Warhammer : Machinist and The Exile

Across the broken plains of Luna, battle lines formed beneath a sky that had not seen war in millennia. The corrupted portal, once a passage to salvation, now churned with sickly, iridescent light — unstable, alive. No new horrors had emerged yet, but none among the defenders believed the stillness would last.

Roboute Guilliman stood at the edge of the staging ground, helm clipped to his belt, ceramite gauntlets stained with dried blood and cerulean ichor. He stared at the pulsating tear in reality, the tension in his frame palpable.

At his side, the Emperor's Champion spoke quietly, voice low and steady.

"We should collapse it, my lord. Even this delay grants them advantage."

The Black Templar had recovered enough to rejoin the fight, his blade resting across one shoulder.

It was Grand Master Voldrus who answered.

"No. A direct strike might rupture it. If it widens—if it becomes a true rift—we risk a breach in the Sol system itself. Terra would burn."

The Champion's jaw clenched, his silence a grim acceptance. He understood. They would hold the line — and pray.

Across the defensive perimeter, the recently reinforced Imperial positions bristled with urgency. Moon dust churned under the treads of Leman Russ tanks as they rolled into craters. Chimeras backed into hasty firing lines. Surviving Astartes — Ultramarines, Black Templars, Salamanders — coordinated with battle-worn Guardsmen and Shinobi operatives.

The Eldar watched from a distant ridge, unmoving, unreadable.

Seiji moved among the wounded with a calm born of bitter experience. His armor was torn open at the shoulder, exposed wiring spitting weak sparks.

Bruno lay pale on a reinforced stretcher beside Naon, vitals stable but low.

"He'll live," Naon murmured, sealing the stump of Bruno's right leg with a fresh layer of nano-coagulant. "But he won't wake for hours."

Seiji said nothing. He squeezed Bruno's wrist once, then turned toward the line.

A scream of reality followed. The portal shuddered, light folding inward — then burst outward like a ruptured wound. Warp energy flooded the plain, staining the sky in bruised purple and sickly crimson. The temperature plummeted. Vox channels spat static. The lunar soil trembled.

And then came the first shot.

Rotary cannon fire — tracer rounds glowing a ghostly azure — tore across the Imperial trenches. A towering Hellbrute, its daemonic frame fused with shattered Dreadnought limbs, lumbered through the breach. Its vox-grille mouth shrieked warpspeech, and its cannon-arm ripped through infantry positions, vaporizing squads in flickering blasts of warpfire.

[HELLBRUTE SIGHTED!] an Astartes vox-operator called out — just before his flesh ignited in a burst of unnatural flame.

Lasguns and bolters answered, heavy emplacements flaring. Explosive shells pounded its position, breaking rock and warpflesh — but not its stride. Every step thundered across the plain.

Behind it, the portal vomited forth new nightmares.

Pink Horrors, shrieking in impossible, pitch-bending voices, danced forward in twisting groups. Blue ones followed in their wake, and then Rubric Marines — silent, unrelenting, their sorcerers hurling bolts of kaleidoscopic death that unraveled Guardsmen into piles of ash or glass statues.

"Form firing lines!" Seiji bellowed.

"Monoblade teams hold center! EFA on the flanks — delay them!"

Rail carbines flared. Dozens of Shinobi darted forward in pairs, their tempo swift and lethal, targeting weak points in corrupted ceramite.

"Mortars, drop ordnance on kill zone Alpha-Beta!" a Salamanders sergeant roared.

"Drop those bastards at the trench lip!"

Explosions stitched across the crater's edge, fire and dust churning. The battlefield reeled.

It didn't hold for long.

A wet, tearing shriek echoed as the first daemon burst through the line. Its ever-shifting form shimmered in the warplight — a mass of iridescent flesh, snapping beaks, writhing tendrils, and lidless, ever-blinking eyes. The thing's mere presence twisted air and bent light.

[Contact! CONTACT!] Vox feeds cracked with Sergeant Rylos' voice, thick with terror.

