The daemons surged forward, tongues lolling and arms brandishing wicked blades. I felt intense clarity, as one might feel before a duel or a major surgery, or perhaps during a shuttle wreck. Only once before had I seen a daemon, and this number of them chilled me to the bone for the briefest of moments. My will was then transformed into a fury of retribution. The foulest beings in the universe and the warp beyond now streamed before me and I could not remain frozen with indecision. 

Emmaline looks to have felt the same, whether by cognitive thought or her sense of survival. The men followed suit and let off a volley of fire, and I cried to the Emperor for guidance.

Lasbolts and slug rounds were sent back at us, cultists hiding behind alcoves and pillars for cover. Luckily it seemed the warp was not intensely strong here, even if I felt it tinged with strangeness, even moreso than usual. The daemons were many, but their numbers were still finite. Lasbolts riddled them as they ran, but many other ducked and dodged with preternatural speed, eyes filled with hatred and forebidden knowledge.

A daemon entered my range, and though it could cut me in two with the merest swipe of its claws, I had been trained to deal with any situation involving the threat beyond. I stepped back and my sign of the emperor, before performing a ritual pattern I had been taught by my late master. The sweep of the power sword and my own hand was like a holy symbol in motion, causing the daemon to growl in fear and backstep, flinching for the crucial moment I needed to ignite my blade and cut through its midsection. It's body dissipated into strange, iridescent dust.

A few of my men had been overrun and cut down, heads and arms flying free of their bodies. The others had made a firing line, the sergeant throwing a grenade behind one of the metal outcroppings. There was a yelp of surprise and the explosion detonated, likely killing a few cultists from the shrapnel. To my right, the Thunder Warrior, Lucius, unleashed his archaic bolter into the daemons. It was not a blessed weapon like the astartes, coming from a time before the heresy, but its sheer firepower and force cut swathes through the loping warp-beasts and any cultist unfortunate enough to peek out of cover at the wrong moment. Even as I watched, a daemon made it to the warrior and cut a jagged line into his armor, only for the warrior to crush the thing beneath his elbow in a move not unlike a wrestler, before it could do further damage. 

"Press forward!" I cried, cutting another daemon down. 

I saw cultists fly out of cover into the silvery protrusions from the ground and breaking bones against the obelisks. I knew Emmaline was to thank for that. By the Emperor, we were winning!

I should know not to make such assumptions. That was when Bahometus entered the fray, sending an arc of purple light coalesced in black lightning into my column of men. Six of them were hit dead one, and though the attack looked to be something that moved with weight and mass, it merely passed through them. They screamed as horrible, unrelenting [i]change[/i] corrupted their very beings. Tendrils and spikes erupted out of their bodies, breaking bones and snapping necks as their limbs and extremities were replaced with bulbous, unnatural growths and horns of some unknown form of cartilage. I nearly vomited at the sight, and with one move a quarter of my men were killed in the most abhorrent way possible. 

"Emmaline! Stop him!" I cried, pointing at where the tendrils of energy had appeared. I did not expect her to kill the sorcerer, only to check him as we moved closer for a killing stroke.