"Have you ever seen such butchery?!"

"Twelfth Legion, I'd stake whatever's left of my reputation on it…they hit hard, overran the enemy defences and cut them down…they kept going, on into the civilian camps…the natives had moved their people into the fortified compounds for protection. World Eaters couldn't tell the difference, not with how they were; perhaps they didn't want to…"

Red-Marked, Nick Kyme

The Cleansing of Ariggata.

An engagement fought in the later stages of the Great Crusade. After the technologically adept world of Ariggata secedes from the Imperium of Man, a taskforce comprised of the XII, XIII and XVI Legions is dispatched to retake the planet. Most of the cities of the world are taken in short order, save for the planetary capital, where the leadership of the separatists are holed up. When his presence is required elsewhere in a nearby system, Horus leaves Angron in charge of the operation to retake the last city, stipulating that his fellow Primarch is only to kill the rebel leaders. When a week's worth of shelling and artillery barrages succeeds only in opening a single breach in the enemy defences, Angron loses patience with trying to bomb the rebels into submission and launches a full-scale attack on the breach. With all the rebel defences concentrated on that one weak spot, the World Eaters' casualties are enormous, but ultimately, they overrun the defenders, and once inside the city walls, they are merciless. When the Ultramarines arrived to secure the newly captured city, they find the World Eaters have already moved on, and left behind a slaughterhouse in their wake; the XII Legion have killed every living person within the city walls, regardless of age or gender.

"They're making another infantry push!"

"Here they come!"

The Astartes Captain roared in triumph, holding its gore-splattered chain-axe aloft as it threw back its crested helmed head and howled to the leaden sky, but before the warrior could finish the job or Captain Tarohne Tauber of the Ariggatan armoured division could fully process the fact most of her augmetic right arm was gone and what was left above the elbow continued to pump oil, lubricant and traces of blood from the ragged stump, staining her taupe uniform blackish-scarlet, there came the sound of running footfalls as loud as thunderclaps getting closer and closer until, with a roar that would have shamed a charging theropod, something large and heavy running at full speed slammed into the side of her command tank with the force of a battering ram, first rocking the vehicle and then, with a jubilant howl and the screech of tortured metal, tipping the tank onto its side as the monstrous attacker continued its assault. Tauber and her Astartes attacker were sent flying as the tank went over- Tauber managed to leap free of the tank's cupola just seconds before impact, crying out in pain as she landed badly on her ruined arm on the slope of rubble and debris leading up to the breach, her attacker landing far more gracefully, hitting the ground on his feet with almost-feline poise. Out of the corner of her eye, Tauber saw more Astartes of the XIIth Legion clambering over her crippled tank, trying to get at the doomed crew trapped inside now, the more lucid amongst their number trying to finish the job by firing bolters or tossing grenades into hatches, view-slots or breaches left in the tank's armour by early attacks, while those completely lost to blood-lust seemed determined to carve open the tank's underside with their chain-axes to get at the prize within, looking like thresher-sharks chewing at a cetacean carcass.

