Doom Slayer
…
Beneath Kasr Kraf
The Doom Slayer followed Saint Celestine into the darkness beneath Kasr Kraf.
Golden-white fire burned along the Ardent Blade, illuminating a staircase cut through layers of reinforced stone. The upper steps remained intact, but the damage worsened as they descended. Cracks divided the walls. Sections of the ceiling had collapsed, and blood ran through the channels built to carry rainwater from the city above.
The trail left by Creed's relief column was impossible to miss. White Cadian arrows marked every junction. Empty charge packs, spent bolter casings, and abandoned ammunition crates covered the route. An armoured transport blocked half the stairwell where its crew had forced it through a collapsed barricade before the lower passage became too narrow to continue.
Daemonic bodies marked the rest of the path.
Bloodletters lay dismembered across the steps. Flesh Hounds had been crushed against the walls, their iron collars buried in broken stone. Dead cultists filled the spaces between them, trampled beneath the soldiers and vehicles that had continued toward the nodal cavern.
The relief column had reached its destination.
The daemons had followed.
The Slayer felt them moving through the galleries surrounding the main passage. Claws scraped against sealed doors. Warp-fire hissed behind fractures in the walls, and thousands of inhuman heartbeats travelled through the blackstone as faint vibrations.
The stone produced a pressure of its own. It pushed against the Immaterium, weakening the corruption that had entered the tunnels. Warp energy recoiled from its presence, and daemonic bodies became less stable the farther they travelled beneath the city.
The blackstone did nothing to the Slayer.
His power had not been born within this universe. It did not come from the dimension these creatures called the Warp, and the ancient machines beneath Cadia possessed no authority over it.
Celestine slowed when the staircase opened into a three-way junction. A damaged Cadian arrow pointed toward the central passage, but fresh blood covered half the symbol. She looked into each tunnel while the familiar golden fire surrounding her sword weakened.
"The blackstone is interfering with my connection to the Emperor," Celestine said with controlled unease as she searched the darkness. "I can still feel His light, but it is distant beneath this city."
The Slayer examined the fragment of his essence inside her. It moved through her flesh, wings, and weapon without touching the Warp. The blackstone pressed against the Emperor's fire surrounding the Ardent Blade, but the white light beneath it remained unchanged.
Celestine tightened her grip upon the sword.
"I can no longer sense the nodal cavern clearly," Celestine admitted with frustration as she studied the damaged route marker. "Can you still find Doombreed?"
The Slayer turned toward the central passage.
Doombreed waited far below them.
Distance and blackstone could not conceal him. Slaughter had swollen the Daemon Prince's essence until it stained every tunnel connected to the cavern. The Slayer felt cities burning inside that corruption. He felt armies offered to Khorne and generations of victims reduced to fuel for a creature that remembered them only as victories.
He entered the central passage.
"I will follow you," Celestine said with immediate trust as she moved beside him.
They had not travelled fifty metres before a sealed door burst from the right wall. Bloodletters climbed through the opening with burning hellblades raised above their horns. Flesh Hounds ran between them, their claws carving sparks from the stone.
The Super Shotgun entered the Slayer's hands.
He fired into the first Bloodletter. The blast tore through the daemon and continued into the creatures behind it, destroying three before their remains struck the walls. The Slayer launched the Meat Hook into a Flesh Hound at the rear of the pack and allowed the chain to pull him through the charging horde.
A hellblade struck his shoulder and broke without marking the Praetor suit. The Doomblade extended from his left arm and removed the Bloodletter's head as he passed. He reached the Flesh Hound, caught it beneath the throat, and drove it into the wall hard enough to bury its body in the stone.
Celestine raised the Ardent Blade.
White light divided around the Slayer into streams no wider than las-bolts. Each found a separate target. Bloodletters burned from within. Flesh Hounds collapsed into ash. None of the power touched the supporting walls or the damaged ceiling.
The Slayer fired again and emptied the doorway.
More daemons waited behind it.
He entered the adjoining gallery before they could gather. The Doomblade passed through the first rank while the Super Shotgun destroyed the second. A Plaguebearer raised a rusted cleaver. The Slayer caught its arm, tore the limb free, and drove the creature backward through two of its kin.
