[500 P.S = 1 Bonus Chapter]
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The battle in the Vigilus star system had raged for what felt like an eternity.
Chaos had once crushed the Imperial Navy, striding toward what seemed like certain victory.
But that illusion shattered the moment the combined fleets of four loyalist Legions entered the fray. The tide turned, and with it, so did fate.
Victory, once within the grasp of the Traitor Legions, slipped further from their blood-stained hands.
Now, the balance had tilted decisively in the Imperium's favor.
Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines and Commander Dante of the Blood Angels—two legends of the Adeptus Astartes—jointly led the campaign. Though differing in their motives—honor, triumph, duty, or perhaps the Primarchs' approval—their execution was unified.
Veterans of a thousand wars, they adopted a flawless, methodical approach.
Their advance was cold, relentless, and utterly calculated. The Imperial fleet did not rush—they eroded. Inch by inch, volley by volley, they wore down the Chaos forces until the Traitor commanders could scarcely breathe under the weight of inevitability.
There was no glory in this kind of war—only domination.
The Chaos fleet, in comparison, was a fractured beast, snarling and biting at itself even in retreat. Without cohesion, without a common cause beyond destruction, they stood no chance against the disciplined might of the Imperium.
It was the difference between a feral mob and a regimented phalanx.
Then came the killing blow.
Imperial warships, forged in the Martian forges under the watch of the Fabricator-General and consecrated by the rites of the Machine God, formed into a deadly spearhead. With unyielding prows and overlapping void shields, they punched through the Chaos formation.
Desperate to escape the ramming assault, the Traitor vessels attempted withdrawal—only to be caught in a hurricane of fire.
The Imperium's firepower did not relent. It sang.
Lances of white-hot light, macro-cannon broadsides, and plasma salvos tore through the void. Every Chaos vessel caught in the kill-zone was obliterated—or left drifting, torn and lifeless.
The return of the Primarchs had changed everything.
With their guidance, the Mechanicus had cast off many of its ancient restrictions. The rise of the Radical Magos allowed the wrath of the Omnissiah to be unshackled and unleashed upon the material world.
What followed was nothing short of cataclysmic.
Each artillery barrage was a hymn to the God of All Things. Each lance beam was a benediction of annihilation.
The Space Marines, now flush with weapons and armor once considered heretical, embraced the doctrine of overwhelming firepower with near-religious fervor.
"If one shot cannot fell the heretic, then fire ten thousand," became gospel.
Even the Iron Warriors—masters of siegecraft—found their void-hardened hulls torn asunder by this imperial onslaught.
Their proud void shields flickered, overloaded, and shattered under the sustained barrages. Once breached, their ships lasted mere seconds before succumbing to the internal chain reactions of detonating munitions, ruptured reactors, and failing containment fields.
A single seven-kilometer battleship—its spine split, its reactor breached—erupted in a firestorm that painted the void with wreckage, corpses, and a silence more deafening than any scream.
And yet, the Imperium pressed no advantage prematurely.
They did not chase glory—they pursued extermination.
Encirclement. Suppression. Annihilation.
The Chaos fleet, already broken, was methodically scoured from existence.
Upon the bridge of the Spirit of Vengeance, Abaddon the Despoiler stood, watching his forces unravel. His fury was volcanic—but so was his stubborn pride. Even surrounded, even outmatched, he would not retreat.
Not yet.
Grinding his teeth in frustration, the Warmaster of Chaos made a bitter decision.
He would deploy the forbidden constructs—the demonic engines forged in secret, creations so blasphemous even the Dark Mechanicum feared them. Weapons designed to threaten even the awakened Primarchs.
These monstrosities—first confronted by Clarks and Dukel in the shadow-realm of the Warp—were the apex of warp-flesh and corrupted steel.
Their numbers were few. Precious. But now, they were necessary.
As these hell-forged abominations entered the void, the balance shifted. The bleeding of the Chaos lines slowed, and for the first time in hours, the Imperium's advance faltered.
A grim smile touched Abaddon's lips. He hated what it cost, but he welcomed the result.
For this boon, he owed Lorgar—a Primarch he neither liked nor trusted.
It was Lorgar's hand that had brought Perturabo and Vashtorr into the Black Legion's fold. It was Lorgar who whispered the blasphemous blueprints that birthed these forbidden weapons.
Nor did his contributions stop there—the Death Guard and the Purge were persuaded into the fold by the same silver tongue.
But Abaddon was no fool.
He had never trusted the Bearer of the Word. Not once.
