A/N Sorry for the delay, dear readers. It took a while, some rewriting here and there, but I've finally got it! The Cadian Assault's drawing to a close, and the real test of Horus' resolve is underway. Please enjoy!
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The Golgo's Respite gives a shudder as another clump of debris scrapes the port side of the battlescarred and tested vessel. The defense of Belis Corona was a failure, for lack of a better term. For all the efforts, the combined might of all Battlegroups, the enemy proved too strong for Cadia's valiant defenders.
"Damage report!" Maranda yelled after the shock of losing so many comrades within the short period of two hours had worn off. Her mood only soured with each answer that came from her crew. Golgo's Respite wasn't going anywhere.
She, and no doubt everyone else on Battlegroup Imperatis, thought that their front would have at least lasted a bit longer against the tide of Chaos. As it turned out, the Despoiler himself spearheaded the assault on Belis Corona, putting whole worlds to the torch as he made a haste for Cadia Prime. They had not anticipated such a twist, and it proved to be their undoing.
Maranda could only look on in horror as the Planetkiller laid waste to both world and Imperial vessel around her, turning the sector into a solar wasteland filled with the remains of the battlefleet and neighboring worlds as testament to the Despoiler's might.
"Captain, it's headed right for us!"
The shadow of the Despoiler's flagship loomed over the Golgo's Respite, never once turning a baleful eye in its direction as it barrels past the smaller vessel. Rendered a derelict as a result of the last battle, Maranda's beloved ship was unable to move out of the Planetkiller's path, and so it suffered one last blow that fractured it in two.
Emergency sealants covered the breach in the Golgo's Respite's hull, stabilizing the bridge and its remaining decks before the artificial environment could collapse.
Maranda Goodwill sank in her chair and covered her face with her hands, unable to bear the crushing feeling of defeat as the final vox-screams of her friends and battlebrothers echoed in her mind.
Onboard the Planetkiller, Abaddon glared across the vastness of space, eyes fixed on his prize that lay just beyond the mustered forces of the battered loyalist armies. He would wait no longer. No more convoluted plots, no more delays as he had done twelve times before. He was stronger than ever, perhaps even more than those twelve times combined! Even the pathetic attempts of the corpse Emperor of bringing in the Horus clone into his Black Crusade cannot stop him from claiming Cadia!
His fleet of voidships, immeasureable in the nature unseen since the great space-wars of the Gothic campaign, streaked past whole fortress worlds and astartes battle-barge blockades like they were nothing. Nova cannons reduced everything to burning wreckage just as the assault on Belis Corona ended up, his flagship shattered planets down to their cores, Abaddon left a very obvious trail of death and destruction in his wake.
Yet, in his haste to grasp his claws around Cadia Prime, Abaddon neglected to snuff out every ship in every confrontation, such as the Golgo's Respite. Those that survived the encounters with the Despoiler rallied together and regrouped under the banner of Battlegroup Imperatis.
Horus had just returned from his brief campaign on Malin's Reach and rejoined the exhausted Captain Maranda at Jorha's Point, a junction separating Belis Corona from the direct route into Cadia Prime. By the time he got there, Battlegroup Imperatis has increased its fleet size from fifty strong to two hundred, all loyalist vessels with an axe to grind against the Despoiler for the destruction of their homeworlds.
"My liege, your arrival is a balm upon our wounds!" Maranda heaved a sigh of relief as Horus stepped inside the cracked bridge of the Golgo's Respite. "Is it true? The Dark Apostle now lies dead?"
"Yes, captain." Horus answered. "But even with Erebus out of the way, a greater danger stands before us. I heard you've all had a taste of Abaddon's wrath?"
By now, all eyes looked to Goodwill for guidance. And since the woman looked to the Nameless Hero for guidance herself, by default all eyes turned to Horus for leadership.
"The Despoiler marches closer to Cadia as we speak!" Maranda answered, barely containing the rage and anguish smoldering within her heart. "We're gathered here now under your banner, Nameless Hero. Guide our hands, that we may strike at the enemy while his hubris still blinds him!"
