Chapter 279: A Subtle Bond (Patreon)

Mephiston halted before Bellona could speak.

Neither Bellona nor her apprentice were natives of Baal. They bore no obligation to sacrifice themselves for this world.

The psychic pressure binding the apprentice dissolved. A sudden pop of released warp-force cracked like thunder, and a wave of raw power rippled outward, slamming the gathered Librarians against the walls.

These were not mortal psykers. They were Astartes Librarians, each honed through gene-forging and mind-tempering. That such an uncontrolled surge had thrown them aside spoke to the enormity of the psychic backlash, a force that could have torn lesser minds apart entirely.

The chamber’s temperature had fallen to freezing. Frost coated armor, stone, and breath. Crystals of ice spider-webbed across sigils carved into the walls, disrupting the faint golden glow of warding runes.

Warp-energies left a faint, metallic taste in the air, like blood on the tongue.

The apprentice slowly pushed himself up, his robes white with ice, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and eyes. He wiped it away and looked to Bellona.

“…I’m alright,” he said, voice steady despite the tremor in his hands.

Bellona exhaled in relief, shoulders easing.

Mephiston stepped forward and rested a gauntleted hand on the apprentice’s shoulder.

“Your service to Baal is not forgotten. My gratitude is yours,” the Lord of Death said. His tone held genuine respect, rare, and therefore weighty. But then his voice lowered, sharpened with purpose. “Now, tell me. What did you see?”

The apprentice closed his eyes, recalling the monstrous vision.

“A Tyranid… larger than any I have ever seen. A Hive Tyrant, but… different.”

He described the creature’s form in detail. Talons like scythe-blades fused with living armor, eyes burning with predatory intelligence. Its presence radiated a cold, calculated malice, unlike the instinct-driven brutality of lesser forms. Mephiston and the Librarians exchanged grim looks.

A Hive Tyrant, but not a common strain. A specialized alpha-beast, its presence carefully veiled.

Why hide such a Tyrant amidst the wreckage of a fallen bio-ship?

What command did it hold? What signal did it withhold?

What role did it play in the Hive Mind’s strategy?

These and a dozen other questions flickered through Mephiston’s mind, but now was not the time.

“Can you continue the scrying?” he asked.

The apprentice hesitated. Fatigue and pain gnawed at him. His soul had nearly splintered under the strain.

“He can,” Bellona answered for him, a quiet challenge in her voice.

Mephiston noted the tone between teacher and student, something deeper, more personal. But psychic work cared nothing for emotional nuance. The Warp devoured sentiment as readily as it devoured the unprepared.

Psychic exertion is not something commanded lightly, so he waited for the apprentice himself to answer.

The apprentice nodded. “…I can.”

The Librarians formed their circle once more.

A priest of the Ecclesiarchy, one who had traveled to Baal alongside General Dhrost’s relief forces, entered and began anointing the floor with sacred saint-oils. The incense censer rang softly as he chanted purification prayers. The smoke curled into shapes that briefly resembled wings, then dissolved.

The apprentice seated himself, cross-legged within the circle, eyes briefly meeting Bellona’s.

Incense burned. The aether thickened. The chamber felt suspended outside of time, the material world thinning to a fragile veil.

When all preparations were complete, the priest withdrew from the chamber.

Bellona gave a final nod.

The apprentice exhaled, and the Warp opened before him once more.

....

Three Nights Outside the Inner Walls of Baal

For three days and nights, the decapitation strike-force fought without rest, slaughtering Tyranid synapse creatures as quickly as they appeared.

Such ceaseless combat would break ordinary soldiers. Even Astartes felt the drag of exhaustion. Their enhanced bodies could endure far beyond mortal limits, but even transhuman flesh had boundaries, and those boundaries were being tested.

Only two among them felt nothing: The Burning One, the star-fed entity of living fire, had consumed stellar flame before arriving to Baal. It could have burned for decades without dimming.

And the Iron Men, cold, tireless war-forms of impossible manufacture, required neither sustenance nor rest.

But the Space Marines? They bled, they sweated, and their bodies strained.

It was not the fighting alone. It was the impossibility of eating. The Tyranid blood was thick with virulent bio-toxins; any food exposed on the open field became unsafe. Their hunger was a constant, clawing weight, an ache in the gut that only worsened with each hour. Helms filtered air, but they could not filter starvation.

Yet their sacrifices bore fruit.

As another Hive Tyrant was brought down, a transmission sounded across every helm.

“Brothers. The swarms inside the Inner Wall have lost cohesion. The garrison forces are preparing to press outward and reclaim the outer bastions.”

