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Sinera withdrew behind her throng. Across her long existence, the Slaanesh Champion had known defeat before—but this human truly unsettled her.
Blood flame scorched his armor. He bled profusely. Her toxin ravaged his organs. And yet—he still moved.
Why? Because hatred and fury were the only engines left within him.
Ignis's conscious mind had blurred; instinct ruled where reason had collapsed. In extreme rage, thought falters—blood pressure spikes, hormones flood, even an Astartes brain can falter. Perhaps especially an Astartes—engineered to secrete more, to burn hotter.
Daemonettes surrounded him. They resembled Sinera faintly, but lacked her stature and lethality.
Chainaxe and thunder hammer rose and fell in relentless cadence.
One sweeping arc of the whirring axe tore three heads free before the daemons could comprehend how a human moved faster than they.
The thunder hammer boomed; its disruption field detonated two clustered Daemonettes into twin blossoms of gore.
Yet Ignis's true focus never left the wounded Champion. The portal vomited forth more and more lesser fiends—faster than he could reap them.
The living tide shielded Sinera—for now. But the portal's energy was finite. Held at bay and hacked apart, it would soon exhaust itself again.
They were locked in attrition.
Ignis must kill her before his life bled away.
Sinera must feed the gate before its strength failed.
But once engaged at close quarters, the Daemonettes had little space for their vaunted agility. They fell like wheat before a scythe, their broken forms carpeting the ground.
Worse for her still—his brothers were breaking free.
Gotthardt rotated the Leviathan's upper hull, flinging clambering Beastmen away. As they burst upon the ground, he redirected fire toward the Daemonettes choking Ignis's path. A sweeping barrage thinned the swarm drastically.
He advanced, crushing stragglers beneath iron tread. The old veteran recognized the signs—Ignis was no longer fighting with disciplined restraint. The Salamanders were renowned for composure. This was different. This was loss of control.
He would need help.
Yet only steps forward—and Sinera intercepted him. One arm severed. One claw torn away.
"Lose a hand and a claw to my younger cousin and you think I'm easier prey?" Gotthardt's voice boomed through the Leviathan's vox-grille as his siege drill whirred to life. "I will grind you into paste."
This time, she did not taunt. The daemon who had reveled in excess now fought only to survive.
In single combat, the massive war machine was not ideally suited—especially with retrofitted systems lacking original fluidity. Yet Sinera, wounded and bleeding, no longer danced as before. Her movements were heavier, less graceful. Even daemons suffered degradation when maimed.
She attempted to leap upon the war engine, to pry open its hull and rip out the pilot—a tactic she had once used against an Ironclad Dreadnought.
But Gotthardt had seen such attempts countless times. He pivoted with precision unexpected for a machine of such mass. She seized his arm—only for him to spin violently, using inertia to hurl her skyward.
Mid-air, nowhere to evade, she endured the lascannon's blast.
Not the original storm cannon array—else she would have been shredded utterly—but still enough to scorch flesh and melt ornament into skin. Painful. Humiliating. Not fatal.
Elsewhere, Cerakos finished the last Beastman in a spray of dark blood. His once-yellow armor was stained beyond recognition. Throughout the battle, a soft song had whispered at the edge of his hearing—guiding his strikes, shielding his mind from sorcery.
Seeing Gotthardt steady and Ignis embattled, he ignited his jump pack and soared.
Meanwhile, poison and blood loss tightened their grip. The Khorne daemon's earlier empowerment faded. Weakness crept in.
Ignis cleaved a Daemonette from shoulder to hip. He staggered. The world swam.
One fiend lunged from behind—he pivoted, thunder hammer erupting in a crack of lightning. The daemon became mist.
Darkness crept across his vision. He might die here.
The Daemonettes sensed it—this terror had slowed. They shrieked and swarmed.
Then Cerakos descended like a falling star, crushing several beneath his boots. Power sword flashed—heads flew. Lightning claws shredded ambushers.
"Cousin!" he shouted, seeing the cracks spiderwebbing Ignis's armor, blood seeping endlessly.
No respite came. Cerakos carved desperately, guided still by that gentle hymn.
Ignis, swaying, looked past the swarm—to Sinera dueling the Leviathan.
He had not taken vengeance. Not yet.
The fire in his chest flared anew, suppressing weakness for one more surge. He gripped the chainaxe, seeking strength from the daemon within—
Silence.
The once-boastful Khorne spirit had fallen mute.
No matter. He forced the weapon awake, plunging again into the tide. Around him rose a storm of death—limbs severed, blood spraying, armor caked in gore. He looked more monster than the daemons themselves.
Then—the metallic tendril that had struck him before returned.
Barbed and bladed, impossibly swift, it evaded axe and hammer alike and lashed across his chest with the force of a heavy bolter. He was hurled meters away.
Through blurred sight he saw it—
A mirror borne upon a frame of living metal tendrils. Two Exalted Daemonettes flanked it, guiding it forth from the portal.
A Mirror of Absorption.
Such constructs amplified nearby daemons, siphoned strength from foes—and worst of all, reflected the darkest desires and deepest fears of those who gazed upon it.
It must be destroyed.
He tried to rise—vomited blood instead. His armor's autosenses screamed warnings. Organ failure imminent.
Death loomed.
Strangely, he felt no fear. Not because he no longer cherished life—but because something had surpassed even that instinct.
If the enemy desired this mirror intact, then it must be broken.
For the Emperor. For humanity. For New Eridu. For himself.
No grand war cry—only a silent, staggering charge.
The tendrils lashed again. He parried with the chainaxe, sparks bursting, rolled beneath another, and brought the thunder hammer down. One tendril detonated under the disruption field.
A gap was opened.
He surged forward—faster than before his wounds.
The chainaxe bit into another tendril and tore it free in less than a heartbeat.
The two Exalted Daemonettes stared in disbelief. This bleeding, poisoned warrior still fought like a god of war.
They leapt down from the frame—prepared to face him personally.
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