A motley storm of colors surged into the training grounds, choking and surrounding all that was within the chambers. Pink and blue and burning orange creatures gnashed rows of serrated teeth as they scrambled over one another with their additional limbs and prehensile tendrils.

As the deluge of daemons crashed inwards on all sides, Gyrthemar pressed his back to that of the first fellow Astartes nearest to him. He quickly found himself regretting that decision.

"Coward," Ajax grunted.

"Bastard," Gyrthemar spat back.

The insults were an unconventional truce. Both marines would have liked to see the other fall under the claws of daemons, but to allow that would be to make themselves vulnerable and open to their own demise. Animosities would have to be set aside for the time being. The realization annoyed Gyrthemar, but he didn't have much time to dwell on it as a Neverborn monstrosity lunged at him, forcing him to cleave it down the middle with his thrumming spear, only for the creature's two halves to shudder then undulate and burst into flames, reforming into two separate horrors of brimstone. He squashed one under his boot, then vanquished the other with the backswing of his weapon. The way the two popped and screeched out their deaths made Gyrthemar smile.

Reigniting the motor on his chainspear, Gyrthemar chuckled to himself as more Neverborn surged forward to replace their exiled kindred. Behind him, he could hear a power scythe singing through the air, accompanied by the sizzling of fading corpses.

Gyrthemar knew that the presence of the daemons spelled a much larger issue for the ship. He knew that this would be a desperate fight in which many of his brothers may die. He knew that he may even die. This was going to be a brutal, agonizing slog for survival. He was not meant to enjoy himself.

Whoever tried to stop him could damn well go breed with dogs, though. He was Gyrthemar the Wolfkiller, and he was going to have some fun.

It took Retrigan a moment to process what he had just heard. "What did she just say?"

"The Gellar Field," the techpriest repeated, "it is compromised."

"How?" Pyotr said, an edge to his voice.

The adept continued plinking away at the cogitator until a display of the Savory Wound appeared on one of the hololiths. Surrounding it was a visual representation of the Gellar Field. It looked like a static membrane that clung to the ship. Except, instead of fully and completely encompassing the hull, it was broken and fractured, moving and undulating, growing and shrinking in various different sections like some form of techno-psychic ameba.

"It would appear that one of the generators is malfunctioning," Curie explained. "This would not normally be an issue, for that is what the additional generators are for, except the problematic device is not simply inactive, but actively inverting realspace projection, creating a negative frequency against the other generators."

"Meaning?" Retrigan asked. He knew that Pyotr would not need a clarification, but he also knew that he would not be getting one either way unless he asked. And where the Warp was involved, Retrigan needed all the details, lest he feel an uncomfortable gloam looming over him.

"Meaning that the malfunctioning generator is trying to destroy the fields that are being created by the other ones," Pyotr answered for his Mechanicum servant. "Is it fixable?"

"Yes, master," Curie responded. "Quite easily, in fact. The faulty device simply needs to be deactivated fully to reestablish a secure field. The remaining generators will be able to maintain the additional strain until a suitable replacement is installed."

"Good. I will see to it, then." Pyotr turned to leave.

"No," Curie said simply, her oculars pulsing shades of blue.

Pyotr stopped in place and turned, his eyebrow raised. "No?"

"With all respect that is deserved, Lord Pyotr, your hands are too profane to touch and operate the sanctity of this ship. I do not fault you for this, but it is so. You cannot be trusted to maintain purity and are prone to corrupt these instruments, potentially causing future operational failures."

"You don't seem to have such grievances normally."

"As you have said, you are the master of this hall. It is not my place to question your actions and heresies here. The rest of the vessel, however, is my domain. I will see that it remains pure in the eyes of the Machine God. I do not recommend we argue this point further, as time is limited. The partial Gellar Field is keeping us from complete and immediate annihilation, but we are still currently being besieged. Additionally, there is a chance this malfunction could spread if not seen to immediately."

"What?" Retrigan asked hastily.