At an unseen signal, bright sparks marred the brooding silhouettes of the Black Fleet. With a thunderous roar, the first bombardment wave hammered past the descending drop-ships - heralds of death for the slaughter to come.
The bedrock of Cadia Secundus, already battered from the first invasion by the Forces of Chaos, churned anew beneath a storm of Macrocannons, Melta Torpedoes and hellfire. Void Shields buckled under the implacable storm, Skyshields crackled. Some held, others collapsed in bursts of brilliant light, secondary explosions coming close behind as the barrage swept the stones behind clean of life.
Outbound fire blazed from the bastions of Kasr Kraf, the fortress' Defence Lasers and Skyfire batteries scouring the heavens for incoming drop-ships. Most fired blind, but accuracy mattered little - the Despoiler's forces swarmed like flies come to a feast.
West of Kasr Kraf, the macro batteries of Kasr Stark roared one last time, the bellow of the guns consumed by a deafening thunder-crack as a Melta Torpedo pierced the subterranean magazine. To the north, the wreck of the Sword of Defiance roared a broadside into the skies, the spread of cannon-fire destroying a skull-prowed drop-ship and sending its Heldrake escorts pinwheeling away. Valkyrie gunships of Clavin Strekka's Howling 119th Regiment screamed into pre-arranged clear-fire corridors between salvoes, then broke away across the furious skies, braving fire and counterfire as they hunted their prey. Across the redoubts of Cadia Secundus, anxious hearts prayed that the foe's nerve would break, that the siege would be won in the skies and not upon the walls of Kasr Kraf and its outliers.
Such was a vain hope. The drop-ships were too many, and the defences too few. The southernmost spur of Kasr Kraf's Martyr's Rampart shattered as its Void Shields failed. Fresh salvoes crashed home to exploit the weakness, unseating guns the size of hab-blocks and burying hundreds beneath charred rubble. Creed saw the destruction, and sent orders for the survivors to withdraw. Kasr Kraf yet had three unbreached and thinly-defended curtain walls about its central keep. There was no sense in losing lives in a wasteland when fortifications cried out for defenders.
At once, the Cadian defenders abandoned the Martyr's Rampart, risking the bombardment's fury to reach the comparative shelter of Kasr Kraf. Fortune abandoned hundreds in that hour. Soon the churned field between the southern rampart and first curtain wall was a field of smouldering wrecks and scorched corpses. But for every stalwart soul who perished, another four reached the outer curtain. Officers bellowed instructions, and the survivors rallied to fresh defences. Only the Black Templars made no move to retreat. Marshal Amalrich spat on Creed's orders. He had chosen his ground, and would defend it to the last.
As the drop-ships closed for final approach, their Heldrake escorts peeled away, strafing the ramparts of Kasr Kraf and the makeshift redoubts of the Shrine of Saint Morrican. A new sound filled the air - a shrill wail like sinners burning in the fires of damnation, but multiplied ten thousand times over. Seconds later, the first Dreadclaw slammed onto the walls of Kasr Kraf. Ramps crashed down, disgorging warriors of the Word Bearers and the Alpha Legion into the heart of Creed's defences. At first, the massed volleys of the Astra Militarum defenders drove the invaders back. But then blasphemous icons rose high into air choked with smoke and dying screams. The fabric of reality cracked, and howling daemons joined the fray.
Everywhere the tale was the same, the roar of Traitors' Bolters joined by the bellowed battle-cries of blood-slicked daemonkin. Gun emplacements fell from within even as they traded fire with the foe, their defenders torn apart by hellblade and claw. Some platoons, stricken with terror, threw down their arms and fled. Most fought and died to the last, urged on by the fiery sermons of their Adeptus Ministorum priests, their resolve stiffened by the certainty that there was no escape in this hour. In that bloody charnel, a soldier's only freedom was to choose how he died; most clutched their weapons tight, and met their doom with defiance.
