BOOM!!!
A massive Drop Pod, covered in Imperial Aquilas and wolf-head markings, plunged almost vertically into the heart of Ork Warlord Urlakk Uruk's ugly, enormous fortress. Trailing the scorching plasma wake that had yet to dissipate after its passage through the Atmosphere, it struck like a spear of thunder hurled by a deity into that bastion of rough-hewn boulders, derelict ship wreckage, and savage brute force.
Its impact point was neither a wall nor a tower. It had targeted the fortress's innermost, most "solid" section directly: a bastion roof formed from reinforced rock and poured metal dozens of meters thick.
In an instant, rubble, metal shards, and the severed limbs of Ork underlings who had failed to escape erupted outward amid explosive clouds of dust and flame, like a grotesque flower of death and destruction blooming from the earth.
The shock wave reverberated wildly through the fortress's narrow, winding passages, overlapping until the entire structure groaned. Dust cascaded down, and thick metal beams and pillars screeched as they twisted beneath unbearable strain.
Before the dust had cleared, the Drop Pod's hatch, warped by impact and intense heat but still sturdy, was kicked violently outward from within with an even sharper shriek of tearing metal. It spun into a nearby crowd of dazed Orks, instantly provoking another chorus of screams as bones snapped and bodies crumpled.
A figure—a figure burst fearlessly through that curtain of Smoke and dust.
It was Horus Lupercal, lord of the Luna Wolves.
He wore his iconic pearl-white Power Armor, lustrous as moonlight and sturdy as a divine mountain. Its exquisite carvings and heraldry, emblems of his Legion's glory, gleamed with a cold, sacred radiance against the smoke and flames.
He wore no Helmet. In his sharply defined face, his eyes burned with a fighting spirit hotter