A week later, at Admiral Abukhensis's personal direction, Alexander received everything he wanted. Tons of high-energy plasma explosives, restricted to Space Marines and the Inquisition, were secretly transported to the 99th Regiment's encampment. Every charge possessed the terrifying power to melt even a Titan into molten iron.
The entire 99th Regiment, the "Pride of Cadia," was deployed to the engine chamber of an immense ancient fortress, built during the Dark Age of Technology, directly beneath the Hymn Engine. This fortress was the strongest defensive position on all of Malakbel, and its final line of defense.
When the soldiers of the 99th Regiment first entered that ancient fortress, steeped in history and tragic grandeur, they showed no fear of the unknown. Their faces held only wild joy and excitement, as though they were about to attend a grand festival.
They raced against time to construct their final defenses. Under Alexander's personal command, they transformed the entire ancient fortress into an immense sacrificial array, filled with the artistry of death. They placed the devastating plasma explosives in every corner of the fortress like decorations, linking every charge with psychically triggered fuses.
They waited, waiting for the final "main course," the one worthy of being "welcomed" with the most magnificent, dazzling fireworks.
On the third day after they finished their preparations, that day finally came.
The tranquil space of the Malakbel system, which the Hymn Engine's light had kept as bright as day, suddenly tore open. An immense Warp Rift burst open at the system's edge, like a hideous scar streaming blood and pus. Then a colossal warship, steeped in blasphemy and corruption and so vast that even the Glory of Terra looked like a child's toy beside it, slowly emerged from the rift.
Its hull was pieced together from countless wailing souls and twisted steel. Its prow bore an enormous, terrifying skull emblem of Khorne, composed of hundreds of millions of skulls from creatures of different species.
The Conqueror, Angron's flagship.
Then an endless swarm of Chaos warships, like a plague of locusts, poured from that bleeding scar, painted in the blood-red and brass colors of the World Eaters Legion.
From the very first instant of contact, the war entered its most brutal and bloody phase. Admiral Abukhensis commanded his vast Imperial Fleet of over a hundred warships, forming an unshakable defensive line of steel that slammed into the blood-red tide of madness and slaughter.
The roar of Macro-cannons tore through the vacuum, and the judgment of lances set the darkness ablaze. Countless fighters darted and battled like swarms of bees among the wreckage of warships. Every second, warships were reduced to cosmic dust in violent explosions. Every moment, countless lives vanished into the cold of space.
Yet everyone knew that this epic naval battle in space, however brutal it became, was merely an inconsequential appetizer. Only one man would truly determine the outcome of this war.
On the Conqueror's bridge, wrought from blood and brass and filled with bloodshed and madness, a figure far too tall to be mortal sat silently upon a bloody throne fashioned from the skulls of countless powerful enemies he had beheaded with his own hands.
A pair of enormous, hideous, batlike daemon wings grew from his back. In his hands, he gripped a colossal axe and sword, both still dripping scalding blood.
He was Angron, the Red Angel.
He did not look at the brutal battle raging beyond the viewports. His gaze pierced the endless void and the planet's atmosphere, locking onto that ocher world, onto the white spire that filled him with such loathing and stabbing pain.
The Hymn Engine.
That psychic light, filled with order, hope, and "hypocrisy," was like countless red-hot steel needles driving into his brain, already utterly warped by the Butcher's Nails and filled with pain and hatred. It brought back the memories he most wanted to forget. It reminded him of Nuceria, that land of despair he had once fought for, only for it to betray him in the end. It reminded him of his brothers and sisters, who had bled and fought beside him in the arena, only to be mercilessly abandoned by the cold tyrant he called "father."
"...Home." A hoarse voice, filled with boundless pain and rage, rasped from his throat, twisted by the Butcher's Nails, like two rusty iron plates scraping against each other. "...Lies!"
BOOM!!!
A visible, blood-red shock wave formed from pure rage and hatred erupted from his body! The entire bridge shook violently beneath his wrath, as though under divine punishment.
He rose from his Skull Throne, spread his enormous, hideous daemon wings, and raised the great axe and sword that thirsted for blood and slaughter.
"KILL!!!"
A roar filled with the purest, most primal, most absolute will to destroy resounded throughout the universe.
He became a dark-red meteor of destruction, hurtling without hesitation toward the planet that caused him endless pain.
When Angron's immense form, burning with the flames of rage like a meteorite, tore through Malakbel's murky atmosphere, the entire planet seemed to cry out in agony. He did not even use a Drop Pod. With his powerful daemon body, blessed by the Warp, he simply slammed straight into the ground.
BOOOOM!!!
An earth-shattering crash like an asteroid impact blasted a vast, burning crater hundreds of meters across into the ground. Angron stood at the center of that molten, scorched earth, utterly unharmed.
Then the sky tore open. Countless Drop Pods of Khorne, steeped in bloodshed and blasphemy, followed close behind him, hammering into the ground around his immense form like a rain of steel and blood. Their doors burst open. Endless World Eaters Chaos Space Marines wore blood-red armor, long since utterly warped by the Butcher's Nails and the energies of the Warp into beasts that knew only slaughter and bloodlust; endless mortal cultists had Khorne's runes painted on their faces and uttered unintelligible, bestial roars.
They poured from the Drop Pods like a blood-red flood bursting through a dam, merging into a crimson tide that would destroy everything. Following in the footsteps of their furious king, they charged toward the white spire standing at the far end of the horizon.
Blocking their path were millions of Astra Militarum soldiers and large numbers of Space Marines, already drawn up and ready for battle.
"For the Emperor! Open fire!!!"
War erupted once more on the ground. This time, however, it was a one-sided massacre with no doubt about its outcome.
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