He entered a square room with two empty alcoves on either side. He could feel that the chamber beyond was the source of the evil in his head and a miasma of gritty darkness filled the air within.
There was nothing to be gained by stealth at this point: fast, lethal force was what was needed now.
Uriel charged into the pyramid-chamber of the Nightbringer, to find a scene of utter bedlam.
PDF troopers convulsed on the chamber's floor, faces bloody where nails and fingers had ripped eyes from heads. Those men still conscious beat themselves bloody with broken fists, mewling in terror at nightmares only they could see.
A ring of metallic skeletal beings advanced implacably towards a central block of dissolving black stone where a group of heavily armed eldar surrounded a jade-armoured warrior, the same one he had fought on the eldar space ship over Caernus IV. Kasimir de Valtos and a dark haired alien female sheltered in their midst.
He spared this scene but a cursory glance as he saw the huge creature pulling itself free of its stone prison. Swathed in rotted robes, it rose up from its tomb, the solid stone unravelling atom by atom and reshaping itself in a swirling black shroud.
More and more of the black stone disintegrated to form the concealing darkness of the creature. Soon all that was left was the slab of the tomb with the final piece of the metal burning brightly in its surface.
Uriel had a barely perceived vision of a gaunt, mouldering face with twin pits of yellow glowing weakly from within. There was insanity and a raging, unquenchable thirst for suffering in those eyes. A cloak of ghostly darkness hid its true form, a pair of rotted, bandage-swathed arms reaching from its nebulous outline. One limb ended in long, grave-dirt encrusted talons, the other in what appeared to be a huge blade of unnatural darkness, angled like a vast scythe.
As the creature rose to its full height, Uriel saw that it towered above the mortals beneath it: swirling eddies of darkness at its base snaking around the bodies of those not quick enough to escape its grasp.
The cloak of darkness swept two of the alien warriors up. The scythe arm flashed, passing through their armour and bodies with ease, and their withered corpses dropped, no more than shrivelled sacks of bone.
The aliens scattered as another of their number was engulfed by the vast alien. The alabaster figures with the copper staffs took their place at their master's side, their perfect faces devoid of life and animation.
'De Valtos!' yelled Barzano. 'By the Emperor's soul, do you know what you've done?'
Kasimir de Valtos screamed in triumph as the Nightbringer bloated the chamber with dark energies, filling his mind with the most wondrous things imaginable. The eldar warriors fell back towards the Ultramarines, ready to fight their way clear of this nightmare they found themselves within.
But the Nightbringer was hungry for soul morsels, the darkness around its form swelling and billowing as though plucked by invisible winds. A deep throbbing beat filled the chamber as the metallic skeleton warriors turned their attention to the interlopers within their master's chambers.
Uriel shuddered in revulsion as the skeletal creatures marched towards him, raising their strange weapons in perfect unison. He dived out of the way, rolling and lashing out at the nearest warrior, the chainsword hacking through its legs and toppling it. He sprang to his feet as the metallic warriors opened fire.
Uriel watched with horror as Sergeant Venasus shuddered under an invisible impact, the fabric of his armour peeling away in flayed layers, his flesh following with horrifying rapidity. The sergeant dropped to his knees as his musculature was revealed then stripped away until nothing but his crouching skeleton remained.
Another Ultramarine died in agony as his body was stripped, layer by layer, by the skull-faced warriors' Weapons. Clawed hands grasped at Uriel, tearing at his armour, and he spun to face the metal skeleton he had just felled, the metal of its body re-knitting even as he watched.
He lashed out with his sword and put a bolt round through its ribcage. The warrior fell once more, but Uriel pounded the machine to fragments beneath his boot lest it somehow manage to regenerate once more. All around him was chaos.
Space Marines grappled with the metallic skeletons and were, for the most part winning, smashing them to the ground and blasting them apart with bolter fire. Sergeant Learchus tore one apart with his bare hands, smashing its skull to destruction against the floor.
