Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

When Lin climbed out of the crack in the ground, the first thing he saw was Gundam and Skarbrand locked in combat high above.

"How long was I down there? Since when did Skarbrand show up?"

The acrid stench of sulfur and molten metal filling Magma City told him this battle had been raging for a while. The trouble was, he hadn't been down there that long — by all rights, things shouldn't have escalated this far.

Skarbrand showed none of his earlier wretchedness from being cast off by Sadistic Terror. Trading blow after blow with Dorn, he was faintly gaining the upper hand.

Piecing that together with the state of Magma City, Lin realized the Exiled One had won back the Blood God's attention.

Watching Skarbrand eye the cockpit with naked hunger, Lin had no trouble guessing why Sadistic Terror would bless such a failure.

"Damn, it's only been this long and Sadistic Terror's already sniffed him out?"

He shifted his gaze forward, to the Exemplary Fists' defensive line — or rather, where that line used to be.

The ground here had been plowed into scorched earth by Titan cannon fire. The Exemplary Fists had built their last cover out of a few crippled siege tanks, while the Soul Drinkers hunted high-threat targets on the perimeter to ease the pressure on them. Even so, their line looked ready to collapse.

Thorne noticed Lin had reappeared. "You got it?"

"Better than expected."

"Then we break out now!"

The Astartes, having regrouped somewhat, were joined by Neos and Evil Sun, who had also returned. The two of them, apparently, had wandered around and found nothing, and had no choice but to come back topside.

Lin, having already secured the Akashic Reader, no longer cared whether there was anything else to gain. He was thinking instead about how to get Dorn — now marked by Sadistic Terror — out safely as well.

But just then, the distant ruins exploded outward. A rusted daemon engine smashed through a wall, and the figure standing atop it called Lin out by name.

"Lin! Come out and die!!!"

Countless ghouls poured out with his words, surrounding Lin's group. Lin squinted at him for a long moment but couldn't place who was calling him out.

"Sorry, do we know each other?"

Viktor's mechanical vocal cords crackled with a burst of static from rage. "You killed me! On the Forge World of Cath Maximus! How dare you forget?!"

Only then did Lin realize who this was. He studied the man carefully — now restored to flesh — and understood what had happened.

"Sorry, killing you didn't take much effort, so naturally I don't remember it. Though come to think of it, your comeback plan was to grovel before a daemon?"

"You bastard...!"

Viktor wanted to retort, but the doubts he harbored about Vashtorr left him with no confidence to claim his current form was a gift of the Omnissiah's grace.

All he could do was drive the ghouls forward, venting his rage through sheer force.

Monsters of rotting machine-shells fused with flesh surged in from every direction. The Astartes fought back as best they could, but against sheer numbers they were losing ground.

"We have to kill that Magos!" Thorne said, pinpointing the problem. "He's the one commanding these ghouls!"

A squad of Astartes was gathered up, but Lin stopped them before they could move.

"I'll go pay him a visit."

"That's too dangerous."

"It's fine. Let the professional handle it.

Lin gestured toward Dalia behind him, and only then did Thorne notice how unusual the girl looked.

Looking into her pale-green eyes, he stopped arguing.

Lin set Vladilena down and, covering for each other with the Celestial Dragon Guard, closed in on Viktor.

The scene now looked identical to what happened on Cath Maximus. Watching Lin apparently come to duel him one-on-one again, Viktor felt a sudden flicker of unease.

He's not running — he's closing in on me?

"You think that trick will still work?!"

Having learned his lesson, he drove the ghouls to swarm Lin, their blasphemous hymns laced with Psychic power strengthening them, dragging Lin into a hard fight — while Viktor, knowing Psychic power wouldn't work on Lin directly, gathered his own energy off to the side.

"I'm not the same as before. But you don't look like you've improved at all."

Under his control, the massive Ion Cannon mounted on his war engine swung to aim at Lin, meaning to deliver the final blow.

But Lin only grinned.

"No. This time, I've got a real god at my back."

Before Viktor could process what that meant, he triggered the Ion Cannon to fire — only to find, to his shock, that his weapon gave no response at all.

Dalia closed her hand loosely around empty air, and pale-green energy closed around the war engine like a giant hand. With a light flick of her wrist, the massive war engine was dismantled and stripped apart as easily as building blocks, revealing Viktor inside, his face frozen in shock.

Is this some Psychic technique?

Viktor tried to resist with the Psychic power Vashtorr had granted him, only to find himself suppressed even deeper.

No — this wasn't Psychic power at all!

The situation was completely beyond his understanding. All he could do was watch as the mechanical implants on his own body were stripped away just like the war engine had been.

