The greater daemon turned its shaggy, bestial head towards Vladimir. Imperial Fists were hacking their way through the advancing bloodletters to form up around their Chapter Master, but the greater daemon could simply step over the melee, and in moments its shadow passed over Vladimir.
The Imperial Fist held the Fangs of Dorn out wide, presenting himself as a target to the greater daemon, taunting it with his refusal to flee from the monstrosity.
‘You dare walk into my domain, and shed the blood of my brothers?’ yelled Vladimir. ‘Who do you think you face here? What victory do you think you can win? All the fury of the warp will falter against the soul of one good Space Marine!’
The greater daemon bellowed and raised its axe, already slick with Adeptus Astartes blood. The axe arced down and Vladimir jumped to the side, the blade cleaving down through the ruined chapel. Vladimir stabbed both the Fangs of Dorn through the greater daemon’s wrist and ripped them out again, snapping tendons and tearing muscle. The greater daemon pulled its arm back and howled in anger, following up its axe blow with a strike from its whip.
The whip moved too fast for even Vladimir to avoid. Its barbs lashed around his leg and the daemon yanked him off his feet, into the air, and cast him down to the ground in the heart of the bloodletters.
The Soulspear was still in Iktinos’s hand. Its glowing black blade was being forced up under Sarpedon’s chin, towards his throat, to slice his head off. Sarpedon grabbed Iktinos’s wrist and fought the Chaplain, but death had unlocked some new fortitude in Iktinos and in that moment the two were matched in strength.
Sarpedon could feel the skin on his face burning. Pain meant something different to a Space Marine compared to a normal man, but it was still pain and Sarpedon struggled as much to avoid blacking out as he did with Iktinos.
The Axe of Mercaeno was trapped under Iktinos. Sarpedon tried to wrench it free, but Iktinos would not relent. He tried to roll over so Iktinos would be trapped beneath, but the Chaplain would not budge, as if he was anchored to the deck.
‘You obey,’ hissed Sarpedon. ‘Obedience only comes from one place.’ He saw his own features reflected in the eyepieces of Iktinos’s mask, the blistering wounds creeping up his face. ‘It comes from fear.’
Sarpedon let go of the Axe and reached up to place his hand on the back of Iktinos’s head. He found a grip and tore the Chaplain’s helmet away.
Iktinos’s face was charred and twisted by the heat. The bubbling skin was stretched tight over the skull, the eyes buried in scorched pits, the scalp coming apart. There was no dimming in the hate on Iktinos’s features. The pain made it stronger. There was almost no resemblance to the face that Sarpedon knew, none of the Chaplain’s calm and resolve, just the intensity of his hatred.
‘I know what you fear,’ said Sarpedon. His hand clamped to the back of Iktinos’s burning skull, and he unleashed the full force of the Hell into the traitor’s mind.
The pain helped. Normally Sarpedon unleashed the Hell out wide, capturing as many of the enemy as possible in its hallucinations. This time he focused it until it was a white-hot psychic spear, thrust into Iktinos’s mind like a hypodermic needle loaded with everything the Chaplain feared.
He feared Daenyathos. Fear, in some deep and unrecognisable form, was the only thing that could force a Space Marine to obey with such unthinking, unquestioning ferocity. Everything that Sarpedon knew about the Philosopher-Soldier was forced into the point of fire and turned into something appalling.
Like a god of the warp itself, the form of Daenyathos loomed in front of Iktinos’s mind’s eye. Daenyathos appeared as he had in illuminated manuscripts of his Catechisms Martial, but vast in size and infinitely more terrible. Around his legs rushed a torrent of broken bodies, all the Soul Drinkers whose lives he had spent following his monstrous plan. His armour was inscribed with exhortations to death and torture, words of the Catechisms Martial twisted and devolved. Thousands of innocents were crucified against the armour of his greaves. His chest and shoulder guards were covered with the forms of the betrayed, sunk into the armour as if half-digested. The heroes of the old Chapter – Captain Caeon, Chapter Master Gorgoleon and the victims of the First Chapter War, manipulated into conflict to satisfy Daenyathos’s desire for a Chapter at odds with the Imperium. The dead of Sarpedon’s Chapter, from Givrillian to Scamander, Captain Karraidin, Sarpedon’s dearest friend Techmarine Lygris and all the others who had fallen.