Lorgar had spent ten millennia evading Clarks' pursuit in the Warp Temples. His sudden reappearance—bruised, battered, and wounded by the Raven Lord—was no coincidence.
Dukel's unprecedented breach of the Warp's divine noose had altered the game.
Abaddon knew Lorgar too well. His exit from the Warp Temples wasn't desperation or allegiance. It was strategy.
The Great Speaker had returned, and with him, the ghost of a thousand unspoken plans.
Somewhere beyond the veil, an unseen hand moved the pieces across the galactic board. And Abaddon, for all his power, could feel it—
The game had only just begun.
Abaddon was well aware of Lorgar's scheming. Yet, he tolerated it—because he understood that the Dark Apostle's hatred for the Imperium rivaled even his own.
In their malice, they found common ground.
And more importantly, the gifts Lorgar had bestowed upon him—Perturabo's alliance, Vashtorr's infernal forges, and the legions of Death Guard and Purifiers—were tangible and potent.
So long as Lorgar's manipulations accelerated the downfall of the Imperium, Abaddon would not interfere.
"I am the embodiment of galactic conquest," Abaddon declared, spreading his arms wide as if to embrace the entire void. His eyes burned with unfettered ambition. "No enemy, no obstacle, no throne shall escape my grasp. Victory will be mine!"
But even as he proclaimed this to the silence of his bridge—
BOOM!
A shuddering explosion rocked the flank of the Spirit of Vengeance. The ancient Gloriana-class battleship, now corrupted beyond recognition, trembled under the assault.
Abaddon did not need reports. He was one with his vessel. He felt the wound.
—Doom, the Lord of Destruction, and Azrael, Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels, had launched a direct boarding assault.
Two living weapons of war. Two paragons of vengeance and retribution. With their elite guard, they had breached the outer hull and begun carving their way through the corridors of the Spirit of Vengeance.
"How arrogant," Abaddon snarled, a savage grin splitting his face.
On this cursed throne-ship, he was not merely a warlord—he was a god among monsters. The bridge was steeped in ancient blood, marked by the deaths of angels and even the Emperor's own bloodline. Here, Abaddon could wield unholy might and command an army of daemons vast beyond comprehension.
Even the Emperor of Mankind and Sanguinius had once bled within these walls.
Doom and Azrael will do the same.
He drew the daemon blade slung across his back, the blade shrieking with hunger as he ran a gauntleted hand along its edge.
"I'll wait for you here," he muttered, voice low, eyes glowing with bloodlust. "And I'll drink your blood when you arrive."
Meanwhile, Doom and Azrael advanced through the corridors of the Spirit of Vengeance, their boots pounding against rusted adamantium. They had already breached the outer hull and now approached the first defensive bastion.
Their auspex arrays lit up, detecting rapid spikes in heat signatures and energy concentrations.
Hundreds of corrupted lifeforms—traitor Astartes, daemons, heretek constructs—were gathering beyond the bulkhead.
Doom turned his visor toward Azrael. This was their first joint operation, and though the Dark Angels were infamous for their secrets and hidden agendas—Dukel often called them "a labyrinth in armor"—Doom wondered if they would begin with some cryptic ritual or prayer.
The Doom Slayers had no such customs. Battle itself was their sanctification, and their oath to Dukel was etched not in words, but in blood and wrath.
"Fight for the Lord of Destruction," Doom said into the vox, his voice like grinding ceramite. "Under his gaze, we shall never halt."
To his surprise, Azrael answered—not with a chant, but with silence. Then, without warning, the Dark Angels surged forward, shoulder to shoulder with the Slayers.
Steel boots hammered the deck as the two forces crashed through the final sealed bulkhead like an avalanche.
"For the Lion!" the Dark Angels finally bellowed, their war cry rising like thunder.
Doom stored that moment away. Efficient. Stoic. Lethal. The First Legion moved with a cold, silent resolve that even he had underestimated.
The pace quickened.
The rhythm of ceramite on steel echoed like the tolling of a funeral bell. The charge of Primaris Marines, encased in towering Mk. X power armor, was a symphony of death in motion.
To the defenders—the traitors, the heretics, the abominations spawned from the Warp—it was terror made manifest.
The eyepieces of the Doom Slayers flared crimson. Shotguns hummed with power as they linked to the Argent reactors mounted to their backs. The sanctified Argent energy, blessed by the Fabricator General himself, surged through the circuits.
The Slayers and Dark Angels crashed through debris-strewn corridors, crushing obstacles beneath armored feet.
Ahead, the enemy waited—hundreds of twisted forms, barricaded behind makeshift bunkers of desecrated plating. Their weapons dripped Warp-oil and radiated corruption.
