Inquisitor Psyker Burns

It was Cherubael.
It was shining so brightly it hurt to behold it, but I could see enough to realise it was wearing the body of one of the Essene s astropaths. Plug sockets still decorated its gleaming flesh, some still trailing wires. All clothing had burned away, but the astropath’s extensive bionic augmentation was clear. The body had no legs, just a dangling assembly of cables and machined connectors where the astropath, like most of Maxilla’s crew, had plugged directly and permanently into a vault socket.
...Heldane and two of the guards ran towards it, the guards shouting prayers against the warp as they opened fire. Heldane drew a force sword from his waist. I felt the backwash as he assaulted the daemonhost with the full force of his psychic powers.
...Behind us, Cherubael giggled hysterically as it torched the guards firing at it. It skimmed down and locked in combat with the furious Heldane.
...Heldane was being driven back across the bridge by the radiant, cackling daemonhost. He was throwing everything he had at Cherubael, and the daemon was just laughing, teeth backlit into silhouette by the light of the warp streaming out of its gaping maw.
Heldane’s robes were beginning to smoulder.
...The marble deck of the bridge cracked and parted underneath Heldane like solid ground split by an earth tremor. One of his feet slipped into the crack and he swayed.
Cherubael snorted with glee and clapped its hands. The deck quaked and the crack closed again, like a vice.
Heldane screamed. He screamed the terrible howl of the damned. He was pinned into the deck by his crushed leg. Cherubael advanced.
Heldane slashed with his sword in terror. The blade melted. The inquisitor’s clothes caught fire. Ablaze from head to foot with green flames, he screamed again. On fire, upright, fixed to the spot, he looked just like a heretic burning at the stake.
Cherubael looked away from his prey, bored with it now it was dying.



"Hereticus", Chapter Eighteen