Editing Toyhammer (section)

=Chapter 19=

Thought for the Day: Give me a thousand men. Or, failing that, a Grey Knight. - Ordo Malleus Inquisitor Andreivich Nonimaus.

The barrel of the psycannon was a black hole in the middle of a storm of motion as Athos – I could tell by his heraldry - leveled it. Right at my face.

His grey-armored arms were curled around the ornate weapon, cradling the precious cannon in his ceramite-encased hands. Kicking away a daemon, he fired whilst roaring a litany to his weapon.

"HOLY WEAPON OF LIGHT,

MIGHTY CANNON OF WOE!"

COME, BANISH THE NIGHT,

AND SMITE YOUR FOE!"

Normally, I'd be dumbstruck, but since the Grey Knight had been kind enough to give me a four-line rhyming warning, I reacted. Ducking to the side, I threw myself to the ground, the blessed projectile hissing over my head as it passed through a pair of daemons and streaked off into the darkness.

"CLEANSE! PURGE! KILL!"

A daemon was shredded as a Grey Knight marked out as 'Aramis' leveled his purified bolter, its holy shells speeding out and puncturing the daemon's scaly hide, then detonated inside of it, shredding the abomination as if it were a punctured water balloon. Grey-green guts spewed everywhere.

"STOP!"

Oozing with pus from its many wounds, the daemon turned to face the speaker.

"Hammer time."

The last of the three Grey Knights – the lettering on his armor told me he was Porthos - whirled his force weapon, a glowing hammer not unlike that of Medieval times, in a graceful and deadly arc, bringing it down on a snarling monster. He smashed its sickly hide open, then gave it a burst of bolter-fire for good measure. The daemon dropped to the floor.

Successful as they were at bringing each individual daemon down, the three were hemmed in shoulder-to-shoulder, with daemons swarming around them like a swarm of locusts. I saw the Grey Knights' polished grey armor, covered in holy scripts and decorated by prayers, gleaming as they hosed down daemons with their wrist-mounted storm bolters, creating an eye of carnage in the storm of Chaos.

As the daemons rushed forward to fill in the gaps that the Knights had created, another litany rose up from the trio, each line spoken by one of the three brothers-in-arms.

"DAEMON, TRAITOR, HERETICS ALL

BY OUR HAND, THEY SHALL FALL!

GRASP THINE SWORD, STRIKE THE BELL!"

The three braced their identical swords, and in unison struck the earth, an eerie shockwave shaking the 'ground'.

"SEND THESE DAEMONS BACK TO HELL!"

A thunderstorm erupted around them, a good two dozen daemons simply vanishing as the whirlwind of holy energy cut through the mass of monstrosities. Screaming skulls and flashes of lightning, gushing flames and rushing winds enveloped the three gleaming figures, and I lost my breath as I beheld the destruction brought about by the three; dozens of dozens of daemons, once surrounding them, now were dust and scattered to the wind.

The rest broke away, snarling one last challenge before disappearing into the depths of the darkness.

Whoa. Wait. A dark chill settled into my stomach as I physically felt the gaze of a hundred daemonic eyes lock onto my soul.

There were no more Grey Knights keeping the hungry daemons distracted from me.

Knowing what was coming, I swung around wildly with my power-maul, and caught the daemon hound as it leaped at me from my flank. At full charge, the club's crackling power field simply buzzed through its muzzle, leaving only a grey haze behind as it eerily disintegrated the 'matter' that made up the daemon.

The death of one daemon was enough. The rest turned, and bore down on me in a swarm of mind-melting Chaos. Rotting skin and bloodied claws, hollow eyes and grinning maws were all I could see as the monsters bore down on me.

A second I managed to bat away, but the power maul had not recharged, so all I managed to do was annoy the thing. It snarled at me with its seven mouths that just did not work, and narrowed the three bleeding eyes set into its head. Lashing out with its barbed tongues, I felt a hot pain flash across my arm as I threw them up in defense.

DA-DAKKA DA-DAKKA DA-DAKKA!

Six ragged holes were torn into the daemon's body, before the shells they heralded burned through their short fuses and detonated, showering me with eldritch gibs. The daemon hissed as it shrugged off the weapon-fire, but a psycannon ripped a hole in the void. The daemon was consumed by the holy fire, and as Athos' psychic shell perforated the warp-fiend, I felt completely calm for a second before the terror came rushing back as the light faded.

I sagged to my knees, power maul falling out of my hands, as the Grey Knights approached.

"Michael! What in the Emperor's name are you doing here!"

I blacked out.

As a Chaos Cultist got busy with his heavy stubber, Commissar Tomas Sturm was crouched down low, his face inches from a Guardsman's, screaming instructions over the cacophony of battle.

"Entrenchments, back there! I wanted them dug thirty seconds ago, Guardsmen! No more retreats."

The Guardsman departed, throwing himself to the ground as a cannon round tore through the flowers above him. Tomas pulled his cap closer to his brow, the soft patter of vegetation confetti reminding him of the dangers around him.