Around the collar of Daneyathos’s armour were clustered his allies in treachery. The cruellest of Inquisitors who had forced the Soul Drinkers into the extremes of exile. Aliens despatched by Sarpedon and his brethren, as Daenyathos watched on, satisfied that they had played their part – the necron creature who had almost killed Sarpedon on Selaaca, the renegade eldar lord of Gravehnhold, the ork warlord of Nevermourn, all gathered in celebration.
Alongside them were the very worst of his allies. The followers of the dark gods – Abraxes, Ve’Meth, a host of Traitor Marines and daemons. The mutant Teturact and his legion of the dead. And Daenyathos himself, his face lit by the fires of wrath itself, laughing with the agents of betrayal of whose wickedness he had been the architect.
Daenyathos looked down at Iktinos, pinned squirming below him like something trapped in a microscope slide. The vastness of his displeasure, mixed with a terrible knowing mockery, hammered into Iktinos’s mind as fiercely as any weapon that Sarpedon could have wielded.
Iktinos screamed. In his mind, the sound was lost among the laughter of Daenyathos, who revelled in seeing one of his most self-important pawns being forced to understand his own insignificance. In reality, the sound was so completely unlike anything a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes should ever utter that Iktinos ceased to be a Space Marine in that moment.
The Chaplain’s grip relaxed. Sarpedon threw him off and rolled out of the flames. He stood over the prostrate Iktinos.
Iktinos’s mind had utterly shattered. Sarpedon’s psychic senses were not sharp, but even he could feel it, a growing void where once the Chaplain’s soul had been, into which were tumbling the fragments of his broken personality.
‘I own you now,’ said Sarpedon. ‘I am the one you obey. Tell me everything.’
The faces of the daemons crowded around, twisted and jeering, the solid mass of their features broken by the black iron blades that cut down to finish off Chapter Master Vladimir.
The Fangs of Dorn were just suited to fighting this close, where they parried and stabbed as if moving in Vladimir’s hand by some will of their own. Perhaps Dorn himself wielded them in those moments, reaching from the Emperor’s side to lend his own skill to Vladimir’s struggle to survive.
It would not be enough. There were too many of them, every one eager to be the one who carried the skull of a Chapter Master back to the warp, to throw it at the foot of the Blood God’s throne.
Vladimir stabbed up into a daemon’s ribcage even as he turned another blade away from his hearts, and prepared to die.
A streak of orange flame burned across his vision, swathing the contorted faced in fire. He was aware of glossy black armour embellished in red, and the blade of a power axe shimmering as it cut in every direction. Hands grabbed him and dragged him out of the mass. Vladimir looked up and saw the unfamiliar face of a woman above him, streaked with blood and grime, teeth gritted.
‘Not while we live,’ she hissed through her teeth, ‘shall they take such a prize.’
She hauled Vladimir to his feet. He recognised Sister Aescarion, the Superior of Lord Inqiusitor Kolgo’s retinue. The jump pack she wore on her back smouldered, its exhaust vanes glowing a dull red, and the path she had carved through the daemons as she dived into the throng after Vladimir was closing as the bloodletters fought to swamp Vladimir again.
‘My thanks, Sister,’ said Vladimir as he found his footing.
‘Through me, the Emperor works,’ she replied.
The two stood back to back as the bloodletters closed. Now Vladimir could l
et the Fangs of Dorn do their finest work, stabbing so rapidly up into the advancing daemon ranks that every moment another of them fell, ribcage split open or burning entrails spilling from a ruptured abdomen. Aescarion fought with her axe in one hand and a pistol in the other, quickly rattling off the pistol’s magazine and then taking the axe in both hands.
A Sister of Battle could not match a Space Marine’s sheer strength and skill. Few unaugmented humans could approach a veteran Superior’s ability, but even so she was just that – human, without the extra organs and enhanced physiology of the Adeptus Astartes. But what she lacked in their physical superiority, she made up with in faith.
