[center][h1][u][b]Witch Hunt[/b][/u][/h1]
-After the Battle of Kursken-[/center]
[hr]
Thrakavorlimsk was ablaze with the purity of the Raptor. Its walls had been overwhelmed in a manner of a month, forced into oblivion by the might of the Imperial armies. Towering spires of witch-metal crumbled as artillery continued to pound it with high-explosive shells days after defeat. Great parapets of spikes and wyrd-runes were torn down by the roaring engines of a hundred tanks, paving the way for the Auxilia to reclaim the forsaken hive-bastion. Snow, stained with the blood of Urshites and Imperials, melted swiftly as the Emperor’s warhost continued their march to the next line in the trench-fields. Their banner waved them away as they left, signaling the fall of the fortress and the start of a new battle.

Yet the fight for Thrakavorlimsk was far from over. The mountains that curled in a half-moon shape around the hive-bastion were tall, fractured, and as snow-capped as the Himalazians. Desolate mining sites were carved into the base of them, previously harvested for stone and precious metals. Now, their tools and automata were silent and rusted from years of inactivity. What cavernous tunnels remained were filled with twisted baubles, queer fetishes, and the skeletal remains of past sacrifices. Runes of the wyrd were plastered across the stony edifices in blood, each as wet and fresh as if it had been applied mere moments before. They were myriad in shape, appearance, and purpose. Nothing guarded these entrances for the warriors, servants, and slaves of Ursh had been called to defend the bastion. Only the eerie darkness, whispers from beyond, and the pulsing of things forgotten remained within.

A convoy of heavy vehicles approached the plethora of cavern entrances, each as large and bulky as several boulders. Their treads ripped apart the depreciated excavation roads with wheels of reinforced steel and engines of burning promethium. Their boxy hulls parted shattered automata and safety objects away in motorized fury. Reinforced plows pushed aside unclaimed rock, mineral, and stone in their warpath. Menacing armaments with thick barrels and dangerous coils poked outwards in anticipation of the unknown. Several were the same hue of the Emperor’s own, faded yellow with livery of the Raptor. Few others held their own livery, such as some with lilac ornamentation or another in slate-grey. Their heraldry mattered little as they each separated, aiming for different corridors into the mountain proper. The sheer size of the man-made mouths easily fit the vehicles within, drowning them in a darkness lit only by prow-mounted lights.

One final vehicle followed some distance behind the vanguard of thick transports. It was a great beast of a machine with a main cannon riddled with volcanic coils. Its hull bristled with armaments fit to tackle anything, ranging from stubbers to autocannons to flakguns. Every churn of its engine howled like a carnosaur. It was a malevolent machine and it was the Imperialis Praetorios of the God-Slayer’s arsenal. It drove into the caverns, confident of its relative size and capability to munch through any amount of stone. The confidence of the tank proved its worth as it rolled over heavy automata, barricades, and boulders alike on a warpath through the mining tunnel. Firmly within, the Praetorios rumbled forward.

Primarch Aeternus watched the holomap twist on a flat axis as the tunnel engulfed their command vehicle. Several of the mortal crewmen were hard at work plugging at coughing cogitators nearby. The hollow ping of a dozen auspex ringed in their ears, each further mapping out the darkness of the mountain above and forward of them. Every noise was a buoy of confidence relayed from vehicle to vehicle as they progressed further in. The myriad caverns opened more and more as they advanced their secret assault. His armor hummed loudly, adding further to the plethora of loud individuals currently populating his command deck. He shifted to look over each of them, the shaven skull of the mother of zmaj over his right shoulder observing with him.

Legate Sultrim did not meet Aeternus’ gaze, instead locking his strange, nearly pupiless, grey eyes with the empty sockets of the zmaj’s skull. The two seemed to engage in a conversation of some sort, before the Astartes gave a short nod. He was in command of those members of the [i]other[/i] First Legion taking part in this assault, the bulk of his gene-siblings along with their Mistress instead sallying forth to relieve the siege of the Terrawatt Clans. His detachment was a mere hundred gene-warriors strong, a pittance compared even to the dwindling God-Slayers, but they had never been intended to take a leading role in this campaign.

Whatever had passed between he and the skull the Space Marine did not say, but shortly after his nod, when Aeternus had turned his attention to one of his gene-cousins, he removed his helm as he continued to silently study the hololith. He bore upon one shoulder a broken gate, marking him as a veteran of Sanctii, and carried himself with a quiet confidence of one who knew he ought to have died and was simply waiting for reality to assert the fact, a disregard for his own life so common to the eighty Astartes who had left that city alive.

The Sirens of Terra, daughters of the Fifteenth, were present in the form of a vexillarius and an epistolary representative. If their Legion Mistress, Lady Pantea, was available, then they gave no indication of her status. Regardless, they remained and watched the hololith rotate as the Primarch eyed over them. 

The troops of the Undying Onslaught would arrive with their regular irregularity, now adapted for Ursh. Their armours were painted with area-appropriate camouflage and adorned with local furs if not outright bearing more serious modifications like welded plasteel plates or razorwire wrapped around knuckles. Many would be bearing weapons atypical for Legionnaires sourced mostly from dead mortals. Heavy stubbers, ripper guns, grenade launchers, shotguns, smaller vehicles, and some human-scaled heavy weapons used as small arms. There would be more, if items like the mortars had not been transferred to fronts that needed them more than this one where they would run into the obvious issue such as an unfortunately low ceiling.

Staff of the Undying Onslaught had taken a… personal interest in this operation. Strange as the reports were of the ongoings, the grain of truth in them was far too enticing. The Fifth had nothing less than a yearning for adaptation, and a foe so unprecedented would prove a selection pressure for their evolution that could not be passed up. As was made clear by their existing campaigns, the first attempts at any new problem was always disastrous for the pale Legionnaires. They knew that going into these caverns, they’d be dying in droves. But they knew that they would learn and improve from this, and the next time they encountered such a foe, it would be the Undying Onslaught that they would not be ready for, not vice versa.

Captain Krassus arrived as their lead, but he noticed more and more his warriors looked to the Apothecary Gamaliel or Sergeant Anwar. Aside from their consistent survival through the many evolutions of the Legion, Gamaliel was a staple sight after engagements that had unavoidable wisdom to impart as his narthecium worked on others while Anwar was simply fascinating because of his strange condition. It had only come to prominence recently, but that mercurial skin made his fellow Legionnaires almost fawn over him like a mother over a babe.

He decided the best way to regain his undermined authority was to simply prove his worth and await the inevitable death of either those two, or of himself. For now there were witches to kill, and of course to study.

“We are to take the witch-citadel of [b]Urgathok[/b], located by the Sigilites deep in the mountains surrounding Thrakavorlimsk. Relics from within will be transferred to our contingency of Sigilites and witch-minds,” Primarch Aeternus finally spoke, his voice grating on the ears of the unaugmented and augmented alike. His tone was bereft of comfort, retaining the lion’s growl that he had been known for throughout his life. The winged helmet’s lenses momentarily fell on the Legate and the Fifteenth’s representatives, regarding them for their unique abilities. He continued, “while the citadel itself will be outright destroyed. Their servants, guardians, and monstrosities are to be put to sword and flame.”

As a maestro of penultimate war, Aeternus’ black gauntlet shifted over the hololith as it spun around and magnified beneath their gazes. A projected route spanned further out to a clearing several thousand meters deep. An impossibly large structure materialized in the cartolith. Taller than the Himalazians and deeper than the Great Ocean’s shrinking depths, it served as a tower of the wyrd. No further buildings, defenses, or formations surrounded the structure. The Thunder Primarch drew several arrows from their current position with his index finger, each differently hued to represent the myriad Imperial forces.