No more retreats. For him, for anyone in his position, that was unthinkable.

Because that would mean leaving Ishabeth behind.

He sat down beside the unconscious Sanctioned Psyker, pulling out his laspistol and searching for a new power pack. Their relationship was... odd. Tomas sighed.

"What happened to you?" He sadly asked the still body.

When the daemonhost and his puppetmaster had released their final attack, the Sanctioned Psyker had suddenly convulsed and then fainted, passing out along with almost every other psyker in the vicinity. The majority of the Eldar – the ones that weren't focused entirely on their physical battles – were safe, though why would be a question for later. The ones that didn't were much like the rest of the casualties.

Outside of Justicar Amadeus and a few of the more defensively talented, only a few of the Imperial psykers had escaped the sorcery of the warp-spawned fiend and its master. They were the ones fighting near the mysterious human girl, who was now making it literally rain cultists by way of picking them up with her many tendrils of light and effortlessly flinging them into the air. However, it was proving a slow task and in some cases a very ineffective one, as the Chaos Marines simply dug themselves up and re-joined the fight.

The entire battlefield had changed, with Michael collapsing as well. Vincent had managed to drag him around out of the way, and Alice soon recovered enough to be able to pull herself out of the mess they we in. The daemonhost, thankfully, had long ago been disintegrated by... what was her name? Emma?

His thoughts were interrupted by a cry.

"They're rushing us!" The sergeant bellowed, ducking down as he shifted through the las-packs of a fallen Guardsman for fresh ammunition, popping his head briefly over the parapet, he turned back to his squad. "Weapons free, but conserve your ammunition!"

Crouching down, the Commissar beckoned the vox-operator over to him, wrenching the handset from the man's backpack vox-caster.

"Callsign Stormfist, callsign Stormfist to command and control, can you copy, over! What the hell is going on out there!"

"This is Lieutenant Berkely! I-Company has been overrun, requesting rally point!" The man on the other end of the line probably realized that he had just requested retreat from a Commissar at about this stage, and tried to cover up his mistake. "S-so we can f-fight from a m-m-more effective p-position, c-Commissar!"

Tomas sighed, and shouted into the vox. "Lieutenant Berkly, get I-Company over on my marker, and make sure that your entrenchments are destroyed! Leave nothing for those traitors!"

"S-sir? Yes sir! Right away, sir!"

Shoving the handset back to the vox-jockey, Tomas turned back to battle and snapped off two quick shots at an approaching cultist. The twisted parody of a soldier screamed as her left torso was separated from its attached arm, and then having her stomach cauterized. The Commissar didn't wait for the dead body to fall to the ground.

Even though the forces of Chaos were in... well, chaos – oh the irony of that – the Coalition forces weren't in the clear yet. Bracketed in by Tau and Imperial artillery, pushed back by mash-up companies of infantry and whittled down by the mixed armor of the 41st Millennium's finest, along with the fact that the majority of their Marine masters dead and their vehicles all but gone, the few remaining troops were sure to die.

That was why they were taking as many of their enemies with them as they could. In a suicidal rush, they had suddenly assaulted then overran a concentration of coalition forces – just forward of Tomas' 'left' – and were murdering their way through I-Company's support platoon.

One of the Guardsmen – a Sergeant - rolled to the side as stubber-fire chewed up the ground around him, taking shelter inside of the small mound of hastily dug up dirt. He raised his lasgun over the miniature parapet, and fired wildly into the gathering cultists. Tomas raised his hell-pistol, and joined the Sergeant in pouring las-fire out to the mass of corrupted humans and dizzying sigils.

Another shout dragged his attention towards its source.

"Friendlies! Looks like two of our mortar teams and a couple of Eldar and Tau infantry squads, sir! They're pushing through!"

Nodding grimly, Tomas spotted them. They were at a dead rush, firing wildly as they rushed forward to their sanctuary. But even as disorganized as their natures defined them, the Chaos troops were quick to identify an exposed and vulnerable support weapon crews as they ran, defenseless bar their laspistols. A mortar's crewman was shot, his knee disappearing as a las-blast passed through it, and he fell to the ground. More shots dashed any chances of him crawling here.

Tomas turned to the pair of Guardsmen armed with grenade launchers, arm frantically gesturing them to come forward.

"Bracket the friendlies! Keep those traitors off their backs, you have weapons free! Smoke shells in close, and fire off the fraggers into anything that looks like they're gathering for a rush!"

Smoke and dirt filled the battleground as the grenadiers complied, firing off a steady trickle of shells that filled the air between the retreating squads and the heretics that hounded them.

"The Fire Caste shall join you, Gue'ui. Shas'la, to your positions!"

