Ash gave way to fire.
The gate convulsed, bleeding light and shadow in equal measure.
Then the first wave came through.
They were countless, a living tide of impossibility.
At the forefront charged Bloodletters—though the Covenant only saw them as red bladed fiends: towering, sinewed shapes, their skin like flayed meat, their black iron swords dragging molten furrows in the ash as they sprinted. Their eyes were nothing but furnace slits, their snarls like broken warhorns.
Snaking between their legs came Flesh Hounds, low and muscled, their hides raw and smoking, jaws layered with teeth like rusted hooks. Chains of brass still clung to their necks, snapping and sparking as they bounded forward.
—
The earth turned slick where Plaguebearers limped in behind them, corpulent silhouettes swollen with disease, each step leaving trails of sloughing meat and crawling flies.
Tiny Nurglings capered and chattered across their shoulders, teeth clicking like bone dice.
Above them buzzed Plague Drones, swollen fly-beasts stitched with rusted armor plates, their riders clutching pitted scythes that dripped black slime into the wind.
—
From the flanks darted Daemonettes, pale and razor-limbed, their claws long enough to scythe through ceramite, their movements unnervingly graceful.
Seekers galloped alongside on slick, many-limbed mounts, their laughter slicing through the storm like glass chimes.
—
And then the air itself screamed as Screamers of Tzeentch swooped low in streaks of warp-light, manta-shaped and shrieking, while far behind them danced ranks of Pink and Blue Horrors, giggling and howling, hurling bolts of raw warp-flame that twisted into shrieking faces as they flew.
Thousands of them.
A world's death, given form.
—
The Covenant didn't falter.
Thanatos leveled its thermal lance and poured a column of sunfire into the breach, turning sleet to boiling vapor.
Cinerion scissored its twin sabres, flinging crescents of shearing plasma.
Morphael drove its thunderstrike gauntlet forward as the spear flared, hurling molten death in hammering pulses.
Morvhar let the Avenger scream, shell-casings spilling like brass rain at its feet.
Vorgane boomed, battle cannon thundering while its seismic claw locked and tore.
Phorxys lanced twin forks of lightning into the shrieking sky.
Kaelthorn flared its stormshield, anchoring the line against the backlash as its heavy weapon answered in kind.
Seven beams and the tides converged.
The storm buckled.
—
The first wave broke apart, red bladed fiends vaporized mid-charge, plague-bloated shapes bursting into smoke, screaming mantas cleaved from the air, lithe razor-things shredded under overlapping fields of fire.
For a breath, the ash plain was nothing but steam and falling embers.
—
Then the gate convulsed again.
It expanded, vomiting fresh ranks without rhythm or mercy: more scarlet killers sprinting on embered feet, packs of burning hounds bounding over the corpses of their own, sleek six-limbed riders spurring needle-steeds to a glass-chime gallop; droning fly-beasts heaving through the heat with scythe-armed riders; shrieking disks of warp-flesh skimming low; and behind them a laughing tide of pink and blue fire-throwers, their bolts writhing with faces.
"Hold the cadence," Obol voxed, calm as a tomb. "Same fields. Same kill lanes."
—
Thanatos swept the lance and reaped lines through the new press.
Cinerion and Morphael cross-cut the charge, sabres and claws stitching a lattice of ruin.
Morvhar walked the Avenger in disciplined arcs, drowning the gaps in tungsten.
Vorgane smashed counter-battery into the rear echelons, then dragged the seismic claw across the front ranks like a scythe.
Phorxys scoured the air lanes, lightning shearing drones and screamers from the sky.
Kaelthorn held the wall—shield bright, stride unbroken—letting the others kill behind its aegis.
The second wave died as the first had—loudly, messily, and to no effect but their own unmaking.
—
And still the gate boiled.
Their cannons cooled, steam sighing from scorched barrels.
For a rare instant, the line of Knights stood still—seven titanic forms haloed in drifting ash.
"Look at them," Maeric's voice crackled over the link, dry amusement threading through the vox.
"All these colors blazing together—they look like Caldrin's dinner after he's had too many drinks."
A chorus of chuckles rumbled across the noosphere.
