[500 P.S = 1 Bonus Chapter]
...
Doom charged through the Spirit of Vengeance like a rampaging beast. His steel-clad boots pounded against the deck plating with a relentless clang-clang-clang, the weight of his armor echoing like war drums across the daemon-forged corridors.
Despite the ferocity of the battle, Doom's mind remained unnervingly calm—tranquil, even. The rhythmic whirr-click of his power armor's servos meshed seamlessly with the wet snarrrrk of his chainsword as it bit through daemonic bone.
His respirator fed him purified air filtered by his war-plate's systems. His breathing was steady, disciplined. On the vox-channel, the cries of triumph from his brothers cut through the darkness, and the infrared sensors of his helm picked out hostile shapes moving like shadows.
The daemons here were unlike those encountered before. Their forms, more solid in the Materium, radiated a sickening wrongness—skin that shimmered with iridescent hues, eyes too large and too many, mouths filled with fangs that shouldn't fit. Unholy symbols seared into reality blazed against Doom's helm display, parsed and flagged by his enhanced vision.
One daemon lunged—its eyes feline and luminous green. It was strong. Doom needed two full arcs of his roaring chainsword to cleave it apart, ichor spraying in arcs across the walls.
Others closed in, attempting to surround him. They came from all directions, seeking to drown the Doom Slayer beneath weight and fury.
A fatal mistake.
"If they had a modicum of sense, they'd scatter," Doom thought grimly.
But he was long used to the stupidity of daemons—willful idiocy bred from blind devotion and deranged fervor. Even faced with the Slayer, they resisted, loyal to their ruinous masters.
The slaughter that followed was brutal and efficient. Each Doom Slayer was a maestro of death. They understood daemons with an intimacy born of endless war. They could recognize the weaknesses in every sinuous limb, the fault lines in flesh woven from madness and Warp-stuff.
They moved like machines honed for annihilation—precise, pitiless. The slaughter was a dance rehearsed a thousand times. They killed like veteran butchers skinning cattle, every movement practiced, perfected.
In less than thirty seconds, the daemonic howls faded to silence.
Doom stepped forward slowly, impeded only by the thick, black daemon-blood coating the deck. It clung to his boots, sticky and hot, congealing quickly.
His chainsword's teeth were matted with gristle and cartilage, a foul sheen of gore glistening along its edge. The air in the corridor had turned putrid—blood, sulfur, rot, and something less identifiable but infinitely worse.
Only the air-purifying systems of his armor prevented the stench from overwhelming his senses—or worse, seeping into his soul.
Fighting in the Immaterium was always brutal. Yet, it was nothing compared to the monotony of the assembly lines.
The Slayers remained eager, fueled not by hatred, but by the sheer relief of not laboring under the drudgery of the forge-factories. Even war was a reprieve.
New data flickered across Doom's visor—tactical readouts from Grand Master Azrael. The Dark Angels had already begun mapping the Spirit of Vengeance, their expertise in breaching operations evident. A real-time schematic unfolded in Doom's HUD, a shifting labyrinth outlined in red and green as the Angels advanced through the vessel.
A fresh wave of hostiles appeared. Doom twisted the selector on his double-barreled shotgun and activated the Argent energy core.
Flames—deep crimson, almost alive—curled across the barrels. This was power gifted by Dukel himself, a concentrated fury that burned even the immaterial. The flames illuminated the corridor, casting flickering shadows as Doom raised the weapon.
The space was too tight for chainsword work. No matter.
He pulled the trigger.
The boom of the shotgun was deafening in the confined space. Argent shells screamed outward in a cone of obliteration, ripping through daemon-flesh and Warp-borne armor like paper.
Shot after shot followed, each one louder than the last, the noise echoing through the blood-slicked hallways like thunder in a tomb.
Elsewhere on the vessel, the Dark Angels heard it clearly—the methodical violence of the Slayers cutting their path toward the heart of the beast. The sound of cracking bone, the mechanical growl of armor, the roar of engines and the thunder of boots—it all sang the song of war.
