by Gav Thorpe
The Deathwing opened fire, their storm bolters shredding the closest corpses in a hail of rounds. Azrael let loose a blast of plasma, incinerating two emaciated foes, while around him the others let free the fury of their bolters and pistols. Brother Damactus in Caulderain’s squad unleashed a jet of burning promethium from his flamer, catching more than a dozen targets with the burst of white fire. The corpses continued to rush the Dark Angels even as their bodies were consumed by the intense flames coating them.
‘Movement below!’ Belial warned.
Azrael turned to the closest steps. The slave-corpses at the furnaces had dumped their loads and were also pressing towards the stairs and ramps, black eyes turned up to those that sought to destroy their creator.
‘There must be thousands of them,’ Caulderain said. His power sword lopped the heads from two creatures as they reached the top of the stair. ‘Blades and fists, brothers. Save your ammunition.’
The Deathwing formed a two-part wall between the horde of living dead and their officers. Within a few seconds the mound of the vanquished was as tall as the warriors as they hacked and smashed with power swords and blazing fists. Garvel stepped from the line, wading into the sea of enemies with broad swings of his thunder hammer, his storm shield crushing more against the rails and bulkheads that lined the hall. The lightning claws of Brother Maldevor coursed with arcs of destructive power as he slashed and swiped, scattering severed limbs and heads.
‘Make way, brothers.’ Ezekiel did not raise his voice, but was heard easily across the crash of storm bolters, crack of powerfields and the snarl of Temenael’s chainfist.
Without thought, Belial’s squad parted to allow the Chief Librarian and his two companions to pass. Ezekiel advanced ahead of the Epistolaries, the triumvirate of psykers bathed in a cerulean glow of power. The Master of the Librarius cut down a walking corpse with his blade and smashed another aside with his backswing, making space for Dalgar and Maldarion to step alongside.
As one they thrust out their swords, each lancing their blade through the chest of a foe. The azure field that enveloped them spasmed and waxed stronger and brighter, boiling along their embedded weapons. Like a tsunami hitting a shore, the wave of blue burst out from the Chapter psykers, the touch of its lightning-flecked aura turning each corpse in its path to motes of flying dust.
Outwards and onwards poured the banishing wave, streaming and undulating from the swords of the Librarians, focused through Traitor’s Bane in the grip of Ezekiel. A score of enemies, a hundred then a thousand were swept away by the wall of ravening warp energy.
Ezekiel’s hands started to quiver; his shoulders shook with the effort of maintaining the flow of psychic power. With a gasp, Dalgar reeled back and fell to one knee, his sword clattering to the deck from weak fingers. Maldarion reached out his free hand and laid it upon the shoulder of Ezekiel, adding his physical and mental strength to that of his Brother-Librarian. A fresh pulse of immaterial fire flared through the thronging dead, leaping with a life of its own from one animated cadaver to the next, pouring up and down the decks as though possessed of a vengeful intent of its own.
Cursing, Maldarion too recoiled from Ezekiel as though struck by a blow, half spinning away from his master. Fronds of gold and black electricity coruscated across his armour for a few seconds before earthing through the gore-spattered deck.
Now alone, Ezekiel turned slowly, his sword sweeping the cleansing fire in an arc across the hall. He took a slow step forwards, twisting his sword to send a fresh flurry of power pulsing down into the furnace level.
‘Open fire!’ Azrael urged the others, who had been as equally mesmerised by the psychic display. ‘Cut our way through.’
The Deathwing formed a solid wall again, anchored on Ezekiel at one end of their line. As their bolts flew into the miasma of power churning through the hall they caught alight with its cleansing touch – each round sliced through a dozen foes before exploding with blue bursts of fire. Asmodai thrust himself into the pressing mass of corpses with a battle chant spilling from his lips, his crozius arcanum a blur of shimmering power that split open heads and crushed chests. Beside him Cathas was more measured in his attack, laying his own crozius upon those that eluded the frenzied assault of the other Chaplain. Metre by metre, they pushed into the seemingly endless horde, advancing along the hall beside Ezekiel, a score of broken foes for every stride taken.
‘Can you walk?’ Azrael demanded, stepping up to Maldarion. ‘Dalgar, are you hurt?’