—
"That was a one-time mistake," Caldrin shot back from within Vorgane, his tone sharp but unable to mask the laughter beneath.
"And far too long ago, cousin!"
—
Even Morvhar's guttural growl came tinged with mirth.
The weight of war eased for a heartbeat, ancient engines sounding almost alive as their pilots shared the laugh.
Then—
"Wait," Vaeleen murmured from Phorxys' helm, her tone sharpening.
"Do you see them?"
—
The others followed her gaze.
Amid the shifting silhouettes beyond the gate, some of the shapes were striking one another—scarlet figures cleaving into cobalt ones, violet stabbing viridian, limbs tearing free and reforming before they even struck the ground.
"They're fighting," Obol said flatly, surprise cracking his voice.
"Fighting each other."
—
"Unity's a façade," Isera noted coldly from Morphael.
"A tide of beasts clawing for the shore."
—
"They'll break themselves before they reach us," Vaerin added, confident.
"Let them."
—
They might have said more—might have pushed the jest further—
—but the void cut them off.
A single roar boomed from within the gate.
No words. No language.
Just sound—raw and colossal—like a star dying in fury.
The ash clouds sheared away in concentric rings.
Reality rippled as the roar carried force.
It hit their god-machines like a hammer.
—
The noosphere crackled—howled, then fractured into a shrieking storm of static.
Warning sigils flared and died across their displays. Vox-feeds burst into white noise.
Gyros whined as the ground trembled like water.
Vaeleen swore, voice half a scream.
"Interference— systems blind—"
—
Inside Cinerion, Maeric's breath hitched, then the link caught the wet sound of him choking back bile.
"I… I'm fine," he rasped, though no one believed it.
—
Even Obol's vision wavered behind gold-filigrreed lenses, vox-canticles from the Throne Mechanicum slurring like drunken prayers.
Then,
silence—harsh and hollow after the maelstrom.
The next wave began.
Ash split. Fire spilled.
And out of the gate came war—not as a tide, but as an army.
—
First came the walls.
A Great Unclean One lurched through the breach like a mountain breaking its moorings, each footfall cracking the stone.Its hide was a tapestry of seeping wounds and rusted hooks, flies clouding so thick they looked like smoke.
Carpets of Nurglings rolled before it, tumbling over each other in a shrieking wave, chittering and biting and reforming from the rot they left behind. They piled into crude bulwarks with their own bodies, forming a living rampart for the army behind them.
The Bastion advanced like a crawling fortress of meat and rusted bone, shrugging off fire, eating distance.
—
Then came the core.
A disciplined army of daemons surged behind the wall.
Bloodletters howled their war chants, the earth sparking under their sprinting claws, while Daemonettes slipped between their legs like slivers of silvered glass.
Further back, lines of Pink and Blue Horrors hurled volleys of screaming warp-flame over their horns, laughter spiking through the roar.
Their advance was a rolling hammerblow, crimson and violet under a crown of blue fire.
—
The flanks split open.
Seekers galloped wide on their glistening many-limbed mounts, laughter cutting through the storm like glass chimes. Hellstriders flitted behind them, spears crackling, darting between the bigger daemons like carrion birds. Flesh Hounds bounded low and fast, smoke streaming from their maws.
Behind them thundered the Bloodcrushers, iron-skinned and brass-helmed, riders roaring atop their Juggernauts. And towering above all of them, the Keeper of Secrets strode with languid grace, its blade-arms trailing ribbons of warped light, its mirrored mask catching the Knight-guns' flash and throwing it back like mocking laughter.
—
And then the sky brought apocalype.
A Bloodthirster burst from the gate in a storm of brass and flame, colossal wings slamming the clouds apart, its axe spinning trails of molten sparks.
Beside it wheeled a Lord of Change in a cyclone of feathers and witchfire, vast wings splitting the heat-haze.It croaked a laugh like shattering glass, and the air screamed.
Flamers spiraled around them, vomiting ribbons of technicolor fire that burned too bright to look at. Rot Flies and Plague Drones buzzed through the heat in clouds, ichor dripping from corroded scythes, while above them, Screamers shrieked like living blades and Furies tore ragged holes in the clouds with their claws.
