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'Where did I go wrong?'

Imandius' thoughts, what few of them managed to pull themselves to the forefront of his sluggish mind, were muddled with guilt, doubt, and pain. The pain he could deal with, but a man of his profession could not survive the other two for long. It would not be so trying, the loss of his squad, were it not for the fact that their trek through the sewers had left him severely wounded. Oh, they all gave their best, they could do no less with him around, and even to the end, his memory returned to him the glorious image of private Wendersale taking the last of the warp-spawned (oh but we all know where they really came from, don't we Immy?) mutants out with an incendiary grenade.

Pity he didn't have time to remove it from his belt first, but such is the life of those who fight in the Emperor's name.

Imandius groaned, wounds all across his body making themselves known as he pulled himself out of the tattered remains of his greatcoat, slumping up against the wall. Two hours' work it had taken him to pull himself out of the muck. It would've taken far less time, if he hadn't slipped on the remains of poor Wendersale and slipped back towards the center of the slow flow. By the Throne, what he would give for some stims. Or even just half a bottle of amasec. He stirred again, his eyes fluttering.

How long was he out? A few minutes? Hours? Perhaps days?

Time had gotten so slippery, ever since the invasion. He wasn't even too particularly sure when it had started, only that he had been 'lucky' enough to have been inspecting one of the weapons caches strewn about the city of Pyrus at the time. He and sixteen PDF troopers had managed to hole up inside the bolt-hole, turning nearby buildings into make-shift fortresses and deathtraps, for nearly eighteen days, before they were forced underground in search for more supplies. They had made a wondrous fight of it, too, worthy of song. Sergeant Manterlay had rigged up several of the excess promethium tanks to blow behind them when they left, even as flamers and stubguns were shooting in all directions.

Imandius closed his eyes again, the sweat beading on his dark brow as a fever overtook him. No doubt the bite marks in his arm and leg were infected. Nothing could be done for that now, though. The commissar was stubborn (oh so fearful of death), rising to his feet, clutching a borrowed stubgun like a walking stick. His own bolt pistol had been lost in the fighting, and was probably useless anyway. The chainsword still lay at his hip, not that he could use it when he needed his good arm to help him walk.

'One step at a time, that's all I have to do...'

He tried not to dwell on the pain in his body as he hobbled over to the faint light in the tunnel. Maintenance hatch? Mechanicus shrine? It mattered not. It was a target, that was enough.

His grunts of pain and the scratching of his make-shift cane were soon joined by the normal sounds of the sewers beneath the city: rats without number, scratching against the walls and crawling against the pipes; other, more alien beasts squirming within the murk, snaking out to snatch at anything that got too close. None of the sounds from before.

None of the screaming, or the sizzling of burning flesh. None of the snap-cracks of las-weapons, or the thunders of stubbers.

It was quiet.

The commissar didn't like the quiet. He never did, not even when he was a child in the schola. It always left him time to focus on other things. Internal things. Normally he would be able to recite something from his childhood education, perhaps some hymnal, 'The Glory Eternal' was always his favorite.

But oh how his everything seemed to ache.

He paused, leaning up against a nearby ladder, taking deep, hurtful breaths. He must've shattered a rib or two in the tussle. Such is the life of a servant of the Emperor. He looked up, wincing as his vision clouded, less from the dust cascading from the ceiling and more from the spots that swam in front of everything. Moisture was collecting around the seal of the hatchway.

'It's raining.'

The tall, dark man hazarded himself a small smile before pulling his weight up the rusted ladder with one arm and one leg, minding the wounds of their opposite numbers. He had to stop halfway up to catch his breath. When he finally reached the top, many words were spoken, most of them would have gotten him the lash back at the schola, and the hatch moved.

'Only a little ways now...'

His brows furrowed as he peered through the slight opening, using his right shoulder to prop it up. Water coursed through, cooling his fever and washing grime away from his face as he spied the surrounding street. Nothing. Not a soul for miles within sight that he could see.

