Returning Like Lightning
Purple mist seeped into Guilliman's skin through the gaps in his torn armor.
"Cough—cough cough!"
Guilliman abruptly knelt on one knee, the *Emperor's Sword* embedded in the mud, barely keeping him from collapsing.
A mouthful of black, foul blood gushed from his mouth, splattering onto the burning blade and releasing a foul-smelling steam.
Pain.
This pain surpassed the limits of his physical body. His lungs were festering; blood vessels, nerves, and cells were withering under this conceptual virus.
"Despicable plague," Guilliman gasped, his vision blurring—a sign of his rapidly draining life force. "Mortarion… you insidious…"
"I simmered this broth for ages to prepare it."
The Great Unclean One, Ku'gath Plaguefather, sat in his palanquin, the ladle still dripping venom, his face still bearing that same sorrowful expression.
"Stop struggling, Mortarion's brother. This is a poison capable of killing gods. Even your father would get diarrhea if he drank it."
"That's it."
Mortarion gave Guilliman no chance to breathe.
He flapped his tattered wings, hovering above Guilliman's head, his giant scythe *Silence* raised high.
"To break the shackles of the false emperor!"
The giant scythe swung down.
*Clang!!*
Guilliman mustered his last strength, raising the *Emperor's Sword* to block.
But he was too weak. The immense impact crushed his defenses. The giant scythe, pressing down on the *Emperor's Sword*, slammed heavily into his shoulder armor.
The blade of the scythe this time cut into his muscle, wedging itself in his shoulder blade.
Guilliman groaned, his entire body slammed to the ground.
Before he could struggle, a thick, rusty iron hook whistled through the air.
Hordesek grinned maliciously, his massive hook precisely seizing Guilliman's other arm before yanking it back sharply.
*Bang!*
The Primarch's right arm was abruptly straightened, the joint cracking as it dislocated.
Guilliman now had a scythe embedded in his left shoulder, his right arm locked in place by the iron hook, and his body weakened by a deadly poison.
"Father!!!"
A heart-wrenching roar echoed from the edge of the distant battlefield.
Marneus Calgar, the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, his eyes bloodshot, resembled a raging lion.
One of his power gauntlets was riddled with wounds from countless blows, revealing a mechanical prosthetic limb beneath, yet he continued to swing his fists like a madman, trying to break through the despairing wall of flesh formed by Nurgle demons.
"Get out of the way! All of you, get out of the way!!"
Calgar punched a Plague Marine's head into its chest, then shoved a Nurgling aside with his shoulder.
But with every step he took, hundreds of demons surged to fill the gap.
"Damn it! The Warp interference is too strong!"
The Librarian, Tigurius, knelt on the ground, blood streaming from his orifices. He tried to gather psionic lightning to support the Primarch.
But the Warp mist released by Ku'gath acted like a thick sheet of lead, completely suppressing all psionic fluctuations.
"We… we can't get through…"
First Company Captain Agemman looked into the distance in despair.
All the Ultramarines witnessed that scene.
Their genetic father, their god, the giant who held up humanity's sky in this age of despair, was now being besieged by three demon lords, dying from the plague.
That sense of despair spread faster than Nurgle's rot.
On the battlefield, the gunfire of the Imperial army began to thin out.
"Is this it?"
Mortarion drew his scythe, preparing for the final execution.
He looked at Guilliman at his feet, at that face ashen with pain and poison, and a twisted pleasure welled up within him.
"Guilliman, you lost. Your order lost. Your persistence was meaningless."
Mortarion pressed the blade of his scythe against Guilliman's neck.
"Farewell, brother. Go to that void and continue your perfect dream."
Guilliman struggled to open his eyes.
Darkness was swallowing his vision. The cold hand of death was tearing at his soul.
"Eileen…"
He murmured that name in his heart.
"I'm sorry… I might… not be able to take you to that dessert shop…"
Just as the Primarch was in utter despair.
*Buzz—!!!*
A sudden, abrupt buzzing sound, as if the heavens and earth were collapsing, resounded across the entire planet without warning.
The sound didn't originate from the atmosphere, but from the depths of his soul, from the waves of the Warp.
Immediately afterward, the earth trembled violently.
This tremor carried a frequency that made demons nauseous.
The Nurgle demons, who had been laughing maniacally and fighting fiercely, suddenly froze.
The feeling was like that of a fish suffocating from lack of oxygen.
"Ah! My stomach! It hurts so much!"
Ku'gath, sitting in the palanquin, suddenly screamed in agony.
Its boiling cauldron exploded with a *bang*.
The venom spilled all over the ground, scalding the Nurglings carrying the palanquin, who squeaked and cried out in pain.
The Great Unclean One named Hordesek was in even worse shape. Its tough barnacles and cuticles began to peel off in large areas.
As if it had contracted some kind of skin disease, the strength in its hand instantly weakened, and the iron hook that had been locking Guilliman loosened.
Even Mortarion, whose movement was about to sever the head, abruptly stopped in mid-air.