The flames burned hotter. Daemons shrieked and faltered, driven back by a fear they were not supposed to feel. But the Slayer's presence twisted even the Warp.
From the shadows, a greater daemon of Slaanesh pounced—a being of androgynous elegance and horror, eyes wild, movements sinuous. In one elegant motion, it struck with a dagger wreathed in violet flame.
Doom twisted aside. The blade grazed his gorget, scraping a line across the ceramite.
He didn't flinch.
He didn't draw a weapon.
He punched.
The impact sent the daemon flying, crashing into the wall with bone-splintering force. Its spine shattered audibly, the wet crunch reverberating through the corridor.
There was no room for finesse. Doom pressed forward, his blows thunderous, relentless. The walls—part metal, part daemonic flesh—dented inward with each strike.
When he finally stopped, the daemon's broken form radiated with residual Warp-energy. Its corpse pulsed unnaturally.
And something—something—was watching through its eyes.
"Be alert," Doom voxed. "The Warp is watching."
He advanced, increasing speed. The target zone was close.
Slayers and Dark Angels converged at the same point, pushing deeper into the heart of the Spirit of Vengeance.
They entered a grand nave. The air shimmered unnaturally, the walls flickering as if reality itself protested their presence. It was nearly indistinguishable from a sub-realm of the Warp.
Six braziers.
Seven vials of poison.
Eight skulls.
Nine crystals.
On an altar forged from corrupted steel and intricate circuitry, symbols blazed in shifting colors. The room spanned only five hundred square meters—but every inch was steeped in blasphemy.
The floor was packed with humans—barely. They stood silent, slack-eyed. Once adepts or workers, now corrupted thralls of Chaos. Their old Mechanicus robes and forge-gear still clung to their frames, but their humanity had long since rotted away.
They moved like puppets, limbs swaying unnaturally, as if gravity no longer applied.
As Doom stepped into the room, thousands of eyes turned to him. The air trembled.
The flesh of the corrupted began to warp—faces elongated, muscles twisted, bones cracked outward. Beaks replaced mouths. Eyes widened and multiplied. Feathers erupted from skin.
The Warp stirred.
Mist filled the chamber, unnaturally thick and flickering with morbid light. Inside the fog were flashes of madness—lightning that never struck, and flames that gave no heat. The very sensation of being felt altered. Doom could feel the pinprick sting of Warp-touch crawling beneath his armor.
His grip on the shotgun tightened.
Now, they faced foes worthy of caution.
Time and space fractured. From within the mist, shapes began to form—tall, lithe figures adorned in twisted finery.
Feathered crowns. Totemic robes etched in curses. Barbed blades that sang discordant notes.
Each one moved with the elegance of a predator and the arrogance of a god.
They came not as warriors.
They came as nightmares.
The moment the twisted figures emerged from the fog, the Dark Angels opened fire. Bolter grenades from underslung launchers rained down like a steel tempest, forcing the warp-born enemies to scatter.
Using the precise suppressing fire laid down by the First Legion, Doom and his brothers launched a brutal close-quarters assault. The synergy between the Dark Angels and the Doom Slayers was seamless—not by rehearsed strategy, but by the intuitive deadliness born from centuries of warfare. It was as if the Emperor Himself had orchestrated their movements.
Doom had long trusted the marksmanship of the sons of the Lion. Their firepower was surgical, carving gaps through the corrupted masses without so much as brushing the Slayers.
Amidst this chaos, Doom felt it—that old, violent exhilaration. Facing a true challenge always stirred something primal within him, the same battle-fury that once ignited their father. The thrill of worthy combat burned brighter than any flame.
Explosions rocked the chamber as frag grenades shattered corrupted bodies. Bombs screamed past Doom's flank, detonating into fanatics who had broken from the mob to flank him.
The First and Second Legions, shoulder to shoulder, wrought destruction with unerring unity.
Doom's chainsword roared to life. With a bone-jarring buzz, it carved through a fanatic's skull, cleaving halfway through before ripping free and slashing across another's throat. Blood, bone, and warp-tainted filth sprayed into the air.
