V2 Chapter 20: True Terror — A Khorne Greater Daemon Descends
Shebol Red Hand sat on his throne of pale skulls, his body trembling in a way he could not control. Rage reverberated violently in his chest.
"Damn the False Emperor! Damned worthless filth, every last one of them!"
He surged to his feet and let out a raw, animal howl at nothing. The False Emperor's servants had broken through the most solid defensive lines on the lower hive's main passages and were driving toward his upper hive base of operations like a series of blades.
He could not accept it. He did not understand how — after deploying those terrifying Daemon war engines deep in the lower hive's recesses, and even placing a Chaos Champion personally blessed by the great gods at the front line — the advance had still not been stopped.
If those nauseating Astra Militarum and the Death Angels had stormed into the upper hive without obstruction, then everything he had done up to this point was a joke.
"Bring me my front-line commanders!" He spun and screamed for his adjutants.
The empty throne hall returned only his own echo. No one answered.
He looked around, breathing hard. Then it registered. The adjutants responsible for relaying intelligence had all already been killed by him. He had vented his frustration on them over the course of the campaign and there were none left.
Now only several incomplete bodies remained at the foot of the throne steps, blood flowing slowly along the seams in the marble floor.
He forced the churning rage down below the surface and used what remained of his rationality to think through his position.
Those savage Death Angels would kill their way here soon. Direct engagement held no chance of victory.
In the end he ground his teeth, discarded the pointless assessment, and made his decision: abandon the planet, use a Warp teleportation ritual to leave, preserve the core force.
He opened the full-band internal communications channel and coldly ordered the remaining commanders to use their lives to resist the enemy's advance for as long as possible, that no one was permitted to fall back a single step.
Then he cut the channel, took the few heavily-armoured bodyguards he still had, and walked at a rapid pace out of the throne hall toward a concealed ritual space deep in the spire's apex.
The space had originally served as a magnificent underground storage vault used by Formal Prime's planetary governor for large quantities of private high-value property, large enough to easily accommodate heavy machinery.
It had been completely transformed into a vast blood sacrifice ritual site.
The markings of the evil ritual preparation covered every inch of the space. A Star of Chaos cast in blood had been burned deep into the floor.
Every senior official and noble who had once governed this planet had contributed their skulls to the pile at the room's centre.
Just as Shebol Red Hand walked to the ritual site's centre and prepared to order the Warp teleportation to begin, a dull and violent explosion penetrated the extremely thick ferrocrete walls and reached his ears clearly. Even the floor shifted under the impact.
The Death Angels were advancing that fast?
His expression changed sharply, distorting slightly with tension.
Without hesitation, he turned immediately and screamed at several blood-sacrifice priests standing at the star's corners in dark red robes: "No time. Start the teleportation now!"
The priests raised rusted sacrificial daggers and without hesitation drew them across their own palms. The blood, accompanied by the chanting of blasphemous incantations, began flowing along the floor's channels toward the ritual's centre.
As the ritual progressed and the blood in the surrounding channels began to boil and roll, something went wrong.
The energy field that was supposed to construct the Warp rift collapsed without warning. The priests' movements halted simultaneously. Then their bodies began violently convulsing. They dropped their daggers and screamed at the ceiling in agony.
The sounds coming from their throats no longer belonged to any human register, a deafening roar like boiling metal fragments grinding against each other.
Shebol Red Hand stood where he was. For the first time in his life, a fear that came from deep inside him arose without precedent.
"What are you doing?!" He drew his weapon and roared at the convulsing priests and his bodyguards, trying to cover the panic in his chest with anger.
But he could not stop it. Gradually, he began to make out what they were chanting in chorus. It was a name — a name whose mere utterance was sufficient to blaspheme the physical laws of reality.
[Vrak'thar, great Lord of the Eight-fold Tiers of Blood, the great Wrathful One, leader at the Eighth Step! He descends! He thirsts for blood! He will kill the miscreant named Duvette! He will take all skulls!]
The priests' voices rose until they were deafening. The entire space descended into a hell of darkness and blood-light intertwined.
