Dark Apostle

Black dust was kicked up as the shuttle landed and the honour guard stepped to the ground, scouring the area for any threat before they stood to attention. Marduk allowed the Dark Apostle to alight first and his dark eyes followed the movement of the older warrior priest as he stepped out of the shuttle. Even his movements were stiff, he thought. Truly it seemed the Dark Apostle was drained almost to the point of exhaustion. He smiled to himself.

They marched across the blackened earth towards the vast doors of a roaring furnace factorum, ignoring thousands of slaves and overseers that dropped to the ground to grovel before their master. Gears and chains groaned as the sliding doors were dragged aside and a blast of intense hot air radiated out from within, making his vision shimmer.

Workers prostrated themselves on the ground as the Word Bearers entered the massive factory. Huge vats of liquid metal were being poured into a vast mould, along with other liquids that flowed from dozens of spiralling tubes and distillery pipes. The super-heated liquid metal was doused with blood and clouds of heady steam rose.

'Now this, this is what sets my Gehemehnet apart from any other,' said Jarulek, his eyes alight.

A dozen huge chains lifted the mould into the air and it swung across the factorum to hang overhead. With a nod from Jarulek, it was released and it fell with bone shaking force ten metres to the floor of the factory. The entire area shuddered as it landed. The floor of the factorum cracked beneath the impact and small, spider web cracks spread across the surface of the mould. Searing light spilled from the branching cracks. Without the benefit of its inbuilt reactive auto-sensors in his helmet, Marduk squinted his eyes against the glare. More of the miniscule faults appeared across its surface, spilling light in all directions, and the mould began to crumble into tiny granules, falling to the ground, smoking and hissing.

The black mould exploded outwards suddenly, spreading scalding hot granules across the factorum, and blinding light filled the area. Overseers and slaves screamed and recoiled as burning particles seared into their skin and their retinas were burned away.

Even to Marduk the glare was painful and he hissed as super-heated granules burned the skin of his face. Still, he did not flinch, for he was determined not to show any weakness before the Dark Apostle.

A towering, glowing shape stood in the middle of the factorum.

'You have made a bell,' he said dryly.

Jarulek laughed, though the laughter tailed off into a hacking wheeze.

'A bell, yes. With this Daemonschage the power of the Gehemehnet will be harnessed. When that power is unleashed, it will shatter the planet's core. Come,' he said, motioning Marduk forward.

The pair approached the glowing bell towering over them. The intensity of the light it projected was dimming, so that it was bearable to look upon, and Marduk saw that it was smooth and the colour of blooded steel. Tiny script-work wound around its circumference, covering most of the bell. Waves of hot emotion, hatred, jealousy, anger and pain emanated from the Daemonschage.

'Place your hands upon it,' ordered Jarulek.

Marduk moved a hand tentatively forwards and touched his fingers gingerly upon the metallic surface.

'It's cold,' he said and placed both his hands firmly upon its surface. There were presences there. A myriad of voices screamed painfully in his mind and he pulled his hands back sharply.

'I have already bound the Daemonschage with the spirits of over a thousand daemons.'

'Such hatred I felt,' said Marduk. 'This is a powerful binding.'

'The daemons are angered that they are within the physical realm, yet they cannot manifest,' chuckled Jarulek. 'But it needs more daemons bound within this prison before it is complete. My strength wanes. It falls to you, First Acolyte, to complete the ceremonies of binding.'

'You honour me, my lord.'

'The construction of the Gehemehnet is all but complete and that is where my strength is needed. The Daemonschage is to be transported to the top of the tower. You will complete the summoning there, Marduk, and then the Daemonschage will sound and this world will be ripped asunder.'

The thunder of ordnance was constant. The lines of artillery and siege tanks boomed one after another, billowing smoke covering their positions. The shells had been hurled relentlessly towards the traitor lines for almost three hours and the salt plains and earthworks were pockmarked with craters. It was impossible to gauge enemy casualties, though Laron guessed they were few. The armour of the enemy, together with the defensive bulwarks and bunkers, would most likely ensure protection against most of the incoming fire.

He was pleased however that the brigadier-general was pushing for the war to come to a head. A long, drawn out siege was not a war for an Elysian. Surgical strikes, lightning raids and daring attacks deep into enemy territory: that was how the warriors of Elysia were meant to fight and it seemed that at last they would have the chance.

Still, it would not be easy and the loss of the Imperial cruiser had been a shock, its destruction testament to the unholy power of the enemy.

'Looks like the brigadier-general has had a change of heart,' said Captain Elias. Laron had promoted the man from sergeant when the brigadier-general had given him the mammoth task of becoming acting colonel. He nodded his head.

'Shinar's air defences are famed throughout the sector,' said Elias. 'You were the one that reminded me of that, sir. Won't we be blown out of the air on the approach?'

'It is going to be bloody, no two ways around it, Elias, but the brigadier-general feels that such a risk is necessary. The threat the enemy poses is far greater than was first understood. It is not going to be pretty, but this is war and it is what the Emperor demands of us.'

That suits me fine, thought Laron. The frustrations and stresses of the previous week had built up, and he longed for the simplicity of leading his men into battle once again.

Elias was right though, they would be at the mercy of the enemy guns until those emplacements were silenced. He prayed that their objective was achievable, else the 72nd and the 133rd would be slaughtered.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Gehemehnet rose almost fifty kilometres into the atmosphere. Black, oily clouds circling the tower far below hid the land from Varnus's eyes, making him feel dizzy and disoriented. The giant, red planet Korsis dominated the sky above. It hung so close that it was an intimidating, looming presence.

Hot vapours rose from the hollow shaft of the Gehemehnet in long, steaming exhalations. The breath of the gods themselves, the Discord had told him, and its touch was intoxicating. It came from deep within the planet, for Varnus knew that the shaft plunged far beneath the earth, into the fiery heart of Tanakreg.

He noticed that there were fewer than a hundred slaves atop the tower: those that had proven to have the strength and will to survive its completion. Each man was crouching on his haunches, accompanied by an overseer who stood just behind him. Looking around at them, Varnus felt sickened. They all looked like worshippers of the Chaos gods, far from the industrious servants of the Emperor that they had once been. Varnus knew that he too must look like one of the cursed, blessed, followers of the ruinous powers and he seethed.

He knew that he had changed. Outwardly, the change was obvious, but the most damaging changes had occurred within him. His blood ran thick with serums concocted by chirurgeons and his mind was filled with hateful visions of darkness and death. Voices spoke within him constantly, chattering maddeningly, and heretical thoughts plagued him. He wanted to embrace the gods of the Ether, to allow himself to succumb utterly to their will, and he knew that the last barriers of resistance were being eaten away.

The tower spoke to him, its voice soothing him.

A massive, black-girded construction was brought over the lip of the tower, held aloft by a trio of spider-legged cranes, and Varnus stared at it in wonder. Its shape was bewitching to the eye and it was swung over his head to hang over the top of the open shaft. It had eight black, iron legs, the first of them touching down on the stone only metres to Varnus's left.

It was an eight-legged armature that rose to a point, like the frame of a giant, triangular tent. That point was embossed with beaten metal the colour of blood, and thick, spiked chains swung from the legs, hanging down into the vast emptiness of the shaft within the tower. Seeing the chains made Varnus put a hand to his neck, feeling around the circumference of his collar. He realised that he no longer wore a chain around his neck, though he had no recollection of the overseers having removed it.

He felt the Gehemehnet beneath him tremble and the feet of the black frame sank into the stone as if it were made of quicksand. Varnus blinked his eyes, as if they were deceiving him. He saw fields of the skinless dead beneath a burning daemon sky. But the stone was once again solid, holding the frame tightly in place.

There was a trembling in the air and a feeling of anticipation built within him. He felt a rumbling bass note shudder through the tower and the ceaseless blare of the Discord began to blend into a monotonous chant that rose up loudly around him. His internal organs shuddered as the intensity of the volume rose and the black arms of the armature began to resonate with power, chains shaking and clinking.

Darkness spilled from the centre of the Gehemehnet, fingers of shadow clawing out over the top of the stones and questing out in all directions. The gloom engulfed Varnus and he began to shiver. He saw flickers of movement in the darkness, shapes clustered all around him, and he felt their hot breath on his neck. They whispered to him and their talons brushed against him, painfully cold and ethereal. He could see the blood-red glow of their eyes in the netherworld staring hungrily out at him and he felt nausea and disorientation.

A trio of Discords rose from within the Gehemehnet, rising up out of its hollow shaft, their tentacles playing out around them like gently waving undersea fronds, angelic voices blurring with daemonic roars and melancholic chanting that boomed from their speakers. Beneath the cacophony of voices was the rhythmic grinding of machinery, the pounding of metal drums and the deep reverberations of pipes. Varnus felt the hairs of his body rise with the potent sounds.

Behind the Discords came a red, armoured figure, arms outstretched to either side, appearing out of darkness like some devil arisen from its hellish realm beneath the earth.

Varnus was in no doubt that this was a priest of the ruinous powers and he felt awed and horrified in equal measure. Faith and power, these were the two things that the warrior-priest radiated. He saw the shadowy, insubstantial shapes of daemons circling the warrior. He could feel their excitement and relentless hate being strengthened by the priest's radiance.

The warrior was huge and his ornate, red armour was scarred from battle. He wore no helmet, but appeared to suffer no ill-effects from the scarce amount of oxygen. His eyes were closed as he chanted, his voice powerful and deep. Varnus did not understand the meaning of the words the priest spoke, but he knew them well, having heard them for weeks on end within the roar of the Discords.

The chains hanging from the black frame began to rise and their barbed tips began to wave around in the air like the searching heads of serpents. They reached out towards the slaves, who were all face down but Varnus. The tip of one of the chains approached him and it hovered in the air. The barbed tip was the size and length of his forearm and he saw that the dark metal was covered in tiny script. It swung back and forth before him, mesmerising and moving gently in time with the rhythms of the Discords, as if held in thrall by some fell snake charmer.

With the speed of a striking serpent, the chains struck down into the backs of the slaves, driving through their bodies and ripping out through their chests. The slaves were lifted up into the air, transfixed upon the living chains running through them. The bladed tips of the chains coiled around and lunged again, stabbing again and again the bodies of the slaves impaled on other chains, until no body was pierced fewer than a dozen of times.

The blade hovering before Varnus hung in the air before him, waving back and forth before it too plunged forward, but not into him, instead it descended into the back of the overseer at his side. The black-clad slaver squealed horribly as the bladed chain tore back and forth through its body, and it was lifted high in the air, along with all the others, black blood showering Varnus.

The chains began to knit together, forming an intricate pattern within the eight-legged frame above the hovering priest, who continued on with his intonation, uncaring of the mayhem that had been unleashed around him. The chains bound together tightly until they resembled a giant spider web, complete with grisly trophies. The bodies of the slaves and the overseers hung impaled and wrapped within the chains, and Varnus was horrified to see that most of them were not yet dead. They twitched and moaned, and their life blood dripped down onto the Chaos Marine priest beneath them.

He stood atop the Gehemehnet walls, his limbs shaking as he realised that he stood alone. Every other slave and overseer was within the sickening chain-length spider web, dying. Only he had been spared.

The priest's eyes opened and fell upon him. He felt as though the warrior's gaze pierced his soul and he cowered before him. Though the Chaos Marine continued to chant his monotonous incantation, Varnus felt a voice throb within his mind.

The Gehemehnet has chosen you to witness its birth. You are privileged, little man.

Screaming shells rained down upon the Word Bearers, throwing up great explosions of earth as they struck at the embankments. The bombardment had increased in tempo and they detonated across the entire length of the Shinar peninsula.

The Warmonger stood atop the battlements in the centre of the first line of defence, uncaring of the mayhem exploding around him. The enemy's pitiful shells could not harm him and he stood motionless in the midst of the bombardment, surveying the battlefield coldly.

The other war machines and daemon engines of the Legion had been pulled back to the second line. Their unarmoured attendants would have been slaughtered beneath the fury of the attack and the daemon engines would have stormed forwards across the plain, eager to get to grips with the enemy. They would have been uniformly destroyed. None but the Dark Apostle would be able to restrain them.

The Dreadnought's augmetic senses pierced the fire and smoke that surrounded the first line, and he saw a series of detonations erupt further out along the salt plains, several kilometres away. This was no bombardment of the Word Bearers, and the Warmonger was momentarily confused. Not even the pitiful gunners of the Imperial Guard could be so inaccurate with their fire. A second line of explosions ran out along the salt plains, this time two hundred metres closer to the Word Bearers' lines. His senses could not pierce the vast clouds of smoke that rose from the detonations.

'Kol Badar, the enemies of the Warmaster are on the approach. They mask their advance with ordnance and blind grenades.'

'Received, Warmonger,' came the vox reply. 'Incoming aircraft have been picked up. Be ready.'

'The blessings of the true gods upon you.'

'Kill well, old friend.'

'The enemy has made its move, Icon Bearer. Your time has come,' said Kol Badar.

Burias bowed his head to the massive, Terminator-armoured war leader.

'You do me a great honour, my Coryphaus,' he said.

'Remember it, Burias,' growled Kol Badar. 'Do the Legion proud. Do not make me regret giving you my favour.'

'You will not, Coryphaus,' said Burias, his handsome, pale face serious with devotion. 'My first kill will be dedicated to you, my lord.'

He could not gauge the reaction of his words upon the Coryphaus's face, hidden as it was beneath his quad-tusked helmet, but he thought the warlord's posture showed that he was pleased. Good, thought Burias.

He turned away from the Coryphaus with another bow of the head, to face the gathered warriors below him, on the off-face of the embankment. Explosions detonated around them, but the warriors were unflinching, their helmets turned up towards him, awaiting his order.

Burias slammed his icon into the ground and the warrior-brothers stood motionless in rapt attention.

'My brothers, the time has come for us to ride out and face the enemy head on,' he roared, the daemon Drak'shal giving his voice unholy resonance and power.

A huge roar of approval rose from the gathered, since many of their voices were also enhanced by the daemons lurking within their souls.

'The Coryphaus honours us with this sacred duty.' Burias continued, which was met with another roar from the gathered warriors.

'Do the Coryphaus proud, my brothers, and kill in the name of Lorgar!'

The gathered warriors roared the name of their daemon primarch, their voices mingling with Burias's bloodcurdling bellow, screaming to the heavens so that their lord might hear their devotion.

The gathered Coteries intoned prayers to the dark gods as they climbed into their transport vehicles. A pair of Land Raiders would lead the Rhino attack column and the assault ramps of the monstrous tanks hissed as they slammed open to receive the warriors honoured to be carried within. Engines revved in anticipation and the lascannon turrets of the Land Raiders swivelled as the daemon spirits controlling them expressed their impatience.

'The smoke the Imperials use blocks our sight, but it blocks theirs as well, Burias. Go forth. Tackle them head on. They will not see you coming.'

Burias snarled a wordless reply. Drak'shal was rising within him. With a final nod, he turned and jogged towards the awaiting Land Raider. Before the assault ramp had even hissed completely closed, the column of tanks roared forwards, climbing the steep embankment quickly amid the explosions of incoming barrage fire. Engines screamed as the massive Land Raiders reached the apex of the climb and rose over the lip of the embankment before the tanks thumped down on the other side. They rolled towards the enemy hidden behind a wall of smoke and ash that was drawing closer with every falling barrage.

Drak'shal's daemon essence pumped strength through his veins and his muscles strained within his power armour.

To become one of the Anointed had been his dream since his inception into the Legion. He knew that his relationship with Marduk had kept him from being embraced into the cult, for his prowess was faultless. Long had it been a source of dishonour for Burias and he had at times hated the First Acolyte for it. He had no idea what had occurred on the moon of Calite, but the hatred between Marduk and Kol Badar had been palpable ever since.

Curse him and his feud with the Coryphaus! Burias thought. If the warlord would allow him to be embraced into the cult of the Anointed then he would relish the opportunity and grasp it with both hands.

The Coryphaus was right, the future of the First Acolyte was far from certain, and to throw his support behind Marduk without consideration of this would be foolish. No, he would wait for the right moment to make his decision about where his loyalties lay.

Such thoughts left him instantly as he heard the mechanised, insane whisperings of the Land Raider cease for a moment. The vehicle's machine-spirit had been merged with the essence of a daemon upon the factory world of Ghalmek, bound within the casing of the tank by the fabricators and sorcerers of the Legion with the aid of the chirameks.

'Entering the blind cloud, Icon Bearer,' said the drawling twin voices of the Land Raider's operators, warriors who had long ago become one with the machine.

The daemonic, mechanised whisperings of the tank began again, the voices agitated and excited.

'Command? Come in! Damn it!' swore the Valkyrie pilot. He could make no sense of the garbled nonsense being broadcast through the vox system. His sensor arrays had turned to darkness minutes earlier and he was flying completely without their assistance. Now the vox-caster was playing up and he was completely cut off from the rest of the squadron, not to mention base command. Damn it, he couldn't even communicate with the drop-troopers behind him, for even the closed circuit comm-transmissions of the unit were spewing nonsense.

He knew that the other Elysians were trying to make contact, but their voices morphed into hellish, bestial screams and roars. He wondered if that was how his voice sounded to their ears.

The closer they got to the damned insane tower of the enemy, the more garbled and chaotic the sounds became. He switched the system off, reasoning that he would rather hear nothing than that hellish blare. Yet even with the systems disabled, his earpieces blared with the evil sound and he slammed his fist into his helmet in desperation to get the insane noise out of his head.

You are all going to die, the voice said to him.

The Valkyrie was ripped apart as it was struck by anti-aircraft fire and the pilot was certain that he heard laughter in his ears, even as the cockpit exploded into a billowing fireball.

Tank Commander Walyon grinned as he stood in the cupola of his Leman Russ battle tank, the wind and smoke blowing in his face. The lowered visor of his helmet protected his eyes, not that there was anything to see as the tank thundered through the smoke.

He glanced out to either side. He could dimly make out only the closest tanks, but he knew that there were scores of vehicles spread out on each wing. He was at the point of the arrowhead, roaring towards the enemy, and his heart was racing.

He had been waiting for this day for decades. He knew that being a tank commander within the Elysian ranks was regarded as a dubious honour; all good Elysians dreamt of attacking via drop-ship, for that was the rhetoric drilled into the soldiers from day one. But tanks had always been Walyon's true love and he had accepted the post with relish. The tank company within the 133rd was regarded as little more than a joke; few Elysian regiments even had a tank company. The other officers regarded the position as a dead end and he knew they sniggered behind his back - promotion out of harm's way, they said. Waylon did not care, for within the ranks of the tank company he had found his home.

However, what had followed was years of boredom and resentment. Time after time the 133rd were launched into battle, but the armoured divisions were held back.

Finally, his time had come and he would be damned if he wasn't going to enjoy it. He smiled like a child given his first exhilarating trip on the harbour shuttle of his home city-hive of Valorsia, and he screamed with exhilaration into the whipping wind.

Somewhere far overhead the Valkyries were disgorging their living cargos. Drop-troopers would be falling through the atmosphere towards their target, the second line of the enemy's defences. Somewhere behind, the Gorgons of the Mechanicus were grinding forwards in the wake of his battle tanks.

An echelon of low-flying Thunderbolt heavy fighters screamed overhead, dull shapes in the haze, utilising the same cover of smoke as the battle tanks, and Walyon punched his fist in the air as they passed, willing them on.

He grinned wildly, feeling as though he were screaming through a vacuum of white smoke. The feeling was not unlike falling blindly through clouds on a combat drop, but this felt much more secure, for he had a giant battle tank steed beneath him. Excitement building, he pulled out his shimmering sabre and levelled it out in front. He felt like one of the daring cavalry marshals of history and he screamed wordlessly, glorying in the sensation of speed.

That was when he saw the massive, red shape looming out of the smoke ahead of him, and the next second of his life seemed to occur in horrifying slow motion. He dimly registered twin flashes of searing white lascannons and the battle tank to his right exploded in a rising ball of black smoke.

