The Daemon Fleet Appears

With Sanguinius’s complete awakening, the space here, shaped by the power of the Warp, began to collapse.

It drew its energy from the Warp, yet had been built upon the Angel’s beliefs. The Greater Daemon of Chaos, Madai, was the master of this trial illusion. At the instigation of The Empyrean, it had carried out this entire series of schemes.

The four Chaos Gods had provided it with support and aid. Otherwise, the power of a single Greater Daemon of Chaos could never have laid so many traps and planted so much groundwork. It was an apostle of The Empyrean, and it had come solely for Sanguinius.

It raged in confusion and regret, wondering why flaws had still shown through in its performance.

That damned Cursed One—how could it possibly know how the Lord of Humanity spoke to his own sons? If the four Chaos Gods had not shielded it, that cold sun in the Warp would likely have noticed Madai the moment it committed this blasphemy.

Then, no matter how far away it was, the cold sun would burn it alive, wiping out even its very essence.

"I painstakingly studied how a qualified human father should converse and communicate with his children. I consulted tens of thousands of samples and devoured the memories of tens of thousands of loving fathers, all to craft the Cursed One’s likeness. Yet there were still mistakes."

"How exactly did the Cursed One act as a father? Being kinder to his children was what gave me away?"

Madai cursed inwardly, but it only dared think it. If it dared curse the other by name, then once the four gods’ protection faded, it would be dead for certain.

Sanguinius, Lox, and the others fought as they withdrew, retreating toward the exposed portal.

Though the strongest warrior, the Angel, stood beside them, fighting an unknown Greater Daemon of Chaos was an extraordinarily risky undertaking. They had no idea what hidden means or trump cards their enemy possessed. It would be better to first reunite with Guilliman and Lion El’Jonson.

Moreover, Lox had long known from Konrad and Sanguinius’s prophetic warnings that they might encounter daemon enemies on this journey. He had already prepared weapons specifically designed to counter these Warp creatures.

There were tens of thousands of Astartes outside, so why fight a bloody one-on-one battle with a Greater Daemon of Chaos here?

Lox tumbled headfirst out of the portal. Before him stood a wary Guilliman and Lion El’Jonson, who held an even more dangerous weapon.

He had just been about to join them when Guilliman drew his Gladius Incandor.

"Prove that you are who you are! Now!"

The Lord of Macragge roared. The chaos unfolding before him tormented his rational mind. From Sanguinius entering the portal, he had concluded that they had all fallen into the enemy’s trap, and that the enemy’s target was Sanguinius.

But he could not determine whether the person emerging from the portal now was also part of the trap.

"After all this is over, you want to find some primitive planet, clear the land, and farm it, Guilliman."

"Neither Lord of the Five Hundred Worlds nor governor of a Second Imperium is what you truly want. All you want is to be a farmer, tending your own little plot of land."

As Lox finished speaking, Guilliman lowered the Gladius Incandor in his hand.

It was a secret known only to him and Lox. The greatest dream of the lofty Lord of Macragge was, in truth, to become a humble country farmer.

"What happened to you? Konrad vanished into the portal with you and Sanguinius."

But Lox’s question came even faster. He seized Guilliman’s Hand of Dominion and asked impatiently.

"How long were we in there? Damn it, ten years! Do you know how I spent those ten years?"

Though the illusion created by the Warp for Sanguinius had been false, the feelings it gave Lox had been utterly real. He truly had witnessed everything being set right, and it had been an immensely gratifying, soul-stirring sight.

To him, what had happened on Davin was already long in the past.

"Ninety-nine seconds. I am certain of it, up to the moment you emerged from there." Guilliman relied on his superhuman mind to give an exact count.

Lox let out a long breath, then immediately said,

"There is a powerful Greater Daemon of the Warp inside. It was the one that, together with the beings behind it, planned everything. Sanguinius is fighting it now."

Veronica, one of the Iron Men, also emerged from the portal, but Sanguinius still had not returned.

Yet at that moment, the Red Alert sounded a red warning for him. A powerful Warp signature was appearing in orbit overhead.

The Red Alert detected the enemy first, followed by the New Caliban and the three Gloriana-class Battleships of the three Legions.

Lox and the primarchs looked into the distance. The enemy had finally bared its fangs.

An unfamiliar fleet emerged from the void. They had not even made a Warp jump, instead burrowing directly out from around that skull planet. Their twisted forms took tangible shape upon entering realspace, and at their head was an incomparably massive floating island.

It was even twice the size of the New Caliban, but it was described as a floating island because its warped, undulating form defied any description as a warship.

However, among the expeditionary fleet in space, several Iron Hands veterans noticed something strange.

That behemoth, far larger than a Gloriana-class Battleship, seemed familiar to them. They were certain they had seen it once before, sometime in the past.

The bizarre floating island from the Warp emitted a powerful transmission signal, mixed with the shrieks of daemons—enough to drive any mortal who heard it into madness and idiocy.

Yet the Iron Hands recognized that familiar sound—it was their damned ship, their missing warship. It was the Iron Truth.

The enemy was advancing at an utterly unnatural speed. This corrupted Iron Truth attack cruiser had once survived the Battle of Isstvan V. Duran Atikus of the Iron Hands had piloted it out of the traitors’ pursuit and destroyed the Emperor’s Children warship Calidora.

After that, the warship had vanished without a trace. Yet today they encountered it again, and it had actually appeared among the enemy ranks.

The Iron Hands’ bionically augmented throats could not produce a word. The coldness and resolve they had always upheld wavered at this moment.

Intense shame and fury surged through every Iron Hand’s heart. Their warship had fallen into the hands of Chaos and was now about to turn against them.

The voice of Iron Father Crux, who had followed Guilliman to the Davin system, was hoarse and low, like a coarse steel saw grinding across an anvil.

He ordered the warship’s Cogitator to scan and analyze the enemy’s nature as thoroughly as possible. The instant he saw the enemy, he had realized that the Warp had committed an act of blasphemy against their Iron Truth.

The Iron Will’s original form had long since vanished. Great quantities of iron and brass spikes spread and extended across its hull, indistinct as though countless sacrificial corpses had been impaled upon it. Enormous pustules and sores covered its metal body.

No one knew how a warship could grow pustules and sores like a flesh-and-blood organism, but it had truly happened. Those blasphemous growths constantly swelled and expanded, then burst apart upon reaching their limit, scattering countless foul substances ever farther.

Rather than leaving craters where the pustules exploded, the warship’s armor became even thicker. Once the filth within them solidified, it became exceptionally hard. Those things were what caused the vessel to endlessly mutate and grow.

Lox, on the ground, could not see such details. He only saw the colossal thing that had emerged from the void open a structure resembling "jaws." Like a living creature, it constantly opened and closed those jaws, seeking to satisfy its endless hunger and rage.

Its gaping maw could swallow an entire frigate. Countless jagged bone cannons cast from brass had replaced its original armaments, with flames, acid, and scorching, bubbling blood running down their barrels to lubricate those blasphemous weapons of war.

Anyone could see that a naval battle between the expeditionary fleet and the Warp’s daemon fleet was about to erupt.