[b]"Pardon my intrusion, but were you in the Guard before joining the retinue?"[/b] 

Sten kept his eyes glued to his laspistol, almost fully absorbed. “Yeah, I was a Gunnery Sargent in 27th Kaviskr Shock Troopers.” He continued to reassemble his weapon, trying to ignore the distracting attempts at conversation. In his experience, Guardsmen, or anyone experienced in going into bad situations, had different ways of coping. Sten's was to light a lho and disassemble and reassemble his weapon until the weapons parts and the stick's flavor were all he thought about. 

The chimera arrived on the front lines soon afterwards. Sten closed the weapon housing and re-checked the battery nodes for the umpteenth time before piling out of the Chimera and into the trenches of the front line. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Guard ID tags swinging from the Magos' neck. Sten was immediately surprised that a Cogboy would wear such a piece of sentimentalism, then felt rather badly for snubbing another ex-Guardsman, possibly hindering his own coping mechanism. He made a mental note to apologize, though after the mission. The Inquisitor gave his orders telepathically, and Sten gave a telepathic bow of acknowledgment before running off towards the left flank. 

The left flank was a maze of trenches and no-man's land, filled with vicious close-quarters fighting. He attached himself to a guard squad and led the push into the enemy's lines. Pyrokinesis, when performed correctly, was much like building a fire. He started with the small things like causing heads to spontaneously combust. Then the real trick was to let his hatred swell so he could control the more powerful techniques. A squad of cultists tried to ambush the squad around a corner, but Sten knew of their presence and heated their weapons in their hands until they dropped them or they jammed. The cultists were quickly mowed down, but one managed to leap forward and strike Sten with a knife. Sten blasted him away with a blow from his force staff, then inspected the wound. 

It was a shallow cut, and didn't immediately require medical attention. Ray pressed his hand into the wound and cauterized it, feeding off his self-inflicted pain to reach forth into the ether. The trench ahead of them erupted in a great gout of fire and screams. The guardsmen held him in fear and awe as his face began to curl into a scowl. He marched onward through the trench he just cleared to find a reinforced steel door, leading to an underground enemy stronghold. The squad leader awkwardly tried telling him that they would have to wait until breaching explosives were brought up when Sten began pounding on the door with his bare hands. Sten let his hate build as he slammed upon the door. He pooled it in his hands and they began to glow like hot metal. He slammed his hands into the door and began tearing a hole into the heated metal. Spotting cultists on the other side, terrified and preparing to fire, he inhaled deeply and spewed a gout of flame-breath into the room. With a grunt of exertion, Sten ripped the door apart and collapsed against the trench wall, his hands returned to normal. He needed to catch his breath after such a powerful exertion. He tried to use a more powerful technique without building up enough fury to fuel it, and so exerted himself more than he intended. He let the squad proceed into the stronghold while he rested for a moment.