[b][u]Erosion[/u][/b][hr]Gugann[hr]
The vox clicked to life in a wave of static, a constant hiss of white noise rising with each passing moment the vox remained alive. The sound abated with a click as whoever had been transmitting finished their transmission and relief washed over the vox channel as only silence followed.

“Vox is acting up.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Quiet both of you, eyes and ears up, we are not the hunters tonight.”

A pair of flashing runes blinked to life across the Serpent’s helm overlay, a pair of non-audible affirmatives from the bickering legionnaires as they fell quiet.

The soft crunch of stone beneath the ceramite boots of ten legionnaires was the only sound accompanying the squad of Serpent’s as they swept down the tunnel. Night-sight overlays aided their enhanced eyes as beams of light from weapons and armor pierced the murky gloom for any sign of the enemy.

A deeper darkness loomed into the tunnel as the squad found themselves entering a cavern of indeterminate size.

Like the well drilled machine they were the squad of Serpents fanned out into the hollow, a circle forming even as two of its members fell into the center of their squad mates.

A device was unhooked from one of the Serpent’s powerpacks and the duo got to work connecting snaking wires and ribbed hydraulic lines to the device. 

Watching the progress on a small overlay on her helms visor Sergeant Mocel blink clicked a runic warning to those working the device, a pair of serpents eating one anothers tails in a spiral.

The device clanked as the two Serpent’s hefted it into the air and with no ceremony spiked it into the cavern floor. The device creaked for a moment, the machine whine of an internal turbine filling the restive silence and the cylindrical machine righted itself on four extending legs and began to pound a flat hammer into the earth with pneumatic hammer blows.

The overlay of her squad working was blinked away in favor of a new overlay, a slowly expanding map of the cavern they were in and the tunnels that snaked beyond it.

The machine worked well, sounding a map out with each hammer stroke, and Mocel allowed herself a small sense of relief as they neared the end of this mission.

The vox crackled to life once more, a static hiss like the death of a star filling the helmets of her entire squad with ear splitting noise before it cut out as quickly as it had come.

A warning rune flickered in her helm from one of her squad, then another, followed in quick succession by four more. Each the same, a four legged animal, similar to the jet black jagara of Hy Brasil, bounding forward.

[i]Movement[/i].

They were felt first, in the way that her helms autosensors struggled to focus and adjust. Then in the thrum of her powerpack as wires corroded and electricity was siphoned off as random heat.

The mission timer counted down in her visor, 27:13, 27:12, 27:11. It would not be fast enough.

A servo whined in protest as one of her own, Xocotl, attempted to reposition to cover a tunnel to her right. The sound was a sweet carrion call to the things that lurked beyond the shadows of the hollow and at once they descended on Mocel and her squad.

Like apparitions of myth, like the tormented souls of Ixhun that haunted the forests beyond the great city-walls, the Hrud appeared. They came forth from every crevice imaginable, from behind every rock and, as Mocel swore on the Fifth Sun, from within the shadows themselves.

Face to face with a slithering blurred beast of chitinous armor and spoils of mucus that had just a moment earlier not existed at all, Mocel opened fire point blank. The harsh report of her bolter set the rest of her squad alive and the hollow alight with the staccato blaze of weapons fire.

The creature before them burst into messy chunks, covering Mocel in its remains as she continued to fire away at the enemy beyond.

She moved her bolter over the xenos with drilled precision and disciplined bursts. Not a single bolt was wasted as each found their mark even as she let loose another at a new target. She slammed a new magazine home and keyed the squad vox.

Static assailed her.

She dropped the connection and blinked clicked a new rune, the closing gates of an Ixhun city state.

[i]Withdraw to safety[/i].

She took a step, servos and fine motors in her armor whining as she did. She could hear her squad moving around her, the tortured screams of delicate mechanisms aging at supernatural speeds echoing just beneath the din of bolter fire.[hr]

Weezing permeated the room as the Primarch of the XVII, newly arrived over Gugann, stood over Sergeant Mocel. Mocel looked up at her scion, her features impossibly aged for a warrior of the Astartes as she rasped out breath after pained breath.

“You are one of few yes?” her Scion asked her as she circled her like a predator would wounded prey.

Mocel steeled her features as best she could, pulling her drooping lips tight before she spoke, “Lord, I and two others of my squad exited the caves.”

Her scion continued around her, poking and prodding at her skin as she did, “The rest fell before you could make for safety, I have read that report, I ask of your condition, of your being as you are,” her Primarch motioned toward her body, toward her aged features, her skin pulled taut over her degraded muscles, to her incessant cough.

“Sixteen total, Lord,” answered Chief Apothecary Peña from where she stood against the wall, “Sixteen of your daughters are reduced to nothing more than feeble old women--”

“We still wish to fight,” Mocel interjected before she began a coughing fit worse than any since her Primarch had entered the room.

Nelchitl stopped her prodding and came to rest in front of Mocel, her eyes, those umber pits looking down upon her daughter with pity as she spoke, “You can fight no longer, Sergeant,” she shook her head, “Though I hate to say it, to condemn you to such a fate as the end of your service in His name… I can not allow you to remain in a combat status.”

Mocel swallowed hard, an action that in itself caused great discomfort to her aged countenance, but mercifully managed to keep the reaction from her dismal features.

“Lord, you can’t d---”

“I can do as I please, I should not have to remind you, Sergeant,” her Primarch spoke quickly as she cut off her daughter, “But I understand, the hurt you must feel,” Mocel found sadness then in the eyes of her scion, a deep hurt like no other she had ever known and in that moment she too ached as she never had before.

“I will have you and the others returned with me to Ixhun, I am always in need of veteran daughters to raise the next of us. With any luck, you will be useful to the His purpose yet, Sergeant.”[hr]