Doom Slayer
…
The Hanger of the will of eternity
The first rank died before it reached the Thunderhawk. The Doom Slayer fired both barrels of the Super Shotgun.
Flame filled the broken assault ramp. Cultists burst apart beneath the blast, their bodies hurled backwards into the Traitor Guardsmen charging behind them. The Slayer broke the weapon open, fed two fresh shells into the smoking chambers, and stepped down onto the deck of the Will of Eternity.
The host of Chaos came to meet him.
Thousands filled the hangar. Mortal soldiers advanced between rows of corrupted tanks and chained daemon engines. Black Legionaries fired from barricades built around the wreckage of Imperial armour. Havocs occupied the gantries above, their heavy weapons already turning toward the intruders. Bloodletters ran among them, brass blades raised, while winged shapes detached themselves from the darkness beneath the ceiling.
The Slayer saw them all.
He moved. Las-fire and bolts crossed the space he had occupied. He entered the first mass of Traitor Guardsmen before they could correct their aim. The Super Shotgun erased the officer at their centre. The Slayer swung the empty weapon into the nearest soldier's face, broke the man's neck with the stock, and drove his left fist through the breastplate of another.
His Doomblade extended. Three cultists fell beneath one sweep.
A Bloodletter sprang over their bodies. Its hellblade descended toward his helm, burning with the anger of a universe that had only just learned he existed. The Slayer caught its wrist. The daemon pulled with enough strength to overturn a battle tank.
His arm did not move.
He broke the wrist, turned the blade, and forced it through the creature's throat. The Bloodletter collapsed into cinders at his feet.
Bolter rounds struck his back. Explosions crawled across the Praetor Suit, covering its green plates in smoke without piercing them. The Slayer turned toward the Black Legionaries responsible.
They continued firing.
He respected neither their courage nor their armour. The Super Shotgun vanished into the unseen space containing his arsenal. The Heavy Cannon appeared in his hands, its precision bolt already charged.
The first Black Legionary raised a power axe. The precision bolt entered one eye lens and burst through the back of his helm.
The Slayer walked into the bolter fire and changed the Heavy Cannon's configuration. Micro-missile ports opened along its frame. A storm of guided warheads crossed the barricade, curving around cover to strike joints, ammunition feeds, and exposed power packs. Black ceramite broke beneath the explosions.
One Legionary lost an arm, another his head, and a third disappeared when the magazine on his belt detonated. The survivors tried to separate, but the Slayer followed the movement of their weapons and killed each warrior before he could find cover.
Golden light spread behind him.
Saint Celestine rose above the ruined Thunderhawk, her wings fully extended. The Ardent Blade passed through a descending Raptor and left two burning halves to strike the deck. She turned in the air, caught a Warp Talon's claws upon her sword, and drove her armoured boot into its chest. Her next stroke removed its head.
The Slayer did not need to watch her further. She could hold her ground.
To his right, the six Imperial Fists advanced from the remains of the shield relay. Their yellow armour had been blackened by fire and scored by hours of fighting, but their formation remained exact.
The warrior at their centre carried the red-and-white helm markings of a veteran sergeant. He held a power sword in one hand and a compact hololithic projector against his belt with the other, guarding the device even while mass-reactive rounds struck the enemies around him.
"Close on the Thunderhawk. Preserve the route-engine at all costs," Veteran Sergeant Garran Kord ordered through the Imperial Fists' vox-channel.
His five surviving brothers obeyed without hesitation. Two fired from kneeling positions while the others advanced around them, each pair moving only when another had established its field of fire.
The wrecked Thunderhawk's side hatch opened behind the Slayer.
Brother-Pilot Castor Vhalen emerged first, his chainsword roaring to life. Brother Malrec followed with a bolt pistol in one hand and the Thunderhawk's emergency beacon in the other. They wore the black armour and white crosses of the Black Templars, but neither remained near the craft they had flown through the void.
"With me, brother. The enemy appears determined to complain about our landing," Castor said.
"Then we should answer them," Malrec replied.
The two Black Templars charged together.
A weapon discharged from the gantry above. The Slayer heard the autocannon shell before it struck him. The impact drove smoke and fragments of deck plating across the hangar. When the cloud cleared, he remained in the crater, looking up at the Havoc who had fired.
The traitor hesitated. That hesitation killed him.
The Slayer dismissed the Heavy Cannon and summoned the Super Shotgun. He fired the Meathook. Its chain crossed forty metres of open air and buried its burning point in the Havoc's breastplate.
The traitor braced himself against the gantry. The Slayer pulled.
The railing tore loose. The Havoc fell, trailing broken metal. The Slayer dragged himself upward at the same time, met the warrior halfway, and fired both barrels into his chest. The recoil carried the Slayer onto the gantry as the Havoc's remains fell past him.
Raptors descended from the darkness.
The first arrived feet-first, jump pack screaming. The Slayer stepped aside, seized it by the throat, and threw it into the second. Both struck a support column hard enough to bend it. He shot the third from the air, cut through the fourth with the Doomblade, and caught the fifth by one ankle as it tried to climb away.
He swung the Raptor through the gantry floor. Metal folded. The platform gave way beneath the remaining Havocs. They fell into the ranks below with their ammunition feeds and heavy weapons tangled around them.
The Slayer dropped after them.
He landed upon a corrupted Chimera. Its roof collapsed beneath his boots. A cultist gunner turned the turret's heavy bolter toward him.
