Purge of the Contqual Sub-sector - Final Assault: The gates to the Capitolis had been shut. Their ornate, gilded surfaces still swam with witchlight, flickering out into the darkness of the tunnels in slowly ebbing swirls. With the banishment of the Daemons and the destruction of the remaining enemy troops, the cavernous space before the portal had slumped into darkness once more.The stench of cordite and blood still lay heavy in the air. The cries of the dying and the wounded echoed eerily in the vast spaces, rebounding from the rockcrete walls like the forlorn wails of spectres.Arven Rauth looked up at the immense baroque doors, ignoring the clangs and booms of activity around him. Every instinct within him urged him to break them down and surge on up into the hive spires beyond. That, for the time being, was impossible, even for him.Telach's successful closing of the Warp portals that the Daemons had used had given the Iron Hands the breathing space they needed to regroup. The claves, freed from battling the last of the Daemons, had already stalked back down the length of the tunnels, slaughtering any residual Traitors they came across and corralling the surviving mortals into fresh columns for renewed assault.The respite would only be brief. They gathered their strength again, rounding up those mortals who could still march and giving the Emperor's Mercy to those who could not. The summit was where the nightmares lay.Telach had divined that much, at least -- whatever great evil he had sensed was located there, growing in power with every passing heartbeat. The Chief Librarian sensed the presence of the daemonic, the Neverborn. The Daemons psychically taunted the Librarian with a proscribed name: the fallen Primarch Fulgrim, now lost to the Eye of Terror.The Daemons probably did so to mislead the Iron Hands, or perhaps to taunt them with the truth. Rauth had heard the name as well while battling the horde of Daemons. But in his hearts he knew that it was not a Daemon Primarch that waited for them. If it was, they would have been dead already.As the Iron Hands approached the primary spire of the Capitolis, Telach could sense a malevolent presence that continued to grow. Thousands of souls had been fed to it; the veil between the worlds was growing weaker by the hour. To succeed, the Iron Hands needed the support of Nethata's armoured units, but the treacherous Astra Militarum commander had not answered his summons.The enemy was numerous; they could not kill them quickly enough. Rauth felt fresh frustration boiling within him. The entire campaign had been arranged around the union of forces -- the numerous mortals of the Astra Militarum to soak up the bulk of the enemy's rage, freeing the Iron Hands to strike out at the real danger, the spirits of the Archenemy that no unmodified Human could successfully battle.Rauth felt paralysed, hung between two equally unacceptable options. Part of him burned to crack open the gates that very moment, to tear into the tainted hive spire and burn his way up to the summit, damning the consequences of failure. Another part burned to take vengeance for Nethata's treachery, to drag the mortals to heel and compel them to do their duty.With a heavy heart, Rauth gave the order to withdraw. The Iron Hands would move quickly, back out into the wastes, and take the needed armoured regiments by force. Then they would assault the Capitolis, their numbers restored, and break the spires. They could do it, if they left now. There would be no hesitation, and no restraint.Rauth seethed. For the traitor Lord General Nethata there would be no mercy. No mercy for any of the mortals who had failed the Iron Hands' -- and the Emperor's -- purpose. Everything about this world was weak and perverse -- when the Iron Hands' task was accomplished, Rauth would scour the planet clean of its taint. A thousand standard years hence the fate of Shardenus would echo throughout the Imperium. Men would look to the Iron Hands' actions there and know the price of weakness.At that moment, the Chief Librarian halted his lord clan commander. He sensed something happening at the peak of the primary spire. Something foreboding. Telach felt his mind flood with visions as soon as the explosions broke out.He did not need to let his mindsight roam free -- the images crowded into his waking consciousness in a mad, overlapping rush. All of the Librarians felt it. He could see his three Codiciers – Nedim, Malik, Djeze -- reeling from the sudden deluge of psychic impressions. Even the non-psychic battle-brothers responded.Daemonspoor. Huge, huge daemonspoor. The Chief Librarian indicated that they had run out of time. They had to act now. A Warp rift was opening. A gateway between the realms. The world stood on the edge of damnation. If the Iron Hands did not act now, the world of Shardenus would be transformed into a playground for the daemonic.Just as the Iron Hands were about to stride towards the gates, they received a comm-signal from Commissar-General Slavo Heriat of the 126th Ferik Tactical Regiment, informing them that Lord General Raji Nethata had been relieved of command due to insubordination. The remaining Galamoth and Ferik armoured divisions were heading for the deployments ordered by Rauth and the bombardment of Shardenus Prime would commence immediately.Satisfied, Rauth indicated to Telach to open the gates to the Capitolis. As Telach unbounded the last wards on the great gates, the Iron Hands could hear the howl of daemonic creatures on the far side. The claves responded instantly. They drew blades and slammed magazines into place. Many still carried horrific injuries, and nearly all had sustained damage to their armour plate.Of more than a hundred Space Marines who had entered the tunnels beneath Shardenus Prime, less than seventy remained. They would take the creatures with speed, advancing and pausing for nothing. The Iron Hands had fought in the manner of their Chapter doctrine -- cold, methodical, remorseless. Now the urgency of the task had become fully apparent, as had the scale of the abomination before them.Such straits demanded the casting-off of fetters, the abandonment of control. Only rarely did the sons of Ferrus Manus abandon their meticulous way of war and adopt the ancient rage that lay deep in the gene-heritage of all the Adeptus Astartes.When that happened, there were few forces in the galaxy capable of resisting it: ten thousand Terran years of anger, of rage, of bitterness, all concentrated into a single, machine-augmented storm of vengeance. Now the storm was coming. Now Shardenus would face the wrath of iron.