Nowhere in that initial onslaught was the fighting harder than the Shrine of Saint Morrican. The tang of the Sisters of Battle's faith was both irresistible and anathema to the rampant daemons, and the lure of it goaded them time and again onto that ground. But alone perhaps of those who fought that day, the Order of Our Martyred Lady never wavered, never took a backward step. Under the twin gazes of Canonesses Genevieve and Eleanor, they met the yowling horde with Bolter and holy flame, driving all taint from the walls of the shrine. For those who watched the embattled walls of Kasr Kraf, it seemed that the smoke-spume of war found no purchase on the Shrine of Saint Morrican, driven back by the golden light dancing about its spires.
To the east, the first landing craft touched down in the cratered valleys. Daemon-possessed war engines rumbled across the broken ground, driving hard for Kasr Kraf's eastern curtain walls. Battle Cannons roared from concealed emplacements as the tanks of the Cadian 252nd opened fire. The Black Legion spearhead disintegrated in a tangled mass of metal and corrupted flesh, but theirs was a tide without end. Chaos Baneblades rumbled on, their treads crushing the wreckage of their forerunners, their shells hammering at the curtain wall. With a mighty rumble, the eastern outer wall partially collapsed, the rubble crushing three squadrons of Leman Russ Tanks. Their growling engines drowning out the roars of victory, a swarm of skull-bedecked Chaos Rhinos broke cover from behind the mighty Baneblades and drove hard for the newly-formed breach.
Far to the north, the patchwork defences of Kasr Jark shuddered beneath the shell-fire of an Iron Warriors siege battery upon the Kolarak Plains. Unwilling to wallow behind the walls, Orven Highfell ordered his brothers to their transports. Warsmith Krom Gat had come prepared for a counter-assault, having fortified his position with drop-bastions and lines of cursed aegis designed to slow any attacker long enough to bring the big guns to bear. But caution had never been Highfell's way, and no spawn of the daemon-forges would stay the fury of the Fenris-born. Sweeping aside all in their path, the Ironwolves descended into Krom Gat's citadel, using its own trenches and bastions as cover against the raging artillery.
"The gates are sealed, Lord Castellan."
Creed waved the lieutenant away from the topographic hologrid - the only source of light in the gloomy bunker. He didn't know the man's name. He didn't expect either of them would live long enough for it to be worth the effort. Six solar months, that had always been the joke of the 8th. If you survived six solar months under his command, then General Creed would trouble himself to learn your name.
The siege went poorly, and yet as well as could be expected at the same time. In his pride, Abaddon sought to humble Cadia once and for all, even though it would cost him dearly. But were the two of them so different, in that regard? Pride would not allow Abaddon to pass on by, just as it had prevented Creed from yielding Cadia in the face of insuperable odds.
And then there was the matter of the null-array, buried beneath the command bastion. Whoever had stabilised it had brought Cadia these precious days. But who, and why? Magos Klarn either didn't know, or wasn't saying. Kasrkin search parties had scoured the tunnels, but to no result. Creed supposed he should be grateful, but the knowledge that some outside force had free reign of his fortress made his skin crawl. Faith of any kind no longer came easily to the Lord Castellan. Kell understood, of course. But the others?
No matter. Hope was a self-sustaining fire. Maintain the illusion long enough, and it would become the truth. And maybe, just maybe, Cadia would defy the Despoiler just one more time...
Creed turned his back on the hologrid. "Lieutenant? Your name, what is it?"
The young man's brow wrinkled in surprise. Surprise, and perhaps a little worry. "Kormachen, sir. Of the 88th."
Creed nodded. "Walk with me, Kormachen. It's past time I saw this battle with my own eyes."
