13th Black Crusade - Battle of the Elysion Fields: The first wave came from the west. Landers skirted the outer edge of Phalanx's bombardment zone, vomiting a filthy tide across the pylon field. They came from a hundred worlds, "liberated" from the worship of the False Emperor, their petty desires stoked by blasphemous canticle and empty promise until they roared liked a furnace. Hive gangers, manufactorum workers, deserters from the Emperor's light -- they swarmed about the pylons, a mass given purpose by the demagogic Dark Apostles railing in their midst. As they crossed a line invisible to the mortal eye, Phalanx's bombardment cannons roared, snatching hundreds of ragged madmen to their deaths. Still the Chaos Cultists came on.The survivors of the Cadian 9th Regiment held their fire to the very last moment, ignoring the reckless Autogun and Stubber fire whining over their heads. Every man amongst them recalled the shame of the Kriegan Gates, where they had fled alongside the Cadian 33rd Regiment. Every man had lost comrades in the brutal culling that had followed, Commissars instilling discipline through bloody example. But one factor lent them resolve more than any other.The chanting mass bearing down upon the 9th served as a dark mirror -- a licentious path that could have been theirs, had fate been but a little different. The Guardsmen of the 9th hated the Cultists for daring to embrace a path they themselves had forsaken, and now punished them for it. At barked words of command, the 9th rose up out of their trenchlines and opened fire. Ragged Cultists screamed their last and fell dead amidst the dust. The voices of apostate preachers faded as cannon-fire sucked the air from their lungs. Hundreds crumpled beneath las-fire and Earthshaker Cannon bombardments, but thousands more came on, the boots of the living stomping the dead to bloody offal in their determination to reach the Cadian Shock Troops' lines.Even as the Cultists thronged forward, the doleful roar of Plasma Drives heralded the arrival of new landing craft. Ramps slammed down into the dirt to the north and east, and Abaddon's second assault began.The Battle-Sisters of Our Martyred Lady held the northern line. Celestine at their head, they met the rush of flame-belching Daemon Engines with the steadfast roar of Bolters and the choral bellow of their Exorcists. Seraphim sisterhoods jinked and soared through the maze of pylons, hunting Warpsmiths before their dark ministrations could return sundered war machines to the fray. To the east, Baroness Vardus' Knights served as artillery support for the tanks of the Cadian 185th Regiment, meeting the battle-scarred Titans of the Legio Vulcanum and the massed tanks of the Crimson Slaughter with fury fit to shake the roots of the world itself.But it was in the south, where the Cadian 8th and 21st Regiments held the line, that Abaddon's true assault fell. There, amidst the ruins of pylons toppled in antiquity, the Black Legion advanced through the shrieking ruin of Phalanx's bombardment. They came in an armoured column two miles wide and twice that deep, the dust clouds of Chaos Space Marine biker outriders upon their flanks, and banners that had once challenged the defences of Terra itself ripping and snapping in the slipstream. Shells fell like black rain in their path, littering the southern approach with twisted wrecks. Heldrakes screeched overhead, strafing volleys shredding the makeshift artillery positions. The Hydras of the 8th Cadian engaged the Daemon-craft, but it was an unending flock. Mortal might could only disperse it, not see it destroyed.With his allies beset on all sides, with no orbital support save Phalanx's bombardments, Korahael divided his Adeptus Astartes strike force; Amalrich's Black Templars and Garadon's Imperial Fists reinforced the southern lines, while the Crimson Fists and Korahael's own Dark Angels 4th Company lent their might to the north. Of the Ironwolves, there were no confirmed sightings, though the 8th's spotters noted that the wrecks of the Black Legion column lay thickest near a ruined bastion, some distance southwest of the trenchlines.Hours passed. Abaddon's warbands closed around the pylon fields like a gauntleted fist, squeezing tight about Creed's command. To the south, the Black Legion cast aside their battered transports and hurled themselves bodily at the 8th Cadian, their guttural battle-cries a marrow-chilling herald to their onset.In the east, Baroness Vardus found an honourable end worthy of her