The convoy of Blood Ravens had ground to a halt several hundred metres short of the summit. The storm had finally reached the mountain, and great sheets of lightning tore into the mountainside, forming a ring of warp energy and fire around the twin peaks. The mountain itself had cracked open along the line of the barrage from the storm, and the dual summits had been torn into the air, floating like impossible islands of rock in the tumult of energised rain. An archipelago of islets, blasted free of the mountain top, were held in impossible suspension all around them.
Through the purpling curtain of warp lightning, Inquisitor Toth could make out dozens of figures on the two islands, and constant flashes of gunfire. Right on the point of the highest peak, Mordecai could see the silhouette of a Chaos sorcerer in a bladed helmet, his arms held up into the storm as though calling it to him. In his hands burned two red flames.
The storm washed down the mountainside, rippling out from the sorcerer’s peak and hurling lashes of hail and spikes of lightning through the gale-force winds. The tumult roared through the ring of warp energy and beat against the Blood Ravens as they waited for the order to advance on the summit. Mordecai and Corallis looked out of the roof-hatch of the lead Rhino, surveying the unnatural scene as the lashes of another realm streamed into their faces. Against the roar of the wind, they could not even hear each other speak.
Corallis stared into the firestorm, his enhanced vision able to pick out individual figures in the kaleidoscope. He narrowed his eyes in disgust as he recognised the shapes of a number of Imperial Guardsmen in the fray, fighting alongside the hulking figures of the Alpha Legionaries. On the second island-summit, lower than the one on which Sindri stood calling to the storm, stood an eldar farseer, her arms upheld to the heavens as though entreating the gods for assistance. Around her was a small, dwindling group of eldar warriors and wraithguard. They were completely outnumbered and outgunned, but they fought with incredible desperation, discipline and grace, as though their very souls depended on it.
Dropping his eyes from the scene, Corallis shook his head-he had never seen a battlefield like it before. It was as though the forces of nature themselves were at war, and the various races of the galaxy were simply caught in the fray. He looked along the line of the sheet of coruscating energy that stood between the Blood Ravens and the theatre of battle, and saw that the border was strewn with corpses-some human, some eldar, and some hidden in the huge suits of armour of the Alpha Legion. They had clearly fought all the way up the mountainside.
He turned to look back down the mountain, over the heads of the Blood Ravens and Imperial storm troopers that had spilled out of their transports, realising that the only way onwards would be on foot. Even in the gathering darkness shed by the black clouds of the warp storm, Corallis could see how the route was speckled with death and doused with blood. He did not pretend to understand what was unfolding here, but he knew that it had to be stopped.
Cresting a rise to the west, Corallis saw a burst of red in a cloud of dust. Flashes of lightning reflected brilliantly off the speeding form, making it flash like a beacon. The sergeant gripped Mordecai’s shoulder and spun the inquisitor round so that he could see, nodding his head towards the approaching rider. Mordecai squinted his eyes against the wind and rain, but then a crack of lightning lit the mountainside and Gabriel’s assault bike shone in the sudden light as he roared across the slope towards the Blood Ravens.
Mordecai nodded firmly to Corallis, but the sergeant was still staring out across the mountain. There was something else over there. As Gabriel drew closer, a great cloud of dust began to emerge over the rise behind him. After a couple of seconds, the cloud of dust turned into a line of ork warbikes, bouncing and roaring in pursuit of the captain. And in the wake of the warbikes came a clutch of wartrukks, battlewagons and the rumbling forms of looted Imperial Chimera transports.
“Orks!” yelled Corallis into his armour’s vox unit. “Orks approaching from the west.”
Mordecai snapped his head back towards the speeding figure of Gabriel, who was already within range of the small vox units built into the Blood Ravens’ armour. The ramshackle line of orks behind him was clearly in view now.
“Ordnance!” came the crackling voice of Gabriel, as his bike bumped and skidded over the increasingly wet ground.
The turrets of the Predators and Whirlwinds rotated smoothly to the west, and a flurry, of fire erupted from the tanks in the Blood Ravens’ convoy, their shells flashing through the air over Gabriel’s head. A series of explosions detonated on the mountainside as the rockets and shells punched into the ork line, toppling a gaggle of warbikes and dropping a battlewagon into a sudden crater.
