The closer Zhang Ge approached the cockpit hatch, the more violently Ascalon vibrated at his waist. The tremor ceased abruptly the moment his boots hit the floor beyond the threshold and he drew the sword.
Amilia withdrew. The hatch sealed, leaving Zhang Ge alone within the Titan.
Before him stretched a corridor leading to the core. Each step resonated with the pulse of rotating gears and labyrinthine circuitry—the grinding of reciprocating pistons, the clang of colliding alloys, the basso profundo of megaton actuators.
He stood inside a beating mechanical heart.
The control chamber held no throne. At its center rose a scabbard forged from identical metallo-ceramics as Ascalon's sheath.
No words were needed.
Zhang Ge raised the blade and plunged it home.
Within the Underhive's darkness, as the tidal swarm surged, a new resonance arose—mantric, omnipotent.
The Warlord Titan's every joint sang. Components originally designed as discrete mechanisms now moved like sinews within a god's musculature. Its right arm, once bearing a plasma annihilator, angled downward.
Dark crimson fluid erupted from interface ports.
Dragon-slaying steel quenched in draconic blood.
Ascalon materialized along the Titan's arm, energy channels meant for the annihilator now feeding the blade. Obsidian metal coalesced beneath rushing sanguine currents, veined with viridian lightning.
Through the Titan's heightened optics, Zhang Ge comprehended the swarm's scale.
Mortals cannot weather storms—only flee. But mount a Titan, and you become the storm.
Now, I am the tide.
The Titan took its first earth-shaking step before the elevator could ascend. Below, the High-Ranking Tech-Priest finally looked up to witness his creation reborn—its shadow engulfing everyone as gearwork howls reverberated through the Lower Hive.
Each subsequent stride accelerated unnaturally. Fifth step. Tenth. Twentieth. Soon the colossus leaned forward, running.
Where the flesh-tide consumed, the Titan conquered. Ceramite towers shattered like kindling beneath its charge. Gyroscopes and gravity stabilizers screamed at critical thresholds.
The swarm paused, reversed course, massing against this new threat. Too late.
Zhang Ge raised the Titan's left arm. The Vulkan Mega Bolter ignited.
Daylight returned to the Lower Hive.
A continent-cleaving beam lanced through the swarm's flank. Flesh-swarms evaporated before the light even struck. Where it made contact, atomic bonds disintegrated—nuclei dissolving into quark-gluon plasma, their death-throes spraying radiant pseudoflesh across kilometers.
The instant the light beam vanished, deafening explosions erupted—quark-gluon plasma cooling and releasing cataclysmic energy.
Ceramite towers blocking the firing path split like rotten timber from left to right. Pale flesh-tides disintegrated under the beam's wrath. As the radiance dimmed, a crescent-shaped inferno became the new light source, molten ceramite flowing like lava where structures had melted instead of vaporizing.
Then the Titan collided with the tide.
Flesh-tendrils thick as hive spires coiled around the war machine's waist, swarming across every armor plate. Zhang Ge felt resistance like wading through hurricane-driven seas—omnidirectional pressure crushing against the Titan's hull.
Stride frequency locked. Power output amplified. Through accumulating viscera and worm-like appendages, the Titan ripped through the tide. Until finally when the rectangular metallic core was already near before his eyes, in his right arm the long sword lifted high up, then fiercely smashed down.
The blade sundered flesh-tendrils like rotten cables. The core split. A death-shriek arced through every biomass strand, vibrating from worm-mouths to shattered steel.
Silence bloomed.
The tide stilled.