Tauber wouldn't have believed it were happening if the slaughter weren't taking place all around her; after a week's worth of barrages from Imperial artillery outside the walls of the last free stronghold of Ariggata, she would have expected the Imperium to continue its attack, intensifying the number and frequency of fire on the city walls or perhaps even try and open a negotiation, as the leaders of the insurgency, holed up in the fortress in the city heights, hoped. Instead, for reasons best known to themselves, whoever was in command of the Imperial forces had seemed to have abandoned trying to open more holes in the defences and contented themselves with hurling successive waves of infantry at the only breach in the rebel defences. Some in the militia had expected such an assault- the observer positions on the walls had noted in their reports the Astartes becoming more and more agitated, like caged tigers eager to get loose- but it had still been a shock when that first screaming mass of blue-and-white ceramite came hurtling at the breach. At first, it had been child's play to hold them at bay; the width of the breach allows no more than half a dozen at a time to storm the defences, and with all the firepower the defenders can muster, Astartes warriors fell, gaping red craters blasted in bone-white chest plates by anti-personnel fire or torn to bits by missile and mortar fire. But those losses had done nothing to change the Imperial strategy, other than whoever was leading the Astartes increasing the number of attacks on the breach, battering away at it constantly in the hope sooner or later it would succeed…and ultimately it had. Supplies of ammunition and power were running lower and lower as the siege dragged on, and when the Imperial attacks started using Land Raiders and Rhinos to scale the breach to get their forces close enough to the defenders without being torn to shreds, the tide had turned. Elite troops in Cataphractii warplate had spearheaded the latest and final attack, disgorging from Land Raiders at the top of the summit of rubble and debris leading up to the breach to assault the defenders, their brethren using the distraction to swarm the breach in the wake of the Terminators.

Looking about her, Tauber could see all was lost; the breach was taken, the slope of rubble and debris leading down from the lone gaping hole the Imperium's artillery had blown in the last bastion of resistance on Ariggata was drowned beneath a descending flood of blue and white ceramite, battle-crazed Astartes running pell-mell into the city precincts. Some, mostly those in the front ranks, those bearing wounds and signs of battle that would have killed or crippled lesser beings- limbs mutilated or severed by anti-personnel mines or shellfire, others slowed by gunshot and stab wounds from bayonets, small arms fire and debris, bleeding staining the white scarlet, or clad in armour pockmarked and studded by shrapnel or broken open by impact damage- hurled themselves at what was left at the collapsing semi-circle of a battleline around the base of the slope to defend the only weak spot in the defences- whether they were out for vengeance for their wounds and the comrades they'd lost scaling the breach to reach the defenders' position, or if lost in their bloodlust they were just throwing themselves at the nearest targets in visual range, Tauber didn't know, but it didn't matter- even maimed and mutilated, those warriors could still tear the heart out of the Ariggatan military's defences, and emboldened by the fact they were no long under near-constant anti-infantry fire from the defensive guns, their rate of fire continuing to slow as they came under attack, second and third waves of Astartes were breaking through the crumbling perimeter into the city proper- some were moving in the direction of the second and third defensive lines on the approach to the palace where the planet's governing body, the ones responsible for the revolution against the Imperium's authority, were holed up, but most seemed more interested in tearing their way through the civilian quarter and the refugees quartered there, determined to slake their bloodlust on anyone who got in their way, indiscriminate of age or gender. Tauber could already envisage the carnage that would ensue.

A roar of fury and the sound of slowly approaching footsteps drew Tarohne Tauber's eyes away from the rapidly spreading carnage to her own plight as something wet and soft slapped her face and came to land in her lap; looking down to see her severed right arm, the fingers still gripped around the broken pistol she'd drawn to try and defend herself before the Astartes had been on her, she then saw the one responsible advancing on her, the chain-axe in his hands snarling as its wielder gunned the weapon's trigger, almost as eager for blood as its master, it seemed.

Tauber scrabbled across the broken and cratered ground, her leg useless to support her weight, likely fractured by the impact, her gaze fixed on one thing only as her would be killer advanced- a discarded bolt pistol, dropped when its owner was gunned down or threw it away in favour of killing hand to hand; the gun's recoil would likely shatter her remaining arm but it was the only thing likely to put down the monster bearing down on her when there came a low, hissing growl, like the sound of breath escaping between a carnosaur's jaws. The XIIth Legion captain turned its head around and, seeing what approached, backed down like a lesser hunter abandoning its kill to an apex predator. Captain Tauber used the distraction to get her hand on the gun, but when she saw what had claimed her as its kill, had overturned her tank with its bare hands and obliterated the defences, when she realised she was looking at the reason behind the stories of entire star systems surrendering unconditionally rather than face the wrath of the Twelfth, it was all Tarohne Tauber could do not to jam the bolt pistol under her chin and pull the trigger.

