Chapter 101: Only a Game

How could Titus possibly be allowed too many allies? As the Lieutenant’s squad mobilized, a certain "Great Horned Rat," who preferred to remain anonymous, personally intervened. Suddenly, the vox-casters and cogitator banks aboard Titus’s gunship wailed with piercing alarms.

"Bleep… Bleep! Cogitator matrix warning: Unidentified interference detected. Rerouting landing coordinates… rerouting landing coordinates!"

The Astartes pilot cried out in disbelief, his fingers flying across the terminal as he desperately tried to override the logic-engines and restore their original flight path.

It was an exercise in futility. In the Immaterium, Lucius sat cross-legged upon the Throne of Ruins, his chin resting on his palms. Through his divine will, he projected a shimmering psychic image of the material universe, watching the unfolding scene like a high-definition cinematic.

Seeing the Space Marine struggle against the controls, Lucius let out a derisive snort.

"If you can wrestle control back from a machine-spirit I’ve personally shackled, I’ll ascend you to daemonhood on the spot!" Lucius chuckled with satisfaction. However, to ensure the "game" remained playable, he set the new landing zone near a minor outpost belonging to a subsidiary Moulder rat-clan.

Titus, realizing the descent was beyond their control, barked orders to prepare for a hot landing, commanding his brothers to engage their Auspex scanners immediately.

The moment the gunship’s sensors flared to life, they revealed a swarm of thermal signatures emerging from the skeletal ruins and petrified forests below. Screeching "Bat-rats," winged abominations with warp-forged talons and muzzles filled with predatory fangs, swarmed the gunships like a living shroud.

The door-gunners unleashed a torrential hail of fire from their storm bolters. Red gore and severed leathery wings erupted in the air, but the sheer, suffocating weight of the swarm was undiminished.

Soon, the reinforced hulls of three of the five gunships were torn open by warp-talons. Screaming monsters poured into the holds, and the craft spun out of control, trailing fire as they plummeted toward the surface.

"All units, forced deployment! Consolidate at the designated rally point!" Titus roared. He stood at the jagged breach of his own gunship’s bay, his chainsword a blur of silver and red as he bisected every Bat-rat that dared enter. He punched the coordinates into the squad-link.

"Understood, my Lord!" Gadriel shouted back.

From a height of nearly fifty meters, the Astartes leaped. They fell like meteoric stones, slamming into the earth with bone-shaking force.

Curiously, once the gunships had been shredded and brought down, the Bat-rats seemed to consider their objective complete. They did not pursue the falling warriors but circled high above like carrion birds, acting as little more than a macabre backdrop for the carnage to follow.

As the squad regrouped, Titus made a grim tally. Only twenty-three combat-effective Astartes remained; the rest were either dead or too shattered to fight.

Titus reflected that this felt remarkably similar to his days in the Deathwatch, or perhaps his trials prior to the Rubicon Primaris. And, as if dictated by some cosmic script, Metaurus and Gadriel stood beside him, entirely unscathed.

"Hold this position. Establish a perimeter and salvage what supplies remain," Titus commanded the survivors. "Metaurus, Gadriel… with me!"

Gadriel checked his bolter. "Yes, Lord. This feels strangely familiar."

"As you command," Metaurus added.

The trio moved out, navigating a path that felt hauntingly scripted, clashing with scattered Skaven patrols.

"Man-things! Man-things!"

Clanrats and a sea of Slaves shrieked in terror as the blue-clad giants erupted from the gloom. Titus and his team showed no mercy. They led with disciplined volleys of bolt and plasma fire before charging in to settle matters with cold steel.

"Careful! Their rounds can disrupt machine spirits and pierce ceramite!" Titus warned. A jagged hole had already been punched into his pauldron by a Clanrat’s warp-musket.

The strongest of the patrol was a Rat Ogre encased in salvaged Ambull plating. The beast lashed out with berserk fury.

"Nothing but a mindless beast!" Gadriel barked, ducking beneath a sweeping claw before carving a ragged trench through the creature’s chitinous armor.

Metaurus followed up with a plasma blast that turned the monster’s chest into a crater of scorched meat. Titus finished the encounter with a practiced flourish: he vaulted onto the beast’s shoulders, his left hand pinning its skull while his chainsword roared through its throat in a single, horizontal spray of gore.

Watching Titus execute the "finisher" move, Lucius nodded in approval. "Now that’s the spirit. A shame I can’t control Titus directly, though I doubt the Golden Man would allow that anyway. Haha!"

The trio fought their way into the heart of the nest, eventually reaching the Skaven Warlord. As a high-ranking chieftain of the Moulder faction, this rat was not only formidable in his own right but rode atop a "Bonebreaker" Rat Ogre, a four-armed titan outfitted with warpfire throwers, Ratling guns, and a pair of serrated flaying-gauntlets.