Plenty of noise. So much noise. Either the heretics got themselves some artillery, or Colonel Jakshaw was giving them the runaround near the garrison. Imandius prayed it was the latter, but deep down he knew the former was more likely true.

With a muffled shout, he heaved up against the hatch, pushing it up far enough that he could throw his stub rifle and chainsword through, and soon he followed, wincing as it scraped against the festering wound on his leg. One wonderful thing about the rain, in this part of Cisyphus, it would be clean water.

The commissar wakes up, and the light is further gone from the sky. Another two hours, maybe three, gone. He didn't remember pulling himself out of the street, nor did he remember bandaging his arm and leg, but there they were, clean as he could get them and wrapped in cloth scavenged from a dead trooper. His fever flared up again, but it wasn't so bad this time. He surveyed his surroundings, and found himself inside of an aging storefront, long since abandoned due to economic troubles.

With more effort than he should have used, the wounded man pulled himself further into the building, placing another wall and a closed door between himself and the open window to the street, and he closed his eyes.

His dreams were filled with fire, and screaming.

"Erik, damn you, where's our fire support? I thought I told you to set up the heavy bolter upstairs!"

Static, screams, and curses ringed in Imandius' ear through the comm-bead as he reloaded his bolt-pistol, leaning his arm up over the ruined aircar he was using as cover to fire at the building across the street. The weapons cache was built inside of an old antique's shop, hidden in one of the sub-basements and reinforced with ferrocrete. Even the storefront was reinforced to military codes, not that it did any good. The heretics were holed up in a local enforcers' station across the street, one of the few buildings left standing in this part of the city when the Great Enemy appeared in orbit.

The stacatto thunder of a heavy bolter answered his earlier inquiry, stitching explosions all along the roof and fourth floors of every building that was firing on his position, a few succumbing to earlier structural damage from the bombardment as the ramjet-propelled grenade shells found their homes in what few columns remained standing.

The dust seemed to dull even the screams for a moment, and Commissar Imandius Mencken was up, moving in a flurry of flowing black and red as the dust swirled around him from the snap-shots of those heretics who still had their wits about them. He didn't pause until he felt a strong arm grabbing his greatcoat and yanking him into the antique shop, throwing him to the floor as an incendiary detonated near the entrance.

"The bastards are gettin' a mite braver now, sir. Twould be a shame to lose ye now, yeah?"

Imandius looked up to see the familiar face of Sergeant Erik Manterlay, a shock of brilliant red hair spilling out from under his ill-fitting helmet, above a pale, freckled face that even now seemed to refuse to stop finding something inherently hilarious about the nature of the universe. He and a few other troopers dragged their commissar behind the reinforced counter of the storefront and began to take potshots out of the long-since shattered window with their rifles, a few of the luckier ones wielding lasguns.

"So while ye were out 'n about playin' with our traitor-friends, ye learn anythin'?"

"Ha! Only that Wendersale has seen fit to remodel half the street. What in the name of Ollanius gave you the bloody idea to give him the bolter, anyway?"

The sergeant, standing a foot shorter than the dark-skinned commissar, barked out a laugh and brought his pistol to bear on a traitor trooper in a ramshackle PDF uniform attempting to lob another grenade in through the windowless front.

"Well I figur'd that he jus' looked so sad, what with how you an' Bravo team blew up that stolen chimera without 'im, and he needed a lil perkin' up!"

"Well for the sake of the Emperor tell him to calm down before he runs down half a week's ammo in one-"

His retort was drowned out by a familiar rumbling that traveled up through the floor, shaking the shattered glass with its vibrations.

'Throne preserve us.'

The commissar woke with a start, his ears attentive and his fingers searching for any sensation of movement. Finding none, he allowed his heart to calm within his chest, and took stock of his surroundings.

There wasn't much in his immediate environment to really use, a few planks of wood he could tear off and make into stints, perhaps, and some tattered cloth, but from the looks of it the store room was looted long before the incursion.

