Dark Apostle

Up and up the Terminators wound, under constant, desperate attack from the Skitarii climbing behind them and the sentry turrets. Ammunition was running low, and with a blast of fiery promethium directed down over the open stairwell to melt the exposed flesh of a dozen enemy machine-warriors, the last of the heavy flamer reloads was expended. Even if they had not a bolt shell remaining, Kol Badar would fight on and succeed. He would die, with all his Anointed at his side, before he would allow the bitch of a Titan to best him once again. He would rip it apart piece by piece with his bare hands if need be.

The noise of turning machinery became increasingly loud as the Terminators neared the Imperator's knee joint. Abruptly, the last sentry gun was silenced, the milky life-blood of the servitor dripping down through the latticed grill to fall upon its brethren advancing from below. At Kol Badar's direction, blinking demolition melta-charges were attached to bulkheads where he indicated, as scattered gunfire roared up from below, shearing through the metal stairs. Scores of charges were placed, four times the amount that were used to blast away the mountainside. Kol Badar was taking no chances.

He nodded as he studied the placement of the blinking charges.

'Commence the descent,' he ordered and the Anointed warriors began to fight their way back down the staircase that they had just fought so hard to ascend.

'We are entering the range of the Imperator, First Acolyte,' hissed Burias. The massive Titan had already blasted every cult warrior apart.

'If he's failed, this war is going to be over very quickly,' replied Marduk.

He climbed atop a rocky outcrop, allowing the ranks of the Host to advance past him. Vehicles rumbled forward slowly, and Dreadnoughts and Defilers stalked across the broken ground. Burias climbed up behind him, planting the icon in the ground at the First Acolyte's side.

The Imperator raised its leg for another step. A series of internal explosions suddenly burst out around its knee-joint. Flames and smoke erupted from the mechanical joint, a mass of detonation within ripping through the thick, reinforced metal. The bastion foot touched down on the floor of the ravine and a secondary flash of timed demolition charges erupted. For a moment it looked as though they had had no effect, until the knee joint gave way beneath the immense weight of the Titan and it lurched to one side as if in slow motion, thousands of tonnes of metal teetering over the battlefield.

Its weapon arms flailed out as if trying to steady the toppling god-machine, but the Titan was falling, gaining speed as its weight bore it down on the ground. There was silence as it crashed to the ground, until the bastion of one shoulder slammed into the sheer cliff face, causing the mountain range to shudder beneath the impact, and an avalanche of rock was sheared from the cliff. Off balance, the impact caused the Imperator to swing towards the ravine wall and the leering head of the great machine smashed straight into the rock face with a resounding crash. The other leg of the Titan, bearing the entire weight of the colossal machine, buckled suddenly with a screeching sound of wrenching metal. The Imperator slammed to the ground with a deafening boom that echoed through the ravine. The impact caused avalanches of rock and rubble, and hundreds of Guardsmen and Skitarii were slain. A rising cloud of dust obscured the fallen, broken Titan.

As one, the Word Bearers roared victoriously at the sight of the mighty war god dying and Burias raised the Host's icon high into the air for all to see.

'Advance and kill!' roared Marduk and the Host descended upon the shattered vanguard.

After killing the traitor Pierlo, Varnus had expected to be slain by his captives, but if anything, his action seemed to have garnered a kind of hateful respect from the hunched, black-clad overseers. Oh, they had hurt him as they prised him off the corpse of the traitor, filling his body with agonising torment as the vile serums that filled their needle fingers assaulted his nerve endings, but he had been expecting far worse.

But no, he had been dragged from the tower and placed on the chirurgeons' familiar, cold, steel slab. There was no Discord there and he felt naked without it speaking to him. There the spindly creatures had prodded and probed him. They seemed particularly interested in the symbol beneath the skin of his forehead, chittering excitedly amongst themselves. They drew blood from him and fed burning black liquid into his veins. Small, black leech creatures with orange patterns on their backs were attached to him and he howled as they burrowed their heads into his skin. They were pulled back out, bloated and fat, some time later.