Fiction:Attero Dominatus/Mirus Campaign/The Battle of Demogorgon Prime

In the baleful eye of its sun, a world stood. The capital of a Gigaquadant-spanning empire, it stood as metaphor for the defiance of its ruling race. Its capital city lay as a monument to the pride of its leaders - a mural on which its denizens celebrated their superiority. Beyond that it was dotted by a network of nigh-impenetrable fortresses - towering bastions designed to obliterate the attempts of lesser species to topple the rulers of this world. Vast lines of statues - those of heroes of ages past guarded its boulevards, encouraging its defenders on while the planet itself seemed to be a guard dog, hellbent on serving its master's to the last.-

But this world was not Mirenton, nor Alcanti, not Paris, not Mou' Cyran, nor any of the capitals of the other great powers. It was beset on all sides by the raging fury of virtually the entire Gigaquadrant. It stood as a symbol for the hubris and arrogance of the Dominatus. In the dead eyes of those statues, both on the great roads of Malogenesis or in its museums lay a smug look of the Dominatus' defiance. In the black and gold hulls of the remnants of the fleet defending it lay a metaphor for what historians would question as either a brilliant gambit or delusional insanity. Yes it was an entire system built to celebrate the grandeur of the Dominatus and to defend it at all costs - a mighty cliff reinforced by the arrogance of its masters, but against it came a tide of all those it had wronged - a roaring storm of both ghosts from the past and enemies from the present.

This is the story of every pebble making up that cliff and every drop of water making up that wave. It is a story of two pugilists locked in a mortal struggle - one on the ground, biting like a rabid dog at his aggressors fist, and one above, gouging out the eyes of his opponent. It is a story of glorious works of art and sculpture erased by the unending firestorm of war, of the flickering lights of countless lives being extinguished by the callous disregard of history's march, and of the last dying breaths of mortals who had fancied them gods.

This is the story of the invasion of Demogorgon Prime.

The War So Far
For 4 years, a war had raged, a slave revolt on December 27, 2791 had ripped through the Tyranny, and in response to the weakening of the Dominatus juggernaut, its rivals had gone to war with it. However, Dominatus fortune as well as an uncoordinated initial effort meant that the Dominatus recovered enough to launch campaigns in the distant galaxies of Bunsen, Borealis, Andromeda, and the Plazith Rim against their opponents, campaigns which came frightfully close to a Dominatus victory before leading to the Dominatus being vanquished from these galaxies. After the defeat of the Dominatus in these galaxies, these races banded together, forming the Anti-Dominatus Coalition, and lead an attack on Dominatus Mirus, attacking at the hypergate system of Manticore. In a series of cataclysmic battles, they took Manticore and much of the surrounding territory.

Despite this, the Dominatus counterattack drove them back to Manticore, where the cataclysmic second battle of Manticore took place. The largest naval battle of the entire Domiantus War, it was an event watched with eager and panicked eyes by both the participants of the war, and other prying eyes. The betrayal of the Dominatus by the ULE, which the Dominatus believed would help them, broke the stalemate and led to a Dominatus military retreat that culminated in the destruction of the hypergate, leaving the extragalactic forces stranded and the Dominatus navy wrecked. The ensuing campaigns saw the Dominatus rebuild their strength while the ULE and the remnants of the Invasion force battled alone against the Dominatus.

The Dominatus nearly succeeded in the defeat of these dismembered and undersupplied forces until the second invasion group arrived from a tour in deep intergalactic space and reestablished supply lines. This began a nigh-unstoppable push in which the Dominatus lost more ground everyday than they gained. While it was a slow grind against the might of a Gigaquadrantic hyperpower, it was an inexorable march which saw the Dominatus pushed back in spite of their new weapons developments. Despite the inclusion of scorched earth policies and daring tactics such as the use of Cyclops special forces and increased cooperation between its constituents, the Dominatus found themselves in an increasingly precarious position. With the fall of the Overseer Citadels, even the Imperium of War abandoned the Tyranny while the Troodontid Empire refused to intervene. Without any allies left, the Dominatus were left to fight alone.

Acting Tyrant Wolframicht Stahl was banished while more insane minds in the Dominatus General Staff influenced the demigod like child Tyrant Castigon Mortarius Heimdall to invest solely in the TIAMAT, a Dominatus hyperweapon that rewrote the fabric of the universe itself. The Dominatus strategy then hinged on a delaying act while the TIAMAT was developed as much as possible, with the end goal of using it in a final apocalyptic battle over Demogorgon Prime to defeat the ADC. The unstoppable ADC advanced eventually brought it to the home systems of the Dominatus where they waited patiently, mustering forces in preparation for the final battle of the war. Both sides pooled their forces and waited for the orders to prepare for the end of days.

The End of Days
An uneasy silence swept through the most fortified system in the Gigaquadrant as the Dominatus and their "children" awaited what all knew to be the final battle of the war. The shattered remnants of the Dominatus navy, spearheaded by the Mark III Ascendancy Class Ultracarrier Ascendancy looked at the entrance point to the system imbued with uneasy feelings. On one hand, their entire late war strategy had centered around preparing for a final massive confrontation over Demogorgon Prime.

Their aim was not to win the battle - they were too far outnumbered, but to delay the invading forces while the somewhat functional TIAMAT charged its main weapon. Tyrant Castigon Mortarius Heimdall had made the ultimate sacrifice and embedded himself, the product of the Dominatus' latest attempts to enhanced themselves, into the TIAMAT, which Dominatus scientists had supreme confidence in working. With this knowledge, the last fleets of the Tyranny were filled with a mixture of feelings - a sense of excitement at the opportunity to save their vaunted Tyranny, an alternating sense of uneasiness and acceptance at their impending morality, a sense of anxiety towards their final battle, and the cold unfeeling devotion to duty that had been programmed into them.

Below on Demogorgon Prime itself, the ground forces waited for the inevitable invasion - in their towering citadels, their eldritch, cathedral like bunkers, and their imposing walls, they waited. The shield was estimated to be strong enough to blunt the worst of the bombardment of the entire projected allied fleet, forcing the ADC to land ground troops for both symbolic and practical reasons. The Dominatus had prepared the entire planet as a monument to the carnage to ensue - the spires which dotted the planet looked condescendingly down at the drop sites, while those in the bunkers prepared to bathe their forsaken home in their nemesis' blood. Their goal was merely to tie up the allied ground forces till the Tiamat went into effect, and an ensuing counterattack would crush those foolish enough to think they could conquer the Tyranny's home.

All manner of denizens inhabited the thought to be impregnable bastion of Dominatus power. Dominatus armor and mecha waited patiently in emplacements and hidden caverns while synthetics, overseers, and Dominatus manned the emplacements. Even the twisted and mutated wildlife of the defiled planet rallied with their Dominatus masters, waiting in the land, the air, and sea, to feast upon the helpless corpses of physically living but damned souls. In hidden locations the Dominatus' largest warmachines sat, ready for the call to attack and visit ruination amongst the ADC. Impelled by both arrogance and desperation, the Dominatus had prepared Demogorgon Prime for the wrath of the gods. Perhaps they fancied themselves composers, creating a symphony of destruction to rhyme with the last verse of their national anthem.

With martial might, and brilliant minds, we make gods kneel before us All that exists, and even more, will be driven before us. Our foes perish, crushed by our will, swallowed whole by oblivion. We will prevail, unstoppable, the Tyranny will rule all!

One could even say that the angry ghosts of those who had gone before looked to the slaughter with enticing and eager smiles. The dead eyes of the cyclopean statues of the Tyranny's heroes which dominated the streets of Malogenesis seemed to have grins etched upon their unmoving faces. The scenes of art and music at the Tyranny's cultural bastions seemed to echo the delusional bloodlust and determination of its defenders as the Dominatus pictured in scenes depicting the wholesale slaughter and holocaust of civilizations, both past, present and future, looked encouragingly at the beings taunting the Gigaquadrant.

The Face of Mortality
No longer Acting Tyrant, but instead the head of the land-based defense of Demorgorgon Prime, Wolframicht Stahl paced the colossal halls of Apogee, the Dominatus military headquarters. The simulations had informed him that he had created as defensible a planet as possible, but the steadfastness and confidence that informed his tone as he gave final orders hid a mind wracked by doubts from the outcomes of the previous campaigns.

He had asked for the power of an Acting Tyrant and had been granted it - he had spearheaded the initial Dominatus defense of Mirus. He had no excuse for failure as a commander save for his own insufficiency - there was no Medusa to blame as in the campaigns of 2791, 2792, and 2793. And it had seemed that perhaps at Manticore, the Dominatus might have snatched victory in this cataclysmic war. But their strategy, one based on complete ruthlessness and overwhelming force both drew new enemies such as the Apalos, and inspired current ones to a fanatic defense. And in the end, the fragile honor between thieves and criminals, the weak and faulty glue in their alliance with the ULE ended with a betrayal all should have seen coming.

In the days that followed, the Dominatus attempted to use their last reserves to consolidate a frontline while the ULE relieved the ADC forces. Despite cutting off the ADC by destroying the Manticore Hypergate, and bleeding out the ADC invasion force to such an extent that only the Tralor could launch offensive action, the Dominatus had lost enough that the General Staff no longer had faith in Stahl. Indeed he was demoted back to a General Staff position while minds who had faith in the Dominatus' most advanced weapons hinged their strategies on those.

Perhaps in his campaigns against the ULE after, he saw some success, blunting their offensive while the new Dominatus fleets went after the ADC in Operation Medusa. But it was too little, too late - the arrival of the second Allied Invasion Group at the Battle of Terminus as well as the funds devoted to new research as opposed to current designs saw a Dominatus navy too weak to do anything but fight a fighting retreat. Perhaps under his lead, if all resources had gone into Mark IIs, his campaigns against the ULE would have succeeded and he could have forced the ADC into a ceasefire, but such counterfactuals were the bread and butter of the myth of Dominatus invincibility.

Stahl knew as much as anyone that the myth of the unstoppable Dominatus, the fastest growing empire in the Gigaquadrant as of late was one that never acknowledged their luck. They could have been crushed like an insect by the ULE in its early days and could have been easily expunged from its extragalactic holdings by those galaxies' resident powers. Only a supreme amount of fortune, infighting amongst the incumbent powers, and random luck let the Dominatus enter a position where their meteoric rise was not immediately stomped out by cautious foes. It was this luck that had allowed them to get this far, this luck that had allowed them to not have been stomped out in 2792 by a unified enemy, and this luck that had let them fight against the entire Gigaquadrant.

And so he saw that the results of this defensive campaign, one in which the Dominatus lost ground everyday as one in which reality was finally catching up with the Tyranny. And even he began to agree, as sector capitals were lost, overseer citadels overrun, that the last best hope of the Tyranny lay not in the cold rationale of traditional military tactics and stratagems, but in the lunacy of trust in their last great weapons. He did not share with those who didn't already know the bleakness of the situation - for in his resigned mind, he saw that the fanaticism and insanity of blind faith in miracles was a better motivator than the acknowledgement of the cold nihilism of an uncaring universe.

A Feverish Dream
The last years of the war saw the Dominatus military machine degenerate into a massed craze of scientists, generals, and admirals vying for the limited resources they had. Each supposedly war-winning invention that was deployed though quickly proved itself to be simply too little and too late in the face of the growing allied Juggernaut. Dominatus and overseers who martyred themselves for the most extreme augmentations simply saw themselves blasted apart when ADC air supremacy found them on their rampages. In the cold calculus of ADC commanders, earth-shattering bombardments could be called down upon their own troops if it meant the annihilation of the ever-rarer Dominatus. Ultra-Heavy vehicles saw themselves utterly dominate the battlefield till they found themselves utterly and hopelessly outgunned by ADC starships. The Mark 3s were a nightmare for ADC forces the first time they were encountered, with stories of small Mark 3 strike groups crushing small Allied fleets circulating through the Allied consciousness. But this fear was eventually quashed completely by the sheer weight of Allied forces and numbers. Even the Dominatus Nemesis Missile program, which culminated in the launch of an integralactic hyperspatial weapon of mass destruction finished only with the destruction of a tiny sliver of Allied industrial capacity in Plazith. Indeed, such an experimental weapon served only to anger the Allies rather than do anything substantial.

