Chapter 316: Catastrophe
In the increasingly dense darkness, the flames burned even brighter.
The shells flickered in the thick, ink-like smoke, which continued to rise and billow in the thick clouds. The rising heat made it seem as if the cathedral towers were moving.
Arik could hear the commander gasping.
“God Emperor, save us!”
the officer pleaded.
Everything seemed to squirm, the remains of the cathedral swung those tall towers, it stood upright like a giant scarab, and then the monster began to move forward.
Arrick stared, not blinking, not breathing, not understanding.
He was in a state of paralysis of extreme fear.
The sight of the cathedral procession was so terrifying that he could only rely on the most instinctive level of consciousness to deal with it.
Something is moving and must be stopped.
His thoughts were immune to any deeper influences and he consciously stopped himself from thinking any further.
If he faces the truth, terror will destroy him.
He already felt his rationality slipping away.
“Political commissar?”
The Chimera's commander was asking for orders, he needed them desperately, needed the illusion that someone knew what to do.
“Cannon.”
Arik whispered, his tongue was soft and dry, and his body seemed to be thousands of miles away, slowly accepting his consciousness.
“Let all our artillery fire.”
Although his hands were shaking, he spoke as if he believed this action would have any effect. .
The artillery began to bombard like crazy, and the remains of the church poured down the mountain with the sound of landslides.
It was a wave of rocks, continuous and flowing for thousands of miles.
It hit the stones of the street and shattered the wall.
Farther away, towers poured down one after another, and the ground kept shaking.
Smoke and dust turned the air into a thick, turbid mass.
Yarrick coughed and spat, wiped the grit from his eyes and tried to look forward, even though he could barely see anything.
He forced himself to focus on what needed to be done, the terrible sense of awe trying to overwhelm him, and if he relaxed his mental restraint even a little, he would stare blankly at the cathedral until It crushes itself.
When the cathedral slammed into the city, it seemed that the whole world became turbulent.
The Chimera moved through the darkness like a stormy ocean, illumination coming from flares and exploding cannonballs.
As the fire breaks out of the damaged building, there are brief flashes of light, but when the building collapses, everything is submerged in greater darkness.
The streets were clogged with gravel, with gaps where buildings had once been, and the commander pulled the Chimera onto any road he could find.
Yarrick gave everyone only one order - to attack from the flanks of the cathedral.
He believed he could find a way through this mad whirlpool of war.
The infantry advanced hand in hand with the Chimera personnel carriers, but his troops were already dying under the rain of rubble. , large pieces of rubble, pillars and walls weighing several tons caused serious damage to the convoy and the infantry.
He kept his troops shrinking and moving.
The cathedral won't back down, they either destroy it or let it destroy them all.
So he kept moving forward, sinking deeper and deeper into the chaos, looking for the opportunity he knew he couldn't find.
At the same time, the demons also made a comeback. They jumped along the edges of the ruins, rushed in and out, hacking and beating the already unsustainable formation, and sometimes attacked head-on in groups. , tearing open hatches and doors of armored units embedded in ridges of rubble or pierced by fallen pillars.
There are fewer demons than before and cannot launch coordinated attacks, but Yarrick does not feel that their reduced number is a victory.
It's just that the other demons have gone elsewhere.
They ran away and left the Cathedral standing, which was their advantage.
Despair roared at Alec from all sides of darkness.
And he yelled back.
He will fight to the death, and as long as he is filled with rage, he will never despair. The team was approaching the north side of the church. Yaric had no illusions about using heavy explosive bombs to knock down this behemoth. A frontal attack would be tantamount to suicide.
He could only hold on to the vague hope of distracting it enough to help the Space Marines.
He will risk everything to fight to the end - for all the living and dead men of the 4337th Infantry Regiment.
There is a black mass going on in the cathedral. It is like a hill moving, impacting and tearing apart in the smoke.
The shells from the artillery position hit the broken towers and the spine of the roof. Although the shells blew holes in the stone walls, the monster was stronger than the fortress walls after its transformation. high.
The stone sculpture hides the monster's body, which is denser and stronger than before.
The impact of the shells only angered it.
And those who missed it made the City of Light one step closer to hell.
All living beings can feel a dark and powerful emotion in the tingling of their skin and the smell that permeates the air.
Angry.
Yes, but more than that.
Hunger, desire, like an intense ecstasy.
The cathedral roared. Every door is a mouth, and behind every mouth is a throat.
The ancient cathedral seems to have its own choir, its voices united in a song of madness, hatred and war.
Horrible music echoed in everyone's chest.
The sound was so loud that it almost shook the bones into dust.
In the darkness, the only constant source of light was the monster's eyes.
Except for its eyes, the entire cathedral was shrouded in darkness.
The cathedral’s rose-tinted glass window is a 50-meter-wide masterpiece of stained fiberglass, a picture of red, purple and gold made up of hundreds of lens-shaped panes large circle.
This is a sublime work of art, symbolizing the eternal vigilance of the God-Emperor.
Now, however, it was a uniform dark purple, a somber, shimmering pulse in the darkness.
Its gaze appears to be level, but if one looks into its eyes, it's difficult to look away.
It exudes an obsessive hunger, twitching from side to side, looking for satisfaction that can never be found.
Thus, the Cathedral’s hunger only makes it angrier.
“Get away!”
Arik, who was looking at the cathedral in trance, was suddenly awakened by a shaking. The Chimera turned sharply to the right and almost hit a wall.
The next second, the wall suddenly tilted forward.
The Chimera's engine roared, and the tracks rotated in the gravel, and then got stuck, and could only stagger forward.
The vehicles behind also rushed out from the falling rocks.
One was buried, with more soldiers dead inside, and others huddled on the right side of the Chimera, taking some cover as debris bounced off the roof.
In some dark places, groups of cultists let out their ecstatic cheers and lit bonfires.
There is no obstacle ahead.
The cathedral had leveled the entire surrounding neighborhood, and a third of the way down from the monster's head were the cathedral's columns, which were leaning toward the north.
The monster noticed something.
Yarrick thought its eyes were staring at a point on the ground.
He glanced in that direction and saw only a silvery gray blurred figure and flashes of fire.
There is no doubt that that is the salvation granted to them by the God Emperor.
The Astral Knights are there.
Then, the cathedral crashed down with a loud bang, almost knocking Alex off the hatch.
It howled its hunger, then raised its body once more.
(End of this chapter)