Watching the monster, Augusta listened to Akemi’s frantic outline, her memory of her lesson from the schola.
The Sister Superior had faced daemons before, and she knew the truth of what Akemi was saying.
‘Sister Akemi, you are truly blessed with wisdom.’ Augusta inhaled, made her decision, gave her orders, soft and urgent. ‘Go. Take the others with you. Find him. Jatoya, stay with me.’
‘I would not be anywhere else,’ Jatoya said.
The touch of her second’s strength and friendship was powerful, a touch of faith in the clamouring dark.
She heard the others scrabble as they crossed the cavern floor. The colossal might of the daemon laughed ever harder. ‘So you flee, little Sisters? So much for your devotion.’
‘We have devotion, daemon!’ The voice was Viola’s.
A flash of pure adrenaline shot through Augusta’s nerves.
‘Viola.’ Her words over the vox were swift and quiet. ‘Follow your orders.’
She didn’t turn, couldn’t take her attention from the titanic, looming height of the monster, but she could still hear the bootsteps as the younger Sister walked across the floor of the cavern.
‘I am a Daughter of the Emperor,’ Viola called. ‘A Sister of the Bloody Rose. A follower of Saint Mina. And I do not fear you, daemon, any more than I fear orks, or any other denizen of the darkness! I defy you!’ Her voice was shaking with outrage – but Augusta could hear the truth of it. Viola’s boldness was pure swagger; under the pressure of the daemon’s presence, she had a need to prove herself worthy, to live up to the thrice-blessed weapon that she bore. ‘And I will send you back!’
‘Viola!’ The Sister Superior’s bark was stronger, this time. ‘Follow your orders!’
But Viola did not reply – she may even have turned off her vox. She came forwards into Augusta’s peripheral vision, an upright figure in blood-soaked scarlet, her cloak blackened by flames, her single merit-bead flickering in the firelight.
The heavy bolter was raised, nestled against her shoulder.
‘Child,’ the daemon said. Its voice was soaked in scorn. ‘I will peel every inch of skin from your body.’
‘Try it,’ Jatoya muttered.
Whether it heard her or not, it raised the whip, curling its thongs upwards and over its head. Augusta knew that one lash from that weapon would break Viola in half, armour and all.
But as it came down, Jatoya was already moving.
Akemi scrambled across the floor of the cavern, away from the monster and the firelight and towards the bottom of the staircase. Words tumbled from her as she ran.
‘Subul,’ she said. ‘We need to find him. And fast.’
The others followed her as ordered, their confusion not voiced aloud. She replied to it anyway. ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘There has been so much bloodshed here, and for thousands of years – from the Age of Strife, and in the cathedral’s valetudinarium… Sister Jatoya was right – the blood-worship is soaked into the very stone here.’
‘What about the town?’ Caia asked. ‘They embraced the Emperor, welcomed the return to their faith of the Great Crusade…’
‘Many embraced the Emperor, certainly,’ Melia said. ‘But the darkness has always been here, twisting and lying and deceiving. This whole world is a battleground.’
‘Then we will win that battle,’ Caia said, simply. ‘Once and for all.’
‘Aye.’
‘Kawa tried to fight,’ Akemi said, still thinking aloud. ‘Maybe Subul used her death as a summoning ritual, maybe the summoning itself was accidental – just too much bloodshed – I don’t know. But…’ she paused, turned round, ‘Subul bears the mark of Khorne, and if we can find him…’
‘We will banish the daemon?’
‘We will banish the daemon.’
Caia had her flickering auspex in her hand and was trying to understand the endless tangles of tunnels, the erratic distant blips of motion. They raced back up the long curve of the steps to the last side passage, and the direction that Subul had taken.
But Caia shook her head. ‘The signal’s gone. This place is like a nightmare. How do we find him in all this?’
Akemi controlled her rising impatience, resisted the urge to grab the auspex and look for herself.
Then Melia pointed, ‘There.’
On the stone ahead of them: a tiny smear of red.
‘Quietly, Sisters,’ she said. ‘Let us take this carefully and not let him know we’re coming.’
Akemi wanted to point out that they didn’t have time to spare – but she also didn’t want to doubt the strength and faith of the Sisters now below them.
Then Caia suddenly said, ‘Where’s Viola?’
The crack of the whip sent a sharp detonation through the air.
The stone shook.
Augusta did not move. She saw Jatoya slam Viola clean in the belly, taking the younger Sister off her feet. The whip curled over Viola’s head just as the pair of them hit the ground.
They rolled back upright in seconds. In defiance of her orders, Viola was again raising the bolter.
Augusta would discipline her squad member later.
Now, she bellowed, ‘To me, both of you!’