"These instruments are delicate and impressionable. Bad influences and peer pressure could lead to unhealthy lifestyles. Ha. Ha," the techpriest said in a flat tone. Retrigan looked at her with an incredulous expression. Was she… attempting humor? He wasn't sure what was more unsettling, the threat of annihilation by the Warp or the fact that a member of the Mechanicum was joking.

Pyotr stared at the robed machine-fanatic for several moments. Retrigan eyed him. Pyotr had always been thoughtful, but he'd also once been vocal about those thoughts as he worked through them. That had changed in recent years. Now, he was more of a cold, mechanical shell of the brother he once knew, with eyes that were sometimes hollow and other times writhing with something dark and putrid.

"Very well," the lord discordant finally said as he drew his bolt pistol and pointed it upward by his head. "But do not make me regret this, honored adept." Curie responded with an emission of garbled noise from her vocabulator that may have been an affirmative. Pyotr then turned to look at Retrigan. There was a silent question in those eyes.

Retrigan swallowed, then glanced at the hololithic display again. With only mild hesitation, he grasped the bolter on his thigh, released its maglock, then nodded to his brother. "Let's get on with it, then."

Gyrthemar was no longer having fun.

He had ceased to do so around the time that he'd lost a vast majority of the teeth on his chainspear and was reduced to using it as a glorified bludgeon. There were numerous times that he could not keep up with the infinite swarm of horrors and had to trade positions with Ajax to keep from being overwhelmed.

"I did not think you were so incompetent that I would have to fight your battles for you!" the berzerker said after their most recent switch, waves of Neverborn evaporating under the swings of his scythe.

"You try killing daemons with what amounts to a stick!" he spat back. Gyrthemar then made a mental note to never use another chain weapon for the rest of his life, assuming he survived this day.

"Replace the damn track, then! I'll cover you."

Gyrthemar grunted in annoyance. "I did not bring any spares!"

"Of course you didn't," Ajax said through clenched teeth. "Leave it to a Night Lord to–"

Gyrthemar did not hear the end of that sentence, thankfully, as his cousin's voice was drowned out by a cacophonous explosion near the center of the room.

"Did someone just throw a bloody grenade?" Gyrthemar shouted incredulously. His only reply was the continuous screeching of Warp-vermin and Astartes grunting and yelling out in pain or command as they fought for their lives. Regardless, he almost wished he'd thought of the idea first up until he noticed the havoc it had wrought on some of their own men.

An arm, severed by the explosion, lay on the decking about thirteen paces from Gyrthemar and Ajax. Its hand still clutched its bolter. Gyrthemar scoffed at the weapon. He didn't carry one himself. He preferred that his ranged weapons have a bit more heft to them so that they may truly tear through his enemies with ease. A boltgun was all well and good until you came upon something actually worth your time.

Gyrthemar looked down at the nearly-bare spear in his hand after slamming it into the side of a diminutive blue daemon, crushing whatever skeletal structure it may or may not have had. Then he looked back at the bolter. Then he sighed.

"Cover me!" he said to Ajax.

"For what?" was the response, but the berzerker pivoted and took up a defensive stance as he stuck close to Gyrthemar regardless.

The path to the weapon was quickly growing flooded with Neverborn once again, but Gyrthemar did his best to clear it with his spear as he bound forward. It took him three strikes upon a particularly persistent pink horror before it split into its two lesser forms, which were then dealt with by Ajax.

As if sensing Gyrthemar's motives, more and more packs of daemons began closing in on the two, practically scrambling over each other at the chance to have at them. Gyrthemar's own armor was already marred with an array of minor cuts and slashes from unnatural claws and fangs. Twice he had to physically pry one of the Neverborn off of him and toss it to Ajax for slaughter as it lunged forward and grappled onto his ceramite.

Just a little closer, he thought through clenched teeth.

Before he even had a chance to wade another step forward, however, he watched as the bolter was swallowed by a horde of pinks and blues and brimstones, all gnashing their way towards him like a variable wave of the Warp made manifest.

