This was the Legion's creed, and it was also the self-hypnosis of the Blood Angels. They had to believe that what they were doing was right.
Even if this "rightness" had to be built upon the corpses of an entire city.
Tobias did not join the roaring.
He merely inspected his bolter magazine in silence, calculating the ammunition distribution for each fire-support node during the next volley.
But in his tactical augur, a new annotation was added.
[Standard Day 319, 18:47-19:03. Orbital fire saturation. Estimated Warp entities purged: 120,000 to 150,000.]
[Collateral Damage: Unknown.]
[Tactical Necessity: High.]
At the end of the annotation, he added a rare, personal note.
[Father, if you can see this, please tell me... is what we are doing truly salvation?]
No one could answer him.
Except for the nine powerful daemonic psychic signatures pulsing from the direction of the Conmo Dynasty grand hall in the distance. They felt like a mocking urge:
Faster. Faster.
Once you finish slaughtering everyone in this city, our sacrifice... will be complete.
--
If the City of the Holy Anthem was a grand, blazing inferno, then the crater in the Seventh Administrative Zone of the Aru Industrial Sector was a sluggish, viscous, but equally lethal, rotting swamp.
Standard Terran Year 976.M30, Day 319, 19:20.
Seranaphy Nori spat out the butt of his third cigarette.
The filter was stained with his own blood.
Just moments ago, the putrid breath of a Warp entity had splashed against the seal of his helmet.
The corrosive acid ate through the environmental seal and burned a festering wound into his left cheek.
The Company's Apothecary apprentice had already treated it, applying anti-corrosive salves and injecting a genetic purification serum.
But Seranaphy could feel something wriggling deep within the wound.
He knew it was the taint from the Warp's domain of putrefaction.
"How many brothers can still fight?" he asked, leaning against the firing slit of the barricade. His voice was slightly slurred due to his swollen cheek.
"Report, Champion. Combat-capable effectives... four hundred and sixty-three."
The reply came from Hassan, a veteran sergeant of the Fifth Company who had fought in at least thirty campaigns. At this moment, the armor on his right arm was completely torn away, and the stump, hastily wrapped with coagulant foam and bandages, was still seeping blood.
"Over thirty critically wounded and combat-ineffective. Confirmed KIA... three hundred and nine."
One day and one night.
Holding the line against this slowly expanding Warp rift, eight hundred Blood Angels had lost nearly forty percent of their brothers.
And this casualty rate was only maintained because the fleet provided macro-cannon saturation fire support every two hours.
"Rift expansion rate?"
"One meter per hour. The trend is stable," Hassan replied, pulling up a data-slate displaying telemetry from the monitoring augurs left behind by the Mechanicus. "But the psychic contamination concentration has spiked drastically in the past six hours. The Librarius apprentices' preliminary analysis is that the entity on the other side of the rift is accelerating its attempt to push through."
Seranaphy looked down into the crater beyond their fortifications.
The green rift had slowly crept beyond the edges of the original pit, now resembling a gaping, rotting maw.
Viscous pus cascaded over the edges like a waterfall, pooling at the bottom into a bubbling, yellow-green swamp.
Within the swamp, countless Warp entities writhed and frolicked like maggots.
Plague Zombies shambled out unsteadily, and occasionally, far more troublesome Plaguebearers or Nurglings would burrow to the surface.
But these were not the biggest problem.
What truly kept Seranaphy's nerves pulled taut was the colossal psychic pressure emanating from deep within the rift—an aura of putrefaction that felt like Death itself.
He didn't know what it was, but the mere sensation of it made him tremble.
It had not fully descended yet; the fabric of reality was still barely managing to hold its grotesquely bloated bulk back.
But its will had already bled through, infecting everything in this sector.
Seranaphy had seen it with his own eyes. A Blood Angel warrior fell in battle. Within ten minutes, the corpse began to bloat and rot. Then, it unsteadily climbed back to its feet, resurrected as a Plague Zombie wearing the shattered remnants of Astartes power armor.
They were forced to incinerate their brother's remains with their own hands.
Using meltas, plasma, and promethium to ensure even the gene-seed was thoroughly purged, leaving absolutely no chance for it to be tainted.
"Champion, Sector Three on the eastern flank is requesting reinforcements! A Warp monstrosity has breached the line!"
An urgent call crackled over the vox, the background noise filled with the roar of bolters and the wet, squelching sound of flesh tearing.
Seranaphy snatched up his bolter.
"Hassan, you have the line."
"Champion, your wound!"
"It won't kill me." Seranaphy twitched his lips in a smirk. The festering wound tore open further, leaking a trail of yellow and red pus. "At least, it won't kill me until I see that terrifying Warp entity crawl out of the rift with my own eyes."
--
Eastern Flank, Sector Three.
The scene here had already surpassed the limits of mortal comprehension.
A Warp monstrosity was currently battering the defensive wall with its grotesquely bloated, tumor-ridden, and pustule-covered bulk.
Its attack method was incredibly primal: pure, brute-force impact to crush the structural integrity, followed by spewing a putrid acid capable of melting ceramite from its maw.
Six Blood Angels were attempting to pin it down.
Mass-reactive bolts struck its body, blasting chunks of rotting flesh away. But the wounds were almost instantaneously filled by newly grown, even more disgusting tissue.
Meltaguns required three seconds to charge. In those three seconds, the Beast of Nurgle could easily unleash two torrents of acidic breath.
Two warriors were already critically wounded and down.
"Make way!" Seranaphy's voice roared from behind them.
The warriors instinctively parted to the sides.
The Champion did not use his bolter.
He drew his power sword—a master-crafted weapon etched with the blood-runes of Baal, a blade that had severed the heads of countless xenos warlords across a hundred campaigns.
Then, he charged.
The Warp monstrosity sensed the threat. Its bloated body spun around with impossible agility, its gaping maw opening wide as yellow-green acid pooled deep within its throat.
But Seranaphy was faster.
With his power armor's servos operating at maximum output, he abruptly changed direction mid-charge, sweeping to its left—its blind spot.
He raised his power sword high.
The disruption field exclusive to the Blood Angels, glowing with a pale golden light, ignited along the blade.
"In the name of Sanguinius—"
He brought the blade down!
The blade plunged deep.
It sliced perfectly into the gap between the Warp entity's back carapace plates, punching straight through fat, muscle, and internal organs, driving all the way down until the tip punched out its belly!
"Purge the unclean!"
Seranaphy roared, his arms bulging with exertion as he violently wrenched the blade downward!
RIIIIP!
With a stomach-churning tearing sound, the Warp monstrosity was carved completely open from back to belly!
Rotting internal organs, undigested corpses, and writhing maggots spilled out like a waterfall. The stench instantly saturated the entire sector.
The Warp monstrosity let out a death wail, its massive body swaying before crashing heavily to the ground.
But Seranaphy, Champion of the Blood Angels, did not pause for a second.
He wrenched his sword free and charged to the edge of the defensive wall. He raised his bolter at the next wave of Warp entities currently gathering at the bottom of the crater.
"For the Emperor! Fire!"
The surviving warriors roared in response.
The storm of bolter fire rained down once more.
And amidst the gunfire and battle cries, Seranaphy shot a glance toward the rift at the bottom of the crater.
Deep within the rift, he saw it. A massive eye, crusted with rotting flesh and festering sores... was slowly opening, staring directly at him.
There was no anger in that gaze, and no killing intent.
There was only a kind of benevolence, like a grandfather looking with doting fondness... upon a mischievous grandson.
Seranaphy felt a violent shudder run from the base of his spine straight to the crown of his head.
He knew then that the time left to them was running out.