The fire burned brighter in the growing darkness.
The shells flickered in the thick, inky smoke, which rose and billowed in thick clouds, and the rising heat made it seem as if the cathedral towers were moving.
Yarrick could hear the commander gasping.
"God Emperor, save us!"
the officer pleaded.
Everything seemed to squirm, the remains of the cathedral swung the towers, it reared up like a giant scarab, and then the monster began to move forward.
Alec stared, not blinking, not breathing, not understanding.
He was in a state of paralysis of utter fear.
The sight of the cathedral procession was so horrific that he could only process it on the most instinctive level of consciousness.
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.
Already he 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."
Alec whispered, his tongue was soft and dry, and his body seemed to be thousands of miles away, slowly accepting his consciousness.
"Let all our cannons fire."
Although his hands were shaking, he spoke as if he believed the action would have some 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 spreading for thousands of miles.
It hit the stones of the street and shattered the wall.
Further away, towers poured down one after another, and the ground shook continuously.
Smoke and dust turned the air into a thick, murky 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, a terrible sense of awe trying to overwhelm him, and if he relaxed his mental restraints even a little, he would stare blankly at the cathedral until it crushed him.
When the cathedral slammed into the city, it seemed to turn the entire world into turbulent waves.
Chimeras moved through the darkness like a stormy ocean, illumination coming from flares and exploding cannonballs.
There are brief flashes of light as fire breaks out of the damaged building, but everything is drowned in greater darkness as the building collapses.
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.
Yaric gave everyone only one order - to attack from the flanks of the cathedral.
He believed he could find a way through this mad maelstrom of war.
The infantry moved in lockstep with the Chimera troop 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 contracted and moving.
The cathedral won't back down, they either destroy it or let it destroy them all.
So he pressed forward, sinking deeper and deeper into the chaos, looking for the opportunity he knew he wouldn't find.
At the same time, the demons also made a comeback. They jumped along the edge of the ruins, rushed in and out, hacking and beating the already unsustainable formation. Sometimes they also attacked frontally in groups, tearing apart the embedded rubble. Hatches and doors of armored units on ridges or pierced by fallen pillars.
There were fewer demons than before, unable to launch coordinated attacks, but Yarrick didn't see their reduced numbers as a victory.
It's just that the other demons have gone elsewhere.
They ran away, leaving the cathedral to its feet, which was their advantage.
Despair roared at Alec from all sides of the darkness.
And he yelled back.
He will fight to the death, and will never despair as long as he is filled with rage.
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 was a Black Mass going on in the cathedral, moving, pounding, tearing apart like a hill in the smoke.
Shells from the artillery position hit the broken towers and the spine of the roof. Although the shells blasted holes in the stone walls, the monster was stronger than the fortress parapets after its transformation.
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 that missed made the City of Light one step closer to hell.
All living humans can feel a dark and powerful emotion in the tingling of their skin and the smell that permeates the air.
anger.
True, 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 seemed 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 glass and steel, a picture of red, purple and gold, made up of hundreds of lens-shaped panes in a large circle.
It is a sublime work of art, symbolizing the eternal vigilance of the God-Emperor.
Now, however, it was a uniform dark purple, a sombre, 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 exuded an obsessive hunger, twitching from side to side, seeking satisfaction that could never be found.
So the cathedral's hunger only makes itself angrier.
"Get away!"
Alex, who was looking at the cathedral in a 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 [Shuquge], the tracks rotated in the gravel, and then got stuck, and could only stagger forward.
Vehicles behind also rushed out from the falling rocks.
One was buried, with more soldiers dead inside, while others huddled on the right side of the Chimera, finding 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 below the monster's head were the cathedral's columns, which were leaning toward the north.
The monster noticed something.
Yarrick thought its eyes were fixed on a point on the ground.
He glanced in that direction and saw only a silver-gray blur and flickers 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 Yarrick off the hatch.
It howled its hunger, then raised its body once more.
