Hekter huddled behind a rock as he listened to the screams of dying guardsmen. In front of him stood a deep chasm that went all the way to the flat plain below. The burning husk of his chimera provided the only source of heat on the snowy path up the mountain.

He dared to stand up for one second to look at the aliens and quickly realized they were only ten.

It seemed impossible. The Imperial Guard had broken through those alien armies with ease, but only ten of them had stopped an entire armored column and were leaving no survivors. Just ten against two hundred, and there had been no contest at all.

They had simply popped into existence in front and around the column and started taking out tank after tank before moving to the surrounding infantry. Their fire was organized and never missed, not even once.

The flak armor of the Imperial Guard was as effective as smoke against the purple rays from the aliens. The only silver lining was that the enemy fire was so hot that it cauterized all wounds instantly, so there was little blood on the ground.

When they fired at a tank, they prioritized the ammunition compartment, killing almost all the crew instantly and sending the turret flying. Some survived, but the aliens gunned them down as soon as they crawled out of their vehicles.

Hekter was lucky to have gotten out of it with his life and all of his limbs. The charge of some brave guardsmen had provided a distraction for a few seconds. By the time those men were dead, Hekter had already found his hiding spot. From there, he could only listen as all the other guardsmen died.

With one last scream of pain, the battle ended, and the aliens teleported into the burning remains of the column. They wore shining golden armor and wielded shoulder-mounted cannons on their right side. Hekter saw one of them finishing a wounded guardsman with a retractable blade on his right hoof.

One alien had a slightly different helmet with silver wings and purple eye lenses. Hekter realized it was a leader, and thought about shooting at it. The realization that his lasgun would have never pierced the armor stopped him from pulling the trigger. He wanted to survive, glorious sacrifice was for others.

He lowered his lasgun and rested his head against the rock behind him, hoping the aliens would not look for survivors and be content with having made a mockery of an Imperial column.

After closing his eyes, he held his breath and thought a prayer as he waited to either die or drift into unconsciousness.

Sleep came with no warning and brought no dreams. It was like he had skipped forward in time. He reopened his eyes when he heard steps crushing the snow.

It was already night by then, with the moon occupying the spot of a setting sun and no stars in the sky because of the thick layer of clouds obfuscating the mountaintop.

He stood up and looked at his now frozen chimera and saw what had made the noise that woke him up. The three enormous men with power armor could be nothing but Astartes, and he even recognized their grey armor as belonging to the Star Lords. They were kneeling to get a better look at the corpses, turning them around to see their faces.

Salvation had arrived.

“M-my Lords,” he said, making the three marines stop what they were doing. “I am so glad to see you. We got ambushed and-“

He stopped when the Astartes turned to look at him and stepped into the moonlight. There was something wrong with them. Their armor bore cracks in several places and had symbols he had never seen on any imperial force. The telltale sign he had made a terrible mistake was the eight-pointed star on the helmet of one of the marines.

“At least one of you whelps lived,” the one with the star said. His booming voice sounded like seeing Hekter amused him. “I must offer you my sincere thanks, for your survival means this day is not a waste.”

Since survival was no longer a possibility, Hekter fired his lasgun. All he achieved was a laugh from the Chaos Marine, who rushed towards and easily yanked his gun from his hands and lifted Hekter by his head with two fluid moves. He then took one step forward so that Hekter would be beyond edge and ready to be dropped at any moment.

“You shall not need this anymore,” he said as he tossed the lasgun away. “Not for a long time.”

Being close to an Astartes was always a terrifying experience, but being face-to-face with one serving the enemy was bowel-liquefying. He knew it would take no effort for the Space Marine to crush his head like a grape.

“No, you shall not perish on this day,” he reassured him, making Hekter think he was reading his thoughts. A moment later, he realized that his thunderous heartbeat was giving away his terror. “Our new friends need you for a simple test.”

“Can’t you just kill me?” he asked, frozen in terror.

The evil giant laughed. “You have nothing to fear, future friend. You will just have a chat with one xeno, nothing that will put your life at risk.”

“And my soul?” his eyes looked away from the Space Marine as he asked his second question. He did not do so out of fear, but because of the shame building up within him from his act of cowardice. Perhaps the Emperor was punishing him, he thought.

“You hid from a battle against hated xenos,” the Space Marine lifted Hekter’s chin so that he could not look away. “Would the Emperor welcome such a coward in his paradise? I think not. You have already fallen, now it is only a matter to discover by how much.”

The Space Marine had a crack where one of his eye-lenses should have been, and Hekter saw that his skin was as pale as a frosted corpse and his visible eye was a black void with one green dot in its center.

Another marine approached the one holding Hekter and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Brother Charon,” his voice sounded like that of a smoker paying the consequences of his addiction. “The xenos will shut down the portal in an hour. We need to move now.”