It was a Tau Fire Warrior, armored in light blue, who spoke as he loaded a photon grenade into his carbine's launcher. The 'Shas'la' troopers took up position alongside the Guardsmen, and the ones with the shorter variety of pulse-weapons raised them higher than the others. A series of muted phomph sounds later, a small section of the traitors were clutching at their eyes and ears as the multispectral lightshow overwhelmed their senses.

Writhing on the ground as they were, the cultists were mercilessly cut down by the precision shots from the Tau pulse rifles, much longer weapons than the grenade-launcher carbine-combi weapons, closely followed by the las-fire of their Guard counterparts.

Even so, a few of the fleeing I-company Guardsmen fell. Tomas spotted one, hustling along with a case of mortar rounds, fall to the ground under a hail of stubber fire.

Holstering his pistol, Tomas snatched up a Tau pulse rifle – his hell-pistol, well crafted as it had been, was simply not made for precision long-range shooting - took careful aim and squeezed the firing stud.

The small ball of plasma shot out, crossed the distance between him and his target. It punctured the casing of mortar shells that had been left behind with its deceased crewman. The bombs inside cooked off, exploding with tremendous force. It consumed at least a dozen cultists that were coming up behind the squads, and dirt flew everywhere.

A fitting funeral pyre for the Guardsman.

He turned away, returning the weapon.

Ducking down, he sat as the I-Company's survivors streamed in. He was facing Ishabeth.

Her eyes were open, staring at him. She was half-sitting, supporting herself by an elbow.

The Commissar immediately rushed over to her, keeping low.

"Can you stand, Ishabeth?" Tomas asked, crouched down beside her.

She nodded, sheepishly. "Y-yes..."

"The other psykers?"

"They are... fighting."

Her gaze drifted off, to meet mine.

"Fighting hard."

I blinked, and when I opened my eyes there was only darkness.

Fade-out. Everything went black. Dammit.

Pain. Pain greeted me from the void.

"Whatthefuck..."

It was... warmer. I could smell the sweet pine logs burning in the fireplace long before I heard its soft crackling. The gentle heat that soon followed was quick to warm me, refreshing my strength as it wrapped around my cold toes and finger.

Stirring, I looked around me. The room was large, almost as large as my house. All details became suddenly unimportant as I realized my hands were empty. The power maul. I closed my eyes, and imagined the weapon in my hand. Nothing. Concentrating harder, I visualized every curve and line, every surface and button. Even the safety strap that I was to loop around my wrist.

My efforts were rewarded by the sudden weight that fell on my palms, as well as the feeling of cold metal pressing against the warmed skin.

A voice behind me was punctuated by the slow clanging that was the all too familiar sound of a power armored Space Marine attempting to clap.

"Good, good. So you know the basics of manipulating the mindscape." The raspy voice of a vox-augmented throat chuckled.

I attacked.

Porthos leaned back ever so slightly, and the power maul passed by with plenty of room to spare between its crackling tip and his helmet-less face.

He grinned as well, a savage light flashing through his eyes. "Careful, too. Attack first, ask questions later? I like it."

The other two Grey Knights nodded in agreement and approval.

Sheepishly, I lowered it the rest of the way, a descending hum indicating that the charge of the weapon was fading away.

Aramis walked over to me, his massive frame towering over me. I suddenly realized just how large these guys were in contrast with the average human.

"Whoa."

"Yes... Many things I find hard to believe, Michael. Did you know that I found myself sharing a redoubt with xeno? Three days ago, I climbed aboard a Tau Devilfish. Yesterday, I shook hands with an Eldar witch. In both cases, we were both not trying to kill each other. In three centuries of service to the Emperor, I have never done that before. Simply amazing, Michael, but believable."

He looked down at me, emphasizing the one and a half foot difference in height between the two of us.

"But, my friend, I still cannot believe that I am actually this much taller than you."

There was a small chuckle shared by the three Grey Knights.

"So, Michael, tell me. How was your first encounter with true daemons?"

A sudden pain wracked my mind, as if I had suddenly been struck.

"Ngggh..."

Images of the daemons that had been attacking them, the stuff of nightmares, flashed through my head. I tried to forget them, push them away. Screaming faces, gaping maws. Jagged teeth and pinprick eyes. Clawed hands, bat-like wings. They persisted, a pain sparking to life and spreading through my head, consuming all my thoughts to the single beat of fear that was passing through me. I was too panicked at the moment to think about the horrifying forms that were attacking me, but when I did...

Falling to my knees, I felt the overwhelming need to claw out my eyes, to dig out my ears to simply forget the shapes of the daemons, the scream of their hunger...

An armored hand settled down on my shoulder.

Athos was the one speaking. "I am afraid that I cannot comfort you with lies that it will be easier the second time, Michael. Each daemon is a fresh nightmare, but I will not see you afraid of mere images. Think of them, remember them, and learn to hate them." He advised, and I breathlessly nodded, gulping down fresh air while I could.

These men must be masters of their mind. I thought, as Aramis passed me a mug of liquid.

"Drink. It is just some sacramental wine."

