For the first time since his ascension to the ranks of the Astartes, Tiberius could feel his otherwise near-perfect memory failing him. He could not remember how he had gotten into the circular room he was currently in. He only remembered a long, serpentine being grabbing him and his brothers as they floated in the dark.

The creature had then carried them through the warp until Tiberius' memories and consciousness failed him. When he regained control of his body, he could feel himself lying on his back against a cold steel wall.

Waves of pain passed through Tiberius' head as he slowly opened his eyes. He looked around the room, finding it covered in a soft penumbra that somehow highlighted its finer details.

Its rusty red walls tilted inwards at their middle point and caused the ceiling to be half the size of the floor. The ceiling in question had one large skull in its center, with small torches dangling from its eyes. An industrial wheel encircled it.

He pointed his bolter to the nearest square door and scanned the room once more as his armor’s systems came back to life. At first, Tiberius ignored most of the information his systems gave him, as he did not care for the exact metallic composition of the walls or which shipyard had produced it a thousand years before.

That piece of information made him pause and look at the data in front of him, a thousand years was no small amount of time even for an Astartes, the ship was clearly more interesting than he had originally thought. His systems could not tell him her name, but they could identify her as belonging to the Mechanchus, and the specific metallic league of her walls made it clear she came from the forge world of Mezoa.

His four brothers were with him in there, taking their time to get up as they also prepared their weapons.

“A Mechanicus ship,” Cassius stated calmly as he observed the room. “I once hoped to be inside one again, but not in this manner.”

“Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment, brother,” Aphaniel recited the old saying to him before facing Tiberius. “My liege, what are your commands?”

Tiberius hesitated to answer the question, as he needed a moment to think about what his next step would be. He was under no delusion that he was out of the warp, and yet the surrounding space, while clearly abandoned, seemed to be unaffected by the reality-denying powers of Chaos. The rusty walls had no eyes or gaping wounds, the stale air was perfectly breathable, and nothing was whispering promises in his ears.

A glacial silence surrounded the squad, and the sergeant realized there was truly no one around him besides his brothers. If his enemies were patiently lying in wait for the right moment to strike, they were doing it so well they might as well not have been there. There were no signs of life coming from anywhere around him, not even automatic responses from the ship's systems as he reached out to them.

“We move,” he said and pointed at the nearest door, picking it for no real reason. As long as he kept moving, any direction would do just fine. “If the Emperor smiles upon us, we will eventually return to real space.”

The door he had pointed at bore another skull of the Mechanicus in its lower half. It had a crack spreading from the primitive axe lodged in its left eye. The axe’s position was too low to have been left there after a melee and had no blood dripping from its edge. No swing would go so low, not even if the weapon had been in the hands of a novice.

“Someone threw this axe in haste,” Icarus approached the weapon in question and placed a hand on it. “And someone else made it, recently.”

“What makes you so sure, brother?” Cadriel had been the last to wake up and was still lying his back against a wall as he calmly checked his chainsword and lazily swung it in front of him.

“First, the angle at which it struck the door is not consistent with a well-aimed throw,” Icarus said and picked up the axe, which seemed like a toy weapon in his huge hands. “Second, look at this metal. It shows signs of high-quality work for the standards of a primitive civilization, which means there is life here, life intelligent enough to craft primitive weaponry.”

He handed the axe to Cassius, who confirmed his statement with a nod.

“A wasted weapon then,” Aphaniel said, then paused for a second as he seemed to think about something. “Why would its owner use it in haste?”

"Fear causes many baseline humans to act against their best interest," Icarus said and looked at the floor, slowly going over every tile as he and Tiberius realized the same thing. “There is no blood in this room. If there was a fight in this place, it moved away from here as soon as it began.”

“Then we have a direction, brothers,” Tiberius said. “I am sure the fight left more signs as it moved through this ship.”

The squad formed up behind the sergeant. Tiberius took point while Aphaniel and Cadriel were right behind him and Cassius and Icarus followed.

