A crack of thunder presaged the opening of a tear in realspace, and a heaving, gelatinous presence poured through, splashing into the broken clock. Long streams of it wrapped themselves around the workings, its touch turning them green and dull with decay even as it bound them together, remaking them and pulling them into a tall, detestable shape.
A black, oily skin formed over the clockwork and broken stone. The daemon rose up, gathering the stuff of the clock and the menhir into itself, and taking on humanoid form. Organs of whirring cogs sank into its chest. Ropey muscle moved under the shining black skin. Where the metal and stone showed in its form, they were corroded: brass and bronze becoming green, fused lumps, and the rock pitting, though it glowed brighter and brighter.
Forearms grew and grew, the fingers becoming long, backward-facing spikes, like the wings of a bat. A short powerful rear pair of legs burst from the back of the mass. Huge shoulders grew in seconds, unnatural bones cracking as they grew at pace.
With a lurching flop, the clock-daemon lurched forwards. For a head, it had the eyeless skull of an equid left long in the forest, green and grey, the honeycomb of its dead marrow showing where the outer layer had failed. It walked hunched over on the knuckles of its elongated fingers, though it had no wing membranes to join them. Indeed, it appeared half finished overall. As it moved its oily surface dulled, becoming leathery, rotting skin. A choking miasma of decay filled the cathedral.
The wind died.
'Back, daemon!' shouted Guilliman. He raised his sword.
'I am Qaramar of the Lost Second,' said a rasping, hideous voice that came from nowhere and everywhere. 'Last Watcher of the Last Moment. Fifth in Nurgle's favour. I cannot be killed. I have seen the end of time. I will be there when the final atomic motion of this hateful realm decays into blessed entropy, and Chaos will be born anew. I am sent here to be your executioner, anathema's get.'
'It's a trap!' yelled Tigurius. He raised his hand, and blazed out a fork of warp lightning.
'Take it down!' yelled Colquan.
All at once, the primarch's party attacked. Bolts hammered into the daemon's unnatural body. Psychic power washed at it.
The daemon marched forwards, its spirit still knitting matter into its false body. The temperature plummeted as it sucked the energy from reality around it. Bullets disappeared like pebbles dropping into water, sending out ripples in the air and nothing more. The thing tossed its head. A stinking mane that looked like rags of seaweed flicked out around its bare skull, and the lightning and fire of the Librarians was turned aside, blasting into the cathedral. It stomped forwards, growing larger as it moved. Now its skin was full of holes, and ribs gleamed beneath; a moment later, it was smooth and supple, untouched by time. As it stalked forwards, like a dragon from ancient legend, it aged and died, aged and died, over and over, though its mismatched skull remained the same throughout and the stink remained, whether its state was flush with youth or ripe with rot.
Qaramar snickered. 'You cannot harm me. I am the end of time. I am the last moment of decay.'
It bent its long head low to the ground and drew in a breath that sucked the warriors of the Imperium towards its razor-toothed maw. Then it blew out, so hard they were bowled over, and aegis hoods exploded around the heads of a few of the lesser Librarians. They died, consumed by their own power, their souls burning up as hot white stab-fires blazed from their eye sockets. Mucous blasted from Qaramar's mouth, a mist filled with gobbets of diseased offal, maggots and all manner of foulness. Where it hit armour, metal rotted, and where it melted its way through to flesh, warriors fell. Where it hit stone, it slid and gathered, taking on the shapes of diseased, pot-bellied mortals. All around the cathedral, plaguebearers rose up, already counting their infernal count before they had fully manifested.
Qaramar rose onto its muscular hindlimbs, and spread its membraneless wings wide.
'Fear me, for I am the rot-drake, the foul catcher, the master of last moments. I am the death of time!' it said. 'And I am mighty.'
Qaramar attacked.
The cathedral became a battlefield where men and women struggled to survive. The fog given off by the daemon corroded breathing apparatus, poured down throats and attacked lungs. The enhanced warriors of the Adeptus Astartes and the Adeptus Custodes struggled on, their mighty bodies fighting against the poison, but even their multi-lungs were no guarantee of survival. Several of the Victrix Guard, the cream of Ultramar, fell to Qaramar's pestilence.
The Sisters of Silence attacked it, blades swinging. Their soulless auras perturbed the existence of the daemon, but it swatted them back, or snapped them up in its massive horse's maw, sheering them in two between scissor teeth. The Custodians charged in, swinging their guardian spears, but they were swept aside by a swipe of the creature's wing-limbs, and one of their mighty company died before Guilliman ordered them to disengage.
'Enough! This beast is beyond you. Fall back, I command you! I will fight it!' His sword flaring with fire, Guilliman stepped closer. Qaramar swung its heavy head around to face the primarch.
'You will die. Your bodyguard will die. All things die before Qaramar the Last, the Lifeless, the Never-Living!'
It bounded forwards, the bones of its useless wings clacked against one another. It knocked the Adeptus Custodes aside, crushing one underneath a massive hind claw.
The power of the enemy was immense. Its very presence scrabbled at Guilliman's soul, threatening to shred the edges and tear pieces away. It roared out a torrent of filth at the primarch; he raised his sword, and its bile evaporated on the blade's fires.
'I have slain many like you,' said Guilliman.
'There are none like me,' said Qaramar.
'There are none like me either.'
Qaramar swung its finger bones like swords, slashing down hard at the primarch. Guilliman parried one hand, dodging the other. The Sword of the Emperor blazed white hot as it connected with the daemon's skin. But though the sword's touch alone was death to most daemons, it was not enough to harm the Last Watcher. Guilliman was forced back by the dragon-thing's onslaught. Custodians leapt to his side, their weapons swinging in perfect synchronicity with one another. They cut it many times, but the wounds closed as Qaramar aged and grew young in constant cycle, and the Custodians were always swept away by vicious sweeps of the thing's wings, leaving Guilliman to battle it alone. As Qaramar fought, the wing fingers trailed shadow that coalesced into ragged skin. A livid growth of flesh crept up from the base of its equid's skull, cladding it in raw, pulsing muscle.
'With every death, I grow stronger,' it said. 'With every soul I grow greater. At the end of time, I hold all the dead in me, and so none are mightier than I.'
'This is not the end of time,' said Guilliman. And he struck.
The Sword of the Emperor swung true, flames rushing from its edge like a banner. Qaramar whipped back its materialising wing too slowly. With crackle of power, the sword cleaved off the tip of Qaramar's littlest elongated finger. Qaramar screeched so loudly part of the cathedral wall tumbled down, crushing Space Marines and daemons alike. The severed digit tip skidded up against a pillar, and boiled away to nothing.
Beneath his helmet, Guilliman smiled with savage triumph. 'This is the Sword of the Emperor, the great foe of Chaos. It has laid low thousands of your kind. You shall be but an addition to the tally.'
Roaring horribly, Qaramar struck down. Guilliman parried one-handed. Though shaken by the impact, he recovered quickly, raising the Hand of Dominion and raking the side of the creature with bolt fire. Rotten skin blew out in showers of gore, and when Qaramar cycled back to his youthful state, the wounds remained.
'Impossible!' it hissed.
'I am the light of the Imperium. The Imperial Regent. I was made by the Emperor, and He watches over me now. I shall be your downfall, daemon, not you mine.'
