After achieving victory in the void battle, the Throne of Shadow's Sovereignty sailed toward Lascal IV.
Nareth remembered that this planet would one day become the primary world of the Lascal system.
Blinding beams of light poured down onto Lascal IV's surface, colliding with the strange energies fired from the Mitu's glass-domed fortresses.
Human technology and Mitu arcane science clashed in the skies above Lascal IV, filling the gray-white heavens with searing light.
The low-hanging clouds lit up from the outer edge inward, and multiple sonic booms from atmospheric discharges echoed across the world.
After two stellar hours of battle, Throne of Shadow's Sovereignty emerged victorious in the exchange of fire. Nareth immediately issued the order to begin planetary landing.
From within the Stormbird, Nareth peered through the viewing window at the roiling, twisted lights below.
The massive deaths caused by the Mitu's arcane technologies, turning flesh into fuel, combined with the chaotic energy of uncontrolled explosions, distorted his vision.
The moment he stepped off the Stormbird's ramp, Nareth ascended into the third layer of Magnus's mental state.
When he first began his studies under Magnus, he had mastered the first three layers of the Enumeration. By the time he left Prospero, he had already grasped the middle three.
Through continued practice afterward, Nareth had learned to move freely among the six lower and middle layers of Magnus's mental structure.
He could not only ascend instantly into any one of them but also shift directly between different levels without transition.
The instant he entered the third mental state, the turbulent warp energy around him seemed to peel away like a veil.
The world became incomparably vivid. The fragments of ruined walls overlapped with intricate geometric structures, and even the drifting dust turned into glimmering meteors in his sight.
The third layer of the Enumeraion served a single purpose: to amplify a psyker's perception and etch every detail of their surroundings into their mind.
At once, Nareth noticed the broken mechanical constructs nearby, within which half-collapsed humans lay sprawled.
Their faces were frozen in terror; their bodies quivered.
Among the wreckage, he also saw crystalline, diamond-shaped prisms glowing faintly with psychic light.
His eyes narrowed. Those crystals, Arcane Prisms, matched the primary material used for the "Fool" pathway's Sequence 7 potion, "Magician," recorded on the Blaspemy Slate.
Then he saw them, Mitu xenos hidden amidst the ruins.
As photomorphic beings, the Mitu could manipulate light itself, blending perfectly into their surroundings.
The explosion of the arcane devices had twisted reality, further aiding their concealment. Even the Shadow of Order's sensors could not detect them from afar.
Nareth raised his left arm, his bolter-mounted power fist roared to life, spewing a storm of bolts toward the lurking Mitu.
Explosions thundered across the ruins as a dozen Mitu were blasted apart.
The survivors hastily erected psychic shields to resist the attack, scanning frantically for their unseen assailant.
Nareth dropped back into the second layer of the mental state, extending his consciousness outward and instantly transmitting the coordinates of all hidden Mitu to his Honor Guard.
The second layer, devised by Magnus, allowed psykers to form instantaneous thought-links.
For those capable of telepathy, loading their minds into the second layer greatly enhanced their transmission speed and clarity.
In an instant, Nareth's perception of the battlefield, every hidden enemy and environmental detail from the third layer, was broadcast directly into the minds of five hundred Honor Guards.
His transmission was faster than the Mitu's reactions.
The Shadows of Order immediately raised their bolters and opened fire on the surrounding xenos.
Bolts detonated against psychic barriers; xeno bodies were engulfed in fireballs, spraying shards and blood across the ruins.
Amid the shockwaves, the Mitu rolled and tumbled in panic, while Nareth swept past a still-twitching corpse and fired again.
His next bolt punched through a psychic shield, hurling the anemone-bodied alien into the air in a burst of flame.
Blood streamed from the warped remains of its grotesque head, rippling unnaturally in the charged air.
The Honor Guard unleashed a storm of fire. Bolter rounds swept the area, cutting down the Mitu in droves.
Their bodies spun and burst; some exploded outright, spraying clouds of shimmering blood like rippling mercury.
The Mitu were horrified; their camouflage had proven useless. The black-armored warriors detected them the instant they entered visual range.
Nareth's immense consciousness allowed him to transition across mental layers faster than thought itself, without any perceptible delay.
Through his enhanced sight, he noticed a massive spherical building ahead. As the smoke cleared from the blasts, the world snapped back to normal.
Hundreds of Mitu surged out of the structure, anemone-like beings with seven pairs of legs, their bodies pulsing with pink light.
Bolter fire struck their psychic shields in a thunderous rhythm.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Ripples spread through the shields as they absorbed the impacts.
Nareth's eyes gleamed. He raised his right hand and lifted it sharply.
The Mitu screamed as an invisible force hoisted them into the air.
In that instant of panic, Nareth's mind pierced theirs.
Their psychic landscape was a blood-red harbor.
Within their collective consciousness, Nareth witnessed how, every four stellar months, they conducted purges across Lascal, exterminating excess population to maintain total control.
They herded humans into arcane machines and activated them mercilessly. Flesh dissolved into energy to fuel their systems.
Delving deeper into their minds, Nareth found what he sought, the source of the Arcane Prisms.
They were mined from Gana's Rock, a peripheral world in the Cyclops Cluster, rich with crystalline deposits.
Having extracted the intelligence he needed, Nareth clenched his right hand.
Telekinetic force, like a giant invisible fist, crushed the Mitu in midair.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The human slaves hiding among the ruins stared in awe as their terrifying alien masters were lifted up and pulped into drifting clouds of blood mist.
After the Honor Guard and the 11th Chapter secured Lascal, Nareth proceeded into the Kingdom of Disorder.
In the fourth layer space, he extended his psychic senses toward a violet sphere of light.
He saw Thomas leading the Librarius and the 12th Chapter in an assault on Gana's Rock.
Finding Thomas momentarily alone, Nareth drew him into the Kingdom of Disorder.
Thomas looked around the swirling black mist, then raised his gaze to the throne where Nareth sat.
"My lord."
With a thought, Nareth levitated an Arcane Prism before him.
"This crystal is mined from Gana's Rock," he said. "Once the world is secured, begin excavation operations."
"As you command, my lord," Thomas replied.
Nareth sent him back to the material realm and then ascended into the fifth-dimensional layer, where his spirit reached toward a golden sphere.
There he saw Hathor Maat standing before an octagonal rune circle, radiant with shifting colors.
Maat was studying the techniques of the Corvidae Cult.
.....
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