Black flames blazed fiercely, just as they had back then.
Another Fate Line
Terra
Breathe, breathe, breathing grew ever more difficult. The Primarch felt as though he had returned to Barbarus.
The thick stench of gunpowder and blood filled his nostrils. The acrid smell bored deep into his lungs. Looking into the distance, the once blue-white sky had been torn apart, and countless sharp trails of smoke and lascannon fire rained down from above.
Nearby, furious roars mingled with piercing screams.
Yet he merely swung his scythe.
The gigantic scythe, so massive and cumbersome in others' eyes, howled through the air in his hands. As it fell, it kicked up sonic booms and sprays of flesh. Three-colored flames, echoing with the Warp's mad laughter, danced across the once pale blade. Amid their ghastly glow, countless innocent ghosts shrieked as they were bound within those eternally burning, strange fires.
Ignoring everything else, he pressed onward toward that enormous throne—one hundred years ago, on the stormy night when the Primarchs scattered, Mortarion had glimpsed the massive structure beneath the Imperial Palace.
A fortress of dark gray, bright yellow, and pitch-black rose before him. He raised his gun and fired. A brilliant blue explosive fireball the size of artillery shells descended like heavenly fire. With a thunderous blast, the seemingly impregnable fortress was blown open, exposing the bare tissue beneath.
The Iron Warriors inside had not even drawn their swords before a gust swept past them. The scythe-wind was too fast for the naked eye to catch. In the next instant, those who had yet to react tried desperately to understand what had happened—but then their corpses, heads already smashed apart by the scythe's blade, crashed to the ground like fireworks bursting across the summer sky.
Mortarion caught that foul stench of