The seventh solar day of the siege of Cadia Secundus opened with the roar of a new bombardment. Too long had the Sword of Defiance stood vigil over Kasr Kraf's northern flank, and now the invaders took steps to silence its guns once and for all. Shell after shell rained down, pulverising the downed Cruiser and unseating its few remaining guns. Even then, Korahael would have held firm, for no Scion of Caliban yields his ground willingly. But this was no ordinary bombardment - it hailed from the diseased bulk of the Terminus Est, flagship of Typhus. Each shell that burst amidst the Sword's hallowed halls brought with it unspeakable contagion - diseases potent enough to take root even in the augmented flesh of the Adeptus Astartes. With his brothers liquefying inside their armour, Korahael had no choice but to abandon the Sword of Defiance. Alas, the plains still teemed with World Eaters, hungry to spill the Lion's blood.
Faith yet burned bright at the Shrine of Saint Morrican, but mortal might grew ever shorter in supply. That outpost alone had seen unremitting assault since the opening days of the siege, and all inside were bone-weary. The basilica had cowed assaults it had never been intended to face, but even for blessed redoubts there comes a breaking point. For the Shrine of Saint Morrican, that breaking point took the form of three Lords of Skulls, unleashed from the heart of Abaddon's own daemon-forges to overcome the shining beacon of faith. Warp-crafted cannons belched and roared, drowning the stones of the sainted basilica in boiling blood. Scores of Battle-Sisters boiled alive in their armour, dozens more were swept away. Still the Daemon Engines ground on, bones and rubble alike crunched to dust beneath their leviathan tracks.
When the Kriegan Gates came down, the defence of Cadia fell upon the shoulders of the Kasrkin. Creed had kept three Kasrkin regiments in reserve throughout the fighting, husbanded for a desperate hour such as this. Now he sent them to hold the line. Lasguns flared. The ruined Kriegan barbican vanished beneath the acrid discharge of cannon shells. The leading edge of the Hounds of Abaddon vanished, torn apart by the greatest single volley yet seen on Cadia Secundus.
Yet the Hounds were undismayed by their losses - indeed, the slaughter lent them new fervour. The survivors struck the massed line of bayonets like a red wind, clawing at the wall of armoured flesh without thought for their own lives. Urkanthos led them, each swipe of his claws snatching a squad into Khorne's bloody embrace. With every foe that fell, the Daemon Prince felt the Blood God's blessings blossom. His armour-fused flesh thickened until it was harder than adamantium. As blood slicked across his wounds, they scabbed and closed. Urkanthos looked upon the massed ranks of Kasrkin and saw not a foe to be bested, but a banquet, an offering in the making to the only true God of Bloodshed.
The Kasrkin battled on beneath the ruin of Kasr Kraf's gates, but they did not fight alone. Creed's barked orders echoed from Vox-casters set across the fortress walls, sending ever more men into the meatgrinder at the gates. Conscripts of the 201st Cadian Regiment fought and died alongside the grizzled veterans of the 9th Cadian. Regiments from Mordia and Vostroya entered the slaughter, fighting for a world not their own, as was so often the duty of the Astra Militarum.
But numbers alone could not win out against the Hounds' daemon-spawned might. Worse, Urkanthos had reinforcements of his own. Slavering daemons emerged from the pooling blood, then sprang forth to further slick the stones. Maddened Cultists, ebon-clad Black Legionaries, hell-wrought behemoths - they stormed across the ruined gates, seizing the opportunity to slaughter, and to perhaps catch the restless eyes of the Dark Gods.
The Kasrkin of the 2nd Cadian perished where they stood. Not a man amongst them gave ground. Others were not so valorous. The discipline of the 33rd Cadian shattered when their colonel was torn apart by Raptors. Wavering hearts turned callow. Like a dam giving way before storm waters, the 33rd broke and ran. With them went all hopes of holding the gateway, and their cowardly example sapped the valour from their comrades as surely as a daemon's roar. The trickle of the 33rd's rout became a flood as panic spread. Regimental colours were abandoned and weapons cast down. What had once been a bastion of defiance had split asunder, and Urkanthos' victory lay within his taloned grasp.
Even as the heart of Kasr Kraf wavered, old perils were renewed. Beyond the eastern wall, Baroness Vardus' Knights fought a losing duel with the surviving Titans of the Legio Vulcanum. Though the God-machines could no longer draw upon Princeps Tiron's direction, their firepower greatly outstripped that at the command of the Nobles of House Raven.