“Vitus,” Charon turned towards his treacherous brother. “Where would I be without you and your attention to time?”

“Stuck on this planet,” Vitus deadpanned. “Probably.”

With nothing else left to say, the three marines walked away, dragging Hekter with them. Charon kept one hand over Hekter’s mouth to keep him from screaming.

Only a week had passed since Tiberius had gotten out of the alien library. A week all imperial forces had spent moving at breakneck speed through the almost empty valleys of the planet, breaking any strongpoint they found in their way.

The battles were clean and direct affairs with no tricks or ambushes, just two sides meeting each other face-to-face in combat. It was a week of war waged as it always should be.

The stunning advance had come to a screeching halt, however, when the Imperial Guard had met their first unsurmountable obstacle: a solitary mountain turned into an impregnable fortress by alien work.

After ten disastrous assaults with no survivors, the Imperial Guard had asked for help from the Star Lords.

Tiberius was one marine who answered the call for reinforcements, but he was not thinking of combat at that moment. He was walking forward alone with his bolter and chainsword hanging from his hips. Grey clouds covered the sky above and soft rays of moonlight lit up the dirt path ahead.

His target was a round and white tent with a hole in its center from which a column of light grey smoke emerged.

Rows of smaller tents lined up the path. They were not for the Astartes, who would spend the night awake, but for their serfs who had followed them on the ground.

The Star Lords had set up camp under the shadow of the mountain, so they had brought almost everyone but their servitors and the most necessary elements of the Hengroen’s crew down to the surface.

Tiberius could see the mountain by looking to his right. The snow still covered its steep slopes in a thick white blanket which allowed only the biggest of its many jagged rocks to emerge from it. The curved shape reminded him of a feral beast’s tooth pointed at the sky.

The Star Lords had considered approaching it with drop pods, but the scouts had revealed a truly staggering amount of anti-air weaponry, mostly composed of surface-to-air missile launchers, which would have turned such an assault into a waste of resources and lives. Going by land was the only acceptable path to victory.

The camp was just a rallying point for the night, as Galahad had decided the attack would take place in the morning. He hoped the sun would provide a distraction for the enemy’s heat-seeking rockets so that thunderhawks could operate in peace.

A few chapter serfs, dressed in plate armor, saluted Tiberius as they walked past him, their blades red with the blood of some alien beast they had hunted in the nearby forest. Almost becoming an Astartes came with many privileges like that.

To his left, a trio of serfs was erecting one of the last tents. Their plain brown and white clothes marked them as some of the many who failed during the early trials, and their sweaty faces showed all the signs of exhaustion from a long day of work. They were too tired to notice his presence.

Two Space Marines with silver laurels on their helmets and a four-pointed white star on their chest plates stood like statues outside the tent Tiberius was about to enter. They were the Captain’s honor guards, and they were already reminding Tiberius of why he was there.

Galahad summoned Tiberius once the sergeant had submitted his first report of the crusade. With the combat slowing down for a few hours, it was time for him to answer the call.

The two guards stepped aside without even looking at Tiberius, and he went inside the tent with apprehension for the future.

Captain Galahad was there waiting for him, flanked by two more honor guards. He was not wearing a helmet, so his pale face was like a glass wall with visible black and blue veins underneath the skin because of the firelight. His age had only worsened the effects of the flawed gene seed, making his skin so pale that strong light could effortlessly go through several layers of it.

“Brother,” Galahad said with solemn calm. “Remove your helmet.”

Tiberius complied, taking off his helmet and placing it under his right arm. A gesture to show utter trust, as it rendered his sword-wielding arm useless.

The two honor guards did their part in the ceremony by walking one step behind and lowering their bolters.

“Your summon has reached me, my liege. I am here because this is what chivalry demands,” Tiberius kneeled as he pronounced the traditional words. “With the stars as my witnesses, I swear myself to secrecy on the words of this meeting. May my brothers strike me down if I betray this oath.”

“I welcome your words,” Galahad placed his hand on Tiberius’ shoulders, instructing him to rise. “Never shall I forget them, not until the day I am buried.”

With the formalities over, Tiberius put his helmet back on. It made a clicking noise when reconnected with the rest of the armor.

“Why did you summon me?” he asked him. “Are you unsatisfied with my performance in this war?”

Tiberius knew he would have a good reason to scold him. He had been reckless in the past few days. Each time he meditated on his behavior in the first battle of the crusade, he could not help but feel ashamed of his actions. Cassius’ words still lingered in his mind.

“It is not your performance that concerns me, but your conduct, that is troubling. You are not acting like the Tiberius I welcomed in the first company with open arms,” Galahad’s words were exactly what he expected. “But that is not the reason I summoned you. The reason for this meeting is your latest report.”