‘We will recover,’ Dalgar assured him, pushing to his feet. He reclaimed his sword. ‘My lord, our master should not expend all of his strength here. We cannot say what trials still lie ahead.’
Azrael saw the immediate truth of this. Ezekiel was aflame head to foot with the power of his cleansing energy, but within the nimbus he was shuddering, shoulders flexing uncontrollably, head jerking to the left and right as though in the grip of a seizure.
‘Ezekiel!’ Azrael moved to lay a hand on the Chief Librarian but Dalgar pushed aside his arm before he touched.
‘That would be unwise,’ the psyker warned.
‘Ezekiel,’ Azrael said, again, quieter, as a companion rather than a commander. ‘That is enough, Ezekiel.’
With a howl more animal than human, Ezekiel tore himself away from his own conjuration, letting the fires gutter and die around him as he staggered back into Azrael. The Supreme Grand Master threw out an arm to catch Ezekiel as his legs gave way, giving him just enough support to stay on his feet.
The Chief Librarian pushed away, sparing just a momentary glance at his superior, flakes of burning paint falling from his armour, a hue glowing on the lenses of his helm like the gleam of molten gold. He turned, set his shoulders, adjusted his grip on Traitor’s Bane and then set upon the enemy once more, laying his blade against the foe in more mortal fashion.
The corpse-slaves were little threat individually – even those that fell on the Space Marines with lengths of pipe, chain and crude tools could not harm them – but their numbers alone would stifle the Dark Angels’ advance.
‘Deadlier foes are coming, I am certain of it,’ Azrael told his brothers as they pressed into the crowd of inhuman enemies thinned by Ezekiel’s psychic assault. More continued to approach from above and below, stumbling from behind and to each side. ‘These soulless shells would suffocate our advance with their bodies given the chance.’
‘Push hard, brothers,’ Belial urged his squad. Caulderain followed suit and the two sergeants formed the point of a spearhead, breaking into a run, their sheer bulk battering aside the cadaver-puppets that staggered into their path. The other Terminators followed on, pulping bodies beneath their boots, weapons silent for the moment.
Azrael and the other officers came on after them, paying no heed to the foes around them, confident that their war-plate would hold against the scrabbling claws and ineffectual blows from the handful of corpse-slaves that hurled themselves into the vacuum behind the advancing Terminators.
They reached the far end of the hall, guided to a double arch by the directions of Ezekiel. Azrael stopped at the corridor entrance and turned to take stock of the situation. The massive chamber was heaped with the bodies of the slain, ripped by bolt, crushed by power fist, charred by psychic fire. Vapour rose from the body piles like a mist, swirling around the distant skeletal figures that lurched through the gloom.
In the distance, more were coming. He could hear them above the crackle of furnaces and the creaks and groans of the ship itself. Hundreds of feet, slapping and pattering on the metal deck.
‘We’ll hold them, Lord Azrael,’ said Caulderain, motioning his squad to turn and take up a defensive position around the two archways.
‘Dalgar,’ said Ezekiel. ‘Remain with the sergeant and be alert for fresh sorcery.’
The Epistolary nodded and joined the Terminator squad, flecks of light shimmering around his force sword.
‘We will return for you,’ Azrael promised the g
roup. He held up the Sword of Secrets in salute. ‘Hold the line and know that the strength of the Lion is in you.’
Ezekiel had already started down the broad corridor, the nimbus of power around Traitor’s Bane the only source of light. The golden aura played upon fleshy outcrops from the plasteel walls, caught on vertebrae-ridged vaulting and jutting, spiny growths that quivered and clashed like grasping fingers at his approach.
‘How much further, Master Librarian?’ Asmodai asked as the others fell in quickly behind the Holder of the Keys. ‘How close is the sorcerer’s lair?’
‘Two hundred metres, Brother-Chaplain,’ Ezekiel replied.
The hiss of power weapons and bark of storm bolters followed them down the corridor as Squad Caulderain’s rearguard began.
When the Dark Angels had covered half the distance to their objective, the Night Lords attacked in strength. Belial shouted a warning, alerted to an energy surge by the sensorium grid just moments before the first bolts shrieked out of the darkness. Azrael spied a gleam of portal lights, a purple hue that appeared for just a few seconds.