I pressed the cup to my lips. Two mouthfuls in, Porthos was shouting at Aramis as I fell to the ground, my brain pounding with pain. Dere washn't eh-nee morr neeed fohr shouhtsch o' daheemons. Hehee, like, wassitcalled? Pohkeemonz.

"What in the Six-hundred Sixty Six Trials was that, Aramis!"

"A good M38, if I'm not mistaken. From the Marist cellars." The Grey Knight performed a gesture that was the equivalent of buffing his nails against his shirt.

"... okay, give me a hand with my gauntlet, will you?"

Slap.

"OW!" A bright pain had ignited on my cheek. "FUCK'N HELL!"

Okay, I was awake again. Kind of. Coherency was rising, but at the cost of my sense of balance. Stumbling around, I crashed back into my seat as another drink was pressed against my hands.

"Terribly sorry, Michael. This is some special recaf, it'll help with the alcohol..." Porthos apologized, before turning to Aramis. "Seriously, Brother, who gives Marist sacramental wine to a lightweight like this!"

There was an apologetic grunt. " 'rry..."

I gulped down a mouthful of the dark liquid, which tasted a lot like the Indonesian coffee I got from Vincent's father – straight black, no sugar or milk – and reallyreallyfastandthisisn'tgoodisit!?

"Aramis! Hold him down! YOU DIDN'T WATER DOWN THE KLATCHIAN, DID YOU?"

"Klatchian! I thought you gave him the Tallarnese recaf... Oh Sweet Emperor, I put in more than two smallspoons of it in that cup!"

"We have done all we can here. It is time to leave!"

Sergeant Horvic, the leader of the ten-man tactical squad, made a few sharp gestures to the surrounding Marines and Guardsmen. "Aquila formation, perimeter fire! Dispersion pattern eight, conserve your munitions! Prepare to advance on my mark..."

Yoza sprinted forwards, witchblade in hand, as the Space Marines around them pumped bolter shell after bolter shell into the oncoming Chaos cultists. Isha preserve them, how many of these cultists were there? s. Guardsmen reloaded their las-packs and muttered quiet prayers as they waited for the signal.

It came.

"MARK!"

Thudding forwards with mechanical precision, the mobile redoubt of Space Marines, Guardsmen and Eldar were analogous to a violently solemn procession as they walked forward with guns blazing multi-flavored death.

Of the hundreds of cultists they were facing, there were maybe three dozen in the small box formation.

They advanced.

As the heavily armored Marines moved forward, between them flitted the Guardsmen and the Eldar troops. They moved amongst the Space Marines, either shooting a cultist off the Marine's back or by keeping their surroundings occupied while the armored monk changed magazines. The wounded were gathered in the middle, dragging the immobile if possible, limping along if they couldn't. What weapons they were able to lift, they fired, or by lobbing what grenades they found.

Shadows fell upon them, blotting out the sun.

A Guardsman flicked his gaze upwards.

"INCOMING!"

Everyone crouched down as the roar of assault packs filtered above the cacophony of battle.

The airborne arm of the coalition; mostly made up of Rokkit Boyz, Assault Marines, Seraphim and Swooping Hawks, crashed into a concentration of cultists twenty meters away.

A Tau battlesuit hovered over the battlefield, its fusion blaster melting large holes in large Space Marines.

The owner broadcasted his voice over Imperial vox-bands. He pointed towards the nearest concentration of coalition troops as a cultist went flying, thrown aside by an Ork scrounging for a fallen Chaos Marine's 'roight 'ard shooty fing'.

"This way! Mark on those bushes!"

Horvic made the cry: "ADJUST MOVEMENT! TWELVE DEGREES LEFT!"

Yoza advanced. The burly Sergeant paused, blinked in disbelief, and began shouting again. "LEFT, YOU POINTY HEADED XENOS, LEFT! NO! THAT IS YOUR RIGHT!"

After some hurried discussion and more shouting, the mobile formation began advancing at a more hurried pace, although not much more than the slowest of their wounded, as they approached the makeshift lines.

In a 'battle' formation, the Eldar were swift and graceful as they and the Tau adopted their favorite tactic; hit and run. As a Chaos squad charged up to meet them, the xenos would back away, where then a nearby Imperial mortar would start shooting at the designated target.

The survivors were brutally put down as the Eldar reclaimed the territory, and with fire they purged the ground clean of any taint.

Along the lines, they and the Guardsmen were also making their forays out, striking at a Chaos Champion before he gathered too much momentum and broke their lines here, killing a concentration of cultists there or otherwise putting down hell wherever they could.

"We're coming up on the position, sir!"

Yoza nodded, his shuriken pistol blazing out a stream of monomolecular disks, before he leaped up into the trenchlines that the Guardsmen had managed to build up underneath the bushes. An ashen-faced trooper turned to greet him. Yoza slapped away the laspistol that was shoved in his face.

"The psykers?" He asked.

"T-there!"