“I see,” Tiberius kicked himself for not immediately understanding the real reason for the meeting, but that had become crystal clear the moment Galahad finished speaking. He kicked himself for not thinking about it before. “If you will allow me to guess, I believe this is because of Mordred?”

“Correct, brother,” Galahad nodded as he confirmed Tiberius’ suspicions. “His presence here is of the utmost concern. Discovering the degree of his involvement with these xenos is now your primary concern, even above the crusade. Hunt him down, brother, him, and all those who followed him. I give this task to you because I hope your methods will be discrete.”

It was almost traditional for the Star Lords to pursue their objectives in a war zone, so Tiberius did not bat an eye at the request to treat the crusade as a secondary matter.

“It shall be as you command,” he banged one fist against his chest. “But I have one request if you will allow it.”

“Ask,” Galahad nodded. “And I shall see if it is within my power to give.”

“I swore to my old squad that I would avenge them with Mordred’s life,” Tiberius said. “If any of our other brothers, or even you, were to find Mordred before I, let me be the one to slay him. I took that oath beneath clear starlight, not fulfilling it would bring me great shame.”

“Your desire is noble,” Galahad said. “I shall do all I can to grant it. Now go, the mountain shall fall when the sun rises.”

After one polite bow, Tiberius finally stepped outside.

The recently risen moon cast a pale light on the camp’s tents. Most of the serfs had gone to sleep, and only a few gathered around some fires as they shared stories.

There was only one Space Marine in the vicinity, Icarus. He was sitting on a tree stump as he looked at the mountain in the distance. Tiberius could hear him tapping one finger against his knee in sets of three.

Because Icarus was not wearing his helmet, Tiberius could appreciate how much less the flawed gene seed had affected his brother compared to others. His skin, while still mostly pale, showed hints of color scattered around in patches all over his face, and his hair still had some black strands in the back. His face looked almost human when compared with the average Star Lord.

For The Star Lords, marines like Icarus were mysteries they could not explain.

“You look like you are hunting for a sign,” Tiberius said as he approached his brother. “Yet neither sky nor moon has caught your eye. Tell me, brother, what is that you observe?”

“No brother, I do not seek a sign,” Icarus shook his head. “I observe a skirmish.”

“And what do your eyes see? What is noteworthy about this fight?” Tiberius noticed red flashes coming from firing lasguns.

“It is a slaughter like those before it,” Aphaniel replied and tapped his finger three more times, the exact number of flashes in the distance. “Do you see now, brother?.”

“No brother, open my eyes to what can be observed here,” Tiberius shook his head. He had a suspicion, but he would let Icarus speak it aloud. “I seem blind to this lesson.”

“I have observed all the skirmishes,” Icarus informed him. “Each lasgun only gets to fire three shots before falling silent, never one shot more or one less. Whatever is killing those guardsmen is being methodical about it. The enemy holding that mountain will be nothing like what we have faced before.”

“A commendable observation,” Tiberius felt a surge of hope of once again meeting something that might match him. His enthusiasm for the crusade had already waned after the first easy battles. It was apparent the aliens he had faced in the forest were just an exception to the rule. “I hope it will be true.”

“I do not make mistakes when I observe my foe,” Icarus said, then turned his head to look at Tiberius. “Will you join me? Or does duty already call you somewhere else?”

“Indeed, I shall,” Tiberius replied and set his eyes on the mountain. “There is no better use of time outside of combat than to observe the enemy.”

Hours passed as the two marines observed the combat on the mountain. Judging by the distance in time and space between each fight, Tiberius could see that the enemy was quick, but not quick enough to be an Astartes.

He would not fight his treacherous brothers yet. Not in the morning, at least.

That morning arrived sooner than expected, a feature of the planet’s smaller-than-average size.

As the hot sunrays warmed up Tiberius’ armor, an oliphant’s long and monotone noise ritualistically signaled that the Astartes would soon attack.

With no more time to spare, Icarus stood up, and Tiberius followed him as they went to join their brothers.

Bright Mark’s eye lenses gave a green tint to the underground corridor he was currently traversing with determined speed. His steps hit the steel floor with heavy thuds, an inevitable consequence of his heavy golden armor.

The weight and noise pleased him immensely. It had been far too long since he had gotten the chance to wear his battle attire instead of those pompous uniforms he had to endure in Canterlot.

Gone were the days of Royal Guards being glorified light infantry. During Twilight’s reign, they had turned into an elite force with the best gear and equipment at the expense of their numbers.

The lights on the ceiling dangled because of the artillery shells striking the mountain’s surface. There was a full-scale assault going on, which meant he was running out of time. Not because of its scale, but because of its participants.

