After Mortarion cut down several Khrave within reach, his breathing grew as heavy as a storm. His grey-brown eyes, filled with loathing and fury, fixed like iron spikes on the elite Khrave that had not moved an inch from the beginning.
It stood in the centre of the Bridge, taller than ordinary Khrave, yet more withered.
A span of years beyond mortal imagination and the erosion of Warp energy had fashioned it into a mummy encased in a smooth, silver-grey carapace.
Its carapace was no longer intact, covered in web-like scars of energy corrosion. Tiny, ghostly blue arcs constantly burst from beneath it, crackling softly, as though an ominous heart still beat within that ancient shell.
Its face had no features, no senses in the conventional meaning of the word. There was only a metal plate that looked as though strong acid had scoured it repeatedly until it was etched flat, so smooth that it reflected the distorted firelight and death around it.
Merely by existing there, it radiated an aura of destruction older and emptier than the galaxy's young spiral arms.
Most dangerous of all was the Warp energy continually seeping from beneath its skin.
That energy formed a dark, constantly fluctuating outline.
Several quick-reacting Death Guard warriors tried to flank it, launching an assault with Chainswords and Power Fists.
Yet the instant they entered the few metres surrounding the Progenitor, before they had even touched that dark outline, their bodies, along with their armour, weapons, flesh...
Everything they were began to disintegrate silently at the atomic level, like sandcastles plunged into strong acid. Not even ash remained, only a thin wisp of rapidly dissipating smoke that smelled of ozone and nothingness.
"Xenos!!"
Witnessing his sons annihilated in such a bizarre and absolute fashion, Mortarion unleashed an almost bestial