StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Lena looked back at him, gutting another footsolider of nurgle, "What," she shouted, "do you expect" a gunshot with a bolt pisol she'd picked up from somewhere when her other ammunition had run out, "me to do?"

"I don't know!" Pater backed away from the circle, and was suddenly jumped by a pack of Nurglings. He blew one into a cloud of putrid mist with his psycannon and then quickly holstered it, grabbing his staff with both hands. "That's" He ducked under a wide swing from one of the jibbering beasts, and used his momentum to swing back into a standing position, smashing it against the crackling Force weapon. "More" He stabbed the staff backwards into the belly of another, psychically charging it with enough kinetic energy to hurl it through a nearby pillar. "In your line." He twisted 180 degrees and parried a rusting, infectious broadsword belonging to an oversized and distended cultist. "Something Saintly!" He leaped over the blade and landed behind the creature, wobbling a little on his feet. That infection really fracked me up. He thought, as he brought the Staff down again.

She shrugged, and worked her way over towards the circle, now smouldering. "Err... Frak off - in His name!"

When this didn't work, she looked at the inquisitor again, "Isn't 'stopping demonic rituals' meant to be what you guys do?"

"For a given amount of Daemon," answered Pater, who had just delivered the coup de grace to his opponent only to be jumped by another pack, "In this case, not on my own." He blasted the last daemon off of him and started chanting the most powerful spell of banishment he knew. "In the name of the immortal God-Emperor, divine protector of the Purity of Mankind and slayer of the Archenemy I bind you in chains and cast you into the pits from whence you came!"

Pater didn't know what to do. Gix, on the other hand, had been trained in daemonology. His skills were weak, but he knew how to undo a summoning. If it wasn't too late. He drew his force rod. "Cover me," he said to Talstrem and Varian. Their deadly blades flashed, slicing a corridor of safety to the summoning circle and leaving the bodies and cultists scattered on the floor.

Gix fired an injector into his neck. More spook. And a stimulant. "Pater! Join your strength to mine!"

"Anathema! Return to hell in which you came!" He began to chant in High Gothic, uttering words of banishment and unworking. Words backed by ever growing power.

Pater had another brief feeling that he'd been made an Inquisitor a little too quickly. He followed Gix's lead.

Someone, somewhere, had decided that it was a good idea to start using a flamer, and the massive gouts of prometheum fueled flame cast odd shadows. The circle itself seemed to drink in all light however, and slowly it began to pulse, falling in on itself, then rising to become a flat plane before once being pulled in and taut...

Pater looked at Gix out of the corner of his ocular. It isn't working. He gently prodded. Is there any way of finding its' name?

The demon's name, had of course, been required for summoning it. It was even written in a skin-bound tome nearby, though as the profane manual of magic had been punctured by a psycannon bolt, it wasn't very useful...

As Gix's attempt at banishment wound down, Pater hefted a large piece of rubble and threw it on top of the summoning circle. He was running out of ideas.

The creature that was forming beneath, or rather, beyond, the circle found this annoying, and a mental hiss of anger and annoyance tickled Pater's mind. A gaping mouth appeared and swallowed the rubble even as it did. If conventional banishment techniques didn't work, then perhaps the creature's annoyance provided a clue to 'out of the box' thinking.

Meanwhile, Vonrilyental finally appeared, and joined with Gix in the various chants and canticles of demon banishment so fanatically guarded by the Ordo Malleus. He even took his time in coaching Lena to join in. Somewhere nearby the stormtroopers the Lord Inquisitor had arrived with screamed in distress that affected even their guarded minds.

Gix felt the power grow and spread. It wasn't the corrupt taint of Nurgle, which he had at least had one last weapon to combat it with. It was something other, but just as terrible. Something he was ignorant of. All he was doing now was delaying it.

Then the chunk of rubble vanished. Why would the accursed devote power to removing it? Possibilities swirled though Gix's mind. Either it needed the symbols unobscured or it needed the space itself open. And he had little time to experiment or choose.

If it was the symbols, then it was probably too late the way the power was building. Destroying the symbols of control might matter, but that would matter to the now dead magus, not to the Imperium. So the other was a better bet.

"Bury the Circle!" he yelled. He reached out telekinetically for rubble.

Pater took aim and fired his Psycannon to blow away the last of the columns, and telekinetically hefted them over the circle.

The annoyance and anger of the creature grew as the circle was steadily blocked, Vonrilyental, lacking telekinesis, simply concentrated on shooting the crumbling ceiling above the circle, as Lena and the remaining Men of Iron joined in in the heroic... rubble throwing excersise.

Tendrils of darkness coalesced from the ground, forming something, but they were too frequently disrupted by hurled rubble to become anything more concrete. It appared that Gix's guess had indeed been correct.

Jolan unleased psychic flame on the tendrils of darkness. "All we are doing is buying time. We need more drastic measures." He raised his plasma pistol and blasted away chunks of the ceiling. "Manifesting here costs it energy. We've got to bury it and keep it buried until the summoning power dissapates. We need to bring the whole cathedral down."

Pater blasted a few places he deemed critical for the cathedral's structural integrity and then ripped the ceiling down with his mind.

"Should we call in a bombardment?" He asked.

The cathedral let out a collosall rumble, as the high vaulted ceiling began to implode and collapse, raining masonry down on all those in the knave. "Nice though that would be," Vonrilyental shouted, "I don't think any of the ships are in position. Someone get on the vox and try and contact them.

"Do you have any artillery in that arbities outpost?"

"Antivehicle weapons," Gix replied. "The is an enclosed hive." He thought for a moment and then something clicked as he looked for support beams to drop. "They have heavy demolition charges. We can try to drop chunks of the higher levels down on the vault."

"If I may." Pater limped over to the nearest wall and buried a meltabomb in one of the larger fissures running through it. "This should collapse the remaining ceiling, so stand back."

The remaining two Iron Men from those the Lord Inquistor had arrived with scurried back as Vonrilyental and Lena turned, the former throwing his now ammunition-less psycannon into the pile of debris in the circle as he went.

After everyone was out of the blast radius Pater pulled out a remote detonator and pressed the activation rune. The meltabomb went off with a resounding CRACK and the fissures in the wall spread rapidly. Huge portions of the wall caved in, and the ceiling fell, quite literally, like a ton of bricks.

"Well," Pater coughed through the cloud of crumbled rock that had suddenly taken up residence in the room, "That should give us some time."

A loud and inhuman shout of rage echoed from the direction of the circle. A rumbling of rocks being pulverised could be heard.

"Damnit Pater," Lena muttered, "you jinxed it!"

"Crap." Pater fed a new clip into his Psycannon and twirled his Force Staff, energy crackling around it. "I suggest we get the Commissar and his troops in here."

"To what?" snarled Gix. "Die?" He had faced a daemon prince, one which had its powers constrained by possession. He had no faith that the Adraxians could last against one manifesting directly. "We need them to hold of the Chaos trash while we deal with this."

Gix pointed. "There and there. They need to go and with the rest of the damage we should a a full collapse. Let's get everyone back."

Pater resolved to Shut The Fuck Up from now on, and rigged the remaining walls to blow.