Perhaps to the average allied trooper, the Dominatus still inspired an incomparable degree of terror. One can imagine the feelings felt by an Allied trooper when confronted by an army wherein the baseline trooper was a 4 meter tall cybernetic soldier with an exoskeleton comparable to advanced power armor. Indeed, such a trooper must have felt that such an army was the product of the feverish imagination of a maniac hellbent on making an army based not on the constraints of reality and logic but on the crazed ideas of fantasy. But those with a strategic view felt only a sense of cautious encouragement : each day presented another vanquished nightmare. These days the Overseer Citadels had had been razed to the ground, permanently preventing the Tyranny’s production of its signature super soldiers. In one such episode, Paragon Uriel Ultanos presided over the complete destruction of the gaudy spires of Sybaris. He saw each spire of gold melt into formless rivers, each marble edifice crumble into dust, and each diamond shattered into an invisible mist. In another, Imperator Caligustus ordered Bruteigon and whatever Berzeker his fleet could reach to be rescued from the jaws of death as Mirusians and Hegemony alike ruptured the fragile crust of Chaedes with flood basalt to erase the Dominatus presence on Chaedes forever. Those overseers which the War-Imperials could not reach in time and those who simply refused to retreat -of which there were many- burned even as they drowned in molten rock. To add insult to the injury, the Imperium of War then not only retreated from Dominatus territory altogether, correctly assuming the ADC could not waste further time by chasing them, they began to draw up plans to reannex the Bellus subsector should the Tyranny fall. Each day saw the Dominatus pushed back, some encircled and destroyed, some starved of supplies and annihilated, and others pushed to their breaking point. Indeed the apocalyptic battles that took place, especially those over the Dominatus’ sector capitals, proved to be abattoirs to the ADC, battles with the casualties of smaller wars. But once those worlds were silenced, as they inevitably were by the combination of a mass of allied bodies and tactical genius, the Dominatus were deprived of both significant prestige and industrial capacity. Yes, a trooper on one of those desolate wastelands, surrounded by mountains of dead comrades and faced with the prospect of an attack by the Dominatus’ newest weapons could feel a sense of dread and futility, but those on top saw a clear path to the destruction of their mortal foe.

The Dominatus, on the other hand, having formed a temporary junta saw everywhere their latest attempts to turn the tide fail, and put their faith in a crazed plan that would be laughed at by saner heads had it not come at such a dark time. It called for the Dominatus to buy as much time for the development and testing of the new TIAMAT as possible. Indeed, the Dominatus hedged their bets solely on their most unpredictable, but by far their most powerful weapon on war. The Dominatus were committed to paying any price for their long-term survival, and thus the allies saw the Dominatus change tactics. Frenzied offensives became the norm amongst the previously retreating Dominatus. These attacks were so ferocious and sometimes damaging that they forced the ADC to stall temporarily, reinforce its lines and plan cautiously before proceeding. Unknown to the Allies, these last attacks were draining the very last of the Dominatus’ strategic reserves; if they had known how utterly desperate the Dominatus were, perhaps these furious, sometimes cataclysmic attacks, were indicators of the ADC’s nearby victory.

Dominatus “heroes” if they could be called as such demonstrated acts of valor comparable to the Allies’ own at the colossal Second Battle of Manticore. In the defense of the Stygian Gate, the offense at Terminus, and the Lanat campaign, they demonstrated an uncanny degree of tactical acumen and shrewdness hitherto not seen. But all in the Tyranny knew that the war had progressed to the point where there was simply no hope in winning through the proven methods of the past. One poem written shortly after some Dominatus archives were recovered after the war compared the Dominatus strategy to a professional army sacrificing itself in the hopes that a group of cultists could summon an angry god. Indeed by the end of the war, the Dominatus had succeeded in developing the TIAMAT as far as they could, and had prepared for an epic confrontation with all the forces they could muster at Demogorgon Prime, where the TIAMAT had been moved. The development had taken so long that it only had a chance of working when the Thanatos subsector had been breached, and paranoid Dominatus had destroyed their own naval Installation after developing the TIAMAT. It was obvious to all in the Tyranny, that in this last battle, quite literally everything would be decided.

The Heart of Darkness
Allied Intelligence had ascertained many things about Demogorgon Prime. Indeed, even without any reconnaissance, the majority of the facts pointed to an unsavory conclusion. In this last battle, the fate of the war would be decided. In this last battle, the Dominatus would deploy each and every last one of their forces. In this last battle, they would face the most defended system in the galaxy and the remnants of the Dominatus’ once thought unstoppable navy. To those allied commanders who had once planned for the defense of Mirenton or Alcanti when it was thought the Dominatus would batter through all of their defenses, they envisioned a system made fortress, one perhaps more defensible than the Dominatus sector capitals or Hypergates. But each one was prepared to pay the final price to exit the war.

Outside the Demogorgon system, the allies pooled an utterly gigantic fleet, one perhaps only exceeded in size by the one that battled at Manticore. The allies were perhaps at the economic and industrial breaking point due to the cost of waging such a titanic war in a foreign galaxy, but they stood poised to enter the ring one last time. Commanders recognized the time as one likely to never again occur. Speeches youths are forced to memorize were made that day as the most powerful militaries of the Gigaquadrant gathered one last time to descend on the Dominatus. Perhaps Emperor Wormulus’s speech entitled “Why?” in which he expounded on the DCP’s greatness.

Why are we here?

''It is not to form a new order! It is not to have material to boast about! It is not to prove ourselves to our superiors!''

''The current order is one we have created! We have planet-wide annals dedicated to the history of our supremacy! We have no superiors!''

Why are we here?

''It is because the Gigaquadrant has forgot why we are Plazith’s hegemon. It is because a rising power thought they could challenge us and wrest away our pre-eminence. It is because the Gigaquadrant is forgetful, and needs it burnt into its consciousness that the Delpha Coalition of Planet’s supremacy is not an ephemeral tumor brought by luck, but mandated by our destiny.''

Why are we here?

''It is not to fight the Dominatus. It is to fight the doubts that are perhaps present in the minds of those who have forgotten who we are. It is not to raze this miserable excuse of a planet to the ground, but to completely incinerate the thought that at any time in the future, history will forget about the Delphi Coalition of Planets. It is not to gain another war story, but to demonstrate to those who perhaps have not seen that such stories are regular to a civilization such as ours.''

Why are we here?

''It is because we are the linchpin of the current order for a reason. It is because we are a necessary force for order. It is because the Dominatus are but a hiccup in the vast march of history and we are the synchronized stomping of the boots.''

Why are we here?

''It is because the Dominatus have forgotten what exactly it means to fight the Delpha Coalition of Planets. It is because in their pride, they have thought themselves our equals. It is because they have forgotten why we will stand and they will fall.''

Why are we here?

Because we are order, and they are chaos.

Because we are civilization, they are barbarians.

Because we are destined to succeed, they are destined to fail.

Why are we here?

Why have we always been here?

Why will we always be here?

Because we are the Delpha Coalition of Planets.

But the volume of oratory gave way to the silence of prayer.

They prayed to their gods.

They prayed to themselves.

They prayed to fate.

They prayed to free will.

They prayed to technology.

They prayed to magic.

And in the vast darkness outside the Demogorgon system, their prayers floated aimlessly, looking blindly for answers.

Only tomorrow could the damned be separated from the blessed.

Tomorrow was Judgement Day.

Moment of Reckoning
It was a story that repeated itself numerous times before. An infinite armada of ships surging through the vast voids of space to a battle. The unceasing brutality and scale of the war had numbed even the most sensitive of souls to the unending horrors of a war against a mortal species that fancied themselves the masters of the gods themselves. Despite this, the cold and dried up scars which criss-crossed the skins, hides, and exoskeletons of the Tyranny’s myriad foes rustled with a burning fire that stood in stark contrast to the scabbed and necrotized flesh of ennui and callous monotony. For in this battle, they saw a doorway out of the several years of an eternity in hell.

They counted amongst themselves veterans of the colossal battles of the war. Veterans of such battles of the Deathstorm, of Invictus, of Manticore, of Terminus, and of countless other such meat grinders flew through the dark, uncaring void of space to smite their mortal enemy. Perhaps even the Junction, the unbelievably ancient power, more a force of nature and a fact of the universe than a civilization perhaps felt a tinge of emotion, one long denied to their jaded selves as fully appreciated the feast to come.

And on the other side of the vast void the Tyranny’s sensors displayed a fact seen on countless other monitors in the past - the might of the Gigaquadrant falling upon a single system. Who knows what the Allies would have felt if they had seen the Dominatus and their minions turn to the last god that they had faith in. This god was not the supposed cold rationalism and knowledge of their supremacy that had served as the basis of their condescension to supposedly lower races but instead the lunatic fanaticism and zealotry of a civilization whose fate hinged solely on a miracle.

In that desolate region of space, shrouded under the baleful eye of Demogorgon, the Dominatus stood watch. Perhaps in the few moments before Armageddon they paused to reflect on a time they had been plotting the victory parades that would take place after the conquest of Mirenton, Alcanti, Paris, among countless other Gigaquadrantic capitals. The most circulated book in the Tyranny, a fantastic and wishful alternate history imagined a conquest of Alcanti and the destruction and complete humiliation of Uriel. These giants had stood over mountains of dead enemy corpses in the individual embers of battle that constituted the initial campaigns against the Allies and had gorged themselves on the all-encompassing fear that they inspired in their enemies.

To most Dominatus, the most appetizing meal they had was not that in which pain and agony filled their enemies completely. This was insufficient. They needed their foes to fully acknowledge the superiority of the Tyranny. They needed their foes, to abandon hope and maoschistically embrace futility. Only when an enemy’s soul died, having fully submitted itself to the Dominatus did the ravaging of the enemy’s body give any pleasure. It was an almost orgasmic feeling for a Dominatus to see a once-strong foe cross the threshold into hopelessness and despair.

The oldest amongst the Dominatus, those who had fought during the Wars of Reunification had enough vision to acknowledge that this sense of futility and hopelessness was knocking at their door. Only the flimsy bastion provided by in the insane hope of the TIAMAT’s success prevented them from crossing this threshold. And they had delayed testing whether this bastion would hold up to the cold and inexorable march of reality. But the day had come in which they would have their moment of reckoning.

The storm had come.

Death Comes to Us All
The same words that described the carnage of battles such as Asphodel, Manticore, Terminus, the Deathstorm among others rang through in this final stanza of war. But all knew that they were writing the last lines in this long epic. This was, like every other invasion of an extremely important Dominatus location less a battle but more a tsunami crashing against a mountain. The Tyranny's twin flagships, the Infinity Class Titan Infinity and Ascendancy Class Ultracarrier Ascendancy arrogantly stood vigil over the incoming tide. They were the twin peaks of the Dominatus' last fleet, a motley selection of Mark 3s, Mark 2s, and stationary defense installations. Each wave was repulsed, but each wave gradually eroded the cliff.

The last 2 Dominatus Grand Admirals knew that they were simply holding a delaying action for the yet unseen TIAMAT to charge up. Indeed, they could see their fleet gradually diminish as the unending waves kept coming. Each passing second saw the blood-red shields of the Dominatus dissipate more and more. Each passing second saw the black and gold of the Supremhydron lost in the blinding light of the ADC's firepower. Each passing second saw the Dominatus navy become more and more of a memory than a fighting force.

This was not as much a battle against ADC but inevitability. The Dominatus navy knew that it was a dead man walking, slowly dragged by the chains of fate to the execution block. It struggled with all of its might, lit with the fiery determination of an animal backed into its last corner. It was obvious to all that this was a war with no quarter for any party. The Dominatus' nigh-magical weapons, made possible by their technological wizardry sounded less like the the mathematically perfect feats of unimaginably complex engineering but the last desperate shouts of a dying animal fending off the reaper.

Indeed the Dominatus seemed to scream and roar, not just at the ADC but at history. It was a roar demanding the universe remember the Tyranny. It was the Dominatus clinging to their delusional and genocidal narcissism and trying to etch a last legacy into a realm so dedicated to pushing them into the cold void of oblivion. They fought not just the incurable miasma of history but the conflagration of the hate of all those they had angered. But their shouts grew more stifled, more hoarse, as they choked on the results of their hubris. Their frantic movements, once those of organized resistance slowly but surely became the involuntary convulsions of a dying man.

