The Knights of Awe fleet burned into orbit at a nearly reckless pace, luck alone ensured that no other vessels were in the path of the mighty warfleet. Several small escort frigates however had to divert from their patrols or orbital bombardment locations to make way.
In the Strategium Astartes captains and Imperial army generals frantically organizing the troops for combat, their skill and determination had the forces largely prepared, but regiments split by the hasty departure were the focus of confusion and being stitched together into a functional force. Over the din of orders and coordination Commander Illan Haen, leader of the Astarte Auxilia, shouts “My Lord Primarch! My Lord! The Emperor’s custodes and other Imperial forces have already begun landing troops, vox traffic seems to show heavy fighting over several landing zones already.”
Prometheus stands suddenly in response bringing the room to silence awaiting word. The primarch’s eyes shift rapidly between the holographic map of the world and officers in the room. He seemed to be analyzing the situation and playing out possibilities fully applying his intellect to forecast the result of dozens of plans. His gaze halts on The Blood Raven and Lord Strategos Arghan, two of the highest ranking commanders in the warfleet.
“Prepare drop-pods and assault landers. The entire legion is to drop here” he says pointing just outside the heart of the primary Ork fortress still covered in a large energy shield of some kind. “The Imperial Army, Astartes and Auxilia are to carve into the fortress decapitating the foe and pave the way for the Emperor to scour this world clean of the Xenos.”
The entire Strategos goes silent in surprise, The legion is fully capable of such assaults as is the army but it’s not their specialization. Then again, the Primarch had made his orders. Mere hours as the first drop pods are fired from the ship the energy shield flickers and dies, the latent precognicience of the Primarch showing that the shield would fall in the correct moment. Drop-pods and hundreds of heavily armored landers deploy the Imperial army by grav chute or vehicles to crush any forces the infantry or terminators have difficulty with.
At the foot of the great spire that was the beating heart of the planet and all of Ullanor, the forces of the enemy were already in disarray. The vanguard of the Truthlayers and the Mechanicum had broken through the Orks’ first lines of defence, and though some scattered pockets of resistance remained, exchanging vicious gunfire from behind the cover of the omnipresent wreckage that littered the greenskins’ crude parody of a city, they now largely held the field. Waves of screaming Orks continued to emerge from the gates of the fortress, but without leadership or organization they merely mindlessly charged the Imperial lines and were swiftly cut down by reaving volleys. Though marred by heaps of broken scrap, mounds of corpses and creeping pools of blood, human and xeno alike, the path to the citadel lay clear.
Prometheus and the legion land in the midst of the Ork fortress, well ahead of the other Imperial front, thousands of Terminator elites and Astartes Veterans charge outward establishing a landing zone for other forces. The deep strike sowed further confusion into the ranks of the Orks but battle lust driving them into a frenzy recklessly attacking the Knights of Awe. In short order the entire landing zone is being assaulted from every direction chain glaives, bolters and flamers drive the orks back. Prometheus and his commanders direct the battle even while holding the green tide at bay.
In the midst of the melee, Arghan, the Lord Strategos of the Knights of Awe, received a vox-hail with an identifying frequency placing its origin from amongst the Stargazers Legion.
“Lord Astartes, this is Malagra Numilus Grirkov of the 12th Legion. Your arrival is most auspicious; our forces are engaging the so-called Nobz High Command and their Warbands within the lower levels of the spire. We are hard pressed to select volunteers from amongst us to ascend and purge the Overlord without exposing our flanks. Do you have any rapid assault groups available for an immediate operation up through the ribs and into the heart of the citadel?”
The Lord Strategos replies, his words punctuated with cries of dying Orks and the thumping report of heavy bolter fire, “Malagra Grirkov, our entire force is preparing to make the assault on the citadel. We have established a landing zone and are awaiting the rest of the legion and Imperial army forces to arrive. We will be making the assault on the citadel soon.” Even as he speaks several Tetrarch Heavy Landers arrive disembarking thousands of soldiers and a pair of super heavy tanks to provide fire support. In short order the majority of the force had been landed and the landing zone was stripped to the bone to make for the citadel, Tens of thousands of Astartes and hundreds of thousands of Imperial army charge the inner citadel driving the orks back with las-gun, and bolter.
