Isidor's Atonement

902.M30.

Under the cover of night on Viziaole, Kion, Fifth Company Captain of the Fourth Legion, raised a hand and tapped lightly between his right eyebrow and eye.

Black-green mist poured from the brow of the "Gatekeeper," and within it drifted faces, twisted or formless.

With a creak, a bizarre gate opened.

Whoosh whoosh whoosh!

One alien Evil Spirit after another spread its arms, gliding on wing membranes as they swept through the air, their Stubbers chattering out dark-green bullets.

Amid sharp shrieks, half-illusory, half-solid bullets pierced the Hrud's Hinged Armor and hammered into their bodies.

The dying Hrud let out screams of terror unlike anything before.

The sound made Kion think of the ticking of a final second, or the ultimate exhaustion of the last star.

This was the death scream of time itself.

Amid those dreadful cries, the madness in the Hrud's great black eyes briefly receded. A scarlet gleam of hatred flickered there as their attention shifted away, for the moment, from the direction of the Stasis Device.

The Hrud roared and raised their Plasma Flintlocks, firing green beams hotter than stars.

The plasma beams constantly phase-shifted between realspace and the Warp before lancing into the Evil Spirits.

Bang bang bang...

In a chain of explosions, the Evil Spirits' bodies burst apart.

Within the black-green radiance of ghostly shadows, the Evil Spirits' bodies condensed anew.

Some had lost a left arm, while others had a great hole torn through their abdomen...

The "Gatekeeper" stared at his ghosts. The Hrud's plasma beams were not confined solely to the realm of reality; they possessed some kind of Warp characteristic, making them far more lethal to Evil Spirits than the plasma weapons of the Imperium or the Squats.

But the damage they caused was also limited to the part directly