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You back up, your back pressing into the hollow underneath the podium, trying to keep your distance without backing yourself into a corner.
The daemon approached, it's arms latching onto the cables around you. It pushed at the distance between the two of you, the closer it grew to you, the harder it seemed to have to push, and the deeper the inside of your head ached. You felt compressed, like you were shoved into too tight of a space, and every step the daemon took towards you made it worse and worse. The inside of your head was screaming, full of snarling engines and steam and particle runoff.
Daemons could be hurt by... hurt by... scripture! The priests claim the Emperor's word could keep daemons at bay, and banish the wicked. The Omnissiah's, too, you knew this. The Voice had told you. Now would be a good time for it to be true.
Squeezing your eyes shut, you run through your memory and try to recall any scraps of scripture you could. Prayers for strength, chants against fatigue, the simple rites an honorable scribe was supposed to use in polite company. Your lips begin to move, but you know it won't mean anything. Fatigue would not banish a creature from beyond the void, especially one that had come for you specifically.
“Oh might Emperor, protect me from the-"
Your thoughts fuzz and scatter as it approaches further, closing the distance between you to less than an inch, it's body spreading and flattening out as if pressing into something flat and hard between the two of you. Heat beat at your back, no doubt the circuits within the lectern being overtaxed to the breaking point. If the Archenemy didn't kill you or worse, you would be dead from the motive force itself or flame.
<span class="mu-r">Your Strain has increased.</span>
Faced with the possibility, in what might be your last moments, you turned your head, searching for a hint of Korash's metal body through the spasming limbs and nerves, through the wailing echoing in your ears and the thundering screams of cannons echoing in your head.
<span class="mu-i">"Heretek."</span> You hiss.
And then burning pain explodes against the back of your neck.
You barely realize that you've screamed, only realizing that it was you as you ran out of breath and slumped down, your body going limp with the feeling of something pouring against the back of your head and down your neck, eating through your run, thin rivulets running over your sleeves and down your chest, dripping off the front and onto your lap. As it ran, black slag puffed on the surface, cracking and flaking away again as it flowed.
Oxide...?
It was molten brass...
>Oh, Omnissiah, was it all for nothing...?
>You're sorry, Corvus...
>It's going to be okay, I'm with you.
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