Blood Gorgons - By Henry Zou Page 0,121
visor data, atmospheric temperatures plummeted almost twenty degrees in an instant. A rime of crystals coated his vision. Barsabbas wiped the frost away from his helmet with his fingertips.
He heard a soft swish like a carp gliding through a creek, a gentle lapping sound as if someone were skimming the surface of the water, ever so gently. Barsabbas wondered if that sound was the witch, gliding across the water. The wafting white hair. That slackened dead face, levitating above the ground. The image chilled him. He shifted his grip on his bolter and held it tight.
GAMMADIN WHEELED AS the wrecking ball crashed through a set of ornate banisters and into the command throne.
‘Come and fight me!’ Opsarus called.
The Blood Gorgon Ascendant had regained his bearings. His head still pounded with residual pain but he had enough faculty to invoke his will again.
Opsarus cornered him, forcing him back up against the mono‐crystal viewing ports of the bridge. Feigning defensiveness, Gammadin lunged upwards without warning. He struck rapidly with his pincer, the gnarled crescent claw snapping at the Nurgle Champion’s Terminator plate, gouging chunks from the ceramite.
Opsarus replied with a backhanded punch that thrust Gammadin several steps back –
enough distance for the wrecking ball to be brought to bear. Still lurching on the balls of his feet, the Blood Gorgons Ascendant balanced himself against the viewing glass. Sensing a momentary lapse in his foe’s guard, Opsarus surged forwards with his tremendous bulk.
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It was exactly where Gammadin wanted him.
The viewing ports detonated, their fragments shooting in straight, linear paths as the vacuum of space stole them away. Gammadin’s mind blast was weak, strained from his earlier effort, but he centred the force well, aiming the full psionic focus at the viewing ports themselves.
The sudden vacuum tore out the command bridge. Parchment, data‐slates and even the shredded shells of cogitators were ripped outwards and through the shattered ports.
Opsarus lunged, overcommitting as the vacuum tugged him. Shooting off his knees, Gammadin threw his entire weight forwards and collided with the Overlord’s shins. Such was the speed and force of their collision that armour plates detached from boltings, visors shattered, ceramite chipped and steel dented steel. Opsarus snarled and staggered.
Gammadin twisted his body and ripped Opsarus’s base out from underneath him, spilling him over.
The Nurgle lord fell, out of the empty port space and into the void beyond. His mammoth bulk became weightless as he was pushed beyond the Cauldron Born’s artificial gravity. His hand shot out and snagged the port frame, digits sinking into the metal as he fought for purchase.
‘Go forth! You are not welcome here. Perish in the seas of space so that no trace of you will remain,’ Gammadin bellowed.
He raised his pincer and snapped at Opsarus’s anchored hand, shearing it off. Globes of blood drifted from Opsarus’s forearm, spilling outwards and upwards in a slow, languid dance. Opsarus spiralled away, silent and still. He pointed at Gammadin, almost accusatory, as the void took him out to drift and drift into a slow, suffering death.
HIS MIND IMAGINED the witch’s scalpel fingers sliding across his neck. Still he heard that awful swishing through the water. Taut with energy, Barsabbas shifted uneasily in his crouch.
Gravel skittered under his boots, loud and clattering in the darkness.
‘Come out…’ a soft voice murmured.
Barsabbas spun out from behind the calcite pillar, squeezing the trigger of his bolter. He screamed something just for the sake of making noise. His neck bulged as he roared, his chest puffed as the bolter flashed ferociously.
Muhr reeled back in surprise. His force shield strobed as a rapid series of impacts exploded around him. One shot after another, Barsabbas aimed for the same spot, attempting to weaken and short out the forcefield. Time slowed down. The impacts seemed frustratingly languid.
The force shield fizzed and then popped with a vacuum clap. Barsabbas’s bolter coughed dry clicks. Emboldened by breaching the shield, he leapt forwards with his mace.
Muhr lashed out with his hands and drilled the bond‐brother in the face with a hammerblow of invisible energy.
The blow rocked Barsabbas so hard he momentarily blacked out. He was compelled by fear and did not feel it. He saw only red. Muscles bunching from frantic tension, he began to swing his mace harder than he had ever struck anything. There was a crazed desperation to his strength: the strength of a madman and the howls of a brain‐addled lunatic. The fear Barsabbas felt gave him a primal savagery he had never known.
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Muhr’s face collapsed under the crunching onslaught.