Magnus the Red - Terran Crusade and the Battle of Luna: The Warp is, in many ways, a mirror of our reality. Like a dark and fathomless pool, its surface ripples with the impact of momentous events, or great outbursts of passion and emotion. The resurrection of Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the Ultramarines, during the Ultramar Campaign in 999.M41 sent bow waves of psychic energy rolling outward through the Immaterium, racing tsunamis of turmoil that did not go unnoticed.One by one, the Champions of the Dark Gods of Chaos became aware of the resurrected Primarch. Upon far-flung hell worlds, Magnus the Red and the Death Lord Mortarion received word of their brother's awakening. Their reactions were as different as fire and ice. Mortarion raged, a cold and virulent storm of anger whirling around him until its echoes in realspace seeded seven new and terrible plagues upon luckless Imperial worlds. Mired amid plans that were nearing fruition, the Daemon Primarch of the Death Guard Traitor Legion could not yet act to strike at Guilliman. Instead, as he stared with glowing eyes across the mist-wreathed parade grounds of his Plague Planet, and the massed ranks of Death Guard there assembled, Mortarion vowed that he would render Guilliman and his empire to rot soon enough.Magnus, by comparison, gave a booming laugh of utter delight. Like a fortune teller who flips their final tarot card and gains sudden insight, the Crimson King saw now before him paths of glorious fate, where before had been a wilderness of confusion. Magnus began to issue orders, his words bursting forth as swarms of crystalline insects. They flitted away to marshal the thrallbands of his once proud Space Marine Legion, the Thousand Sons. Already, the cyclopean Daemon Primarch had revenged himself upon one hated foe of old, setting the Fenris System of the Space Wolves alight in the fires of retribution. Now, he saw a chance to punish another.That chance came after Guilliman had thrown back Abaddon the Despoiler's assault upon Ultramar. Guilliman had assembled a vast fleet, with the intention of travelling through the growing instability of the Warp in the wake of the 13th Black Crusade to Terra, to meet with his gene-father the Emperor for the first time in 10,000 standard years and determine how best to save the Imperium from the growing threats all around it. Magnus saw the chance to strike against this so-called "Terran Crusade" when Guilliman's fleet had reached the trailing edges of the permanent Warp rift known as the Maelstrom, which was swollen with fearsome new power. The fleet's Navigators moaned and screamed, describing something akin to an endless, impossibly immense tornado thundering in the Warp. Where safe channels should have existed, the billowing fringes of the Maelstrom had consumed all. Even the light of the Astronomican became faltering and nigh-impossible to see.Fearing for the safety of their brutalised craft, the fleet's captains ordered immediate translation to realspace. One by one, the Imperial warships tore through the meniscus of reality, streamers of glowing ectoplasm trailing from their hulls as they plunged back into the cold darkness of the void. Yet the thunderous shuddering on board each voidcraft continued, intensifying violently as impacts flared upon Void Shields and smashed through armoured hulls.The Hawk Lords frigate Wings of Glory was ripped apart by a string of punishing explosions before its crew even knew who or what was attacking them. The Ultramarines Strike Cruiser, Primarch's Wrath, sustained crippling damage after colliding with the White Consuls Cruiser Hope and Fire as both voidships attempted blind evasive manoeuvres.Frantic orders filled the vox net and echoed through cavernous ships' bridges as furious captains attempted to establish the nature of the threat. Had the fleet dropped out of the Warp and straight into an asteroid field? Had they, by some horrible chance, emerged into the midst of a hostile foe?As auspexes awoke and observation decks were unshrouded, the bleak truth became clear. The scattered ships of the Terran Crusade had indeed exited the Immaterium straight into the thundering guns of an enemy armada, but it looked as though this was no accident of chance.Arrayed in perfect ambush formations were dozens of Traitor warships bearing baroque and ancient markings upon their hulls. The Loyalists realised that a vast fleet of the Thousand Sons surrounded them, deployed as though they had known precisely where and when the Imperial forces would emerge from the Warp.At the heart of the enemy hung a strange craft of surpassing immensity. Only Guilliman truly understood its appearance, recognising a vast silver facsimile of the Great Pyramid of Tizca. That cyclopean crystal structure had once stood as the crowning glory in the Thousand Sons Legion's capital city of the same name, upon their lost homeworld of Prospero. Now it was resurrected in