Corax desperately dodged the incoming Battle Automatons.
He rolled, leaped, and dodged through the narrow corridor, the Battle Automatons' weapons grazing past his body and leaving deep gouges in the walls and floor.
His movements had lost their usual composure, becoming hurried and frantic, like a hunted beast fleeing for its life.
Corax could not use the power of Chaos. Blackstone was suppressing him.
The Blackstone energy fields acted like an invisible cage, locking his Warp power inside his body and preventing him from drawing on even a trace of Chaos energy.
He tried to summon the shadows, but they ignored him.
He tried to wield Chaos power, but it dissipated at his fingertips.
He tried to awaken the Chaos Gods' blessings within him, but they remained dormant under the power of Blackstone.
His own combat skills were not enough to contend with so many combat Men of Iron.
As a Primarch, his fighting skills were unquestionably among the finest, but his style had long relied on the enhancements granted by Chaos.
Yet once those enhancements from the Warp were stripped away, he discovered how feeble the combat skills he had once taken such pride in seemed against these tireless, fearless, perfectly coordinated combat Men of Iron.
These combat Men of Iron were purpose-built military creations, far beyond anything the Imperium's current technology could achieve.
They were relics of the Dark Age of Technology, products of humanity's technological zenith, each equipped with long-lost artificial intelligence and weapons systems.
Their reaction speeds far exceeded those of Space Marines, their precision reached the nanometer scale, and their ability to fight in concert rivaled a well-trained army.
When Corax clumsily destroyed a combat Man of Iron that had come close, he drove his Talon Blades through the robot's central processor and tore it