'You men are blessed indeed.' Marduk said, 'for you have been chosen to receive a great gift, a boon of the great majesty of the warp. It is the Calling, and you are to be the hosts.'
Marduk began to chant, his voice effortlessly mouthing the difficult, unearthly language of the daemon. He felt the creature Borhg'ash within his chainsword stir at his words.
The kneeling men were surrounding by dozens of burning blood-candles, the light of their flames the only thing holding the darkness of the room at bay. They flickered as Marduk continued his incantation, the flames straining in towards the First Acolyte.
Whispers could be heard, flittering around the dark edges of the room, and Marduk welcomed them, for they spoke of the arrival of the Kathartes. The flickering of the candles increased, and a howling sound began to circle the gathered group as Marduk's voice rose.
The blood of the Speaker, pooling out on the floor of the room, began to bubble, and Marduk knelt and placed both hands in the rapidly heating liquid.
Marduk continued to speak the words of the Calling and stepped towards the kneeling figure of Karalos, placing a bloody hand on either side of the man's head. He held onto his head firmly, feeling the skull compress beneath his hands, and continued his complex incantation.
Karalos began to writhe and twitch, but Marduk did not release his grip, holding tightly to the man's head. The cultist's eyes began to bleed and blood seeped from his ears, but still Marduk continued to chant and clasp the man. He could feel the power of the warp opening up, its strength pulsing through his hands into the boiling brain of the man beneath him, but Karalos made not a sound, silently welcoming the beast that was emerging within his flesh.
With a final barked stream of daemonic words, Marduk pushed Karalos away from him. The man stood for a moment twitching, blood streaming from his eyes, before he fell to the ground, writhing and convulsing. A flickering blur seemed to overlap the thrashing figure, flashing between the body of a mortal man and the insubstantial form of something distinctly other. His tongue bulged from his mouth and he arched his back unnaturally, before breaking into severe muscle contractions that threw his body across the floor. Bones broke under his exertions and his spine twisted horribly, tendons and sinews tearing and ripping. The other men stood hurriedly and backed away from the wildly jerking man, horrified fascination and devotion on their faces.
The man's flickering flesh bulged unnaturally, as if things held within were trying to burst free, and he scratched frantically at the skin of his face, ripping bloody rents. The bones of his fingers lengthened and pushed through the skin of his fingertips, curving out into sharp talons, and he ripped at his skin and clothes, tearing them off in bloody strips.
He rolled over and over on the ground, ripping and tearing at his flesh frenziedly, every muscle of his body straining. Blood vessels bulged on his neck and at his temples, and he lacerated his skin with his long talons as he continued to spasm and convulse soundlessly.
His teeth lengthened into fine points and he bit into his own shoulder, ripping off chunks of meat.
Marduk smiled and crossed his arms over his chest.
The thing that had been Karalos entered even more frantic convulsions, ripping and tearing at its flesh, until it finally went still. It lay for a moment, bloody and broken, before it picked itself up from the ground and crouched, its skinless face turned towards the First Acolyte, staring at him with eyeless, bloody sockets. Almost its entire bloodied musculature was displayed, and only patches of raw, red skin clung to its frame. The hazy flickering still overlapped the creature, blurring its image slightly and hurting the eye.
An extra, backwards bending joint had formed in the lower leg of the daemon creature, in the manner of a bird, and long talons emerged from its toes. With a sickening, wet cracking sound, a pair of long, skeletal wings unfolded from the monster's back, sheets of bloody skin hanging limply between the bloody bones.
Opening its sharp-toothed, lipless maw wide, the daemon creature hissed hollowly at Marduk, like some newly hatched chick crying to its mother for food. He smiled broadly, the flickering candlelight glinting in his eyes.
'Karalos is no more,' spoke Marduk. 'He gave up his mortal vessel selflessly that this katharte might come into existence.'
The gathered men stared at the daemon with wide eyes. The air tasted electric: like the taste of Chaos.
'Now, all of you will selflessly give yourselves up to Chaos as good Karalos did,' said Marduk, 'for that is what I wish, and through my words you hear the desire of the gods themselves.'
The gathered men glanced warily at each other. 'Well,' said Marduk to the daemon clawing at the floor in front of him, licking itself with a long, barbed tongue, 'call the flock.' The men in the room fell to the ground as one, blood running from their eyes and ears, and they began to convulse.
'It's not right,' said Sergeant Elias of the 72nd Elysian storm troopers, hotly. 'We are the damned elite. We are not meant to be the grunts of the Imperium, plodding through the mud and crap getting gunned down in droves. We ain't that kind of regiment. We are…'
'The glory boys?' suggested Captain Laron wryly. The captain was a big, blond haired soldier, born of pure Elysian stock. Brash, strong and proud, he was the perfect captain for the brash, strong and proud storm troopers of the 72nd. If any other soldier or officer had spoken to him in such a way he would have had the man disciplined, but Elias had been his comrade for decades. He had fought alongside the man long before he had been captain, or even sergeant.
'Damn right we are!' said Elias with considerable passion. 'It's the job of the other regiments to grind mindlessly up the centre. We are the elite, fast in and fast out.'
'I'm sure the camp women appreciate that, sergeant.'
Elias laughed at that. 'But you know what I mean, sir. We don't have the sheer number of men or tanks to fight a conventional frontal assault, not against this enemy.'
'Who said we would be fighting a conventional frontal assault? The brigadier-general is not a damn fool.'
'I know that he is not, sir, but… I still don't know why we didn't just drop on Shinar and have this whole thing over with as soon as possible.'
'We do that and the entire damn regiment would be slaughtered. The air defences of Shinar are strong. Don't be thickheaded, Elias. Use your brains for a change and stop thinking with your damn balls!'
Elias grinned suddenly. 'I do have a big old pair of balls though, captain.'
'The sentinels on recon reported yet?'
'Another hour before the next report, sir.'
'Well, keep Colonel Boerl informed. If they see any enemy movement, report in immediately. We must secure those highlands. The brigadier-general says the enemy may be up there already. If that's the case, then without artillery support to make the bastards keep their heads down, we will be weathering the storm trying to land. If they are up there, it is not going to be easy to take it off them.'
'If anyone can take it off them, it'll be the 72nd,' said Elias, turning towards his superior. The captain was looking out across the plains to where the Adeptus Mechanicus battle force was making ready to move out.
'What do you make of them, sir?' asked Elias, indicating the massing Adeptus Mechanicus tech-guard with an incline of his head. Ever more of the disturbing warriors and war machines of Mars were disembarking from the wide-bodied Mechanicus loaders.
Captain Laron curled his lip in distaste. 'Never seen a concentration of them like this.'
The earth boomed as another of the massive cargo-transports of the Mechanicus landed, throwing up a cloud of salt grit. Hulking, slow moving, tracked crawler vehicles emerged from transports that had already landed, each led by a procession of censor waving, red-robed adepts of the Machine-God. From others came more of the pale fleshed tech-guard soldiers, marching in perfect, rectangular phalanx blocks, ten deep and a hundred wide.