The Super Shotgun vanished. The Combat Shotgun replaced it.
The Slayer launched a sticky bomb through the Chimera's vision slit. The charge detonated inside the crew compartment and blew every hatch from the vehicle. Traitor Guardsmen stumbled through the rear doors into the path of the shotgun's full-auto fire. The rotating mechanism consumed shells as quickly as they appeared from his arsenal, tearing through the soldiers before they could spread out.
Golden fire consumed the few who survived.
Celestine landed beside the vehicle. Daemonic blood burned along the edge of her sword. A ring of Bloodletters closed around her, each creature pressing against the radiance surrounding her.
"Slayer, the upper galleries," Celestine warned.
The Slayer looked.
Warp Talons crowded the arches above the Imperial Fists. More were emerging from fractures in reality, their armour fused to hooked limbs and their claws wet with colours no mortal blood possessed.
The Slayer summoned his Rocket Launcher.
The first missile entered the largest fracture. Its detonation collapsed the portal and tore the Warp Talons around it apart. He fired again before the smoke cleared. The second rocket struck the gallery's central support and brought half the structure down upon the daemons below.
Kord looked toward him as the debris fell around the Imperial Fists without touching their formation.
"Acceptable fire discipline," Kord observed.
The Slayer turned back to the horde.
The enemy had begun to understand that the broken Thunderhawk was not a vulnerable point. Cultists slowed near it. Traitor Guardsmen abandoned firing positions that brought them within sight of the green-armoured warrior. Even some of the Black Legionaries hesitated before advancing.
The daemons did not. They came faster.
Bloodletters poured across the deck in a crimson tide. Flesh Hounds bounded between them, their brass collars flashing beneath the hangar's emergency lumens. A horned Herald of Khorne strode behind the lesser creatures and raised a blade engraved with the runes of slaughter.
"The skull of the outlander belongs to Khorne!" the Herald roared.
The Slayer walked toward it.
The Herald's challenge became a command. Every Bloodletter in the hangar turned toward him. Their charge shook the deck.
The Slayer welcomed them.
His Rocket Launcher vanished. The Equipment Launcher upon his shoulder fired an Ice Bomb into the front rank. Frost exploded across the charge, freezing Bloodletters and Flesh Hounds in the middle of their strides. The Slayer ignited the second rank with the Flame Belch, then sent a fragmentation grenade beneath the frozen daemons. Ice, brass, and burning flesh erupted together.
The Chaingun appeared in his hands.
An energy shield unfolded from the weapon as he walked into the survivors. Hellblades struck the barrier and broke. The Chaingun's barrels opened into their mobile-turret configuration and filled the hangar with thunder. The Slayer swept the stream across the horde, reducing frozen daemons to shards and cutting the burning creatures behind them into pieces.
When the Herald forced its way through the barrage, the Chaingun vanished and the Super Shotgun returned to the Slayer's hands. He fired, reloaded, and fired again. Each blast opened a path through the daemons. He moved into that path before it closed, breaking bodies with his fists and cutting through reaching limbs with the Doomblade. A Flesh Hound clamped its jaws around his forearm. Its teeth failed against the Praetor Suit. He lifted the creature, struck another with it, and tore its head free.
The Herald reached him.
Its sword struck his shoulder with enough force to split the deck beneath his feet. The blade stopped against his armour.
The Herald stared at the unbroken plate. The Slayer seized both of its horns and drove his knee into its face.
Bone shattered. He twisted until the daemon's neck broke, then hurled its body into the advancing Bloodletters. They climbed across their fallen master without slowing.
Behind him, the Imperial formation tightened around the Thunderhawk. Celestine's sword drew circles of gold through the red host. Castor and Malrec fought back-to-back beneath her, chainsword and bolt pistol answering every creature that passed her guard. The Imperial Fists fired with the measured rhythm of an execution line.
The Slayer accelerated.
He became the centre of the battle. Daemons entered his reach and ceased to exist as bodies capable of war. Mortal soldiers fled before him and died facing away. Black Legionaries tried to form walls of ceramite, only to discover that armour made them heavier when he threw them into one another.
The host began to break. The Slayer did not allow it to escape.
He crossed the hangar from one barricade to the next. He destroyed the Havocs attempting to cover the retreat, crushed the controls of the inner blast doors, and killed the warband commander before the traitor could seal them. Celestine descended upon the fleeing daemons from above while the Space Marines advanced beneath her.
The last enemy was a Black Legionary trapped beneath the overturned hull of a Hell Talon. The traitor raised a bolt pistol as the Slayer approached.
"What are you?" the Legionary demanded.
The Slayer took the pistol from his hand and closed one gauntlet around the traitor's helm. He crushed it.
Silence spread through the hangar.
Fires moved across the wreckage. Ammunition detonated inside ruined vehicles. Atmosphere hissed through cracks in the outer doors, carrying ash and loose fragments toward the void. Nothing else moved except the warriors who had arrived aboard the Thunderhawk and the six Imperial Fists who had opened the shield for them.
The Slayer turned toward the inner gates.
"Slayer," Celestine called.
He stopped.
Celestine landed beside him. Her wings folded slowly against her back. The light surrounding her remained strong, though the Blackstone beneath their feet seemed to drink from its edges.
Veteran Sergeant Kord approached with the other Imperial Fists. One of his brothers carried a damaged auspex. Another had removed a rectangular device from the shield relay and now held it against his breastplate as though it were a Chapter relic.