He had spent the entire night fighting against the regular soldiers sent by the invaders, dispatching them with ease, but the morning had brought the alien giants against whom he knew he could not win, so Bright Mark and the others had retreated to the network of tunnels and corridors under the mountain.

For all Bright Mark knew, the battle was already over and he was already dead. All he could do was not leave his duty unfulfilled, and he was not there to protect the mountain.

Other Royal Guards, nine, were accompanying him. They walked in a double-lined V formation, quickly making their way toward a thick steel door. It was protected by two private security guards wearing a steel helmet emblazoned with the logo of the company for which they worked: Arcane Solutions.

The logo was a single white unicorn horn surrounded by two thunderbolts and standing on a sky-blue field.

Officially, Arcane Solutions was just an energy provider. When a police investigation uncovered the existence of a secret facility on a remote planet, protected by enough weapons to stop an army, Bright Mark and his Royal Guards received orders to investigate the matter in much more detail.

He had arrived a few days before the invasion started and had faced a nigh unbreakable wall of red tape and bureaucratic procedures every time he had tried to look anywhere.

“Halt!” the biggest of the two guards said when Bright Mark reached the door. “You do not have the proper authorization to enter.”

He looked down at him. Even though the guard was wearing a black mask over his face, Bright Mark could sense his fear. His armor’s sensors picked up all the signs and compiled them into an easy-to-read sheet floating right next to the stallion’s head whenever Bright Mark looked at it.

His heart threatened to burst out of his chest, and an ocean of sweat drowned his face.

With a second look, Bright Mark saw black patches covering vast sections of the guard’s lungs because of his blatant smoking habit.

Despite his big muscles, the stallion was no threat to Bright Mark.

“We are her majesty’s Royal Guards,” Bright Mark stated flatly. “You will let us through or face the consequences.”

“I cannot allow-“

The stallion attempted to reply but stopped when he saw a short and smooth shoulder-mounted cannon pointed at his face. Bright Mark would no longer waste his time with a security force that could not stop wet paper if truly tested, no matter how well armed.

The other guard looked at his colleague and shook his head. A moment later, they stepped aside and the door opened, seemingly of its own volition.

Bright Mark and the others walked in one by one. The room had no windows, relying on sterile electrical lights dangling from the ceiling to receive any illumination. Large rectangular screens covered the upper half of one wall and showed scenes of the ongoing attack, adding to Bright Mark’s sense of urgency.

A few rows of employees were quietly working on their computers but stopped when they saw and heard the Royal Guards entering. They silently stared at the Royal Guards without moving a muscle. Bright Mark’s sensors revealed their heartbeat was steadily getting faster and beyond what would be healthy.

“No, no, no, you can’t be here,” a frantic pegasus mare with a long black mane and purple coat said. “I told you… you will get all your files in time. Get out!”

She was the director, Purple Rose, the one who had delayed all of their efforts to receive every information about the place.

Bright Mark was married to his duty, and could not be distracted by something as frivolous as physical attraction, but even he could not deny that Purple Rose was the most beautiful mare he had ever seen.

Her face especially seemed to have a magnetic pull that could attract those with less self-control. He thanked his training for allowing him to keep himself together.

As invisible tendrils wormed their way into Bright Mark’s head, an image of Purple Rose sitting on the throne in Canterlot surrounded by an adoring crowd flashed in front of him. He cursed himself for the intrusive thought and almost made a mental note to meditate on it before he remembered he would not have that long to live.

“The time will never come,” Bright Mark pointed to one screen. The giants were making mincemeat of the private security guarding the outer defensive line. “We will all be dead before the sun sets, and I intend to die knowing my task is done.”

All at once, the employees stood up and stepped towards the Royal Guards. Their one step, done in unison, echoed around the room.

“Guards!” The two stallions who had stood near the door entered as soon as they heard the call. “Escort these outsiders to the exit.”

The two hesitantly approached Bright Mark, pointing their trembling side-mounted rifles at him.

“We will not comply until we have received our answers,” Bright Mark said, not even looking at the guns pointed at him. Their caliber was too low to pierce through his armor. “You will tell us the purpose of this place out of your own free will, or I will have to extract your memories by force. Every embarrassing little secret your company holds will be mine to see.”

Instead of responding, the mare rushed to a steel microphone on the closest desk. “Brothers and sisters,” she said, her voice echoing from every speaker outside. “The hour has come, kill the-“

She did not finish the sentence. One Royal Guard fired a burst of purple energy that cut off both of Purple Rose’s frontal legs, causing her to fall to the ground. There was no blood, as the heat instantly cauterized the wounds. The mare’s scream was not of pain but pleasure, making it like she enjoyed her mutilation.

A moment later, many employees rushed towards Bright Mark and the others. Some of those in the back armed themselves with scissors and long pencils.

The two private guards were the first to go, their heads turned to vapor a second after they fired their guns. Only one of their bullets hit its target but did not leave a scratch.