In the echoing of that blasphemous name, Shebol Red Hand's consciousness began to blur rapidly. The hand gripping his weapon convulsed. The rationality that had been trying to push him toward flight was swallowed by a pure and incomprehensible lust for killing.
He gradually gave up struggling. He opened his mouth and began screaming alongside them, completely joining the blasphemous chorus.
On the final stretch of the main passage ramp connecting the lower hive to the upper levels, the battle had already opened.
"Fire."
Duvette stood behind a Chimera APC and issued the cold command. All Demolisher-type Leman Russ tanks' dual lascannons charged to full power simultaneously. Two blinding high-energy beams slammed directly into the heavy plasteel gate blocking the passage ahead.
The deafening sound of metal tearing. The gate buckled and melted under the extreme heat, and behind it was revealed an enormous elevator platform, large enough to accommodate an entire Astra Militarum regiment.
Without hesitation, Duvette ordered the 112th's armoured column and all infantry onto the platform immediately.
Heavy tracks crushed over molten steel. The soldiers methodically established a circular defensive perimeter. Duvette pressed the console's activation control. With the great sound of mechanical gears engaging, the elevator platform began its slow and heavy ascent.
Duvette stood at the platform's edge and raised his head.
The upper spire above was already burning. Firelight painted the dim metal dome in red.
He knew: the White Scars warriors, after breaking through the lower hive's defensive lines, had long since used their extraordinary speed to reach the upper levels. The proud Astartes had abandoned their vehicles and were making jump-pack assault leaps between the ornate noble estates and Ecclesiarchy cathedrals of the upper hive, cutting down the heretics blocking them without mercy.
The elevator platform continued its steady ascent. Then Duvette registered something extremely wrong.
The smell of blood.
Then his communications channel erupted with sharp, heavy static interference.
A fragment of emergency communications from the front forced itself through in broken pieces. The voice carried unmistakable heavy breathing and terror. Duvette could recognise it as the front-line command post's signal.
"All...with...blood...WITH-DRAW!! One-twelve...Duvet—...pull back...withdraw..."
He pressed the earpiece hard, trying to make out anything more specific. But the faint warning was drowned almost immediately by something that registered not as sound but as a physical intrusion — a whispering directly on every channel simultaneously, growing louder, until it became a deafening pressure like ten thousand iron hammers driving into every skull on the platform.
[Vrak'thar, great Lord of the Eight-fold Tiers of Blood, the great Wrathful One, leader at the Eighth Step! He descends! He thirsts for blood! He will kill the miscreant named Duvette! He will take all skulls!]
Duvette's pupils contracted sharply.
The clear mechanical tone of the elevator reaching its destination sounded. The enormous safety gates on both sides thundered open.
What greeted them was a scene that had become a Warp hell in its entirety.
The sky above the distant spire was completely buried under thick, churning crimson clouds.
The ornate golden statues that had lined the upper hive's grand boulevards were twisting and warping. From the sky, a slow and viscous rain of blood was falling.
Every person in the entire upper hive, fanatical believers in the corners, Blood Pact regulars, Penitents, all of them were screaming at the sky with the same voice, with a force that shredded their own throats, calling the nauseating bloody name in chorus, and with it the name of the miscreant who was about to be torn apart and personally hunted.
Under the erosion of this pure Warp force, the 112th soldiers on the platform were hit. Their eyes began to change.
A silent, deeply destructive rage began growing rapidly in every mortal warrior's chest. They were on the edge of raising their weapons against the soldiers standing beside them.
In the next instant, Duvette activated [Iron Crusade].
The Warp's erosion was made null. Every soldier shuddered simultaneously, pulled back from the edge, and gulped air as their rationality returned.
Duvette drew a slow breath of blood-thick air and raised his head toward the great spire ahead.
He understood all too clearly what everything before him meant. He had drawn the substantial and personal attention of a Warp entity. Khorne himself had noticed him.
A Greater Daemon from the abyss, a blood-maddened berserker of the Eight-fold Tiers of Blood, had torn open the veil of reality with the specific purpose of hunting him.
"Not entirely sure whether I should consider that an honour," Duvette said quietly, and laughed without humour.
A Khorne Greater Daemon, descending personally to hunt him.