I nod, turning aside as the heretics raise their boltguns and fire, even as they burn. The rounds are lit with the same searing blue magicks as their eye-lenses. I feel the incredible heat of it as the bolts miss me narrowly, impacting against the column to my left instead, obliterating the centuries-old stone in an instant and showering me with mortar dust and slivers of marble that flake the finish from my armour and cut my face. The wounds are superficial, but the pain is bright and keen. Pure.

I answer with my own bolter, firing three times at the closest of the heretics. The explosive rounds find their homes in its abdomen and its chest, shredding the ancient armour plate. Either wound should be enough to kill, but the heretic does not die. Not until I follow up by cleaving my sword through its neck seal, and separating its head from its body. Only then does it crash to the ground. Even then, it does not bleed. All that the heretic has to offer me are thin wisps of fine, grey dust that blow into the air like candle smoke. It takes Haskia, Joti and Veridia firing their bolters as one to lay the second heretic low. Even then, it still tries to drag its way across the stone towards them until Qi-Oh rams her chainsword down through its head. The heretic’s armour breaks open with a flash of warp light and an infernal scream. Dust blows up in a dense cloud. The air is thick with it. With the cries of my Sisters as they fight all around me.

‘Evangeline.’

Elivia and her Celestians are right beside us in the heart of the melee. Elivia’s bolter is gone, her power sword burned black from use. Her right greave is shattered in a way that means her leg beneath it must be, too. Her Celestians have also suffered. Beatris’ right eye is nothing but a bloodied vacancy, and Radah’s left arm has been torn away at the elbow. Even so, Elivia and her Sisters still match us step for step. Kill for kill.

‘This is what He chose you for,’ Elivia says, as she crashes her blade against one of the heretics. ‘This is why He gave you the mark.’

She catches my eyes as she brings her sword down again, splintering ceramite. Even through the melee and the smoke, I see the tiny flecks of green in her eyes.

‘We will get you close,’ she says. ‘Close enough to kill the witch.’

‘Aye, Canoness,’ I reply.

‘This is why He spared you,’ Elivia says. ‘Remember that.’

She turns away and looks to Liana. The Retributor Superior is dragging a limp, her face cut open to the bone.