"YES-YES! Iron-clad things! You fall into the hands of the mighty Hezar Tailsnatcher! I will dig-pluck the seeds from your bellies and sew-stuff them into my Bone-breaker!!" the Warlord shrieked from his high saddle.

"Xenos! What have you done with the heritage of our Chapter?!" Metaurus, Titus’s former mentor, roared in righteous fury, leveling his power sword at the chieftain.

"Hahaha! Good-spoils, shiny-prizes! All Skaven know, man-clad things have good-meat inside! Mutator-Masters love it! Great Horned One loves it! Use it to grow big-strong! VERY STRONG!!" The Warlord cackled, commanding the Bonebreaker to raise its heavy flamer-arm. A torrent of sickly green warpfire bathed the area.

Titus and his brothers rolled clear of the inferno.

"Hezar has Iron-thing seed-bits! Bonebreaker has them too! But we want more-more!"

"These lunatics," Titus cursed, firing as he moved. "They have blasphemed the gene-seed... grafted it directly into their foul bodies!"

Under the erratic and corner-cutting experiments of the Master Mutators, stitching gene-seed directly into the flesh of their monsters had become a favored shortcut. It granted behemoths like the Bonebreaker unnatural reflexes and speed. The creature’s flaying-gauntlets moved with a precision that allowed it to parry the strikes of Gadriel and Metaurus with ease.

"Titus! We must end this now! The gene-seed cannot be allowed to suffer such desecration!" Metaurus cried out.

"I know, Sergeant!"

Watching Titus struggle against the odds, Lucius felt a marvelous sense of fulfillment. But simply observing was no longer enough. Before his ascension, he had been a devotee of Total War: Warhammer, Vermintide, Darktide, and Space Marine. It was time to join the fray.

He reached out his divine will and seized direct control of Hezar’s body. Like stepping into a VR simulation, Lucius took the reins of the Skaven Warlord, staring down at the three legendary Astartes through the rat’s own greedy eyes.

Chapter 102: The Game of the Dark Gods

Though its outward appearance remained unchanged, Titus felt an instinctive shift in the loathsome xenos before him. A primal dread, thick and suffocating as a stagnant mire, welled up within him.

The Skaven Warlord, Hezar, stood tall upon the back of his Bonebreaker. His hunched frame seemed to dilate in the eyes of the Space Marines, growing impossibly vast and terrifying. Even the Bonebreaker beneath him, a mountain of warped and stitched muscle, trembled, shuddering as if it dared not draw a single errant breath in the presence of the entity now inhabiting its master.

Titus had faced and banished a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, yet the sheer, malevolent psychic weight radiating from this rat-man filled him with a cold, hollow despair.

Hezar leveled his warp-power sword at Titus. "Come, Titus... do not disappoint me. If you can provide me with sufficient amusement, your battle-brothers may yet draw breath. Fail, and I shall devise a punishment for you of... exquisite creativity."

The rat’s stuttering, high-pitched rasp was gone. In its place was a voice of silk and iron, the tone of a bored master toying with his subjects.

"Xenos, you die here!" Metaurus roared. His psychic sensitivity was low; though he sensed the creature had been possessed, it changed nothing. Whether the rat was a puppet for a daemon or a god, his duty remained the same.

Metaurus fired a searing bolt of plasma at Hezar even as he charged the Bonebreaker, intent on meeting the beast in a contest of raw strength. The Bonebreaker reacted with instinctual ferocity to protect its rider. The Moulder-bred monstrosity, its muscles as dense as ceramite, swung its flaying-gauntlets with a speed that defied its massive bulk, swatting the Astartes aside.

"Lord Titus, we strike together!" Gadriel cried out. He laid down a covering hail of bolt shells before activating his jump pack, soaring through the air with his blade held high to cleave Hezar in twain.

Lucius had not merely possessed Hezar; he had seized the rat’s soul and puppeted the meat. His essence remained anchored in the Immaterium, where he utilized the malevolent craftsmanship of the Forge of Souls to fashion a keyboard and mouse from the quintessence of blood, fire, and spirit. Sitting upon his Throne of Ruins, the Great Horned Rat was playing a high-stakes simulation.

"Heh, entertaining." Controlling Hezar, Lucius raised a triangular shield to deflect the plasma and bolt rounds. He ignored the two "supporting characters," focusing entirely on his protagonist.

With a supernatural leap, Hezar landed fifteen meters from Titus, leaving the Bonebreaker to stall the other two Space Marines.

Titus stared at the creature. It was a vile xenos in form, yet it radiated the abyssal horror of the deep Warp. "What are you?" he asked, his voice heavy. "Alien... or daemon?"