Blue fire crossed the chamber from above. Pink Horrors crowded an elevated ledge, their flames bending around pillars and burning bodies as they sought him.
The Slayer did not avoid the attack.
Warp-fire divided against his breastplate and disappeared without leaving a scorch. The Ballista replaced the shotgun. One bolt passed through the Horrors and destroyed the ledge beneath them, burying the creatures without disturbing the main supports.
Behind him, Celestine fought with a precision she had not possessed aboard the Will of Eternity or on the outskirts of Cadia. Her sword no longer needed to touch every target. White-gold force followed each swing, killing daemons several metres beyond the Ardent Blade's reach. When a winged creature dropped from the ceiling, she caught it less than a metre above her head and crushed it with telekinesis without interrupting her advance.
She had learned to wield the fragment rather than merely release it.
A lasgun fired somewhere beyond the chamber. The shot struck a Bloodletter in the back. Several more followed from behind a collapsed section of wall where broken support beams had formed a narrow enclosure.
"Saint Celestine!" a wounded Cadian called with desperate relief as he fired through a gap in the rubble. "We have wounded trapped behind the barricade!"
The Slayer seized the nearest Bloodletter by one horn and drove its face into the floor. His boot crushed the daemon's skull before it could rise.
Celestine crossed the chamber inside a burst of white light. Seven Cadians remained behind the collapsed wall. Three could still stand. The others lay upon blood-darkened cloaks while a medicae worked beside them. Daemonettes had entered through a crack at the rear of the position and were descending the rubble toward the wounded.
Celestine extended one hand. The creatures stopped in mid-leap before white light closed around them and compressed. Nothing remained when the power faded.
"The relief column ordered us to hold this junction until the wounded could be moved," the Cadian sergeant reported through clenched teeth as he pressed one hand against a wound in his stomach. "Then the ceiling came down and cut us off."
"Your position is no longer required," Celestine told him with firm compassion as she raised her free hand toward the rubble. "You and your soldiers are leaving with us."
The collapsed wall rose.
Stone, metal, and the remains of a destroyed vehicle lifted together. Celestine separated the wreckage and placed each piece against the side of the chamber, revealing the upper passage without allowing a single fragment to fall upon the wounded.
The medicae stared at her. The Slayer looked deeper into the lower tunnel and felt more daemons approaching.
"Take the wounded toward the surface," Celestine ordered with calm authority as she lowered the last slab. "The route behind us is clear."
"The cavern needs every weapon," the sergeant protested through his pain as he struggled to remain standing.
"The cavern needs living soldiers more than Doombreed needs additional dead," Celestine answered sternly as she placed a steadying hand upon his shoulder. "Return when your wounds allow you to fight."
The sergeant looked past her. Red light moved across the walls behind the Slayer as another horde entered the lower tunnel.
"Understood, Saint," the sergeant replied with reluctant acceptance as he signalled his remaining soldiers toward the surface.
The Slayer summoned the Heavy Cannon.
Its first Precision Bolt removed a Bloodletter's head. The second passed through the eye of a Flesh Hound. The third struck a Pink Horror before the creature could release the fire growing between its hands. He advanced one step with every shot, killing the daemons closest to him and those attempting to climb across their bodies.
The rifle disappeared when the horde came within reach.
He met them with his hands.
The tunnel did not give the larger creatures room to surround him, and their deaths became orderly. He broke one Bloodletter across his knee, divided another from shoulder to hip, and drove his fist through a Plaguebearer into the daemon behind it.
Celestine remained beside the Cadians until the last wounded soldier entered the upper passage. Then her wings opened. She crossed the chamber above the Slayer and landed behind the daemonic line.
The Ardent Blade moved once.
A white-gold wave passed through the horde and stopped against the walls. Every daemon between Celestine and the Slayer separated into burning pieces.
Silence returned.
Celestine examined the undamaged supports with satisfaction before turning toward the lower passage.
"Your essence is becoming easier to control," Celestine said with quiet wonder as white light faded along her sword. "It responds before I finish forming the command."
"It is yours now," the Slayer replied evenly as he turned toward the path below.
His firearms waited inside his pocket dimension. The Crucible remained with them, dark and inactive.