Kord stopped before Celestine and the Slayer. His five brothers formed a line behind him before he removed his helmet.
"Veteran Sergeant Garran Kord, Seventh Company of the Imperial Fists. With me are Battle-Brothers Vardas, Helion, Torren, Acastus, and Brannoc. We are the last survivors of Boarding Spear Aureus. Thirty-two of us entered through the lower weapons spine. We six remain," Kord said, introducing himself and his men to Celestine and the Slayer.
Celestine inclined her head to each warrior.
"Your fallen brothers opened the way for us. Their sacrifice will not be wasted," Celestine promised.
"We intend to ensure it is not," Kord replied.
The Slayer looked from Kord to each of the five survivors. They were wounded, exhausted, and surrounded by enemies, but none lowered his weapon.
He gave them one measured nod.
Kord replaced his helmet, removed the hololithic projector from his belt, and activated it. A broken image of the fortress appeared above his palm. Red corridors turned through one another in shapes that ignored distance and perspective. Entire decks flickered in and out of existence.
The Slayer studied the projection.
A route pulsed through the image. It crossed a barracks complex, descended through a forge, and entered a dense knot of intersecting passages near the fortress core. Beyond that knot, a black sigil marked the command sanctum.
"Captured data places Abaddon here. The route is imperfect. The fortress has already altered several sections since we recorded them," Kord explained, indicating the black sigil.
The Slayer reached toward the image. His finger passed through the barracks and stopped over the command sanctum.
"That is our destination," Celestine said.
"It is. My squad will guide you while the route remains reliable," Kord agreed.
The fortress shook.
The deck rose beneath them, then dropped. Damaged vehicles slid across the hangar. A lance strike passed through the outer armour somewhere above, filling the distance with a sound too deep to be heard as much as felt.
Static burst from Kord's vox.
"Boarding Spear, this is Phalanx. Fortress batteries on the dorsal arc remain active. Our fleet is engaging. Confirm penetration," a distant Imperial Fist reported through the interference.
Kord opened the channel.
"Phalanx, this is Veteran Sergeant Kord. Penetration confirmed. The Slayer and Saint Celestine are inside," Kord reported.
For several seconds, only static answered.
"Then make the opening count," the distant Imperial Fist replied before the signal died.
Kord looked at the Slayer.
"The Phalanx can keep this fortress occupied, but not forever," Kord said.
The Slayer turned toward the inner gate. He had heard enough.
The doors were ten metres tall and sealed by four locking bars. He placed one hand against their centre. Blackstone resisted him for a moment before the metal framing around it began to scream. The first bar broke. Then the second.
Kord deactivated the hololith.
"That is one method," Kord conceded.
The Slayer forced the gates apart. Beyond them waited a corridor lined with skulls.
He entered first.
…
The Barracks of the Will of Eternity
The route to the barracks had been prepared for defence.
Automated guns emerged from the walls. Mines waited beneath the floor. Black Legion kill-teams occupied intersecting passages and fired from positions protected by layered bulkheads. The Slayer crossed each defence without slowing. The Space Marines followed through the ruin he left behind, protecting Kord and the route-engine while Celestine watched the passages above.
The deeper they travelled, the more often the fortress shook.
Sometimes the impacts came from the void battle outside. At other times they came from within, where other Imperial boarding forces fought and died in passages the Slayer could not see. Vox messages surfaced through the static in fragments: requests for ammunition, warnings of daemon incursions, final prayers from squads whose signals ended before they finished speaking.
The Slayer heard every voice.He did not slow. The barracks doors stood open.
Blood covered the chamber beyond them. It had been painted across the walls in eight-pointed stars and allowed to gather in channels cut through the floor. Racks of chainaxes lined the pillars. Skulls hung from chains over fighting pits large enough to hold armoured vehicles.
Warriors waited among them.
The Hounds of Abaddon wore black-and-red armour marked by the sign of Khorne. Khorne Berzerkers stood at their sides, chainaxes snarling in their fists. Chosen guarded the upper walkways. Bloodletters crowded the fighting pits, while Flesh Hounds strained against chains held by armoured handlers.
At the chamber's centre waited three Bloodcrushers, each rider mounted upon a brass beast whose hooves left molten prints in the deck.
The Hounds had not gathered to defend the barracks. They had gathered for him.
Their leader stepped forward. A cloak of flayed skin hung from one pauldron, and Urkanthos's broken sigil had been nailed to his breastplate.
"Urkanthos was chosen Daemon Prince by the Blood God, and you erased him," the Hound-Captain accused.
The Slayer looked at the broken sigil.
He remembered the daemon prince's final expression as the Crucible carved him apart. Every severed piece had been erased in turn. Urkanthos had understood, in the final instant, that there would be no return to the Warp. No rebirth. No second battle.
Only an end.
"Your skull will rest before Khorne's throne, outlander. Your death will redeem us," the Hound-Captain promised.
The Slayer raised the Super Shotgun.
The Hound-Captain laughed.
"He accepts!" the Hound-Captain shouted.
The Slayer fired.
The Hound-Captain's head vanished. For one heartbeat, no one moved.
Then the barracks erupted.
The Bloodcrushers charged first. Their brass mounts gained speed with every stride, horns lowered toward the Slayer. Berzerkers followed behind them, using the daemonic cavalry as a moving wall.