this monstrously magnified new form. Vast as a planetoid, bristling with gun decks of baffling shape and function, and boasting an immense red crystal eye upon one flank, the insane structure was clearly both flagship and star fort for the enemy fleet. Guilliman knew his brothers well, and here, in this grandiose war engine, he saw all the hallmarks of the Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red.To the Loyalist fleet's rear loomed the squirming spiral arms of the Maelstrom, a towering wall of unnatural energies and whirling psychic sorcery that promised madness and death. To their fore was the titanic pyramid of Magnus, its attendant warships already pummelling Guilliman's armada. With little choice, the Imperials fought as best they could in their scattered dispersal. Torpedoes fired from launch tubes, streaking through the void to blast ragged holes in Heretic warships. Fighter squadrons scrambled, jetting out into the darkness like swarming insects. Lance arrays spat ruby light, and gun decks thundered as the Imperial ships frantically attempted to fight free of their ambushing foes.Yet the Imperial voidcraft were taking a terrible hammering, void shields collapsing and ruptured decks venting screaming crewmen into space. Engines flared out and died under volley after volley of macro shells, while rune-inscribed torpedoes swept in to fill Loyalist bridges and magazines with Warpflame.Guilliman issued a steady stream of orders to his captains, doing everything in his power to gather his ships and fight back. Inwardly he raged, both at his fallen brother's deviousness and his own failure to foresee the ambush. By comparison, Magnus watched with amused satisfaction from the grand observation gallery aboard his pyramidal flagship. He had fashioned the vast voidcraft, named Tizca's Revenge, using the plundered resources of an Imperial world and the nameless energies of the Warp. Now he conjured those empyric powers again, for an altogether different purpose. A cabal of powerful Chaos Sorcerers stood around Magnus, chanting ominous words as he raised his arms high and cried out in stentorian tones.The Crimson King called and the Warp answered, coiling tendrils of power coalescing to surround Guilliman's battered fleet. Magnus judged the damage done to be sufficient. He had no desire to kill his resurrected brother. Not yet, anyway. Thus, with a final booming incantation, Magnus completed his spell. The empyric tendrils clamped tight around the starships of the Terran Crusade and, with a vast convulsive wrench, dragged them deep into the raging heart of the Maelstrom.Guilliman's fleet remained trapped in the Maelstrom, unable to find its way out, for an indeterminate amount of time, as reality flows very differently within the Immaterium. Only with the aid of the Craftworld Aeldari Farseer Eldrad Ulthran were the Imperials at last able to follow a series of landmarks that led to an exit from the Warp rift back into realspace -- and the path led through a vast graveyard of voidships that had not been nearly as lucky.Unfortunately, the way was blocked by a fleet of the Red Corsairs Renegade Space Marines...led by the Greater Daemon of Tzeentch Kairos Fateweaver. The Chaos forces successfully assaulted the Terran Crusade fleet, ultimately forcing the Imperials to surrender when Fateweaver used his command of sorcery to immobilise Guilliman with psychic chains formed from his own guilt and rage at being unable to lead his people out of the Maelstrom for so long. Guilliman and his forces were imprisoned aboard a Blackstone Fortress hidden within the Maelstrom that had been given to the Red Corsairs by Abaddon the Despoiler.But the Imperials were freed from their cells aboard the massive alien star fort by the intervention of the Harlequin Shadowseer Sylandri Veilwalker and the Fallen Angel Cypher, in return for Guilliman's promise to allow Cypher an audience before the Emperor once they reached Terra. The Imperials were led into the bowels of the Blackstone Fortress, which housed a massive Webway Gate. Guilliman defeated the Bloodthirster Skarbrand, allowing his people to escape into the Webway before the gate was sealed behind them. However, this was all part of a plan on the part of Magnus, who had foreseen the path Guilliman would take to return to the Imperial Throneworld.Once the surviving Imperials were safely within the confines of the Webway and were warned by Veilwalker's Harlequin scouts that the Thousand Sons were tracking them within its labyrinthine corridors, Guilliman became suspicious of his sorcerer brother's motives. Guilliman's mind raced, weaving fragments of fact and glimpses of information with his peerless strategist's intuition. It was Magnus, realised the primarch. His manipulative brother -- who must have somehow known precisely how matters would play out for Guilliman -- who had sent his cursed gene-sons to intercept the Imperials.Events began to fall into