Suddenly, a warp-wizard emerged from the fog, crowned in feathers and radiating raw psychic force. As Doom approached, he felt his skin prickle beneath the armor—pure warp energy condensed around the psyker like a noxious storm.
The sorcerer mimicked Doom mockingly, raising his staff in imitation of a salute—then attacked.
Their weapons clashed. Energy and flame burst forth, a searing mix of psychic plasma and sorcery. The ritual circle around them bolstered the psyker, pushing his speed and strength to unnatural heights. For a few heartbeats, even Doom found himself locked in an even duel.
The warp-wizard's staff stabbed forward, brimming with malevolent power. The impact forced Doom back, his boots grinding into the corrupted metal floor as the ground buckled beneath him.
The sorcerer struck again, this time with a barbed rapier drawn from his waist. Doom shifted, letting the thrust glance off his reinforced chest plate. As the foe reeled back to strike once more, Doom struck first—swinging his chainsword low and diagonal, carving a jagged path into the psyker's torso.
The sorcerer's innards were hollow, his body more a container of unnatural essence than flesh. He shrieked, a cry like a dying avian god, high and wretched. Doom didn't hesitate.
The final swing came from below. His chainsword chewed through the psyker's jaw and split the feathered crown in two. The scream was cut short. Doom stomped forward, crushing the twitching remnants beneath his steel boot.
A rush of raw, unfiltered energy surged into him—a reward far purer than what he'd claimed from even the daemon of Slaanesh. His muscles tightened. His breath grew calmer. He felt stronger.
Better.
But there was no time to dwell.
The Dark Angels pushed forward, five tactical squads weaving precision and death through the tide of cultists. Commander Azrael himself led the charge, his blade blazing a path toward Doom's position. Together, they pressed deeper into the Spirit of Vengeance, each step closing the distance to their true target—Abaddon, Warmaster of Chaos.
Screams echoed through the void-flesh corridors. The slaughter continued unabated.
And then Doom encountered a new foe. A true beast.
The air thickened with the stench of rot before the creature emerged. It was a Great Unclean One—a bloated daemon of Nurgle, its festering mass held together by rot and warp-entropy.
It was enormous—towering more than twice the height of a Primaris Astartes. Its limbs bulged with pustulent fat and rotted sinew, its skin a patchwork of diseased hues. The Warp coiled thickly around it, and a sickly corona of pestilence shimmered in the air like a dying star.
Without pause, Doom charged.
He ripped through a tide of lesser daemons as he closed the distance, his momentum unstoppable. The Great Unclean One bellowed with mirthless hatred and responded. With a gurgling roar, it reached into the folds of its own corrupted flesh and withdrew a rotary autocannon, crusted with filth and buzzing with plague-flies.
It fired.
Shells screamed through the air, tearing into the corridor. Doom weaved through the barrage. The autocannon's inaccuracy betrayed the daemon's monstrous size—it wasn't aiming, just vomiting hate.
Those few rounds that struck him were weakened by his psychic barrier and deflected by ceramite. Minor scratches. Nothing more.
As Doom drew closer, the daemon hurled the autocannon aside and retrieved a club—corrupted by Nurgle's triple blight. It stank of decay and ruin, the very air around it corroding.
It swung the club with unnatural speed, far faster than such bulk should allow.
But to Doom, it was slow.
Crude.
Brute strength without skill. No elegance. No precision.
Doom smirked behind his helmet and charged again.
Dukel leaned to the side, narrowly avoiding the Great Unclean One's strike, and surged forward with terrifying speed.
"Son of Dukel!" the bloated monstrosity bellowed. Its voice was thick and wet, like a hacking cough dredged from a rotted lung—laden with hatred, but tinged unmistakably with fear.
"One day, we will repay you for the torment you inflicted upon our beloved Father!"
To this day, the Sons of Nurgle had not forgotten the Second Legion's violent intrusion into the Plague Garden. Their lust for vengeance remained unquenched—but the Second Legion would never allow such a debt to be repaid.