There was nowhere to retreat too. There was no next battle. Only death. And even death itself denied the Dominatus solace. For each destroyed Dominatus ship and each dying Dominatus did not go into a rest knowing that it had served its duty and that history would remember their sacrifice. They went into the void tormented by the twin mistresses of anguish and uncertainty, the former a reminder that they had not destroyed enough of the enemy, and the latter a reminder that even if they had, it was most probable that the Dominatus would cease to exist.

The Dominatus tried to stand against the furious storm for as long as possible. They were a colossus of flesh and bone that stood at the epicenter of history taunting the whole universe. But Each hole made in the Dominatus line was a line that could not be filled. Each ship destroyed was once which was gone forever.Each bone broken, was one that would never again men. Each piece of skin ripped off by the maelstrom was one that would never again grow back. And with each sickening snap, and each flayed piece of skin, the Dominatus were forced to kneel, for even the most determined of men is unable to stand with broken knees and broken elbows.

But even kneeling, the Dominatus fleet did not give up. When it could not stand like a man, it moved like a furious but wounded dog, biting and barking furiously at the cold and unstoppable banshees of eternity. And when it could not move like a dog, it instead squirmed like a worm, trying to bite at the cold iron of fate's boot. But fate does not care for the determination and valor of those destined to be vanquished. The cold calculus of reality gives advantage is not swayed by pathos or ethos but simply logos.

It had become a sick cliche of this war that the ADC would suffer titanic casualties in any battle against a well-defended Dominatus position, and this was no different. But that did nothing to change the outcome. For the now worm-like Dominatus fleet was squashed slowly, painfully, and certainly by the march of history. Infinity imploded upon itself after having been built several months prior. Ascendancy descended unceremoniously into the void of space.

Time was not of consequence to anything but the TIAMAT. The battle unfolded in its preordained way. As was usual, the Allied fleet suffered monstrous losses. But for the first time, The Dominatus fleet was reduced to nothing more than a footnote in history. The once proud fleet that had menaced each galaxy of the Gigaquadrant was now simply an ever-changing fog of cosmic dust permeating itself throughout the system. The roar had been silenced, the fierce growl slowly having subsided into the death croaks of a gurgling corpse.

For all the Allies knew, they owned the space above Demogorgon Prime. To them, all that was left was a siege that would rhyme with the battle that had just concluded.

The Deluge
The ADC had prepared for the eventuality of a planetary invasion. It was a move made necessary by the Dominatus planetary shield, and beyond practicality, a move justified by its symbolism. Each and everyone of the ADC's constituent nations had a vision of their flag on the Tyrant's spire. Each and everyone of them had the same vision of the Dominatus' monuments purged from history. Each and everyone of them had a vision of the Dominatus consciousness, forged in the marble and steel of Malogenesis, the planet's capital, ripped from the annals of time.

The deluge was such that even with the almost impossible technological wizardry of the Domiantus shield, the skies were set aflame by the fury of the bombardment. Fire and light rained from the heavens replete with the screaming howls of countless strike craft buzzing about like a horde of locusts. But the damned on the ground did not for a second consider resignation to their fate. The planet shouted with defiance as the myriad anti-aircraft installations shouted back in defiance. Molten streams of metal traveling at near relativistic speeds impaled Allied craft, screeching missiles incinerated others while bolts of raw energy disintegrated yet more.

And yet as parts of the virtually endless swarm were incinerated, more flew down from above to fill in the gaps. But yet a darker, more pervasive, and less porous cloud appeared. The lowest layer of this cloud was one composed almost solely of prisoners, expendables, and other such undesirables. Indeed the DCP had conspired to punish races and empty some of its prisons by transferring a multitude of prisoners from their cells to landing craft. Indeed the sheer weight of numbers and the wide spaces involved meant that a large amount of these craft eventually hit the ground, only to be pummeled mercilessly by the almost city-sized bastions of the Dominatus.

One can imagine the horror an an average infantryman felt upon landing. To get out of the landing craft alive was to be greeted by the sight of burning skies from which countless angels fell to the gnawing mouths of the hell below. And if one survived past that sight, it was to be greeted by the unweclome sight of the sheer power of the Dominatus military installations. Spires several kilometers tall, nestled in city-wide citadels formed the centerpiece of the Dominatus defense. These utterly massive fortresses could cause catastrophic levels of damage to landing zones with a single barrage, and arrogantly stood with a nigh-omniscient view of the entire battlefield. Beyond these spires stood numerous other bastions, town-sized installations that towered over the landscape. These sentinels gazed down upon the tiny allied soldiers and without so much a thought banished them from existence. The smallest such defenses were cathedral sized bunkers which marked the god-forsaken land. While lacking in the raw firepower of their larger brethren, they were dispersed such that the average allied trooper was always perfectly exposes. The overlapping killzones meant cover against one bunker was simply the firing line of another, and as the day would show, only the piles of dead ADC troops would provide any sort of cover.

And perhaps for the more average species of the ADC, one can imagine the ensuing horror they felt upon being hit, even by indirect fire. For the all encompassing body suits or power armor to be breached meant full exposure to the maddening environment of Demogorgon Prime. It was to see ones skin scourged by the ravages of heat, or frost, or a poisonous fog. It was for a small wound to fester with the radioactive and chemical waste that permeated the evil fog. It was for still living men to be consumed from the inside out by the parasitic and invasive flies that constituted the lowest rung of the planet's food chain. But the cries of men eaten alive from within by the mutated abominations that populated Demogorgon Prime were drowned out by the cacophony above. The arbiters above had no thought for mercy or respite, and the pleas below were only assuaged after the gentle shepherd of death ended the torture.

The first waves were always damned. They were never meant to accomplish anything against the Dominatus defenses. They were merely there to serve as bait.

Tip of the Spear
Above the carnage below, the Allies prepared for the next phase of the offensive. The objective was to damage the Dominatus bunker system enough so that it would no longer preclude the possibility of landing heavier equipment. The Allies were thus forced to rely solely on elite ground forces in conjunction with air support to take these bastions. The usual suspects were involved - DCP Ultra Troopers and Legionnaires, Draconis Marines, Wraith Legionnaires, and Blood Dragons, French Parachutistes, Fordanta, ISF Paladins, ULE Commandos and Cybertroopers, the Junction’s monstrosities among others. But in this battle, the Olympians of the Enlightenment Collaborative were also deployed at the tip of the spear. These fearsome troopers, each designed as a counter to the Tyranny’s monstrous Overseer legions had seen action in the later stages of Mirus during the conquest of the Overseer Citadels and little else. Even then, they had played second fiddle to the non-Mirusian powers of the Allies. This, at the time, was warranted due to the relative inexperience of the Olympians though it still caused significant resentment amongst the more prideful of Olympian Creeds. At Sybaris, for example, the Solar Siblings and their Arhat Elegant'e has refused to do battle alongside the reformed Sons of Hedon Template Hedon Morillium. At Hunn, the Storm Strikers were nearly wiped out when they struck out alone to claim the head of the Horsemen of Destiny's Template, Nephillheim, and would only be saved by the intervention of the nigh-immortal and at that instance quite mad Phase-Hunter. In the aftermath of the battle for Masoch, the Tartarian Arbiters had nearly clashed with the Katarian armies fighting alongside them for failing to reinforce them, arguing that this had been a deliberate move to keep them out of the final section of the operation, though in reality the Aeoneonatrix fleet en route to their position had vanished alongside the entire Aeoneonatrix Empire. At the time of the battle for Demogorgon Prime however, this problematic behavior had been stamped out by rapidly mounting experience. Finally, the Collaborative found an opportunity to deploy its best at the very tip of the spear.

The Mirusians, save for perhaps the ULE had always been considered auxiliary troops by the rest of the Gigaquadrantic hyperpowers and superpowers which constituted the ADC. Even when they were assigned to frontline combat after linking up with the ADC, they did not receive the assignments or the rewards that similarly accomplished ADC troopers received. All that would change during the battle for Demogorgon Prime, during which Barda Clett had pleaded successfully that the Olympians could stand alongside the very best of the ADC in a fight against a once thought unstoppable foe.

Epizoume Toicho of the Celestial Hoplites stood in the assault bay of his personalized Stormstrike Hover Carrier waited intently for the order to attack. He was personally charged with leading the assault on the Dominatus command post bunker overlooking a key Mendel Pact War-Guardianship site. The Shock Troopers of Cicoluis needed that command post cleared before they could deploy the brunt of their armored divisions, and early attempts at landing had been thwarted by the sheer power and accuracy of the Dominatus artillery. It was up to three Arhats and their elite retinues to clear out this command bunker, one significantly better defended than the average defense bunker, so as to clear the way.

The viewport he looked out of gave him a vision of a world seemingly designed to kill him. He had only heard reports of the carnage below. He could only see it through the footage provided to him as an officer, the looks of anguish on the faces of his fellow commanders who, if not on the ground, saw their forces virtually exterminated by the Dominatus defenses. Epizoume Toicho, the first full Olympian, had killed dozens of Dominatus in duels, and many more of the overseers and beyond that many more of their synthetic war machines. Raballut Ulthoon of the Knights Ultima, the passenger of the ship to his right, had fought against a Dominatus Sovereign Executor and survived. Alphahpla of the Shrouded Slayers, presumably the passenger of the ship to his left, had kept his deployments to secret that even the Tyranny’s infamously efficient Terpeschoire Spy Network could not pinpoint them. It was a rare feat that put them in the same league as the most utterly powerful of ADC fighters, and one they took pride in. But perhaps Epizoume’s biggest claim to fame was having survived the first-wave assault on the Dominatus stronghold of Krieg, its northernmost sector capital. But even a warrior of his caliber, and a leader of such a brood remembered with sadness what being part of the first wave was like.

In Epizoume’s mind, it was to walk through a literal meat grinder while being shot at from all sides, it was to talk through plains on which not rain fell, but fallen landing craft and artillery shells, and it was to take shelter in the mounds of the corpses of ones comrades so as to have a brief respite from the slaughter. Each minute counted - the earlier he captured the command post, the earlier his allies could be saved from such a horrid fate. Epizoume Toicho could not accept the plight of the average War-Guardian, Clone Soldier or Biotic Trooper, to be killed before having fired a shot at the monsters who burnt their worlds and desecrated their culture. He could not accept that the Dominatus did not even consider the Collaborative to be equals of their other foes. He could not accept that the Dominatus, a constant reminder of the continuing nightmare, still breathed.

As Arhats, the most well-trained idividuals the Collaborative could deploy, Epizoume Toicho, Raballut Ulthoon and even Alphahpla led from the front. They were at the very tip of the spear, the first ships in the Olympian wedge. Theirs were the first to fall through the heavens into the hell of Demogorgon Prime. Theirs were the first wracked by the hungry winds and vicious lightning of the planet. Theirs were the first ships to initiate evasive maneuvers as they neared the target. The ablative cover of non-Olympian landers and other such strike craft provided them some respite, but the sheer power of Dominatus anti-air began taking its toll amongst their rapidly moving landing craft. The wedge split up, each contingent going to its assigned bunker, and at this moment, Ulthoon put them all on the speaker to inspire them. Such had always been his way, a moment of reprieve before the run trough the gauntlet, a moment to remind his troops -to remind himself- for what they fought.

''Olympians, what do you see before you? Is it the volcanic hell that is Vestibon, one of the triple wombs from which the Dominatus abominations sprang forth? Is it the arrogance of the Dominatus, made into stone and steel by their technological wizardry? Is it an ever-lasting insult to our dignity of our civilization? An insult that if not addressed is a lasting indictment on who we are as a people? The Dominatus are a repudiation for all that we stand for! They are a vile beast that cannot be reasoned with, and today, we have the opportunity to rid the Gigaquadrant of this monstrosity.''

''Look at the hellish swamps below you. They are made of mud. They are made of mesh. They are made of bone. They are made of flesh. Our comrades wither and rot because these bunkers yet stand. If you were to see the look of sorrow on a general’s face, the suffocated moans for help of a War-Guardian, or the clipped wings of a Biotic lander, you would recognize that we have the most important task of the invasion.''

''Today the Gigaquadrant grants us an entrance to the grand stage. We have but a change to prove ourselves not just as warriors, but as a nation. We are here to send out the message that we have arrived. We have arrived as a nation of warriors, dedicated to the consecration of all that is right and just. We have arrived as Olympians, the ambassadors of the Collaborative. For it is through us today that those above will judge our civilization. We have arrived as liberators of the galaxy, from slavery to the Dominatus, from slavery to terror, from slavery to the rampant abuse of unholy power, from the tyranny of Demogorgon Prime, from the perversity of twisted science, and from a nightmare.''

