Pulling his arms out and splaying his legs suddenly, he slowed his descent fractionally and spun
himself expertly in the air. The grav-chute engaged, barely five metres above the ground, and his
descent dropped in an instant to a safe speed.
His hellpistol was already in his hand, and Boerl rolled expertly as he hit the wet ground, rising
to one knee and blasting the over-charged laspistol into the back of a towering, power armoured
figure. With a flick of his hand, he nudged the release button on his bulky grav-chute, and it dropped
to the ground behind him. His storm troopers landed around him, rolling smoothly to their feet, and
began laying down a blanket of fire with their hell-guns. Super-heated air hissed as Sergeant Langer
unleashed the power of his meltagun, the white-hot blast scything through the ceramite armour of
another enemy.
The other Guard units would be pushing up at the enemy from below, just entering range as the
drop-troopers landed. They were well drilled, and he knew that the timing would be perfect. The
micro-bead in his ear confirmed this expectation and he made his commands, short and clipped, as
he ordered the platoons to converge. The enemy were strong, but they were vastly outnumbered.
The Elysians would have the position within the hour.
He was leading one contingent of the 72nd storm troopers, the other two arms of the elite
regiment landing at the other main targets.
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Tearing the respirator mask from his face, it retracted automatically into the chest unit of his
carapace armour. “For the Emperor and the 72nd!” he bellowed, his powerful voice carrying over
the frantic sound of battle.
He drew his power sword in one swift movement as a huge, dark-red armoured warrior lashed
out at him with a screaming chainaxe, and he raised his blade to block the swing. The unholy
strength behind the blow was immense and he was knocked backwards even as his humming
weapon carved into the axe, sparks and shearing metal screaming as chain teeth were ripped apart.
The massive brute raised its heavy foot surprisingly fast and kicked Boerl squarely in the chest.
He was knocked back once again, stumbling over the rocky ground. It felt as though a track had
hit him, all the breath knocked from his body. The Chaos Marine loomed over him, savouring the
kill. He threw his sparking chainaxe to the ground and raised his bolt pistol to execute the colonel. A
blast of las-fire struck his knee joint and Boerl heard a deep, rambling growl of anger as the Chaos
Marine’s leg gave out beneath him. Swinging his bolt pistol around, the traitor fired and a storm
trooper was killed instantly as the bolt-round exploded in his chest cavity.
His sacrifice was not completely in vain, however, for it allowed the colonel a moment to gather
himself, and he surged forwards, slashing his shimmering blade across the warrior’s chest, cutting
through ceramite easily and scoring a deep wound.
The blow would have killed any lesser man, but the Chaos Marine was Astartes, and he grabbed
Boerl around the throat, crushing the life out of him. Frantically, he thrust with his power sword, the
blade entering the warrior’s gut, sliding easily through his body and emerging from his back. Still
the warrior continued to fight, and Boerl began to see stars before his eyes. He managed to raise his
hellpistol, pushing it into the Chaos Marine’s neck, slipping it between armour plates, and he fired
once, twice. Hot blood spurted from the wound, spraying Boerl’s face, his skin burning.
The grip around his neck slackened, and he kicked back from the massive warrior, who even on
his knees was the same height as the colonel. Still the warrior was not dead, and he raised his bolt
pistol. Gathering as much strength as he could muster, Boerl swung his power sword into the
warrior’s armoured head, the humming blade embedding deep in his skull. At last the warrior fell,
the power sword slipping easily from the wound, blood spitting as it boiled on the superheated
blade.
Las-fire erupted as the other Guardsmen arrived, lending the storm troopers additional weight of
fire. There was a roar of daemonic fury, and Boerl saw a Guardsman lifted five metres into the air
by a pair of immense, mechanical claws before being ripped in half and hurled into the darkness.
His eyes widened as he took in the mass of the hellish thing.
It was a massive, eight-legged machine. No, not truly a machine, he realised with horror as he
saw the fleshy torso that erupted from the body of the beast. Four times the size of a man, its black
skin covered in glowing, blasphemous runes, the beast seemed to blend into the armoured machine
that dwarfed it. The metal plates on the infernal thing rippled like muscle, and blood hissed from
wounds scored on its armoured hide.
