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 eight140
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
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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 leatherclad
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.
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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 combibolter.
“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.
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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