"What now?" Ajax barked to Gyrthemar, beginning to also struggle with the continuous flood of enemies.

Gyrthemar scanned where he had last seen the gun as he battered daemon after daemon with his oversized baton. He needed a glimpse. Just. A single. Glimpse.

Another horror pounced at him. This time, Gyrthemar grabbed it while it was in flight and hurled it back into its group of chattering hellspawn. The impact caused several to scatter, revealing the barest hint of a black muzzle resting atop the cold, gray deck.

There.

"Now," Gyrthemar replied to Ajax, "I do something very stupid."

Before the Son of Angron had the opportunity to respond, Gyrthemar rammed the shaft of his spear into one final Neverborn before he dropped it, closed the distance between him and his prize in four, quick steps, and dove into the swarm of daemons, allowing their mass to engulf and consume him.

Artemis knelt. Even after the pain receded, she knelt. Even after she began to hear screams echo from the distant halls, she knelt. Even after Brelja had left her to investigate what was going on, she knelt. Because that was the only option.

She wasn't quite sure why she knew this, but she did. She knew it the same way that a vole knew that it had little choice but to die once the snake slithered into its den. A deep, primeval part of Artemis sensed this. They were the voles, trapped in their cramped burrow, and the viper was coming.

And here I thought I didn't raise quitters, a voice said.

"The beast cometh, Mother," Artemis whispered. "There's nothing that can be done. We aren't gods."

Hmph. Stop calling them that. The Astartes aren't gods, they're hardly even men.

"We're dead."

I'm dead. You're giving up.

That caused Artemis to stir slightly. "I…" She frowned. "What would you have me do?"

Be my daughter. Fight.

She knew that the voice wasn't real. That her mother was truly well and gone and Artemis was simply imagining what she thought the old crone might have said in this moment. It still helped.

With almost agonizing effort, Artemis rose to her feet and looked around. All the workers had stopped what they were doing and were staring out into the corridor beyond the entryway of their station with abject terror. Screams echoed from that darkness, both the surreal sounds of something inhuman, and the harrowing cries of people being slaughtered in droves.

"Hey!" Artemis yelled. No one gave her any heed. In response, she turned, stomped back to the pile of junk she had been sorting, grabbed a length of rebar, and proceeded to slam it into a sheet of scrap metal like some sort of trash-yard drum. "HEY!" she repeated. This time, several heads turned to face her.

"I want everyone to grab something and start barricading that entrance. Now!" She gestured to the material pile that Jep had referred to as 'the Behemoth' and found herself grateful that she'd taken the time to begin sorting it after all.

Surprisingly, there was little hesitation as bodies quickly scrambled to follow her orders. The few who didn't listen turned to Jep, who simply waved them off with a frantic air. "You heard her! Get to it!"

"What's happening?" a small man with dark hair asked as he scurried past Artemis.

"What's your name?" Artemis asked, trying to regain her best bridge officer's stance.

"Kim… Er, ma'am."

She nodded. "I'm afraid I have no idea, Kim. And, for our own safety, I think it's best that we keep it that way."

The man blanched slightly and visibly gulped, but nodded in understanding as he hurried to help carry more scrap to their makeshift barricade.

Artemis spent the next few minutes directing the slapdash construction project the best she could. The end result was a barricade that likely wouldn't even hold up against a siege by a regular human force—but it was better than nothing.

"What about weapons?" A voice at her side asked. Artemis jumped when she realized Brelja had, at some point, returned to her.

"What?"

"Weapons. For if we get breached." All eyes turned to Artemis for answers.

If… Throne, they actually had faith in her.

In an attempt to mask her crushing and sudden terror, Artemis glanced around the room until her eyes fell on a tool resting on one of the workbenches. "What's that?" she asked, pointing to it.

One of the women standing nearby looked at it, then back to Artemis. "A welder, ma'am."

"Well, it's a hand flamer now," Artemis said. "Get as many of those into each of your hands as possible. Do you have any lascutters?"

