The halls here were large, but they weren't seemingly endless like the other areas of the facility. The only perpetual direction one way or another seemed to be up, and it was only because I could not see past the darkness after a few dozen meters. As it stood, Emmaline and I were in an unremarkable hall in an entirely remarkable, dangerous place. 

"We only need to know two things." I said sternly, holding aloft my autogun. I had lost my shotgun in the firefight and subsequent teleportation. "Where the sorcerer is and how to get out of here once he is dead." 

"Very pragmatic," she said. I looked at her to ascertain if she was joking. Her face was serene, gazing back at me with her pretty eyes. I realized I was being harsher than usual. She tended to be the one person to make me laugh, beside Lazarus. Thinking about it actually caused me to feel a bit of levity in that moment. 

"That's me, all business." I remarked. It didn't do to panic now, and Emmaline asking questions on how exactly we were to get out was another thing I was not prepared to answer. All we could do is move forward, and so we did at my insistence. She clutched the staff, more sure of herself now that we had taken a taste of combat and survived. I had no doubt the next time we found a xenos or cultist, she would throw them a hundred meters down the next hall. 

Unfortunately, I would find out soon. 

The next bend in the hallway, we had entered a bizarre corridor; an almost exhibit of stalls. What appeared like strange glass covered the walls, sectioned off by huge dividers of the xenos metal. From what we could tell, the glass shined a glare we couldn't view until we stepped in further, and the sight was horrible and breathtaking.  

I saw a man's face. A face contorted into a scream. He wore the robes of an ecclesiarch, his skin tanned as if the sun still beamed on him brightly. But the robes he wore were unlike any I had ever witness. Their symbols were strange, runic, and the few I recognized were old-fashioned even thousands of years ago. The next stall held an Ork, or what I thought was an Ork. It's skin was red rather than green, and demonic horns sprouted from its cranium. I couldn't feel the chaos taint on the xenos, but I knew it was there, locked in this prison of eternity. 

"Hadrian..." Emmaline said, drawing my attention. I gasped when I turned. 

Across the hall was another prison of stasis. A giant in baroque, bronze power armor, holding a weapon that looked very much like a storm bolter, only of a distant, weird design. It wore a tall helm with a red mane, and I thought it to be one of the venerable custodes for a brief moment, but I had seen the guards of the emperor before. They were taller than this squat monstrosity, though whatever this was dwarfed an astartes in size.  

[i]Click clack click[/i] 

We turned, weapons held at the ready. What approached was a machine, but it wasn't sentient or sapient as far as I could tell. I would later find out it was a thing called a Tomb Spyder. As large as a ground car, it had many limbs working in perfect unison. I thought it would come at us immediately, but it seemed content with checking the status of the hall and the consoles, it's subroutines likely just maintenance. Either way, I loathed the thing. 

I leveled my pistol at it. As I did so, before my finger touched the trigger, I saw more forms. Not the walking things I later learned were called Necrons, but machines that crawled across the ground. They were stout, the size of large dogs. I was not initially concerned, but there looked to be dozens, no, hundreds of them. They clattered and skittered, charging forward like a wave past the Tomb Spyder. 

Emmaline waved her staff forward, the front thirty scarabs suddenly crushed or tossed back into the darkness behind the relentless tide. Oil burst forth like blood, xenos-material crippled. I fired into the mass, hitting either its 'eye' or center mass with every shot. But I could not reload quickly enough, and soon I took a step back. They swarmed forward relentlessly, and we knew their mission was merely to kill.

With a burst of sudden thought, to this day I did not know if it was inspiration or panic, Emmaline scrambled over to the closest terminal. She hesitated a moment, but began to smack and poke at the console, frantically trying to get it to work and do something, anything. 

"Emmaline! We need to run!" I started, but even as I finished my scream, there was a change in the glass. It glared brightly in a brief flash, and then dissipated like liquid that retreated rather than fell with the law of gravity. A scarab hit me in the stomach, sending me to the ground. My quick unsheathing of my power sword saved my life, slicing it in half even as it bore down on me. Its two sides fell to my left and right, and I pressed a tired hand on the floor to lift myself up before I was overwhelmed.

A massive foot stepped out of the stall, encased in archaic steel-plate. The next step crushed the nearest scarab as if it were made of paper. I saw Emmaline gaping, holding herself on the ground as the massive man stepped forward, its weapon igniting, tearing through the mass of scarabs. Dozens were shattered every second, and with the terribly loud weapon came a scream from the giant, echoing out of its plated great helm. A cry of rage and madness. Luckily, I would soon find the madness would subside. It was a temporary phenomenon his strain of post-human dealt with when first made by the God-Emperor. 

Never in all my years did I ever believe I would meet one of the Emperor's legendary Thunder Warriors.