Walyon ducked back within the cupola as heavy bolter rounds ripped across the hull of his tank. The command tank's driver must have seen the Land Raider at exactly the same moment and the Leman Russ slewed to the side in an attempt to avoid the massive shape. The move was one of desperation and instinct and the Land Raider turned into it, smashing into the side of the Leman Russ at full speed.

The force of the impact slammed the battle tank onto its side with the sickening sound of crunching metal. The front of the Land Raider rose up into the air like a looming monster of the depths as the impact and its momentum lifted it. The Leman Russ rolled onto its top and the massive traitor tank smashed down upon it, engines roaring as its tracks spun wildly, gaining no traction.

Metal screamed as it buckled beneath the weight of the giant and Walyon was buffeted from side to side, smashing his head on the inside of the cupola, the hot taste of exhaust fumes in his mouth. The next moments of his life were a blur as the Leman Russ rolled wildly across the salt plain, flipping and finally coming to rest upright.

Dazed and shell-shocked, blood running from nose, Walyon called out weakly to the crew within the tank. Pulling himself upright, wincing and feeling as if every bone in his body had been smashed by the severity of the impact, he looked across the smoky void of the salt plains. He couldn't see far, but now that the Leman Russ engine was dead, he could hear the roar of engines, the chatter of gunfire, the heavy boom of battle cannons and the hissing scream of las-cannons. Explosions rocked the earth and rising plumes of oily, black smoke and bright orange fireballs pierced the haze. He coughed painfully, spitting blood, and he closed his eyes against the burning pain in his ribs.

An enemy Rhino screamed out of the smoke and Walyon dimly saw Chaos Space Marines standing in the open top of the vehicle, weapons raised. His vision was blurring before his eyes and he barely saw the plume of white-hot plasma screaming towards him, nor the meltagun that blurred the air as it fired upon his beloved tank.

Walyon died, his flesh burning and liquefying, and a moment later the Leman Russ exploded violently, throwing the blackened hull into the air.

A battle cannon shell detonated on the flank of the Land Raider's hull, spinning the behemoth to the side, its momentum lost.

'Out!' roared Burias. 'Lower the attack ramp!'

Leading the coteries from the Land Raider, desperate to get to grips with the enemy, Burias swung his head from side to side as battle tanks roared past them. Snarling, he snapped off an ineffectual shot with his bolt pistol.

One of the tanks spun amid a rising cloud of salt dust as its track was blown clear by a meltagun shot and the coterie broke into a run towards the slowing vehicle, roaring to the heavens.

One of the tank's side sponsons screeched as it rotated and unleashed its salvo into the Word Bearers, ripping apart bodies. Burias leapt over the fallen warrior-brothers.

Drak'shal surged to the surface of the Icon Bearer's being and his shape blurred as muscles bulged within his power armour. Bunching his legs beneath him, he leapt through the air, landing atop the Demolisher tank. He gripped the hatch atop the cannon turret and ripped it clear of its housing in one brutal movement, wires and cables sparking as the metal was wrenched out of shape, and he hurled it aside. Thumbing a pair of grenades into his hand, he hurled them into the exposed interior before leaping from the tank.

The grenades detonated behind him, but his focus had fixed on something new, and he stared into the impenetrable smoke cloud, his nostrils flaring. A giant shape appeared, roaring towards the Word Bearers.

Larger than even a Land Raider, a super-heavy Gorgon transport vehicle loomed out of the smoke. A giant, angled assault ram of thick metal protected its front, and the gunfire of the coterie pinged off its surface. The metal turned molten beneath the touch of melta weaponry, but even that was not enough to penetrate the thick armour.

Chattering gunfire ripped up the ground around the Coterie and a spray of autocannon shells smashed Burias back a step. He felt his anger grow. Lascannons from the Land Raider pierced the metal side of the massive super-heavy vehicle, but it did not slow, and Burias once again tensed his leg muscles, making ready to spring.

With a roar, he leapt as the massive tank bore down on him and he landed on the upper side of the assault ramp, the force of the impact causing him to hiss in pain. A second later, the Gorgon slammed into the wreckage of the Demolisher, smashing the battle tank aside with contemptible ease, nearly crushing Burias. He pulled himself up over the lip of the giant dozer blade. The vehicle was open-topped and he snarled in pleasure as he saw the score of heavy battle servitors packed within. Several were borne upon large tracked units, while others were bipedal, easily as large as a Space Marine, held in place by large clamps around their waists. Autocannon fire slammed into one of Burias's arms, shattering the ceramite, and he lost his grip momentarily, sliding precariously. With a roar he pulled himself up and, kicking off with one foot, he descended into the midst of the heavy Praetorian battle servitors. They raised their massive inbuilt weapon systems towards him, though they were hampered by the tight confines of the Gorgon.

Spinning cannons screamed, the heavy calibre gunfire tearing armour and flesh from Burias-Drak'shal's body, but he was amongst them in an instant. The holding clamps hissed open, releasing the Praetorians. Their immense weight and solid construction ensured they did not lose their footing, despite the speed the Gorgon was travelling at. He ripped the augmented head from the shoulders of one of the warriors as he landed, and protein rich, sickly, white synth-blood, sucrosol, sprayed out, mixing with spurting oil and Burias-Drak'shal's sizzling, scarlet vital fluids.

Another three possessed Chaos Marines launched themselves over the side of the Gorgon, landing amidst the Praetorians, roaring their dedications to the Chaos gods. Chainaxes and power swords rose and fell in bloody arcs and their bolt pistols barked as they fired into the tight press.

The enemy was all around him and Burias-Drak'shal lashed out blindly, ripping mechanical arms from torsos and punching his talons through chests. The Praetorians were the most highly advanced servitors created by the Adeptus Mechanicus, fitted with neuro-linked targeting processors and enhanced combat brain-stem implants, as well as heavy weaponry and powerfully armoured shells. They were easily a match for an Astartes warrior-brother.

One of the berserkers was clubbed to the ground by a heavy blow from a chaingun, mechanics and augmetics whirring as they lent immense power to the blow. Placing a heavy foot upon the downed warrior's chest, buckling his power armour, the Praetorian levelled its cannon towards the Word Bearer's helmet, which was torn to shreds beneath the power of the burst of fire it unleashed. The headless corpse twitched as it died.

Burias-Drak'shal caught a swinging, metal arm in one hand and with a powerful twist ripped it from its mechanical socket. Lashing out with his other hand, he slashed his claws across the head of another, tearing its red blinking eye free and ripping away a chunk of skull and brain with it. A spinning cannon was levelled at his back, but he spun around, the daemon within him sensing the danger. He knocked the weapon to the side using the Skitarii's dismembered arm as a club. Gunfire burst from the barrels, tearing apart a pair of Praetorians.

A heavy blow smashed into his head and Burias-Drak'shal staggered to the side, straight into another swinging metal arm that smashed into his high gorget. He was slammed backwards, falling to the floor of the roaring Gorgon, and a multi-barrelled cannon swung around towards him. The barrels of the gun were shorn off with the sweep of a power sword and a burst of bolt fire knocked the Skitarii backwards, allowing Burias-Drak'shal the time to regain his feet.

He came up fast, the talons of one hand swinging up in a slashing uppercut, ripping the head from a Praetorian, even as the warrior-brother that had saved him was slain, a hole appearing in his chest as a burst of cannon fire ripped through him. Holy Astartes blood splashed over Burias-Drak'shal's face, congealing even as it landed on his pale skin, and he grabbed the rotating cannon in his hands as it swung in his direction. The barrels halted instantly under his daemonic, crushing grip. He wrenched the metal out of shape and smoke rose from the mechanics of the weapon.

With a barked roar, he slammed his fist into the Praetorian's head, pulverising its skull. Burias-Drak'shal hurled it into one of its comrades, slamming it against the thick metal interior of the Gorgon.

The next minute passed in a flurry of bloodshed and gunfire. Burias-Drak'shal alone stood on his feet. Every Skitarii had been ripped and hacked apart, and lay twitching and sparking on the floor of the superheavy vehicle. His fallen brethren lay unmoving, their souls having passed on to the Ether.

Burias-Drak'shal reached out and gripped a heavy, metal hatch, the metal bending out of shape beneath his grip as he wrenched it from its hinges. A withered servitor was revealed, hard-wired into the cabin of the vehicle, its sightless eyes staring forward and its arms connected directly to the gearshift and steering column of the tank. He grabbed the wretch around its throat and ripped it out of the cabin amid a shower of sparks and pale, sickly blood. It was ripped in half, its lower torso still attached to the machine, and its mouth moved soundlessly as milky fluid rose in its throat. The super-heavy vehicle came to a halt.

Burias intoned the words of binding and Drak'shal was pushed back within, fighting against the strength of its master. The overgrown tusks that protruded from his mouth retracted painfully and his long talons receded back into his hands. His posture straightened and he was once again the elegant, controlled warrior, though his body was ravaged and exhausted, the after-effects of possession.

'Coryphaus,' he spoke.

'Speak, Icon Bearer,' said the vox reply.

'Met the foe, head on,' said Burias, breathing heavily. 'My warriors fought well. More have advanced around us. Beware the Gorgons.'

'Acknowledged.'

'You wish me to return to the bulwark, Coryphaus?'

'No. The enemy has committed to the attack. They may have left their command unprotected. Continue your advance. Drive through them and kill their commanders. Succeed and the Cult of the Anointed will embrace you, young one.'

Wiping blood from his face, his breathing having almost returned to normal, Burias nodded his head.

'It will be done, my Coryphaus.'

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The anti-aircraft batteries tore the heavens apart overhead, but the Warmonger was focused only on the Leman Russ battle tank climbing the embankment towards him. The Dreadnought stood motionless as a battle cannon shell streaked past its shoulder and its armoured plates were peppered with explosive heavy bolter rounds.

The Warmonger stepped heavily to the side, into the path of the tank. As it breached the top of the battlement, its front lifting up into the air, the Dreadnought reached up with its massive power claw and brought the vehicle to a screaming halt. Servos groaned as it held the tank and its huge mechanical feet slid backwards beneath the vehicle's weight and momentum. Its underbelly was less armoured than its front and the Warmonger fired its weaponry, the rapid firing rounds punching through the undercarriage, shredding the weakling mortals within and tearing through the Leman Russ's vital systems.

The Chaos Dreadnought's servos whined as it exerted its strength and pushed the tank back the way it had come, sending it toppling end over end down the embankment to smash into the front of another battle tank.

'Kill for the Warmaster!' the Dreadnought roared as it re-fought the battle for the Emperor's palace in its damaged mind. 'Destroy the Emperor, the betrayer of the Great Crusade!'

Bodies fell all around Kol Badar. Many of them were already dead, though their timed grav-chutes were in operation and slowed their descent mere metres above the ground. Still, thousands of living drop-troopers were landing all along the second tier and the open space behind the first, and he fired off controlled bursts left and right as he killed.

The attack had been well coordinated, timed to perfection. The first drop-troopers had landed just as the line of tanks had emerged from the cloud wall and just after a scything attack run by air that had cost him many warriors and war machines of the dark gods.

It was a well-organised attack, but one that was ultimately flawed. Given an inordinate amount of time, the enemy would prevail, for their numbers were great, but time was not on the Imperials' side. Even he, Kol Badar, who felt the touch of the dark gods only faintly, could feel the birth tremors of the Gehemehnet. He knew that the enemy would feel it too. They would be fearful and rightly so.

In the meantime, the enemy would die upon his warriors' blades.

The haemonculus attached to Techno-Magos Darioq via aqueduct cables flooded his system with suppressants and holy vital fluids, filtering his veins and cables for viruses. Red robes hid the tumorous, cancer-ridden flesh of the stunted creature that had been bred in the nutrient tanks of Mars. It diverted the diseases and weaknesses of the flesh into itself so that they did not afflict him; such was its purpose in life.

He quoted the fifteenth Universal Lore to himself, ''Flesh is fallible, but ritual honours the machine-spirit'', and he intoned a prayer to the Omnissiah as his system was cleansed.

Nevertheless, he recognised something amiss within the frail remnants of his flesh body and he opened up the cortex channels to the right-hand side of his brain in order to determine its purpose. Synapses sparked and he realised that what he felt were crude and fleshy emotions: tension, trepidation and anger.

Such base, human things, emotions, yet he found them intriguing as well as deplorable.

It had been a long time since last he had stepped foot upon planet c6.7.32, what the Elysians called Tanakreg. He accessed the hard memories of his secondary brain units and one of the myriad arrays of screens within the control centre of his airship flashed with data.

It showed his report to the Fabricator Tianamek Primus, dated over two thousand years earlier, though his current brain units had no record of him having scribed them.

Access to primary expeditionary focus/purpose denied. Magos Metallurgicus Annonus unable to determine material make-up of structure. Impervious. Logis cogitator augurs recommended path - terraform c6.7.32 and dissemble discovery. Magos Technicus Darioq to fabricate auditory station, and post watch over c6.7.32.

That was the source of the alien emotions of tension and trepidation that he had felt in the past two millennia. None had sought out that which he had been unable to breach, yet here was a powerful enemy of the Omnissiah on c6.7.32. It was imperative that they did not uncover the structure that he had gone to such pains to eradicate from all Imperial and accessible Mechanicus records.

But anger had nothing to do with the exploratory expedition he had led. That strange, hot temper had been brought upon him by the nature of the foe. He could feel the affront to the Machine-God in their essence, in the unholy constructions that they had defiled beyond all heresies.

Their machines, infused with the essence of daemonic warp entities, were the greatest corruption that the adepts of Mars could contemplate, a blasphemy that made all other blasphemies pale. All thinking machineries of the Mechanicus had souls within their flesh, for a soulless sentient machine is the epitome of true evil. And upon the battlefield, raging beyond the concealing clouds of blind-smoke, were machineries that had been polluted by their merging with the soulless entities of the warp. A soulless sentience is the enemy of all.

Such heresies were utterly wrong and Darioq was both revolted and horrified by how low the Legion of the Word Bearers had stooped. He shut off the receptors and synapses that synched his right brain hemisphere and the uncomfortable feelings instantly vanished. All that remained was the irrefutable fact that the enemy made use of sacrilegious, dangerous machineries that were an affront to his god and that they needed to be neutralised, their heresies eradicated and their hold over c6.7.32 removed.

His mechadendrites plugged into the central control column and, connected as he was to the delicate sensors on the outside of the hull, he registered the field of disruption that spread out in a cone from the enemy's tower. At his impulse, the command ship was lowered towards the ground. It was imperative for him to maintain contact and hence control over his thousands of Skitarii warriors. If he were cut off from them and his adepts then his entire army would grind to a halt.

Vast turbine engines rotated in their housings as the airship began to descend, the linking cable that connected it to the holy Ordinatus Magentus drawing it in towards the docking station on its upper deck.

One of the servo-arms of Darioq's quad-manifold rotated, whining softly, and its clamp-like jaws eased open.

'Enginseer Kladdon, open the hiemalis chamber and bring forth my blessed cogitation units.'

One of the red-robed junior priests behind him lowered the head of his power halberd in respect for his master's order and stepped towards one of the walls of the command centre. He spoke the words of awakening as he pressed the buttons of the hiemalis unit ritualistically, timing his speech to coincide with the correct sequence of buttons. With a blessing to the machine-spirit he gripped the sunken circular handle and, as he incanted the correct words beseeching the unit for its acquiescence, he pulled the drawer open.

Fog billowed from the unit as the ice-cold air within reacted to the heat outside. Held within a long shelf were over a dozen carefully stored bell jars. Within each jar was a blessed brain hemisphere held in static charged null-liquid. One of Darioq's servo-arms reached forward, hovering over several of the jars before the magos selected the required unit, and his servo-arm gently lifted it free.

Another servo-arm folded down and grasped the top of one of the bell jars protruding from the massive power generator he bore, and as he muttered the required intonations of supplication, mechadendrites whirred as he loosened the cog-shaped bolts fixing the bell jar to him. Needle-like incision spikes clicked out of the centres of other mechadendrite tentacles and were carefully inserted into the cog-shaped holes revealed with the removed bolts. They turned and with a hissing sound the bell jar was lifted clear. He felt the loss of information and processing power of the brain unit like a vague emptiness within him.

Swiftly and precisely he placed this brain unit within the gap in the hiemalis unit and attached the new bell jar to his core systems. Fresh information that he had not accessed for many centuries flooded through him, including memories and algorithms that had departed from him completely when he had disconnected the brain unit.

Much of the content of this brain unit would have been classed as heretical by some of the priesthood of Mars, but Darioq had felt driven to re-synch with the hemispheres within the bell jar. This was the unit that he had utilised when he had been part of the explorator team that had first investigated planet c6.7.32, and it had none of the synapse burns that altered and neutered many of the right brain functions.

This was a creative brain unit. Only a few secretive and covert members of the priesthood would dare to access such a component. The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question, the tenets said, and for him to utilise a creative thinking brain unit to make adaptations and improvisations to mechanics, as he had done in the past when wired into this particular bell jar, was at best the height of hubris and, at worst, heresy of the worst kind.

His devotion to the Machine-God, Deus Mechanicus, and its conduit manifestation, the Omnissiah, was unwavering. To deny the effectiveness of such a creative drive when prescribed methodology would fail was abject foolishness, but even as these thoughts ran through his mind, he recognised the danger inherent within them. He must not utilise this brain unit for long periods, or he risked his whole being. Such dogmatism is folly, he thought. I must retain my dogmatism, he thought. The conflicting impulses gave him pause, but the new addition was the more dominant presence.

'Tech-priests, go forth and ready the plasma reactors of the Ordinatus. And bring the void shields up to full power.' Magos Technicus Darioq said. The robed figures bowed their cog-bladed power halberds in compliance and left the command shrine.

His cogitator units had judged the potency of the weapons of the enemy and calculated the likelihood of damage to the blessed Ordinatus. Any moderate risk of damage was to be avoided, thus spoke the tenets, and he had previously determined not to advance the giant war machine until the enemy forces had been pushed back by 7.435 Mechanicus standard units, back to the third defensive tier.

Now he thought differently. He remodelled the algorithms of trajectory and manifest firepower, and a flurry of numbers scrolled down the screens lining the walls of the command shrine.

If the energy of the rear void shields was redirected to the frontal arc then the probability of success rose exponentially the more power that he diverted there. Such a thing may be deemed heresy, for the STC explicitly stated the correct shield levels and to alter them was to ignore the teachings of the elders. But if his mission on planet c6.7.32 was compromised then it would be of no matter. He deemed the minor heresy a lesser evil than what would occur if the enemy breached the walls of the xenos structure, and he began the complex calculations necessary to adapt the systems of the Ordinatus to his will.

Scores of Valkyries were being ripped apart by the relentless anti-aircraft fire that speared up through the roiling black clouds. Thousands of the Elysians drop-troopers were slaughtered as they plummeted down through the atmosphere at terminal velocity, but still others survived and Laron prayed that the other storm trooper platoons were amongst them.

It was a baffling experience, to be falling alongside something so massive. They had launched from their Valkyrie above the tower and he had been falling past it for the last few minutes. That such a thing could be so high was inconceivable, the engineering impossible, but there it was in front of his eyes. It made him feel physically ill and he could hear strange voices in his head. The thing seemed to exert a gravitational pull of its own and he angled away from it, so as not to be drawn too close.

'Keep your distance from the tower,' he said into his micro-bead, but the thing merely fed back a blare of roaring, horrifying sounds in his ears and he doubted that any heard his order.

He angled further away from the tower, hoping that his storm troopers would follow his lead, but even as he did so he felt something tugging at him, pulling him in closer, towards the hateful construction.

He muttered a prayer to the Emperor and felt the pull slacken enough for him to angle as far from the tower as was feasible while staying on target. The surface of the tower seemed to pulse and waver, and he felt hot blasts of air spilling from it, disrupting his descent, bustling him from side to side.