The hastily-prepared excuse for a bunker was simply a deeper hole in the ground, like a briskly prepared grave. Yoza quickly assessed them; A half-dozen wounded Guardsmen. Most would make it with amputated limbs, at least. One would not. He turned to face an Eldar Dire Avenger missing her right leg. She would be fine, although new wraithbone replacement would have to be crafted. Three Tau Fire Warriors, a Sister of Battle and a Space Marine rounded off the casualties. The rest – almost a dozen of them – were psykers.

A few had already succumbed to the Mind War.

Their bodies were contorted, with clear signs of muscles and bones tearing themselves apart as they lost control of their bodies, some unrecognizable as their internal organs liquidated inside of their bodies then burst. A few had shown the earlier symptoms of daemonic mutation before someone had mercifully released them from their torment. Two of their number were Seer councilors. Yoza's armor began to crackle and spark as he gathered energy from the Warp, the very thing that had killed his brothers and sisters.

A hand seized his wrist.

"Calm yourself, Yoza."

"Farseer Zara?"

"Really? I would never have guessed. You're meant to be the wiser of the two of us, you know."

"Consciousness to sarcasm in four seconds. I do believe that would be a new record."

With a grumble of annoyance, the Eldar Farseer picked herself up, and dusted herself off. "Status on Michael? Dammit, that stupid mon-keigh, can't even wake up without making a mess of things..." She shook her head, as if to clear it, and then looked around her, counting each casualty that they had sustained.

"This many?"

A grim nod. "There would have been more, were it not for the aid of the younger girl."

"Yes. She is... powerful. Very powerful. Almost too powerful. And... familiar. I have seen into the Warp many times, before and after we came here. This presence... it... it is ... far too familiar."

Another nod.

"Nothing is coincidence." She quoted. "Well, lets us get to work then. The mon-keigh can go ahead and try to find his own way out of the mindscape."

She stood.

"For the rest of us, we need to keep their bodies safe."

"Uuuuugh..."

Aramis looked up from his sword, the sharpening stone pausing midway across the gently curving blade. "Michael? Ah, good for you to rejoin the upright and sober."

My head throbbed, which made me "I think an Ork's been stomping on my head..."

There was a quick flash of guilt across the Grey Knight's face as Porthos and Athos began to chuckle.

"Yeah... about that..."

Klatchian recaf, it turns out, was the kind of stuff they used to get Space Marines out of bed after a grouchy decade in stasis. I mean, there was enough caffeine inside of a tablespoon of it to keep me awake for a week.

Oh, as for the 'Marist' sacramental wine? Its what they used to get drunk. Space Marines, it turns out, have very strong livers and toxin filters built into their biology. So the only way to get drunk was to brute force their way through. I only had one sip of the wine, and I was already messed up.

A cup would have meant 'mild inebriation' for the durable Grey Knights, but for me it would be 'death by alcohol poisoning' in a very embarrassing manner.

Staring at the apologetic Grey Knight, I blinked a few times before shaking my head.

"So... I could have died! ?"

A nod.

"That would have been... embarrassing."

Another nod.

I palmed my forehead.

"So anyway... where are we?"

"In the closest thing we can call home, Michael. This is our quarters, in the Grey Knight's fortress-monastery on Titan."

"Titan? Y'mean Saturn's moon?"

A grin flashed across his face.

"The largest of them, yes. It is the home-base of the Grey Knights, where every one of us were trained, and born again in the shadow of Holy Terra. Then, we will also be brought there to be buried; the greatest honor for a Grey Knight."

I nodded solemnly as Aramis finished his brief explanation.

The massive room was neatly partitioned into four sections; one each had a bed marked with each Grey Knight's heraldry, and the fourth was a communal living room. All around us, mounted on walls, shelved in bookcases or set atop little pedestals were icons, works of holy writ and relics, many of which I suspected would have been worth more than my neighborhood (maybe even the entire state and country, while you're at it) by themselves, especially if you asked the right people...

I caught sight of bright blades, hallowed scripts and scraps of fabric which I guessed were holy in some way or another. I looked around a little bit more, before finding myself looking at a lighter. One of those little metal ones you flipped open.

Tarnished with age, it was looked appropriately ancient for a forty thousand (at least) year old relic. Whoa.

"You recognize it?" Porthos asked, arching an eyebrow. "Time and dust have sealed its secret contents, Michael. The priests of Ancient Terra believe that it is some kind of container."

I shrugged. "It's a lighter. You use it to start fires. Its a cheap thing you sell at corner stores."

There was a snort from Aramis. "I see. Well, that may be true, Michael, but it is now holy and is worth far more than a simple corner store. Such is the wonder of time."

"Yeah, but I wonder i-"

There was a frantic hiss for silence, and the three of us turned to see as Athos lowered his hand, and closed his eyes. I could feel his senses expanding, his psychic eye reaching out into the void beyond these safe walls.

"They come again. Someone has gathered the daemons."