The vista that met them within the walls of the fortress was one that could have emerged from a crazed architect’s Warp-touched nightmare. The interior of the gargantuan spire was all but hollow, with no separate floors intervening between the ground and its summit. Like a colossal silo, it stretched off and away into the distance, the ceiling a barely distinguishable shadow from below. Its mighty walls were lined with innumerable ramps, platforms and stairways, crudely bolted and welded to the sheer surface, connected to one another by dizzying bridges and rickety planks. An entire labyrinth assembled from scrap and detritus was precariously suspended above the Legions’ heads, the sloping and rattling links between the suspended balconies forming a network more intricate and chaotic than any solid corridors could hope to be.
And every step, every inch of the baffling construction was swarming with Orks. Gangs of them ran back and forth on the walkways, swung and grappled on chains and ropes like apes, even jumped from one bridge to another. For all their disorderly rushing about, it was clear at a glance that the ones gathered at the core of the Ullanor empire were a cut above the majority of the greenskins the Imperial troops had faced until that point. Even the smallest boyz were full as tall as Astartes, and each of them bore some garishly ostentatious mark of their station - gratuitous golden trinkets, looted armour pieces, cybernetic implants that were not threatening to explode at the slightest wince or, above all, elaborately styled hats. The metallic bulks of Meganobz towered among them at alarmingly frequent intervals.
The 12th Legion’s Taghmata forces were already present and widely distributed through the lower reaches of the massive chamber. Focusing not on confronting the Orks directly but instead on establishing beachheads and bastions amidst the terrifying vertical architectural morass of the inner spire, attempting to seize and hold the lower entrances and gates into the fortification so that the inner forces could be purged without fear of flanking reinforcements. Lines of Skitarii assembled in lines before Kastellan robots took as much advantage of their powerful repulsor fields for cover, while Onager Dunecrawlers crab-walked across the tangled paths and bridgework of the patchwork hive - pausing only to turn their turrets and blow suspended buildings and fortifications to pieces, causing debris and shrapnel to be flung across the cavernous expanse along with screaming, enraged greenskins. Killclades of Ruststalkers scaled the sides of the inner spire, planting demolition charges and ambushing Orks attempting to traverse the walkways and catwalks, proving to be just as agile and willing to swing over the abyss on crude chains and cable lines in dizzying maneuvers of precision, in contrast to the more frenzied and energetic careening motion of the smaller Ork scouts and Gretchin that elected to do the same. The rim of the inner spire was the figurative eyewall of the crossfire hurricane, with heavy explosives causing entire Orkish shacks and hanging towers to brutally detonate or crumble into the abyss below while bridges and support lines sprung loose and whiplashed like alien appendages across the empty space, interspersed with laz and bolter-fire and clashing figures exchanging blows as they rushed over and across rooftops and bridge-lengths in the expansive interior. Here and there, evidence of Onagers utilizing actual Icarus anti-air arrays was manifest with the appearance of sudden, hissing salvos of swarm rockets and exploding flak rippling across the interior in a deadly staccato that almost-but-not-quite harmonized with the Orks’ own overbearing clamor.
While the sheer amount of structural damage and havoc the Stargazers were inflicting was impressive, their progress in eradicating the enemy was less-so. The innermost bastions and drifting citadels of the Orkoid MegaNobs, arranged in an almost spiraling column up and down the length of the spire’s interior, were almost uniformly untouched. The bowels of the spire’s lowest depths were heaped amply with both fungal green and crimson-clad bodies alike, their only burial raiments to follow being the intermingled scrap plating of exploding Ork constructs and Legio Cybernetica robots. The 12th Legion seemed simply to be prioritizing securing the entrances and exits of the Spire, even at substantive cost and risk to their own forces.
“Rrah, won’t ya gitz just be still!” A raging Ork swung his thrumming choppa at a Stalker as it clambered past him along the inner wall, but the walkway was just a hair too distant, and the cyborg, too nimble. The boy spat and loped towards an ascending ramp, only to be sent staggering back as a massive metallic hulk shoved past him, almost pushing him off the platform altogether.
“Ya num’skull, don’t waste ya time with dem jumping gnats dere!” The Nob pointed his shoota-arm at a narrow terrace overhead.
The object of his offending digit was the imposing group of Marines that had entrenched themselves at one of the staging balconies for bikes heading in and out of the spire. A group of ten Terminators that had used a beacon to teleport onto the spot from outside the fortress and had swiftly strewn the entire platform with the smoldering spread of innards of over a hundred Orks that had been occupying the area in the previous instant. The Terminator squad leader, armed with an imposing Omnissian Power Axe, was making formation gestures and clearly looking
directly at the Nob across the bridge, all the while a reinforcing group of Skitarii and Corpuscarii escorting an Onager up and across an access ramp towards the same platform. The landing had all the makings of a fight to die for.