"A few," Brelja said with obvious glee. "They're not anywhere near as good as the ones the Astartes use, but they'll karking do, I bet."

"Then get to it! Nail guns too, if you have them. If it's a tool that can be used at range, it's a weapon now! I want more barricades spaced out around this station as cover, too!"

Everyone was quick to adhere to her commands and Artemis felt something… strange within her. Something that mixed with the complete terror and nausea she was feeling. Pride.

That's my girl…

"Do you need something too?" Jep asked, as Brelja had already rushed off, presumably to get a lascutter before they were all nabbed.

Artemis's hand drifted to her hip and her expression soured. She was still getting used to carrying around the revolver her master had given her and had forgotten it back in her quarters.

"Yes," she admitted. "Please."

Moments later, Artemis had an industrial nail gun in her hand and was ordering workers behind fortifications and optimizing their positionings the best that she could manage. Artemis was no militarum strategist, nor inspiring Commissar, but, well, if those around her needed her to pretend for a little bit, then that's what she would do.

As each man and woman found their station, Artemis noted Jep and Brelja had once again stuck close to her.

"Looks good," Brelja said, nodding in approval.

"You… think it'll work?" Jep asked, his grip growing tighter on the handle of his flamer. Artemis didn't answer him. Better that she didn't lie to her friends.

"Throne, no!" Brelja echoed Artemis's thoughts, albeit with far more humor. "But it'll be a glorious way to go out, I can say that much."

There was something in the way she spoke those words that piqued Artemis's interest. A tone that was almost desperate. Artemis opened her mouth to question the woman, but before she had the opportunity, a resounding thud crashed against their barrier. All fell silent.

Over two dozen eyes stared forward at their fortification as it was met with another, stronger thud as something slammed against it. There was another pause. Then another slam. Then again. And again.

Each hit rattled the blockade, causing portions of the defense to creak and break off. Slowly, the creaking grew louder as if it were crying out at the strain of keeping their foes back. The sound caused Artemis's heart to lose its rhythm as each moan and squeak of metal seemed to be a promise of the dam's inevitable collapse.

And yet, by some miracle, it held.

The assault quieted and Artemis heard a collective exhale spread across the ranks of the fuel-loading station.

Then the blockade exploded.

There was a muffled CRACK-CRACK-CRACK! on the opposing side of the barrier and, before anyone could so much as utter a word of reaction, the barrier collapsed as if shattered by the fists of vengeful spirits. Powderized metal and motes of dust coughed into the air as their defense fell, creating an impenetrable cloud that obscured their view beyond.

"Aim!" Artemis cried, more in an attempt to break everyone out of their stupor rather than raise any sort of respectable defense. Most of the workers complied.

A silhouette appeared in the cloud. Dark and imposing, it stalked forward, one step at a time. Artemis swore she could even hear hissing coming from the thing. The hissing of a viper.

"Hold!" she yelled. The workers around her shivered and trembled in fearful anticipation.

Red eyes glinted from the dusty shadows. Then a dark boot emerged, slamming down onto the deck, followed by a ceramite-encrusted waist, then a midnight torso bearing a winged-skull emblem. Finally, the helm of an Astartes appeared from the gloom, its head and shoulders shrouded with a crimson cloak and hood.

The figure stood in the entryway, toting his bolter, glaring at the humans surrounding him. Then he spoke in a toneless voice that bore no accent, "When you hear knocking at your door, it is common courtesy to open it."

The fool was dead. Ajax was certain of that.

Never before, in all his years, had he seen an Astartes willingly drop his weapon—as feeble as it was—and dive into a horde of vile Warp-vermin. Even if he survived by some grand jest of the Ruinous Powers, the coward would surely be mutated and forever changed by the psychically-laced claws and fangs of the daemons surrounding them. And to be touched by the Changer of Ways was a fate deserving of being put down like a dog.
Part of Ajax was relieved with this outcome. One less nuisance for the nails to agonize him over.