But many of the deathly creatures simply picked themselves up once more, untroubled by wounds that would have killed a man twice over. Barzano fought beside Uriel, his glowing knife cutting a swathe through the enemy. His face was ashen and his movements slowing as the agony of his wounds began overcoming the pain balms.
The eldar fought alongside them and as Uriel kicked out at another foe, he kept a close eye on the aliens, ready to turn on them the second the machine warriors had been despatched. Their jade-armoured leader fought and killed with a deadly grace, his axe lashing out in a dizzying spiral of death. Wherever he struck a machine collapsed and each blow struck brought a screeching cry from the swirling darkness at the chamber's centre. But to Uriel it sounded more like a sound of amusement rather than displeasure.
The excrents snapped and bit, bearing their master's foes to the ground by sheer weight of numbers. The hideous alien weapons stripped great swathes of flesh from their deformed frames, but they fought on, oblivious to the rain of their anatomy, until there was little left save scraps of torn, convulsing body parts.
Uriel fought like he had never fought before, cutting, shooting and killing with a skill he had not known he possessed. His reflexes were honed to perfection. He dodged killing thrusts and lethal blows with preternatural speed, deflecting clawed hands and shattering metal skulls with dazzling skill.
The last of the metal warriors were smashed to ruins, their gleaming limbs and bodies scattered in pieces across the chamber's floor. Uriel heaved a painful breath, his side burning where an alien rifle had stripped away a portion of his armour and flesh. Clotted blood caked his head and armour where grasping hands had ripped into him.
A strange calm settled as Space Marines and eldar faced one another across the chamber. The Nightbringer stood unmoving beside the slab of what had been the top of its tomb, the cruciform shaped piece of metal still glowing with eldritch fire.
Barzano joined Uriel, his breathing ragged and uneven. Uriel saw the wound on his arm had reopened, blood leaking through the synthflesh bandage.
Kasimir de Valtos stood in the undulating shadow of the Nightbringer, his features twisted in savage glee.
He raised a finger to point at the Ultramarines and screamed, 'Destroy them! I command you!'
Whether the words were aimed at the eldar or the vast alien and its bodyguards, Uriel did not know, but it was the eldar who leapt forwards. Their leader made straight for him, his war-axe raised high.
The Ultramarines roared and charged to meet them, the chamber ringing with the clash of arms as battle was joined once more.
Uriel blocked a cut and stepped in to hammer his fist into the side of the alien's helmet. His foe ducked, slamming the barbed haft of his axe into Uriel's belly, ripping a long gash in his armour.
Uriel gasped in pain, powering the hilt of his sword into Kesharq's back, slamming the alien to the floor. He reversed the grip on his sword and spun, hammering the roaring chain blade downwards.
His opponent was no longer there, but somersaulting to his feet and spinning his axe at Uriel's head. A burst of flaring light exploded as Barzano's knife intercepted the blow and Uriel took advantage of the alien's momentary distraction to smash his sword into his head.
Kesharq saw it coming and twisted his neck, robbing the blow of much of its power. The whirring teeth ripped off his helmet, the dented metal catching on the loose skin of his face and tearing it free in a wash of blood.
Kesharq screamed in pain, his fleshless face hideously revealed. He staggered back, regaining his balance and blocked Barzano's reverse cut, def
lecting the blade away from him and hammering his axe into the inquisitor's chest.
Bones shattered as the axe clove downwards through Barzano's ribcage, exiting in a bloody spray above his hip. Barzano fell, the power knife dropping from his hand.
Uriel screamed a denial, slashing at the alien leader's back. Kesharq spun away from the blow, trapping Uriel's sword in the jagged barbs of the axe blade and snapping it with a flick of his wrist. Before he could reverse the stroke, Uriel dived forwards, over Barzano's body, and swept up the fallen inquisitor's blade in time to deflect a sweep meant to remove his head.
Kesharq came at him again. The axe swept round and Uriel blocked it with the glowing weapon he had taken from Barzano.
Kesharq advanced more cautiously now, the red mask of his bloody features a truly repulsive sight, the twitching of glistening facial muscles clearly visible. He spat a mouthful of blood and charged, axe raised to smash down.
