V2 Chapter 105: Have No Fear, Marshal. I Am Here.
Deep inside the High Palace, the throne hall was immaculate.
This was unlike the battlefield outside. The rest of the High Palace had been covered in shellfire, bodies, and Chaos sigils, but this hall retained the grandeur of the old Oligarch era.
The marble floor had been polished clean. Black and gold columns were arranged in rows on both sides. The noble crests on the walls had been reframed inside Chaos eight-pointed stars.
No bodies lay scattered here. Not a trace of dust covered the floor.
Everything had been arranged in precise order.
Nadzybar disliked disorder. His relationship with cleanliness bordered on obsession. He preferred things this way.
He stood before the throne, tall, wearing black and gold robes over old-pattern battle armour.
The fine garments concealed most of the mutated flesh. Only the skin visible at his cuffs and the sides of his neck showed what lay beneath: veins that had grown too large, finger joints that had twisted from their original shape, and something that appeared to move slowly beneath the skin.
A golden mask covered his face.
The mask bore three faces. The central face was calm. The two faces flanking it were frozen in a snarl and in weeping. All three had no eye apertures, only dense dark-red patterns that moved across the gold surface.
In his right hand he held a desecrated sceptre. In his left, a black sabre.
His Chaos Champion bodyguards stood on both sides. They wore heavy armour and carried chain-axes, war hammers, and power blades, silent as a row of killing statues placed beside the throne as ornament.
From the distance came tremors.
Shellfire was drawing closer through the High Palace's interior corridors. After the Plutocrat Tower's fall, the Imperial force had torn through the outer defensive layer. The High Palace was being taken apart section by section.
Nadzybar did not move.
He simply looked toward the distance, as though waiting for something that had already been decided.
From the shadows, a High Palace scribe in long robes came forward quickly. He knelt at the foot of the steps, his voice carrying a tremor.
"Grand Executor. The east and west corridors have been lost. The central main road is close to failing as well. The Imperial Warmaster has personally entered the High Palace. We can still reach the passage below the throne hall and..."
He did not finish.
Nadzybar was already in front of him.
The golden mask tilted downward slightly. The calm face regarded him. The black sabre passed across the side of the scribe's neck. The head rolled onto the floor, and blood spread in large quantity across the clean marble.
The Chaos Champions around them showed no reaction.
Nadzybar wiped the blood from the sabre's edge with deliberate care.
"Flee?"
His voice came through the mask, measured with a trace of obsessive madness beneath the calm.
"I will wait here. I will wait for them to walk into the High Palace."
He stepped down from the throne platform slowly.
"I will wait for their deaths. I will taste their despair."
The Chaos Champion bodyguards followed him as he left the throne hall and moved toward the western fortification.
Marshal Slaydo was advancing through the High Palace's interior.
The High Palace was enormous, on the scale of a small city. It had great halls, gallery bridges, fortified positions, open courtyards, barracks, interior walls, and countless interconnected stairways. Eight elite regiments were pressing in from different directions. Other Astra Militarum units were advancing along the outer corridors. The objective was singular.
Close off every road. Trap Nadzybar inside the core district.
Every enemy encountered on the way was among the most capable forces under Nadzybar's command.
Blood Pact palace guard, corrupted noble household troops, heavy-armoured cult soldiers, Chaos Champion escorts, and armed Mechanicus thralls concealed in corridors and fire control towers all blocked the Imperial advance. Every corridor had to be opened with demolition charges. Every hall was purchased with casualties.
The Imperial losses were severe.
Slaydo did not stop.
He pushed forward with his personal guard, the standard bearers, and several elite assault teams. More and more units were detached to hold side corridors, seal stairways, and suppress fire positions. By the end, the force still following him closely had reduced to a single elite team.
When they reached the High Palace's western fortification, the passage behind them had been cut off by collapsed debris and the spreading close-quarters fighting.
The western fortification was a wide platform. Its outer edge looked across the Oligarchy core district masked in smoke. Its inner side connected to the throne hall and the western courtyard. The floor was cracked marble. Several old noble statues had fallen nearby.
Nadzybar was at the far end of the platform.