“The Fifth Legio Astartes will take the foremost vanguard, led by Captain Krassus, to engage the witches and their protectors. The First Legio Astartes, led by Legate Sultrim, will follow the Fifth’s wave to the wyrd reliquary. The First Legio Cataegis and the Fifteenth Legio Astartes will slay the cabal members and their masters. Once all objectives have been completed, the Fifth will have the honor of rectifying the mistakes of the Old Night and crushing their dwelling. All other vehicles will egress the mountain.” Aeternus stated, the hololithic battle sphere adjusting to include the names and details of their assault. His choices were made based on observation, battle history, and instinct. The Fifth were present in their full force, the Fifteenth with their witch-minds, and the First with their veterans. Still, he was adjusting to the differences between the Cataegis and the Astartes. 

“Auspex, telemetry, and divination has assured our respective targets located at the bottom and top of their demesne; however, the wyrd affects the fabrics of reality and your destinations may be hindered. We will arrive in fifteen minutes. Now is the time to vocalize your questions if you have any.” He turned to regard each of the warrior-leaders that accompanied him, expectantly awaiting the last word before their battle began.

“The First Legio Astartes has acquired weapons of a sort against the wyrd, courtesy of the Sigilites. I am told that they are relics from before the fall of Old Night,” Legate Sultrim said in a soft voice, his attention sliding now and then away from Aeternus and back to the zmaj. “I shall keep three squads so equipped in reserve, to be deployed as needed. That is all.”

Primarch Aeternus narrowed his eyes at Legate Sultrim. He hadn’t been informed of a new weapon to use against the powers of the wyrd. If Malcador had gone to the length of denying him information, then there was reason to believe that the identity of the weapon must be contained. The strange leering at his new trophy further raised his suspicions, yet Aeternus relented with a simple nod.

“Understood. Contact me if there are issues with these new weapons.” Rex responded, turning his attention away from the Astartes towards the duo of lilac warriors after receiving a warrior’s salute from the Legate in acknowledgement.

“A sound battlefield strategy, Aeternus.” Spake a new voice, the door to the command room opening to reveal the armored form of the Fifteenth’s Legion Master with her helmet held tightly under one arm, brilliant silvered hair allowed to cascade freely around her shoulders as she eyed all within.

“You missed just one thing though. My Legion has deployed in force for this operation - our numbers may be few, but they are great enough that some can be diverted for other important tasks.” Pantea continued, nodding to the other occupants of the command vehicle, “The Astartes of the Fifteenth can serve as potent force multipliers for any conventional company - and rather than use the full complement of my Legion as a hammer against our foe I would… [i]advise[/i] deployment of a few of our assets in this supporting role. We have proven our merit in such at Inceon, and our forces would greatly aid the conventional assault of the Fifth and First.”

There was, of course, a little more to her suggestion than a simple desire to aid fellow servants of the Emperor in bringing unity to Terra. The reliquary of psychic artifacts was something she and her legion coveted greatly - and she would be damned if she allowed its capture without some of her trusted eyes and ears present to ensure that the finest such artifice would go to the hands of the Legion best suited to the use of such wondrous things. 

Not that she would have ever said it that way. 

“Legion Mistress Pantea,” Primarch Aeternus stated in a half-announcement, turning away from the hololith to the Astartes now entering the command deck. Captain Tiberius hadn’t forwarded her arrival to him, an issue for a later date. He offered a swift salute as he had to the other representatives, a fist to the Raptor on his chestplate. Rex continued after dropping the salute, “I’ve read the reports about the Fifteenth’s combat aptitude. The prowess of your Legion speaks for itself. I authorize the spread of the Fifteenth’s warriors across the battlegroup.”

Before the Astartes could respond back to the Primarch, he raised a blackened gauntlet to halt her. “However, I have a need for you and your strongest by my side as we ascend. The Steel Sentinels spoke of your valor and power in Maullen Sen. If their tales are true, then the First Cataegis will need your witch-minds to reinforce them.” Aeternus finished, his voice a lion’s roar, a great growl of confidence and pride. He hadn’t shown it, but beneath the heavy mantle of command Rex appreciated that the Astartes had begun showing more characteristics around him. From the stories he had heard, he was certain that Pantea would be one of these Astartes with their humanity intact.

Pantea said nothing in direct response to his initial reply - though her eyebrow [i]did[/i] raise as he gave his [i]authorization[/i] for her to disperse a fraction of her forces. She was not used to taking orders in such a manner - indeed there were only a handful of individuals on Terra whom she would accept orders from. 

Still, his praise for her Legion’s prowess mollified her somewhat, and a small smile graced her lips as she listened to him patiently. 

“And that is why the Sirens have deployed here in force.” She replied smoothly, the smile growing slightly, “An entire cabal of this nature obviously demands our attention - they give all of us with these gifts the image of maddened warlocks. We of all Legions know the power the warp can grant to any military operation - and I think you’ll be pleased to see that the powers of these foes are nothing compared to those of the Emperor’s chosen of the Fifteenth.”

Krassus had no objections to anything that was said outright, though he turned his head the slightest amount to heed the word of Gamaliel that made a request of him to relay in turn. “The Fifth would need clarification of protocols for enemy wounded and surrenderers .” As part of their improvised use of captured weaponry they had also much less-than-lethal equipment to ensure Gamaliel and the Apothecaries would have meat enough to play with. But an effort to capture the witches if they were to be executed for an example to be made of was not an effort the Legion had much interest in. 

“None will survive. The cabal dies here.” Primarch Aeternus responded swiftly, ending his previous discussion with the Fifteenth’s Legion Mistress. His tone bordered on aggressive at the thought of capturing any of the witches from within. The data provided of the other legions confirmed his suspicions about the Fifth and he snapped his eyes at the apothecary among them. He continued with a snarl on his lips, “do not dare to claim their cadavers. They, and their monsters, will be thoroughly corrupted with the wyrd and will be cleansed by fire. Should you dare, then it is not the Sigilite that you shall answer to.”

He rolled his shoulder, imposing himself over the gathering with the aura that had made him a Primarch in the first place. Although his eyes were hidden beneath the winged helmet of his office, Aeternus’ glare was evident in a headlong stare towards the apothecary. His blackened fist tightened around the handle of Apocrypha, which rested against his left pauldron. The shaven skull of the zmaj on Rex’s right pauldron stared out at the Astartes, words unspoken but to the Legate nearby. A threat was made, uncharacteristically of the First Primarch.

Sultrim returned the stare, and an understanding seemed to pass between Legate and zmaj. The  Astarte did not move from his position, but the slightest change in disposition and handling occurred. The First it seemed would stand with the First.

“There was no such intention, save your fervour for the foe. We merely wished to leave nothing unclear.” Krassus replied, though accompanying this with a bow of his head in obeisance to formality. Gamaliel made no such movement. Instead, even behind the green lenses of his helmet the augmented vision of the transhumans would suffice to make a concentrated gaze see how he narrowed his eyes at the Primarch, skin crinkling with displeasure. A mental grudge was noted, and another whisper in the ear of Krassus made who seemed to not react in the slightest. Well, flesh wasn't blood of bone. But that wasn't a loophole they would attempt to exploit just yet. Not after scrutiny was so recently inspired. “No further questions.” Krassus stated, bowing his head another time. 
	
“Good. Today, we deal with an ancient enemy that has plagued us since the dawn of Unity. From the mountains of the Himalazians of our Master to the cold plains of Nordyc to the trenches of Ursh. They have escaped our Master’s gaze for a century. No more. We will slay them today, like the rest of the witches they’ve sent against us. Glory to Him of Terra! Raptor Imperialis!” Primarch Aeternus stated with a roar, his former aggression dispersing as he regarded their operation at last. His rally was echoed by the members of the chamber, mortals and genewarriors following his rally for their Master. The chronometer on the hololith ticked down to its final second, unleashing a discordant tone that set off klaxons across the Godbane-pattern Baneblade.

