singing bowls with odd, polyrhythmic melodies. Haunting and drawn, they channelled the psychic focus of the coven.
Slowly and deliberately, Sabtah stepped onto the dais. He was alert, his eyes darting, but his body was fluid and relaxed. He turned and gave the surrounding Blood Gorgons a salute, extending his power trident horizontally before him.
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Opposite him, Muhr also stepped onto the dais. The witch’s armour was polished clean.
New iron studs had been riveted over the polyps that clustered on the shoulders and chest plate. A black cloak poured from his shoulders and a sword that Sabtah had never seen before sat at his hip.
Both were ready for judgement.
Sabtah knelt down, murmured his devotion to the gods and threw fistfuls of rock salt over his shoulders. The coarse grains cascaded down his back as he prayed.
‘We invoke you for judgement,’ intoned one of the coven. The air continued to distort, warping itself to bursting point. Patterns solidified in the air as overlapping dimensions within the warp became lucid to the human mind. The air became so cold, it carried particles of frost.
Muhr looked at Sabtah, curiously confident despite his impending judgement.
INSIDE THE SACRIFICE bowl, Muhr’s crystal shard rocked gently as the warp energy was invoked. The creature within became animated, thrashing its microscopic arms and dancing with an eerie vigour. As it cavorted, minute cracks appeared across the tiny shard.
The crystal cracked and began to weep a black fluid. Oozing like treacle, it was pushed outwards from the crystal shard, discolouring and mingling with the blood. Bubbling and frothing, it released an absurd amount of liquid that the tiny crystal could not possibly contain. It filled the bowl until the black fluid gathered along the edges and poured down in a solid curtain. With one final shudder, the bowl rocked and tipped over, spilling a low tide across the marble.
The Blood Gorgons gathered at the edge of the pit touched their boltguns in trepidation.
The invocation was a common ritual but they had never seen this before.
Sabtah looked up. Across from him, Muhr had crouched with one knee on the ground.
The witch’s head was bowed. His hands were nonchalantly pressed against the marble. His fingers, subtle and almost unseen, were scraping away at the painted wards.
Sabtah rose urgently. He opened his mouth to shout a warning. Muhr looked up and smiled at him.
Something was wrong, but it was too late.
Reality began to buckle. The walls of the temple appeared to liquefy, the particles of its structure becoming loose. The floor and ceiling tilted at an angle that was nauseous to the human mind. The three dimensions of the material plane and the numerical perfection of existence was disintegrating as the warp hole began to expand.
And then the world went black.
YETSUGEI WAS AWAKENED. His playthings were pleading for his presence again. The warp was shifting. Beyond any concept of distance or time, a rift was opening. He could sense his invocation. But there was something else there too – a baleful malevolence, strong and reeking. Yetsugei knew better. He curled himself away, folding himself up and squirming into the darkest regions. The presence was too much, even for him. He ignored their call and tried to flee.
THERE WAS AN atom‐splitting howl. They all heard it.
It was followed by a sudden and ominous blackout. Every single sconce torch fluttered out.
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As a matter of automatic reaction, the Blood Gorgons switched to thermal vision.
Nothing.Night reflection.Nothing. Multi‐light overlay. Nothing. It was an unnatural darkness flooding in from the warp.
Then the screaming began.
It killed quickly. Brother Talus was disembowelled. Brother‐Sergeant Arkum fell in sections, blood drizzling like fine rain. Muzzles flashed.
Inexplicably, the torches fluttered back. A daemon was amongst them. The containment wards had failed. They were scorched into the marble itself, burning like a racing promethium flame.
It towered above them all, thirteen metres tall. Its body was flaccid, covered with sparse, wiry hair. Its eight‐dozen arms whipped sickles like a threshing mill. Its maw was ringed by blunt, chiselled teeth.
‘Daemon of Nurgle!’ shouted one of the coven.
‘Basho Eeluk has come for Sabtah,’ gurgled the daemon.
Before the coven could banish it, Basho Eeluk shouted a single word, a syllable of power. The warp gate expanded rapidly until it encompassed the entire dais before collapsing with a surge of static. There was a rolling boom like thunder, as air rushed in to fill the vacuum.
The marble dais was gone. The sacrificial bowl lay upturned. Sabtah was gone. Muhr was gone.
SABTAH DID NOT know where he was. His surroundings were dark