The rest of him realized the tactical disadvantage he was now at.

Horrors flowed around him, pushing inward in all directions, his back exposed. The forms of the creatures eternally shifting and mutating, some becoming no more than blurs of colors at the edge of his vision, their flesh pulsating with arcane deviance that he could even see in the darkness of his missing eye.

The nails sang. Ajax could not hold them back. The mere presence of the Neverborn caused the pain engine to drill into his skull with feverish zeal. He roared as the sounds of cackling and incomprehensible tongues only coaxed the nails to further batter his mind.
Instinctively, Ajax spun and swung his cursed weapon, shearing three horrors in half as they lunged at his vulnerable backside, but that now left him exposed from the direction he had previously been facing, leaving him to feel arcs of Warp-lightning to burn away at his armor, sending his mind ablaze even further.

Too much… Ajax thought through heavy breaths, desperately cutting away at as many daemons as he could, hoping that thinning their numbers would ease some of the stimulation pounding through his brain, only for it to do the opposite as the creatures regrew and became entirely new entities from their split and severed corpses.

Ajax clenched his teeth. Too. Much…

"Blood God give me strength!" he bellowed, but these were beings of the Warp. They had no blood to spill, no skulls to claim. The only interest the Great God had in them would be in the hatred he held for their master. Ajax hoped it would be enough.

You bear the weapon of a fallen warrior. You are cursed. You deserve no favor.

Ajax's vision rapidly grew red. His vocal cords strained and threatened to tear as he roared at the daemons, at the battle, at his god, at Zasharr, at the open air, at everything. His rage could shatter mountains, but even mountains would bend under the overwhelming force that were these horrors as they slowly gained ground and began to overtake Ajax. He continued to swing his accursed power scythe in defiance anyway.

More pressure weighed on his back and the nails grew hotter. The berzerker felt claws dig into his ceramite and begin scuttling higher towards his own head, forcing him to reach backward and grab at the loathsome thing and toss it into the air where he was then able to cleave into it.

Whirling around, Ajax reaped the next wave of horrors that had intended to rush him, as well, but was then forced to spin to deal with the next pack, then again to deal with the next. Then again. And again.

Too many.

He gnashed his teeth unconsciously in the same way a beast does when cornered. Ajax was outmatched with little hope of support. Either due to his own brothers struggling to maintain control over their nails, or because he would never expect a Night Lord to ever lend aid if it meant compromising their desire to save their own skin.

Crackling rose in greater volume behind Ajax and he whirled about to see half a dozen Neverborn, their forms twitching and ephemeral, standing together with their arms outstretched, each channeling and building towards a single, powerful blast of Warp-magic. Ajax knew he would not reach them before he was obliterated. He charged forward anyway, refusing to give in.

"For the Carnage Stitchers!" Ajax howled. The horrors laughed, the light of their power growing almost blinding. A loud series of bangs soon followed.

And then the light vanished, snuffed out as if by a vacuum.

When the glare in his vision cleared, Ajax saw that the daemons that had been closely huddled together were now nothing more than scorched marks. Standing a few paces away, a bolter trained at the exact position the horrors had previously stood, was the coward, Gyrthemar.

"Now we can have some real fun!" the Night Lord called to Ajax with jovial bloodlust, his armor horridly tattered and damaged, but uncompromised.

"You're insane!" Ajax spat, but allowed the warrior to press their backs together again.

"How do those nails feel?" Gyrthemar countered. Ajax grunted in response.

The relief was near immediate as Ajax mowed down the horrid creatures with his scythe while Gyrthemar plinked away at groups of them with the explosive rounds from his bolter. The tide had not fully shifted by any means, but there they held a chance once more.

Ajax spared a glance back at the Night Lord. "Why did you do that?"

"What?" Gyrthemar called over the din of his gun.

"Why did you risk your life for that boltgun instead of fleeing?"

"Simple," Gyrthemar said. "I knew it would annoy my brothers when I tell them later!"