"Then I will continue to use it well," Celestine promised with solemn gratitude as she placed one hand over her heart.
The ground shook beneath them. Dust fell from the ceiling, and a deep impact passed through the floor before the distant roar of collapsing machinery reached the chamber.
Doombreed had advanced again.
The Slayer continued downward. He knew what waited below and what the creature had done.
He would not make its death quick.
…
The Nodal Cavern
The primary tunnel ended upon a gallery overlooking the nodal cavern.
The chamber stretched almost three kilometres from end to end. Its ceiling rose hundreds of metres before disappearing behind smoke and darkness. Blackstone pillars surrounded the central pylon, their surfaces filled with streams of light that moved against gravity. Imperial cables, generators, cogitators, and sacramental machinery covered the pylon's base.
War had buried everything else.
Destroyed tanks lay among broken artillery pieces. The wrecks of the Contemptor Dreadnoughts remained where the ancient machines had made their final defence. Dead soldiers filled trenches that no longer possessed walls, and Necron bodies had been torn apart across the approaches. Servitors remained attached to weapons that had continued firing after their operators died.
Daemonic ash had gathered into dunes and fresh daemons crossed them in their thousands.
Seven defensive lines stretched between the western gallery and the central node. Every one had fallen. Some had been overrun. Others had been destroyed so completely that only scorched lines upon the ground showed where defenders had once stood.
What remained upon the final approaches could no longer be called an army.
The Slayer's visor counted seventy-two Imperial life signs around the central node. Only thirty of those defenders could still stand. Not one of the seventy-two was uninjured.
Some fought with broken limbs bound against their armour. Others leaned against barricades because their legs could no longer support them. The medicae had exhausted their supplies and now tore cloth from the dead to slow the bleeding of those who remained alive.
The Slayer understood at once that they did not just need reinforcement, instead they needed the battle taken from them.
Lieutenant-Commander Cerantes held the left approach with the last of the Heresy-era Ultramarines, the surviving Salamanders, and several mortal auxiliaries. Their armour had been split, burned, or torn open. Cerantes had lost part of one pauldron, and blood ran from beneath his helmet while he directed warriors who could barely raise their weapons.
The remnants of the Vostroyan XXI defended the centre beside Greyfax and the surviving 55th Kappic Eagles. Cadians, Sisters of Battle, and heavy-weapons crews from Creed's relief column filled the spaces between them. Four Tanith snipers remained in the upper galleries, firing from positions already surrounded by winged daemons.
No squad was complete and no suit of armour remained whole. The soldiers who had entered the cavern to save its defenders now required saving themselves.
Cawl stood at the base of the central pylon. Cables connected his body to the Imperial interface surrounding it, and several mechadendrites hung dead from his chassis while the others moved between damaged relays, control surfaces, and streams of Necron symbols.
Trazyn worked beside him. The Necron held his staff in one hand while the other moved across a blackstone panel. Beyond the seventy-two Imperial life signs, Trazyn and fifteen surviving constructs, his remaining Necrons and Cawl's damaged war machines, formed the last mechanical ring around the interface. All continued firing, but they could not hold the approaches for much longer.
The concussion that had shaken the tunnel above had come from the last Imperial tank.
Its wreck burned beyond the seventh line. The five members of its crew were already dead, and black vapour still carried the final traces of their lives into the creature standing over the ruined vehicle.
Doombreed towered above the battlefield.
Brazen armour covered a body swollen by sacrifices offered across thousands of years. Wings spread through the smoke behind him. The Axe of Khorne filled one hand while the Rod of Khorne burned within the other.
The defenders had wounded him many times. The remains of those wounds were still visible beneath the armour rebuilding across his side, but every death that had occurred during the retreat had restored part of what they destroyed. A fallen Vostroyan had replaced flesh. Three Cadians burned by Warp-fire had restored one wing. The death of a Salamander who lay beside the two soldiers he had saved had closed the cracks across Doombreed's breastplate.
Every mortal death had strengthened him. The Necrons on the other hand had provided nothing, they possessed neither blood nor mortal souls for the Daemon Prince to claim.
The Slayer understood the battle. He also understood that the killing would stop now.
