Part 32

The faithful died like chaff, and that alone was enough to infuriate me. A flurry of booms as their weapons fired, followed swiftly by an echoing cannonade as the projectiles blew apart the last of my entourage.

Shiss’kill still stood, Laena and Naryssa safe behind her unnatural bulk, several explosions blossoming on her still unblemished skin. For my part, I took a round to the shoulder.

The explosion deafened me, threw me to the ground. Agony coursed through my shoulder, the first time I’d felt physical pain since discovering the Basilica Exsolutus. It was long seconds before I was able to move, able to shift enough to view the damage. My skin was charred and cracked, but intact, and only a few thin lines of blood seeped through the fractures. I smiled, the smell of blood kindling a fire in my gut. There was no one left to protect, no one left to fight for but myself, and the Chaos Gods.

There was nothing left but to spill blood until my own ran out.

I brandished my sword, an obsidian blade whose name I had never managed to learn. The wide, flat shard was two handspans broad, as long as I was tall, and yet I wielded it with supernatural ease. Planting the weapon, I hauled myself to my feet, the sounds of carnage gradually filtering in through the buzzing in my ears. I peered through the sockets of my avian skull mask and witnessed the most beautiful sight to ever grace my eyes, then or since.

Shiss’kill was a whirlwind. A dervish of pale flesh, jagged blades, surrounding itself in a torrent of blood and gore. Her hooved feet carried her across the snow in a blur, faster than I’d ever seen her move. The weapons of our foe tried to track her, sweeping across the field, the staccato blasts of their firing overlapping in a cacophony. Those shots that touched her blew bloody chunks from her crafted body where before they had barely touched her. It was only then that the chanting of our foes became audible to me.

“His sight guides our aim. His light reveals our foe. We are the hand with which he strikes down the wicked.”

With every word, some of the enchanting aura around Shiss’kill wavered, the oily sheen to the air flickering out of existence. In those moments she seemed more solid, more vulnerable, mere flesh and bone. And their weapons were destroying her in the same manner. Slowly, one of them falling for every shot that landed, but still they numbered in the dozens.

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Many of them would die, but they would outlast her.

Two sets of hands helped me up, Naryssa and Laena standing beside me. Their weapons seemed pitifully inadequate compared to the armaments of our enemies, and yet we were called to fight nonetheless.

And so we would.

Naryssa was the first to charge forward, her whip cracking the air, the bronze blade gleaming with bloodlust. If even that cursed blade could cut through their thick plate, I did not know. Perhaps my own sword would simply bounce off, repelled by the suits they wore, or the words they spoke. I could feel the power of those chants, as I could feel the power of mine. Their faith shined as a beacon, as did my own.

I supposed we would soon discover which was brighter.

Shiss’kill had fallen to her knees by the time we reached her, surrounded on all sides by figures in black and red, massive weapons spewing explosive death into her tattered form. They were all focused on the demon, of course. They never saw us coming.

Naryssa was the first to strike, her long legs carrying her swiftly through snow she was long accustomed to traveling through. My concern over her primitive weaponry was proven fruitless, as her first swing clove the skull of an invader in two. Such folly, to enter battle in armor as advanced as this, but to refuse a helmet. The woman beside her turned, surprise etched into her angelic features. My blade was the first to test the mettle of that foreign plate.

To cleave men in two, I’d merely had to wave the blade toward them. Here, I took my running start, and put all the strength of my body behind the two handed swing. The obsidian entered her midriff, cleaving through the armor like butter, no more impeded by it than by flesh and bone. The massive sword went through her in a blink, and the warrior fell in halves behind me, her blood a crimson spray on the snow.

One among so many others.

The remaining dozen foes put the finishing touches to Shiss’kill, one whose armor was edged in gold putting her weapon to the massive head of the demon, and pulling the trigger. Her head exploded, the vitality abruptly vanishing from her massive form. The demonhost was unmade, the entity bound to it banished into the warp. That was alright. I had more than enough sacrifices here to bring her back…

I hacked through the torso of another warrior, Naryssa trading blows with an opponent of her own. There were still too many, far too many left, and even as we fought, I watched another of my friends die.

Laena was a shapeshifter, a deceiver. She did not fight. She did not know how to. I was not surprised to see her spit upon the blade of her first opponent, a spike crackling with lightning that sat beneath the opening that spat death. So it was not surprise, but fury, that filled my veins as her killer fired, Laena’s lithe body bursting upon the spike impaling her.

After that, I saw nothing but red.