Bright Mark scanned the crowd in front of him, and his helmet counted forty targets. He had trained for worse odds. All he needed to do was to calculate his moves and find the path to victory.

“Each one of you takes care of four of them,” he said to the others, then he assigned the stated number of targets just by thinking about it. He could do so because of the neurally reactive qualities of his armor which allowed it to turn the wearer's thoughts into actions and orders.

With his choices marked by red squares on their heads, Bright Mark took a second to plan his actions. Two of his targets were close enough for his blades, with only three steps separating them, but the others were in the back of the room.

He killed the first one, a kirin, by slashing his throat with the retractable blade on his right foreleg’s armor. Even if he had practiced the move a hundred times during training, he still reflexively closed his eyes for a second when the blood spray hit him.

Killing enemies who looked like civilians was nauseating, but he knew the time for diplomacy had passed.

With no time to further dwell on his actions, he fired his shoulder-mounted cannon at one target in the distance and vaporized his head. The headless body fell to the ground with a flat thud.

He took a sideways step to the left and repeated his previous moves like a passionless machine running on autopilot, and just like that, the battle was already over.

The other Royal Guards had been just as quick with their targets and were the only living things left in the room, or so it seemed.

Bright Mark heard a grunt and looked down at the cooling carpet of corpses. Purple Rose was still alive and trying to crawl away with her two remaining legs.

“I warned you,” he said as he approached her and lifted her with his magic. “Now we'll do this the hard way.”

He focused his thoughts and let out a slithering trail of energy that gently caressed Purple Rose’s forehead. As her mental barriers crumbled under his magical assault, terrible images of murder revealed themselves. She had committed them all with the same curved dagger, plunging it into a victim already bound over a rock.

Before he could see anything else, the visions stopped as Purple Rose gurgled and Bright Mark felt another spray of blood hitting him.

Purple Rose had slit her own throat with a dagger she held with one of her wings. It looked like the one in her memories.

A glance at her head revealed that her heart was still and all brain activity had ceased. She was already dead, too quickly to be a completely natural occurrence. He let her corpse join the others on the floor and noticed the lack of noise when it hit the ground.

The blood pooling around the mare’s open throat disappeared whenever it touched the curved dagger’s blade. It was not merely vanishing, the blade itself was absorbing it like a sponge in water.

He obeyed the instincts that told him not to touch the dagger, but he risked one quick look at the handle. Its gold was so clean Bright mark could see the room reflected on its smooth surface and it had an eight-pointed star dangling from a chain from its lower end.

“Warder,” said one mare who addressed by his rank, what less disciplined forces would call a sergeant. She was looking at the screens. “What do we do now?”

“No easy way now, so we’ll go straight to the source,” he said. “The laboratory.”

The laboratory at the very top of the mountain was highly restricted, but Bright Mark figured it was no longer a concern.

“Their guards will be here soon,” noted one earth stallion everyone called Mountain because of his muscles so big they could imagine him crushing rocks as a pastime. “They will not allow us through.”

“They cannot stop us,” he replied. “Remove all combat restraints on my authority, engage targets at will. No teleportation. We do not know this place well enough.”

So they did. Using the energy weapons mounted on their shoulders and the retractable blades on their hooves, they carved their path through defenders who dared to stop their advance. Shooting the civilians never got easy, but they left them with no choice when they attacked the Royal Guards without caring for their lives. If not for the medicines provided by the armor, Bright Mark would not have been able to keep his focus and would have vomited everything he had ever eaten because of his rising nausea.

Bright Mark noticed one detail as he shot what remained of a horde.

“They are enjoying this,” a Royal Guard next to Bright Mark voiced his thoughts for him.

“Yes,” Bright Mark nodded and looked directly at the body that had just reached the ground; the data from his helmet confirmed the absurd. “Someone tampered with their pain receptors. They can only feel pleasure.”

“What in Twilight’s name is this?” Mountain asked, making no secret of how unnerved he was at the sight of the smiling bodies.

“Sorcery, that’s what it is!” Another Royal Guard proclaimed.

“No such thing,” Bright Mark snapped at the word. It reeked of the superstition Equestria had relegated to the dustbin of history. “There is only magic, and even that word is a stretch.”

“Look at them and tell me this is the same thing Twilight could do.” Mountain pointed a hoof toward the body of a mare he had cut in half with his cannon. Despite the guts scattered around the floor, the open mouth and rolled-back eyes revealed only pleasure in the dead mare’s face. “No, this is something different; I can feel it in my bones.”

“Science and reason have built Twilight’s reign,” Bright Mark proudly repeated one of the propaganda lines he had memorized since his basic training. “And whatever you might feel at the moment doesn’t concern them. If I call this magic, then that’s what this is.”

