The air was far worse than humid, and tiny droplets of viscous liquid hung suspended in the tepid atmosphere like static rain. Three weeks had passed since the rift had opened upon the agri-world of Hubris IV, and Chaos ran rife through what was once a sane and productive planet. Now the landscape itself actually breathed like some monstrous beast, the black column of Death Korps marching across acres of puckered skin and through forests of thick, slime-covered hair.
Veteran Sergeant Mahler knew full well why his superiors had requested to be transferred here. The missions of Chaos epitomized weakness, especially those that revered this particular god, and must be eradicated. No matter that they had lost most of their company to starvation and disease. They would bring the Emperor’s grace back to this world.
At a curt command from the front of the column, the Death Korps fanned out into a battle line as doctrine dictated. The armoured support, a resplendent symbol of the Emperor’s might, took up its positions. Imperial pennants and skull-emblazoned banners fluttered in the breeze above rank upon rank of black greatcoats. For a second, all was still.
Without warning, there was a deafening scream, and all hell broke loose.
Countless fleshy mouths were peeling open in the ground ahead. Clambering out of the foul orifices were all manner of monstrosities, a catalogue of perversion and insanity. The lasguns of the Death Korps opened fire, searing into daemon flesh in as perfect a firing drill as displayed on the subterranean rifle ranges of their home planet. Coalescing in the air mere feet ahead, a horned, dripping head leered out from the ether, straining forward to catch the trooper next to Mahler in its distended jaws. Mahler and his squad took out the thing’s eyes, firing pointblank as it came for him, the ghastly apparition dissipating at the last second as his bayonet punctured its bulging forehead.
The tide of atrocity spilling across the ground was closing fast, a gestalt entity of lascivious flesh and gibbering faces. To the right, a troupe of clawed daemon-hags danced and slithered forward, their sensuous bodies writhing obscenely. One of them headed toward Mahler, its grinning features twisting into a foul parody of a woman from his past. Its aura of evil beauty was overpowering. Claws raised, it reared back to strike. Mahler shot it in the mouth.
Shouting praise to the Emperor, the Death Korps blew apart daemon upon daemon, their grotesque forms liquefying and running like quicksilver across the dermal landscape. Many-limbed flesh-scorpions clambered across the bodies of the fallen, their barbed tails stabbing spasmodically into anything that still drew breath. Battle tanks thundered shells into the gaping maw-portals that had vomited forth the Chaos filth, the landscape shuddering in pain with each titanic detonation. Lasguns sliced through unprotected flesh time and time again, the air sizzling with the stench of battle. And yet not one of the Death Korps hesitated in his duty. Mahler expected nothing less.
On the left flank, a flock of daemons wheeled towards them, their long-limbed bipedal steeds carrying screeching riders at shocking speed toward a weakened spot in the Death Korps’ line. Just as Mahler feared they would hit home, the Krieg Death Riders swept over a fleshy ridge, sonorous voices rising above the deafening howling of the daemons in a battlecry of devotion and rage. Hunting lances burst through the flanks of the daemonic cavalry, massive discharges of energy tearing apart the lithe creatures and bowling their riders to the ground. The daemons had the advantage of numbers, and reacted quickly. Contemptuously, one Daemonette pivoted gracefully and snipped off the head of a Krieg steed with a vicious claw, another smashing a Death-Rider from his saddle before sinking its teeth into the face of his mount. But the Death-Riders had earnt their formidable reputation for a reason, their wounded steeds regaining their feet, sparks flying from the damaged machinery implanted in the resilient beasts. The Death Riders plunged back into the melee, fighting with renewed ferocity.
The orgy of carnage seemed only to encourage the remaining daemons. Mahler was shocked to see a gigantic, many armed nightmare burst from the ground in a spray of light and blood, its elongated face bellowing a deafening battlecry. The cry was answered by mass lasfire, a hundred guns spitting defiance at the beast. It strode toward their lines, paying as much heed to the Guardsmen as a grox would to a lashfly. Firing on full auto now, Mahler caught a glimpse of a Leman Russ with a damaged turret speeding forward toward the Greater Daemon on what was obviously a collision course, well away from the battleline. The daemon was inhumanly fast, and smashed one of its claws down into the turret, peeling it open as if it were paper. Its other claw neatly snipped the barrels from the tank’s guns. The thing was on the hull in the blink of an eye, its lithe limbs working fast as it peeled back the armour, intent on feasting on the souls of the guardsmen inside. It pushed its head into the hole torn in the hull, its gurgling laugh running through the psyche of every one of the Death Korps in a contusion of psychic pain. For a moment, time seemed to halt.
With perfect clarity, Mahler saw one of the tank crew turn calmly and discharge his laspistol into the stacked battle cannon shells by the loading breach.
The resultant explosion was cataclysmic, a vast mushroom of noise, light, and dust. It annihilated not only the tank and the Greater Daemon, but slaughtered hundreds of its nearby minions. The remainder were in disarray, howling as the ground buckled and split, lesions appearing in a thousand places.
As one, the Death Korps of Krieg charged.