The muscles in Lorgar's arms bulged, his tendons rising like dragons and serpents, molten-gold light shining beneath his skin.
The Golden Cross, larger than his entire body, seemed weightless in his grip. It became a warhammer of intertwined pure white and blazing gold, which he brought crashing down upon the boundless Sea of Sand and the embodiment of Saladin's will with enough force to split mountains and seas!
Pure white radiance spilled across the ground like tangible quicksilver. Wherever it passed, the dark-gold grains that formed Saladin's domain, steeped in his psychic energy, let out soundless screams as they disintegrated, scattering frantically backward like insects confronted by their natural predator.
Where the force field swept through, a broad, ever-lengthening, pristine passage was "ploughed" through the Sea of Sand. Every grain within it turned to pale, lifeless dust.
But Saladin's will had already become one with the Planet.
Farther behind, the scattered grains roared in fury and gathered frantically once more.
This time, they no longer tried to withstand the all-purifying Cross head-on. Instead, like living fluid, they surged in from every direction, layer upon layer, instantly forming a constantly flowing, rotating wall of dark-gold sand dozens of metres thick before Saladin's colossus.
BOOM!!!
The burning Cross smashed into the flowing wall of sand!
At the boundary between the pure white light and the sand wall, blinding radiance erupted amid violent currents of annihilating energy.
The blow drove a deep hollow into the wall. Vast quantities of sand vaporised in the holy light, but still more poured in from the Planet's endless reserves, filling the gaps in relentless succession.
The Cross's advance was forcibly halted, caught in a war of attrition between raw energy and matter.
Behind the wall, Saladin's enormous sandy body collapsed under the violent impact, bursting into a