“Push through, we must secure the Artefact!” the Samander captain roared as he himself followed his own and and crashed through the crowd of Bloodletters like a human-shaped wreg ball.

  His men followed him with roars of their own and burning phosphorus and psma fire soon burned a scorg path ahead of the Samanders. They took a rge detour, keeping their distance from the Greater Daemon and the group fighting them and headed towards the tre of the colossal cavernous hall.

  I followed the dire they headed in with my eyes, the out a camoufged swarm of droo scout and found an altar at the middle isnd. It was made of a sianic sb of obsidian and had hundreds of little runes carved into its side.

  “It seems they are abandoning their kin,” Trazyn noted evenly. “Disappointing. The Daemons already have the upper hand. I might really have to part with another one of my tesseracts.”

  Ka’Bandha was a monster, easily keeping up with the Custodian even as the Grey Knights did their anti-daemon magi him. His form was visibly quivering at the edges, as if reality itself was trying to push him back down into the , but was failing.

  Is he … not fully maed? I rubbed my thoughtfully, trying to get a feel for the daemon and noticed that he didn’t have a damned anchor.

  This crazy fuck was staying in realspa nothing more than pure will and hatred, he just pushed through the veil because he just felt like it. Which was why the Grey Knights and the Custodian were still in the fight, most of his focus and power must be going towards maintaining his maion.

  Iing. If he could do it, so could I. Meaning, teically, the loss of both of my avatars might not actually sigo ay of floating above the like an angry white cloud. I could actually re-enter realspace.

  Good to know.

  [You already could, with the Crotalid hymn.]

  Oh.

  Anyway! It seemed as though the Samanders would be the ones in need of our help after all, the whole lot of them were cutting down hundreds of daemons every moment, but they were getting pushed away from the tre.

  “I’m assuming you’d hem to actually activate that altar thingy?” I asked.

  “I do indeed,” Trazyn said, his green glowing gaze narrowing.

  “Wao help them out a bit? Get them over to the finish line?”

  “That would be appreciated,” he said. “But do make sure you don’t attract the Custodian onto yourself. If he leaves the fight with the Greater Daemon the rest of them will fall apart quickly.”

  “Sure, I’ll be stealthy!”

  Uhe cover of camoufge, I shot off towards the horde of daemons. Bloodletters, the most on Lesser Daemons of Khorne, were the most numerous here too, but I could see Bloodcrushers, the mounted cavalry of the God of Blood riding on Flesh Hounds.

  Those were prime targets for the Samander’s melta fire, though, so the few of them that came were already reduced t carcasses. I was silent, invisible, and quicker than anything else in here aside from the Custodes and the gigantic Greater Daemon.

  Heads went flying, legs detached at the knees, arms wielding whips flew through the air and the daemonic horde slowed. I circled around the Samanders, disrupting the daemon’s charge and dodged around plumes of burning phosphorus easily.

  I was reduced back to using a Hive Tyrant grade set of y hand to rip my enemies apart, and my speed was much diminished pared to my other avatar, but the Lesser Daemons were still just fodder.

  Slowly, the Samanders started gaining ground once more and with ahusiastic ‘CHAAAARGEEE!’ from the captain, they were once again on the move. I kept up with them easily, slipping around and iween the daemons to thin them out and disrupt them as much as possible before the marines reached them.

  They reached the first magma river soon enough and jumped over its five metre width like it was nothing. I’d been w how they’d get over it, so that was anticlimactic. With a sigh, I jumped after them and slipped bato the fray. Daemons were already waiting for them oher bank of the river, so I had my work cut out for me.

  The marines died, oer the other. Each jump over another river costing awo or three of them each time as Daemons pounced on them mid-jump and dragged them down into the molten rocks flowing by. Their power armours protected them from the heat and the weight of the magma for a while, but they couldn’t get out of it by themselves and their rades were far too preoccupied with the hordes of daemons to help them.