"Heh heh heh… I am merely a player," the Warlord replied. The rat’s black power armor creaked as its body straightened. At three meters tall and infused with stolen gene-seed, the rat now stared Titus directly in the eye. "And you, your company, your Chapter, the very galaxy itself, are but my game."

Titus drew a deep, ragged breath. He roared through bared teeth: "The Light of the Emperor and the Light of Macragge are with me! FORWARD!!"

Titus lunged, his chainsword, decorated with the Aquila and holy purity seals, roaring with the hum of its disruption field. Hezar’s power sword met the strike with perfect fluidity. With every parry, the rat flicked the chainsword aside, following up with lightning-fast counter-thrusts.

Titus could scarcely believe it. The xenos was not only parrying every blow but doing so with effortless contempt.

"Heh heh... here, the Emperor cannot save you. His light does not reach the sunless depths!" Hezar cackled. He swung his triangular shield like a great sickle, forcing Titus into a desperate retreat.

"Ugh—!" Titus attempted a backhanded parry, but the rat’s strength was astronomical. A jolt of agonizing pain flared through his arm as the shield slammed into it like a hydraulic press. His ceramite gauntlet shattered like glass.

"You disappoint me, Titus." A look of disdainful triumph crossed the rat’s face. Hezar delivered a snap-kick to Titus's chest, sending the three-meter transhuman giant flying. Titus slammed into a reinforced metal bulkhead, denting the structure half a meter deep.

"Yaah!" Gadriel roared, rolling beneath a fist from the Bonebreaker and lunging at Hezar’s exposed back.

Without looking, the Warlord spun, slamming the hilt of his warp-sword into Gadriel’s face. The Astartes was hurled backward, his helm shattered and face a mask of gore.

"Gadriel!" Titus bellowed. He tried to rise, but his mangled arm couldn't even grip his sword. His internal organs were hemorrhaging; the "game" was nearing its end.

"Heh heh... let me think. Shall I let you pass to the next level? Or are you hoping for a 'cutscene save'? Are you waiting for someone to snatch you from the jaws of death, just as you escaped the Tyranids during your time in the Deathwatch?"

The Skaven Warlord paced back and forth, recounting Titus’s history with gleeful accuracy, mocking him like a cat toying with a broken mouse.

"I have no interest... in the lies of xenos!"

Titus did not waver. He did not understand the concept of a "cutscene," nor did he care. He used a tattered prayer-scroll from his chest to bind his chainsword to his ruined hand. He stood again, unbowed and towering.

"Second round, xenos. Come!"

Lucius’s eyes gleamed with delight. "Magnificent. Let us see when your cinematic trigger arrives!"

As Hezar lunged, Titus poured every ounce of his transhuman will into a counter-strike, a roar tearing from his throat: "FOR THE EMPEROR!!!"

In that instant, a blinding shroud of golden light erupted from Titus. His shattered armor mended, his broken bones fused, and his flagging spirit was bolstered by a divine radiance.

"What?!" Lucius was caught off guard. His blade met Titus’s in a clash that shook the chamber, the two now locked in a stalemate of absolute power.

Titus stood like a man of living stone. He began to walk forward, forcing the rat back step by step.

"Damn it... I forgot about you, Emperor!" Lucius hissed. He was startled, but quickly replaced the shock with excitement. The game had just received a difficulty patch.

"I am his cutscene... I hope you are satisfied." Titus’s eyes blazed with golden fire. He spoke with the calm, detached cadence of a saint, his voice devoid of mortal emotion.

"I am very satisfied! Let us test this new build!" Hezar laughed, dancing back with a flurry of steel. But Titus pressed the advantage, his strikes a relentless, golden blur that left the Warlord no room to breathe.

The rat’s body, even with the gene-seed, could not sustain the level of power Titus was now channeling. Lucius felt the physical vessel beginning to tear apart under the strain of the Emperor’s light.

Titus seized his opening. His chainsword punched through Hezar’s chest. In an explosion of holy energy, Lucius’s consciousness was violently purged from the rat’s body. The Warlord’s eyes widened, filling with a final, pathetic terror.

"Agh... No... no-no... G-Great Horned One... King of Many Tails...!"

Hezar coughed up a spray of black bile before Titus silenced him forever with a bolt round to the skull. The three Astartes then fell upon the Bonebreaker, hacking the monster into a heap of dead meat.

Metaurus stared at Titus and Gadriel, both miraculously restored, his face a mask of awe. "By the Throne... a miracle of the God-Emperor."

Titus exhaled sharply, the golden light fading. He felt nothing of the possession, assuming only that his inner strength had reached a new zenith in the Emperor's name.

"Move out," Titus commanded, his voice heavy with the weight of the ordeal. "This is far from over." He ordered Gadriel to recover and then incinerate the corrupted gene-seed within the monsters before the skaven swarm could reclaim the chamber.

