A very long time ago, half a galaxy away, on Terra, centre of human civilization...

*In the famous playhouse, The Leman Russ*
Belatyn Larkin patiently waited for the curtian to come up. It would, he had been told, be worth waiting for - and with a quick glance around the room, he saw that many others had been told the same thing. As he sat, and occasionally talked to the person next to him, he felt a pang in his heart at what he was now doing. He should be out there, fighting, for Emperor and Imperium, or otherwise, not sitting here waiting for a damned play to start. He ruthlessly crushed these feelings, and reminded himself of all the losses that he had suffered in battle - and what he might lose still. Why not spend the rest of his days in this body in some other way than what he had been doing for as long as he could remember?
He had to tell himself that.
He had to...

*Onboard the TDS Guardian*

"Damn sensors..." muttered the officer manning that position, "keep bloody malfunctioning!" After a brief second, he looked at the sacred, consecrated display screen, imbued by the sanctified Enginseers with the spirit of the Machine God, and gave it a good whack. He had been around for too long to beleive in all that stuff - it was a machine, pure and simple, and it often screwed up. As it was doing now - how could there possibly be hundreds of contacts, many several kilometres long, racing through the warp? Had to be a malfunction.
He decided to report the malfunction to his duty officer, and stood to head over to his station - taking a glance out of the durasteel porthole while he did so, to calm his frayed nerves with the soothing sight of the asteroid belt.
What he saw, did not soothe him.
"Sir... I really think you should look at this..."....

They were the last words he ever said, as he and his entire station was vapourised by multiple, simultaneous lance strikes from the Chaos fleet. He was not the first to die, and he would not be the last...

*Back at The Leman Russ*
There was a mutter rapidly spreading around the playhall, as the third vibration shook the whole place. The actors were continuing as normal, but they would do that - the show must go on, and all that. The audience were not so composed - many were on their feet, and one or two of the older women had even fainted. An earthquake of this size had never happened on Terra since the tectonic plates had been frozen in place, during the lifetime of the Emperor. The real lifetime, that is, not the mechanically sustained undeath that he was suspended in now. At the thought of that, Bel shivered. He had known the Emperor well, and he would never have thought that he would have wanted such a life. Looking around, he...

*BOOM*

A shockwave blasted up from the point of impact, which was almost directly on the stage, and blew the entire building to pieces. Those within fourty meters of the blast were vapourised instantly, and many within a hundred were sliced in half by the sheer force of the wave. It was only those up in the balconies, a quarter of a kilometre away from the blast, who even had a chance of survival, but they still suffered seventy-five percent fatalities. Those who died were the lucky ones, as would soon be seen. For the impact had not been a spaceborne weapon - it had been a Chaos drop-pod. The baroquely worked, pus-dripping, crenelated gangways fell away from the center of the pod, and dozens of cultists, traitor Guardsmen, and worse things spilled forth. Many of these showed signs of injury as well, from scratched to broken necks - but Chaos did not care for it's wounded, or it's dead, and the tide of filth came on.

