Without the telepathic tether of the Chimeric Hydra-Drake’s central nervous system, the sixty thousand war-beasts of the Sovereign Chimera Order ceased to function as an organized army.
They became an unthinking, convulsing sea of man-made madness.
Along the three-half-mile apron of Gate Seven, forty thousand surviving shock amalgams—locusts, corpse-hounds, back shell-crabs, and multi-limbed stitch-stalkers—froze in the frozen mud. Their artificial neural interfaces, overloaded by the violent psionic backlash of their flagship’s decapitation, sparked with wild, disorganized bio-electricity.
Then, the cannibalism began.
Deprived of their hive-master’s telepathic exact timing, the hunting beasts’ starved, chemically overclocked metabolisms took complete control. Back shell Maulers snapped their bone-crushing pincers shut around the necks of next-door Corpse-Hounds. Swarms of Acid-Stitched Locusts dropped upon the twitching corpses of the fallen Siege Giant statues, tearing into the exposed muscle tissue in a wild, rabid feeding frenzy that turned the badlands into a boiling stew of black ichor and gnashing jaws.
“They’re eating their own vanguard!” Sergeant Ethan Miller shouted from atop the backup low roof wall. He lowered his magnetic rifle in sheer, horrified revulsion. “They’ve fully lost holding power!”
“Counter-offensive, all units!” Valerie Koslov’s command boomed across the outer defense channels, her voice cutting through the panic like an iron whip. “Bring up the mobile rail-cannon batteries! Drive the vermin into the salt flats!”
