Lances of light scoured the sea of sand.
Prolonged, intense heat had turned the grains of sand into an endless expanse of smooth glass.
The glass continent reflected the sky. Unbroken orange lightning flickered within the heavy dark clouds, and shafts of light pierced the sea of clouds from farther away.
Standing on this glass continent, it seemed as though an entirely inverted Vigilus lay beneath their feet.
Only when a pair of ceramite knees buckled and struck the glass did the reflected world instantly "shatter."
A Chaos Astartes clad in ceramite Power Armour stared blankly at the mortal before him through his helmet's red lenses.
Sith braced a foot against him and wrenched his Power Sword from the Chaos Astartes' chest.
The massive body toppled backward, looking as though it lay upon the sky amid the endless reflections.
Sith's body heaved, his ragged breathing clearly audible even through his helmet.
Sith stood with a boltgun in one hand and his Power Sword in the other, surveying his surroundings through a helmet bearing a deep slash.
Corpses stretched without end.
Orks, humans, Chaos-at this moment, all of them seemed wrapped between two seas of clouds, their eyes quietly closed in this "midair."
Only the blood beneath them spread into long rivers, slowly staining the smooth expanse beyond.
"Long live... the God-Emperor..."
"Long live... the Imperium..."
Broken cries rose and fell in the distance. Sith looked over. The scattered mortal survivors lay slumped or propped themselves up, gazing at the heaps of corpses beside their solitary figures as they strained to raise their heads and proclaim their existence as the final victors of this meat grinder.
Sith lowered his head wearily. Without the strength to hold it up, his helmet sagged toward his feet. Looking at the slashes and blood covering his body in the glass reflection, he silently moved his lips along with the broken cries rising and falling around him.
"Long live the mortals..."
Bang!
His Power Sword pierced the reflection in the glass. Sith drew a deep breath and, supporting himself on the blade, gritted his teeth and straightened again.
Looking around, he spotted Brunok slumped amid a pile of corpses in the distance, clutching his machine gun with vacant eyes. Sith pulled out his Power Sword and walked over.
"Gather the troops. Move toward Hyperia immediately."
Sith mustered his strength to keep his voice as steady as possible. Awareness gradually returned to Brunok's eyes. His faintly trembling hands, still held in the position of pulling the trigger, tugged the machine gun free. Looking up at Sith, Brunok swallowed dryly.
Almost every surviving soldier could not help looking at the area around Sith.
Cultist corpses carpeted the ground there, along with enough Astartes to pile atop one another.
Among several mountains of Ork corpses were several Ork bosses encased in heavy steel, their enormous bodies sprawled directly on the ground.
Faced with these "trophies" of Sith's, survivors like Brunok no longer knew how to express their shock beyond swallowing dryly.
Bracing himself on his machine gun, Brunok gritted his teeth and hauled his exhausted, trembling body upright.
The watching survivors around him likewise gritted their teeth and straightened. At this moment, even their Lasguns became crutches.
Limping, the much-diminished soldiers of the 101st Regiment gathered from every direction.
Sith swallowed hard again to ease his painfully dry throat.
A slightly hoarse voice came from behind his helmet:
"We still have a long way to go across this mirror."
The soldiers followed Sith's gaze. Perhaps because this place had just suffered two successive exterminations, and their own troops had been deployed here not long before, the repeated exterminations and slaughter on the distant horizon had, here beneath Sith and the others' feet, given way to silence.
Even the fierce winds raised by the violent explosions far away, after racing hundreds or thousands of kilometers, actually carried a chill by the time they arrived, brushing gently over the survivors.
In the direction the wind came from, an immense hive district rose above the horizon, shimmering with a blue curtain of light, still unleashing artillery fire that filled the sky.
There were no further words, nor did they truly have the strength to speak. The soldiers merely withdrew their gazes and looked at Sith, watching him in silence.
In the distance, boundless "meteors" pierced the sea of clouds once more. From the direction in which the rivers of blood flowed came the reverberations of the ground gradually beginning to tremble. Sith looked away from both directions, turned, and continued toward Hyperia.
But he had only just lifted his foot when a fighter trailing thick smoke screamed down and crashed into the mirrored surface nearby.
A huge crater opened in the sea of clouds beneath their feet. Sith and the others looked over in puzzlement. Judging by its markings, it was an Imperial fighter.
But why would an Imperial fighter cross the entire war zone and force its way here?
Brunok and the others looked at Sith. With a touch of resignation at having to expend more strength, Sith walked toward the fighter:
"A few stormtroopers, with me. Everyone else, stay here and keep watch."
Several stormtroopers wearing jump packs silently followed Sith without complaint. Brunok turned and found a Chaos Astartes who had died taking an Ork boss down with him, using the body as cover and setting his machine gun directly on it.
But before Sith had taken more than a couple of steps, a Servo-skull wobbled out of the billowing smoke rising from the distant fighter.
The Servo-skull swiftly scanned its surroundings, then flew straight toward Sith.
The stormtroopers serving as his guards immediately raised their weapons, but Sith lifted a hand to stop them.
Sure enough, the Servo-skull did not attack. Instead, light flickered, casting a projection onto the open ground.
Within the blurry, pale-blue projection stood a towering blue Astartes equipped with a pair of exaggeratedly large Power Fists!
Through the noisy electronic audio of the weak signal came his busy commands:
"Pull back the defensive line! Yield the entire outer fortress to them!"
"The Void Shields? Nothing must be allowed to happen to the Void Shields. Reinforce their defenses with the routed troops falling back!"
Sith and everyone around him stared in astonishment at the blue Astartes continuously directing the battle before them.
Only when a faint reminder came from outside the image did the giant turn to look at Sith.
He revealed himself fully from the front, and the mortal soldiers beside Sith drew sharp breaths before dropping to one knee before the figure.
"Lord... Calgar?"
Shock filled their hearts, for this was a legend who existed only in Imperial propaganda, someone who could meet a demigod and fight at his side.
And now, even if he was only a projection, this man had truly appeared before their eyes.
Sith stood where he was, soldiers kneeling across the ground behind him, while before him stood Calgar, so tall that Sith had to tilt his head back to see him.
Rather than speak immediately, Calgar first surveyed their surroundings.
Looking at the endless corpses on the mirrored surface, with even a considerable amount of Warp Daemon ash among them, Calgar's resolute, rational face showed unmistakable approval.
The instant that expression appeared, even the noise from the command center beyond the projection subsided a little.
But as Calgar continued his inspection and saw the mountains of Ork corpses and the stacked Chaos Astartes, even his sole remaining right eye widened slightly.
Then, with a trace of disbelief, he looked at the Chaos Astartes, then at Sith standing before him in Power Armour.
For that expanse of corpses was unlike the others. There were no human soldiers' bodies there, only Chaos and Orks!
Understanding what this meant, Calgar finally abandoned his rational detachment and cast Sith a look of shock that he had not shown anyone in who knew how many years.
"These..."
"Did you kill them all?"