It is by our hand, and by our hand alone, that these shackles are broken.

It is by our hand, and by our hand alone, that we cast off these chains.

It is by our hand, and by our hand alone, that the oppressed defeat the oppressors.

Thus all Tyrants Die!

The anti-aircraft fire had taken its toll, but the Olympians had reached their position. They leaped off their transports to the bunkers below. It was as if vengeful angels were descending from heaven to smite the demons below. It was not only the elite retinues of the Ahrats themselves who descended, seismic spears, power longswords and energy dirks pointed at the ground below. They were supposed by the full weight of Olympian airpower - while Stormstrikes, Blitzwinds, and Talonbolts swept in to directly provide cover for troops on the ground, Shockravens, Thundereagles, and even Typhoonphoenixes loosed their deadly payloads on the Dominatus positions. Dominatus Arachne Class Mecha, specifically made for fire support and air support contested these skies, and they barked in deadly symphony with the Dominatus’ stationary AA defenses against the aerial onslaught above.

Epizoume and his Creed descended like comets upon the earth. Their numbers thinned due to the sheer weight of Anti-Aircraft Fire, which not even their escorts nor other forces in the battle could fully distract, but each passing second saw them get closer and closer to the top of the bunker. A blazing meteor of gold with artisan-etched markings of vibrant green, the sacred colors of the Enlightenment Collaborative, his golden aspis a blazig protective disk held in front of him, his trident crackling with earth-scattering force, Epizoume Toicho prepared as his Immortal guard entered firing range of the Dominatus troops below.

Still screaming from the heavens, the Epizoume’s Immmortals opened fire using their Aegis disk launchers on the Dominatus synthetics below. In return they received the full firepower of the Dominatus infantry garrisoning the bunker. Annihilator Variant Chiliarchs, the most commonly found heavy weapons users in the Tyranny, opened fire with gatling railgun and mini-MHD cannons. Slugs of insanely accelerated metal and molten streams of transuranium fired at relativistic rates took their toll amongst the heavily armored Hoplites, who despite their heavy and advanced armor were still not invulnerable to heavy Domintus infantry ordnance. Their response, however, was equally devastating. It seemed that the wrath of all of the Collaborative had fallen upon the Dominatus, and the Dominatus were reeling. The initial salvo of disk launcher fire took its toll, but only in the aftermath of the frenzied onslaught of spear, longsword and dirk use that followed the seismic impact of the combined landing of all three Olympian Creeds did the Dominatus forces begin retreating from the rooftop.

Ulthoon himself, leader of his Creed, cleaved a Dominatus Daemon-Class mecha in two. The leader of the rooftop’s garrison, the fearsome, 15 meter tall Apex Daemon known as Charon was so heavily armed that each of his barrages killed groups of the Celestial Hoplites and Knights Ultima alike, despite their advanced powered armor. Ulthoon thought this to be an unacceptable, and in one slash of his falchions, immobilized the synthetic beast by wrecking its hip joints. Charon turned his full firepower upon Ulthoon, but the enhanced Volver effortlessly dodged this and with the insane agility and strength befitting of an Ahrat, leapt into the air and with all his might, forced his falchions through Charon’s face, before boosting downwards and cleaving the mecha in half.

Having secured the rooftop, the Creeds split up as the Olympians proceeded downwards and medical craft took the scores of wounded back. Only their enhanced constitutions prevented the wounded from succumbing to the fearsome environment of the planet, as their bodies resisted the massive flies that seemed out new hosts. Proceeding to the corridors below, they encountered some of the Tyranny’s more powerful synthetic soldiers. The Excubitors, veteran Chiliarchs transferred to newer and stronger bodies, contested their advance.

The Excubitor’s most common weapon was the SERSMME Multi-Stage-Projectile Rifle. Created for use against the DCP’s Commandoes, and the Draconid Imperium’s marines, its main design specification was that one shot be able to penetrate both the shielding and the armor and then completely destroy the soldier inside. Against such a fearsome weapon, many of the Celestial Hoplites succumbed. But emboldened by the presence of their Ahrat and propelled by the heroism and courage befitting of the Olympians, they rapidly closed the gap, slaughtering the Excubitors in close ranged combat.

The sounds of gunfire and swords on steel tore through the corridors of the baroque and sinister bunker, but even with the increasingly dire death toll, the Hoplites pushed on to the command room. It was perhaps lightly defended by comparison, the rest of the garrison having been eliminated it and the Hoplites cleared it out with ease. But before they could celebrate, they found themselves assaulted by Akemainyu himself. Akemainyu had himself heard of the Hoplites and their countertactics to his Eternal Guard. Thus he felt the urgent need to skewer Epizoume Toicho on his beam katana and had teleported to the bunker using its internal teleporter.

The Hoplites were alerted to his coming with the faint screams of Angels split in half by the ludicrously powerful katana. Crafted by the Dominatus themselves in credit for Akemainyu’s service, it was almost as if the Hoplites’ armor and shielding, the pride of the Olympians and the Collaborative, was nothing but tissue paper in the face of such a ludicrously powerful foe. Even alone, Akemainyu seemed vaguely unstoppable. The corridors presented such an environment that the monster couldn’t be flanked, and his onyx black armor was splattered only with the remains of the Hoplites.

Epizoume Toicho raced forwards to confront this monstrosity and eventually found him in a corridor, having pulverized the head of one of Epizoume Toicho’s veteran Immortals by stomping. Incensed by such a callous show of force, Epizoume sprinted towards the towering Mahanyan monster, which let loose such a massively powered wave of energy from his katana that even Epizoume was thrown back. Akemainyu them charged towards Epizoume, sword held high. It was only barely that Epizoume was able to begin parrying the abominable foe’s strikes and even then, with each parry he was forced back.

After some fighting, Akemainyu had pushed Epizoume to a wall, and kicked him against it with such force that he scattered the Ahrat’s armor and flung the enhanced Soldarian through segments of the wall. Amused, he walked to the now prone Epizoume Toicho and stomped down on the Ahrat’s chest while holding his katana high for a final strike. The weight of his foot prevented Epizoume from moving before he condescendingly taunted the Arhat of the Celestial Hoplites, the one that was supposedly trained from birth to be his better, one last time.

Akemainyu - ''I was wrong in having thought you a challenge. Any last words, worm?''  Epizoume - Thus all Tyrants Die!

Akemainyu chuckled before bringing his blade down. But right at the midway point, Epizoume swung his shield to block Akemainyu’s crushing boot and flung his trident upwards into Akemainyu’s eye. Roaring in pain, Akemainyu let one hand off his katana to rip out the trident. Grabbing it as if it was a large toothpick, he slowly took it out of his left eye socket before chuckling again. But midway through this chuckle, Epizoume drew another weapon and implanted this kopis squarely into the arrogant Mahanayan’s skull through the provided opening. Bristling with energy, the kopis incinerated the Mahanayan from the head down as Akemainyu’s screams were overpowered with the iridescence of the Celestial Hoplite Arhat’s weapons, henceforth to be amongst the most revered relics of his Creed. Soon, all that was left of the towering 8.5 meter tall Overseer Template was a pile of goop inside broken black armor.

Epizoume Toicho had defeated one of the most powerful of the Dominatus’ templates, and successfully cleared the bunker. Wounded and exhausted, he was dragged by an alarmed Raballut Ulthoon and an expressionless Alphahpla as well as the remainder of his Immortals to the rooftop above. There, on the cathedral-sized bastion did he finally see the fruits of their collective labor. Yes, they had paid the price in extremely heavy casualties, but through the efforts of the Olympians, the War-Guardian landing zones, specifically those of the Shock Troopers of Cicoluis were much less hotly contested, and they could start bringing down the big guns. The Olympians had proven that they could stand with the Gigaquadrant’s foremost powers as equals in combat, and from that day on, no ADC commander would consider the Mirusians as anything else but equals in the field of combat.

On Fire We Fly
To Kyrennus Varus Savenior, stepping inside the belly of an AO-8 dropship was nothing new. The veteran of dozens of combat drops even prior to the Dominatus War, he was truly personified the dignified experience and animal ferocity of the Talon Marines. Clad from wing to wing in some of the best armor that the Aetheral Talon Body could afford him, he took each step slowly and somberly as he entered the dropship for the last time. As the doors closed, he took a final breath before awaiting the order to drop.

Even with air dominance, landing upon a Dominatus fortress world was a risky undertaking. It was for a skilled pilot to dart like a madman through barrages of anti-air fire that close-air-support struggled to take out. It was for a marine to fight the biological and cybernetic monstrosities of a civilization that justifiably threatened an entire Gigaquadrant on open ground. It was to know that the encounter would end in either victory or death. Even though Kyrennus was familiar with these grim realities, and even though he was amongst the most well-trained of the Gigaquadrant's professional soldiers, his mind always found a way to drift.

Perhaps it drifted to memories of his homeworld. Perhaps it drifted to memories of previous campaigns prior to the Dominatus War. Not this day. As he looked to the camera-ports and remebered the strategic maps showing the disposition of the baroque and cyclopean Dominatus bunkers, he remembered an operation that though past, was seared permanently into his memory. Looking at the god-forsaken world beneath him, his mind flitted to a similar memory - the assault on Sybaris.

...

Corporal Kyrennus looked out at the camera-ports as he pondered his mission. Orders had come from a senior figure high command that contingents from his legion would be assigned to a critical mission. Details were sparse and released on a need-to-know basis, but Kyrennus knew that it would involve infiltrating the production lines of the Sons to recover the Ultima Servilis serum. While in his craft, he reviewed likely scenarios as well as the foes he would probably have to face.

After the fall of Invictus, command of the Sons of Hedon had been shared by its three most powerful Praetors: Sodom, Gommorah, and Moloch. During the Mirus Campaign, each had received extensive modifications and enhancements with effects which reflected the atrocities they had each committed during the Andromeda Campaign. Sodom, who had committed unspeakable crimes involving eating and consumption of Andromedans had turned into little more than a maliciously intelligent mass of teeth, tongues, and jaws held together in the shape of a Draconis. Gommorah, who had committed numerous crimes of the flesh, had turned into a seething mass of tentacles and tendrils clad in the almost impervious armor of an Overseer Praetor under the command of an appallingly sick but commensurately capable mind. But first among equals, both in power, and sheer evil was Moloch.

Despite having fallen from their pre-eminence after the fall of Invictus, and then later on during Archon Stahl’s reforms, the Sons still represented one of the most frightening foes faced by the Anti-Dominatus Coalition.The defeat at Invictus and their inability to eliminate Uriel as well as Medusa’s death had seen them lost their often envy-inducing position of prestige. However, it was a foolish man who presumed that any of this led to a loss in either combat effectiveness or sheer bowel-inducing terror. The Sons were recipients of some of the earliest Overseer enhancement programs : vehicles and exoskeletons created specifically for Overseer use were often first tested by them, and they often provided the first volunteers for the yet untested second-stage enhancements given to Overseers.

Overseers of the later stages of the Mirus Campaign were very different from those in the first stages of the Dominatus War. The combination of second-stage biological and cybernetic enhancements, even more advanced  equipment and armor, and years of experience as well as doctrinal changes meant that the overseers that survived, while not nearly as numerous as those which had gone forth in the Tyranny’s extragalactic campaigns, were potent enough that more often than not, they were considered one man armies. Indeed, in their latest form, Overseers were encountered considerably less frequently, but when they were, the ADC often considered the squads which had made first contact to be dead men walking. Whereas at the start of the war, this was mostly due to the sheer novelty and shock  of the Overseers as much as for their power, now it was simply because

For a squad of elite shock troopers such as Draconis Marines, who while formidable, were not super soldiers, to come up on top against a few Sons of Hedon was considered a rare event. In this manner, the men under Kyrennus command had distinguished themselves as amongst the few who could be counted to perform admirably well against the Sons through a combination of skill, creativity, and pure luck. It was for this reason that after Uriel had ordered the ITN Marines to secure a copy of the Ultima Servilis Serum for Draconis on Sybaris, that Kyrennus’ men had come to the top of the recommended list.