The Slayer met the first Juggernaut head-on.
Its horns struck his chest. The collision cracked the floor in a line extending twenty metres behind him, but it did not move him. He locked both arms around the beast's skull, turned his body, and threw it sideways. Mount and rider crashed into the second Bloodcrusher. Brass limbs tangled with black armour.
The third rider swung its hellblade.
The Slayer ducked beneath the stroke, fired both barrels into the Juggernaut's chest, and drove the Doomblade through its rider as the beast collapsed. The Berzerkers reached him before he withdrew the blade.
Chainaxes struck from three directions.
One caught his shoulder. Another hit his back. The third stopped against his forearm as he raised it to guard his helm. Teeth screamed against the Praetor Suit and broke away in sparks.
The Chainsaw appeared in the Slayer's hands.
Its engine screamed louder than the Berzerkers. He drove its teeth through the first warrior's breastplate, split the corrupted Space Marine from shoulder to hip, and turned the blade into the second. The third Berzerker raised his chainaxe. The Slayer tore the weapon from his hands, buried it in its owner's neck, and hurled the body into the Chosen firing from the walkway.
Flesh Hounds were released along both flanks.
"Shield the route-engine. Refuse the beasts our centre," Kord ordered.
The Imperial Fists formed a wall. Bolters fired over interlocked shields, bursting Flesh Hounds apart as they ran. One beast survived the barrage and leapt for Kord. Malrec intercepted it with his chainsword, opening its throat while Castor shot its handler through the eye lens.
"Your map remains intact, sergeant," Malrec reported.
"See that it remains so," Kord replied.
Above them, Chosen opened fire upon Celestine. She folded her wings, descended through the bolt storm, and landed among them. The Ardent Blade struck three times. Three armoured bodies fell from the walkway.
The Slayer crossed the barracks beneath her.
Bloodletters surrounded him. He changed weapons between one step and the next. The Ballista appeared against his shoulder and discharged a line of argent energy through the first six daemons. Their bodies came apart in burning fragments. He turned the weapon upon the tangled Bloodcrushers and fired again.
The blast ruptured both Juggernauts.
One rider crawled free. The Slayer stepped upon its sword arm and fired the Ballista into its chest.
The Berzerkers kept coming.
They attacked without fear, but their fury made them predictable. The Slayer had fought armies driven by rage since before their species had learned to name the stars. He saw each blow before it began. He broke their arms, turned their weapons against them, and used their charge to carry them into his reach.
The final mass closed around him.
The Slayer summoned the Sentinel Hammer. He drove it into the deck.
The impact released a ring of argent force. Berzerkers left the floor. Bloodletters shattered against the pillars. The remaining Juggernaut rolled through an entire weapon rack before the wall stopped it. The Slayer rose from the crater while stunned warriors struggled to regain their feet.
He did not grant them the time.
The Hounds of Abaddon attempted to close the bulkheads behind him.
He reached the narrowing gap, caught both doors, and forced them apart. Their motors burned out. The Slayer tore one door from its track and drove it through the warriors gathered behind it.
Something changed among the survivors. The Berzerkers still attacked. The daemons still rushed toward violence. But the Black Legion Chosen began to retreat.
One activated his vox while backing toward an inner passage.
"Command, this is Kharon Cell. The reports are true. It is the one who ended Urkanthos. Seal the approaches to the forge," the Chosen warned.
The Slayer fired the Meathook. The chain buried itself in the Chosen's shoulder and dragged him back into the chamber.
"He cannot be stopped," the Chosen transmitted.
The Slayer caught him. The transmission ended.
Across the barracks, enemy vox-channels came alive. The Slayer heard orders, denials, prayers, and threats spoken by voices that had not yet seen him. Blast doors closed in distant sections. Daemons were summoned. Weapons turned away from the Imperial fleet and toward the fortress interior.
They knew he was coming, but that knowledge would not save them.
.
The Forge of the Will of Eternity
The passage to the daemon forge descended through heat.
At first, it came through the walls. Then the air itself began to burn. The corridor widened into a bridge suspended above a cavern whose limits disappeared behind smoke and chains.
The forge filled the entire hollow.
Furnaces rose like temples. Rivers of molten metal crossed the floor beneath suspended platforms. Captured Imperial tanks hung from hooks while mechanical limbs stripped away their armour. Human prisoners had been wired into machines that drew blood, memory, and pain from their bodies. At the far end of the cavern, daemons were being forced into iron shells beneath circles of screaming runes.
The Slayer stopped at the bridge's edge. He had seen such places before.
Hell had built factories from bone and steel. It had turned souls into fuel and suffering into machinery. Different symbols covered this forge, and different gods claimed the screams rising from it, but the purpose was unchanged.
It existed to transform torment into war. His anger deepened.
The machinery around him sensed it.
Klaxons sounded. Warpsmiths turned from their altars. Corrupted servitors raised weapon-limbs. Possessed Marines crawled down the pillars, their armour split by horns, claws, and wet mouths. Obliterators stepped from the furnace light with cannons growing through their flesh.
Daemon engines awakened below.
Two Forgefiends tore free of their restraints. A Maulerfiend climbed the side of a smelting tower. A Helbrute broke through a maintenance gate, dragging cables and mutilated attendants behind it. Beyond them, a Defiler unfolded its bladed limbs and aimed its battle cannon toward the bridge.
