The Hunt

The Moon's cold gray surface revolved silently below, while the battlefield in its low orbit boiled like a seething furnace.

With the Webway Gate as its center, the Imperial expeditionary fleet had constructed a Wall of Sighs from steel and fire.

Dense macro-cannon salvos, deadly lance arrays, and saturating torpedo barrages held the Thousand Sons Chaos fleet trying to swarm out of the gate firmly confined to the narrow space near its exit.

Every Chaos vessel that tried to force its way out was reduced to burning wreckage beneath the Imperial fleet's tightly woven circular firing formation.

Magnus's carefully planned pursuit ambush had reached a stalemate under the expeditionary fleet's preemptive move and Terra's imminent reinforcements—or rather, the beginning of its failure.

Clearly, Tzeentch's Changer of Ways had not told this arrogant Daemon Primarch about the reality-defying encounter deep within the Maelstrom.

At the heart of the battlefield, Macragge's Honour and the Crimson King were like two primordial beasts locked in a vicious bite amid the void.

At the warped seams where adamantium fused with living daemon metal, flames surged and leaking energy wailed like a dying beast.

Upon this hellish deck, the decisive battle was underway.

Magnus the Red, Lord of Knowledge and chosen of Tzeentch, had now fallen into an unprecedentedly humiliating position.

His opponent was not merely Roboute Guilliman, wielding the Emperor's Sword and wreathed in golden flames of fury.

Though Guilliman could not match Magnus in his Daemon Primarch form, his Primarch-level combat skill, unyielding will, and masterful command of the Emperor's Sword were enough to pin Magnus firmly to this deck and deny him any easy escape.

But this was only the beginning.

"For the Emperor! For Terra!" Amid earth-shaking battle cries, a group of figures clad in radiant golden armor, like living holy icons, joined the fray! The Adeptus Custodes! The Emperor's most loyal and powerful personal guards!

The Guardian Spears in their hands gleamed with runes that banished evil. Swift as lightning, they precisely sealed every route Magnus might use to break through, each thrust carrying the threat of tearing apart the very essence of the Warp.

Close behind the Adeptus Custodes came several figures in pitch-black power armor, radiating an absolute aura of "nothingness" that froze the soul—the Sisters of Silence!

Their very existence was like a singularity creating an absolute vacuum within Warp energy!

The moment they stepped into the heart of the battlefield, the terrifying psychic power surging around Magnus like an ocean hissed in anguish like red-hot iron plunged into ice water, forcibly suppressed and weakened! The powerful spells he tried to gather lost most of their force upon approaching the soulless fields of the Sisters of Silence, sometimes collapsing outright!

Yet what Magnus found truly absurd were several other figures.

They were aid from beyond this world, wielding power systems this Daemon Primarch could not comprehend. What was that glowing longsword? And what were those cannon muzzles behind those delicate young women?

Magnus, the mighty Daemon Primarch and Lord of Knowledge, had now been plunged into a truly comprehensive and utterly miserable predicament!

Physical attacks? Guilliman's Emperor's Sword met him head-on with its evil-breaking power, while the Adeptus Custodes' spears waited like vipers to strike.

Psychic attacks? The moment they formed, the Sisters of Silence weakened them drastically, leaving them with less than a tenth of their original power.

And whenever he barely managed to bring one into being, Glory precisely disrupted and broke it apart, or Obi-Wan deftly blocked it with his lightsaber.

Wanted to eliminate those irritating Sisters of Silence first? Prinz Eugen's Wall of Sighs was as impregnable as the Wall of Sighs itself! The instant he showed any intent to attack the Sisters, he found himself facing that shield bearing a massive force field, with no opening to exploit.

Joan of Arc's sacred Halo helped Guilliman strengthen his resistance.

Prince of Wales's charged heavy cannons kept him from acting recklessly!

