The sounds of gunfire and cries of the wounded drifted down the hallway and Katherine broke into a run. "Enemy contact ahead! Move!" She ordered, her red-gold boots thudding on the uneven stone floor. Magdalena's Bane, the holy relic once owned by the Living Saint herself, burst into flames in her hand, as it did when in the presence of daemons. Katherine heard Dinah's voice down the hall, "For the Emperor!". She cursed herself for allowing them to become too spread out. In the process of cleansing each room they passed with sacred fire, the heavy weight of the horrific sights they had borne witness too on their hearts and souls, their discipline had lapsed.
Katherine prayed that Dinah, her Celestians, and the Acolytes hadn't paid the ultimate price for it.
Coming around a corner, she nearly lost her footing as her boot slid through something wet and slippery. Glancing down, Katherine paled to see her feet squelching through the disemboweled entrails of an Acolyte. The poor girl was sitting propped up against the wall, staring in shock down at her own organs spilled across the ground. The other Acolytes were lying dead or grievously wounded. The Canoness' heart sunk as she saw three Celestians with them, their white Vestments power armor splattered in crimson gore. Among them were several of the pink and lavender armored women with the hands of daemonettes, slain by the Celestians.
Raising her eyes from the carnage, she looked down the short section of hall and into a large chamber beyond, lit by flickering firelight. Hands tightly wrapped about the hilt of the flaming blade of Saint Magdalena, Katherine walked into the room, followed closely by the Seraphim and Dominions. The chamber was the size of a small ballroom, a ceiling vaulted high above. The walls were carved with bas-relief images of cavorting daemons and copulating humans…a vast mural of decadent perversity. Wherever the eye landed, one saw sickening sculptures of deviant orgy. In the center of the floor was a six-rayed star lined with candles of scented lavender and pink rose. Lying within were thirty-six shriveled, desiccated, husks of corpses…sacrificial victims in some dark rite.
On the other side of the symbol, stood twelve women, each clad in the same pink and lavender armor. Their hair was wild and upon their faces were expressions of manic cruelty and lascivious lust. Cradled in their arms were strange weapons of throbbing flesh and dark purple carapace, crafted from psychoplasm summoned from the Eye of Terror, shaped by malice, hatred, and twisted desires. Before them was another woman, clad similarly to the others. At her feet was lying Dinah, the Celestian Sister Superior. Her face was contorted in pain, all four arms and legs bent and broken. The woman stood theatrically with one foot on the Celestian's back. In one hand she bore a wickedly barbed blade with a slight curve, the hilt carved in phallic shape. The other held a vicious neural whip of energized brass links. From her back sprouted two broad, leathery wings, flexing outward dramatically. Her face was handsome, with strong bone structure, the irises of her eyes deep violet and glowing with warp-spawned power. Her platinum blonde hair was short and spiked straight up.
"Rebecca?" Katherine whispered, shocked to the core of her being.
"Hi Kathy," Rebecca grinned with an evil satisfaction. "Nice of you to drop by. And you brought gifts." She gestured toward the prone Dinah.
The Canoness shook her head with disbelief, "No Rebecca…not you…not you. Of all of us, I thought you would be the last to ever succumb…"
"Gaius has shown us what we were long ignorant of…what we were too long denied," Rebecca replied, licking her lips.
Katherine's eyes swept over the dozen other sisters standing behind Rebecca, each formerly a sister of the Commandery there on Byzantium. She now understood to where they had disappeared. "How many of you? How many others have turned your backs on righteousness? How many have embraced madness?"