Both Sisters started to move, but the descending clang of the axeblade was too close, and it sent them sprawling. Snarling, the daemon raised the weapon just enough to crush both of them where they lay–
‘Wait!’ Augusta stepped forwards, bellowing up at the thing. ‘You’ll face me, daemon, not them.’
‘What are you doing?’ Jatoya asked. The squad’s second was pulling Viola to her feet, but the younger Sister was struggling to rise. She was chanting the same line of the litany, over and over again.
From the begetting of daemons… the begetting of daemons…
Augusta said, ‘Giving Akemi time.’
The daemon hissed through long, stained teeth.
‘Why? I could kill all of you with a flick, with a finger. I could hold you over the fire and flay you while you still lived.’
Because the error of this place was mine, and they should not pay for it…
‘You don’t fear me, do you?’ Her shout rang from the stone, mocking. ‘Do you fear to lose?’
Caught, the thing mantled its wings and hissed, stooping forwards to study her. Its head was bigger than she was, its eyes like pits of fire and death. As it came close, Augusta felt her throat close, her blood turn utterly cold.
The screaming…
The blood…
The hooks…
But she could also see a red Sabbat-pattern helmet, bloodied skull still within, that was hung about its neck like a trophy. It was the one that had been missing from the previous chamber.
Felicity.
And her anger came flooding back to her, her faith and her strength. ‘A morte perpetua. Domine, libra nos.’
The monster snarled. ‘You foolish women are all the same.’ Its breath was caustic, polluted. ‘So proud, so eager to die.’
‘I will take you with me.’
That made it laugh again, a deep rumble like falling stone. It stood back upright and threw back its head…
…but now, Augusta could see that Akemi had been right – the voice did not belong to the creature.
‘Your Sister said exactly the same thing,’ it said, but the words were posturing, empty.
And hope unfurled like a flag in her chest.
Three scarlet figures slunk along the edge of the wall.
They had no need for the auspex; they could hear the movement, now, hear the voices from ahead of them.
Hear the many-layered bass boom that was Subul, the summoner.
Akemi was beginning to understand that the daemon had always been here, that the blood shed down through the generations had called it back to the stone, again and again. And she could remember the stylised illustration in the schola’s manuscript – the cult leader with his symbol, his arms raised. They needed to find and slay him, and end this ordeal.
Then they could return to the cathedral, and to the town, and they could begin their work anew.
Or raze the building completely.
The three Sisters turned the last corner of the tunnel.
Ahead of them, there was light. It was the same rich, red light that came from the fire below – as if the flames themselves were somehow thick with blood.
It had all come from here.
The chamber was bright with flame – it had an open viewing port that allowed its occupants to see down into the pit. Down there, Augusta would face the daemon and she would try to give Akemi enough time…
But Subul was not alone.
One of the smaller creatures stood with him, flanking him like a guard, its hooves tamping restlessly on the rough stone floor. About its ankles curled another three of the red-skinned hounds.
And Subul himself.
He stood before an angled metal machine – a smaller thing, but a thing that looked exactly like the dead sculptures of the town. This one, however, was very much alive – and it defied her vision, its corners impossible, its edges bright with a hot, brass gleam. Writing writhed about it, seething in the air, and it contained an outline like some ancient mirror, a thing that roiled with mists of scarlet.
It did not reflect the room, nor the figures within.
Not a construction device, as Jencir had first guessed, but a portal.
In its presence, Caia’s auspex flickered, guttered and burst into flame.
With a startled curse, she dropped it.
At the sound, the summoner turned around, the vortex in the mirror haloing him in pure, Chaotic power. Subul’s grin was unchanged, and the symbol on his head still ran scarlet with his own blood.
The flow had blinded him completely, but his sightlessness was not a hindrance and he laughed the bass laugh of the daemon.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You are wise indeed, little Sisters.’ The hounds curled at his feet, bristling and snarling. ‘But you are not nearly strong enough. I can call forth endless foes, an army to walk over your corpses and to own this planet entire. And when your canoness comes – which she will – I can take her shuttles, and her ships. I can access the moon, and the fuel that it bears. And then, I can be freed from this rock.’
‘So that’s it,’ Melia said. ‘You want the warships.’
‘Your Mechanicus are easy bait, and your Order both warlike and prideful. You are simple to lead, and simple to slay. And this will be your ending, once and for all.’ His grin broadened, wider than his face. ‘Fitting, that Mina’s Order should make its last stand here, facing its oldest foes. And I… I will be free to leave. To carry the power of the Blood God across the galaxy!’
Melia made no response. She raised her bolter and pulled the trigger.
But Subul was no longer there. Somehow, he’d slipped sideways and the round hit the flaming, churning, seething mass that was the centre of the mirror.
The daemon hissed as if it were laughing.
