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1d4chan>Triacom |
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| The Lion awoke, eyes snapping open as the smell of burning reached his superhuman senses. He felt the Rock beneath his body, the familiar stonework, but somehow changed. The Primarch woke in the midst of a siege. The walls were coming down in sheets of flame, revealing Caliban’s great forests in all directions.
| | #REDIRECT [[Story:Warhammer_60K:_The_Age_of_Dusk#Additional_Background_Section_30:_The_Lion.E2.80.99s_Cage]] |
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| They too were burning, as orbital munitions fell like meteorite strikes, vaporizing acres of woodland in the time it took the light of each blast to reach them. Mountains were pummelled to plasma, which drifted across the world, killing everything in its path.
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| “Who... attacks us?” the Primarch demanded, his mind fighting to regain its composure. He was disorientated, a sensation he had never felt before. Not truly.
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| “Russ’ wolves have broken through the second cordon! The Fists have taken the orbitals! We’ve lost the ability to contest space!”
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| This was the voice of countless Dark Angels, who rushed from one console to another. Each was marked with eight pointed stars upon their foreheads, and each one spoke with a voice of sulphurous corruption. One turned to the Lion.
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| “My liege, you wake! We cannot hold them off my Lord and Master! What are your orders?”
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| “The Wolf attacks us? Dorn too? But Horus... his allies were vanquished. The war is... concluded.”
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| “It shall never be concluded. Not while we still draw breath; those were your words sire. That was your decree.”
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| The Lion was horrified by the words of his heathen children. He looked for his sword, but when he found none, he threw himself upon them with unrelenting fury. He broke them, tossing their bodies aside before he signalled the planet-wide surrender of Caliban. He then signalled Russ, and declared his intent to surrender himself to his brother.
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| Russ teleported tot he surface personally, flanked by the Custodians and his own Fenryka bodyguards.
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| “What madness drove you to this Jonson?”
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| “I promise you, the crimes of these fallen are not mine, I swear to you brother, on my honour.”
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| Russ snorted. “Honour? Honour means very little in these dark days, would you not say? Besides which, this is not the heresy that we condemn you for. You have orchestrated something far worse,” Russ replied ominously.
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| The Lion was brought onboard the Space Wolf flagship in chains, forged by the Lion’s lost brother Vulkan himself to be unbreakable by even the strongest creature. He was thrown intot he bowels of the ship, alongside mewling, broken traitors, begging for death. While the ship travelled through the warp, in the pitch darkness oft he cargo holds, the Lion granted them their wishes. He killed them all with the loops of his chains and the strength of his arms, till there was nothing but human paste remaining.
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| The Lion was being brought to Terra. The Lion knew the palace to be a tumbled ruin, filled with corpses five metres deep in all directions. Industrial excavators worked day and night to dig out pockets of defenders from amongst the siege’s endless swathes of dead. Yet, in his dank, lightless cell, he saw nothing, until he was dragged onboard a thudnerhawk and shuttled to the surface; tot he Throne room itself.
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| The throne room was a mess of smashed artefacts, and suffered vast scratch marks and gouges, caused by creatures most foul and impossible. Around the chamber, Imperial fists and Custodian Guards stood in neat rows, silent and stoic, with bolters and spears clutched tight to their chests. The Lion was ushered into the chamber by four Custodes, whose guardian spears glimmered with deadly promise as they hovered mere feet from the chained Primarch. The Lion looked ahead, and saw a sight which broke his hearts.
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| Upon a small, unadorned throne, Dorn sat, his left gauntlet clutched to his face, as if suppressing tears. His armour, once lustrous gold, was now as black as night. It was darker even than the battle plate of the Dark Angels themselves. To his left sat the Emperor. The Emperor no longer glowed. His body was broken, a cluster of scars and cables that punched through his flesh and fed into the strange alien device taht dominated the chamber. A throne of gold, that formed the heart of a vast ring of ritual stone and psycho-plastic embedded in the wall. All manner of horrors throbbed beyond this gate, held back only by the cabal of psykers who were suffering just behind Dorn. The Emperor was dead. Not just the living death inflicted by Horus. The Emperor was completely dead. What was worse was that the Lion could see why.
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| The Lion Sword stood embedded in the Emperor’s chest, protruding like a vile banner of treachery, more foul than any could contemplate. Tears began to spring to the Lion’s ordinarily inscrutable face.
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| Dorn rose from his throne upon hearing the name of the Lion announced by the serfs and clerks who lingered on the periphery. He had a cold expression; as if his soul had died alongside the Emperor. His head was bald in patches, for he had torn great chunks of his scalp away in demented frustration. In his right hand, he clutched a handful of great white feathers, alongside a teardrop of blood fashioned into an amulet.
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| He cursed the Lion for his manifest heresies, for his cowardice and his evil. Leman Russ, who prowled behind the rows of Astartes and Custodes, simply glowered at him with animalistic loathing.
