Their demagogue's armour was embellished with burning braziers rising from his suit's reactor pack. Draped across the giant's shoulders was the white and black-striped pelt of some feline, sabre-toothed predator. Chains hung rattling from his ceramited body, black metal icons dangling from them, along with the shrunken heads of the faithless. In his hand he bore a Chaos-consecrated mace and Gdolkin could see a snarling daemon face standing proud of the warrior-mystic's right shoulder plate.

These blasphemies were chanting too, as they strode through the crowd of the devoted faithful, their voices rich and powerful. Scraps of parchment fluttered from where they had been attached to their armour.

These figures exuded evil and power. All within the chamber were cowed by their mere presence: even Iron-Father Gdolkin could feel their malign, dominating influence. It was the power that only an unswerving devotion to one's god could bring, representative of a faith that could bring entire worlds under its sway.

But in the case of these armoured behemoths, and in particular their icon-bearing leader, it was not their faith in the Emperor that gave them such presence, but an unswerving loyalty to the one force that threatened to topple the Imperium and all it stood for, a devotion to the sentient manifestation of all-encompassing evil, the power of Chaos undivided.

For before Gdolkin now were the evangelical foot-soldiers of Chaos in all its myriad forms coalesced as one unstoppable force - almost unstoppable, the Iron-Father had to remind himself - the offspring of the favoured Son of Chaos, the clerics of Colchis, the warriors of the Word. Daemons in human form. Chaos Marines. The Bearers of the Word.

And leading them was their own demagogue of evil, the driving force behind this whole operation -who had no doubt brought all of this about, who had seeded the cult of the Shinarii on this world countless centuries past, all in preparation for this moment - their Dark Apostle.

'Word Bearers,' Gdolkin spat, as if the very name were poison to him.

Seven warriors and their leader, eight in total: the number sacred to the Dark Gods they paid fealty to. The creatures emanated an aura of evil that the loyal brethren of the Iron Hands could feel coming off them in sickening pulsing waves. A miasma of malevolent intent, just a glimmer of the power mat would see the universe overturned.

'Sons of Medusa.’ Gdolkin intoned, 'prepare for battle.'

The Iron-Father hefted his blessed power axe in his right hand and raised the bolt pistol held in his left, casting up prayers to the Omnissiah that the machine spirits of his wargear might serve him well against the servants of Chaos in the battle to come.

Gdolkin felt waves of power emanating from the eight-sided obelisk. He could also sense a sick, oppressive force pulsing within the chamber, no doubt corrupting, insidious warp energy generated by the Shinarii's profane ritual.