“Ya gotta spot where dem big onez’s all bunched togeva’, so dey can’t run off!” The Nob demonstratively fired a volley in the general direction of the Stargazer detachment. “Come on, ya squig-guts! Let’s crack some skulls!”
His cry was echoed by a good few dozen Orks in the vicinity, and soon drowned out by the revving of their chain-weapons and the metallic barking of their shootas as they rared to charge across the bridge, which was, much to their aggravation, not wide enough for them all to cross it at the same time. The one who had lunged at the Ruststalker stood scratching his head with a skeptical look on his stolid tusked face for a moment before falling into the rear of the mob.
Nobody dared contest the Nob as he stepped first onto the bridge with a crash of metal upon metal. He opened his half-mechanical maw wide and roared his challenge as he broke into a run, his at least partially metallic lungs giving an uncanny echoing tinge to his already bestial voice.
The same Ruststalker the straggling Ork had swiped at earlier, hanging off from the adjacent wall some twenty meters up and had spent the last two minutes prior rigging the bridge with melta charges, simply hung in place impassively and waited until the Nob had reached a point on the bridge where the Stalker’s internal cogitator calculated he could not make a safe leap either forward or back across the bridge as it collapse - and then sent a silent detonation signal to the charges.
The support struts for the bridge at both ends were both instantly blown out, causing both ends to snap upwards like a steel trap and actually fling some of the Ork mob at its backend straight up into the air, still WAAAAAGHing. The Nob, cursing and thrashing wildly as both he and the bridge plummeted, managed to tear himself free of the entangling support wires just in time for the heap of it and his band to slam into the lower terrace below. Looking back up at the balcony where the Marines were staging, the Nob saw the Terminator squad leader peer over the lip down at them.
The squad leader - clearly a veteran who had fought Orks in several prior campaigns - made a clearly visible and profane Orkoid tribal gesture with his free hand, casually dropped a krak grenade off the side down towards the Nob for good measure, and walked away.
When the Nob climbed back up the next few levels, bleeding from a dozen puncture wounds and missing several fingers while occasionally ducking to avoid impromptu decapitation from a humming Transonic blade as Ruststalkers swooped past on support cables - completely incapable of meaningfully retaliating beyond firing his shoota in their vague direction and cursing violently - only to then see that the Marines had set up a shielded perimeter and were simply taking volleying shots at distant targets on bridges, he had decided that these Humies were absolutely shitty grots to have to fight, and made as much clear with a stream of expletives that shook the scaffolding almost as strongly as the explosives had. From the opposite end of the collapsed bridge, the one Ork who had managed not to tumble down by virtue of being the last in line peered down, looking as bemused as before.
“Wot’d I tell ya? Ain’t no zoggin’ use, dem gitz just won’t ‘old proppa still!” He was about to add some choice epithets about the elusive adversaries, but at that moment the commotion below suddenly grew in magnitude, and as he glanced downward to see what was happening his mid-word gaping expression turned to a grin of bloodthirsty joy.
The commotion was that of the Knights of Awe making their first assault on the fortress. The tip of the spear was led by a phalanx of terminators carrying storm shields and chain glaives surrounding the Primarch, an impenetrable wall of armor and death simply wading through the greenskins cutting them down in the thousands. Within the walls of the phalanx terminators carrying plasma cannons and autocannons lanced their fire upward to weaken the deluge falling upon them. The assault simply marched forward driving an ever deeper wedge into the Ork hordes, allowing those not caught in the assault to be cleaned up but the following Astartes and Imperial army stormtroopers.
There was a brief lull as myriads of greenskin eyes turned towards the advancing force. Then, the immense hall erupted in a storm of gunfire. Shells rained down from all sides, increasing in intensity by the second as more and more Orks unloaded their weapons towards the ground - the great enclosure of the tower formed a circumscript killzone, so that even the most inaccurate shooters had a good chance to strike true among the clustered humans below. The unrelenting rain of slugs was joined by bombs, rockets, energy discharges, shokk disruptions, even screaming Orks hurling themselves down from the balconies to crush the enemy under their weight. Now and then, shouts and commands could be heard breaking through the continuous
dakka-dakka-dakka.
“OI, BLOODTUSK, GET YA RUNTY ASS DOWN FROM YA PERCH! WE GOTS REAL ‘UMIEZ TO SPLATTER NOW!”
“WOT? FINALLY! TOOK ‘EM BLOODY LONG ‘NUFF! DA BOYZ WUZ GETTIN’ BORED UP ‘ERE!”