"Disperse. Target weapon systems before the engines gain elevation," Kord ordered.
The Defiler fired.
The Slayer stepped in front of the shell. It struck his chest and detonated.
The bridge disappeared inside fire. Celestine braced against the blast. Space Marines locked their boots to the deck while fragments of Blackstone swept past them.
When the flames receded, the Slayer stood in the same place.
The Defiler adjusted its aim.
The Slayer summoned his Rocket Launcher.
He fired into the battle cannon. The rocket entered the barrel a moment before the Defiler's second shot. Both munitions detonated inside the weapon, peeling the turret open. The daemon engine screamed through every vox-speaker in the forge.
The Slayer jumped from the bridge.
He fell through smoke and landed on the Defiler's hull. Its bladed limbs stabbed upward, striking its own armour as he moved between them. He tore the ruined cannon from its mounting and drove the hot metal down through the creature's central shell. The daemon bound within tried to escape through the cracks.
The Slayer reached into the opening and pulled it back. His Doomblade entered the engine's core. The Defiler collapsed.
The forge attacked him at once.
Plasma from the Forgefiends turned the air white. Obliterators opened fire from the platforms above, their arms becoming lascannons, meltaguns, and weapons without Imperial names.
The Unmaykr appeared in the Slayer's hands.
Maykr mechanisms unfolded around its pale core. A torrent of argent projectiles crossed the forge in precise converging lines. The first Forgefiend came apart from within. Two Obliterators vanished beneath the barrage, and a third fell from the platform with every weapon fused into useless metal. The Slayer turned the Unmaykr upon the second Forgefiend and cut through its head before it could fire again.
The Helbrute charged through the wreckage, burning but alive. The Unmaykr vanished, replaced by the Chaingun. Its barrels opened into their mobile-turret configuration, rounds carving through the Helbrute's sarcophagus as it advanced. Its power fist closed around the Slayer and lifted him from the deck.
The Helbrute squeezed. The Praetor Suit did not yield.
The Slayer dismissed the Chaingun, drove both hands between the fingers of the power fist, and forced them apart. He climbed the arm, reached the sarcophagus, and tore its front plate free. What remained of the warrior within screamed at him.
The Slayer ended the scream with one blow.
The Maulerfiend struck him from behind. Its charge carried both of them through the wall of a furnace. Molten metal fell around the Slayer. The daemon engine snapped its mechanical jaws toward his head. He caught the jaws and held them open.
The furnace collapsed across them. For several seconds, only fire moved. Then the Slayer rose from the molten wreckage carrying the Maulerfiend's severed head.
The Warpsmiths began to retreat.
"Contain the anomaly! Release the bound one!" one Warpsmith demanded.
Chains broke at the centre of the forge.
The machinery beneath the largest binding circle split apart. A tower of iron and daemonic flesh hauled itself from the pit below. Its lower body was a mass of piston-driven legs. Armour plates covered a torso large enough to fill the central aisle. One arm ended in a cleaver, the other in a weapon whose barrel burned with Warp-fire. A horned skull pushed from the cage of metal surrounding its head.
The Soul Grinder roared.
Its voice silenced every lesser daemon in the cavern.
"I have consumed worlds older than your bloodline, mortal," the Soul Grinder declared.
The Slayer walked toward it.
The creature's cannon fired. Warp-fire engulfed him. It burned through the deck, the machinery beneath it, and three lower levels of the forge. The Slayer emerged from the column before the flame had ended.
He fired the Meathook into the Soul Grinder's weapon arm.
The chain pulled him across the gap. The Soul Grinder swung its cleaver. He released the hook, landed upon the blade, and ran along its edge. The daemon tried to throw him off. He jumped, caught one of its horns, and drove the Doomblade into the side of its skull.
The Soul Grinder howled and struck him against a smelting tower.
The tower folded.
The Slayer maintained his grip.
He tore the horn free and plunged it into one of the creature's eyes. The Soul Grinder staggered into the binding circle. Kord's squad opened fire from the upper bridge, their krak missiles striking the armour joints exposed beneath its arms. Celestine descended and drove the Ardent Blade through the chains attached to its back.
"Now, Slayer!" Celestine called.
The Slayer landed before the creature.
Its cleaver descended. He caught the flat of the blade between both hands. The impact drove him knee-deep into the Blackstone floor, but his arms remained locked.
He twisted. The Soul Grinder's wrist broke. The cleaver came free.
The Slayer turned the weapon upon its owner. One strike split the iron abdomen. A second severed the cannon arm. The third opened the cage surrounding the daemon's torso.
The Soul Grinder tried to drag itself away.
The Slayer discarded the cleaver. An argent hilt appeared in his hand. Red energy erupted from it, forming the blade of the Crucible. Its light drove the shadows from the forge and cast every daemon in the colour of fresh blood.
The Soul Grinder stopped retreating. It recognised the weapon. More importantly, it understood what the weapon would do.
"No," the Soul Grinder rasped.
The Slayer brought the Crucible down.
The blade passed through the engine's iron body, its daemonic core, and the binding circle beneath both. For one instant the Soul Grinder existed in two burning halves. Then the Crucible's power reached every fragment of its essence.
There was no flight back to the Warp. There was no banishment from which it might return. The daemon within the Soul Grinder ceased to exist.
Its empty shell crashed into the binding circle. The runes beneath it overloaded.
