"Prepare to fire!" the lead Archmagos ordered.
"10..."
The chanting, prayers, and whirring machinery throughout the great hall all grew quieter the instant the countdown began, finally settling into a silence filled with awe and anticipation.
Only the roar of energy surging through the conduits grew louder.
"9..."
Every metal plate and rune node in the enormous focusing array began to emit a faint, spectral blue glow.
"8..."
The thousands of Skitarii surrounding the energy well dropped to one knee in unison, laid their weapons before them, and bowed their mechanized heads.
"7..."
Countless Tech-Priests and magi, from low-ranking computational adepts to senior forge masters, stopped their work and faced the energy well, crossing their mechanical appendages over their chests. Data streams flashed wildly in their electronic eyes—their final, most devout prayers, offered in binary code.
"6...5...4..."
A deep rumble rose from the depths of the energy well, like the churning core of a star.
The spectral blue light grew brighter and increasingly unstable, seething restlessly within the well like imprisoned lightning.
"3...2...1..."
"Let the divine power of the Omnissiah descend!"
"HUM!!!"
There was no deafening explosion as they had imagined.
There was only an impossibly low hum, yet so deep and heavy that the entire universe seemed to resonate with it.
This hum did not travel through the air. It was a direct disturbance of the fabric of reality, causing the hull of every warship on the battlefield, friend and foe alike, to shudder faintly, instinctively.
At the same moment, the tips of countless jagged black projections across the Blackstone Fortress's surface suddenly erupted with dazzling spectral Blue Light!
Rather than scattering at random, the light seemed guided by an invisible hand, racing along the grooves and patterns of the fortress's non-Euclidean geometry toward the largest and most intricate