A series of choppy explosions interrupted them. The sounds were dangerously close. Approaching via an eastbound street was a large swarm of Jellies, who were exchanging fire with a pair of retreating squids that Kira assumed belonged to Lphet. And converging upon them via several of the westbound streets were masses of twisted bodies climbing over the piles of rubble and even climbing over themselves: tortured flesh that was red and black and melted like the scars on Falconi’s forearms—an army of the Corrupted. An army of nightmares.

Then a crack sounded behind them, loud as a gunshot. Kira crouched and whirled, expecting to be ambushed.

In the depths of the temple’s inner sanctum, the dark obelisk fractured, white lines racing across its surface, shedding dust. The nape of Kira’s neck prickled as the front of the pillar fell forward with a doom-laden peal.

The obelisk was hollow. Inside it stirred a tall, angular something—a figure as lean as a skeleton, with legs that jointed backwards and two pairs of arms. A cloak of black seemed to hang from its pointed shoulders, and a hard, hood-like shape hid all its face, save the crimson eyes that burned within that shadowed recess.

Kira hadn’t thought it possible to be any more afraid. She was wrong. For she recognized the creature from her dreams. It wasn’t one of the Vanished, but one of their dread servants.

It was a Seeker, and that meant death.

CHAPTER V

SIC ITUR AD ASTRA

1.

The Seeker was moving, but slowly, as if disoriented after its long sleep.

“Run,” Kira said to both humans and Jellies. “Now. Don’t stop. Don’t fight. Run.”

[[Lphet here: A Mind Ripper! Flee!]]

The Jellies threw down a smokescreen—hiding the Seeker from sight—and together, they and the Marines scrambled out the broken front of the temple. Kira’s heart was pounding with panic she couldn’t suppress. A Seeker. She remembered them from ages past: creatures made to enforce the word of the Heptarchy. A single one had wreaked havoc on the Jellies during the Sundering; she feared to think what it might do to the League if it escaped the planet.

Nielsen carried Trig’s mummified form in her arms as they clambered into the open. Falconi guarded her left; Kira her right.

“This way,” said Tschetter, leading them toward a narrow side street next to the temple—one that, for the moment, was empty of enemies.

Across the plaza, the two Jellies that had been fighting a delaying action tossed drones into the air and then abandoned their cover and sprinted on tentacles across the open space to join their companions. Orange ichor dripped from several holes in the carapace of the alien on the right.

“What was that thing?” cried Nielsen, hunching over to protect Trig.

“Bad news,” said Kira.

The mushroom cloud still towered high overhead, overwhelming in its size. The wind tore at the central column, dragging streaks of it westward, into the planet’s nightside. A burnt, dirt-like smell pervaded the air, and the electric tang of ozone also, as if from an impending storm.