Abaddon slammed his sword forwards. All his strength and all his skill focused in the blow. It struck the guandao. Sheets of sparks flashed out. Jubal flinched back, the flow of his strikes shattered as force jolted through his weapon and up his arms. Abaddon activated the field of his power fist and slammed it forwards, palm open. The lightning-wreathed fingers closed on the guandao with a flash of light. Jubal whirled back but Abaddon had already read the movement. His sword-thrust struck Jubal in the gut and cut upwards, sawing through armour, flesh and bone.

Blood poured into the air, glistening, burning in the sword’s power field. Jubal’s arms swung, still bearing his broken weapon. Abaddon stepped back, pulling the sword free and kicking the corpse off his blade. And the Lord of Summer Lightning tumbled away, limbs suddenly slack, blood venting in spheres into the all-but-vanished air.

Abaddon stood for a second, hearing his own breath inside his helm, watching the warrior he had killed.

Then the sound rose up through the deck, vibrating through his armour.

Abaddon’s awareness snapped back, sharp and bright. Light was building in the front of one of the assault rams embedded in the deck. Abaddon had a stretching, momentary perception of the chamber before him, of the bolts and beams of energy reaching between the surviving White Scars and the Sons of Horus. The corpses already spinning through the air. The flicker of detonations out in the void beyond. And the light of the beam of heat building, ripping through the deck beneath his feet as the assault ram fired its magna-melta. For the narrowest sliver of an instant the deck plating seemed to contain it, glowing through red to white. Then the moment passed.

Heat and molten metal exploded outwards. The melta-beam sliced through the deck towards Abaddon. He felt the deck pitch as it began to crumple like parchment in a furnace. He was still moving, but these moments were slow, the last grains falling in an hourglass.

The molten beam struck an invisible wall. Frost exploded to steam as it spread across the torn deck. The sound of screaming voices filled Abaddon’s ears, shrieking and pleading. Shadows spiralled around him. He could smell burning parchment and incense.

Zardu Layak stepped to Abaddon’s side. His hand was raised. A device burned on his palm.

+Move…+ said Layak’s voice in Abaddon’s mind. Layak stood for another second, the hemisphere of shadow holding back the blast. Then Layak closed his hand. The shield of shadows and the melta-beam vanished. Stillness filled the second. Then Layak opened his hand and the fire leapt out, like light trapped in a shuttered lamp. The assault ram exploded. Half of the deck vanished in a flash of white heat.

A moment later the gunfire ceased.