The Astartes captain who'd maimed her had towered at least a head taller than her and was almost as broad at the shoulders as the span of her arms, but compared to the red-and-bronze armoured goliath bearing down on her now, the legionary was a gecko besides a mica-dragon.

Gargantuan in proportion, the monster was clad in slabs of plate armour the colour of arterial spurt, trimmed at its edge with tarnished bronze the hue of swords pulled from ancient tombs, created by artisans of the armourer's craft but made to look archaic, like something a barbarian gladiator or prehistoric hoplite might don. The behemoth's features are a craggy, rough-hewn mask of barely constrained fury, like the defaced statue of some ancient god of war, the few patches of skin not crisscrossed by a lattice of battle scars and barely healed wounds adorned with ritualistic marks and tattoos. In place of hair sprouting from the shaven scalp, a gorgon's mane of dull metal cables thrashed and rattled with every step of their wearer- every so often, one of the giant's boulder-sized hands reached up to clutch at the cable ends wired directly into its temples, as if in constant pain.

Looking like a predator studying a downed prey animal before delivering the deathblow, the Primarch studied her for a moment, its expression somewhere between fury and disbelief, as if not quite comprehending how something so insignificant could have delayed it for so long, eyes and muscles of the face twitching erratically as the Primarch stared down at her, the corners of the mouth constantly twitching into a bestial snarl, baring teeth fashioned from iron and sharpened to points, the dentition of a saurian predator from some prehistory of Old Terra, gimlet eyes the colour of slate narrowing as they studied her, looking for something only it could identify.

"High-rider…" the looming colossus snarled down at her, the mouth peeling back into a snarl, spitting bloody froth at her as a trickle of the same began to flow from the Primarch's nostrils, followed by a groan of pain and more nervous tics and twitches of the face in response. The gargantuan warrior spat down at her in disgust, its expression livid with pain-fed anger, but made no move to turn its weapons on her, and the captain dared to believe herself reprieved…

Until a plate-booted foot the size of a paving slab rose and then came stamping down- she clearly wasn't worth wasting a blade on- and Tarohne Tauber's life ended as broken spears of bone that had been her ribcage were driven with the force of an industrial press back into her flesh, puncturing heart and lungs in multiple places. Her killer was already on the move for fresh prey long before she'd stopped breathing.

Nine days earlier, aboard the Vengeful Spirit

"Are your eyes failing you, brother?" Angron snarled when Horus had given his orders. "Do I look like Perturabo to you?! If your intent was to bomb these rebellious curs into submission, why did you not summon the IVth Legion for this meatgrinder instead of wasting my time?!"

"No doubt the Warmaster is applying your Legion's 'talents' to where they are best suited" the cerulean figure across the strategium opines, the note of derision in his voice clear even if his highborn, aristocratic features remain a composed mask, neutral in their cast.

Even with his mind aflame, the Nails sending fiery spikes jack-knifing along the synapses and neurons, the insult was clear and Angron took the bait, slamming a clenched fist into the table top, causing the hololithic projection of the XIIIth Legion's Primarch to sputter and crackle. Horus's thin eyebrows rose at such an open display of anger, but the pain in his cerebrum was volcanic, and Angron was in no mood to be talked down by that preening high-rider martinet.

"When I want advice on making war from a man whose weapon of choice is a stylus, Roboute, I will ask for it!" Angron snarled. "Until that day comes, I and my Legion will continue to act as I see fit, and you and your azure popinjays can go back to working where your talents lie" the Lord of the Twelfth Legion retorted, the ragged gash that served Angron as a mouth peeling back into a sneer "like tallying grain and wheat lest these traitorous wretches go hungry in the winter, instead of doing something useful, like laying the foundations for a new hive from their skulls!"