Auto-turrets lined the walls and ceiling—ten in total—each one covering overlapping fields of fire, ensuring no blind spots.
It was a killing ground. A gauntlet of steel, fire, and daemonic rage.
And Doom smiled.
This was where he felt alive.
But in the grim darkness of the far future, none of that mattered.
With unstoppable force, the Doom Slayer charged ahead like a thunderbolt, while the Dark Angels initiated a precise detonation, followed by a barrage of flashbangs. Explosions and piercing light tore through the gloom, disorienting the senses of every daemon in sight.
Confused, staggered, and blinded by the sudden barrage, the daemons faltered—only to be engulfed by a living storm of ceramite and vengeance. The Doom Slayers, relentless and unyielding, smashed through their ranks like a tidal wave of steel. Those few who resisted found themselves cut down by the merciless blades of the Dark Angels, who moved with lethal efficiency behind the storm.
In mere seconds, hundreds of heretics and daemons were reduced to shredded gore, left no time to scream before steel and fire consumed them.
When the lightning-fast assault ended, Doom and Azrael exchanged a silent glance.
In that moment, Doom understood the subtlety and precision of the First Legion.
And Azrael, Grand Master of the Dark Angels, acknowledged the sheer brutality and devotion of the Second.
Through bloodshed and fury, they were beginning to learn one another's methods.
With the first defensive bulwark of the Spirit of Vengeance shattered, the joint strike force surged into a vast, open chamber.
Ahead of them stretched a twisting labyrinth of corridors and branching access tunnels—tight, winding, and built for confusion. In such confined spaces, even the towering transhuman physique of the Primaris Astartes became a tactical liability. And this time, the defenders had prepared.
As they pushed through the narrow passages, las-blasts and frag detonations erupted all around them. The Fallen had dug in, turning every shadowed corner into a kill-zone.
"Shield our battle-brothers!" Doom's voice roared over the vox.
The Doom Slayers responded instantly. Activating personal force fields, they formed a living wall of armored flesh and unyielding will, placing themselves between the Dark Angels and the incoming fire. Bolts and shells, slowed by the force barriers, pinged harmlessly off their power armor.
The instant the volley ceased, the Fallen warriors broke cover and surged forward, blades raised in a disorganized counterassault.
Doom had had enough of tight spaces.
With a growl that echoed like a tectonic shift, the Slayer threw himself bodily into the wall ahead—shattering it. Alloy bulkheads cracked and gave way before his momentum. The entire structure groaned in protest as he burst into a new section of the chamber, debris raining around him.
And then he was among them.
Like a wrathful beast, he tore through the Fallen ranks, a whirling cyclone of death. His chainsword, wreathed in Argent fire, screamed as it bit into flesh and ceramite alike.
A hulking daemon of Khorne, known to have slaughtered thousands on mortal battlefields, stepped to challenge him.
It was a mistake.
Doom hit the creature like an orbital strike, driving it through a wall with pure force. His chainsword roared, plunging deep into the daemon's gut. His other gauntleted fist smashed again and again into its chest—each strike splintering bone, rupturing organs, and igniting corrupted flesh with holy flame.
The daemon howled in agony as its once-frenzied eyes clouded with fear. The flaming teeth of the chainsword chewed deeper, and in those final moments, even this avatar of blood and madness knew terror.
Behind his helmet, Doom grinned.
There was always a dark joy in showing the so-called mighty that they, too, could bleed.
Around him, the Doom Slayers advanced like living siege engines. Chainswords roared. Argent energy packs flared. Bolts flew. Artillery fire shook the halls. The enemy was crushed beneath their advance.
The Dark Angels, by contrast, were scalpel to the Slayers' hammer.
Even in the chaos of battle, they moved with eerie calm. Each shot they fired was deliberate, placed with chilling accuracy. No ammunition wasted. No motion without purpose. Where the Doom Slayers tore, the Dark Angels dissected.
Together, their enemies stood no chance.
Trapped between two different styles of annihilation, the Fallen had no path of escape. To retreat meant falling to the Angels' hidden bombs and sudden strikes. To charge meant being torn limb from limb by the Slayer's unstoppable advance.
There was no good choice.
Only death.
Then, the Dark Angels extinguished every lumen, plunging the battlefield into near-total darkness. Only the flickering glow of the Argent flames remained—haunting embers that danced on the walls and glinted off bloodied armor.
In that gloom, the slaughter continued, lit by fire and death.
And the warriors of the Imperium—of Dukel's cause—danced in the shadows, proud and merciless, striking down all who dared defy them.
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TN:
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