forebears, her crippled Knight dealing the deathblow to the Traitor Reaver Titan, Furioso Rex, before reactor containment failed. The baroness' death redoubled her lance-mates' determination -- in the proud history of House Raven, none perished so valiantly as they in that hour. Bereft of the Knights' heavy armament, the colonel of the Cadian 185th Regiment ordered a fighting retreat, in his terror forgetting there was no longer any ground to yield.The eastern lines would have fallen in that hour, but for the intervention of Korahael's 4th Company, and Tracinto's 5th. Screaming from skies in golden Thunderhawks, they reached the breached trenchlines in the very moment Sevastus Kranon led his crimson-armoured Traitors in a final assault. As the Crimson Fists' veteran Devastators duelled with the surviving Titans, steadfast angel and fallen sabre clashed amidst the charred remnants of House Raven, bitter history lending fury to every blow.At Kasr Kraf, the Cadian 9th Regiment had fled. At the Elysion Fields, they died by the hundred without faltering, matching the madness of their foes with a coward's zeal for redemption. Yet, little by little, their line of bayonets shrank inwards, overwhelmed. Seeing the danger, Creed ordered new reserves into the west, but the foe were too many. Though the banners of the 75th and the 403rd Cadian Regiments reached the western trenches before they were overrun, the 9th was beyond salvation. In death, they had earned redemption.Day ground on into night, and then into day once again, each fleeting solar hour standing witness to martyrdoms by the score. Not one Daemon Engine laid a warped claw on the northern trenchlines, for the Sisters of Our Martyred Lady met them on the open plain beyond. The light of battle was upon them, the Will of the Emperor coursing through their veins. The Battle-Sisters paid a bloody price for their resolve, but they felt neither pain nor loss, for Celestine's presence was both a balm and a spur to holy madness.In the east, Ruis Tracinto perished upon the Chainfist of Baranox the Blood-Haunted, only to be avenged in kind by Korahael's relic sword. In the south, the colonel of the 21st Cadian, driven mad by daemonic voices that had haunted him since the fall of Kasr Kraf, seized a Voxcaster and ordered his soldiers to retreat. He perished before he could repeat that command, the Emperor's Mercy delivered from Commissar Strang's smoking Bolt Pistol, but the damage had been done. The 21st, their morale already upon a bayonet's edge, wavered. Creed strove to rally them, his voice booming across the Vox-grid as it had so many times before, but now the Lord Castellan himself came under assault.Abaddon had sworn to crush Cadia's last resistance himself, and he now came to do so. He did not enter the maelstrom of battle alone. The Bringers of Despair, their trophy racks thick with the heads of Cadian officers, teleported into the heart of Creed's command Skyshield. Dozens perished in bloody moments, ripped apart by the fury of the Black Legion's finest warriors. Only Creed survived, shoved aboard a Valkyrie at Jarran Kell's hand -- the colour sergeant's last act of fealty in a lifetime of unflinching service to his friend and commander.The bolt shell struck a hammer-blow against Sergeant Jarran Kell's knee, shredding flesh and mangling bone. He fell, agony clawing at his thoughts. Still, he found the strength to push Creed aboard the waiting assault carrier. "Go! Go!"The Valkryie's pilot needed no further encouragement. Engines howling, it sped skyward, bearing the Lord Castellan of Cadia to safety, or whatever illusion of it remained on the Elysion Fields. Only then did Kell afford himself the luxury of pain. Bracing the foot of the 8th Cadian's standard against the ground, he fell to his remaining knee. His vision clouded. Dark shapes loomed over him, monstrous silhouettes edged with blood-spattered gold.A black gauntlet closed around Kell's throat, hoisting him up like a broken doll. Coal-black eyes stared from a pallid face. The Despoiler. Kell felt no fear. He was dead already, what more could even Abaddon the Traitor do to him? Only faith mattered now. Faith, and honour."Such dedication to so unworthy a cause," the Despoiler rumbled. "Pitiful."With his last strength, Kell hawked a gobbet of bloody phlegm at his captor. "Cadia stands."Abaddon snorted, his lip curling in sardonic disgust. "I don’t think so."The last sound Jarran Kell ever heard was the crack of his own shattering spine.With the 8th Cadian's