As the projectiles continued to fall, more green hordes charged down the ramps, gnashing and cursing as they stumbled over each other in their haste to reach the thick of battle. Encircling the Imperials as they advanced deeper into the citadel, they poured down as thickly as the fire, brandishing enormous choppas, kombi-weapons and power claws, shrouded in a halo of spurting flamers. Their hulking bodies hopelessly dwarfed the majority of the human troops, and once the massive armoured Nobz began to descend, it was clear that only the most heavily augmented could withstand their fury.
The ork hordes and the massive Nobz however found themselves crashing into the Knights of Awe phalanx with a Primarch at its head. The roaring glaives drove the Nobz back, slowly, their bulk and armor ensured that a single stab or swipe would not fell them but still they were no match for an organized force of Terminator elites. However the sheer weight of fire and ferocity even brought some Astartes to their knees, either being dragged into the open air of the spire’s center by a gang of battle crazed Nobz or simply pulverized by the hellish fire being directed at them.
As the assault climbed the great tower the battle lines grew and thinned as units of Astartes and their Army auxilia began breaking off to handle a knot of resistance or clear a confused warren of structures. Prometheus knew each of his commanders and trusted in their ability to drive this assault to its conclusion, his mission was to obtain ultimate victory over Ullanor his officer’s mission was to ensure he succeeded and crushing resistance as it was found protected the Primarch’s advance. The fighting in the base of the spice never ceased however as the great battle drew in every ork that could reach the battle further anchoring the legions forces to the spot.
As Prometheus and his warband climbed to the same heights as the 12th legion his rear guard began to grow thin massed attacks would cut between the phalanx and the rest of the legion severing their connection, if briefly. Prometheus stopped and considered the situation for a heartbeat, ignoring the crude ork bullets pinging off his battle plate. He still possessed thousands of Terminators and the battle below would not cease any time soon, the battle had to be pressed forward but a cohesive front was slowing him down.
“Astartes, Auxilia and Army forces! This is your Primarch, Fight on and destroy the Xenos wherever you find them! Phalanx, with me!” He shouts into the vox across all channels surrendering his connection with the legion to drive deeper into the fortress. “Lord Strategos, Deploy teleportarum beacons.. Bring me the ancient and his dreadnoughts”
Without word the beacons were deployed and a dozen dreadnoughts were teleported directly into battle, their bulk and firepower lending an even greater weight to the assault. Auto cannons and missile launchers dampen the hordes assaulting the phalanx allowing it to push more quickly, in a matter of minutes the force was engulfed by the green tide.
The appearance of the ancients was difficult not to notice, and as even the dullest boyz saw that something was amiss where hundreds of them kept hurling themselves at the advancing formation without so much as slowing it, so did eyes lit by a slightly brighter spark of intellect. Somewhere in the nests of ropes, chains and planks overhead, something began to whirr and rattle. At first barely audible through the din of the carnage, it rapidly grew into an ear-splitting buzz, like a disturbed hive of gigantic metallic hornets. It seemed to emanate from a ramshackle construction resembling a misshapen cocoon made of scaffolding, which started to perilously vibrate as the sound grew in intensity, until it burst apart in a rain of splinters and bent nails.
There, affixed to the underside of one of the highest platforms, was a weapon as mystifying in its shape as it was astounding in its size. It resembled more than anything a Knight cannon, but it was not anything that may have been mounted on an Imperial war machine. Though assembled from surprisingly well-kept pieces by orkish standards, and thus only about halfway rusted through, it was wholly unclear what or how it was supposed to fire - instead of an open barrel, it ended in something between a lightning rod and a propeller. Mismatched tubes and wires ran up from its base and around the entire balcony, and a goggle-wearing Ork with a mechanical arm sat in a cramped nest of levers astride it.
“GIT READY FOR DA BIG SHOW!” the Mekboy bellowed through an improvised voxcaster made with a tin box and several wires that did not quite fit together, “YA BOYZ BEEN GRUMBLIN’ BOUT DA ‘XPERIMENTUL SHOKK ZAPGUN NEVVA’ DOIN’ ANYFINK? WELL DERE YA GO!” He tugged at several levers at once, one of which he held with his jaws, and the dire contraptions sprang to life.