“Then, with all due respect, Warder Bright Mark, you are being stubborn,” Mountain told him as he shook his head. It was rare for him to address Bright Mark by both name and rank, as he usually preferred the latter. “This might be a new threat we just discovered. Why not use a new word for it?”

“I barely tolerate the word magic. I will not bother with another word for what we don’t fully understand yet. That's all this is.” He explained. “Now let’s keep moving. We don’t have all the time in the galaxy.”

After that, they exchanged words only to notify each other of which target they had acquired. They maintained a fast pace thanks to the artificial muscles underneath their armor, which allowed them to move much faster than their respective species ever could without even a sweat.

With the roaring of the giants’ weapons coming ever closer, the Royal Guards reached the laboratory’s entrance. Two black-clad ponies stood in front of an even darker door that killed any rays of light that touched it.

They dispatched the two ponies in less than a blink and shot the door open in the next blink.

All of them leaped inside, guns ready to fire upon anything they saw. What they found was a target-rich environment. Six ceiling-high stained glass windows should have allowed plenty of natural light inside, but all the rays quickly died shortly after entering, shrouding the room in a permanent penumbra that almost looked like a dark fog.

Six concentric rings of ponies and other creatures were spinning around a floating purple flame as they chanted in a language Bright Mark had never heard before. Each word reverberated through the air as if it was echoing from a distant valley.

Listening carefully, he could hear there was a feminine voice replying to the chanting, it felt maternal and gentle, despite speaking in the same incomprehensible language.

With each word spoken, the purple flame grew brighter and taller, threatening to reach the ceiling and go beyond it.

Bright Mark acquired the closest target with the aid of his helmet and fired, breaking the first of the six circles.

For once, it looked like Icarus had been wrong. Squad Tiberius had never fought an easier battle.

Something had done the Astartes’ jobs for them, leaving behind a trail of scorch marks and broken corpses for them to walk over. It was almost disappointing, but Tiberius would not complain about someone saving him some bolter rounds.

After half an hour of killing off the wounded and the stragglers, squad Tiberius reached an already open door with two headless alien bodies next to it. Even rushing ahead of the primary force provided no challenge.

“Never have we vanquished a foe with such ease,” said Cadriel, not hiding the amusement in his voice. “May all of our battles be like this one.”

“Be careful with what you desire,” Aphaniel warned him. “You might receive it.”

They entered the room in two groups, the first two brothers inside being Icarus and Aphaniel. Both marines covered ninety degrees of the space in front of them, while the three behind formed a secondary line and offered additional firepower against whatever target the first two might spot.

A battle was already underway. Ten golden aliens were butchering scores of their kind dressed in black robes.

The ten moved with speed and certainty Tiberius had yet to see in their race. Perhaps those were the warriors Icarus had seen fighting in the night. Their fighting style seemed methodical enough to make them look like the probable candidates.

“Target the cultists first,” Tiberius ordered. “We shall deal with the golden xenos once the rabble is dead.”

“Yes, my liege,” his brothers said. “As you command.”

With the Astartes on one side and the golden warriors on the other, they wiped out what remained of the cultists in a couple of minutes. Covered in the blood and guts of their kind, the golden aliens immediately turned to face the Astartes.

Tiberius pointed his bolter at the closest alien, but never got the chance to fire it.

As he acquired his target, the purple flame in the room turned into a furious column of fire that finally pierced through the ceiling and created a wind so powerful it sent the walls and glass flying. All that remained were six grey supporting arches that connected above the center of the room like the bars of a cage.

The howling wind of the outside blizzard quickly blanketed the alien corpses under a growing layer of snow.

With what sounded like a scream of ecstasy, the flame emitted a shockwave that caused everyone to lose their balance and Tiberius stumbled backward for several steps before falling to the ground just before he went over the edge.

Tiberius looked down at the distant rocks that would have greeted him had he been just slightly less lucky. After a second of observation, he noticed they were getting smaller, more distant.

“My liege!” shouted Icarus. “The heavens open before us!”

He stood up and looked at the sky. It had a new gaping wound, a cut in reality from which a black fog spilled forth. The cut was steadily expanding from the column of purple flames.

“Cassius!” turned in his brother’s direction. “Contact the Hengroen. We need extraction now!”

“Yes, my liege!”

Before Tiberius could give another order, the platform wobbled as it went up in the air, beginning a steady ascent towards the wound in the sky. It took him all of his enhanced senses to remain firmly planted on his own two feet as the floor trembled like a wild horse dispatching a new rider.

The golden aliens were faring similarly, planting their hooves on the ground to hold on to their position. Judging from the sparks on their boots, Tiberius figured they must have had some magnetic properties.