The time for discussion was over. It was now time to purify Ursh of its witch threat.
[hr]
The clearing was ahead of the battlegroup. Their target had been found deep within the realms of Thrakavorlimsk. Urgathok. It was a tower of impossible height made of black metal carved with screaming faces of things unknown. It stretched hundreds of meters, yet the structure didn’t fully eclipse the cavern clearing. Sigils were carved into the walls from the base of the cavern to the lip of the opening above, snow freshly falling through from the sky. Things shambled around it, unfocused and unrecognizable even from a clear distance. They were difficult to see, their forms tainted by forces that hurt their mortal eyes. It mattered little to the Undying Onslaught.

The troops of the Fifth once ready would begin with an opening salvo into the depths of the caverns with canisters of vile gas, echoing ancient siege tactics. It was likely the witches could deal with this, but at the very least it was meant to put a strain on their psychic powers before the battle truly began. There would be a very brief wait to let the stuff aerate, before the rev of chainswords and engines would supposedly announce a motorized charge into close combat, shells of smoke obscuring it. But there would be no charge, the deafening noise combined with smoke merely meant to give cover to the attacker and unnerve the defender. 

A stampede of plasteel boots could be audible just at the edge of one’s hearing, announcing the warriors of the Undying Onslaught advancing up to the very edge of the miasma of smoke and gas. They would set up with heavy weapons, largely autocannons and heavy bolters but the true devastation would come with a rain of grenades both handheld and from the captured launchers, the first lines of the foe to be showered with thousands of pieces of shrapnel. The goal was to simply repeat this cycle of bringing forth covers of smoke, advancing with heavy weaponry to cover made gains, and finally bringing the fragmenting explosives down to kill defenders and dislodge them from their own cover; if any remained in a position claimed by advancing Astartes then they would simply martial their physical supremacy. But, of course, the witches would undoubtedly have their own say on the day’s outcome.

All the while as the sounds of gunfire and explosions echoed along stone that seemed too claustrophobic for the magnitude of violence within, a few of the Fifth would sing. A soft tenor would pierce through it, the sounds switching from warbling to drawn out like opera regaling themes like the warriors living forever even if they fall, eternity found within the ink on poet’s papers. 

Yet, their plans were sent into a state of discord the moment their smoke began to fill the tunnels. As the Undying Onslaught began their rapid set-up, fire, and reposition strategies, the clearing of the cabal’s citadel swiftly sucked in the area around it. The Fifth had several moments of seeing the first enemies before they vanished into the smoke and toxins. They were legion in that chamber, a horde of half-beast half-men covered in mutations and runes. Amongst them were great, hulking creatures made of various persons. Each of them were difficult to stare at, causing their eyes to want to blink the madness away or water with pain. Then they were gone beneath the smoke their own forces offered.

The Fifth’s explosives detonated, showering shrapnel across the figures that blended into the smoke. Silhouettes crumbled, fell, and then stood as more devices erupted into torrents of fragmentation. The grenades, missiles, and charges violently shook the caverns around them; however, the stone stood. Dark sigils on the walls began to glow in response to their arrival. Blood that was spilt was siphoned unknowingly, seeping through the stone floors and down into deeps unknown.

Their smoke cover lingered like a heavy shroud, twisting and turning the hue of fresh gore. The silhouettes within, under fire from the heavy weapons of the Fifth, began to sprint forward on all of their available limbs. Despite the heavy fire and reposition, the Undying Onslaught couldn’t fully annihilate a horde of prowling man-beasts. The Astartes were assaulted by creatures with gangly limbs, horrific claws, and howling maws. Even beneath ceramite, their armor would not protect against beasts such as these. Genewarriors were torn from their position and dragged into the smoke. Rhinos were flipped, smashed, and destroyed as their head beams dared to shine into the clearing.

Even their songs were beginning to drown out as a humming began to burn through the ears of the Emperor’s fiercest warriors. It was a language unknown, imperceptible to the untrained. An acrid taste set upon tongues. Sulphur bit into the nostrils. Trickles of thin blood snaked from ears. Invisible sensations pressed against skin. Eyes began to redden with anguish. It was sorcery, the power of the wyrd.

The rest of the battlegroup quickly disembarked from their transports, rushing to the aid of the Fifth as the crimson smoke began to spread outward from the tower base. The God-Slayers lunged into combat, disregarding their previous orders, to assist their gene-descendants. Primarch Aeternus entered the fray with his warriors, disappearing amidst the shroud with valor on his tongue. The Astartes were reacting and the environment reacted to them.

The First Legio Astartes had remained in the rear of the formation, Legate Sultrim leading a scant force of seventy - his remaining thirty gene-siblings left in reserve, as he had said. They advanced in a defensive formation, a large square centered around a cluster of Sigilites carrying between them a long, thin box of some sort - most likely a cryo-vault, considering the sheer sense of [i]cold[/i] emanating from it.

At the sight of the unleashed sorcery, the Sigilites laid down their burden, the seniormost among them typing rapidly upon the runes embossed upon the vault’s surface. While they went about their mysterious work, their Astartes escort dropped into a low and ready formation, bearing the esoteric armory that had been the plunder of Sanctii.

+‘Wyrd neutralization imminent. Brace for reality disjunction,’+ Sultrim keyed over the interlegionary vox as he and the other members of the First went through their preferred mental assurances to ground themselves in material existence. One plus one gives two. Gravity pulls down. Time moves forward.

A pulse of [i][b]is[/b][/i] radiated from the casket. The very rock seemed more solid with its passing, and several of the more arcane weapons wielded by the First seemed to power down as it washed over them. It advanced unerringly, racing ever towards the front of the formation.

+‘Disjunction in three… two… on-’+ Sultrim counted down, abruptly cut off as reality met unreality and both were unfurled into quantum foam. Physics in the vicinity briefly stopped working as described, its laws haphazardly reconfiguring themselves to fill the hole in existence left by the mutual destruction. For the briefest of instants, a span of time so short that in the ordinary course of things it had no measurement, the assembled hosts found themselves flattened upon a two-dimensional plane as the third had turned into a vector measuring an object’s underlying concept, a reallocation required by the temporary absence of souls in the space.

Strangely, Aeternus’ zmaj skull was unaffected.

And then mundanity reasserted itself, and all returned to as it was - minus the stench of sorcery. +‘Disjunction concluded,’+ Sultrim managed to croak out despite the overriding urge to vomit. Keying back to his unit’s internal vox frequency, he managed to give his next command in a more confident voice. +‘Engage the enemy.’+

A flurry of blink clicked acknowledgements followed, prelude to the fury of the Dark Age being unleashed once more. Weapons that would have been better off forgotten were once more wielded by man against man and the fundamental forces of creation, still tender after their rough treatment, were rudely weaponized.

The constituent subatomic particles of a mutated abomination, bulging with muscles and boasting claws dripping a poison that burnt through armor and flesh and bone into its victim’s very soul, were altered to increase their effective mass, instantly transforming the creation of the wyrd into a micro-singularity that swiftly evaporated in a burst of hard radiation - but not before consuming two of its fellows. Sound turned sharp, the warsongs of the Fifth suddenly gaining a physical force, barricades smashed aside and the eardrums of their enemy burst as they advanced. Chosen warriors, blessed with power by their sorcerous masters, found themselves frozen in time, unaware of their own demise as other legionnaires took mercy on them with their relatively mundane Volkite weapons.

Sultrim blink-clicked an icon on his helmet’s display. The advance was proceeding as planned.

