The rapid, doomy rattle of a heavy bolter sounded not far ahead. Speeding shells scythed down the plants. Cawl ducked behind the thallax, but it shook and stopped suddenly. Bio-suspension fluids gushed from holes in its front and fire licked from around its joints. Enraged by the death of the machine, Cawl leaned out around its corpse and snapped off a shot from his volkite. Dark, armoured shapes were advancing through the smoke, weapons thumping. The thallax took another hit. Cawl took a breath, and leaned out again, yelling in exultation as he punched one of the armoured giants from its feet with a precise shot through the helmet.

But they were not firing back. It had become silent. Dangerously silent.

He looked to the side. The thallax had frozen. Red lumens blinked on the back of the casings of them all. Suddenly, they put up their weapons, and went into a stance of attention, before shutting down. All the Mechanicum troops were inactive. Tech thralls froze. Skitarii spasmed as they fought with orders imposed from outside. Only the adepts and others with independent will remained active, and they looked about in bewilderment. Those that continued to fight were shot down. Weapons clacked onto the floor as the rest took stock of their situation, and surrendered.

Cawl reached into his augmetic, scanning the command frequencies. An all-band message swamped the infosphere, disabling the cyborgs and urging the rest to submit.

<Surrender. Surrender. Surrender,> the order went, transmitted with the correct codes.

'Aspertia,' Cawl whispered.

The lumens went out. Emergency lighting flicked on, flooding the agri-cavern hall with bloody red light. Cawl glanced upwards. From the row next to his, a boltgun was pressed against his head. Somehow, the legionary had reached his side without Cawl noticing.

'Yield or die,' said the legionary.

Cawl went to his knees and held up his hands.

'Yield.'

His gun was taken. Cawl expected death, but the legionary ordered him to stand.

'You're coming with us,' he said.

Cawl was delivered along with dozens of other adepts of the Trisolian Taghmata to the Heptaligon's Septa station. Legionaries had seized control of the capital, and guarded every intersection. Blood smears on the walls indicated recent executions. His escort of Night Lords marched him past all this too fast for him to get more than a glimpse of ongoing atrocities.

The priests were kept under guard in an antechamber of Central Command, and taken one by one within. They all came out again, but some were taken away with grim looks on the human portions of their faces. The rest were herded to the far side of the room. Speech was forbidden; the Heptaligon's infosphere was shut down.