13th Black Crusade - The Fall of Kasr Kraf: When the Kriegan Gates came down, the defence of Cadia fell upon the shoulders of the Kasrkin. Creed had kept three Kasrkin regiments in reserve throughout the fighting, husbanded for a desperate hour such as this. Now he sent them to hold the line. Lasguns flared. The ruined Kriegan barbican vanished beneath the acrid discharge of cannon shells. The leading edge of the Hounds of Abaddon vanished, torn apart by the greatest single volley yet seen on Cadia Secundus.Yet the Hounds were undismayed by their losses -- indeed, the slaughter lent them new fervour. The survivors struck the massed line of bayonets like a red wind, clawing at the wall of armoured flesh without thought for their own lives. Urkanthos led them, each swipe of his claws snatching a squad into Khorne's bloody embrace. With every foe that fell, the Daemon Prince felt the Blood God's blessings blossom. His armour-fused flesh thickened until it was harder than adamantium. As blood slicked across his wounds, they scabbed and closed. Urkanthos looked upon the massed ranks of Kasrkin and saw not a foe to be bested, but a banquet, an offering in the making to the only true God of Bloodshed.The Kasrkin battled on beneath the ruin of Kasr Kraf's gates, but they did not fight alone. Creed's barked orders echoed from Vox-casters set across the fortress walls, sending ever more men into the meatgrinder at the gates. Conscripts of the 201st Cadian Regiment fought and died alongside the grizzled veterans of the 9th Cadian. Regiments from Mordia and Vostroya entered the slaughter, fighting for a world not their own, as was so often the duty of the Astra Militarum.But numbers alone could not win out against the Hounds' daemon-spawned might. Worse, Urkanthos had reinforcements of his own. Slavering daemons emerged from the pooling blood, then sprang forth to further slick the stones. Maddened Cultists, ebon-clad Black Legionaries, hell-wrought behemoths -- they stormed across the ruined gates, seizing the opportunity to slaughter, and to perhaps catch the restless eyes of the Dark Gods.The Kasrkin of the 2nd Cadian perished where they stood. Not a man amongst them gave ground. Others were not so valorous. The discipline of the 33rd Cadian shattered when their colonel was torn apart by Raptors. Wavering hearts turned callow. Like a dam giving way before storm waters, the 33rd broke and ran. With them went all hopes of holding the gateway, and their cowardly example sapped the valour from their comrades as surely as a daemon's roar. The trickle of the 33rd's rout became a flood as panic spread. Regimental colours were abandoned and weapons cast down. What had once been a bastion of defiance had split asunder, and Urkanthos' victory lay within his taloned grasp.Even as the heart of Kasr Kraf wavered, old perils were renewed. Beyond the eastern wall, Baroness Vardus' Knights fought a losing duel with the surviving Titans of the Legio Vulcanum. Though the God-machines could no longer draw upon Princeps Tiron's direction, their firepower greatly outstripped that at the command of the Nobles of House Raven.Vardus was no fool -- indeed, she'd slain men in duels for even hinting such was true -- and commanded a fighting retreat. Thus far, it had served her well, costing her only four brother Nobles in exchange for one Traitor Reaver destroyed, and another crippled. Yet a fighting retreat required ground to retreat to, and the Knights of House Raven were rapidly running out of room to manoeuvre. As the weary baroness ordered yet another withdrawal, her lance-mate disintegrated in an eruption of superheated light. Hurried interrogation of her synapse-web confirmed Vardus' greatest fear -- Vessel of Damnation had rejoined the fray.Further south, knee-deep in the bodies of his foes, Marshal Amalrich experienced an uncharacteristic moment of doubt. Foes still offered their lives up to the Black Templars' positions, but no longer in the numbers that had graced previous days. Gazing north, Amalrich recognised the storm gathering over Kasr Kraf's Kriegan Gates. At last, the Marshal acknowledged what had been obvious to his peers from the first -- that the Black Templars' strength would have been better employed upon the walls of the fortress than at the Martyr's Rampart. Even generations after the fact, the stubbornness of Rogal Dorn still haunted his inheritors. But perhaps there was yet time to unmake the error. One of the Cruxis Crusade's Thunderhawks had been destroyed during the opening bombardment, but the other endured, untouched in a subterranean