Tresch wasn't singing. This despite having learned it during his youth in the Schola Progenium and having sung it loud and clear as a child there. Then after he joined the Adeptus Arbites as a young adult and many years after in law enforcement, as his attitude slowly soured and he became more and more cynical and joined Glaitis' organisation to become one of her assassins. This was natural, he was by and far the best sniper of his precinct, so much so he'd been seconded to aid the Scintillan PDF and Magistratum in missions too many times to count.

He was the best, he was always the best, and here he was about to die the worst death imaginable, he was about to die like a dog. He didn't deserve such a death.

Hayden glanced about at everyone as they stood and sung, but no one deserved such a death. He glanced again at the enclosing walls, floor and ceiling like they had fused into a sphere. Hayden wondered if anyone else had noticed it, he doubted it.

The thought made Hayden look to Dellenger. The scout wasn't singing either; he just watched Hayden through narrowed slits for eyes. Despite this himself, a shiver sliced through him and he looked away. Something about the Scout terrified him, and Hayden didn't scare easy, and it wasn't just his reputation, but something else, something inhuman? Hayden couldn't quite place a finger on it. He had eyes like Attelus,' the weary eyes of someone who is far older than they seem or had led a short life of horrible experience. But to a far, far more significant extent than that little shit. It was Hayden's fear of Dellenger that made him stand down.

Hayden then looked to Commissar Tathe, who still sung the loudest and still swung his arm side to side like a fool. But yet, despite the familiar stench of sweat and terror in the air, almost everyone sang alongside him, even the damned civilians and especially the frigging ecclesiarch.

It was...damned impressive Hayden was loathed to admit. He doubted even Inquisitor Enandra or Inquisitor Tybalt could rally and inspire people so well, make them sing in the face of inevitable death. Hayden clenched his teeth as envy stabbed into his chest. If he had that level of leadership skill and charisma...

He'd be the leader of this expedition, rather than Attelus. Maybe...Maybe Inquistor Enandra was right not to place Hayden in charge, while he disagreed with her decision to put Attelus as the leader. Hayden wasn't a leader; perhaps he could never be one at all; he was too old, too aloof, too stuck in his ways. Attelus was still young, still with great potential, but Hayden doubted he could ever be a leader on par with the great ones such as Tathe. Not even close.

But he could still be a better leader than Hayden.

Hayden glanced at Vark's dead body which was slowly sliding across the floor towards them with the enclosing door. Hayden sighed, both he and Hayden had wanted to slaughter the civilians to escape, as had most the others, but the commissar had been right, if they had they'd surely have fallen to Chaos, making all their hardship pointless. But they were going to get crushed to death, so it was pointless either way.

Unless Attelus, Karmen and the others pulled some frigging miracle and saved them.

Why was frigging Commissar Tathe so willing to place his faith into the little frigger? Hayden couldn't understand it, but as Darrance had said, Hayden wasn't the most faithful of people.

Darrance...His only other friend, who was likely dead, surely his luck must have run out? Darrance and Castella and many others over the years, she had died back on Omnartus, three years at the hand of Etuarq's witch-puppet Inquisitor Edracian. She had been faithful, a true believer in the damned Imperial Cult. Both Darrance and Hayden and sometimes Attelus would talk behind her back about her hypocrisy; she was a mercenary, she fought for herself and her organisation, not the 'God-Emperor' and yet, she'd been the best of them. The organisation's heart, it was her that first saw Glaitis' corruption, and it was her that convinced Darrance and Hayden to betray her. She had also been the only one who stood up for Attelus and...

Hayden sighed again, he missed her, he truly did and...He wondered why she had died where Attelus had lived.

Tears welled in Hayden's eyes as the realisation hit him; he probably wasn't going to see her when he dies, which will be likely very damned soon.


