Gumede whispered. The chief’s eyes were saucered in consternation. ‘Do you feel that?’
Sindul turned on the chief, ready to lash out at him for disrupting his thought process.
But he stopped himself short when he felt it too. A continuous tremor in the very walls. He placed a palm to the clay and it vibrated loosely.
‘What is that?’ Gumede asked.
‘I–’
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Sindul did not finish his sentence. The hall shook so violently that the lamps shorted out, burying them in darkness. The ground heaved underneath them as if the world had been tilted onto an angle. Sindul could hear tables and other unbolted furnishings slide across the tiles.
‘Get away from the walls,’ Sindul managed to shout before his voice was lost to a thunderous clash. Covering his head, the dark eldar curled up and let the world rock him back and forth. The sensation continued for some time, a violent shaking that hummed in his skull and loosened his joints.
By the time he opened his eyes, the light had returned. Or rather, light now pierced where none could before. As he opened his eyes and adjusted to the haze of brick dust, he could see that he lay on the broken edge of tiled flooring. The ground plummeted away from him, along with the entire left‐hand wall and structure. An entire portion of the asylum had collapsed.
Beyond the rubble of the destroyed wing, he saw a child standing atop a stone plinth, flinging up his arms like an orchestral maestro. With one lift of his left arm, a surge of clay rose like liquid, radiating outwards with seismic tremors. With a sweep of his right wrist, a wall burst into constituent bricks. Up went both his arms in crescendo as a column of spiralling sandstone spiked from the ground to pierce through the skin of the ceiling. From behind the cover of dog‐toothed rubble, sentries of Ur as well as a formation of Plague Marines hammered him with volleys of shots. The ammunition sparked harmlessly off a bubble of kinetic force around the child. It was the most terrifying performance of telekinesis Sindul had ever witnessed.
He might have remained there, mesmerised, had a hand not dragged him away from the edge. Sindul turned, expecting to see Gumede, but found himself staring into the face of a stylised gargoyle – Barsabbas.
‘It is ever glorious to meet you,’ Sindul said, scratching his cheek.
‘No, it’s not,’ Barsabbas refuted, entirely ignorant of Sindul’s sarcasm. ‘You lie too much.’
Behind them all, the wall ruptured, silencing their exchange. They moved then, darting through the open storm of rock shrapnel and stray rounds. Barsabbas only paused to pick up a weapon, a stray bolter lying next to the body of a fallen Plague Marine. While the power armour of the corpse was unmarked, ugly wounds marked the bare flesh at its joints. The ‘monsters’ had done their work well here.
Weaving through broken remains of masonry, they left the skirmish between the inmates and their keepers behind.
THE CENTRAL BLOCKHOUSE was empty. Without fuss or ceremony Barsabbas, Sindul and Gumede made their way down the three‐hundred‐metre hall to the one door at its end.
They followed a trail of dead and dying sentries and inmates alike.
The final door was high priority indeed. Despite the rumbles of a not‐so‐distant fight, a phalanx of twenty Urite sentries crouched pensively by the nickel‐plated door. Their collective fear became tangible as they spotted Barsabbas approaching, as if each man were literally shaking from fright. The Traitor Marine’s horned helm clapped against the ceiling and his massive, plated shoulders chafed the walls. The tiny, flitting black ghost of the dark eldar was barely noticed and Gumede, eager to indicate his apartness from the group, trailed behind nursing his bow.
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At first they panicked. Their sergeant, a wilting man of middle years, flapped his arms in some sort of command or pre‐drilled order. ‘Release our hound!’
The phalanx remained fixed, no one willing to break away from the protective formation as the Traitor Marine drew closer, towering above them. The sergeant executed the same hesitant command signals. ‘The hound, damn you. Babalu! Unlock Babalu!’
Willing themselves into action, the soldiers began to pry open the weighty door, taking two men to haul on the steering lock and three of them to scrape it open against the suspension hinges.
Barsabbas paused. He staggered his stance into a low crouch ready to receive an oncoming charge. The door edged upon. From beyond came a roar, a challenge.
Stepping under the door frame rose the largest non‐modified