He was rapidly closing on the roiling, black smog clouds circling the tower and he was pleased to have his rebreather mask. As soon as he hit the smoke he felt terror rise within him. There were things within the oily cloud and they slashed at him with their claws, their red, glowing eyes burning fiercely in the gloom as he screamed past them.

Wind whipped at him, drawing him off course, and he cried out as something raked a series of deep cuts across his arms and chest. It was more from shock than pain, for his heavy carapace armour ensured the wounds did little real damage, but such an attack startled him. He had the impression of insubstantial creatures flying alongside him.

Pushing these thoughts from his mind, he turned into a steep dive, legs held together and arms clasped tightly to his sides, and prayed that he would escape the hellish clouds alive.

Marduk chanted as he held his hands out towards the Daemonschage. As he bound each additional daemon essence within its structure, another tiny line from the Book of Lorgar flashed into existence upon its surface.

The true names of the daemonic entities contained within appeared between each line of the holy script and the beings of the warp screamed in hatred as they were sucked from the Ether and sealed within. The bell was vibrating slightly, creating a low hum that would have been impossible to hear with mere human ears.

His hands shook with the power of the summoning, and a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead from the exertion. He was vaguely aware of explosions in the skies above and of dark shapes falling around him, but his entire concentration was focused upon the Daemonschage, and its complex binding incantations.

The pressure in his head increased and he felt the strength of the warp building within him. Still, his faith was unwavering and he bound the daemons of the warp to his will with the power of his word. The corners of his mouth rose in a smile as he incanted, relishing the feeling of sheer joy that came with control over the entities of Chaos.

Varnus crouched, unmoving atop the towering Gehemehnet wall, enthralled and horrified. The air at the top of the tower was electric and he could see dim, shadowy shapes of daemons being pulled screaming and clawing into the massive bell that hung over the endless drop of the tower's chimney. The corpses hanging in the chains twitched and convulsed, and he reeled backwards in shock as a body fell from the sky to land upon that spider web of chain, crashing amongst the corpses with bone breaking force.

The body jerked as the chains broke its fall and the man's back, and the body hung for a moment before it continued downwards, spiralling madly, down into the depths of the planet. A moment later, a roar of hot air was expelled up the hollow shaft, and Varnus saw more bodies falling around him. He decided that he must truly have lost his sanity, if he was seeing men falling from the heavens.

Still they fell, some tumbling down into the gaping maw of the Gehemehnet, as if it were drawing them to it, and others flashing past him, smashing into the outside of the tower. He jumped to his feet as a figure fell directly towards him, scrambling out of the way as it smashed into stone with a sickening sound. The man lay broken and very dead, his legs and arms bent beneath him, blood splattering out over the stones and across Varnus's legs. He stood, looking down at the helmeted corpse dumbly. It was Imperial!

Another figure landed beside him, though this one's descent was slowed by a tech-device upon its back. He landed awkwardly, one of his legs buckling beneath him with a sickening, cracking sound.

The figure cried out in pain and fell to one knee. He held a lasgun in his hand and Varnus could see his pale blue eyes behind his visor. He saw the twin-headed eagle symbol of the aquila pinned to the man's chest and he felt a surge of recognition. This was an Imperial Guardsman! The Imperium had come to liberate Tanakreg!

He shouted out in joy and dropped to his knees to help the man, but the man scrambled back away from him.

'I am a friend!' Varnus called out, holding his empty hands up, showing the man he was unarmed. 'I am a citizen enforcer of this planet! Thank the Emperor you have come at last!'

Guardsman Thortis cried out in pain and pulled the rebreather mask from his face. His leg was a shattered wreck beneath him, but he pushed back with all his force away from the vile figure. His heart was thundering in his head and his stomach churned with the absolute wrongness of everything around him.

Insane daemon speakers blared a deafening, evil cacophony of hatred and corpses were strewn up in chains. A devil Astartes chanted vile words that made his skin crawl and things unnatural and maddening flickered at the corners of his vision.

The wretched follower of the ruinous powers clawed at him, his eyes as red as a daemon's and a burning eight-pointed star upon his forehead. His mouth was nothing but a grilled speaker-box amidst a tight fitting, black mask, and he spoke in the foul language of Chaos.

Amid the hateful, guttural speech of the traitor, he heard the word Emperor.

'Speak not His name, enemy of mankind.' Thortis spat and levelled his lasgun at the hated foe.

The spoken words of the Guardsman meant nothing to Varnus, the sound coming out of the man's mouth little more than a garbled mess of childish sounds to his ears. In confusion he saw the hatred burning on the man's face and he saw the lasgun lower towards him.

A flash of anger burned hot within him, and he felt his blood pounding in his head. He had offered his hand in aid to this soldier, and he was turning his weapon on him! The shock of betrayal quickly changed to anger and his hand flashed out, knocking the barrel of the gun to one side. The lasgun blast seared across his shoulder and he hissed in pain. Without thinking, his survival instinct taking over, he drove the fingers of his other hand up into the man's throat, crushing his windpipe. He stepped in close and slammed his elbow into his head.

The Guardsman fell heavily, choking, his pale blue eyes bulging, but Varnus hauled him back to his feet.

'I was trying to help you and this is how you repay me?' he roared, weeks of repressed rage and shame rising to the surface. Holding onto the man's jacket front with one hand, he thundered a punch into the man's face, splattering his nose.

'I curse you!' Varnus shouted and landed another punch into the soldier's face, ignoring the man's feeble attempts to deflect the blow. He pulled the helmet off the man's head with a sharp rip and threw it over the edge of the Gehemehnet tower. He saw that the man's hair was sandy blond, and for some reason even this made him angry. He saw nothing but red, felt nothing but rising hatred, loathing and rage, and gripping the man with both hands, he smashed his forehead into his face, and let him fall to the stone.

'I curse you,' he screamed once more, kicking the soldier hard in his side. He knelt down on top of the man and gripped his head in both hands.

'And I curse the False Emperor!' he screamed as he slammed the soldier's head into the stone.

Laron landed smoothly, rolling to his feet and flicking the release of the heavy grav-chute with one hand, while he blasted his hellpistol into the face of an enemy Chaos Marine. His ornate plasma pistol appeared in his other hand and he fired it into the chest of a second enemy warrior, the screaming plasma searing through ceramite, flesh and bone. Super-heated air vented from the potent weapon, hissing like an angry serpent.

Storm troopers were landing all around him, laying down a withering hail of fire from their overcharged, gyro-stabilised hellguns. All vox communication was jammed and Laron wondered how many of his soldiers had survived the drop even if their Valkyrie had not been gunned down on the approach.

Thousands of drop-troopers were descending through the hellish clouds above and falling along the ridge of the second enemy embankment, just behind the long first line. Some squads of Laron's storm troopers had been briefed to attack along the second tier, targeting the enemy's static war machines with melta weaponry, but the majority of his elite cadre were targetting the bunkers along the first battlement.

While Laron's squad laid down a protective curtain of fire, one of his men knelt and stuck a melta charge to the thick door of the bunker.

'Clear,' yelled the man, stepping back, and the charge detonated inwards, melting the thick metal to liquid.

A second storm trooper stepped forward, kicked the heavy, metal door open and filled the interior with a spray of roaring promethium from his flamer, before pulling back, allowing Laron to lead the hellgun-armed soldiers in.

The walls were scorched black from the flames and the advanced auto-sensor systems in Laron's helmet adjusted to the gloom instantly. He fired both his pistols into the massive shape of the first Chaos Marine and his soldiers' hellguns shot down the next, even as the enemy swung their weapons to bear.

A blast from a lascannon, blindingly bright in the confines of the bunker, ripped a head-sized hole through one of his men and tore the arm off another, before striking the bunker wall behind them. A pair of enemy warriors had thrown down their missile launchers and hurled themselves at the storm troopers, their armour blackened and still burning in places.

Laron ducked beneath the huge slashing knife of the first and fired his plasma pistol into the giant Chaos Marine's groin, followed by a sharp double-tap from his hellgun into the traitor's head as he fell back.

Four hellgun shots slammed into the second enemy warrior, but it did not slow him, and he barrelled into the storm troopers with a daemonic roar. The traitor rammed two men back against the thick wall of the bunker with the sickening sound of breaking bones and swung his fist into the face of another as he rose, shattering the bones of the man's jaw.

The lascannon-wielding enemy swung the heavy weapon like a club, sending Laron flying into a wall. He slid to the ground gasping for breath. Raising both his pistols from his prone position, he fired into the chest of the Chaos Marine, who twitched and fell.

Laron pushed himself to his feet to see the last traitor fall to his knees. Even as the Chaos Marine died, he broke the neck of a storm trooper, before a trio of hellgun shots took him in the head.

Four of Laron's men were dead, but the bunker had been neutralised.

'Out,' he shouted. 'To the next one.'

Concentrated heavy weapon fire ripped through the Imperial armoured advance and the embankment was littered with scores of motionless and burned out vehicles. Battle cannons roared and the heavy siege shells fired at close range, obliterated dozens of bunkers.

The south end of the embankment was overran, armoured vehicles rolling up and over the defensive position. Hellhound tanks spewed sheets of flaming promethium, engulfing dozens of Word Bearers before heavy weapons pierced their fuel tanks and they exploded in rising balls of fire, sending the searing, flammable liquid spraying out in all directions.

Hulking, super-heavy Gorgon assault tanks roared up the steep embankment, their side-sponsons spewing flaming death and autocannon turrets raking along the ridge top.

Streaking lascannon beams and smoking krak missiles zeroed in on the Mechanicus vehicles, but nothing was able to halt their advance. As they reached the top of the tier, their huge assault ramps were dropped and the heavy battle servitors within surged out, chainguns spinning and multi-meltas hissing.

'The reserve is committed, my lord. Have engaged the enemy behind the second tier,' said the growling voice of Bokkar, Kol Badar's Anointed sergeant, across a closed vox-channel.

'Understood,' replied Kol Badar. The reserve had occupied the third tier, guarding against the enemy dropping in behind the main battle force of the Host.

The Kataphractoi followed in the wake of the Gorgons, Skitarii warriors hard-wired into tracked units. They roared forward, heavy bolters barking and missile pods sending streams of self-propelled explosives towards the Word Bearers.

Echelons of Thunderbolts screamed through the air, flying low, tearing up the ground with their strafing gunfire. Several of the fighters were blown out of the sky, lascannon fire and anti-aircraft cannons tearing through wings and cockpits, and they smashed down into the ground, carving burning furrows through the earth and killing all in their path.

Still more drop-troopers fell from the sky, though for every soldier who landed ready to fight, another four smashed lifeless into the earth. Marauder bombers and Valkyries descended in flames through the wildly circling black clouds overhead to crash amid the chaotic battle.

Kol Badar grinned at the spectacle of carnage around him as he gunned down dozens of enemy Guardsmen as they landed. There would be no break in the fighting until victory was achieved and all his enemies were dead or dying upon this field of battle.

Flames washed over him, but he stepped through the conflagration and smashed the weapon out of a Guardsman's hands, placing the barrel of his combi-bolter against the chest of the soldier, relishing the look of terror on the man's face. He pulled the trigger and the man was smashed to the ground, his chest blown open.

'Captains of the Legion, pull your warriors back to the second tier.'

The evacuation of the first line of defence was methodical and organised. The Coryphaus had dictated his orders to his underlings and each enacted his designs with practised efficiency.

Under the covering fire of the restrained Dreadnoughts and war machines of the Host, the warrior-brothers pulled back. They walked with unhurried, measured steps as they laid down overlapping enfilades of fire against the combat servitors emerging from their transports, specialist weaponry destroying vehicles and tanks.

Kol Badar and his Anointed stood at the base of the second tier, clearing the area of incoming drop-troopers, their roaring weapons ripping easily through the lightly armoured foe. They were practically immune to the Guardsmen's fire and carved through them with ease, though the number of the foe was starting to clog the open space with bodies.

He saw the Warmonger stepping resolutely backwards, his roaring cannons ripping apart the foe, and the heavy flamer slung beneath his power claw engulfing dozens in flames.

Laron dropped off the stepped rampart of the embankment, snapping off shots with his pistols at the retreating enemy, before taking cover behind the wrecked chassis of a Gorgon. They were masterful in their order and precision. Each squad that backed off was supported by angled lines of troops firing their bolters in controlled bursts. It was like attacking a damned fortification. The lines of the enemy were angled like those of the greatest fortresses, with the strongest points, the ''towers'', being squads bearing heavy weapons. The Guardsmen were naturally drawn towards the apparently weaker points, veering away from the heavy weapons, but this brought them into the deadly killing ground where the enemy's guns were able to assail them from both sides.

'Where is that damned infantry?' he snarled. He desperately needed the massed ranks of the Skitarii foot cohorts to arrive, for he had not the men to tackle the retreating foe, and the incoming Elysians were being cut down in swathes.

As if on cue, the first ranks of the tech-guard cohort appeared over the edge of the battlements, tracked weaponry rolling forward at their side. They began to fire as they marched resolutely forwards.

The tracked units of the tech-guard unleashed the power of their arcane construction at the Chaos Marines as they backed away. The air crackled with energy as coruscating lightning leapt from humming bronze spheres to strike the foe. The ground was ripped up as bizarre weapons fired, causing great rents to rip along the ground, tossing the enemy into the air. Heavy, quad-barrelled cannons pumped fire into the foe, but the traitors, recognising the new threat, began to target the tracked units of the Mechanicus with missiles and other heavy weapons fire.

Laron's eyes flashed to the timer counting down in the corner of the head-up display in his helmet and he swore. The second wave of drop-troopers was about to be launched and the anti-aircraft fire from the palace had not yet been silenced. The first wave had been devastated and it looked as though the second would face a similar barrage.

Time was running out.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Brigadier-General Havorn cursed as the pict-screen before him flickered, the detailed map-schematic shorting out. The Chimera bumped its occupants about as it rolled across the salt plain in the wake of the tech-guard cohorts. Sweat was dripping down Havorn's face.

Bestial roars and screaming mixed with hissing static blared out of the vox-unit suddenly, replacing the relayed chatter of the senior captains.

'What the hell's all that?' Havorn snarled.

'I don't know, sir, but its been flooding the less powerful voxes for the past hundred metres or so,' replied his adjutant. 'I thought my set-up would be too powerful for it. Damn enemy's jamming our comms somehow.'

'Perfect. Looks like the rest of this war is going to be fought deaf, dumb and blind.'

'Your officers are good men, sir,' replied the man. 'They know their orders.'

'Move us up closer to the front, Kashar. I want to at least be able to see what the hell is going on.'

'Is that wise, brigadier-general? You would be exposing yourself to unnecessary danger.'

'What do you think is going to happen if we lose this battle, Kashar? We lose this battle and we are all dead men. Move us up closer. I want to be able to see the outcome with my own eyes.'

Burias-Drak'shal hacked left and right, smashing the Skitarii out of his way with sweeps of his spiked icon. At the Coryphaus's order he had remounted his Land Raider and led his warriors straight into the massed ranks of the enemy cohorts, meeting them within another of the slowly dispersing cloud walls. The vehicles had ploughed through the enemy ranks, crushing hundreds beneath their heavy tracks.

The Rhinos disabled by the foe were left behind, the warrior-brothers within abandoned to their fate. They would kill many before they fell. It was an honour to die for the Legion.

They had ridden deep into the heart of the enemy formation, until his Land Raider was finally brought to a halt, its hull pierced by countless melta-blasts, its tracks torn and ragged, and its engine reduced to molten metal.

Even then, Burias-Drak'shal refused to be slowed, leading his coterie of warrior-brothers out of the ruined vehicle, roaring and screaming their battle-cries. He pulverised the enemy in his path, shrugging off countless wounds and gunshots that would have killed any other warrior-brother within the Host. The Word Bearers carved a bloody swathe through the Skitarii cohorts, urged ever onwards by the Icon Bearer, following the frenzied warrior deeper into the enemy formation. These were the regular troopers of the Adeptus Mechanicus, indentured warriors who had only minor augmetic enhancements: eye-piece targeters, altered neural pathways, enhanced lungs and such, and they died easily beneath the fury of the possessed warrior and his battle-brothers.

Hissing ichor dripped from his wounds and his armour was cracked and blistering, yet Burias-Drak'shal continued on, ploughing through the enemy, bashing them out of his path. His warriors' chainaxes rose and fell, and bolt pistols blasted as they followed behind him.

Burias-Drak'shal blocked a swinging double-handed axe with the shaft of his icon and grabbed a hovering metallic tentacle attached to the red-robed Tech-Priest's spine, pulling the adept towards him. He leant forwards, snarling as the priest stumbled, and ripped out his throat with a bite, tasting putrid oils and blood-replacement fluids in his mouth. Knocking the priest to the ground he continued to ran, impaling a gun-servitor upon the point of the icon and hurling it into the air as its heavy bolter armament ripped chunks out of his shoulder pad.

He saw armoured personnel carriers through the press of bodies up ahead and roared as he sensed that the prey was close, sprinting on with renewed vigour. With a flick of his talons he decapitated another foe, and smashed another out of his way with the return blow, a brutal backhand swing that almost ripped the head of another Skitarii from its shoulders.

The fighting between the first and second tier was brutal and bloody. The daemon engines of the Word Bearers unleashed countless barrages of warp infused shells into the no man's land, killing thousands. The Skitarii warriors marched in perfect unison into the guns of the Word Bearers protected behind the fortified bulwark of the second embankment and hundreds of them were torn apart by the concentrated fire.

'Ancients of battle,' roared the Warmonger, 'be released from your shackles and kill once more in the name of Lorgar!'

Thirty Dreadnoughts roared and screamed wordlessly, straining against the inscribed chains that bound them. The chains were suddenly released and the bloodthirsty machines, all semblance of their sanity having long abandoned them, were unleashed on the enemy as they pushed up the second tier.

They surged over the parapet, their ancient weapons roaring and booming, and they slammed into the enemy, hurling them into the air with great sweeps of their power claws and piston-driven siege hammers. Multi-bladed power gauntlets scythed through the front ranks of the foe, cleaving men and Skitarii in half, and screaming chainfists the length of two men carved down through the bodies of others, throwing blood and chunks of flesh in every direction.

Dreadnoughts stood atop the bulwark, missiles firing from their inbuilt weapon systems, detonating amongst the foe in fiery blasts. One Dreadnought, screaming insanely, turned its rapid firing autocannons upon power armoured warrior-brothers, his ability to distinguish between friend and foe lost in the madness of battle.

The Warmonger strode towards the machine and struck it to the ground with one mighty sweep of its arm. It kicked and screamed madly as it tried to right itself, and the Warmonger unleashed the power of its guns into the sarcophagus casing of the Dreadnought, seeking to put an end to its struggles. Its kicking ceased and its screams became a gurgled hiss. A cadaverous, jawless head could be seen within the cracked sarcophagus, the skull malformed and covered with bony, spiny growths coated in sickly pus.

'You are released from your bondage, warrior-brother,' intoned the Warmonger before it turned its guns once more towards the numberless enemy swarming over the barricade.

'Coryphaus, the smoke-wall is abating. The Ordinatus is come,' said Bokkar.

'What?' growled Kol Badar. 'The Mechanicus would never risk the war machine until its safety was assured.'

'Nevertheless, it is advancing across the salt plain, my lord. It will be in range of the daemon engines within the minute and will be ready to fire upon the palace within ten.'

'A curse upon them! Pull out from combat, Bokkar. Take a Thunderhawk and slow the damned thing down! Get the daemon engines to target it.'

'As you wish, Coryphaus.'

My lord Jarulek, it is done. The Daemonschage is ready.

Good, my acolyte, Jarulek replied. Everything is set in motion. I will join you shortly.

Jarulek opened his eyes from the deep trance. He sat in the restoration chamber, blinking against the thick, viscous liquid that he was immersed in. His arms were bare, the script-covered, pale and heavily muscled limbs pierced by dozens of pipes and needles, pumping him with biologics and serums. He had no wish for his underlings to realise just how taxing the creation of the Gehemehnet had been on his system, but the last twelve hours in the tank, deep in a trance and communion with the higher powers, had rejuvenated him.

