[Warhammer 40K - The Horus Heresy 48] - The Burden of Loyalty by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Military Fiction, Science Fiction, Warhammer 40K
ISBN: 9781785728716
Published: 2018-01-02T10:36:43+00:00

The webway—now

The beam rips across the space between Borealis Thoon and the tide of daemons.

Blackness runs down the beam’s core. Light shatters around it. Sound flattens. Screams, howls and hoots lose distance and volume. The beam strikes. The first daemons in its path vanish. One moment they are bounding forward, and the next, they do not exist.

The beam begins to shriek. Cold light whips around it. Colours pour into it.

The daemons run, clawing at each other, leaping up the curved walls of the Lychway to get away from the darkness shearing through them. They are creatures without fear, without the nature to feel any true emotion. Yet they run from Borealis Thoon.

Hydragyrum watches as the beam carves through them. The crucible is spinning into a new alignment around him. Borealis Thoon will not be able to maintain fire for more than a few more seconds. He pushes the black globe back into orbit amongst the elements spinning in the crucible.

The beam blinks out of existence. Light and sound roar back into full force. The daemons hold still for an instant and then flow down the walls again.

The third and first cardinal elements are smoking as they spin past Hydragyrum. Blood will be staining the amniotic caskets of the two psykers. They will last only a little longer, but Borealis Thoon has other teeth. The crucible slows its spin. Hydragyrum reaches for the sigils for sulphur, fire, silver. The turbo lasers on the Titan’s back gather charge.

The daemons cross the distance in a stuttering blink. Their substance thins as they close. Flesh unravels from them like sand blown from the face of a dune.

The turbo lasers fire. Sun-white beams lance out, punching into the horde, cutting through plague-bloated bodies, blasting gleaming skin and muscle to black slime. Inside Borealis Thoon’s skull, the governor named Silence is breathing hard, trembling with the connection to the machine’s weapons.

The daemons keep pouring down the spiral of the Lychway. The glowing tips of alien pillars project from the surface of the swelling flow of monsters. The air is blazing with ghostlight.

Slaved weapons fire from beneath the Borealis Thoon’s carapace. Bolt-rounds and las-fire sleet down as the flow of monsters spills around its feet. Fanged mouths bay in its shadow. Ash falls from them as they try to hold on to their forms.

Hydragyrum notes the daemons’ proximity as a flash of hololithic light in the crucible. Elements and symbols shift to his will. Void shields snap into being around the Titan, wrapping it in layers of energy. A pulse of telekinetic force rips out from the Titan’s body, and half-dissolved daemons scatter into the air. Borealis Thoon strides into the sea of horrors. The Lychway quakes under its tread. The ghostly substance of the webway trembles, as though fighting the presence of the Titan. Bone and crystal pillars shatter as it passes. Hydragyrum notes each effect and alteration, and pushes Borealis Thoon on into the tide even as it rises to meet him.

The plan had been simple, its need direct.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.