As the casualty count for his forces surged, Perturabo could wait no longer. At the Primarch's command, Warlord Titans began their forced intervention into the theater of war. The corrupted god-machines began to emit a violent, resonant hum as the Chaos Titans circling the city's perimeter unleashed a hellstorm of bombardment into the urban ruins.
Following strict orders, the Iron Warriors withdrew their direct contingents just moments before the carpet fire descended. Vast numbers of cultists and mortal rebels were left behind, commanded to use their own flesh to bog down the mechanical entities.
The Chaos Warlord Titans accompanying the Iron Warriors were equipped with twin-linked laser blasters on their carapaces, a Melta-cannon on their right arms, and plasma annihilators on their left. Massive, overlapping beams raked across the city, methodically leveling every sector where combat signatures were detected. Orange-red torrents of melta-fire and cascades of azure plasma danced above the city, leaving behind crater after crater of molten ruin, while the carapace-mounted laser blasters set the remains of the metropolis ablaze.
Magnus glared at Perturabo, but the Lord of Iron chose to ignore him. After all, the lion's share of the losses thus far had been sustained by the Iron Warriors, while the treacherous and wily Thousand Sons had scurried away like rabbits. Since Magnus insisted on forcing him to face this enemy, Perturabo was not about to bear the cost alone. Ten millennia of exile might have altered Perturabo, but in certain respects, he remained unchanged.
This scorched-earth strategy did, in fact, bear fruit. Irrational decisions often have inexplicable effects against the logic-bound units of the Iron Men. As the Warlord Titans fired indiscriminately into every engagement zone, caring nothing for friendly fire, the automata on Sortiarius began to sustain heavy losses.
Unlucky Reaver-Eviscerators, caught in the open, were vaporized before they could even activate their battlefield repair modules. The sheer, overwhelming power of these ruinous weapons simply erased them from existence. They were, after all, reconnaissance units, not standard combat machines like the Destroyers. Neither their shield strength nor their chassis composition could match those dedicated Iron Men designed solely for total annihilation. In truth, even the Destroyer-class automata could not withstand repeated, direct hits from weapons of such titan-grade magnitude.
The Reaver-Eviscerators immediately adjusted their tactical algorithms. Within nanoseconds, the swarm intelligence proposed over a dozen viable solutions, which were put to a data-vote among all surviving units. Ultimately, a singular, universal battle-doctrine was adopted: every Reaver-Eviscerator would cease all protracted close-quarters engagements. Every action would henceforth be dedicated to rapid, surgical destruction.
The traitors on the planet soon witnessed what it meant to be hunted by Titan-class killers. The automata shifted their tactics on every front. They abandoned traditional melee as inefficient, opting instead for a new brand of ambush. Ghost-stepping through the ruins, the machines utilized unimaginable maneuvers to slip beneath the defensive threshold of the Void Shields, where a single shot from their dissociation cannons was enough to cripple a Titan.
Four Warlord Titans were lost to these erratic, cunning tactics. The automata, operating in cells of three, utilized the carcasses of fallen traitor Titans as improvised bombs, overloading their plasma reactors and hurling them at the massive Warlords. The resulting ion-backlash would coat the Warlords' Void Shields, momentarily blinding their primary sensors. In that split second, the Reaver-Eviscerators would surge forward, breach the shield perimeter, and unleash their dissociation cannons.
The beams, appearing out of nowhere, were aimed with surgical precision at the center of the Warlords' torsos. That was the location of the plasma reactor on a Warlord-class Titan. The most effective way to down such a beast was to punch through the adamantine plating directly into the energy core. The dissociation weapons possessed a terrifying capacity for armor penetration; they didn't just punch holes in fortress walls, they carved yawning chasms through adamantine plating with every shot.
By narrowing the focal range of their dissociation weapons and pushing their output to maximum, the Reaver-Eviscerators quickly bored deep, narrow shafts through meters of plating, eventually dismantling the components of the plasma reactor itself. Once the reactor destabilized, the resulting titanic energy detonation tore the Warlord Titan asunder.
Even worse, these mechanical units began salvaging the heavy weaponry from the wreckage of the Warlord Titans. The immense firepower of recovered Melta-cannons and plasma annihilators was sufficient to collapse the Void Shields of their peers. Once those shields were overloaded, swarms of Reaver-Eviscerators would descend to dismantle the vulnerable chassis piece by piece.
Perturabo's decision cost him four priceless Warlord Titans, but it did succeed in purging hundreds of the reconnaissance automata. Yet, as the scale of the conflict widened and the destruction grew, Magnus could no longer remain a spectator.
The Crimson Giant, clutching his iconic blade, the Ahn-Nunura, ascended to the summit of the Tower of the Cyclops. Violent, turbulent currents of Chaos energy swirled around him; the psychic power that should have been blue burned a deep, incandescent crimson. The Traitor Primarch, now perfectly fused with the power of the Warp, had become far more potent than he had ever been before.
Chaos energy rippled across the surface of Sortiarius, driving the warped horrors of the planet into a state of frothing madness. The Thousand Sons sorcerers, sensing the wrath of their Gene-Father, watched the sky with feverish anticipation. They were about to witness their Primarch manifest his sublime power to scourge their enemies.
As Magnus raised his staff-blade high, the arcane runes etched into the grip pulsed with blinding intensity. A beam of energy erupted, vanishing into the roiling, atmospheric warp-currents of the planet.
In an instant, countless bolts of gargantuan lightning shattered the sky. These bolts, meters thick, struck every Reaver-Eviscerator on the planet with pinpoint accuracy. The psychic lightning possessed not only catastrophic destructive force but also the power to warp the very laws of physics.
In a singular moment, every automaton was struck, their systems reeling under the psychic assault. The destructive potential of a powerful psyker was laid bare: unlike physical impacts or conventional energy damage, this psychic injury, which carried the ability to distort fundamental rules, inflicted damage upon the Iron Men far exceeding projected tolerances. Under normal circumstances, naturally occurring lightning could never harm these machines, but psychic lightning had succeeded.
Yet, beyond the few dozen units that had exhausted their repair reserves and fallen silent, the rest of the Reaver-Eviscerators instantly shimmered with a golden light. Their damaged chassis were restored to pristine condition in a heartbeat.
Perturabo, who had been monitoring the battlefield metrics, ascended the high tower with a grim expression. He locked eyes with Magnus. For a fleeting second, he saw the Cyclops' single eye betray a trace of disappointment.
It was a look Perturabo had once seen on the face of his own father, and as their gazes met, a familiar, nameless rage began to churn within his soul.
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