And the hounds leapt forwards.
Down her long years of combat, there were many times that Augusta had been thankful for the care and attention she gave her armour, for the faith and training and discipline that kept her wargear immaculate.
As the impossibly huge axeblade crashed to the floor just beside where she’d been standing, this was one of those times. The armour would not have stopped the blow, but it moved fluidly despite its weight, and it allowed her to dodge and roll.
She came to her feet, blade still in hand, the Litany of Battle rumbling in her throat like a growl.
But, defiance aside, she also had a solidly practical understanding of the might of the daemon – if that axe hit her, she would not get up again.
And she had to give Akemi time.
Facing the thing, she fought to banish its darkness from her mind, seeking a weak point, an advantage. She had better reactions, more manoeuvrability – yet its words had caught her, like a hook in her skin.
Like your whole blood-armoured Order…
This beast had slain Felicity. Dismembered her squad. Peeled the skin from Jencir’s skull and soaked the high altar in his life. In her head, she could hear the tech-priest, screaming like the Hephaestian miners…
Snarling denial, she roared, ‘Mori blasphemous fui!’
The whip-thongs circled and snapped over its head, the noise of them deafening. Brass spikes sparked with flame.
But as the baffles in her vox-bead kicked in, she became aware of Jatoya’s deep voice, urgent words in her ear.
She softened the litany to a whisper, fierce and quiet.
‘His hand has guided us, Sister. He has shown us the way.’
‘What do you intend?’ Augusta said. ‘Quickly!’
She threw herself backwards as the whip snapped at her again, an inch from her gorget. The detonation of it almost made her stumble.
‘Viola!’ Jatoya barked the order.
The roaring bark of the heavy bolter was familiar, a relief. Viola couldn’t take the monster down, but she could slow it, keep it back.
The daemon juddered under the impacts. It paused, mouth open, hissing in frustration. ‘Are you such a weakling, Sister? Tumbling and fleeing?’
Augusta ignored the goad, kept moving.
‘The statue!’ Jatoya said. ‘You must observe this for yourself!’
The bolter hammered, flashes of rounds impacting from the daemon and from the surrounding stone. The creature was closer now. It raised a foot, stamping at the Sisters as Augusta had once stamped at the gretchin in the cathedral above, then slashed the axe at them, snarling.
Fire flashed from the blade. Seeing it coming, Jatoya moved, but she was not fast enough; the edge of it caught her full in the chest, lifted her from the floor and slammed her back into the wall.
The crunch of ceramite was unmistakeable, like the cry in the vox that was suddenly cut short.
She slid to the floor, broken.
‘Jatoya!’
Viola was shouting, raw and wild.
But the crumple of armour lay still.
Wrath rose in Augusta’s heart – the sort of anger that burned from her skin, her weapons, her voice. She drew the chainsword, started the mechanism. She may not be able to kill this thing, but she was a Sister of Battle, a Daughter of the Emperor, and Jatoya was her second and her friend.
The creature peered downwards. ‘You foolish little woman.’ The words were an accusation, a goad. ‘You think you can fight me?’
Augusta tightened her grip on the chainsword and the litany rose in her heart like the bells of the convent itself.
But revenge was personal, prideful, and a sin. She was the faith and fist of the Imperial Creed – she fought in the name of the Emperor, not in her own. This thing was daemon and defiler, and she must stop it with whatever means she could muster…
She had a mission to complete. She cast her gaze around and saw what Jatoya’s plan had been.
In one of the colossal statues, the huge pillars of carved stone that stretched all the way to the roof of the chamber, there was a crack.
A long crack, a fault-line that split the thing almost to the top.
And in it, she had placed a krak grenade.
The falling rock may well kill all of them, but it would slow the monster enough.
‘Truly,’ Augusta whispered softly, ‘you are blessed with wit as well as weaponry.’ Then, over the vox: ‘Akemi,’ she said, ‘how much time do you need?’
But it was Melia who replied, ‘Sister! We are under attack!’
There were only the three of them – no heavy bolter, no flamer, no chainsword. Subul stood with the impossible brass mirror behind him, its roil and seethe surrounding his flesh with the raw, hot churn of Chaos. They could hear the daemon, its voice interwoven with Subul’s, mocking Augusta for her cowardice; they could feel their own rage, but they were focused upon the advancing hounds.
Shoulders low and bellies slinking, the beasts approached the three women, savage and eager.
Melia’s orders were calm, clear. ‘Short, focused bursts. And sing, my Sisters, for the Emperor is with us!’
The hounds’ daemon master snarled the order to attack.
Three bolters barked; one of the beasts twisted and faded, its essence sucked back towards the portal. But two were still moving and their master came with them, blade shining red in the light.
‘Again!’ Melia’s order was unnecessary; a split-second later, the bolters barked a second time.
