Deadwater

The sororita continued trudging on through the seemingly endless swamp. She had long ago lost track of how much time she had spent there, but by the particular dryness of her mouth she could tell it had been almost a full day since she had run out of all liquid reserves.
For a while the only thing accompanying the battle-sister was the throng of insects swarming all around her; the frenetic, buzzing motion of their hundreds of wing-pairs sounding almost like the revving of a chainsword. Lately though she had started to see other things in the surrounding waters. Most of them were dead things, just bloated and rotting corpses. But there were others as well. Sometimes she would catch glimpses of pale, gaunt figures roaming around in the distance. Other times she could perceive smaller, shorter shapes looking at her from behind a tree. As soon as she cast eyes on them they would be gone, leaving behind only a faint, eerie laughter as evidence of their presence.

Swamp-mud had now leaked into her power-armour and the insects had breached most crevices of the damaged ceramite, biting down onto her skin. As she struggled to focus her attention away from the slow torment she suddenly fell down onto her knees. Foul, murky water splashed her face and she was struck by an intense nausea she had not felt in years. It was not because of the putrid drenching though, she had grown accustomed to the vile smell of the marshes. No, it felt like something far away had taken a dive into the world itself and disturbed the surface, leaving behind ring-like shockwaves strong enough to force her off-balance. Something gargantuan.

"By the Emperor, where have I ended up?..."

She could do nothing but get up again and increase her pace, hoping that there could be an end to this horrid landscape. There had to be...