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Chapter 257: An Elephant Bitten to Death by Ants
🕑 Added 2025-08-31 14:23:44 +0000 UTCChapter 257: An Elephant Bitten to Death by Ants
As the daemons continued their slaughter, they began to feel that something was wrong... why couldn't they seem to kill all of these bugs?
Most importantly, the daemons gained nothing from killing the Zerg. They could not feed on the emotion of fear, a fact that stymied even the daemons of Khorne. The Zerg were not fighting out of bloodlust or martial pride; they were simply obeying Kerrigan's commands. The daemons of Khorne couldn't even claim their skulls or blood, because the Zerg Queens advanced with the Swarm. The Creep they spread would rapidly collect the remains of any fallen Zerg, ensuring not a single scrap of usable biomass was wasted.
The teeming daemons of Nurgle clashed with the Zerg Swarm, two oceans of green and deep purple devouring one another. But the plagues that were Nurgle's greatest pride were rendered impotent. The damage from conventional viruses could not keep up with the speed of the Zerg's mutation. And the sweeping thermal beams of the Colossi were the perfect weapon for cleansing the sea of Nurglings.
Abaddon looked up at the sky, where the golden bodies of the Colossi were now clearly visible.
"A giant machine driven by psychic energy... impossible... how could we have not sensed such a massive psychic signature before?"
The sight of the Colossi reminded Abaddon of an organization within the Imperium that the Imperium itself had long since sanctioned. During the battles on Terra, the Imperium had once deployed a special kind of Titan. The damage they inflicted on mortal soldiers and daemons alike was even more terrifying than that of the Colossi before him. He was thinking of the Psi-Titans, controlled by the Divisio Sinister, which had been personally founded by the Emperor. However, after the Emperor was interred on the Golden Throne, these constructs were sealed away, never to walk beyond Terra's soil.
"Could it be that the decadent Imperium gave this technology to the xenos?"
Abaddon's rage intensified. He brandished his daemon sword and once again commanded his forces to attack. The two traitor Titan Legions, Legio Vulcanum I and Legio Vulcanum II, turned their attention to the newly appeared Colossi. The thermal beams of the Colossi were inflicting far too much damage on the Chaos ground forces. Any troops that tried to get close to destroy them were either blocked by the Zerg or incinerated into ash before they even got near. A sea of Zerg protected the Colossi from any close-range assault.
Under Abaddon's command, the traitor Titan Legions once again shouldered the task of eliminating the enemy's large-scale combat units. Just as they had destroyed the presumptuous Imperial Knights, the Warpsmiths piloting the god-machines now intended to use their absolute numerical superiority to deal with these Colossi.
The Black Legion poured fire into the Swarm, and the advancing Zerg were shredded into fragments of flesh and chitin. But a vast number of Zerg still managed to crash into the Black Legion's lines. Even Abaddon himself had to join the effort to clear them out. He swung his daemon sword and Talon of Horus, carving through the lesser Zerg with contemptuous ease. But when nearly twenty Ultralisks appeared at once, even he was forced to retreat under the cover of his Chosen. These giant biological war machines knew no fear and only died when their bodies were torn apart by a storm of metal. Taking a direct hit from an Ultralisk's kaiser blade was a death sentence for anyone. Standing over ten meters tall and weighing over a hundred tons, they were true behemoths.
Just before retreating, Abaddon caught a glimpse of Kerrigan standing atop a Colossus. Was that xenos... looking down on him with disdain?
"Where in the warp did these xenos come from?"
Abaddon stared at the endless sea of bugs. From time to time, a rain of corrosive acid would fall from the sky like fire. There was no telling how many Ravagers were mixed in with the Swarm. Neither daemon-possessed war machines nor Astartes power armor could withstand their bile.
