Mechanicum

Its voids exploded outwards in a blinding blast wave, tearing the metallic weapon dendrites from its back and vaporising its left arm in a thunderous detonation. Smoke and sparks of jetting energy spewed from the machine's ruptured flanks and its sensor blisters flickered madly, as though unable to comprehend how it had been hurt.

It rocked back, stunned and screaming in garbled bursts of binary that sliced over the Manifold and blew several of the augmitters inside Maven's cockpit.

Maven rode through the billowing clouds of rock dust, seeing the spherical form of his long-sought-for enemy ahead of him. It was mortally wounded, but still had some fight left in it. Maven didn't give it a chance and drove the full four metres of his energised war blade through its frontal section.

Its death scream shrieked in a pitiful wail of agonised binary, but Maven twisted his blade in the wound until at last its cries ceased and the light of its sensor blisters was extinguished.

Letting out a pent-up breath of battle fury and pain, Maven stepped back from the destroyed machine, feeling an overwhelming sense of closure as he stood over the shell of his defeated enemy. The pain from his psychostigmatic wounds diminished and Maven smiled as he felt Equitos Bellum's satisfaction wash through him in a rush of approval.

The essence of what made a Knight such a fearsome war machine moved through his battered flesh to ease his suffering, filling his body and rushing along his aching limbs.

Too late, Maven felt the soul of his mount surge to the fore, the soothing balm that eased his pain wielding him as though he were the mount and it the rider. He felt the raw, ferocious heart of his machine, the terrifying power that lurked in the heart of the Manifold, take control of his limbs and turn Equitos Bellum towards the scar in the earth where the targets of the enemy machine had taken cover.

Through the blown-out cockpit glass, Maven saw a Mechanicum Protector, leading a slightly built woman with eyes that shone with a golden light towards him. A red cloak billowed at the shoulders of the Protector, who carried a weapon stave hung with the number grid symbol of Koriel Zeth. Behind them was a short, robed man who knelt beside the prone form of what looked like a tonsured menial.

Maven heard heavy footfalls as Pax Mortis moved alongside him and tried to speak to Cronus, but the elemental force of the Manifold held him tightly in its grip.

The woman approached the wounded Knight and before he knew what was happening, Equitos Bellum dropped to one knee and bowed its head to her. Without looking, he knew his battle-brother's Knight had done likewise.

She reached out and Maven felt warmth infuse every molecule of his hybrid existence of flesh and steel with newfound purpose and vitality. He felt the warmth of the woman's touch through the shell of his mount, and gasped as trembling vibrations spread through its armoured frame of plasteel and ceramite.

'Machine, heal thyself,' she said.

3.05

Night was falling across the Magma City, though darkness never really came to the glowing, orange-lit metropolis. Like a scene from the ancients' visions of the underworld, Adept Zeth's forge was bathed in the fires of battle as the forces of the Dark Mechanicum pounded her walls with vortex missiles and collapsed the outer bastions with graviton cannons.

The city was being torn apart with mechanistic precision and, within hours, the forces under the command of Ambassador Melgator - who watched the unfolding destruction from beneath his dark pavilion at the end of the Typhon Causeway - would have seized their prize for the Fabricator General.

The city was doomed and there was only one order left to give.

Deus Tempestus strode through the twisted, blackened remains of what had once been an armaments factory. Fires and small explosions still popped and flamed beneath the Warlord's mighty tread, but Princeps Cavalerio paid them no mind. Such things were irrelevant to a being of his stature. Only Aeschman's host of Tempestus skitarii following behind his battlegroups needed to concern themselves with such matters.

The full strength of Tempestus marched from the shelter of the Magma City, the cobalt blue of their armour and the fluttering honour banners gloriously bright against the brooding skies and fire-blackened rubble they marched through.

Leading from the centre, Deus Tempestus took up position behind a tangle of twisted iron columns and girders that had once been the structure of the largest sheet metal fabrication plant in Tharsis, but which now resembled a mass of razorwire.

On Cavalerio's right was Princeps Sharaq's battle group, Metallus Cebrenia leading the Warhounds Astrus Lux and Raptoria into battle. Princeps Lamnos and Kasim marched their smaller engines to either side of the larger Reaver, and Cavalerio raised his volcano cannon in salute of his brave warriors.