Belatyn Larkin was lucky to survive. Only the fact that he had been sitting in his signature wheelchair spared him, as the seats in front, and their occupants, protected him from the blast. He saw the messy remmanants of his neighbor's upper torso, and decided not to waste time looking for the rest of him - he had Chaos to kill. Standing, he looked at the oncoming wave of monstrosities, and decided this was not such a good idea. He was outnumbered almost a hundred to one, and had no weapons. A las-blast came searing toward his head, and only his unnaturally fast reflexes - and the fact that he was already moving - saved him, causing the beam to impale a panicking patron behind him. Bel hit the ground rolling, and was up and running in seconds, with a hail of fire blasting the seats behind him to splinters. As soon as he heard a heavy bolter fire, he knew he couldn't keep this up - Chaos Marines were unlikely to make the same mistake as the addled mutants were - and would track rather than follow their targets.
Luckily for him, his objective - the window - was close. Diving through it, he felt rounds whistle all around him, and one even sliced across the back of his legs. But nonetheless, he had escaped, and was already planning his route back to his domicile.
With a crack that would have made anyone wince, he hit the solid, duracrete floor, fourty meters below. After a few seconds catching his breath, he was up and running again, along the blasted street, surrounded by broken buildings and vehicles, his mind working furiously. How could they have breached the defenses? And possibly more importantly, why? Their method must have been made possible recently, or else they would have done it much earlier.
Such consideration was swiftly cut short, however, as a squad of Chaos soldiery came dashing across the street in front of him. From their careless, clumsy movements, and the sloppy angles of fire they were keeping open, he could tell that this group of six had little or no experience, or training. It would be easy.
Sliding into cover behind an upturned car, he listened to the breathing of the approaching pointman. It was unsteady, a clear sign of anxeity. Another point against them, then. Bel waited, paitiently, while the squad worked their way toward him. He watched as the pointman, then a rifleman, then an autocannon-wielding cultist went past him. His eyes raised briefly at that - Chaos would never normally issue such weapons to such ill-suited louts, seemingly unable to even look behind unsecured cover. No matter, it was his good fortune. As soon as the next two members of the squad came past him, one on his left, one on his right, he moved with lightning speed - sending a mental command to his Puppeteer, jamming the firing mechanisms of their lasguns, sending a psychic pulse that blew the skull of the last man to pieces, and lunging for the exposed, poorly armoured neck of the man on his right. With a quick twist that most observers would not have beleived possible, he broke the cultist's neck and tossed his body at the first three, knocking them down. Before the surviors could realise their peril, he was on them - punching the man on his left in the chest with enough force to crack concrete, he leaped for the staggering autocannon wielder. This time, the man had a chance to respond, and brought his weapon to bear - he even managed to fire a few rounds. But it was to no avail, and Bel yanked the cannon out of his hands and turned it on the gunner. The two survivors were only just now turning to look at him, and he mowed them down before they even had a chance to reach cover, sending giblets a dozen meters down the street.
Bel stood them, holding the autocannon in one hand, and stopped the mental timer he had started when he first burst into action.
Four point seven six seconds. He winced. He was getting slow in his old age.
He continued his run toward his home...

*Aboard the Imperator-Class Destroyer, Pride of Perthis*

The blast killed Certin and Reynolds instantly - shredded them into a gooey, reddish pulp. The rest of the comms crew fared little better, and Captian Dante doubted that any of them would survive. He offered a brief prayer to the Emperor for his deliverance - if the macro-cannon rounds had landed a dozen feet left of where they did, the whole bridge would have been slaughtered, including him. He glanced at the crystal display that showed the ebb and flow of the battle, broken in a dozen places - and saw that it was flowing against the Imperial forces. Despite dozens of burnt-out hulks littering the space behind them, the hundreds of Chaos ships continued to press the thin Imperial line. It was only thanks to the planetary defense batteries and the Ramiles Starfort that was anchoring the center of the Imperial line that it hadn't turned into a massacre on the Imperial side. He leaned foward, and allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction as the Chaos frigate that had nearly killed him fell afoul of a lance burst, blasting it's plasma generator to pieces, and looked back at the sensor screen. The first thing he noticed, in his fore-vision, was the fact that dozens of Chaos ships had slipped past the battle line and were even now pouring drop-pods and drop-ships down onto the planet - and ceasing the fire of the orbital batteries. The second, was the vast, impossibly ornate spear of pure evil that had just thrust through the Chaos battle lines - twenty kilometers long, dripping with weapons of all descriptions, and surrounded by a void shield that was resisting the combined fire of dozens of Imperial ships. And the third and final thing, the lance batteries opening to fire - straight at him.