He tried to shoot at them, but the constant movement of the ground forced him to readjust his aim far too many times. He only fired a couple of rounds, and a purple bubble they had formed when he fired the first shot easily deflected those.

Tiberius heard a woman giggling behind him as she then sweetly whispered in his right ear, and his experience and training took over.

With startling speed, he turned around with his chainsword in hand. When he finished his move, he had cut through a woman with black hair and eyes, pale purple skin, and long crab-like pincers where her hands should have been.

“Daemons!” shouted Aphaniel, who was already fighting with two of the things that had appeared from thin air.

The things came out of the five arches as a purple mist that quickly turned into solid matter. There was some variation in the shape of their claws and their haircuts, but their shape was overall familiar to Tiberius who had faced the slaves of the Lord of Pleasure countless times.

Space Marines and aliens delayed their battle once more as they turned their focus on their private fights with the daemons.

The aliens formed a defensive ring and dared the daemons to come to them, their energy weapons pulverizing many of them before they could even get close to them. Tiberius could not tell if it was just their shoulder-mounted cannons and their armors that did the trick, or perhaps they were gene-enhanced in some unclear way, but the effectiveness of their gear was undeniable.

Squad Tiberius opted for a similar strategy, with four brothers taking position around Aphaniel and his banner, but occasionally shifting their position when one of them had too many targets to deal with.

“Why are they here?” Asked Icarus, who was calmly firing at the daemons. His superlative aim allowed him to fire effectively despite the unfavorable ground, while his brothers had to rely mostly on their chainswords.

“Your aim is sharp, brother, but your eyes lack focus. The battle was a ritual,” Aphaniel pointed to the dead cultists on the ground. Their blood was flowing towards the center instead of pooling around the bodies. “This summoning is our doing.”

“It is not like we could have suffered these xenos to live,” Tiberius commented as he swapped a magazine. “We shall deal with these horrors in the same way. For the Tower!”

The fight kept going with no apparent end in sight for what felt like hours, but was closer to twenty minutes. Squad Tiberius was doing all it could to hold the line against the increasingly large horde, but the daemons were only growing more numerous no matter how many of them died. To make the situation even worse, with each passing second the floor went up higher and even increased its speed.

“Cassius, how long until our extraction is here?” Tiberius’ voice was the closest his kind could get to sounding worried.

“Ten minutes if lady luck smiles upon us,” Cassius said. “But these winds are creating troubles for the thunderhawk. Twenty minutes is the worst-case scenario.”

Tiberius dared a look upwards and saw that the once distant gap had quickly grown large to cover his entire field of vision. Little white stars were twinkling in the dark fog, giving it the impression of being a night sky come to life.

“We do not have ten minutes,” he realized aloud. “Let alone twenty.”

“Then what is your command?” asked Cassius.

“Call off the extraction,” he said. “We will take the long journey out of this battle.”

He smiled under his helmet, sensing a deed worthy of a song in his future.

Saureil was doing all he could to keep a straight trajectory with his thunderhawk, but the ever-shifting winds were doing all they could to test his century and a half of experience. He could have maintained a steady course, had it not for the second nuisance, the large birds attempting to ram him, forcing him to waste precious time with evasive maneuvers.

After yet another turn so narrow it would have broken a normal man’s neck, he received a hail on his vox from the squad he was there to rescue.

“This is Saureil,” he said. “Receiving your signal loud and clear.”

“This is Cassius, speaking for squad Tiberius,” he could hear the roaring of bolters and chainswords behind his brother’s voice. “Abort our extraction, now!”

“For what reason?” he asked. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“It is not fast enough,” Cassius quickly informed him. “Give word to the chapter of our fate, so that it may not turn into yet another mystery.”

He turned the thunderhawk vertically and killed the engine for one second, causing one of the large birds to overshoot and end up in his sights. It was the dead a second after, its body torn apart by bolter rounds.

“I will not run,” he said. “With the stars as my witnesses-“

“Saureil,” Tiberius overtook the conversation. “Do not be too proud to live. Do you remember the wisdom of the codex?”

“No glory is earned in pointless death,” Saureil recited the words by heart. “I understand, sergeant. What shall I tell my brothers?”

“Tell them that the warp stole us from this world,” Tiberius said. “Tell them also that we shall return one day.”

“As you wish,” he nodded. “Aborting mission.”

With a quick split S, he turned the thunderhawk around, away from the treacherous winds and his brothers. He steadily gained altitude to exit the planet’s atmosphere and after a few minutes of passing through fire and turbulence, he was outside the atmosphere.

Perhaps it was a leftover from the chapter’s early nomadic days, but Saureil always felt more at home in the void of space instead of the countless alien skies he had seen. Not even the blue skies of the homeworld, Aldroc, could give him the same serenity that the parade of stars waiting for him every time he flew in space.