  So they sank, slowly, their auras never even gaining as much as a hint of fear or dread even as their still living bodies got swallowed up by the river.

  By the time they reached the middle part of the hall and mao set themselves up around the obsidian altar, they were down to two-thirds of their men, a whole third having been swallowed up by either the daemons or the magma they no doubt thought their ally as Samanders.

  “Hold your positions!” the captain bellowed. “Once we have the artefact we’ll sughter these curs. Hold. Positions!”

  That didn’t seem to go down well with Ka’Bandha, at all.

  “PATHETIS!” He shouted, his whips fshing out so fast it left after images and smashed into a trio of Grey Knights. The marines were bsted aower armour dented and their bodies underh broken as a thunderous bst echoed throughout the colossal cavern. “You don’t deserve to face me in bat! Your tricks won’t work, your strength fails you, yod abandoned you! Lament your weakness as you DIE!”

  His axe desded upon the Custodian, and unlike before, the golden warrior’s strength failed him. The parry erfect, his movement immacute and his stahing of excellence, a wasn’t enough against one of Khorne’s stro Damons.

  The golden warrior was sent stumbling, then as his guard was down a whip strike, he barely ma up his arms to block, sending him flying after the three broken Grey Knights.

  “Your blood will satiate my axe, but it is not yours my Lord hungers for,” he said, his snarling crimson face turning towards the altar. He fpped his leathery wings and unched himself into the air. “Where is the white ohe white anathema? Where are you, creature? SHOW YOURSELF, COWARDLY CUR! KHORNE WANTS YOUR SKULL!”

  Uh-oh. I thought, seeing the damned Daemon flying right towards me. “Trazyn? I could use some help.”

  “Bringing you along has most certainly been a grievous mistake,” The Ne Overlord huffed, appeario me now without his cloaking ted startling the Samanders behind us. “You attract trouble it seems.”

  He palmed a tesseract again, then aimed it towards the Greater Daemon a sed or two away from crashing right into us. Trazy out a whiny cackle, like activating the artifa his hand was causing him physical pain.

  Blueish white light shot forth and a gigantiaterialised in the Daemon’s path. A roar shook the cavern, causing spikes of hardened basalt and grao e falling off the ceiling and crashing into the daemons. Some fell in the rivers, sending torrents of magma flying through the air and e back down as globules of molten rocks.

  I stared at the thing Trazyn summoned. It was rger thahe Greater Daemon and looked like a rge silvery wyrm. Its body was covered iallic scales, on its head were a set of forward-fag horns made of some pitch bck material and its eyes glowed the lifeless green of all Ne structs.

  The Wyrm shot forth, crashing into the flying Greater Daemon like a ndslide, breaking a wing in the first exge and sending its foe crashing into a river of magma with a titanic swing of its tail.

  Tonnes of molten rock shot up as the daemon smashed down, then fell back do the -borure while the silver Wyrm floated up above it like a divi.

  “What’s that?” I asked, staring wide eyed at the beauty. If it wasn’t Trazyn’s, I’d have beeing the thing already. It was a dragon, a metal dragon, true, but a dragon heless. I wanted a dragon.

  “A projeirazyn huffed, staring unhappily at the Wyrm. “I was w on an exhibit showing the early life of the Primarch Ferrus Manus. This creature was a recreation of the great silver wyrm he fought to gain his famed ‘iron hands’.”

  “I’ve been told Ferrus is in no state to be put in an exhibit,” I said, watg on as with a rumbling roar, Ka’Bundha burst out from beh the magma river. He was still covered in cooling magma as he barreled into the Wyrm. He delivered a titanic overhead swing to the Wyrm, his axe cutting a deep gash into the creature’s side before it mao tighten itself around the daemon. It dragged Ka’Bandha back to the ground along with it, twisting itself just so it would nd atop the Khornite bastard.

  “A regrettable turn of events that I was unaware of at the time,” he said. “Which is the only reason I am willing to put this struct at risk. Pr it took moal effort, both in moime aal fortitude.”