—
The seven Knights stood amidst the ash, reactors thundering in uneven rhythms.
Their vision feeds still crawled with static, vox channels popping like oil on fire.
Every machine-spirit in the Covenant murmured in dissonant hymn.
Inside his throne, Obol exhaled once, slow and sharp.
"Inject the tranquillitas," he voxed, tone level, brooking no dissent.
"Purge the noise. Now."
—
Obedient clicks answered him across the noosphere.
Along each Knight's spine, the throne-cables hissed and thin needles seated into flesh and augmetics alike released measured spurts of pale fluid, nerve-dampers and adrenal balancers flooding into their bloodstreams.
—
The Scions stiffened.
Breaths hitched as one—then left them in long, shaking exhales.
The noosphere steadied. The static guttered out.
Their reactors hummed again in harmony, the Covenant whole once more.
—
"Finally," Caldrin rumbled from Vorgane, a wry grin in his tone,
"they start looking like fun."
A ripple of dark chuckles followed, low and sharp-edged.
—
"Discipline," Obol cut through, though the corners of his voice held faint amusement.
"Maeric—terrain."
—
"Stone's brittle," came the immediate reply from Cinerion's helm,
"heat-shocked from our first salvos. Cracked plains, shallow basins…Good for killing fields. Bad for retreat."
—
"Noted," Obol said.
His gaze swept the horizon, gold-filigreed lenses narrowing at the towering silhouettes forming beyond the shattered breach.
"Then mark the commanders. The big ones.
The Xenos warlords join the field at last."
—
Their eyes turned skyward, to the blood-red wings and rotting towers of flesh,to the avian cyclone of witchfire and the glimmering giant masked in mirrors.Four shapes, each colossal, each drawing their legions to heel.
—
"Test their lines," Obol ordered, voice flat.
"Fire at my mark. Maeric, Isera — plasma-charge your melees."
—
A ripple of acknowledge-runes pulsed across the noosphere — seven lights blinking as one, their reactor-hymns tightening into a war-chord.
Thanatos shifted first. The Eternal Toll's thermal lance hissed to white, focusing to a hairline glare. Servos locked along its spine as it anchored to fire true.
Cinerion crouched low, sabres raised in mirrored guard. Capacitors shrieked as their plasma channels overcharged, bright arcs crawling across the teeth like blue lightning searching for prey.
Morphael rolled its thunderstrike gauntlet, the coils in its thermal spear whirling up to screaming pitch — the spearhead glowing molten-white, spitting slag droplets into the ash.
Morvhar pivoted wide to rake the line. The Avenger spun up with a shriek, its drum-fed autoloaders clanging as tungsten-cored shells chambered and primed.
Vorgane dug its seismic claw into the earth to brace, battle cannon elevating with a hydraulic groan. Range-spires cascaded across its display, locking coordinates in razor lattice.
Phorxys split away to the flank, lightning lances braced under-arm like duelist's rapiers. Static bled from its carapace in crawling veins of white.
Kaelthorn rolled forward half a stride, stormshield flaring into a rippling dome of hexagonal light. Its heavy weapon locked above the shieldline, barrel glowing cherry as the capacitors cycled.
—
"Mark." Obol's word cracked like thunder through the noosphere.
And they fired.
—
Thanatos carved a white-hot swathe through the front ranks, slagging dozens of lesser forms where they stood.
Morvhar and Vorgane hammered the second echelon, shell impacts bursting swathes of writhing bodies into vaporized gore.
Phorxys and Cinerion scythed the flanks, lightning bolts and plasma arcs vaporizing shrieking fliers as they banked low.
Kaelthorn's shield drank the backlash, absorbing the wavefronts as heat rippled harmlessly across its field.
And yet — even as daemonic bodies burst and dissolved into raw aether — the Covenant watched as Nurglings and Plaguebearers shuffled forward, their swollen masses willingly absorbing the fusillade, blocking the shots meant for the daemon ranks behind them.
High above, Bloodletters and Screamers wheeled through the air lanes as living shields, soaking fire that should have torn into the plague-drones and rot-flies behind them.
—
"Cease fire. They bleed, but not clean. Vaerin, dig them a grave. Force their core down."
