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Las-fire sprayed across his back, and he hissed in pain and anger as one of the beams caught him in the back of his knee-joint. He turned and gunned down one of the PDF troopers before they disappeared beneath an inferno of flames, screaming horribly. Kol Badar nodded his head towards the Anointed warrior Bokkar, who acknowledged the Coryphaus with a nod of his own, before his heavy flamer roared again, engulfing another group of soldiers.

Heavy footsteps made the ground tremble, and Kol Badar turned towards the huge form of the Warmonger, the Dreadnought dwarfing even him as it walked through the carnage, potent cannons pumping fire towards enemy vehicles in the distance.

'It is good to crush the enemy on the field of war once more, but this is no battle, Kol Badar,' the ancient war machine boomed. There were few within the Host that would dare call the warlord by his name, but the Warmonger was amongst them. They had fought at each other's sides for millennia. Indeed, Kol Badar had been the Warmonger's Coryphaus when the warrior had been Dark Apostle.

'The enemy is weak,' agreed Kol Badar. 'How I yearn to face a worthy foe,' he added, turning his gaze up into the void of the heavens.

'You think Astartes will come?' boomed the Warmonger hungrily.

'No, I think not,' sighed Kol Badar. 'As much as I wish to face them once more. The Dark Apostle has said that in none of his dream-visions did he see any Astartes come to this world to do battle with us.'

'But minions of the Corpse Emperor will come, will they not? They will come to do battle?'

'Oh, they will come, my friend. They will be marshalling their forces even now.'

'But not Astartes?'

'No, not Astartes.'

'Bah,' snorted the Warmonger. 'It will be just mortals then.'

'Yes, mortals,' said Kol Badar, still staring up into the night sky, as if he could pierce the heavens with his angry gaze. 'One can only hope that they will come in force. At least then there may be a worthy battle.'

The Warmonger stomped off, its cannons firing once more. He saw the daemon engines clawing over the bulwark, multi-legged and spitting great gouts of flame from their maws, while others busied themselves tearing apart enemy tanks with contemptuous ease.

Kol Badar began to follow the Warmonger, to rejoin the battle once again. No, he reminded himself, this was not battle. This was a slaughter.

Varnus coughed, causing a searing, sharp pain in his side. Smoke was all around him, and bodies. No, not just bodies: body parts. He pushed himself to his feet, gasping at the pain that seemed to erupt all over his body, and his head reeled. He put a hand to his forehead and felt wet blood there, but the worst pain was in his side. It was slick with blood, and he winced as he loosened the clips holding his chest-plate in place. He hissed as he pulled out a long shard of metal that had pushed up under the body armour and into his side. He dropped the bloody shard to the floor. Still, he was alive, which was more than could be said for the others splayed out on the chamber floor.

The blast had ripped through the palace, and smoke and dust rose from piles of rubble. The walls were blackened in part, and ancient wall hangings were ablaze. Many of the bloody bodies strewn around him were also on fire, and the stink of burning flesh and fat almost made him retch. Varnus coughed painfully and he felt the floor beneath his feet shake as another blast somewhere else in the palace detonated.

The sound of shouting reached him, and he staggered towards it, away from the inferno that was blazing behind him. A trio of palace guards ran past along an adjoining corridor, and he hurried along in their wake. He felt another explosion rock the floor beneath his feet and increased his pace, wincing against the pain. He had to get out of this part of the palace.

Staggering along through the smoke that seemed to be thickening around him, he followed the direction that he thought the guards had taken. He limped through a half open door, entering a service corridor usually closed to those frequenting the palace. He passed a palace guard lying dead on the ground, a gunshot wound in the man's head. He leant down and picked up the guard's long-barrelled las-lock. It was heavy and unwieldy in his hands, but it was a weapon none-the-less.

Rounding a corner, Varnus saw a pair of palace guards standing over a fallen man. He wore a plain, cream coloured robe, identical to any number of anonymous bureaucrats that worked within the palace. Seeing him, the guards shouldered their weapons. Varnus held up his hands.

'I'm an enforcer. What the hell is going on?' Varnus managed.

'Insurgents,' said one of the guards. 'Our commander has called us out onto the upper battlements. You had best come with us, enforcer.'