Chapter 264: The Enlightened Inquisitor (Patreon)

With the Lamenters’ Terminator-armoured brethren joining the defense, and with the unexpected generosity and material aid of the enigmatic Lord of Talon, the original defense plan for Baal was rendered obsolete and had to be restructured from the ground up.

When the new strategy was being drawn up, Commander Dante personally requested that each of the successor Chapters send one representative to attend the grand council of war.

This was, in truth, unnecessary, every successor trusted Dante’s judgment implicitly. Yet his insistence was deliberate, a gesture of brotherhood and respect. None doubted Dante’s wisdom, and all were willing to obey his word without question, but by calling them to counsel, he reminded them that each Chapter’s lineage, honour, and blood still held meaning in this desperate hour, that they were not merely soldiers of convenience, but sons of Sanguinius, kin bound by blood and sacrifice.

Those representatives would return to their Chapters carrying not orders, but pride: the knowledge that the Lord of the Blood Angels had listened to them as equals.

The new defense plan was swiftly but meticulously completed.

The Lamenters were strategically distributed along the inner walls of the fortress’ core defense perimeter, reinforcing each Chapter or mortal regiment assigned to that section.

In the brutal microcosm of such battles, even a single squad of Terminators could turn the tide, their presence drastically easing the pressure upon their brothers-in-arms.

During the council, Chapter Master Phoros of the Lamenters had revealed one final advantage: his flagship, the Daughter of Tempests, possessed operational Talon teleportarium arrays and an ample supply of teleport shields and beacons.

Dante immediately seized upon the opportunity, assembling elite warriors from each Chapter, Astartes whose combat prowess rivaled that of company captains, to form a joint Teleportation Decapitation Strike Force, tasked with hunting and exterminating the Tyranid synapse creatures behind enemy lines.

For an entire month, the core region of the Arx Angelicum fortress-monastery held against the unending Tyranid swarm.

Before each strike, the Lamenters’ Techmarines employed a Talon-forged relic auspex-scope, capable of linking to their flagship’s orbital batteries through a controlled dimensional rift. A short, precisely targeted orbital bombardment would carve a temporary crater within the xenos tide, and moments later, the Decapitation Team would teleport directly into the breach, materializing amidst the surviving Hive Tyrants.

Their mission was simple: slay the synaptic leaders of the swarm and return instantly to the Arx Angelicum via teleport beacon before the Tyranids could react.

Everything appeared to progress as planned.

Yet among the defenders, none could say how long such days could continue.

....

“Something’s not right.”

Once again, the day’s battle against the swarm was raging.

Phoros, Karlaen, and the Lamenters’ honour guard were stationed deep beneath the fortress-monastery, at the terminus of a long maintenance tunnel, purging it of Genestealers and Lictors attempting infiltration from below.

Unlike the larger beasts on the surface, these were not berserk swarms but calculated hunters. They went for weak points, the pressure gates, the power conduits, the maintenance seals that linked directly to the fortress’s heart. Each infiltration, if unchecked, could cripple an entire sector’s defenses.

Karlaen crushed a Lictor beneath his thunder hammer, its chitinous carapace shattering into fragments, and repeated, “Something’s wrong.”

“You mean these Lictors?” Phoros thrust his spear with mechanical precision, impaling two at once. “They seem to learn, to adapt. Every engagement they’re faster, more cunning.”

He was finding the duels increasingly taxing. What had once been a single clean kill now required focus and precision, a full contest before the fatal strike could land.

Karlaen shook his head. “Not the beasts. The war itself.”

He smashed another Lictor aside, sparks and blood spattering across his armour.

“This war isn’t behaving as it should. From my experience, the Tyranids’ assaults should be escalating, more feral, more cunning with each wave. But after a month of this deadlock, their attacks are no stronger than when they began. Even the bio-titans have grown rare.”

He paused, his eyes narrowing behind his helm lenses. “It’s wrong. All of it.”

Phoros listened in silence. He didn’t need more words; they reached the same conclusion easily.

Something was holding the Tyranids back. Something, or someone was diverting their attention, preventing the swarm from committing its full strength to Baal.

And yet, despite that unseen restraint, the swarm’s hatred for this world burned undiminished. They threw themselves upon the guns regardless, as if compelled by instinct to die here.

“I see your meaning,” Phoros replied grimly, withdrawing his spear from a fallen Genestealer. “But if this continues, it’s only a slower death. The swarm is seemingly infinite. Our brothers, and the mortals under our charge, are not.”

Karlaen nodded silently. He could not disagree. They both knew that in the long corridors of siege warfare, time itself was the deadliest enemy. Every day that the Tyranids failed to evolve was a mercy, but it was a fragile one.

As Phoros resumed his patrol, the rhythm of combat gave him space to think. A flicker of memory surfaced, Inquisitor Bellona.