Rather than step back, Uriel ducked low and caught the haft of the axe on his forearm, feeling the force of impact crack his armour open. He roared, spinning inside the eldar's guard and gripped his arms, slamming his body into the alien and pulling.
The momentum of Kesharq's charge carried him sailing over Uriel's shoulder and he smashed into the ground on his back. Uriel spun the power knife and drove it with all his strength through Kesharq's breastplate and into his heart. The alien leader spasmed, dark blood bursting from his throat as Uriel twisted the knife in the wound and plunged it home again and again.
Yells and war-cries echoed around him, but all Uriel could see was the ecstatic form of Kasimir de Valtos at the chamber's centre.
He wrenched the knife clear of Kesharq's corpse and stumbled towards the man who had set these events in motion.
Kasimir de Valtos watched the furious battle raging around him with unabashed pleasure. To see so much blood spilt was pleasing to him, and the terrible things swarming through his head were a revelation. So much slaughter filled his mind! His entire being felt elevated as he savoured the thought that the things he was seeing and feeling were but the tiniest morsel of the bloodshed the Nightbringer could unleash.
It was still weak, its substance not yet fully formed, but incredibly powerful. Whether it was simply his nearness to the creature that empowered him with such knowledge or some deeper link he did not know. Perhaps it recognised in him a kindred spirit. Certainly it displayed none of the lethal hostility to him that it had to the eldar in its first moments of awakening.
The alien woman of Kesharq's stood behind him. He could feel the fear radiating from her in waves and it felt wonderful to drink in that emotion. She collapsed to her knees, her skin blistering and cracking as every shred of her life force was leeched from her body. She was able to scream once before the last vestiges of her existence was swallowed by the Nightbringer. Was this the beginning of his transformation into an immortal, wondered de Valtos? Was this the first of the new powers he was soon to manifest?
The violence around him felt truly intoxicating. He could feel the combined hatred and aggression of the enemies flaring bright and succulent, filling him, making him stronger. So pleasing to have such things to feast upon rather than the cold, tasteless energies that had sustained its form these millions of years.
Kasimir de Valtos blinked in puzzlement. Millions of years? Where had that thought come from? Suddenly he realised that the sensations flooding through him, the fear, the anger, the terror were not his own, but borrowed from the alien creature before him. Anger filled him as he realised he had been nothing more than a conduit for emotions that this being had forgotten over the passage of aeons it had spent locked away from the sight of man.
As though sensing his thoughts the Nightbringer slowly turned to face him, the yellow pits of its eyes burning his soul, boring into the core of what made him human.
But Kasimir de Valtos had set himself to becoming an immortal god and utter single-mindedness filled his thoughts as a creature from the dawn of time swept its darkness around him.
'Make me like you! I freed you. I demand immortality - it is my right!' shrieked de Valtos as the Nightbringer lowered its gaze to his.
He felt himself sucked into the creature's eyes, the emptiness of its stare more terrifying than anything he could comprehend. He saw the dawn of the alien's race, the things they had done, the misery and suffering they had inflicted upon the galaxy and the blink of an eye that was the race of man.
He dropped to his knees as the sheer insignificance of his existence trembled before the unutterable vastness of the alien's consciousness. The fragile threads that were the twisted remains of Kasimir de Valtos's sanity shattered under such awful self-knowledge. This being had tamed stars and wiped entire civilisations from existence before the human race had even crawled from the soup of creation. What need had it of him?
'Please…' he begged, 'I want to live forever!'
The Nightbringer closed its clawed hand over de Valtos's head, the blackened fist completely enclosing his skull. Kasimir shrieked in terror at its touch, his flesh sloughing from his bones as it fed on his life energies.
The dark scythe slashed towards his neck.
He had a brief moment of perfect horror as he felt his own death flow through him, feeling his own terror and pain as the flimsiest morsel, barely worth feeding on, yet inflicted for the sake of the death it caused.
His head parted from his body.