At the same time, Tanthius’ Land Raider streaked through the driving hail towards the orks, passing Gabriel’s bike on its way. Behind it growled one of the Rhinos being used by the storm troopers. Tanthius and Ckrius, standing against the elements in the open hatch in the side of the Land Raider, snapped a crisp salute to Gabriel as they roared past, the vehicle’s gun turret lancing parallel streams from its twin-lascannons as it went.
As he reached the rest of the Blood Ravens, Gabriel hit the brakes hard, skidding the bike over the sodden ground and stopping perilously close to the lead Rhino. He vaulted from the bike, straight into the side-hatch of the transport, greeting Corallis and Mordecai with abrupt nods. The rain and wind whipped them.
“We cannot approach the summits, captain,” explained Corallis through the vox-channel. “The storm hobbles the systems in our vehicles, and… well, the mountain top is unsound, as you can see.”
Gabriel stared forward into the curtain of warp energy for the first time, his mind racing with questions that had no answers. The scene on the other side was simply impossible-with islands of rock floating amidst floods of fire, wracked with bolts of purple lightning and lashed by torrents of rain and hail. The Alpha Legionaries and a knot of damned Imperial Guardsmen were assaulting a sub-summit, held by the eldar witch that had saved Gabriel’s life in Lloovre Marr. She was a blaze of blue fire, but her forces were dwindling. And there was Sindri, standing on his own on the top of the highest island, calling to the daemons of the warp, the Maledictum in one hand and the curved dagger in the other.
“We have little time left, Gabriel. The sorcerer must have released the daemon,” said Mordecai, clearly relieved that Gabriel had returned to lead the Space Marines.
“Our course is clear,” said Gabriel resolutely, making his decision instantly. “We must destroy this Chaos sorcerer and his lackeys… and we must attend to the daemon before it is too late-it will not find our souls as weak as it has those of others,” he added, Isador’s face flickering behind his eyes.
“What about the eldar, captain?” asked Corallis, unsure about how to approach the aliens.
“This is a desperate hour, sergeant, and the eldar risk their already meagre forces to confront the evil on Tartarus. They are our allies, at least for today,” replied Gabriel with only a hint of hesitation, speaking such heretical words in front of an inquisitor of the Emperor. But Mordecai simply nodded his agreement, and Corallis leapt out of the Rhino to disseminate the orders.
The Land Raider roared through the hail, its lascannons slicing into the greenskins and cutting them down in swathes. Splutters of gunfire rattled back at the charging transports, pinging off their thick armour and grinding gashes out of their bodywork. But the Land Raider showed no signs of slowing as it powered onwards, heading directly for the biggest wartrukk in the ork line, pulsing javelins of las-fire into its front armour.
Gretchin and slugga boyz scattered out of its path as the Land Raider drove through the vanguard of the ork force, flattening a warbike as it fell under the heavy tracks of the huge vehicle, making the transport bounce and swerve.
“Brace for impact!” yelled Tanthius from the viewing hatch, preparing the Terminators within for the collision. Sergeant Ckrius linked his arm around a brace in the gun turret just in time; the Razorback crashed straight into the front of the rumbling wartrukk.
The impact sent Tanthius flying out of the hatch and over the wreckage of both vehicles. He reached out his arms in front of him and let the powerful servos in his armour absorb his weight as he struck the ground on the other side. His momentum pushed him into a roll, and he was quickly back on his feet, unleashing the might of his storm bolter into the backs of the orks on the wrecked wartrukk.
Ckrius quickly unhooked himself from the Land Raider and climbed up onto the roof, drawing the officer’s sword that he had salvaged from a battlefield corpse as he saw a huge greenskin slam its choppa into the side hatch. Only a couple of days earlier, Ckrius would have had no idea what to do, and would certainly never have dreamt of leaping off a roof onto the back of an enormous, massively muscled green alien. But today he was a seasoned ork-killer. Holding his blade firmly in his right hand, he dropped off the Land Raider directly down onto the creature’s back, driving his sword cleanly between the beast’s collarbone and its shoulder blade, letting his fall push the blade in right up to its hilt. The ork hardly even had time to shriek before the blade pierced straight down through its heart, killing it instantly.
