A millennium of modifications had made the lower production and storage decks structurally complex. Most public infrastructure was damaged, and the Attilan Royal Family and the Gene Council had preferred to let things run wild, refusing to waste wealth on Alpha Primitives and outcasts who had lost the glory of their genes. Compared with the war on the upper decks, the Human Army's attitude toward the lower production decks was more one of clearing them out. Likewise because of their complex structure, every area apart from occupied zones, production facilities, and heavy antigravity freight elevators had been left unattacked for lacking strategic value.
Black Bolt did not know that at this very moment, the alien peoples long oppressed by the Inhumans of the upper decks had gathered around his blood relatives and the statues of gods buried beneath rusted steel and industrial waste, loudly singing praises to gods who should have been forgotten and to the blood spilled by war. After the return of the High Priestess Periel, the ritual site grew even noisier. The temple priests sped up their cutting of the offerings' throats, scattering organs and blood over the crowd. The extreme frenzy was so feverish it warped the air. Those splashed with blood were immediately infected by the emotion, and the air, which should have reeked of blood, instead carried the scent of aphrodisiac musk.
Increasingly shrill harmonies tore apart the last scraps of reason among the believers. The nearly mad crowd raised daggers forged from scrap metal, celebrating by harming themselves and others. The believers cut open their own skin or that of others, flesh, muscles, even organs. In the end, they began dismembering one another to satisfy the ever-swelling perverse desires in their hearts. At the same time, the frenzied believers copulated wantonly with those