Chapter 260: Night Falls (Patreon)

When Phoros led his Honour Guard against the Hive Tyrant, they were intercepted by a swarm of Tyranid Warriors.

One of the xenos leapt at Phoros when only five meters separated them, but before its claws could strike, a Terminator-clad Guard of the Lamenters drove his power spear clean through its carapace, the weapon’s energized edge piercing with a crack of ruptured air and sizzling flesh. The Warrior’s screech turned into a gurgle as the Guard twisted the spear, lifting the beast bodily from the ground before flinging its twitching husk aside like refuse hurled into the void.

Normally, even an Astartes would struggle to bring down a Tyranid Warrior so swiftly, but now, clad in Indomitus-pattern Terminator armour and reinforced by the strange modifications unique to Chapter, these warriors were more than equal to the task.

More Tyranid Warriors closed in, scything talons raised, aware that their synaptic overlord was in danger. Their chittering shrieks reverberated across the ruined walls, amplified by the psychic lattice binding their hive-minds.

Around them, bladed Gaunts scuttled and bounded forward, their serrated limbs slashing at the air in anticipation. Together they advanced like a tide of chitin and bone, a single monstrous organism seeking to cut Phoros and his brothers off from their quarry.

Three nearby combat squads of Lamenters intervened, intercepting the beasts and buying their Chapter Master his path. Bolter-fire cracked in disciplined volleys, each shot placed with measured lethality.

Gaunts were torn to fragments, ichor steaming as it hissed upon the hot barrels of the guns. Chainswords and power blades rose and fell in ceaseless rhythm, painting the ground with streaks of alien gore.

The Hive Tyrant saw the humans advancing and roared, its four arms wielding twin pairs of bone sabres with terrifying grace. The sound was not merely physical but psychic, a tremor that shook the soul and rattled armour joints. To mortal ears, it was deadly; to a Space Marine, it was a battlefield hymn of madness that tested even gene-forged resolve.

It moved with ponderous yet unstoppable strides toward Phoros, each step shattering stone and sending cracks rippling outward, as though the very ground recoiled from its presence. Where it walked, lesser Tyranids scuttled aside in instinctive reverence, clearing its path like servants before a monarch of horror.

At two meters’ distance, the Tyrant struck, its talons cleaving down with enough force to bisect a tank.

A Honour Guard interposed himself. His storm-shield caught the descending blade, sparks and splinters flying, while his thunder hammer crashed into the Tyrant’s abdomen.

The hammer’s disruption field rippled through the monster, detonating inside its body like a shaped charge. The Hive Tyrant reeled, staggering back as though a grenade had detonated inside its flesh.

Chunks of liquefied chitin splattered the ground, sizzling like molten metal. Still, the creature did not fall, its roar doubling in both volume and psychic resonance, stunning the Honour Guard. Even the Terminator’s enhanced senses dulled for an instant, his limbs locking as though caught in amber.

Seizing the opening, Phoros vaulted past his guardian. His power spear plunged into the Tyrant’s skull, its phase-field unraveling bone and chitin alike. The haft drove clean through, nailing the creature to the ground.

As the Hive Tyrant fell, the swarm faltered. Across the central causeway, the lesser Tyranids, Gaunts and Warriors alike shrieked, their coordinated movement collapsing into panicked frenzy. Some scattered wildly, others hurled themselves in blind charges. Without the Tyrant’s synaptic will, they had lost their cohesion.

Phoros wrenched his spear free, flicking the blood from its haft as he strode forward. His brothers of the Lamenters advanced at his flanks, cutting down whatever xenos still twitched in their path.

But this battle was far from over.

The Tyranids slain thus far were but the airdropped vanguard, a hastily deployed brood sent to stall the defense. The air was still thick with the stink of their bio-pods, ruptured capsules that smoked where they had burned into the fortress walls.

Their corpses piled high, but for every carcass cooling on the stones, a dozen more poured from the breach. From further ahead came a tide without number: gaunts and warriors surging through the shattered walls, chasing retreating Imperial forces, flooding into the central causeway.

And looming even farther ahead was a behemoth fifteen meters (50 feet) tall, a Bio-Titan, a Titan-grade Tyranid bioform, lumbering forward amidst the sea of claws.

Its every step was an earthquake, its spined silhouette blotting out firelight, a living siege engine bred for nothing but annihilation. Where the Hive Tyrant was the mind of the swarm, this creature was its executioner, a beast whose existence was a weaponized theology of consumption.

