No two squads experienced the same war. No two minutes matched the chronological pulse of the hive's master clock.
Sector Aurek Spine – Mid-Hive Engagement Zone
"Move! Move! Do NOT stop in the corridor!"
Jorren Nox joined in with Line Company 14-B. He realized that only by being next to the troopers would he be able to locate the guild leader he was looking for. Divination was not an option because he saw it as too close to the changer.
He carried the standard gear, used the standard weapon, and maintained the standard pace. He looked like every other guild infantryman in the formation.
Ahead, the corridor was wrong, metal and flesh had begun to blend in patches, like an infection spreading through the infrastructure. Some sections looked completely normal until a soldier looked away from them.
"Thermals unstable!" a trooper shouted. "Multiple pings, they're coming from inside the bulkheads!"
The talk of identifying targets was no longer a question, because anything here, in this sector, was not supposed to be here.
The first attack came without warning. A figure was simply there, it tore out of the wall mid-step, its limbs were too long, its joints were in the wrong direction, and its face was half-formed and shifting. It hit the front line instantly.
A trooper fired point-blank, his rounds passed through it as if the entity had turned into a liquid, allowing the slug passage, then it became solid again.
With that it punched through the trooper and he came apart.
"Burn the air!"
Fire roared down the corridor, the fire consumed the entity in a way that looked wrong. Instead of just burning, it fractured under the heat splitting into multiple overlapping versions of itself, each reacting differently.
One screamed. One laughed. One simply walked forward through the fire.
Jorren using a gun for the first time fired, in short bursts that would mistake him for a veteran trooper. It connects with the thing causing it to stagger not from damage, but from the interruption.
That was enough for the squad to adjust and push it back. The corridor behind them shifted its geometry once again, the troopers had become used to the constant shifts by now.
Meanwhile the guild decided to change its policies. This change had pushed the guild alliance defense force nearly to the brink of collapse. The protection was no longer to be fought at the lower levels.
The guild leaders wanted the concentration of their forces to be at the top levels of the Hive city, so they could feel safe.
But the defense forces accepted this and changed
Fire teams rotated out constantly, squads were required to never hold a position for more than minutes, to avoid guild high command. And it was to reduce the mistrust as no one trusted sightlines or memory longer than the immediate past.
But even adaptation had its limitations. Battlefields began to introduce contradictions, clear hallways would become full of corpses when revisited seconds later.
Sealed door would open into a burning room that had never existed on any map. Squads that radioed "secure" would be found dead five minutes before their transmission timestamp.
Time began to distort in ways that the people were not equipped to handle.
Jorren on the other hand performed his duties as a trooper, he did not stand out. He had left Taren in the upper levels in a hidden location and had given him a task.
Record anyone you see moving within this level with guards.
He reloaded when others reloaded. He took cover when others took cover. He advanced when ordered. He killed when something reached the line.
In between events he would observe the troopers. The idea of having a team of his own had come to him, but could mortals stand before him in any manner other than death. He was in need of those gifted with vision in the warp.
While he was doing his job in silence, a trooper beside him suddenly froze.
"I recognize that weld…we...we...were here earlier," the man muttered.
"No," another replied instantly. "We just arrived."
Jorren understood what the trooper said. The corridors have been moving irregularly even for this madness. They were trying to lead them somewhere.
A breach opened above the group as they continued their patrol. A wound in reality opened right on top of them and something fell through it arriving with impact that bent the feroconcrete floors
It immediately divided into multiple versions of itself with each version launching an attack on the squad from different directions.
One squad member was shot by something that did not exist in his line of sight. Another was dragged into a direction that stopped being spatially valid halfway through. The squad broke formation for the first time.
"Close ranks!" the sergeant shouted.
Jorren moved with them trying his best to maintain the facade. But for a fraction of a second, the thing looked at him, without any thought, he raised his weapon and fired.
This time more erratically than before, emptying the entire magazine on it. This did nothing to the entity, but Jorren had already moved to cover
The rhythmic tune of slugs and promethium hummed from one corridor echoed into another that did not exist. Screams arrived before injuries, orders were issued after the response was already delivered.
Jorren now stuck in a self-imposed survival mode in this collapsing world, could only follow the procedures dictated by what he had seen in the troopers.
A trooper fell beside him with half of his body intact, the other half missing when one of the entities had distorted space, slicing it off.
The trooper unaware of his predicament used his hands to crawl forward looking for cover, as his entrails dragged along with him. Jorren looked at him as his hand moved to his weapon...
"Leave him," the sergeant ordered.
The sergeant had seen more than most in the troop. He did not hesitate to leave a man to die, if he had been in a better condition, the man would have been killed directly. They could not be allowed to give more men to this horror.
Better dead.
A breach formed ahead once again, this time with too many entities coming at once. The line began to destabilize, and Jorren began to feel the heat of what a battle is.
He stopped for a second too long, contemplating changing the battle parameters, but decided against it. He needed control for now, and he would not want to change the minds of these men again.
There was a slight spike in his psychic energy, which caused the enemy to pause for a fraction of the time. Without identification, the battle continued.
On another day, the troops were brought together to discuss attack positioning. Guild command had decided on an action direction.
Jorren Nox followed without invitation.
They reached a forward command pocket as they fought. It was a half-collapsed transit hub reinforced with scavenged armor plating. The officers inside were exhausted, they had begun to expect everything and anything.
"Report from 14-B," the commander demanded.
Jorren stepped forward with the infantry troopers' captain, as a wave pulsed out from him to the men and women around
"Corridor is non-linear," the sergeant said.
"Hostiles present across inconsistent spatial states. Holding is possible but unstable."
The commander nodded. "It's universal, then. Scrap the current deployment"
Jorren spoke, expressing the sentiment of some of the troopers beside him
"We are losing ground faster than we can define it Sir."
While this meeting took place.
Far below where the battle are benign fought Khoras Veyl, still in the process of fully forming his body, began to ship once again. His psychic levels began to climb once again. Before he would not have been able to stand before Taren.
But with time and more deaths, it seemed that he has now reached Taren's level. If this were to continue, he could possibly…
He had begun to focus upward, specifically towards Jorren.
"We shall converge shortly...my son" his voice sounding airy almost like it came out of everything in the room at once.
The alter in front of him continued to pulse with veins as the building brought it more sustenance, as its crystalline structure shimmered with shifting patterns of light.
Many days later
The final push was initiated by the guilds, their goal was not victory, but a stall. Promethium canisters were deployed in different locations in the city. At locations with the highest amount of mutations.
Charges were set on them and…
BOOM!!!
Entire corridor sections were destroyed. But the enemy did not take that in peace, corridors stopped matching themselves. Squads encountered earlier versions of themselves in sections they had once been in.
Jorren fought to the best of his ability. Or at least what one would expect of an untrained trooper.
With a scream from a nearby trooper
"I remember the smell...I've already died here!"
The entire squad froze in silence.