The mortal screamed in agony as a jagged combat blade, long since stained with the blood of foes long since slain sliced through his soft belly and carved an unholy pattern into his entrails. The tattered remains of his PDF uniform were a pathetic remainder of his once stupid decision to stand against the inevitability of chaos and the power of the dark pantheon. Now he was a sacrifice to the very powers he scorned in favour of the corpse tyrant. The miserable wretch writhed and begged, at first for his life to be spared, then for mercy and finally for a swift end from his torments. The Word Bearer ignored all pleas like a man would ignore the scarred buzzing of an insect it was trying to swat. 

The whimpering mortal made a meagre, if not pathetic offering to the ruinous powers. But it was the best Ashtor could scrounge up. One soul would have to do. The Imperial forces were fast approaching and it seemed the will of fate that this world would not be liberated from the great enemy this day. More screams issued from the mortals throat, now raw and hoarse with pain and overuse. Ashtor gave his blade one last savage twist and ripped it out of the chest cavity, coating the ruined soil beneath in splattered blood. By now the creature only had a few more minutes of life left inside him, and every second of that remaining life would be spent in agony that would appease the Dark gods in hopeful exchange for favours. 

He had no more time to spend on the creature. His sacrifice was made, the eight pointed star carved and bubbling with blood and viscera related bile. His fate was in the gods hands now. Unlike warriors from most chaos legions, a Word Bearer did not embrace solitude and lone wandering. Word Bearers were disciplined and worked best when under the leadership of their dark apostles. Gathered in their war-hosts and standing shoulder to shoulder in unholy vigour. Without such inspired leadership Ashtor felt rudderless. He did not blame Amon for fleeing. To stay on this world would only spell doom for the Defiler's war-host and lose the Word Bearer's legion over two hundred of its warriors and resources. Such a loss would displease the gods and their plans for the legion. He did resent being separated in the confusion. His battle squad was dead, Killed in retreating skirmishes against their 'loyalist' cousins. He could only scavenge what he could of ammo and ordinance. Their armour was likely lost to the legion forever. A hard blow to lose four suits of precious power armour and their weapons. 

As the sound of countless skitarii marched forward in eerie unison reached it's crescendo, accentuated by the roar of engines of war greater and more numerous than anything chaos managed to deploy to the surface. Ashtor knew it was time to leave.... and quickly. 

Luckily he knew there were some opportunities of escape. Listening to the vox channels of the mechanicus served no purpose. Their accursed binary script was unintelligible to all save their own. Even the chaos aligned techpriests jealously guarded the secret of their language. But the chatter of his allies revealed far more. It was unlikely that the Black legion would simply let him board their gunship. He would never bend the knee to their pretender king. But he had little choice other than to try. 

By the time he approached the gunship a scene of a whole other sort was unfolding. The black Legion warriors were being set upon by a gaggle of other legion warriors. He recognized the livery of them. He briefly considered joining the fray but there was no guarantee these misguided servants of their singular patrons would not turn on each other once the black legion was no more. He had confidence in the khornite and the sorcerer hacking each other to pieces. Such were the consequences of foolishly choosing to ignore chaos in its entirety as was the only proper way to worship, and instead focus on one flawed and narrow aspect of darkness.

He would watch from afar for now. It was like watching beasts fight, they would tire themselves out, maybe even injure and kill each other. Once battle had weakened the remainder Ashtor would make the decision to descend on the survivors in a hail of super-heated plasma and take the gunship for his own. Returning to the war-host with such a prize would grant him much prestige in the eyes of the apostles.