Years later, when corporal 2273 stood on Krieg, whose environment was gradually being purified, he would surely remember the moment the Demons suddenly leaped out of thin air.
—"High-energy reaction!"
The piercing warning exploded beside his ear, and corporal 2273 fell to the ground in a sorry heap. It was not because he had thrown himself down of his own accord. Otherwise, with a Kriegsman's tactical discipline, there was no way he would have ended up lying on the ground in such a defenseless posture.
The culprit was a wave of heat.
A raging heat, explosive as the sun, burst behind him. Golden radiance lit the entire underground, but the worst consequence of this sudden, wondrous sight was merely that several Krieg soldiers briefly fainted before they were quickly awakened by the Aquila's built-in emergency measures.
The true threat, however, appeared after that.
Demons.
Dancing shadows leaped out of The Void. They shrieked and screamed, and the stench of burned flesh rushed into his face. Some of those that did not belong to Khorne did not even have time to begin slaughtering; they only fled in panic into the darkness shrouding the surroundings.
As for those Demons that belonged to Khorne, they tightened their grips on their weapons in agony and roared as they began fighting the enemies before them.
Most of them had lost limbs, and some were even utterly vaporized by the burning golden radiance within seconds of appearing, leaving only twisted skeletons behind. But these Demons of the Blood God still roared and swung their weapons, crying "blood for the Blood God" amid extreme terror and pain as they began a battle to the death with the silent Kriegsmen.
Sometimes, war came that suddenly. History was not without precedent. Many wars that ended with all life plunged