Primarch Aeternus wretched, spilling bile through his helmet out onto the ground. The areas where it collided melted like magma, superheated by one of his many rushed augmentations. Whatever had been used to halt the sorcery, it rippled across the God-Slayers in a multitude of ways. They were not Astartes, after all, and they suffered for their cruel transformations into Thunder Warriors. Some of his men were enhanced tenfold, ripping abominations in half with reinvigorated strength, while others simply perished as their bodies couldn’t withstand the pressure. 

The blood-soaked mist vanished as he carved through the few mutated guardians that remained. He eyed the walls that had glowed and noticed their lack of ornamentation. Whatever vile sorcery had plagued them was now null to their world. His attention regarded the mass assembly of First Legio Astartes advancing through the abomination mire, slaughtering as they pressed on. Aeternus shared a spare look with the Legate before continuing onward.

+‘Slaughter the last of these curs! Raptor Imperialis!’+ Primarch Aeternus roared out into the vox, the last of his bile dripping through the grills in his helmet. Apocrypha was hefted far above his head, then ignited in a crimson sheath of plasma acting as a beacon for the rest of the combatants on the battlefield. The God-Slayers were quick to react, gaining their sense of awareness and perpetrating murder on the vile creatures of the cabal.

For most of the assembled Astartes, the splintering of reality along a trillion spiraling fractal lines of formless infinity was a harrowing experience, one few would ever forget even as it lasted for less than a human heartbeat.

For the Sirens it was a different matter. Eternity stretched on in an endless plane of bleak impossibility in all directions. The dimensions flattened themselves and folded together in bizarre and twisting impossibilities. Pantea looked down at herself and beheld her own hearts beating furiously on the outside, her skin twisted and boiling within her. Her brain spread evenly around the exterior of the four spatial planes her inverted skull had spread itself across. Up was down and left was right and every cell in her body began to collapse into a singularity of unfathomable nightmare [i]emptiness[/i]. She drifted alone trapped amidst the tens of trillions of parallel worlds within each singularity for an eternity and a day, unable to end herself, unable to scream, able only to think of her own looming madness in this prison of unreality.

And then not even that. 

Reality reasserted itself in the inexorable crashing of a thousand tsunami waves of roiling wyrd-and-material foam. She was drowning as the world reoriented itself and all the trillions of hell-singularities snapped in an instant as she and her gene-sisters were reconstituted from screaming statistical nonexistence in eruptions of unfocused psychic backlash. One of their number blinked out of existence again for a moment before reappearing a meter to the right as a tower of ash bearing her shape materialized from thin air beside her and crumbled to nothing. Pantea herself came back to physicality in a blaze of emerald warpflame that singed the lilac armor of those adjacent her and fused the ground beneath the melted snow under her feet into volcanic glass. Others vomited up unspeakable black sludge or screamed as lightning vented from eyes and other orifices. Only a second had elapsed, and yet for the Astartes of the Fifteenth it had been a dreadful nightmarish eternity as their own essence turned against them and fought against its own existence. 

It was not the ordinary way of the Fifteenth to charge, en masse and in force, into the head of an enemy army. But neither this was not an ordinary engagement. Fists erupting into flame the legion mistress of the Fifteenth lead her forces into battle with all the furious might of the wyrd suffusing every dreadful blow and blast of psy-lightning. 

Captain Krassus stared out at Aeternus as the order was given. It was not the way of the Fifth for commanders to wade into the melee together with their subordinates. Indeed, he observed the Thunder Warrior remotely through the lens of one of his comrades. He pondered the possibility of shooting him in his back, Thunder Warrior or not a lascannon tended to get through most things. As far as he was concerned it would be just recompense for the insult at the strategic meeting. Then he wondered if it was the psykers that had introduced this thought into him, after all it would be in line with their behaviour. Then he decided it didn’t matter, because it was just a pleasing fantasy rather than something to act on. 

Looking out at the battle-field, he was glad that the Undying Onslaught had been reinforced. Having been in the vanguard, they had taken the first line of casualties. Now at least, the fact they were almost all gunners rather than any kind of melee troops meant that the burden of personnel losses would be offloaded to their allies. But as he stared out at the battlefield, there was a command he felt was very important. “The sigils, destroy them.” It didn’t matter to him if the ‘reality device’ seemed to suppress the wyrd. It was clear that there was some sort of value in the glowing red markings about the scene. 

Thus his troops obeyed, unloading the fragmentation munitions from their assorted launchers and replacing them with krak charges. Perhaps it was unwise to try and destroy them, perhaps there’d be some devastating release of aetheric energy. But such wouldn’t be his fault, merely that of the circumstances. As the detonations rang out, swift calculations had to be made to be sure these shots wouldn’t cause a collapse of the cavern. It would be a shame if all of the rest of the warfare would be ceased by a cave-in trapping both sides in a rocky tomb. 

The cavern began to violently rumble between the loss of the sorcerous runes and the Fifth’s fragmentation launchers. For a moment, it felt as if the world would come crashing down on the advancing Imperials; however, to their surprise, the cavern held for reasons unknown. The mortal members of the expedition wondered at the reason for this, but those that had fought the Emperor’s wars for decades knew why. At the heart of the clearing, the tower still rose high above as a symbol of ignorance and defiance. Explosives did not harm it nor did the strange weapon of the First. It stared down at them with myriad daemonic visages, leering at the souls that dared to scour its depths.

The Imperials did more than dare. Those mutated horrors that remained, afflicted by the First’s dimensional device, were slaughtered the last with the Fifteenth’s empyric destruction. No monsters awaited within the confines of the tower, shrouded by mystical shadows. The techno-barbians lay scattered in macabre piles, slaughtered by bolt, ray, and blade. Their path was clear. Primarch Aeternus stepped up the obsidian stairs leading into the mouth of the cabal’s stronghold. He turned to the leaders of the respective legions as they approached.

“It begins. I feel it within my bones that the wyrd will assail our assault.” Primarch Aeternus scowled, momentarily adjusting his gaze back to the eerie tower with malevolence in his eyes. His tone roared out as the augments of the Cataegis began to filter through him. He could see it in all of the Thunder Warriors as they twitched, snarled, and bayed with their weapons ready; yet, they suppressed it well beneath their warplate. His crimson lenses returned to the Astartes.

“The God-Slayers will enter first to intercept the wyrd. Follow after and split to achieve your objectives. For Him of Himalazia!” Primarch Aeternus roared out, raising Apocrypha once more to the blasting war cries of the First Legio Cataegis. He had considered sending the First Legio Astartes in with their Sigilite box, but Rex couldn’t risk Malcador’s artifacts being lost in the first wave. His armored form turned around and began to stride through the shadows that licked his armor.

The God-Slayers followed after him with their bravery on full display, melting into the shadowy portal of the tower with their weapons ready and their mouths screaming warsongs. After several seconds of raucous noise, the clearing fell quiet, save for the idle hum of power armor and nearby idling engines. 

Regarding the looming entrance with visible disdain, Pantea and her legion halted for a brief moment. A murmured re-confirmation of their battle plans ensued, and they picked up their march. Her arms erupted in towering flame that would cast aside any mundane darkness for hundreds of meters away - but in the choking void of shadow and darkness they now found themselves, her own powers and those of the rest of the Legion could barely make a dent. 

Still, they pressed on, some twirling force swords in their hands in anticipation of the slaughter to come, others simply watching in cold, contemplative silence as the darkness enveloped them and the final confrontation drew near.

The Fifth were somewhat delayed from the next objective, picking over the battle-field. They made an exaggerated showing of disposing of the dead, dying, and wounded as if mocking the suspicions that Aeternus had implied. Stone would echo with chainblades whirring, followed by the cries of the few foemen still lucid despite the wyrd begging for mercy. The last sound loud enough to be echoed would be sardonic laughter nearly as loud as the noise of the chainblades going through flesh and bone. Quiet would briefly reign as the Astartes picked over ammunition and equipment from the fallen of both sides, and then piled all the corpses of the enemy before igniting them in a pyre. The ashes would then be contained in spent munition crates, very brief welding making sure they were air-sealed to finally be the problem of the unspoken higher authorities he appealed to. 