Obol's voice cut through the cooling hiss.
"Lady Vaerin," he voxed, "dig their graves."
—
A rune pulsed affirmative as Kaelthorn's stormshield dipped slightly and Vaerin's voice
crackled back, quick and bright.
"With pleasure, High-Scion."
Kaelthorn's siege mortars rotated on their shoulder racks, elevation servos whining. Massive shells clunked into their chambers, rune-fuses sparking with delayed charges.
—
"Thrykos," Obol continued.
"Once Once the front is funneled down, blast their core open."
—
"Understood," Thrykos replied, flat as gunmetal.
Morvhar's Avenger whined to full speed, feed-belt rattling like steel serpents. Its stance shifted low, knees locking as it angled for crossfire.
—
"Lady Isera," Obol said next,
"open link to Bastion. Get them on stand-by. Then harry their calvaries, force them back into their ranks if they stray"
—
"Already on uplink, High Scion." Isera answered from Morphael, voice all business. The Knight's thermal spear hissed steam as her gauntlet flexed with anticipation.
"Claw and Spear locked on their calvaries."
—
"Vaeleen," Obol voxed, "keep concentration on their flyers until Caldrin can thread a shell through their mass."
—
"Hear that, uncle?" Vaeleen answered, Phorxys' lightning lances already crackling as she dialed their capacitors hot.
"Looks like the sky is our."
—
"I'm a babysitter now?" Caldrin rasped, then chuckled, Vorgane's battle cannon elevated again, waiting to pierce through the carrion's mass.
"You thin them out and I will make it boom."
—
"Maeric," Obol finished, "stay with Vaerin. Shield her line. If one of their… commanders moves first, intercept."
—
Cinerion's twin sabres angled like scissor-blades, reactor growling a low assent.
Maeric's reply came measured, clipped. "She won't fall, High-Scion."
—
Obol's throne hummed in approval as Thanatos shifted, the thermal lance swinging back toward the seething breach.
"Mark targets. Execute when ready."
The noosphere chimed as their runes aligned in readiness. Outside, the warped legions gathered under their towering masters, oblivious that the killing ground itself was about to be reshaped.
—
Within Morvhar, Thrykos' voice came first—steady, precise as iron striking an anvil.
"Avenger is ready to plow," he voxed.
"Waiting for your graves, Scion Vaerin."
—
Vaerin's grin was audible through the link.
"Wait for the fireworks, Lord Thrykos," she responded, her tone quick and sharp-edged.
"I'll give you front row view on their core."
Kaelthorn's siege mortars rotated into place with a grinding whine, their vast shells slotting home like tombstones falling into sockets.
Behind her, Morvhar lowered its stance, the Avenger's barrels spinning to a shrieking blur, autoloaders clanging as the feed belts surged forward like steel serpents.
Ash cracked under the weight of their god-machines as both Knights dug in.
"Graves incoming!" Vaerin murmured, almost to herself.
Then she keyed her sights, and the first firing run began.
—
Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop—
Six shells left Kaelthorn's mortars in quick succession, each recoil slamming its frame into the ash with a deep thud.
They cut screaming arcs through the air, whistling sharper as they climbed—then click—a hydraulic snap mid-flight.
The shells split apart, one into four, six into twenty-four.
A steel storm fanned wide, descending in slow arcs like falling scythes.
—
They struck just ahead of the advancing wall of 'Xenos'.
Vaerin grinned inside her helm, voice quick and bright over the link.
"Seeds planted. Fuses off in three… two—"
BOOM—BOOM BOOM BOOM—BOOM!
Each cluster-bomb dug deep before its delay-charge tripped, ripping the ground into geysers of fire and black glass.
The earth heaved like a dying beast.
Ash fountains roared skyward as the plain cracked and collapsed into itself,leaving a jagged wound of smoking craters across the 'Xenos' path—
a torn scar of shattered stone like a dried-up riverbed,waiting to swallow their march.
—
The wall of green lurched forward—then, with ponderous inevitability, began to march downward, swallowed by the jagged scar Vaerin had carved.
As the living rampart of rot sank into the torn earth, the formations behind them—crimson and violet—were left bared to the guns.