[They're through! Emperor's mercy — it's on us!]

Guns roared to life. Las-fire and bolter rounds slammed into the daemon's hide — some bolts dissolving midair, others rebounding in arcs of warpfire. The ground heaved under its weight, the soil itself bubbling, as cracks of impossible geometry spread with every step.

More breaches tore open the sky. Twisting horrors spilled forth, laughter and shrieks bending the mind.

[Hold position!] barked Lieutenant Vornek on his regimental channel.

[I don't care if it's a Daemon Prince or Magnus himself — fire discipline! Hold the line!]

But discipline was already cracking.

The daemon shrieked, a sound that turned stomachs and clouded vision, cleaving through Vornek's own men. Warpfire bolts turned Guardsmen to ash. The creature's limbs lashed out, its form shifting with each heartbeat.

A moment later, the Shinobi struck.

A shimmer in the war-torn air — then masked figures emerged in matte-black bodysuits, wielding mono-molecular blades and rail pistols. One dropped from a high gravitic leap, blade sparking as it plunged deep into the daemon's back.

It howled, frost crawling across vox speakers.

Another hurled a cluster charge — a soundless implosion twisting the creature's flank into smoking void.

[Shadow Cells engaging,] a calm voice cut across the encrypted Shinobi channel.

[The line won't hold. Additional breaches imminent.]

Even as they fought, the warp rippled again — disgorging a tide of shrieking, chittering horrors.

From the ruins came laughter.

A Harlequin Troupe blurred into existence, their garish motley flickering against the ruined plain. They moved like liquid light, pirouettes and impossibilities. The lead player — face half-hidden by a grinning death mask — vaulted through daemon-blades, his blade's touch severing warp-creatures mid-lunge.

"Let the final act begin," a lilting voice sang over the Eldar channels.

The Harlequins wove through the tide, blades etching stanzas of death. A trio formed a triad of motion, splitting limbs, warping forms, severing heads — though some horrors simply dissolved and reformed.

Still, the tide pressed forward.

[They're everywhere! Emperor's teeth — we're overrun!] The Guard vox flared with calls.

[Fourth Platoon's gone! I can't raise the east trench!]

[Command! Command — we need reserves — we can't—]

A Leman Russ battle tank, ancient and scarred, fired point-blank into the daemonic tide. The shell's detonation carved a momentary reprieve.

From the command post, Colonel Deyarr watched, the weight of defeat thick on his shoulders. Around him, the last vox-feeds flickered with static and screaming.

He drew a ragged breath.

[There's no line left to hold. The first line is lost.]

Another breath.

[To all remaining units — withdraw to the second perimeter. Cover your brothers' retreat.]

His voice cracked.

[For Terra. For the Emperor. Make it cost them.]

Across the shattered defense, Guardsmen grimly formed fireteams amid smoke and flame, covering their comrades' fall back.

A Shinobi team leader's voice broke through.

[Shadow Cells, Phase Two. Harlequin Troupe Shadowbane consolidating Sector Six. Remaining Guard elements in retreat. We cover them.]

More breaches split the horizon. The daemons would not relent.

And neither would they.

Still, they came.

Daemons and cultists flooded in droves. More Hellbrutes lumbered forward. Daemonic engines shrieked from the rift.

By the time the first defensive line collapsed, five daemon engines roamed the battlefield, and dozens more signals flared on auspex screens.

Then the earth groaned.

A colossal figure strode through the portal, each step cracking the lunar soil. A pair of crimson wings unfurled like bloodstained banners. Warplate gleamed like polished murder.

Magnus the Red.

His single eye blazed like a burning galaxy.

Guilliman's jaw clenched as he stepped forward, pulse pounding.

At his side, the Emperor's Champion gripped his relic blade tighter, warpfire reflecting across his helm.

The two Primarchs locked eyes — fate and fury meeting on that blasted plain.

"Magnus," Guilliman whispered, more oath than name.

The traitor raised his staff in mocking salute.

Guilliman gave a single order.

"Hold the line."

And the battle for Luna truly began.