She had once planned to accompany him to Baal. They had both departed Cadia together, but midway she had split away, saying she had “a matter to attend to.”

When he had asked whether she would still come to Baal, she had smiled faintly through the hololith: “Of course. I’ll only be a little late.”

Now, Phoros doubted any vessel using a warp drive could breach the encircling Tyranid bioships to reach Baal at all. Even astropathic contact had grown faint and distorted, swallowed by the swarm’s psychic shadow.

Phoros pushed the thought aside as the tunnel ahead trembled under a distant detonation. The entire wall rippled with fine dust, and a thin line of red warning runes blinked on his armour’s display.

Karlaen looked over, his expression unreadable behind his helm. “Upper levels?”

“Possibly,” Phoros replied. “Or the swarm found another path.”

“Then we move,” Karlaen said simply. “Before they do.”

Together, the two commanders advanced, their footfalls thunderous in the confined space. The yellow and red of their armour gleamed briefly under the tunnel lights, symbols of endurance in a world long consumed by despair.

....

“Hold, brothers! We’ll take over from here.”

A 2nd Company Captain of the Blood Angels arrived with his detachment, coming to relieve Phoros and Karlaen’s squad.

As before, they handed over their defensive post and withdrew with their weary warriors.

Karlaen thumped his thunder hammer against his breastplate in salute, a gesture returned by the Blood Angel captain. The exchange required no words; among sons of Sanguinius, respect was shown through endurance, not speeches.

“Emperor guide you, Captain. Keep these tunnels sealed, no matter the cost,” said Phoros.

The Blood Angel inclined his head, the red lenses of his helm glowing faintly. “And may your brothers find rest, Lord Phoros. You’ve earned it ten times over.”

With that, the Lamenters withdrew. As they emerged from the tunnels, the sounds of battle grew louder, the staccato thunder of anti-air batteries and the howl of missile barrages filled the air.

Above them, the sky was still thick with drifting clouds of black spores, the “death fog” of the swarm.

From here, they could not see the inner wall directly, but the endless roar of guns and detonations made clear how desperate the fighting there had become.

“Wait,” Karlaen halted, gripping Phoros’ pauldron and pointing skyward. “That ship, is that your flagship?”

Phoros followed his gaze skyward. Through the haze, a glint of light broke through the gloom, a silhouette too sharp, too geometrically precise to be organic. For an instant, a warship gleamed against the red clouds.

But it was not the Daughter of Tempests.

“No,” he said slowly. “Mine’s far larger.”

As he spoke, the ship vanished before their eyes, swallowed by a brief flare of blue light.

Phoros recognized it instantly: a translation field. A vessel transitioning not through the Warp, but through dimensional space itself. The vessel was using a Dimensional Engine.

“It might be from the Talon Navy,” Phoros said, barely restraining his excitement.

Hope flared within him for the first time in weeks. He had prayed that Talon might come to aid Baal, but it seemed too much to ask after the brutal Cadian campaign. Most of their crews had been afflicted by the whispers of the Warp, and they were supposed to be in recovery, not war.

Yet as Phoros stared at the now-empty sky, a new vox transmission crackled into his helm.

“Chapter Master! Report to the strategium immediately!”

“What’s happened?”

“Just come, my lord. You’ll want to see this.”

....

When Phoros entered the strategium, the first thing he saw was Commander Dante and beside him, being formally received, a pale-haired woman in a white Inquisitorial coat.

It was none other than Inquisitor Bellona herself.

She gave Phoros a brief nod, acknowledging him before returning to her conversation with Dante.

Standing near them were the company captains of the Lamenters Chapter, all silent, watching.

Phoros opened his mouth to speak, but a deep, resonant clang echoed through the hall, interrupting him.

He turned toward the sound, and froze.

From the far side, massive adamantium doors parted, and through them strode a towering Dreadnought, painted in the yellow of the Lamenters and bearing their teardrop sigil upon its sarcophagus.

“Young one…” The Dreadnought’s vox-grille emitted a voice, metallic yet trembling with emotion. “I… I…”

Phoros froze for a heartbeat, then dropped to one knee, his voice unsteady.

“Lord Chyron… you… you live!”

The ancient Brother Chyron, once thought lost, the last Dreadnought of the Lamenters, had vanished after the original Daughter of Tempests was annihilated by the Minotaur flagship.

Phoros had long believed him dead.

Before and after Phoros had ascended to Chapter Master, Chyron had been both mentor and confessor, a living link to the Legion’s past. Chyron would always speak of the Chapter’s past when he awoke, his voice echoing with the weight of centuries. The venerable Dreadnought had known history since the age when the IX Legion was sundered into its successor Chapters. He had told Phoros tales of the Twenty First Founding, of the pain and pride that had birthed the Lamenters from the Blood Angels’ line.

Now, at the edge of ruin, they met again, on Baal.