His golden mask caught and released the firelight. His Chaos Champions stood on both sides of him, their crimson gaze locked on the enemies across the floor.
Slaydo looked at him and tightened his grip on Liberatus.
"Nadzybar."
"Slaydo."
Nadzybar raised the desecrated sceptre. The dark-red patterns on all three faces of the golden mask brightened slightly. He spread both arms.
"I can hear your soldiers calling out beyond these walls. They believe that opening one gate, pulling down one tower, is enough to make this whole world, this entire Sabbat Sector, yours again."
Slaydo stepped forward.
"Balhaut has fallen. Your fleet is broken. Your walls are rubble. Your forces are being eliminated. Now only you remain standing here."
Nadzybar produced a low sound of amusement.
"Fallen?" He said. "Have you seen the city outside? Have you seen the streets that your orbital fire tore open? Have you seen the people who died in the mud, in the factories, under the high walls?"
"This sector of space has not become better since you arrived."
"It has only traded my fire for your shellfire."
Slaydo said nothing.
Nadzybar continued. "You call us butchers. But you also offer lives. You simply do not call it an offering. You call it duty. Sacrifice. You send your young into battle, drain your worlds dry, stack the dead before your icons, and tell yourselves it is for the Emperor."
Nadzybar looked away briefly, the golden mask turning slightly, the weeping face orienting toward Slaydo.
"The Imperium and Chaos are not as different as you imagine, Slaydo."
"We are not like you. We never pretend to be merciful."
"You paint your chains gold. You write your massacres into your scriptures. You go across the galaxy proclaiming your faith, telling everyone that if they surrender everything they will find salvation, and in the end they find nothing."
"I have seen those chains, Nadzybar." The Marshal raised Liberatus slowly. "I have seen child workers in the hive cities. I have seen slavery in the mines. I have seen the Departmento Munitorum send an entire generation of young men into the war. I have seen priests use the word salvation to drive dying men to keep crawling forward."
The low sound from behind Nadzybar's golden mask returned.
"So you admit it."
"I have never claimed the Imperium was merciful." Slaydo said. "I acknowledge that it is heavy, cold, and soaked in blood."
He stepped forward.
"But the Imperium lets humanity survive. You make humanity kneel, rot, and become livestock. You deliver souls to the Ruinous Powers to be corrupted, then tell those souls they are free. Salvation may never come. But as long as I am still standing, you will not pass off despair as truth."
Nadzybar laughed, a contemptuous sound. "You are truly pitiable."
Slaydo was entirely unmoved. "I have also never claimed the crusade would come without death."
"You turned these worlds into altars. You turned people into livestock. You drove children into ritual pits. You made peace impossible, and then mocked the people who came to end the war for bringing war with them."
Nadzybar tightened his grip on the sabre and tilted his head slightly. The angry face on the golden mask fixed itself on Slaydo.
"And then what? After you kill me, what do they receive? A new governor. A new conscription order. A new tithe. A new temple. New... oppression?"
"They receive the chance to live." Slaydo said.
"I will give them a world without you in it."
Nadzybar was quiet for a moment, then said quietly: "Die here, Slaydo."
Slaydo stepped forward.
"You are welcome to try."
At those words, both sides' escorts moved simultaneously.
The Marshal's personal guard and the Chaos Champions crashed together. Chain-axes split through shields. Power blades cut through armour. Bolt weapons fired at point-blank range. Slaydo did not manage the outer fighting. He walked directly toward Nadzybar.
Nadzybar came to meet him.
His speed exceeded anything that large body should have been capable of. The desecrated sceptre drove toward Slaydo's shoulder plate. The black sabre followed immediately after. Slaydo managed to turn enough to avoid the sceptre; Liberatus caught the sabre's edge.
The force drove a pained sound from the ageing Marshal.
"Such an old body." Nadzybar regarded the Marshal straining to hold the exchange with something approaching calm patience. "I will spare you the suffering."
Slaydo gave a cold sound and did not reply. He stepped back to change his approach, attempting to use Liberatus to force Nadzybar's centreline open. Nadzybar drove him back with force that had no natural explanation, the sceptre coming down hard on the floor and fracturing the stone beneath it.