A few spare hands of the Undying Onslaught would work with their chainaxes to complete the removal of the profane runes etched on the walls, while apothecaries extracted geneseed from dead comrades. Soft but somber, some would begin to sing a requiem for the fallen that now finally had eternal respite.

The First, posted behind the Fifth, simply watched. All seventy, as paltry a force as that was, were still standing, but even with the battle concluded they remained in a defensive formation, tensely alert in threats from all directions as they hunkered down close about their strange weapon. Their cousins they left to their looting and their ritual with neither question nor complaint as they stood in silent vigil.
[hr]
After reassembling their lines, the Fifth would be in a formation long and wide. They hadn’t fought psykers before, and there was no knowing what to expect. Thus the best they could do was simply make sure that anything that targeted one Legionnaire would be unlikely to target another, and if things took a turn for the worst they could simply run for their lives. Beyond that, their arrangement was quite simple. The lightest weapons they bore like the heavy stubbers and boltguns would be at the front, behind them the heavier ones, and finally the indirect fire ones. They had enough flashlights on them to blind a human in a single blink, just in case their visors would fail. Some also bore chemical lights as a redundancy, though these were kept away for now. Of course, to blind the foe, canisters of more gas and smoke were still held in reserve.

They weren’t ready to advance into the Tower, they weren’t ready to fight psykers. But they wouldn’t get any less unready, and so in almost perfect rhythm the Fifth’s boots crushed stone underneath their march. 

Behind them, in a chorus of ceramite upon rock discordant in its [i]truly[/i] perfect rhythm, came the First. Even ignoring their strange anti-wyrd device they were all seasoned veterans, the least of them having already engaged with Urshites in the countless petty engagements and border wars that had served as prelude to the grand invasion. And the greatest of course had fought in Sanctii, the city-state that had been hoped for as a staunch ally and vassal in this war having instead bled their firstborn white - but in exchange for such prizes.

Yet, even as the stalwart genewarriors entered through the darkness, nothing had prepared them for the penumbra that awaited them. Tendrils of shadowy substance streamed from their ceramite as they emerged into the tower of the cabal proper. It dripped down on the floor beneath, disappearing into a puddle of black, watery mirth. The air was heavy with the wyrd of the coalesced realm. It was a physical affliction on them as weight on the shoulder, pain behind the eye, or wetness on the skin even beneath their warplates. The stink of sulphur was abundant, mixed together with burning incense and rich iron of freshly spilt blood. 

It was a home made of the wyrd and they were intruders.

The Astartes of the First, Fifteenth, and Fifth had a single moment of cohesion, joining up behind the vigilant Cataegis of the First before pandemonium began. Where the impossibly dark walls had started to reveal their contents, each side fell away to a penumbral abyss unseen before. A swirling vortex replaced where an ascender led up to the heights of the tower. Furniture, ornaments, fetishes and more fell apart as if reality had been its stitches pulled. The floor beneath their boots began to shift, splitting apart and spinning the occupants on different axes of the dimensional plane. 

Howling, chirping, barking, roaring, growling, screeching, shrieking. All of these sounds filtered into their ears through their ceramite helmets. Audible reductors couldn’t lower the pitch, tone, or volume of these unrelenting noises. They came unabated on an unnerving loop of madness. The room around them shifted further as their strike force was split apart by the moving tiles beneath their feet. The First Cataegis on one side, the Fifth on the other, and the First Astartes on the next. They formed an abominable circle on myriad axes around a shape that had begun to coalesce in the space between them.

It began as a sphere of swirling blue, violet, and black. Then it rapidly expanded, pushing out in a variety of shapes to form an eccentric star. It rippled violently as it spun, desperately trying to reach out and touch the warriors of the Emperor. It screeched with a tone that wasn’t audible, felt only against the primordial energies within their souls. Imperials began to collapse, claimed by the touch of the sphere or descending into madness that shattered their spirit. Those touched disappeared into molecular motes of liquid shadow. The realm quivered with each death and howled in delight.

Their vision began to grow agonizingly painful as they watched the polygonal creation of the wyrd suddenly burst apart. It created a jagged line that stretched from the edge of their vision to the next. The edges of reality were dragged open before their eyes as they stared into the pink miasma of unreality. The agony was enough to drive veterans of hundreds of campaigns into suicidal insanity. It lasted for only a moment as they were seemingly dragged through the lilac abyss.

Reality remade itself as they were spit out onto the dark tiles of the tower. Mauve fluids coated their armor as if they were vomited from a living creature. Strands of viscous mucus stretched between segments of their warplate. Wispy tendrils of lilac lightning arced in short bursts around their powerplants. It was a horrendous, damnifying experience that was followed shortly by more.

Primarch Aeternus raised his head from the ground to witness the great union of the archenemy. He stood in a wide, circular room as large as the greatest vaults of his Master’s fortress. Towering shelves of impossible material housed millions of undecipherable tomes on the edges of the chamber. Furniture, bricks, and more floated above them in the paradoxical heights of the tower. His eyes ached as he stared at everything around him, but nothing hurt as much as the things that stood in his way.

Eighteen shrouded figures loomed in a circle within the circular chamber around him and the reorganizing strike force. Their robes were beyond the darkest black and inscribed with brilliant blue runes that shifted in his sight. They chanted in a language that he couldn’t comprehend. Even attempting to listen hurt him on a level he couldn’t fully understand. They concerned Aeternus as much as the things that stood between him and the figures.

Aberrations beyond his wildest imagination hungrily bayed in fathomless hordes. They were creatures stolen from myriad myths on Terra. They were everything and nothing at the same time. At one time they were pink skinned, many-limbed, and comically short. In the next second, they were snarling beasts on all fours with mauve fur and spinned coats. They were unreality made flesh. They were hungry. They were endless.

Primarch Aeternus had never allowed a mote of the flaw to take him. He had never even felt the genetic deterioration that had afflicted many of his warriors. Rex never felt that it was an impossibility that it would never happen to him. It was a looming curse that would plague him one day. He’d always wondered when it would afflict him. Perhaps it was a boon that he never was forced to fight an enemy of such impossibility or suffer the wyrd on such an unfathomable scale.

The Emperor’s Blade fractured as an aggression unseen in his temperament broke through. A warrior of a thousand battles. A warlord of a hundred campaigns. A leader of countless men and women. He only felt one thing in the moment leading to their current destination. Unfathomable, unrelenting, pure rage that filtered through his body as if afflicted by a spirit of vengeance.

[h2]“[b]Purge the witch![/b]”[/h2]

Primarch Aeternus roared out with an animalistic howl that stunned the first row of abominations. Apocrypha responded with a cleaving slash of crimson corona. Aberrations melted away from the violence of reality, either sheared by plasmic destruction or fading from something unseen. The God-Slayers, awestruck by their stoic primarch, jumped into the fray with the same reckless, wild abandon that he exhibited.  It was like watching a frenzy that afflicted a great many people as they screamed, barked, and howled in unformed words.

With the descent of the unreal, the Fifth didn’t respond well. The very first tendrils of it had a few of their ranks attempt to fire at the encroaching immaterium. Thousands of spent casings would hit the ground in just a few seconds as heavy stubbers and boltguns fired in an outright useless effort as they dissipated into thin air. But, at least it was an effort to resist. When several of the Marines seemed to be truly overtaken by the wyrd, response was swift. The ones that merely turned to gibbering messes or were struck by seizures got a strike against the head or an injection from the nearest apothecary to take them out of the fight. The few who became outright liabilities were given the Emperor’s mercy. 