The miracle-like scene made every Dark Mechanicum cogboy present flinch back. Lin stepped forward, facing off once more against this Deputy Forge Director of Cath Maximus.

"Seems like Vashtorr's gift to you isn't as useful as you thought, huh? Did you really believe your master was the Omnissiah?"

"That was you who said it! You told me on Cath Maximus that I never knew what the real Omnissiah was..."

"Too bad. Seems like you still don't know."

Those words drove home Viktor's doubts about whether Vashtorr really was the Omnissiah. He slumped, all fighting spirit draining out of him.

Dalia went on dismantling Viktor however she pleased — a scene like death by a thousand cuts to a Mechanicum mind, one that left the surrounding Dark Mechanicum cogboys trembling in their boots. They fled in panic, all thought of blocking Lin's group gone from their minds.

Lin realized these men were no longer an obstacle on their path of retreat, and he said to Dalia:

"Just suppress him so he can't command the ghouls anymore. Keep him alive for me — I might be able to pry some intel about Vashtorr out of him later."

Dalia nodded and tossed Viktor — now reduced to a stripped, stick-like husk — off to one side.

The Void Dragon's power also cut off Viktor's means of controlling the ghoul army through Psychic power and communications, and the ghouls stiffened up like puppets with their strings cut.

They kept fighting on instinct alone, but there was no more coordination between them.

"Sending your commander right up into someone's face? These cogboys really don't know how to fight," Lin remarked sharply, though his attention was really on the power Dalia had just used.

The Star God's power was almost absurdly convenient in the material universe — convenient enough that Lin was almost jealous.

He wished he had something just as direct to show off his own power. Too bad the Void Dragon energy dormant inside him gave no response — it couldn't be summoned at his will.

It lay quietly dormant within him, as if suppressed. It seemed to only surface briefly to lend assistance, like it just had, whenever he drew on local Warhammer knowledge.

Was the Void Dragon simply reluctant to make itself known?

Or was his own nature perhaps higher-ranked than a Star God's, such that its power simply couldn't manifest through him?

Lin found his own speculation amusing.

He looked at Thorne. "Any other obstacles left in Magma City?"

Thorne had grown a little numb to scenes like this by now. "Just that Chaos Titan, and the pack of Bloodletters."

Without explosive weaponry, the Chaos Titan was hardly efficient at dealing with "ants" like them. Now that the front-line ghouls were gone, they had no lingering worries and could move about Magma City with a degree of freedom.

"Good. Let's seize some heavy weapons first to give Gundam fire support, and have Koorland line up the Nova Cannon on Magma City. Once Gundam pulls back some distance, we'll have Koorland give that dog-head a nasty surprise with the Nova Cannon!"

The remaining forces mobilized quickly, seizing control of Magma City under Lin's orders.

With Vashtorr deliberately staying out of the way, the Titan caused them no trouble at all, and their advance went smoothly.

No one noticed that Vashtorr was deliberately going easy on them. Vashtorr was quite pleased with his own handling of things.

It might have helped that he'd already come across as useless before. But things were different now — who could say his earlier incompetence hadn't been an act all along?

Every failure was, in its own way, a victory for him!

Lin flexing his own capabilities was an extra bonus on top of his "victory."

Vashtorr had expected Lin to defeat Viktor. What he hadn't expected was the way he did it.

Vashtorr, of course, recognized exactly what that pale-green energy Dalia used was. It was the power of Blackstone.

More precisely, it was the power of the Void Dragon.

The Void Dragon imprisoned beneath Mars wasn't a purely technological deity. It had certainly advanced technology far enough, but its true authority lay in commanding raw, unrefined Blackstone energy.

First he was startled that Lin had somehow become tangled up with the Void Dragon; then he was overjoyed at how much further the man's power had grown.

The Void Dragon — how wonderful. The more power Lin held, the more valuable an investment he became.

He had to seize this chance to get aboard. Miss it now, and there wouldn't be another like it.

Vashtorr's resolve hardened. He waited patiently for Lin's group to seize the large laser cannons within Magma City.

Those guns, originally meant for city defense, swung around under Lin's direction. Seizing the opening created when Dorn forced Skarbrand back, Lin fed every battery a fire-support protocol targeting the Bloodthirster.

"Fire!"

Crimson lasers and deep-blue ion beams wove together, striking Skarbrand true. Even with his excellent resistance to ranged damage, the Exiled One felt real pain under fire this concentrated.

"Who — who dares interrupt this sacred duel!"

Unable to contain his fury, he vented it into the air — and Dorn seized the opening.

Gundam's Beam Saber came down and nearly hacked off his entire elbow. It regenerated quickly, but everyone could see the balance of the fight had shifted.

