Free of its fetters, fire surged into the now unbound daemon’s eyes. Hellish claws reached out from the shattered rib cage as it pulled loose.

I will feast upon this world.

Evangeline opened her eyes and uttered the first and last words she would ever speak. A true name…

Khartak-shek-hlad-bahkarn…

The daemon shrieked before a harsh corona of light engulfed it. Hot winds, the stench of ash and blood tainted the air, then was gone, the daemon with it. The banishing spilled outwards like a droplet expanding in a massive pool, beyond the chamber, beyond the convent-bastion walls, across all of Sepulchre IV.

In the chapel, only a smouldering hunk of machine metal remained. The scorched remnants of the engine were lifeless and inert.

Praetor staggered in, bloody but with storm shield in hand.

It was over.

Father Lumeon had roused too and stumbled in behind Tsu’gan. What he saw made him weep.

Evangeline’s aura had almost faded.

‘Her grace is spent. By speaking, she violated the most sacred credo of the Order. Her unique gift is lost.’ The priest was distraught, but glad Evangeline was alive.

Tsu’gan saw it differently. ‘A daemon is banished and the Red Rage has been dealt a severe blow.’

Reports were flooding in through his comm-link. He read them aloud. ‘Their forces are in retreat. The skies are clearing and the blockade lifts.’

Praetor scowled. ‘It will not last. We have only a short opportunity.’

Going to the comm-bead in his ear, he contacted the Implacable with extraction coordinates. Praetor turned to the priest and novitiate. ‘You will ride with us.’

Father Lumeon nodded, holding Evangeline close like a child.

‘Brother-sergeant.’

Praetor took his thunder hammer from Tsu’gan and nodded.

‘A worthy blow.’

Tsu’gan saw the respect in his eyes and made the most of it. With Evangeline’s grace gone, the old anger was returning. He’d been a fool to believe it was anything more than a temporary reprieve.

‘What’s wrong, brother?’

‘Nothing,’ he lied. By the time the sound of the Implacable’s engines were overhead, his inner pain, his rage, had returned.

Prometheus Requiem

PROMETHEUS REQUIEM

The hangar gaped like an open wound in the side of the ship, festering with rust and warp corrosion. It belonged to the Glorion, an ancient vessel from the long-dead Kapp Frontier Wars and was just one in a conglomeration of almost a hundred. Ruined cathedra, mashed together in the violent act of joining, jutted alongside broken spires, shattered domes and the cleaved remains of many-tiered decks. The union of once-disparate vessels was as incongruous as the product of their fusion. Now a single drifting mass, such abominations were commonly referred to as ‘hulks’.