The Nightbringer released its grip on de Valtos, letting his ravaged body topple to the ground. Slowly, deliberately, it turned its attention to the glowing metal fixed in the centre of its former tomb, passing its gnarled fingers over the shape.
And in space, a crescent shaped starship began to slowly drag itself from the shadowy realm it had occupied for the last sixty million years, called back into existence by its master.
Uriel watched dispassionately as the alien creature killed de Valtos. He felt nothing at his foe's death: the stakes were now far higher than personal revenge. He must somehow destroy this creature, or banish it: at least, stand against it.
The alabaster guardians stepped to intercept him, but Uriel was not to be denied. Pasanius, Learchus and Dardino joined him in his dash for the alien creature. Crackling emerald energies fired from the staff of the first two warriors. Uriel blocked the first bolt with the power knife and dodged the second. Pasanius raked one of the perfect figures with bolter fire, blasting porcelain-like chunks from its body, as Learchus drove his chainsword through its belly. A sweep of its staff smashed both sergeants from their feet, wreathing their bodies in green balefire.
Dardino hacked the warrior's legs from under it with a sweep of his power sword and Uriel leapt feet first at the second. His boots hammered home, but it was like striking a solid wall. The white figure rocked slightly, but did not fall, stabbing at Uriel with its copper staff. Uriel barely raised the knife in time, the power behind the blow sending hot jolts of agony up his arm. He rolled to his feet, punching the power knife through the figure's groin, slashing upwards and outwards. The alien warrior toppled, its leg severed at the hip, and Uriel ducked below the sweeping slash of yet another of the emotionless warriors' weapons.
Pasanius rose to his feet, firing at the remaining figures and punching another from its feet in a hail of white splinters. The final figure took a step back, Learchus's sword slashing at its head. Its master's clawed hand swept out and felled Learchus with a single blow. The sergeant groaned and struggled to rise.
Uriel, Pasanius and Dardino faced the awesome form of the Nightbringer, weapons drawn, feeling waves of horror breaking against them, but standing firm in the face of the enemy.
Uriel had nothing but contempt for the massive alien creature before him. The darkness of its spectral cloak billowed around its form and twin pools of sickly yellow pulsed within the darkness where its head might be.
The howling darkness of its scythe-arm lashed out, faster than the eye could follow. Sergeant Dardino grunted, more in surprise
than pain as his torso toppled from his body and his legs crumpled in a flood of gore.
Pasanius opened fire, his bolts stitching a path across the swirling night of the alien's form. Hollow, echoing laughter pealed from the walls as each bolt flickered harmlessly through the enveloping darkness. The scythe licked out again and Pasanius's bolter was sheared in two perfect halves. The return stroke removed his right arm below the elbow.
Uriel used the distraction to close with the alien, slashing the power knife into the darkness. He screamed as the glacial chill of the being's substance enfolded his arm.
The creature's awful talons swung in a low arc, punching through Uriel's chest, tearing through a lung and rupturing his primary heart. He hurtled backwards, landing awkwardly across the remaining slab of the tomb, the glowing metal burning its image into the back of his armour. Pain ripped through him, deep in his chest, along his arm and within every nerve of his body. He groaned, fighting to push himself to his feet as he watched the Nightbringer begin the slaughter of his men.
Inquisitor Barzano watched with pride as Uriel and his comrades stood before the power of the Nightbringer, despite the utter impossibility of victory. He pulled himself towards the slab even as life ebbed from his body. He could feel the flow of powerful energies flooding through the chamber, nightmarish visions the proximity of the Nightbringer was generating, and something else…
A soundless shriek, dazzling in its purity of purpose, called into the depths of space, calling the lost ship home. The living metal that shaped its form could not resist, pulled back from the realm it had been stranded in all these years.
So powerful was the summons that he could practically see the rippling waves of power radiating from where the C'tan's tomb had once stood. Or, more precisely, the glowing metal talisman buried in the slab.
His strength was all but gone, but still he tried to pull himself across the floor. He moaned as he watched Pasanius fall and Uriel thrown across the chamber, the Nightbringer's long, claws punching effortlessly through his armour.
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