Chereads / Warhammer: Dawn of Annihilation / Chapter 39 - 39 - Candidate (Bonus)

Chapter 39 - 39 - Candidate (Bonus)

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The Glory of Macragge emerged from the howling madness of the warp after twenty-one days of relentless turbulence, its adamantium hull battered by the immaterial storms. The Gellar fields had held—but the scars of the passage lingered.

The ship groaned as real space stabilized around it, its vast mass settling into the black void of the Talasa system. Here, light from the system's aging star stretched thin, casting a pale, cold glow over the fortress world that awaited them.

Guilliman had sent no word ahead.

His arrival was unannounced, unheralded—and, therefore, dangerous.

As soon as the Primarch's fleet materialized, the system's defenses roared to life. Orbital stations locked targeting arrays onto the Glory of Macragge and its escort vessels. Planetary silos, dormant for centuries, flared to readiness, their payloads armed within moments. An entire battlefleet stationed above Talasa prepared to intercept, its captains scanning for any sign of deception.

To them, this was the beginning of an invasion.

To them, this was war.

Orders to fire were seconds from being given.

Then, a single transmission cut through the mounting panic. A priority cipher, decoded and verified in rapid succession, passed through layer upon layer of encrypted protocols. The Lord Regent himself was aboard.

A silence fell over the command channels.

Talasas' defenders had prepared to repel an incursion from the forces of the Dark Gods. Instead, they now faced a presence equally unsettling—the resurrected son of the Emperor.

Even after authentication, the tension in the air did not dissipate. Why had Guilliman come here? No Primarch, not even one as pragmatic as he, had ever involved himself with this place.

Talasa, the forbidden vault.

A world of secrets. A prison—not just for the condemned, but for things that had no right to exist in real space.

The Ordo Xenos had turned this planet into an ironclad tomb, a repository for all that was too dangerous to be left unchained. Here, daemonhosts—men and women hollowed out, their flesh made vessels for creatures of the immaterium—languished in rune-bound containment cells. Here, relics of civilizations long erased from history—artifacts whose mere existence invited corruption—were locked beneath vaults wreathed in eternal flame.

And yet Guilliman knew the truth.

Even this place, with its steel-clad sanctuaries and its psychic wards, was not secure.

Nothing was secure.

The Imperium was rotting.

Heresy did not begin in the warp. It began in the hearts of men.

Horus had been loyal once. Horus had loved his father once.

Yet it had not saved him.

If the Warmaster—the most beloved son of the Emperor—could fall, then what of the High Lords? What of the Inquisition? What of his own brothers?

Would Guilliman's name one day be cursed alongside those who had betrayed the Imperium?

The thought lodged itself in his mind, a venomous whisper.

No.

He would not allow it.

He would preserve the Imperium, by whatever means necessary.

That was why he was here. The Inquisition would be his tool. If he must use them, manipulate them, even sacrifice them when the time came, so be it.

There was no morality in war.

Only victory.

The fleet pushed forward, passing through the outer defense perimeter and descending toward the fortress-world below. Talasa's surface was a grim landscape of metal and fire, vast citadels rising like blackened fangs from the planetary crust. The sky was veiled in perpetual storm, thick with the haze of industrial exhaust and the unseen energies of caged horrors.

This was not a world where men lived.

It was a world where they endured.

The reception was swift, but cold. There were no banners, no fanfare. The people of Talasa did not worship heroes, nor did they waste time on ceremony.

Instead, they came in silence.

A procession of black-robed figures awaited Guilliman upon his descent, their faces shadowed beneath the hoods of their austere garments. Some bore the insignia of the Ordo Xenos, others the brand of the Ordo Hereticus. All were men and women who had gazed into the abyss and chosen to remain there.

At their head stood Lord Inquisitor Covenant.

His presence was as sharp as a drawn blade. His chin had been replaced with a burnished augmetic plate, his face pale and lined from years spent battling forces no mortal should endure. His voice, when it came, was a low, mechanical rasp.

"Lord Primarch."

Guilliman regarded him, his expression unreadable. The Inquisition was a paradox—both sword and poison. An institution necessary for the Imperium's survival, yet dangerous beyond reckoning.

He did not trust them.

He never had.

"Rise," Guilliman commanded. His voice carried the weight of law. "I am here to restore order to the Tribunal. You will cooperate."

There was no question in his tone. No room for negotiation.

The files, the records, the names of every Inquisitor operating in Ultramar— he wanted them all.

Covenant inclined his head. "It will be done."

The documents arrived within hours—a mountain of evidence, confessions, and transcripts of horrors committed in the name of the Emperor.

Guilliman pored over them with the precision of a strategist dissecting a battlefield. His mind, enhanced beyond human comprehension, absorbed page after page in moments. Executions. Excommunications. The purging of entire worlds in the name of righteousness.

And then—a name.

Eisenhorn.

Guilliman's expression darkened. He knew the name.

A judge. A hunter of heretics. A man who had summoned daemons to fight in the Imperium's name.

His grip on the dataslate tightened. His voice was cold. "This Eisenhorn. He has called upon the warp itself. And yet you call him loyal?"

Covenant's gaze did not waver. "My lord, his actions were not taken lightly. The enemies he faced—traitors, xenos, threats beyond imagining—he used every weapon available to ensure their destruction."

A radical.

A man who had walked the edge of damnation, believing he could wield the abyss like a weapon.

Guilliman's thoughts were a storm.

Did Eisenhorn serve the Imperium?

Or did he serve his own vision of it?

The difference mattered.

One day, someone else would make that choice—to break the rules, to take the first step toward damnation, all in the name of survival.

And from that step, there would be no return.

His jaw tightened.

No.

He would not allow another Horus.

He would not allow another war.

His voice was steel. "Where is he now?"

Covenant did not hesitate. "In the Inquisitor Academy, my lord."

Guilliman set the dataslate down, his fingers pressing into the cold surface.

"Bring him to me."

Pragmatism and heresy were a razor's edge apart.

Guilliman had walked this path before. He knew where it led.

But this time, he would not fail.

This time, he would do what the Emperor could not.

He would save the Imperium.

Even if he had to tear it apart and build it anew.

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Also here are some of the pictures of weapons and ship from Warhammer 

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