*Back on Terra*

Bel raced around the corner, desperate enought to kick down the door of his lodgings if necessary, and then skidded to a halt. The door had already been broken. His eyes narrowed, and he started to move again before realising how badly out of breath he was. Since the encounter with the inexperienced patrol, he had fought several other running battles, and had to ditch the autocannon - and taken a number of glancing injuries - all without even stopping. Deciding that now was as good as soon, and that all of his equipment was hidden well enough that the Chaos couldn't find it anyway, he took cover in the wreckage of a destroyed building, set up some simple psychic wards - the first to warn him of a mind's approach, and the second to dismember the first person to cross it, and cast his mind out to the battle, both on the planet, and above it....
Out...
Out....
Out......
Out.
He saw the death of the Pride of Perthis, and a score of other Imperial ships beside, at the hands of the Chaos command ship. He saw the frantic gun-battles that were occurring even now, through the streets of the cities, within PDF bases and planetary guns, and even in the plaza outside of the Imperial Palace itself. Almost as an afterthought, he moved his disembodied conciousness into his house, and searched for mental signatures within. He saw three - two clearly tainted by Chaos, on the first and second floors, and working upwards, and another that was just terrified, on the third. He moved his thoughts back to his own body..
In.........
In......
In...
In.
Standing up, he started to move toward his house, already issuing mental commands to the Puppeteer - commands along the lines of "Initalize defense protocol twenty-three"
By the time he got to the third floor, having stepped over the exploded bodies of the two Chaos incursors, the third mind had moved. No matter, thought he, and walked over to it's location. His eyebrows raised when he saw what the person was hiding in - his wardrobe. With a wave of his hand, and a command to the Puppeteer, the door swang open, and someone spilled out.
"Don't hurt me!" The person screamed, as Bel was already moving to break something crucial. You know, like skulls, hearts, spines, that kind of thing.
"Who are you?" He asked, willing to give him a second or two to explain himself. Mentally, he started counting. *Noone* should be in his home, especially not at a time like this.
"I.. I.. I'm just.... the... repairman!", stammered the terrified intruder. After a brief interrogation - drawing the answers straight from his mind, in some cases, this was proven to be incorrect. The man was a thief. Normally he would have handed him in to the authorities - killing people drew so much attention, he could never understand why - and indeed, this was the one time noone would notice another body, but he felt oddly happy since the attack. A certian energy buzzed around his body, revitalizing his tired old limbs. After all, now he no longer needed to go to the battle - it had come to him.
Plus, it wouldn't really matter if he let him live or killed him anwyay...
"Scram", Belatyn said, letting go of the thief. "And a piece of advice... grab a gun"
"But I don't know how to use one!", bawled the thief.
"You don't need to. If one of these Chaos soldiers sees you with a gun, they'll shoot you. If one of these Chaos soldier sees you unarmed, they'll capture you. And trust me, being captured is a helluvalot worse"

After the man fled, Bel headed down to the 'secret' room, accessable from the living room by pulling out a particular two books on the shelves at once, standing on a pressure plate with one foot and on a second with another, clearly saying the password, and looking directly at the vase of flowers on the table - and allowing the laser to scan your retina. 'Secret', because all his neighbors, the local Arbites, and indeed everyone, had seen him do it. He snorted at human thought processes, as he ordered the Puppeteer to open the door to the secret, *secret* room, in the roof of the 'secret' room.

Within, he saw what he had been really wishing he had for the last hour - his exo-suit. He felt the strange urge to hug it, but fought it down. It was only a machine, after all.
Dammit, he thought, I can't not say hello. He gave it a pat, and murmured hello.
Grabbing his tools and weaponry, which was sprawled around the room, he started to attach the chosen weapons to it..

*Loadout*

Head:
Laser Designator, mounted foward-facing on the left temple
Respirator system, linked to oxygen regenerator, enabling survival in toxic, corrosive, and hard-vacuum conditions.
Psytech uplink
Sensor array

Shoulder:
Deuterium Missile launcher, 2 missiles

Torso:
Minature Plasma Generator, inbuilt and back
Man-portable void shield, 14 seconds max duration at full power, inbuilt and front.
Light Ceramite overlay on Vitranium (AKA Shadowsteel) underlayer.
Phase Capacitor, maximum teleport range, 2500 meters.

Left arm:
Warp-thread sensor (Warp Portal Mechanism)
Power Blade
Bolter (OOC - you can never go wrong with a good bolter, as my old Space Marine Sgt. used to say)

Right arm:
Plasma rifle
Flamer
Power Blade

Legs:
Antigrav generators
Core-det jumppacks (OOC - much like a jetpack, but with a limited number of blasts to it, causing extremely high jumps, not enabling flying - in this case, three jumps and subsequent landings)

*Loadout ends*

A few minitues later, he had finished, and donned the armour. With practiced skill, he enabled the warp-threader, and began an labourious search for the correct filament, that would drop him right into the bridge of the Chaos flagship, and allow him to end this bloody assault..