The other side hatch of the Land Raider burst open and a Marine in Terminator armour sprang out with a massive thunder hammer swinging around its head. The Terminator squad had re-equipped itself ready for the demands of this hill-top battle. The Marine stopped suddenly at the sight of the little human soldier tugging his brittle sword out of the greenskin’s shoulder. Then he nodded to Ckrius and leapt forward into the crowd of orks that were pressing towards the wreck, his hammer sweeping in lethal arcs. Three more Terminators stormed out of the Razorback in his wake, each stealing a surprised glance at the solitary storm trooper blasting away with his hellgun, before they opened up with their storm bolters and flamers.
Disciplined volleys of fire riddled the greenskins that charged towards Ckrius, and he flicked a glance to his right. Pounding across the slick battlefield towards their sergeant came the rest of the storm troopers, leaving a couple of Marines to support the heavy guns of the Rhino from which they had spilled.
Bolter shells flashed past her head, but she ignored them, trusting that the remnants of the Storm squad and the wraithguard would keep the shots away from her. At her side, the last of the Biel-Tan warlocks sent crackling blasts of warp energy jousting from his fingertips, cooking the flesh of Chaos Marines inside their armour and making their souls cry out in horror. The once pristine white armour of the Storm squad was now scratched and dull, coated in layers of dirt and blood. But they fought with a passion and determination known only to the eldar race.
Skrekrea had been here before, on this very mountainside with her brother, all those centuries ago-and now her brother, Jaerielle, was gone. These daemons would pay dearly for his soul. She flipped and danced around the rain of bolter fire, rattling off shuriken from her pistol and slicing her power sword with immaculate precision. She plunged her blade straight through the green and black armour of a Chaos Marine, shrieking a cry into his face as she withdrew it, and watching his head shatter and explode as her rage was funnelled through the Banshee Mask on her own head, transforming it into a psychosonic blast. As her sword withdrew, she flipped it over and drove it blindly behind her, skewering another Alpha Legionary in the back of the neck as he tried to slip past towards the farseer.
Macha held her arms up into the heavens and called down the lightning, forming it into spheres of pure, blue energy that revolved in the air in front of her chest. With a slight contraction of her eyes, she fired the energy balls searing through the dark, moist air towards the Chaos sorcerer on the higher island-peak. With his arms also raised to greet the storm, Sindri hardly even noticed the fireballs blazing towards him. But at the last second, one of his arms snapped out to his side, punching the blue flames and exploding them into showers of red fire, as the Maledictum stone in his fist flared with power.
Turning his eyes to face Macha, Sindri glared through the hail, wind, and bolts of warp energy, his eyes burning with red and gold fires, daring her to interfere. For a moment, Macha felt like the sorcerer was breathing into her face, as his eyes seemed to fill her entire field of vision. But then he turned away from her again, raising his face and hands back to the storm, crying into its heart.
A phalanx of Alpha Legionaries strode around Sindri, repositioning themselves between the sorcerer and the farseer, as the islands of rock bobbed and swirled on the flood of fire around the mountain top. They braced their bolters, checking their aim against the motion of the ground beneath their feet, and then loosed a volley of fire down towards the eldar. Macha, with nowhere to go, raised her hand and a jolt of blue flame seared out to meet the bolter fire, detonating the shells in mid-air. The Marines fired again and again, and Macha was forced to contend with them rather than Sindri, despite the fact that he was so close. If only more eldar had survived. Then she realised that the eldar had failed: Gabriel… Gabriel…
“Almost! Almost!” cried Sindri into the storm, his face convulsing with power and pain as tendrils of daemonic energy started to lash down at his skin. But he could not wait any longer; he had waited so long and been so patient all these years, even putting up with the humiliations of service to that cretin, Lord Bale.
Raging with impatience, Sindri pointed the Maledictum towards a knot of Alpha Legionaries and Imperial Guardsmen on a floating mass of rock nearby. The stone blazed with power and a lance of red light flashed into the soldiers, exploding them into a rain of blood and disintegrating the rock beneath their feet.