"Your 'beloved' Father is nothing but a failure," Dukel spat, his voice cold and merciless.
"My father claimed the Goddess of Life from him. He could only scream—just like you are now—powerless and enraged. That goddess your master so desperately coveted is now held by my father… firmly within his grasp."
With those venomous words, Dukel not only revealed what had transpired within the divine realms, but he also tore open an old wound that the followers of Nurgle had long buried.
The Great Unclean One let out an inhuman screech of rage. Dukel staggered backward under a crushing wave of psychic energy, his armored boots screeching against the deck of the Spirit of Vengeance as he skidded several meters before regaining balance.
Warp energies howled across the chamber. The demon's wrath shook the fabric of realspace. Around them, lesser daemons were flung back into the Immaterium, their forms unraveling in the storm.
Then, from above—like judgment from on high—Azrael, Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels, descended from a shattered ceiling arch. His bolter roared, hurling explosive bolts into the Great Unclean One's exposed intestines.
The Primarch's strike briefly stunned the daemon. Its psychic howling faltered.
Dukel seized the moment. He charged once more—just as the plague-ridden brute swung its bloated plague club in a wide arc.
Gunfire erupted around the hall. The thunder of grenade launchers filled the air as over fifty muzzle flashes unleashed a storm of explosives upon the daemon.
Wounded by Azrael's marksmanship and boxed in by the sheer mass of fire, the Great Unclean One had no room to maneuver. Its psychic defenses faltered. Its body began to rupture under the pressure.
Dukel ducked beneath the swinging club. Dropping low, he pivoted on his left foot, torqueing his waist with perfect precision. His chainsword screamed to life and carved a wide, vicious arc through the Great Unclean One's chest.
The wound was deep. The blade tore through diseased flesh and ruptured swollen innards, releasing a flood of bile and ichor that reeked of death.
The daemon reeled backward, its strikes now clumsy and disordered. The warp energy around it dimmed, flickering like a dying star.
Dukel gave no quarter. He pressed the assault, relentless as a hurricane. Cracks split the floor beneath them, and steam hissed from ruptured conduits. The entire structure of the Spirit of Vengeance groaned under the pressure of their battle.
The Great Unclean One continued to scream—a wretched sound of agony and hatred. Even as its grotesque form began to collapse, it locked eyes with Dukel, pure loathing burning within.
"You cannot defeat the Father!" it spat, ichor bubbling from its ruined mouth.
"You only make Him stronger! Do you understand? Stronger!"
Dukel rotated his chainsword in his grip, the blade revving hungrily.
"Stronger? How unfortunate… you won't be alive to see it."
He took a step forward, voice calm—mocking.
"But fear not. One day, I shall return to the Plague God's rotting dominion. I will bear witness in your place. Do not thank me—mercy is one of the Second Legion's finer virtues."
For a moment, only hatred and silence filled the space between them. And then—execution.
With a final, brutal strike, Dukel ended the creature. The daemon's bloated form fell still. There would be no return to Grandfather Nurgle's garden.
After the battle, Dukel and Azrael regrouped, marshalling their elite forces. Though the Doom Slayers and Dark Angels were paragons of discipline, they checked for signs of corruption. Chaos was insidious. Even the strongest warriors could not afford complacency.
As they assessed their squads, a strange scent crept into the air.
It was subtle—like the lingering burn of ashes mingled with ceremonial incense. But beneath it lurked something darker… something ancient.
From within the haze, figures emerged—warriors clad in black and gold, their armor bearing the Eye of Horus.
The Black Legion had arrived.
And from their ranks strode a towering warlord, his eyes gleaming with malice. A daemon sword, broad and brutal, rested in his grip.
"Greetings, commanders," came the voice—cold, cruel, and unmistakable.
It was Abaddon the Despoiler. Warmaster of Chaos.
The blade of Drach'nyen pointed toward both Dukel and Azrael.
The next battle was about to begin.
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TN:
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