[There was no time to think through the banner idea. You acted on it and thought about it while it was already happening.]
[The burning Imperial Blood Banner swept outward in a wide arc, interposing itself between you and the bone whip. The crimson flames on the daemon weapon met the psychic fire of the Emperor's blood and the crimson flames stopped being crimson flames. They went out. The whip was still a whip, still large, still held by Ka'Bandha, but it had been briefly reduced to something that was merely physically dangerous rather than spiritually corrosive, and that was enough.]
[The axe was already coming down.]
[Shadow Step.]
[You were elsewhere. The massive blood-red blade hit the bone-carpet where you had been standing and the impact sent fragments in every direction, rubble and skeletal remains peppering the nearest Blood Angels and daemons alike. Ka'Bandha's momentum carried him through the swing and past the point where you had been, and you materialised behind him with your Blood Scythe already in motion.]
[The swing connected.]
[The green-lit necrodermis edge passed through the base of Ka'Bandha's left wing at the point where the membrane met the muscular shoulder, and the wing came away from the body and hit the ground and kept burning faintly from the residual energy of the cut. Ka'Bandha had not felt pain in the way mortals felt pain for a very long time, but he felt that.]
["Insects—"]
[He turned faster than something his size had any right to turn, the roar building from somewhere deep in the Warp rather than from any physical throat, the sound of it hitting your armour like pressure rather than noise. The pride in that roar was louder than the anger: a Great Daemon, one of Khorne's most favoured, marked by a creature that was not yet a Primarch in any meaningful operational sense.]
[You brought the Blood Scythe around for the follow-up, pressing the advantage, the weapon's properties beginning to engage as the blade edge found daemon flesh again. The blood drain had started. Even Ka'Bandha would weaken eventually if you could sustain contact.]
[He did not give you the chance to sustain contact.]
[His massive crimson body began to spin.]
[It was not a combat technique in any form you had a counter for. His whole bulk rotated, the blood-red whirlwind building from the ground up as he spun faster, rubble and bone fragments lifting off the ground and accelerating outward as the rotational force increased. The debris hit your armour like concentrated fire from multiple directions simultaneously, each impact not individually catastrophic but the cumulative effect driving you back step by step. You tried Shadow Step again and emerged from it already being hit, the field of debris too wide and too fast to clear entirely.]
[You got clear of the worst of it. But not all of it.]
[The bone whip came out of the spin, reignited, moving faster than you could track it across the full distance. It connected with your breastplate dead centre.]
[The iron halo overloaded. The ceramite took the impact that the field had been meant to absorb, and the ceramite transmitted what it could not absorb to you, and what that felt like was a battering ram hitting your ribcage from the outside while simultaneously every system in your armour registered critical damage at once.]
[You were airborne for a moment. Then the ground arrived.]
[The impact of your power pack hitting the bone-carpet at the end of the arc brought you back from the edge of unconsciousness by way of violent physical shock, which was extremely unpleasant and also effective. You were aware of blood in your mouth, the golden-copper taste of it, and the sound of your armour's structural integrity reports competing with each other for attention.]
[You swallowed the blood. You got your arms under you.]
[The medical system inside the speed-type armour activated without needing to be told. The liquefied panacea entered your bloodstream and the pain did not stop but it moved into a register that you could work past, the severe internal damage beginning its repair cycle. You had time. Not infinite time, the panacea reserves in the armour were not infinite, but time.]
[You pushed yourself upright using the burning banner as a support, the psychic fire still holding on the Imperial blood-soaked fabric, still burning, still real. Your armour screamed in multiple systems. You breathed through it.]
[Ka'Bandha was dealing with the Blood Angels.]
[They had come from all directions across the battlefield, squads and individuals who had recovered their sanity from the banner's light, every one of them seeing what was in front of them and making the same decision regardless of odds. Their chainblades were out. They were charging the Great Daemon of Khorne with the full knowledge of what a single swing of his axe would do to them, and they were charging anyway, roaring his name as they went.]
[One swing. It hit an entire squad and the squad ceased to be a squad. The next squad hit him from the flank and accomplished nothing structural and kept fighting. Another swing. Another squad gone. Another charging in behind the previous one's death.]
["Blood Angels!" Your voice came out wrong, hoarse, the impact damage not fully resolved yet. You forced it louder. "I am your Primarch, and I am ordering you to pull back! This is not your fight! Pull back now!"]
[Not one of them pulled back.]
[They heard you. You could see the ones close enough registering the words. They looked at you, looked at Ka'Bandha, looked at the dead, looked at you again, and they charged anyway. Every one of them. As though the calculation they were running had a different answer than the one you were trying to give them.]
[You watched two more squads die buying you thirty seconds.]
[You pulled off your helmet.]
[The air of Signus Prime hit your face, wrong-smelling, the atmosphere carrying something that had nothing to do with weather or climate. You did not care. You needed Ka'Bandha to look at you instead of them.]
["Ka'Bandha!" The name came out at full volume, cutting through the noise of the battlefield the way a struck bell cuts through a crowd. "You useless, long-winded, one-winged fool! Here! I'm here! Come and finish it yourself if you can!"]
[He looked at you.]
[Good.]
[The Blood Angels still between you and him were buying time. You intended to use it.]
[The banner in your grip. The Blood Scythe in the other. Your armour wrecked and screaming and still moving. The panacea working. The Emperor's blood burning on the fabric with a stubbornness that matched your own.]
[Khorne's blessing hit you on the fourth step.]
[You recognised what it was immediately: power descending from outside, the Blood God's favour flowing toward the fight because the fight was exactly what the Blood God wanted, because you were exactly what the Blood God favoured in this moment, and the recognition of it was deeply uncomfortable and also undeniable. Your body was stronger than it had been ten seconds ago. Your grip on the weapons was stronger. The pain from the whip impact had retreated further than the panacea alone could explain.]
[You used it. You hated that you were using it. You used it anyway.]
[Ka'Bandha was thirty metres away. Twenty. Ten.]
[You reversed your grip on the burning banner.]
[And threw it.]
["Try this!"]
[The Imperial blood banner, soaked through with golden fire, tumbling end over end toward Ka'Bandha's massive crimson chest.]