He touched the door and it immediately fell to the ground. Tiberius quickly stepped forward and grabbed it before it could make any loud noise. He gently accompanied it to the floor only letting it go once it touched the steel below. There was no need to make any unnecessary sounds before a battle. Some of the chapter's elders would not approve of such a timid action, but they would not be able to legally punish him even if they found out about it.

The squad walked out in absolute silence, the only noise coming from their heavy steps on the metal floor. They occasionally used their shared vox channel to confirm the lifelessness of the space around them. Most lights were either dead or flickering, but the primitive torches on the walls allowed for perfect visibility.

Every turn revealed the same thing, a seemingly endless set of long, cramped hallways with no signs of life in sight. The Mechanicus vessel was a maze with many paths and staircases that created a labyrinth of red walls and empty rooms.

There was no way to tell where they were going in such a claustrophobic environment, so Tiberius, who had given up on the idea of following the signs of a fight after finding none after two hours, just did his best to stick to one direction and hoped he would eventually reach an exit. He occasionally took detours from the main path to look for things that might be hiding in the ship, only to find nothing.

After what felt like an eternity of walking, there was finally something new in the air. It was a powerful metallic smell they were all familiar with.

“Fresh blood,” several marines reported in unison, recognizing the smell as soon as the putrid odor hit their noses.

“But no breathing,” Tiberius pointed out as he let his nose lead him to the smell’s source. ‘Whoever has bled here is already dead."

He approached a door large enough for only one Astartes at a time and checked its corners with his armored gauntlet before pushing it open.

Once inside, Tiberius saw what was producing the smell.

Three skinned human corpses, two men and one woman, dangled from the ceiling with a noose wrapped tight around each of their necks. They had no eyes anymore and a thin black thread kept their mouths sealed shut. The killers had tied the victims’ hands behind their backs and bent their legs at impossible angles. Their broken bones emerged from their red muscles.

“Professional work,” Aphaniel was the first to break the squad’s silence. “No doubt about it. Whoever did this was no amateur. There are no unnecessary cuts in their muscles, and each noose is near-perfect. Their killers have done this many times before.”

Tiberius took a better look at the room. It was small, with a flat ceiling and no functioning lights. The dried blood on the walls gave them an even darker red shade than the rest of the ship, and a couple of spears made entirely of metal rested next to the door.

“Were these people hunters or sentries?” Cadriel asked.

“To answer your question I would have to guess,” Tiberius responded. “These-“

He stopped speaking because of a noise that came from deeper in the ship, echoing from the crimson walls in several waves. It was a terrified scream followed by the explosion of a bolter round. It was distant, yet clear.

“Reach the source,” Tiberius commanded. “Be ready for combat.”

They quickly got out of the room and moved carefully through the corridors leading to the noise. Each brother mentally checked their equipment as they prepared themselves for the fight ahead. First, Tiberius checked his systems, once he was sure they worked perfectly, he made sure his bolter still had ammunition and his chainsword could still work.

His bolter had only half its ammunition, but the chainsword worked just fine. It was not an ideal situation, and he would have to make it work or die trying.

There were no more bolter rounds following the one that had drawn Squad Tiberius’ attention. Perhaps the noise was simply a way to lure them into an ambush, Tiberius thought, but he would fight his way out if it was so.

They finally stopped before a large steel door. Two charred corpses lay at its sides, each dead man gripping his spear close to his chest.

“Prepare to enter, loudly, brothers.” The sergeant tightened his grip on his bolter. With one fluid motion, he opened the door and leaped quickly to its left side so that his brothers could rush inside. A moment later, he followed them and readied his bolter for whatever waited for him and his brothers.

Only for him to find no one.

The room had a grandeur that was absent from the rest of the ship. Two rows of black metal pillars flanked a red carpet that led to an elevated platform. There, a pile of spears and axes covered a command throne almost completely, allowing only the armrests to emerge from the collection. In front of the throne, there were several rows of consoles with cracked screens.

