Song of the Burned One

The instant Angron stepped into the engine room, he froze. For the first time, his mind—long since utterly consumed by endless fury—experienced an emotion called "confusion." The mortals he had expected, weakly crying and scattering in panic, were nowhere to be seen. Nor was there any futile defense line made of trenches and barricades.

What he saw were ten thousand tiny human soldiers, like ants. They stood silently in the vast hall, each holding an iron box that glimmered with dangerously charged energy. On their faces was an expression he could not comprehend at all.

It was neither fear nor anger. It was—ecstasy. The pure ecstasy of the most devout believers finally beholding the god they worshipped.

Then he saw the human in the very center of the crowd, dressed in a black uniform and missing one arm. That tiny ant, so inexplicably familiar to him, gave him a brilliant, defiant smile.

Then the tiny ant opened his mouth and issued a clear, ringing command, as though drawing back the curtain on a grand performance.

"—For the Emperor!! Charge!!!"

"Roar!!!"

At that command, ten thousand small figures moved. They did not retreat, nor did they fire a single shot. Clutching their deadly "firewood," they charged forward with meaningless roars that nevertheless brimmed with the purest, most fanatical longing for destruction and glory. They rushed toward the nine invincible embodiments of ruin, toward the chainsaw axes and hellish whips that could shred their flesh in an instant, toward their final glory—death.

"What?" For the first time, a word filled with confusion and incomprehension was forced from Angron's throat, twisted by the Butcher's Nails.

Then his confusion was utterly drowned beneath the light and heat of endless explosions.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom----------!!!

The soldiers of the 99th Regiment were like moths hurling themselves into a bonfire, using their small, fragile bodies to form an unstoppable tide of death.

A former Hive City convict was struck across the waist by a Bloodletter's whip, blazing with hellfire, as he charged. His upper and lower body separated instantly. Yet in the last moment before his life faded, he still used the last of his strength to hurl the plasma explosive in his hand, already stained red with blood, straight at the Bloodletter's enormous face. Boom—!!! The violent blast instantly consumed half the greater Demon's head.

A Cadian veteran who had survived Viridia had lost one leg and could only charge forward with a limp, supported by a crude powered prosthetic. Another Bloodletter split him in two with a massive brass axe, along with his metal limb. Yet at the instant he fell, he detonated the enormous explosive pack in his arms, bundled with three full plasma charges. That terrifying energy, enough to melt even a Knight into molten iron, instantly blasted half the Bloodletter's body into nothingness.

They were spending their lives to wear down those powerful Demons that mortals believed to be immortal and indestructible. They had only one objective: clear a path for their elder brother to reach the final target.

Alexander walked down the center of that road of death, paved in blood and flame. Around him were his three hundred and fifty-one most loyal, most fanatical veterans. They formed a moving wall of flesh, using their bodies to shield their elder brother from lethal attacks from every direction. They fell one after another, yet the human wall never developed a gap. Whenever one man fell, another immediately stepped into his place.

At last, they reached the eight Bloodletters, already battered all over and enraged by these mad suicide attacks.

"Now!" Alexander gave his final roar.

The surviving veterans, who had long since cast aside all thought of life and death, let out the final and loudest roar of their lives.

"—For the Emperor!!!"

Then they detonated every explosive on their bodies.

Boom---------------------!!!

Countless brilliant suns rose at once in the fortress's deepest depths. The indescribable light and heat of pure destruction instantly swallowed everything. The eight arrogant, mighty Bloodletters did not even have time to let out a final wail before they were utterly purified, broken apart, and banished back to their Chaos home in this sacred sacrificial fire kindled by mortal flesh and souls.

And Angron, the embodiment of rage, was also completely engulfed by the terrifying energy storm at such close range. For the first time, his powerful Demon body, blessed by the Warp, showed signs of collapse. The hellfire burning over him was extinguished, the massive Demon wings on his back shattered, and horrifying cracks deep enough to reveal bone split his supposedly indestructible Demon hide.

A powerful force of rejection from Realspace was forcibly driving him, an existence that did not belong in this world, away. He was about to be banished, about to taste once again the failure he hated most.

He refused to accept it!

"NO----------!!!"

He unleashed a roar filled with boundless fury and unwillingness. He drove the only giant axe still intact into the ground beneath his feet, trying to resist that unstoppable force of banishment. But it was all futile. He was becoming transparent, about to disappear.

And at the final instant before his figure, filled with fury and despair, completely vanished from Realspace, in the deepest reaches of the distant Warp—far beyond measurement by any physical distance—upon that immense, horrific Brass Throne piled from billions of severed skulls, a great and terrifying will whose existence could not be described by any language slowly opened eyes filled with endless, pure slaughter and rage.

He saw the pitiful figure of his most favored, yet most incompetent champion about to be banished, and let out a sigh overflowing with disdain and disappointment. Then he extended a giant hand capable of crushing the entire galaxy and casually selected from among his billions of treasures a toy he rather liked—a massive sacred greatsword burning with golden flames of pure rage. Then, as casually as tossing away a useless stick, he threw it into Realspace, toward his incompetent champion who was about to vanish.

The next second, above Malakbel's fortress ruins, already utterly engulfed by destructive light and heat, a golden meteor tore through the black sky and, in a manner absurdly beyond time and space, pierced precisely into Angron's chest as it was about to turn transparent.