and metal splinters rammed through skin-folds. They were no longer afraid of me, no longer afraid of anything, their systems force-fed hallucinogens and stimulants by the demagogues who had dragged them into this debauchery.
I did not hesitate. I charged into their midst. I tore through them, slaying rapidly and carving a path towards the pulpit. Behind me I heard the first of Urbo’s troops arrive, and the flash of las-fire soon competed with the leaping brazier-flames to banish the shadows. Gnosis whirled in a reaper-pattern, carving through the diseased flesh. They shrieked and they cursed, throwing themselves towards me. Dozens pressed in, then hundreds, clawing out, their eyes locked wide with demented fury.
Not one of them even touched my armour. I surrounded myself with a hemisphere of tattered flesh, an orbit of thrown blood that spun and splattered. I moved ever faster, my pace barely slowed by the methodical killing. I immersed myself in my combat-state of pure concentration. I didn’t see those wretches as individual targets at all, just one vast, many-headed beast standing between me and my ultimate goal. They died so quickly, depressingly quickly, like dry fuel hurled into the furnace.
Heavy weapons cracked out, telling me that Urbo’s ranged-attack squads were in place. Assault teams headed for the cages, aiming to release as many of their comrades as they could, while the bulk of the regular troops engaged the acolytes.
I was close to the pulpit by then, and could feel the air thicken, just as it had done in the cathedral of the relic. The screams ramped up, the flames leapt higher. The priest sacrificed another struggling victim on his false altar even as I drew into bolter range, oblivious to everything save the rite he was orchestrating. By then I could see just how many had been slain – there were piles of skulls, blood-streaked and flesh-pocked, stacked up beyond the pulpit like a conqueror’s hoard.
I hurled Gnosis around in a heavy crossways swipe, clearing space to leap. Even as I did so, the air ahead of me cracked open, shriven by a sudden blast of frost-hard energy, flooring those who still howled and capered, and causing the pulpit itself to rock wildly. Five clear shafts of eye-burning lightning speared down from the void above us, crystallising into the outlines of silver-grey warriors bearing force halberds and crackling warhammers. They slammed into the heart of the enemy, scattering them with the force of their arrival before instantly bursting into choreographed killing movement.
I adapted, assessing how the new arrivals interlocked with my assault, gauging speeds and impacts. Soon we were fighting together, cutting our way higher and hurling the crushed and broken bodies into the conveyers. We closed the gap, vaulting up to the pulpit’s high platform, seizing its crustaceous exhaust vents and hauling ourselves onto it.
My blade was the quickest. I reached the high platform in time to see the priest tear the living heart from a final victim. I cast down the stimm-bulked bodyguards who lumbered to engage me and angled Gnosis to discharge. The human sacrifice was thrown aside, bouncing awkwardly down the slope of skulls.
The priest grinned at me. He held the heart aloft and crushed it between his fingers, dousing his bald head in a lumpy torrent of liquid gore.
‘You see, though, we’ve done enough,’ he told me.
My bolt-shell hit him in the chest, blowing him from the platform. The charge ignited while he was in mid-air, rending him open and sending his severed limbs spinning into the crowds.
The Grey Knights joined me. Their steel-grey armour still sizzled from the extremes of teleportation, and the homer-beacons on their shoulders throbbed with residual power. Four of them bore mighty blades that crackled with neon-blue disruptor charge, while their leader carried a heavy warhammer inscribed with runes of purity.
‘We come too late,’ said their leader.
I turned on him. The hall was now in confusion, the mobs running from Urbo’s advance, throwing themselves into the las-volleys like startled cattle.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. We would kill them all now – by dawn, this place would be purged of its corruption. ‘This is ended here.’
His helm was caked in a dirty brown film of blood, all except the lenses, which glowed with blue fire. I could sense the psychic essence radiating from his core. It was like heat, leaking from his every gesture. He was perhaps a head shorter than I was, a little less heavily built. His armour was scoured raw where mine was