Donatos War - The Mournful Angel: While the battle between the Adrastapolian Loyalists and the remnants of House Chimaeros still raged, High King Danial and the Knight of Ashes were forcing an entry into the immense building housing the Plasma Generators that usually powered Ironpeak. Adepts of the Dark Mechanicum had altered the machines to maximise their energy output.Taking control of a mob of Donatosian rebels, Alicia Kar Manticos was pursuing the retreating Varakh'Lorr. The Dark Apostle's warriors -- now almost exclusively Chaos Space Marines -- were mounting a tenacious defence of every corridor, hall and balcony. Their bolters tore Alicia's merely human troops to shreds. If she had not been using her sorcerous powers to enhance her soldiers' aggression levels and strip away their fear, they would already have broken. Her puppets threw themselves at the Word Bearers in fury, dragging the towering transhuman warriors down beneath their number even as the Word Bearers caved their skulls in with the stocks of their Bolters or dismembered them with their bare hands. In truth the mortal rebels were nothing but a meatshield to absorb incoming fire, leaving the witch to incinerate them with Warp-tainted fire or crush them with waves of telekinetic energy.Alicia could feel the buildup of energy emanating from the Beacon of Ascension, a sorcerous ritual so powerful it would draw the gaze of the Chaos Gods themselves onto Donatos Primus. From the sorcerous lore she had been studying all her life, the consort knew that Varakh'Lorr would be considerably weakened by this ordeal. Where her lover had always believed in a purely military solution to their problem, Alicia had no such limitation. With the prophecy of That Which Dwells In Darkness exposed as a lie, Alicia intended to murder Varakh'Lorr and claim his prize for herself, demanding from the gods what the daemon failed to deliver.Suddenly, Alicia felt an acute pain in her breast, the harmonic bond linking her to Gerraint's soul broken. As her lover's soul entered the Warp, tears welled in her eyes and the strength faded from her limbs. The spell keeping the Donatosian rebels fearless broke and they quickly fled the scene of carnage they saw before them. Grief almost overcame her, urging her to take her own life, to join her lover in the Warp, seek out his soul and bring him back with her, but she resisted the Warp's siren's call.Hate radiated from her heart, psychotic fury filled her veins, an unquenchable fire that filled her with new strength. Her powers enhanced by her rage, Alicia Kar Manticos marched on, her eyes burning with blue fire. The energies of the Warp stormed around her, tearing at her torn garments and letting her raven-black hair fly as if caught in a powerful storm. Where she had held the rail of an ornamental balcony, the metal ran like wax and the carved wood burned with blue flames. Three fleeing mortal Renegades crossed her path, and their bodies were instantly transformed into crystal as they met her gaze.Inertia carried them over the railing and they shattered on the ground below with the din of shattering glass. Behind the three cowards a pair of Word Bearers pushed through the doorway. Bolts flew at her but crashed against an invisible shield of protective energy. Alicia raised her hand and the bolts' detonations grew into a purple firestorm, trails of living fire running over the Word Bearers as if they were snakes.These trails of sorcerous fire reached the Space Marines' eyes-lenses and punched through with animal intent, the warriors inside screaming as their flesh was consumed by sudden change, their bodies fusing with their armour. Their bodies swelled as daemons claimed their souls and turned them into Possessed, great horns growing from their helmets, fang-rimmed mouths opening on their greaves and remolding their hands into long claws or chitinous blades. Pleased with the new level of power she had achieved, Alicia sent her two creations to hunt down their former brothers while she ventured deeper into the generatorium. Varakh'Lorr was not far away.Alicia found the Dark Apostle where she had expected him, at a desecrated shrine to the Machine God, leading his supplicants into the fell ritual that was powering the Beacon. At his feet rested the last required sacrifice, the corpse of his faithful Terminator-armoured bodyguard -- the closest ally whose life had to be taken to power his final ascension.The transformation was already well underway. Varakh'Lorr now towered above the assembled supplicants, easily twice the size of his former bodyguard. Great bat-shaped wings had emerged from his back and his oversized fist still held on to his Accursed Crozius. Bellowing words in the Dark Tongue, leading his cultists in song, Varakh'Lorr was moments away from his apotheosis. Thousands upon thousands of spirits whirled around the Beacon, souls ready to be released into the Warp to satiate the hunger of the Chaos