Roiling masses of daemon flesh materialized from the reclusiam's white stonework. So great was the warp-stench that many of the mortals fell to the ground, gasping for air as the fats and tissues coalesced into one - one being. A mouth took form, and eyes, beady and black with daemonic hunger.
"I am Alsquegoth the unclean!" the warp-fiend uttered. "I am your doom!"
Almost to a man, the guardsmen began to move back, their psyches battered by the sudden presence of this creature, so removed from the realm of the material. Even the celestians, proud and silent in their power armour, seemed unnerved by the daemon's appearance.
But to Chaplain Ruckluss and the Templars, the fear that gripped their allies was as alien as the fiend who caused it.
"It's massive," Sword Brother Barndunn hissed, narrowly avoiding being crushed by the daemon's bubo infested arm. "How can we hope to defeat such a beast?"
"Our will is greater!" Ruckluss intoned, slamming his crozius deep into Alsquegoth's rotten flesh. Shockwaves of force rippled up through the thing's torso as the thousands of kilograms of blubber and mucus and pus absorbed the impact. The smell of that organic slurry, burning, and mixing with ozone, wafted visibly, but the Templars did not pause.
Again and again, from all sides the templars cut and smashed, blasting chunks from the daemon, yet doing no lasting damage. Marshalled by the astarte's example, the guardsmen fired volleys of their lasguns up into the yawning rot-hollows of the beast's body while the celestians, ever silent and dedicated, loosed bolt rounds into its joints and face.
As if taking some perverse joy in the damage it had taken, Alsquegoth gurgled - it might have been laughter. The thing chortled and jiggled, so jubilant in the mayhem, and then it's maw dropped open, whatever passed for bones, unhinging so that it might spew a great wave of corrosive vomit down on its assailants.
Stationary, and in such tight formation, the guardsmen made a perfect target. They hardly had a chance to scream before the bilious discharge flensed the muscle from their bones, leaving behind only a few corroded lasguns and some scraps of flak armour.
"Our will is greater!" Ruckluss barked again, lifting his crozius again and swatting away more kilograms of flesh.
The rot-fiend snatched a celestian from the reclusiam floor, considering her for a perverse moment before crushing the life from her body with black fingernails.
"Avenge the fallen!" Ruckluss shouted, grappling his way up the daemon's side.
"What are you doing little one?" Alsquegoth chuckled, moving its ponderous arms to deal with this threat.
"I am your demise, daemon!" Ruckluss spat, ripping another hole in the daemon's ghoulish frame. "I will cast you back to the depths of the warp!"
"I think not!" Alsquegoth gurgled, grabbing the Templar Chaplain, much as he had the celestian, but with a speed wholly unexpected from something so large.
Holding Ruckluss up before its eyes, the daemon opened its maw once more, ready to pop the ceramite encased warrior into its mouth as a man might a morsel of food.
But as he drew closer, only a few feet from his end, Ruckluss growled, "No pity, no remorse, no fear!" and heaved his last melta bomb down the fiend's gullet.
For a long moment, Alsquegoth looked concerned - or as unconcerned as one with its tattered flesh held together by little more than warp energies and sticky pus could. And then, the daemon erupted, the melta fire within it burning through every layer of organic tissue until the thing's insides painted the reclusiam walls.
Barndunn flew back, impacted by the guts and bile, but coming through unscathed.
"You killed it," the sword brother said, somewhat unnecessarily, as he rose to his feet. "I cannot believe that you killed it."
"My will was greater," Ruckluss replied, his armour steaming with chemical rot, and his eyes glowering the way that only a chaplain's could.