We advanced past the last of the open area, the long green grasses swaying in the gentle breeze. The enemy were ahead, a landscape of open fields was inexplicably replaced with outcroppings of rock, the green of the fields replaced by the green of trees poking up and through the rocks and a dead malignant space among them.
This was the source of the corruption, the reason the planet wasn't safe. This was where Kar Drannon had left his infernal mark, damn his traitorous heart.
This was the site where two battalions of Iskradian Thorakites had been wiped out with no word from them.
Anyone else would have slowed down, we started to run.
The blighted area was dead ahead but beyond that, in the depths of the forest, among the mutated but still living trees, something moved.
It moved to meet us.
First squad made it into contact first. Their bolter rounds smashed through the foliage, breaking branches, bringing down the smaller trees, but then something emerged that brought down the bigger trees and it was on them. It smashed through them and into the Inceptors behind them.
Indarus was yelling to his men to move his hellblasters up quickly as the beast was on the Inceptors. One of plucked out of the air as he tried to jump clear and slammed with the force of an autocannon round into the rocky ground. Even the explosion of the fuel in his jump pack didn't affect the monster as it reached out to grab another victim.
Indarus yelled "Back, now" and the inceptors and intercessors ran away from the creature at once, leaving it confused, the creatures goading it forward saw what was happening and tried to push the monster towards the hellblaster squad but it was too late. The creatures roars of pain rang through the wooded land as it collapsed under the brilliant fusillade, blood bubbling and bursting out of the creatures skin as it cooked inside and out.
The enemy had used our focus on the monsters to gain our flank and Squad three was caught in enfilading fire which brought down Sgt. Orrus.
Our response was rapid and accurate but we had too few marines left to sustain a fight against an enemy that was clearly much more adapted for fighting in this terrain than we ourselves were. The Inceptors laid down a hail of fire that allowed us to collect our wounded and dead and retreat.