Severed Arm

The scales of victory seemed to have tipped.

Under the combined suppression of the Imperium of Man, the Adeptus Custodes, the Sisters of Silence, the Living Saint, the Hilling Valkyries, and the Jedi Masters, the Red Daemon Magnus's colossal demonic body was being steadily driven toward the Webway Gate, like the gaping maw of the Abyss.

His roar brimmed with humiliation and fury, yet he could not break free of that invisible net.

Guilliman's Emperor's Sword burned with unprecedented golden wrath, every advance carrying the resolve to end this catastrophe.

Yet just as everyone believed banishment was certain, Macragge's Honour beneath their feet suddenly shuddered with unprecedented violence!

"Warning! Warning! Abnormal activation detected in the Crimson King's living structure! Energy readings spiking! It is... it is accelerating its consumption of the ship's structure! The power core area is being corroded!" On the bridge, shrill alarms and Cawl's urgent, mechanical report instantly drowned out the din of battle!

The Crimson King, locked in a death grip, had its writhing flesh conduits and metal tentacles swell and pulse madly, as though injected with a violent catalyst!

Its enormous demonic skull prow gave a silent roar. Wherever its fangs had sunk in, Adamantium armor dissolved and was sucked away like melting wax.

Macragge's Honour groaned with the teeth-grinding sound of a structure on the verge of collapse. The violent shaking destabilized everyone advancing forward, instantly throwing the rhythm of the siege into disarray!

"The flagship's structural integrity is collapsing! We... we cannot disengage on our own!" The captain's voice carried helplessness over the comms channel.

Guilliman's gaze beneath his helmet turned utterly cold.

Sacrifice was unavoidable.

"Fleet, heed my command!" His voice was like a cold anvil striking every channel. "Target—the Crimson King! All weapons, saturate it! Do not spare Macragge's Honour! Fire! Fire immediately!!"

The order was as cruel as a cold wind, yet carried absolute determination.

Boom! Boom! Boom—!!!

The nearby Imperial warships, including the Imperial Fists strike cruisers that had just joined the battlefield, did not hesitate in the slightest.

Macro cannons, lance batteries, and torpedoes poured down like a storm of vengeance upon the Crimson King's immense, endlessly writhing living hull.

Violent explosions bloomed one after another across corrupt flesh and twisted metal. Huge chunks of tissue were blasted apart and melted away, while filthy pus-blood and energy slurry sprayed into the Void like waterfalls!

"Roar—!!!" Magnus seized the moment when the encircling force had been divided and the flagship violently shaken, unleashing a roar mingling agonizing pain and mad fury!

His immense body erupted with one final, powerful psychic shockwave, forcibly throwing back Guilliman and the Adeptus Custodes pressing in on him. With a mighty beat of his demonic wings, he broke free of the invisible net and became a burning red meteor, instantly leaving Macragge's Honour's deck and flying back above the Crimson King's bridge area, like the maw of the Abyss.

"Guilliman! Do you think this ends here?!" Magnus's single eye burned with the madness of Destruction as he hovered above his flagship, arms spread wide.

As his will poured into it, the Crimson King's rate of consumption not only failed to slow under the bombardment—it became even more frenzied!

From the wounds blasted open across its hull, countless new, thicker flesh buds and metal tentacles grew wildly, like the final burst of a dying beast, tearing and devouring Macragge's Honour's already battered hull with even greater ferocity!

It intended to drag this Gloriana-class Battleship, along with everyone aboard who dared resist him, into the Abyss!

"Amend target—the connection between the Crimson King and Macragge's Honour! Saturation strike! Tear it apart!" Guilliman ordered at once.

Upon receiving Guilliman's command, several Imperial Fists cruisers painted in yellow-and-black stripes fearlessly closed in and concentrated all their firepower upon the connection area, locked together like the jaws of a beast!

Macro cannon shells, searing lance beams, and armor-piercing torpedo detonations became countless scalpels, viciously slicing through those writhing flesh conduits and entwined metal tentacles!

Rumble—!!

The connection point suffered an unprecedented concentrated assault! Vast swathes of corrupt tissue were blasted into dust, while thick tentacles snapped and melted.

Under the raging barrage, the Crimson King's enormous jaws, which had been clamped shut so tightly, were finally forcibly torn open and pried apart.

Only several of the thickest core structures, too deeply hidden behind the hull to be directly targeted, remained tangled around Macragge's Honour's keel like stubborn roots!

"Now!" Prince of Wales's voice was exceptionally calm.

She drove the enormous chainsaw greatsword in her hand into the molten deck beneath her feet and planted both hands firmly upon the end of its hilt.