Energy crossed the forge in branching lines. Binding circles failed. Furnace doors burst open. The mechanisms holding the captured prisoners released at once, dropping chains and restraint frames across the platforms.
"The forge is destabilising," Malrec warned.
"Then let it," Castor replied.
The Slayer saw the main power conduits rising behind the Soul Grinder's empty shell. They carried energy from the forge toward the fortress's outer weapon systems. He summoned the Ballista and fired into the central junction.
The first shot breached the shielding. The second reached the core. The daemon forge became a sun.
Celestine's wings closed around the nearest prisoners. The Imperial Fists anchored themselves to the bridge. Castor seized Malrec by one arm as the deck vanished beneath them.
The Slayer walked through the blast.
Power failed across the cavern. The furnaces went dark one after another. Forgefiends collapsed as their binding systems died. The remaining Possessed fled into passages suddenly lit only by emergency lumens.
Kord's vox crackled.
"Boarding Spear, Phalanx. Multiple fortress batteries have ceased firing. Whatever you destroyed, continue doing so," the distant Imperial Fist transmitted.
Kord looked across the ruined forge at the Slayer.
"The recommendation appears sound," Kord said.
The walls answered him.
A woman's voice emerged from the dead machinery. It spoke through servitor mouths, vox-grilles, and the broken skull of the Soul Grinder at the same time.
"External organism confirmed. Origin absent. Warp signature absent. Causal profile incompatible," the woman said.
The Slayer turned toward the nearest speaker.
"You are an error," the woman told him.
The Slayer crushed the speaker beneath one boot.
Her laughter continued through the walls.
"Enter the labyrinth, error. Let the Will of Eternity correct you," the woman invited.
The voice vanished.
Celestine came to stand beside the Slayer. Her expression had tightened.
"That was Dravura Morkath, daughter of the despoiler," Celestine said.
Kord reactivated the hololith. Half the route had disappeared.
"She knows our position," Kord said.
The Slayer looked toward the only passage still open.
"Good," the Slayer said.
It was the first word he had spoken since entering the fortress.
.
The Labyrinth of the Will of Eternity
The Blackstone labyrinth began with a straight corridor.
It did not remain straight.
The walls shifted before the group had crossed half its length. What had been a passage became a descending shaft. Gravity turned with it, dragging loose debris sideways while the warriors adjusted their footing. The Imperial Fists locked magnetic boots to the new floor. Celestine opened her wings and caught Castor before he fell into the darkness below.
The Slayer continued walking.
"The route-engine no longer recognises our orientation," Kord reported.
The hololith above his gauntlet rotated through impossible geometries. Corridors intersected without joining. Their position marker appeared in three places at once.
"Can it still locate the fortress core?" Celestine asked.
"It can locate six fortress cores. I doubt five of them existed when we entered," Kord replied.
The corridor turned again.
Doors opened around them. Pink Horrors spilled from the first, laughing as warpfire gathered between their claws. Flamers of Tzeentch drifted from the second on columns of blue fire. Blackstone figures tore themselves from the third wall, featureless bodies shaped by the fortress into weapons.
The Slayer summoned the Plasma Rifle.
Blue-white energy met the daemons' changing fire. A Pink Horror burst and divided into two smaller creatures. The Slayer shot both before their feet touched the deck. He swept the beam across the Flamers, then triggered a heat blast that stripped their forms apart.
The constructs reached him.
They carried no life, no souls, and no fear. Their limbs sharpened into blades as they struck. He shattered the first with his fist and used its broken torso to crush the second. The third closed around his arm like liquid stone.
The Slayer flexed.
Cracks spread through it. He tore free and drove the Doomblade into the wall from which the constructs had emerged. The surface recoiled as if wounded.
Sorcery filled the passage.
A Chaos Sorcerer appeared at its far end, attended by two Masters of Possession. Sigils turned around them in layers. The corridor stretched, placing them kilometres away without changing their apparent size.
"You cannot cross what has no end," the Sorcerer declared.
The Slayer fired the Ballista. The bolt travelled down the corridor, diminished to a point, and returned from behind the group. Kord threw himself aside as it passed.
"The passage is folded," Kord warned.
The Sorcerer laughed.
The Slayer looked at the floor.
Blood from a dead Horror flowed toward the left wall instead of away from it. He followed the direction of the false gravity, reached the wall, and struck it.
Blackstone cracked. The Sorcerer stopped laughing. The Slayer struck again.
The false corridor shattered like glass. Distance collapsed. The Sorcerer stood ten paces away, staring at the green-armoured warrior already crossing the space between them.
"Impossible," the Sorcerer whispered.
The Slayer caught him by the throat.
One Master of Possession opened a portal beneath the Slayer's feet. He did not fall. His weight remained fixed to the reality he chose to occupy. He threw the Sorcerer into the portal instead. The Master tried to close it, but the Slayer's Super Shotgun fired first.
The second Master fled. Celestine's blade passed through his back.
The labyrinth convulsed.
Walls drove between the warriors. One separated Castor and Malrec from the Imperial Fists. Another rose between Celestine and the Slayer. Kord's squad fired into the closing seams, but the Blackstone absorbed their rounds.
The Slayer heard Morkath through the structure.
"Every bond is a weakness. Every companion is a direction in which you can be pulled," Morkath whispered.
The Slayer placed both hands against the wall separating him from Celestine.
"Choose which of them dies first," Morkath urged.
He tore the wall open. Blackstone screamed.