“Yes!” he cried as he felt the currents of power shift in the storm above him. “Yes! It is upon us!” he screamed, crashing the Maledictum into the hilt of the curved dagger, where it burst into flames as the stone found an empty socket. Streaks of purple lightning and tendrils of warp power whipped down out of the storm, lashing themselves around the body of the sorcerer and lifting him into the air. He screamed and wailed in ecstasies of agony, feeling the daemon prince tugging at the tendons of his soul from the other side of the breach in the immaterium, clawing at his mind, desperately trying to make the leap into the material realm and into the solid body of this devoted sorcerer.
“Bear witness to my ascension!” bellowed the voice of Sindri, echoing with power into the ears of everyone on the mountain, resounding through the storm itself. For a moment, it seemed as though the entire battle ceased as all heads turned towards the levitating form of the Chaos sorcerer.
Gabriel stood in the centre of a resplendent line of Blood Ravens, their crimson armour shimmering in the lightning flashes, their resolve unshaken by the daemonic fury that stormed around the mountain top. They were poised, ready to advance through the ring of warp energy that held a column of liquid fire on which floated islands of battle and damnation. They were unflinching in the face of a Chaos sorcerer, ascending to daemonhood before their very eyes. They were the Adeptus Astartes, and this was their purpose: to defend the Emperor’s realm against the unholy. In the fires of battle, they would test their resolve and prove themselves worthy of a place at the Emperor’s side.
Bowing his head for a moment of silent prayer, Gabriel heard a delicate voice calling his name: Gabriel… Gabriel… It repeated over and over, gradually shifting into a beautiful rhythm and then, slowly, a chorus of other voices started up underneath it. The pristine, clear, silvery tones of the Astronomican soared into his soul, pressing the strength of the Emperor himself into his heart.
He lifted his head, and raised Mordecai’s daemonhammer-the god-splitter-into the air: “For the Great Father and the Emperor!” he yelled, his voice carrying against the vicious wind. A tremendous call came back, thundering from the lungs of every Blood Raven, shaking the ground itself: “The Great Father and the Emperor!”
With that, Gabriel strode forward through the curtain of energy, vaulting up onto the first island of rock and swinging the god-splitter for the first time. It erupted with power even before its arc was complete, spitting unearthly energy from its head as it approached the body of the first Alpha Legionary, before erupting into an immense explosion as it impacted, blasting the Chaos Marine off his feet and casting him into the sea of fire.
Gabriel swung the hammer again, crashing it into the side of the next Chaos Marine’s head and knocking it clean off his shoulders. He let the arc continue, sweeping it lower as he spun his own body, pushing the hammer through the stomachs of two more Marines before hoisting it up into the air and screaming in a defiant cry: “I come for you, sorcerer!”
Mordecai had said that this daemonhammer was constructed from a fragment of the weapon of an eldar avatar-the very weapon used by the eldar to defeat the daemon prince three thousand years before. He had entrusted the ancient artefact to Gabriel, pushing it into his hands before they had jumped down out of the Rhino to take their positions in the line of Blood Ravens. “Call it a premonition,” Mordecai had said, “and damn my unsanctioned soul, but I believe that you will end this fight, Gabriel, not me. You are the Emperor’s champion, and I am a mere servant. You, like your Captain Trythos before you… you must wield the daemonhammer on Tartarus and save us all from this daemon.” Gabriel had just nodded and taken the weapon, appreciating the inquisitor’s confidence, and knowing that he was right.
The little platform of rock was swimming in the blood of Chaos Marines and strewn with their corpses; Gabriel stood alone. Looking around, he saw his Blood Ravens leaping from one island to another, hacking into the Alpha Legion with chainswords and power fists. Lines of Devastator Marines were punching out volleys of bolter fire, shredding those Imperial Guardsmen who had turned against the Emperor. And Matiel’s assault squad roared above the flaming ocean with their jump packs spilling fire, raining frag-grenades onto Chaos positions and spraying them with bolter shells.
Gabriel vaulted up onto the next rocky island, heading towards the highest summit where Sindri was still held in the heart of the storm by the wild tendrils of energy. Beneath him, a phalanx of Chaos Marines was bunched into a firing line, loosing bolter fire across a chasm towards the eldar farseer, whose bursts of defensive flame seemed to be growing weaker.