A cascade of swirling blackness and electric currents flowed out from the weapon’s tips with a loud tearing sound and a foul smell of burned fabric and sulphur, scattering across multiple tiers of the spire in a blink. Several of them struck among Prometheus’ escort and washed over the dreadnoughts, and in a moment, hundreds of Terminators and multiple ancients were no longer there. Loud detonations and showers of sparks at the lower levels marked the spots where they materialized soon after, somewhat scorched and battered by their journey through the immaterial. Many Orks also found themselves displaced by the shokk gun’s less than accurate fire, various howls of annoyance resounding at being abruptly taken out of the brawl.
Prometheus watched in shock as much of his vanguard simply ceased to exist as far as he could tell. Reducing his forces from well over a thousand terminators and a dozen dreadnoughts to merely a few hundred of the hulking soldiers and a pair of ancient warriors. Galvanized by the spectacular display, the Mekboy pulled the levers again, flooring a number of pedals beneath the control throne to adjust the orientation of the platform and reaim the weapon. Haphazard Ork power capacitors began to churn and whine as turbulent WAAAAAGH began to course through them, crackling warp energies beginning to spiral around the sputtering propeller-tipped blast-rod - now squarely pointed squarely at the Primarch.
Over the sound of the charging Haze Zhokkaz and his own uproarious laughter, the Mekboy did not even hear the faint, tell-tale thrumm that signified the arrival of the enemy.
A booming and boisterous voice laden with the overtones of a zealous ovation shook the interior of the spire as it was amplified first through the built-in Vox-Caster of an Abeyant, and then in turn through the Mekboy’s own improvised Vox-Caster.
”BY THE POWER VESTED IN MY OFFICE AS MALAGRA,” The Mekboy’s head whipped around in surprise, to see Grirkov Numilus, standing poised atop his dais-shaped Throne Abeyant, reared back and about to stave the Ork’s face in with the butt of their rifle, which was embossed with the seal of the Prefecture Magisterium - and superheated to a glowing-white intensity from the crackling energies coursing through it.
”THIS PERVERSE XENOS DEVICE I ORDAIN HERETECH!!!” Grirkov slammed the butt of his rifle down against the Mekboy’s cranium, channeling the Motive Force of the voltaic weapon through the alien mechanist and permanently branding a seal of condemnation into his green flesh as the Ork screamed in a combination of surprised pain and rage.
”CARO AUTEM INFIRMA!!!” Grirkov roared, his rebounding, redoubled voice reverberating through the interior of the spire, acting as a massive acoustic chamber for his condemnation - and then, he activated his Voltagheist Field, and the Mekboy found himself being carried out from his seat by a massive discharge of lightning, to then fall, still roaring out in rage in disbelief, into the dark depths of the spire.
Grirkov turned his rifle to the capacitors for the Haze Zhokkaz and unleashed another blast of coursing power, overloading and causing them to detonate in a spectacular shower of sparks. A dozen arcing bolts of light streaked from the corona of light surrounding him, flash-frying the mob of Gretchin and Ork Boyz that had been about to pounce on him from all around - and then, just like that, the Abeyant Dais Grirkov stood upon shot straight down and assumed an approach vector to rendezvous with the Primarch’s vanguard.
’Primarch, oh holy son of the Omnissiah, your loyal servant Malagra Numilus Grirkov shall see you through all perils!’ The Tech Priest cast down on the Primarch’s Vox-Frequency.
Scarcely had he finished speaking that a new wave of piercing noise rose above the sounds of battle, drowning out the last echoes. This time, however, it was not the cryptic buzzing of some outlandish piece of machinery, but the prosaic roar of malodorous greenskin engines. Streaks of thick black smoke erupted from various sections of the walls, converging onto Grirkov’s trajectory like the grasping limbs of a marine beast. At the head of each of them, trailing flames, was one of that particularly sinister breed of Ork known as Stormboyz, borne through the air on crude and loud, yet powerful jump packs. They did not scream or howl as they approached, but there was no need for them to, as their mere movement through the air split it with the sound of a roar. Some of them were aiming their sluggas at the Malagra, others raised their choppas or prepared to toss their stikkbombs, but all in all it was unmistakable they were determined to blow the Tech Priest to smithereens.
Grirkov’s flight to join the Primarch and his van halted, and he assumed a series of evasive, erratic manuevers from atop his Abeyant dais, dipping and obliquely swerving to and fro through the chasms of the spire as he haphazardly attempt to engage the Stormboyz. His voltagheist field was more than up to the challenge of protecting him from their sluggas and stickbombs, with arcs of unfathomable and blindingly intense Motive Force flash-vaporizing the projectiles before they could even get close, as well as fatally immolating those Stormboyz who flew too close to his dais - but in turn, Grirkov could only turn his voltaic rifle on one target at a time, and despite the unwieldy and ramshackle nature of the Orks’ jetpacks, they were more than able to harry and hound the tech-priest from all sides as he futilely attempted to blast them away one by one. And as he was chased through the chained spires and tethered dens of the spire’s interior, the Knights of Awe began to recover from the devastating displacement of their forces.