Vardus was no fool - indeed, she'd slain men in duels for even hinting such was true - and commanded a fighting retreat. Thus far, it had served her well, costing her only four brother Nobles in exchange for one Traitor Reaver destroyed, and another crippled. Yet a fighting retreat required ground to retreat to, and the Knights of House Raven were rapidly running out of room to manoeuvre. As the weary baroness ordered yet another withdrawal, her lance-mate disintegrated in an eruption of superheated light. Hurried interrogation of her synapse-web confirmed Vardus' greatest fear - Vessel of Damnation had rejoined the fray.
Further south, knee-deep in the bodies of his foes, Marshal Amalrich experienced an uncharacteristic moment of doubt. Foes still offered their lives up to the Black Templars' positions, but no longer in the numbers that had graced previous days. Gazing north, Amalrich recognised the storm gathering over Kasr Kraf's Kriegan Gates. At last, the Marshal acknowledged what had been obvious to his peers from the first - that the Black Templars' strength would have been better employed upon the walls of the fortress than at the Martyr's Rampart. Even generations after the fact, the stubbornness of Rogal Dorn still haunted his inheritors. But perhaps there was yet time to unmake the error. One of the Cruxis Crusade's Thunderhawks had been destroyed during the opening bombardment, but the other endured, untouched in a subterranean hangar. Swallowing the last of his pride, Amalrich gave orders to abandon the Martyr's Rampart.
At Kasr Kraf, the Hounds of Abaddon slaked their blades and thirsts upon the routing Guardsmen. Urkanthos bellowed with delight. He had been given one task, and one task alone: breach the fortress and destroy the machine that held the Will of Eternity's fury in abeyance. But now the Scourgemaster saw no reason to stop at such half-measures. Proud Cadia had broken. Its defenders trampled one another in their eagerness to flee his coming! He, Urkanthos, would do what Abaddon never had. He would shatter the last resolve of the Fortress World. The rewards of triumph would be his, and not the Warmaster of Chaos'.
A volley seared the air, its fury hot enough for the Daemon Prince to feel through his calloused skin. Where moments before there had been only a fleeing rabble, now the Hounds of Abaddon faced a manned aegis line, formed bayonets, and the unwavering ranks of the Cadian 8th Regiment.
Urkanthos' assault, grown overconfident in slaughter, burst against the breakwater of the Cadian 8th. The Hounds of Abaddon bore the brunt, torn to scraps by roiling cannon-fire. Raptors took to the air, seeking to pluck Creed from his command as they had the erstwhile colonel of the 33rd. Vox-amplifiers wailing, they ripped deep into Creed's platoon. But where the 33rd had broken and fled, the veterans of the 8th closed ranks. Scores perished before a bayonet rammed into the final Raptor's primary heart, but Creed was not amongst them. Kell's sleeve was crimson with blood, little of it his own, and dead at his feet lay the Raptor who'd come closest to laying low his beloved general.
The battle for the muster field stalled, both sides yet with numbers unbound to hurl into the battle, but neither able to gain traction over the foe. But the advantage at last lay again with the defenders, for Creed fought like a man whose hour had at last come. He never once laid hand on pistol nor blade. Instead, he wielded his soldiers as his weapon, striking hard for a weakness when it presented, and drawing back in the face of overwhelming odds. Hundreds, thousands of lives he spent in those desperate hours, though never carelessly. He bought time with the blood of his Shock Troopers - not in the hope that help would arrive, for Creed had long since abandoned such fancies, but because every moment of defiance was now a prize without price, a wound to Abaddon's pride. Cadia stood, it was true, but only because Creed stood with it.
Around the fortress, Creed's allies lent what aid they could. Korahael's dwindled 4th Company fought beside the Ironwolves in the muster field's eastern extent and, though neither party would ever acknowledge as much, each was the salvation of the other on many occasions. The Astartes of other Chapters, their Battle-Brothers lost to the Cadian wars, set aside rivalries, forming a single demi-company of every colour and hue. The Sisters of Our Martyred Lady marshalled before the command bastion, their holy flames the bane of many a daemon, their righteous presence instilling fresh valour in the Conscripts of the 111th Cadian, deployed immediately to their fore.