‘They are behind us,’ he growled, turning with Lion’s Wrath at the ready. The flicker of bolt propellant lit the gloom a moment before three rounds exploded across his chest plastron, showering him with ceramite flakes.
Asmodai opened fire, bellowing curses as his bolts streamed back down the corridor into the shadows. Azrael held, finger on the trigger, ready to fire the plasma gun of his combi-weapon. He ignored two more bolt impacts on his backpack, peering into the gloom that persisted despite the auto-senses of his armour.
‘Maldarion, relieve us of this cloying umbra,’ the Supreme Grand Master commanded, still seeking a target.
‘They have gone,’ reported Belial even as a glow of white light from the Librarian’s upraised fist thrust back the living darkness.
‘Hit and run,’ said Cathas. ‘A tactic of the outnumbered. I think we overestimate their strength. The greater part of their host must be committed to the surface.’
‘I agree,’ said Belial as he started down the corridor once more. ‘We will draw them into direct confrontation.’
‘Wait!’ Ezekiel shouted, but his warning came too late.
The floor erupted around the lead Terminators like a massive jaw closing. Fang-like, steel-and-bone points swung up and punched into the armour of Belial and Garvel. Caught in the shoulder and midriff, the sergeant gave a cry of pain. The other Deathwing warrior made no noise at all, pierced through the chest, his armour no more protection than a padded vest. Blood streamed to the floor, where hissing midnight-blue beetles scurried from the cracks and gratings to feed on the thick lifefluid of the Space Marines.
Inhuman appendages thrust and swung at the Dark Angels; serrated horns and grasping fingers clawed and hacked at their armour. Issuing a long moan, a doorway beside Azrael opened, spilling forth a swarm of wasps formed of lightning and fog. Engulfed, the Supreme Grand Master swatted with his blade, to no effect.
The crackling, buzzing cloud swirled, filling his auto-senses with their flickering and droning. He glimpsed bright flashes of light but only when his armour registered the impacts did he realise that the traitors had returned to waylay the stricken Dark Angels.
Blinded, he kept moving, throwing himself towards the opening from which the psychic swarm had emerged. With the Sword of Secrets held before him like a lance, he charged, half-expecting to crash into the bulkhead.
Instead he met soft resistance, a sound like tearing cloth as his blade parted whatever he had encountered.
‘By the Lion, this is not the end of me,’ he snarled, plunging through the tatters of flesh, bloody fronds slicking over his armour like tongues.
Though coated in grime and blood, he was free of the infernal swarm. A few wasps clung to his arms and legs; others zipped fitfully around his helm. The room was little more than a maintenance conduit, dominated by a confluence of pipes and cables to a series of black-screened panels on the far wall. Cracks in the wall let in more beetles, while slugs as long as his arm oozed through a fissure in one corner.
He turned and pushed back through the bloody opening into the corridor. Just a few metres away a Night Lord levelled an ancient meltagun at Asmodai, who was now beset by the swarm, roaring and flailing.
Azrael fired before the traitor, turning his head and chest to ash with a blast of plasma. The smoking remains of the Night Lord’s armour collapsed, the archeotech weapon falling from his dead grasp.
Behind, two more traitor legionaries fired their bolters at Azrael, stitching a crossfire of shots across his chest and pauldrons. He ducked into their fire, firing the bolter of the Lion’s Wrath in reply. The closest Night Lord reeled back as detonations raked his helm and faceplate. The second dived past Azrael, hand outstretched for the fallen meltagun.
Caught between the two foes, the Dark Angels commander’s momentum carried him into the first, the Sword of Secrets burying itself to the hilt in the traitor’s gut.
The Night Lord smashed his bolter into Azrael and grabbed his wrist in the other hand, trapping him as the meltagun’s generator whined into life behind the Dark Angel.
Azrael swung the Lion’s Wrath towards the other Night Lord. A small reticule in his vision, fed from the targeter built into the weapon, danced across the traitor’s faceplate, not quite on target.
A flash of white light split the air. Asmodai emerged from the blinding pulse, the eagle head of his crozius arcanum buried deep in the skull of the Night Lord. The corpse’s legs and arms twitched when the Chaplain ripped his weapon free.