But the beasts were close now, too close.
Akemi heard the conversation in the pit, the words in the vox. She heard Jatoya’s cry. Then one of the things was upon her, leaping for her throat.
She went backwards, grappling for its collar. The daemon driving them was snarling and hissing in a language that made chills chase along her skin. And the beast was right in her face, yammering at her. Its teeth were bared and its breath was making her visor steam over; she couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t move. Panic rose in her heart. She heard Caia swear, heard Melia bark another order but the creature was right there and the words were lost in the chaos…
Chaos.
Another flash of memory: her brief studies of the Ruinous Powers, in the schola, all of them strictly supervised. She had opened the scrolls and read the words and felt her flesh crawling in response.
But the memory was gone again, lost under the weight of the thing, under the horror of it so close and the smog of its breath in her visor. It stank like sulphur; its jaws were either side of her gorget, and she could feel it, straining to bite down. She remembered the litany, the words rising almost reflexively. Her frantic hands found the thing’s collar and dragged it away from her face. It scrabbled, claws scraping on ceramite with a noise that set her teeth on edge.
She gripped it in one hand, brought the bolter up in the other.
With its bared teeth no more than a smoky smear, she put the bolter against its skull, and pulled the trigger.
Red splattered, blinding her completely. The creature’s weight was gone. She came up to her feet, shaking, her gauntlet scraping the blood from her face.
In the chamber, only one of the creatures was still upright, coiling at its master’s hooved feet. The bloodletter had raised its blade and was facing the three of them.
The glow of the portal shone from its eyes.
Akemi felt Caia and Melia as they pulled together, felt the strong bond of her Sisters.
Subul, furious, was roaring, his many-layered voice half-chant, half-outrage. The colours at the centre of the mirror had changed hue; they were fierce and bright, rich with the tones of brass and blood. And there were noises coming from it now, echoes of screams and warfare, of clashing weapons and gunfire, of massive, rumbling engines.
Instinctively, Akemi knew that there were more of the creatures coming.
And then more, and then more. They would never end; the portal would spew them forth in their thousands.
‘We have to stop him!’ She raised her bolter, unaware she’d said the words aloud.
Subul’s chant grew higher.
And then, with a thunderous roar, the whole chamber shook.
The detonation knocked Augusta from her feet.
Above her, the statue trembled, tottered and fell. One side slid clear, a cascade of heavy stone that hit the daemon’s shoulders and rocked it on its hooves; the other side stayed upright for a moment, then followed it down. It went over sideways in a single piece that struck the thing an immense, heavy blow.
The daemon faltered, stumbled.
Its axe hit the floor with a crash.
But even as it was getting up again, reaching for the weapon, Augusta barked, ‘Viola! Target its hands!’
The heavy bolter roared, its full rate of fire aimed at the monster’s whip-hand.
It wasn’t enough – even under the repeated impacts of the heavy bolter, the daemon seemed to shrug off the damage. It came back to its feet, rocks sliding from it; it reached to pick up the axe.
Its anger was tangible, now; it filled the air. The steam that poured from its shoulders was thick, ropes of it rising to the roof of the cavern, boiling like the jungle’s mist.
Teeth bared, it roared at them, inarticulate and furious. The hate was like a fist in the face, a punch in the gut – only the bright flame of Augusta’s faith was keeping her on her feet.
‘I do not fear you,’ she told it. ‘In the Emperor’s name, we finish this.’
The concussion had knocked the bloodletter from its feet.
It was scrambling back upright even as the detonation faded, but it was not fast enough. Melia was after it in a moment, kicking its blade away from its hand, finishing the last hound with a single, accurate shot. Behind her, Caia placed one boot on the daemon’s chest.
Even as Akemi was gathering her wits, Caia snarled a war-prayer, and shot the thing in the face.
Gore splashed; the creature snarled and struggled. But Caia kept firing, and kept firing, one round after another, again and again, her voice rising to a paean that was almost a shriek.
The thing finally detonated and she stumbled forwards, falling to her knees.
She stopped, her shoulders shaking, blood leaking down her injured arm.
But Akemi had turned to Subul, and to the mirror.
The summoner was snarling his chant, his face distorted. The symbol on his head pulsed with blood and light; its red glare lit the walls. He was savage, furious, and the daemon’s roars were echoing out of his mouth.
Steam was starting to steal across the roof of the chamber, but it was too late.
Subul may have the voice of the daemon, but he was only a man.
Only a heretic, who had dared to risk his soul for the false powers of Chaos.
‘I do not fear you.’ Akemi repeated Augusta’s words. ‘In the Emperor’s name, we finish this.’
She aimed her bolter at the symbol on his forehead, and pulled the trigger.