The red carpet had a golden trim and covered the middle of the room, its surface covered in bodies and darkened pools of blood. It led to a big hexagonal door guarded by two statues of tech-priests holding halberds. With their wall of green eyes on their black marble faces, the priests' statues seemed to be looking at every corner of the room.

Tiberius expected to see either the emptiness of space or to stare directly at the warp when he looked at the room’s large glass windows. What he saw instead was a wall of jagged rocks with white veins running on their surface.

A totem of human skulls with a chaos star made of blackened steel on its top stood in the middle of the room, making the humans’ allegiance clear for the five marines.

The squad walked between tents of human leather scattered around the room with no apparent order. There were corpses anywhere Tiberius looked. Men, women, and children, all kinds of unaugmented humanity lay in the carnage, their limbs severed and their eyes gouged in a display of cruelty.

Some bodies had the telltale fist-sized holes that only a bolter could make, with those who had received a shot in the head resting in a pool of blood and gray matter. Many were completely black from the burning effect of the weapon that had killed them.

“Blood of Dorn,” Icarus let out a whisper at the macabre scene surrounding the squad. "Such painful deaths... a waste of time for targets so weak."

Like all Astartes, the Star Lords were no strangers to massacres, but the one in front of them was unlike any they had seen. The Star Lords had participated in the dispensation of imperial justice, but never in such a needlessly brutal way. What had happened there was far beyond what was necessary to send a message to would-be traitors.

“Such are the wages of sin,” Aphaniel said as he stomped a mutated man’s head with his armored boot. “I call this justice served.”

“If the executioner is as wicked as the condemned, can you really call it justice?” Tiberius walked towards the rows of dead consoles at one end of the room. “This was no punishment. The killers who did this acted for their own pleasure.”

He stopped before the largest console, where a man dressed better than the other corpses laid with a hand over its dead screen. The man wore a blue helmet with a pair of curved horns on top and a suit of studded leather armor reinforced with thick pieces of steel on its chest.

Next to him was a man with a spear in his gut who was carrying much more familiar gear. He wore a dark blue flak vest that resembled the kind used by Cadian regiments. Tiberius went closer to the dead man and noticed a small medal pinned to his chest. It was a small pair of red wings with a dagger between them.

The man's face was pale and marble-like. He looked like he hadn't seen sunlight in years and had facial features similar to a nobleman, with a clean face and a short beard. His black hair reached just above his shoulders, and his eyebrows were thin and neatly trimmed. His dark blue eyes stared lifelessly at nothing in particular.

“I do not recognize this regiment,” Tiberius said as he knelt in front of the dead man’s body to inspect it better. “I believe he was a mercenary, but that leaves the question of his employer unanswered.”

Walking next to his sergeant, Icarus went to inspect the corpse and knelt in front of it.

“He looks well-fed,” he said as pointed at the dead man's arms and legs. “Which means he had access to a great deal of supplies.”

“An organized force did this then,” Tiberius said, then he walked away from the body and once again looked at the brutal scene around him.

Looking up, he noticed several skinned bodies dangling from the ceiling he had not seen when he had walked in.

“One with Astartes at their side, or access to bolter weapons,” Icarus pointed at the headless body of a woman. She wore a simple brown dress and a necklace with a tooth dangling from it, both tainted by the dark blood staining them. “Either way, they outmatched these barbarian heretics.”

Cadriel walked apart from the rest of the squad, looking at one dead body after another.

“Half of me wants to admire those responsible for such a use of violence. This is the sort of act that sows terror in every traitor's mind,” He said in a low tone. “The other half despises this cowardly act, to use such overwhelming power on barbarians. I say we find those responsible and force them into a proper fight.”

Tiberius knew no fear, but his brother’s words caused something that he could at least call concern. Cadriel’s admission caused an old memory to emerge from the recesses of his mind.

He thought of Mordred, the man who had been in his brother even before they were Astartes, saying there was nothing wrong with the use of terror. “If the enemy is too terrified to fight,” he had argued. “Would they not surrender sooner? Would there not be less bloodshed? Where is the honor in conducting a campaign the proper way if it leads to more deaths in the end?”

