Chapter 186 - The Lion's Rescue
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The clash erupted in an instant.
The Ultramarines lived up to their reputation as the Imperium's finest. With textbook-precise tactical coordination, they seized the upper hand almost immediately, bolts and plasma weaving a wall of fire at close range, driving the Despoiler's Chosen back step by step.
The duel between Calgar and Abaddon was just as savage. Power fist and the Talon of Horus crashed together in the firelight, every collision throwing off blinding showers of sparks.
The scene was chaos, but the momentum was shifting toward Calgar.
The Ultramarines grew fiercer the longer they fought. The Chapter Master's own assault came in waves, each one harder than the last.
But it was an illusion.
Every warrior under Abaddon's command was a Terminator. The ten-thousand-year veterans shook off the initial chaos, locked their feet, and absorbed the Ultramarines' firepower through sheer, grinding endurance. Then they began to hit back. Cold. Precise.
Calgar's luck ran out at the same moment.
Abaddon went on the offensive. The twin-linked bolter mounted beneath the Talon of Horus roared and thundered, hammering Calgar back one step at a time.
Then the stone slab gave out.
It cracked under the weight of his Terminator Armour. His center of gravity lurched, his body tipping backward before he could catch himself.
Abaddon was already moving.
The Warmaster of Chaos came in like a hunting cat, closing the distance in a heartbeat until they were face to face. The Talon of Horus swung. Steel claws tore through the forearm plate, ripped the power fist clean off his arm. Flesh split. Blood sprayed.
But it also put Abaddon inside Calgar's reach.
He didn't flinch. Didn't hesitate. He swung with that same ruined arm, putting his full body weight and every ounce of fury behind a punch aimed straight at Abaddon's face.
That punch could have shattered the Warmaster of Chaos's jaw. Could have reduced that contempt-smeared face to pulp.
It didn't land on his face.
It landed dead center on the Terminator chestplate.
BOOM. The front chestplate blew apart in fragments. Abaddon was hurled off his feet, hit the ground hard, and sent rubble and dust spraying in all directions.
His face was always hideous. Now it was something worse.
Rage. Frustration. Disbelief. They burned together in his chest, searing into the bedrock of his pride.
He had held Calgar's life in his grasp seconds ago. One claw strike, and it would have been over. Instead, this blue-armoured Chapter Master had sent him flying with a single punch.
A supreme humiliation.
Drach'nyen felt its master's fury. Violent flames erupted along the blade, blazing purple. The air around the sword began to shriek, as though every soul imprisoned within it was screaming at once.
Abaddon stopped holding back. He came off the ground in one motion, the burning daemon sword in his fist, and charged at full speed.
Calgar had no time to move. His body was still off-balance. On instinct, he brought up his remaining power fist and held it between himself and the blade.
He knew it wasn't enough. A power fist couldn't stop Drach'nyen. But there was nothing else left.
Abaddon raised the sword. The flames along the edge licked at the air.
The blade came down.
And in the instant before it struck, Abaddon smelled something.
A forest scent. Deep and old and wrong: rotting leaves, cold damp earth, ancient tree roots wrapped in moss, quietly decomposing in the dark.
It came from nowhere. It had no reason to be here. But it hit so hard and so suddenly that something in his nerves fired before his mind could catch up.
The next millisecond, a knight's longsword appeared from nothing, directly in front of Calgar, and caught Drach'nyen's strike clean.
CLANG. Steel met steel. Sparks exploded outward like a burst of rain, and the light swept across the face of the sword's owner, half-hidden under a hood.
Abaddon's fury went cold.
Not dimmed. Extinguished. Like a torch plunged into black water. Even the flames on Drach'nyen guttered for a moment without any cause.
Calgar stared with his mouth open.
He didn't recognize this figure. An old warrior in heavy armour, a hooded knight with a longsword in one hand and an eagle shield strapped to his arm. He didn't know who this was.
But he felt it. Something that resisted description, an aura that was identical to what he felt standing next to his own gene-father, Roboute Guilliman. A radiance that belonged only to a Primarch. A walking god.
"That topknot of yours is still as impressive as ever, Ezekyle."
The old knight's voice was level. Unhurried. The tone of a man greeting an acquaintance he hadn't thought about in a long time.
"Do you still remember me?"