…

In the Immaterium, Lucius leaned back, pushing his "keyboard" away. He glanced toward the distant, frozen golden sun. "Heh. Now that is entertainment. Come, Corpse-God, let us play the long game."

"Ah... how delightful. May I join in?" A slow, gurgling voice echoed. Nurgle, the Grandfather, had taken notice.

Immediately, a roar of bloodthirsty rage and a sibilant, androgynous whisper joined the chorus.

"Hahaha! A game with the Cursed One? Rare indeed, Little Rat! Let my warriors taste the steel, or I shall tear your warrens asunder!" Khorne bellowed.

"Oh, my dear... you truly are a blessing. Letting you join the Great Game was an inspired choice. You won't mind if I add a little... flair to your next level, will you?" Slaanesh purred.

Lucius looked at the three shifting colors appearing in the sky of his domain and narrowed his eyes. These gods are truly bored, he thought.

Chapter 103: The Great Horned Rat, the Pitiful Child Without Toys

The Ruinous Powers pursue but one ultimate end: amusement. Whether it is Nurgle brewing a new pox, Slaanesh luring the pure into depravity, Khorne drowning worlds in sensory-shattering rage, or Tzeentch weaving labyrinths of change… they act because it pleases them.

When the Four decide to intervene, none can bar their path.

Thus, the Chaos Gods unceremoniously deployed their pawns. They watched with predatory curiosity as the Great Horned Rat deviated from his usual habit of sending disposable vermin to sow chaos; instead, he was manifesting his direct will through the bodies of his thralls. To the Four, this was a novel diversion.

More importantly, they sensed the Anathema. The Emperor Himself was reaching out to guide Titus’s hand in battle. It was as if a roommate who never touched spirits had suddenly reached for the bottle, and the rest of the household couldn't help but crowd around with boisterous, mocking encouragement.

Deep within the warrens of Clan Moulder, in a hellscape choked with xenos abominations and heaving with reshaped flesh, Chief Grey Seer Skathrippa Sevenhorns surveyed the sacrificial site. His heart, or what passed for one, ached at the cost.

He had paid a ruinous price to convince Throt the Unclean to surrender a vast cache of salvaged gene-seed for this ritual. The terms were harrowing: upon his ascension to daemonhood, Skathrippa was to submit his immortal form to Moulder’s scalpel for "study."

Those mad masters of flesh-craft had long coveted the secrets of daemonic anatomy, but the corpses of Neverborn were fleeting things, dissolving into empyric residue upon death. They needed a living specimen. To become the second Verminlord of the Grey Seer Clan, Skathrippa was prepared to sacrifice everything.

"Fast-quick! This is for the Great Horned Rat! Break-spoil it, and I’ll use your rat-head to plug the gap!" Skathrippa shrieked, his voice twitching with the tremors of Black Hunger and nervous ecstasy as he lashed the passing slave-rats.

Meanwhile, Titus and his Ultramarines recuperated within a recaptured Imperial armory, rearming and interrogating captured Skaven for intelligence.

The Skaven, possessing no concept of fortitude, spilled their secrets like bile. Yet, the sheer entropic chaos of Skaven hierarchy, where leaders were assassinated or replaced hourly, rendered much of Titus's data useless. They spent days launching fruitless raids on splinter-warrens and Clan Moulder outposts. To Titus, these were merely more xenos to be purged.

The intensity paled in comparison to his memories of the Tyranid swarms or the sorceries of the Thousand Sons. That strange, Warp-tainted presence had not returned.

"Faith is my shield," Titus murmured, a silent prayer to the Emperor.

But neither the ambitious Skathrippa nor the veteran Titus realized that within the Warp, their masters had convened once more. They met amidst the churning molten iron of the Forge of Souls.

For the sake of the "game," and alongside Lucius, the Four had assumed human guises. The Emperor sat among them, though Tzeentch was conspicuously absent.

"This place is wretched," muttered a rotly, jovial-looking man, shaking his head in disappointment. Instead of the scorched iron, he preferred the vibrant greens of decay.

Nurgle held a certain paternal fondness for the Skaven; their filth was a sanctuary for his beloved pathogens, and the Skaven’s "Great Plague" was a masterpiece of viral lethality. For the sake of the plague alone, Nurgle felt a kinship with the Great Horned Rat.

Khorne, however, loathed the Forge. There was no hot blood here, no frantic slaughter, only the cold, rhythmic clanging of the hammer. Slaanesh looked upon the mechanical rigidity of the place with open disdain.

"Hahaha! What did I tell you? The newcomer always brings surprises," Nurgle chuckled, pointing a bloated finger at a golden youth. "He even got this boring fellow to join the fray."

