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, 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.
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 Burias-Drak'shal leapt on the man as he tried to rise. He lifted the trooper into the air, holding him by the head and the groin, and he brought his hands together sharply. The man was neatly folded, his back cracking sickeningly under the force.
Other possessed Chaos Marines leapt from the rocks above, crashing down through the rain to land amongst the enemy hacking and slaughtering, ripping and rending. Blood sprayed the rocks as the Guardsmen died.
Letting the power of the daemon overcome him, Burias-Drak'shal and his possessed comrades slew until there were no more foes to kill. He stood, chest heaving for a moment before leaping off through the darkness on all fours, scenting other enemies nearby. He howled into the night and felt the rest of his pack spread out to either side of him, to encircle the next gathering of meat.
Heavy bolter fire tore through the Guardsmen, taking down five men in a screaming burst. Their bodies were ripped apart, bolts tearing through armour as if it were made of paper, and punching through the soft flesh beneath. Blood sprayed out, and Boerl swung his head to see a massive armoured shape turning its rapid-firing guns in his direction. It was at least five metres tall and nearly as wide.
'Emperor above,' swore Boerl as fresh shells fed into the twin-linked heavy bolters of the Dreadnought, and it unleashed its barrage of deadly fire. He leapt to the side, rolling as the heavy bolts tore through more of his men, and came to his feet running.
He blasted a Chaos Space Marine in the head with his lasgun as he moved, the shot striking the warrior's helmet, rocking him backwards but failing to pierce the powerful armour. Ignoring the reeling Chaos Space Marine, Boerl charged towards the towering Dreadnought. He reached to his belt and pulled loose a melta bomb as he neared the hellish machine annihilating his men.