*On board the Chaos Flagship*

"Muahahhahahahah! Muahahahahhahaah! Muahahhaahhahhahahahah!", cackled the evil Chaos Lord Eaamon Kull. After a brief moment of consideration, he added "Muahahah! Muahahahahahahah!".

A careful observer - he would have to be very careful, on a command deck full of Chaos spawn - would have noticed that he was not actually laughing, but instead *saying*, 'Muahahaha'. The same observer, probably deciding to leave the insane Chaos worshipper to his amusement, may have glanced outside, and taken a look at the way the space battle was going. It would be evident to any that it was not going well for the Imperial side - with nearly as many Imperial ships destroyed as Chaos, and a clear weight advantage to the Chaos forces, it would not be long before the staggering power of the command ship, behind a practically unbreakable void shield, could cause a fatal injury to the Imperial forces, and open the way for the rest of the Chaos fleet. It may be time for the observer to leave now...

*Outside the command deck*

The first Chaos Marine guarding the door to the command deck was sliced in half by the opening warp portal, his lower body being sucked into the warp and ravaged by a million demons. The second did a double-take, raising his storm-bolter to fire, before a burning blade of pure energy sliced into him, puncturing both of his hearts and leaving him dying in his own boiling juices - unable even to cry out, thanks to the insides of his lungs being crisped by the energy field around the blade. Stepping through the portal, Bel waved his hand, and closed it behind him. He would not stay unnoticed long, he fully realised, as any psyker on board would detect the unshielded portal. He had to move quickly. With a brief moment to recollect his thoughts, he opened the door to the command deck, raised his arms, and opened fire with the flamer, and started to raise his bolter, activating both of the blades, and strode over the still-gurgling body of the second, unfortunate guard - dragging his crackling power blade across his throat as he did so. These Chaos Marines could be so tenacious, sometimes...
His sustained burst of fire crisped everyone not wearing armour on the command deck, sending their burning corpses tumbling to the ground in pools of clinging, plasma-fuelled flame. Those who were armoured fared little better - a flack jacket was little protection against fire, and dozens of human torches were lit in those first few seconds, running around, screaming, and rolling - none of it did any good. The few on the deck wearing helmets and power armour, however, were left practically unscathed - only practically, as the line of bolter fire traced across power armour, occasionally puncturing through, and in the case of one unfortunate Marine, detonating within his his skull - splattering the inside of his helmet with brain tissue. Despite this devastating first attack, Bel quickly realised that he was outmatched - nearly two squads of Chaos Marines were left alive, nineteen of them. This time, he did not dive to his left fast enough to avoid all of their fire - and a hail of bolter rounds whizzed around and slammed into him. His well-designed armour protected him from many of the rounds, but one penetrated, blasting away a chunk of his left leg. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he returned fire with his mounted weaponry, horizontal, in mid-air - the first Deuterium missile raced toward a cluster on the far right, and blew the group apart. Four down. Before it had even fired, however, he was putting his plasma gun to effect, firing a pair of rapid shots. Neither killed anyone, but both drove several Marines into cover - and briefly halted their fire. His bolter continued to blaze away, but the few times he hit, the rounds did not penetrate. Clearly, he thought, this was not working. Hitting the deck and rolling, Bel dropped into a recess in the ground - landing on the smoking body of one of his earlier victims.

