Clawing a foothold in the masonry, the daemon vaulted up through the beams of the chamber ceiling and into the great belfry above. The clangs of its ungainly movements could be heard against the metal of the Obelisk’s bell. As the Chaplain indulged a slick reload of his pistol, Brother Micah sidestepped across the chamber towards his corpus-captain, dribbling bolt-rounds at the ceiling beams. These were joined by the judicious crash of the Apothecary’s pistol and the fully automatic hurricane of fire from Toralech. The standard bearer had been drawn in by the sound of gunfire and held his banner upright like some religious artefact, ready to repel the infernal beast with faith alone.
‘Hold your fire!’ Kersh ordered, bringing even Toralech’s chattering bolter to a halt. The Excoriators listened to the ring and scrape of the thing’s talons on the bell. Kersh’s eyes widened as the potential calamity of the situation crystallised in his mind. ‘Fall back!’ the corpus-captain roared, but by then the calamity was already in play.
The Obelisk’s Great Bell crashed down through the ceiling beams from the belfry above. The colossal instrument descended on a furious cloud of masonry dust and debris, clanging and pealing its thunderous way down through the throne room floor. Kersh watched in horror as Chaplain Shadrath, Toralech and Brother Micah all disappeared, carried down with the bell as it made its cacophonous descent through the different floors of the Obelisk. Once again, Kersh was treated to the hazy impression of the daemon, clinging to the bell crown and riding the instrument down through its path of destruction.
Ezrachi had been fortunate not to have been caught in the path of the object, but now with the demolished throne room floor collapsing under him, the Apothecary had little choice but to make a clumsy bound for the balcony. The Excoriator’s hydraulic leg wouldn’t entertain the speed such a manoeuvre entailed and Kersh watched the marble floor fall away beneath the Apothecary.
Dropping both pistol and chainsword, Kersh threw himself down and half over the crumbling floorspace. Marble disappeared beneath his chest also, leaving only his legs and armoured midriff spread awkwardly across the balcony. With one of the Scourge’s gauntlets clutching for a handhold, the other shot for the falling Ezrachi. His ceramite fingertips clawed their way around the edge of the reductor adorning the Apothecary’s armoured wrist. Ordinarily, Ezrachi would use the sacred tool to extract gene-seed from fallen Excoriators. As the Apothecary dangled from his corpus-captain’s grasp it became clear that the instrument had saved him from falling. Holstering his pistol and getting his gauntlet to the Scourge’s arm, Ezrachi gave Kersh a glare of crabby exertion before hauling himself up the ceramite plating of his arm and shoulder. Swinging his bionic leg up and onto the balcony edge, the Apothecary used his powerful hydraulics to do the last of the heavy lifting.
As the two Excoriators lay on their chestplates looking down through the devastation the bell had punched through the different levels of the palace, they heard Colquhoun’s Charnel Guard hit the stairs and make their way down towards the ground floor.
‘The casualties…’ Ezrachi began, getting to his feet. Kersh snatched up his pistol and chainsword.
‘Let me at least kill it first,’ the Scourge shouted as he gunned the chainblade to serrated life. ‘Call for the Gauntlet,’ Kersh ordered, ‘and get the pontifex off that ledge.’
With that, Kersh turned and dropped off the side of the balcony. As the Great Bell had fallen, taking out floor after floor, it had left behind a narrow rim of masonry on each level, keystones and structural girder-stumps protruding from the exterior wall. Bounding from one to the other, dropping whole floors and spiralling his way down through the wreckage, Kersh went after the daemon.
A thick cloud of dust rose to meet him about halfway down, indicating that the bell had finally reached the ground floor of the palace. With the powdered masonry and final resonance of the instrument hanging in the air it became increasingly difficult to make the footholds out. When what looked like a snapped support strut turned out to be nothing, the Scourge fell the remaining three floors. Hitting the uneven floor of debris and stone carnage, Kersh felt the hydraulics of his power armour groan and protest. Springing back and rolling, he assumed a combat stance in the miasma of dust. Kersh could make out little but the ghostly outline of the toppled bell and mess of ropes, cords and pulleys left by the falling instrument, hanging in the haze like vines in a jungle mist.
‘Shadrath… Micah… Toralech. Respond.’ The vox-link fed back only static.
The beast was suddenly upon him.
Launching itself over the bell, with a shattered length of girder clutched within its infernal talons, the daemon howled its inhuman desire to end the Scourge. The potent length of a slack, bestial tongue swung from the creature’s maw. The chainsword raged in Kersh’s hand.
The corpus-captain followed the savage motion of the girder with his sword. Kersh ducked the first swing – a manoeuvre that had every right to take his head from his shoulders. A second and a third danced in an arc of pure wrath, flying for the Excoriator time and again. Attempting to keep his focus and composure amid the supernatural speed of the strikes and the primeval roaring and hissing of the thing, Kersh sidestepped across the uneven ground. He leant back out of the path of the shattered end of the girder as it descended, his throat a hair’s breadth from the razor tip of the metal support strut. A roll to the left took him away from the improvised weapon, and the daemon had to content itself with the lump of palace masonry it pulverised instead. A sudden backslash, riding on a crest of spite, found the Scourge, smacking his backpack and slamming the Excoriator into the wall.
Kersh swung straight back with the raging teeth of his chainsword, clipping the tip off the retracting girder. Clasping the weapon like a lance, the daemon charged at the Excoriator. Kersh batted the metal away with the flat of his sword, allowing the girder to skewer the stone of the wall right beside him. The Scourge accelerated the chain on his weapon to an insane screech before cutting down through the girder’s thickness. Again the creature retracted the strut only to have Kersh follow, pressing his advantage. The beast rewarded its opponent with a series of strikes designed to cut the Adeptus Astartes in two, but each one met with the Scourge’s serrated blade and the immovable arms of the Excoriator behind it. The girder’s length was cut down again and again, forcing the creature to step back up the bell. With just a stump remaining of the daemon’s weapon, Kersh brought up his pistol. By the time the Mark II delivered its death-dealing blast, however, the monster had flipped back behind the bell, leaving the girder to fall to the uneven floor and fat bolt-holes in the metal of the bell.
Fuelled by the creature’s retreat, Kersh stormed across the demolished architecture. A lightshow cast ghostly patterns through the swirls and eddies in the dust. The Scourge immediately recognised the semi-automatic whoosh of the Charnel Guard’s lasfusils and the High Constable’s calm and routine instruction. The beast had retreated straight into the fearful Guardsmen, waiting in formation at the bottom of the stairs.
Kersh would have stormed into the hail of las-bolts himself if it hadn’t been for the company standard, resting in the rubble. Toralech’s hand was still clenched around the banner pole, despite the fact that the hulking standard bearer’s body was a twisted mess of bone and ceramite, half buried in the wreckage. Kersh spat and swore. Suddenly a gauntlet snatched at his boot. Spinning around, Kersh saw a partially buried Excoriator. Looking from the lightshow to the gauntlet, the corpus-captain slammed his Mark II and his chainsword down in the rubble. Heaving pieces of stone off the Space Marine, Kersh found himself looking down at the cracked, half-skull face of Shadrath’s helm. The Chaplain had been buried in masonry and the rim of the Great Bell rested across the smashed ceramite of his chest.