Heavy footsteps beat like war drums against the ground heaped with corpses and rubble.
The green tide seemed to meet an invisible dam, slowly parting to either side and opening a path to the center of the stage of death.
In that instant, even the air seemed to freeze, leaving only the faint thunder of distant guns and the uneven rasp of breathing nearby.
Uralk, the Ork Warboss of Ullanor, finally emerged from his "bodyguard" of the mightiest beasts and stepped into the blood-soaked square.
His body was even larger than those of his guards, like a moving mountain of flesh built from muscle, steel, and pure malice.
Thick, crudely forged armor covered most of his body, festooned with crude trophies: human skulls, the bones of various xenos, shattered Imperial insignia, and even the damaged sensor assembly of a small Titan, set into his pauldron like a medal.
His eyes focused on Horus like searchlights. His gaze mingled the cruelty of watching prey struggle in its death throes, the satisfaction of claiming the ultimate trophy, and an absolute confidence in his own supremacy rooted deep in the Ork soul.
"Humie runt." His voice was deep and hoarse, like rusted gears grinding rock, yet it strangely overwhelmed every sound on the battlefield, reaching everyone's auditory sensors with perfect clarity. "I told you, this universe... is a universe where the strong eat the weak."
He stopped roughly twenty paces from Horus. For beings like him and Horus, that was already within killing distance, a gap they could cross in an instant.
The surrounding Orks, from the ordinary Ork Boyz to the towering "bodyguards," held their breath, watching their Warboss with awe and fanaticism.
"Pah!"
Horus jerked his head aside and spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, mixed with dust and fragments