Ajax continued to fight, but looked back at the warrior yet again, meeting his eyes. Then they both began to laugh.

The trek to the Gellar Field generators was a tedious one that made Retrigan wish—not for the first time—that he'd never given up the jump pack.

Their journey consisted of Pyotr sending that daemonic beast of his ahead to scout and distract any enemies away from their position while he and Retrigan escorted the techpriest. That in and of itself was a trial in patience, however, as Curie insisted that they not move until the constantly fluctuating bubble of realspace around the ship encompassed the next leg of their route in order to avoid any "profane influences upon their spirits." On any other occasion, Retrigan would have agreed with the caution—but this was not a time to be cautious, this was a time to act.

The end result was them reaching their destination with only minor resistance along the way that Pyotr and Retrigan dealt with easily enough with a concentrated salvo of bolter fire until their obstacle ceased to be, but at the cost of what Retrigan assumed to be half the damn ship due to how egregiously long it took them.

"Yes, very good," Curie said as they entered the generator bay. Based on initial inspection, Retrigan saw no immediate or visible malfunction from any of the machines through his retinal display, but the adept seemed confident as she shuffled to the room's cogitator. "Diagnosing the misaligned system should take but a few moments. After the proper ritual is done."

Retrigan flexed his fist in irritation, allowing his lightning claws to slide out from their casings before sheathing them once again. "Excellent. More time wasted," he muttered then turned to Pyotr for some level of agreement that he knew would not be there.

Instead he saw his brother's daemon engine had quietly prowled its way into the room behind them. Retrigan suppressed a shiver. Something so large and cumbersome should not be so furtive.

Pyotr touched the entombed daemon on its flesh-and-metal neck and spoke softly to it. "Thank you, Tzimiti. You may hunt freely now."

The helstalker nudged its master in the chest with its head in a manner that Retrigan would have called affectionate if he did not know any better of the malice that was hidden within that creature. It then whirled around again, vibrated in dark delight, and bound its way back into the deep arteries of the Savory Wound.

"I do not understand how you trust that thing," Retrigan said as he took his place on one side of the entryway, using it as cover as he aimed his bolter down into the dark corridor. Pyotr took his position across from him and did the same with his bolt pistol.

"It is not about trust," he said. "Tzimiti is bound to me. My will dominates its. It has no choice but to follow my commands."

Retrigan saw no reason to reply. Those tainted by the Ruinous Powers had a way of deluding themselves, justifying every action that sank them further in their corruption. He had seen it in his fellow raptors after Gargahl's ascension and it had sickened him. He'd given up the skies in favor of his soul for that very reason. He missed it. He missed his brothers who flew with him, but they were gone. What remained were nothing more than husks in service to Chaos. Pyotr wouldn't be far behind them.

The silence continued between them as they stared off into the darkness before them, the only sound that of the ritual chanting and bionic clicking and snapping from Curie behind them. Retrigan itched to extend his lightning claws again, but resisted the urge.

"You are wrong," Pyotr said, abruptly ending the uncomfortable quiet.

"What?"

"When you said I want to be Fabrinus. That was a false claim."

Retrigan frowned behind his helm, but turned his head to face his brother. "Is that so?"

Pyotr nodded, but did not meet Retrigan's eyes. He simply continued staring out into the darkness.

"But I do envy him. His conviction…"

"Is now really the time for this, brother?"

Pyotr ignored him. "I have spent my entire life wishing for something to believe in, Retrigan. To ascend beyond the wastes of Nostramo and find a better purpose. I thought the Astartes would be the answer. Instead, I was met with a father who hated me and an Emperor who turned his back on us the moment we became too unsightly for his sterling Imperium. I cannot put my faith in the Ruinous Powers, for I know too well what their plans entail for their followers. The last hope I had was the Machine God. I devoted myself to the sanctity of technology in an attempt to find purpose amongst steel and oil."

"And did you?" Retrigan asked despite already knowing the answer.