The visions returned; bloodied claws and hungry eyes. Gasping, I closed my eyes, seeking to end the mental images from entering my mind again. My hands were already clammy with a cold sweat.

A Grey Knight thudded over.

"Michael? They are but dreams, Michael. They cannot hurt you. However, they will." Porthos advised, giving a stiff glance to the window and the oncoming daemons outside.

I nodded, still trying to rid myself of the dreams. Flashes of daemons passed by, coming close before ducking away. It ate away at my awareness, my sanity.

"Weapon... I need... my weapon..."

Closing my eyes, I imagined the weapon that had become familiar to me over the last twenty or so minutes. The power maul. Details, details! Baseball-bat like in size and shape, but covered with plates of conducting metal.

The nearest Grey Knight nodded to me.

"Excellent. However, a weapon tends to... decay over time when facing these monstrosities, Michael. That is why we need weapons. Lots and lots of weapons."

He made a broad gesture, one which swept aside all the scenery in favor of a flat field. It was covered in grass, but...

I quickly sucked in a breath. Spread around the entire field were weapons, ranging from simple daggers/swords to ornate Force Halberds and power-fists, and from bolt-pistols to heavy weapons with their barrels stuck into the ground. I found one close by, a heavy bolter by the looks of it, and looked on as Aramis walked over and pulled it free of the metal rod that had been driven into the dirt and used as a mounting for the massive weapon.

"Any weapon that you have ever seen, Michael, can be re-created here. Though you may not fully understand their mechanisms, we have trained our minds to work around that. You should be able to create anything you wish here: so long as we draw breath, we can simply draw another weapon."

Beside him, Porthos had found himself a pair of bolt pistols, as bright grey as his armor and as plain as a workman's hammer, and had magnetically clamped them to his hips. Another pair were clamped to his shoulders, and finally a pair of ornate hand grenades to his chest.

"But don't go overdoing it: these weapons can still hurt us, so make sure they cannot be too easily turned against their creators."

Athos grinned, and hefted his own weapon of choice; the psycannon which he slung over his shoulder as he summoned more weapons and stabbed them into the ground around him. Swords and bolters, mostly, as well as more psycannon. He flicked a switch on his weapon of choice, which hummed to life in his hands.

"Hurry, Michael! As soon as the daemons come here, our ability to freely create weapons will be very limited indeed! But don't worry, your imagination is the limit!"

I nodded, and began thinking of every single weapon I could use.

First was a trio of power mauls, which I stabbed into the ground. I grabbed a pair of fire extinguishers from thin air and mashed their bases into the soft grass. A flamethrower – modeled after the ones used by the Space Marines – was added to my personal inventory.

It would be just the five of us against countless daemons.

Which brought up another thought into my mind.

"Hey, Aramis?"

"Yes, Michael?"

"How come that last daemon we fought was harder to kill than the rest?"

There was a chuckle.

"You saw?" Aramis asked, my nod answering his question. "Well, Michael, as we are inside of our mindscapes we have access to only a limited pool of warp-essence. The daemons have to share that essence around, so therefore the more there are to attack us, the weaker they get."

I nodded to show my understanding, but my face was a mask of puzzlement.

"Why not just send one daemon, then?"

There was a disgusted 'pfah' from Athos. "Predators such as these foul abominations do not understand the concept of working together."

Understanding, I finished for him with a fierce grin, realizing the advantage the four of us held. "We, however, do."

A nod, with a grin to match mine. "So you understand. Well done, Michael."

"But the fewer there are, the stronger they get."

"Again, you are correct. We refer to this as the Inverse Daemon Effect."

Talk about a double edged sword.

I looked on as Athos produced another heavy bolter, and flicked out its bipod mount. He scanned the horizon for the oncoming horde, and then looked at me.

"We will be four against four hundred. I only wish we had some more... even some of those automated servitors would help..."

Yeah, like those... Wait a minute.

"Hey, I got an idea... can you help me with this?"

"Miles, left side!

Miles pulled the curved magazine out of his weapon, an old first-generation M4A1 carbine. He pushed in a new box of 5.56mm shells, and shouldered the compact firearm. Chaos 'Predator' class battle-tank. Breathing out slightly, he tensed the muscles in his arm and upper torso, then fired a pair of shots. At these ranges, it wasn't hard to hit the tank; the three quick single-shots that he fired all crashed into the assault tank, tearing off weapons and turrets in a shower of sparks, the leftovers of ceramic armor meeting a full metal jacket.

It was then scooped up by the graceful Alice as she sprinted to and fro, then hurled into the air to crash into the ground, dashed to pieces on the pavement. Vincent was doing the same thing, having retrieved the garden rake and using it to full effect; scooping up entire platoons of enemies, he would mash them together before concentrated fire from the miniature warriors would wipe their taint clear.

But as unfair as their actions were, they had good reason.

Vincent had managed to shelter Batel and Michael inside, and the miniature coalition were fighting fiercely to keep the Chaos forces from re-entering the house.