Attelus hit the floor and rolled into a crouch, his sword activating into a blaze of blue and held ready as he took in his surroundings. A man stood with his back to Attelus, about fifteen metres away he was shirtless and was well over two metres tall and utterly corded and bloated with muscle. The muscles seemed to have burst from the skin, making the shiny, red fibres fully visible. The head covered in shaggy, short brown hair. He stood in front of a huge window which reached to the ceiling, at least thirty metres above and spread to encapsulate half the width of the wall, around twenty metres and turned to allow a 60-degree view of the blood sands and the buried city far below. The floor was tiled with expensive-looking sandstone, and to Attelus' right was a stairway which zigzagged up to a higher-level which Attelus assumed must be where the living quarter must be.

'So,' said the man, keeping his back to Attelus. 'I cannot believe you managed to make it all the way here, little assassin.'

Attelus stood, pointing his sword at the man. 'General Tathe, I assume?'

'Indeed,' said the General. 'I cannot believe you made it, little assassin, but I am glad that you did.'

That put Attelus off balance. 'Before...I-I kill you, I-I-I n-need you to-to-to tell me...s-something.'

'I would like to have answers from you as well, little assassin,' said the General. 'Such as how you managed to bypass the warp storm conjured by my patron? You and that other group. Are only two, but I suspect you won't tell me.'

'O-o-of course n-not.'

The General sighed. 'What is it you wish to know, little assassin?'

'The-the e-exterminatus, how did it h-happen? And w-why? And w-why do y-y-y-your soldiers not r-remember it?'

The General raised his head and barked out a laugh. 'Hah! Is that what you came all this way to learn? To be honest, little assassin I had forgotten about it as well, until a few months ago at the beginning of this war.'

'Y-y-you're a-a-actually g-going to tell me?'

Finally, general Tathe turned to face Attelus, a massive grin on his face. 'Oh, I am. I tell you only because I am weary, oh so weary of everything. I have been a soldier for over a century, I have been a commander of men for almost half of that and recently, I realised that with my action of selling my soul to the Blood God, I have merely replaced one slave-master for another.'

With that general Tathe waved his huge paw, in an arc. 'There, I have just released my son and my former men from their imprisonment. Call them on the vox-link if you wish for confirmation.'

Attelus through his bemusement managed to activate his micro-bead with a shaking hand. 'Commissar?'

'That you, Attelus?' said Tathe. 'We're, we're free! Did you kill my-'

Attelus cut the link, his chest.

'I didn't want to subject them to such a horrific death,' said the General. 'If you hadn't come up here; I wouldn't have had the courage to do it. To release them, I mean.'

'I-I-I don't-don't-n't-don't un-understand!'

The General shrugged his huge shoulders. 'No, you wouldn't. You came here expecting me to be a frothing at the mouth psychopath, fighting with all he has to kill you, and that's understandable, especially because of my announcements over the public address system but I have managed to gain control of myself again, temporarily, mind you, so we have little time. Now, so do you wish to know about the Exterminatus or not?'

'I-I do. B-But h-how the hell d-d-d-do I know-know you're telling the truth?'

'You do not,' said the General. 'But you can take this as my last will and testament if that means anything.'

All Attelus could do was nod.

'Thank-' a huge animalistic growl tore from the General's mouth and his head raised, the veins popping from the muscle fibres in his neck. Attelus readied his sword.

But the General seemed to gain control of himself. 'My apologies, I am hanging by the thinnest of threads, my master wants you dead, but frig him...for now.'

The General hunched forwards and sighed, closing his eyes. 'It was two years ago we were deployed on the world of Gurtar to aid it in defending a Chaos invasion. Gurtar was an agri world with a population of around eight billion. My Elbyran contingent and I were deployed on the northern continent, which was the most urban and inhabited. The first month was a hard slog, but we were slowly gaining the advantage over the enemy, but...'

The General closed his blood-shot eyes again and took a long inhale through his nose. 'But then we began receiving reports of hundreds of strange, black domes scattered throughout the world.'

'B-b-black d-d-domes?' Attelus blurted as the terror overrode his red-addled mind.

'Yes, and by your tone, you are familiar with them as well?'