From his cockpit, he could see a large portion of the crusading fleet. The red livery of the Mechanichus ships made them the first to catch his attention. They had small grey skulls surrounded by a gear wheel above each gun port for their main cannons, at least six for each side and sometimes more. There were also smaller flak guns scattered around the hull.

The Imperial Navy was no less grandiose but in a different way. Instead of ostentations of hoarded technology, their ships were flying prayers to the Emperor with statues and windows of stained depicting Him when He still walked among mortal men.

His ship, the Hengroen, stood slightly apart from the rest of the fleet, content to stalk the other vessel like a grey shark.

There was also another ship, so distant that it looked like a grey speck of dust on his glass. As he went to clean it, he saw it move behind an asteroid belt, and then it was like it never existed.

Squadrons of ten fighters each patrolled the blind spots of their home ships’ guns or escorted troop transports as they went down to the surface. A pair of Thunderbolts flew right in front of him, and he saw one of the human pilots staring at him with that mixture of awe and respect he expected from mortals. Saureil knew that if that man survived the crusade, he would tell his children about the day he got to see a Space Marine, perhaps even embellishing the story as all talented storytellers do.

“This is Hengroen flight command,” said a female voice in his vox. “Welcome back, Lord Saureil. How did the mission go?”

He knew the woman well. Enid had been with him on his flight missions for over forty years, always being the voice that announced when he could finally let his guard down. For a moment, he felt shame when he knew he would have to announce his first failure to her.

“Aborted,” he said. “On squad Tiberius’ request.”

A second of silence passed as Enid processed what the report truly meant.

He heard her type a familiar number of letters on her cogitator. She even paused after each set almost as if she want to confirm to him what she was doing. He never thought he would be alive to see Sergeant Tiberius counted as a casualty.

She was the one to break the silence. “Understood, did they mention what their lament should focus on?”

He told her everything Tiberius had asked him to report, and then once listened as she corrected what she had typed a moment before. She had assumed that squad Tiberius was dead, and he did not blame her for it.

“And this crusade was going so well, too. Seems impossible that even you Lords are taking casualties,” she said in a lower tone of voice. “In any case, you are now clear to land in the hanger, broadside approach. May the stars guide you.”

“And may they brighten your darkest nights,” he finished for her. “Going to the hangar.”

There was no fanfare waiting for him when he landed, not even one brother to greet him or chastise him for his failure, as most of them were down on the surface. He found only an eerie silence occasionally broken by menials and servitors going about their duties.

Only one woman was paying attention to his arrival. She was sitting on a munitions crate as she calmly inspected her bolt pistol. Saureil had never seen her before, but she lifted her head when she heard the thunderhawk landing.

With a sigh, Saureil lowered the ramp and walked outside, sure to see the woman waiting for him. She was wearing a dark blue hood and polished silver armor from neck to toe. A black cloak hid her shoulder and reached to the floor.

“Greetings,” she said. “I am glad to make your acquaintance. I believe you have a minute to speak?”

She enunciated each word perfectly, like a superbly educated noble would.

“My answer depends on your identity,” he replied. “State it, or leave my presence.”

With one fluid motion, she produced a small trinket from her belt. It was an ‘I’ with a skull in its center and a thin silver line running around it.

“An Inquisitor,” he said. “To what do I owe the displeasure?”

“The inquisition has many eyes, and let’s just say that your errands on this alien world have not gone unnoticed, especially when that forest took fire,” she explained casually, then put her Inquisitorial rosette back on her belt. “I was hoping to have a chat with the squads that were seemingly most involved with it, just to clear out some facts. There is nothing to fear unless you lot have something to hide.”

“Threatening a Space Marine on his own chapter’s battle barge is a brave move,” he told her. “But it will earn you no reward. Squad Tiberius is lost to us. Your quest ended before it could begin.”

Saureil attempted to walk past her, for once eager to be free of his armor for a few hours, but he stopped when she placed her hand on his chest plate.

“Not so fast, pilot,” her voice seemed amused at how easily she had stopped him. “I have commandeered your service for as long as this crusade continues.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I spoke with your Captain,” she explained. “It was either this or allowing me to have a room aboard the Hengroen. Galahad decided that lending me one pilot would be the lesser evil.”

“Why not get your Deathwatch lapdogs?” Saureil could not believe his ears. “I have seen their vessel on my way here.”

“Really?” the woman smiled at him. “Such a keen eye you have. No, I do not need to deploy the Deathwatch. I will keep you close to me so I can monitor and understand your chapter.”

Saureil was about to reply but stopped when he understood there would be no point. Others had already decided for him. It seemed like fate had presented him with a way to do some penance for his failure.

Author's Note

"It's Alive"

Sorry to keep you waiting, a delay this long is kind of embarrassing tbh.

Hopefully, the next update will be in less than a year .