Thinking to take cover and pick a few Marines off, he stood and took careful aim for a Chaos warrior who appeared to be an officer - pumping a plasma blast and dozens of bolter rounds into him, breaking through his armour and shredding his insides with shrapnel. Six. His respite was short-lived, though, as not one, not two, but three krak grenades came clumping down at his feet - thrown by the Marines in cover. Moving swiftly, he kicked one grenade back, and leapt into cover behind the wreckage of a display screen. Well, that was the plan - the grenades were clearly on a shorter fuse than expected, as all three detonated, hurling him across the deck. When he struck the floor, it was with enough force to actually bend the metal. Enough force, in fact, to rather severely concuss him.
He laid there, dazed, for several moments, hearing the clumping of the heavy boots of the Marines drawing steadily closer, and their harsh cries becoming gradually louder.
With a huge force of will, he drove through his concussed stupour, and staggered to his feet. There were no Marines in sight, and he took a few uncertian steps toward a new cover position. Just before he got there, a Chaos Marine rounded the corner, uttered a guttural shout of triumph, and raised his bolter to fire. With reflexes dulled by his head injury, Bel's first double-thrust high missed it's mark by a wide margin, but at least succeeded in causing the spray of boltgun fire to scatter harmlessly into the ceiling. Seeing the innefectuality of his attack, the Marine simply drove foward with the bayoneted gun, intending to impale him through the heart.
Only by dint of prodigous twisting was Bel able to deflect the lethal thrust, causing it to first slide across, then dig into the armour on his upper right arm - finally penetrating through to practically shatter the bone.
The agonising pain drove out any vestige of confusion, and let Bel sharpen his wits enough to bring both of his energy blades back, neatly slicing the Marine's head in two. He dug out the bayonet blade with a grimace, and severely regretted not bringing medical supplies. Seven down, at least, he thought grimly. The situation was not as grim as he feared, however - despite the shout of the Marine, the others were not aware of his location. The occasional scream from the dying bridge crew and the blasts from the battle outside may have seen to that. He toggled his vision to thermal, trusting in the sensor-muffling armour he wore to shield his own thermal signature. With his newfound insight into the battle, he noted that six of the Marines were standing in a defensive cluster around a seventh, near to the relatively unprotected view screen - a mere six inches of material between them and hard vaccum. Normally a Marine could survive that - but could they survive the backwash from the continual hits on the void shields, or the energy blaring from the lance batteries mounted just below the bridge?
Leaving himself no time to think, he marked the viewport with his designator, and launched the final missile from his rack at it. Everything seemed to slow, as if moving in treacle - the missile slowly tracking it's way to the view port, the seven marines scouring the wrecked bridge for him, and the watchful eyes of the six guards, only now realising their peril.
Suddenly, everything sped up. The missile impacted, and the detonation blew a five-meter wide hole in the viewport. The metal blast covers were already closing, but it was too slow. One by one, the Marines were sucked out through the gap, along with the bridge equipment - battering the viewport, and widening the hole. Bel reactivated his power blades, and went to work.