'Fine by me, being alone in the ghettos is easier than being in the warzone right now...'

His hands went to pull a canteen from his greatcoat, only to remember that he had discarded its ruined remains long ago. With a barely audible curse he stood up and worked on the stints, replacing his bandages with the dusty remains of curtains from the corner. He grimaced as the puffed up wounds leaked pus, throbbing angrily in purple and red with his heartbeat. He could see the damned things (oh you know deep down don't you) already trailing red up and down his arm and leg.

'Give me a las-wound anyday over this grox-spit.'

After a painful trip outside to attempt to clean his wounds, and wash the grime from his body in the rain, and he was on the move again. Every alley seemed to hold potential predators, and more importantly, hiding places.

At least with the splints and a curtain rod, he was free to walk with his good arm free to hold his chainsword, the stubber slung over his back as the rain continued to pour. A flash of light in the distance, accompanied by a roaring thunder that knocked gutters from buildings answered his question about the good Colonel. A mushroom cloud soon displaced the rain drops for a minute as it rose slowly into the air.

'There goes the base... And at least a thousand heretics with it. They're all seeing the Emperor's judgment now.'

If he remembered right, with how the stormy seasons of Cisyphus went, the winds would blow the fallout far away from him for several days, although at least one poor bastard and his friends are going to be caught in a radioactive tornado along that path. It wasn't going to be Imandius, though.

With that thought he turned on his heels, heading further away from the city-center and the fighting, racking his memory for the locations of other weapons caches. There were several spread about the city to aid in its defense, so that PDF troopers and arbites who are even off-duty can rush to arm and armor themselves, but when some of them happened to be traitors...

It was all very typical, really. It probably would have been far, far worse if the invasion were, say, caused by a genestealer infestation. Then all of the weapon caches would have been compromised somehow, he just knew it.

They were upon him before he had time to think, only his reflexes saving him from death as his chainsword was up and chewing into flesh before his eyes were even focusing.

They were abhumans, once. Beastmen of various flavors and types. The Cisyphians used them mainly for forced labor, and as conscripts whenever nearby ork tribes that survived the last waagh began to cause trouble. Now they were simply chattel-mutants for the agents of Chaos, foul man-things with festering wounds that seemed to sprout eyes and teeth, and arms that bent in all of the wrong ways while ending in claws more befitting one of the jungle predators of the southern hemisphere.

Imandius was pivoting on his bad leg and his crutch without realizing it, taking the head off of one mewling mutant's shoulders before the pain sent him to his knees. By some stroke of luck, or the Emperor's Grace, a claw meant for his neck was caused to miss, taking his hat off his head instead as he continued to fight in the desperate melee.

Black, corrupted ichor spilled everywhere as the adamantium teeth of his weapon bit home, chewing chunks off of malformed heads, removing arms, legs, and tails. The tortured screams of the foul beasts seemed to come from someplace else, underwater, as Imandius' vision and hearing began to waver. His focus was brought back abruptly as he felt needle-sharp teeth sink into his shoulder, and his chainsword lashed out again, ripping into the offending creature's spine, causing it to unlatch its muzzle from him.

'I'm going to die here.'

The thought was so clear, so sure in his mind, that when the flashes of gunfire and the crackling of shock mauls came to his ears he was almost frozen in shock.

Almost.

Renewed by the sounds of reinforcements, the wounded commissar lunged to his feet and planted a swift kick to the face of a hunchbacked wolfman, knocking it sprawling as he pivoted again, adrenaline overwhelming pain as adamantium bit into flesh once more, and soon the horde of unruly man-things left, howling into the night.

Still holding his chainsword in a ready position, Imandius turned to face his rescuers, his eyes greeted by the sight of two weary adeptus arbites and a group of PDF troopers, their uniforms as ragged as his was. The contradiction of their tattered uniforms and their well-kept weapons gave the commissar a weak smile.