“Kill the first half and feed the second,” Tiberius said to Cadriel what he should have said to Mordred, bringing his mind back to reality. “We have seen everything here, brothers. Let us keep moving.”

The exploration of the rest of the vessel had been uneventful, the discovery of a few more skinned corpses being the only thing worthy of note in their silent journey.

They stopped walking for one moment when they found a room with one wall blown apart by a powerful piece of ordinance. Its fractured and blackened border showed signs of burning just like the rest of the room around it. Two broken Skitarii lay on the ground, their mechanical bodies frozen in place like discarded toys.

Outside the ship, there was a lightless wide space. Even the marines of squad Tiberius had to wait a few seconds before being able to see inside its empty rocky confines. If they were not Astartes, they would not have been able to see past the darkness waiting outside.

Neither their lights nor their night vision systems could pierce the darkness, but their naked eyes could at least figure out the outlines of the space ahead and slowly reveal more of what was outside. It was a large cave, with jagged walls of grey rock and several stalactites growing from its ceiling

“Time to get outside this wreck, brothers,” Tiberius said, and then he took one step out of the vessel and dropped to the ground below. His armored boots hit the sturdy rock creating small cracks and sending an echo down the cave’s walls. The echo’s returning wave let him know there was no one waiting in ambush.

It was not a polite thing to acknowledge in front of the upper circles of the chapter, but the Star Lords had a talent for moving in near-lightless conditions. Only their strict self-imposed laws, and their ruthless enforcement, prevented them from becoming one of the many cowardly chapters that struck from the darkness.

His brothers did the same, their contacts with the ground producing four similar sounds to his and allowing him to get a better understanding of his surroundings.

Looking forward, he could see a corridor carved through the rock and a line of white electrical lights attached to its right wall. Mentally, he was glad to see a sign of proper civilization, even if he suspected it would be hostile.

Keeping their bolters at the ready, the squad followed the guidance of the white lights, feeling no warmth from them as they kept a slow pace. The corridor was wide enough for two marines to walk side by side, with Tiberius and Cassius forming the first pair, Cadriel and Aphaniel behind them, and Icarus in the rearguard.

The path turned left, and they all heard steps approaching them. Judging by the noise, they were some form of unaugmented humans in light armor, two to be precise. Tiberius raised his closed left fist and his squad immediately stopped.

“I count two humans, we shall slay them with our hands,” he said in the squad’s vox channel. “No need to waste bolter rounds.”

“Acknowledged, my liege,” each of his brothers replied in quick succession.

Tiberius ignored the unchivalrous instincts that were surfacing from the back of his mind. They commanded him to withdraw from the light next to him and take advantage of the shadows behind him to better observe the two incoming humans. He appreciated the logic, but the chapter’s laws demanded he stood proudly and fearlessly in the light when approaching any foe unless it was blatantly suicidal to do so.

If he did not follow the laws and rules of the chapter, how could he and his brothers prove their validity to the rest of the galaxy? The Star Lords believed their laws should be the standard for the entire human race; the least he could do was follow them to the letter to set an example.

He stood tall in the light as a pair of humans turned around the corner in front of him and stopped as soon as they saw the five Astartes. They wore a dark blue flak vest similar to the one worn by the dead body in the Mechanichus vessel and had short, barely visible, black hair.

Instead of attacking squad Tiberius, the two humans saluted the marines by bringing their fists over their chests.

“Greetings lords!” one of them, an older man with a few grey hairs in his short brown beard, quickly said in a heavily accented Low Gothic. “Lord Varl commands all his brothers to-“

The man stopped in the middle of his sentence as the familiar expression of dread appeared on his face. Tiberius has seen it on many humans before they died by his hands, his mere presence turning courage to abject terror in the unaugmented and the alien. He wished it was not so, for there was no challenge in killing the terrified, but he could not help it.

