The moment Angron stepped into the Engine Room, he froze. For the first time, a flicker of something called "confusion" appeared in his mind, long since utterly consumed by endless rage. The mortals he had expected to see scattering in cowardly, tearful flight were nowhere to be found. Nor did he see any futile defensive lines of trenches and barricades.
What he saw were ten thousand tiny human soldiers, as insignificant as ants. They stood silently in the cavernous hall, each cradling an iron box that flickered with the glow of dangerous energy. Their faces wore a strange expression he could not begin to understand.
It was neither fear nor anger. It was-ecstasy. Pure ecstasy, like that of the most devout believers finally beholding the god they worshipped.
Then he saw the human standing at the very center of the crowd, dressed in a black uniform, with only one arm remaining. That insignificant ant, so maddeningly familiar to him, gave him a brilliant, defiant smile.
Then that insignificant ant opened his mouth and delivered a clear, ringing command, as though raising the curtain on a grand performance.
"For the Emperor!! Charge!!!"
"Raaagh!!!"
At that command, ten thousand tiny figures moved. They did not retreat. They did not even fire a shot. They simply clutched their lethal "firewood" and roared-wordless cries filled with the purest, most fanatical yearning for destruction and glory-as they rushed to meet those nine invincible, godlike incarnations of destruction. They rushed toward the massive chainaxes and Hellwhips that could tear their flesh to pieces in an instant, toward their final glory-death.
"...?" For the first time, Angron's throat, twisted by the Butcher's Nails, forced out a sound filled with confusion and incomprehension.
Then his confusion was utterly drowned in the light and heat of endless explosions.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! BOOOOM!!!
Like moths plunging into a bonfire, the soldiers of the 99th Regiment formed an unstoppable tide of death with their frail, insignificant bodies.
A former Hive City criminal was caught across the waist mid-charge by a Bloodthirster's whip, blazing with hellfire. His upper and lower body separated in an instant. Yet in the final moment before his life faded, he summoned the last of his strength and hurled the blood-soaked Plasma Explosive in his hands straight at the Bloodthirster's enormous face. BOOM!!! The violent explosion swallowed half the Greater Daemon's head in an instant.
A veteran of Cadia who had survived Viridia had lost a leg and could only limp forward on a crude powered prosthesis. Another Bloodthirster's enormous brass axe cleaved him in two, along with his steel limb. Yet the instant he fell, he detonated the massive charge in his arms, made from three Plasma Explosives bound together. Terrifying energy, enough to melt even a Knight Titan into molten metal, blasted half the Bloodthirster's body into nothingness.
They were spending their lives to wear down those mighty daemons that should have been immortal and indestructible in mortal eyes. They had only one objective: to clear a path for their Elder Brother to reach the final target.
Alexander walked down the center of that road of death, paved with blood and flame. Around him were his three hundred and fifty-one most loyal, most fanatical veterans. They formed a moving human wall, shielding their Elder Brother with their bodies from every lethal attack coming from every direction. They fell one after another, yet no gap ever opened in the wall. Whenever one man fell, another immediately took his place.
At last, they reached the eight Bloodthirsters, already battered and enraged by the insane suicide attacks.
"Now!" Alexander gave his final roar.
The remaining veterans, who had long since cast aside all concern for life or death, gave the last and loudest battle cry of their lives.
"For the Emperor!!!"
Then they detonated every explosive on their bodies.
BOOOOM!!!
Countless dazzling suns rose simultaneously in the deepest reaches of the fortress. Indescribable light and heat, pure destruction, swallowed everything in an instant. The eight mighty, arrogant Bloodthirsters did not even have time to utter a final howl before the sacred sacrificial flames, kindled by mortal flesh and souls, utterly purified and disintegrated them, banishing them back to their home in Chaos.
And Angron, that incarnation of rage, was also engulfed by the terrifying storm of energy at point-blank range. For the first time, his mighty daemon body, blessed by the Warp, showed signs of collapse. The hellfire burning across him went out. The enormous daemonic wings on his back shattered. Horrific fissures opened in his impenetrable daemon skin, deep enough to expose bone.
A powerful repulsive force from realspace was forcibly expelling him, an existence that did not belong in this world. He was about to be banished, about to taste once more the defeat he hated above all else.
He refused to accept it!
"NOOOO!!!"
He roared with endless fury and defiance. He drove his only intact greataxe deep into the ground beneath his feet, trying to resist the unstoppable force of banishment. But it was all futile. He was turning transparent, about to vanish.
And in the final instant before his furious, despairing figure disappeared entirely from realspace, far away in the deepest reaches of the Warp, beyond any measurable physical distance, atop the vast and terrible Brass Throne built from billions upon billions of severed skulls, a great and terrifying will whose existence no words could describe slowly opened his eyes, filled with endless, pure slaughter and rage.
He saw the pathetic figure of his most favored-and most incompetent-champion on the verge of banishment, and let out a sigh of boundless contempt and disappointment. Then he extended his vast hand, capable of crushing the entire galaxy, and casually selected a toy he rather liked from his billions upon billions of trophies-a massive Holy Greatsword burning with golden flames of pure rage. Then, as though tossing away a useless stick, he carelessly hurled it into realspace, toward his incompetent champion as he was about to disappear.
The next second, above the ruined fortress on Malakbel, already utterly engulfed in the light and heat of destruction, a golden meteor tore through the pitch-black sky. In an impossible manner that transcended time and space, it pierced precisely into Angron's chest just as he was about to turn transparent.
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