But the greatest triumph in that hour belonged to Marshal Amalrich's Black Templars. Their Thunderhawk, hull smouldering and crippled engines belching smoke, ploughed into the muster field, disgorging the vengeful warriors of the Cruxis Crusade into the heart of the heretical foe. Each blow struck by a Son of Dorn that day was one of penance as much as fury, and was all the mightier for it.
Urkanthos' dreams of glorious victory withered in the face of that defiance, and his thoughts again turned to his orders. Destroy the null-array, and every drop of the defenders' valour would be for naught, burned away by the unstoppable energies of the Blackstone Fortress. Gathering the remnants of the Hounds of Abaddon to his side, Urkanthos carved a path for the command bastion and the prize within.
Creed marked the Daemon Prince's assault, but could do little to counter it, for it coincided with the arrival of a new threat. An armoured column, the Traitor Baneblade Vicanthrus at its head, ground its way over the dead and dying about the Kriegan Gates. The thunder-crack of Demolisher Cannons echoed around the crumbling bastions. Creed's leading ranks disintegrated under the bombardment. Voxes crackled, sergeants bellowed orders and the defenders' pattern of fire shifted to engage Vicanthrus.
The Whiteshield Conscripts of the 111th were little match for Urkanthos' retinue of damned, but they held the line to the last. Yet even when they were overcome, the Daemon Prince's route remained blocked, this time by the ardent Battle-Sisters of Our Martyred Lady.
Urkanthos hurled himself into the Sisters' ranks, exulting at each drop of martyr's blood to fleck his claws. Bolter-fire pattered off his carapace, and even the incandescent fury of Multi-Meltas were but a dull warmth upon his skin. Behind him came his last remaining Hounds. Of a dark brethren once numbering in the hundreds, now only a score remained. Lacking their master's protections, the Chaos Space Marines died hard, but die they did. It mattered not. Their purpose had only ever been to bring their master to his target. Before the last black heart stilled its motion, Urkanthos reached the command bastion's Egressium Gate.
And then, the unthinkable happened.
She came wreathed in holy fire, an angel cast from the Emperor's hand and into the horror of war. Down she swept, a thunderbolt shrieking from a golden star newly arrived in the skies of Cadia. As she drew closer to the beleaguered walls of Kasr Kraf, the defenders gave voice to a name. It began with the survivors of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, but it spread like wildfire, borne upon the lips of the faithful, uttered in reverence and in jubilation.
Celestine. Prayers had been answered. The miracle had come.
She smote the muster fields without slowing, the firestorm of her wake scouring besiegers from the stones. On Celestine swept, her sword a blur of silvered light amongst the spiralling smoke. Daemons scattered before her, seared from reality by the blade of one who was a blazing counterpoint to their unfathomable darkness.
Strength returned to weary limbs. Defenders who had forsaken all hope forged new mettle from despair. The Emperor was with them still. Why else would He have sent His Living Saint to guide them to victory? United, they rose for one final effort, no fear remaining in their hearts. Even Creed, lost to seething emotion, forgot the threat of the Blackstone Fortress in distant orbit and fought alongside his men. With the exception of the zealous Black Templars, only the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes felt no stirring at the sight of Celestine. The Imperial Creed was not their faith. Theirs was a bond of brotherhood, of duty to long-dead Primarchs, but if the homilies of the Adeptus Ministorum would deliver victory that day, then so be it.
For one moment, one glorious moment, the attackers' ranks shuddered. The Baneblade Vicanthrus, still locked in sightless combat with the nanomachines shredding its system, vanished beneath a zealous tide of humanity. Cultists scattered, their apostatic dreams dispersed by the Living Saint's arrival. Then the Black Legion met the defenders' newfound fury with their own blasphemous resolve. Despite their resurgence, outnumbered and outmatched, the defenders' counterattack stalled.