“Wait...” he picked up the lasgun strapped to his shoulder by a leather harness. “You’re not with-“

Once again, he did not finish his sentence, as Tiberius promptly snapped the man’s neck and Cassius did the same with the other man.

“We are dealing with Astartes then,” Aphaniel said as Tiberius and Cassius guided the bodies to the ground to prevent excessive noise.

“But we do know how many there are. It could be a renegade squad or a legion reborn,” Tiberius replied, stepping above the man he just killed. “We will take a good look at their number, then we will change the plan accordingly.”

The squad resumed their walk, following the trail of white lights until they reached a large steel wall. It was clearly a piece of another old vessel. Many lines of electrical lights came out of one rusty macro cannon resting like a tired beast on the rocky surface of the cavern. Those lights then disappeared into other tunnels like the one they had used.

Rust covered large sections of the steel wall, but many others still had a bright green paint job over the metal. There was a window of stained glass to the left with a white dragon’s head painted above it.

“They dare defile Vulkan’s legacy,” Tiberius said as he noticed the symbol. He had fought once side-by-side with the Salamanders when he was a squire, and remembered them to be phenomenal warriors, even if they were more concerned with civilians than he would ever be. “Let us do a favor for our cousins, brothers.”

Some of the ship’s systems still worked and responded when Tiberius tried to identify her with his helmet. The vessel’s name appeared on the bottom right of his vision alongside a three-dimensional model of the vessel. She was called “Ashen hand”, but her name and allegiance were far from its more interesting detail, which was her age.

“Brothers, are you seeing it too?” Tiberius asked his squad. His breathing got slower as he took a step inside the macro cannon.

“Yes, sergeant,” Aphaniel responded. “This is a vessel from the age of heresy.”

The air seemed to turn heavier as Aphaniel’s words seemed to turn the abstract data in front of him into tangible reality. Tiberius could almost taste the history surrounding him, and for a moment he wondered what heroes had been in that old vessel. Had Vulkan himself walked through its corridors or stood in its halls nine thousand years ago, commanding his sons during a war against a vile alien race?

“She is a relic,” Icarus’ observation brought Tiberius out of his thoughts.

“Yes,” Cassius answered, caressing the weapon’s barrel with an almost gentle touch as he went further inside. “Yes, she is.”

As expected from a vessel of the Great Crusade, the corridors of the Ashen Hand were spacious enough for a squad of Astartes, but they were not quiet. Every few minutes, the marines heard heavy footsteps following them, always at the same distance but never from the same spot. Frustratingly, the sound was never clear enough to carry any kind of valuable information.

Unlike in the caves, there were no artificial lights on the ancient walls, but their genetically enhanced vision allowed them to understand where they were going. That, and the map of the ship they could on their lenses.

Tiberius saw something, a shape moving so quickly in front of him that even he could not understand what it was. Before he could squeeze the trigger or call out a contact, it had already disappeared behind a corner. If not for his photographic memory, Tiberius would have doubted anything had ever been there.

When he went to check the corner, there was no trace of the armored figure he was sure he had seen, but he could see a light at the end of the corridor.

It was a faint green glow coming from behind a large and broken blast door with a white dragon’s head painted above it. Someone or something had punched its way inside, causing the door to bend inwards and creating a large hole in its center.

Acting on instinct, all five marines lined up on the right side of the breach in a textbook preparation to enter. Tiberius carefully moved to the other side, keeping his bolter pointed towards the center. It took only a few moments to understand there was no need for such a precaution.

There was nothing there, nothing alive at least.

A carpet of old skeletons covered the floor of grey metal tiles, each one lying next to rusted lasguns and bolt casings. Since all the skeletons were intact, Tiberius assumed the kills did not belong to the Salamanders.

The room was devoid of any furniture or decorations, with two noticeable exceptions. A hololithic projector on the ceiling was showing a flickering green hologram of a Salamander floating just above the ground as he spoke. Behind it, there were several dead screens large enough to cover an entire wall, and it was clear they had once belonged to a now-dead cogitator.