The thick liquid evacuated from the chamber, sucked into gurgling pipes, and he sank to his feet. Chirameks clustered around him, pulling free the tubes and pipes inserted into his veins and muscles, and he flexed his fingers. The time to rejoin the Host had come. It was mere hours until the alignment of planets took place, until the Gehemehnet awoke.

Techno-Magos Darioq stood impassively upon the secondary gantry deck of the Ordinatus as heavy-calibre anti-aircraft batteries directed fire towards the Thunderhawk. The enemy's barrages had been as nothing to the Ordinatus, the incoming ordnance soaked up by flashing void shields, and its return fire darkened the air, overloading the gunship's shielding with ease.

The critically damaged Thunderhawk turned towards the Ordinatus, its pilot clearly fighting with its controls to guide it towards the target. It passed through the giant vehicle's void shields as its left wing tore loose, sending the gunship spinning, and the concentrated, servitor aimed quad-cannons ripped the hull apart, tearing the bulky aircraft in two. The rear half was engulfed in flames and exploded as the fire reached its fuel lines. The front half of the gunship fell from the sky, plummeting towards the Ordinatus, propelled by its velocity and the force of the explosion.

Techno-Magos Darioq calculated the trajectory and velocity of the incoming debris from his position and stood stone still as it slammed into the upper deck above. The metal grid was smashed asunder by the massive incoming weight and it skimmed along the metal, raising a shower of sparks as it ploughed through barricades and crane-structures. It screeched through one of the cannon batteries, instantly crushing a pair of ogryn servitor loaders, before careening off the edge and falling to the secondary gantry where Darioq stood.

The front section of the Thunderhawk screeched across the metal latticework towards him, but he did not move, and it ground to a halt just metres from him, as he had calculated.

Servitors rolled forwards on tracked units, dousing the flames with foam.

'Life signs remain,' said Darioq as he scanned the Thunderhawk, and the servitors retreated from the wreckage instantly. Heavy combat servitors rolled forwards, weapons raised, scanning for the enemy.

Red-armoured Chaos Marines emerged from the flames and the servitors fired upon the survivors. Several of the servitors were ripped apart by bolt fire, but others rolled forwards even as their fallen comrades were dragged aside by tentacled scavenger servitors for re-manufacture.

Darioq's four servo arms unfolded like the legs of a gigantic spider, the weapons systems built into their design humming into activation. Four of the enemy warriors were ripped apart by the fire from his potent weaponry.

With a roar, a bulky shape emerged from the wreckage, smashing through twisted, burning metal. Flaming promethium from this warrior's heavy weapon system engulfed the servitors, turning their flesh to liquid and detonating their ammunition drums.

Bokkar roared as he smashed his way towards the magos. Plasma pierced the reinforced plasteel plating of his Terminator armour and heavy bolt-rounds tore through his chest plate.

He unleashed the fury of his heavy flamer and roaring promethium engulfed the magos, hiding him from view. As the inferno dissipated, Bokkar could see that the flames had washed harmlessly over a bubble of protective energy surrounding the cursed Mechanicus priest, and he powered forwards, intent on smashing the magos apart with the force of his chain-fist.

Bokkar stepped within the boundaries of the tech-priest's protective field and swung his chainfist around in a murderous arc. The blow never landed, as one of the servo-arms, hanging over the magos's shoulder like the barbed tail of a scorpion, snapped out and grabbed his arm, halting it mid-swing.

The servo-arm over the other shoulder grabbed his other arm, and he felt his blessed Terminator armour crack beneath the immense pressure that the whining arms exerted. The servo arms pulled out to each side sharply and both of Bokkar's arms were ripped from his body, spraying blood out in both directions.

He stared down dumbly at his armless torso and was cut in half by the magos's swinging power halberd, the cogged blade hacking through his midsection. He fell to the metal lattice floor.

He had failed his Coryphaus, failed his Legion and only damnation awaited him.

The air turned electric as the massive plasma reactors roared to full power in readiness to fire. Fashioned from the same STC templates from which the grand Ordinatus Mars was constructed, the giant weapon's humming increased to painful decibels as it drew the reactors' energy into its power drums.

The pitch of the weapon rose beyond that of human hearing and the entire colossal structure of the Ordinatus began to shudder.

'Dispose of this in the inferno chambers,' said Darioq as he dropped the severed arms of the traitor Terminator beside the severed torso. The armour had been constructed by Mechanicus Forge Worlds over ten thousand years ago and he was loathe to destroy such a revered piece of artifice, but the enemy had long tainted it with its corruption.

He registered the rising pitch of the sonic destructor cannon, and reran the trajectory algorithms. Satisfied, he waited until the warning beacon began to flash within his inner systems, indicating that the Ordinatus was ready.

'Targeting locked, magos,' said the mechanised voice of one of his Tech-Priest subordinates. 'Initiate firing sequence,' Darioq intoned.

The palace that had stood upon Tanakreg since it was populated two thousand years previously shuddered as the focused sonic beams ripped through it, shattering its structure at a molecular level. Fully three kilometres long from one end of the structure to the other, and rising hundreds of metres above the low-lying salt plains, the structure began to vibrate as its rocky substructure was rent with hundreds of cracking faults and weaknesses.

One section of the palace collapsed with a thundering roar that echoed across the battlefield as the cliff walls beneath it gave way. The fortified battlements atop the sprawling defensive structure were shattered and the anti-aircraft turrets and batteries ripped from their plascrete housings as more of the palace collapsed.

The whole mountainous outcrop from which the palace was carved disappeared beneath a rising cloud, and the thunder of its collapse made the earth beneath the feet of the battling armies shudder. The potent guns of the palace were silenced as the entire structure smashed to the ground.

A subterranean explosion rocked the earth and Darioq's delicate sensors picked up the faint hint of radiation as the plasma reactor buried deep beneath the ground was breached. A secondary subterranean explosion roared as the palace settled, and rock and debris was hurled hundreds of metres into the air.

A shockwave rippled out from the detonating plasma reactor, hurling tanks and men into the air as it whipped across the land before its power was spent.

The enemy's giant tower shook, dried mortar cracking and slipping from between its massive stone bricks, and a shudder ran up its length. Yet, denying the laws of the physical universe, it remained standing.

'What in the Emperor's holy name was that?' asked Havorn as the Chimera ground to a halt. He scrambled out of the command tank, his blinking advisors and adjutant at his side, and the ever-present bulk of his ogryn bodyguard behind him.

Putting his magnoculars to his eyes, he saw the rising dust cloud where a moment before the towering presence of the palace had been located.

'Emperor be praised,' he exclaimed.

He laughed out loud in surprise and astonishment.

'When's our second wave of drop-troopers inbound?'

'Now sir, they should be falling as we speak,' answered his comms officer, who had been staring blankly at his useless machines since his vox communication had been silenced.

'And now they are safe from the wretched fire from those air turrets,' exclaimed Havorn's young adjutant. 'This is a good day for the Imperium indeed! Victory is assured!'

'Victory is never assured,' said Havorn as his eyes fell on the red-armoured Chaos Marines fighting their way free of the tech-guard cohorts. His augmented, ogryn bodyguard growled menacingly and took a step in front of the brigadier-general.

'Quick, sir!' said his adjutant, urgently.

'We have not the time,' said Havorn flatly, seeing the enemy carve a bloody exit from the mass of bodies and begin hurtling across the salt plain towards them. He pulled his gold-rimmed plasma pistol from his holster.

His entourage raised their weapons and sprayed the approaching warriors with gunfire. The ogryn roared as it planted its heavy feet and empty shells streamed from its ripper gun as it fired the weapon wildly. The Chimera behind them rotated its turret and multi-laser fire peppered the traitors, cutting several of them down. Only six Chaos Marines reached the brigadier-general's command group, but it was enough.

The first Chaos Marine ducked under the ogryn's heavy swinging arm and leapt forwards, smashing its tall, spiked icon into the head of Havorn's adjutant, pulverising his skull.

A burst of fire tore apart another of Havorn's men and the brigadier-general fired his plasma pistol in response, knocking back a chainsword wielding foe as the shot took him in the shoulder. He fired again quickly and despatched the traitor, streaming plasma engulfing his helmet.

This was the end, he thought. An ignominious end to his thirty-seven years within the Imperial Guard, hacked apart by brutal warriors behind his battle lines.

'Damn you, you traitorous whoresons!' he muttered and fired his pistol twice in quick succession, felling another of the two and half metre behemoths.

Two more of his entourage were hacked down and he backed further away.

He saw the loyal ogryn fall to the ground with a bestial roar. He wasn't a sentimental man by any stretch, but he felt pain as his faithful bodyguard fell to the ground, coughing blood from his lungs.

Havorn fired his pistol again and again, and felt the rising pain beneath his hand as the pistol overheated, venting super-heated air. With a snarl, he hurled it to the ground and drew his long bladed combat knife. It had been more than twenty years since it had tasted blood, back in the days when he was a captain of the storm troopers.

Only two of the enemy remained standing and they stalked towards him, wordlessly stepping away from each other to take him from both sides.

Havorn kept his eyes on the foe so as not to attract their attention to the massive form of the ogryn picking itself up behind them, blood running from the wounds on its arms and chest, and spilling from its mouth.

With a roar, the ogryn picked up one of the traitors, one massive hand upon the enemy's backpack and the other between his legs. It lifted the Chaos Marine high into the air and slammed it head first into the ground, cracking its neck.

The second traitor turned with a snarl and swung its icon two handed into the ogryn's legs, driving it to its knees. Releasing his grip on the haft of the hateful symbol of Chaos, the Chaos Marine leapt at the ogryn, its long talons extended for the killing blow.

Havorn cried out and surged forwards, but he was too slow and he saw the bodyguard fall, its throat ripped completely out, blood spurting from the fatal wound.

He drove his combat knife through a crack in the traitor's ceramite back plate, the blade sinking deep. Blood spurted from the wound, burning through Havorn's leather glove, and the enemy spun, his fist smashing into the brigadier-general's cheek, shattering the bone.

Pain exploded in his head and he fell back from the force of the blow. He saw the ogryn's large, mournful eyes as it tried desperately to aid its master before the Chaos Marine reached down and broke its neck with a brutal twist.

'Traitorous hellspawn,' spat Havorn.

'Hellspawn yes. Traitor, no,' replied the hateful, possessed traitor, his fang-filled maw forming the Low Gothic words with difficulty. The fangs retracted and the warrior shook his head, his daemonic visage melting away to leave a cold, pale handsome face.

'The Word Bearers Legion, blessed of Lorgar, are no traitors, wretched fool,' growled the warrior as he stalked towards Havorn.

'You and your wretched kin turned your back on the glorious Emperor and all of humanity to embrace damnation,' said Havorn, crawling back towards his fallen adjutant and the dead man's laspistol.

'The Emperor turned his back on us!' raged the traitor. 'Only through the unified worship of true divinities can mankind be saved. Your False Emperor is nothing more than a rotting corpse perched atop a golden high-chair, a puppet for bureaucrats and taxmen. And you pathetic humans pray to him? You are the lowest of scum, ignorant and embracing that ignorance.'

Havorn's hand slid behind him and closed on the grip of the laspistol.

'Your soul will be damned when you leave this world, while I will go to the blessed Emperor's side in glory and light,' said Havorn, trying to keep the bastard distracted.

'I say my soul is already damned in this world, and that there will be nothing but hell waiting for you,' said the traitor.

'I'll see you there,' said Havorn and he swung the laspistol up, firing it straight into the face of the Chaos Marine. The traitor fell backwards with a cry of anger and pain, and lay still.

Havorn pushed himself to his feet, pain throbbing from his shattered cheek-bone, and he began to stagger away.

A clawed hand wrapped around his neck from behind, and he was lifted into the air and turned to face the traitor. The wound on the traitor's forehead was closing as he watched, the bone knitting together and flesh re-forming over the bullet hole, leaving not a scratch upon the traitor's darkly handsome face.

'Yes, I will see you in hell, human,' said Burias-Drak'shal as he plunged his clawed hand through the brigadier-general's chest. With one decisive wrench, he pulled the Elysian commander's still-beating heart from the old man's broken ribcage and watched as the life left his eyes. He held the beating heart to his mouth, tasting the sweet, warm blood, and threw the lifeless corpse dismissively to the ground.

The Chimera slammed into Burias-Drak'shal with shocking force, sending him flying out in front of the armoured personnel carrier. As he tried to rise to his feet it slammed into him again, and he disappeared beneath its whirling tracks, sixty tonnes of Imperial tank rolling over him.

A ripple of movement spread out from the base of the Gehemehnet, the blackened earth around the tower shimmering and wavering. Electricity coalesced down the tower and surged across the surface of the ground before dissipating. Glowing light began to spill from the mortar between the massive stone blocks, which began to bulge and warp like molten rubber. A daemonic, fanged face appeared within the stone, pushing outwards, straining to break into the mortal realm.

'Not just yet, precious,' said Jarulek, caressing the daemonic manifestation. Claws appeared in the stone, reaching out towards the Dark Apostle and he chuckled. He spoke a word in the language of the daemon and the creature recoiled, its face a mask of childish, shamefaced repentance.

'Not just yet,' he repeated and the daemon retreated back within the Gehemehnet.

CHAPTER TWENTY

For a day and night the Chaos Marines held the Imperials at bay, though they were driven slowly back, unable to contain the sheer numbers of the foe advancing against them. There were moments of brief respite in the action, as the Elysians gathered themselves for another push forwards, but always there were skirmishes and minor actions. The Skitarii tech-guard cohorts advanced tirelessly. Without the threat of the potent air defences that had been housed within the palace, the heavens were filled with Elysian and Imperial Navy aircraft, and Elysian drop-troopers descended through the darkness above to fall behind the enemy lines. Laron felt a touch of admiration and awe for the enemy, for they fought without rest as never-ending waves of the Imperials attacked, and they resisted every push and new attack with great fervour. He dismissed the thought as soon as it formed. To even think such a thing bordered on heresy.

Arcs of lightning reached out from the tower to ensnare Valkyries, Thunderbolts and drop-troopers that strayed close, and they were dragged through the air into its sheer stone sides. Pilots fought with their controls as the circuitry of their aircrafts was fried and they were drawn in towards the tower. There were no explosions, however; they merely disappeared as they should have struck stone, sucked into the Ether, to be fed upon by the army of daemons waiting just beyond the thin membrane separating the physical world from the warp.

Missiles screamed from beneath the wings of fighters, detonating explosively into the side of the daemon tower, and keening, high-pitched, maddening screams echoed across the skies. The attacks caused great rents to appear in the side of the tower and dark blood seeped from the wounds, thick and glutinous. Bombardment from the advancing Imperial line joined with the attack and battle cannons and siege ordnance were directed towards the giant tower as they too came into range, and bleeding pockmarks appeared across the sheer walls of the tower.

The tower's pain resonated within the soul of every warrior on the battlefield. The traitorous enemy seemed to become enraged by the power of the cries and they attacked with renewed fury. Laron staggered beneath the twisting power of Chaos that burst in waves from the tower, his head spinning and nausea making bile rise in his throat, and he knew that every Elysian on the field of battle suffered. Even the tech-guard warriors of the Adeptus Mechanicus seemed affected, pausing mid-battle in confusion at the unwholesome stimuli washing over them.

The Ordinatus continued its relentless, unstoppable advance and it levelled great sections of the Chaos defences with every titanic blast from its sonic weapon. Laron swore as enemy warriors and Elysians alike were caught in the blasts, their internal organs exploding and their bones shattering as the resonating blast ripped through them. The foes' ancient ceramite power armour shattered into millions of tiny shards beneath the potent Mechanicus weapon.

Clearly recognising the threat that the Ordinatus posed, the Chaos Marines hammered thousands of rounds of fire into its void shields, overriding them completely several times. Little damage was sustained by the behemoth before dutiful Tech-Priests and the army of servitors that swarmed over the machine restored the shields and it continued its relentless advance. Soon it would be within range of the cursed daemon tower. Laron prayed to the Emperor that the war machine would fell it.

The enemy was pushed back to the third tier and then back to the fourth. Here it seemed that they had determined to make their stand. They would hold the fourth tier or they would be slaughtered to a man. That suited Laron just fine. It was brutal, gritty fighting, but he took heart in the fact that they were grinding the enemy down, though it was a slow process. The enemy were being beaten, individual by individual, even though Imperial losses were horrific.

Communications remained completely inoperative and Brigadier-General Havorn's corpse had been found behind the tech-guard cohorts. Colonel Laron had donned a black armband in mourning for the old general, but he had taken over as the overall commander of the Elysian 72nd and 133rd with some reluctance. He set up crude communications using runners, flags, loudhailers and searchlights to organise attacks and retreats across the peninsula. Commissar Kheler proved an admirable and forthright advisor. Kheler tempered Laron's more foolhardy attitudes and the acting colonel developed an appreciation of Kheler's uncompromising expectations of the captains of the regiments. He allowed no talk of retreat and shot any man who showed the slightest sign of doubt or reluctance to perform his duties.

It will all be over soon, thought Laron. The enemy could not hold out for longer than hours at most. They would be victorious and they would return to the Crusade bearing Havorn's body with full honours.

This was the final push. They just needed to break the enemy from the fourth tier of defence and that would allow the Ordinatus to begin its barrage upon the cursed tower. It was unholy, the massive thing that rose up and pierced the skies over head. It must have been over a kilometre in diameter, and the aura of wrongness that it exuded made him feel physically sick. It must be destroyed.

If there was a portal to hell, it was surely this damned tower. With a nod to his subordinates, he indicated the commencement of the final push against the enemy. Flags were raised and powerful spotlights flashed the signal along the Imperial line.

The final chapter of the war would be played out in the next hours of engagement, for better or for worse.

Varnus paced back and forth behind the picketed slaves, a lasgun in his hands and his mind seething.

Blood filled his thoughts, anger and bitterness infusing him.

A hundred thousand workers, the last remaining Imperial subjects enslaved by the Word Bearers, had been herded together and picketed along the top of the third tier. Their chains were bolted into the plascrete battlements atop the earthen bulwark. There they stood, forming a living shield of bodies.

The red-armoured priest had dragged him there. Varnus's thoughts were confused and tormented. He had not realised at first what was going on. All he could hear were the voices of Chaos in his head and the pounding of blood, and he had stared at his bloody hands in dumb incomprehension.

A small shuttle had risen to the top of the Gehemehnet tower and a glorious, terrifying figure had emerged. Without any conscious will, he had dropped to the ground before this warrior-priest, screwing his eyes tightly shut and trying desperately to maintain control of his bodily functions. The figure radiated power and the essence of Chaos and Varnus found his insides twisting within him, his skin crawling and his head aching. He felt as if he was being turned inside out and pain wracked his body before he passed out.

He had awoken to find the first warrior-priest dragging him across the earth and he was deposited at the top of the fourth defensive line with the other slaves.

The warrior had left him without a word, going to join in the raging battle.

The overseers had tried to chain him with the others, but they soon backed away from him after he had killed two of them and turned their needle-fingers upon them. Some of the slaves had cheered at that, but their cries died in their throats as Varnus looked at them. Perhaps they saw the same thing that made the overseers back away.

And so he had waited with the slaves, unchained but bound there nonetheless. To go forward was to die, but to go back would only be to lengthen his torment. No, this was the battlefield where his eternal fate was to be determined and he waited whatever was to come with little care of the outcome. He stalked back and forth, letting his anger and bitterness build.

He raged as he felt the pain of the Gehemehnet and cried out in anguish as each shell screamed over his head to strike against it. The child was strong and it would take more than humble shells to destroy it, but still he roared with anger at the pain it endured.

Even here on the battlefield, the Discords blared at the slaves and Varnus knew now that they spoke the truth.

