I should have remembered Saturn.

Holding the Emperor's Sword didn't mean I was worthy of using it. My first strike bounced off painfully and the sword deflected away from an impenetrable magic shield and flew off, like a boomerang guided by its own mind.

It landed point first in front of the Demonifuge, and Sister Stern's hand grabbed the pommel by instinct. I didn't wait for the consequences of my failure to crush me, crossing through the labyrinth and withdrawing the army a good distance away, while moving my Blackstone Forts into formation around the Chaos God. Cegorach's Fortress joined the circle of six and even fired first, its blue Immaterium beam now tinged with hues of black and another color I could only taste and not see.

"Did you wash your neck this morning, Tzeentch?" the Demonifuge asked in a serious voice, as the sword in her hand began to glow brighter and brighter.

She was not ready for this, but at least the sword didn't reject her. Nobody was ready, in fact.

Tzeentch was not a God of Magic and Sorcery for nothing. The Demonifuge's strike barely left a white mark on the shield of the Dark God, just as the 5 Primarchs join the attack.

Corax and Angron were the only ones to even leave a mark, before my 5 Blackstone Fortresses fired their beams as well.

It was only then I understood the stupid Penumbra Prophecy that drove Abaddon to his 12th Black Crusade. Six of the ancient weapons were meant to kill a god when fired together, and two of them were even more powerful than normal. The Black Lament had a black beam modified by the Emperor himself, while the Mobilitas Sanctum of the Sisters of Battle added a golden beam that sang like a choir of Angels.

In less than a minute, the blue Warp shield covering the Dark God shattered into crystal shards, and then the beams began to burn through eyes and tentacles, while the army battled the remaining daemons with increased morale.

My changed perception even showed me the morale bar on my units, though I doubted morale was so easily converted into numerical units.

'Deploying 666 Pylons now. Contingency Zet now in effect.' Zath warned me with a mental impulse, as the Necron Pylons vanished from the tesseract and appeared in a sphere around the Hidden Library.

Zet, huh? Leave the enemy a path of escape, and sit on that road by myself.

It was the worst plan of them all, especially since it relied on the untested Godslayer Lance.

Then again, compared to the Demonifuge and the Primarchs, a lone Lancefire would seem mostly harmless.

"Die well, Lancefire!" I heard the joking Solitaire encourage me, while riding the head of an avian Great Daemon and stabbing its eyes with his black-bladed Athame dagger. The Lord of Change died forever, and Mnemorach grew even stronger. Damn, the Eldar harlequin was too cool to watch. Maybe one day I could match him, if I didn't die in the next minute.

'Take care of Purity, Canis.' I sent to my loyal wolf as I moved to stand on the death ground left untouched by the Pylon's area of enforced reality.

As expected, Tzeentch didn't wait to die under the siege, and half of its mangled body and burning tentacles moved towards the only escape route, guarded by a lone human.

"You stand in the path of a God, mortal!" Tzeentch shouted with a slightly desperate voice, far less impressive than he likely wanted to appear.

"I take it you just want to run, and leave all these precious books behind? Why are you in such a hurry? Stay for me, we could have tea..." I proposed in a mild voice, and took a step forward.

A warp spell of some sort tried to wash me away, only to pass over me with no effect. Or rather, I drained a small bit to empower myself, while the rest carved a path of destruction behind me.

A mind-scrambling spell? I looked back to see the Tyranid Hive Mind retreating in pain, blood and gore flowing from its eyes and mouth. Uh, I wasn't even the target? I stood between two gods by myself.

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Time to make my death mean something. That had always been the plan, after all. I died fighting Slaanesh, and will die again fighting a god. It was inevitable.

Two swords appeared in my hands, a Phase Blade and the Sword of Dawn, or the Dawn_Blade the chronophagic weapon I was gifted so long ago.

Only now, I was a far better swordsman than I have ever been, mostly by stealing bladework from a Daemon Blade.

To my surprise, the Phase Blade worked far worse than the other, barely cutting into the dense warp-flesh of the Dark God, but the Dawn Blade left huge rends, each adding more knowledge into my mind.

"Cursed thief! You will pay for your insolence!" Tzeentch wailed as my strikes caused real damage.

"I understand and forgive you, little blue snail. You wanted to rise above your pitiful fate, wiping the floor of the Old Ones's library with your slime. But see, we had such a wonderful cuisine on Terra. Snails are a delicacy..." I quipped in an effort to annoy the Warp God and make him lose some tactics to anger.

"I am not a snail! It's only your lies, damned Lancefire!" Tzeentch shouted with words that hit me like hammers.

"...fried in olive oil, boiled alive for soup? Do you even have cooking books in this Library?" I wondered as the Warp God bulged into a muscular mollusk to crush me once and for all.

"You will boil alive for all eternity, Pef Lancefire!" the mollusk god promised, and then formed a giant mouth in his bulge and just ate me.

I dropped the useless Phase Blade and drew out the Godslayer made from the Emperor's Fulgurite, then stabbed the roof of the mouth just as the flesh walls crushed down on me.

And this is how I died, fighting a Warp God. Again.

A mortal was never meant to touch such a power like the Fulgurite, the essence of Petrified Lightning of the Emperor of Mankind. Even Perpetuals would die doing that.

That would have been deadly enough, except for the part where I drew this weapon out from Vulkan's dead body. So Vulkan wasn't dead anymore, but he was also alive back in the Fringe with my other teachers in the Temple of Knowledge.

A paradox, right inside the God of Magic? Far deadlier than I assumed.

Vulkan emerged alive and angry beside me, and certainly very pissed. "Where are we, neophyte?" he asked loudly, before noting the situation and grabbing the Godslayer in his huge hand.

I stabbed the Dawn Blade downwards, while Vulkan kept the roof of the mouth from crushing us.

"The blue mouth is Tzeentch, Primarch. Try to kill him before we die." I urged the good Primarch just as I remembered my promise to Zath and released the Transcendant C'tan from his Tesseract Vault.

I was dying, and only the drain of time via the Dawn Blade sustained me to watch the Primarch and the C'tan Star God go to town inside the Warp God.

They made a good team, especially after the C'tan crafted a nice suit of armor around Vulkan with a single hand-wave. I was still dying, a bit slower...

Pass through death and reach the other side. It sounded much easier in my head before. Actually doing it...dying sucks.

Like a controlled demolition, when it's your own life you're demolishing.

I should have died. I did die. Then I saw the face of a God, and it wasn't even the Emperor. Ynnead's cold eyes stood watch over the gates of death, and I felt judged and sentenced.

I did kill plenty of Eldar, to be fair. Enough of them to give birth to the Eldar god of Death.

And as Tzeentch died around me, I died with him. And stood face to face with death.

Ynnead's eyes changed to pity, as if a worse fate awaited me on the other side.

And then I died, for real.

Being dead sucks. Sanguinius was right.