Seraphs of the Emperor’s Judgment

Chapter 228: Escaping from the Tiger's Mouth

"Armin!"

Soshyan roared over the vox-net as he sprinted back toward the defensive line.

"Grab the wounded! We are leaving this place right now!!"

He paused for a fraction of a second to cleanly sever both arms of a Hybrid wildly swinging a heavy mining pick, immediately reversing the angle of his blade to plunge the blazing tip directly through the beast's throat. A sharp twist of his wrist sent the abhorrent, mutating head rolling across the rockcrete.

"Everyone!"

Armin bellowed, a surge of adrenaline revitalizing his exhausted voice.

"Move out! Now!"

The tight, bristling defensive circle instantly expanded into a wedge formation, the Astartes surging forward in the wake of their Chapter Master.

Spearheading the desperate breakout was Sevatar. His raven-feather cloak billowing around him, the Prince of Crows systematically butchered a path through the dense, shrieking horde. Free from the claustrophobic confines of the temple archway, he finally possessed the required space to swing his gargantuan chain-glaive with its full, devastating momentum.

"Follow me. I will clear the path.""Yes, master."

The chain-glaive roared like a starved predator as it effortlessly clove through the thick, armored torsos of purestrain Genestealers. In the span of a few shallow breaths, dozens of xenos were violently dismantled before the traitor, while his surviving mortal acolytes frantically guarded his flanks and rear.

Simultaneously, Soshyan relentlessly hacked and slashed his way forward, Sol fighting fiercely directly beside him.

BOOM————!

Another massive detonation blasted the cavern, close enough that the shockwave nearly lifted Soshyan entirely off his feet. Snapping his helm toward the source of the explosion, his auto-senses highlighted a cluster of fourth-generation Hybrids haphazardly operating crude, jury-rigged rocket launchers.

"Contact front!"

Soshyan barked the warning as he simultaneously brought his bolter to bear. Following a roaring volley of mass-reactive death, the xenos manning the scavenged heavy weapons wailed in agony as they were violently blown apart.

Sol’s twin blades were a blur of lethal precision as he continuously moved forward. Hideously mutated faces and the glint of scavenged weapons flashed across his vision before being abruptly replaced by fountains of xenos blood. More nearby detonations violently shook the chalky rockcrete beneath their boots, the blazing heat of the localized blast waves radiating harmlessly off their power armor as shrapnel rained down around them.

As the wedge formation ground inexorably forward, Sevatar's surviving followers passed their scavenged heavy bolter to Armin. Wielding the heavy weapon with transhuman stability, the Captain unleashed a sweeping, sustained barrage of raking fire, effortlessly mowing down dozens of unarmored xenos by the dozen.

Then, following another earsplitting detonation perilously close to their position and a triumphant, bloodthirsty howl from Sevatar, they finally punched a ragged hole through the endless horde.

They burst free of the temple entrance, but were immediately confronted by a terrifying "surprise gift" the enemy had carefully positioned to intercept them.

Waiting at the very bottom of the grand temple stairs stood four colossal, industrial-grade mining walkers.

These were massive, bipedal machines designed to stand on thick, stubbornly reinforced legs. Their central chassis were encased in heavy, overlapping plasteel plates further reinforced with adamantium ribbing—a necessity for surviving catastrophic tunnel collapses.

The "head" of each machine consisted of a clustered optical array and high-intensity floodlights beneath a heavily shielded canopy, mounted atop a broad, immensely thick shoulder chassis. The ends of their multiple, heavy-duty manipulator arms were equipped with terrifying industrial tools: massive impact drills and enormous, diamond-toothed rock saws.

Such heavy industrial equipment was utterly commonplace on any mining world. However, the Astartes had not anticipated the Genestealers successfully repurposing them into devastatingly lethal engines of war, completely sealing off their only avenue of escape.

"Charge!"

Surrounded by a literally endless ocean of shrieking xenos and with absolutely no option for retreat, their only chance of survival lay in a reckless, desperate offensive.

Soshyan cleaved a bloody path down the remaining stairs, charging headlong directly toward the towering mining mechas.

He swung Heaven's Fall in a devastating arc, the disruption field screaming as it bit into the closest walker's central chassis. However, even the master-crafted blade failed to fully penetrate the sheer, overlapping thickness of the industrial plasteel plating.

Though agonizingly slow and ponderous, the massive machine possessed terrifying mechanical strength. It swiped a massive, drill-tipped arm directly at Soshyan in a crushing backhand. He immediately brought his sword up to parry, but the sheer kinetic impact violently catapulted him backward several paces, the jarring shock numbing his hands even through the thick ceramite of his gauntlets.

However, relying on pure, transhuman brute force, Soshyan lunged forward a second time, leveraging his entire body weight behind his blade to finally punch straight through the machine's reinforced cockpit canopy.

Sol's approach was far more surgical.

His twin blades expertly identified the walker's mechanical vulnerabilities. The obsidian blade, Solomon's Bane, slid effortlessly through a narrow gap between the torso plating, burying itself deep within the cockpit. Simultaneously, his second blade punched precisely through an armored viewing slit. A torrent of blood instantly cascaded from the shattered glass.

As Sol smoothly extracted his weapons, the colossal machine collapsed with a deafening crash, its green optical sensors flickering and dying.

It was at this exact moment, amidst the deafening roar of battle, that Soshyan caught a single, curtly spoken word, completely unnoticed by anyone else.

An instant later, the solid rockcrete floor directly beneath the feet of a walker sprinting toward Soshyan violently warped and cracked. A massive, jagged pillar of solid rock erupted upward with explosive force, smashing directly into the machine's lower drive-train and instantly paralyzing it.