Azrael elbowed aside the other Night Lord’s bolter a moment before the legionary opened fire; the crack of the rounds echoed back from the ceiling. The Dark Angel twisted his blade, opening up the wound in the Night Lord’s gut. He lifted a foot and stamped hard, ramming the heel of his boot under the chin of the traitor, smashing his head back into the metal of the deck.
Thrice more he kicked, cracking open the Night Lord’s helm, turning the skull within to blood-coated shards.
‘Vengeance,’ growled Azrael, ‘finds you even after ten millennia.’
He slid the Sword of Secrets free from the traitor’s body and turned back to the others.
The others had prised Belial free and dragged aside the body of Garvel. Meritus and Turivael, with Ezekiel behind, had positioned themselves on overwatch a few metres further on, but the Night Lords had disappeared once more, leaving the shattered bodies of three more casualties.
‘I shall hold here,’ declared Cathas, standing guard next to Belial. The sergeant seemed barely conscious, his heavy armour slumped against the wall, one side coated in his blood. ‘We shall watch your and Caulderains’ backs. Find and slay the sorcerer quickly, my lord, so that we might quit this cursed place.’
‘Meritus, you will remain also,’ said Azrael, striding to join the Master of the Librarius. ‘Turivael, Galad, advance in our wake and destroy anything that tries to come behind us. Lead the way, Ezekiel, as quickly as you dare.’
‘Swiftness shall be our shield,’ the Librarian replied.
Date Ident: Unknown
Azrael, Asmodai, Ezekiel and Maldarion quickly outpaced the Terminators. The light from the Chief Librarian’s psychic hood pushed ahead of them like a bow wave, the shadows ahead darker than ever as if in response to their intrusion.
Azrael could not see what energies swirled around the Chief Librarian but he was certain that more than light preceded their approach – it was impossible for him to know what mystical duel he fought, what immaterial shields Ezekiel and his Brother-Librarian projected around the advancing Dark Angels.
The ring of metal on metal reminded him of the more obvious battle taking place behind as their Deathwing brothers intercepted another attack. Storm bolters barked and the hiss and snarl of detonating plasma followed them along the broad passageway.
Though they no longer had the sensorium of the Terminators, the othersight of Ezekiel and Maldarion le
d them unerringly towards their target. They took a branching tunnel decorated with parts of broken skulls. Shattered mandibles and pieces of cranium flowed through the half-flesh surface to merge into faces that silently leered and snarled at the Dark Angels.
Two large figures loomed out of the darkness ahead – a pair of Night Lords in slab-armoured suits of Terminator armour. Even as the muzzle flash of their autocannons blossomed, Asmodai moved, leaping in front of his companions. The conversion field set within his sacred rosarius flared into blinding life as he charged straight into the converging streams of shells.
‘I shall break them as the Lion broke the walls of Kanna!’ the Chaplain bellowed, accelerating while hunks of ceramite and slivers of metal stripped away from his armour like the tail of a comet, splintered by the rounds that passed through his energy shield.
Azrael and the two Librarians followed close on his heel, understanding Asmodai’s intent. The Chaplain was an ebon-black figure in the heart of a silver star as he crashed into the closest traitor Cataphractii. The impact sent a shock wave reverberating down the tunnel, rippling the walls as it boomed past Azrael.
Asmodai’s arm was like a piston as he laid his crozius into the helm of his foe, blow after blow after blow, each strike accompanied by a shout of pure rage. Azrael did not stop, but stormed past the two traitors to plunge into the hell-lit chamber beyond the open metal gateway they guarded.
The Supreme Grand Master could not have mistaken the hall for anything other than the heart of the sorcerer’s lair. It felt as if he had broken into some gigantic beast’s ribcage; massive bone vaults soared above, their summits surrounded by a swirling cloud lit from within by orange and red gleams of unnatural power. Shadows cast through ancient stained glass windows hung like webs, almost tangible in the fume that issued from pulsing orifices in the floor.
Bizarre sculptures broke the expanse, more half-seen in the distance. All were of wretched, horrific figures. One bronze crouched, holding entrails that spilled from a gaping abdominal wound, another cowered in terror with eight-fingered hands covering her eyes. A goat-headed dwarf leered with a serpent’s tongue while centipedes crawled from its long, ragged beard. A dark granite skeleton in voluminous rags plunged stiletto fingers into its own bony chest, piercing heart and lungs sculpted in red marble within.