Wordlessly, they heeded the words of Aeternus. All of the Astartes with standard firearms would work on simply cutting down the waves of verminous warp spawn, the rarely seen shotguns and ripperguns in particular causing a clatter as shrapnel and pellets ricocheted about the scene in their near-misses. However, any of the Legion that had heavy weapons would turn them to psykers. In particular favouring the grenade launchers that they may fire over the heads of the comrades in arcs, the familiar cacophony of frag and krak charges would resound after their brief flights. A simple warning would be given, “Danger close!” but they weren’t expecting anybody to manage to get to these almost alien beings particularly soon.
[hr]
While the other First, Fifteenth, and the Fifth were whisked away by the foul sorcery at play, the First Astartes found themselves still standing at the tower entrance when the wyrd had finished washing over them. Hunkered close around the cyro-vault in a tight, defensive formation, whatever properties it possessed seemed to have sheltered them from the worst of the chaos.

Regardless, half of the Sigilites had gouged their own eyes out at the impossible vistas they had been exposed to. Those who had retained their wits were removing or deactivating pitch-black blinders, either hand-held or cybernetic, and regarded their peers with a measure of pitying dismay. Making matters worse, the paltry force, intended to augment a far larger team of Astartes, now found itself alone in the foyer of the occult spire.

Legate Sultrim broke the silence after all of his Astartes had blink-clicked their status, and the Sigilites tended to their own, his voice sounding clear over the vox. +‘Legate to reserve squads, reinforce the main element at tower atrium immediately. Original stratagem non-operative. All Sigilites, attend: Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, unseal the hushed casket of the soul.’+
[hr]
The presence of the First Legio Astartes was felt as the fight began within the black spire. The onslaught of the Fifth saw waves of the creatures annihilated into mist of psionic energy, reforming seconds later further back into the line. The mastery of the Fifteenth’s wyrd cleared entire sections of the room in storms of bioelectricity or psyfire; however, they would soon form once again in an endless torrent of fathomless psionic potential. Each of their cruel, raw logic saw the enemy deterred for several seconds at a time. Only one thing became clear as they watched the chaos that erupted.

The God-Slayers were pushing into the monsters of the cabal like frenzied animals let loose from their master’s shackles. The raw aggression, powerful output, and refusal to attend wounds saw their entire host push into the waves. The creatures were pushed back no matter how many times they were formed as they suffered blade, bolter, and shock from the Cataegis. They laughed, screamed, and howled as they cut through the horde. The fragmentation devices of the Fifth exploded overhead, reflected by the strange shadow beings into the horde. Some of the Thunder Warriors were hit, yet they pushed on in a complete disregard for logic or wounds.

Primarch Aeternus held no thought in his mind. His focus was singular. He felt as one of the emotionless Custodes that loomed beside the Emperor. Every single step saw several of the creatures die in a single swing of Apocrypha, cutting their existence to ribbons before pressing forward. His wrist-mounted armament, Ea, spat azure death into the crowd as he spun. Rex was a whirlwind of black and crimson, the edge of his greatsword screaming as it fought on.

Others danced around him in whirlwinds of death. Nero was howling as his twinned chainaxes tore through the horde of pink monstrosities, while Tiberius was feverishly stabbing and prodding at those that threatened to reform under their assault. For a moment, Aeternus felt as if he saw the form of Caligula fight with a smile on his lips; however, it was only an afterimage of another Cataegis that fought with a similar fighting style. It drove his aggression on as he roared through his winged helmet.

“God-Slayers!” The Lord of the First screamed out as he closed the distance between him and the first shrouded individual. He could physically see them begin to falter with their hands raised, willing the wyrd in an attempt to stop him. It slowed him as black tendrils threatened to wrap around his extremities. A growl that bubbled up from his throat saw the darkness recede from his arms.

“In glory, we slay!” All of the Cataegis cried out as the last patch of monstrosities were slain by their battered and bloodied hands. Each was stained in the gore of the wyrd as they fought. Their own vitae was mixed in, torn free from wounds that marred their black-yellow warplates. The Empyrean retreated from them as they slew, tore, and crunched it beneath their extremities. 

The shrouded being attempted to escape from the ruthless Cataegis, yet the Primarch of the God-Slayers was already there. Fear emanated from it as a black, wispy musk that tried to drown the area in darkness. His wyrd-stained armor reached out and grabbed the cloaked individual by the skull. It screamed out in a language that the Thunder Warrior could not understand. Aeternus closed his fist. A jet of azure vitae exploded out of the hood, emptying out onto the floor as their body began to wither and dry like an old Terran cephalopod.

They could be killed. They were terrified. Each began to react as the realization that their incorporeal forms, protected by the wyrd above and below, could be demolished. Rapidly, they started chanting faster and moving their many hands in esoteric gestures. Unreality threatened to buckle under their heresy as psyflame, bioelectricity, ghoulfire, and realmserpents were flung at the Astartes.

The Fifteenth reacted as they watched the God-Slayers annihilate the first of the eighteen warlocks. Lilac barriers of superb wyrd were erected into reality, defending the Fifth and their own from the unreal assault. None were harmed by the attack, yet some of their number faltered as they were ambushed by onrushing creatures. They cried out in rage, forcing the tide back with their psyshouts. Every member that was lost was a death that couldn’t be replaced. Every warrior that fell was an unimaginable blow to their legion. They would not suffer such attacks and lashed out with rage-enhanced biolightning. Bolters and volkite carbines barked in defiance. Powerweapons flicked out with the skill and precision known to the Sirens of Terra. 

As her legion fought on, Mistress Pantea observed the situation with a mind unrivaled by others of her kind. The Lord of the Fifteenth understood what happened with a mixture of her mastery of the Empyrean and her gene-enhanced speed thought. Unrelenting speed, unimaginable rage, and a willpower that could defy the unreal was all that was required. She realized what must be done. A blink-order saw several Sirens surround her as she chanted, willing the wyrd into her gauntlets.

For the Fifth, there was only one more act they could take. With the charge of their comrades they could no longer rely on fragmentation and high explosives, despite their brutality a belief of the sanctity of life ensured they couldn’t bombard a zone so rife with their comrades. The bearers of the explosives slung them away, drawing their pistols and blades. But, a select few detached from the rest. The Fifth tended to be shorter than other Astartes, and these fellows would be even smaller bearing extensively modified boltguns. These were sharpshooters of sorts, climbing up crevasses and other irregularities in the scenery. Warriors that would be called dishonourable in other eras and perhaps this one too, the battlefield was more compact than what they were accustomed to but they would nonetheless get to work. Now proven vulnerable, the psykers of the enemy would be singled out for destruction. 
[hr]
One hundred Astartes, thirty-two Sigilites, and four cryo-vaults formed a defensive perimeter at the entrance of the tower while the remainder of the strike force dealt with madness within the spire’s impossible geometry. Whether it had been their weapon that had saved them from being transported to do battle with the warlocks of Ursh, or those very same masters of the profane fearing to face it directly opting to spare them, the difference was immaterial. The First had found themselves shunted away from the fight, and now that they were amassed sought to avenge that insult.

But first, the Legate’s command had to be obeyed. The Sigilites, those who had retained their senses and faculties at the least, labored over their charges with precise care, the leaders of each band triple-checking every action done not only to their own casket but the other three as well. When all four were satisfied, they depressed identical runes upon the surfaces of the vaults, and then withdrew from the field. Though far from defenseless, with the seals undone, there was little for them to contribute to the battle to come.

