A beam of light flashed through Flamini's mind an instant before it appeared. He threw himself forward, rolling to the left to avoid the incoming Mitu attack.
But his followers had no such foresight; several were killed instantly by the alien strike.
Flamini knew he had fewer than a hundred followers left, and the building from his visions was still more than five hundred meters away.
A thought flickered through his mind, to retreat, or to find somewhere to hide. But he could sense that the entire city was about to become a battlefield.
A battlefield of blood-red Mitu and black shadows.
Flamini felt relieved that his visions were correct; hope had arrived.
But the sense of death pressed even harder on him. Since danger could not be avoided, he wanted at least to die in his birthplace.
He made his decision and pushed forward.
The revelation he had foreseen lay ahead. Only by reaching it could he find hope.
Flamini also wanted to know if his parents were still alive, yet the visions he saw upon awakening his psychic power contradicted one another.
Even several attempts at divination had given him no answer.
Thinking of this, he raised his rusted gun and fired at the exact spot where a Mitu would appear a moment later.
The xeno fell dead, giving his followers a burst of confidence. They lifted their mismatched weapons and fired back.
Those who had survived this long were excellent marksmen, every shot found its mark, killing several Mitu.
Flamini kept his head low, advancing along the route he had foreseen, his followers close behind.
The path to the target was soaked in blood. Although Flamini constantly adjusted direction to avoid enemies as much as possible, more and more Mitu swarmed in, and his followers fell one after another.
When just over sixty meters remained, only fifty-odd people were left.
Flamini was the first to reach the building and immediately saw the rotting corpses inside.
A violent buzzing filled his mind as a memory burst forth:
His mother pushing him away.
His father standing before him, shielding him.
They had long been dead.
Flamini finally accepted the cold truth: his parents had been slain by the Mitu long ago.
He let out a bitter, despairing cry. Hope? He had reached this place, only to find nothing.
Flamini let out a hollow laugh, then looked around. Countless Mitu warriors were charging toward them; more than a dozen of his remaining followers fell at once.
Just as despair consumed him, a brilliant light ignited in his mind, and in his eyes.
Blinding flames descended from the sky. In an instant, tens of thousands of Mitu were reduced to ash.
Through the rising smoke, Flamini saw the armored giant in black walking toward him, and he understood, that was the hope he had foreseen.
Nareth's gaze passed over the others and settled on the boy.
He could sense with perfect clarity that the youth was a psyker, and an exceptionally gifted one.
But the boy's emotions were volatile, threatening to spiral out of control.
The Primarch sent a mental pulse to Ramsey, transmitting the boy's image directly into his thoughts.
"Ramsey. Assist him."
Then Nareth turned his eyes toward the domed structure at the city center. By reading the Mitu mindscape, he already knew: the rulers of the Mitu United Empire were nineteen Consuls.
The Mitu was made of many species. Aside from humans, used only as fuel, each species had a role. But the top of the hierarchy was always the anemone-form beings.
Each species capable of producing a "sacred form" created one Consul to join the ruling council.
The nineteen Mitu Consuls were inside the largest city, in the Council Dome.
Nareth led his Honor Guard toward the Dome.
Bolters roared in a storm of explosive rounds, Mitu falling in swathes.
The Sword of Vaul shimmered with blue-white light as it spun, slicing through anemone flesh.
When Nareth reached a kilometer from the Dome, the building flared with swirling, multicolored light in his Warp Insight, and he sensed countless lives extinguishing.
Thinking of the Mitu's arcane technology, the answer was obvious:
The Mitu were burning human lives as fuel to activate some sort of arcane device.
A flash of cold fury passed through Nareth's eyes. His golden wings snapped once, and he appeared at the Dome in an instant.
His muscles bulged, spine twisting as he swung his left arm, firing a cannon-like punch.
BOOM!
The stone shattered, spreading into a spiderweb of cracks before exploding into a gaping hole.
The entire building trembled, then collapsed.
Nareth stepped into the ruins and saw a shimmering barrier humming loudly.
Tens of thousands of humans writhed and screamed.
As they died, a supernatural energy was harvested by arcane machinery and funneled into the transparent shield above the high platform, where nineteen massive anemone-form beings were standing.
In the Warp Insight, the Consuls grew visibly stronger as more energy poured into them.
Nareth knew he had to kill them quickly to stop their ascension and save the remaining humans.
But the barrier's energy was clearly empowering the Consuls.
His wings snapped open. In a blur, he hurled the Dionysian Spear.
The spear pierced the barrier, shot through the chamber, and embedded itself in the ground beyond.
The instant the shield cracked, Nareth flew inside, psychic presence flooding outward.
The chamber had been sealed by the Consuls' will, so only their kind could enter, but the "Baron of Corruption" twisted that will, warping the chamber into an independent psychic domain.
Just as the nineteen Consuls moved to attack, their anemone bodies shriveled. They felt their arcane power draining at an impossible speed.
For the Baron of Corruption wielded not only Corrosion, but also his signature extraordinary ability: "Distortion."
The arcane energies usable only by Mitu were twisted into raw Warp power.
The newly ascended Baron did not merely use rules; he twisted the rules themselves to his advantage.
The battlefield environment that favored the Mitu was distorted into one that empowered him.
As his soul-force burned rapidly, Nareth felt the energy swirling around his form.
Light flickered in his eyes. Telekinesis erupted. The chamber shook violently.
Energy that should have dispersed was forced, distorted, into the dome, creating shockwaves that tore machinery apart.
Machines whirring at full power froze and shattered. Survivors stared in disbelief at the council chamber.
With one controlled slash of his right hand, the Primarch carved open a rift between the physical universe and the Warp.
The a vortex of destruction was unleashed.
The nineteen Consuls were dragged into its depths.
Their bodies were pulled apart in every direction at once.
They fought desperately, but the destructive power was far beyond anything they could resist. Their struggle meant nothing.
With horrific screams, their massive bodies were shredded, then torn again into finer and finer pieces.
Within seconds, all nineteen were obliterated by the Vortex, leaving not even scraps behind.
The rescued humans stared blankly as the Consuls were torn apart.
Then someone shouted:
"The xeno leaders are dead!"
Roars of joy erupted. Tears streamed down their faces as they embraced one another.
The Baron of Corruption dispelled the sealed barrier, and the blood-red chain around his right pinky glowed faintly, rapidly refilling his drained psychic energy.
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
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