"I fear I am at a disadvantage, friends. I am Commissar Imandius Mencken, Pyrus 31st-"

One of the arbites began to grin under his helmet as he holstered his pistol and the wicked shock maul, and he took off his helmet, showing the same shade of red that dear Manterlay had.

"Aye, we heard about what happened, how'd you manage to get out of that mess? Ye can call me Tanner."

Imandius went through his story, although he feared that the introductions to the rest of the group of survivors slipped from his mind as they snuck back to the enforcer's station they were holed up in. Time was slipping again, and with it his ability to concentrate. It would all be so much easier if the pain would just stop.

Laughing, tired faces greeted him and passed from his memory as a local doctor, a civilian who refused to flee to the shelters in the wake of the invasion, dressed his wounds and cleaned them. Pain coursed through the commissar as the medicines did their work, but at least now they were properly treated and (you think that will make them go away don't you, poor, poor Immy-boy?) would soon be on their way out.

He sighed with relief, closing his eyes...

His dreams were filled with the sounds of running water and the smell of burning flesh.

Poor Manterlay. Leman Russes aren't normally things a PDF trooper is equipped to combat, but he surely tried. Brought the entire building down on top of it, and set the whole block burning in the process, denying the heretics any of the weapons. Good man. He probably died quick enough.

At least one could hope that, in such an inferno.

Of the sixteen troopers, eight were taken in the fighting, and four more were taken in the destruction of the cache, holding the line as the others got out. Of them, Imandius only knew Wendersale, the black haired man from the southern continent who was carrying the heavy bolter on his back with the help of another. He didn't even know the tall man's first name, only that unlike the sergeant he was not taken to smiling. It was probably a cultural thing. Imandius himself was from the western islands of Arephos, which were known mainly for exporting sea-food and for being used as training grounds for the schola students and pdf troopers.

A brief second's luxury was spent wondering how they were fairing during the invasion before he was dragged back into the present by the sound of many shambling feet echoing through the tunnels behind them.

"On your guard, but keep moving. Probably just some bloody mutants from the undercity coming up to explore the commotion."

The lights flickered overhead in the tunnel as they proceeded onward, hopefully to an untouched cache hidden in an old subway station that was abandoned years ago by the government. Dust would cascade down in sheets from the ceiling and up from the floor as they pushed themselves up against the wall, the telltale rumblings of artillery and bombs rattling their teeth. They waited several minutes for the dust to settle, then made their way again.

The sight of the old subway station would've brought tears to their eyes if any man among them had the luxury of wasting the water.

It was in ruins, a large rent in the ceiling caused by a cave-in, either from the bombardment or the ravages of time, and several sewer pipes had burst their way through the ground like jagged, metal roots lusting for the embrace of the sun's light.

Imandius took a full minute, absorbing every detail, then put a smile on his face and turned around.

"Well, on to the next one, boys."

The commissar was jarred awake as the ground underneath him seemed to shake and jump, his head bumping up against a metal surface. His eyes snapped open.

A chimera.

He was inside a chimera, and the others were with him.

'Must be evacuating from the police station...'

His whole body itched. His dressings had been replaced again. From the smell, and the looks the others gave him, the infections must be getting worse (but they feel so much better the pain is gone so much better.) No matter, if he died, he died.

The trip was silent. Not even the sound of gunfire challenging them as they drove managed to pierce the confines of the armored transport. He saw a few of the others occasionally scratching at wounds they had acquired during the evacuation, and he sighed, about to close his eyes (rest your weary head Immy you need your rest for what's to come) again.

"How rough was it?"

His throat ached when he broke the silence, startling the others. He didn't see the arbite from before. He must be driving. Muttered voices and noncommittal grunts greeted his ears. Must've been (oh how little you remember) really bad.

His vision blurred as he rested his head against the vibrating plates of the transport, but his hearing was just fine. Coughing, more muttering. Muffled curses. The coughing was especially painful sounding, probably from dust and glass (sure of that aren't you) particles.