Crunching down into a crouch as he landed, Gabriel saw that this platform contained a knot of Imperial Guardsmen, each mutated and contorted into inhuman shapes. They were concentrating their fire against a squadron of Gabriel’s Devastator Marines, ensconced on a nearby islet, who ceased fire when they saw their captain suddenly appear amongst their targets. For a moment, the Guardsmen were confused by the unexpected turn of events, but then one of them caught on and turned. He yelled something to the other men, and they all turned at once, lumbering towards the Blood Raven with their shotguns barking, brandishing blades in the air.
With a swift movement, Gabriel swung his hammer in a horizontal arc, scattering Guardsmen into the seething fires around the platform-he didn’t have time to waste on these heretics. But something made him pause before he struck the one who had told the others to turn. He stopped the hammer just next to the Guardsman’s head, and then dropped it to his side, staring at the officer while his brain rushed to put a name to the face.
Then it hit him: Brom. It was Colonel Brom. His face was bright red, burnt, and covered with lacerations. His uniform was ripped and dirty, and parts of it were clearly soaked with blood. But it was definitely him.
“Brom?” asked Gabriel, still unwilling to believe what he was seeing. “Brom? Is that really you?”
“Ah, the heroic Captain Angelos-how good of you to notice me, at last,” hissed Brom, his voice distorted and barely recognisable. “I thought that this might get your attention,” he added, stabbing forward with his power sword.
Gabriel parried the clumsy lunge with his gauntlet, catching the blade in his fist and pulling the weapon out of the colonel’s hand. “What are you blathering about, Brom?” he asked, casting the sword into the flames.
“Do you know how long I have been on this planet?” asked Brom, apparently rhetorically. “My whole life-that’s how long. And then you arrive and it is as though I wasn’t here at all. You and that inquisitor-”
A trickle of blood suddenly appeared out of a hole in the centre of Brom’s forehead, and he slumped to the ground, dead. His mouth was still open, ready to continue his list of grievances, and Gabriel was grateful that he had not had to listen to any more drivel from the colonel. He strode to the edge of the platform and looked down, seeing Matiel hovering between two islets on his jump pack, squeezing off bolter shells in all directions. Nodding his gratitude to the sergeant, he turned and jumped towards the base of the summit.
Something had shifted within the warp field, and Macha cast her eyes around the fiery landscape searching for the source of the movement. She felt a familiar presence, one she had not felt for thousands of years. And then she saw it, flashing through the hail and pounding into the forces of Chaos like the tool of a deity. It swept and spun, crashing into Alpha Legionaries and fallen Guardsmen, as though guided to them by some ineffable power. It was majestic and effortless, wielding its wielder and gifting him with the illusion of control.
The Blood Raven has a fragment of the Wailing Doom-all is not yet lost. We must help him, said Macha, reaching out with her mind to the best of her warriors.
Understood, replied Skrekrea as she somersaulted over the collapsing form of a dying Chaos Marine and brought her blade round into a vicious vertical arc in her wake, driving it down between the neck and shoulder plates of another. She turned to face the farseer, and sprinted up the slope towards her, pushing her foot hard into the ground as she reached the summit, next to Macha, and leaping out into the fiery space between their islet and the one above where Sindri levitated. She flew through the flames, her legs cycling and her back arched with the effort of the long jump.
Macha sent out bursts of blue energy from her fingertips, incinerating the sleet of bolter shells that flashed out towards Skrekrea as she leapt towards the Chaos Marines. The warlock, just down the slope from Macha, power coruscating around his hands as he unleashed bolts of raw energy against the forces of Chaos that besieged their own island-summit, turned to assist the farseer, throwing blue flames across the chasm in support of Skrekrea. Macha nodded her thanks to the warlock and started to redirect her own assault against Sindri himself once again, forming revolving balls of blue energy and hurling them across the void towards the Chaos sorcerer.
But the loss of Skrekrea and the warlock from her own defences left Macha vulnerable to the pressing forces of Chaos behind her. Bolter shells zipped past her head, and she could hear the wails of her diminishing Storm squad as they fought to keep the Alpha Legionaries and fallen Guardsmen off her back.
The emerald-green wraithguard reorganised their positions behind the Storm squad, forming a solid shielding line between the enemy and the farseer, standing implacably with their wraithcannons a constant blaze. Aggressive fire zinged out of the Chaos forces, zipping into the wraithguard, and punching out great chunks of their psycho-plastic armour. But the un-living eldar warriors held their ground, unafraid of death, afraid only of failure.
