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.
‘Brother!’ yelled Tyrendian. ‘Fall back! We cannot lose you!’
Luko flung the last plaguebearer off himself and rounded on the
greater daemon again. Too late, he saw the daemon had loped a
massive stride closer, the mass of its belly like a solid wall of flesh
bearing down on him. Luko turned and tried to run but the daemon
moved faster than its bulk should have allowed, hauling its weight off
the floor on its stumpy back leg and stamping down next to Luko,
bringing its weight down onto the Soul Drinker.
Luko crashed to the deck, his lower half pinned under the weight of
the daemon. The foul, oozing mass of muscle and flab was crushing
down on him with so much weight Luko could feel the ceramite of his
leg armour distorting under the pressure.
Luko twisted around as best he could, lightning claws held in front of
him in the best guard he could manage. The greater daemon’s face
loomed past the curve of its belly, and it was smiling. Luko could feel
the deep rumble of its laughter as it saw its prey trapped beneath it.
‘Here!’ yelled Tyrendian. ‘Here! You want to eat?’ Tyrendian put his
hands together, as if in prayer, and thrust them forward, a twisting bolt
of electricity lancing into the greater daemon’s shoulder. It bored
through the flesh, charred layers flaking away to the bone.
Tyrendian was walking forwards, every step flinging lightning into the
greater daemon. He passed into its shadow, his face edged in hard
white and blue by the power playing around his hands.
‘Tyrendian! No!’ shouted Luko, but Tyrendian did not back off. As the
daemon’s gaze fell onto him he stood his ground, casting another
lightning bolt up at the daemon’s face.
The greater daemon dropped the chain, and reached a massive
flabby hand over Tyrendian. Tyrendian did not move. Tyrendian had
never picked up a scar in battle - never, it had always seemed, even
been afflicted by the patina of grime and blood that covered every
soldier. He always appeared perfect, less a soldier and more a
sculpture, a painting, of what a Space Marine should be. Framed by
the battling plaguebearers and borne down upon by the greater
daemon, there could be no more powerful symbol of purity facing the
very embodiment of corruption.
The daemon’s hand closed on Tyrendian. Tyrendian gritted his teeth
as the daemon lifted him off his feet, and the air thrummed with the
power gathering around his hands. Crackles of it arced into the deck or
into the daemon’s hand, but it did not seem to feel them. It licked its
lips and its mouth yawned wide, showing the multiple rows of teeth
that led down to the churning acidic pit of its stomach.
‘No!’ yelled Luko, his words almost lost by the force with which he
shouted them. ‘Tyrendian, My brother. Do not do this, not for me. My
brother, no!’
The greater daemon flung Tyrendian into the air, and the Soul
Drinker disappeared into its mouth.
Luko screamed in anger, as if by doing so he could force the grief
down and bury it.
The daemon laughed. So pleased was it by its kill, that it did not
notice for a few seconds the blue glow growing in the centre of its
belly.
Luko rolled back onto his front and covered himself with his lightning
claws. He saw plaguebearers approaching to butcher him, or perhaps
hack his legs off to free the rest of him so he could be fed to their lord.
split with rotten grins, gleeful at their master’s kill and the prospect of
feeding him another Soul Drinker.
The rising hum from inside the greater daemon told Luko he had
only moments left. That was all the plaguebearers needed to get to
him.
‘Come closer,’ he shouted at them. ‘Let us become acquainted, my
friends. Let me show you an Adeptus Astartes welcome.’
The hum turned to a whine. The greater daemon noticed it now. It
groaned, and placed its hand to its belly, face turning sour and pained.
It roared, and the terrible gale of it drowned out Luko’s voice as he
yelled obscenities at the plaguebearers.
The daemon’s belly swelled suddenly, like a balloon inflating. The
daemon’s eyes widened in surprise. It was the last expression on its
hateful face – surprise and dismay.
The daemon’s belly exploded in the tremendous burst of blue-white
power. Luko was slammed into the floor with the force of it. The
plaguebearers were thrown backwards, battered by the wall of force
that hit them. A great cloud of torn and burning entrails showered
down, covering Soul Drinker and daemon alike. Lightning arced in
every direction from the shattered body of the greater daemon, ripping
into the plaguebearers surrounding it, lashing across the ceiling, boring
through the floor.
In the old Chapter, some had speculated on just how much power
Tyrendian could gather. If collateral damage and his own survival were
no issue, it was guessed by the Librarium that their
bioelectric weapon
could detonate himself with massive force, as great a force of raw
destruction as a whole artillery strike. They had never been sure, and
never sought to find out, for Tyrendian was too valuable a weapon of
war to risk him finding out how much power he could concentrate
within himself.
Now, the question had been answered. Tyrendian could gather
inside himself enough electric power to destroy a greater daemon of
the warp. He had detonated inside the daemon’s belly with such force
that all that remained, tottering above Luko, was a thick and gristly
spine on which was still mounted the ragged remnants of the greater
daemon’s skull. The shattered stumps of its ribs and a single shoulder
blade, clinging by tattered tendons, alone suggested the bulk of its
chest. Green-black brains spilled from the back of its ruptured skull,
and across the front of it was stretched the daemon’s face, still
wearing that expression of surprise.
The daemon toppled backwards, the ruin of its upper body slapping
to the deck. The weight on Luko relaxed and he dug a claw into the
deck in front of him, dragging himself out from under the daemon. He
looked back and saw that only the lower portion of its once-vast belly
remained, its legs connected only by skin, the many layers of entrails
and organs now just a charred crater.
The plaguebearers nearby had been blasted back off their feet. Many
had been burst apart by the lightning unleashed by Tyrendian’s
detonation. The whole deck surrounding the daemon’s corpse was
buckled and burned. Luko’s own armour was charred and bent out of
shape, giving him only just enough free movement to walk away from
the destruction towards the Soul Drinkers lines.
Luko’s ears rang, and the sound of gunfire barely registered through
the white noise filling his head. He looked around, dazed, trying to
blink away the fog that seemed to smother his mind. There was no
sign of Tyrendian. Quite probably he had been vaporised by the force
of the power he unleashed. There would be nothing to bury.
Sergeat Graevus ran forwards and grabbed Luko, dragging him away
from the reforming plaguebearers and thrusting him behind a fallen
pillar for cover.
Yellow-armoured figures came into view, approaching from the
direction of the Imperial Fists centre. Without the greater daemon to