He tried to speak once more, a little louder, his voice seeming to grate out from deep within him, but he was just so tired, and once more he dreamt.

Two more caches, gone, raided, or inaccessible. So far their rations were holding out, though, so it wasn't all that bad.

Or it wouldn't have been if they hadn't lost the bolter holding against more damned souls at an intersection. They rigged it to blow and brought down a cave-in to help their escape, but the loss of the heavy weapon had hurt morale something fierce, and Imandius could think of nothing but shallow platitudes with which to bring up his charges' spirits.

On at least two occasions they were forced further down into the undercity, below the sewers, tunnels, and maintenance ways, in order to bypass a new obstruction caused by the explosive battle going on above. They encountered few groups of survivors, or deserters. They didn't have time to identify which they could've been without revealing their own position. More than half the time they were forced to kill the others, for fear of discovery. In the end the Emperor would know his own. Imandius prayed to himself that sometime soon His Divine Majesty would remember his own still amongst the living. Even a single squad of Astartes would not go without cheers, if they happened to show up.

Throne knows that the fighting was getting worse. He could hear the reverberations even in the undercity. The PDF space fleet probably just lost its last vessel, or had pulled out, because parts of the city were being bombarded from orbit. It would make it a trifle harder to retake the city, and they were no doubt funneling reinforcements to key battles, but it's been done before. The trouble with a guerrilla campaign against Chaos is that one can easily forget why one was fighting in the first place.

Imandius drew himself out of his reverie as he noticed that all sounds seemed to stop around them. No rats, no echoes of refugees, no gunshots. Motes of dust were frozen in the air, and he could see his breath as it escaped from him, the vapor slowing to a stop inches from his face.

His bolt pistol and chainsword were already in his hands as his head whipped around, eyes searching for unseen threats.

"Wendersale, we need to find cover, now."

His voice sounded flat, there were no echoes, and the air refused to carry it, even when he shouted. His troopers heard, though, snapping from whatever hex the atmosphere was trying to place on them, and the burly black-haired Cisyphian was clambering over a corpse long-dead and prying open an old service hatch.

"In here, Commissar!"

The metal hatch groaned as the trooper opened it, a puff of dust and rust escaping from its hinges. He heard it then, the cause of the silence. It was like the scraping of chains against steel. It was a dry sound, rasping against the very air as if the very idea of coming into contact with the wet rot surrounding the tunnels were anathema. The sound grew louder and louder, even as all of the troopers pushed through the hatch and made their run.

A thick arm grasped the commissar then, and he almost lashed out before realizing that it was one of his charges, pulling him away. It was as if his very bones had taken root in the floor.

'Sorcery.'

The very idea that it could have been fear was pushed from his mind and reforged into the intense hatred of all things psyker-related his training had instilled him with. While the ones in service to the Emperor were a necessary evil, but all those who were tainted by the Ruinous Powers were fair-game for his bolt pistol. If he could overcome whatever that was that had frozen his mind and body.

The fog from his mind refused to leave him, even as he ran after the troopers, his thumb hovering over the ignition button on his chainsword. Every moment they spent that was not in motion threatened to pull them into the psychic quagmire the enemy had cast about the place. Even breathing became a thing of great labor and concentration. Litanies and prayers ran through his mind, and still he could find no recourse or change.

Well, there was a change. Whatever was hounding them began to laugh.

It was a melodious sound, almost like music, and it was tinged with a deep, harsh undertone that suggested horrible temptations. Dark promises dripped down from the walls as the echoes of the laugh reached his ears. It would be so easy just to stop, just to listen. Another voice, his own, rebelled. He revved up his chainsword, the sound drowning out the laugh and snapping most of the troopers out of their spellbound states. One was not quick enough to rouse out, his face like a man asleep, lost in a dreamworld. For the sake of the poor man's soul, Imandius cut him down.