The Emperor was no god; he was a shattered corpse that clung to a last vestige of life by feeding off the deaths of those dedicated to him, and he cared not at all for Varnus or any of the other wretched, deceived slaves that invoked his name in prayer.

But there were true gods in the universe, ones that took an active interest in the lives of mortals: gods that granted strength to their followers and brought ruin upon their foes.

He had been blind, but now his eyes had been opened wide. He didn't hate the Imperial Guardsmen for their ignorance, for he too had been duped into believing the lies of the Ecclesiarchy. He hated them for betraying him and all these poor chained-up individuals. They had waited for liberation, enduring hell at the hands of their captors, and now they were being killed by those they had waited so long to save them.

He had picked up a lasgun from a corpse and he stood waiting for them to come to him. He would damn well kill as many of the bastards as he could before he was overcome. It would not be long before the fighting was upon them once more. The Chaos Marines were even now pulling back towards the fourth line and it was time for the slaves to do their part.

The overseers had attached the slaves' chains to dozens of massive living machines of horrific power and brutal will. These daemonic, infernal creations roared as they fired their ordnance into the advancing Imperial ranks and the closest to them were deafened by the sound. Scores more slaves were killed by the daemon engines, dragged beneath their claws and within reach of snapping mouth-tentacles of flesh and metal.

Varnus could feel the ceaseless anger of the daemon essences bound within the vehicles and he felt somehow akin to them. At some unheard command, the daemon engines were released from their bindings of words and shackles, and they surged over the barricade of the fourth and last defensive line, dragging the slaves forward between them.

Varnus screamed his hatred and pain, and followed, clutching his lasgun.

Marduk stood atop the fourth and final embankment, watching as the enemy began its final push. The bombardment of artillery began afresh and the lines of the Host were hidden beneath plumes of smoke and flame. An endless wave of enemy troops and tanks spilled down into the open ground between the third and fourth lines of embankments, the intensity of gunfire lifting dramatically as they came into bolter range.

'The end is nigh,' commented Burias.

'It will be a close run thing. This will be the final battle,' said Marduk. He glanced over at the Icon Bearer. 'Watch out for your nemesis, Burias. Fear the dreaded Chimera.'

Burias laughed out loud and rubbed his unmarked head with one hand.

'Damn thing hurt,' he said. He had returned to the lines of the Word Bearers, driving a battered enemy tank through the ranks of battle servitors, crushing them under its tracks, but they did not target it. It was an Imperial tank and it was not in their programming to raise a weapon against it. As it drew near the Host's lines a missile had sent it spinning into the air. Burias had crawled from the flaming wreckage and told a laughing Marduk of his tale.

He had gripped onto the tank as it thundered over him and had crawled across its hull before ripping away a hatch and slaughtering the occupants. Then he had ripped the driver's seat from its housing so that he could fit his bulk into the compartment before driving back towards the lines of the Host.

'I saw you speaking with the Coryphaus,' said Marduk.

Burias looked over at him and Marduk raised his eyebrows.

'Yes, First Acolyte.'

'Of what were you speaking?'

'Things of little consequence,' said Burias. 'The deployment of our Havoc squads, the use of the slaves.'

Marduk narrowed his eyes. The Icon Bearer was concealing something. He was a conniving snake, and Marduk had no doubt that he would turn on him if that would benefit him.

'The Dark Apostle comes!' Marduk heard one of the warrior-brothers exclaim, and he turned, his thoughts pulled away from Burias, inclining his head to witness his lord's arrival.

He floated out of the roiling, black, lightning filled clouds, surrounded by a glistening nimbus of light, descending gently towards the battle like a glorified angel. He was borne aloft upon a disc-like daemon pulpit, one hand upon the spiked railing at its front. Daemons swirled around him, filling the air with their keening screams as they scythed around the Dark Apostle in intricate weaving patterns.

They were daemons blessed by Tzeentch, the Great Changer of the Ways, and their bodies were long and smooth, rimmed with thousands of jagged barbs. Hunters of the Ether, they resembled the ray-fish that existed in the oceans of countless worlds, sleek and deadly. Their bodies were ovular in shape and long barbed tails swished behind them as they cut through the air, fleshy wing tips rising and falling deceptively slowly. Colours played over their dark hides, glistening patterns of iridescent shades. Each was the length of three men and they cut through the air in a deadly dance, spiralling down in steep dives before turning into climbing corkscrews, interweaving with the paths of others of their kind.

Smaller versions of the screaming daemon-rays, no larger than a hand span across, whipped around the Dark Apostle, spiralling around him like a dense shoal of frenzied fish.

Jarulek held his crozius of the dark gods high before him and a roar rose up to greet him from the assembled Host.

He certainly knew how to make an entrance, Marduk thought wryly.

'The way you appear to the Host is paramount, First Acolyte,' he remembered Jarulek lecturing him. 'Always you must project an aura of authority and religious awe. We are beyond the warrior-brothers of the Legion, we are the chosen of the gods, exalted in Lorgar's eyes and raised beyond the morass of the lower warrior. Our warriors must worship us. And why? We must appear glorified and exalted so that always we can inspire utter devotion in the Host. A warrior fuelled with faith fights with twice the hatred and twice the strength of one that does not, and he will fight on past the point when he would otherwise give in to death. A Dark Apostle must always inspire such devotion in his flock,' said Jarulek, his eyes filled with passion and belief.

'That is the reason that we need a Coryphaus, Marduk. The Dark Apostle must be separate and aloof from the Host to maintain the utter devotion of the warrior-brothers. He must not be one of them, he must be beyond them. The Coryphaus is the war leader of the Host, but he is also the conduit through which the Dark Apostle can gauge the feeling of the Host. For once you take on the mantle of Dark Apostle, you must be one apart from the Legion. Always you must project a holy aura that will inspire utter, fanatical loyalty and devotion.'

The full power of the Dark Apostle's words were driven home to Marduk as he felt the spirit of the Host rise as Jarulek made his descent upon the back of the hellish daemon construct.

The daemon pulpit was a work of mad genius, formed from the lucid dreams of the Dark Apostle's mind and birthed in the Immaterium before it had been dragged into the material realm to serve his will. Its skeleton was of blackest iron and the ribs of the metallic frame formed an eight-pointed star beneath his feet. Between these was living, red-raw flesh and muscle, and it was upon this that the Dark Apostle stood.

The whole daemon construct was disc shaped and razor sharp barbs of black iron lined its edges. Black, iron rib work rose up at the front of the pulpit, curved to either side of the Dark Apostle like a chariot of old, and living, bloody flesh filled the gaps between the struts. An ancient book bound in human leather was open before him and a pair of burning braziers trailed oily, black smoke in his wake.

He held his arms out wide to receive the praise of the Host, a rapturous smile upon his upturned face. He glided down until he was hovering just above the heads of the warrior-brothers and his velvet voice swept out before him as he spoke.

'Let the infidel worshippers of the Corpse Emperor witness the power of true gods!' he said, his words carrying easily over the throng of battle, though he seemed barely to raise his voice. 'Show them the power of the warriors of true faith! Let them not defile the sacred monument of the Gehemehnet! Slaughter them with the words of blessed Lorgar upon your lips! Feel the power of the gods surge within you! Kill them, my warriors! The gods hunger for sacrifice!'

The Dark Apostle lowered his defiled crozius arcanum in the direction of the enemy and his daemon pulpit began gliding forwards over the heads of his warriors. The scything daemon rays of Tzeentch screamed ahead of him, weaving deadly patterns and glowing with iridescent light.

The explosions of incoming shells erupted around the Dark Apostle, but he emerged unscathed, protected by a nimbus of light that surrounded him.

As one, the Host of the Word Bearers gave a roar of devotion and hatred, and surged forwards. The Gehemehnet rumbled behind them and Marduk could feel the presence of thousands of daemons struggling to enter the physical realm. Its time was almost upon them.

There was no glory to be had in waiting behind walls for death to come. No, the final battle would be a full attack against the enemy. Havoc squads would hold position upon the fourth tier, but the remainder of the Host was to attack in one powerful wave and engage the enemy in the open.

Marduk lifted his daemon weapon, feeling its power building as the Gehemehnet neared its awakening, and he leapt the barricade.

'Purge them of their heresies!' he roared. 'Death to the followers of the Corpse Emperor!'

The Host surged towards the enemy behind the advance of the slaves, bolters barking. Marduk was pleased to see that many of the slaves picked up weapons from fallen enemy soldiers and put them to use, shooting at their erstwhile allies. Some turned these weapons back to shoot at the Word Bearers, but they were few, and they were clubbed to the ground and murdered by their fellow slaves.

Marduk always found it pleasing to seeing former heathen worshippers of the False Emperor turn to Chaos, embracing the truth and becoming true converts, proselytes of the true Gods. The corruption of the innocent some would say, but he knew that it was something far more worthwhile. He was seeing enlightenment come to those who had been exposed to lies and falsehood for their entire lives. It was liberation and it was salvation.

The daemonic war engines that the slaves were chained to bellowed and roared as they clawed up the earth beneath them and filled the air with sprays of shells, flame and missiles. They smashed into the enemy foot soldiers and began ripping them apart and crushing them beneath their weight. Hundreds of slaves were injured as they were dragged into the fray and their chains snapped tight between the machines, entangling them with the foe.

The Host followed closely, firing into the mayhem, not caring who they killed. Thousands dropped beneath the roar of bolters, and as chains were driven into the ground and snapped, the Host broke into a run. They fell amongst the slaves and enemy, hacking and cutting with chainaxes and swords, bludgeoning with bolters and burning with roaring flamers.

Marduk saw Jarulek enter battle ahead of him, shooting down from his floating pulpit with a monstrous, daemon-bolter that caused hideous mutations in those it struck. The screaming daemons of Tzeentch scythed through the enemy, their razor-edged forms cutting limbs from bodies and cleaving through heads. The smaller daemons whirled around the Dark Apostle, eviscerating anything that came close.

Marduk saw a warrior raise a hand to hurl a grenade at the Dark Apostle, but his forearm was cleanly severed as he pulled it back for the throw. It fell to the ground as his feet. Marduk laughed as he saw the look of frantic panic on the man's face before he was hurled through the air by the force of the explosion. A pair of screaming ray-daemons cut through the air and sliced into the flailing body as if playing with a new toy and he fell to the ground in pieces.

Give them a taste of the power of Chaos that will soon come, said the voice of Jarulek.

Marduk fired his bolt pistol into the face of an enemy as he formed the complex words of a passage from the Enumeration of Convocation, an inspired work that blessed Erebus had crafted in the language of the daemon. He spoke the difficult words easily, his chainsword hacking into flesh and his bolt pistol blasting through bone.

A searing beam of white-blue energy from a Skitarii weapon caused the flesh and blood of several Word Bearers to boil within their power armour, and Marduk rolled to the side as the beam swept towards him, almost stumbling over the words of the complex enumeration. The results of such a slip could be catastrophic, but he picked up the incantation smoothly once again as he rolled to his feet, cleaving his weapon across the throat of another foe.

He barked out the guttural words of the enumeration, feeling the power of Chaos building, tapping into the excessive amounts of energy waiting to be released. Burias-Drak'shal's horned head lifted as the possessed warrior crouched over a kill, nostrils flaring as it scented the build-up of warp energy.

With a wave of his chainsword, Marduk ordered the warriors around him to form a circle, with him as its centre. The power armoured Chaos Marines of the Legion planted their feet, facing outwards, mowing down any that drew near their First Acolyte.

Burias-Drak'shal stalked through the maelstrom of battle. His whole posture was altered once the change had taken him. From a tall, proud and graceful warrior, he became a hulking, stooped, feral creature that oozed power and barely suppressed rage. He roughly shoved a Word Bearers warrior-brother out of his way to take his place beside the First Acolyte, who was drawing near the end of the enumeration, and planted his icon firmly into the ground.

Reaching out with one hand, Marduk gripped the icon, directing the building power of Chaos through its black metal. He gripped the icon tightly and closed his eyes, still speaking in the contorting language of the warp. When he opened his eyes they were as black as pitch.

He barked the last words of the enumeration and, in the moment of silence that followed, he and Burias-Drak'shal raised the icon high before slamming its butt down into the ground, steam rising from where it touched the earth.

The air around the icon shimmered as if with the heat of a star-engine and the long, spiked haft began to vibrate. A swirling vortex of darkness suddenly opened, and the surrounding air was sucked towards it. The kathartes screamed into reality from within the portal. Scores of them hurtled up into the sky from the rift in real space.

Their exposed muscles were slick with blood and they beat their powerful, flayed wings as they coiled overhead before descending upon the battlefield. They plummeted into the Elysians, talons curled forwards like those of an attacking bird of prey, hooking and ripping into flesh. Some men were grasped by the shoulders and lifted into the air before other kathartes screamed into them, ripping at them and squabbling over the pickings. Guardsmen were torn apart as the kathartes fought, and Marduk could feel the rising terror and fear of the soldiers, their resolve wavering.

'Fear not the devils! Faith in the Emperor will protect your souls!' came a shout from a leather-clad individual with wide, mad eyes and Marduk laughed at his folly. The man screamed an oath to the Emperor and shot down one of the katharte daemons. The shot broke one of its wings and it fell into the crush of men.

Marduk roared and leapt towards the figure, smashing aside those in his path, but the black-clad commissar was lost amongst the melee. Marduk swore in anger and continued to slaughter those around him.

Laron smiled as he saw the enemy surge forward. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He commanded his signal communicators to order the attack. They had stormed forward from their final defensive line. Now the sheer weight of the Imperials must surely prevail.

Laron raced back down the embankment towards the waiting Valkyries. He leapt aboard the closest aircraft and hooked himself onto the rappel line attached just inside the open bay door, nodding to Captain Elias. The aircraft's engines roared as it took off and the flight of thirty Valkyries rose just high enough to clear the embankment of the third defensive line before screeching over the heads of the frantically battling combatants in the no man's land below. The crewmen manning a pair of secured heavy bolters opened fire as the Valkyries swooped low over the field of battle. Laron's storm troopers, kneeling in the open doors and secured with rappel lines, fired their hellguns down into the melee, picking out targets amongst the chaotic battle surging below.

A hellish shape burst through the open bay door, ripping with daemonic claws, and blood splashed across the close interior of the Valkyrie. The stench of the creature was foul and it slashed around frenziedly, ripping at the storm troopers and hacking through rappel lines as if they were twine. Two storm troopers fell from the aircraft as it roared across the battlefield, jinking from side to side to avoid incoming fire. They fell into the mayhem below, and another's face was ripped off as the creature's tri-hinged jaw snapped.

Laron clubbed the hateful thing in the face with the butt of his pistol. Its head swung towards him, eyes burning with flames and steam emanating from the twin gashes that marked where a nose should have been. Its foetid breath made him gag and he saw that its tongue was made up of a thousand wriggling worm-tentacles as it reached for him. He jammed his melta-pistol into the daemon's mouth and pulled the trigger. The thing was lit up from the inside before it broke up into a million tiny pieces of ash and was blown out of the aircraft.

Laron grimaced as he spat the foul ash from his mouth, before grinning at the surviving storm troopers.

The Valkyries carried large cases packed with explosives. The Ordinatus might well destroy the tower, but he wasn't taking any chances and he didn't like the idea of their victory relying upon the disconcerting Adeptus Mechanicus magos. This might have been an old-fashioned way of blowing something up, but sometimes that was the best way.

'Havoc squads, shoot them down,' ordered Kol Badar as the Valkyries appeared over the ridge, flying fast and low over the top of the raging battle, fire pumping from their forward-mounted guns and from their open doors.

Shells smashed down along the defensive tier as carefully timed and targeted artillery fire was unleashed, and an echelon of thunderbolts screamed along the line, peppering the heavy weapons teams with their intense strafing runs. The Havoc squads took down over a dozen of the Valkyries, but the relentless attacks forced them to take cover, and the remaining Valkyries screamed overhead, past the fourth defensive line, heading towards the base of the Gehemehnet.

'Rearguard, incoming.' Kol Badar said as he ripped through a pair of enemies with his combi-bolter.

'Acknowledged, Coryphaus,' came the response.

Varnus could see nothing but red as his rage lent him strength and he swung his lasgun into the face of the Elysian, smashing his visor. He leapt upon the Guardsman as he fell and smashed the butt of his las-gun into his face again before rising from the kill and gunning down another.

Something struck him from behind and he was thrown forwards, falling at the feet of a man dressed in black. A commissar, he recognised dimly, seeing the man level a pistol at his head. He stared back at the commissar hatefully, awaiting the shot that would end his life.

But it never came. The commissar's hand was hacked off by a chainsword and Varnus surged to his feet.

'This one is mine!' he roared and the Chaos Marine towering over him turned its helmeted head in his direction. With a dignified nod of its head, it left the wounded commissar to Varnus and leapt back into the fray, its twin chainswords whirring.

Varnus stood on the one good hand of the commissar as he scrabbled for a weapon and the man turned his face towards him, twisted in hatred and pain.

'Where is the Emperor now?' asked Varnus in a language the commissar could not understand. 'He has abandoned you, just as he abandoned me.'

Varnus placed the barrel of his lasgun against the commissar's forehead. The man's eyes were defiant till the last and Varnus pulled the trigger. He watched as the life faded from his eyes and a pang wrenched inside him. He dropped to his knees over the dead figure, confused and lost. The anger drained from him and was replaced with self-loathing, guilt and anguish.

He caught the sight of his own reflection in the highly buffed, silver pin on the commissar's hat and he lifted it up, staring at his own hate-filled visage.

What had he become? This was the face of the enemy. The False Emperor is the enemy!

He looked upon the two-headed eagle symbol upon the black leather hat he held in his hands and he felt duel emotions: hate and sadness. They betrayed you! The worship of the False Emperor is a lie!

Maybe it was a lie, but was this a better alternative? This embracing of evil and slaughter?

Slaughter is the holy sacrifice that the gods demand.

The madness was descending upon him again and he had not the strength to fight it any longer. He would continue to fall into damnation. No, he would not fall, he would embrace it. He felt the rage building within him and it terrified him that it was not unpleasant. He would be lost and he would not care that he was lost.

With the last vestiges of himself, he lifted the pistol from the commissar's hand and raised it to his head. Emperor, save me, he thought. Before the unrelenting rage descended upon him once again and he was completely lost, he pulled the trigger.

At last he had found release from the sound of Chaos in his mind.

'Those damned explosives set! We ain't got much time!' shouted Laron as he hunkered down behind the Valkyrie. His storm troopers were firing on the incoming enemies, but they would be on them in a moment. Bolter rounds impacted against the aircraft, and the crewman operating the heavy bolter flew backwards as a bolt shell detonated in his skull, splattering Laron with blood. He swore and took the man's position, swinging the heavy weapon towards the enemy. A missile slammed into one of the other Valkyries, which detonated explosively, throwing flaming debris in all directions.

Laron pressed the twin thumb triggers of the pivot mounted heavy bolter and fired a spray of heavy calibre rounds towards the incoming foe, dropping several of them. Rhinos could be seen cutting towards the storm troopers from further off, and Laron swore.

'Set the damned timers! Move it!' he roared in between bursts of fire.

'Sir, we have incoming hostiles from the east,' said a wounded storm trooper as he pulled a piece of metal from his shoulder.

'Just great,' muttered Laron as he gunned down another enemy.

'All set.' Captain Elias shouted.

A sudden scream from the base of the tower made Laron glance around and he did a double take as he saw the scene unfolding. A long, spined arm had reached out of the stone of the tower, grabbed one his men around the throat and was dragging him towards the wall. Another storm trooper was hacking at the arm with his knife, and hissing ichor dripped from the wound. Fleshy, hooked claws burst from the wall and latched onto another man. He was pulled off balance and tumbled into the wall. He half disappeared into the surface of the stone, and tentacles and claws gripped his armour and hauled him fully inside as he screamed.