hangar. Swallowing the last of his pride, Amalrich gave orders to abandon the Martyr's Rampart.At Kasr Kraf, the Hounds of Abaddon slaked their blades and thirsts upon the routing Guardsmen. Urkanthos bellowed with delight. He had been given one task, and one task alone: breach the fortress and destroy the machine that held the Will of Eternity's fury in abeyance. But now the Scourgemaster saw no reason to stop at such half-measures. Proud Cadia had broken. Its defenders trampled one another in their eagerness to flee his coming! He, Urkanthos, would do what Abaddon never had. He would shatter the last resolve of the Fortress World. The rewards of triumph would be his, and not the Warmaster of Chaos'.A volley seared the air, its fury hot enough for the Daemon Prince to feel through his calloused skin. Where moments before there had been only a fleeing rabble, now the Hounds of Abaddon faced a manned aegis line, formed bayonets, and the unwavering ranks of the Cadian 8th Regiment.Cadia stands! The lone voice, obdurate as the stones of Kasr Kraf, somehow carried across the tumult of battle. Other voices took up the battle-cry, the ranks of the once desperate thickening around their standards. Cadia stands! The third chorus was lost beneath the defiant roar of Battle Cannons and the dying screams of daemons. Newborn defiance rippled across the muster field as the soldiers of the Astra Militarum found anew their sundered courage. At the epicentre, Jarran Kell held aloft the colours of the Cadian 8th. At his side, his implacable expression giving no clue to the doubt in his heart, the Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed bellowed his mantra once more: Cadia stands!Urkanthos' assault, grown overconfident in slaughter, burst against the breakwater of the Cadian 8th. The Hounds of Abaddon bore the brunt, torn to scraps by roiling cannon-fire. Raptors took to the air, seeking to pluck Creed from his command as they had the erstwhile colonel of the 33rd. Vox-amplifiers wailing, they ripped deep into Creed's platoon. But where the 33rd had broken and fled, the veterans of the 8th closed ranks. Scores perished before a bayonet rammed into the final Raptor's primary heart, but Creed was not amongst them. Kell's sleeve was crimson with blood, little of it his own, and dead at his feet lay the Raptor who'd come closest to laying low his beloved general.The battle for the muster field stalled, both sides yet with numbers unbound to hurl into the battle, but neither able to gain traction over the foe. But the advantage at last lay again with the defenders, for Creed fought like a man whose hour had at last come. He never once laid hand on pistol nor blade. Instead, he wielded his soldiers as his weapon, striking hard for a weakness when it presented, and drawing back in the face of overwhelming odds. Hundreds, thousands of lives he spent in those desperate hours, though never carelessly. He bought time with the blood of his Shock Troopers -- not in the hope that help would arrive, for Creed had long since abandoned such fancies, but because every moment of defiance was now a prize without price, a wound to Abaddon's pride. Cadia stood, it was true, but only because Creed stood with it.Around the fortress, Creed's allies lent what aid they could. Korahael's dwindled 4th Company fought beside the Ironwolves in the muster field's eastern extent and, though neither party would ever acknowledge as much, each was the salvation of the other on many occasions. The Astartes of other Chapters, their Battle-Brothers lost to the Cadian wars, set aside rivalries, forming a single demi-company of every colour and hue. The Sisters of Our Martyred Lady marshalled before the command bastion, their holy flames the bane of many a daemon, their righteous presence instilling fresh valour in the Conscripts of the 111th Cadian, deployed immediately to their fore.But the greatest triumph in that hour belonged to Marshal Amalrich's Black Templars. Their Thunderhawk, hull smouldering and crippled engines belching smoke, ploughed into the muster field, disgorging the vengeful warriors of the Cruxis Crusade into the heart of the heretical foe. Each blow struck by a Son of Dorn that day was one of penance as much as fury, and was all the mightier for it.Urkanthos' dreams of glorious victory withered in the face of that defiance, and his thoughts again turned to his orders. Destroy the null-array, and every drop of the defenders' valour would be for naught, burned away by the unstoppable energies of the Blackstone Fortress. Gathering the remnants of the Hounds of Abaddon to his