It was not a Space Marine’s mental fortitude that Vladimir witnessed in Aescarion. A Space Marine was a master of his fear, his mind so strong he could face even the daemons of the warp and remain sane. Aescarion was different. It was not conditioning and strength of duty, raw bloody-mindedness, that fuelled her. It was faith. She believed so completely in the Emperor’s hand guiding her, in the place she had in His plan, that it was as plain to her as the enemy closing in around her. She did not fear them, because in her mind she was not a human being with human frailties. She was a hollow vessel that existed to be filled up with the will of the Emperor and used as He willed it. There could be no fear, when whatever end befell not her, but the Emperor.
Vladimir led the way back towards the Imperial Fists lines, opening up a path as the Fangs of Dorn flashed as quick and deadly as the teeth of a giant chainblade. He had to force his legs out of the sucking mire of gore and entrails around his feet. Aescarion’s axe gave her reach and she swung it in great arcs as she followed, smashing falling blades aside and keeping a good sword’s length between her and the bloodletters.
The mass parted and Aescarion’s Battle Sisters crowded forwards, flanking Vladimir and battering the daemons back with bolter fire. Vladimir could see Lysander atop a barricade, swatting aside one of the horrors with his shield and pointing with his hammer to direct the heavy weapons set up around the Tactica. Everywhere he looked, there was carnage. Here, the Imperial Fists launched forwards in a counter-attack; there, the line broke and leaping horrors or galloping fiends poured through the lines like air bursting from a hull breach.
Vladimir made it over the altar of a shrine, used as the lynchpin of a barricade of chapel pews and statues. Inquisitor Kolgo was standing in the chapel, its columns fallen and its nave strewn with the bodies of daemons and Space Marines. With a moment to breathe at last, he turned to help drag the Battle Sisters following him over the altar into shelter. Aescarion leapt over the barricade on the exhausts of her jump pack, the gauntlets of her power armour smoking with daemon blood up to the elbow. Battle Sisters and Imperial Fists manned the barricade, pouring bolter fire into the bloodletters trying to follow.
‘Did it work?’ said Vladimir, catching his breath. ‘Is it fallen?’
By way of answer, Kolgo simply pointed towards the ruin where Vladimir had made his stand against the greater daemon.
The winged daemon was slumped against the wall, its wings in bloody tatters and its armour torn. Another volley of heavy fire slammed into it, punching through its corded red muscles. One of its wings was sheared through and fell broken, tattered skin fluttering like the canvas of a ruined sail. Vladimir had brought the daemon into the open, forced it to stand proud of the daemonic host while it fought him. He had bought his heavy weapons the time they needed to draw a bead on the target and spear it on a lance of concentrated fire.
The greater daemon was taking its time to die. Heavy bolter fire rippled up and down it. The daemon dropped its lash and tried to force itself back to its feet, leaning on the ruined wall for support. A lascannon blast caught it in the chest and bored right through it, revealing its gory ribs and pulsing organs. The daemon roared, blood spattering from its lips, and toppled over into the horde.
The Imperial Fists cheered as the daemon died. Lysander led them, raising his hammer high as if taunting the daemons to respond.
The sound was drowned out by the laughter that rumbled through the Phalanx. It was the laughter of Abraxes, observing the slaughter from the rear ranks. The object of his amusement lumbered into view on the Imperial Fists flank – a greater daemon of the plague god, the enormous bloated horror that had killed Leucrontas and broken the force holding the Rynn’s World Memorial. The daemon’s laughter joined Abraxes’s own as it was herded forward by its attendant daemons, and it clapped its flabby hands in glee at the prospect of new playthings.
‘Can we kill another one, Chapter Master?’ voxed Kolgo.
‘It is not a question of whether we can or not,’ replied Vladimir. ‘We will do so or we will be lost.’
‘Behold this icon of sin!’ shouted Aescarion to her Battle Sisters. ‘Witness the corruption it wears! In the face of this evil, let our bullets be our prayers!’
The expression on the greater daemon’s face changed. Its enormous mouth downturned and it frowned, its eyes widening in surprise, a caricature of dismay and shock. Tiny explosions studded the rubbery surface of its flesh, not from the direction of the Imperial Fists centre, but from behind it.
Vladimir jumped onto a fallen pillar to get a better view. He glimpsed the flash of a power weapon – power claws, slashing through the plaguebearers, illuminating the edges of purple armour.
‘It’s the Soul Drinkers!’ came a vox from the nearest Imperial Fists unit.
