The gate in the factory wall opened.
More than a dozen Machine Priests stood shoulder to shoulder. The priest in the center held a scepter over two meters tall, chanting a prayer known as the War Hymn. The monsters outside the gate turned to look.
He slammed his scepter against the ground, but a tremendous clang of metal rang out, and sparks flew from its tip.
Several people around him were within range of the sparks.
The weapons in their hands and the steel on their bodies flashed for an instant, like dying furnace embers fed a blast of air.
The crisp sound of meshing gears rang out, as though the steel, too, were praying in unison.
The Machine Priests lowered the bowl-thick tubes in their hands together.
The next instant.
Blazing flames surged out, racing one another, screaming and roaring toward the monsters. The factory entrance instantly became a sea of fire. During the Ten-Year Holy War forty years ago, Machine Priests chanting Praise of War had blanketed the entire battlefield with heavy flamethrowers. The flames had burned for three days without dying, and from then on, apostates had never dared employ trench warfare on an open battlefield again.
Now, the same prayer rang out in the Imperial Capital, but it was no longer heretics the flames purified.
The flamethrowers had a range of a hundred and thirty meters. Within that distance, nothing remained but a sea of fire. Beyond it, the wind swept up the flames and stuck them to the monsters' long fur. Their fur, which could stop pistol bullets, now became the perfect tinder, drawing the demons of hell out of the sea of fire.
The burning monsters scattered with agonized howls, crashing into large groups of monsters and setting off more bursts of flame.
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