A wave of relief passed through the warriors. Even the Burning One’s flame dimmed in acknowledgment, its form drawing inward like embers settling. The Iron Men paused mid-motion, as if some shared calculation updated among them.

The Burning One pondered, in its alien, ancient way, that the battle lacked an ending. It had burned and burned, but the swarm replenished endlessly. A war without a head is a war without conclusion. Its thoughts were not human thoughts, but the concept of futility, even for such a being, could be felt like heat radiating from its form.

If the Tyranids had a true leader-form here, it remained hidden, or had not yet revealed itself.

If it had one, the Burning One could simply go there and end the war in a single strike. A sun falling upon a single point, erasing it utterly.

But the swarm offered no such clarity.

“Chapter Master, I request your presence. There is a matter that must be reported,” Mephiston’s voice came from an encrypted channel.

“After the battle. The counteroffensive is about to begin,” Dante replied. He was exhausted, but he would not abandon the line. Not now.

He could not withdraw, not when the Sons of Sanguinius pushed outward to reclaim the fortress walls had come. A leader must be seen. A leader must bleed beside his own.

The chance to fight beside the Primarch’s eldest son, Commander Dante of the Blood Angels, was something few would ever experience again and the warriors drew strength from it, even as their limbs trembled beneath ceramite and fatigue.

The wind howled across the wastes, carrying with it the stench of acid, burning chitin, and ozone. Yet still they fought.

....

Five more days passed.

The Inner Wall defenders surged outward in a full-scale attack, purging Tyranid forms and burning digestion pools to ash.

Dante’s strike force continued their long, grueling execution of synapse creatures. Every engagement was chosen with surgical precision: break the mind, and the body collapses.

Within the Fortress-Monastery’s shadow, the hive-mind’s cohesion finally shattered. The later-arriving broods failed to reinforce. The swarm… faltered.

When the mortal forces and the allied Chapters’ 2nd and 3rd Companies charged forward, Dante’s own strike cadre finally halted to rest.

Helmets came off. Rations came out. Synthetic nutrient bars were devoured in silence.

No one celebrated the successful operation, as everyone's focus was now on replenishing their strength. Victory felt too thin, too fragile; they had learned not to trust relief. Not yet.

Dante chewed mechanically, but his gaze rested on the Iron Men, those silent, unfeeling allies who appeared and vanished with tactical precision.

They stood motionless, their armor unblemished despite the slaughter, as though the battle simply did not touch them in any meaningful way.

These "Mechanicus forces" were strange.

Dante recalled the Datasmiths of the machine-warriors during the battle; they were as rigid and cold as their mechanical warriors, and they didn't eat.

When the battle intensified, the Priest would disappear.

When the battle subsided, they would reappear from nowhere. As though they existed in parallel to the battlefield, watching rather than participating.

But the Mechanicus were always eccentric, so Dante didn't ask further. He had grown weary of questioning mysteries he had no time to solve. War forced the mind to prioritize the immediate, and meaning was a luxury.

His gaze shifted to the Burning One, and he pulled out a piece of food and offered it.

It was obvious the Burning One didn't need to eat, but it was a courtesy; whether it ate or not was its own business.

The being of flame looked down at him. 〈“Keep it. I require none.”〉

But Dante’s gesture was received, and its tone held a flicker of acknowledgment.

Then the Burning One looked into the distance and vanished, reappearing on the horizon, incinerating a brood with a wave of stellar fire, thinning the swarm further now that reinforcements had ceased.

Yet even such a powerful being could not end the war swiftly.

Such was the number of the Tyranids.

“What manner of enemy is this… truly?” Dante murmured, gaze heavy. The sons of Sanguinius had stood upon the edge of extinction many times, but rarely had despair sunk so deeply into the bones.

Even his enhanced heart felt heavy. Even an angel of war could feel tired.

When would it end?

He lifted his gaze, toward Baal’s sky.

The sun was bright.

For a moment, he thought he saw the face of Sanguinius haloed in the light.

Noble, sorrowful, radiant.

The memory struck like a blade, not painful, but piercing. A longing that lived in every Blood Angel’s marrow.

But the illusion broke at Mephiston’s voice, “Chapter Master. It is time.”

The sky was once more choked with shadows of bio-ships and flying Tyranids blotting the sun. The brief moment of peace dissolved like smoke.

Dante finished his last bite of ration, sat still for a few breaths, then rose slowly, re-sealing his helm.

And walked back toward the truth awaiting him.

“I am on my way.”