place in Guilliman's mind. Magnus had hurled Guilliman's crusade into the Maelstrom not to destroy it, but to weaken it. He had propelled the Lord of Ultramar onto a particular path of fate that Magnus had either hoped or known would lead him to his capture, incarceration within that very specific gaol, and eventual escape into this section of the Webway. Guilliman could not know that the Crimson King had called upon his greatest champion, Ahriman, to aid him with his stolen knowledge of the Webway's paths, but otherwise the primarch's conclusions were entirely correct.Swiftly and earnestly, Guilliman sought the counsel of his closest lieutenants. They had to determine what Magnus planned, and quickly, before they stepped straight into the Daemon Primarch's trap. It was Aldrik Voldus who -- drawing upon his knowledge of Titan's ancient libraries -- made the intuitive leap. There was a warded entrance to the Webway within the Imperial Palace. Voldus believed it to be heavily defended, bound shut with the most potent abjurations that the Imperium could muster, but still it existed. Perhaps Magnus knew of that gate, and sought to follow them to it?Guilliman's strategic brilliance leapt ahead again, tracing patterns within patterns and perceiving the truth. Magnus already knew where the gate lay, he realised. There had been whispers that the Crimson King had passed that way just before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, and in so doing unleashed the catastrophe that fell upon him and his XV Legion. Magnus did not need them to lead him to the gate. He sought instead to follow them through it, clearly hoping that the gate's defences would be deactivated to allow for Guilliman's arrival. The Daemon Primarch wanted to strike at Terra, at the very Golden Throne of the Emperor of Mankind, and he hoped to launch his attack as the gate was thrown open to permit the Ultramarines' primarch passage.The Terran Crusade, ironically, could not emerge at Terra, Guilliman realised with something like despair, not if it meant allowing Magnus to strike at the cradle of Humanity. Yet Sylandri Veilwalker had never intended for them to take that road. Instead, the Shadowseer revealed a secret that the Eldar had long guarded. Lying dormant for millennia, hidden behind a veil of wards that even Humanity's greatest psykers could not pierce, a lonely spar of the Webway stretched out upon the border between realspace and the Warp to connect to Luna, Terra's only natural moon. It was to that illusion-veiled gate that the crusade must now make haste.With their path chosen, the survivors of the Terran Crusade set out at once. Already they had crossed great gulfs of space, and fought their way through hellish environs, yet they began this new and arduous leg of their journey without complaint. All who had set forth from Ultramar had been prepared to give their lives for this cause, and to endure any hardship they must in order to see the reborn Roboute Guilliman safely to Terra. Nothing had changed.Travelling fast, the Harlequins of the Veiled Path led the way. The Webway changed and shifted around them, from misty passages to dark and echoing tunnels, brightly lit expanses of polyhedral crystal to weirdly fleshy spirals that pulsed with peristaltic motion. The Loyalists surely would have been lost within solar minutes, had they travelled alone, or else set upon by the predatory entities that haunted the Labyrinth Dimension. Yet with the Harlequins as both guides and escorts, the Imperial forces were able to proceed unchallenged.All that changed when frantic reports reached Sylandri Veilwalker of familiars that had espied the Loyalists. At the Shadowseer's urging, the punishing pace increased still further, until the slowest servitors were abandoned altogether. As Guilliman and his warriors thundered across a hazy, crystal-studded cavern, sudden volleys of firepower scythed into them from the flanks. Fifteen warriors fell to that first volley, punched off their feet by bolt shells wreathed in coruscating flame. Rhinos exploded amidst leaping blasts of psychic sorcery, while Skitarii degenerated into howling mutant flesh as the fires of change washed over them.Guilliman barked his orders and the Loyalists fanned out as one, dropping into firing crouches amidst the crystal outcroppings. From all around, swimming into focus through the veiling mists, came the plodding automata of Thousand Sons Rubricae. The armoured golems played their bolters right and left as they advanced, laying down a steady hail of ensorcelled bolts. Hordes of shrieking Tzaangors moved amongst them, brandishing silvered blades.Guilliman's warriors fired back, sending many of their ambushers reeling as their armour was rent and the dust that animated it spilled onto the ground. Cypher span and dove through the mayhem, evading every shot fired his way and reaping a tally of the foe with his blazing pistols. Aldrik Voldus, too, wrought