Celestine stood on the other side, surrounded by Horrors. Her radiance had faded to a thin outline around her armour. The Ardent Blade still burned, but its fire had drawn close to the metal.
The Slayer entered the daemons from behind. His Super Shotgun fired until none remained.
"The stone is suppressing my connection to the Emperor. It is stronger here," Celestine said as she steadied herself against the wall.
The Slayer felt the pressure seeking entry into his own body. The fortress searched for Warp currents, mortal nerves, and the patterns by which reality recognised its children.
It found none it could command.
His essence had been remade by a power born beyond this universe. He had walked through dimensions that had no names here. The Blackstone could no more sever him from that power than it could order the void to bleed.
The Slayer placed one hand beneath Celestine's arm and pulled her upright.
"I can continue," Celestine assured him.
He released her only when she stood without support.
Behind the next wall, Castor's chainsword roared. The Slayer struck through the Blackstone and opened a path. Castor and Malrec emerged carrying Brother Vardas, who had protected the route-engine. The armour across the Imperial Fist's back had been split, but he still held the device against his chest.
"All six present. The route-engine is damaged but functional," Kord reported after counting his brothers.
"Functional may be generous," Malrec said.
"It displays lights. For the moment, that will suffice," Kord replied.
They advanced. The same corridor met them three times.
On the first crossing, it contained the bodies of cultists. On the second, those bodies had aged into dust. On the third, the cultists were alive and begging the group not to open the door at the far end.
The Slayer opened it.
There was no room beyond, only an eye larger than the passage, watching from the other side of reality.
He drove the Doomblade into its pupil. The eye withdrew. The corridor unfolded with a sound like stone exhaling.
Kord's route-engine stabilised for one second.
"The core lies ahead. Or something wishes us to believe it does," Kord said.
The Slayer already knew.
He could feel the weapon carried by the one they sought. A presence moved inside it, ancient and hateful, unlike the daemons swarming through the fortress. It waited near Abaddon like a wound that had learned patience.
Drach'nyen.
The Slayer did not know its name, but he knew what it wanted.
Before he could continue, a bolter fired somewhere beyond the walls.
The sound was deep, measured, and followed by a second shot. Then a third.
These were not the frantic bursts of warriors being overrun. Each round arrived with the certainty of a funeral bell.
Green fire appeared beneath the nearest door.
Kord raised his power sword.
"Imperial-pattern bolter fire. No friendly squad is marked within this section," Kord reported.
Celestine looked toward the flame.
"They require no mark upon your map," Celestine said.
The Slayer opened the door.
.
The Fortress Core of the Will of Eternity
The chamber beyond had become a battlefield outside time. Broken stairways climbed in every direction. Pillars hung horizontally in the air. Gravity changed between one section of the room and the next, leaving bodies suspended above the central floor.
Daemons filled the chamber.
Horrors crawled across the walls. Flamers circled through the open spaces. Bloodletters fought beside warped creatures whose forms changed whenever the Slayer looked away. At their centre, a towering Master of Possession held open three Warp rifts while Black Legion Possessed poured through them.
They surrounded eight black-armoured warriors.
Spectral flames moved across those warriors without consuming them. Images of bone covered their armour, transforming each breastplate into a ribcage and every helm into a burning skull. Their bolters fired rounds wrapped in pale fire. Daemons struck by them did not merely fall; they burned from within, screaming as the flame followed them back toward the Warp.
The Legion of the Damned held the centre of the chamber. There were eight of them against an army.
The Slayer entered the daemonic host from behind.
His first shotgun blast destroyed two Possessed. His second tore the legs from a Bloodletter. He fired the Meathook into a floating stairway, pulled himself above the horde, and dropped into its centre.
The Damned Legionnaires saw him land. None showed surprise.
Their leader wore the broken insignia of a sergeant upon one shoulder. Green fire burned from the eye sockets of the skull painted across his helm. He lifted a black power sword and pointed it toward the Master of Possession.
The Damned changed formation. They attacked from the front as the Slayer attacked from the rear.
"Imperial Fists, secure the doorway and fire by ranks," Kord commanded.
Yellow-armoured warriors formed beneath the arch and opened fire. Castor and Malrec took the right flank, bolters hammering the Horrors crawling across the wall. Celestine rose through the chamber's broken gravity, her diminished radiance strengthening as she approached the ghostly flames.
"Drive them from the rifts," Celestine called.
The Slayer reached the first portal.
A Possessed champion emerged carrying an axe in four arms. The Slayer broke the first arm, severed the second, and fired the Super Shotgun through the warrior's chest. He caught the falling axe and hurled it into the next daemon trying to cross.
Then he stepped into the edge of the rift and pulled. Reality resisted him. He pulled harder. The opening folded inward around his hands. Daemonic limbs reached through as it narrowed. He crushed them together and forced the rift shut.
The Master of Possession recoiled.
"No mortal hand can close the path!" the Master protested.
The Slayer moved toward the second rift.
The Damned sergeant reached it first. His power sword entered the opening, and spectral fire spread across its surface. The rift burned like cloth. Shapes screamed on the other side as the passage collapsed.
Only the third remained.
The Master of Possession poured his power into it. The opening expanded across the chamber, revealing an army waiting in the Warp beyond. Bloodletters pressed against one another for the chance to cross. Greater shapes moved behind them.
Celestine descended beside the Slayer.
"Together," Celestine said.