Gods. Alicia felt their power and without hesitation opened herself up to it. Rising on a pillar of azure flame, Alicia fashioned the power into rays of energy she let fly at the chorus below her. Dozens of them were touched by the flames of change, transforming into hideous Chaos Spawn, statues of solid gold or clouds of crystalline insects.Crying out in panic, the chorus dispersed. Some raised side-arms and opened fire, others gathered their own meager psychic powers to retaliate, but most fled the scene. With commendable discipline, Varakh'Lorr's remaining Word Bearers opened fire as well. Some of them were obviously Havocs, wielding baroque Lascannons and Flamers. Shielded by a swirling ball of fire, Alicia mostly ignored them. The beam of a Lascannon broke through her psychic shield and she drew yet more power of the Beacon inside of her, transforming two Bolts that were aimed for her heart into light and mist.Molding the stolen power into small orbs of fire, she let them fly and wherever they landed they detonated with the fury of an artillery barrage. Two Word Bearers were killed, the others hurrying into cover. Wrestling with the Dark Apostle over the control of the Beacon, Alicia Kar Manticos gorged herself upon the souls of a million sacrifices until her body threatened to burst. She felt a presence and readied herself for the final act.With a thunderous boom, the wall behind the Dark Apostle exploded inwards. Falling debris and metallic shrapnel decimated the cultists that had not yet fled, their blood mixing with the blood of the sacrifices on the shrine's flagstones, their soul siphoned into the Beacon. Two Knights emerged into the great hall, Oath of Flame and Sword of Heroes. Realigning his Ion Shield to the front, the High King barely caught a Lascannon beam before vaporising the Havoc wielding the heavy weapon and two of his comrades with a blast of his Thermal Cannon.Another Lascannon-armed Havoc fired at him, but his Ion Shield held yet again. The closest Word Bearers threw Krak Grenades at Oath’s legs, the powerful explosives denting his leg armour but not doing any real damage. Danial's sight fell upon the winged monster that obviously was the enemy’s leader. Raising his Thermal Cannon he willed it to fire. His aim was true but at the last moment the energy of the shot dissipated against some shield of eldritch provenance.Next to Danial, the Knight of Ashes leveled his own Thermal Cannon at his mother while clipping Chaos Cultists with Heavy Stubber fire. Blue fire shone through her mouth and eyes, a demonic scowl marring her once beautiful face. The horror of this sight made Luk hesitate."They killed your father," Alicia said to her son, "and yet you still fight for them? For their Corpse-God?" she asked. Her feeble attempts to sway Luk's loyalty bought her the time she needed to mouth a spell, a stream of purple fire suddenly shooting from her. Recognising it as the terrible spell that had unraveled Grandmarshal Tan Minotos, Luk thrust his gauntlet forward. The microwave impellers of his Thermal Cannon roared to life, heating the surrounding air to plasma. The power of a sun battled against Alicia's sorcerous blast, technology defying the arcane.The pillar of coruscating light pushed the eldritch flames back, the sorceress frantically raising a telekinetic shield. The power of Luk's blast hit Alicia's bubble of protection with its full might. The kinetic force was such that Alicia was blasted through the wall behind her. Luk wanted to go after her, to make sure he had slain her, but a new foe had entered the arena.From a deep pit hidden between two towering piles of machinery a new monster arose. The thing was massive, easily the size of Danial's or Luk's mount. The mountain of flesh looked as if it had been stitched together from other bodies, an unholy fusion of muscle and sinew, its torso roughly humanoid in shape. Its belly featured a gigantic fanged maw which could easily have fit the front of a Sacristan's Land Crawler within it. Its skin was covered in slime and other body-fluids and it had several flailing appendages. Metallic spikes protruded from its back and a gigantic morning star was hanging at its side, its face a grotesque imitation of a cherub mask.This was Varakh'Lorr's unholiest creation, his Mournful Angel, the unholy fusion of the Obliterator techno-virus and the bodies of Donatos' astropathic choir. As some of their Knight's higher systems began to fail and static overwhelmed their Vox, Luk Kar Chimaeros and Danial Tan Draconis had no doubt that they had found what they had come here to destroy, the source of the Chaos scrap-code.Hundreds of tons of flesh surged forwards, hitting Oath of Flame with the might of a mag-lev train at full speed. Danial's Knight's servo-engines strained against the brute force of the monster. Sensing that he was losing, Danial stepped back, giving ground before the monster as Luk hurried to his side. Danial revved his Reaper