Without their leader, the Storm squad began to falter, pinned down under the relentless fire of the Alpha Legionaries, and engaged on all sides by lunging blades and hacking axes. The squad leapt and spun, their own blades blurring into torrents of violence, but they were outnumbered, and their own numbers were falling all the time. It would not be long before the eldar were overrun and the Alpha Legion would have a clear line to the farseer.
You must hold the line-Kaela Mensha Khaine is with us, came the thoughts of Macha, filling the souls of the eldar with hope. The spirit of our avatar is with us in the mon-keigh’s daemonhammer.
The Storm squadron seemed to lurch with new energy, leaping and striking with inhuman speed, cutting a swathe through the Chaos forces, and an eerie chant flowed out of their diminishing numbers, filling the storm with a chorus of eldar magic: “Kaela Mensha Khaine!”
The daemonhammer seemed to erupt into flames as Gabriel crashed down onto the rocky platform, and the strange alien music flooded through the hail and wind. The hammer pulsed with power, radiating energy into his body as he brandished it above his head and charged towards the phalanx of Chaos Marines that stood guard around the very peak of the dismembered mountaintop.
As he closed, a group of Marines snapped round to face him, their bolters coughing with fire, while their brother-Legionaries continued to focus their shots elsewhere, to the other side of the pyramidal rock, where Gabriel could not see. The bolter shells flashed through the dark air, heading straight for Gabriel in a lethal horizontal sheet that threatened to cut him in two. But suddenly, the shots seemed to reduce into slow motion as the eldar chants rose into a deafening chorus, mixing with the silver tones of the symphony that still played in his mind. The daemonhammer glowed with power. With consummate and casual ease, Gabriel brought the daemonhammer round in a horizontal arc, sweeping it through the oncoming fire and detonating each shell as the hammerhead crunched into it. He didn’t even break his stride as he pounded onwards towards the shocked Alpha Legionaries, bursting out of the line of explosions unscathed by their vicious tirade.
As he ran, Gabriel saw one of the Chaos Marines suddenly throw up his arms, casting his bolter to the ground, and then slump forward onto his face. Standing in his place, her curving blade dripping with blood as lightning flashed behind her, an eldar warrior paused for a moment, throwing back her head and letting out a cry of victory. The cry rose shrilly, gathering volume and power until it drowned out even the sound of the storm and the chanting of her brethren.
The Chaos Marines on either side of the eldar warrior collapsed to the ground, clutching their hands to the sides of their helmets, shaking their heads in insane agony. As they fell to their knees, the eldar snapped back into motion, spinning into a pirouette with her blade outstretched, taking the heads of both Marines in a single fluid movement.
Gabriel was closing now, swinging the hammer above his head in preparation for the combat to come as he stormed over the uneven terrain. The Chaos Marines were in disarray, trying to deal with the slippery eldar in their midst and with the charging Blood Raven all at once-they snatched bolter fire in all directions, snapping their weapons from side to side whilst drawing their chainswords ready for close-range combat.
Diving forward into a roll, Gabriel cleared the last few strides in an instant as bolter fire zinged off his armour and flew over his head. He flipped back onto his feet, bringing the hammer down vertically on the head of one of the Chaos Marines, shattering his spine as the hammer flared with power. To his left, the eldar warrior was dancing and springing between Marines, slicing into their armour with her blade and spraying out shuriken from her pistol. For a brief moment, the eldar and Blood Raven came to rest, back to back in the midst of a ring of Alpha Legionaries.
Looking up, Gabriel could see the figure of Sindri, suspended above the floating mountaintop, hanging by tendrils of power that seemed to pulse, feeding him with the energy of the storm. Time was running out, and he leapt forward towards the Marines that blocked his path up the summit, sweeping the daemonhammer in front of him and clattering through their outstretched chainswords. He felt a movement breeze past his shoulder as he started to run forward, and then the eldar warrior landed lightly in front of him, having somersaulted over the Blood Raven’s head.
