The storm troopers backed away from the wall and began firing at the things materialising out of the stone surface. Hissing, fanged faces pushed out, bulbous, mutated eyes opened up all over the stone. A flickering figure of a huge, horned daemon with a twisting blade of fire in its hand strained to escape the stone, and hellguns blasted as the soldiers targeted the emerging monster.
'Back! Get back to the Valkyries!' shouted Laron, ducking down behind the heavy bolter as rounds of incoming fire peppered the aircraft.
One of the storm troopers shot their comrade who was still being pulled into the tower. It was a mercy killing, to end whatever cruel fate had awaited him.
A heavily muscled humanoid figure pulled free of the wall and ran at the storm troopers, hefting a heavy, archaic broadsword in its muscular red arms. With one sweep of the blade it carved a man in half from shoulder to waist, and it roared, flames spilling from its eyes and throat.
Laron swung his heavy bolter around and unleashed a long burst of fire into the daemon's chest. It was driven back several steps by the impacts, though it appeared unharmed. It turned its snarling head towards Colonel Laron and began to advance through the barrage.
'Go!' he shouted to the pilot as the surviving storm troopers scrambled aboard, and the Valkyrie lifted straight up into the air, its powerful vertical thrusters roaring. Boltgun fire ripped through the undercarriage of the aircraft as it lifted and several men were killed, their blood spraying the roof.
'The charges blow in ten, sir!' shouted one of his men, and Laron nodded as he fired upon the Chaos Marines below. More things were emerging from the walls of the tower.
The Valkyrie turned steeply, and a missile destined to smash into its side flew through the open doorway, screaming over Laron's head and miraculously passing straight out of the other open doorway, filling the interior with the smoke of its propulsion.
Open-mouthed, Laron turned.
'The Emperor protects!' shouted Elias, laughing at the sheer improbability of the occurrence.
'It certainly seems that way,' agreed Laron, shaking his head in utter disbelief.
He didn't see the hulking, winged daemon pushing out of the wall behind the turning Valkyrie. Nor did he see it leap towards the aircraft, nor hear the power of its roar over the screaming engines. But he felt the impact as it struck.
The tail of the Valkyrie tipped earthwards with the sudden additional weight, and the pilot struggled to keep it airborne. The head of a giant axe slammed through the raised rear assault ramp, smashing it asunder. The ramp was ripped from the aircraft as the axe was pulled free, and it tumbled end over end to the ground below.
The daemon roared as it pulled at the tail of the Valkyrie, its wings beating furiously and its infernal muscles straining to bring the aircraft down to the ground. It was thrown off as the Valkyrie's jet turbines kicked in, but with a beat of its powerfully muscled wings it turned in the air and its whip flicked out, wrapping around the tail of the aircraft, pulling it sharply downwards.
With its engines roaring, the Valkyrie screamed up into the air as its tail tipped beneath it, and the pilot lost control. The aircraft slammed into another Valkyrie before flipping upside down and plummeting to the ground. Laron leapt from the aircraft as it slammed into the earth, rolling into the dust.
The daemon landed atop the flaming wreck, its massive hooves twisting the metal beneath it. It seemed impervious to the flames, and Laron scrambled backwards as the malevolent thing stepped out of the inferno, its burning eyes fixed upon him.
It was over twelve feet tall and it seemed to flicker as if it were not fully there. Its skin was as black as pitch and a burning symbol was emblazoned on its chest, the mark of one of the ruinous powers.
'Emperor, protect my soul,' whispered Laron.
The charges exploded. Both man and daemon were ripped apart by the force of the detonations.
But the tower still stood.
The Ordinatus fired upon the Gehemehnet, enormous amounts of energy focused into a deadly frequency that held the power to shatter mountains and crash bones to powder. The air shimmered as the ultra-high and ultra-low frequencies screamed over the top of the chaotic battle and roared towards the fifty kilometre high structure. It struck the side of the tower some forty metres up, and stones were ruptured from within as they were shaken apart. They exploded into sand and were blown out of the other side. A hole the size of a building was driven through the tower.
Impossibly, the tower still stood, despite the lack of integrity holding it together, for it was no longer bound by the rules of geometry or gravity. The tower was a gateway to the warp beyond, and through the hole blasted in its side the roiling darkness and liquid flame of the Ether could be seen.
With a roar that came from the throats of a million infernal entities the Gehemehnet awoke and the barrier between the realm of the daemon and the material plane was stripped away. Energy roared outwards from the Gehemehnet, throwing dust up into the air and hurling men to the ground. It made the black seas beyond the Shinar peninsula rise in a giant tidal wave that roared out from the tower, and lightning tore apart the heavens. Rumblings shook the ground, and daemons screamed into being.
They emerged from within the tower, thousands of straining hellish entities clawing out of living stone, and they roared their pleasure as they manifested. Thousands of others flew from the rent in the tower's side, held aloft by pinioning wings or twisting, contorting winds of fire. Screams and roars thundered across the Shinar peninsula and tens of thousands of daemons poured from the gateway, descending on the mortals.
The Ordinatus machine fired again, but this time the force of its attack seemed to rebound from the tower and it hurtled back towards the behemoth, smashing into its void shields and ripping them apart, the fury of its own power turned against it. The void shields crumbled one by one beneath the onslaught, robbing the energy of its force, but still enough power hurtled into the Ordinatus to rip it apart.
The Ordinatus was rocked by the force of its own weapon, though even this was not enough to destroy it completely. Plumes of smoke wreathed its iron sides, and metal scaffolds and gantries were shattered. The great weapon housed upon its back, greater than even those of a mighty Titan, was torn from its housing and collapsed beneath its own weight. Blue fire spurted from breaches in the plasma core powering the machine and tech-priests wailed as the machine-spirit groaned in agony.
Daemons streamed across the battlefield, hacking, slashing and ripping. Thousands of mortals were slaughtered in the first moments of the insane combat, their limbs hacked apart by brutal hellblades, their bodies turned to liquid by blasts of yellow and pink unearthly fire and their souls ripped from their still warm bodies by lascivious, hateful daemons.
The clouds overhead were sucked suddenly inwards, towards the Gehemehnet, and fierce winds pulled at everyone battling upon the plains. Tanks slid across the ground under the force of the sudden gale and men were sent flying through the air.
As suddenly as they came into being, the daemons of the warp were sucked back towards the Gehemehnet, screaming in rage as the fabric of their beings was stripped away like melting wax, and the energies that composed them was drawn back into the tower.
The heavens were cleared of darkness and the great orb of the red planet Korsis could be seen large overhead.
'The conjunction comes,' muttered Jarulek in awe, down on one knee as he strained to resist being pulled back by the roaring gale, his daemonic pulpit having been sucked back to the Gehemehnet by the force of the Daemonschage. He put a hand out to break his fall as the wind stopped abruptly and silence descended across the peninsula, except for one sound.
At the top of the Gehemehnet, the Daemonschage bell tolled as the twelve planets of the Dalar system drew into line and the energies of the ten thousand daemons contained within the tower were propelled down the shaft into the core of the planet.