"No," Pyotr replied darkly. "And yet Lavitor Fabrinus has. More so than most of his kin. For that, I hate him."

"Among other reasons," Retrigan grunted.

"Among other reasons," Pyotr agreed but did not elaborate. The silence returned again for a moment before the lord discordant spoke once more, his voice eerily quiet, "I'm getting worse, Retrigan."

The once-raptor stopped, looking at his brother. His fingers begged him to turn the end of his bolter on his fellow Night Lord due to the dark promise in his words, but he ignored that urge for now.

"Do you know why I did not have my mechadendrite replaced?"

"No," Retrigan answered. Nor had he particularly cared until now.

"It is because I cannot trust myself to not inject every machine spirit I come across with debilitating scrapcode if I had it. I avoid my Mechanization Hall because it is a constant test of will to not devote all my moments to flaying and torturing and agonizing every motive force I can get my hands on simply for the thrill of it. The temptation is never far from my mind. The desire is always there."

He finally turned and looked to Retrigan then. Those black eyes were still hollow, but it was only then that Retrigan truly understood why. His brother looked exhausted.

"When was the last time you slept, Pyotr?" Retrigan found himself asking, rather than voicing his sudden and strong discomfort at the words he was hearing.

"Not since Exodus Station."

"That was over a week ago."

Pyotr nodded, then looked back down the corridor, his pallid visage seeming old and decrepit beyond his years despite the preservative effects of Astartes physiology. "The Prince of Pleasure visits me in my dreams. They take things from me. My emotions, mostly. But I think other things are stolen, too. I'm being reformed. I fear what it is I am becoming."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Pyotr met Retrigan's eyes again. "You know why, brother."

Retrigan nodded. He did.

"I have been unfair to you, brother. I thought you fully lost to your… condition."

"Do not patronize me with soft-sounding replacements for reality, Retrigan. Call my corruption for what it is."

Retrigan nodded again, still processing his surprise. He thought the brother he once knew to be gone—or at least nearly so—what he had just been told proved otherwise. And yet…

"Diagnostics complete," Curie said, not bothering to turn away from her cogitator.

As if the conversation that had just taken place did not happen, Pyotr rose and joined his tech adept. Retrigan belatedly followed, standing to her other side. "The results?"

"Generator Seven is our problem. Completely inoperable. We will need to replace it when time is convenient, as I assumed." Curie spoke as she moved away from the cogitator and began to stroll down the line of large, box-shaped generators that buzzed and thrummed with activity. She stopped at one of them at the end of the line and began using her multi-tooled limb to access the panel.

In moments, the generator clicked and its front face split and began to lift into the air, coolant vapor rising alongside it. Within was a mess of wiring, cables, and blinking lumens that surrounded a throne. Sat within the seat was a cadaver of a human, its skin wrinkled and withered as many of the cablings ran from and connected to its temples and skull, while additional tubes attached to their gut and intestines, likely to provide nutrition and remove waste. Despite this, the figure thrashed and seized in its seat, their milky eyes flickering wildly and sparking with blue and purple fire. Retrigan looked at their form and immediately recognized them for what they were: A psyker.

"So that's how we do it," he said bluntly.

"Yes," Curie acknowledged. One of her mechadendrites rose from her spine and lowered towards the psyker in their seat—as degraded as they were, Retrigan couldn't define their gender anymore. "Simplistic. But efficiency often is."

The pointed tip of the servo-arm speared forward and up under the creature's chin. They stiffened as the metal point slid past their flesh and into the brain, then fell still. When Curie removed her appendage, only a dark dribble of fluid leaked out of the wound.

"Is that all?" Pyotr asked.

"Yes," Curie replied. "Realspace will be fully exerting itself over the vessel now. We should not need to worry about additional intruders, but all current ones will still need to be dealt with."

Retrigan frowned. That was easier said than done.

There were only two emotions that truly encompassed life: Fear and rage. The rest were simply superfluous. They may have encouraged life, but they did not define it. Only those two, primal feelings dictated survival.