Kyrennus was a veteran of many a landing, and had seen many a planet. However, Sybaris seemed different - it was less a planet and more the delusional fantasy of a deranged and insane epicurean given nigh-infinite resources. It was a planet defined by rampant and wanton excess - the complete and utter lack of balance on the world. Kyrennus' target was the single most opulent palace in the entire planet, a sprawling citadel formerly occupied by Hedon Morilium himself. One in which gold was considered the least valuable material, decorated in patterns that took the Draconis proclivity for the arts to an obscene extreme. Kyrennus had to rapidly shake himself from the twisted mirage. At least the aphordisiac-like perfume that defined the atmosphere of the world was partially burnt away by orbital bombardment and the dust plumes of mass Talon Ground Legion landings, while the saccharine symphonies emanating from the ground were drowned out by the sounds of mass shelling. If they were not, Kyrennus may have very well been tempted to take off his helmet and plummet to the ground.

Steeling his mind, he turned back to the task at hand - his men would find the Ultima Servilis Serum. Another team would disable the fortresses' main power supply, and another would cover the exfiltration. High Command had repeatedly stressed that this was a stealth mission and that confrontation with Overseers was to be avoided if possible. To this end, the teams had been equipped with the most advanced camouflage and dampening technologies the Andromedan Commonwealth had access to. They had also been given anti-tank armaments in case of any unavoidable circumstances. Slipping beneath the sensors in their stealthy AO-8 variant, they landed on a rooftop and began deploying.

While most drops would have had Kyrennus and his squad hopping from the AO-8 and softly descending on afterburners, the maximum stealth requirement made this option inappropriate. Instead ,and to maintain maximum stealth, the craft hovered above one of the palace's rooftops. High enough so that the crew could safely jump down without assisted technology. Landing softly, the 15-man marine team quietly moved to the closest access hatch. With a laser cutter, one of the marines cut away the door from the lock. Opening the hatch softly, they descended one by one into the palace's interior, ducking for any form of cover as each one dropped through into the unknown realm.

Kyrennus and his troops had grown accustomed to the baroque and cyclopean interiors of Dominatus fortresses. But upon entering the hallways, they were instantly assaulted by a crass gaudiness to which previous experiences could not compare. Kyrennus himself had to reprimand his troops and remind them that they were quite literally in the belly of the beast as they advanced.

The gaudy decorations interior did not get any easier to bear as the team moved though the hallways. The team split up to some degree, staying close but making use of alternate hallways to spread themselves out on the way towards what intelligence would identify as laboratory storage. At every corner, soldiers ducked, checked for signs of patrols before calling their companions to follow them as they slipped silently down the hallways. The noise-cancelling modifications to their gear allowed them to slip around unheard, on a few occasions a crossing had to duck into adjacent and generally empty rooms to avoid a patrol.

As they descended, it became apparent this was more than a recovery mission, it was an education on the twisted abominations the Dominatus had planned to install as masters of Andromeda. Bunks and bedrooms were one thing, closer to the ground level the squad had on occasion ducked into dens where at first glance were abnormal prisoner pens. Later discovering the submissive nature of these docile occupants were perhaps of the most unfortunate kind of prisoner, servants to the aberrant creatures that called such a twisted domain a place of comfort.

The mission came first, and these souls would have to wait until the structure was liberated of its original owner for any hope of freedom. The soldiers resolved to continue on their mission.

They felt themselves get closer and closer to the laboratories and vats. It was not just intelligence that told them they were getting nearer, but an unnatural uneasiness that gnawed at them more and more as they went on. They enter a room that stank with rotten and unnatural flesh, with unsuccessfully fused alloys and bone, with wings torn in half by the weight of augmentations. It was a room that echoed with cracks and drips and what almost seemed to be screams from mouthless heads.

Although sealed from the stench in their hermetically sealed suits of armour, a few of the marines began to choke ,moving their arm to their faces. One of them, of enlisted rank, had broken formation to observe one of the piles. With gentle kicks to move the mound of aggregate flesh and metal, they looked back to their partners.

Marine - What exactly did they put their own kind through? Fireteam Leader - ''Does it matter? It's bad enough they have been killing our own and dragging them to a living nightmare, now they're slaughtering their own for the sake of a stronger being.'' Marine - It's a total mess if you ask me. Other Marine - Praise to that.

Perhaps Draconis stealth fooled even the enhanced Sons of Hedon, but a nightmarish bark vaguely reminiscent of that a Sarshaan emitted sent chills down the spines of the marines. For a Sarshaan to be present meant that one of the Equites Ferrum was present. It was a situation that Draconis marines were trained almost explciitly to avoid - a 16 meter long enhanced Sarshaan clad in armor ridden by an Imperator of the Sons of Hedon was not exactly a foe that the marines wished to fight. The beast sniffed and paced as it tried to ascertain the location of the marines, who were forced to acknowledge that they had a fight on their hands.

With silent hand gestures, the marines spread themselves out across the room, hoping the Sarshaan would miss them. Communicating though their built in comms, their voices dampened by the padding an plating that insulated them from the foul air and fouler smell, concerned what to do. In days past this creature was mounted cavalry. Mutated by the twisted science of the Dominatus and ridden by a veteran of this depraved Overseer legion, observations put tis creature as an easy match for armoured vehicles. Bringing grenades, explosive rounds and explosive packaging, the anti-armour weaponry that had hoped not to use would be their best option.

But to shock the beast they had a plan - the foul air was perfect for an incendiary, and although they were close to the objective, they assumed the Sons would design this chamber so as to not allow the foul air to escape. Ready at the four corners of the room, marines tossed incendiary grenades into the air, exploding around the Sarshaan and igniting the foul gases that lingered in the air surrounding them into fireballs.

The beast and its rider rose up as the flames engulfed them. Of course, the Tyranny's armor meant that a fireball would only shock the beast and burn the paint, but pure animal instinct meant that the beast rose up on its hindlegs to roar, exposing its relatively unarmored belly to the Draconis marines. As the beast reared, some of the marines behind it fired magnetically-propelled rounds, designed to pierce dense armour, into the gaps in the pits of its legs. On the front, other soldiers did similar, aiming for important locations in the creature's anatomy. Modified by dark sciences or not, this beast behaved much the same as smaller versions documented extensively by the Draconis. Some of the marines might have even known how to ride one in more civilian circumstances, all in all, knowing where to hit. The rounds impacted and blew out 2 of the creatures legs as well as some of its vital organs. The internal explosions blasted those limbs off while throwing the rider off. The creature however, reacted by limping with an almost prenatural speed to the nearest marine, and while bleeding, swallowed the marine whole before roaring in triumph.

The marines responded with more rounds. Fireteam leaders tossed adhesive grenades to squadmates who then tossed them at the beast. Companions of the engulfed marine resorted to concentrated fire in the beast's belly. All but two moved and fired almost forgetting about the cast-off rider. The beast roared and limped, using its tail to swat a marine with such force that his armor cracked. The rider had come to his senses and began to advance on the marines. However, the marines had created such a potent killzone that the Imperator was within seconds, hit by two anti-tank rounds, severely wounding him. The beast on the other hand, was fighting a losing battle as its regenerative abilities were insufficient to deal with the seemingly never ending barrage of grenades and anti-tank shells. The rider was only able to get a single fatal shot off with his massive sonic carbine before he was killed by yet another barrage, while the beast's remaining legs were blown off, rendering it mere target practice for the marines.

Despite their victory, the marines had paused to consider the casualties they had suffered in the surprise attack - the engulfed marine was a crushed and half-digested mess of armor, blood, and bone. The one swatted to the wall was paralyzed due to the sheer impact and was only mobile due to the sheer resilience of the suit's internal servomotors. The one shot at by the rider was less a man and more a slurry of organic fluid pouring out of two holes on either side of his armor. There was a silence at the surveyed losses. While the marine who had hit the wall had survived, made mobile only by the mechanisms in his armour's limbs, the two other marines were unrecoverable. Marines had managed to cut open the beast's belly and extract the half-digested body, his ID tags were partially melted but were roughly legible, while the empty armour, although punctured and its occupant no longer recogniseable, the compartment where his tags were held was largely intact. Counting their losses they took a moment to reflect - Kyrennus was a veteran against the horrors the Dominatus had produced, but pulling though each encounter cleanly with monstrosities like the Overseers never got any easier. He never made it public, but sometimes he wished for the days when a neutralisng shot did not completely destroy the body. But that is an easy thing to dream, as courtesy was rarely seen on a true battlefield.

The troops continued through the gateway at the other end of the room and entered what could only be described as something spawned from their most feverish nightmares. As one of the larger Overseer legions, the production and enhancement facilities of the Sons of Hedon were some of the largest in the entire Tyranny. The vats beneath Hedon's fortresses were an industrialised orchestra of biological perversion. As the troops pensively walked through the abominable building, they saw the Sons at all levels of enhancement. Newborn Draconis clones were first pumped with the first installment of the Ultima Servilis serum. There nascent wings were then eviscerated with scientifc precision before being replaced by synthetically engineered polymers. Other Sons at different stages saw their bones pulverized and replaced with a lace made of synthetically engineered carbon nanotubes. Regardless, everywhere they looked, the marines could see comatose Draconis, if they could even be called that, operated on by a mad symphony of surgical machines and test tubes which pumped only Lifefather knew what into them. And for some were not really comatose - Kyrennus could see their faces distort in unspeakable agony as mouths that were sewn shut refused to open. But perhaps the most disturbing part were the live vivisections that took place. Kyrennus was a hardened man, but he could only balk as surgical machines tore open Draconis who were kept alive only by the Dominatus' perverted technology and had their internal organs replaced. Sybaris was one of the last Overseer Citadels to be taken, and he had heard reports through the ADC grapevine of the horrors one would face, but everywhere he looked, he was still faced with the numbness associated not just with staring into the Dominatus abyss, but diving head first.

There were mutterings throughout the squad. Soldiers looked away, others tried to keep down their rations. Squad leaders occasionally received requests of “permission to regurgitate rations, sir" from queasy soldiers. Kyrennus’ officers knew it easily: They had stepped into a realm of nightmares, a place where not even the darkest of horror stories could ever put to words. Then one of Kyrennus’ sergents spoke.

Marine - Corporal, this place should be reduced to ruins. Kyrennus - That's not our mission, sergeant.

The sergeant stopped. Through his helmet he glared with disgust at his commander.

Sergeant - ''Not our mission? Look around you sir! If this war doesn't end every aberrant around us is an enemy.'' Kyrennus - The priority is intel recovery sergeant, when the ground forces clear the frontline and secure the fortress, we can deal with these...

Kyrennus paused - what word describes the monstrosities he was looking at?

Kyrennus - ''Well I don't know what to call them. They're certainly not Draconis.'' Sergeant - ''They don't deserve a name. They're tyranny bioweapons, no need to go giving them monikers.''

"Names hold power" as the ancients texts say. To give something a name is to give it an identity. There were military codes for hostile entities of all kinds. A proper name? Words could not describe how vile and perverse the vat creatures were - to give them a name was to recognise them as something more than a weapon of flesh.

Almost immediately after this conversation, they stumbled upon a vial of Draconis Ultima Servilis serum that had not yet been injected into a proto-son. Taking it out, they soon noticed the lights go out - the other squad had obviously done their job of taking out the power supply. Remembering their orders, they made their way back in the pitch black darkness of the citadel. Kyrennus could not believe that they had accomplished their mission - against the Dominatus, things were never as simple or easy as they first seemed. But today it seemed, they had seen the very worst of the Dominatus military machine, and after this, they could see nothing worse.

The marines maintained a level of professionalism at all cost. The more experienced marines knew that they were only half-done: Now they had their objective, sealed away in a back-mounted storage compartment Kyrennus had attached to his armour, now they had to leave. They needed to return to the rooftop, using the darkness to ease their escape.

As on their way in, the marines spread out, covering multiple corridors. They had priority item on them, and keeping scattered not only reduced the chances of a patrol finding the entire team, but only one of several teams - if discovered - had the serum.

All seemed to be proceeding as planned. But then, the communications channels blazed with a scream from the team assigned to destroying the power supply. And then a barrage of fire from the marines. But the fire made an impact only on the walls of the citadel. But the walls seemed to respond with a laugh, if it could be called that, that sounded across all the communications channels of the squads involved. It was less a laugh, and more the anguished screams of dozens of Andromedans and ADC personnel from all ages and walks of life. It was a laugh that boomed over the more panicked fire of the marines. It was a chorus of screams that was joined by another, and another, as more of the marines succumbed to a foe that was moving too fast for them to see. But through this chorus, one could hear the panicked attempts of the other squad leader's attempts to reorganize and figure out how to deal with the threat. But even soldiers as professional as the marines could not keep up completely steel discipline against what seemed to be an invincible and sinister force of nature.

