Watcher's of the Thone Bloodthirster fight - Aleya perspective

The shaitainn was a brute. Its essence was so powerful and so profound that even
our combined aura of suppression was only partially effective. At times, as we
fought it, I even got brief flashes of what it must have seemed like to those with
souls – a living furnace, a fire devil, a bull-horned beast that burned and burned
and never went out.
But the rest of the time was bad enough. It was foetid, like they all were – the
clotting aroma of slops and putrescence. It was a thing of death, steeped in the
corpses of those it had ended, and the aroma clung to it like plague-musk. I was
taken aback by the size of it, the sheer bulk of the thing, and our charges felt
little more than suicidal.
That was before I saw the way the others fought, though. It pains me to say this,
because I shared a mutual, unavoidable loathing with the knights of Titan and
still find Valerian’s endless piety utterly maddening, but they were magnificent. I
came to realise that my observations in the practice cages on the Enduring
Abundance fell far short of the mark – in true combat, they were breathtaking.
Alcuin’s squad were far faster than I would have thought possible, and the way
they combined into a tight-edged force multiplier gave us killing potential far
beyond our paltry numbers. They were everything I had been schooled to admire
in the Space Marines – implacable, focused, absurdly violent.
Perhaps Valerian outstripped them by a fraction, but then there was only one of
him, and in that armour he was always destined to catch the eye. I still remember
seeing him leap up at the shaitainn’s chest and plant that ridiculous spear right
into its heart. I could have laughed out loud at the audacity of it. Not only that,
but he succeeded in getting out again, trailed by the black strands of the
creature’s ghastly innards. Perhaps only we Sisters could see just how badly he’d
wounded it then, for we didn’t have to cope with the phantom flames and the
sham-roar of fractured psy-voices.
Of course, they would not have done as well without us. Four null-maidens
acting in concert can generate a formidable dampening aura, and it crushed the
spirit of the shedim. They became slower, they became weaker, and even their
blood-mad lord was stripped of its monstrous braggadocio. We did our part with
the blade, too. We hurt it, and that felt good. Every time my sword sliced a
chunk of grey skin from the shaitainn’s greasy back my heart rejoiced. I was
never going back to my flamer, I resolved then. This was far more rewarding.
Once Valerian broke the axe shaft I thought, dangerously, that we might have a
chance. Reva was still alive and fighting beside me, and we rushed forwards,
beating even Alcuin to the chance to land a blow.
Things moved too quickly after that. I saw Valerian take that pile-driver punch
direct to his torso, and thought he must surely have been obliterated by it – the
daemon’s fist was almost half as big as he was, and he should have been
smashed into pieces. Instead, he just spun away, battered and broken but still
grasping his blade and very much alive.
It wouldn’t stay that way. The shaitainn was maddened by the mauling of its
weapon and raged after him, raising its axe-stump two-handed. The thing could
move incredibly fast when it wanted, almost as if it could slip between timestates. In his half-crushed condition, there was no chance of Valerian evading the
coming lunge.
By then Reva and I were running, acting on instinct, throwing ourselves after
the huge creature in a frantic attempt to haul it back. I pounced, knowing I was
too far away. I was nowhere close to damaging it seriously, but its trailing leg
remained in range, and I somehow got my greatblade at the right angle and
drove it down and down through the creature’s straining thews, parting the pale
grey strands of slickened muscle until its movement ripped the hilt from my
gauntlets.
That wouldn’t kill it, of course. It wasn’t even the greatest of the wounds we
had already given it, but it was pushed into its weight-bearing leg, just above its
huge ankle bone, and even for a warp-forged horror, that was a bad place to take
a skewer. I extended all my null-energy into that strike, willing the warp-spun
flesh to part and implode. My blade did the rest, blazing with blue flame as it
burned within the wound.
The entire limb twisted and buckled, and the shaitainn missed its target,
slamming the axe-head down a fraction to the right of the prone Valerian and
crashing, overbalanced, to the earth. The shock was massive, smashing the
already blown asphalt and sending clods of it careening. Its mighty head
thumped to the ground, for the first time down at our level, and its wings sagged
into crumpled tangles of tattered leather.
That was all Valerian needed. I saw him sweep up from the wreckage of the
creature’s fall, haul his blade over and spin it in a single movement. Crying out
loud from the pain and exertion, he drove the spear point-first through the
daemon’s throat, powering it with both arms until it almost disappeared into a
mire of burning, bubbling ichor.
Alcuin was only a fraction of a second behind, leaping high before slamming
his daemonhammer into the creature’s ribs, and then the rest caught up. We
forgot ourselves entirely then in that orgy of slaughter, piling into the enormous,
stricken frame as if it were so much meat, knowing that it could still come back
from the most incredible wounds and determined to stop that happening.
At the end, we stood, all of us, drenched in foul fluids, panting hard, dotted
amid the ruins of its cyclopean corpse. Valerian limped towards me, and only
then could I see the damage he’d taken. I marvelled that he could stand at all, let
alone still wield that spear.
‘That was well done, Sister,’ he said, the first time I ever heard him speak. It
was like hearing something out of a devotional vid, the voice of a martyr sent to
comfort the masses, and I instantly found it annoying.
There was no respite. The Neverborn still came at us, leaping over the corpse of
their lord, as hungry as ever to rip out our throats. The sky was lit with the crisscross of las-beams and mortar trails. The daemon army was still enormous, still
assaulting the walls, still raving and bellowing and tearing. The entire Palace
was half obscured by the dust they kicked up, and we were isolated, set on an
island amid that sea of wrath.
And yet I could see that the momentum had shifted. Heavy aircraft had been
launched and were pummelling the ground-locked daemons with punishing
volleys of incendiaries. The Ten Thousand were making ground, driving into the
enemy and encircling the great shaitainn. The air still burned and crackled, the
ground still trembled, but I could see an end to this. Something had happened to
break the daemons’ advance, though even now the matter remained poised.
But we were still alone, and still surrounded.
Back to it, I signed wearily, taking up my blade once more.