Attelus nodded, they were the daemon-things Etuarq had Feuilt, the triple agent, summon to destroy them back on Omnartus. They were horrific things, immune to pain and far more powerful than the Bloodletters before. They would've wiped out Attelus and the others, then the entire population, potentially if Attelus didn't have the help of Farseer Faleaseen to stop them. They also only had to deal with one dome, Attelus couldn't help shudder at the thought of what hundreds would do. He didn't even begin to consider that Etuarq would be able to use them on such a colossal scale.

'None of us, not even Dellenger had seen such things before thus I called the Inquisition and it only took them two weeks to arrive, and during that time, teams monitored the domes, but they did nothing. But I was shocked, as were everyone, when we found it was three squads of Grey Knights and an Inquisitor of the name Soloston.'

'And let m-me g-g-guess, th-the minute the Grey Knights d-d-deployed: huge, ugly, bloated th-th-things began e-e-emerging from the d-domes and a-a-appearing around th-them?'

The General nodded and his huge frame shuddered. 'They were almost unstoppable, it took dozens upon dozens of shots to take down even one of them, they slaughtered my men and the enemy as well, we'd managed to hack into their vox network a week before and were just as bemused as we were by the black domes, and they too were being slaughtered en masse. The Grey Knights were more effective, but they were spread thin and their psychic powers weren't effective; even they had no idea what the hell, the...monsters were, either.'

The General's eyes glazed as he stared into the middle distance. 'My command squad and I encountered two and it took five krak missiles to take one down but the other slaughtered all my men except for my voxman and myself with its angled teeth and more and more and more kept coming, so I turned to Inquisitor Soloston and said to him that we only had one option...'

'Exterminatus,' said Attelus.

'The world was lost, frig it!' snarled the General so powerfully it made Attelus flinch. 'And we only had enough ships to evacuate The Imperial Guard, so we evacuated, leaving the civilian populace to die and then I watched the world burn and die. But we had no choice! If those things escaped and managed to spread to other worlds! They would destroy everything. Only one Grey Knight escaped with us! All the rest were overwhelmed so fast it boggled the mind!'

There was a long pause as the General fell into short, sharp hyperventilating.

'T-then w-what h-h-happened?'

'They last remaining Grey Knight erased my memory and the memories of it for every Imperial Guardsman and woman who had fought on the planet. I and many others thought it were a blessing. But since then, a voice in my skull began to whisper again and again that something was wrong. Then eventually, I made the mistake of beginning to speak to that voice, that was at the beginning of this campaign and then it unlocked the memories of what happened and it drove me insane, and into giving myself to...Him and betraying my men and turning my back on the Emperor.'

Again, the General roared out then began to start storming toward Attelus, but seemed to manage to stop himself and sideways a few steps. 'I-I can't control myself for much longer, little assassin! You have to kill me! I am a lodestone! I am the last fragment of His power left on this world, so when I die! The Resurrected die too! Kill me now! Before my son and your allies are overwhelmed.'

'I-I n-need to ask a-another question!'

'I already answered! Kill me! Please. But, please just tell my son that I am so very proud of him. That he is a far greater man than I can ever...be! That I should...have told him that...years ago!'

'Y-yes, okay, b-but w-where's the sword?'

The General's eyes narrowed. 'What sword?'

'Th-the sword o-o-o-of Kalncereth or w-w-whatever it' s-it's called! Where-where is i-it? The-the voice s-said it was-was up here!'

'I have...no idea what...you are...talking about! Please! Just! Kill me! Noooow!'

The General's utterance of "Now!" descended into an animalistic, guttural growl and spittle exploded from his lipless mouth and down his chin.

Finally, through his thundering skull and the haze Attelus' managed to realise the General was telling the truth, so he raised his sword and exploded into a charge.

Attelus made the fifteen metres in less than a split-second, but it felt like hours before he lunged into a decapitating slash. But the General, horrifically fast, ducked the cut. Attelus spun to face the General, then landed just in time to throw himself aside an uppercut which smashed into the thick Glasteel a good few centimetres, cracking it.

Then a huge chainsword seemed to materialise in the General's other hand, and he swung it for Attelus' chest horizontally. Attelus jumped away and cursed.

He had the opportunity to end it, and frigged it.

He frigged it bad.