Seeing Skarbrand's dominance slipping away, Vashtorr knew it was time for him to step in.

"Time to retreat, Skarbrand. I've already secured enough production lines,"

"What about Dorn?"

"He was never part of our plan to begin with. Those Astartes have already retaken control of the situation. As long as they keep interfering with you, you have no chance of winning.

The way he handed over the situation was clumsy, but Skarbrand had never had much of a brain to begin with. Vashtorr was confident the daemon wouldn't notice anything wrong.

Unfortunately, even without noticing anything wrong, the Greater Daemon still had a stubborn streak in him.

"If you can't control the situation, then let me handle it!"

"I'll give up the clause requiring your obedience and service to me next time. That term will be struck from our contract — I promise you that."

The offer tempted Skarbrand for a moment, but the instant he thought about what he'd lose by abandoning the fight with Dorn, the temptation vanished.

This battle had won him the Blood God's attention — something he hadn't received in tens of thousands of years. If he abandoned it now, he didn't dare imagine what would become of him afterward.

He had no way back now!

"I must win this fight! If Lin tries to interfere, I'll tear off his limbs and pierce his soul, so he can never disturb my duel with Dorn again!"

Those words struck a nerve Vashtorr couldn't tolerate. Unable to hold back, he cast aside the contract, manifested his true form out of Augustus's body, and lunged at Skarbrand with claws bared.

Skarbrand hadn't expected this at all, and before he could react, Vashtorr tackled him to the ground. "What's gotten into you?!"

"You don't get to talk about him — he's my father!"

"Huh?!"

The two Greater Daemons grappled in the most ridiculous way imaginable, leaving Lin and the others down in Magma City exchanging baffled looks.

"Reckon they's fightin' each other," said Evil Sun, who, being used to brawling with other greenskins, read the situation clearly.

Infighting wasn't unheard of among daemons. Lin had no idea what set them off, but he knew they had to seize the opening.

"Retreat! Fastest speed possible — get as far as we can!"

The whole group, Dorn included, sprinted for the edge of Magma City, not daring to waste a second.

After all, a certain dog-head who hadn't gotten what he wanted was just as unhappy with how the battle was going.

High above, the churning crimson vortex, as if stirred by an unseen hand, suddenly expanded into a blood-colored rift spanning the sky. The stench of sulfur and copper rust poured out from within — Sadistic Terror no longer bothered hiding that he meant to flip the table.

Seeing Magma City about to become nothing but a daemon-realm of Sadistic Terror's endless battle and slaughter, Lin gave the order without hesitation.

"Koorland, fire! Now!"

Receiving the order, the Shanzheng activated its Nova Cannon, already primed and ready.

A blinding beam of white light plunged down from the heavens.

Not a laser, not plasma — this main gun, a relic of the Dark Age of Technology, brought pure annihilation down on all of Magma City.

Wherever the pillar of light passed, the ground collapsed layer by layer like fragile ice, and the two Greater Daemons standing on that "ice" fared no better.

Skarbrand only managed to raise his brass battle-axe to block. His weapon melted into liquid in less than a second.

Even Sadistic Terror's resistance to ranged damage couldn't shield him from a direct hit of this magnitude. His body turned to ash in the white glare, leaving him no choice but to retreat back into the Warp to await rebirth.

In his last second in the material world, he cast a resentful glance at Vashtorr, who was meeting the same fate as him.

"Vashtorr, look what you've done! Now we've got nothing! My Blood God, my Dorn, and my air-conditioning production line!"

Vashtorr only gave a smile Skarbrand couldn't understand.

"My mission's done!"

The pillar of light lasted a full five seconds.

When the light finally faded, a perfect hemispherical crater two kilometers across had appeared at the center of Magma City. Its walls were smooth as mirrors, gleaming with a crystallized, dark-red sheen.

Every trace of the Blood God's presence — the mist of blood, the works of brass, even the killing lust that had saturated the air — had been utterly purged.

No Warp taint, no daemonic residue — only the purest, most literal destruction.

As far as Lin knew, not a single Lance weapon in the Mechanicus's arsenal could achieve an effect like this.

"Weapons from the Dark Age of Technology really are terrifying..."

With a weapon like that as a backstop, even if Vashtorr and Skarbrand hadn't turned on each other, things wouldn't have gotten much more complicated.

The lingering warmth from the Nova Cannon's blast washed over everyone present, but the sense of security it carried let every one of them breathe a little easier.

"There's probably nothing left in Magma City at all," Thorne remarked.

"No. There's still one thing left.

Sharp-eyed as ever, Lin adjusted his optical sensors and spotted a still-intact device amid the ruins of Magma City, in what had once been a testing ground.

"Is that... an ork teleportation device?"

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