havoc as he led a counterattack against the Thousand Sons. His warhammer swung in lightning fast arcs, battering Rubricae to the ground amid clouds of glittering dust.Still more Rubricae closed in, their sorcerous masters upon their flying discs hurling their spells into the Loyalist ranks. Guilliman realised that to stay here was to fight an impossible battle, and to be lost with his goal in sight. It infuriated the primarch to run yet again, for it seemed to him that, since leaving Ultramar, he had done little else. Yet the greater goal was of more importance, and he knew that he would not aid his father's Imperium by dying here. Blade raised high, Guilliman led the movement to break out of the Thousand Sons ambush. Not all of his battle-brothers could extract themselves from the fight safely, and more precious lives were lost -- along with the gene-seed within them -- as Space Marines were cut down by the enemy's fire. Yet with the winged Living Saint Saint Celestine cutting a path at their head, the Loyalists broke away from their attackers and fled deeper into the Webway.They found themselves beset at every turn, Rubricae and braying Tzaangors bursting from side passages or holding junctions against them. Still the Loyalists pressed on, smashing headlong through every ambush and blockade with Guilliman, Voldus, Katarinya Greyfax, Celestine and Cypher at their head. At last, the Imperials reached a rune-sealed portal, fixing helms and rebreather cowls in place. Then, led by the Shadowseer, they stepped from the Webway and onto the surface of Luna.The survivors of the Terran Crusade had emerged into a deep crater, much of which was immersed in inky blackness. Shafts of stark illumination fell from above, where the rays of Sol itself spilled over the lip of the deep pit. Conscious of the foes following close on their heels, the Loyalists climbed quickly up the pit's sides. Space Marines sprang upwards hand over fist in the low gravity, only one-sixteenth that of Terra.Tanks threw up drifting fans of moon dust as they powered up the rocky slope. Skitarii marched relentlessly upward, ignoring their blackening and freezing organic components. These latter soldiers would not last long on the lunar surface, but they would endure long enough to serve the Omnissiah's needs.Above them, Celestine soared upward into the dark skies -- her Geminae Superia had donned their helms, but the Living Saint had no need of such apparel. Behind them, Veilwalker and her Harlequins lingered by the Webway gate. The Shadowseer gathered her powers, levelling her staff towards the Webway portal and beginning a whispering chant. The runes upon the structure's flanks glowed fiercely with a searing light.Before Veilwalker could finish her ritual, the gate pulsed with dark energies. Blue fire billowed, its roar sounding as a dull rumble in the airless conditions. Veilwalker spun clear at the last moment, but many of her Harlequin followers were not so fortunate. Their lithe bodies were engulfed in flame and, as their dathedi suits burned away, so their bodies melted like wax or froze and died.From near the lip of the crater, Guilliman looked back to see the corrupted Webway gate glowing with dark fire. Out from that crackling storm stepped the first Rubric Marines, their footfalls muffled as they advanced across the crater floor. They raised their bolters and opened fire, cursed shells roaring up from below to slam into the Imperials.Armour ruptured and souls burned. Bulky bodies in the colours of the Novamarines and Mortifactors tumbled in slow motion down the slopes, clouds of chalky dust cascading around them. A Dreadknight toppled backwards, its pilot slain. The remaining Loyalists kept moving, over the lip of the crater and out of the Thousand Sons' line of fire.Here, the retreat stopped at last. Guilliman and his surviving followers stood upon the surface of Luna itself, near the heart of the Mare Tempestus. On every side loomed the rusted hulks of old and broken Imperial voidships, a graveyard of junked and decommissioned spacecraft left there to moulder. Overhead, the blackness of space was speckled with stars while closer to hand, huge orbital docks and defence platforms filled the sky. Gothic leviathans swarming with voidcraft and covered in glaring lights, the grandeur of the Luna docks still faded against the breathtaking sight of Terra itself, hanging stark against the blackness above. There was the destination that Guilliman sought, the end of his journey at last.Yet a deadly foe still chased at the primarch's heels, and could not be allowed to work his malefic will within sight of the Throneworld. Guilliman knew that the Warp phenomena currently erupting in the crater's depths must surely have triggered every alarm and emergency augur within a dozen terra-sols. It would not be long before overwhelming Imperial forces raced to investigate, but there was no telling what irrevocable havoc Magnus could cause