No litanies or quips came to his mind to push the soldiers forward, so instead he used the much simpler, but much easier method of violence. Near-blasphemous curses left his lips as he bashed one of the troopers in the shoulder with the pommel of his chainsword, kicking another in the back.

"We don't have time, move! For the sake of all things sacred move!"

His heart pounded in his chest, and the chill miasma was replaced with terror-inspired adrenaline. It was a small mercy that his chainsword was already out and at the ready, for their flight led them into a nest of the undercity's denizens. Beastmen of all shades, forced out of sight save when they were needed, and covered in sores, boils, and wicked mutations all, they whipped their heads up from their slumber and stared at the interlopers.

The first mistake was that Wendersale opened fire, in the hopes of scaring them off with a few well placed shots in the ceiling. The second was one of the privates trying to flee back the way they came.

His tortured screams forced Imandius to a decision, one that he did not remember he had made until now.

He strode forward purposefully as the mutated abhumans snarled and jumped towards him and his guardsmen. He pulled the pin on one of the incendiary grenades on Wendersale's belt.

He kicked.

His chainsword sprung to life in his hands as he thrust himself to the side, carving down man and beast if they were in his way as he fled towards one of the other entrances to this den. The thinking part of his mind rather thought it was a former subway hub. It also began to come up with all manner of excuses and illusions, as the human mind is wont to do, in order to maintain his sanity. In order to keep his personal identity intact as adamantium teeth bit through flesh and bone, and his squad died as they were ripped apart by the filthy abhumans. It was a small sacrifice to buy him time. To let him live.

He did not even notice the ragged tears and chunks in his arm as a beastman tore chunks away, his mind was elsewhere as the chainsword tore out the throat of the offending creature.

Imandius woke with a start, his entire body covered in a cold sweat. He was still in the chimera. He was alone. The smell was unbearable, and he threw himself out of the open hatch and onto the ground, coughing and retching up a vile, green substance.

All around the vehicle were the signs of battle, recent and horrid. The chimera itself was a shell of what it should be, the entire forward section sporting a glowing hole where some lucky cultist managed to blast it with a melta gun. The surrounding street was littered with corpses, and the local carrion birds were feasting with immense glee. They didn't bother him so much as the decayed state of the dead. Was he out for days? Weeks?

His chrono said mere hours had passed. Some manner of sorcery, then.

He stumbled over a shape on the ground that had once been a man, the corpse exploding in a fountain of corrupted gore, black ichor spraying all over him. He wanted to scream, but instead rolled over, crawling away as the scream burned in his throat. He ripped off his overcoat, scrubbing the slime off of himself as he got clear of what his eyes now told him was an intense massacre. There were heavy casualties on both sides. The arbites fought hard, but it was not enough. He could not think of why he was left behind, or indeed how he had managed to sleep through such a battle, but he pushed those thoughts from his mind as he tossed his ruined greatcoat to the ground, pulling his chainsword free from it.

He should go back and salvage weapons.

He chose to get them elsewhere, and leave everything to the near-crows.

His ambling brought him to an abandoned hospital. The top six floors were bombed out, and still smoking, and there wasn't a sign of any movement at all. In his more lucid moments, he would have immediately gone to ground someplace with less entrances, as it was most certainly a trap of some kind, the silence should've tipped him off that something was horribly wrong.

The pleading of his mind went unheard. The sound of the flood and buzzing in his ears drowned out all thoughts. He had to get to shelter.

And he was so bloody thirsty. (It will all be over soon, be joyful Immy!)

With a groan he pushed his way through the rubble blocking the door of the bombed out building, and made his way inside. It had long since lost the sterile smell of death he associated with hospitals, and instead smelled of rotten mold, rank water, and the long-dead. Sisters Hospitalier, most of them. He pushed the thoughts from his mind, searching for anything he could use. He had to use his chainsword as an impromptu 'key' on many occasions, but all of the medicines and food rations he could find were long-since useless. There was water, though, which was greedily drank before he passed out on one of the patient beds.