The Mist
"You've completely drained your 'blue bar,' young lady."
Old Huang's voice echoed in Eileen's mind, laced with helpless exasperation.
"That 'Super Holy Light Purification' was impressive. It also emptied your stamina and willpower."
"Right now, you're a boltgun with an empty magazine. Other than hitting something with the casing, you've got nothing left. For at least ninety minutes, no golden halos. No flashy miracles."
Eileen was set back on her feet by Sicarius. Her legs trembled slightly as she wiped the blood from beneath her nose.
Before she could respond, the world shifted.
The fresh air left behind by her purification was replaced in an instant by a heavy, metallic stench—like rust and rot ground together.
On the horizon, the thin green haze thickened and surged forward unnaturally fast, rolling toward the ruins like a living tide.
"All units, alert! Auspex interference!" Sergeant Varo's voice crackled over the vox. "Thermals are blank! Warp distortion escalating!"
The fog slammed into them.
It wasn't mist.
It was viscous—dense, opaque, green.
Visibility collapsed to less than two meters.
Eileen felt resistance against her ankles, as though wading through liquid glue.
"Consolidate positions!" Sicarius raised his power sword; its disruption field hummed violently against the corruption. "Colquan? Report!"
No reply.
"Astartes, sound off!"
Only static answered. And beneath it—the faint rasping buzz of countless unseen wings.
Eileen spun.
Six meters to her left, Sicarius had been standing moments ago.
Now—
Nothing.
Not vanished visually.
Gone.
She tried running toward where he had been, but distance twisted. Each step felt like running in place while the world shifted around her.
Direction no longer meant anything.
Space itself felt wrong.
A hand seized her shoulder.
"Stay close, Ms. Eileen!"
Varo.
Through the murk she could just make out him, two Ultramarines veterans, and three mortal auxilia clutching lasguns with white knuckles.
The formation had shattered into isolated pockets.
"Something's above us," one veteran muttered.
The buzzing deepened—like an enormous chainblade grinding overhead.
"Contact! High!"
A red las-beam lanced upward, briefly illuminating massive winged silhouettes.
Not angels.
Plague flies.
Each as large as a groundcar—bloated abdomens splitting with rot, compound eyes glowing dull crimson. Spores cascaded from their beating wings like toxic snowfall.
On their backs rode Nurgle daemons clutching corroded spears.
"For the Emperor! Fire!"
The veterans opened up. Bolts and las-blasts tore into one descending beast, shredding a wing joint.
It screamed and plummeted.
The corpse hit like artillery.
Two auxilia were crushed instantly beneath chitin and putrescent bulk. Corrosive ichor exploded outward. The last mortal screamed as his mask dissolved against his face.
Varo's boltgun roared, detonating a daemon rider midair.
But the mist churned again.
Three larger plague flies dove from separate vectors, using the fog for concealment.
They did not aim at Varo.
They aimed at Eileen.
"Their target is the Saint! Protect her!"
A veteran tossed aside his overheated weapon and drew a blade, throwing himself forward to intercept.
Varo moved.
As an Ultramarine, his reaction time was measured in milliseconds. He did not fire—too close to Eileen.
"For Macragge!"
He overcharged his armor's servos and slid laterally, placing himself between her and the diving monstrosity. Chainsword raised. Perfect parry angle calculated.
On a normal battlefield—
It would have worked.
But here, warp corruption rewrote reality.
Deep within the fog, a sorcerous whisper sounded.
"Iron's Lament… Rot."
No lightning.
No spectacle.
Just—
Crack.
Varo felt it instantly.
His armor—ancient, sacred, vacuum-sealed—erupted in clouds of red-brown rust.
Knee joints froze.
Servo linkages disintegrated.
Motor housings collapsed into powder.
Decay was not happening.
It had already happened—and was merely revealed.
His armor locked mid-motion.
The plague fly struck.
Its meter-long stinger avoided the thickest ceramite and punched through the exposed joint beneath his raised arm.
"Ugh—!"
The impact drove him backward, carving trenches in the soil.
But he did not fall.
Even as venom flooded his system, even as his armor seized around him, Varo clamped both hands around the embedded stinger and held fast.
He would not let it reach Eileen.
She stood two meters behind him.
She saw everything.
The blackened Astartes blood.
The stinger buried in flesh.
Time slowed.
Fear clawed at her.
But something hotter burned over it.
In her memory—Sicarius' voice during training:
"Look at the enemy. Not yourself. Not your fear. Look at what you intend to kill."
Her pupils contracted.
She moved.
The plague fly hovered low, abdomen exposed beneath its armored thorax.
Eileen dropped flat and slid forward, small frame turning into an advantage. She darted beneath the monster's body—into its blind spot.
Soft tissue.
Vulnerable.
Disgusting.
Slime splashed across her face. The stench was suffocating.
She didn't blink.
Her hand tightened on her short sword—the weapon whose machine spirit had been calmed and aligned through careful rites.
"Don't touch… anyone I protect!"
She thrust upward with every ounce of strength and training she possessed.
The blade slid in to the hilt.
No resistance.
Then—
The weapon's disruption field ignited.
And the faint residual divine spark clinging to it reacted violently with warp corruption.
Golden arcs erupted inside the daemon-fly's abdomen.
The scream that followed was not merely physical—it was metaphysical, a warp-essence shriek as corruption was burned away.
Organs liquefied.
Compound eyes burst in sparks.
The stinger went limp in Varo's grasp.
The corpse crashed to the ground.
Eileen stood over it, breathing hard, drenched in green ichor.
No halo.
No miracle.
Just a girl with a sword.
Varo turned his head slowly, visor facing her.
"L-Lady…?"
"I stabbed it in the ass," she said, yanking her blade free. Her hands trembled despite her effort to sound steady. "Uncle Sicarius said to find the weakness."
A roar split the mist.
Another veteran was hurled into a shattered wall, armor crushed. His mask shattered; contaminated air flooded his lungs.
The plague fly descended for the killing blow—
A streak of blue cleaved through the fog.
Sicarius.
He emerged like a comet, Talassarian Tempest humming. One strike split the daemon in two.
An instant later, a halberd wreathed in crackling energy annihilated the remaining beasts.
"The blasphemy has been corrected," Colquan intoned.
Silence fell again.
But the mist did not recede.
It thickened.
Sicarius assessed the field—Varo impaled and immobilized. A veteran convulsing from viral exposure. Eileen soaked in ichor.
"Apothecary! Immediate triage!"
Eileen stared at Varo's wound.
At the black spike lodged in ceramite and flesh.
At the soldier choking on corrupted air.
The adrenaline drained from her limbs.
Her sword felt impossibly heavy.
"Don't freeze up," Old Huang said calmly. "It's not finished."
"That thing you killed? All that warp filth inside it—that's energy."
"If the battery's empty… we recharge."
The blade in her hand began to grow warm.
It vibrated faintly.
Hungry.
[And that sorcerer hiding in the back wants to play games with warp distortion?]
Old Huang's tone turned amused.
[Fine. Let's play.]