—
Morvhar did not hesitate.
Its Avenger spun to screaming life, barrels blurring, and a continuous
SCREEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHH
tore across the battlefield as a beam of tungsten slugs swept low, mowing through the exposed ranks in a perfect horizontal line.
Bodies burst like ruptured fruit. Vaporized gore fountained high, falling back as black rain.
"Your trenches are spotless, Scion Vaerin," Thrykos voxed at last, a rare note of approval from the famously taciturn pilot.
"We will be done in no time." His voice low and barely audible above the roar of gatling.
—
"I'm flattered, my lord." Vaerin answered lightly, Kaelthorn's massive form shifting to reset its siege racks.
Then her tone sharpened back to duty.
"Lord Obol, requesting permission to cycle payloads—switching to incendiary. I can scour the ones trapped in the ditch before they climb back out."
Her stormshield angled forward like a wall as her siege mortars ratcheted open, smoke venting from their spent chambers—awaiting Obol's word to rearm.
—
"Aye," Obol answered, voice clipped.
"Burn the weeds," he said, gold-filigrreed lenses narrowing as Kaelthorn's mortars cycled to new feed racks.
"Then cycle back to digging—keep that sequence."
—
Vaerin's acknowledgement rune blinked bright.
The siege mortars clunked closed on fresh canisters etched with hazard runes, fuses ticking like patient hearts as her Knight's stance shifted to brace for the firestorm to come.
—
Vaerin's voice crackled across the link, quick and bright.
"Lord Thrykos—switch your optics. Thermal or auspex-band. The burn's going to choke the air; you won't see a thing through the smoke."
—
Morvhar shifted slightly in its firing stance, the Avenger's barrels still spinning down from their last sweep.
Thrykos answered, flat and clipped as ever.
"Already cycling. Pattern-recognition active. Your smoke won't hide them from me, Scion Vaerin."
—
A small grin touched her tone.
"Good. Then let's make it worth seeing."
Kaelthorn's siege mortars locked with a deep hydraulic clunk, elevation servos whining as their barrels ratcheted skyward.
Morvhar's Avenger spun back to life, its drum-feeds rattling like a chain dragged over iron.
—
Vaerin's voice cut bright through the vox once more.
"On your mark, Lord Thrykos."
—
"Ready, mark." Thrykos replied, flat as stone, already tracking.
—
Kaelthorn kicked like a breaking mountain.
POP—POP—POP
six colossal shells burst from its racks, whistling high into the smoke-choked air.
Morvhar's Avenger joined in immedietly—
SCREEEEEEHHHHH—
a scything stream of tungsten tearing across the horizon.
—
The mortars' rune-fuses tripped mid-flight with a sharp click; each shell split into burning submunitions that plunged into the trenches below.
BOOM—BOOM BOOM BOOM—BOOM!
The ditch became a furnace.
Fire belched upward in rolling curtains, heat-shimmer twisting the air; oily smoke clawed skyward, thick and black, veiling the front in a writhing wall.
Through it all, Morvhar's Avenger sang—a continuous metallic scream.
SCREEEEHHHHHHH!
Its tungsten stream cut through the veil in perfect lines, slicing silhouettes out of the firestorm—red and violet shapes dismembered in bursts of molten gore, their bodies vanishing back into the smoke before they hit the ground.
Each burst lit the haze from within like lightning trapped in tar, revealing the exposed core scrambling in confusion, their formation shredded mid-step.
—
Before them, annihilation reigned.
The daemon ranks were collapsing under the Covenant's guns — crimson and violet bodies flayed apart mid-charge, their pieces scattered across the cracked plain like burning refuse.
At the center of it all, the Great Unclean One lumbered, half-submerged in the furnace ditch.
Its hide blistered and sloughed away in sheets of molten fat, only to bubble back anew — flesh knitting as fast as fire devoured it.Boils burst into clouds of flies that crisped instantly in the heat, hissing to ash before they could escape.
It looked less like a living warlord and more like a dying anthill set ablaze, its own bulk writhing against itself just to stay upright.
—
And yet, behind that mountain of decay, the gate still stood.
Vast. Silent. Eternal.