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| The Lion protested his innocence. He recalled returning to Caliban, to punish Luther and the fallen. He admitted some of his Legion had fallen, but he swore he had destroyed them. Dorn told him that in fact, the loyalists of the Dark Angels had returned to Caliban to defeat the Lion and his rebellious kin. There was no Luther. None of the assembled Imperials had ever heard of a man called Luther.
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| “Luther was only part of your madness; your sickness,” Dorn explained without emotion. He couldn’t even bear to look at the Lion.
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| Dorn then explained that the Lion had shown his betrayal only after he had sent his agent to greet the Emperor.
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| “-and there, your fallen Angel, using your own blade, pierced the Emperor’s heart and struck him dead, before your Astartes pawn was moments later cut down himself.”
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| “Impossible! This is impossible!” the Lion began to scream. He couldn’t be a traitor. He simply could not comprehend such a thing, even after the Heresy.
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| Dorn lost his patience, snatching the Lion Sword from the Emperor’s corpse, and flinging it across the chamber. It landed with a deafening clatter across the marble floor at the Lion’s feet. “See the truth of your treachery written in the blood on your own blade!” Dorn howled.
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| Gently, the Lion plucked his sword from the floor. He gazed long at the workmanship of the weapon, and the delicate spider’s web of drying blood that traced a pattern across the blade. It was real; it was definitely his sword. Convulsing in disgust, the Lion threw his face upon the ground, his free hand splayed across the throne-room’s floor as he sobbed, golden locks falling over his face.
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| “Yet, brother, you can still be redeemed; if not in our eyes, then in His,” Russ finally spoke, shoving through the crowd, before coming to a halt before the Golden Throne. “Your life is forfeit, of course, but your death need not simply be oblivion. Your death can mean something.”
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| “Indeed,” Dorn began. “We can bring Him back. The Emperor can yet live. A soul such as His cannot simply be dissolved into the immaterium like a mortal’s. It is out there, waiting for a means to be reborn into the realm of flesh, to save us all. The Librarians say all we require is a host; an avatar for his being. If you are truly penitent, truly loyal to our cause, you will give yourself freely to this task. What else do you have? Your Legion is dead, as is your honour. You are alone now. Return to the fold, and be who you were born to be!”
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| The Lion stopped sobbing instantly, for he was never truly crying.
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| “I have been here before. This chamber; this exact room,” the Lion began.
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| Russ shrugged. “Of course, this is the throne room of the E-“
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| “No no, I was here in the throne room, after the lifting of the siege. I remembered every square millimetre of this chamber. I have a primarch’s eyes, you forget. I do not forget a single detail; I cannot forget any detail. Your illusion is good, very good. But In using images I am familiar with, you made your first mistake. Everything you have conjured here is almost perfect. But I can spot the errors; the mold lines and seams that bind this lie together. It was a nice touch using my real sword, but I see through this facade.”
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| The entire chamber shuddered. The golden light of Terra’s Star turned a ruddy red as it shone through the high windows each side of the throne.
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| “What was our second mistake?” Dorn asked with a metallic, deathless voice that dripped with condescention.
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| The Lion looked up and smiled. “You gave me my sword back.”
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| The four Custodes launched their attacks with their spears, but the Lion was phenomenally fast. He shattered the false chains that fettered him, bringing his sword around to block the precise and relentless blows of the Custodes. The duel did not last long. Energised blades carved through Lion El Jonson’s body in a dozen places, but each cut was barely a scratch to the greatest swordsman amongst the Primarchs. Blade in hand, the four Custodes could not best him. He ended the contest in a dozen precisely placed blows. Each Custodes fell, decapitated.
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| Four headless Lychguard crashed to the ground, warscythes falling from their metallic digits, before both weapons and necron teleported away in flashes of green light.
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| Shuddering and smoking from his cuts, the Lion rose to his feet, holding his blade in a double-handed grip.
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| All around him, molecule-sized scarabs crawled from the walls, ceilings and floor, and every Imperial present was stripped of their metal scarab-skin. Now, the true nature of his foes was revealed. Necorn Immortals replaced the Fists, and Lychguard the Custodes. A grinning necron that towered as tall as the Lion stood in place of Dorn, as scarabs still fell from its skeletal form like sparkling particles of metal dust. The thing taht was Russ had no scarabs hiding its form. It simply turned molten, and the living metla of its form returned to its natural state of being. The faceless Angyl turned its head slowly towards the Lion, bladed wings unfurling like the petals of a flower.
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| As one, the necrons raised their gauss weapons. The Lion saw his end, and simply grasped his sword tighter.
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| “What are you? What monster wishes to possess my form? Speak you honourless dogs!” the Lion roared.
