At the summit of the Himalayas.
The Emperor and Qin Mo stood at the edge of a cliff, with Malcador at their side.
Their gazes passed through the Himalayas, across the barren, cracked earth, and over the chasms left behind by dried-up seas. Their eyes settled upon a plain.
And the battle raging across it.
Since their trip to Saturn and the time they had spent together afterward, the Emperor and Qin Mo had established a clear partnership. The mobile fortress was parked beside the Himalayas, like another mountain peak.
The battle unfolding at the end of the two Lords of Thunder's gazes was the first step they had taken together toward the unification of Terra.
Their enemy was an advance force from a religious collective called the Moransen Alliance. This army had come because its masters coveted the Eagle Nations.
The force fighting them was not a massive army, but a handful of infantry squads and fifty Adeptus Custodes, fewer than a thousand people in total.
The infantry squads equipped with advanced weaponry and the fifty Adeptus Custodes led by Valdor lived separately in the Himalayas and the mobile fortress, but they wore identical emblems.
A Double-headed Eagle, with lightning and flames spreading outward from either side of it.
This battle itself was not the first step of the Unification Wars. The results it would achieve—showing the Eagle Nations that they would receive protection, and thus winning their allegiance—those were the true first step of the Unification Wars.
"The Moransen Alliance." In Malcador's Psychic Power-enhanced sight, nearly ten thousand enemy combatants were laid out before him. "I heard that you have dealt with them before, Lord of Flame."
"Yes." Qin Mo recalled it for a moment. "Back when the wanderers protected me rather than the other way around, we