Kyrennus desperately attempted to establish contact with the picked-off squads. Each channel was accompanied by screams and gunfire. With hand gestures and comms code, Kyrennus ordered for his squad to engage combat synchronisation. In a blink, Kyrennus was able to see the video feeds of his squad leaders alongside his own. There was no hint as to what the assailant was, but it was fast and was picking off marines one by one.

Almost as Kyrennus had established contact, it seemed that the monster decided that it was time to be serious.In but a few moments, Kyrennus saw the linked monitors of the other squad's marines go off in quick succession. In fact, the marines were neutralized at such a rate that the screams did not subside before they were joined by new ones. It seemed like only a moment after the team leader, the squad's last remaining member had cursed at the unseen foe was his helmet removed by what seemed to be a tendril and pointed at the terrified face of the marine. It was through the night vision of his helmet did Kyrennus see an image that would accompany him for the rest of his life. Held immobile, the marine cursed and screamed while two massive hands held his face in place. It was then it seemed a massive array of twisted biological implements - living saws, scalpels, and tendons seemed to emerge from the marine's assailant., Kyrennus saw as slowly, this surgical nightmare blazed with a dark energy and scraped off the still-living marine's face. Most disturbingly, Kyrennus saw as the still emoting face seemed to get absorbed by the implements, flowing to the edge of the immense wing at the edge of the visor. All Kyrennus could hear was the new laugh, a chorus of anguished screams that had gained a new member. And then, before the comms went dark, he heard the monster speak for the first time. The frenzied and tortured mass screamed in unison.

??? - Kyrennus, I'm coming.

Gritting his teeth there was no time for subtlety. With anyone left, Kyrannus ran - his pace assisted by the motors in his armoured limbs. The marine's death scarred him deeply, the screams raced though his mind both hearing the screams echo though the halls and remembering what he just saw. In his escape he hoped none of the other Sons would get in his way - if there were any - and moved with haste to reach the marines guarding the extraction point.

The mad dash almost drew the fire of the marines guarding the corridor to the dropzone, where their AO-8 was waiting for them, but almost as soon as they passed into the AO-8, they heard a similar sinister sound.

Kyrennus - Get this brick airborne, now now now!

The panicked shouting and the malicious laugh gave way to the flapping of giant wings. The marines in the corridor let loose a fearsome salvo of advanced weapons-fire, and relief swept through them as the flapping stopped.

Kyrennus could only see through the camera-ports of the AO-8 in the midst of the lift-off sequence as a moving tornado of wings, an unnaturally long whip, and a massive battleaxe burst through the marines in the corridor. The pitch black darkness gave away only screams and the sound of the rampage itself. Kyrennus watched alarmed as the abomination tore through the elite marine barricade as if it was nothing. As the lift-off sequence neared completion, he questioned what kind of monster was capable of such damage and sadism. It was then that, quite literally, speaking of the devil lead to its summoning.

In the illuminated rooftop, Kyrennus finally bore witness to the force that had exterminated two squads. It was a towering Draconis, perhaps taller than even Hedon himself with the ancillary augmentations and appendages that crowded the beast. Its wings bore the anguished faces of not only ADC soldiers, but also civilian men, women, and most disturbingly, children from Andromeda. Its stomach, while ostensibly protected by armor, split like a many-sided mouth into a maw of horrific implements of torture and surgery. With each one of its movements, the wind seemed to impel the tormented souls that defined its body to sing in pain.

Kyrennus had heard stories of Sodom and Gommorah. But he had dismissed the stories of this last Draconis as mere exaggeration. Barracks-talk had centered around a Draconis who had tormented Andromedans to the extent that they would sacrifice their dearest loved ones to a fate worse than death. It was a Draconis who tortured parents to sell the souls of their children, comrades in arms, the souls of their best friends, among countless others. Perhaps those damned souls had once lived merely as his prisoners. But now, they were subsumed into his body, screaming extensions of the brute's mindless sadism.

It was with this unwelcome sight that Kyrennus finally acknowledged that (insert titles later), Praetor Moloch of the Sons of Hedon was real, and that if anything, the tales associated with him only downplayed the terror he inspired.That the demon Moloch was real sent a paralysing chill down his spine. The thought that the vat-grown creatures deserved no label paled in how to describe Moloch. "demon", "horror"and "hellspawn" were all appropriate. The sight of a demon who by the mere sight clearly made prisoners part of his own body defies any thoughts that he could have been anything but a nightmare incarnate. Something compelled him to open one of the hatches and look at the entity from the dropship.

He opened it just in time to see what would forever strike him as the most flagrant example of a mutated Son's incredible power. Moloch had thrown his axe into the AO-8's weapon and targeting systems, essentially disabling them, while he coiled his impossibly long whip around one of its wings. Kyrennus could only look in shock as he saw the beast, pulsing with raw power, fight with the activating thrusters of the aircraft. It struck his mind as simply impossible - not even an Overseer Praetor should have been capable of such raw strength. It was almost as if Moloch had the ability to temporarily channel the life essence of his captive prisoners into the enhancement of one of his attributes. Kyrennus could only watch as Moloch tugged the whip and brought the ship closer and closer to a standstill.

Kyrennus held on as the dropship was rocked about. With the craft's weapons disabled, any weapons required a manual effort. Fumbling about, he pulled up from below the bay a heavy repeating fusion cannon. Moloch was out in the open, he could not move so long as he tugged at the dropship like an angler with a large fish. Centre mass, that was the most effective target to hit. After charging up, He pressed down on the trigger, releasing a hailstorm of particle cannon rounds on this one single beast. Under most circumstances, anyone encountering this illuminated rainstorm would have been riddled to fried meat and charred armour.

Only due to his special Dominatus-artificed armor, a privilege given to only templates, and the most esteemed of Praetors was Moloch able to weather the storm. But even someone given the most advanced in "infantry" armor could see the shields deplete. Knowing that a long-term engagement was a losing proposition, Moloch channeled all of his strength into one tug, and with that last struggle, the AO-8 came crashing down.

Moloch did not bother to check the crash site as he seemed to almost instantly teleport to Kyrennus' location. Trapped beneaththe repeating fusion cannon, Kyrennus could only look up in horror as Moloch removed his helmet. Instantly, Kyrennus was saturated with the perverse smells and tastes of the planet. But he was soon brought back to reality as he stared into the open gaping maw of Moloch. Struggling in vain, he cursed and wished as the appendages got closer to his face.

It seemed a miracle answered him when in a split instant, a mecha even taller than Moloch smashed into the acting commander of the Sons of Hedon. Casting Moloch to the ground was a titan machine vaguely in the form of a Draconis. Flanked by two great amber wing-like sails emerging from its back, the machine stood over the downed Son. As Moloch was the epitome of darkness, the machine was plated in a white almost radiant coating, the edges of the various plates trimmed with decorated gold. But the most significant detail was upon the machine's head: Flowing from the right eye socket, dancing decorations surrounded a motif that to Moloch was instantly recogniseable - the mark of a full Dominatus.

Moloch, while dazed by the power of Uriel's personal mecha, was even more stunned that it possessed the mark. But this amazement was soon replaced by rage - entombed in a vat of aminotic fluid beneath the mecha lay the man who had killed Hedon Morilium, Father of the Sons of Hedon and chosen of Medusa Heimdall. Moloch had been on one of the last ships that left Invictus, and had  prepared vigorously for such an encounter. He had painstakingly developed a strategy to deal with the one who the Dominatus knew as the Destroyer of Invictus, Slayer of Lord Hedon, Dread-Bane of the Dominatus, the Great Worm, and the Devil of Andromeda. Now, in addition to that, he had to contend that he was facing one who, by the account of an unknown party, had gained some kind of parity with his Dominatus masters. If not for his prowess as a warrior and his dedication to vengeance, perhaps Moloch would have been intimidated.

Uriel stared silently, denying any satisfaction from responding to Moloch's rage. Instead, the mecha drew a greatsword from a compartment in their back, and held the point end in Moloch's direction.

Moloch's strategy was never to engage Uriel in a duel - even a Praetor of his standing could not best Uriel's personal mecha in a test of raw brute strength. Despite this, to deceive Uriel, he entertained the notion by parrying Uriel's greatsword with the axe he had retrieved from the burning AO-8 as well as his whip. Such was the force of each of Uriel's blows that Moloch was forced to give ground even when such blows were parried.

Moloch was playing a dangerous game - only his short bursts of insane speed could allow him to fight long and well enough to trap Uriel into the thought that this was going to be a duel. While perhaps he could have channeled his energy into short bursts of insane power aimed at beating the mech, Moloch had a separate idea.

Indeed, after a long battle, Uriel ended up impaling Moloch belly-first on his sword. To his surprise, the monstrous Praetor along with his chorus of voices laughed as an almost ichor like blood leaked from the wound. Deep inside the machine, Uriel had understood enough of the Sons to know that Moloch was enjoying the pain. The mech tilted its head. Drew the sword out and with a great swing aimed to land another blow on the titan. It was with a surprising gust of wind that Moloch embraced the mecha with both his body and his whip. The Draconis aberration’s body split open as a wide array of internally held biomechanical and cybernetic wires and tendrils snaked around the mecha. It was almost as if instantaneously, the mecha had been covered in a web-like mesh of Moloch's entrails.

Moloch smiled as he executed the moves he had rehearsed time and time again to bring down the slayer of his father. Channeling all his energy, the web worked against the armor plating of the mecha, gradually tearing apart, dissolving, and piercing the mecha in strategic locations. Uriel could only watch helplessly from his vat of aminotic fluid as the abomination snaked his way through the giant mecha. Struggling in vain much like Kyrennus, Uriel felt a feeling of dread similar in magnitude to that he had felt on Invictus when his vat was pried out of the mecha and onto the floor.

Withdrawing himself and returning to what could be called his normal form, Moloch stood over Uriel with his abdominal implements pointed at Uriel's face. Seeing that he was about to execute Uriel, Moloch had streamed this on every communications channel and speaker on Sybaris.

Moloch - ''It is an insult to my masters that your wear the mark. It is an insult to my legion that the Slayer of Hedon still lives. It is an insult to me that you are not screaming. But these are all errors. And errors are not mistakes unless they are not rectified.'' Uriel - When you are cast into the void...ask your progenitor why he carved the mark!

Moloch paused for a single moment, his enhanced brain needing extra time to comprehend the implications of Uriel's statement. In this single moment, a titanic Draconis, about as large as Moloch charged and pushed Moloch away from Uriel.

If Uriel was a giant of white and gold in his armour, this one was a goliath of adamant silver. While Uriel was ensconced deep inside his mech, the new assailant had emerged without helmet, revealing a head encased in thick silver scales. Although donned in a suit of armour that accentuated his physique - displaying with artistic pride the sculpted muscles that this giant possessed, the plates were as white as the sun shining above, But the fierce eyes and thick, plaited dreadlocks told Moloch exactly who this guardian angel was.

The cameras that Moloch had centered on the to-be-executed Uriel then focused on the face of the brilliant and imposing figure. Moloch saw, as did every Son of Hedon, and every cybernetic auxiliary that their father had abandoned them. For a single moment, it seemed that every Son, whether fighting on the ground, cruising the skies in the battlesuits of the Mortem Militum, or riding a Sarshaan paused. And in that single moment, Uriel saw the unrelenting sadism and arrogance in Moloch's almost pitch-black eyes give way to different feelings - fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Moloch - Father?

Hedon stood up from Moloch's fallen body. Although he didn't move or make any gesture beyond looking directly into Moloch's eyes, this alone gave Moloch his answer.

Uriel saw the maliciously calm and collected Moloch, a being so confident in his power and the supremacy and eventual victory of the Dominatus degenerate into a gibbering mass of panicked protestations.

Moloch - ''You were Medusa's Chosen! You were the progenitor of the Tyranny's most favored legion. You were the Right Hand of the Dominatus! Why?'' Uriel - Because he saw in me a strength his masters lacked.

