A missile streaked past Tarvitz and burst against the blast doors, leaving a flaming, blackened crater in the metal. Another missile followed the first, and then another, and the doors crumpled inwards. Tarvitz saw the golden armour of Eidolon flashing in the planet's hard light, the lord commander heftВing a mighty hammer with blue arcs of energy crackling around its head.
The hammer slammed into die remains of the doors, blue-white light bursting like a lightning strike as they vanished in a thunderous explosion. Eidolon charged inside the facility, the honour his by virtue of his noble rank.
Tarvitz followed Eidolon in, ducking through the wrecked blast doors.
Inside, the station was in darkness, lit only by the muzzle flashes of bolter fire and sparking cables
torn from their mountings by the furious combat. Tarvitz's enhanced vision dispelled the darkness, warm air billowing from the station through the ruptured doors and white vapour surged around him as he saw the enemy for the first time.
They wore black armour with bulky power packs and thick cables that attached to heavy rifles. The plates of their armour were traced with silver scrollВwork, perhaps just for decoration, perhaps a pattern of circuitry.
Their faces were hooded, each with a single red lens over one eye. A hundred of them packed the dome, sheltering behind slabs of broken machinery and furniture. The armoured soldiers formed a solid defensive line, and no sooner had Eidolon and the Emperor's Children emerged from the entrance tunnel than they opened fire.
Rapid firing bolts of ruby laser fire spat out from the Isstvanian troops, filling the dome with horiВzontal red rain. Tarvitz took a trio of shots, one to his chest, one to his greaves and another cracking against his helmet, filling his senses with a burst of static.
Fulgerion was ahead of him, wading through the las-fire that battered his shield. Eidolon surged forwards in the centre of the line and his hammer bludgeoned Isstvanians to death with each lethal swing. A body flew through the air, its torso a crushed ruin and its limbs shattered by the shock of die hammer's impact. The weight of enemy fire faltered and the Emperor's Children charged
forwards,’overlapping fields of bolter fire shredding the Isstvanians' cover as close combat specialists crashed through the gaps to kill with gory sweeps of chainswords.
Tarvitz's bolt pistol snapped shots at the darting black figures catching one in the throat and spinВning him around. Squad Fulgerion took up position at the remains of the barricade, their bolters filling the dome with covering gunfire for Eidolon and his chosen warriors.
Tarvitz killed the enemy with brutally efficient shots and sweeps of his broadsword, fighting like a warrior of Fulgrim should. His every strike was a faultless killing blow, and his every step was meaВsured and perfect. Gunfire ricocheted from his gilded armour and the light of battle reflected from his helmet as if from a hero of ancient legend.
'We have the entrance dome,' shouted Eidolon as the last of the Isstvanians were efficiently despatched by the Astartes around him. 'Death Guard units report heavy resistance inside. Blow the inner doors and we'll finish this for them.'
Warriors with breaching charges rushed to destroy the inner doors, and even over the flames and shots, Tarvitz could hear muffled explosions from the other side. He lowered his sword and took a moment to survey his surroundings now that there was a lull in the fighting.
A dead body lay at his feet, the plates of the man's black armour ruptured and a ragged tear ripped in the hood covering his face. Frozen blood lay
scattered around him like precious stones and Tarvitz knelt to pull aside the torn cowl.
The man's skin was covered in an elaborate swirling black tattoo, echoing the silver designs on his armour. A frozen eye looked up at him, hollow and darkened, and Tarvitz wondered what manner of being had the power to force this man to renounce his oaths of loyalty to the Imperium.
Tarvitz was spared thinking of an answer by the dull thump of the interior doors blowing open. He put the dead man from his mind and set off after Eidolon as he held his hammer high and charged into the central dome. He ran alongside his fellow warriors, knowing that whatever the Isstvanians could throw at him, he was an Astartes and no weapon they had could match the will of the Emperor's Children.
Tarvitz and his men moved through the dust and smoke of the door's explosion, the autosenses of his armour momentarily useless.
Then they were through and into the heart of the Isstvan Extremis facility.
He pulled up short as he suddenly realised that the intelligence they had been given on this facility was utterly wrong.
This was not a comms station, it was a temple.
Torgaddon's face was ashen and leathery, puckВered and scarred around a burning yellow eye. Sharpened metallic teeth glinted in a lipless mouth and twin gashes were torn in the centre of his face.
A star with eight points was gouged in his temple, mirroring its golden twin etched upon his ornate, black armour.
'No,’ said Loken, backing away from this terrible apparition.
'You have trespassed, Loken,’ hissed Torgaddon. 'You have betrayed,’
A dry, deathly wind carried Torgaddon's words, gusting over him with the smell of burning bodies. As he breathed the noxious wind, a vision of broВken steppes spread out before Loken, expanses of desolation and plains of rusted machinery like skeletons of extinct monsters. A hive city on the disВtant horizon split open like a flower, and from its broken, burning petals rose a mighty tower of brass that punctured the pollution-heavy clouds.
The sky above was burning and the laughter of Dark Gods boomed from the heavens. Loken wanted to scream, this vision of devastation worse than anything he had seen before
This wasn't real. It couldn't be. He did not believe in ghosts and illusions.
The thought gave him strength. He wrenched his mind away from the dying world, and suddenly he was soaring through the galaxy, tumbling between the stars. He saw them destroyed, bleeding glowing plumes of stellar matter into the void. A baleful mass of red stars glowered above him, staring like a great and terrible eye of flame. An endless tide of titanic monsters and vast space fleets vomited from that eye, drowning the universe in a tide of blood.
A sea of burning flames spat and leapt from the blood, consuming all in its path, leaving black, barВren wasteland in its wake.
Was this a vision of some lunatic's hell, a dimension of destruction and chaos where sinners went when they died? Loken forced himself to remember the lurid descriptions from the Chronicles of Ursh, the outВlandish scenes described by inventions of dark faith. No, said the voice of Torgaddon, this is no madВman's delusion. It is the future.
'You're not Torgaddon!' shouted Loken, shaking the whispering voice from his head. You are seeing the galaxy die. Loken saw the Sons of Horus in the tide of fiery madness that poured from the red eye, armoured in black and surrounded by leaping, deformed creatures. Abaddon was there, and Horus himself, an immense obsidian giant who crushed worlds in his gauntlets.
This could not be the future. This was a diseased distorted vision of the future.
A galaxy in which mankind was led by the Emperor could never become such a terrible maelВstrom of chaos and death. You are wrong.
The galaxy in flames receded and Loken scrabbled for some solidity, something to reassure him that this terrifying vision could never come to pass. He was tumbling again, his vision blurring until he opened his eyes and found himself in Archive Chamber Three, a place he had felt safe, surВrounded by books that rendered the universe down
to pure logic and kept the madness locked up in crude pagan epics where it belonged.
But something was wrong, the books were burnВing around him, this purest of knowledge being systematically destroyed to keep the masses ignoВrant of their truths. The shelves held nothing but flames and ash, the heat battering against Loken as he tried to save the dying books. His hands blisВtered and blackened as he fought to save the wisdom of ancient times, the flesh peeling back from his bones.