Guilliman bristled angrily, about to return fire with insults of his own when the clank of metal moving and grinding of servos caught their attention; both Primarchs whirled to see Horus raising his taloned gauntlet of a right hand to intercede.

"Thank you for your report, Roboute; that will be all" Horus interjected before the Primarch of the Ultramarines could retort in similar fashion. "I am sure that your efforts are proceeding in accordance with the projected schedule to ensure Ariggata's reintegration with compliance. I will expect a full report when this world is fully in line with our Father's will once more, and I will expect your final report when our brother has done his work and this campaign is concluded"

Guilliman did not look pleased with being so summarily dismissed, and the sneer on his face indicated full well he expected the Thirteenth Legion to have its work cut out for them once their Twelfth Legion brethren were done with the last rebel enclave on the planet, but unable to contest the Warmaster's command, he saluted curtly. "Of course, Warmaster. Good fortune in your own campaign" Roboute replied, making the sign of the aquila before nodding to some out-of-sight functionary beside him, the hololith in whatever command centre in whichever of the already conquered cities the Ultramarines' Primarch was transmitting from powering down and the projection fading away into nothing. Once their sibling was gone, Angron's lip still curled at Roboute's behaviour, sneering his usual mental taunt after his Macraggian brother- 'You would not have lasted a week on Nuceria'- before the stabbing of the Nails drove the memory of that world and the bitter memories with it from his mind. Horus turned to face Angron, and while his tone was persuasive, there was a hard look in his amber eyes that suggested he wouldn't accept protests or refusals.

"I called you here Angron, because this sort of thing is what you and your Legion excel at" Horus began, raising a hand to forestall Angron's attempt to dismiss the transparent attempt at flattery. "If all I wished was victory then yes, I would have had the Iron Warriors bomb this place to the ground until there was nothing left but melted glass, but that's not what I'm after. Ariggata rebelled, spat on its oaths of loyalty to our Father, murdered our emissaries and stole what was the Imperium's due. If I allow the men and women cowering in that citadel to go unpunished for such acts, what message will that send? How long before other worlds across the sector get the idea into their heads that rebellion and revolution go unpunished and try to make their own bid for freedom? No, the traitors behind Ariggata's laughable little revolt are to be made an example of, and that is why I intend to deploy your considerable talents in this regard, my brother"

Angron had to admit Horus had a point. His hands were trembling gleefully at the thought of killing high-rider filth again, the Nails burning fitfully at the prospect of such unrestrained violence.

"You have your orders, brother. Take that city and do what you like with the curs cowering like rats in that fortress, but no one else is to die unless necessary. I will not have another slaughter like those that have come before it- you will keep your war hounds on a leash this time, is that clear, Angron?"

Angron's lip curled again at the command, but before he could retort he was not some mortal bootlick to be ordered about like an Imperial Army grunt, but Horus has already turned his back. Angron growled at the implied insult from the preening bastard but before he could speak a retort, he sees something in Horus's amber eyes as the Warmaster turned back to glower at him that stills any further protest from him.

Perhaps he was imagining it- maybe it was just a trick of his mind, some side effect of the Nails biting into his cerebrum as they always do when he is inactive- but the gleam in Horus's gaze would seem to suggest that the Warmaster knows full well Angron has no intention on following his orders to exercise restraint….and even more unsettling, the Warmaster doesn't want him to. It's another sign of just how much Horus has changed since whatever transpired on Davin. Angron has seen hints of it in their war with the Technocracy- his brother seems to have acquired quite a taste for blood, for making brutal examples of all and any who stand in the way of his designs- and Angron is not certain whether he should be impressed or perturbed by the Warmaster's almost Nucerian appetite for savagery.