side, Urkanthos carved a path for the command bastion and the prize within.Creed marked the Daemon Prince's assault, but could do little to counter it, for it coincided with the arrival of a new threat. An armoured column, the Traitor Baneblade Vicanthrus at its head, ground its way over the dead and dying about the Kriegan Gates. The thunder-crack of Demolisher Cannons echoed around the crumbling bastions. Creed's leading ranks disintegrated under the bombardment. Voxes crackled, sergeants bellowed orders and the defenders' pattern of fire shifted to engage Vicanthrus.The Whiteshield Conscripts of the 111th were little match for Urkanthos' retinue of damned, but they held the line to the last. Yet even when they were overcome, the Daemon Prince's route remained blocked, this time by the ardent Battle-Sisters of Our Martyred Lady.Urkanthos hurled himself into the Sisters' ranks, exulting at each drop of martyr's blood to fleck his claws. Bolter-fire pattered off his carapace, and even the incandescent fury of Multi-Meltas were but a dull warmth upon his skin. Behind him came his last remaining Hounds. Of a dark brethren once numbering in the hundreds, now only a score remained. Lacking their master's protections, the Chaos Space Marines died hard, but die they did. It mattered not. Their purpose had only ever been to bring their master to his target. Before the last black heart stilled its motion, Urkanthos reached the command bastion's Egressium Gate.But one last obstacle remained. A prayer upon their lips, the Sisters Genevieve and Eleanor led a host of Seraphim to bar Urkanthos' path. Bellowing with laughter, the Daemon Prince struck his assailants from the air, dashing their bodies to the ground as one might scatter a swarm of insects. Pain flared in Urkanthos' mutated chest. Again Genevieve struck, her blessed blade blazing with light as it clove the beast's cursed flesh.Urkanthos staggered away, talons raised to shield against the Canoness' strike. An exultant Genevieve pursued, blade flashing. But in her zeal, the Canoness was deceived. The Daemon Prince was not cowed, but awaiting opportunity. As Genevieve struck again, Urkanthos ripped the blade from her grip and closed a taloned hand about her throat. Seeing her sister's danger, Eleanor lunged at the beast, her frenzied flurry hacking deep into his armoured skin, and all but severing a tattered wing. It was not enough. Genevieve's spine splintered under her captor's unholy strength, her last act to headbutt the brute between his burning eyes. Loosing a desolate cry, Eleanor lunged with all her strength, the point of her sword lodging beside Urkanthos' black heart. The Daemon Prince bellowed and smote her, lifeless, to the ground. Then he stalked away, the Power Sword still trapped within his flesh.In the muster field, Marshal Amalrich prepared another assault against the looming Vicanthrus. One had already failed, hurled back by the enfilading fire of the Baneblade's Havoc escorts, but as Vicanthrus' turret swung to bear on the aegis lines of the Cadian 8th, the Black Templars gathered themselves for another attempt.Vicanthrus' turret locked into position, but didn't fire. The super-heavy tank froze in position like some great metal beast locked in the throes of confusion. Then, at an unseen command, its weapons blazed to life. Not at the Black Templars of the Cruxis Crusade. Not at the Cadian 8th. But at its own compatriots. The warriors of the Black Legion never stood a chance. Vicanthrus' sponson-mounted weaponry shredded the Havocs who moments before had preserved it from Amalrich's fury. The turret swung about onto a new bearing, the heavy shells ripping apart an Alpha Legion Predator spearhead as if their hulls were forged of glass.For a heartbeat, neither side knew what to make of the sudden betrayal. None had marked the cloaked figure who ducked briefly from the shadow of a ruined bastion, a flood of silvery nanomachines flowing from his hand and into the crannies of Vicanthrus' armour. That heartbeat was all Creed required. At his bellow, the heart of the 8th marched for the breached command bastion. The slaughtered Whiteshields and Battle-Sisters told a gruesome tale, and one boding ill for those who had fought so hard for Cadia.Inside the command bastion, Urkanthos let the mangled body of Magos Klarn slide from his claws. A half-maniple of Skitarii had barred his way to this chamber, but not one of the Omnissiah-spawned weapons had hurt him so much as the blades of the twin Canonesses. Eleanor's sword still protruded from his flesh, the hilt burning like fire whenever