The flash of lasgun fire tore through the gloom like a knife through cloth, illuminating the forest with an unsettling maroon glow. The crack of the weapons fire was punctuated by screams, both of pain and fear, that danced through the trees like the cries of the damned from the immaterium itself. It was chaos; any sense of unity or organization had disintegrated once the heretics smashed into the Imperial line. The green battalion shattered easily, disintegrating like a corpse shot by a bolter. Some of the men broke, mentally and literally, with troopers chancing the Commissars bolter to flee from the chattering hoard that bore down on them. Trooper Aleksander Krejcik was running but not away from the fight. He made his way through the wood with, a white-knuckle grip on his lasgun as he advanced towards the closest screams. The night hid his movements, the greyish-green of his uniform allowing the thin young man to move unseen by the servants of the ruinous powers who roamed the battlefield. They, too, were searching for the source of the cries, though for more malicious reasons. They swept through the brush in packs, swift and brutal in their movements, their inhuman forms shifting like ghosts in the dark. The crunch of footsteps reached his ears; he wasn't alone. The wiry medic stopped, crouching behind the trunk of a shattered tree as he did, the instincts drilled into him by a childhood poaching game taking hold. He gritted his teeth, eyes searching through the trees for signs of movement. Alek could feel his heart pounding like a drum, his fear making it beat like an animal throwing itself at the bars of its cage. He forced the fear down, taking deep breaths as he did, pushing the swell of emotions that threatened to overwhelm what little courage he possessed. These feelings came bursting from their confines as he saw them. A handful of figures emerged from the darkness before him, the sheen of their weapons and armour glinting slightly in the dim moonlight.

They had been men once, probably, but now their forms were twisted beyond the limits of human physiology. The one in front, the leader perhaps, towered over its followers. Its body seemed stretched, with lanky limbs that turned to vicious-looking talons were the things hands and feet should have been. The heretics' head was angular and slanted, its mouth replaced by a short beak, with terribly jagged fangs jutting from it its boney maw. The others were of similar builds though they were considerably shorter, coming up to the leaders' shoulders. They still stood more than a head taller than Alek. The damned souls before him were clad in a mishmash of uniforms and civilian clothes, the indigo hues of local PDF uniforms clashing with dull browns of industrial gear. One still had on a mining helmet, complete with a ventilator mask crammed over its mutated mouth. The things tubes were disconnected, the dangling hoses leaked a festering black liquid, viscous and fowl. Another held a gruesome-looking weapon that appeared to be a rivet gun, although 'held might not be the right word as it was merged with the flesh of the foul creature's left arm. The sigils of their dark gods adorned almost every surface of their bodies, including their blotchy skin. The horrific emblems bit into the troopers' eyes, their horrible nature tearing at his very soul. One in the rear with a single spiralled horn jutting from its scalp was dragging something that seemed to be a body, much to Aleks horror. It was the body of a guardsman, one of the poor sods he had been trying save most likely, his screams silenced once these creatures found him. The corpse was clad in the same tattered uniform as Alek, though it was of better quality. Well, at least it had been before a set of claws cut its front to ribbons, carving deep wounds across the man's chest. He was an officer, though Alek couldn't see his face from his hiding spot. His wounds had been somewhat treated, though his blood had long since oozed through the gauze that wrapped around his chest, soaking into his tattered tunic. The group of devils chattered incomprehensibly, their beaks spitting out their words in clumps that sounded like an angle grinder touching ceramic. Alek winced at the sound of their foul language, the full force of their chaotic nature setting off every instinct in his brain at once. If he could feel his legs, he probably would have run. They stopped their advance, the lead monster tasting the air with its tongue, which wriggled from its beak like a snake's, before gesturing with a clawed mandible towards a tree stump to the group's left. The one holding the officer dragged the body to the site and dumped its captive by the stump's roots. To Aleks surprise, the man stirred, a spark of life still burning in his ruined body despite his wounds. The wounded fellow slowly propped himself up on an elbow and managed to lean back onto the stump, breathing heavily. His face was familiar, but Alek couldn't place it; the mixture of grime and blood obscured his features too much, and the swollen, broken nose didn't help either. He was mumbling something, his words lost over the distance between them, but to the watching trooper, it seemed very likely it was a prayer. Alek knew he'd be praying if he was in the officer's place. The four traitors stalked towards the man, eerily silent now. Their quarry tried to put on a brave face, though his gut-wrenching terror was clear despite his attempts at false bravado. The tall one crouched before the trembling man, limbs bending unnaturally as he did. Alek couldn't see its face from his position. Still, he knew that if the damned figure got as close to him as it was to the wounded soldier, he would probably shit himself and then run gibbering towards the nearest Commissar to accept his summary execution. The ungainly abomination spoke, its beak garbling out something that sounded suspiciously like High Gothic, though the words were pronounced as if they were being spoken through a vox set that was possessed by a demon. The sound of hawking spit interrupted its speech as the man before it coughed bloody phlegm into its face. The beast paused; its posturing interrupted by the insolence of the dying man before it. It raised a limb to retaliate against the slight, and the officer below braced in preparation for the strike, his body tensing. As the abomination's hand swung down, Alek burst from his hiding spot, bringing his lasgun to bear on the horrific creatures before him. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.