Silence filled the atrium as the vaults opened, the rush of frigid air from each physically displacing the corruption of the wyrd in that haunted place. Four women lay there recumbent, truesilver swords as tall as them laid upon their breasts.  They moved with an unearthly unison, curling their legs behind themselves as they raised their blades underhand to stab down into the flagstones of the tower. Each lifted themselves up by the waist as marionettes upon strings, wrenching themselves to their feet.

A chill filled the air as they took their first steps within the tower. No word passed between the four and the Astartes as they took up position at the points of a compass, the force advancing in search of nightmares.

+‘Aeternus will prevail with or without our aid. Priority objective remains. We make for the reliquary,’+ Sultrim confirmed to his gene-siblings as they engaged the first dregs of resistance. Scattered churls and misbegotten failures of horrific arts were as wheat before the sickle, the focus of the Legate instead upon confirming their relative location in regards to physical reality as they had previously understood it.

It soon became apparent that such effort was unnecessary, if not impossible. Standing before the strike force, guarding a door of obsidian inlaid with skulls burning with impossible blue flame, was a knight in black armor clad standing so tall as to put a Custode to shame. Its hands, each large enough to engulf the skull of even a Astartes, were laid casually to rest upon the pommel of a greatsword as tall as a Thunder Warrior. When it spoke, its voice was the void itself, a lack of sound that conveyed meaning by its absence.

[center]“[b]Thou shalt not.[/b]”[/center]

The decree was an absolute, a statement of fact written upon the Empyrean, a truth resounding in the was, is, and will be.

The four silent women did not care, and advanced with silver brands.
[hr]
Fear.

It was a primordial emotion that was drummed up by antediluvian terrors that haunted the depths of the mind. An erratic feeling that insidiously dwelt within all that lived, modified or not. A powerful tool that could be wielded by friends and enemies alike. The most potent resource for a rampaging warrior, a cowardly soldier, or a lively magus. The driving factor in souls that strove for survival.

Primarch Aeternus was the source of their fears made manifest in hulking muscle, unbreakable will, and fathomless carnage. Shades cowered in fear as their ranks were pulverized by the onslaught that the God-Slayer brought, proving true to their names as vanquishers. Each step was a row of monstrosities defeated. Each swing was a plethora of creatures vivisected. Each roar was a group routed from indomitable resolve. Vitae of mauve and azure painted the Thunder Primarch’s armor as he murdered into their numbers. Even as the Cataegis split, they did so with the same fury that their warlord held.

It drove the dark, robed being mad with despair. Their hands trembled with the carnage unleashed upon them, unable to halt the Emperor’s Blade from exacting his retribution. Some attempted to flee, risking their final bastion to live for another day. Astartes from the Fifth and Fifteenth were quick to murder them with psyfire and precise bolts. Some wildly tossed aside defense to erect great feats of the wyrd, desperate to drive off the weapons of the Himalazian king. It only served to open them up for the genewarriors to swiftly pick them off. Their desperation mixed with the stink of the Empyrean. They were dying, more and more falling to the slaughter of these immortal warriors.

Fewer than ten of the cabal remained, each on the defensive against the psionic assault of the Fifteenth. One was already beginning to break from the attack as their shadowy barrier began to crack under biolightning. The nine remaining shared a glance as their myriad wyrd allies were fed into the ambush. They knew what must be done. There were no other options left for the cabal.

In an instant, it felt as if the tower was taking on a new calling. The last ten warlocks pulled free blades from their robes. Their barriers remained, hammered by psionic assault and bolter, as they began to draw daggers into themselves. All, save for one, started to plunge their weapons into their shadow-infused bodies. Azure vitae spilled out onto the chamber’s floor as their lifeforce was scattered. 

The shadows in the room felt alive as the members of the wyrd started to perish in ritualistic sacrifice. The last warlock was lifted into the air on invisible wings, their wyrdbarrier stronger than ever and infused with the souls of the expired cabal. An intense stink of ozone and sulphur perforated the stale stench of the chamber. It felt as if one couldn’t breath from the lack of clean air. Eyes wept trickles of vitae. Skin prickled and cracked to form fresh scars beneath ceramite warplate. Something knocked on the doors of reality as the warlock screamed for their life, azure-black blood torrenting out of their robes.

Primarch Aeternus halted in his frenzy as he stared up at the wrathsinger. He felt shadows dance on the edge of his eyes like a thicket of squirming tentacles. An unimaginably painful migraine formed against his skull as unreality was beginning to unravel once more. His teeth gritted together hard enough to fracture enamel. It was enough to pull him from the bloodlust that had overtaken him, nearly drowning him in a sea of wrathful zealotry. The conjuring wyrd affected his brethren much the same, their consciousness brought back from the teetering edge of their geneflaw.

“Pantea! Bring it down!” Aeternus roared across the battlefield. The armament on his right arm, Ea, swept upward to unleash a volley of azure bullets against the warlock’s barrier. Prismatic creatures blocked each of the shots, defending their master with indiscernible limbs and shifting scales. The Thunder Primarch cursed as he plunged into the fray once more, eager to halt what was occurring.

The warlock screamed out as shadows were quickly beginning to reform the man into a new being. Vitae from everything within the chamber was swallowed into the tile, funneled into their reconstructing form. Claws of midnight were sprouting from their hands. A penumbral maw was jutting from their robe. Wings of dusk were unfolding from their back. It was a slow, painful process that defied the laws of reality…

The Sirens, precious few in number, surged forward as one unified body. Their battle cry mingled with the earsplitting crack of fragmenting bone and warp-lightning. Garbed in lavender and silver they moved in unison, each one striking down the ants that stood in their way in a lethal symphony of slaughter. A current of warp energy swirled around them, the air smelling suddenly of charred human flesh as a nexus of warpflame erupted from each Siren.

Their legion master was at the fore as she leapt through the air towards the nascent Daemon, baleful energies that wreathed her fists howling for the blood of mankind’s foes. Cloaked in a blinding sheet of warpflame she cut a bright beacon through the churning morass of shadow and darkness that now surrounded them. Her legion followed suit, each sister in turn hurling themselves at the threat as the light surrounding them grew brighter and brighter. Engulfed in a blazing corona of warp-born flame and lightning the armored spearhead crashed into the writhing energies of the Immaterium.

And where those warring wavefronts met, reality fractured.

Terrifying visions ripped through realspace as conjured from a realm of bleakest nightmare. All present died and lived and died and lived again as a hungry maw of malevolent darkness tore and bit and howled for blood. Visages of madness assaulted the minds of all present. White hot knives of sanguine delirium cut the flesh and flensed the bone and burned as shards of flaming ice broke the mind and sundered the soul. 

Flashes of lavender and silver cut through the kaleidoscopic morass of terror as all beheld the sixteenth slaughtered wholesale, standing triumphant amidst a field of corpses, laughing as they seized fell powers for themselves, bedecked in raiments of carnage as the knives dug deeper and deeper and deeper and rent the flesh and shattered the bone. Pantea’s outstretched fist inched forwards, time slowing agonizingly as she stared with unbridled fury into the maw of the looming abyss and felt it stare back. 

Light shed from her outstretched hand in waves as she felt her very soul scoured by the howling winds of the warp. Kaleidoscopic visions of madness, of terrible things that had passed, of even more terrible things to come. Time flayed itself in a blossoming fractal void as foul energies shattered in razor-edged shards of light that tore to pieces the world around them. Stone shattered under its impact, exposed flesh erupted in showers of bloody and viscera. 

And then they saw it. They all saw it. The vast plateau. It loomed large through the weakening veil. Ten thousand leagues of pallid stone upon which crawled [i]things[/i] no sane mind could have created. Roiling churning tides of primordial [i]hatred[/i] surged forth towards the intrusion, ten thousand voices cried out in unison, in the voices of those dearest departed, those left behind for duty’s name. They [i]screamed[/i] in anger, in hate, in bleakest sorrow as their voices crashed upon the intruders to their realm who had brought them into their own. Eddy currents of boiling potentiality crashed into the onrushing tide, their shapes distorting still further in a screeching chorus of fevered nightmare. 