The chaos of the weapon’s destruction at Grirkov’s hands gave the Knights of Awe a brief respite and just long enough for Prometheus to understand the dire situation he had found himself in. The paths he was expecting to use have now been destroyed and the majority of his forces were now missing. “No! I can not fail, I can not be defeated.” He growled beneath his helm as he drew his power sword, taking another from a fallen Knight, forgoing his glaive. He waded into the ork hordes with a vengeance, hacking and cleaving a bloody path through them that the honor guard fought furiously to keep up with. He began shouting at the orks, losing his carefully crafted composure to the fury of battle and the tangible threat of defeat. “I am Prometheus! Primarch and Son of the Emperor! I shall have only victory! ”
Even as mighty mega-armored Nobz charged the Primarch, they were cut down with expert, though furious, swings of his blades. His fury even began to frighten the smallest orks in the horde, breaking around him to engage the terminators following behind while the biggest orks still threw themselves at Prometheus with enthusiasm. It was only a few moments of swirling battle before Prometheus realized that he was only slaughtering orks without making actual progress, the bridges and ramps had collapsed and had lost him his direction. He speaks in a clipped tone into the vox “Knights! Find me a way to the summit!”
’Son of the Omnissiah!’ Grirkov’s strained voice broke into Prometheus’ vox-line.
’From my aerial vantage point and with a number of auspex skulls, I have already devised a number of suitable pathways that can lead you to the summit! But I cannot send sustained telemetry over the infosphere unless these frakking xenos flies are swatted!’ Even as the message was received, Grirkov’s abeyant dais broke through the cover of hanging Ork garages and shacks to the side of the Primarch’s platform, closely followed by more than six dozen yelping and shouting Stormboyz, their outraged bellows blurring almost indistinguishably with the dull, continuous roar of their crude jetpacks.
As Grirkov closed with the Knights assault the storm-boyz found themselves confronted with the weapons of the dreadnoughts, autocannons ripping ork after ork from the sky. Any who dared to close with the terminators were swiftly cut down and cast over the side. Glaives flashed out from the phalanx clipping the storm-boy, their ‘jetpack’ or the crude rig holding the two together. Several fell to their deaths and the jetpack flew off and exploded in the upper floors of the spire.
With the new telemetry data from Grirkov the assault team rolled forward encroaching on the summit of the spire. The fighting growing ever more furious, if that were possible, Knights even in Artificer Terminator plate were dragged down by ork nobz as large and heavily armored as themselves. Of the massed charge up the tower a bare handful remained with Prometheus. As they reached the ramp to the summit storm-boyz and mega-armored nobz descended. The fighting turned from furious to nearly desperate. With a Primarch at the head however it was not an attack that could be turned aside. Prometheus with his blade and storm shield cut through the warboss’ elite with the precision and skill that could only be distilled from the Emperor himself. Even still an explosion rocked from behind the vanguard, One of the ancient dreadnoughts had been crippled and was being torn to pieces by battle crazed nobz.
The assault reached the threshold, now there were no orks coming from the top to meet them the entire force was behind them trying to drag them down. The ancient Deckard, last dreadnought in the spire, spoke “Go my lord. We shall hold.” The remaining terminators fell in around the ancient save for 5 of the Primarch’s ceremonial honor guard. As he stepped through onto the summit he heard dreadnought loudhailers blare from behind him “Now for wrath! Now for Ruin! For the Imperium!”
Beyond the sloping gateway lay the open sky, almost dazzling after what seemed like an eternity spent battling through the bowels of the fortress. The pinnacle of the spire was a vast, mostly open platform, with no walls but a ring of robust metallic pillars holding its fortified roof in place. Flames in the sky and on the ground below lit the scene with a macabre glow, burning streaks rending the heavens top to bottom as they fell onto the devastated surface of Ullanor Prime and erupted into infernos of strife. The view was something out of a prophetic dream, an apocalyptic scene that could only belong in the direst of omens - yet there it was, in the roars on the wind, in the smell of steel and ashes that drifted up from a hundred battlefields below.