The storm troopers backed away from the wall and began firing at the things materialising out of the stone surface. Hissing, fanged faces pushed out, bulbous, mutated eyes opened up all over the stone. A flickering figure of a huge, horned daemon with a twisting blade of fire in its hand strained to escape the stone, and hellguns blasted as the soldiers targeted the emerging monster.

'Back! Get back to the Valkyries!' shouted Laron, ducking down behind the heavy bolter as rounds of incoming fire peppered the aircraft.

One of the storm troopers shot their comrade who was still being pulled into the tower. It was a mercy killing, to end whatever cruel fate had awaited him.

A heavily muscled humanoid figure pulled free of the wall and ran at the storm troopers, hefting a heavy, archaic broadsword in its muscular red arms. With one sweep of the blade it carved a man in half from shoulder to waist, and it roared, flames spilling from its eyes and throat.

Laron swung his heavy bolter around and unleashed a long burst of fire into the daemon's chest. It was driven back several steps by the impacts, though it appeared unharmed. It turned its snarling head towards Colonel Laron and began to advance through the barrage.

'Go!' he shouted to the pilot as the surviving storm troopers scrambled aboard, and the Valkyrie lifted straight up into the air, its powerful vertical thrusters roaring. Boltgun fire ripped through the undercarriage of the aircraft as it lifted and several men were killed, their blood spraying the roof.

'The charges blow in ten, sir!' shouted one of his men, and Laron nodded as he fired upon the Chaos Marines below. More things were emerging from the walls of the tower.

The Valkyrie turned steeply, and a missile destined to smash into its side flew through the open doorway, screaming over Laron's head and miraculously passing straight out of the other open doorway, filling the interior with the smoke of its propulsion.

Open-mouthed, Laron turned.

'The Emperor protects!' shouted Elias, laughing at the sheer improbability of the occurrence.

'It certainly seems that way,' agreed Laron, shaking his head in utter disbelief.

He didn't see the hulking, winged daemon pushing out of the wall behind the turning Valkyrie. Nor did he see it leap towards the aircraft, nor hear the power of its roar over the screaming engines. But he felt the impact as it struck.

The tail of the Valkyrie tipped earthwards with the sudden additional weight, and the pilot struggled to keep it airborne. The head of a giant axe slammed through the raised rear assault ramp, smashing it asunder. The ramp was ripped from the aircraft as the axe was pulled free, and it tumbled end over end to the ground below.

The daemon roared as it pulled at the tail of the Valkyrie, its wings beating furiously and its infernal muscles straining to bring the aircraft down to the ground. It was thrown off as the Valkyrie's jet turbines kicked in, but with a beat of its powerfully muscled wings it turned in the air and its whip flicked out, wrapping around the tail of the aircraft, pulling it sharply downwards.

With its engines roaring, the Valkyrie screamed up into the air as its tail tipped beneath it, and the pilot lost control. The aircraft slammed into another Valkyrie before flipping upside down and plummeting to the ground. Laron leapt from the aircraft as it slammed into the earth, rolling into the dust.

The daemon landed atop the flaming wreck, its massive hooves twisting the metal beneath it. It seemed impervious to the flames, and Laron scrambled backwards as the malevolent thing stepped out of the inferno, its burning eyes fixed upon him.

It was over twelve feet tall and it seemed to flicker as if it were not fully there. Its skin was as black as pitch and a burning symbol was emblazoned on its chest, the mark of one of the ruinous powers.

'Emperor, protect my soul,' whispered Laron.

The charges exploded. Both man and daemon were ripped apart by the force of the detonations.

But the tower still stood.

The Ordinatus fired upon the Gehemehnet, enormous amounts of energy focused into a deadly frequency that held the power to shatter mountains and crash bones to powder. The air shimmered as the ultra-high and ultra-low frequencies screamed over the top of the chaotic battle and roared towards the fifty kilometre high structure. It struck the side of the tower some forty metres up, and stones were ruptured from within as they were shaken apart. They exploded into sand and were blown out of the other side. A hole the size of a building was driven through the tower.

Impossibly, the tower still stood, despite the lack of integrity holding it together, for it was no longer bound by the rules of geometry or gravity. The tower was a gateway to the warp beyond, and through the hole blasted in its side the roiling darkness and liquid flame of the Ether could be seen.

With a roar that came from the throats of a million infernal entities the Gehemehnet awoke and the barrier between the realm of the daemon and the material plane was stripped away. Energy roared outwards from the Gehemehnet, throwing dust up into the air and hurling men to the ground. It made the black seas beyond the Shinar peninsula rise in a giant tidal wave that roared out from the tower, and lightning tore apart the heavens. Rumblings shook the ground, and daemons screamed into being.

They emerged from within the tower, thousands of straining hellish entities clawing out of living stone, and they roared their pleasure as they manifested. Thousands of others flew from the rent in the tower's side, held aloft by pinioning wings or twisting, contorting winds of fire. Screams and roars thundered across the Shinar peninsula and tens of thousands of daemons poured from the gateway, descending on the mortals.

The Ordinatus machine fired again, but this time the force of its attack seemed to rebound from the tower and it hurtled back towards the behemoth, smashing into its void shields and ripping them apart, the fury of its own power turned against it. The void shields crumbled one by one beneath the onslaught, robbing the energy of its force, but still enough power hurtled into the Ordinatus to rip it apart.

The Ordinatus was rocked by the force of its own weapon, though even this was not enough to destroy it completely. Plumes of smoke wreathed its iron sides, and metal scaffolds and gantries were shattered. The great weapon housed upon its back, greater than even those of a mighty Titan, was torn from its housing and collapsed beneath its own weight. Blue fire spurted from breaches in the plasma core powering the machine and tech-priests wailed as the machine-spirit groaned in agony.

Daemons streamed across the battlefield, hacking, slashing and ripping. Thousands of mortals were slaughtered in the first moments of the insane combat, their limbs hacked apart by brutal hellblades, their bodies turned to liquid by blasts of yellow and pink unearthly fire and their souls ripped from their still warm bodies by lascivious, hateful daemons.

The clouds overhead were sucked suddenly inwards, towards the Gehemehnet, and fierce winds pulled at everyone battling upon the plains. Tanks slid across the ground under the force of the sudden gale and men were sent flying through the air.

As suddenly as they came into being, the daemons of the warp were sucked back towards the Gehemehnet, screaming in rage as the fabric of their beings was stripped away like melting wax, and the energies that composed them was drawn back into the tower.

The heavens were cleared of darkness and the great orb of the red planet Korsis could be seen large overhead.

'The conjunction comes,' muttered Jarulek in awe, down on one knee as he strained to resist being pulled back by the roaring gale, his daemonic pulpit having been sucked back to the Gehemehnet by the force of the Daemonschage. He put a hand out to break his fall as the wind stopped abruptly and silence descended across the peninsula, except for one sound.

At the top of the Gehemehnet, the Daemonschage bell tolled as the twelve planets of the Dalar system drew into line and the energies of the ten thousand daemons contained within the tower were propelled down the shaft into the core of the planet.

The dense rock that formed the mantle surrounding the absolute centre of Tanakreg was ripped apart by the unholy power and the land above was shattered.

Massive fault lines ripped up the continents as tectonic plates shifted and smashed into each other. New mountains were instantly formed as shifting rock plates collided and were thrown up into the sky, and existing mountain ranges disappeared as they sank into the vast chasm opening up beneath them.

Earthquakes rolled across the planet, throwing up giant tidal waves that roared across the earth, destroying everything in their path and creating new oceans as plains were overrun with the deluge. New continents were formed as the oceans roiled and great upthrusts of rock climbed into the sky.

Volcanoes spewed lava and ash into the atmosphere, and acidic seas boiled away as they were exposed to rising streams of liquid iron from the planet's core. Deep, subterranean avalanches at the core mantle boundary, far below the planet's surface, disrupted the planet's magnetic field, and the integrity of the planet as a whole wavered.

The gravitational pull of Korsis strained at the weakness of the planet and Tanakreg was tipped off its axis, sending a new shockwave through it, and triggering a second wave of earthquakes.

Great cracks appeared across the Shinar peninsula and the mountains to the east were lost to oblivion as the continental plate sank. The peninsula was lifted up into the air, throwing the Gehemehnet off at an oblique angle, though it still stood. Water rushed across the plains as it vacated the seas below the peninsula, boiling and rising into scalding steam as it touched the rising lava spilling up through the cracks in the earth.

Ash, dust and gases filled the skies, covering the hot, white sun and obscuring Korsis once more.

The Ordinatus slipped into a giant chasm that opened up beneath it, falling into the molten magma rising from below, even as the airship docked upon its back lifted off and rose into the air, smoking and labouring to stay airborne. It drifted sluggishly through the air, hanging heavily to one side where its gyro-stabilisers had been destroyed, passing over the shattered battlefield. Missiles impacted with the undercarriage of the airship and it dived down over the edge of the cliff, flame and smoke spewing from it. The Word Bearers backed towards the base of the Gehemehnet, though scores of their vehicles and daemon engines were lost as they fell into chasms that opened beneath them, or were swept away by the black acid sea. At last the continents settled.

And there below the peninsula where the Gehemehnet had been built, deep in an abyssal channel that just moments before had been hidden beneath kilometres of inky black, acidic waters, was a structure.

It was a black-sided pyramid, its sides perfectly smooth and gleaming. The burning, shattered airship descended into the chasm before smashing upon its floor.

'And that,' breathed Jarulek as he stared down at the structure hungrily, 'is what I have come to find.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Cult of the Anointed stood to attention upon the deep, abyssal chasm floor. The glossy black sides of the pyramid rose up some two hundred metres behind them. Nothing upon its sides gave any indication as to its origin and it was unmarked by scratch or blemish.

The Dark Apostle strode imperiously down the assault ramp of the Stormbird, flanked by his First Acolyte and the Icon Bearer. He wore his ceremonial cloak of skin, the inside lined with golden thread, and his head was held high, for this was the moment of his success.

Twenty of the Anointed formed a corridor that the trio strode along, each slamming a heavy foot down onto the earth as they passed. They advanced towards the bulky form of Kol Badar, standing at the head of the two hundred Terminators arrayed in serried ranks, who awaited the arrival of their lord in silence. All two hundred warriors stamped their feet into the ground as the Dark Apostle halted before them.

The Coryphaus spread his arms wide, palms up, the power claw on his left arm dwarfing the right, as he intoned the ritual greeting.

'The Cult of the Anointed greets the revered Dark Apostle with open arms and beseeches the Dark Gods to bless him for time eternal.'

'And the blessing of the Ether upon you, my loyal Anointed warriors,' said Jarulek, concluding the ritual.

'My lord, we have secured the area and I have inspected the outside of the structure. There appears to be no entrances to its interior.'

'The door shall be opened to him of pure faith,' said Jarulek, a knowing smile on his face.

'Yes, my lord,' said the Coryphaus, bowing his head to Jarulek's proclamation. 'Our auspexes and sensors are unable to scan within. It gives off nothing, my lord.'

'And what of that?' asked Jarulek, pointing towards the black smoke rising in the distance that marked where the airship of the Mechanicus had gone down. 'Did you ensure it was destroyed?'

'I did, my lord. There was a survivor from the crash. I brought it back alive, for I thought it would interest you.'

'Master of the cog will come in chains and tattered robes, to become Enslaved,' quoted Jarulek, a smile upon his script covered, pale face. 'And so, the prophecy comes to fruition.'

Jarulek strode forwards, raising his cursed crozius arcanum high into the air as he neared the base of the black, flawless structure. Not a mark could be seen upon the pyramid's slick surface, not a crack or a join - it was as if the whole structure had been carved from one gigantic piece of some midnight, glossy mineral.

As he neared it, a green light began to glow, dimly at first and then more fiercely The light coalesced into strange symbols running vertically down the surface in front of the Dark Apostle, hieroglyphs the likes of which Marduk had never seen before. It appeared to be a form of early picture writing, consisting of circles and lines, but it was utterly alien in design.

The green light grew in intensity until the glare spilling from the strange glyphs was almost blinding. More light began to appear upon the surface of the pyramid and Marduk clenched his hand around the grip of his daemon-blade, feeling the reassuring connection as the barbs of the grip pierced his armour and flesh.

A circular symbol appeared, and lines that could have been representations of sunbeams spread from its circumference. Without a sound, the circle sank into the black surface of the stone and the panels created by the ''sunbeams'' slid to the side, revealing a dark entranceway within the structure, almost five metres in height. Air was sucked into the open gateway, as if the inside of the structure was a vacuum, and icy coldness exuded from within.

The Anointed moved up protectively around the Dark Apostle, combi-bolters and heavy weapons swinging towards the open gateway.

Jarulek turned towards Marduk, a smile upon his lips.

'Come, my First Acolyte. Our destinies await us.'

Allowing a dozen members of the Anointed to take the lead, Marduk and Jarulek entered the ancient, alien pyramid.

A searing pain flared on Marduk's head beneath his helmet as he crossed the boundary into the pyramid, and he dropped to one knee, eyes tightly shut. It felt like someone had pressed a red-hot brand against the flesh of his forehead.

'What is wrong with you?' snapped Jarulek.

Marduk concentrated hard, mouthing the scriptures of Lorgar to shut off the burning pain, and pushed himself back to his feet.

It felt as though his skin was being melted away from the bone and he gritted his sharp teeth as he mouthed the sacred words.

He knew what the feeling was - it had been described to him - and he had read of it in countless accounts of Dark Apostles.

Jarulek's words came back to him.

Have you had any holy scriptures appear on your flesh yet?

He pushed the pain deep within him, feeling a surge of pride. He could still feel the searing pain, but it would not dominate him. He rose to his feet.

'Nothing, Dark Apostle,' he said, and the Word Bearers pressed on into the alien pyramid.

'There is nothing here,' said Kol Badar. They had been walking through the darkness for what seemed like hours, passing through endless, smooth corridors flanked by columns of obsidian, descending deeper into the stygian blackness. They must have been far beneath the ground, thought Marduk. How large a structure was this unearthly, black pyramid?

'That which I seek is here,' said the Dark Apostle. 'I have seen this place in my dream visions.'

Marduk could sense something, but what it was he didn't know. His skin prickled with vague unease. He ran his hand along the smooth, black stone, feeling the icy chill within.

The corridor was wide enough for four Terminators to walk side by side, and the Dark Apostle was flanked by warriors who formed a shield of ablative armour around him. They had passed dozens of other corridors and passages that bisected their own, but Jarulek had never once paused to consider the way forward. He strode onwards, his head held high, as if he had been here before.

'This place is ancient,' said Marduk. 'What manner of xenos created this structure?'

'Creatures long dead,' said Kol Badar, his deep voice ringing out from the speakers concealed beneath the quad-tusks of his helmet.

'Maybe,' said Marduk, but he was not so certain. This place certainly felt dead, but unease nagged at him.

'Drak'shal is writhing within me,' snarled Burias. His eyes shone with daemonic witch-sight, like silver orbs in the gloom.

'Keep control of yourself, Icon Bearer,' replied Kol Badar sharply.

'The daemon is… repelled by this place,' said Burias.

A whisper of air brushed past Marduk and he swung his helmeted head to one side, scanning for movement or heat signals that would indicate an enemy presence. There was nothing. Another wisp of air shadowed by him and he raised his bolt pistol, scanning to the left. 'Something is in here with us,' he hissed. 'Anointed, be vigilant, possible hostile presence,' said Kol Badar, his words carrying to each of the Terminators through their internal comm-system. The Terminators turned left and right, weapons panning.

There was a sudden shout and the darkness was lit up as combi-bolters roared. There was a crunching sound followed by a wet splash and more bolter-fire barked.

Marduk felt a shadow rise behind him and he spun to see a towering shape looming out of the gloom, something that did not register on any of his heat or life sensors. Even with his advanced vision and the keen autosenses of his helmet, the shape was still little more than a shadow, a tapering coil of darkness that rose up to a hunched pair of shoulders. Skeletally thin arms whipped out, plunging down into the body of an Anointed warrior-brother, skewering him, and blood splashed out across the slick, black walls.

With a shout, Marduk fired his bolt pistol into the shape and he saw a shadowy face turn towards him, pinpricks of green light marking eyes amidst the darkness. With inhuman speed the creature was gone, leaping straight into the smooth, black wall, its tapering shadow tail whipping behind it as it disappeared. The Anointed warrior fell to the ground, dead. 'They are coming out of the walls,' roared Marduk, spinning as he felt another shadow flash past him. He thumbed the activation rune of his daemon-blade to life and the chainblades roared.

Shouts and gunfire erupted as more shadowy forms appeared all along the corridor, plunging their long arms into the bodies of the Anointed, killing and rending, before disappearing like ghosts.

A pair of green, glowing eyes appeared as a shape rose out of the floor before Marduk, and he swung his chainsword towards it. He saw a dark, metallic, skeletal face as the thing opened its mouth in a soundless hiss. It reared back out of range of his attack, its shadowy torso held aloft upon a long, flexible spinal cord that tapered into darkness.

He fired his pistol towards the thing's head, but the bolts passed through it as it turned to black smoke. In an instant, it had regained its metallic, physical form and lunged at him, preternaturally fast arms plunging down to impale him. He lashed out with his chainsword and threw himself into a desperate roll beneath the descending ghost creature, feeling the teeth of his weapon bite against something solid. As he came to his feet, the creature was gone.

The Terminator to his left staggered to his knees as shadowy blades punched through his head, and Marduk lashed out with his chainsword once more, the blade passing harmlessly through the shadowy, serpentine spinal cord of the creature before it disappeared back within the sanctity of the black walls.

'We have to get out of this corridor, we need more space!' yelled Burias, flailing to defend himself against a shadow that emerged to his right.

'Warriors of Lorgar! Advance, double time!' roared Kol Badar.

Marduk saw a creature descend from the darkness above, coiling down to impale another warrior upon its skeletal arms, and the man was lifted up into the air, legs kicking.

'Gods of the Ether give me strength,' Marduk heard the Dark Apostle spit, and he saw him smash his cursed crozius into the enemy. A burst of hot electric energy crackled over the dark shape as the weapon made contact, and it was smashed to the ground, its metallic limbs and long, serpentine spine thrashing feebly. The skull of the creature caved in with the Dark Apostle's next blow and the green glow of its eyes faded to darkness.

'Move out! Protect the Dark Apostle,' roared Kol Badar as he turned to give covering fire to those warriors behind him. More of the Anointed were slain as wraiths appeared out of nowhere and drove their bladed, shadow-arms through armour and flesh.

One warrior, walking resolutely backwards, his reaper autocannon roaring, caught one of the shadowy creatures in a blast of heavy fire and it was ripped apart by the awesome force of the weapon.

'Enkil, turn!' roared Kol Badar as a wraith dropped down from the darkness behind the warrior. The Coryphaus stepped forwards, pumping fire towards the dark shape looming over the warrior, but the shots passed straight through the creature. Enkil turned, swinging his heavy weapon around to bear, but the shadow was too quick and it drove twin-bladed arms through his body. He fell to his knees, blood pumping from the wounds. Kol Badar roared as he stepped forwards, his combi-bolter barking as the injured warrior tried to push himself to his feet. Three wraiths appeared around him like looming spectres of death, their arms raised, poised for the kill.

The Coryphaus took another step towards the fallen warrior, but a hand on his arm halted him.

'Coryphaus, we must leave this place,' said Burias, his eyes glittering like molten silver.

With a snarl, Kol Badar shook off the Icon Bearer's hand, but nodded his head.

'The gods be with you, Enkil,' he said, firing a final burst towards the gathered wraiths as they killed the warrior. He turned and moved as swiftly as his armour allowed him, passing the rearguard walking steadily backwards, fire barking from their weapons.

Marduk ran ahead of the Anointed warriors, unencumbered by the bulky Terminator armour they wore, and the corridor gave way to a vast open area. Steps rose to a large circular dais that dominated the room, surrounded by dozens of columns glowing with green hieroglyphs. A black-sided pyramid stood in the centre of the dais, a miniature replica of the structure they were within, some ten metres in height.