As Lucius’s understanding of the Warp deepened, he realized the Emperor’s form, that of a golden boy, was a reflection of His fragmented power, His true essence still shackled to the Golden Throne in the Materium. The golden youth sat motionless, his gaze fixed on nothingness, with Malcador standing like a silent shadow behind him.

"Speak," the Emperor said, his voice a calm, chilling tide. "What game do you propose?"

Khorne grinned, a jagged, bloody expression. "Just as you did with the Vile One. You value this human highly. Fine, I shall give him the chance to see if he can survive my chosen."

Slaanesh’s serpentine form slithered toward Lucius. A tongue like a glistening tentacle flicked from cherry-red lips. "Hehe… perhaps you aren't so dull after all. Perhaps we should... exchange ideas more often."

Slaanesh gestured toward the Vermin Herders working the daemonic machinery; their physiques were as lithe and sculpted as any Daemonette. Clearly, the Dark Prince saw potential in this "new god."

Lucius remained stoic. He enjoyed his "aesthetics," but he had no desire for Slaanesh’s brand of "evolution." He stood and addressed the Emperor. "The last wager was between us. A true game involves everyone. Let Titus be the stake."

The Emperor’s gaze did not shift. "State your terms."

"Each of us shall send a servant to hunt Titus," Lucius proposed with a sharp grin. "If he carves his way through them all, you win. If he falls to any one of them, the victor claims the prize."

The Emperor considered this. "Hardly equitable. I can lose but once; you have three chances to see him fail."

Nurgle, Khorne, and Slaanesh offered smiles of predatory innocence. But Lucius countered, "If Titus triumphs over a god's pawn, that god loses to you individually. We settle the tallies separately."

"I have waged wars across the galaxy, staking tens of billions of lives and entire sectors on a single campaign," Khorne roared with laughter. "To bet on a single mortal... how quaint. The Blood God accepts!"

Khorne waved a hand, and a shimmering projection of an Astartes appeared. Lucius recognized the silhouette immediately: Khârn the Betrayer.

Slaanesh nodded, summoning a twisted, scarred swordsman whose face was a mask of ecstatic agony. Lucius the Eternal.

Nurgle, still seething over the Emperor’s fire cleansing his garden due to Mortarion’s failure, chose a champion to spite his own wayward son. With a flick of his wrist, he summoned Typhus.

Then, the Three turned as one. They looked at Lucius with the pity one reserves for a child who has no toys to play with. The Emperor merely closed his eyes, his silence radiating a cold, golden fury.

Lucius felt a surge of indignation. In his own realm, he had a warband of Night Lords suffering for their impudence toward the Great Horned Rat, but they were not yet fully broken, let alone corrupted enough to stand against the legends the Three had summoned. These were the monsters of myth.

"Do not fail me, Queek!" Lucius growled, thrusting his hand forward.

Chapter 104: Adeptus Astartes Arena Mode

Across the galaxy, Khârn the Betrayer, the Exalted Champion of Khorne and chosen of the World Eaters, had brought glory to the Blood God through the roar of his chainaxe. Since Angron’s return had once more consumed the Legion’s remaining sliver of sanity in a tide of mindless fury, Khârn had led his own warband through the stars, seeking a way to reforge the shattered XII.

As they drifted through the void, the Warp, usually parted by the sheer violence of their passage, suddenly churned into a boiling, visceral crimson.

"Lord of Skulls!!"

"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!!"

The World Eaters within the warband erupted in fanatical cheers; such an overwhelming manifestation of Khornate power could only herald the presence of their patron deity. Khârn felt no gratitude, only a cold, escalating rage for the slaughter to come. He knew the Blood God was calling him, summoning him to butcher in His name.

A tide of infinite blood surged through the corridors of the strike cruiser, drowning Khârn and his warriors in an instant.

Simultaneously, Typhus and his warband were likewise beckoned by the Grandfather. Having obeyed Nurgle’s direct whims during the Plague Wars, the Traveler currently enjoyed much higher favor than the sulking Mortarion. To a summons from the Plaguefather himself, Typhus offered nothing but absolute compliance.

Finally, there was Lucius the Eternal. The peerless duelist of the Emperor’s Children, who stole the flesh of his conquerors to respawn eternally, was unceremoniously dropped by Slaanesh into a sprawling ruin on the moon of Ironward VIII, a wasteland of gargantuan mechanical structures that resembled a twisted colosseum.

Under the combined might of the Ruinous Powers, the Imperial architecture of Ironward VIII began to warp and distend. Metal groaned and reshaped itself like living tissue, eventually forming a titanic Roman-style arena that consumed two-thirds of the moon’s surface.