command scattered or slain, and the 21st in full retreat, the southern front collapsed. Dark praises on their lips, the Chosen of Abaddon overran the few remaining trenches held by the 21st Cadian, and rampaged east across the Elysion Fields. Amalrich and Garadon planted their banners full in the Black Legion's path -- a ceramite wall of black and gold to serve as a breakwater against the tide. Had valour alone been the measure of victory, the Elysion Fields would have been won that day, but the Sons of Dorn were too few, and the Black Legion many. Their redoubt became an island swallowed by a sea of madness, and the Traitors swept on.The artillery companies of the 185th Cadian Regiment perished first, overwhelmed from ground they had thought secure. As the black tide consumed the 185th's command squadrons, the battle-worn brothers of the Crimson Fists' 5th Company counterattacked, their Bolters reaping vengeance for their fallen captain. Robbed of his staunched allies, Korahael rallied the last of his Dark Angels in the shadow of a sky-scraping pylon. As the Crimson Slaughter howled fresh battle-cries, the Sons of Caliban prepared to sell their lives dearly.In the west, the 75th and the 403rd Cadian Regiments defended a rampart of dead. The wall of charred and bloody flesh grew taller with each new onslaught, a treacherous, gore-slicked mass that claimed as many lives as the defenders' volleys, yet still the Chaos Cultists came on. As yet another assault ended in sodden ruin, the tone of the Cultists' chant altered. Hellfire flared across the points of rusted icons, dark prayers billowed with the smoke, and the first daemons clawed their way onto the Elysion Fields.The hellspawn flickered, inconstant as dreams in the shadow of the ancient pylons, but their claws cut as savagely as always, their whispered promises and the droning of flies no less pervasive for the infirmity of flesh. Warpfire scoured the bloody rampart, lissom Daemonettes danced into the breaches, and the western front crumbled.Celestine saw the danger. Only to the north had the Traitors' assault crumpled entirely, hammered and split by the unwavering zeal of the Adepta Sororitas. The Battle-Sisters had paid a high price for their victory, but it was victory nonetheless. The light of the Living Saint shone as bright as ever, the valour of her reborn Geminae Superia undimmed. Southwards they went, hymns of battle echoing about the pylons, the thunder of Bolters never far behind.As the remnants of the Cadian 8th withdrew into the catacombs, Abaddon led his Chaos Terminators in bloody pursuit. Other warbands followed, and soon the outermost passageways resounded to the thunder of Autocannons and the screams of the dying. Their ranks bolstered by Cawl's Skitarii, the 8th fought like lions for every inch of those catacombs. Each blast door became a choke point where sacrifice bought precious moments -- each crossroads a corpse-strewn redoubt.Creed fought with the rearguard, leading by example wherever he could. With their colours lost, their command dead upon the field above, he knew the 8th needed a talisman, a promise of hope in a battle swiftly turning to defeat. The 8th Cadian did not disappoint him. Not lightly had they been named the "Lord Castellan's Own." They would have followed Creed into the fires of a Daemon World had only he led them there, and with every defiant curse, every rearguard sacrificed to the Despoiler's onset, they proved themselves worthy of their beloved general.Deeper still in the catacomb network, Archmagos Cawl laboured on. At Trazyn's direction, he focussed his attentions on the pylon that served as the command node for the Elysion Fields. With each moment, the tendrils of his machine consciousness wended deeper into the pylon's pathways, his understanding of its arcane constructions magnifying with each binharic calculation. At last, he comprehended the full scope and purpose of the pylon fields, the elegance of a design millennia beyond the advances of the Adeptus Mechanicus.Trazyn the Infinite watched from the shadows, careful not to provoke the Kataphron Breachers tasked with his obliteration should he attempt betrayal. He still didn't know himself if he intended one. The possibilities offered by the immediate future were too tempting, yet too finely balanced. Had he come as thief or a saviour? Did he any longer know how to make the choice? Uncertain, the Necron watched the Archmagos at his work.The western wall of the vast cavern collapsed with an ear-splitting