A final shard erupted from her fist as her armored gauntlet cracked and shattered under the strain, bare skin striking that of the nascent Daemon. 

And as her strike cut through the veil, riding up into view all beheld a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Chaos followed with him.

The world exploded around them as the void tripled in size, engulfing the writhing abominations that had poured forth through the breech. The hungering gyre swallowed all its progeny and turned its ruinous eye upon the feast arrayed before it. The void howled, it howled and gnawed and wailed and gnashed at the fraying fibers of reality that held it at bay. One by one they began to snap under its assault as the trickle that had become a current became a flood. 

The Daemon laughed, its voice echoing through the mind twoscore times over with each syllable as it sang a wordless song of victory. The world groaned and heaved as the air began to bleed, cuts ripping through the fabric of realspace as thick black ichor oozed from everywhere and from nowhere. Three-dimensionality became but a memory as the world buckled under the torrent of bile and blood that bled through the corners and the cracks. The Daemon’s form grew larger still, engulfing the full height of the chamber as it clasped a hand upon the summit of victory.

The air itself held its breath as the rest of the legion made contact. All at once, the unrestrained force of their combined psychic might blasted through the fragile conduits of power and possibility. Reality itself began to scream, an earsplitting wail that forced the air from the lungs and cracked the stone beneath the feet of its focal point.

Time flowed backward as every burning blade of fragmented materiality flew backwards, carving chunks from the shadow-stuff of the Daemon’s body. Reality reasserted itself in force as the air once again became tangible and the blood ceased to flow and the screaming intensified to a single deafening crescendo before it too was cut off at the source. A nexus of churning carnage erupted from the center of the Legion as their unified might shattered the bonds of the Daemon’s tether to the materium, flensing it piece by piece until nothing remained. 

The void collapsed to a single point of nothingness, and all was silent, save the dull thud as the Sixteenth dropped to the floor. Yet among their number their leader could not be seen, having vanished from the room.

As the darkness fell into nothingness, same with the abnormalities that plagued the tower, so too did the madness that afflicted the God Slayers. Rationality returned as a salve over a festering wound. Rage gave way to cool logic as they tore their helmets, vomiting bile and blood from the vivid experience. Some lay still on the ground, their armor ruptured and their faces contorted into permanent visages of pained fear. Those that fell amongst the First were few.

Aeternus recollected himself first amongst the Cataegis numbers, readjusting to reality after it was shattered like a fragile mirror. He carefully assessed the situation in a manner of seconds before sighing in relief that victory was attained. The Primarch clapped a gauntlet over Nero’s pauldron, lifting the Thunder Warrior up before slowly gathering handfuls of his legion. No words were needed between them to begin assisting the remnants of the Sixteenth and the Fifth; however, he frantically scanned the room for the Legion Master of the Sirens to no avail. 

A crack of thunder split the room as a burst of warpflame erupted from thin air, Pantea re-emerging from wherever she had gone. Blood flows freely from her eyes, eyes that had become an unsettling shade of deep violet. She stands there, stock-still, eyes wide and filled with - of all things - [i]terror[/i]. Another moment passes, and she collapses without a word.

The Primarch of the First Legio Cataegis was the first to retrieve the collapsed Legion Master, reading her vitals through his helmet and carefully picking her up in both of his arms. The Fifth, Sixteenth, and First gathered around him as they began to egress the tower. A passage down to the ground floor had entered reality where it had never been before, blocked by the will of the wyrd. Communications returned shortly after, released from their immaterial shackles. As the strike force descended, Aeternus keyed the vox with triumph in his voice.

+’The witches have been slain. We are victorious. Prepare for the destruction of the tower.’+
[hr]
Far below, in the tower’s dungeons and vaults, another combat took place, its combatants sliding in between reality and unreality like pieces on a regicide board with each stroke of their swords. That the Astartes of the First fought and died, trapped within the apparent reality of the hallway, was of little concern to the Black Knight and the four women who hunted him as they were hunted. Coruscating energies unseen since the birth of the cosmos reverted baryonic matter to a more elementary plasma as they attempted to strike the foe, only for it to simply vanish, turning sideways into a corridor that was ninety degrees to neither left nor right but [i]out[/i], only to reappear again to bisect the gunman, the shorn halves bleeding gouts of creation as flesh and ceramite and bone were unmade into thought and hope and prayer.

The dance of five swords continued, silver on silver on silver on silver on black.

In between the steps of the lethal death, the primeval fire of creation was joined by the eternal silence of entropy as the Astartes unleashed their arcane arsenals. Atoms aged and protons decayed, sending forth jets of antimatter heralded by bursts of hard radiation that left voids of perfect nothingness in their wake. They faded harmlessly into the black shadow of cloak woven from the screams of a thousand first nightmares.

But the silver blades were fashioned from something [i]realer[/i] than mere matter, and [i]truer[/i] than even the most fervent dream, and they cut deep. Exultant agony rocked the knight as he at last could taste his own end, the wards of Is and Shall unraveling as the course of fate turned against him. The giant did not fall, but faded away, vanishing back into the thoughts of the suicidal and desperate to once more whisper the psalm of self-destruction.

Such matters, however, were not the concern of the First. The survivors rushed forward, past their dead, and swiftly secured the hall. Sultrim breached through the great gates as the silent sisters descended back into their caskets, the Legate slowly keying his vox as he took stock of their prize.

+Inform the Sigilite. Objective secured.+
[hr]
Several hours had passed since the start of the operation. The fleet of armoured vehicles encircling the black tower anxiously waited in anticipation of victory. Armaments were trained on anything that dared to break the tranquility left behind by the strike force’s ferocious charge. They were found wanting as all that remained was the stillness of statuesque Astartes and falling snow. The boom of thunder echoed in the distance as chronometers ticked down.

And then the first of the strike force returned. The God-Slayers, accompanied by the Fifth and Fifteenth, quickly egressed the mouth of the tower with wounded Sirens on their back or arms. Primarch Aeternus led from the front with the Legion Mistress protected in both of his sizable gauntlets. The Fifteenth, those that could still move, trudged behind the First with lilac wyrd wisping off of their limbs. Finally, the Fifth followed after with their numbers taking up the rearguard and spreading out to begin their after action procedures. They began unholstering the first of their explosives as the First Legio Astartes appeared.

Their number, escorting plentiful caskets and stasis pods, promptly funneled down the dark steps of the witch tower. They left in utter silence, focused entirely on their objective and subsequent transportation of such. As the last of their number fled the outer perimeter of the wyrd structure, the Fifth began their grisly work. An unspeakable quantity of explosives were planted at the base of the obsidian monolith to the Empyrean. Melta, plasma, disintegrative, void, and other types were carefully rigged by the Astartes. Several minutes passed before the last transhuman completed their job.

The voxnet burst into a flurry of activity as the Astartes embarked their dreadful transports, mounting once more and readying for the death knell of the witch’s stronghold. It greeted their eyes as a cascading blossom of prismatic blooms. Reactionary explosions mixed with volatile compounds, skyrocketing the temperature and melting the obsidian wyrd-material into slag as more detonations shook the cavern. The first vehicles scurried out of the perimeter and through the tunnel they had entered. The dark tower fell behind them, crumbling into the darkness to never be remembered again.

All that remained was [b]Mosrovoth [/b]- Citadel of Kalagann.
[hr]
Credit: [@MarshalSolgriev] (Aeternus/God-Slayers) [@antediluvixen] (Legion Mistress Pantea/Sirens of Terra) [@grimely] (First Legio Astartes) [@Bugman] (Fifth Legio Astartes)