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| “The Star Father demands a body. You bear the mark of his flesh seed, and element of his being and soul. You will be his vessel. Obey! Obey!” the Angyl demanded. Its voice was a sonorous monotone that rumbled with irresistible force. But resist it the Lion did.
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| “You are nothing to me. Daemons lie, as you lie. Where is this place?”
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| It was the necron’s turn to speak. “This is the Lori Delta Trove. You, little puppet, will show respect to your betters. This is my domain, and the Father of Stars is a force for Order in this dark time. I am the Storm Lord Imotekh. You have no clue what forces you rail against here. I tire of your petulance.”
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| “You speak as if I have not destroyed countless xenos warlords who believed they were my match before. It is you who does not know me!” the Lion sneered.
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| “It is disobedient. Destroy the vessel; it is false,” the Angyl stated blandly. The necron gauss flayers began to crackle with power.
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| “Fight me! Blade to blade! Prove how powerful your Lord is! Come, test your steel against mine!” the Lion shouted. He knew that he would perish if the gauss weapons struck him, and he had no avenue of escape.
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| Imotekh stopped his necrons with a gesture. The Phaeron crackled with the power of both the Star father and the miracle science of his race. Lightning played about his head like a halo, as his fingers glowed with building power.
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| “This whelp will not have a clean, honourable death. He is unworthy of it. I will best him. I will enjoy taking your hand. Then, when you are broken and sobbing like the infant you truly are, then you shall die,” Imotekh explained, his tiny flickering soul briefly flaring with life as he described how he’d destroy the Lion.
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| “You are a soulless machine of evil craft, yet I pity you. You are pathetic. I hear your mortal voice quivering inside your living metal shell. A little thing that thinks it is a god. I shal educate you otherwise,” the Lion replied with similar calm resolve.
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| The Lion charged. Imotekh’s staff was raised, and a bolt of indescribable power struck the Primarch. He howled in agony as his flesh was seared by the scouging bolt. Flesh melted in some places, while blood boiled and burst in its veins in others. The Lion staggered to his knees as the onslaught intestified. His organs were burning, his lungs were charcoal.
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| Yet, he rose, first to one knee, then to his feet. He swung the Lion sword into a guard position, and the lightning of the Stormlord was drawn to the tempered etal of his relic blade, channelled away fromt he Lion’s body until his own blade’s energy field crackled and sparked like a malfunctioning fusion furnace.
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| Finally, with a hastily thrown kick, the Lion knocked the lightning stave aside, disrupting the electrical storm finally. Imotekh did not give the Lion a second’s respite. He instantly lunge dinto combat, bladed staff twirling in his lifeless claws. Imotekh’s every blow was countered by the primarch, the two weapons both blurs of silver as they exchanged a multitude of strikes and counterstrikes every second. Despite his grievous wounds, the Lion was impossibly fast and tireless as only a Primarch could be.
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| Yet, Imotekh was immortal and easily his match attritionally. The necron lord could fight forever, untilt he last start went out. Even a primarch had limits. The Lion could not simply outlast him in a duel. He had to end it somehow. The necrons formed a circle around the combatants, while the Angyl shimmered with what one could describe as rage; Imotekh had not followed its instructions. Disobedience was anathema to the Angyls of the Star father; utterly unthinkable. Yet, Imotekh had disobeyed...
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| The duel between the two giant continued without a single pause or hesitation. Every move was fluid; precision born of instinct and programming. Every blow landed by the Lion was repaired within moments by the alien war machine, while the wound sinflicted by the necrons refused to heal, some effect of their unholy sciences no doubt. The two beings threw themselves into a final clash of blades, throwing their weight into the crunch of staff against sword, mechanical versus biological perfection. Both Imotekh and the Lion forced their opponent backwards for an instant. As their blades parted, Imotekh plunged his staff into the floor, unleashing a catastrophic blast of electrical force. The Lion’s senses were overloaded for an instant, and he dropped his blade. As he dropped to snatch it up, the necorn lord’s blade fell.
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| With his left hand, Lion El Jonson caught the blade. The energised weapon flashed lightning through his body, and his hand began to burn, first flesh, then bone. But Imotekh’s blade was stopped. In that millisecond seemed to last an age. Even as motekh was disentangling his staff from the Lion’s destroyed left hand, the Lion had already picke dup his sword. With one almighty blow, the Lion chopped off the Stormlord’s arm. The necron tried to grab his falling staff in his other arm, but the Lion hacked taht arm away too, before he carved Imotekh in twain with an upward, double-handed swing of his legendary sword. The alien unleashed a hideous metallic shriek, which continued long after the Lion pulverised his head with the pommel of his blade.