The room was relatively large, with enough space for several marines to walk in it without obstructing each other. The walls were grey and bare, and many of its doors were sealed shut or covered by piles of rocks.

“No contacts,” Tiberius said, then he lowered his bolter and entered the room. His squad followed him one by one.

“Finally, a place with some power,” Cadriel said once he stepped inside and saw the Salamander’s hologram.

“Barely,” Cassius replied as soon as he heard him. “The machine spirits here are not dead but are in hibernation so deep they might as well be as far as our current capabilities are concerned. The fact that this projector still works after nine thousand years is a miracle of the Omnissiah.”

“Your days on Mars are behind you, brother,” Icarus said as the squad approached the hologram. "Why do you still entertain the philosophy of the red priests?"

“You would too if you knew what I do,” Cassius replied and stopped right in front of it.

The skeleton of an Astartes lay right below the image of the Salamander, giving the impression that the spirit of the ancient warrior was speaking to them.

“If you hear these words… de-dead,” he said, the words having a slight echo around the room. A sudden static noise made the message incomprehensible for several seconds. “…Carry our torch, bring word to our father… Vulkan must know… Horus... more allies than...”

The message became incomprehensible again, then looped to the beginning.

“We cannot afford to linger on this mystery,” Tiberius said as she looked away from the hologram and saw another open door on the opposite side of the room. He headed towards it and his squad followed him, leaving the looping message behind them.

Squad Tiberius went outside the room and found another long and dark corridor, but larger and far more decorated. There were large statues of space marines placed in pairs every twenty paces, all wielding different weapons. From catphractii armor to volkite rifles, the ancient cracked statues showcased the entire arsenal available to the Legiones Astartes of old. Between the statues, there were flags bearing the legion's emblem or its number.

They walked through the corridor for several silent minutes, glad to no longer hear the previously constant noise of armored boots coming from all around them. The relief quickly faded as they were left alone with their thoughts, and soon felt like intruders in a piece of history that did not belong to them.

Tiberius occasionally looked up at the statues, feeling the weight of that history bearing down on him. His chapter kept some records of the Heresy, which Tiberius had greedily consumed during his training. Even if those warriors were not his ancient brothers, he could not help but feel a sense of awe as he looked at those who had built the Imperium. He also pitied them just a little, knowing what their legion had through in the Isstvan system.

When he and his squad reached the corridor’s end, a large door with a white dragon’s head painted in its center blocked their path. Two statues of Salamanders flanked the door, each one planting their power sword into the ground with both hands. Their eyes of stone stared into the darkness beyond making them look like mythical guardians protecting a treasure.

Tiberius noticed that the door was slightly open already and slowly pushed it in while keeping his bolter ready to fire the moment he saw anything moving inside the room. After a few seconds, he could see the precaution was once again unnecessary and lowered his bolter.

“This place is empty,” he declared and entered the room. “At least there are no skeletons.”

He and his squad looked round the room, finding it to be a steel grey box with no identifying marks anywhere on its walls or ceiling. It was small, and they traversed in only a few steps before reaching an already open door on the opposite side and venturing into the space beyond.

There, the squad found another maze of corridors, but with clear signs of being lived in. The gentle white light from the ceiling glimmered on the half-empty bottles of dark amasec on black steel tables. Playing cards were scattered both on the tables and on the floor, clearly abandoned in a hurry by their users.

It was not long until they found a headless body lying still on the ground. With just one glance at it, Tiberius noticed a lack of blood next to the corpse. Whatever weapon had killed the man had also instantly cauterized the wound, preventing any bleeding.

“This is too clean for plasma, too precise,” Icarus stated as he looked at the body.

The squad did not stop to analyze the corpse and instead walked straight past it after each brother had a passing glance at him. One look was all that was necessary for them to form an opinion on it.

“And yet the wounds are clearly heat-related,” Cassius said. His voice was neutral, like that of an academic man adding to a dry philosophical discussion. "It resembles the wounds delivered by the xenos in golden armor."