The Marshal's personal guard tried to reach him. Three of Nadzybar's strongest Champions held the outer ring down and prevented them from closing.
On the other side, Nadzybar's bodyguards were being engaged by the Imperial elite. The entire western fortification had become a tight close-quarters engagement.
Slaydo and Nadzybar were at its centre.
Nadzybar's sabre cut across Slaydo's chest plate. The monomolecular edge tore through the outer armour. Slaydo took the wound with a sharp sound and swung back, the blade landing on Nadzybar's shoulder.
The black and gold robe split open, revealing the mutated flesh beneath.
Nadzybar did not step back. He did not appear to register pain at all.
He drove his shoulder forward and used sheer physical mass to push Slaydo's blade aside, the black sabre driving again toward the Marshal's abdomen. Slaydo turned enough to avoid the vitals but the edge opened a deep wound regardless.
At that moment, a shout came from the entrance to the western fortification.
"Have no fear, Marshal. I am here."
Duvette's figure appeared at the western fortification's entrance.
He was alone. His black commissar's greatcoat was covered in dust. His only weapon was the power sword in his hand. He had not waited for the Krieg. He had not waited for the 112th. On the strategic map, Slaydo's marker had overlapped with Nadzybar's, and he had understood that he needed to arrive first.
Nadzybar kicked Slaydo back and turned to look at the commissar who had appeared without warning.
Low amusement came from behind the golden mask.
"Another Imperial dog."
He raised the sceptre and signalled to the three Chaos Champions who had just finished with the Marshal's personal guard.
"Kill him."
Three Chaos Champions turned and advanced on Duvette with the weight of their combined threat.
Duvette pressed the activation on his power sword.
Blue-white arcs ran along the disruption field. He looked at the advancing figures and allowed himself a cold smile.
[Flesh Engine] was still running through him.
[King of War] was pressing itself into his flesh and nerves.
The Star of Terra in his pocket pulsed faintly. [United We Stand] answered his will.
The ferrocrete floor beneath Duvette's feet cracked.
An instant later, he was in front of the first Chaos Champion.
The Champion swung the chain-axe by instinct. Duvette dropped under the arc of the blade, drove the power sword upward from below in a diagonal cut. The disruption field tore through the neck armour. The head came off.
The large body took one more step forward before it went down.
The remaining two Chaos Champions stopped.
They raised their weapons in a defensive stance. One carried a war hammer. One carried a power blade. Duvette did not give them time to establish their position. He launched from the floor again.
The war hammer came down from the front.
Duvette stepped aside, let the hammer's momentum carry it past, and drove the power sword along the shaft and through the forearm carrying it. The Champion with the power blade came in from the side. Duvette turned and caught the blade, then drove his boot into the chest of the disarmed Champion.
The disarmed Champion staggered back.
Duvette closed the distance and drove the sword through the gap between chest plate and abdominal plate. When the blade came free, black blood covered the front of his greatcoat.
The last Chaos Champion came in with a roar.
His power blade came in a continuous sequence of cuts, each one at a speed well beyond what an ordinary mortal could track. Duvette did not retreat. He caught each strike in sequence with the power sword, forcing the Champion's rhythm to slow one exchange at a time.
The two weapons met again.
Duvette stepped in half a pace and drove his shoulder into the Champion's chest plate. The Champion's motion stalled. The power sword was already moving upward through the knee armour from below.
The Champion went to one knee.
A flash of blue-white light, and the head fell.
In the space of a few minutes, three of Nadzybar's most capable Chaos Champions were on the floor.
Slaydo looked at what had just happened, went quiet, and then produced a short, low sound.
"Well done."
There was surprise in it, and something that could not quite be hidden, a kind of deep satisfaction.
Duvette was covered in blood. None of it was his own.
He walked slowly toward Nadzybar, his eyes full of cold contempt.
Slaydo tightened his grip on Liberatus and stood from the blood pooling around him.
"No, Duvette."
The Marshal's voice was low, but the command in it was still present.
"He is mine."
Duvette stopped walking.
He did not turn. He only raised the power sword in his hand.
"I apologise, Marshal."
His voice was entirely level.
"This is the one order I cannot obey."
"He is my prey."