Within the towering urban sprawl of the city, the Reaver-Eviscerators were not as conspicuous as one might expect. Cultists lurked within the architectural labyrinth, unleashing incessant volleys of fire against the towering mechanical units. Yet, their only response was the signature sickly green glow of neural-sensory pulverizers.
Any retaliation through windows or firing slits served only to leave behind a harvest of soulless husks. The excruciating agony of dying nerves rippled through their bodies, tearing away the very reflection of the Empyrean; the flesh, now empty of spirit, stood frozen in place, nothing more than grotesque statuary. The outcome was identical for the Rubric Marines. After the pulse swept through, only complete, hollow sets of power armor remained, clattering to the ground.
Highly efficient scanning arrays easily pierced through every structure in close proximity. The automaton's staggering efficiency in neutralizing small, "living" targets left the enemy with almost no time to relay intelligence. Backed by their own armored columns and Knight-class walkers, the traitor contingents gathered from across the stars began to attempt a ground-based pursuit of these mechanical ghosts.
However, Tizca was never designed for conventional warfare. Its streets were never meant to accommodate heavy armor, and the traitor's armored columns, tangled with Knight walkers and Warhound Titans, struggled to maneuver through the crushing density of the city's architecture.
...
"No feedback from the augur arrays. How in the hell are they doing this?"
"Unclear. But the sorcerers seem to have ways of sensing them."
"Dammit, what good is sensing them if they won't use their cursed Warp-craft to turn them to ash? They're just too weak to fight them!"
"But their psychic signature won't sync with the cogitators."
"Then keep your eyes peeled—"
"LOOK OUT!!!"
Two traitor Knight pilots, shielded by a retinue of cultists, stalked through the narrow, high-walled streets. They were already disgruntled with the orders for this engagement. Corrupted by Chaos, they no longer cared for notions of honor, and unlike their past glories, they felt no thrill in facing a foe of similar stature; only the raw, visceral carnage of a slaughter could stir them. Yet, these enemies were rare, fleeting, and terrifyingly efficient. They despised such a mission.
As they spoke, a semi-transparent shadow suddenly stirred within a gap between buildings, a crevice far too narrow for any Knight to traverse. A squad of cultists marching in formation was instantly atomized into a smear of gore, which splattered faintly against something invisible.
BANG!
SKREEEEE—
A deafening impact roared through the street, accompanied by the shriek of tortured metal. The Knight walker nearest the alley gap suddenly lurched as its bipedal chassis snapped; it toppled forward, crashing into the earth.
The bipedal Reaver-Eviscerator had performed an action beyond the traitors' comprehension. It had pivoted its frame to slide sideways into the claustrophobic gap between the structures, launching a surgical ambush from a position the enemy considered untouchable.
The automaton, less than six meters wide and barely three meters deep, ghosted through the urban fissures. The Knight walkers, unable to even enter these gaps, had neglected to defend against such an angle. As the enemy reached the perfect vantage, the Reaver-Eviscerator burst from the ambush point and drove a massive, mechanical foot directly into the Knight's knee joint. The brittle support sheared away under the brutal strike.
The upper chassis lost its support and plunged forward. Before the second Knight walker, trailing a short distance behind, could even adjust its torso, it was struck by a beam of blue-white light. A single shot from a dissociation cannon reduced two-thirds of the entire Knight walker to fine, drifting powder. Two green arcs flashed, hopping across the infantry to leave a trail of soulless corpses in their wake. The automaton's power claw, currently housing the dissociation cannon, flared with lethal energy; it stabbed into the back of the toppled Knight, punched through the cockpit, and crushed the pilot within into a pulp.
The machine flicked its claw with a hauntingly human gesture, shaking off the metallic debris. Its form then faded back into transparency, and it strode onward to its next reconnaissance objective.
The Knight walker detachments, despite their infantry screens, were the fastest to crumble in this engagement.
Across the city, in a plaza some dozen blocks away from the main skirmish, five Reaver-Eviscerators launched a surprise assault on three Warhound Titans and a single Reaver Titan. They had carefully scaled the high spires of a cathedral, dismantled key load-bearing masonry, and plummeted into the enemy ranks along with the collapsing structure.
The Titan Legions were supported by far heavier assets than the Knights, vast numbers of tanks, armored transports, and infantry swarmed around them. The Titan-auxiliaries of the Dark Mechanicum were also in tow, their masters hungering to capture one of these dreaded Iron Men machines to strip it of its forbidden knowledge.
Yet, the Warhound Titan's biomimetic design left it with poor turning radii and a dangerously forward-leaning center of gravity. The Reaver-Eviscerators attacked with brutal speed; in a single exchange, the surrounding mortal forces were obliterated or scattered by the falling debris. The three Warhounds were ambushed from behind, their void shields utterly useless against such intimate, close-quarters violence. The Reaver-Eviscerators' power claws shredded their internal conduits with contemptuous ease, the immense force of the machines tearing the Warhounds apart limb by limb.
The hulking Reaver Titan suffered an even grimmer fate. Two Reaver-Eviscerators, one on either side, drove their power claws into the connecting joints between the torso and the legs. With a screech of shearing metal, the upper half of the Reaver toppled backward, slamming into the ground. Its side-mounted Hellstorm cannons and Vulcan mega-bolters thrashed in a frantic, futile attempt to brace the machine and pull it upright. The Apocalypse missile launcher atop its carapace tried to lock onto a target.
"I will not fall! I will make you pay for what you have done to me!" the Titan Princeps roared in fury, his voice echoing through the ruins via the vox-arrays.
But the Reaver-Eviscerators had already completed their data analysis. They hauled the shattered, mangled carcasses of the three Warhound Titans, each leaking plasma from critical wounds in their reactors, and piled them onto the fallen Reaver.
Having visited Lucius and studied Imperial Titan tech, the Iron Men understood these primitive plasma reactors all too well. It took only a precise, microscopic puncture of a power claw to turn those volatile, poorly shielded reactors into titanic plasma bombs.
The Princeps of the Reaver Titan realized the truth a second too late.
"NOOO!!!!!"
BOOOOM!
A cataclysmic shockwave, laced with searing azure plasma, scoured everything within several city blocks clean. But the five Reaver-Eviscerators had long since vanished. The entire city had become their hunting ground, and the traitors were melting away like snowflakes in a furnace.
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