Skrekrea bounced into a spin, flashing her blade out in every direction, slicing into the Chaos Marines all around, but leaving Gabriel completely unscathed. As she danced through the combat, she opened a gap in the line of Marines, and Gabriel barged through it, dropping his shoulder and pulling the weight of the daemonhammer behind him. He knocked two Alpha Legionaries off their feet as he crashed through them, and then leapt up the slope towards the peak, the way ahead clear.
A wail of agony from behind him made Gabriel pause. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the eldar warrior skewered on the blades of three Chaos Marines. Her head was thrown back and a death cry was gurgling unevenly from her throat as the Marines twisted their blades. Gabriel turned to face them, his blood boiling and rage flooding into his head, and he brought the daemonhammer crashing down against the rock at his feet. The hammerhead exploded with power as it pounded into the rock, ripping a crack into the islet and rendering it asunder, breaking the platform under the Chaos Marines free of the mountain summit and sending it tumbling down into the sea of flames below. The Alpha Legionaries scrambled to keep their footing on the plummeting platform, but the rock flipped end over end, throwing the traitorous Marines screaming into the daemonic firestorm.
Gabriel watched them fall, and then turned back to the mountaintop, looking up as Sindri started to glow with power, radiating purple light from his body as the blood of the dead Marines blended with the swirling ocean that consecrated the tainted ground of Tartarus. The Blood Ravens captain swung the hammer over his shoulder and started to climb up towards the emergent daemon prince.
“Yes!” cried the bellowing voice of Sindri as the storm pulsed through his veins, filling his body with the oscillating energies of the warp. A great ring of purple flame blew out from his position, rippling across the fragmented mountaintop in concentric circles, dousing the combatants in warp energy. The Alpha Legionaries roared with renewed passion as the power washed over them, and the Blood Ravens staggered under the tidal onslaught. But Matiel blasted over the waves with his jump pack spilling orange flames into the sea of fire. He roared towards the Chaos sorcerer, determined that his Space Marines would not meet their end at the hands of such a foul creature. His bolter coughed and spat shells, and his chainsword spluttered in readiness as he barrelled through the hail and wind, yelling his determination into the storm: “For the Great Father and the Emperor!”
Gabriel pulled himself up onto the summit just in time to see Sindri turn his head towards the sergeant, as he seared through the air towards him. A sudden javelin of purple flashed out of the daemon’s eyes, punching into the jetting form of the Blood Raven and halting him in midair. Sindri shrieked with pleasure, immersing himself in the daemonic energies that flowed through him as a conduit into the material realm.
Matiel was held for a moment, suspended in the onrush of warp fire, held high above the frantic battle that raged on the sundered mountaintop. His arms snapped out to his sides, and his weapons fell away from his hands, as he was held in a blaze of agony for all the warriors to see.
“No!” yelled Gabriel, hefting the daemonhammer onto his shoulder and crouching, ready to pounce. “Matiel!”
Suddenly, a blue fireball hissed through the sleeting rain and punched into the levitating form of the Chaos sorcerer, knocking him back. Sindri, the emergent daemon prince, snapped his gaze back round to face the eldar farseer, raking his flaming eyes in a great arc of destruction across the islets of the mountaintop, exploding rock and incinerating Marines as his stare touched them. The purple river crashed against the figure of the farseer, splitting into a series of streams that ran around her, as she stood defiantly against the current.
Meanwhile, released from the daemon prince’s thrall, Matiel tumbled out of the sky, crashing down against a rocky outcrop far below.
“No!” yelled Gabriel, as he launched himself into the air, swinging the daemonhammer up in a vertical arc and throwing himself towards the pulsating form of Sindri. He jumped three metres into the sky, carried upwards on the back of the eldar chants, the chorus of the Astronomican, and the righteous will of the Blood Ravens themselves. The daemonhammer seemed to drag him higher and higher, pulling him into the eye of the storm as though it were a guided missile, as though it had a will of its own.
Sindri narrowed his eyes, concentrating the river of fire into a torrent that crashed into the farseer as she staggered back under the daemonic onslaught. But she would not fall, and the daemon prince roared his rage into the storm, bringing down forks of purple lightning and ravaging the mountain with hurricane force winds. Just at the last minute, he saw Gabriel out of the corner of his eye. But it was too late.