Vladimir recognised Captain Luko now, followed by what remained of the Soul Drinkers Chapter. A bolt of lightning arced from the ceiling, earthing through the daemon, burning away masses of charred flesh – Tyrendian, the Soul Drinkers Librarian, marshalled the lightning like a conductor with an orchestra as the other Soul Drinkers ran into the fight around him.
Vladimir paused for a second. The Soul Drinkers were the enemies of the Imperial Fists, rebels and traitors. But the daemons they both fought were a fouler enemy even than the renegade. The legions of the warp were the worst of the worst.
‘All units of the Fifth,’ ordered Vladimir. ‘Join the Soul Drinkers and counter to our flank! Third and Ninth, hold the centre!’
The predator tanks emerged from the barracks they were using for shelter and rumbled towards the growing battle on the flank. Imperial Fists units broke from their positions and followed them. Vladimir watched as the Fifth Company and the Soul Drinkers caught the plague daemon’s force from both sides.
‘Dorn forgive me,’ said Vladimir to himself.
Captain Luko looked into the eyes of the daemon, and he saw there everything that mankind had learned to fear.
Something in those unholy eyes had tormented the sons of Earth ever since creatures first crawled out from beneath the mud. Humans had told tales of it, had seen it in their nightmares, before their species had finished evolving. It was the force that inspired the weak flesh to corrupt and rot away, the purest of fears, of death and pain and the unknown wrapped up into one faceless, malevolent will.
Since there had been intelligent minds to contemplate it, the Plague God had existed, turning vulnerable minds to corruption and evil through the fear of what it could do to their flesh. But now there were no vulnerable minds for it to exploit, no kernels of doubt that could grow into desperation and surrender. A Space Marine did not have that weakness. Now, this avatar of the Plague God had to fight.
The plaguebearers that attended the greater daemon were caught by surprise by the Soul Drinkers, who charged from the warren of the catacombs without warning. The daemons did not scatter or run as mundane troops might, but they did not have enough numbers in the right place and the Soul Drinkers had destroyed dozens of them in the first seconds. Luko had taken a worthy toll with his claws and bolter fire had done for the rest. Now Luko was face to face with the greater daemon, its burning and blood-covered form quivering with rage and pain, and everything they had earned in those moments would be lost if he faltered now.
‘I have killed your kind before!’ yelled Luko,
knowing the daemon could hear him even through the battle’s din. ‘But you have never killed anything like me!’
The daemon snatched up one of the chains its followers had used to drag it. It raised the chain over its head and brought it down like a whip, the links of the chain slamming into the deck. Luko threw himself out of the way, the floor beneath him buckling under the impact.
Plaguebearers following the greater daemon shambled to its side. A dozen of them carried between them an enormous sword of oozing black steel, its pitted blade edged with bloody fangs that looked like they had just been torn from some huge beast’s jaw. The greater daemon bent down and took up the sword in its other hand, and the pits in the metal formed mouths that screamed and howled. Luko saw the souls bound into the blade, pitiful souls who had pledged themselves to the daemon in ignorance or desperation.
The daemon raised the blade over its head, point down aimed at Luko. Luko got to his feet and slashed at the plaguebearers who tried to hem him in, the shadow of the blade falling over him as he realised he could not get out of its way.
A bolt of blue-white light hit the sword and the whole weapon lit up, power coursing through it. The daemon bellowed as the flesh of its hand burned off, falling in charred flakes. Its fingers, stripped to bloody bone, let go of the sword and it fell to the deck with a tremendous clang.
Behind Luko, Librarian Tyrendian leapt from the Soul Drinkers ranks. Lightning leapt from his fingers and played around Luko, burning away the plaguebearers who tried to close with him. A bolt struck the greater daemon, earthing in blue-white crackles of power through its skin and leaving crazed burn patterns across its bulk.
Luko leapt over the fallen sword and punched forwards with a claw, spearing through the back of the daemon’s ruined hand. The daemon yanked the hand away and lashed at Luko with the chain again, as if it had been bitten by a troublesome insect and was trying to swat it before it could bite again. The chain whipped into Luko at chest height and threw him back into a pack of plaguebearers. Luko slashed in every direction, hoping that each wild strike would catch one of the diseased daemons closing on him.
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