The unnamed Custodian remained between Doombreed and the central node. His golden armour had been broken across the chest and abdomen. One injured leg forced him to kneel, yet both hands still held his guardian spear toward the advancing Daemon Prince.
Cerantes and the remaining Astartes tried to close around him. Greyfax directed the last mobile soldiers toward the pylon while the Geminae guarded their retreat.
Eleanor had fallen beside the final barricade, her breastplate split by the Rod of Khorne. Genevieve stood over her with blood covering one wing and a broken sword held in both hands.
Doombreed raised his axe above them.
Celestine saw her companions, relief passed through the fragment inside her, followed immediately by fear and fury. Her wings opened.
The Super Shotgun entered the Slayer's hands, he pointed toward the seventy-two survivors without taking his visor from Doombreed.
"Protect them," the Slayer ordered with absolute command as he stepped from the gallery.
"None will be lost," Celestine promised with fierce certainty as she dropped beside him.
They entered the battle together.
The Super Shotgun fired before the Slayer reached the ground.
The blast entered the side of Doombreed's head. Horn, armour, and black flesh disappeared. The Daemon Prince turned beneath the impact and crashed through the burning tank wreck before his axe could fall.
The Slayer landed between him and the final defenders.
Bloodletters charged from both sides. One shotgun blast destroyed the creatures approaching from the left. The Doomblade cut through those upon the right. A Flesh Hound leapt toward the wounded Custodian, but the Slayer caught it by the skull and drove it beneath his boot before it crossed half the distance.
Celestine reached the final position inside a burst of white-gold light. She drove the Ardent Blade into the ground.
Power spread through the cavern before the first daemon could strike another defender. Bloodletters vanished within the expanding radiance. Flesh Hounds were hurled away from the wounded, and Warp-fire divided against the light before returning toward the Horrors that had released it.
No daemon reached an Imperial soldier after that moment.
A curved barrier formed around the central node. It passed through Cawl, Trazyn, and the defenders already gathered there without touching them, then hardened between the wounded and the daemonic horde.
Celestine raised one hand. Every visible survivor outside the barrier lifted from the battlefield inside a separate field of white light.
Cadians, Vostroyans, Sisters, Scions, auxiliaries, and Astartes passed through the daemons without being touched. Celestine carried them into safety while the Slayer destroyed every creature that attempted to follow. None of their wounds worsened during the movement. None were abandoned because they could no longer walk.
The final defence had not just received two more warriors, but had been fully relieved.
Doombreed rolled onto one knee. Half his head remained. Black vapour gathered around the missing portion, drawing upon the stolen life already contained within him. His skull completed itself first. Muscle closed around it, followed by armour and an eye that fixed upon the Slayer. The rest of his face returned around bared teeth.
Then Doombreed stopped, he felt the power contained beneath the Praetor suit.
The Slayer kept it sealed. No golden fire escaped his armour, and no divine pressure spread through the cavern. Yet at that distance, Doombreed sensed what waited within him.
It was not the Emperor's light. It did not come from the Warp. No Chaos God had given it. The pylon's nullifying pressure did not weaken it, and the blackstone could not touch it.
For the first time since entering the cavern, Doombreed hesitated.
"What power do you conceal, mortal?" Doombreed demanded with sudden uncertainty as black vapour curled around his restored face.
The Slayer gave him no answer.
Doombreed's uncertainty became rage. He raised the Axe of Khorne and charged. The weapon descended with enough force to destroy the final defensive position.
The Slayer caught it.
One gauntlet closed around the haft beneath the blade. The impact passed through him and entered the cavern floor. Stone split beneath his boots. A fracture travelled across the remains of the seventh defensive line before stopping against the foundations surrounding the central pylon.
The Slayer did not move.
No crack, scorch, bloodstain, or layer of dust marked the Praetor suit.
Doombreed pushed against the weapon. The muscles in his arms expanded while red fire burned across the runes carved into the axe. The Slayer tightened his grip.
The haft broke.
He tore the remaining half from Doombreed's hands and drove the broken end into the Daemon Prince's chest. Brazen armour folded beneath it. Before Doombreed could recover, the Slayer struck his lower arm, caught the broken limb with both hands, and twisted.
The arm separated at the elbow, black blood crossed the floor.