The Primarch clutched his chest, his deathly pale face contorted with utter shock and disbelief.
He felt it.
It was the rupture of the connection between the Warp and reality.
In the direction of the Northern Hemisphere, the place that should have been the epicenter of the plague, the anchor point of this invasion… vanished.
Completely vanished.
Along with it, an aura he knew all too well, an aura he loathed yet was powerless against, vanished as well.
"This… this is impossible…"
Mortarion abruptly turned his head, looking north, his glowing eyes filled with astonishment.
"That… that damned… Typhus the Cockroach… vanished?"
"And not just dead?… Complete annihilation? Not even a trace of his soul remained?"
"Who could do that? Even… impossible… he couldn't have done it twice…"
Just as Mortarion was stunned into silence…
"Cough cough… hehe…"
A weak, yet triumphant laugh came from beneath his feet.
Taking advantage of the loosening of the hook, Guilliman managed to roll over, lying face up in the mud.
Although his face was still stained purple by the poison, and he was still coughing up blood, the despair in his eyes had vanished, replaced by a kind of solace called "hope."
"You felt it... Mortarion..."
Guilliman gasped, watching the poisonous cloud in the sky begin to dissipate due to the Warp tremors.
"Looks like... my gamble... worked."
"That child... she did it."
Mortarion lowered his head, looking at the still-smiling Guilliman, his astonishment instantly transforming into a savage rage.
Typhus was dead? That traitor was dead?
Although he hated Typhus, he was the First Company Captain of the Death Guard! He was a Herald of Nurgle!
This meant the war on the northern front had completely collapsed!
If he didn't kill Guilliman now, this meticulously planned hunt would become a joke!
"So what?!"
Mortarion roared, his wings flapping violently, sending a gust of bloody wind through him.
"Even if that traitor dies! You will die here! Now! Immediately!"
"Die, Guilliman!!"
He no longer possessed the composure of a cat to a mouse.
He gripped the *Silence* scythe with both hands, channeling all his strength, along with the Warp energy within him that had become raging due to Typhus's death, into this single strike.
The scythe, crackling with all-consuming green lightning, slashed down at Guilliman's neck at ten times the speed of before!
This time, Guilliman didn't even have the strength to raise his arm.
Calgar closed his eyes in despair.
Ventris let out a helpless roar.
Just as the blade of the scythe was only 0.01 seconds away from Guilliman's throat.
*Whoosh—!!!*
A sharp whistling sound pierced the air from the horizon.
The object that arrived was beyond the limits of the naked eye, leaving only a visible, burning orange-red trail in the air.
*Clang!!!!!*
A deafening clang of metal clashing exploded in Guilliman's ears.
No blood splattered.
Mortarion's demonic artifact, the *Silence* scythe, said to be able to slice atoms, was actually blocked.
It stopped abruptly in mid-air.
What blocked it was not some famous relic, nor some psionic shield.
It was a ceremonial short sword with the emblem of Ultramar and the double-headed eagle engraved on its hilt.
That short sword lay horizontally beneath the giant scythe, its blade burning with that orange-red "fire" that sent shivers down the very soul just by looking at it.
Like a nail, it was firmly driven into the giant scythe's dead end, unable to fall.
"What was that?!"
Mortarion's hand went numb from the impact. He looked up, shocked and furious, in the direction the short sword had come from.
There it was, above the battlefield.
The thick cloud of poison had been violently torn open, leaving a gaping hole.
A golden streak of light descended from the sky.
*Boom!*
Sergeant Varo—the Ultramarine who had recently been critically wounded and on the verge of death—was now hovering ten meters above the ground, his battle-worn but still functioning power armor gleaming with golden flames from his jump pack.
On Sergeant Varo's broad, heavy right shoulder armor, sat a small figure.
She wore a tactical trench coat stained with green blood and black ash.
Her hair was no longer flaxen, but flowing liquid gold, wildly dancing behind her head.
Two golden flames burned fiercely in her eyes, brighter than all the artillery fire combined on the battlefield.
She sat cross-legged on the giant's shoulder, her hands empty (her sword had just been thrown), yet her aura was even more arrogant than the demon principality's.
She looked down at the three demon lords below who had beaten Guilliman half to death.
She looked at Mortarion, who was still in a scythe-wielding stance.
Eileen tilted her head, revealing the defiant, bandit-like sneer unique to her when protecting other scrap-collecting children.
She pointed a finger at the victorious demon principality.
The voice, booming and echoing like billions of people combined, carried an arrogant and domineering aura that reverberated throughout the battlefield:
"Hey! You little brat with fluttering moth wings! And those two disgusting lumps of fat over there!"
The entire arena fell silent.
Even the demons were stunned. No one had ever addressed the Lord of Death and the Father of Plague like that before.
Eileen didn't stop.
She patted Varo's helmet, signaling him to lower it further.
Then, staring into Mortarion's fire-breathing eyes, tinged with fear, she said, word by word:
"Dare to touch someone under my protection?"
"Have you really never seen...?"
"The Ant Alley gangsters (Old Huang taught me)?!"