Its edges bled light that hurt to look at, and from its heart came the shapes — endless, shifting silhouettes forcing their way into reality, screaming as they were born.
Even as the frontlines burned to ruin, the breach only swelled, vomiting more bodies into the world.
For every foe erased, ten more clawed through.
—
The battlefield shook with more than just fire.
Above the furnace trench, three titanic shapes stirred—
The Lord of Change screeched, its many voices clashing like shattering glass, witchfire spiraling from its wings in furious coils.
The Bloodthirster loosed a bellow that split the air, axe grinding against its own gauntlet in a spray of molten sparks.
And the Great Unclean One, half-consumed in the pit, vomited a roar of bubbling phlegm that sent sheets of burning pus raining over its still-screaming hordes.
Their fury cracked across the field like thunder.
—
Then the Keeper of Secrets moved.
Silent. Sudden.
It vaulted from the far-right flank in a blur of mirrored limbs, its towering frame folding and unfolding like a whip.
The flames kissed its mirrored mask and slithered off, light bending around its form as if reality dared not touch it.
It landed beyond the trench in a blossom of shattered stone, claws sinking deep into the cracked earth.
Behind it came the shock-cavalry—
Seekers bounding in glass-chime strides, Hellstriders weaving between them on snapping spearpoints, Flesh Hounds loping low and fast with brass chains flailing, and the Bloodcrushers thundering behind, Juggernauts screaming brass-steam from their nostrils.
The ground quaked as they came on, a wedge of screaming speed and brute mass cutting for the Covenant's flank.
—
Obol's gaze never left the oncoming wedge.
The Keeper of Secrets danced at its point like a shard of living glass, each stride devouring ground.
"Isera."
The single word cut across the noosphere like a blade.
—
"Yes, milord," she answered, voice clipped steel.
Morphael shifted instantly—its thunderstrike gauntlet locking as the thermal spear snapped level. Vents screamed, blasting white steam from its shoulders as the coils wound to killing heat.
—
Capacitors screamed to full charge, the thermal spear's coils glowing white-hot.
Then the spear bellowed.
ZHOOM!
A column of incandescent death roared from the lance, hammering toward the charging Keeper, cutting a blazing scar through its cavalry screen.
The beam shrieked across the plain—
—but the Keeper moved like thought.
—
It vaulted aside in a blur of mirrored limbs, trailing ribbons of warped light.
The lance-shot howled past and detonated in the cavalry ranks behind, erupting into a wall of fire and molten shrapnel.
Daemon mounts shrieked as they came apart mid-stride, riders bursting into arcs of dissolving flesh; charred torsos pinwheeled through the smoke, their weapons falling from slack claws as the herd scattered riderless.
Still the Keeper came on, mask glinting through the flames.
—
It twisted mid-leap, a blur of mirrored limbs, and the incandescent lance only scorched a molten trench through the cavalry ranks behind it.Daemon mounts screamed as they disintegrated; the Keeper landed unscathed in their wake, claws dragging furrows through the ash.
"Adaptive filth…" Isera hissed under her breath, gauntlet flexing.
Morphael's ammo-feeds cycled with a hollow clank as she switched her lance's warhead carriage.
Runes blinked green on her display: PROX-FUSED EX.
"Maeric," she voxed, voice sharp,
"ready yourself. I'll crack its rhythm—then you take its head."
—
"Understood," came Maeric's reply from Cinerion, cold and steady, sabres already drawing up into mirrored guard.
Morphael's spear re-ignited, heat haze bleeding from its tip as Isera lowered it toward the approaching giant.
"Let's see you dance through this."
—
Morphael's spear barked again—
WHUMP-CRACK!
The proximity shell detonated just short of the Keeper's mirrored mask, a blossom of white fire bursting outward in a rippling shockfront.
The blast staggered the giant mid-stride, its taloned feet skidding through molten ash.
—
It roared—a sound like broken glass grinding in a furnace—and blurred sideways.
Isera didn't relent.
WHUMP—WHUMP—WHUMP!
One shot after another hammered into its path, bursting close enough to lick its flanks in tongues of searing light.
—
The Keeper twisted and vaulted to evade, forced to keep moving, its sweeping blade-arms carving only smoke.
