and began ripping them apart and crushing them beneath their weight. Hundreds of slaves were injured as they were dragged into the fray and their chains snapped tight between the machines, entangling them with the foe.
The Host followed closely, firing into the mayhem, not caring who they killed. Thousands dropped beneath the roar of bolters, and as chains were driven into the ground and snapped, the Host broke into a run. They fell amongst the slaves and enemy, hacking and cutting with chainaxes and swords, bludgeoning with bolters and burning with roaring flamers.
Marduk saw Jarulek enter battle ahead of him, shooting down from his floating pulpit with a monstrous, daemon-bolter that caused hideous mutations in those it struck. The screaming daemons of Tzeentch scythed through the enemy, their razor-edged forms cutting limbs from bodies and cleaving through heads. The smaller daemons whirled around the Dark Apostle, eviscerating anything that came close.
Marduk saw a warrior raise a hand to hurl a grenade at the Dark Apostle, but his forearm was cleanly severed as he pulled it back for the throw. It fell to the ground as his feet. Marduk laughed as he saw the look of frantic panic on the man's face before he was hurled through the air by the force of the explosion. A pair of screaming ray-daemons cut through the air and sliced into the flailing body as if playing with a new toy and he fell to the ground in pieces.
Marduk fired his bolt pistol into the face of an enemy as he formed the complex words of a passage from the
A searing beam of white-blue energy from a Skitarii weapon caused the flesh and blood of several Word Bearers to boil within their power armour, and Marduk rolled to the side as the beam swept towards him, almost stumbling over the words of the complex enumeration. The results of such a slip could be catastrophic, but he picked up the incantation smoothly once again as he rolled to his feet, cleaving his weapon across the throat of another foe.
He barked out the guttural words of the enumeration, feeling the power of Chaos building, tapping into the excessive amounts of energy waiting to be released. Burias-Drak'shal's horned head lifted as the possessed warrior crouched over a kill, nostrils flaring as it scented the build-up of warp energy.
With a wave of his chainsword, Marduk ordered the warriors around him to form a circle, with him as its centre. The power armoured Chaos Marines of the Legion planted their feet, facing outwards, mowing down any that drew near their First Acolyte.
Burias-Drak'shal stalked through the maelstrom of battle. His whole posture was altered once the change had taken him. From a tall, proud and graceful warrior, he became a hulking, stooped, feral creature that oozed power and barely suppressed rage. He roughly shoved a Word Bearers warrior-brother out of his way to take his place beside the First Acolyte, who was drawing near the end of the enumeration, and planted his icon firmly into the ground.
Reaching out with one hand, Marduk gripped the icon, directing the building power of Chaos through its black metal. He gripped the icon tightly and closed his eyes, still speaking in the contorting language of the warp. When he opened his eyes they were as black as pitch.
He barked the last words of the enumeration and, in the moment of silence that followed, he and Burias- Drak'shal raised the icon high before slamming its butt down into the ground, steam rising from where it touched the earth.
The air around the icon shimmered as if with the heat of a star-engine and the long, spiked haft began to vibrate. A swirling vortex of darkness suddenly opened, and the surrounding air was sucked towards it. The kathartes screamed into reality from within the portal. Scores of them hurtled up into the sky from the rift in real space.
Their exposed muscles were slick with blood and they beat their powerful, flayed wings as they coiled overhead before descending upon the battlefield. They plummeted into the Elysians, talons curled forwards like those of an attacking bird of prey, hooking and ripping into flesh. Some men were grasped by the shoulders and lifted into the air before other kathartes screamed into them, ripping at them and squabbling over the pickings. Guardsmen were torn apart as the kathartes fought, and Marduk could feel the rising terror and fear of the soldiers, their resolve wavering.
'Fear not the devils! Faith in the Emperor will protect your souls!' came a shout from a leather-clad individual with wide, mad eyes and Marduk laughed at his folly. The man screamed an oath to the Emperor and shot down one of the katharte daemons. The shot broke one of its wings and it fell into the crush of men.
Marduk roared and leapt towards the figure, smashing aside those in his path, but the black-clad commissar was lost amongst the melee. Marduk swore in anger and continued to slaughter those around him.
Laron smiled as he saw the enemy surge forward. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He commanded his signal communicators to order the attack. They had stormed forward from their final defensive line. Now the sheer weight of the Imperials must surely prevail.
Laron raced back down the embankment towards the waiting Valkyries. He leapt aboard the closest aircraft and hooked himself onto the rappel line attached just inside the open bay door, nodding to Captain Elias. The aircraft's engines roared as it took off and the flight of thirty Valkyries rose just high enough to clear the embankment of the third defensive line before screeching over the heads of the frantically battling combatants in the no man's land below. The crewmen manning a pair of secured heavy bolters opened fire as the Valkyries swooped low over the field of battle. Laron's storm troopers, kneeling in the open doors and secured with rappel lines, fired their hellguns down into the melee, picking out targets amongst the chaotic battle surging below.
A hellish shape burst through the open bay door, ripping with daemonic claws, and blood splashed across the close interior of the Valkyrie. The stench of the creature was foul and it slashed around frenziedly, ripping at the storm troopers and hacking through rappel lines as if they were twine. Two storm troopers fell from the aircraft as it roared across the battlefield, jinking from side to side to avoid incoming fire. They fell into the mayhem below, and another's face was ripped off as the creature's tri-hinged jaw snapped.
Laron clubbed the hateful thing in the face with the butt of his pistol. Its head swung towards him, eyes burning with flames and steam emanating from the twin gashes that marked where a nose should have been. Its foetid breath made him gag and he saw that its tongue was made up of a thousand wriggling worm-tentacles as it reached for him. He jammed his melta-pistol into the daemon's mouth and pulled the trigger. The thing was lit up from the inside before it broke up into a million tiny pieces of ash and was blown out of the aircraft.
Laron grimaced as he spat the foul ash from his mouth, before grinning at the surviving storm troopers.
The Valkyries carried large cases packed with explosives. The Ordinatus might well destroy the tower, but he wasn't taking any chances and he didn't like the idea of their victory relying upon the disconcerting Adeptus Mechanicus magos. This might have been an old-fashioned way of blowing something up, but sometimes that was the best way.
Shells smashed down along the defensive tier as carefully timed and targeted artillery fire was unleashed, and an echelon of thunderbolts screamed along the line, peppering the heavy weapons teams with their intense strafing runs. The Havoc squads took down over a dozen of the Valkyries, but the relentless attacks forced them to take cover, and the remaining Valkyries screamed overhead, past the fourth defensive line, heading towards the base of the Gehemehnet.
'Rearguard, incoming.' Kol Badar said as he ripped through a pair of enemies with his combi-bolter.
'Acknowledged, Coryphaus,' came the response.
Varnus could see nothing but red as his rage lent him strength and he swung his lasgun into the face of the Elysian, smashing his visor. He leapt upon the Guardsman as he fell and smashed the butt of his las-gun into his
