(Thanks to the generous Dio Who Eats Oligei for the Super Fan donation. An extra update for National Day.)
Axe blades and sword edges clashed amid the blood. The narrow shipboard corridor had become a savage arena.
Fulgrim and Angron fought like true gladiators, every clash tearing a shrill scream from the air.
Shattered armor plates, mangled corpses, and blood-soaked scraps of cloth lay beneath their feet. Dim emergency lighting flickered between their rapidly crossing figures, stretching their shadows across the walls into madly writhing monsters.
Fulgrim was strong. Extremely strong.
His movements flowed like water, every thrust tracing a path so precise it bordered on art, without the slightest wasted motion or hesitation.
In his hand, the Purple Longsword seemed no longer a weapon but part of his body, moving wherever his will directed it.
Angron swung both axes, meeting that flash of swordlight with brute force. He crossed his axes to block and drive back Fulgrim's thrust, sparks spraying from their blades.
Yet a moment later, that swordlight struck again like a python, twisting through an unnatural angle to slip beneath Angron's axe blade and stab straight at his flank.
Angron had to twist aside, but the sword's edge still opened a shallow cut across his waist.
As a Primarch whose swordsmanship was second only to Lion El'Jonson's, Fulgrim had all but reached the limits of the art.
His wrist turned as though it had no joints, his sword tip weaving countless silver trails through the air.
In mere seconds, more than ten thousand thrusts fell like a downpour upon a lake, leaving several more wounds across Angron's body.
None were deep, but they were finely and evenly spread across his bare chest, arms, and abdomen, like lines a painter had painstakingly drawn on a canvas.
Every thrust