Release of the Void Dragon

Sol burned.

 

The ruins of a thousand warships drifted in its orbits, gutted; hulls seared and interiors warped by the lash of unimaginably exotic energies. The cities of the outer system were all gone. The pariah colony on Pluto had been invaded and ransacked, its inhabitants carried off to unknowable ends. The moons of Saturn had been scoured to bedrock, and the gossamer castles floating in the atmosphere itself shot down to be crushed in the depths. The Navigator Houses about Jupiter had been destroyed, their incredible opulence but a memory and hundreds of irreplaceable bloodlines snuffed out. Ganymede yet resisted, the supposedly uninhabited world unleashing lunatic weapons of desperation upon the invaders, but the secret fortress of the Grey Knights could only preserve itself, not turn the tide. The innumerable asteroid hives had been swept aside casually by the implacable advance. Now, the battle had moved to Mars. The orbitals of the holy red world blazed with weaponry unseen since the end of the Golden Age of Technology, wonders and horrors alike unleashed from the sacred stockpiles, irreplaceable artifacts used to destruction without hesitation. A full dozen Ark Mechanici unleashed the full might of their arsenals as their crews sang binary hymns to their might. But it was already clear the defense would ultimately fail. For the Mechanicus faced a foe that could match them madness for madness and miracle for miracle.

 

The Necron Star Empire had come to Sol. A fleet tens of thousands of ships strong, with thousands of the great inertialess battleships and at its center, a fully armed and operational World Engine. A force against which even demigods would contend in vain. For all its defenses, there was nothing in Sol that could stop this force. The only thing that even came close was the Phalanx; now its neutronium keel drifted gleaming among all the other wreckage, everything else stripped away by the guns of the World Engine. If there was anything else, it would have been deployed by now.

 

Of this the Silent King was certain.

 

...

 

Below the surface of Mars, two men stood before a god.