The ground then continuously heaved and fractured, the jagged fragments of stone miraculously coalescing into the shape of a colossal, open hand, physically lifting the paralyzed walker into the air.

With a terrifying, deafening rumble, the colossal stone hand violently clenched into a massive fist. The incredibly durable industrial machine was instantly crushed into a mangled, unrecognizable cube of twisted metal and pulverized rock.

Witnessing this impossible display of power, Soshyan's gaze instantly snapped toward the iron coffin securely strapped to Sevatar's back.

The former First Captain of the Eighth Legion, despite bearing a solid iron coffin that likely weighed in excess of a ton, suddenly launched himself into the air, his movements remaining as terrifyingly agile and graceful as an oversized bat hunting in the pitch black.

Descending rapidly, he swung his gargantuan chain-glaive with the raw, terrifying power of a primeval beast. The weapon crashed into the remaining walker like a thunderous hammer striking an anvil.

Amidst a shower of sparks and the shrieking of tortured metal, the walker's optical array exploded into dust, its heavily reinforced chassis buckling inward from the sheer kinetic impact.

The vicious, adamantium teeth of the roaring chain-blade bit greedily into the thick plasteel armor, tearing it violently apart and unleashing a lethal storm of razor-sharp shrapnel until the roaring teeth finally seized entirely within the ruined metal.

As the devastating momentum of the colossal strike finally dissipated, Sevatar landed heavily, instantly ripping his weapon free and sweeping it into a devastating follow-up attack.

The heavily damaged walker desperately attempted to stumble backward, but its ruined armor was completely shattered. The reinforced cockpit violently fractured into a smoking, ruined crater.

As the massive machine crashed onto its back, an ocean of blood rapidly pooled beneath the mangled wreckage.

A fraction of a second later, Sevatar's voice cut through the din like the agonizing shriek of grinding metal, issuing a single, absolute command.

"Run!"

The survivors instantly broke into a desperate, all-out sprint.

The surrounding xenos horde was a vast, tempestuous ocean, and their small, battered group was nothing more than a fragile skiff being viciously tossed upon the breaking waves.

The sprint speed of an Adeptus Astartes was vastly beyond the capabilities of any baseline human. The tightly packed wedge formation rapidly fractured into two distinct groups. At the rear, mortal cultists fell with agonizing regularity, their agonizing shrieks abruptly severed as they were brutally dragged down and ripped limb from limb by the relentlessly pursuing horde.

Soshyan occasionally cast a glance backward, but Sevatar never once looked back at the carnage. The only mortal seemingly capable of keeping pace with the demigods was the enigmatic figure wearing the bone-white raven mask.

Finally, a glimmer of desperate hope materialized before them.

A section of the cavern's sheer, chalky grey wall suddenly shuddered violently before three massive, silver drilling heads violently breached the surface, followed immediately by the colossal, rumbling bulk of a heavy subterranean transport.

A lone figure wrenched open the top command hatch, hauling himself up to man the pintle-mounted heavy bolter, instantly laying down a withering barrage of covering fire against the pursuing xenos tide.

"Make for the transport!"

Sevatar roared over his shoulder.

"Run like your miserable lives depend on it!"

The subterranean transport maintained a relentless hail of suppression fire as the Astartes sprinted toward it. However, the sheer density of the enemy horde meant completely stalling their advance was entirely impossible.

They continued to aggressively push forward, completely indifferent to the horrifying casualties they were sustaining.

Sevatar was the first to reach the objective. Bounding twice, he effortlessly launched himself onto the transport's reinforced roof, unceremoniously shoved the bewildered cultist aside, seized control of the heavy bolter, and unleashed a ferocious, pinpoint barrage into the shrieking sea of monsters.

His accuracy was infinitely superior to the mortal operator's, and the Genestealers' relentless pursuit visibly faltered under the punishing fire.

"Move it!!"

Moments later, the remainder of the survivors reached the humming transport. By this point, the only ones left were the Astartes squad and the masked cultist; every other mortal had been brutally butchered during the desperate sprint.

The moment Soshyan vaulted onto the roof, he smoothly mag-locked his sword, drew his bolt pistol, slammed home a fresh magazine, and turned to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Sevatar, furiously pouring fire into the encroaching tide.

"Cease fire!"

Sevatar suddenly slammed his pauldron into Soshyan's chestplate and roared over the din.

"You can't kill them all! Get inside and brace yourselves immediately! We have seconds before the entire cavern goes up!"

In the briefest lull in firing, Soshyan threw himself through the open hatch. The remainder of the survivors scrambled down into the transport's interior, with Sevatar descending last, slamming the heavy hatch securely behind him.

"Go, go, go! Take us up!"

The Prince of Crows stalked into the cockpit and bellowed at the terrified driver.

"Everyone is inside!"

BOOM——————————————————————————!

Before his words could even fade, an apocalyptic detonation erupted beneath them, the unimaginable kinetic force violently rocking the massive machine and furiously throwing its heavily armored passengers against the bulkheads.

"Move!"

The transport, heavily modified by the Mining Guild and now packed with Adeptus Astartes, shuddered violently as the driver engaged the massive drills and rammed the throttle forward, the occupants securing themselves desperately inside the rumbling dark.

As the massive machine rapidly bored its way upward back into the solid rock strata, millions of tons of pitch-black subterranean water explosively breached the shattered cavern walls, instantaneously flooding the vast space before triggering a catastrophic, total structural collapse.

The secret sanctuary of the Cult of the Raven Lord was entirely, violently erased from existence, buried forever beneath unimaginable tons of crushing stone...