13th Black Crusade - The Death of Defiance: Abaddon lurched away from Celestine, her blade ripping free of his flesh. The wound seethed as if aflame. It had been millennia since he had last been hurt so, and his spirit boiled with the need for revenge. But as the Cadian 8th Regiment surged to reclaim their beloved general, Abaddon realised he had no time for the luxury of pride. The last vestiges of the Warp were retreating before the pylons' arcane energies. If he were to depart, it would have to be now. Reluctantly, his eyes never leaving Celestine's, Abaddon gave the order to withdraw.As the Vengeful Spirit's teleport anchors engaged, the honourable warrior Abaddon had once been acknowledged the feat Cadia's defenders had managed. They had lost, though they did not yet know it. But they had also won. He had sought to break Cadia's spirit, send the vanquished souls of its garrisons screaming into the Warp. He had not done so.Before the defenders' incredulous gazes, azure lighting crackled across the nodal cavern, and the surviving warriors of the Black Legion faded into nothingness. Creed pulled angrily away from the medic attempting to treat his hand, blinking away afterimages as the implications hammered home. I set this world's fate in motion before I even made planetfall, Abaddon had said. The Lord Castellan wished he could believe the words were mere bravado, but his heavy heart knew otherwise.The void in Greyfax's mind grew larger, black and hungry against the red rage of her thoughts. Her weapons fell from numbed hands. She knew that to yield to it was to embrace oblivion, but still the temptation was there. She staggered, and sought to right herself before one of her bodyguard could help her do so. A hand seized Greyfax's shoulder and steadied her. Not that of a Tempestus Scion, but the Heretic Celestine."Endure," said the false saint. "It will not be forever."Greyfax lurched away, the suddenness of the motion shooting fresh spikes of pain through her mind. "Touch me not, witch."Celestine's lips curled into a supercilious smile. "If I am a witch, then why did you save me?""I struck at another. It is not the same.""Or perhaps the Emperor's hand guided you, as it guided me.""A miracle?" The throbbing pain made the disdain all the easier."Some call them so.""There are no miracles," spat Greyfax. "Only delusions. I will break your heresy. You will beg for death." The void in her mind pulsed. Again she staggered. Again Celestine caught her."We shall see," said the false saint. Letting go of the Inquisitor's shoulder, she walked away.Following the sudden cessation, Archmagos Cawl's first thought was to recheck the pylon nodal grid's function. Finding it satisfactory, he secured from war mode, and took inventory of his remaining forces. Greyfax shook with the effort of keeping her soul centred as the Warp-vacuum sought to claim it. Trazyn slipped the Tesseract Labyrinth beneath his cloak, and regretfully allowed that Ezekyle Abaddon would not grace his collection -- at least not that day. As for Celestine, the Living Saint stared upward, through the ruined cavern roof and into the starlit skies beyond, her manner that of one who already knew what would happen next.On the surface, the Thunderhawks of the Crimson Slaughter and warped dropships of the Traitor Legions braved the Imperial defenders' fire, retrieving whatever dark brothers and Daemon Engines they could. The Cultists and Heretic citizenry, never more than fodder to weary Cadia's guns, were abandoned to their fate.Tor Garadon rallied what remained of the Imperial Fists on Cadia. Scarce a score of Battle-Brothers from the 3rd Company still fought, some through horrendous wounds. Of the 1st Company, only Sergeant Furan remained. Garadon was struck by the irony. The 3rd had only been on Phalanx because they had been considered too inexperienced to join the Chapter's Crusade of Vengeance. Those who remained had nothing more to prove -- assuming they survived what was to come next. By contrast, Marshal Amalrich's Black Templars harried the retreating Traitors, slaughtering the crew of one dropship before they could take flight, and bringing another two down with missile fire.Even discounting Amalrich's efforts, not all the Black Legion arrived safely at their destination. Caught in the turbulent currents of the Warp, scores were torn apart or simply scattered as monomolecular dust across Cadia's atmosphere. But Abaddon survived, bloody and consumed with fury at his failure. From the Vengeful Spirit's strategium, he sounded the knell of Cadia's doom.Deep within the Will of Eternity's debris cloud, Warpsmiths heard Abaddon's order. All across the largest fragment of debris -- a mass of ancient stone the size of a small moon -- banks of Plasma Drives roared into life. The Blackstone Fortress' corpse shuddered as the engines fought to overcome the inertia of orbit. Then, slowly at first, but with ever-increasing velocity, the ungainly missile broke orbit, and roared planetwards.Across the Black Fleet, Plasma Drives blazed as soon as the last dropships were aboard, pulling away from atmosphere at whatever speed their captains could urge. As the Vengeful Spirit led the exodus, Abaddon beheld the blue-grey orb of Cadia one last time. For ten thousand standard years, that world had been as much his foe as the warriors that garrisoned its fortresses. But nothing defied the will of Chaos forever. Nothing defied his will forever. Loosing a peal of dark laughter, the Despoiler decanted a draught of brulkwine into a chalice fashioned from the skull of Fabius Bile's clone of Horus and toasted the death of one ancient foe with the remains of another.Aboard Phalanx, Commodore Trevaux at last realised the Chaos cruisers' purpose within the debris cloud, and ordered the battle-station's batteries to engage the improvised missile. But in death, the Blackstone Fortress resisted Phalanx's fire as it had failed to do in life.A section of the ramshackle drive-train went dark beneath the bombardment, but by then Cadia's gluttonous gravity well had seized the plunging Blackstone. All Trevaux could do was broadcast a warning to those on the planet's surface.Down the Blackstone wreckage plunged, its outer edge blazing red with atmospheric friction. But the Will of Eternity had been forged to withstand fiercer fires than any that nature could provide.Though the last of the Warpsmiths perished, their hab-shelters burned away by Cadia's wrath, the main body plunged on, a bolt of flaming brimstone cast from Abaddon's dark hand.All upon the planet's surface heard the Blackstone's coming. Its soul-wrenching onset screeched through the quickening winds, its presence already disrupting the complex web of thermals and weather patterns across the beleaguered planet.On the continent of Cadia Tertius, half a world away from the slaughter of the Elysion Fields, the defenders of scattered Imperial garrisons deemed too insignificant for Abaddon's attention beheld the Blackstone's onset as a pinprick of fire amidst shrieking skies.At first, it was taken for a voidship's reactor going critical in outer orbit. But as the moments ticked passed, and the fireball grew ever larger, it became clear that the light heralded an altogether different scale of disaster.Winds howling about it, the artificial meteor impacted Cadia.