"Lion El'Jonson!?"
The name tore out of Abaddon with an emotion that had no clean label. Fear. Rage. Disbelief. And underneath all of it, the deep, humiliating sense of a man who had just realized the universe had been laughing at him.
He withdrew Drach'nyen and threw himself back.
He was reckless. He was not stupid.
Not when facing a Primarch.
At his shout, every weapon on the battlefield stopped. The Ultramarines froze. The Despoiler's Chosen froze. Every eye on the field moved to the towering figure standing under the hood, clad in dark green power armour, the longsword burning with cold light in his grip.
"Impossible! You disappeared!"
Abaddon's roar was all rage and wounded pride.
"And yet, as you can see, I have returned."
The Lion's voice was almost casual. His gaze moved across Abaddon and the Black Legion warriors behind him with the slow, measured look of a man appraising a group of disappointing students.
"I never expected Horus's First Captain to become the Imperium's greatest enemy." He shook his head slightly. There was something in his voice that could have been mockery, or could have been genuine regret, or both at once. "It seems you have been enjoying yourself quite thoroughly in our absence, Ezekyle."
He moved before the words had finished leaving his mouth.
No warning. No tell. His speed broke through the reaction threshold of every person on the field.
Several Black Legion Terminator veterans threw themselves in front of their Warmaster on instinct. The Lion Sword took their heads one after another, clean and unhurried, ceramite helmets tumbling to the ground with the skulls still inside.
But it bought Abaddon the moment he needed. He raised Drach'nyen and came in to meet the attack.
The two blades collided again, violet flame against cold light, both weapons shrieking as they ground against each other.
This time, Abaddon had held something in reserve.
In the locked moment between the swords, he wrenched the Talon of Horus around and drove it in from the side, going for the Lion's flank. The claws tore through the air, cold and vicious, aimed straight for his ribs.
The eagle shield was there first.
The moment the Talon struck, the shield flared with a burst of hard golden light that swallowed the kinetic energy whole and sent every joule of it straight back.
An irresistible force detonated up Abaddon's arm. He was hurled backward, crashed into the ground 15 meters away, and his ceramite warplate carved a long, deep furrow through the stone.
The Black Legion's possessed warriors didn't hesitate. They launched a suicidal counter-charge to protect their Warmaster, throwing themselves at the Lion like men with nothing left to lose, spending their lives to buy him seconds.
The Lion moved through them without changing expression. One after another they fell at his feet, cut down with the same clean economy as a man harvesting grain.
Then Haarken Worldclaimer's voice came through on an encrypted channel, flat and urgent in Abaddon's ear:
[Warmaster, the Vengeful Spirit has been struck amidships by Blood Angels reinforcements. The mortal captain has ordered a Warp disengagement. He will likely use the opportunity to steal the ship. We must return immediately, or we will lose her forever.]
The flagship. Not destroyed in a straightforward fight, but lost, sent drifting by some coward mortal into a directionless Warp translation, spinning off into some dark and nameless corner of the void where no one would ever find her.
He was out of time.
And he could not fight a Primarch.
Today's debt would have to wait.
"RETREAT!"
The last of the possessed warriors answered. They threw themselves forward one final time, pouring out what remained of their lives to carve a path out for the Warmaster and the Despoiler's Chosen.
The Lion cut down the last of them, then raised his head.
He watched Abaddon preparing to teleport without any urgency. He made no move to pursue.
There was no need to kill Abaddon today. The time simply wasn't right.
"You fall far short of your other brother Loken, Ezekyle."
Not loud. Perfectly clear.
Abaddon's eyes went wide. For one brief, unguarded instant, something blank and lost moved across that hideous face.
His mouth opened. He wanted to demand something, wanted to ask, but the teleportation light was already blazing. The flash swallowed him whole, took the last of the Despoiler's Chosen with him, and stripped them all from the battlefield in an instant.
Silence settled over the field.
Smoke drifted in slow coils. The Ultramarines stood where they were, looking at one another, still trying to catch up with what had just happened.
Lion El'Jonson slid the Lion Sword back into its scabbard. He turned around and looked at the blue-armoured Chapter Master still standing motionless in the middle of it all.
"I am Lion El'Jonson." His tone was easy. Direct. "How shall I address you, son of Guilliman?"
➤ Next: Dark Angels
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