He possessed the power to destroy stars, yet he was tightly bound by an inescapable net woven from abilities perfectly suited to counter him. Like a mammoth trapped in a mire, he had brute strength but nowhere to use it, able only to roar in humiliated fury!

Every attack was neutralized, every attempt to unleash his power suppressed, and new wounds continually appeared across his body—though not fatal to a Daemon Primarch, they were deeply humiliating!

Where was the glory of a brotherly duel? This was plainly... a shameless, targeted group beating!

"Shameless! Cowards! Do you only dare bully the few with the many?!" Magnus's single eye burned with the flames of humiliation. A psychic shockwave tore up the warped metal deck around him, yet it could not shake the flawlessly coordinated encirclement.

Just as Magnus was being suppressed into a helpless rage, a multicolored, ghostlike figure silently appeared at the edge of the battlefield, avoiding the chaotic energy currents.

It was the Veilwalker of the Harlequin Troupe.

"Regent!" The Veilwalker's voice entered Guilliman's helmet. "The Webway Gate is both the prison that binds him and the passage that can exile him! Force him back into the Webway! Together, we can close it and temporarily banish him back into the depths of the Warp! This is how we end this farce and remove his threat to Terra!"

Guilliman parried a heavy blow from Magnus's daemon blade, his eyes instantly locking onto the Webway Gate, which still spewed forth Chaos vessels and energy.

He understood the Harlequin's plan at once.

"Good!" Guilliman's reply was transmitted through the comm-link to every attacker. "Change tactics! Drive him toward the Webway Gate!"

The moment the order was given, the rhythm of the assault changed abruptly!

Prince of Wales's triple-mounted heavy cannons erupted with a deafening roar!

The three blazing white beams did not strike Magnus directly. Instead, they slammed into the deck behind him, toward the bridge and the Crimson King, triggering violent explosions and a torrent of molten metal that completely sealed off his path of retreat toward the flagship's interior or his own vessel!

The force-field glow of Prinz Eugen's Wall of Sighs flared brightly. Like a moving fortress, it shielded the silent Sisters of Silence as they advanced resolutely! Wherever they passed, the psychic energy around Magnus melted away like snow and ice, and the suppression intensified sharply!

Joan of Arc's halo of holy light instantly contracted, focusing like a spotlight upon Guilliman and the Adeptus Custodes spearheading the frontal assault, granting them greater strength and an even stronger will to destroy evil!

"Magnus!" Guilliman roared his traitorous brother's name. The golden fire of the Emperor's Sword blazed more fiercely than ever as he launched a savage charge with unstoppable resolve!

Every attack, every ounce of power, became a converging flood—not to kill him, but to force him back!

Magnus was caught completely off guard!

He had been doing everything he could to fend off attacks from every direction and had never imagined this battle would become so humiliating!

In the original plan, even if Guilliman had brought out the Maelstrom, the expeditionary force he led should have been nearly spent.

After coming to the Moon through the Webway, he should still have been able to deal with this loyal brother easily.

But the battlefield before him filled him with fury. Under the extreme suppression of the Sisters of Silence's fields, his psychic power ran sluggishly; bolstered by Joan of Arc's halo, his opponents' strength multiplied; with Prince of Wales sealing his retreat, Prinz Eugen blocking his path to attack the Sisters, and Glory precisely dismantling his counterattack spells, he was like a beast caught in an invisible giant net!

"Guilliman! Coward! Face me!" Magnus roared in mingled shock and fury. His enormous daemon body was forcibly, step by step, driven off the deck of Macragge's Honour by the combined strength of the Imperium of Man, the Adeptus Custodes, the Sisters of Silence, a Living Saint, an Eldar seer, the Hilling Valkyries, and a Jedi Master, stumbling back toward the Webway Gate that endlessly spewed Chaos and destruction!

The molten deck beneath his feet stretched into the void like a road of shame leading toward exile.

His single eye, burning with unwillingness and rage, stared fixedly at the ever-nearing Webway Gate, which radiated an ominous ghostly glow.