Flames roared like the breath of an enraged dragon, raging along the edge of Hope Star's corruption-soaked rainforest.
The warriors of the Salamanders Legion formed a moving wall of fire, Flamers in hand, as scorching promethium fuel became devastating streams of white flame that mercilessly licked at everything in their path.
The towering trees infected by the xenos plague were already filled with flammable, putrid sap. Under the kiss of temperatures reaching thousands of degrees, they did not even have time to burn before swelling and turning to ash and charcoal within seconds.
The air reeked of acrid smoke from vaporized vegetation, the stench of burning rot, and something stranger beneath it all, like fat roasting over a fire.
Morkan walked with the formation, the heavy Flamer roaring steadily in his hands as he reduced a tangled mass of vines dripping viscous fluid to ash.
Sweat, a perfectly ordinary bodily response for a mortal, now slid down his forehead and evaporated within his Power Armour's cooling system, becoming yet more hot, humid vapor.
He felt stifling heat unlike anything he had ever experienced.
It was not the heat of the flames searing them from outside, but a damp, putrid heat radiating from deep within the rainforest, as though it could rot even steel.
Thick and heavy, that heat clung to every inch of his Power Armour like a heavy quilt soaked in warm water. Even the air drawn through his breathing grille carried a suffocating, sickly sweetness and oppressive dampness.
"So hot," Morkan muttered, his voice carrying through the internal channel with a faint, suppressed gasp.
Even the genetically enhanced Salamanders warriors, capable of fighting on the rims of volcanoes, found it unbearable. Clearly, the rainforest's "heat" had already passed beyond the bounds of nature.
"Warriors!" A voice as steady