Doombreed struck him with the Rod of Khorne. Red force spread through the cavern, lifting wreckage, bodies, and broken weapons from the ground. The Slayer remained where he stood while the power divided around his armour.
Doombreed's replacement arm began growing. Bone extended from the wound. Muscle formed around it, and claws appeared at the end of the unfinished hand.
The regeneration remained swift, but nothing new fed it. The Daemon Prince was consuming power stolen before the Slayer entered the cavern, and that reserve was no longer being replenished.
Thin streams of black vapour reached toward the protected defenders. They struck Celestine's barrier and disappeared.
The Slayer had separated Doombreed from every mortal soul in the cavern. Celestine had taken everything else from him.
Inside the barrier, Celestine lowered Eleanor beside Genevieve and placed one hand over the broken armour covering her chest. White-gold light entered the wound without weakening the protection surrounding the other survivors.
"Eleanor," Celestine said with painful relief as she knelt beside her companion. "I have returned."
Eleanor's eyes opened.
"My lady," Eleanor whispered with exhausted joy as she struggled to focus upon Celestine's face. "We knew you would."
Genevieve looked between them, blood and disbelief covering her face.
"We were told you had vanished aboard the Blackstone Fortress," Genevieve said with trembling relief as she remained beside her sister. "Creed received no answer."
"We fell from the fortress with Abaddon," Celestine explained with solemn satisfaction as the light beneath her hand restored Eleanor's broken bones. "The Slayer destroyed him upon Cadia. He and Drach'nyen are gone forever."
Genevieve looked through the barrier toward the warrior holding Doombreed away from them.
"Then the reports were true," Genevieve said with growing awe as she watched him. "The Despoiler is dead."
"Nothing remains of him," Celestine confirmed with quiet gratitude as Eleanor's breathing steadied beneath her hand.
The reunion lasted only seconds. Celestine rose before the daemons surrounding the barrier could gather, leaving Eleanor healed but exhausted beside her sister.
"All surviving units enter the light!" Greyfax commanded with urgent authority as she directed the remaining Vostroyans toward the central node. "Leave the barricades!"
"Ultramarines, cover their withdrawal!" Cerantes ordered with disciplined exhaustion as he placed himself between the daemons and the final survivors.
A white-gold wave passed around Cerantes and the remaining Astartes. It destroyed the Bloodletters approaching from the front, turned the Flesh Hounds upon the opposite flank into ash, and stopped before touching a single defender.
Cerantes looked toward Celestine, then toward the Slayer holding Doombreed alone beyond the shattered barricades.
He understood. There was nothing left for his warriors to cover.
"Ultramarines, withdraw," Cerantes ordered with reluctant acceptance as he lowered his bolter and led his surviving warriors toward the light.
The Vostroyans entered first with the Kappic Eagles helping those unable to walk. Cadians and Sisters followed. The surviving Salamanders were among the last Astartes to withdraw, each carrying wounded soldiers despite the blood running through the breaks in their own armour. Celestine drew the remaining Tanith snipers from the upper galleries before winged daemons could close around them.
The Kataphron Breachers reversed through the light while Electro-Priests guarded their damaged machines. Trazyn's surviving Necrons withdrew with them, firing until the barrier closed between them and the horde.
Eleanor forced herself upright. Her armour remained broken, but the body beneath it had healed. She reached for a weapon while Genevieve turned toward the daemons outside.
"Remain with the wounded," Celestine told the Geminae with gentle authority as she lifted the Ardent Blade from the ground. "You have both fought enough."
"We can still stand beside you," Genevieve insisted with exhausted devotion as she tightened her grip upon the broken sword.
"I know," Celestine answered with grateful warmth as she looked between her companions. "That is why I am ordering you to rest."
Genevieve hesitated before lowering the ruined blade. Eleanor placed one hand upon her sister's shoulder, and the two withdrew deeper into the protected area.
The Custodian remained outside longer than anyone else. Blood covered most of his damaged armour, but his guardian spear continued killing the daemons nearest the wounded. Only after the final Kappic Eagle passed through the barrier did he turn toward the light.
His injured leg failed beneath the first step.