He looked towards the advancing Titan Legions. He needed these god-machines to break the stalemate. The Titans of Legio Vulcanum advanced, their void shields and immense bulk allowing them to simply stomp over the bodies of the Zerg. Gatling blasters and missile pods reaped a heavy toll on the Swarm. A single sweep of a Titan's melee weapon could obliterate any individual Zerg that stood in its way. A shot from a Warlord-class Titan's Volcano Cannon was enough to vaporize a whole section of the Swarm, destroying the Creep on the ground along with it. Their kill rate was even faster than the rate at which the Zerg were arriving on the planet. Even a Thor would be pierced through and destroyed if it took a direct hit from a Volcano Cannon. A Colossus's shields would also be obliterated by a single, solid hit. One Colossus had already been destroyed under the focused fire of the Chaos Titans.
The pinnacle of humanity's ground-based power was beginning to display its terrifying might. The range of a Titan's weapons was far greater than that of a Colossus.
In the sky, the Black Legion's fighter craft, daemon engines, and even flying warp beasts and daemons were trying to halt the Colossi's advance. The wreckage of two Warhound-class Titans, sliced cleanly in half as they tried to get close, was a testament to the power of the Colossus's thermal beams. Not even a Titan's armor could withstand a direct hit.
The Zerg flying units carried out their mission. Giant Brood Lords launched living broodlings like missiles. Mutalisks, Vipers, and other Zerg strains engaged the Chaos flyers in ferocious dogfights. Their purely biological forms made them even more agile than their Chaos counterparts, and when necessary, they would use their own bodies to shield the Colossi from harm. And then there were the countless Scourge—Banelings of the sky—ready to teach a harsh lesson to any enemy foolish enough to get in their way.
Kerrigan's will was linked to every single Zerg. As their numbers grew, the Chaos psykers and sorcerers in Abaddon's army began to feel a growing discomfort. One sorcerer clutched his head in agony. The sheer number of Zerg was increasing the influence of the Hive Mind on the local warp space. Kerrigan was deliberately using the Hive Mind to interfere with the Chaos renegades.
"Warmaster," the sorcerer gasped, "we must kill those special Zerg in the sky! They are like the Tyranids' synapse creatures! And... I sense it. Atop that golden war machine, there is a psychic signature of unbelievable power. That thing must be the key to controlling these bio-weapons!"
In the sorcerer's psychic sight, a huge blank spot had appeared at the apex of the Colossus—a void that was still growing.
Abaddon knew this all too well. But what could he do? The Zerg screened the Colossi's advance, and a swarm of SCVs followed closely behind the giant walkers, ready to repair any mechanical damage they sustained.
But the Chaos Titans, their attention fixed on the Colossi, failed to notice some special units mixed in with the Swarm. The Zerg's greatest advantage was their ability to constantly adapt to the changing battlefield. The ease with which the Titans were slaughtering the common Zerg had led them to believe that while numerous, the Swarm posed no real threat to them. The biological acid and spines of the larger Zerg strains could not overload a Titan's void shields.
They failed to notice that, within the sea of Zerglings, a portion had secretly morphed into Banelings. A common Zergling was powerless against a Titan's heavy armor. But the acid of a Baneling was a different story.
When a Titan stepped forward, it was as if it had plunged its leg into a pool of acid. The intensely corrosive bile began to eat away at the Titan's external armor, causing critical malfunctions. As the Warpsmiths tried to reboot the power, the fatal stall gave more Banelings time to swarm the Titan's legs. The immobilized god-machine could only watch as a group of Colossi closed in. Their thermal beams converged on the Warlord-class Titan.
The first Warlord-class Titan to be destroyed by the Colossi had fallen.
Abaddon stared in stunned silence as the Titan was carved apart by the thermal beams, then completely submerged by the tide of the Swarm.
Logan Grimnar spotted the opportunity. He decisively ordered the forces in Kasr Kraf to sally forth and join the battle. This was no time to question the presence of xenos. The Custodes also agreed to fight alongside them; while they were surprised by the appearance of the Zerg and the Protoss Colossi, the Emperor's guidance led them to trust Lucan.
There could be no better time for a counter-attack. The wolf pack should always be on the hunt. For the first time on a massive scale, the forces of the Imperium fought in concert with xenos. Leaving only a small garrison behind, the Cadians launched their counter-attack with jubilant war cries.
And on the Blackstone Plains, the forces led by Castellan Creed also saw the tide begin to turn.
Lucan had arrived on Cadia.