He scanned left and right as he ran, seeking out any sign of the enemy, and he leapt up the steps and onto the circular dais. He circled and realised that dozens of corridors similar to the one he had just exited, branched off this large, circular room, spaced evenly around the perimeter. Darkness, impenetrable even to his eyes, was beyond these corridors, but he had the impression that they all led back up towards the surface. Everything was perfectly symmetrical and it made sense that none of these corridors led further down. The circular room rose up high into darkness - no ceiling could be seen - and the cylindrical open space projected straight up what Marduk guessed was the centre of the structure.

He approached the central pyramid warily, weapons ready. It began to silently rise, green light spilling from beneath it. Whatever mechanism or sorcery lifted the massive weight was powerful indeed and the smooth black pyramid rose high into the air, steadily and silently. He realised that it was not a pyramid at all, but rather was an immense diamond shape, and he squinted against the green glare that spilled from beneath its bulk, his bolt pistol scanning for movement.

'The gateway to the ancients,' breathed Jarulek as he came up beside Marduk. There was nothing holding or supporting the giant, black diamond shape as it rose, neither above nor below. It lifted higher and higher into the vast empty space above them, hanging suspended in the air.

The Coryphaus entered the room, Burias at his side, and Marduk's eyes narrowed.

'We hold here. We are right where we are meant to be,' ordered Jarulek.

With a nod, Kol Badar quickly ordered the Cult of the Anointed into positions around the edge of the circular dais, guarding the corridor entrances, forming a protective circle around the Dark Apostle, facing out. 'The shadow wraiths seem unable or unwilling to enter this room,' said Marduk.

The Dark Apostle made no response, his eyes fixed on the expanse vacated by the diamond that had come to a halt, hanging ten metres above them. The green light had dimmed and from the smooth, black sides of the angled hole that the diamond fitted perfectly into, wide steps appeared out of the seamless, black stone. A section of the black stone sank away and a gateway was revealed at the foot of the steps, green light spilling from the same sun and light-beam icon that had appeared on the outside of the pyramid.

There was a shout for silence from the Coryphaus, and Marduk ripped his eyes away from the newly exposed gateway. A dim, rhythmic and repetitive sound could be heard in the silence that followed, something akin to metal striking stone. He realised that it was getting louder and he turned around, trying to get a lock on where the sound was emanating from. It seemed to be coming from all around.

'What in the name of the true gods is that?' he said.

'Something comes,' hissed Burias.

He could see nothing at first, but then he saw green lights, eyes of the enemy, appearing within the darkness of one of the corridors, no, from all of the corridors. They were completely surrounded. His first thought was that the shadow wraiths had returned, but these creatures were not ethereal shadows; their bodies were very real.

They were the walking dead and Marduk jolted as the force of his recurring vision entered his head. Assailed by the dead, long dead, and they claw at my armour with skeletal claws. This was his vision come to life.

But it was different. These creatures were not formed of bones held together by desiccated, dried skin. Their skulls glinted with a metallic sheen and their eyes glowed with baleful green light. That light matched the coiling, green energy that was contained within the enemies' weapons, held low in their skeletal hands as they trudged forward. The creatures were formed of dark metal and the green glow spilling from their weapons was reflected upon their ribs and bony arms. The first were smashed apart by the guns of the Anointed, falling silently to the floor where they were stepped over by others of their mechanical kind. There were scores of the creatures spilling from each corridor, marching in perfect unison, shoulder-to-shoulder, silent except for the sound of their metal feet clanking rhythmically on the stone floor.

On and on they came, walking slowly into the torrent of gunfire laid down by the Anointed, and still they did not raise their weapons. Marduk saw one of the fallen creatures, its head shattered by autocannon rounds, begin to rise to its feet once more, its eyes, which were black moments before, glowing once again. The damage done to its cranium repaired before his eyes, the metal knitting back into shape. Its skull was smooth and immaculate, and it stepped back into line with its companions.

Liquid promethium from heavy flamers roared as it was unleashed, as the walking corpse-machines drew ever nearer to the Terminators, but the flames did nothing to halt their progress.

As one, the front rank of the corpse-machines raised their weapons and blinding, green light roared from their barrels. Marduk saw the thick Terminator armour of one warrior-brother flayed instantly to nothing beneath the searing light. Skin was torn away, exposing first muscle tissue then inner organs then nothing but bone, before even that was seared away.

Several of the Anointed fell beneath the blasts, though return fire smashed the first line of the foe away. The second line stepped forwards, lowering their weapons, and a second barrage of green light spewed from the barrels of their potent weapons.

'First Acolyte, we are entering that gateway. Hold them here, Kol Badar.' Jarulek said into his comm unit.

Kol Badar broke away from the circle of Terminators and approached the Dark Apostle, the armour of his left shoulder pad sheared away from a glancing shot, exposing servos and insulation beneath.

'My lord, the Cult warriors can hold here. I shall accompany you,' said the Coryphaus.

'No, you will not,' said Jarulek, stepping close to the big warrior.

Marduk turned away from the pair, scanning the area. There seemed to be no end to the undead warrior-machines entering the room. The Anointed were the finest fighting force within the Host, but he could see that even they would eventually be slaughtered by this relentless foe.

This will be our tomb, he thought.

'My lord?' said Kol Badar. Always he had fought at the side of the Dark Apostle. He was his champion, his protector. To allow the holy leader to face some unknown enemy without him was unthinkable. The life of a Coryphaus who allowed his master to fall in battle was forfeit. The Council would see him dead were Jarulek to fall.

'What I go to face is not for you to be a part of,' hissed Jarulek, his voice low, his eyes resolute. 'This is one battle that you cannot win, Kol Badar, and it is one foe that you cannot face.'

Doubt plagued the Coryphaus.

'My place is at your side, my lord,' he said. 'You would take the wretched whelp with you, but not me?'

'I am telling you that, for now, your place is not at my side. Hold the line here. The Anointed need you. This battle will not be easily won. Await my return.'

'As you wish, my lord,' said Kol Badar, fuming. The Dark Apostle stepped in close to him, looking up at him with eyes ablaze with faith.

'If we both return, then you may kill Marduk, my Coryphaus. Your honour will be fulfilled.'

A surge of pleasure ran through Kol Badar at the Dark Apostle's words and he smiled beneath his quad-tusked helmet. At last his hand that had once been stayed was free of constraint. At last, he would kill the whoreson whelp, Marduk.

'We shall hold, my lord. I await your return with great expectation.'

'The blessings of the dark gods upon you, my Coryphaus.'

'And with you, my lord. May the gods be at your side as you walk into darkness.'

Kol Badar watched as the Dark Apostle and the First Acolyte descended the stairs. The panels of the gateway slid aside soundlessly and the pair of Word Bearers stepped inside, disappearing into the inky blackness as if consumed. The panels flicked back into place. There was no way of following them now, he thought. He just had to wait and hold off these forsaken corpse-machines long enough for him to be able to kill Marduk.

He rejoined his warriors, racking the underslung mechanism that activated the meltagun attached to his bolter.

'They are gone, Coryphaus?' asked Burias as he fired his bolt pistol into the head of an enemy, knocking it back a step.

'They are, Icon Bearer. The fate of the Host hangs in the balance.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The panels slid shut behind them, cutting off all noise of the raging battle, and they stood in absolute darkness. Not a sound pierced the pitch-black night that descended on them. The silence was heavy, claustrophobic and dense. Marduk was utterly blind. Never before had he experienced such all-encompassing darkness.

He felt lost, adrift, his connection to the warp severed, and he panicked for a moment as his head reeled as if with vertigo, though it was impossible for him to experience such a sensation.

Marduk wobbled, though his senses came back to him in an instant, and his faculties returned. He saw a dim light, though perhaps it had only just begun to shine. It reached out towards them from below, a slowly pulsing beam.

He looked at Jarulek beside him, whose face showed tension and wariness.

'It felt as though we just travelled an infinite distance in the blink of an eye,' said Marduk quietly, unwilling to break the oppressive silence. The gateway they had come through was sealed shut, though the sun icon emblazoned upon it glowed dimly with light. He pushed against it, but it would not budge. As the pulsing light increased, he saw that the black stone wall in which the gateway was positioned rose impossibly high above them. They stood on a bridge of black stone that seemed to hang in the air. There were sheer drops to either side, and it was joined by dozens of black staircases. These in turn were linked to other bridges, gantries and platforms, all formed of black stone and all hanging in the air without any clear support. 'This place is insane,' he hissed. 'It is madness.' Marduk had encountered many landscapes and worlds that most would consider maddening within the warp, where the rules of the physical world held no sway, but here he felt no touch of Chaos. Far from it, this place felt like it actively kept Chaos out. It was sterile and lifeless, devoid of any touch of the warp.

'Is it some trick of the Changer?' asked Marduk, speaking of Tzeentch, the lord of the twisting fates and one of the greater gods of the Ether. He knew as he spoke that it was not, for even the great Changer of the Ways would surely be unable to create such a place, so cut off from the essence of magic.

'Far from it, First Acolyte,' said Jarulek. 'This is the antithesis of the Great Changer and indeed of all of Chaos.'

'And what you seek is here, in this place? It would seem that anything here would be better destroyed than utilised.'

'Much can be tainted and changed by Chaos, Marduk. Turning an enemy's weapons against them is the greatest strength that we have.'

'And you have foreseen this place in your dream visions?'

'This place, no. It has always been hidden from my sight. I foresaw our entrance through the gateway, but never what transposed beyond it, only what occurs afterwards.'

'You have seen our return from this place?'

'Sometimes. The future is fickle and unclear. In some twists of what may come to pass we return with our prize. In others, we do not and the Anointed are destroyed. The guardians assailing them return to their eternal rest. In others I have seen just myself return. In others, just you.'

'I would not abandon you here, Dark Apostle,' said Marduk. Jarulek chuckled.

'We need to move,' he said.

'Which way?'

'Down.'

It seemed that they had been walking for days on end, or perhaps it had been but minutes. Marduk was not sure anymore. This place was maddening in its power to disorient, and he had long since lost a sense of his bearings. They had walked down stairways only to find themselves walking up, had crossed straight walkways only to find themselves somehow turned around and walking back the way they had come, and more than once they had descended staircases only to find themselves higher up than they had been before the descent.

'This place affects our connection with the blessed Ether,' said Jarulek.

'It does,' replied Marduk. 'It is as though this place muffles it. I can still feel it, but it is distant, and faint.'

'It is an unholy place,' said Jarulek. 'What do you feel from your daemon-blade?'

'I feel… nothing,' said Marduk, placing his hand around the thorn-covered hilt of his chainsword. There was none of the tingling sensation that usually announced the essence of the daemon Borhg'ash merging with his own. There was no indication of its presence at all.

'It is as though the daemon has escaped its binding, but that is not possible.'

They continued their descent towards the slowly pulsing light below. After what seemed an age, they could discern a circular platform beneath them, though it was certainly not the bottom of the expanse. Marduk wondered if there truly was a base to this maddening place, or if it extended forever. Or perhaps if they continued down they would find themselves back where they had started.

Shaking his head, he concentrated upon the circular platform. It seemed that it was covered in silver waters that rippled with movement. As they descended, he realised that it was not liquid.

Thousands of tiny, crawling insect creatures swarmed away from the Word Bearers as they stepped down from the last of the maddening steps onto the slick, black, circular platform. The creatures scuttled away on metallic, barbed legs, making a sound like gentle ocean waves crashing, as their metallic carapaces scraped and millions of tiny metal legs scrambled for purchase. Their glistening carapaces were dark and the smallest of them was no larger than a grain of sand.

Marduk bent and grasped one of the larger, scuttling beetle creatures, lifting it up between his thumb and forefinger for closer inspection. Dozens of glowing green eyes were arrayed upon its segmented head and its wickedly barbed mandibles clicked as it tried vainly to bite him. Its eight-spiked legs kicked and pushed at him, surprising him with their strength as it tried to get free. Its carapace was of dark metal and a golden emblem, the now familiar sun circle with light beams streaming from it, was emblazoned across it.

He turned it over in his hand to get a look at the creature's underside, but its sharp mandibles bit into him, gripping onto the ceramite protecting his finger. It could not pierce his armour, but it would not let go. He flicked his wrist as he lost interest and patience with the creature, sending the mechanical bug flying. It unfurled wafer-thin membranes of metal from beneath its thick carapace and flittered through the air to join its fleeing companions. It landed amongst the scuttling mass of creatures moving like a living, metal carpet away from the intruders who had entered their realm. They streamed towards a sunken, circular pit that lay before the pair, crawling over its lip and down into its protective darkness.

There must have been tens of thousands of the creatures, and they swarmed towards the pit from all directions. Marduk stepped forwards and the living mass of mechanical insects surged away, parting before him.

Stepping to the edge of the hole, he looked down into the darkness. It was impossible to guess its depth.

He felt a presence behind him and quickly turned, moving away from the edge of the abyss, seeing Jarulek smirk at his discomfort. Marduk glared hatefully at his master from within his helmet. Not long, he thought.

The pair of unholy warriors stalked warily around the edge of the pit. Curved walls rose up around the platform, rising high into the air above. The floor gave way a metre before the wall and it fell down into darkness. They walked carefully around the ring of stone towards the pulsating light throbbing from an adjacent chamber.

A short, enclosed passageway linked the two rooms, and the Word Bearers stepped along it warily. Marduk was uneasy, but it was good to feel solid walls on each side rather than an empty expanse. The second chamber was small and its glossy, black walls reflected the glaring, green light of the glowing object suspended in mid-air in the centre of the room. Pulsing light spilled from it as it spun slowly, floating above the tip of a metre-high black pyramid set in the floor. Light rose in a shaft from the tip of the pyramid, encasing the spinning orb in its beam.

It was a captivating piece of mechanical artistry of utterly alien design, and it revolved slowly. Its centre was a glowing ball of harnessed energy, around which revolved a series of metal rings that spun in all directions around the sphere in a complex weave. The rings overlapped and swung around the glowing centre of the sphere, forming intricate and mesmerising patterns. Marduk could not be certain exactly how many rotating rings there were and he saw that glowing, alien hieroglyphs shone across their flat surfaces. He thought he could see something solid within the ball of energy, but the light was too intense for him to be sure.

He was pulled away from the fascinating object by a hand on his shoulder and he snapped his gaze away, a dull pain in his head.

'Do not look too closely,' warned Jarulek. 'It will ensnare you.'

Marduk nodded, his temples throbbing.

'This is the object you have come to find,' he said finally.

'It is. This is the artefact spoken of in the third book of the Oraculata Nocti.'

Marduk's eyes widened.

'And with the Nexus Arrangement one shall wield great force, and he shall open and close the portals to the netherworld and become Gatemaster,' quoted Marduk. 'You believe that this is the… the Nexus Arrangement?'

'It is,' said Jarulek, his eyes alight with faith and passion. 'And long have I waited for its discovery.'

'The Nexus Arrangement is the tool, it is said, that will usher in a new age of destruction. But it is unclear about the destruction of what, or of whom. '

'It is the same as any weapon. It has no will of its own, but is directed by he who would use it. A bolt-gun is indiscriminate in who it kills, the one who pulls the trigger is the killer. It is a holy weapon to those who use it as such and it is a tool of the great enemy.

'But this… this is something far more potent. With this, we will be able to strike at our enemies without fear of reprisal.'

'Open and close the portals to the netherworld?'

'That's right, my First Acolyte,' laughed Jarulek. 'Entire systems could have the warp closed off to them, allowing nothing to pass in or out of the region. Imagine it: systems unable to receive reinforcements, communications, supplies, munitions. Imagine, if you will, if this were activated near ancient Terra,' said Jarulek, an evil grin upon his face. 'Terra itself, closed to the warp, the cursed light of the False Emperor effectively kept in shadow, his ships, blind and lost in the turmoil of the Immaterium…'

'This could bring about the end of the Imperium.' Marduk breathed, awe and lust in his soul.

'And it is foretold that it may only be removed when in the presence of a master and an apprentice, holy warriors of Lorgar both. Our being here was prophesied and now that prophecy is complete.'

The Dark Apostle whispered an entreaty to the dark powers and reached his hands slowly forwards, into the light projecting up from the top of the pyramid, reaching towards the revolving sphere. Instantly the light from the pyramid dimmed, plunging the room into darkness, but for the green light emanating from the glowing sphere.

Holding his breath, Marduk watched as the Dark Apostle's hands neared the spinning rings, reaching underneath the orb to cup it. The spinning rings began to slow. Each pulse of light was timed with the revolutions of the rings. There were seven rings, he now saw as they slowed to a standstill, and they seemed to melt together, their edges merging, so that within seconds all that remained was what appeared to be a solid sphere of dark metal. The green hieroglyphs faded away and darkness descended. The blackness was not complete, for now that the glare of the room had faded, a dim light could be seen emanating from the pit in the adjacent chamber, where the scarabs had retreated.

Jarulek lifted the metal orb out from where it hovered above the black pyramid, awe upon his face.

It was the size of grown man's heart and he cradled it in his hands like a newborn child.

Marduk felt greed and desire rise within him. He licked his lips and toyed with the activation rune of his chainsword as he stared at his master. As the Dark Apostle had said, the prophecy had been fulfilled.

A flicker of movement in the corner of his eyes drew his attention and he spun towards it.

A dark shape was rising from the circular pit in the adjacent chamber and Marduk thumbed the activation rune of his chainsword, snarling. His gazed shifted between Jarulek, who was focused on the sphere in his hands, and the rising shadow that blocked their retreat.

The shape was roughly humanoid, though it was covered in thousands of the metallic scarabs, or more correctly it was formed from them. They skittered over the humanoid torso, rising slowly and silently from the pit, their body mass creating the shape of a man.

'Jarulek,' he hissed. The eyes of the Dark Apostle flashed with outrage that he dare use his name, but then he too saw the rising shape.

As they watched, the skittering bugs came to rest as they aligned in their appropriate positions, and their bodies merged, like droplets of water that were sucked together to form a greater mass. Thousands of metallic insects blurred together, their individual shapes and limbs moulding like liquid metal to form the immaculate and perfect form of a skeletal torso, gleaming silver.

Black, carapaced scarabs gave up their physical uniqueness, forming a black chest-plate over the silver ribs of the cadaverous, ancient lord rising up out of the light below. A golden sun gleamed on the centre of the black, lustrous armour plate, golden lines representing the sun's rays spilling from it. The corpse-machine's head was down, its chin lowered, and its eye sockets were dark and hollow.

A long-hafted weapon was formed in the creature's metallic hands, as hundreds of scarabs gripped each other with claw and mandible to form a solid shape. They blurred as they melted together, creating an arcane and impressively sized weapon, a pair of curving blades at each end of a long shaft.

Marduk and Jarulek raised their weapons as one, the Dark Apostle supporting the heavy weight of his archaic bolter on his forearm, the orb still held in his hand. They unleashed a salvo of barking shots towards the forming corpse-machine. Bolts smashed into its gleaming, silver skull, blasting chunks of metal away, and others caused chips of black stone to crack from its chest-plate.

These pieces of metal and stone landed on the black, glossy surface of the floor and immediately returned to their metallic scarab forms. They skittered about for a second before launching themselves into the air, wafer-thin metallic wings clicking out. They hovered over the deathly machine before settling on the damage done by the guns of the holy Word Bearer warriors. The metallic insects disappeared as they melted into the metal body of their master, leaving no appearance of the damage that had been caused.

'The Undying One,' said Jarulek.

A scarab with a gleaming, golden carapace skittered over the skull of the forming creature, and it melted to become a shining circlet upon its forehead, glittering with intricate, alien line work. It was an alien yet clearly regal device, and Marduk was left in no doubt that this was some lord of the undead, living machines.

