As the Primarch had foreseen, the Underhive was a sprawling labyrinth. Its sewers, vents, and mine shafts covered a territory nearly three times the size of the Soviet Union during Terra's 2K era. Even with millions of Astra Militarum troops, a total defense of the subterranean frontier was an impossibility.
Under the cold supervision of the Dark Angels and the Imperial Guard, the exodus began. Billions were funneled toward the Mid and Upper Hives. Yet, a population numbering in the tens of billions cannot be moved in its entirety; despite the mass relocation, billions of souls remained in the shadows of the deep—the forgotten, the stubborn, and the lost.
The dregs of the Underhive, their bodies twisted by severe mutation and their hearts hardened by cruelty, initially believed they had struck gold. They scavenged through the deserted sectors, picking clean the wealth left behind by those who had fled.
But soon, a chittering resonance began to echo through the pipes—the frantic, rhythmic scratching of vermin. From the lightless gullets of the deepest pits, the rats emerged in numbers beyond counting.
The scavengers of the Underhive were no strangers to vermin; these foul creatures were as much a fixture of ancient Terra as the ruins themselves. But these were different.
"W-what in the name of the Throne is that?!"
Behind the swarms of bloated rats came the bipeds: emaciated, filth-crusted things with long, twitching tails crawling out from the murk. These ratmen, their eyes glowing with a malevolent red light, clutched spears and blades whetted from scrap metal. In their off-hands, they gripped revolvers encrusted with filth and rust.
As the red-eyed tide swelled, a brutal turf war erupted between the Underhive gangs and the Skaven. The human scavengers were not easy prey; they retaliated with improvised shivs and autoguns stolen from Planetary Defense Force armories.
Reports of the subterranean skirmishes soon reached the Imperial command in the Mid-hive. The Astra Militarum had fortified the primary transit arteries leading upward. With the Dark Angels and the spectral Legion of the Damned prowling the heights, infiltration seemed an impossibility.
"Hmph. Let the dregs exhaust the xenos' strength," an Imperial Guard officer remarked with cold indifference. "These things aren't Tyranids. Let them kill each other."
The high command abandoned the Underhive to its fate. Only the Legion of the Damned appeared sporadically in the gloom, their ghostly fire purging scavenger and Skaven alike, but such interventions were a mere drop of water in a sea of flame.
As the tunnels fell, hundreds of sub-clans under Clan Skryre began to take root. These warbands were led by Warlock Engineers, graduates of the Skryre Warp-Academy who had gathered small retinues of warlords to their banner.
With the arrival of the main force, the dynamic shifted. The Slave-rats were replaced by disciplined Clanrats.
The human survivors found the enemy's firepower suddenly, terrifyingly upgraded. The Skaven now carried long-rifles reminiscent of archaic Mosin-Nagant patterns. The Clanrats wore dented steel helms adorned with human trophies, and many sported crude optical lenses over their eyes—Warp-scopes that granted them unnatural precision in the dark.
Crack-crack-crack!
From every nook and crumbling rafter, the Clanrats pulled their triggers, unleashing rounds of solidified Warpstone. In the chaotic claustrophobia of the Underhive, there was no sanctuary. Every shadow held a sniper; every floorboard hid a killer.
The Underhive became a charnel house. Corpses of man and rat littered the ground, though they never remained for long, either devoured by the great rats or dragged back to the breeding pits.
As the Skaven numbers grew, the humans' hiding spots were sniffed out. Their meager supplies were plundered; their kin vanished into the night. Resistance crumbled. While the human population of the Underhive plummeted, the slave-pens of Clan Skryre swelled with fresh meat.
Finally, the human presence in the depths collapsed entirely. The Skaven had conquered the infinite, sunless abyss of the Underhive.
Immediately, the mad Warlock Engineers began to "remodel" the Hive's foundations and its ancient, esoteric machinery.
In the deepest dark, a cabal of cyborg-vermin gathered. Among them were Ikit Claw and the Archmagos of the Dark Mechanicus, Moslit Blackheart, now Chieftain of Clan Resilience.
The unholy exchange of data between the Dark Mechanicus and Clan Skryre had birthed a horrific synergy of logic and lunacy.
"YES-YES! The Great Horned Rat commands—this world is ours, YES, OURS!" Ikit shrieked, staring at a green-tinted tactical display. On the screen were blueprints for planetary engines, a Skaven-bastardized version of an Ork Attack Moon.
The Skaven were masters of intellectual theft. If they could not understand a technology, they would simply "improve" it with their own deranged intuition. Though Ikit possessed the schematics for an Ark of Omen, he had "loyally" surrendered that patent to Clan Chieftain Morskittar. To secure his own standing, he needed something more devastating.
But first, the world above had to fall.
The Lion's defense of the Mid-hive transit points was absolute. The fortresses were impenetrable, and the Skaven found no ground soft enough to burrow through. However, to a Skaven mind, "impossible" was merely a lack of imagination.
Archmagos Moslit produced a detailed structural holomap of the Hive, cackling as he highlighted the spire's structural weaknesses.
"YES-YES! If-if I can move my BIG-GREAT THING there! I can send the man-things to the stars! Yes-yes, TO THE STARS!!"
Ikit Claw gestured wildly. His Doomrockets, the tactical nuclear equivalent of the Skaven world, were legendary. In the ancient myths of the World-That-Was, Warlord Skarsnik had once tried to use one to blast Eight Peaks into the sky, though it had proven a dud.
Now, backed by the resources of dozens of conquered worlds, the Warlock Engineers had refined the Doomrocket into a weapon of apocalyptic potency. The only obstacle was that the Lion had anticipated the threat and garrisoned the structural weak points with his most elite warriors. In a single month, a dozen Skaven clans had been annihilated without ever touching the fortress walls.
"No matter, no matter! Skaven find-search a way. Our claws are long-big!"
…
The siege of Planet Bard had lasted half a solar year, a mere heartbeat to a Primarch. As the Lion sat in his sanctum, dissecting the weaknesses of this new xenos threat, a sudden, unbidden psychic vision tore through his mind.
In the vision, Jonson saw the filth-choked rat-nests. He saw the Skaven constructing massive, fifteen-meter-tall wheels of brass and iron, Doom-Wheels of a different, more sorcerous design. As the lever was thrown, the wheels were wreathed in emerald lightning, tearing a rift in the veil, a gateway through the Warp.
Through these localized rifts, the Skaven pushed massive, glowing green warheads.
In his dream, the Lion heard the screeching laughter of the ratmen as hundreds of Doomrockets were detonated simultaneously. Green mushroom clouds erupted throughout the Hive's foundations, shattering the spire like glass.
Amidst the ruins, humans fled in terror, only to die screaming as the radioactive Warp-filth rotted their flesh. Even he, the Lion, was forced to flee through the "forest" to escape the world's death. The bipeds occupied Bard, transforming it into a gargantuan Attack Moon, a malignant cancer within the Nachmund Gauntlet.
"No! This... this cannot be!"
The Lion snapped awake, drenched in a cold sweat. The stern, knightly Primarch wiped his brow, his heart hammering against his ribs. He did not fully understand the nature of the prophecy, but if it held even a grain of truth, he had to strike immediately.
"Father?" a Dark Angels Terminator veteran asked, sensing the Primarch's sudden agitation.
"Summon the Deathwing," the Lion commanded, his voice heavy with grim resolve. "Now."
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