But the Lamenters would not stand alone. The First Company of the Blood Angels had arrived, their crimson plate shining like blood beneath Baal’s dying sun. Each bore the livery of ten thousand battles, their presence a reminder of the Legion that once was.

“Phoros?” Karlaen, the Blood Angels’ Captain of the First halted, shock in his voice. “I thought the Minotaurs’ curs had...”

“That’s a tale for another time,” Phoros replied curtly, his gaze falling upon a nearby Blood Angel, grievously wounded, his arm torn away.

“Apothecary.” Phoros turned.

One of the Lamenters stepped forward, his Terminator armour marked with the sigil of the Apothecarion. He immediately set to work, stabilizing the Astartes and preparing augmetic replacement. Mechanical servos whirred softly as the Apothecary’s gauntlets unfolded into a cascade of surgical tools, their gleaming edges precise and alien in their complexity.

Karlaen frowned, unsettled. Something about these Lamenters was… off. Even their Apothecary was fully encased in Terminator plate. Their warriors all stood near three meters tall, larger, broader, more imposing than even the mightiest of his own.

Though both Chapters shared the blood of Sanguinius and the Blood Angels were the parent Chapter of the Lamenters, Karlaen felt no kinship here, only a cold distance, sharpened by Phoros’ brusque command of “Apothecary.”

The Blood Angels and their Successors usually called their healers Sanguinary Priests. Phoros’ Angels did not.

Yet whatever their differences, the Lamenters had come to defend Baal. Karlaen would not spurn such allies.

“Your aid is welcome, brother.” Karlaen clasped Phoros’ gauntleted hand. “Though you arrive too late. Not for the battle. No, for you missed the feast for our fallen.”

“Our regrets,” Phoros said, his spear upright in both hands. “We were still upon Cadia when the summons came.”

Behind them, mortal serfs, like the blood thralls, hurried past, fleeing deeper into the fortress. Some Blood Angels and their Successors stayed behind to hold the line.

A Captain of the Knights of Blood Chapter appeared at Karlaen’s side. “When do we withdraw to the inner defenses?” he asked.

Karlaen did not answer. His eyes sought Phoros. Surely, he thought, these warriors, so heavily armed, so brutal in their presence, should be at Commander Dante’s side, not here on the front line.

But Phoros did not move. He stood with his brothers, his spear burning with field-light.

“You should fall back,” the Knight-Captain urged. “The inner bastion is what matters.”

“We will,” Phoros said coldly, never taking his eyes from the tide of xenos. “But not until the last mortal has passed safely behind us.”

The Knight-Captain sighed, resigned, and turned to rally his warriors. “Very well. Prepare to meet them!”

The causeway bristled with ready bolters, shields, and blades. Every Astartes stood resolute.

Phoros voxed a command to Tessa aboard their flagship, the Daughter of Tempests. Moments later, the strike cruiser translated back into realspace, disgorging tens of thousands of Chapter serfs via teleportarium. They appeared laden with crates of munitions, running to resupply the defenders.

They moved with drill precision, handing out bolter magazines and loading fresh warheads into the launchers of the Lamenters’ heavy squads.

These were not standard krak or frag missiles. They were incendiary warheads, designed to scour the Tyranid swarms in alchemical fire.

The next salvo turned the causeway into a sea of fire. Entire swathes of Gaunts ignited, burning to ash at the touch of even a spark. Still, their numbers seemed endless. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands pressed on. Tyranid Warriors fell by the hundreds, but their kin seemed wiser; after a few thousand perished, they began to circumvent the flames.

Above, the fortress’ artillery, after a few test fires and calibrations to the new shells, began a rain of destruction that tore swathes from the swarm. The ground shook as the avenue became a churning hellscape of fire, ichor, and screeching death.

The serfs, their duty done, were withdrawn by teleport, and the Daughter of Tempests once more slipped away.

Then the light dimmed. Phoros frowned. “Nightfall?”

Karlaen shook his head, pointing skyward. “No. Not night. The swarm blots out the sun.”

Phoros looked up. The heavens were filled with wings, an endless cloud of Tyranid gargoyles and harpies, swooping toward the fortress in a living storm. The sky itself seemed to fall. Each wing-beat was a hiss of leathery membranes, their screeches harmonizing into a banshee-wail that eclipsed artillery fire.

Tens of thousands of anti-air emplacements in the Arx Angelicum thundered to life, their fire lighting the heavens as the ground trembled under the recoil.

Karlaen gave Phoros a grim smile. “Welcome to Baal.”

And with that, he charged headlong into the oncoming Tyranid Warriors.

Every Space Marine present roared a battle-cry and hurled themselves into the swarm.