Celestine's power closed around him and carried him the remaining distance. He landed beside Greyfax and used his spear to remain upright.
"A necessary withdrawal," the Custodian acknowledged with restrained displeasure as he looked back toward Doombreed.
"The battle is no longer yours to carry," Celestine answered with respectful firmness as she moved beyond the barrier. "Rest. We will finish it."
The Custodian studied her before looking toward the Slayer standing alone before the Daemon Prince.
"Then deny him every soul," the Custodian agreed with cold resolve as he lowered himself to one knee.
For the first time since the assault began, the surviving defenders stopped fighting.
Bolters and lasguns lowered. Vostroyans sank against the base of the pylon. Cadians removed their helmets and allowed medicae workers to reach wounds they had ignored for hours. Cerantes sat among the last of his Ultramarines while Salamanders placed the soldiers they had carried beside him. Greyfax remained standing for several seconds before the strength left her wounded side and she accepted the support of a Kappic Eagle.
No one celebrated since many lacked the strength even to speak.
They rested because Saint Celestine and the Doom Slayer had taken the battle from them.
Cawl and Trazyn remained at the centre of the protected area. Neither disconnected from the interface.
"The field does not register upon any Warp-sensitive instrument," Cawl reported with intense fascination as several lenses followed the white light. "It possesses no measurable Immaterium signature, yet it is resisting every daemonic incursion."
"You may study the impossible phenomenon after we survive it," Trazyn advised with dry urgency as he continued correcting the pylon sequence. "Your attention remains necessary elsewhere."
Cawl and Trazyn could not join the exhausted defenders. Breaking contact would end the activation sequence purchased with so many lives. Trazyn's remaining Necrons stood motionless behind the barrier while Cawl's surviving machines powered down damaged weapons and redirected their remaining energy toward the interface.
Doombreed attempted to move toward them.
The Slayer caught him by one wing and pulled him backward. The Daemon Prince struck the ground hard enough to bury his restored arm beneath the stone. The Slayer placed one boot against the base of the wing and tore it from his back.
Doombreed roared. The sound broke damaged machinery throughout the cavern, but it did not move Celestine's barrier.
The lesser daemons charged with him.
Celestine met them alone.
She flew beyond the barrier and swept the Ardent Blade across the cavern. White-gold light passed through the first formation, destroying hundreds of daemons before striking the ranks behind them. Bloodletters vanished. Flesh Hounds became ash. Winged creatures fell burning from the smoke while Horrors disappeared beneath their own reflected fire.
No Imperial weapon joined her attack and none was needed.
Celestine drew more survivors from positions hidden beneath wreckage and carried them through the light one after another. With each rescue, another path through which Doombreed might reach a mortal soul disappeared. His severed wing did not return at once, and the damaged arm remained incomplete.
When the last visible defender entered the barrier, seventy-one of the original seventy-two Imperial life signs rested within it. One remained somewhere beyond the light, alive but concealed beneath the wreckage of the fallen lines.
The reserve of stolen power within Doombreed continued to drain. Doombreed understood what they had done.
He drove the Rod of Khorne into the ground.
Red fire erupted beneath the Slayer. The floor opened and stone rose around him in burning fragments while the Daemon Prince used the explosion to throw himself toward Celestine's barrier.
The Super Shotgun entered the Slayer's hands.
He fired into the back of Doombreed's knee. Bone and armour disappeared, folding the leg beneath the Daemon Prince before he could reach the light.
The Slayer launched the Meat Hook into his spine and dragged him away from the central node. Doombreed's claws opened trenches across the floor. He turned and released another wave from the Rod, but the energy divided around the pristine Praetor suit without slowing the chain.
The Slayer reached him and drove the Super Shotgun beneath the edge of his breastplate.
He fired.
The blast opened Doombreed from chest to back. When the Daemon Prince swung one claw toward him, the Slayer moved beneath it, caught the wrist, and used the arm to throw the larger creature across the cavern.
Doombreed struck the remains of the sixth defensive line and continued through it. His knee began regenerating, but the process was slower now.
The Ballista replaced the shotgun.
Doombreed rose upon one leg and opened his remaining wing. The first bolt passed through its centre, burning the membrane from the bones. A second destroyed the joint connecting it to his back.