But faith renewed was not the only gift Celestine had brought to Kasr Kraf. Plasma Drives roared in the darkness. Landing gears crunched onto plascrete. The discordant notes of battle-hymns swelled, the chimes of blessed bells echoing along the walls. Even more than faith, even more than hope, the defenders of Kasr Kraf had needed reinforcements, and the Living Saint had provided.
Celestine had found them in the Warp, their transport's Plasma Drives all but dead through a Traitor's act, its Gellar Fields failing: five companies of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, thought lost some fourteen hundred standard years. Her light served as a beacon through the Empyrean, drawing the wounded vessel into the path of another craft and binding the two until realspace claimed them both once more. Now they came forth as her fiery sword, and to avenge a seeming-eternity adrift amidst the Immaterium. With their onset, the battle shifted once again - this time in the defenders' favour.
Urkanthos lurched through the Egressium Gate, his wings scattering the ashen remains of what had once been men. The cursed machine holding the Blackstone Fortress' wrath at bay was no more. The Despoiler's will had been done. Cadia waited to die, and Urkanthos had no desire to die with it. It was time to depart and claim his reward.
"Die, abomination!"
A Guardsman ran headlong towards the Daemon Prince, bayonet lowered. Urkanthos eviscerated the mortal with a single savage swipe. Licking blood from his talons, he let the body fall upon the remains of the black-clad prayer-witches who'd sought to bar his ingress.
Slaughter still raged across the muster field, the tempo and scent of it somehow different. Urkanthos longed to join it, even though to do so was to risk annihilation beneath the Blackstone's gaze.
In a swoop of wings, she landed before Urkanthos, her armour glittering in the golden light of her halo. At last, the Daemon Prince recognised the altered stench - the battlefield stank of her faith, her certainty.
"The corpse-bride," he growled.
The angel raised her sword, the point steady as a rock. "Your hour is done, beast."
Urkanthos laughed, the sound of it a rough peal of thunder. "It has only just begun. You are nothing. The echo of a false god. I will break you in half and set your skull upon Khorne's throne."
Agony wracked the Daemon Prince, a white heat searing the veins of his chest. Through slitted eyes, he saw the corpse-bride regarding him, unmoving. The pain passed. As ever, Urkanthos felt the stronger for it. Another trial endured.
"I am the Scourgemaster of the Black Fleet, the Right Hand of the Despoiler. You cannot match me alone."
Urkanthos pressed a taloned hand to the site of the faded agony. Something was wrong. The sword in his flesh - the prayer-witch's sword - had gone. He spun around. Two prayer-witches stared back, their faces alive with light, their golden armour as radiant as a sun. Urkanthos, who never forgot those he slew, knew their faces. The twins he'd killed upon the threshold. His seething ichor dripped from the leftmost's blade. The blade so lately trapped in his flesh. The first glimmer of uncertainty trickled into the Daemon Prince's bartered soul.
"I am not alone," said Celestine. "And your hour is done."
With a roar, Urkanthos swept back his wings, and pounced.
Suddenly, a bright beam of light struck from Cadia's bleeding skies and struck the broken earth of Kasr Kraf, bearing the Nameless Hero and his host of Blood Angels and faithful Whiteshields! This unexpected turn of events brought all eyes to their presence, some in annoyance and others in relief. Urkanthos regarded the newcomer with great disdain, for he sensed a great disturbance in the Warp. "Who comes now?"
"Your end." He answered, raising Soulrender at the ascendant.
Celestine could not believe her eyes. Just as the Emperor foretold, the Wolf of Terra stands before her, remaining pure and devoid of all corruption!
"Scourge of the Warp! Hear me!" The Nameless Hero bellowed at the daemon hordes washing across the battlefield, at last shedding his moniker. "I am Horus Lupercal, son of the Emperor of Mankind! Your hour of reckoning is upon you!" With that, the paragon of Cthonia charged into the frey.
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