JUDGEMENT PART TWO

We stood on the corpse-strewn barricade, victorious, the demonic horde shattered and fleeing before the might of the unified Imperial armies.
General Tiberius was at Tulote's side, already coordinating the legion's next movements.
But the victory felt... incomplete?

The air was still thick with the stench of chaos, and the sky above the heart of the desert was a storm of dark energy.
The cage was complete, but the beast was yet to show herself.

"Six days, that's all the time I have left." I said quietly to Xerta who stood beside me, her power armour scuffed and dented.

She looked from me to the swirling vortex on the horizon.

"Then we'd best not waste any of them," she rumbled. "We've got a God to kill."

Our respite was an illusion.
A tremor ran through the desert floor, a shudder, as if the world itself groaned in agony.

The chaotic storm on the horizon pulsed, and a wave of pure, unadulterated despair washed over the battlefield.
The cheering of the victorious soldiers died in their throats, replaced by gasps of terror.
The sky darkened, the sun blotted out not by a cloud, but by an encroaching, absolute emptiness.

And from the heart of that emptiness, she descended.

It was not a projection this time.
It was Dietha, in all her terrible, glorious finality.
Her form was a perfect, beautiful silhouette of a woman, but she was made of the void, a disease to all things pure and true.
Where she moved, colour and sound died.
Her eyes were twin black holes, and her presence was a crushing weight that buckled the knees of lesser men.

"You have built a cage of mortals and steel, son of Erton. A cage to hold a goddess. How quaint." Her voice echoed, not in the air, but in the minds of every living being on that battlefield.

It was a song of pure nihilism and an ugly, bitter despair.

She raised a single hand.

"You fight to protect this flawed, painful, pitiful little world. Allow me to show you the futility of your struggle. If you were to be so kind, allow me to bring back some of your greatest triumphs."

The ground before her throne of shadows tore open.
From these fissures, four forms clawed their way into existence, reconstituted from the raw chaos of the desert.
They were larger, more powerful, their forms unstable and crackling with raw, untamed energy.

The Greater Demons, Abaddon the Beholder. Haydes, the Formless. Malakor, the Executioner. And Ghor'ath, the Annihilator.

"IMPOSSIBLE!" Tulote roared, his voice booming through his helm. "They were UNMADE!"

"Nothing is ever unmade. It merely returns to the chaos from whence it came. And I am Chaos." Dietha's voice chimed with amusement.

The four resurrected champions of hell stood before her, their eyes blazing with a singular malevolent purpose.
They were no longer the commanders of before; but avatars of their mistress's will, their power grossly amplified.

"This is it, Tulote, you know what has to be done." I said.

He nodded, his face grim.
He turned to the fellowship.

"This is our last stand! Cassandra, Xerta, you are with me! We hold the line! No matter the cost!" He then looked to me, a final plea in his eyes. "Arda... finish this."

I sprinted towards the highest point of the barricade, a small, flat precipice of rock and corpses.
I sat, crossing my legs, and laid the Gladius Nobellus across the knees.
I drew the four relics, placing them upon the blade: the Heartstone, the Seed, the Breath, and the Echo.

"Erton, my children, Kathuria..." I whispered. "Give me strength."

I closed my eyes and reached out with my will, my soul, my power of Order.
I began to weave the threads.

The world outside my concentration was one of glorious, terrible violence.
I could hear it, feel it through the vibrations in the stone.

"FOR THE IMPERIUM!" Tulote roared.

He met Malakor, the demon who had nearly killed us at sea, in a cataclysmic clash of fire and shadow. His power armour strained as he unleashed a torrent of Terra Flow, the very desert sands rising to form titanicc fists that battered the resurrected demon.

Xerta's war cry was a guttural, earthy roar of utter defiance.

"FOR STONEHEARTH!" she bellowed, and charged Abaddon.

Her powered hammer sent shockwaves that cracked the very ground.
She was no demigod, but her will was as unyielding as the heart of a volcano, and she fought with the fury of a people who had been wronged for too long.

Cassandra became a phantom once more, her target the hulkinng Ghor'ath.
She was a blur of midnight blue, her movements too fast to follow.
She didn't meet his brute strength head-on; she was a thousand cuts, a disorienting dance of shadow clones and swift, precise strikes that bled the monster's power, her rage was beyond anything I've ever seen from her.