Swarms of smaller insects, some barely large enough for the eye to discern, glided over the silver bones of the creature and blurred together, forming a semi-opaque, wafer-thin, billowing shroud that whipped around the skeletal form. This cloak had a dark, metallic sheen as if it had been woven of infinitely fine mesh, and it shimmered like liquid metal. It fluttered as if caught in a breeze, though there was no movement of air. From beneath the deep hood, the darkness of the creature's eye sockets began to glow a baleful green and it raised its chin to look upon the interlopers trespassing on its ancient realm. A feeling of dread washed over Marduk. He gritted his sharp teeth in anger at the unwelcome and uncommon feeling.

The creature rose higher out of the pit, accompanied by a rhythmic humming noise, and the light beneath it grew stronger, throwing its skull into deeper shadow beneath its billowing shroud. Rather than ending in hips and legs, the metallic spinal column of the creature merged into a bulky shape that was not dissimilar to the armoured carapace of one of the diminutive scarabs, though on a colossal scale. Thousands of teeming insects scrambled over each other and moulded together to form this lower body, and eight barbed legs hanging beneath the bulk of its armour took shape. The light filling the room came from beneath this carapace, shining out below it and throwing its upper body into gloom.

The creature rose into the air, hovering above the open pit as it awoke, its silver, insect legs curling and clicking beneath it, the humanoid torso flexing as the ancient, unliving being rolled its shoulders. It did not move in the same manner as the skeletal machines guarding the upper chambers of the pyramid. Where they were mechanical and jerky in movement, this creature was fluid and supple, its limbs moving smoothly and in perfect balance.

It spun the staff before it, the twin blades humming through the air. It seemed ignorant or uncaring of the Word Bearers as it went through a series of lithe movements with the double-headed blade, spinning the haft of the weapon around in its metallic hands with consummate ease.

Intent on the monstrous creature, Marduk failed to see Jarulek raising his ornate bolter towards his head.

'And this, my First Acolyte, is where your education comes to an end,' breathed the Dark Apostle, and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Marduk threw himself to the side, servo-muscles straining, but he could not avoid the burst of fire at such close range. The mass-reactive tips of the bolt-rounds impacted with the side of his helmet as he dodged and their explosions tore the right side of his helmet and face apart in a gory mess of blood and sparks.

He fell, smashed to the ground by the impact. The inside of his helmet was awash with blood and he ripped it from his head, hurling it away from him as he staggered backwards on the floor.

He could feel that the left side of his skull was shattered and he could not see from his left eye. He felt fragments of bone and tooth in his mouth, and he spat them to the floor amid blood and saliva. He tongued the inside of his mouth and felt that the teeth on his left side had been shattered, and where he should have felt the inside of his cheek, he felt nothing. The flesh had been completely blown away. He heard a chuckle.

'One shall fall, he of lesser faith, he unmarked by godly touch,' Jarulek said. 'Did you think that I did not notice your treacherous intent, whelp? Your usefulness passed as soon as you fulfilled your role in the prophecy.'

Marduk blinked blood from his working eye. He scrabbled on the ground around him, but realised that he had lost his grip on his bolt pistol and it lay out of his reach. He felt dizzy and disoriented.

Jarulek stood with his bolter pointed at Marduk. The metal sphere was still in one hand and the bolter was supported upon his forearm. He stared down the stylised daemonic maw that was the barrel of the archaic weapon and Marduk knew that he was too far from the Dark Apostle to be able to rush him without taking a full clip of bolts.

'What damned prophecy?' he spat, his jaw not working properly, spraying blood.

'Why, the Prophecy of Jarulek, dear Marduk: the prophecy that appears on only one page: my flesh, the prophecy that I have lived with since the fall of the Warmaster. The prophecy says that only one of us will leave this place and I intend that to be me.'

Marduk tensed himself to leap. He wiped the blood from his face quickly with his free hand and he saw Jarulek's eyes widen in shock.

A searing beam of green light slammed into the back of the Dark Apostle and ripped through him, boring a fist-sized hole from abdomen to lower back.

The bolter in Jarulek's hand barked as Marduk leapt from the floor, bolts ricocheting around the chamber. With a roar of pure hatred, Marduk swung the blade of his chainsword towards the staggering Dark Apostle, but Jarulek managed to bring his arm up before him and swipe the blade away, though it tore a chunk of armour and flesh from his arm. Marduk felt the faint presence of the daemon Borhg'ash rouse within the weapon as it tasted the sacrosanct blood, and it lent him strength.

'The mark! This cannot be!' screamed Jarulek, his eyes locked to Marduk's forehead, where pain still seared him.

Another blast of green light speared towards the pair and Marduk rolled to the side to avoid it, coming to his feet quickly, positioning himself so he could see both enemies with his limited vision.

The skeletal, ancient xenos lord was hovering towards them, its dark shroud whipping around it furiously. The tips of its double-bladed staff were glowing with power and it thrust one end forwards, a searing beam lancing from the weapon. Marduk swayed to the side, the blast just grazing against his chest-plate, searing a groove along it as the super-hard ceramite was stripped away.

Bolts impacted with his chest a millisecond later, slamming him back against the wall. He snarled, his attention swinging towards Jarulek.

'I'm going to rip you apart, you whoreson,' he spat.

'Not the way one should speak to his holy leader. Mark or no mark, you are dying here,' said Jarulek. Seeing movement, he turned and fired a burst towards the advancing alien machine-creature, the bolts making its head reel back, but not slowing its advance.

Marduk rolled as another green lance of light streaked towards him, and came up in front of the Dark Apostle. His chainsword roared and he ripped it up in a murderous arc as he rose, carving it between Jarulek's legs. Pre-empting the attack, but with nothing to defend against it, the Dark Apostle released his grip on his bolter and grabbed the whirring chain-blades with his hand, halting its progress before it struck.

Blood and ceramite sprayed as his hand was ripped apart, but the move had taken Marduk by surprise, and the Dark Apostle slammed a kick into the outside of his knee. The leg collapsed beneath him. Jarulek followed the attack with a thundering elbow that struck Marduk in the head, cracking the bone, and he fell heavily.

Switching the precious sphere into the crook of his other, now handless, arm, Jarulek swept up his discarded bolter with his left hand and fired towards the closing skeletal alien, hefting the kicking weapon with difficulty in one hand. Bolts hammered into the creature's arm, sending its next shot wide. The Dark Apostle hurled the bolter aside, its ammo spent, and pulled his crozius arcanum from where it hung on his hip, the spiked head of the holy weapon crackling with energy as it came to life. He sprang directly towards the hovering, monstrous creature, a curse on his lips.

Marduk scrambled to his feet, swept up the Dark Apostle's discarded bolter and slammed a new clip into its base. He looked up to see the hovering, skeletal machine fire a blast of green energy towards Jarulek, who swayed to the side with nigh on preternatural speed, and leapt forwards with a shout, swinging the crozius towards the foe.

The enemy lowered itself towards the ground, so that it hovered less than a metre above the floor, its claws clicking and flexing beneath it. Its shimmering shroud whipped around it and it flashed out with its double-bladed staff, blocking Jarulek's attack with a screech of sparks and crackling energy. The other end of the staff swept around, its long curved blade slicing towards his throat. The Dark Apostle swayed beneath the lightning quick repost and swung his crozius again. The heavy blow was deflected easily and he stepped to the side, moving further around the flank of the creature and closer to escape.

Marduk broke into a run, invoking the gods of Chaos, and fired the bolter one-handed. If the Dark Apostle escaped then his life was forfeit. The bolts slammed into Jarulek's lower back, pitching him forwards. He roared in despair as he lost his grip on the metal sphere, and it flew through the air away from him.

The hovering corpse-machine swung its weapon in a wide arc as the Dark Apostle fell, the blow carving through the chest armour just below the fused ribcage. Blood sprayed from the wound and from the blade as it passed through the Dark Apostle's body and out the other side, severing his torso. Jarulek flailed frantically for the spilled sphere as he fell to the ground in two pieces, his lifeblood flooding the floor beneath him.

Marduk leapt, landing with his right foot on the carapace of the enemy and hacked his chainsword into its head. Chunks of metal were torn loose by the whirring chainblade, turning almost instantly into tiny, metallic flying scarabs, and the death's-head visage of the foe was snapped back by the force of the blow. Pushing off with his other foot, Marduk leapt through the air, his good eye focused on the falling sphere, and his hand reaching out vainly to catch it.

The metal ball slipped beyond his reach and hit the ground with a heavy, reverberating thud. It did not bounce, but began to roll straight towards the pit from which the cursed alien creature had emerged. Marduk hit the ground and slid after the ancient artefact. His hand closed on it just as it rolled clear of the edge and the unnatural weight of it almost took him with it.

He saw Jarulek's eyes glaring at him, filled with bitterness and hatred. The Dark Apostle clawed his way towards him, pulling his legless torso across the blood-slick floor.

'He unmarked by godly touch,' spat the Dark Apostle. 'You deceived me, Marduk. Somehow, you kept that mark concealed.'

Jarulek was silenced as his head was skewered upon the blade of the massive skeletal creature. It lifted his severed torso high into the air and the dark crozius slipped from dead fingers to the floor. The Dark Apostle was hurled through the air, thudding wetly against the curving wall of the chamber. He slid down its slick surface and disappeared into the abyssal darkness.

Marduk attached his daemon-blade to his waist and staggered forward to retrieve the fallen crozius. He raised it before him and it crackled to life, arcing blue electricity shimmering over its spiked head.

He felt the baleful gaze of the enemy fall towards him and he turned and ran.

Marduk staggered from the gateway, falling to his knees, the ice-cold sphere cradled under his arm.

Had the Undying One allowed him to leave its realm? No, he told himself, my faith brought me back from that ungodly place.

Gunfire blared around him and he stumbled up the black steps to the top of the dais. The Anointed, their ranks more than halved in number, had fallen back, forming an ever-tightening circle of warriors.

Kol Badar spun as he saw the First Acolyte rise from the steps, and took a few paces forward, lightning crackling across the talons of his power claw, but he slowed his advance as he drew nearer.

'Where is the Dark Apostle?' he thundered.

'Dead,' spat Marduk. 'He sacrificed himself that I may escape to lead the Host.'

'That is a lie!' roared Kol Badar, stepping forward to smash Marduk with his powerful fist. He halted his movement as Marduk lifted the crozius up between them.

'The Dark Apostle gifted me this, his sacred crozius arcanum,' said Marduk, his voice raised loudly to carry to all the Anointed. 'He told me to lead the Host to Sicarus, to see me sworn in as Dark Apostle. He sacrificed himself that I could escape with that which we have fought so hard, my brothers, to attain. Come,' he said, as more of the Word Bearers were cut down by the scything green flashes of the xenos weaponry, 'we must vacate this world.'

Kol Badar clenched his fist but did not move. Did he know that Jarulek had always intended to see him dead, pondered Marduk? Most probably, he surmised.

'The Host must honour the Dark Apostle's last wishes, else his sacrifice has been made in vain,' said Marduk loudly, a smile curling the right side of his mouth. The left side of his face was a mess of torn and missing flesh. 'Come, Coryphaus, we must leave here.'

Kol Badar's face twisted in anger and hatred, and he lashed out violently with his power claw, the talons curling around Marduk's neck, crashing the ceramite of his gorget and lifting the smaller Word Bearer up into the air before him like a child. The muscles of his neck straining against the immense grip, Marduk still managed a crooked smile.

'Just like our encounter upon the cursed moon so many years past, Coryphaus, 'and all because I killed your worthless, heathen blood-brother.' Marduk's face turned red as Kol Badar tightened his grip. 'He was a worthless dog, not fit to be named Word Bearer,' gasped Marduk. 'He brought nothing but shame to the noble Host. Lorgar himself would have done as I did that day.'

'Your words are poison. They mean nothing to me,' snarled Kol Badar, exerting even more force, hearing the enhanced muscles and vertebrae of the First Acolyte groan in resistance to his pressure.

'You would try to kill me here, Kol Badar?' snarled Marduk, his voice strained.

'You wouldn't be able to stop me,' growled the big warrior.

'No,' said Marduk, with difficulty, 'but he would.'

Kol Badar glanced to his side to see Burias-Drak'shal's hulking form beside him, staring at him.

Great horns rose from the possessed warrior's forehead and his corded muscles were tense. His massive clawed hands clenched and unclenched as he stared at the Coryphaus with glittering, daemonic eyes filled with bestial rage.

The possessed warrior rose to his full, towering height, his chest rising and falling heavily as he drew breath, steam billowing from his flared nostrils. He was quivering with anticipation for the kill, veins bulging within his hyper-tense muscles.

'You would stand against me, Icon Bearer?' growled Kol Badar.

'I would not stand against the holy leader of the Host,' replied Burias-Drak'shal, forming the words with some difficulty, his jaw having altered in form to contain his thick, tusk-like teeth.

'And this is not he!' thundered the Coryphaus.

'The Dark Apostle entrusted me with his holy writ,' said Marduk. 'Go against me and forfeit your life. Choose your words carefully.'

The Coryphaus was silent. The sound of bolters firing echoed from the glossy black walls, accompanied by the death groans of falling Anointed warriors.

'We cannot leave this place without the Dark Apostle.' Kol Badar said, at last.

'He is dead!' snarled Marduk.

'Then we must bear his holy body back to Sicarus,' roared Kol Badar, his grip around Marduk's neck tightening. Burias-Drak'shal hissed and grasped Kol Badar's arm, his claws digging deep, cutting into the thick armour. Their strength was evenly matched.

'You would dare put hands upon me.' Kol Badar growled. Burias-Drak'shal snarled, digging his talons in deeper, blood pooling around them and flowing over the Coryphaus's sacred Terminator armour.

'And you would dare defy my command?' asked Marduk. 'Your life is on tenterhooks, Kol Badar. We leave this place, now. Choose your path. Follow me, or die here in this tomb. Your name will be cursed by the Legion for time immaterial, a traitor to the Legion and a traitor to Lorgar.'

Kol Badar stared at Marduk, who returned the glare, staring back at himself in the eyes of the Terminator's helmet. 'Choose swiftly, Kol Badar. The warriors of the Legion are dying.'

'This is not over,' growled Kol Badar, releasing his grip around Marduk's neck with a shove. 'Remove your hands, Icon Bearer.' Burias-Drak'shal looked to Marduk, who nodded, and the possessed warrior released his grip, blood upon his talons.

Kol Badar swung away, shouting orders.

'We leave, now!' he roared. 'Form up!'

'Your forehead,' growled Burias-Drak'shal. 'You bear the mark of Lorgar.'

The burning pain on his forehead was as nothing to the pain covering the rest of his head, but it was worth the feeling of satisfaction that he felt as he looked upon the crozius in his hands.

'Let us leave this forsaken world,' said Marduk. 'It has served its purpose.'

At Marduk's psychic call, the Infidus Diabolus returned to the shattered wreck of Tanakreg, tearing a rift in reality as it emerged from the warp to meet the Thunderhawks, Stormbirds and other landing craft streaming up from the planet's surface.

The Imperial ships that had remained in orbit around the planet moved to engage, though they were sluggish to respond to its appearance. Their astropaths' senses were dulled by the warp field projected by the Gehemehnet and they had no warning as to the strike cruiser's sudden appearance. The Imperial ships kept a respectful distance from the field of unbridled Chaos energy that the tower continued to project into the outer atmosphere. Flights of fighters swarmed from the bowels of the Infidus Diabolus to slow the enemy's approach, though the Chaos ships were outnumbered and outclassed by those of the Imperial Navy.

Several transportation craft were destroyed as they sought to dock with the Infidus Diabolus and the powerful strike cruiser took damage from incoming torpedoes fired from an Imperial Dictator class warship.

The Host had suffered heavy casualties and many of the holy suits of armour worn by the Anointed had been lost in the xenos pyramid. The revered religious leader of the Host had fallen, and long would be the requiem services dedicated to his honour. The First Acolyte, mourning the loss of his master and spiritual guide, would lead these ceremonies of lamentation and grievance.

The Infidus Diabolus returned to the roiling seas of the Ether, forging a path towards the Eye of Terror and Sicarus, the world claimed by the Daemon-Primarch Lorgar, and the religious seat of the Council of Apostles. There Marduk would face trial, to prove his worth to be embraced into the fold and become a true Dark Apostle of the Word.

EPILOGUE

The twitching magos was held against the back wall of the cell, deep within the Infidus Diabolus. His legs had been sheared off above the knees, and he hung suspended by dozens of chains. His wasted arms, covered with cancers and black malignancies, were outstretched and clamped with spiked manacles attached to further chains. Those arms had not been moved or utilised for centuries, and they were little more than canker ridden, skin-covered bones. They had broken as they had been pulled away from their position across the magos's chest, where they had been held unmoving for countless centuries.

Marduk moved beneath the sole, flickering glow-globe that buzzed overhead. The entire left side of his face was covered in augmetics and the skin around these bionics was puckered and a deathly shade of blue. His left eye was an angry, lidless, red orb, the pupil slender and slitted like a cat's. He had rejected the bionic eye replacements that the Chirumeks had offered, instead demanding this daemonic flesh hybrid, and he was pleased with the chirurgeons' efforts.

The sparking stubs of four mechanical servo-arms flailed spasmodically from the priest's shoulders and the remnants of mechadendrites quivered. Most had been ripped from the magos's spine and those that remained were little more than shorn off, useless protuberances. The haemoncolyte that had been attached by umbilical tubes to the machine priest had been severed from him and its repulsive, diminutive form opened up by the chirurgeons for study. It had squirmed as their knives had cut into its cankerous flesh. Large bell jars filled with viscous liquid protruded from the hunched back of the magos, though several of them had been smashed open, leaking pungent green-blue liquid, and sparking electricity flashed from within them occasionally. The contents of the jars had been placed under close scrutiny to try to tease the secrets from the preserved, ancient brains.

The red robes of the magos had been stripped from his mechanical body, and without its all concealing hood, the priest's head was exposed. Little human flesh remained of its face, and what existed was corpse pale and twitched uncontrollably. Tubes and pipes fed via thick needles had been shoved into his exposed flesh, pumping him with serums and foul secretions. 'It would seem that it has some kind of protective field generator around it,' Kol Badar had explained when the magos had first been discovered amongst the wreckage of the crashed airship.

'I would presume that this is what enabled it to survive the crash,' he had said. 'Allow me to demonstrate.'

The Coryphaus had fired a burst of fire from his combi-bolter towards the magos and an energy bubble surrounding the priest of the Machine-God shimmered as it absorbed the momentum from the incoming bolt-rounds, slowing them enough for them to fall harmlessly at the magos's feet.

But this device did not protect him any longer. No, the device had been prised from his flesh and the Chirumeks of the Host were even now examining its workings. Marduk could do whatever he wanted to the magos, who now had no defence.

'Greetings Magos Darioq.'

'I will not aid you Marduk, First Acolyte of the Word Bearers Legion of Astartes, genetic descendant of the traitor Primarch Lorgar. My systems are failing. This flesh unit is dying and I shall soon become one with Deus Machina.'

'You will aid me, and you will not be granted release. Yes, your flesh is dying since we removed your filthy dwarf clone, but soon you will be… changed. A daemon essence is being nurtured especially for you: you should feel privileged. Soon it will merge with you. Daemon, human and machine will become one within you. You will become that which your order loathes.'

Marduk smiled, the buzzing glow-globe lighting his face daemonically.

Soon you will be a puppet, dancing to my words, thought Marduk, and then you will beg to do my bidding. You will unlock the secrets of the Nexus Arrangement and a new era of destruction will be unleashed upon the Imperium of Man.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After finishing university Anthony Reynolds set sail from his homeland and ventured forth to foreign climes. He ended up settling in the UK, and managed to blag his way into Games Workshop's hallowed Design Studio. There he worked for four years as a games developer and two years as part of the management team. He now resides back in his hometown of Sydney, overlooking the beach and enjoying the sun and the surf, though he finds that to capture the true darkness and horror of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 he has taken to writing in what could be described as a darkened cave.