If you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss will stare back

Laser fire and stubber rounds whizzed by Zehk’s head as he approached the entrance to a sunken temple. Ewryht’eikl had instructed him to reclaim similar sites in order to power up some sort of way line, a current in the warp. With that, the Dark Lord could send a small force to Crion without attracting the attention of all but the most keen Psykers. Resistance was nil at the other locations, but Zehk figured that with this one being closer to Hive Cogger, some of the Flayed Legion (defected was Zehk’s assumption; they did not wear the Hand of Lazarus) might have had fled to it to escape the obvious hysteria that was Hive Cogger.

Zehk summoned his combi-bolter, a daemon-weapon that went by ‘Eclipse’, to his hand and sent a lazy spray of mass-reactive bolts into a grouping of cultists hiding behind a downed tree. He need not kill them, but only suppress them as there was more of the New Order behind him who wore their bloodlust on their sleeve. One of those souls in particular was a spawn named Kri, whom was named after the only noise that it could make. The sound in fact, was an almost-certain death sentence to all who heard it. It wouldn’t take the spawn long to pick up a victim’s scent and hunt it down like a ravenous wolf.

Kri barreled past Zehk, smashing trees aside like they were twigs, and leapt to the unfortunate band of cultists. Zehk turned away in content at the carnage. More cultists swarmed out of the entrance of the temple and took cover behind ferrocrete columns, makeshift barricades and civilian vehicles. Zehk’s forces were easily out-numbered 5-1, though Zehk always preferred quality over quantity. Most of the weapons in the cultist’s possession weren’t even capable of piercing power armour. A shrill voice broke Zehk from his war-revelries.

“Was the order not to ‘stay in formation, you dogs?’ “ Zehk’s second-in-command, a traitor commissar by the name of Helga Schäfer. She stood only a few inches above most men, but that might have been a foot in the eyes of her subordinates. Her face was perfectly symmetrical apart from a monocle over her left eye and her hair was pulled back into a perfect bun that was neatly covered by her commissar’s hat. One could venture and say she valued order and perfection above all else. “You know it's irksome to me when you defy your own order.”

Zehk felt stabbed, not by the words, but by her eyes. She had a way of persuasion that didn’t involve her bolt pistol and worked on both cultist and Traitor-Astartes alike. It was unnatural. “I did… Kri! Form ranks!” Zehk commanded, his armour beginning to feel constricted, “And get out of my head…”

“Apologies, my lord,” the commissar said, bowing in an honest way. She stood back up straight and waved her hand towards the temple. By now, the cultists had stopped firing, but remained wary nonetheless. “First rank, raise shields!”

The first line of Zehk’s men, twenty in all, broken into two lines of ten, raised their makeshift shields in a close fitting line. He doubted that they would stop anything above bolter fire, but against auto and lasguns, they would do fine. Schäfer’s ‘command’ squad approached from between the two lines and joined up with their commissar. The squad consisted of a standard bearer, carrying a flag with the Waxing Moon of Ewryht'eikl painted on it, two of Schäfer’s bodyguards and an ogryn with a massive drum.