Uriel had pulled himself out of his pod. Moloch's devastation of the mech had rendered it useless, but the pod had preserved him and Hedon's timely arrival had preserved the container from further violation. As he emerged from it, the amniotic fluid poured out, revealing Uriel's raw form, the scar that Hedon had given him was plain as day - it was not some affectation he had adopted ,but something he was given. Moloch knew, as Hedon did, that only the Dominatus knew the significance of the mark, nothing he had heard about the Worm King could explain why he would carve this on himself, only a Dominatus or someone who knew the mark could have applied it.

The revelations were too much for even a mind as twisted as Moloch's to bare. Surrendering his sentience, he channeled all the power contained by the prisoners's faces into an expression of raw hatred. An amorphous collection of angry scales, limbs, and biomechanical weapons burst from the hole that Uriel's mech-sword had left in the armor. But it became apparent that such was the flood of organic and mechanical material than even the Dominatus-crafted armor created to contain it burst against the blizzard or chaotic flesh and steel. Moloch's wings grew to even more colossal proportions as his lower body burst into a gibbering mass of saws, axes, and swords made of the synthetic bone of the Overseers. Most disturbingly, Moloch's upper body split into a titanic gaping maw of teeth and the screaming heads of prisoners, his ribs having split open and having been overcome by tendrils pulsing with dark energies.

From a hatch in the amniotic fluid, Uriel pulled out a linked set of armour. Heh ad been wearing his body glove while inside the vat and as the armour came down it magnetically moved and attached itself to this outer skin. From another compartment, Uriel drew a sabre and a fusion carbine. Hedon had watched Moloch's horrid transformation, but it only made him disgusted. Gripping the great blades Uriel had kept, he wasted no time and charged for the beast that was his former second in command.

The monster formerly known as Moloch could only claw in a chatoic and crazed manner at its two assailants. There was no reason in its movements, no skill in its rapid and frenzied swings, and no functioning mind behind any of its decisions. Both Uriel and Hedon, so used to fighting skilled duelists, or even monsters with brains, faced little trouble in evading the frantic attacks from the tornado of flesh and bone.

Hedon evaded the uncontrolled flailings of the beast, with cleaves of his swords he sliced appendages, bone axes, bone swords, and the various implements that the screaming monstrosity threw at him. His flesh was seared after Uriel delivered round after round of energised particles into the pulsing flesh. Close shaves with the writing tendrils gave Uriel an opportunity to lacerate the flesh, every cut every hack, every scar would whittle at the beast. No brother of Moloch's interfered. Even among his kin, Moloch was now a monster. What he had surrendered himself to was not something they could support. For all their debauchery, all the sadism and abuse of those they deemed inferior, the Sons of Hedon shared the belief of their genetic relatives that animals and civilsied beings had a clear distinction. And Moloch was slipping past that line into the realms of the animal.

After what seemed to be an eternity of slashing and shooting at the formless and chaotic mass, Moloch's senseless writhing seemed to stop as the the monster collapsed to the floor, unable to move. Moloch's head surfaced to the top of the almost liquid pool of collapsing flesh and bone. With a brief moment of lucidity, he stared outwards with a look of defiance. He was unable to speak, but the steely glare he shot at both Uriel and Hedon told them of a man who was resigned to his fate but unwilling to admit that he was wrong. Hedon stood back as Uriel walked up to the puddle of flesh that was once the interim master of the Sons of Hedon.

Uriel' - Before your fate comes, I wish to ask of you: Are you aware of how the Draconis achieved their supremacy?

Moloch could only try pathetically to find a mouth to speak from in order to deliver an arrogant riposte. But he had sacrificed his ability to speak, a gift reserved for civilized beings in hopes of gaining the raw brute strength of an animal. Uriel could only look as the puddle seemed to vibrate as Moloch pitifully attempted to speak. But alas, it was as hopeless as watching a dog attempt to give a speech.

Uriel - ''Your father understands. Your masters concluded, that the best approach for order is absolute control. That all exist to elevate and serve them. Those that resist or somehow fall short either die, or suffer a painful torture until they capitulate, am I correct?''

Uriel turned to look at Hedon.

Hedon - ''Correct, save for perhaps one subtlety. The Dominatus will torture others not just for punishment, but also just for entertainment.''

Uriel - ''A constant war to keep the lesser species invisible, unheard. The Imperium however, rules by wisdom: Every being has a value, not as a slave or a servant to the holders of power, but as a contributor to a greater whole. It was not fear and expendable labour that built the spires of Araveene or the long memorial-endowed trail of the Paragon's Promenade, The Imperium your masters promised you after this war was built with every being doing their part not because their masters promised the lash as the alternative but because they all wanted to build something great.''

Uriel approached the blob, lowering himself to look sternly into Moloch's eyes.

Uriel- ''That is how the Imperium succeeded: Twenty quadrillion individual elements, working to maintain a galactic machine. With each contributing in their own way. A million ecosystems offering their output because they know that such greatness must be preserved, not by fear the lash or the headsman's axe but by the dream that they are building a brighter future for their descendents. Your masters were so fixated on their own needs and their own self-preservation that those who were not their kind did not matter. They saw the chance to work for them as a reward to bask in.''

Hedon - ''The house of the Dominatus is one predicated on the flimsy columns of fear. Perhaps if we were so great, others would have come willingly and rather than submitting out of fear, would have joined us because of their admiration. Uriel's confidence in his Imperium was such that with all the power he had over me, he gave me a choice.''

Uriel - Just as I decided Hedon's fate as he lay at my mercy, it is only appropriate that your own father should decide on yours.

Moloch shot back a defiant looked that also betrayed his last descent into animal insanity. As the blob tried in vain to move in all directions, Uriel stepped aside as Hedon approached the blob. Hedon flew into the air over Moloch, but to Uriel's surprise did not raise his sword.

Hedon - I'm sorry it had to end this way, my son.

Hedon opened his jaw and began breathing a fire that burnt with such an intensity that it could be seen from all below the citadel's rooftop. While the average Son could breathe fire, Hedon's gift as a second-stage enhancement was something like a plasma flamethrower. The sheer, blinding brilliance of the fire incinerated the writhing Moloch, spreading from his face to the rest of his corrupted and strewn out body. The iridescent light was one that Kyrennus and Uriel could only look in awe at as it completely consumed the body of the former commander of the Sons of Hedon. After some time, all that remained were charred ashes on the rooftop's floor, ashes that were soon scattered by the wind to the rest of Sybaris.

Uriel - ''Fitting, Hedon. That his corrupted body is cleansed by a purifying light.''

Emerging from the smoke of the battle, Kyrennus approached his paragon. With a bow, he opened the compartment in his back and presented the canister of the Ultima Servilis Serum.

Kyrennus - Ultima Servilis, as requested by high command, your majesty. Uriel- ''Prepare it for extraction, it returns to the Imperium. Hedon...these are your children and this was your home. What is to become of it and them, I shall defer to you judgement.''

Hedon was a creature than once relished in the extermination of children and the razing of planets. But now it was his children, and his former home. And in Hedon's eyes, Uriel saw something new - indecisiveness.

Hedon - ''My Paragon, It is my wish to preserve as many of the Sons as possible, but only those who have the will to change. Even at this stage of the war, the Sons still cling onto to the belief that the Dominatus will win. It is impossible for them to see the light until the Dominatus are destroyed. Furthermore, the Sons below will never surrender. It is with a heavy heart that I decree it is necessary to kill them.'' Uriel - ''Under Medusa you were their progenitor. And when this is over, you will be their progenitor again; Wipe the slate of Medusa's stain, and from what is left, build something stronger.'' Hedon - Yes, my Paragon.

...

Kyrennus returned from looking out the camera ports. He looked back at his squad. He was the only survivor from the Andromeda Campaign, and only one of 2 from the start of the Mirus Campaign.He sensed the craft slow down, a sign that they were preparing to open the bay doors in order for a combat jump. As they stalled, Kyrennus looked at his men and spoke.

The Dominatus rule solely by fear. Their victory relies on us losing hope. We did not lose hope in Andromeda, even when their fleets closed in on Araveene. We did not lose hope at Manticore, even when it seemed their fleets would destroy outs. We will certainly not lose hope here - victory  - victory in this battle means victory in the war.

''Today we jump to rid the Gigaquadrant of this menance, once and for all. ''

Today we jump because we are the Imperium's ambassadors to the Gigaquadrant.

Today we jump because unlike in Andromeda, the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.

On fire we fly!

The Belly of the Beast
The citadel Immortal Hatred stood arrogantly over the war-torn hells cape of Demogorgon Prime that the Delpha Coalition of Planets had been assigned to seize. It was the last bastion that the Coalition had to capture before laying siege to Malogenesis, the capital of the Dominatus themselves. Situated in Muspel, the side of Demogorgon Prime that faced the star Demogorgon, the battleground was a scene of sundered earth and screeching lava embraced by the constant roars of thunder and accompanying lashes of lightning. It was permeated by screaming mounds of dead and dying Delpha soldiers, who themselves were strangled by the endless plumes of ash that were the disintegrated remains of their comrades. In the midst of this barren and nightmarish landscape, the towering spires of the citadel stood, cackling evilly at the hastily erected bastions that the DCP had built to encircle the city-fortress. Each laugh was a bolt of Dominatus science that tore into the DCP’s ranks with contemptuous ease.

Warlord Klinok was a veteran of many a war. Each cell in his glazed eyes had seen more death and destruction than entire civilisations. Before him flashed the legacy of the DCP - with one blink were the titanic clashes of iron that symbolised their conflicts with the Grox. In another were the defiant screams of mortal men against the unstoppable tide of the Xhodocto. Perhaps only his time as a warrior let him process the carnage he saw regularly as a normal man would process the banality of normal life. It was only fitting that the DCP’s greatest commander managed a commanding and calm countenance in face of the ceaseless chaos in front of him. But even one as great as Klinok, and one as jaded as the head commander of one of the Gigaquadrant’s greatest empires was taken aback by the one-sided massacre he had witnessed.

The dreaded sound of each failure was at times a cacophony and at other times a dead silence. As standard practice, assaults against Dominatus citadels consisted of the full mechanised might of a civilisation. The rumble of tanks, the earth-shattering footsteps of mecha, the hurried stampede of power-armoured infantry, massed artillery barrages, a never-ending tide of strike craft and what orbital bombardment could make it past the shielding of the planet. To all but the most powerful militaries, even a fraction of this force would be enough to intimidate even their most arrogant generals into submission. But to see each attack utterly annihilated without so much as a modicum of visible against its heavy ordnance was an experience that caused even hardened generals to breakdown in the comfort of their private quarters.

In their fights with the Dominatus, the DCP had learned that the most efficient way to seize a bastion was via the use of hyper elite melee troops equipped with personal short-range FTL and utility fog capability. However, after each successive use, the Dominatus constantly counteracted this with modifications to their own sensors. It was a never-ending arms race, but fortunately, one in which the DCP had just gained the upper hand. Klinok and his most elite troops - Furies, each codenamed for a DCP city that had been destroyed by the Dominatus had just been equipped with the latest versions of these equipment, and had been tasked with taking the bastion. Klinok however, knew that no matter what the outcome of this battle, that the Dominatus would soon come up with countermeasures against their new toys.

In taking the fortress, Klinok and his troops first had to close the no-mans-land between themselves and the walls. Then after they scaled the walls, they had to face the full firepower of the Domiantus garrison. Their goal was solely to silence the heavy guns of the Dominatus so that the DCP could bring its specialised seize equipment bear. Furthermore, they were to hold on as much as possible, so as to hold up Dominatus reinforcements while the walls were torn down. To distract Dominatus forces in such a way that their melee forces were kept back, the DCP would send assaults throughout no-man’s-land. The idea was that the Dominatus would be so busy gunning down another hopeless offensive that Klinok and his men could close the distance and get onto the walls before they had invited any retribution. As there were more walls to guard than Dominatus Overseers, the only Dominatus combatants who could effectively combat the Furies short of the Dominatus themselves, and the Overseers had learned not to split up in fear of being defeated in detail, they remained in the citadel’s spire waiting to respond to a possible breach.