before they arrived.The Thousand Sons were spilling from the Webway gate in increasing numbers, Scarab Occult and Rubricae driven forward by Chaos Sorcerers on their flying, Daemonic Discs of Tzeentch. Their advance was steady but unstoppable, pushing up the crater walls with their guns blazing. Recognising that the crater itself offered the best chance of containing the foe, Guilliman spread his warriors, combat walkers and tanks around its lip and commanded them to pour fire down into the advancing Thousand Sons.Using the lip of the crater for cover, and making the most of the higher ground, the Loyalists sent volley after volley ripping down into the Heretic Astartes. Striding automata were knocked back into the crater by devastating explosions. Glittering dust drifted from rents in ancient, ornate armour, floating free in the low gravity and leaving once-animate undead armour suits to crumple and collapse. Armoured corpses piled in heaps at the bottom of the crater, surrounding the Webway gate with carrion remains. From cracks and rocky outcroppings around the crater's edge, the last of the Harlequins added their own fire to the fusillade, hails of monofilament discs cutting through ancient power armour and the flesh of the living, Daemonic discs.For a time, it appeared as though the Thousand Sons would be bottled up in the crater. Then a fresh pulse of dark power surged through the Webway gate, its energies whirling faster and faster until they formed a flaming vortex. A wave of supernatural dread swept over the Loyalist Space Marines as a huge, horn-headed figure stepped through onto the surface of Luna. Spreading his wings wide, Magnus the Red looked up at Guilliman with a mocking smile.Drawing himself up to his full height, Magnus raised his ensorcelled glaive and spoke dolorous words of power that rang out in defiance of all natural law. Purple flames leapt, forming shimmering shields and warding the Thousand Sons from harm. Suddenly, the Rubricae and Scarab Occult could advance unharmed, striding upwards as their foes' shots exploded upon Magnus' psychic shields.Seeing the sudden shift in the situation, and knowing that they must hold out no matter the cost, Guilliman ordered his surviving warriors back. Moments later, the first ranks of Rubricae crested the lip of the crater and strode out with their gun muzzles flaring. More Thousand Sons marched behind them, and the surviving Loyalists fell back to voidship wrecks and rocky craters to gain cover while their tanks backed steadily away with their guns thundering. Magnus rose from the crater. He brandished his staff and reality rent apart, a tide of cackling Tzeentchian Daemons boiling from the Warp to join the battle.Recognising that the Daemon Primarch would swiftly destroy his army if allowed free reign, Guilliman broke into a headlong charge. Giving vent to a booming war cry, the primarch of the Ultramarines smashed a path through the Rubricae before him and launched himself into a heroic leap from the lip of the crater. Guilliman soared, burning blade leaving a trail of flame behind him. Magnus saw his brother coming and began an incantation of pain, but before he could finish it the Lord of Ultramar struck.Magnus managed to parry his brother's arcing blade with his glaive, but the battering ram impact of Guilliman's leap carried the Crimson King backward, away from the fight. The two primarchs tumbled across the lunar surface, dust billowing around them, and smashed into the rusted wreck of an Imperial frigate.Guilliman fought his way to freedom, hurling aside a slab of rusted metal and ignoring the alarms ringing within his helm. His armour was compromised, its air supply venting and the cold of the void leaking in. Were it not for his god-like constitution, and Belisarius Cawl's life-sustaining technology, Guilliman would likely have been dead. Instead, he raised his blade and kicked his way clear of the scattered wreckage."Magnus!", he shouted through his vox grill, searching around him. The primarch knew his dubiously gifted brother could hear his words, even in the void of space. "I know better than to think you dead. Face me!" Deep laughter rolled around Guilliman, a sound redolent with ancient malice. As he watched, Magnus' ethereal form rose from the wreckage and drifted down to loom over him. The Daemon Primarch solidified once more, huge and menacing."Very well, Roboute," laughed Magnus, and his words conjured crystalline showers that rained down upon the pale ground. "Here I am, in the flesh. And -- somehow -- there you are." Magnus cocked his head to one side and smirked. "I don't remember you seeming so...insignifcant.""Ten millennia have made you no less arrogant, then?" asked Guilliman, warily circling his towering foe. Inside his helm, a look of disgust twisted his patrician features as he regarded the monstrous, mutated form of the Crimson King. "Certainly those years have done you no other kindness."Magnus