It stepped forwards, its eight metal limbs ripping free from chains that bound it to rune-encrusted
stone blocks. Black-clad figures recoiled from the thing, and several of them were instantly killed as
it impaled their bodies on spiked claws that unfolded from its legs. Flames belched from its weapon
units, engulfing a group of Guardsmen who screamed in agony as the flesh dissolved from their
bones.
“Langer!” roared Boerl. “Take that thing out!”
The Guardsman at his side blasted another searing beam of death with his meltagun and nodded
to his colonel.
“Storm troopers, with me!” shouted Boerl, and with Langer at his side, he charged towards the
towering daemonic war engine, blasting at Chaos Marines that moved to intercept them. Several of
the storm troopers were hacked to the ground by sweeping blows from the massive warriors, and
others were torn to shreds by bolter fire. Langer ducked beneath a swipe from a Chaos Space
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Marine’s barbed, short blade, and Boerl carved his power sword through the warrior’s leg as he
barrelled past, neatly severing the limb at the thigh. Still the warrior did not drop its weapons,
despite the horrendous wound, and it fired as it fell, bolt-rounds thudding into the storm trooper
beside Boerl, exploding his chest.
A shot smacked into Langer’s leg and he screamed in pain as he fell, his leg shattered. A power
armoured foot slammed down onto his neck, silencing him instantly, and another running storm
trooper was felled by the Chaos Marine’s swinging forearm, his neck cracking audibly. Boerl
stumbled, a fortunate accident that saved his life as self-propelled bolts screamed just over his head.
He fell to his knees before the monster, and a burst of lasgun fire smashed it backwards. Boerl rose
from the ground, impaling the Chaos Marine through the neck with his humming blade. The stink of
the monster was staggering, and he gagged as he ripped the power sword free.
Dropping his hellpistol and sheathing his blade, Boerl swept up the meltagun from Langer’s
lifeless hands and scrambled to his feet, continuing his advance towards the towering war machine
that was killing his men in droves.
Its back was to him. He raised the powerful weapon, aiming towards the beast’s horned head.
Wires sprouted from the back of its blasphemous cranium. He squeezed the trigger. The searing,
white-hot beam of super-heated energy screamed towards the target, but as if alerted by some
daemonic prescience, the creature merely swung its head to one side and the blast passed harmlessly
by.
An explosion detonated behind Colonel Boerl and he was thrown through the air, arms and legs
flailing. He crashed to the wet ground, still clutching the melta gun, and grazed one of the war
engine’s spider-like legs. Pain ripped through him as his shoulder was sliced open by the sharp
blades positioned on the daemonic machine’s leg. Oblivious to him, it took another step, and Boerl
found himself directly beneath the massive thing, lying flat on his back as hissing blood-oil dripped
down upon him.
Without hesitation he swung the meltagun and shouted wordlessly as he fired it straight into the
underbelly of the mechanical beast. The searing beam tore up through the creature, and a splash of
hot liquid washed over the colonel, burning his skin and hissing on his armour.
The daemon engine roared horribly and its legs began to buckle. Scrambling frantically, Boerl
pushed himself from beneath the monster before it fell. With the roaring, sucking sound of air filling
a vacuum, the daemon essence of the machine vacated its host, and Boerl felt himself reel, his head
spinning. A blast of energy knocked him from his feet, and all the Guardsmen within a radius of
twenty metres of the departing daemon spirit were thrown to the ground. The Chaos Space Marines
were buffeted, but retained their feet, and they fired into the prone Elysians, executing them
mercilessly with head shots.
Colonel Boerl was spared this fate as a platoon of Elysians swept into the area, las-fire pounding
into the Chaos Marines. It took dozens of shots before any of the traitors fell, and they exacted a
heavy toll on the Guardsmen, killing more than ten for each one of their own that succumbed to the
weight of fire.
“Facing heavy resistance,” came Captain Laron’s voice through Boerl’s micro-bead. The captain
had led one of the other assaults, targeting an area some five kilometres away.
“No shit,” he muttered as he picked himself up from the ground, retrieving a lasgun from a
fallen Elysian and firing it into the Chaos Space Marines.
Burias rose from his position and moved swiftly across the rocky ground, running low and fast. He
covered the open ground quickly and dropped behind a group of boulders.