But the demons were stronger than before.
Their forms were less stable but their power was immense.
Malakor's greatsword clashed against Tulote's Flamma,and the ground between them shattered.
Abaddon's pure rage, landed a blow that sent Xerta skidding back, her armour groaning in protest.
Cassandra, for all her speed, was forced into a desperate defense against Ghor'ath's uneding, chaotic assaults.

And then there was Haydes.
The formless demon, a creature of liquid chaos, bypassed the main fight, and headed towards me.

I felt its approach, a slithering, corrupting presence at the edge of my senses.
But I could not more.
The ritual had began.
The four relics were glowing, their essences slowly, painstakingly being drawn into the Gladius.
It was like trying to thread four different cosmic needles at once.
I was utterly defenseless.

"He's mine, little hero," Haydes gurgled as it flowed up the side of the barricade.

It never reached me. 

"I've got this one, do what you're doing FAST!" General Tiberius said.

He held the demon at bay, and slowly drove Haydes down.
He was gaining the upper hand.

The battle raged.
My friends were being pushed back.
Even with their enhanced armour, the resurrected demons were too powerful.
Xerta was bleeding from a gash in her side. Tulote's armour was cracked and glowing red-hot from the sheer power he was channelling, and Cassandra couldn't keep up for much longer.

"ARDA! It's not enough! I need to buy you more time!"

"There is no victory without sacrifice," his own words echoed in my mind.

"TULOTE, NO!" I screamed, my concentration breaking for a second.

.

.

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.

.

He smiled, a sad, proud, brotherly smile that I will carry with me for all eternity.

"My parents died to revive this world. My siblings died defending it." He looked towards the heavens. "It is my turn to protect its fute. Farewell... my brother."

He drove Flamma into the ground.

"I AM TULOTE RILDON VON CAESAR!" he bellowed, his voice shaking the heavens. "Son of Silus and Usasha! Lord Regent of the Imperium! And I.. AM... ENOUGH!"

He unleashed everything.

The power that erupted from him was not that of a man, or even a demigod. It was the raw unrestrained power of Silus and Usasha's last remaining child, the full, cataclysmic might of their lineage.
The desert floor for two hundred miles in every direction shattered, erupting upwards in a storm of molten rock and fire.
His armour disintegrated, and his body became a figure of pure, brilliant golden light.
His grief and love and duty forged into a final, ultimate act of defiance.

The four Greater Demons, caught in the blast, were instantly vaporized, their reconstituted forms no match for this primal power. The demonic horde was decimated, a great, circular swathe of the battlefield simply erased from existence.

Dietha herself rose from her throne, her amusement replaced by the first flicker of genuine shock.

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.

.

But Tulote's light was too bright to last.
His form began to fracture, to break apart.
And in that moment, two other spectral forms appeared at his side.
Aquarius and Niath.

And one more...
A fierce warrior princess with the stripes of a tiger, her eyes filled with clarity.
It was the repentant Tigress.

The Four Children of the Imperium, reunited in their final moments.
They stood together, a ghostly, beautiful family, and raised their hands, their combined spirits forming a brilliant, golden shield between Dietha and me, holding back the tide of Chaos for a few, precious seconds.

And then, with a final, silent farewell, they were gone.
Tulote was gone.

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.

.

The grief that hit me was harder than any demon's.
The loss, the sacrifice, the absolute, heroic love of my friend... it poured into me.

And the ritual completed.

The four relics dissolved into pure light, flowing into the Gladius Nobellus.
The sword in my lap did not just glow; it became a conduit for all the pain, all the hope, all the love and loss of this entire, broken world.
The Heartstone of the Dwarf's endurance.
The Seed of the Elf's grace.
The Breath of the Human's ambition.
The Echo of the Half-Human's fury.
And now, the sacrifice of the last true son of the Imperium.

It all flowed into me.
My armour shattered, unable to contain the power.
My body was no longer a vessel of Order.
It became Order.
My eyes opened, and they were no longer the eyes of a mortal man.
They were twin stars, blazing with the pure, white, unforgiving light of creation itself.
I felt the pain of this world, I had shouldered its grief, and now I wielded its very soul.

Before me, Dietha, Chaos personified, for the very first time in her eternal existence, looked afraid.
My brother had bought me the time.
And now, I would make it count.

I became, The Third Great Calamity, Arda Hans Nebula.