Chapter 33: Daemons of Tzeentch
From his vantage on the Land Raider, Petros watched the slaughter and shook his head.
He could see hesitation in the ranks of his mortal auxilia, the "Spear of Hector." He knew why. These were former city-state levies. Their wars were about single, pitched battles, followed by capture, negotiation, or fealty. They had never been ordered to conduct a purge—a merciless culling of the warrior and the non-combatant alike.
It seemed that after this, he would have to cull the older, softer men from the ranks. The future lay with the young, with a new generation. Their education would have to be... reformed.
The four great pincers of his army continued to close, ready to annihilate the last hundred thousand cultists. But then, a massive surge of raw Warp-energy exploded from the enemy's epicenter. The ground shook.
A tide of bizarre, chittering creatures erupted from the cultist ranks, tearing into their own allies. They were gibbering orbs of pink, blue, and yellow flesh, bouncing and rolling forward. They tore into the mortals, biting with needle-teeth and slashing with their three-clawed hands.
The Pink Horrors cackled, spewing unnatural pink fire from their fingertips, which sizzled and mutated the flesh of the cultists. The Blue Horrors spat blue flames, while the smallest, the Brimstone Horrors, were living torches, setting everything they touched alight.
Swooping overhead were flat, ray-like daemons, the Screamers, which dove down to shear heads from shoulders. Floating behind them were tall, slender daemons, the Flamers, their lower bodies a funnel of Warp-fire, their arms spewing torrents of mutating flame.
And leading them all was the colossal Chaos Spawn, a mountain of flesh, tentacles, and screaming faces. It still possessed psychic power, its many mouths chanting as it unleashed bolts of lightning, even as its immense bulk crushed the very cultists it had emerged from.
Petros observed the daemonic incursion, his voice flat as he identified the enemy. "Chaos Spawn. Horrors. Screamers. Flamers. A limited daemonic incursion."
He keyed his command-vox. "All units, Daemons of Tzeentch have manifested. All commanders, halt advance. Concentrate heavy fire on the daemonic entities. Air support, stand by."
He switched channels. "Sachs, consolidate the line. All weapons are free, lethal-only. No more prisoners."
At the command, the "Spear of Hector" and the Dark Mechanicum forces ceased their capture operations. Officers shouted, "Fix bayonets!" The mortal auxilia unleashed a storm of fire. The cultists were mown down, but the daemons barely slowed. Las-fire and autogun slugs pattered uselessly against their empyrean hides as they bounded toward the Imperial line.
The Land Raider's sponson-lascannons fired, their twin beams vaporizing a Pink Horror. The creature's remains split in two, reforming into two smaller, cackling Blue Horrors.
Petros raised his plasma pistol, his finger carefully squeezing a medium-power shot. The blue-white orb melted a Blue Horror, which in turn burst apart, spawning two tiny, crackling Brimstone Horrors.
The enemy was multiplying.
The Astartes and neophytes remained calm, firing controlled bursts. Antonius, on the heavy bolter, was methodical, stitching two or three rounds into each daemon. But there were too many. The daemons were about to hit the mortal line, and the troopers were beginning to show panic.
Petros voxed one name: "Yamila."
From the rear, a line of 1,000 Dark Mechanicum Tech-Guard advanced. They were the Skitarii. Clad in rust-red robes, their limbs were fleshless metal, their bodies brutally augmented. They advanced in perfect, silent unison, leveling their long, archaic-looking galvanic rifles.
They passed through the ranks of the auxilia, formed a two-rank firing line, and at some unseen signal, fired as one. A volley of hyper-charged slugs tore through the daemons. The Horrors, Screamers, and Flamers didn't die; they dissipated, their forms dissolving back into the Warp.
The Tech-Guard were powerful. In the confines of a ship, an Astartes would beat the oil out of them. But on an open plain, facing hundreds of rifles that could punch through power armor... even an Astartes had to respect their fire.
The lesser daemons were all but gone, dissipated by the Skitarii. Only the colossal Chaos Spawn remained. Petros set his plasma pistol to maximum, a roiling ball of blue energy forming. He fired. The shot detonated in mid-air, splashing against an invisible barrier.
A psychic shield.
The Land Raider's lascannons fired again, their beams refracting uselessly. The Spawn counter-attacked. A wave of invisible force erupted from its many maws, and hundreds of mortal auxilia troopers were pulped, their bodies exploding in a shower of gore and shrapnel.
"Air strike, now!" Petros roared.
The Storm Eagle gunship dove. Its twin-linked multi-melta roared, but the melta-beams dissipated before they could reach full-effect, scattering against the same shield. The pilot, unwilling to risk the Warband's only Astartes-grade aircraft, did not descend further. He unleashed his payload.
Four Hellstrike missiles streaked down, impacting the shield in a massive conflagration. Smoke billowed... and the Chaos Spawn strode out of it, unharmed. It unleashed another psychic blast, and this time, a score of Skitarii and another hundred mortals were annihilated.
The beast was still coming, slow and steady.
But Petros was calm. He knew the weakness of void-shields, and psychic shields were often the same. They were designed to stop high-velocity attacks... not slow ones.
He keyed his vox. "First and Second Assault Bike teams. To my position. Now."