Inside the Fortress of Hera, sunlight poured through the blasted cracks in the dome. Straight shafts of light pierced the dust and fell among the ruins, illuminating patches of mottled shadow.
Broken stones lay piled along both sides of the corridors. Some sections had collapsed entirely, leaving only gaps barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways.
Bullet scars and black scorch marks covered the walls. Metal cables torn loose by bolts dangled from the concrete, occasionally crackling with electrical arcs.
Concrete dust, gunpowder residue, and a faint trace of blood filled the air, working their way through the nose and deep into the lungs.
Euten sat beneath a collapsed section of the ruins, her back against a broken stone pillar. It had once supported the dome of the Fortress of Hera; now only half remained, leaning crookedly against another wall like a mortally wounded giant.
Euten sat in the pillar's shadow with her legs together, her hands folded in her lap, and her back perfectly straight.
Her dark blue seneschal's robes were covered in dust and dried blood, with torn lining showing through several rents.
Half her hair had already turned gray. After the fighting had loosened it, she had pinned it back with a piece of wire she had picked up, though a few stray tufts still stuck out.
A small scar marked her forehead, an irregular line running diagonally across her brow, less than three finger-widths long and slightly red around the edges.
That scar had been left by a warrior of the Iron Hands Legion who had descended from orbit into the Fortress of Hera.
At the height of the fighting on Macragge, a breach had been torn in the defenses above the fortress. A traitor warrior in Terminator Armour had crawled from a