sighed. "How you can have such grand plans and yet such scant vision has always eluded me. This," the Daemon Primarch said, empyric energies stirring as they gathered around his levelled glaive, "is what true power looks like.""I see no power here," said Guilliman, shaking his head in dismay. "I see corruption, and enslavement to monsters that are worshipped as gods.""On that, Roboute," Magnus laughed, sparing a glance at the Loyalists fighting nearby, "perhaps we can finally agree."The cyclopean sorcerer's smile turned into a sneer when he noticed his brother glance to the skies above. "Hoping to keep my sons and I occupied until the remnants of this palsied Imperium come to save you? I may not reach our father's throne room today, but I promise that you won't either. You will be dead long before help arrives. That alone will be worth all this trouble." With that, Magnus attacked. The giant moved far faster than even Guilliman could have believed, his ensorcelled glaive lashing out to split the Lord of Ultramar in two.Guilliman leapt backward, pulling his midriff in as he did so. Magnus' weapon drew sparks from his armour as it whistled past, and Guilliman landed atop the crumpled prow of a nearby frigate. Before he could take stock, Magnus was hurling balls of blue psychic flame at him. Guilliman threw himself out of their path, sliding down the prow's rusted flank and dropping into a crouch at its feet. He broke into a charge, bursting from the drifting cloud of dust raised by his landing and weaving skillfully around his brother's sorcerous projectiles.The ammunition in the Hand of Dominion was spent, but it was still a phenomenally powerful weapon. Sidestepping a downward cut from Magnus' glaive, Guilliman slid inside his brother's guard and delivered a thunderous uppercut. The impact lifted Magnus from his feet and sent him tumbling upward into the inky blackness. Fiery blood drifted in strings from Magnus' shattered jaw, causing kaleidoscopic fungi to sprout from where it spattered on Luna's surface, the power of change embedded even in the Daemon Primarch's blood.Roiling psychic energy wrapped around Magnus, arresting his motion and righting him as he howled in anger. The Daemon Primarch stared hatefully down with his single eye, and Guilliman knew fresh sorrow as he realised how truly mad and lost his sibling had become. "Arrogance", shouted Guilliman. "It was always your undoing, brother. You thought this would be an easy fight, that the gifts of your so-called gods would render me impotent. Perhaps those you serve are not all you believed them to be?"Magnus' rage vanished in an eye-blink, and he laughed scornfully in response to Guilliman's jibe. "You would like to believe that, wouldn't you? That the dutiful Roboute Guilliman was justified in his loyalty? That, now the ramifications of our choices have become clear, you can look down on me as you always did?"With sudden violence, Magnus jabbed downward with his glaive. Multicoloured flames exploded from its blade, engulfing Guilliman and the bedrock upon which he stood. Moon dust exploded upwards in crackling clouds. Fire danced across scrap iron, and Roboute cried out as agony wracked his body. Crackling with raw, psychic power, Magnus descended, still pouring Warp fire into his brother. Guilliman screamed again, dropping to one knee as his armour blazed with searing energy. Sparks burst from the overloaded systems of his power armour, and the smell of his own, cooking flesh filled his nostrils. Desperate, Guilliman drove himself backwards in a graceless leap. He flew in an arc to smash down amidst a tumbled heap of enginarium debris, armour still flickering with flames.Magnus landed, chuckling cruelly. Sprawled amidst the tangle of wreckage, Guilliman tried to push himself to his feet. The primarch's body was a mass of pain, and his armour responded sluggishly, a number of its servomotors burned out. "No, brother", said Magnus. "You stay where you are."The Daemon Primarch gestured, and spectral claws tore several hundred tons of machinery loose from a nearby wreck. Guilliman had time to brace himself before the ungainly mass impacted like a comet, burying him completely beneath an avalanche of crushing metal. Guilliman was entombed. Alarms chimed in his ears, red warning signs flashing in his peripheral vision. The pain of lacerated organs and shattered bones dragged at him, and for a moment the Lord of Ultramar was tempted simply to give in. Then he thought again of his long-suffering gene-sons, fighting so hard for the ideals of an Imperium whose truth they had never even known. He would not betray them. He would not let one of his degenerate brothers keep him from his responsibilities -- not again.Muscles tensing, strength surging, Guilliman ripped his way up through the tumbled mountain of wreckage. He roared as he hurled aside a capacitor unit the size of a Land Raider, and stepped, bloodied but unbroken, into the hard