Alice turned to Miles as both crouched down . "How's Batel?"

"The purple haired girl? Still out."

Both flinched as a demolisher cannon lived up to its name, gouging a fist-sized hole in the dirt. Miles sprang up and placed a few shots on it. He paused, saw movement, and shot it again. This repeated. Seven shots later, the Chaos assault tank was finally silenced.

For kiddy toys, these things were pretty tough.

"How many are there left?"

Miles scanned the ridiculously small battlefield

"Not as many as there were. We're winning, I think."

"I hope so."

The daemons came, a seething tide of hunger and malice, making their across the flat field at a steady trot as they ducked and weaved around the field of weapons that rose up around them. Around them, the air began to shift, a dizzying sensation filling the heads of the four defenders of the mind-scape. The taste of blood. Mixed with that was another ingredient that added to the air; the pungent odor of decayed flesh.

The Grey Knights turned as I gagged and choked. I was passed a gas-mask, and slipped it on gratefully. It was a full-face unit, with a small filter tank that was strapped onto me. A slam of the sealing valve sucked all the distasteful air out and replaced it with a more palatable atmosphere. The miasma disappeared, replaced by the clean, hospital-like taste of disinfectant and clean air. Then I was given a pair of binoculars.

Dialing it up to 30x, I peered through the boxy device.

At a fast canter, the daemons advanced. I sucked in a breath as they closed in on us. A few displayed what passed for confusion as they entered a relatively empty section of ground, marked out only by a few bright red swords.

I turned to the Grey Knights, raising my own hand.

"NOW!"

Suddenly the air was filled with thousands of projectiles, accompanied by the sound of frenzied buzzing as 5.56mm rounds were fired off at hypersonic speeds with a rate-of-fire approaching seven hundred rounds per second from at least a dozen miniguns, which tore through flesh and punctured scaly hides with almost Orkish brutality and numbers.

Although a few were able to resist a few hits without too much trouble, the sheer volume of firepower made up for that. It was an amazing sight to behold; monsters of the Warp would resist for a second, maybe a little longer, before their bodies were overwhelmed by the number of bullets bouncing off them, their ether-flesh rent apart by the swarms of small metal projectiles tearing at them.

Standing from behind the line of minigun turrets I had convinced the Grey Knights to set up, the four of us watched the initial carnage as the daemons milled about in confusion five hundred yards short of their four targets. Carrying a designator slaved to a couple turrets each (with a few more simply straight firing and the rest using their own motion trackers to target daemons) we were cutting down the first wave by simply sweeping our arms back and forth.

"THOUGH I FACE THE SHADOWS OF THE WARP,

I SHALL FEAR NO EVIL, I SHALL FEAR NO FOE!

FOR I HAVE MOAR DAKKA THAN YOU, BITCHES!"

A clunk made me turn around, to see Athos facepalm.

"That makes no sense, Michael."

I began laughing, at some stage after the retort, as the stuff of nightmares became the fluff that would get me to sleep at night.

Thank you, Infinity Ward.

My exultation, however, was cut short as Porthos swore, his arm up above the angle possible for the turrets to reach. "They're getting airborne!"

Shaped much like great manta rays, a few of the daemons had risen up above their ground-chewing brethren and taken to the skies above, their equally daemonic riders brandishing daemonic weapons. They soon fell in a typically daemonic fashion as they were promptly brought back down to earth when Porthos and Aramis hefted their large, Troika-pattern combi-miniguns and swept the sky clear.

A few, however, did manage to land amongst the four 'defenders', but were too few to make any difference as Athos cut them down with his Force Halberd.

"Can't touch this." He rumbled, dancing back from a blow before lunging forward to impale a daemon with his force halberd.

I glanced back to the killing field. More were swarming in.

The two sentry turrets I was controlling fell silent, their ammunition expended. I reached out for the closest weapon a purified bolter. A fine weapon made of ceramite and alloys of various recipes, it was a simple grey-white color decorated with gold and black. Leveling the boltgun at the nearest daemon (about a hundred yards away), I fired it, and realized that it had a surprisingly small kickback factor; the stroke of the trigger was accompanied by an almost polite coughing sound as the initial charge pushed the bolt out of the barrel, then the rocket motor activated and sent the armor-piercing bolt-grenade out with the sharp hiss of burning propellant.

There was a small thunderclap as the bolt accelerated past the speed of sound some four feet in front of me, and hit with a wet smack into the daemon I had been aiming at. There was a pause between the neat dark-blue hole appearing in its chest, and then the bigger hole that replaced it as the explosive component of the bolt detonated, basically gutting the blue daemon as it rushed forward.

I blinked.

Wow.

Muttering to myself, I lined up a second target. "I gotta get me one of these later."

Pull. Cough. Woosh. Crack. Smack. Boom. Next target.

Pull. Cough. Woosh. Crack. Smack. Boom. Aim again.

