High Inquisitor Stephen Blackheart opened his eyes and began the hunt.
Fragments of intelligence surrounded him, images and summary data stretching into the distance across the holographic display of his tactical visor. The Orks had attacked the power station south of Dunwich again. The Titan Ghost Spider had repelled the raid, but one division had taken devastating losses, and Ork agents had also destroyed an airfield.
Not ideal, but still better than the alternative.
He observed through the sentinel insects scattered across the city, and his vision became a multitude of separate planes.
Before sixteen hundred hours, when he began to suspect that they might have found him, he released those tiny creatures into Dunwich's sewer system.
The metal insects occupied key locations throughout the city, tirelessly monitoring and identifying every face they saw, listening to every sound.
Dunwich's sewer system was enormous, unimaginably vast.
Its original purpose had merely been to process the city's domestic wastewater, but now those sewers and underground chambers housed a great deal of foul power.
The Inquisition had begun to suspect that the city had been deliberately planned this way during its construction. Had spaces deliberately been left behind for evil to flourish?
Stephen Blackheart was one of the High Inquisitors who believed the answer was yes. From his observations over the past several days, furtive groups had been moving through those tunnels. They seemed to command numerous secret routes in and out of the city, and often appeared near the combat zones.
Sometimes they transported corpses. Sometimes they fought the Orks.
In a sense, Dunwich had become a cage. No matter who they were, anyone trapped within that cage had to fight the beast prowling outside it.
What Stephen was monitoring now was the Blood-Worship Cult's largest suspected nest, located in the deepest