While the marines prepared to discuss the nature of the dead man’s wounds, a new sound reached their ears, marching feet, thousands of them. They were not coming towards them, but the noise still revealed a sizeable force somewhere right ahead of them.

“Finally,” Tiberius ordered. “Time to see the true numbers of our foe, brothers.”

They increased their pace, once again preparing themselves for a fight and checking their ammunition. There was not much left, so they would have to make it count.

After turning a corner, they saw a light at the end of the long corridor they had just entered, revealing powerful electrical lights beyond.

To journey towards the end of the corridor was brief, and waiting for them there was a wide balcony overlooking an enormous hangar. The balcony was large enough for squad Tiberius to stand comfortably side by side on it and still have room to spare.

Looking down, they could see there were thousands of troops, tens of thousands, all marching in formation while Astartes walked between them. A few wore a chaos-corrupted version of the armor used by the Star Lords, but the majority had colors and heraldry Squad Tiberius did not recognize immediately.

Those traitors had on midnight blue armor with white lightning bolts and skull-shaped helmets. Some helmets had dark red wings added to them. On their kneepads, many of the traitor space marines had the gothic numeral ‘eight’ etched in and painted white. As expected from their kind, many traitors had white skulls attached to their pauldrons kept in place by heavy chains. A few even had multiple skulls or severed hands dangling from their belts.

Their unaugmented infantry looked like a heretical parody of the Imperial Guard. Men and women marching in perfectly regimented columns all wielded polished lasguns which they held close to their chests. On their dark blue flak vests, they wore rank-related insignia alongside small silver or gold medals.

The humans’ expressions were stern and focused directly forward, towards the transport at one end of the hangar. The troop transports were near-identical to those employed by the Imperial Guard but had chaos stars painted on their hulls.

Chimeras and Leman Russ tanks shielded the flanks of infantry squares but left enough space for the traitor marines to walk freely between them. Cranes on the ceiling carried other vehicles to prepared positions, where their crews patiently waited for them.

The sheer size of this force in front of them could conquer star systems with ease, and it was mobilizing for the conflict its infernal masters had created it to fight.

“This is...” Tiberius struggled to find the right for what he was seeing but did not have to finish his sentence as a new voice came from behind them.

“You’ve gotten sloppy in all your time away from us, brothers,” said a powerful voice of an Astartes, and Tiberius could hear a hint of amusement in it. “But I am so glad you’re back.”

The sergeant quickly spun around and aimed his bolter at whoever had spoken. The marine in question wore the midnight blue armor of the Astartes below but with no helmet. His face was clean and hairless, with a pallor that only highlighted his pitch-black eyes.

All five marines pointed their bolters at him the moment they saw him. Despite the speed of their movements, the traitor was faster. He used his right hand to create lightning and destroyed the bolter rounds of Squad Tiberius while they were still in the air.

More lightning came forth from the traitor’s fingers as he fired another volley, which hit all five space marines at the same time. The energy went through their armor and into their flesh, burning them as if someone had poured acid into them. All their equipment suddenly felt powerless and much heavier than normal as the traitor's sorcery shut down all of their systems.

Pain Tiberius had never imagined possible flowed through his body, sending him to his knees. His strength left him as his transhuman muscles failed him for the first time in his life. All fibers in his body were burning as waves of agony washed over him and paralyzed him. Despite his instincts commanding him to fight, he could only remain and take the pain he was receiving.

He did not scream, nor did his brothers. Not one made as much as a grunt even as they also fell to their knees in pain. They would not show more weakness than what their bodies could not hide.

“Forgive me for such a dramatic introduction,” the traitor said with fake politeness in his voice. “We will have a chance for a better conversation later. How about you get some rest before that?”

Darkness crept from the corner of his vision like a moon slowly eclipsing the sun until it fully covered it, taking him into a dreamless slumber.

Author's Note

Many darlings were brutally murdered in the making of this chapter.
Also, I apologize for the delay.