Yet in those eyes that rose once more, flowing like molten gold, Aun'Ve saw none of the pain he had expected, none of the weakness of approaching death.
All he saw was endless, pure... cold fury, enough to drag the entire universe into the finality of heat death.
Saul saw it.
Through the smoke hanging over the battlefield, through his shattered goggles, he saw Company Captain Augustus's final instant as the ion torrent reduced him to ash. He saw countless brothers of the Lamenters, stripped of the protection of their "extraordinary luck," trip over insignificant lengths of rebar and then be torn apart by xenos fire. He saw T'au civilians with fanatical eyes, seemingly driven mad, charging at his warriors with crude wrenches and kitchen knives, roaring before they were mercilessly crushed like ants.
He saw how these pathetic xenos burned away their lives within an elaborately woven lie, attacking the Emperor's Angels who could have brought them true salvation.
He understood.
Conventional warfare was too slow, and too gentle.
Using armies and tactics to fight a world that had gone utterly mad, that regarded death as glory and had lashed its entire species to its war chariot, was itself a failure of logic.
"Since you crave destruction..."
Slowly, he rose from his kneeling position. As he moved, his battered golden Power Armour let out a mournful groan, but a moment later, that groan was swallowed by a far greater sound.
"Then I shall grant you... destruction."
He decided to stop suppressing the ceaseless power surging through his body, as violent as a star.
Golden psychic power, indescribable in any human language and pure beyond measure, erupted from his body like a supernova!
It was no longer light, no longer flame. It was "existence" from a higher dimension, a will