Near the center of the platform, turned sideways from Prometheus, stood what seemed to be a small Stompa, towering even on the wide circular field. Its twisted armour was painted black and yellow, and one of its claws rested on the handle of a terrifyingly large weapon of hideous design - not quite hammer nor chainaxe, but a behemoth hybrid of both, mighty enough to smash through a Knight’s armour with a single blow. There was nothing else on the bare rooftop besides the colossus of gnarled iron, no trace of the infamous Warboss of the Ullanor Empire.
Then the thing moved, and all became clear. It was not a vehicle waiting to be driven by the Ork leader into battle - the giant was Urlakk Urg himself.
The monstrous greenskin heavily turned to face the Primarch. Underneath his titanic armour, his scarred, stony hide was darker than that of any Ork Prometheus had ever seen, so deep as to be almost obsidian-black with the faintest shades of putrid green. His left eye had been replaced with a cybernetic lens as large as an autocannon barrel, and four mighty tusks jutted up from his lower jaw. He snarled, baring files of yellow teeth strong enough to bite through powered armour, and began to heft his tremendous maul.
“Human,” he growled, his voice cavernous and beastly, but far less distorted than any of his underlings, “You might be strong, but your kind is weak. When you die, they will scatter and fall, because they are nothing without your power. We Orks are stronger. Even if you kill me now, we’ll never stop fighting, and in the end we’ll win.”
Prometheus took a moment as the colossal ork spoke, moving his limbs ensuring the servos and range of motion in his armor were still correct after the hellish battle. “My kind… My kind has driven you and your hordes back to this tower. I am but one man, a powerful one to be sure, but an individual. Humanity, the Imperium, is the true power I wield and none can stand before it, Ork, Eldar or any other xenos. Stand now beast and fight or watch as your empire burns around you.” Concludes Prometheus assuming a cautious but aggressive fighting stance mirrored by his honor-guard.
“Your Imperium will crumble the moment its herds find the next shiny bauble to worship,” Urlakk grunted, “Without a born purpose, you stumble around like blind squigs at the mercy of Mork’s whims. Not us! We know what we’re made to do, and we’ll never forget the path of the WAAAGH! We’re made for fighting and winning - and I’ll show you runts what that means!”
With an earth-shaking roar, the Warboss raised his maul, which whirred to life in a nightmare of spinning blades and crackling generators, and sprang forward. He was fast, much faster than something so massive had any right to be. One hand brought down the maul in a wide swing, and the other snapped forth, grasping with a gigantic metal talon.
Prometheus smiled behind his helm, this would be a battle to remember one to be immortalized in the annals of Imperial history forever. He advanced his muscles driving his hulking armor forward faster than the motors wanted sliding past the Warboss’ attacks. His blade flashed out severing hydraulic pipes and power relays in the claw slowing its movement. The honor guard moved to evade the attacks though one was bashed aside by the maul, sent flying across the field with a crunch of buckling ceramite. The terminators also lashed out taking their lead from Prometheus severing further components of the Warboss’ weapons.
Even as Urlakk reared to deliver his next attack Prometheus advanced further driving his blade into the armored leg joints drawing first blood on the Warboss. The Honor-guard however kept their distance knowing they would be a hindrance to Prometheus, and so they harried the boss’ flanks to give their primarch advantage or taking opportunities to wound the great ork.
Though impaired by the breaking of the power lines flowing along his armour, Urg did not relent, forcing his ponderous weaponry into motion with the sheer strength of his body. He scarcely seemed to acknowledge his wound, only briefly gnashing and snarling as his dark ichor dripped onto the ground, and pressed the attack, now wielding his maul with both hands. Titanic blows rained down onto and around Prometheus as the Warboss focused his onslaught on him, uncaring of the terminators’ occasional strike of opportunity against his immense bulk. The floor shook and in places gave way, gaping fissures breaking open under the Ork’s strikes, but he seemed to know where and how to aim to avoid the damaged rooftop collapsing under his own weight. Indeed, the pits became a new peril for the Primarch and his guard, each of them large enough to swallow them on an incautious step and send them plummeting through the tower below.