Crawling out from the sea of blood, Khârn and his warband revved their chainaxes, their bloodshot eyes scanning the environment through the visors of their "bunny-eared" helms. Strangely, they found themselves confined within a sealed chamber of rusted, blackened iron. Aside from their own kin, there was no life to be found.

"By the Blood God, what is this?" Khârn muttered. He stepped forward and brought his axe down on the metallic wall with a thunderous blow.

Sparks flew as the metal cleaved like parchment, only to instantly knit itself back together. Recognizing this as a supernatural phenomenon beyond his control, Khârn ceased his efforts. Even with the Butcher's Nails biting into his brain, he remained one of the few World Eaters capable of lucidity; he understood that a power far greater than any mortal was at work here.

Indeed, the anomaly on Ironward VIII was a masterpiece of the Forge of Souls, a perfect arena crafted by Lucius using his nascent authority over "Malevolent Artifice." In the empyrean above the arena, the five Chaos Gods watched their pawns.

The Three had sent their champions and their respective warbands. Lucius, lacking his own corrupted Astartes, had been forced to field Queek Headtaker and his Red Guard to make up the numbers.

Queek was equally agitated. He had just finished slaughtering a unit of "beard-things" when he was suddenly snatched away. To be interrupted mid-kill left the Headtaker in a state of murderous pique.

"Excellent, now we wait for our final contestant," Lucius said, nodding toward the Emperor as the players took their marks.

The Three seemed genuinely intrigued by this novelty. It was as if veteran RTS players had suddenly switched to a high-stakes "Arena Mode." This micro-perspective offered a different flavor of entertainment.

The Emperor closed His eyes and made a slight gesture. Titus and his squad, having just carved their way through a Skaven patrol, found that the only available path led directly into the heart of the gargantuan structure.

"This... did the records say such a structure existed on Ironward VIII?" Gadriel asked, squinting up at the metal spires that pierced the heavens.

"This is not the work of Ultramar. This is the foul influence of the Warp," Titus replied grimly. Though every instinct screamed against entering, a hallowed, resonant voice echoed in his mind, commanding him forward.

Titus obeyed the Divine Will.

They soon entered a labyrinthine interior that felt uncannily deliberate. It wasn't a functional outpost; it was a grand arena, reminiscent of the traditional pits of Macragge, filled with cover, obstacles, and strange "items."

"My Lord, a cache!" An Ultramarine opened a series of iron crates emblazoned with the Imperial Aquila. Inside lay a bounty of bolt shells, plasma flasks, and a full arsenal of chainswords, power packs, and thunder hammers.

"They are pristine, sir. Fully functional," the Marines reported after testing a few rounds. Their excitement was palpable; after days of continuous grinding combat, their supplies were dangerously low, and their battle-barge remained silent.

"Resupply immediately. In my experience," Titus commanded, slamming a fresh mag into his bolter, "when you find a cache this generous, trouble is close behind."

He knew the rule, that supplies precede the slaughter. Gadriel, having fought alongside him through the entire campaign, understood this grim logic perfectly.

No sooner had they rearmed and advanced than the staccato roar of bolter fire erupted.

Titus dove for cover as his squad returned fire instinctively. When Titus looked up, his pupils constricted. Their attackers were nightmarish, their forms warped and flamboyant, wielding power swords with a decadent grace. On their power armor, however, was the mocking silhouette of the Golden Aquila.

"The Emperor’s Children? How did these traitors reach Ultramar?!" Titus shouted.

Lucius the Eternal was equally bewildered. He remembered dueling an Aeldari Autarch, having just peeled the xenos's face off when Slaanesh tossed him here. He had charged through the first opening door he saw, only to find a squad of "Blueberry" Astartes waiting for him.

Bewilderment, however, did not stay their hands. Both were masters of the blade. The Ultramarines and Lucius’s Blades of Perfection clashed with immediate, lethal intent.

Lucius expected to make short work of this Ultramarine "champion," but the youth's bladework was frustratingly resilient. Lucius’s sword danced in a lethal, intricate web, yet the Ultramarine parried it with a blunt, pragmatic technique that bordered on the insulting. Lucius was genuinely shocked; when had these "stodgy fools" of the XIII produced a duelist of this caliber?

Elsewhere, the other champions were unleashed. Khârn led his World Eaters out of their gate like a volcanic eruption, desperate for anything to kill.

Ten kilometers away, the auspex chimed. Khârn looked across the dunes of the arena and saw the bloated, scythe-wielding form of Typhus and his Death Guard.

Khârn recognized Typhus, but he had no idea why the Traveler was here. He didn't care.

Above the arena, the sky turned black as a storm, and a terrifying, booming voice spoke, "Welcome to the Arena of the Gods, pawns... Offer up your lives and your slaughter to your masters. Only one side leaves this place alive!"