roar. Black-armoured Traitors crashed into the line of waiting Electro-priests, a line that collapsed within moments of the first blow. Abaddon himself hacked and tore at their head, the Daemon Sword Drach'nyen cleaving alloy and bone without effort. Cawl saw none of it, his tri-level consciousness locked in the joys of discovery. Trazyn watched the Breachers' Torsion Cannons rip into the Traitors' ranks, and knew at once the Kataphrons could not prevail. Thief or saviour? The decision had been made for him. At least for the moment. Reaching beneath his scaled cloak, the Necron withdrew a gleaming fractal Tesseract Labyrinth and hurled it into the fray. It bounced twice, the shifting energy fields decomposing into glowing gossamer strands, then its captive dimensions unfolded in a burst of dazzling light, disgorging a new army into the war-torn cavern.This was not a Necron legion, nor even a body of troops drawn from a single world. The Tesseract's contents comprised the merest fragment of Trazyn's Imperial collection, drawn from archives filled to bursting, or storage vaults given over to duplicate exhibits. Some had languished in Solemnace's stasis vaults for Terran millennia, the fleeting centuries passing unnoticed. Others had joined the collection in but recent times, their captivity measured in solar months or years.For Lieutenant-Commander Cerantes of the Ultramarines, barely an eyeblink had passed since the dark days of the Horus Heresy. For his Contemptor Pattern Dreadnoughts and mortal brothers alike, no guidance was needed save the presence of the blasphemous icons of Chaos, and the Imperium's double-headed Aquila. The Dreadnought Talon at their head, the time-lost Ultramarines prosecuted their eternal battle anew.Others were not so swift to react. The Vostroyan Firstborn's XXI Regiment, taken by the Necron Overlord during one of the innumerable Greenskin offensives along the Segmentum Obscurus, found themselves beset with stasis sickness, their heads swimming as perceptions snapped back into step with reality. But the roar of battle cures many ills of the mind, and the desire for survival transcends all existential doubt. Orders rang out, and the shaken Vostroyans entered the fray, joined by snipers from long-dead Tanith, Salamanders thought lost during the Klovian disaster, and a lone warrior in golden armour, his scarlet plume and eagle heraldry seldom seen so far from the cradle of Mankind on Terra.With the arrival of the impossible reinforcements, the Black Legion assault stalled. His self-appointed duty done, Trazyn returned to the shadows. The role of saviour might perhaps have suited him in that hour, but self-sacrifice was a task he gladly left to organics.Yet there was one amongst the Tesseract-loosed group who did not join the battle, but surveyed it coldly from the fringes. Katarinya Greyfax, Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, was not known for leaping to rash conclusions, for she counted rashness as but one of the many paths to heresy. Her bodyguard, drawn from the 55th Kappic Eagles, had learned this harsh lesson over many standard years of indentured service. Though Lasguns were levelled and safeties disengaged, not a single Scion fired."Sir, we have movement amongst the Blackstone debris."Commodore Trevaux crossed to the Auspex holo-display. Phalanx's sensors had taken as much of a hammering as the rest of the vessel, but fdelity enough remained to confirm the ensign's assessment. At least a dozen Traitor Cruisers risked oblivion amidst the debris cloud."What are those scum playing at?" he breathed.The question was purely rhetorical. Whatever the Black Fleet sought in the ruins of the fortress, it was Trevaux's duty to see that it went undiscovered."Helm, get us underway. Set heading for the near edge of the debris cloud. Comms, relay a request to our Mechanicus allies to cover our abaft starboard engagement zone -- the shield generators are still down and we've dead sensors all across that quadrant."The deck tremored as Phalanx got underway. Trevaux glanced again at the display for any response from the Black Fleet. He saw none. Was it a trap?The communications officer looked up from his station. "Mechanicus ﬂeet confirms request."On the holo-display, the bulk of the rust-red ﬂeet swung onto new headings. Only the Ark Mechanicus remained on station, well beyond weapons range. Trevaux knew he'd receive no explanation as to why, and gave silent thanks that the Adepts of Mars had lent him any vessels at all.