The daemonhammer swept up and around in a spiralling blur, dragging Gabriel in a loop around the daemon until he was suspended in the eye of the storm alongside the husk of Sindri. Without even a moment’s hesitation, Gabriel shouldered the hammer and spun his whole body, bringing the daemonhammer around with all his strength. The ornate, rune-encrusted hammerhead flared with blinding light as it punched into the chest of the emergent daemon, driving straight through its body in an explosion of warp fire and gore. Sindri’s body was rent in two, as his chest crumpled into nothing and then exploded out of his back, leaving his head hanging momentarily in the air above his stomach.
The storm itself seemed to reel in agony as its eye was shattered by the captain of the Blood Ravens. The clouds whipped into a giant whirlpool, pulling the lightning into spiralling streams that seemed to be sucked back in towards the core, dragging the energy of the immaterium back through the Chaos forces in an immense backwash that left the Alpha Legionaries boiling within their armour. The storm was collapsing back on itself, as Gabriel tumbled down towards the rocky summit of the mountain, and the floating islets of rock themselves started to fall back into place on the mountaintop.
As Gabriel crashed into solid ground, he pulled himself to his feet and watched the maelstrom raging all around him. The remaining Blood Ravens were struggling to maintain their balance as the mountain shifted and rocked, spilling the boiled Alpha Legionaries and the treacherous Guardsmen into fiery chasms that were quickly sealed as the mountaintop reformed. Further down the mountainside, Gabriel could see the remnants of the orks turning tail and fleeing down into the valley. Then, with an earth-shattering crack, the Maledictum dagger thudded into the stone at his feet, its curved blade biting into the rock with the hilt holding the stone itself.
He hoisted the daemonhammer for one last strike, but a thought stayed his hand, pressing into his mind.
Human! Do not destroy the stone… you will doom us all!
Gabriel paused with the hammer held aloft, poised, ready to crash down on the Maledictum. He could see the eldar farseer, shining like an angel in the spiralling maelstrom of the collapsing storm. She was staring at him, willing him not to crush the stone. There were a few eldar warriors standing beside her, a couple of wraithguard and a warlock. The eldar had paid a heavy price for the souls of the Tartarans.
“Captain!” came a shouted voice from behind him. “Destroy the stone before it leads others to ruin-it lies at the root of the damnation of Tartarus!” cried Mordecai, straining his voice against the torrential storm, standing on the edge of a nearby islet.
Gabriel shook his head and closed his eyes, trying to find some calm in the eye of the storm, searching his soul for the guidance of the Astronomican. But there was nothing but fire and darkness swirling behind his eyelids.
You know not what you do… came the thoughts of Macha once again, but this time they were accompanied by a rain of shuriken and blasts of wraithcannon. I cannot let you destroy it.
The fire zinged against Gabriel’s armour, ricocheting in sparks, but he did not move. He stayed silent and still, waiting for calm, waiting for certainty. The hammer hummed in his hands, hungry for destruction. His mind was congealing with disparate images: he saw flickers of the silver choir transforming into the tortured faces of the people of Cyrene; he saw Isador’s eyes burning with fury and hatred; and he saw the disfigured form of Brom, a bullet hole fresh in his forehead.
Opening his eyes, not even wincing at the sleet of shuriken that peppered his armour and sunk into his flesh, he looked down into the Maledictum. Something dark and shadowy moved within, and inchoate whispers reached for his mind.
“No!” he cried, bringing the daemonhammer crashing down on the stone, driving the dagger down into the rock below but shattering the Maledictum into a rain of tiny shards. An immense explosion detonated as the hammer struck the daemonic stone, sending concentric shock-waves of warp energy radiating out from the mountaintop. The explosions knocked everything flat, rippling down the mountainside after the fleeing orks. Then, with a sudden reversal, the Shockwaves were sucked back up the mountain, gathering in the storms, the hail and the lightning, dragging the darkness back to the hilt of the curved dagger, and sucking them into the abrupt implosion.
The twin-peaked mountain was thrown into sudden silence, leaving the motionless, prostrate forms of Blood Ravens and Biel-Tan eldar lying on the rocky summit. The clouds parted, and the dusky red sun shone warmly through the cold, still air.
C.S. Goto (ebook by Undead)
01 – Dawn of War