Khârn and Typhus, realizing this wasn't the voice of their own gods, were about to roar their defiance when a Nurgling perched on Typhus’s shoulder slapped the Traveler across the head.

"Hehehe, start already! Grandfather is watching, tee-hee!" the daemonette-like mite chirped.

Typhus respected this Nurgling, a personal gift from the Plaguefather, far more than he respected Mortarion. He understood immediately: this was a game to amuse the Grandfather.

His gaze locked onto the confused, then incandescently angry Khârn.

"Hehe, it’s alright, newcomer," Slaanesh purred, leaning elegantly against Lucius’s shoulder while watching the duel between her Eternal and Titus. "We’ll play first. Let your cute little rat-things join in a bit later~"

Queek Headtaker had already undergone the "Rat-startes" augmentations; his strength, size, and speed were now a match for any Space Marine. Yet, as the only god using a "proxy" servant, Lucius felt a stinging sense of shame.

I must get my own Daemon Primarchs and Astartes Legions, Lucius vowed silently.

Chapter 105: Queek vs. Khârn

By some stroke of what could only be described as "protagonist’s luck," Titus led his Ultramarines into a blistering melee against Lucius’s Emperor’s Children. Lucius, a duelist of peerless virtuosity among the scions of the Third Legion, brought his blade down in a lethal arc, only for Titus to parry the strike with a backhanded swing.

In the same breath, Titus’s left hand brought his bolter up; a single roar of muzzle flare blasted a gaping hole through Lucius’s torso. Lucius’s eyes widened in sheer, indignant disbelief.

Titus offered no monologue. He leaped into the air, putting the full weight of his transhuman frame into a crushing overhead blow that forced Lucius’s single-handed blade down. The diamond-toothed chainsword whirred with predatory hunger, biting into Lucius’s shoulder like a slow-motion execution, spraying shards of ceramite and ribbons of gore.

Titus’s face was a mask of cold, unadulterated hatred. He drove a heavy, armored boot into Lucius’s face, sending the Champion of Slaanesh reeling, before unleashing a continuous torrent of bolter fire that bloomed across Lucius’s body.

In an instant, Lucius was reduced to a mangled heap of meat and metal.

Titus did not know Lucius, nor did he care for his pedigree. Seeing the foe neutralized, he immediately turned to aid his battle-brothers. However, the remaining Emperor’s Children, seeing their champion slain, didn't hesitate as they turned tail and fled, utterly indifferent to Lucius’s fate.

The spectacle drew raucous laughter from the Dark Gods. Khorne’s laughter was particularly deafening and arrogant. Having always held the "effeminate" Slaanesh in the lowest contempt, the Blood God sneered, "A sissy god for a sissy champion, a perfect match. Soon, I shall set him against my own servants, so your worthless slave might truly remember the power of the Blood God!"

Slaanesh’s face turned a livid shade of bruised purple as the Prince of Pleasure watched the Emperor's Children flee in disgrace. Yet, in a twisted sense, they were merely upholding the tenets of their god: pursuit of whim, even if that whim was cowardice.

Slaanesh smirked at the Emperor. "Heh... a small welcoming gift for your efforts. But it is far from over."

The Emperor remained expressionless, as if the victory were a mere grain of sand in the desert of time.

"Victory is ours, Lord! Under the Emperor’s light, these traitors shatter!" Gadriel laughed, approaching Titus while drenched in gore.

Titus’s mentor, Metaurus, remained as grim as his pupil. "I fear it is not so simple."

Titus nodded silently. The duty given to them by the Emperor was to press forward until death became their final duty.

"Refit and move out. We find a way out of here!" Titus barked, slamming a fresh magazine into his bolter. As he glanced back toward Lucius’s remains, he saw the traitor’s body had vanished, leaving nothing but a puddle of putrid, rotting sludge.

Slaanesh had cheated again. The blessing, or curse, placed upon Lucius dictated that if his killer felt even a flicker of pride or satisfaction, Lucius would be reborn within them.

However, two factors intervened: first, Titus felt no pleasure, only cold duty; second, Titus was under the direct gaze of the Emperor, and Slaanesh dared not attempt a possession under that golden scrutiny.

Instead, the Eternal was reborn hundreds of light-years away. He manifested within a factory worker on a world that had manufactured the very bolt-shell Titus used to kill him. The sudden mutation sparked a riot in the tireless manufactorum. When the Enforcers arrived to suppress the disturbance, Lucius slaughtered them all and vanished into the shadows.

"What happened?" Lucius muttered, genuinely bewildered. He had no memory of how he had been brought before that Ultramarine, how he had been slain, or why he had respawned in the body of a commoner he’d never met.