Therefore, it only made sense that Gyrthemar and Ajax together represented life itself. And where they were life, death followed at their choosing.

Few words were spoken as the two almost melded into one entity of violence and destruction, intuiting the other's movements and intent before they even moved to do so. Waves of horrors were banished under their shots and strikes.

As the fight continued on, Gyrthemar's bolter began to run dry, but that only became an excuse to further venture and carve away at more ranks of daemons until they were able to locate the rest of the body of that had been blown apart by the wayward grenade and collect his spare ammunition cartridges. Moments later, they were back to unleashing devastation with maximum capacity, both warrior and berzerker howling in delight as the cackles of the Neverborn became nervous chittering whenever they drew near.

It was only a matter of time, however, before their foes regrouped and began to press in on them with renewed gusto.

"Bah!" Ajax snarled, swinging his scythe but only vanquishing one daemon in the process. "The little runts run scared! They won't bother coming close to me anymore!"

"Would that I had the same problem," Gyrthemar grunted through clenched teeth as he focused all his attention on shooting down enemies before they lunged too close. "I can't keep the damn things off of me!"

The two Astartes—backs still pressed together—glanced at one another knowingly. They nodded, then each tossed their weapon over their shoulders. Ajax caught the bolter at the same moment that Gyrthemar grabbed the power scythe. The horrors that had been previously just out of reach of Ajax's swings began to burst apart as they were met with bolter fire, while the crowding hordes that were charging Gyrthemar found themselves cut down by the dozens as he swung his new instrument of death with both hands.

Time ticked on as the two adapted their strategies just as quickly as the horrors changed their own. They were met with blasts of psychic energies and an occasional claw and fang, wearing down their armor and energy. But that only encouraged them to wear down the forces against them quicker to compensate and, soon enough, the enemy they faced had been reduced so heavily in numbers that they could finally begin taking stock of the room.

Many other Astartes, both Night Lords and Carnage Stitchers alike, still fought. Several of which were heavily injured, but only three were notably dead. Pockets of psychic mutation sat sparsely about the chamber, some panels of metal jutting with brackish ice while the walls dripped with unnaturally bright and viscous fluids, among other peculiarities. Even some of their fellow brothers sported odd growths and spines caused by the unexpected effects of their opponents.

Gyrthemar and Ajax breathed heavily as they took this in. Horrors continued to surge into the room, continuing the assault but not nearly with the same level of devastation that their near-endless wave of bodies had waged before.

"I think we've just about killed them all," Gyrthemar said proudly.

Ajax snorted. "Wisdom is certainly chasing you with that assessment, Night Lord."

"Is it?"

"Yes," Ajax replied, idly taking his scythe back from Gyrthemar and tossing him the bolter. "Unfortunately, you're faster."

Gyrthemar's red lenses turned and stared at the berzerker for a moment, then the contorted buzz of laughter came from his voxgrill. "Better that than to sit and let my past catch up with me."

Ajax let his nostrils flare as a vague sign of shared mirth before turning his head to look at the entryway of the chamber as he felt the nails suddenly begin humming. The vibrations steadily grew stronger.

"Hngh," Ajax growled, bringing a hand up to his temple. "Something is coming."

Gyrthemar raised his bolter, but no sooner than he did that a figure burst through the doorway, its form just as ghastly and fluid as its compatriots around it. Only this one carried a stave crackling with Warp-energy and rode atop a floating, beetle-like disc that jutted with spines around all edges. The horrid thing cried out in some incomprehensible tongue and pointed its stave forward. A new swarm of horrors surged forward into the room, only these seemed to part as they drew near Ajax and Gyrthemar and instead engaged with the other Astartes.

The entity atop its disc looked at them with half a dozen beady, ever-changing eyes. It bore its fangs and pointed to them with a simultaneously gnarled and rubbery clawed finger.

"I think it's challenging us," Gyrthemar stated.

The nails bits. No, they howled. "Then let's give it what it wants."