Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-33521582-20180324203957/@comment-33521582-20180409201928

You are very aware of the sound of your own breathing as you descend the twisting corridor. The low hum from Brother Zhevordus' Grav-cannon is like a baseline for the short bursts of staccato static that sound feebly from your vox occasionally, and its siclky green light casts odd shadows in the darkness. Crackling arcs of energy jump from Sergeant Invexus' thunder hammer and shield, short lived sparks in the darkness. Your heavy greaves pound the bare rock, incredibly loud in the silence. You are very aware of your breathing, and all the other noises, but you can't let go of the phantom noise of millions of insectoid legs scurrying, as you walk deeper into the darkness of Al-Tuhag's entrails.

The tunnels are long, long and winding. You walk for two hours at least, advancing as carefully as you can, clearing small alcoves and sudden bends cautiously, until you come to the central chamber displayed on Sergeant Invexus' datapad. You've noticed that, as you descended, the temperature had gone up, but here it would be unbearable if not for your power armour. Light shines from the tunnel mouth leading into the tunnel, with that dull, orange glow of molten rock. The Iron Scorpions pick it up first, but even conventional Astartes ears can hear the screeching. Something large, something huge, emitting piercing, alien cries.

"From the display," Sergeant Invexus says, "I believe the chamber to be at least three hundred meters across, and forty high. Whatever is in there, it needs to die, brothers." Lowering his head, he pronounces a brief prayer to the Emperor, before stepping into the cavern.

It is as large as the display showed, an incredible space underground, centered around a huge mound of jagged rock standing over twenty meters tall. The walls are living, natural rock, untouched by machine or claw. The bare ground is black and cracked, the intense red glow of magma coming from within. However, there is a mucous substance covering the majority of it. To your surprise, where it comes in contact with the scorching magma, it doesn't come to a boil or burn. Rather it seems as though the viscous substance is absorbing the heat from the molten rock.

Upon the mucus are eggs, thousands of eggs. Not as many as you saw in the bottom-most chamber, but this cavern is just a fraction of the size. The eggs are almost spherical, one meter across, greenish and translucent, with blackened veins covering the surface. Within them you can see humanoid figures, floating in a fetal position, and showing different stages of development. Some of them appear to be little more than infants, undistinguishable from humans; others are larger, heavy chitin covering their skin, and wicked claws protruding from their hands.

You take all this in, and then the jagged mound of rock lets out another piercing screech, and turns. The creature is immense, with gigantic armoured plates covering its head and thorax, so worn and craggy that they have the appearance of stone. Its head has no human features at all, purely insect-like, brown, with six huge, bulging black eyes, antennae three meters long hanging above them, and large, slavering jaws filled with uncountable teeth. The creature has six limbs, covered in chitin as well, which it holds close to it. By judging their size against its bulk, they must be at least fifty meters long, each. But the most eye-catching part of the beast is its judge, distended abdomen. Bulging, translucent and covered in the mucus of the cave, you watch in horror as it disgorges another clutch of eggs, the ten new spheres rolled away dutifully by smaller monsters, waiting at the end.

The creature thrashes its arms and screeches again and, even as dozens of the creatures surrounding it turn to llok at your tunnel mouth, it reaches out and pops a dozen of the nearest eggs, releasing an equal number of heavily armoured abominations, with shining eyes and bulging throats.

"The Emperor Protects." Says Sergeant Invexus quietly.

As if in anticipation, the earth rumbles, clouds of dust falling from the ceiling.