It mattered not. The Chaos Gods never require their pawns to understand. As the Ultramar Auxilia moved to surround the area, Slaanesh’s hand reached out across the veil and snatched him away once more.

…

The Arena of Ironward VIII.

The World Eaters, famed for their bloodlust, and the Death Guard, renowned for their stolid endurance, had ground each other into a stalemate.

Khârn led the charge. His twin-headed chainaxe, Gorechild, roared with a terrifying mechanical scream, feeling as light as a toy in his hands as he carved into the "stinky tin cans" of the Fourteenth Legion.

Typhus, wielding his Manreaper, struggled to repel Khârn’s onslaught. His bloated, fly-blown form labored against the frenetic violence of the Blood God’s greatest mortal champion. Khârn’s martial prowess was a whirlwind that forced the Herald of Nurgle back step by bloody step.

"Come, Typhus! Today we settle this!!" Khârn bellowed in a blind rage. He held no mercy for this old acquaintance from the Great Crusade.

On the contrary, he utterly despised Typhus for the treacherous way he had doomed his own battle-brothers to the Warp. Khârn might be a butcher, but even he found Typhus’s brand of betrayal distasteful.

Khârn’s strength surged, his blood-red axes blurring into a crimson haze. Finally, Typhus’s guard slipped. An axe-blade bit deep, cleaving through the thick, diseased layers of Cataphractii plate.

But no blood sprayed forth. Instead, a deluge of daemonic plague-flies, thick, foul-smelling bile, and the excrement of parasitic worms erupted from the wound.

Khârn was caught in the blast, the flies instantly beginning to gnaw at his flesh. But Khârn’s fury was a literal flame; the rage in his heart burned so hot it incinerated the filth before it could take hold. Typhus seized the opening, ordering the Death Guard to retreat.

Typhus’s arrogance toward Mortarion stemmed from his immense "contributions" and Grandfather Nurgle’s personal favor. He would not suffer a humiliating defeat in the eyes of his patron.

The Death Guard occupied a defensible chokepoint, utilizing their unnatural resilience to repel wave after wave of World Eaters, much to Khârn’s mounting frustration.

As the two legions faced off, a third force arrived. Khârn turned to see a host of warriors as tall as Astartes, but hunched and spindly, clad in crimson power armor that mimicked the plate of the Legiones Astartes.

High above, Typhus blinked. What? Do the World Eaters have reinforcements?

But Khârn knew better. The red armor was all wrong. It lacked the "cute" bunny-ear crests favored by the XII Legion. Instead, the helmets were elongated, and the backpacks were adorned with sharp spikes festooned with desiccated, mangled trophies.

Khorne might have recognized the color, but that didn't mean Khârn wouldn't swing his axe at them, especially after seeing the black-furred rat-faces beneath those helmets.

"Xenos! Feel the wrath of the Blood God!!!"

Khârn abandoned the Death Guard, charging headlong toward Queek and his Red Guard. His World Eaters followed, howling in a frenzy to slaughter these verminous impersonators.

Queek Headtaker was equally enraged. He had been having a perfectly good time killing things on Eight Peaks when he was suddenly dragged away; he needed someone to vent his fury upon.

The Warlord of Eight Peaks charged forward, a Warp-energy power sword in one hand and a Votann-tech power pick in the other. His loyal second-in-command, the four-meter-tall Ska Bloodtail, followed silently with his massive Warp-Lightning Glaive.

"Oh, look at them go~ Darling, don't disappoint me~" Slaanesh giggled, seeing Lucius’s Skaven clashing with Khorne’s favorite toys. The Dark Prince draped themselves over Lucius’s back, whispering in a voice like a thousand succubi.

"Hmph. Interesting enough... but there is a gap in strength!" Khorne grunted. He did not believe Khârn could lose.

Queek and Khârn slammed into one another. Khârn swung Gorechild with mountain-crushing force, intending to end the xenos in a single blow.

But Queek, augmented with the gene-seed of the Emperor’s Children, moved with preternatural, perfect speed. The Skaven warlord crossed his weapons, miraculously parrying Khârn’s axe.

Khârn paused for a fraction of a second in surprise before pivoting with even greater force, aiming for Queek’s waist. Queek’s tail lashed out, wrapping around Khârn’s thigh to provide leverage as he leaped over the Berzerker’s shoulder. In mid-air, he slammed his Votann power pick into Khârn’s pauldron.

The impact left a web of crystalline fractures on the ancient power armor.

"YES-YES! Golden-hair man-thing, good trick, Queek likes it! Stumpy-one, you... you SHUT UP!" Queek shrieked with manic laughter, addressing the withered head of an Emperor’s Children Marine mounted on his trophy rack, before snapping at the head of a Squat beside it.

Queek Headtaker was truly in his element: fighting, killing, and arguing strategy with the severed heads of his collection.