light of Luna. Magnus arched an eyebrow at the sight, and braced his glaive to hurl another spell.And then the void lit with fire.Grand Master Aldrik Voldus looked up and gave thanks as the Emperor's deliverance rained down upon the battlefield. The Terran Crusade forces had broken into small islands of resistance, some hunkered down amidst spacecraft wreckage, others crouching behind jutting Luna rocks. The Thousand Sons had surrounded them, relentlessly pouring fire into the Loyalist positions while Tzeentchian Daemons hurtled overhead on golden discs to rain Warpflame upon them.Now, though, help had arrived. Gilt-chased fighter craft screamed down over the lunar landscape. As they did so, rippling lines of fire exploded amidst Rubricae and Horrors alike. Las blasts and hails of explosive shells tore the Tzeentchian footsoldiers apart. Bombs fell amongst them, sundering armour and flesh. At the same time, vast leviathans of adamantium and plasteel rumbled in overhead. Naval system monitors of the Imperial Navy's Terran Defence Fleet hove into low orbit, their enormous forms swamping the battlefield in shadow as they came. Aided by triangulatory targeting data transmitted by Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl, the voidships rained pinpoint-accurate fire upon the foe.Lunar dust whirled in sudden vortices as teleport energies snatched it up. Bright light flared, and the golden giants of the Adeptus Custodes stepped from it with their Guardian Spears levelled. Hails of bolt fire ripped into the Rubricae. Cursing, the Thousand Sons sorcerers ordered their undead golem warriors to turn and address these new foes, but to no avail. Moving with breathtaking speed and skill, the Custodians hacked their way into the Heretic Astartes. Each fought like a hero born, their blades splitting ancient power armour like firewood and sending empty helms spinning lazily away across the lunar surface.The muffled boom of engines sounded overhead, heralding the arrival of further Imperial forces. Stark yellow Drop Pods slammed down, thrusters flaring. Their hatches opened and squads of Imperial Fists Space Marines emerged from within, bolters blazing at the enemy. Gunships rumbled overhead, yellow-hulled Stormravens and Stormtalons whose weapons tore through the Thousand Sons. Several were swatted by bolts of sorcery and hails of rotary cannon fire, flames belching from ruptured hulls as they span down to crash amidst the wreckage of starships.Amongst these craft flew a trio of Valkyries with hulls of crimson and black, the sigil of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica emblazoned upon their flanks. Arcing through the explosions and mayhem above the battlefield, the gunships made for the point some way distant where Guilliman still battled his monstrous brother. Purple fire speared upwards, ripping the wing from the leading craft and sending it rolling to a halt in a blazing fireball. The other two swept on towards their quarry, and as they came in low, their side doors slid open.While their brave pilots blitzed fire at Magnus the Red, two squads of helmed Sisters of Silence dropped from the gunships. They landed near Guilliman in fighting crouches. Angrily, Magnus swept his clawed hand through the air, dragging one gunship sideways with telekinetic power and smashing it into the other. Both Valkyries exploded and tumbled downwards, but the Sisters of Silence leapt nimbly aside. Magnus glowered, jabbing with his glaive and sending tendrils of green and yellow psychic flame spiralling in their direction. The sorcery sputtered and died before it reached them, undone by the empyric dead zone around the warrior Nulls.Seeing a strategic advantage at last, Guilliman leapt down from the mound of wreckage and landed amidst the Sisters of Silence. They would shield him from his brother's fell powers. Together, the primarch and the Sisters charged towards Magnus with their blades at the ready. The Daemon Primarch hurled another volley of psychic destruction, growling in frustration as it flickered out like the first. Angrily, Magnus hefted his glaive and swooped forward to meet his enemies at close quarters. If he could not destroy them with the powers of the Warp, he would hack and crush their mortal bodies until nothing remained but meat.Beneath the dark lunar sky, with Terra hanging, ancient and hallowed above them, the two primarchs crashed together once again.Syndri Veilwalker bounded into the air. She drove one foot into the side of a Rubricae's helm, ripping it free with the force of her kick. The Shadowseer pushed off from her first victim, spinning through the thin air to hurl a bewildering glamour into the face of a nearby sorcerer. Amidst a hail of ensorcelled bolts, Veilwalker sprang away, as her kin cartwheeled into the enemy's midst from another direction. In such low gravity conditions, the Harlequins could achieve feats of agility and grace beyond even their normal blinding