He slowly closed his eyes, drawing his consciousness out of his physical shell and sinking into the boundless depths of his soul.
Within his soul world stood an eternally burning golden lighthouse. Countless tiny green lights surrounded it. They slumbered, waiting for that familiar voice to awaken their restless souls once more.
"In the name of the Big Boss..."
Saul murmured. His voice was quiet, yet it seemed to carry a magic that transcended dimensions, piercing the boundary between life and death.
"Awaken, flame of revolution."
At his call, something uncanny happened.
The shadow at his feet, stretched long by the starlight, began to writhe and boil in defiance of physics. Then faint motes of golden light, flickering like candles in the wind and mingled with a wild green energy, drifted out of his body.
Like dandelion seeds, those lights floated toward the mountains of metal wreckage all around him.
"WAAAGH!..."
At first, it was a whisper that seemed to rise from deep underground, like wind blowing through hollow skulls.
Then the sound grew louder. Countless pattering footsteps, the clang of metal striking metal, and roars brimming with life.
A moment later, space began to warp before Saul. One short, hunched figure after another appeared out of thin air, as though squeezed out of nothingness.
Their skin was that familiar vivid green, glaring against the lifeless gray world. Most were small and scrawny, with pointed ears and large, cunning eyes, their nostrils flaring with heavy breaths.
Gretchin.
In Imperial Guard tactical manuals, these creatures were usually described as "timid, cowardly, inferior xenos fit only to serve as cannon fodder and slaves."
But the army before him was no ordinary band of Gretchin.
Their eyes held none of the cowardice and stupidity ingrained in ordinary Gretchin, nor the servility that made