At the edge of the Sea of Slaughter, the First Company Captain of the 8th Legion gazed at the putrid swamp before him.
Dark green mist drifted toward them, and circling swarms of black flies buzzed overhead.
He reviewed the report the Auger Matrix moderator had submitted before the airdrop.
The runes at the edge of the Sands of Slaughter were marked 4.9 kilometers ahead.
"Release the Spy Flies. Verify the orbital scan results."
"Understood," Ethan said, walking toward a crate carried by attendants.
He tapped with his right hand, rapidly entering a string of numbers.
The crate lid clicked open, revealing densely packed metal insects within.
The Psyker of the Indomitable Discipline pressed his hand against the crate, and brilliant psionic light enveloped the Spy Flies.
Bzzzz-
With a humming sound, over a thousand metal insects rose into the air and streamed into the green mist.
Ethan's obsidian eyes fractured into countless images, his field of vision seemingly divided into over a thousand screens.
He gave his head a slight shake, drew a deep breath, and entered the first layer of Magnus mindset.
His chaotic thoughts gradually settled, and he began watching all thousand images at once.
With a thought, he sent over a hundred Spy Flies diving.
They scanned the ground from different angles.
More than a dozen patches of sand of varying sizes receded visibly, as though the green mire were swallowing them.
Ethan's gaze sharpened. A black tree eerily sprouted from a stretch of ground that had turned entirely green.
Could the Word Bearers have summoned the daemons mentioned in the information my lord distributed?
As he considered this, two hundred Spy Flies projected an image into his eyes.
Black trees swayed in the wind, thick dark green sap flowing down their trunks.
Bzzzz-
Amid the