Before her chest, a rotating cube emitting a faint blue glow materialized in an instant!

At the same time, the barrel structures of the three massive cannons behind her wriggled, deformed, and reassembled like living things!

They finally converged into a single, even larger and more monstrous cannon, a terrifying vortex of energy spinning within its muzzle!

"Maximum power! Fire!"

Hummm—!!!

A beam of energy beyond description by color shot silently from the cannon's muzzle, as if it devoured light itself and warped space strangely along its path. It carried the terrifying pressure to destroy all things as it precisely pierced the final stubborn core structures of flesh and metal connecting the two colossal ships!

Screech—!!!

There was no earth-shattering explosion, only the soul-shuddering sound of matter itself being forcibly erased, of concepts being forcibly dissolved into Oblivion!

The Crimson King and Macragge's Honour were completely separated!

"All fleet! Continue the attack! Push that monster back!" Guilliman's command rang like thunder!

The engines of the Imperial warships, long poised to strike, roared at the brink of their limits!

The two closest escort ships, their hulls equally scarred and battered, blasted out their last comet-like trails from their engines amid their captains' resolute roars. Like two meteors charging toward death, they slammed without hesitation into the Crimson King's prow and flank as it drifted backward, temporarily unbalanced by the severed connection!

Boom! Boom!!

The tremendous impact sent the Crimson King's colossal body shuddering and rolling! Then the firepower of every surrounding Imperial warship, along with the full-throttle engine thrust of several Imperial Fists cruisers, became countless invisible giant hands bracing against this dying demonic beast and pushing it, inch by inch and irreversibly, toward the still-open Webway Gate flowing with corrupt energy!

"Ah—!!!" Magnus hovered above his flagship and let out an unwilling roar that echoed through the Void.

He tried to summon his power to stop it, but it was already too late.

The fleet's relentless firepower drained his psychic strength, leaving him unable to control his flagship's tumbling.

He could only watch helplessly as his beloved vessel carried him, little by little, toward the Webway Gate!

Just as the Crimson King's immense prow entered the Webway Gate's ghostly glow once more, the brightly colored Veilwalker appeared again at the edge of the battlefield.

This time, he held aloft a crystal fragment emanating an ancient, profound aura, as though it could freeze time itself.

Accompanied by the Veilwalker's ringing, ritualistic chant, the crystal fragment in his hand suddenly erupted in dazzling, kaleidoscopic light!

The light instantly flowed into the psychic runes at the edge of the Webway Gate that had not yet fully faded!

At the same time, the surviving members of the Harlequin Troupe began chanting even more ancient and obscure incantations in unison, their psychic power resonating with the crystal fragment in the Veilwalker's hand!

Hummm—!!!

The edges of the Webway Gate, which had been forcibly ripped open and spread apart, were suddenly squeezed inward as if by an invisible giant hand!

The strange flowing light that formed the gate instantly froze and dimmed, emitting a groan of unbearable strain!

The entire portal collapsed inward and closed at a speed visible to the naked eye!

Magnus's final venomous gaze pierced the closing portal and nailed itself upon Guilliman, leaving only a roar filled with endless curses echoing through the Void:

"Guilliman! You are a coward! We... will meet again! Next time..."

The next second, the Webway Gate linking reality and the Warp, through which countless bloodshed and conspiracies had flowed, permanently closed under the Harlequin Troupe's all-consuming ritual, accompanied by a low hum like the sigh of the universe!

In lunar orbit, all that remained was a devastated battlefield, the wreckage of warships, and the Imperial flagship Macragge's Honour—gnawed full of holes and teetering on collapse, yet miraculously surviving in the end.

The piercing alarms gradually subsided, replaced by report after report over the comms channels, each laden with exhaustion and disbelieving joy:

"Target... target Crimson King confirmed gone!"

"Webway Gate energy signature... completely gone! Spatial structure stable!"

"Magnus... confirmed withdrawn from the battlefield!"

Leaning on the Emperor's Sword, Guilliman stood upon the wrecked deck, breathing heavily.

He looked toward the region of absolute emptiness where the Webway Gate had once been, then toward the distant planet beneath the Astronomican's light—Terra.

Slowly, he removed his damaged helmet, revealing a face streaked with sweat and blood, yet incomparably resolute.

His golden eyes reflected the exhaustion of surviving disaster, but also burned with an unprecedented, unshakable determination.

"I have returned," he said softly. His voice was not loud, yet it seemed to pierce the cold Void and reach the heart of that planet.

The cube before Prince of Wales's chest dimmed. The massive cannon behind her returned to its triple-barreled form, and her body swayed slightly before Glory caught her.

A new storm had only just begun.