Pausing for a moment, he looked out through the darkness that was as clear as day to his eyes.
Rain and wind whipped at him, but he didn’t care. The other members of his team were all but
invisible, even to his eyes, as they moved through the night. They were spread wide and were
closing on their prey swiftly. They had fanned out in a wide arc, heading away from the enemy,
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racing through ravines and massive cracks in the mountainous terrain before swinging back around
to encircle the foe.
This was the kind of warfare that Burias lived for, and he excelled at it. He had built a fierce
reputation amongst the Host for his hunting and stealth missions, and the Coryphaus would often
utilise his particular talents to sow terror and throw the enemy into disarray while the warlord led
the main attacking force into the heart of the enemy’s battle force.
Burias scrambled on all fours over the rain-slick boulders and ran into a tight ravine that rose up
on either side. Water was flowing down through the ravine. He moved swiftly and quietly despite
the bulk of his power armour, leaping lightly from rock to rock and stepping easily over cracks that
dropped hundreds of metres beneath him.
The walls of the ravine dropped away in front of him suddenly, exposing a massive drop, and
without hesitation Burias leapt, clearing the five metre expanse with ease, landing smoothly and
continuing his kilometre-eating pace. His mental map of the area told him that they were close. He
heard the heavy thump of mortars and picked up his pace, snarling.
He scrambled up a steep, near vertical, rain-slick incline without pause and leapt from the top to
a nearby boulder, and from there to another. Up and down the broken, steep ground he traversed,
leaping and rolling, always in motion. The mortars thumped again, closer this time, and he leapt
onto a steep wall of rock, pulling himself swiftly up. The cliff-face angled beyond vertical, a
dangerous overhang with a drop of hundreds of metres. With a snarl, he kicked off the rock face,
lunging for a handhold near the lip of the rock. He grabbed it one-handed and hung there for a
moment before he secured another handhold and hauled himself over the edge.
Burias paused, crouching for a moment, scenting the air. The rain dulled his senses somewhat,
but the taste of meat in the air was strong. Then he was moving again, running along a thin ridge of
rock barely two hand spans wide. The drop on one side must have been almost a thousands metres,
but he traversed it at a full run before dropping behind some boulders. Glancing down, he grinned
and looked back the way he had come, seeing the dark shapes of several of his brethren racing
swiftly across the rocks. The thud of mortars was right beneath him.
He leapt from his position out over the drop, landing on a ledge on the other side. He waited for
a few breaths, and then launched himself over the edge. He landed behind some large rocks and
waited for the heavy weapons to fire once more. As they did, he rose from his position and ghosted
up behind the Guardsmen, who were still oblivious to their imminent demise and were quickly
reloading the six powerful mortars set on the rocky ground.
Grabbing the first Guardsman from behind by his helmeted head, Burias pulled him violently
backwards, ramming his massive knifeblade into the base of his neck. The blade, easily the length of
a man’s forearm, severed the spinal cord and continued up into the brain. Burias hurled him away.
The other Guardsmen gaped in horror at the red-clad devil in their midst, even as Burias leapt
amongst them. He ripped his blade across the throat of one and plunged it into the neck of another
with the return, backhand motion.
Another Word Bearer loomed up behind the group, and a further Guardsman died as a bony,
bladed arm was rammed into his back. The daemon within that warrior-brother had already surged
to the fore, Burias saw, as the possessed Word Bearer ripped the fallen Guardsman’s throat out with
a tusk-filled, gaping wide maw.
Feeling Drak’shal begin to surface as the daemon responded to the presence of its kin, a jolt of
daemonic power and adrenaline shot through Burias’s body. He snarled and leapt at the remaining
Guardsmen, who had recovered themselves enough to have drawn laspistols, at least those that were
not already scrabbling over rocks in a vain attempt to escape.
Las-fire streaked past Burias’s head, singeing the skin, and he grabbed the offender’s hand,
crushing bones as he turned the pistol away from him. Pulling sharply forwards, he ripped the man’s
shoulder from its socket and drove his blade up into the man’s stomach, twisting it mercilessly.
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A blast of las-fire struck him from behind and Burias turned, hurling the body of the man he had
just gutted into the shooter. The power of the daemon within rose screaming to the surface and
