Eldrad Ulthuan

The power of fear

The Tech Sergeant and everyone else withdrew before the final step in activating the Stasis Device Perturabo had built.

Nimrod pressed the activation rune, then returned to the thirty-three Double-Number Black Gold Pillars. He drew Flagpole with his right hand, gripped it tightly, and loudly recited the sacrificial incantation in Dunnish.

"In the name of the Red Priest, I beseech the Nation of Disorder to grant me power, that the Hrud beyond Craven may not perceive the Stasis Field."

The Baron of Corruption's spirituality was drained in an instant, and Flagpole grew searing hot.

Light and shadow flickered in the Primarch's eyes as his consciousness spread outward.

[Hmm... the numbers aren't right. There are far fewer than I expected.]

Although the Hrud poured in endlessly, the Primarch's psychic senses detected noticeably fewer of them than on Gorgis.

[Even if Craven has the fewest Hrud of the Gugan System's three main worlds,

and millions died in the decisive void battle, their numbers are still far below what they should be.]

As Nimrod pondered this, deep beneath Gorgis, something was happening.

Over a million Hrud frantically dug through collapsed passages.

The glaring light illuminating the underground provoked revulsion and terror, sending tens of millions of Hrud fleeing in panic.

Their distortion fields converged, and ripples of time erased hundreds of caverns and collapsed thousands of tunnels.

The limbs coiled around their spines writhed frantically, rapidly opening a path toward the place they loathed.

The small, hunched Hrud could bend their limbs in any direction. Working together, they dug faster than a Termite Drill.

Hundreds of tunnels were rebuilt at a speed visible to the naked eye, rapidly extending toward Nimrod's position.

In the Gugan System, a green-painted Gothic vessel bearing no legion insignia abruptly appeared.

On its bridge,