Staring through the scarlet eye lenses of a faceplate forged into a perpetual, rictus snarl, the legionnaire in question halted his thumping bootfalls and regarded Lentus' power sword with complete and unabashed envy. Clad in a power-armored mishmash of multiple Marks, the marine stood, like the rest of the Legion, as a living nightmare. Dirty white skulls with outstretched, ugly, maroon pinions screamed in silent fury through the hollowed ceramite that served as their eye sockets as the spikes on his back-mounted powerplant bristled with the cracked helms of Novamarines. On the trimming of one pauldron, stenciled in the serpentine cuneiform of Nostraman read, [i]'Udan, who is without mercy.'[/i]

[b]"I,"[/b] he pronounced slowly, in a low, deceptively cool voice; his body language guarded and his trigger finger itching, [b]"am one of Fourth Claw, and Sorthraal is my sergeant; but I am not [i]his man[/i], Lentus."[/b]