"Sire, your orders? The defenders are starting to regroup at positions directly on the approach to the palace. We need to get moving and hit them before they can fortify those-"

Angron slapped his equerry across the breastplate with the flat of Gorefather and Khârn fell silent; he knew this already- he had vague recollections of Lotara mentioning such things, though it had barely registered, the fire in his skull all-consuming, nothing else registering. The Ariggatans are falling back, discipline giving way to panic as the Legion swarms in like termites; deafening thunder cracks as artillery barrages continue, but in fewer numbers as advance units of the Legion began to reach them, or artillery spotters in the outer reaches were hunted down and butchered. The howls and cheers of the Legion as they went about their bloody work with gleeful abandon and all their skill for the task rang out over the city, even above the sounds of gunfire, the crackle of flames and explosions

"A pacified enemy is still an enemy. War is over when every enemy is dead"

He remembered saying those words before, to one of his brothers, of that he was sure, but not which brother and when. That self-deluding savage, Russ, perhaps? A retort to drive home the point that there is no difference between the VIth and the XIIth Legion save the lies Fenris's lord tells himself, that somehow his barbarian sense of honour conceals the fact he's no less a butcher than the Red Angel? Or perhaps that quill-pushing weakling Lorgar? Too concerned with his spiritual mysteries to realise that such sentiments would never bring the galaxy to order, at least not in the way their Father wanted?

It matters not, Angron snarled to himself, the Nails burning angrily, driving such introspection from his mind. Nuceria had taught him a long time ago that negotiation and pacification were useless- their Father would never grasp in His ambition to have the worlds of the galaxy in His clutches that when He forced the peoples of conquered worlds to bend their knees, press their faces to their dirt and swear their allegiance to the Emperor, they would rise up again with blades in their hands and hatred in their souls. Peace would never come with negotiated settlements and compromises that would never satisfy one person or another. Peace only came when no army, no enemy remains to challenge you, and the example you've made of them serves to ensure no one will dare to follow in their footsteps.

I admit that, Angron snarled to himself, even if none of my brothers will ever acknowledge that's what it will take to satisfy our Father's ambitions.

"WORLD EATERS!" Angron roared into his armour's vox-unit. "NO PRISONERS! NO MERCY! SLAUGHTER THEM ALL!" The Nails pulsed fitfully at those words. Angron answered their demands by barrelling after his advancing forces; a cluster of civilians running from what looked like a burning schola got in his way- he barely had a moment to identify most as women and children, a few armed guards clustered in their midst, seeing what was bearing down on them and letting loose either a few, futile snap shots or keening shrieks of terror before the Nails fired up and with a mingled scream of rage and pain, Angron laid about him with Gorefather and Gorechild in each hand and small, fragile bodies came apart like rotten fruit.

The cleansing of Ariggata had begun. It was nowhere near its end.

"Bones of Macragge!" Verus Caspaen whispered as he looked down at the scene before him. It was oft said that the Emperor's Space Marines knew no fear, but horror and disgust were no strangers to them and looking down from the slope of debris, ruined vehicles and corpses leading down into the city proper, such sentiments were strong in Decius's mind.

The white stone walls of the city smeared with blood in wide arcs that suggested the work of chainaxes. Mutilated bodies lying in heaps where they fell, regardless of age and gender- men, women, children; the World Eaters had been indiscriminate…and judging by the state of the bodies, none of them had died quickly or painlessly. Few showed the signs of injuries inflicted by bolter fire- most had been killed at close range, if the severed limbs and eviscerated conditions were anything to go on. Pyramids fashioned of severed heads lay on street corners, bringing into mind the reports he'd heard of the Twelfth's propensity for blood rituals, of savage competitions between battle brothers over who could take the most enemy heads in combat…seeing this, Caspaen could well believe it, and knew full well such horrors would greet him and his men all the way through the city to the rebel stronghold. He could only imagine what display of butchery Angron would have left in his wake there.

"Lord Guilliman, you will need to see this"

"What is it, Verus?" the Primarch's voice sounds resigned, clearly aware of what will likely be the response, but needing to know regardless.

"Slaughter, my lord. This was slaughter".