Chapter 83 The Forefather?

Chapter 83: Chapter 84: The Forefather?

A vicious firefight was popping off inside the fog-drenched Webway.

Led by Custodian Navradaran, the golden-armored Custodes and the red-robed Skitarii fought tooth and nail to hold back a relentless, surging tide of Dark Eldar.

“If I die here, the Martian Mechanicus will fall into absolute chaos, and production efficiency will drop off a cliff!”

“The factional infighting will completely spiral out of control. Especially those radical lunatics led by Belisarius Cawl—they’ll definitely try to tear up the Treaty of Olympus!”

“And if I get captured by these xenos, it’ll be a thousand times worse. The entire Imperium will become a laughingstock.”

“So I absolutely cannot die here. And I sure as hell can’t get captured by these freaks!”

A heavy tractor unit was frantically dragging the massive, bloated chassis of Fabricator General Raskian toward the rear, his vocal emitters constantly spitting out rapid-fire complaints.

Listening to the endless whining, Navradaran finally lost his patience. The Custodian whipped around and literally started slapping vortex grenades right onto the Fabricator General’s colossal mechanical body.

“Hey! Hey! What are you sticking bombs to me for?!”

Raskian stared at the Custodian’s absolutely unhinged behavior, his optical sensors practically bugging out.

“You’re right. As a High Lord of Terra, you absolutely cannot fall into xenos hands,” Navradaran replied deadpan. “Just in case our lines break, please be prepared to die for the Imperium, Lord Fabricator General.

“I’ll do my best to break out of here and deliver the news to Mars so they can start electing your replacement.”

Navradaran’s brutal honesty left Raskian completely speechless.

He was spitting all that logic to convince the Custodes to protect him better, not to volunteer for a suicide mission!

He still needed to get back and guide the Cult Mechanicus! He had the teachings of the Omnissiah to spread! He absolutely could not die in this rundown alleyway!

The Adeptus Custodes were the absolute pinnacle of the Imperium’s military might, and they had a solid chunk of Skitarii backing them up. Normally, wiping out a raiding party of Dark Eldar wouldn’t be much of a hassle. But they were ridiculously outnumbered. It was just one squad of Custodes against an overwhelming swarm of xenos, and the Webway was home turf for the Dark Eldar.

Just as the defensive line was about to completely buckle, Vane smashed into the battlefield, bringing two Primarchs and a whole roster of Imperial legends with him.

Moving with blinding, impossible speed, Vane swung his Bloodletter [Carnage], continuously hacking the Dark Eldar to pieces.

The two Primarchs unleashed their own brand of apocalyptic violence, they ripped through the enemy lines with overwhelming force, leaving nothing but a gory, mutilated trail of severed limbs and pulverized bodies in their wake.

“Th… that’s impossible!” Raskian scanned the battlefield, his synthesized voice glitching with sheer disbelief. “Primarchs… Two of them? And a Living Saint?! Where the hell did they come from?!”

The Fabricator General’s panic sent a massive shockwave through everyone present. The Primarchs were figures of absolute myth! How were they standing right in front of them? Had the Emperor Himself witnessed their desperate last stand and personally dispatched His sons to bail them out?

“For the Forefather! For the Emperor! For Sanguinius!”

Dante and his Blood Angels roared their battle cries as they plunged into the fray, blowing the Dark Eldar apart with bolter fire and shredding them with roaring power swords.

“Are these Blood Angels planning a heresy?! How dare they put His holy title second!”

As a Custodian Tribune, Navradaran sounded intensely offended. The Emperor was the absolute, supreme master of mankind—His name always came first. Yet Dante and his Blood Angels were putting some unknown “Forefather” ahead of the Emperor and a Primarch! In the Ecclesiarchy’s eyes, that level of blatant blasphemy was a one-way ticket to burning at the stake with white phosphorus.

Facing down a pilgrimage force packed with that much god-tier firepower, the Dark Eldar completely folded. Their lines shattered, leaving mountains of corpses behind as only a tiny handful managed to scramble back into the Webway and narrowly escape with their lives.

“How did you end up looking so incredibly pathetic?”

Archmagos Cawl swaggered right up to the massive, heavily armed bulk of Raskian, his mechanical voice dripping with pure sarcasm.

Cawl was the absolute poster boy for the Mechanicus’s radical faction, openly advocating for dumping useless, bureaucratic traditions and actively pushing for the research and deployment of brand-new tech. Raskian, on the other hand, was the ultimate conservative, fiercely believing that mortals had no right to alter the sacred creations of the Omnissiah.

Over the years, the political bloodbath between their two factions had escalated out of control. Kicking each other while they were down was basically their standard greeting.

“Belisarius Cawl…” Raskian forced a highly synthetic, entirely fake smile. “Long time no see. When I heard Cadia fell, I was actually worried about you for quite some time.”

“Worried I wasn’t dead?” Archmagos Cawl fired back. “Relax. Not only am I not dead, but I actually picked up a little souvenir along the way.”

Cawl deployed Zarhulash the Potentate, deliberately showing off the shackled entity to the Fabricator General.

“This is my new servant. A C’tan shard that used to rule over the Necrons.”

Raskian stared at the C’tan shard, a sudden spike of naked greed flaring up in his circuits.

“Turning a xenos god into your personal servant is a blatant violation of the Cult Mechanicus’s teachings.”

“The Forefather gave it to me. You got a problem with that?” Cawl didn’t give a single damn about the Fabricator General’s threats.

“The Forefather? Since when does the Imperium have someone by that title?” Raskian asked, genuinely confused.

“The Forefather is a man from the 2nd Millennium,” Cawl explained. “He has the Emperor’s absolute seal of approval and wields total authority over the Omnissiah’s domain. His blessing is exactly the same as the Emperor’s blessing. So don’t even try using the Cult’s teachings to threaten me, Raskian. It’s completely useless.”

“Someone better start explaining,” Navradaran aggressively interrupted. “What exactly is the deal with this ‘Forefather’?”

“Allow me to explain.” Inquisitor Greyfax walked over, joining the conversation.

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