skill, and Veilwalker laughed again as she saw the Rubricae rendered clumsy by comparison.Bounding in a high pirouette over the battle, Veilwalker sought he who wore the Armour of Fate. There he was, amidst the wrecks of crude Human spacecraft, battling his monstrous brother alongside a band of warriors. Even from here, the mere presence of the psychic Nulls made Sylandri shudder. Guilliman and Magnus were trading hate-filled blows, their weapons crashing together with titanic force. The Nulls were doing what they could to aid the fight, stabbing blades at the Daemon in their midst or pouring bolter fire into him. Already, several lay as broken corpses for their troubles, but the rest were doing an effective job of deadening Magnus' sorcerous powers.Veilwalker landed gracefully, ignoring a storm of magical flames that exploded away to her left. Daemons, befuddled by her Domino Field, cast their spells at where they believed her to be. With a thought, Veilwalker activated the communications inlay in her helm, communing with her Death Jester, the Hollow Prince."The moment has arrived," she said. "Our drama has played out, and the brothers' enmity burns anew.""Now the final curtain, then?" whispered the voice of the Hollow Prince, rich with wicked mirth. "Indignation. Outrage. Vendetta.""It must be thus," agreed Veilwalker. "I shall ready the gate, for truth this time. You deliver your lines, and let matters play out."Without waiting for an answer, Veilwalker cut her communications. She sprinted for the crater from which they had all emerged. Across the crater floor, the darkness was lit by the whirling storm of purple light that spat from the corrupted Webway gate. Magnus had done that, cursing the portal to permit his unnatural passage. Veilwalker smirked coldly behind her mask; he would pay for that hubris.Across the field of battle, she knew that the Hollow Prince would be communicating with Guilliman, explaining their plan to the primarch. The Death Jester would be telling the primarch that Magnus could be destroyed only by casting his body into the Chaos-corrupted Webway gate. If Veilwalker's visions were correct, Guilliman would believe him.At that moment, battling demigods appeared upon the crater's edge. Guilliman and Magnus, both bleeding from the wounds they had dealt one another, still flanked by a last handful of the Null warriors. Magnus bisected another of the women with a brutal swing of his glaive, which lashed around to hack a chunk from Guilliman's breastplate. In return, the Lord of Ultramar drove Magnus back with hammer blows from the Emperor's blade, then slammed his shoulder into his brother's chest and sent the Crimson King crashing down the steep slope. Guilliman leapt after him, not giving Magnus a chance to recover. The primarch's onslaught was punishing, the wounded Guilliman visibly pouring everything he had into this last storm of blows. Veilwalker melted away into the shadows as the warring brothers neared the Webway gate, still muttering her incantations and weaving her staff back and forth.Magnus conjured a deadly sphere of Warp energies and hurled it at his brother with all his might. The force field of Guilliman's Iron Halo absorbed the worst of the blast, but still he was sent staggering back. With his back to the gate, the primarch of the Thousand Sons conjured a wave of telekinetic fury and used it to fling a mass of Space Marine corpses -- Loyalist and Traitor alike -- at the last few Nulls. They vanished from Sylandri's sight, their contra-empyric drag blinking out as they were buried beneath a macabre heap of the dead.The Shadowseer started forward, fearing for the fate of the Final Act. Then, with a roar of hate and rage, Guilliman struck. The Lord of Ultramar lunged at his brother. The burning blade drove in, under the Daemon Primarch's guard, and sank deep into his chest. Golden flames leapt, and Magnus howled in agony as they chewed hungrily at his flesh. He unleashed his powers in an uncontrolled sorcerous blast, its shock wave racing out across the crater and throwing Sylandri from her feet.The burst of power hurled Guilliman onto his back, blade in hand, and sent Magnus staggering free, back through the pulsating Webway gate. Sylandri had one chance, a single moment in which to alter fate. With a final word, she shattered the runestone that glowed hot in her palm, and severed the Webway gate to Luna forever. Power surged, Magnus roared his fury, and then he was cut off from Luna, his remaining warriors and his hated brother, banished to the depths of the Labyrinth Dimension.Though his plan to strike at the heart of the Imperium in one fell swoop had failed at the Battle of Luna, Magnus the Red always had another scheme in place. With his Planet of the Sorcerers, Sortiarius, restored to realspace, the Crimson King knew that he would soon have another opportunity to lay low the Imperium that had betrayed him and destroyed all he had once loved.