The stench of death hung heavy in the air of the Dreadlands, a putrid miasma that had become as familiar as breathing to the soldiers stationed there.
Piles of nyphorite corpses surrounded the human encampment—grotesque forms with black, chitinous skin that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Their alien anatomy defied easy description: elongated limbs that bent at impossible angles, multiple eyes that continued to gleam with malevolent intelligence even in death, and mouths filled with rows of crystalline teeth that still dripped with acidic saliva.
The abominable creatures of the far end abyss were now lying dead, and their corpses formed mountains.
Two months had passed since the Empire's forces had successfully halted the nyphorite advance at the borders of the Midlands.
What had begun as a desperate defensive action had evolved into a sustained campaign of extermination, pushing deep into the creatures' native territory.