  “How so?” I asked, watg the two legendary beings grapple and roll around on the ground, sending dozens of lesser daemons flying every sed and crushing even more underfoot.

  “My dynasty is not adept at the creation er neis structs,” he said sourly. “I had to … outsource it.”

  “Ah, I imagine how that would prove problematic.” I waved my hand, diverting a bolter shell ing to burst my skull open. “That was rude.”

  The Samanders whose life I’d saved tless times didn’t care, and soon I had to put up a damned psychic barrier to divert their assault. Fmes coated it from the outside, bathing it all in burning phosphorus. It was annoying. They were making me waste soul energy.

  “Stop that or we’ll have the Wyrm attack the lot of you!” I shouted at the assholes, emp my voice with a hint of soul energy, and the assault on us quickly dried up. “That’s what I fug thought. Numbskulls.”

  “I believe they suspect we are intending to take their artefact,” Trazyn said evenly, turning towards the altar. He watched on in fasation as the Captain pushed in little finger-sized buttons on the obsidian struct. “What a curious struct.”

  Everything seemed to be going well, which is of course a big no-no in this gaxy. The moment I found myself thinking that we might actually mao do this little quest of Trazyn’s was the moment I felt a deep reverberation gh the grouh my feet.

  “It is dohe Captain said, his voice weary as he turned around to stare at the two of us. I practically felt his gaze narrow and sharpen as it took us in. There was hate in there, and a fair bit of defiance. “A Ne and … a human? Wait! I know you, you metallic bastard! KILL HIM! HE WANTS THE ARTEFACT!”

  That was all the Samanders o open fire on us again, and I once again threw up a barrier that held their fmes and bolter shells at bay. I didn’t care about them, not now, not with what I could feel.

  I fell on my knees, my bare palms nding on the granite floor as I upgraded my tactile seo the limit and overcharged them with bio-energy. Then shifted them once more, as my mind-cores found a handy little tempte from some animal sample we got that had pretty advanced seismises.

  “Something is ing,” Trazyn said, likewise ign the Samanders as he knocked his staff on the ground.

  “There are twelve of them,” I said, my hands now looking like oversized frog-feet, but it was worth it. The seismise told me everything I o know. “They are … burrowing through the granite? No, there are probably magma tunnels, they are swimming up in those. Whatever these things are, they are huge and will be here in half a minute.”

  “ you hahose things?” he asked, his gaze turning to stare in an apparently random dire.

  “Perhaps,” I said. “If they are anid non-psychic, I probably kill them with little trouble. Though with how many of them there are … it might take a while.”

  “Your ‘stalker’ is back,” Trazyn said, swinging his staff onto the ground and sending out a crag pulse of energy that flowed over the ground. It was just at the perfeent too, as it sent the Custodian nding there barreling bato a river of magma before he could do anything. “Persistent.”

  “He’s pretty annoying, isn’t he?” I asked with a smirk, thinking of a way to get through this debacle without wasting more of my soul energy or sacrifig the emergency bio-energy stores in my Realm.

  [Potential Solution (If the ining foes are anic): e them for bio-energy -> Recreate ae bio-form for bating the Custodian -> kill the Custodian -> Profit?]

  “ you hold the golden boy off while I take care of the ining things from below?” I asked.

  “Not if these Astartes keep hounding me from behind and you remove your barrier.”

  Oh well. I should have enough bio-energy for that. I thought, then shrugged awo dozen globules of eldritch flesh that rapidly morphed into different Tyranid-esque forms.

  Half of them were of the psychic variant, and would protect Trazyn from attacks while the other half were Lictors-like drones. You know the drill. Protect Trazyn. You don’t have to kill the enemies, but keep them from b the Ne.

  [Aowledged.]

  I stood up, rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck as I ted down in my head.

  … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … 0 … Hello? Where are yo-

  Three giants burst out of the magma tunnels with a bellowing roar.

  I grinned. It was show time.

  P3t1