They were a terrifying, awesome sight to behold, proud and darkly noble, yet with a savage, feral quality. They looked resplendent in armour, rust-brown blood stains attesting to the number of their enemy they had slain in battle, ancient favoured wargear

clashing against the breastplates of their armour in a clatter of crashing metal, like the clamour of battle itself.

Behind the Traitor Marines came the cultist worshippers of the Fell Powers, homicidal maniacs who would rather live the existence of the insane than die in the service of the God-Emperor of Mankind. They came half-naked, some wearing the ritual robes of their perverted faith while others still wore the uniform of the regiments they had originally belonged to, only now the noble insignia of the Imperium were defaced and replaced with blasphemous symbols of the outer darkness. They came in their hundreds, swelling the ranks of the Chaos host.

Behind those traitor Guardsmen and the insane congregations of the Chaos cults came the mutants, creatures not quite human but neither entirely animal in form, yet greater than both. And they came in their thousands. Tentacle-limbed things, hulking beasts, bellowing multi-armed monstrosities, mewling savage-clawed, insect-headed perversions of nature, scaled brutes, the warped foot soldiers of the Ruinous Powers.

No matter how grotesque these warped warriors might appear, following in their wake were indescribable writhing, slithering, constantly metamorphosing horrors. If they had once been men, then the revulsion and sheer terror they instilled in any who looked upon them was only heightened. These horrors were spine-bristling, fanged and mutated proof that Chaos was a fickle master whose gifts, as well as potentially leading to power and riches beyond measure, might also reduce a damned soul to something far less than

human under its corrupting caress. For these were the true, terrifying spawn of Chaos.

And behind all this host of the lost and the damned the horizon burned, the light of the raging hive-fires of conquered Japheth eclipsing the bitter light of the sun...

...the arid plain burned under the planet's twin suns, sizzling beneath every crunching footstep of the Apostle's gore-stained ceramite boots.

Ancient power armour the colour of dried blood glinted in the harsh, glaring suns-light. Edging trim that looked like riveted, sculpted bone shone like bleached skulls. The ceramite-armoured giant advanced across the parched earth, his titanic shadow reaching out across the arid wilderness ahead of him.

The dazzling light of the burning sky reflected from the glassy surface of the plain, blurring the definition between heaven and earth. And on the distant horizon the crumbling sandstone walls of an ancient city rose out of the desert plain, a fortified citadel surmounting the jagged outcrop of a desert plateau.

This was the next stop on his centuries-long pilgrimage that would ultimately bring him to the time revealed to him by the secret messengers of the warp so many eons ago.

Incongruous in the torturous desert heat, draped across the giant's shoulders was the white and black-striped pelt. Clanking chains swung from his waist. Scraps of parchment whipped the air in the hot desert wind, bearing verses and catechisms written in a faded ink scrawl. Other zealous proclamations were inscribed upon gauntlets, armoured greaves and every other ceramite plate. The crackle of flames accompanied the sounds of the desert. Fires burned in the brazier exhausts of the armoured suit's reactor; burning like the unholy zeal blazing inside his dark, corrupted heart.