreckage, the air thick with smoke and sorrow. The Thunderhawk lay broken and scarred where the green lightning had struck-a twisted silhouette of scorched metal and shattered ceramite, its once-proud form now a tomb. Near the wreckage, Vorn knelt beside Cassian, his breath ragged, his armor smeared with blood and soot.
Thaddeus approached slowly, kneeling beside them. The Imperial Guards and Voss fell silent, the weight of the moment pressing down like the ash-filled sky.
Cassian's eyes fluttered open, dim but burning with a fierce light. "Thaddeus..." His voice was a rasp, a whisper of brotherhood amid the chaos.
"Brother," Cassian spat blood tinged with sickly green, "I... I did it, brother... I shot the beam..."
Thaddeus's jaw clenched tight. "Yes, brother... you did it..."
"Voss... any... any mechanic or apothecary here?" Thaddeus asked, hope flickering.
Voss closed his eyes, shaking his head slowly. "No... none that can help..."
Cassian's breath hitched, his gaze steady despite the pain. "It's... it's okay, brothers... I did my duty..." His voice faded, the last words of a warrior who had given everything.
Cassian was dead.
Vorn's gaze lingered on the shattered remains of his chainsword-arm, the weapon Cassian had improvised in their desperate fight. "Of course you did, brother," he murmured, voice thick with grief.
Thaddeus asked Voss. "Colonel..."
"Yes, Sargeant?"
"Any ships here? Any way off this cursed rock?"
"We have and Imperial ship, a Dauntless Light Cruiser," Voss replied, voice heavy. "Less impressive than a battle barge but it can carry us." Voss wanted to ask more questions but he knew that it wasn't the right moment...
"Good," Thaddeus said, voice cold but resolute. "Organize everyone. We're leaving Gethsemane IV."
"Yes, Sergeant."
Vorn carefully lifted Cassian's broken form, cradling him as one would a fallen brother. "We won't leave his gene-seed behind."
Thaddeus took the staff, and as the survivors prepared to withdraw, the weight of victory was crushed beneath the unbearable cost. The cheers had died, replaced by the hollow silence of loss. Gethsemane IV was lost-not just to the enemy, but to the shadows that claimed their own.
In the fading light, the battered warriors moved on, carrying with them the memory of a brother who had burned bright and falled hard in the dying emebers of a hopeless war.