Chainsword and swung it at the monster's flank. The roaring blade bit deep, ropey strings of gore splattering in all direction. A deafening scream exited from the monster's maw, its spikes blazing with electrical energy as the scream of pain was converted into binaric scrap-code.Even with Polluxis' data-wards still in place, the scrap-code insinuated itself deep into Oath’s systems, shutting off its Thermal Cannon and causing the Vox-link to crash. Sparks blew from several of the consoles in Danial's cockpit, and Luk's Knight was similarly afflicted. A heavy blow rang on Oath’s carapace, denting the armour inwards and sending rivets flying through the closed confines of the cockpit. The Mournful Angel was drawing its human-like fist for another punch, each finger a mesh of human limbs.The blow never landed. Sword of Heroes' Thermal Cannon fired and burned the gigantic fist to ashes. The monster cried out again in pain. This time Danial's cockpit lights flickered out as Oath of Flame’s Plasma Reactor momentarily shut down. The reboot of its generator reactivated Danial's Thermal Cannon and he joined Luk in blasting the monster. Withering in pain, the Mournful Angel rolled over, crushing the last few Word Bearers beneath its bulk, revealing several tentacles and other appendages that had been grafted onto its back. The tentacles hammered at Sword of Heroes as Luk desperately tried to sever some of the limbs with his Reaper Chainsword. For every one they cut, two more seemed to rear out from the thing's bulk. The High King and the Knight of Ashes quickly realised that they were not dealing enough damage to slay it.Daring to look back at the sorcerous ritual, Danial saw that the smaller daemon -- the winged one -- was now levitating at the centre of the Beacon, feeding on the souls trapped in its sorcerous flames, its attention clearly elsewhere. This gave the High King an idea. Shooting the Angel with his Heavy Stubber, Danial began to retreat, a movement quickly imitated by Luk in Sword of Heroes. The monster lurched forward, its limbs flailing, the Beacon of Ascendancy now at their back.The monster drew itself up to its full height, the metallic spikes of its spine scraping the hall's ceiling, intending to crush the Imperial Knights beneath its belly. As the mountain of flesh came crashing down, the two Knights moved sideways and unleashed the full fury of their Thermal Cannons. This time the twin beams were directed at the monster's midriff, turning flesh, blood, unnatural organs and even bone to superheated steam. Like a falling tree, the monster's bulk crashed between the two Knights, right into the burning beacon. Black lightning exploded from the thing's spine, mixing with the Beacon's energies and corrupting them. With a death scream of scrapcode, the huge Plasma Reactors of the surrounding generatorium complex were snuffed out. At the same time Oath of Flame and Sword of Heroes also shut down, leaving Danial and Luk in complete darkness, with even the familiar whispers of their Thrones Mechanicum absent.Climbing out of his Throne, Danial fumbled for the emergency reactivation panel, pumping the hydraulic handle several times, while half-expecting a gigantic fist to deliver the deathblow. None came. When the hatch finally opened with a hiss of compressed air, the light of a single auto-lumen almost blinded him. Following the instructions of the panel's interior, Danial began chanting the Mantra of Blessed Awakening as he located and folded out the manual igniter handles. With the Mantra completed, Danial recited a short-prayer to the Machine God before turning both igniter handles clockwise at the same moment.After a series of clanks and grinding noises, the lights flickered and died twice before Oath of Flame’s reactor roared back to life. With his pict-screen back online, Danial Draconis could see the monster's corpse still being consumed by the sacrificial pyre, the scrapcode beast obviously slain. Danial's eyes opened wide as he witnessed the Dark Apostle's fate: from the body of the beast, a ghost with a cherub-like countenance joined the throng surrounding the almost ascended Varakh'Lorr.Before his very eyes, the Dark Apostle's bulk began to shrink as a tide of similar ghosts erupted from the twisted body of the fallen scrap-code beast and poisoned the Beacon's energies. Screaming its hatred for the Dark Apostle, one ghost threw itself at Varakh'Lorr, ripping a bloody hole in both armour and flash. Like a school of carnivorous fish finally attacking their prey, the horde of ghosts launched itself at their former tormentor, ripping him apart. The Dark Apostle extended one of its clawed hands towards the Beacon as if beseeching his gods for help, but the Gods of Chaos had abandoned him, fickle as always in the face of failure. With unnatural swiftness, the great pyre waned and extinguished itself, the corpse of the Dark Apostle coming to rest on top of that of his slain bodyguard.