Prometheus expertly evaded Urlakk’s assaults briefly however one swing from the maul struck him squarely, but it was caught on the giant storm shield he carried. The blow drove the primarch back showering the battlefield in splintered shards of adamantium and ceramite. He simply hefted the great sword in both hands and charged forward again trying for a death blow to sever the ork’s head, but it was a near miss the blade passing just in front of the warboss’ face merely cutting a thin line and severing a pair of tusks. The primarch pressed his advance raining his own blows onto the giant. He sidestepped a savage blow sparks showering off him as the roaring teeth of the weapon clip his armor. Pivoting the Prometheus swings his blade down cleaving through the Orks wrist leaving a sizzling stup and relieving the beast of his hand. As the cascading shower of sparks from the blade screaming through the Overlord’s armor struck the room with harsh flashes of illumination, the Primarch caught sight of Grirkov dashing into the room - having dismounted his abeyant at some point - followed by a small swarm of servo skulls. The Malagra made no evident moves to intervene in the ongoing battle, likely coming to the conclusion that his volagheist field and unwieldy voltaic blaster would simply impede the Primarch more than it would hurt the massive, armored Ork Overlord.
With a growl of rage more than pain, Urlakk recoiled in a wide step. His one remaining hand suddenly swept wide, hurling away his maul in a spinning arc like a throwing axe at two of the Honour Guards as they approached to flank him. Such was the sheer size of the weapon and the force behind the throw that one of them slumped to the ground with a shattering crack and the other was sent careening off the edge of the platform, borne down by the weight of his own armour. Now unarmed, the Warboss gathered his strength and lunged at Prometheus with his one remaining fist, bringing the whole of his mass to bear in a single shattering blow.
Seeing the Ork’s desperate attack he changed his stance and simply allowed his great sword to fall from his hands preparing his own counter. Urlakk closed the distance in a moment his size and momentum a considerable threat to the Primarch, in response Prometheus seized the Warboss’ arm and hauled with every ounce of his immense strength granting even more momentum to the warboss sending the towering beast past the edge of the tower into the air above the raging war below. Dragged down by his weight and blind rage, Urlakk could not so much as try and slow down and he hurtled down with a berserker howl still rising from his throat. In a final furious grasp, he caught hold of one of the pillars at the edge of the platform, tearing it away from its foundation. The entire roof overhead staggered and came crashing down as the Warboss’ roar faded away in the distance and its last echoes were lost upon the wind.
“As my nerves are made still with awe…” Prometheus’ remaining honor guard parted to permit the comparatively diminutive Grirkov to pass and approach the Primarch, his servo-skulls now buzzing in a circular orbit about the father of the Knights of Awe, taking in the scene.
“By your hand alone, the Beast of Ullanor has been smote and cast down! As it is said in the Laws of the Machine God, the Omnissiah Knows All, Comprehends All. For so long as the spark of light that is my spirit shines in this life, it shall sing of the glory of Prometheus, and mark it well, for your father himself shall Know of this! He shall bear witness to this clash, in the pure aggregate fidelity of mine many eyes and sights!” He gestured emphatically to the servo skulls before falling prostrate before the Primarch.
“Glory to the Primarch! Glory to Prometheus! Hail!”
Each of the honor guards followed suit dropping to a knee, their heads bowed in reverence of their primarch. Prometheus soaked in the honor for a fraction of a second before dropping to one knee himself and placing a hand on Grirkov’s shoulder plate “Rise Artisan Malagra Veneratus Prime Numlius Grirkov” he said in a highly respectful tone, when Grirkov looked up he could see the scarred and damaged battle plate Prometheus wore but it stood in contrast rather than lessening his presence. “All of you, rise. I may have defeated the Xenos monster here but the legions, the Imperial army, you Grirkov and your brothers conquered this system for the Imperium.”
Just as Prometheus made the benefacting gesture with his hands towards the semi-circle of warriors surrounding him, a servo-skull shot a particularly aggrandized capture of the moment - with Ullanor’s setting star framing the Primarch in the backdrop as the remaining animated skulls danced about his crown in the fashion of a macabre halo.
The image, which was later submitted to the Imperial Administratum, was instantly seized upon and disseminated almost entirely unaltered as propaganda. The image blazed across countless billions of holo-feeds and picts across hundreds of thousands of worlds. Artists of every field and medium, from painters to sculptors to holo-vid directographers, began to produce innumerable recreations, replicas, and inspired variations of the image. Handsome, framed picts of the image were hung in schools and garrisons, hospitals and Mechanicum shrines, Administratum Offices and even in the streets of Terra itself.
And trillions of Human lips, many of whom knew not even of Prometheus’ name, began to whisper and cry adulation and reverent reference of the depicted figure by the appellation that spread like the Emperor’s own anointed truth across the interplanetary infospheres and the astropathic relays connecting them.
They called that resplendent and glorious figure, ‘The Light Bringer, our Warmaster.’
Lord Zee
Cyclone