Katherine burst out the doors of the convent, running out into the courtyard with Flavia on her heels. The handful of Celestians and Seraphim were assembled in the courtyard, readying their weapons. Katherine charged up the stairs to the top of the wall, where the Lay sisters were kneeling behind the crenelations of the battlements, keeping their heads down. The thick stone of the wall was erupting with the concentrated barrage of weapons fire from outside. Katherine poked her head around the battlements for a quick look…
…and immediately regretted it…
The front of the convent opened onto a public forum surrounded by buildings that catered to the Ecclesiarchy. Behind the columns of those buildings, former sisters of the convent knelt, firing their disgusting, pulsing weapons crafted from psychoplasm from the warp. The corrupted Sororitas taunted the loyal sisters with lewd calls and perverse gestures as they laid down a withering hail of suppressive fire on the defenders. The air over the center of the forum wavered and undulated like a flag in the wind, and the smell of Brimstone filled Katherine's nose. The fabric of reality tore asunder, the licking flames and utter blackness of the Warp beyond. From the gash in time-space fell scores of laughing Daemonettes, writhing masses of shifting flesh that were the Warp spawn, and shrieking, winged Succubi launching themselves into the sky.
"Emperor's Balls…" Katherine breathed, ducking her head back under cover. She raced back down the stairs to the courtyard, shouting, "Fall back! Fall back to the Narthex! We can't hold the walls!" With only two dozen Lay sisters and half that number of Celestians and Seraphim, defending the walls was an impossibility against those numbers.
Eve raced up to her, twin plasma pistols drawn, "Looks like Gaius isn't holding anything back."
"No…he isn't," Katherine replied, her face ashen. "Let's go! Let's go!" She waved the sisters past her and into the thick, sturdy doors of the convent. "Take positions in the side vaults of the main hall. We'll set up a crossfire and turn the Narthex into a kill-box. It will form a choke point we should be able to hold!"
"Hold for how long?" Eve asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Long enough to organize a fighting withdrawal to the Cathedral," Katherine growled as the young Lay sisters filed quickly through the doors, leaving the walls unmanned. "Hopefully we can build a more concentrated defense with the Ecclesiastic forces and hold a smaller front."
"Eyes up!" Eve shouted in warning, raising her pistols to a firing position. High over the walls, six figures in the lavender and pink armor of the Sisters of Slaanesh came gliding down on black, leathery wings. In their hands were wickedly barbed blades and warped bolt pistols, firing down a hail of explosive rounds. Eve could recognize several of them…formerly Seraphim from this very convent, before succumbing to the lures of Slaanesh. Eve's pistols returned fire with brilliant, blue-white pulses of plasma. Two of the traitorous women screamed and plummeted to the ground.
Katherine's Inferno pistol cleared the leather of the holster at the small of her back. Sighting carefully, she pulled the trigger and the beam of scarlet superheat bored through one of the servants of Chaos, killing her instantly. Without hurry, her face deadly calm, she shifted the weapon and fired again, blasting another.
The leader of the ex-Seraphim, descended on Katherine, an ornate black blade raised high over her head. Katherine remembered her face, a sister she had trained with three decades ago on Pentateuch named Naomi. Her once-lovely face was marred now by livid welts from masochistic self-flagellation, and festooned with metal rings and studs. Naomi's tongue lolled from her mouth and wagged suggestively as she came down, the black blade swinging down for Katherine's head. The weapon was a daemon crafted into form, keening like a banshee, lusting for the brilliance of Katherine's pure life force. The Canoness' right hand swept down to the hilt of Magdalena's Bane, but Katherine knew she was too late…the tip of the blade would not have time to clear her scabbard before the Black Blade found her…
