Behind him, Rucka heard the pack. They’d slowed. He realised then he’d been steered to this place.

Slowly the skittering from the tunnel became louder and the pack from behind him closer. The cultists scuttled into view. Rucka counted at least fifty men and women, their mouths sewn shut, blue veins threading from their puckered lips. They carried picks and shards of metal and glass.

It wasn’t the end that Rucka had envisaged for himself.

The sergeant had picked out his first opponent and was about to take aim with his lasgun when a piece of rockcrete clattered down onto the street. Rucka traced its trajectory back to the overpass and saw the silhouettes of three armoured giants in the ambient light.

The brief spark of salvation given life in Rucka’s mind was quickly crushed when he realised that these creatures were not here to save him.

Thunder roared and muzzle flares tore away the darkness a second later.

Rucka read what was about to happen and went to ground just before the onslaught. The deadly salvo lasted heartbeats, but it was enough. The cultists were utterly annihilated – their broken, blasted bodies littered the street like visceral trash.

Rucka was on his back, still dazed from the sudden attack. When he couldn’t feel his legs, he realised he’d been hit. Heat blazed down his side like an angry knife ripping at his skin. His fatigues were wet, probably with his own blood. A sudden earth tremor shook the rockcrete where Rucka lay prone, sending fresh daggers of pain through his body, as something large and dense smashed into the ground. More impacts followed, landing swift and heavy like mortar strikes.

Vision fogging, the sergeant managed to turn his head… His blood-rimed eyes widened. Crouched in gory armour, two bloody horns curling from its snarling dragon helm, was a terrible giant. It rose to its feet, like some primordial beast uncurling from the abyss, to reveal an immense plastron swathed in red scales. Heat haze seemed to emanate from its armoured form as if it had been fresh-forged from the mantle of a volcano.

‘The vault, where is it?’ the dragon giant asked, fiery embers rasping through its fanged mouth-grille as if it breathed ash and cinder.

‘Close…’ said another. Its voice was like cracked parchment but carried the resonance of power.

Though he couldn’t see them in his eye-line, Rucka realised the secondary impacts had been the giant warrior’s companions.

‘We are not alone,’ said a third, deep and throaty like crackling magma.

‘Salamanders,’ said the dragon giant, his vitriol obvious.

‘Then we had best be swift,’ returned the second voice. ‘I do not want to miss them.’

Rucka heard heavy footfalls approaching and felt the ominous gaze of one of the armoured giants upon him.

‘This one still lives,’ it barked.

Rucka’s vision was fading, but the sergeant could still smell copper coming off its armour, mangled with the acrid stench of gun smoke.

‘No survivors,’ said the second voice. ‘Kill it quickly. We have no time for amusement, Ramlek.’