Step by step, the distance opened—and with every sidestep, it drifted further from its cavalry screen.
Exactly where she wanted it.
—
"Isolated," Isera voxed, her tone sharp with satisfaction.
"Now, Maeric."
—
Cinerion moved.
Its twin sabres flared as Maeric drove the Knight into a bounding stride, engines howling, each step crushing molten trenches behind him.
He broke through the firestorm like a steel wraith, leaping the last thirty metres, both blades crossed in a scissoring arc.
CLANG—SHRIEK!
Metal met impossible flesh in a detonation of sparks and witchlight.
Cinerion and the Keeper collided in a storm of screaming metal and mirrored claws, the ground cracking under their weight as they locked into the duel.
"It's all yours, Duelist Specialist!" Isera called, her grin audible through the vox.
Morphael's spear swung back toward the cavalry ranks as she pivoted away.
"I'll get rid of their mounts."
—
Cinerion's sabres screamed as they crossed again, searing arcs flaring cobalt-blue in the ashen dark.
The Keeper's four bladed arms caught them mid-swing with a shriek of tearing metal—each limb like a living guillotine, talons sparking as they locked against the Knight's weapons.
Their collision sent a shockwave crawling through the cracked plain, ash geysering from the impact.
Inside his throne, Maeric bared his teeth.
"Now that we're up close," he voxed, voice dry as flint,
"you're really one ugly bastard."
—
The Keeper shrieked, sound like razors dragged over glass.
It pushed back with impossible strength, its limbs scissoring in a blur, trying to shear through Cinerion's guard from all sides at once.
Cinerion twisted with the momentum, sabres flashing in mirrored arcs, catching and deflecting the strikes in showers of blue plasma sparks.
Every impact rang like cathedral bells smashed with hammers—
Clang, Clash, Chriek, Crash—
as Knight and daemon duelist circled, locked in a storm of speed and hate.
Cinerion locked both sabres against the Keeper's inner scissor-arms, pistons shrieking as Maeric forced them outward. Servos howled, plasma channels spitting lightning across the lock.
Then Maeric cut the mag-clamps—
Cinerion's arms snapped free in a burst of recoil force.
"Die!" He hissed.
The Knight twisted with brutal grace, swinging one sabre in a low horizontal scythe.The Keeper's left pair of arms crossed to block—
—and the second sabre came down from above in a vertical blur.
CRANG! SHIV!
One daemon-arm split at the elbow, ichor spraying in pressurized gouts as the limb spun away, shrieking and writhing even as it fell.
The Keeper reeled back, mirrored mask fracturing with hairline cracks.
Maeric pressed, sabres flashing like twin storms, driving it off-balance in a whirl of crackling blue arcs.
—
Off to their flank, Isera's voice crackled calm through the noosphere.
"Their hounds are helpless." She chuckled afterward.
Morphael thundered alongside the cavalry screen, thermal spear booming in short, savage bursts.
ZHOOM—ZHOOM—ZHOOM!
Needle-limbed steeds detonated under the blasts, riders flung screaming through the air like broken dolls.
The formation began to splinter, seekers scattering from their collapsing screen as their mounts died mid-stride.
—
The Keeper shrieked again, staggering under Maeric's relentless advance as the cavalry screen dissolved around it.
It then moved in a blur of impossible grace, left scissor-arm carved downward like a guillotine, slamming into Cinerion's crossed sabres.
CRANG!
The impact wrenched one blade from Maeric's grip—It spun away trailing sparks, embedding hilt-deep in the cracked ash far below.
—
Before he could recover, the Keeper's right arm darted forward like a striking serpent.
The mirrored blade punched toward Cinerion's chestplate, shrieking through the air—
Maeric wrenched the Knight sideways, servos screaming as the point tore a molten furrow across its pauldron instead of its heart.
The glancing blow still hit like an orbital shell.
Cinerion staggered, its left knee plowing a trench as it caught itself with a seismic thud, vox-snarling from the strain.
The Keeper followed in, all four of its remaining arms lashing in a whirl of silvered death, trying to finish the duel before Maeric could recover.