She drove the Ardent Blade into one side of the portal. The Damned sergeant drove his black sword into the other. Golden fire and the green flames of the dead travelled around the rift's edge, preventing it from widening further.
The Slayer walked between them. The largest weapon in his arsenal emerged from the space beyond reality.
The BFG 9000 settled into his hands.
Green light gathered inside its chamber. The machinery had been built by mortal hands, fed by energies stolen from Hell, and perfected for one purpose: the destruction of everything standing before him.
He aimed through the portal.
The army beyond the portal saw him.
The daemons at the forefront stopped advancing. They could sense the power contained within him. It was vast, alien, and utterly beyond anything they could comprehend. Its crushing pressure poured through the portal and descended upon the horde like the promise of annihilation. Even the mightiest among them recoiled.
They did not know what stood before them, but they knew only that it had come to destroy them.
Panic swept through the horde. They tried to retreat.
The Slayer fired the BFG.
A sphere of green energy entered the rift. Argent tendrils reached from it in every direction, finding every daemon beyond the threshold. Bloodletters vanished by the thousands. The greater shapes behind them burned into silhouettes and then into nothing. The projectile continued deeper, pulling the portal's unstable energy after it.
The Master of Possession screamed as the rift began to collapse.
Celestine and the Damned sergeant wrenched their blades inward. Golden and spectral fire closed around the BFG's passage. The portal folded, narrowed, and snapped shut behind the projectile.
The BFG detonated on the other side. Green light flashed through every remaining crack in reality. Then the portal and the army beyond it were gone.
Every surviving daemon in the chamber turned toward the exits. The Legion of the Damned shot them down.
The Slayer pursued those who reached the stairs. Kord's squad destroyed the creatures attempting to climb the walls. Castor cut through the last Pink Horror while Malrec fired into the Blue Horrors created by its death. Celestine reached the Master of Possession before it could open another path.
The traitor raised its staff. The Ardent Blade passed through staff, armour, and flesh in one descending line.
Silence returned. Ghostly flames continued to burn.
All eight Damned Legionnaires emerged from the dying fire and gathered around their leader. Their number did not change.
The Damned sergeant approached Celestine and the Slayer with his sword lowered. His seven warriors formed behind him.
"Sergeant Mordren of the Legion of the Damned. With me are Brothers Severian, Castael, Vult, Rhex, Tiber, Alaric, and Varro. Eight of the Damned stand before you," Mordren introduced himself and his warriors to Celestine and the Slayer. His voice carried the crackle of a pyre.
Celestine inclined her head.
"I am Saint Celestine, and the warrior beside me is the Doom Slayer," Celestine replied.
Green flames brightened within Mordren's eye lenses.
"The dead know the Living Saint. We do not know this warrior though," Mordren replied, turning his burning gaze toward the Slayer.
"The Slayer is no servant of Chaos. He fought for Cadia, and Urkanthos died by his hand—truly died, beyond any return to the Warp. I trust him," Celestine assured the Damned sergeant.
Mordren considered the silent warrior beside her.
"Then your word is enough. While he fights beside you, the Damned will count him as an ally," Mordren declared.
Veteran Sergeant Kord approached with his sword lowered but not sheathed.
"Veteran Sergeant Garran Kord, Seventh Company. My five brothers and I are the last of Boarding Spear Aureus," Kord introduced himself and his men to Mordren.
Mordren turned his burning helm toward the Imperial Fist.
"We did not know your name, Garran Kord. But we know the fist upon your shoulder and the loyalty it represents. You and your brothers are allies," Mordren answered.
His gaze shifted to Castor and Malrec.
"We do not know the Black Templars beside you, either. Their heraldry and their faith are enough. All who remain loyal to the Emperor stand with the Damned," Mordren added.
Castor struck one fist against his breastplate. Malrec answered with a solemn inclination of his helm.
Kord studied the burning skull of Mordren's helm.
"How long has your squad been aboard?" Kord asked.
"Long enough to hear the fortress scream," Sergeant Mordren answered.
Mordren faced the Doom Slayer once more.
For several seconds, neither warrior moved. One was a stranger carrying a power Mordren did not recognise. The other stood among the dead and had returned only because the Imperium still required his wrath.
Mordren raised his sword in a measured salute. It was not the greeting of warriors who knew one another. It was an acknowledgement of the alliance Celestine's word had forged between them.
The Slayer answered with one inclination of his helm.
"The path to the core has moved. The dead can still find it," Mordren warned, pointing his burning blade toward a stairway descending across the chamber ceiling.
"Then lead us to it," Celestine said.
Sergeant Mordren turned toward the impossible stairway. The Legion of the Damned fell into formation behind him.
Kord checked his five brothers. Castor reloaded his bolter. Malrec recovered the route-engine from the floor and struck its casing until the projection returned. Celestine lifted the Ardent Blade, and its gold fire burned more brightly beside the flames of the dead.
The Slayer looked into the passage ahead.
Far beyond the shifting walls, something issued new orders across the fortress. Bulkheads sealed. Weapons changed position. Sorcerers began rituals intended not to kill him, but to delay him.
Chaos knew what walked through its stronghold now. It knew that the Doom Slayer was coming.
Sergeant Mordren led the dead into the darkness. Saint Celestine and the living followed. The Slayer walked at their centre.
Ahead of them, the daemons began to flee.
…
Doom Guy Kill Count: 33,594