Some time later, as the body of the last Marine collapsed to the floor - cut in half, in fact - and the blast covers finally slid over the holes in the viewscreen, Bel took stock of the situation. His missile rack was depleted, he was almost out of bolter ammunition, he had suffered dozens of injuries - one of them serious, a bolt-round in the lung, that had left him wheezing and spluttering up blood. It was only thanks to the Puppeteer that it had not detonated, which would have killed him instantly. Nonetheless, he was the last person alive on the bridge. Activating the warp-threader, he went flying as a huge chain-axe smashed into his back, chewing out a chunk of the plasma generator, armour, and flesh in it's path. With a sickening crack, he went barreling into a skeletal sensor screen.
This is not my day, he decided, as he watched the last Marine stalk toward him. His chainaxe was dripping blood, his armour was incredibly ornate and bearing the symbols of Chaos Undivided, he was dripping with secondary weaponry and defensive mechanisms, his unhelmeted head showed boiling, demonic flame writhing around his face and rising from his armour, and all in all, he looked rather more important - and tougher - than the Marines he had been fighting thus far. Obviously, the Chaos Lord. That would explain who that cluster had been guarding...
With speed that he would not have thought possible, the Chaos Lord leapt foward, bringing down his axe as if fully intending to slice Bel in half.
It was only with a quick roll to the side that he avoided his messy fate. Reacting quickly, he raised his left power blade for a stop-thrust against the flying Chaos Lord. Unfortunately for Bel, the blade slid off the power armour, serving only to make his attacker even more enraged than he currently was. He leapt to his feet - and immediately fell down again as his injured legs gave way. Staring up at the massive, axe-wielding warrior, he felt the first twinges of fear in his heart. How could he hope to defeat such an adversary from such a starting disadvantage?
He crushed those feelings as well. Fear did nothing but get you killed in battles where you could ill-afford to die. He summoned all of his psychic energies, and fired a burst directly at the Chaos Lord. In the time that he recovered from the staggering blow, Bel had leapt to his feet, and had his plasma gun aimed at the unarmoured face of the traitorous marine.
"Now we're talking", he whispered to himself
He barely got one blast before his arm was smashed down by the ceramite gauntlet of the Lord, shattering the bone and the firing mechanism of the plasma rifle. In a desperate attempt to buy himself time, he lunged foward with his left power sword, and was quite pleased by the way that it slipped into the Chaos Lord's primary heart. He was less pleased when his opponent roared, and brought up his boot to smash him in the legs. Focusing the last of his energy, he struck out at the Chaos Lord's armour - psychically weakening and rusting the metal in two specific spots - and brought his legs up to avoid the blow, using his antigrav units to speed the transition.
The manouvre ended with both of his legs pointing at a newly-made weak spot, with the core-detonators positioned exactly over them.
He blasted them off, and the Chaos Lord barely had time to bellow his fury before the tough metal caps, fired at round about Mach three, burst through his armour and turned most of his insides into a gooey mess. In return, Bel was propelled right across the bridge, hitting the ground and sliding, before coming to rest against the viewport.
He dragged himself to his feet once more, and stared in amazement as the Chaos Lord did the same, on the other side of the bridge.
"Don't you know when to stay dead?", he growled, designated the Chaos Lord's plasma-scarred face with his designator, and raised his bolter to fire the last few rocket-propelled rounds - guided by the designator.
His head exploded most messily.
After ensuring that the Chaos Lord was dead - decapitating him seemed a good start - Bel crossed to the command station. Miraculoulsly, it was still intact, despite all it had gone through. Well, he thought, I can fix that... he was about to destroy it with his powered blades, when a better idea struck him. With a rapid series of commands, he informed the daemon-corrupted machine spirit of it's new orders - turn around, and head into the middle of the Chaos fleet.
And then self-destruct.
Chuckling, and knowing full well that the blast would eviscerate dozens of ships and spread confusion among the surviors, he glanced at the now-sealed blast doors of the bridge, and only just now heard the banging of the team despatched to investigate the disturbance on the bridge. He left them a little present, just for when they did get through - a Lotus anti-infantry mine - and returned to his home to restock on ammo and see what he could do about his injuries.

After he was finished, he began to look to see why the Chaos fleet had attacked, ignoring the monumental blast that seared away the heart of that same fleet up in space. After some browsing, and accessing files that only the Lords of Terra were meant to have access to, he found something that made his eyebrows raise. After some more research into it, he decided to investigate, and began searching for the correct warp thread to the appropriate area.

*The warp*

After some searching, he found it, and opened the portal, taking a step into it, and activating his warp shield. With a quick glance to either side, he continued to press foward through the warp - only to detect a terrible, malignant presence, pressing down on him. He turned to run back to his entry point, only to watch his last hope slam shut before his eyes - with a tide of dark energy flowing down across it. An awful, booming laugh resounded all around, and in that moment, he felt terror unlike any he had ever experienced. Would this be the day that his existence would end, his soul eternally destroyed or worse, dammned, by the twisting energies of the warp? The evil presence clamming in all around him seemed determined on ensuring this would be so -with the clarity that only a dying man posseses, he realised that it must be the Chaos Lord, striking out against his killer, or perhaps one who supported him. With the shadowy energy that pressed in on him, the point seemed moot. The tendrils began to tighten on his body and his mind - slowly cracking and bending his armour, and crushing out the last vestiges of resistance from his thoughts.
But he would not die now - not today, not tomorrow, not ever. With a burst of psychic strength, he smashed his way free of the stunned daemonspawn, and went tumbling out into the warp.
But even this desperate act would only buy him time, and could still cost him his life, Bel realised, as he carreened into the first pocket of pure evil, his mental and physical shields barely holding. He watched with a strange detachment as the bizzaire critters ripped each other to pieces over the scant nourishment that his soul would provide. He continued to tumble through the furious storm of the warp - and as his head crashed into the wreckage of some long-lost, demon-ravaged ship, he only realised he still had his warp capability intact, as he slid into unconciousness.
Again.