the Daemon Prince touched it. But at least his goal was now within sight.Beyond the edge of the buckled walkway, half a mile straight down into the bedrock of Cadia Secundus, the null-array's capacitors arced and crackled. Destroy them, and Cadia would be at the mercy of the Will of Eternity once more. Sweeping back his wings, Urkanthos plunged from the walkway, picking up speed as Cadia's gravity embraced him."Double time! faster, damn you, faster!" Creed bellowed the words to be heard over the madness of battle.Obedient as ever, the veterans of the 8th Cadian Regiment picked up their pace, their march breaking into a run. Creed told himself there was still time, still the opportunity to catch the daemonic monstrosity before it undid alltheir efforts.Hospitallers parted before Creed's command platoon, their faces uncharacteristically tight. The Order ofOur Martyred Lady had fought fit to shame a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, but had paid a steep toll in dead andwounded. At least they'd fared better than the 111th Whiteshields, Creed allowed.The Order still endured in other parts of the fortress -- other reaches of the galaxy, even -- but the Whiteshields were no more. Would there be anyone to remember their sacrifce once Kasr Kraf fell?The leading squads reached the wreckage of the Egressium Gate. Weapons ready, they fled inside. "Can we even kill the beast that did this?" Lieutenant Kormachen muttered.Creed turned. The aide's face was pale, his eyes darting warily across the carnage. It took a dozen battles to make a veteran. Maybe more. How many had Kormachen seen? How many more would any of them see? Whatever happened, Cadia's time was ending. That much was clear.Kell aimed a kick at the corpse of a tusked brute. "If it bleeds, it can die." He pointed at the broken body of a Canoness, drawing attention to the thick ichor spattered across her armour. "They made it bleed. So can we."The ground trembled. The ululating wail of tortured air rippled outwards from the Egressium Gate.Creed was still processing the meaning of the sound when his bodyguard, Sergeant Jarran Kell, shoved him clear. He struck the ground beside the slain Canoness just as the doorway exploded in fire. Kell crunched beside him, singed but hale. Kormachen wasn’t so fortunate. He barely had time to scream before the fireball engulfed him. The air flled with the sizzlepop of burning ﬂesh, and a brackish meaty stench. Other aides threw themselves clear, uniforms smouldering as the ﬂames took hold.Kell hauled himself upright and offered Creed his hand. "Your luck holds, Lord Castellan."Accepting Kell's hand, Creed rose. "You're my luck, Sergeant."Creed looked at the blackened doorway. A vast crack split the outer face of the command bastion -- testament to the force of the explosion. The sounds of battle seemed muted now, as if they belonged to another world. Three squads had preceded them into the command bunker. They were surely dead. Not that it mattered. Not if the explosion meant what he thought. He found himself staring skyward without meaning to, searching for the angry cyclopean eye he knew he'd not see. Would there be any warning? Was there any point fighting on?He shook the thought angrily away. There was always a point. That was a Cadian's duty. His purpose. Defance in the face of the inevitable. His stomach knotted with rising anger. He might fail in his charge to defend the Cadian Gate, but he'd never stop fighting. Never."Give the order, sergeant. We're going back to the muster feld. The 8th stands. Cadia stands."A surviving aide, as pale as Kormachen had been moments before, pressed a manuscript to his lips -- a talisman. Quitepossibly an heirloom. Many officers had them. "The Emperor protects."Creed rounded on him, unable to contain his wrath. He dashed the scrip from the officer's hand, then ripped the aide's pistol from its holster."The Emperor?" Creed bellowed. "He's light years away!" He thrust the pistol into the officer's chest, forcing him back a step. "You want salvation, lad, you forge it with this! Not with prayer. Not with scripture. A soldier makes his own fate. He doesn't plead for miracles!"The officer gaped open-mouthed. Not at Creed, but at something in the sky behind him, far above the command bastion. Kell was looking too, a grim smile upon his face. Clenching a fist to calm himself, Creed spun around and stared upward. He didn't see it at first, but when his eyes at last settled upon it, he was amazed they had ever failed to do so."Well, I'll be damned," said Creed. Then he cracked his first smile in ten standard years.