The Talon of Baal angled downwards. The main gate of the foundry was visible now, illuminated by the glow of industry within. It was twenty miles high and ten wide. Its iron doors were open, vomiting forth an endless stream of daemons. They scraped against the basalt ground as they closed, striking comet tails of sparks. The movement was slow, the march of glaciers towards collision. Past the gate, the foundry was a hive of tunnels, clearly too small for the Warhawks. The squadrons of immense gunships made for the terrain immediately before the gate. At the rate the doors were closing, the Blood Angels would have several minutes yet before the way in was barred.

Hellstrike missiles flashed from beneath the wings of the Stormbirds. The hard rain became a sea of fire. Nose- and wing-mounted autocannons opened up, hammering the ground through the spreading fireballs. The squadrons hit with the full complement of their heavy weaponry. It was an assault that would have vaporised a human force. Clouds of dust rose, enveloping the gunships as they dropped planetwards. The downdraughts of their engines whirled the stone fragments into scouring cyclones. The Stormbirds landed on ground blackened by fire, the loading ramps coming down at the same instant that the landing gear made contact. Thousands of Blood Angels disembarked, the sound of ceramite boots on metal a pounding counterpoint to the descending whine of the engines.

The terrain for a few moments was clear of the enemy. The bombardment had melted rock. Clusters of shell craters overlapped. Everywhere Sanguinius looked as he led the way forwards from the gunships, he saw daemons reduced to twitching, hissing pools. Carbonised bodies liquefied as they came apart at a fundamental level, losing their grip on the materium. Desultory blue and violet light, sick with the taint of the warp, flickered over the sludge.

The gunships took off again immediately. Their pilots headed back the way they had come, turning their autocannons on the mass of daemons to the rear, holding them back. Monstrous howls filled the thin air. The daemons understood the strategy being used against them, and were trying to counter it. Sanguinius hoped the Stormbirds would buy him a few more seconds during which he would only have to fight on one front.

The doors continued to close. Sanguinius looked up at them slowly scraping their way along the ground. Their edges, unnaturally straight, the tops invisible in the far heights, were less than five hundred yards apart now. The narrowing gap had slowed the rush of daemons to the battlefield, though the baying horde that ran and leapt and crawled and danced towards the Blood Angels was large enough. In the mass was a terrible plenty of forms. The monsters were things of disease and excess and wrath and unceasing change. Reality frayed at the edges of the daemon army, unravelled by their presence and their numbers.