Pull. Couch. Woosh. Crack. Smack. Boom. The rhythm continued.

There were twenty shots inside of a standard-issue bolter magazine, and about fifteen of those managed to find a target and wound or otherwise kill the advancing daemons before they got too close for me to keep up the relaxed shooting rhythm that I had adopted, and so I hurled the bolter at the nearest daemon. It paused to slap the fumbled weapon out of the way, grinning hungrily as it looked at me like Tomas looked at his coffee.

Athos casually pointed his left arm at it while he wrestled with another daemon, and fired a pair of bolts into its relatively brittle teeth.

Now I had enough time to pull out the power sword that had been at my feet. The blade was simple enough; a pure-and-simple longsword. The crossguard was finely decorated to look like the Imperial Aquila, and the handle quite soft to the touch. As I gripped harder in the backswing, blade above my head, the weapon crackled to life.

Two halves of one daemon passed by on either side of me as the blade bit into the ground.

I whirled about in a three-hundred-sixty degree spin, sword flashing as its power field struck home on numerous daemons.

Christ this thing is powerful...

Porthos punted a ball-shaped Horror into the air, smashed the daemon behind it into the ground, then stomped on its head. A stab from the halberd ended its battle. His wrist-mounted storm bolter still blazed away as I saw more daemons rushing up to him from behind.

"PORTHOS! BEHIND!"

The Grey Knight seemed to flinch for a brief instant, then his force halberd whirled around in a blurring sweep. He didn't bother wasting time turning to shout out confirmation; he simply became a blur of glinting ceramite, blazing muzzle-flashes and a series of glowing after-images as his holy blade met unholy body to cut down the daemons that attempted to pile on him. A heartbeat later, ten daemons were more-or-less evenly spread out over an area radiating two meters from the Grey Knight, and a little more bits were scattered beyond.

But more came.

Aramis gestured fiercely at his remaining teammate. "ATHOS! MICHAEL!"

I picked up a flamethrower, a cone of fire suddenly warming the locale, crisping a daemon as it charged by. Athos charged, knocking daemons down and shooting those that were out of reach with his heavy bolter and boots. Wading through the daemons and tossing them aside with cold contempt, the Grey Knight cleared a path for me to follow behind, a collected bolt-pistol finishing off what the charging Grey Knight had started.

We reached Porthos, but not quickly enough.

His right arm had been torn off, and he was still fighting with his left as more daemons were attempting to remove his helmet and his head. Kicking and blazing away with the remainder of his storm-bolter munitions, he was roaring incoherently as daemons tore away a purity seal at his shoulder, scratched a deep gouge in his ceramite armor at the knee, attacked the stump that had been his arm.

I raised the flamer, and shouted a warning as I remembered a Space Marine's explanation for his confidence in storing a dozen flamer tanks on his body.

Powered armor made from shaped plates of ceramic materials were very fire-resistant.

I figured that daemonic skin was not.

Athos was wreathed in holy promethium, which burned brightly as he punched the nearest abomination in the face. He roared in grand exultation, and began punching his way through more daemons, which flinched from the flames; whether it was their holy quality or the heat, I was betting on the former.

"LOOK UPON US, DAEMONS, AND DESPAIR!

FOR WE ARE THE HAMMER!

WE ARE THE HATE!

AND YOU. WILL. DIE!"

The burning Grey Knight sent a daemon flying into the air via a rising kick, and judging by that he didn't appear to be bothered by the burning promethium that was currently coating his armor, instead putting the side-effects of the white-hot armor to full use by wading through daemons and making as much armor-to-daemon contact as possible.

I myself made my way through to the wounded Porthos, a power maul in hand.

One tried to jump me from behind, managing to knock me down. I shouted for help, to which Athos instantly responded; whirling around, he knocked it off in a flash, his heavy bolter crashing into the daemon's head like a runaway train. The roar of the heavy weapon deafened me for a moment, and all that I could hear were the muted reports of the massive guns that the Grey Knights were using, the persistent ringing of the blast and...

A hand seized my collar.

"Well hello, young man." Calm, collected and dripping with sensuality, I recognized the hallmarks of a Slaaneshi cultist from talks with the psykers. The 'daughters' of the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Prince(ss) of Excess, they were what happened if classic seductresses were supercharged with Warp-powers.

It picked me up with contemptuous ease as the smell of blooming roses filled my nostrils.

My eyes immediately flashed with tears as my nose began to block up.

Goddamn hay-fever... Seems like allergies weren't immune to conversion into mindscaping, huh?

I took a swing at her, power maul arcing across, but the blow was stopped. She didn't even raise her hand, or even flinch; the blow was stopped short just before it reached her immaculate face. A flicker of her eye was all the warning I had before her mind threw me back ten feet, and darkness enveloped me.

Again.

Maybe for the seventh or eighth time.

I got bored of counting after the first few.

Fucking hell.

This was starting to get annoying.