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| The necrons registered their Lord’s demise. In the moment sit took them to formulate the ‘kill’ response, the Lion had taken up the Stormlord’s staff. As his hand still clutched the weapon, it remained active. A screaming, living thunderbolt wriggled free of the weapon t the speed of light, leaping form necorn to necron in a blinding series of flashes. The Lion only got one shot off before the staff phase dout alongside its owner’s body, but it was enough to stun the assembled killing machines. He leapt into their midst, carving his way through the silver masses until he reached what seemed like a door.
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| The Lion fled through the Lori Delta Trove complex in a daze, his hideous wounds afflicting him more than he realised at first. The Angyl chased him, turning the smashed remains of the fallen necrons into hosts for new angyls, who flew at its side.
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| The Lion could not escape. It reached a chamber open to the dying red sun that the tombworld orbited, before the bolts of the Angyls struck him, and he fell to the ground. Bladed wings stabbed into his flesh, and he was tossed around like a ragdoll by the horde of anti-daemons. Finally, he slumped onto his back, sword just out of his grasp.
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| His vision swam, and his mind reeled ocne again from the horror before him. Then, he heard bolters; distant, as if underwater. Dark shapes fought off the glowing silver apparitions, flashes of orange and blue turning the angyls to molten ruin. The entire world seemed to shudder and convulse. There was an attack. Something was attacking the Necrons and the Star father’s minions.
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| His eyes focussed upon the giants who surrounded his prone form like a congregation.
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| They were hooded and robed, but their dark-green armour gave them away as Astartes. Winged blades etched into ceramite. The Lion cackled bitterly through mouthfuls of blood.
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| “More tricks. More lies! Ghosts of my past come to haunt me!”
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| One of the giants was slightly taller than the others. His face was shrouded in shadow, and a cloak of midnight feathers wreathed his hooded head.
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| “Hail Lion El Jonson, Knight of Caliban, Lord of the First and defender of the realm of Man,” a firm yet melodious voice called out.
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| “Begone ghosts. You are taunting me with visions of my lost children. I do not apprieciate it,” the Lion gargled deliriously.
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| “Most of your organs are dying. You need our help.”
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| “You expect me to believe my legionnaires would appear at my point of death to save me? Your head is full of fairy tales, apparition!”
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| “Look upon these men closely,” the cloaked man implored gently. “They are your kin. Every one of them is a Dark Angel, though a significant few are also Alpharius, in addition to being Angels. I must confess, we did not come here on our own. We were opportunistic, striking when an assault upon the Delta trove was already underway.
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| The Lion shook his head. “No, no. Alpharius is a heretic! You are damned fallen; Luther’s progeny! And who are you, faceless one? You have the counternance of Corax, yet I know you cannot be he. Are you Alpharius too?”
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| The giant shrugged. “More than most...”
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| The world shuddered again.
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| “We have no time. Things are not as you remember. You have slept for long ages of the galaxy. These men are not fallen. They are Unforgiven, but they know their place. The Watchers in the Dark sent them to me. There is more to this situation than simply humans. So much is at stake.”
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| “Whether you serve xenos or daemons, it matters not. I would die before I betrayed my Imperium!” the Lion spluttered.
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| Green flashes flared somewhere close by, followed by angry screaming and the roaring retort of boltguns.
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| “The Imperium fell, as it was destined to! But you do not understand. Let us help you. We are not alike. My brother and I, we have walked both paths, for we alone could take the road no loyalist or traitor could travel. You must come with me! Take up the feathered mantle with me! We are poised now at the very precipice; we need you. The necrons war with each other, and the Krork war with everyone. They both enslave worlds for their wars, but they cannot touch us, because they do not know we exist! We are shadows,a nd from the shadows, we can take them down. Please brother, forget the old animosities. Take my hand brother!” the man in midnight feahers pleaded, reaching out to the Lion.
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| The Lion spat in his face. “You’re no brother of mine.”
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| And with that, the shadowy forces of the Unforgiven and their Hydra cult allies melted away.
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| Soon, the sound of battle became a relentless, all consuming roar, filling the head and cleansing the mind. Necrons falling, fire and flames. The crack of lascannons and corkscrewing missiles bisecting silver walkers. Multi-limbed monsters leaping between towers, bony claws ripping through living steel. The Lion was fading. His organs were failing; most were simply charcoal in his chest.
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| He could barely see now. Everything was falling away, like wet sheets of paper.
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| Then, a monster appeared before his eyes. It was a snarling dragon’s mouth, filled with slavering teeth set into an unforgiving mask, with glowing yellow lenses that pierced his soul. The dragon ripped away its face, revealing a face beneath that was just as fearsome.
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| The Lion felt two vast hands upon each side of his head. The stink of promethium on the dragon-man’s breath began to rouse him.
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| “You stink... you always stank. I missed it...” Jonson slurred, with a weary smile.
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| “Stay with me Lion. I’ve got you brother. I’ve got you,” Vulkan called out breathlessly to his brother, as he held him in his arms. “I’ve got you now.”
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