*Eidolon*
*Innumerable years ago*

The warp gate opened, and Bel came tumbling out of it. Looking around, he saw that he was on the edge of a massive canyon, miles across, in an even larger basin. All around, the area was teeming with life - verdant vegetation was being chowed down by huge creatures, and smaller ones scuttled thorugh the undergrowth. Bel sat down to take stock of the situation and recover.
Moments later, a second warp gate opened - this one, insanely huge. Kilometers high, it's apex was concealed somewhere in the clouds, and it stretched for the same distance across at it's widest point. Beyond the gate, a group of four gigantic figures could be seen - pulsing with evil, and surrounded by countless smaller shapes, swarming around their feet. As the first of them took a step though the gate, a shockwave came blasting out - every time it touched something living, that thing died. By the time the foot fell, a clearing five miles across had been made, the ground scorched and the bones of the animals within scattered all around.
The first figure - with a beak like a bird and an air of evil intellect about it beyond human understanding - sensed his presence, and smiled with a mouth hundreds of meters wide. It reached out with a much larger hand - and the fate of all that fell under the shadow of that hand did not bode well for Bel. Anything which even came close began mutating in the most horrible ways imaginable - and many that were unimaginable. Hard callouses and ridges of bone burst up from skin, in some cases with still-pulsing organs impaled on them. Craniums and limbs exploded, and tentacles ripped out from the rapidly-healing gashes, feeling for life to consume. Bel watched as his volley of bolter-fire flashed into flame and was vapourised, still leagues from it's target. It was clear there were was nothing he could do here, and he staggered back into the portal, closing it behind him, and braced his mind against the pursuing spirit of the Chaos Lord, and the rest of him against the terrible energies of the warp.

*Eidolon*
*Ten thousand years ago*

The warp gate opened, and Bel came tumbling out of it.
Looking around, he saw that the area had changed, greatly - the canyon was gone, replaced by a flat expanse of earth, and the crater was also missing in the same way. Aside from that, the land was all almost as charred and destroyed as it had been from the second portal - there was nothing living in sight.
Suddenly, Bel saw movement - first one, then two, then dozens of creatures came bursting out of the earth, dripping with pus and other vile fluids. With a howl, this mob came rushing on, and more creatures began to coalesce nearby. This was not his fight, Bel wisely decided, and turned to return to his portal.
At that moment, a medium-sized vessel came out of the clouds - clearly of an old Imperial design, but also showing the signs of recent corruption by Chaos. As it fired it's braking thrusters to land, and the base of the ship came in sight, Bel's heart skipped a beat.
For he had seen the sigil of the World Eaters Legion.
Tripping through the portal, and closing it behind it, Bel continued to plummet through the Warp - being pursued by the Chaos Lord the whole way.

*Eidolon*
*Now*

The oddly-shaped warp gate formed, a hundred metres or so from the battle of the companions. Through it, came hurling the battered body of Belatyn Larkin - practically dripping the Chaotic energies of the warp, and his mental shields nigh-on annihlated. From the portal came the hissing of the Chaos Lord - his prey had been lost, he knew this for certian.
Bel lay there for a moment, as he came round, before hauling himself to his feet. He felt - strange. Stranger than you normally would after being hurled through the warp with only the ricketiest of protections, of course. Looking around, he saw that he was in the middle of a massive battle -Space Marines against Traitors, and worse things, which he did not wish to look at more closely.
Then, he spotted something that really made him curious - a strange group, attacking someone who looked very much like Abbaddon. With a quick scan, he realised that the figure *was* Abbaddon. The first thing he saw was a gun-toting figure fire a burst of cluster bombs toward Abbaddon. With nothing else to do, he decided to try his luck with that ancient evil. He ran a quick mental inventory, and realised that only his plasma rifle and power blades would be any good in the battle - the bolter and flamer would do nothing but annoy Abaddon, and while the Deuterium missiles would make an impact, that impact would include some of the companions. Locking on with his laser designator, limping in closer to the battle site, and raising his plasma gun to fire, he waited for the oppurtune moment to do so - after his new foe had received the severe injuries that the cluster bombs would herald. He hoped there would be no confusion as to which side he was on when he joined the battle.