[You take a slow breath and let it out.]
[You understand their wariness. A stranger in unknown armor falling from the sky and extending help is not something most Astartes are built to accept without suspicion.]
["You may consider me an angel dispatched by the Emperor. A savior from beyond time. The twenty-second loyal Primarch of the Imperium of Man."]
[Your voice carries level and low across the hillside.]
[The living metal between the skull helmet's modules responds to the neural command like thick liquid finding its own level. It flows back from the front of your face in slow, deliberate layers, retracting into the armor's internal housing, and leaves your bronze features and close-cropped grey hair exposed to the open air.]
["What did you say? A loyalist Primarch?"]
[The Terminator veteran does not move immediately. He studies Starfire Glory for a long time, methodically, beginning at the chest and working outward to the wings and back to the skull helmet.]
["If my records are accurate, the internal housing material is consistent with Necron living metal, or technology of comparable advancement. The armor itself exceeds the craftsmanship of any standard precision suit I have encountered. This is not equipment a renegade warband could afford or produce."]
[His visor settles on your face.]
["Additionally: no xenos force or heretical element has ever expended resources of this scale to deceive a strike team that has already failed its mission. My tactical cogitator has completed a preliminary assessment based on your combat data from the engagement below. You are operating at a level that exceeds any Astartes classification in my records. Were every member of this squad to engage you simultaneously, our probability of victory would be below ten percent."]
[The words are coming out exactly as you expected them to. You are already anticipating the "however."]
[It does not come.]
["The Machira Clan, Sons of Medusa Chapter. Captain Slyll, Terminator veteran, commanding the surviving members of this strike squad. We render respects to the Twenty-Second Primarch."]
[A sharp clang as ceramite kneeplate meets stone. Captain Slyll goes down on one knee.]
[Around him, the Sons of Medusa lower their weapons and drop to a single knee as one, helmets angled toward the ground. The remaining Mordian Iron Guard exchange glances, then follow, hands forming the aquila.]
[You raise an eyebrow. The corner of your mouth moves slightly.]
[The reversal was more complete than you had prepared for. The Sons of Medusa carry no genetic bond to you — they are Iron Hands successors, their founding split from the parent chapter over the Moirae Schism, and whatever reverence they hold for the Primarchs is institutional rather than bred into the blood. You had been readying yourself for an argument.]
["Rise. I don't want anyone kneeling in front of me, brothers."]
[You shake your head once and speak without raising your voice.]
["Now. Explain your mission here. Tell me what those aliens are, and what you know about the time aging. Everything your chapter has on them."]
[Captain Slyll pushes upright on his armored legs and reaches up to pull the helmet free. The face beneath it is a record of close-range detonations: scar tissue running across the left side, the right eye replaced entirely by a red-glowing mechanical prosthetic.]
["They are called Hrud. Sometimes Space Rats, informally. An ancient race, born with a racial ability they call Entropy Field — a force field extending roughly one and a half meters from their bodies that accelerates the local passage of time for anything caught inside it."]
[He does not pause before continuing.]
["On their own, scattered, they are manageable. Heavy armor and long-range fire is sufficient. Mordian heavy companies could clear isolated groups without meaningful losses. The problem is scale. When Hrud reach a critical density, or form a nomadic migration group, the Entropy Fields compound. What a dozen of them generate, ten thousand of them generate together exponentially. Any world in the path of a Hrud migration faces rapid temporal degradation across its entire surface."]
["My Primarch, what we encountered here is not a scattered remnant population. A Hrud nomadic tribe crossed into the underground of this Sacred World through a spacetime rift. We did not know that when we deployed. We came expecting a xenos suppression action — a strike squad, a handful of Mordian regiments, standard clearance parameters. We were not equipped for a migration."]
[The red prosthetic eye holds steady on you.]
[You are already thinking. The numbers are not workable. Nine Astartes. A dozen mortal warriors. An entire Hrud migration beneath the city.]
[Somewhere in the back of your mind, a memory surfaces: the Great Crusade. Perturabo's forces caught in a Hrud migration corridor, losses that the IV Legion did not discuss openly afterward.]
[You do not want to experience dying of old age.]
["Brothers, this goes beyond what a Sons of Medusa strike squad can resolve, and beyond what I can resolve alone by force. We need to get a message out. Where is your ship? Can you reach your crew aboard from here?"]
[Your thoughts snap back into focus and your voice comes out steady and direct.]
[Captain Slyll replaces his helmet and speaks through the vox grille.]
["A Sword-class frigate, holding position in near-orbital space above the Sacred World. The problem is the Entropy Field residue. The Hrud migration has contaminated every frequency band across the city. Armor short-range vox is unlikely to punch through with anything coherent. Physical communication is the only reliable option — we need to reach a flying vehicle and get someone up through the interference manually."]
[A beat.]
["The good news: there are vehicles in the city. The Thunderhawk gunships we abandoned near the forward positions should still be intact — the Hrud do not have weapons in the conventional sense. The bad news: reaching them means crossing most of the occupied zone."]
[He tilts his helmet very slightly.]
["Unfamiliar Primarch. Do you have any suggestions? As an Astartes, I am listening."]
[The words are calibrated to provoke slightly, and both of you know it.]
[You let it pass.]
[The living metal flows back across your skull from the collar up, spreading across the bronze features in overlapping layers until the pale gold skull mask is seated fully in place. The dark red lenses catch the light.]
["No need for any of that. You have done well enough as the commander here."]
["Now it is the Primarch's turn to cut a path through for you."]