It bent its long head low to the ground and drew in a breath that sucked the warriors of the Imperium towards its razor-toothed maw. Then it blew out, so hard they were bowled over, and aegis hoods exploded around the heads of a few of the lesser Librarians. They died, consumed by their own power, their souls burning up as hot white stab-fires blazed from their eye sockets. Mucous blasted from Qaramar’s mouth, a mist filled with gobbets of diseased offal, maggots and all manner of foulness. Where it hit armour, metal rotted, and where it melted its way through to flesh, warriors fell. Where it hit stone, it slid and gathered, taking on the shapes of diseased, pot-bellied mortals. All around the cathedral, plaguebearers rose up, already counting their infernal count before they had fully manifested.

Qaramar rose onto its muscular hindlimbs, and spread its membraneless wings wide.

‘Fear me, for I am the rot-drake, the foul catcher, the master of last moments. I am the death of time!’ it said. ‘And I am mighty.’

Qaramar attacked.

The cathedral became a battlefield where men and women struggled to survive. The fog given off by the daemon corroded breathing apparatus, poured down throats and attacked lungs. The enhanced warriors of the Adeptus Astartes and the Adeptus Custodes struggled on, their mighty bodies fighting against the poison, but even their multi-lungs were no guarantee of survival. Several of the Victrix Guard, the cream of Ultramar, fell to Qaramar’s pestilence.

The Sisters of Silence attacked it, blades swinging. Their soulless auras perturbed the existence of the daemon, but it swatted them back, or snapped them up in its massive horse’s maw, sheering them in two between scissor teeth. The Custodians charged in, swinging their guardian spears, but they were swept aside by a swipe of the creature’s wing-limbs, and one of their mighty company died before Guilliman ordered them to disengage.

‘Enough! This beast is beyond you. Fall back, I command you! I will fight it!’ His sword flaring with fire, Guilliman stepped closer. Qaramar swung its heavy head around to face the primarch.

‘You will die. Your bodyguard will die. All things die before Qaramar the Last, the Lifeless, the Never-Living!’

It bounded forwards, the bones of its useless wings clacked against one another. It knocked the Adeptus Custodes aside, crushing one underneath a massive hind claw.

The power of the enemy was immense. Its very presence scrabbled at Guilliman’s soul, threatening to shred the edges and tear pieces away. It roared out a torrent of filth at the primarch; he raised his sword, and its bile evaporated on the blade’s fires.

‘I have slain many like you,’ said Guilliman.

‘There are none like me,’ said Qaramar.

‘There are none like me either.’