The Daemon Prince fell again.
Lesser daemons rushed to surround him, but Celestine intercepted them. Waves of white-gold force left the Ardent Blade and crossed the cavern, destroying entire formations before stopping short of Doombreed. When winged daemons attempted to pass above her, telekinesis caught them and drove them into the ground. When Horrors filled the galleries with Warp-fire, she turned the flames back upon them.
Behind the barrier, the survivors surrendered to the exhaustion they had denied for hours. Eleanor sat beside Genevieve while medicae workers removed the broken sections of their armour. Cerantes had taken off his helmet and rested against the pylon with the remnants of his Ultramarines. Greyfax permitted a Scion to bind the wound beneath her ribs. Even the Custodian remained upon one knee, both hands resting upon his guardian spear while damaged armour and blood covered his body.
Their weapons lay silent beside them.
They watched Celestine hold back the daemonic army and the Slayer drive Doombreed across the ruins of the lines their comrades had died defending.
The Daemon Prince's regeneration slowed further.
The Slayer stored the Ballista and extended the Doomblade.
Doombreed recovered his axe from the burning wreckage. Its haft remained broken, but he gripped the shortened weapon with one hand and swung.
The Slayer stepped inside its arc.
The Doomblade cut through Doombreed's wrist. The axe and severed hand struck the ground together. The Slayer tore the weapon free and threw it beyond the Daemon Prince's reach, burying it inside the cavern wall.
Doombreed attacked with the Rod, the Doomblade removed that arm as well.
Both wounds began closing, but neither closed quickly enough.
"Seventy-two Imperial life signs remain," Cawl reported with guarded relief as new projections filled his vision. "No loss has occurred since your arrival. Seventy-one are protected within the field, and our projected survival now exceeds the remaining synchronisation period."
"One life remains exposed, and the barrier remains essential," Trazyn cautioned with focused concern as he examined the changing harmonics. "Postpone your optimism until both problems are resolved."
"Neither will be lost," Celestine promised with unwavering confidence as she held the white-gold field around the protected survivors and searched beyond it for the final life sign.
Doombreed heard them. He looked from the Slayer to the protected defenders. Every path toward the pylon was blocked by the warrior before him. Every mortal he could see had disappeared behind power he could not break, while the final exposed life remained hidden beneath wreckage and covered by Celestine's reach. His lesser daemons were dying outside the barrier, and the Necrons behind it possessed nothing he could use.
The trap was closing.
"You shield the weak so they may watch you die," Doombreed snarled with desperate rage as incomplete arms grew from his shoulders.
The Slayer walked toward him.
"They are not yours," the Slayer answered with cold finality as the Doomblade remained lowered beside him.
Doombreed stepped backward.
The movement was small, even so the Slayer saw that sign of hesitation.
Beneath the rage, Doombreed understood. The Slayer could have released his divine essence when he entered the cavern. He could have erased the Daemon Prince before the first blow and ended the battle without drawing a weapon.
He had chosen not to.
Inside Doombreed's corrupted essence, the Slayer felt the remnants of countless deaths. Worlds had been turned into altars. Cities had burned so that Khorne might receive their blood. Children, soldiers, rulers, and entire cultures had ended beneath the weapons of the creature retreating before him.
Doombreed remembered them only as offerings, but the Slayer felt every echo they had left behind.
He left every firearm inside his pocket dimension. The Super Shotgun, Ballista, Heavy Cannon, and the rest waited there beside the inactive Crucible.
Doombreed would not receive its finality yet.
The Doomblade retracted into the Slayer's gauntlet. He approached the Daemon Prince with nothing but his physical strength.
Behind him, Celestine searched the battlefield one final time.
A wounded Vostroyan lay beneath the remains of a field gun near the destroyed seventh line. One hand moved against the stone.
He was alive.
Celestine reached toward him. White light closed around the wreckage and lifted it away. The soldier rose from the ground inside her power and crossed the ruined cavern while daemons burned beneath Celestine's light.
Cawl's final unprotected marker crossed the boundary and joined the other seventy-one.
The Slayer extended the Doomblade. Doombreed looked at him and understood: there was no one left to feed upon and no one left to hide behind.
Now the punishment could begin.