Purge of the Contqual Sub-sector - Wrath of Iron: With a cry of "For the Emperor!" Clan Raukaan swept up to the portal into the Capitolis in a tide of darkness, charging into the maelstrom with murder in their eyes, blood on their armour and death kindling on their blades. The Iron Hands ran hard. Despite the weight of many tonnes of full battle-plate, the Astartes' speed and momentum was formidable. The Iron Hands all ran at the same pace, hitting the ground hard with heavy armoured treads.Beyond the gates, the Great Stair snaked away into the preternatural darkness, winding around a core of solid granite. It spiralled upwards, immense and majestic, curling like a massive python about the structural core of the hive spire. That core was gigantic -- over sixty metres in diameter and lined with basalt pillars and mammoth iron bracings. Eyeless angels perched along its width, gazing sightlessly out over the enormous vaults.The Great Stair swept upwards around the core, vanishing into a dark haze as the marble-lined steps wound ever higher. It was surrounded on all sides by a vast gulf of emptiness, breached only by a web of flying buttresses and high arches that spanned it, branching out and forming a sprawling lattice linking the stairway to the rest of the hive. On the far side of the abyss, the vast inner walls of the hive spire stood, shrouded in shadow and smoke.The Warp itself burst out from the walls at all levels. Enormous growths snaked down from overhanging gargoyles, luminous and clutching. Screams echoed down from the high places, bouncing and refracting from twisting structures of living, weeping metal. Blood swilled down the stairs, frothing and boiling as the Iron Hands crashed up through it.Angry, violent lights wheeled and flickered in the vaults above, turning the echoing spaces into psychedelic, hallucinatory nightmares. The Iron Hands powered upwards, sprinting forwards, crashing through resistance with blunt, brutal force, pivoting on heels and bringing weapons into contact with crushing, shuddering violence.They slammed into knots of squealing mutants, cracking them open, hurling them apart and dealing death with savage purity. But mutants were not the worst of the dangers under the arches of the soaring Capitolis.The spire had been steeped in the baleful powers of the Warp, and everything within it sang with hatred, malice and madness. The winding core of the Capitolis had been turned into a maelstrom of spines, hooks, barbs, flails and toxins.As the Iron Hands continued their relentless advance up the Great Stair, Commissar-General Heriat ordered the armoured units now under his command to fire upon the Capitolis. All along the line, a hundred Leman Russ tanks opened up, and the wasteland disappeared in a huge plume of dirty smoke.A fraction of a second later, a vast, rolling boom cracked out, echoing between the distant burning spires. Long trails lanced out through the air, straight as gun-shafts, before slamming into the soaring walls of the Capitolis. The colossal hive towered above them, dwarfing all else and filling the tank crews' viewfinders, but it was already burning.Explosions at the summit had spread, dropping like flaming tears from the distant pinnacles. A massive gouge ran down from the top of the pyramidal structure, still burning at its edges, revealing the innards of the structure within.The spire's defenders -- such as they were -- initially seemed to have been caught off-guard. Many of their massive, wall-mounted cannons had been destroyed in the opening flurry of fire, as if their commanders had been distracted by the cascade of destruction descending from above.Now, though, the Heretics' response had picked up. Lines of cannons on the parapets swung round and down, picking out the exposed formations of Loyalist armour. White beams of las-fire and hammering torrents of Heavy Bolter fire scythed down from the burning ramparts, cracking into static Leman Russ plate and breaking it open.The Capitolis' cannons were huge -- as large as those that had been mounted on the outer perimeter -- and each direct hit utterly destroyed its target. Commissar-General Heriat's forces were exposed, out in the open, hidden only by clouds of toxic matter.A prudent commander would have withdrawn before the carnage overwhelmed him. A prudent commander would have demanded to know why the two Warlord Battle Titans, the only things big enough to take on the spire's enormous guns as equals, were standing immobile out in the wasteland and taking no part in the action. A prudent commander would have done something, anything, to ensure his survival in the face of such withering, deadening fire.But Heriat's task was not to survive. Neither was it to destroy the spire from the outside -- he had nowhere near enough firepower for that. Heriat's task was simple and specific. All his guns were aimed at a small fraction of the Capitolis' vast expanse.His commanders zeroed in on their coordinates with ruthless efficiency, ignoring the havoc wreaked among their ranks and doing nothing to lessen the dreadful impact of returning enemy fire.Chief Librarian Telach sprinted up the stair, flanked by his three Codiciers. Only he knew the full measure of the monsters being birthed in the spire above. If the Warp rift opened, many more abominations would spill through, condemning Shardenus to a living hell of madness.The Lesser Daemons the Iron Hands had fought since entering the tunnels required only trivial sorcery to spin into being. The ones that were coming demanded sacrifices of worlds: they were devourers, the shrivers of souls, the bringers of torment.One of Fulgrim's sons. And he had fought the Iron Hands before.Telach kept running, leaping up several steps at a time. Warp creatures crashed against his psychic shielding, burning away at the touch of the dreadful aegis around him. He had gone faster than the others, using his psychic gifts to propel him. Only Nedim, Malik and Djeze, similarly wreathed in layers     of psychic fire and capable of using their powers to sustain them, had been able to keep up.Telach had blazed a trail up through the high places, using his Warp-summoned powers to speed him onwards. Even he had not been able to outrun the clouds of toxins that had rushed up the central core, sweeping through the ranks of mutants before them and laying them low.Now, with the swarms of Traitor creatures thinned out, every step, every boost, took him a little closer to the conflict that waited.Telach kept going, ever upwards, ever higher, carving a path through the vaults of darkness like a spear of starlight surging up through layers of shadow. The pinnacle of the Capitolis was gone. Whole towers, domes and structures had gone, blasted apart in a storm of incendiary fury. What remained was a blunt, unstable, half-collapsed plateau at the very top of the hive.It was comprised of molten metal and broken pillars, riven with crevasses, still flickering with windswept flame, open to the elements and buffeted by Shardenus' endless, driving ash.Telach spun round, searching for the enemy that he had sensed for so long. His Codiciers pulled themselves free of the wreckage and joined him, their fists crackling with opalescent energies.Then he saw the Warp rift. It must have been enclosed once, hidden inside one of the Capitolis' highest chambers and surrounded by the instruments of heretical ritual. Now those chambers and those instruments were gone, blasted apart in an orgy of fire, and the portal was out in the open, cast upon the uttermost summit of the shattered hive spire.Telach strode up to the portal, feeling its unholy essence radiate across him. Out on the plains below, troops continued to die, and fires continued to rage. His Codiciers followed him, each of them kindling fresh psychic fire from their Force Staffs. The Librarians had the power to destroy the rift. The damnation of Shardenus would be halted.Then, behind him, ten metres away, nearly on the edge of the dizzying drop, a pile of masonry stirred. Telach almost did not turn. His first thought was that it was a Lesser Daemon that had followed them up, one that his acolytes were capable of dealing with. But he did turn. Some note of disquiet made him look away from the rift and over to where the rubble was moving.With an echoing roar, the creature pulled itself free of the wreckage, and uncurled itself. Lightning snapped and fizzed around it, lancing down from the heavens as if drawn by its unholy presence. It was a giant; almost three times the height of a Terminator-clad Space Marine.It was a huge, shambling mess of armour plates, bulbous tumours of weeping flesh and gaudy, vivid swirls of decoration. The monster had once been Human. It had once been like Telach was -- an Angel of Death, a Child of the Emperor.The Daemon looked down on Telach and the Codiciers. It recognised what they were. Its gaze was deranged, out-of-focus. When it smiled, patches of stitched flesh broke away from its skull, bursting free of their sutures.