—
Cinerion quickly got up, circled the towering Keeper like a hunting blade-wraith, one sabre flashing in a staccato rhythm—slash, slip, sidestep—each strike skimming between the scissor-arms as its feet tore gouges into the ash.
The Keeper's mirrored limbs blurred, silver arcs screaming through the storm; each strike missed by metres—and millimetres—
Maeric rode the edge of death, dodging, riposting, never stopping.
—
Then it struck low with its lower right limb, scything toward Cinerion's legs while its upper left arm snapped down like a steel trap.
CLANG!—
Cinerion parried low—too low.
The upper limb slammed down on its forearm, locking it fast.
Servos screamed. Pistons ground. The Knight jolted to a halt.
The Keeper leaned close, its fanged grin catching the warlight as it hissed triumph.
—
Maeric grinned back inside his helm.
"Your hit connected," he said, voice cold,
"because I let you."
—
The Keeper's eyes widened.
Chains—thin, black, and barbed—snaked from Cinerion's vambrace, running down the trapped arm…
…then further, trailing across the ash.
Its gaze followed the chains—
—and found them connected to the fallen sabre.
—
Cinerion's shoulder twisted. The left arm went slack as Maeric dropped the trapped sabre straight into his right hand.
At the same instant his free left hand seized the Keeper's limb, locking it in place with a pneumatic SNAP.
—
The abandoned sabre on the ground jerked as the chains hissed taut,then whipped upward in a reverse whirl, spinning like a hooked comet.
The Keeper lunged to escape—
—too late.
The barbed chains wrapped around its torso and arms, dragging them tight with a shriek of tearing flesh and sparking warp-light.
It tried to leap skyward—
—but Cinerion's grip was unbreakable.
"Caught you," Maeric laughed.
He drove the sabre in his right hand up under the Keeper's ribs.
Black ichor geysered as the blade sank to the hilt.
In the same heartbeat, the chained sabre snapped into his left palm.
He crossed his arms, and drove the second blade straight down into the Keeper's back from behind.
Pinned. Screaming. Bound.
"Now, High Scion!" Maeric roared.
—
"The toll is called, Xenos," Obol muttered, his tone flat as iron.
"You answer."
Thanatos' thermal lance hummed, the pitch climbing from a low growl to a keening shriek as the charge built—
BOOM!
A streak of white fury tore from the barrel, carving through the ashstorm like a spear of sunfire.
It snaked straight toward the struggling knot of Cinerion and the bound Keeper—
—and in the last heartbeat before impact, Cinerion's arm servos clanged open.
The barbed chains snapped loose and Maeric wrenched the Knight sideways in a blur of pistons and shrieking gyros, clearing the blast path.
The daemon remained alone, still bound in tightening coils.
CRASH!
The beam struck.
There was no explosion—only erasure.
—
The Keeper's upper body vaporized in a bloom of blinding light, its mirrored mask dissolving into molten droplets before they could even fall.
Its limbs convulsed, claws grasping at nothing as its torso dissolved to glowing mist.
Ash and ichor rained down in silence where it had stood.
Only a scorched crater marked where the servant of excess had died.
—
Cinerion's servos whined as it strode back from the scorched crater, steam still curling from its armor.
Maeric brought the twin sabres up into guard, reactor hum settling back to a steady growl.
He took his place beside Kaelthorn once more, shielded under the looming stormshield.
"Three left," he muttered over the link.
—
Vaerin's voice chimed in, quick and wry.
"A good performance, Lord Maeric."
A low, noncommittal grunt was all the reply she got—but the corners of his tone held the faintest smirk.
—
On the far flank, Morphael waded through the last of the broken cavalry.
"They're like headless chickens," Isera rasped, her voice tight with exertion as her thermal spear swept glowing arcs through the collapsing riders.
Needle-steeds shrieked as they dissolved into fire, leaving only molten glass where they fell.
—
Thanatos added its fire, the thermal lance flashing like a sunbeam as Obol picked off the strays trying to scatter from the rout.
"Aye," Obol voxed at last, voice iron-steady and confident.
"Only the fliers… and that bloat now."
The remaining sky-host wheeled above, and the great rotting titan still lumbered at the center of the horde, its shadow swallowing whole platoons as it came on.