‘We’ve been summoned by the High Constable, my lord,’ the dour officer replied.
‘Go,’ Kersh ordered his Excoriators, who had little trouble reaching the palace doors before the Guardsmen. With Ishmael and Toralech flanking the archway, Brothers Micah and Levi kicked aside the heavy doors and led the group into the small palace and up through the Obelisk’s stairwells. Before the reception chambers and beneath the great belfry, the Space Marines found High Constable Colquhoun barking orders to a gathering of his Guardsmen. Some were stationed at the bronze doors of the pontifex’s reception chambers, calling through the thick metal. Others had the long barrels of their lasfusils pointed at the aperture, while a small group had toppled a masonry statue at the High Constable’s instruction and were trying to batter the doors down.
‘Thank the God-Emperor,’ Colquhoun said at the appearance of the Adeptus Astartes.
‘What’s happening?’
‘The pontifex has been in there for many hours. We thought he was at prayer,’ the High Constable confessed. ‘When planetary business necessitated a disturbance I tried to enter myself.’
‘Locked?’
‘There is no lock. They must be blocked from the other side.’
‘Anyone in there, beside the pontifex?’ Kersh asked.
‘Only his chief astropath,’ Colquhoun confirmed. The Scourge pursed his grizzled lips.
‘Toralech, Ishmael,’ the corpus-captain ordered.
As the Charnel Guard and their improvised ram retreated, the squad whip and the hulking standard bearer put their ceramite shoulders to the bronze. As the Space Marines pushed against the metal with superhuman might, the doors began to give. With a screech they parted slightly, at which Ishmael put his eye to the crack. ‘Barricaded with masonry,’ he reported.
‘What?’ the High Constable exclaimed.
A sulphurous tang stung the Scourge’s nostrils.
‘Do you smell that?’ he asked. As he snorted he detected the otherworldly odours of ozone and scalded reality. The same reek he experienced on the battlefield when the witchbreeds of the Librarius brought the full force of their warp-drawn powers down on the Emperor’s enemies.
‘Warpstench…’ Shadrath snarled.
‘Pontifex!’ Ezrachi boomed through the gap in the bronze. When no sound returned, Kersh stabbed a finger at Brother Micah and then at the stone wall.
‘Shoot it out!’
Pulling the bolter into his shoulder, the company champion hammered the masonry with diamantine-tip precision. As the dust cleared, a ragged circle in the wall was revealed, as well as a peppering of holes that had broken up the masonry within. Like a torpedo, Kersh launched himself at the wall. Punching through the crumbling stone, he dived through the opening. Rolling across a pauldron and the curvature of his pack, the Scourge landed back on his feet. With dust cascading off his armour, he unclipped his chainsword and brought the short, falchion-shaped weapon out in front of him. Gunning the Ryza-pattern blade to life, he waved it from left to right like a flaming torch in the darkness of a cave. Beyond, the throne room appeared in a state of considerable disarray.
Rolling into a covering position, both Micah and Levi followed their corpus-captain through, bolters up and scanning the chamber.
‘Oliphant!’ Kersh called above the chug of the company heirloom.
Shadrath and Ezrachi stepped through the wall with Squad Whip Ishmael bringing up the rear. Toralech waited by the opening with the standard in hand and his bolter pointed through the hole. ‘Spread out,’ the corpus-captain called, prompting the Excoriators to advance through the pontifex’s reception chambers and throne room.
‘Kersh,’ the Apothecary called, drawing the Scourge’s attention to the small mountain of masonry that had been ripped out of the walls and ceiling and piled before the bronze doors.
Sweeping through the wreckage of the darkened chamber, the Excoriators moved in on the throne room. As Kersh led the way with the idling chainsword, flanked by the gaping muzzles of Micah and Levi’s bolters, the Space Marines found a robed form slumped in the ecclesiarch’s throne.
‘Pontifex?’ Kersh called. When the figure didn’t reply, the corpus-captain shouted, ‘Ezrachi!’
The Apothecary moved up behind the group as they advanced on the throne. The remaining Excoriators gathered at the door, ready to provide cover fire. Levi moved in and pulled the figure’s head back. Slipping the hood off, the Excoriators found themselves looking into the empty sockets of the pontifex’s chief astropath. Ezrachi moved in.
‘Unconscious,’ the Apothecary confirmed. ‘Like Melmoch.’
‘Listen!’ Kersh said, shutting off the chainsword’s brutal motor. The remaining Excoriators, who had been moving through the expanse of the throne room, froze. As they scanned the chamber, they heard a distant murmur.
‘It’s coming from outside,’ Ishmael said. Kersh joined him on the pontifex’s balcony, squinting through the darkness. A narrow ledge ran along the four sides of the Obelisk, running under the balcony, a decorative rather than a practical structure. Peering through the murk along it, the Excoriators caught a glimpse of fingers, clasping the corner of the building with bone-white desperation. A figure was somehow situated out on the ledge. As a fearful face edged around the corner, peering at the Excoriators, the figure released a howl of relief and urgency.
‘Oliphant!’ Kersh cried. ‘Ishmael–’
But the squad whip was already over the balcony balustrade and stepping down onto the narrow ledge. ‘Ezrachi,’ the corpus-captain called, as he craned his head back around into the reception chamber. The Apothecary left Brother Levi with the comatose astropath and made his way up the steps.
‘He’s coming around,’ the Excoriator announced as the astropath’s head came up. Instead of empty sockets, a pair of dark orbs – black as midnight and sizzling with blank hatred – rolled over in the psyker’s skull. Momentarily transfixed, Brother Levi watched as twisted horns of charred bone sliced their way out of the man-puppet’s gaunt flesh.
‘Daemo–’ Levi began, but the thing before him exploded in a bloodstorm of shattered skull and brain. An elongated cranium blasted out of the back of the astropath’s head, while daemonfangs burst through his forehead and neck, swallowing his face whole. In its place a visage of infernal flesh appeared: primordial, bestial and depraved. Willowy, lurid limbs and talons erupted from the palms and soles of the astropath’s own and the daemon grew, wearing the puppet’s body like a garment over its horrific and emaciated torso. Pinpricks of immaterial life, like keyholes into a furnace, burned through the inky incomprehension in the monster’s eyes. In one savage motion, the daemon seized Brother Levi by his pauldrons and enveloped the Excoriator’s head with the cage of its jaws. Snapping down, the beast sheared Levi’s head from his neck and swallowed, leaving the Space Marine’s power armour to fountain gore from the neckbrace.
With his attention split between the throne room and the ledge, Kersh was slow to react. The first he truly understood of the danger was the sight of his Excoriators lifting their weapons at the far end of the throne room. The Scourge felt a shockwave of rage and hatred spread through the chamber like a red mist that could be felt but not seen. All Kersh saw was the cavernous muzzle of Shadrath’s bolt pistol thrust at him and the Chaplain lean into a firing position.
Kersh snatched his own Mark II piece from his holster only to see Brother Micah slam the Chaplain’s arms aside with his shoulder.
‘The corpus-captain!’ he yelled.
Before the Scourge could take aim a florid blur shot across the entrance to the balcony. The corpus-captain got the impression of something spindly and daemonic, all horns, claws and blasphemous flesh. Kersh thrust a palm back at Ishmael on the ledge, the squad whip having the exhausted pontifex under one arm. By the time he turned back, the creature had bounded halfway down the chamber on its gangly legs. Both Micah and Chaplain Shadrath’s gunfire had now been unleashed, blasting its way up the precious Ecclesiarchical relics that adorned the throne room wall. Kersh brought his own to bear, trapping the beast between two converging arcs of .75 calibre hell.