The battle began without any speeches - the ennui of the war had taken its toll on even the most eloquent and inspirational of men. It began with the familiar rampage of the full might of the Coalition. Klinok and his men waited in their experimental, custom-made assault suits. These suits had been equipped with extremely powerful thrusters that would propel the Furies to the battlements themselves. They would gradually break off in mid flight and leave a trail of utility flog. Finally, they would fire off a series of missiles before ejecting the soldier, who would use his short-range teleporter to enter the frenzy. While these suits had been in production for some time, it was only now that they had been gathered in the numbers needed for them to make a battle-changing difference as opposed to only novel shock. But even in what must have seemed to be one of the Coalition’s most advanced pieces of tactical technology, the Furies could have sworn they were as vulnerable as the bait on the battlefield.

Klinok waited silently for the go-signal, begrudgingly waiting for it as he forced himself to listen to the screams of the dead and dying on the communication channel. To himself he thought that the Dominatus were laughing, thinking this was just another day. And as the countdown to launch ended, he smirked for the first time in a long time - it was not just another day.

Even for warriors of the Fury’s stature, the impact of the thrusters was one that felt like it was going to rip their bodies apart. Every sensory output was disguised by the utility fog across all mediums, but to the warriors inside, the feeling was that of being ripped in every direction. The Furies readied themselves for combat, trying to meditate as the sound of their rapidly-depleting suits drowned out the slaughter below. Each Fury had been trained in the operation of the suit, and at Klinok’s order, having surpassed the altitude of the citadel’s walls, activated their payloads. They Dominatus defenders, sadistically cajoling in their unopposed slaughter, were taken aback by the appearance and sudden impact of the DCP’s most advanced miniaturised missiles. So used to feeling invincible, chunks were taken out of whole formations while the battlements shuddered from the impact.

After recovering from the shock of this sudden attack, the wall’s garrison soon found themselves beset by the DCP’s most elite melee fighters. Dominatus synthetics, only some of whom had been given melee weapons, were soundly outclassed by the Furies. The majority, who had been given long-ranged weaponry, were but cattle to a butcher. To the beleaguered DCP assault troops on the plains below, they noticed happily that each new thud was a falling Dominatus synthetic or fortification - today was certainly going to be different. Even when the Dominatus turned their own turrets on the walls, they struck their own forces instead of the DCP’s, who used their teleporters to escape each salvo. Klinok noticed gleefully that the remaining Dominatus synthetics no longer manned the battlements, but rushed to the heaviest Dominatus turrets to attempt to protect them from the onslaught.

But this glee was short-lived. Klinok had fought the Dominatus long enough to know that when good things happened, they were either too good to be true, or they did not last. A large contingent of Overseers, namely the Vartekian Subjugators of Cravidor and Grow Steel Reapers led by a Dominatus Sovereign Executor, perhaps one of the single most powerful hand-to-hand combatants in the Gigaquadrant certainly qualified as par for the course. Klinok split his forces into a contingent that would pursue the Dominatus ultra-heavy turrets and one led by him that would hold the Overseers off.

To the ground troops below, advancing much more freely, the fight above seemed to be not one fought between mortals, but between gods. Each stroke pulverised subsections of the wall, sending them falling down like angry meteors to the hells cape below. Each parry gave off such energy that the angry storm that ranged seemed tame by comparison. The fights between gods of war - DCP Furies and late-war Tyranny Overseers seemed was one that the synthetics of the Dominatus and the DCP’s troopers felt a petrified reverence for. The air was awash with coruscating flashes of light and monstrous screams that seemed to reverberate through the buckling walls of the citadel. Each dead Overseer was a permanent casualty to its legion - with all the Overseer worlds destroyed, they could never be replaced. Each dead Fury was a DCP war hero, perhaps an ultra-soldier or a commander wiped from history, the collective experience of an army being snuffed out from existence.

A crescendo of explosions delighted Klinok - while his main force was decimated in the fight against the Overseers, his demolitions force had destroyed all but one of the main towers threatening the DCP’s specialised siege equipment. But assessing the situation again, he found that to his horror, the Dominatus and the majority of his overseers had clustered around the last turret. They formed an impenetrable cordon around it that the Furies couldn’t seem to break. Klinok took stock of his men and noticed that they had taken severe casualties. Any rational observer saw what had to be done, and a frenzied charge towards the last turret was what followed. Despite the Dominatus’ best attempts, several Furies got through the cordon, with Klinok giving them the specific instruction to wait for his command to activate the explosives once they were set. Unfortunately, Klinok himself stood face to face with the nameless Dominatus Sovereign Executor, one who untraditionally it seems, skipped the formalities of gloating before a duel and charged Klinok. Before the battle, Klinok had tested his new weaponry against the late Sovereign Executor Talos’ Mortis armor. It seemed that his blades could slice through the armour of the Destroyer of Horatorio with ease - and as Sovereign Executors went into battle so sparingly, Klinok assumed that his blades would at least be able to penetrate the armour of the Dominatus he faced. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

To his disappointment ,this particular Sovereign Executor was wearing a one-of-a-kind Dominatus-crafted armor that had been created just prior to the destruction of the Archostrategon’s main research Installation. A slash from Klinok’s blade could only dent the armour while a piercing blow couldn’t even get to the infamously resilient Dominatus flesh. On the other hand, a blow from the Dominatus’ weapon-claw nearly severed his left arm, which was only held together by the timely intervention of DCP nanites. This particular Dominatus was also faster than usual, and could keep up with Klinok’s hyperspatial antics. The Warlord found that unfortunately, whenever he popped out of hyperspace to strike, there was a parry. Unbeknownst to Klinok, this particular Sovereign Executor had never been promoted to the rank of Drachon as he showed no particular talent for command, only duelling. While this would have appealed to him had they stood on opposite sides of the battlefield, the fact that he had made such a rank on the sole basis of one-on-one combat made him uneasy. Perhaps his only solace was that a sole Fury had survived to plant the mines and merely waited on his order.

But this development was quickly pushed out of his mind when after another prolonged period of combat, the invincible Dominatus slashed through Klinok as he jumped out of hyperspace, almost severing is body in half. while in the same motion bringing him to his mouth Thanks to the power of DCP technology however, Klinok maintained full consciousness and cognitive faculty - enough to notice in full lucidity the fact that the Dominatus was eating him whole and his overheated teleporter still needed time to cool down.

The first sensation he experienced after the complete darkness of the Dominatus’ gaping maw was the crushing sensation as the Dominatus jaw and internal muscles literally squeezed the life out of him. One could almost joke that Klinok was becoming more slurry than warrior, being only barely held together by overstretched DCP nanites. But a new sensation followed - he seemed to be stuck in a blender of ultra-sharp teeth, one which span him round while synthetic acid tore at his exposed viscera. But the half of Klinok’s face that remained smirked inside the valley of teeth as he mentally activated his teleporter one last time, and a split second later gave the order to detonate.

The Dominatus could not have known about the trip through hyperspace that his food was carrying him through. He would have been perhaps the first Dominatus to eat a Warlord alive. He was that and more - the first Dominatus to use the DCP’s personal hyperspatial technology. He was also the first Dominatus to test whether his armour could protect its inhabitant from the reactor blast of an ultra-heavy turret. He failed in that test. Fortunately, the armour was strong enough that what remained of Klinok found himself in a crater on the plains below, barely protected by the charred and fused husk of Dominatus biomass and the last vestiges of arguably the most advanced personal armour system of the war. his mission accomplished, Klinok entered unconsciousness as his nanites scrambled to stabilise him.

With the last turret destroyed, the DCP brought its specialised siege weaponry to bear, and soon cracked open the Dominatus walls. What followed was a predictable fight in which despite Dominatus resistance, the DCP slowly ground the fortress down to dust. What few Furies remained protected Klinok’s biomechanical sarcophagus while reinforcements came, and over the course of the battle, Klinok was exhumed from Dominatus tomb. Upon seeing him, his compatriots were possessed of two emotions - shock at what he had been through, and the implied power of the Dominatus, and also laughter at expecting this result - it seemed the closer Klinok got to death, the more likely he would be alive. A near death experience for Klinok was simply a test for whether one knew him or not, for he seemed to dance with the reaper closer and closer merely to taunt it.

Klinok’s medical chamber was erected in full view of the ruined fortress - his first sight upon opening his one remaining eye was the flag of the Coalition soaring above the citadel’s spire.

Daring, Heroism, and Courage
Perhaps the most intimidating building in Malogenesis other than the Tyrant’s Spire, Apogee, the Dominatus Military Headquarters was abuzz with activity. In it, the Dominatus military junta headed by the formerly disgraced but recently repromoted Wolframicht Stahl received its daily report. The contents of this reports were always bad; the only variation was whether they were avoidably bad or unavoidably bad. The loss of a bunker, bastion, or eventually citadel after it held out for its expected combat lifetime was considered unavoidably bad. The loss of a Dominatus or senior Overseer in an arrogance-addled rampage was considered avoidably bad. Stahl sardonically laughed at the reports of enemy casualties during these unavoidably bad actions : Warlord Klinok - Killed in Action (no confirmation), some UAE Overseer knockoffs - Killed in Action (no confirmation), scores of famous ADC war heroes - Killed in Action (no confirmation), famous galactic figure leading a charge - Killed in Action (no confirmation). Of Course the Dominatus list of dead was suitably more detailed : Overseer Template Akemainyu - Killed in Action (confirmation), Sovereign Executor Malefis Wyrex - Killed in Action (confirmation), Overseer Pestillon Nephilim - Killed in Action (confirmation).

Each dead Overseer Template meant that even if by some miracle the Tyranny emerged victorious and reconquered its old territories, that in a certain way, that Overseer Legion was sterile. Stahl laughed again when the word sterility came up - he thought it madness that several hundred years ago the so-called Drakodominatus Republic had on its deathbed released a sterility plague just to spite the victorious Drakodomiantus Tyranny. While in front of what remained of the Dominatus General Staff, he was lost in a short trance. Stahl was never an engineer or a scientist - his original assignment upon finishing officer school was to the cavalry. It wasn’t the enhanced biomechanics monstrosities of today that mounted armour and shielding similar to strike craft, but the beautiful offspring of Demogorgon Prime. Perhaps it was a consequence that the Dominatus had risen to power to meteorically, almost like a cancer engineered by a scientist equal parts sadistic and talented that he remembered the times when the flimsy exoskeletons which passed for “powered armour” were considered state of the art, and laser armed bombardment satellites were considered to be war-winning weapons. A Dominatus in powered armour now would be worshipped as a god in those times - it could fly gracefully, was immune to almost everything, and from its fingertips could generate beams of energy that made the beams released by those satellites look like friction burns. During the days of the rifle, a single high caliber shot could dismember an unarmored Drakodominatus. He had grown up in those days and still remembered the feeling of danger and mortality. He couldn’t say the same for those whose first taste of combat was civilising primitives while performing orbital drops in powered armour, much less those who were born Dominatus.

Yet it seemed even some of his generation had gone insane with the power bestowed upon them by providence and their own talents and determination. They acted as if they were in a play in which the lone protagonist fought off the endless hordes by himself and triumphed over the enemy champion. Stahl mused that these idiots were so genre blind that they couldn’t tell tragedy from comedy and protagonist from antagonist. It was perhaps the same idiocy that believe in things like heroism and valour triumphing over the raw weight of an industrialised war machine. In the grand scheme of things, the vast majority of the time, those flashy duels meant shit -and when they did mean something, it was because the armies believed it meant something and seemed to pause to spectate. Acts of heroism and valour were mere expectations and statistical occurrences in a war of extermination between two industrial juggernauts - mere flashpoints to distract future historians from the boring minutiae of casualty reports, production output reports, statistical demography, logistics, technology, development that made up the bulk of this godforsaken war. As a child, no, even now, Stahl would rather read about tomes describing decisive and daring actions, bold heroes locked in duels with their nemeses than a novel about two men choking each other and trying to outlast each other. What would such a novel even look like?

“At the resolution of the story there is no room for both a hero and a villain. One of the two must die and by definition the one remaining is the hero. At the start of the story both characters are fully healthy. Character 1 has a higher initial air capacity than Character 2, and they both choke each other out at the same rate. Character 1 kills Character 2. Character 1 is therefore the hero. The End.”

He found it ironic that as Character 2 so to speak, with barely a breath left, that he was turning to yet more sarcasm instead of thinking about how to choke Character 1. He chuckled again. The time for being reasonable and sane was long past - those hopes ended at Manticore. There was only time for insanity now. He only needed to hold out a bit longer now - Castigon would be done fusing with their last hope soon.

Stahl - Daring, Heroism, and Courage Stahl - Thats an odd way to spell TIAMAT