While the sun slowly set over the former imperial capital Terra was slowly starting to hype herself up, she was currently hidden at a gathering point that was determined to be for the rest of her unit, being the only one which had arrived. Even as the last member of her unit, Terra still had a mission to do, and so she slowly started preparations for making entry into the now dead silent imperial capital while her sensors indicated that there were multiple elders in the area, although there was no way of ascertaining their exact location without visual confirmation.

Having prepared for scaling the outer walls like she did last time she entered a city, Terra was pleasantly surprised when she found a hole through the walls, most likely stemming from an elder's attack. Upon closer investigating Terra was struck with a sense of awe and terror, the elder's attack had ripped straight through the 15 metres thick reinforced wall like it was nothing, leaving a completely circular 5 metre wide hole through it, the edges of which had turned the solid stone molten for some time before it once more cooled down and became solid.

(What kind of power could have done that? If it is magic like Dax thinks then there truly exists some great boundary that even the mighty angels have yet to cross, to the elders we might as well be ants, with our relative power there is no real observable difference.)

Having entered the imperial capital Terra was meet with more of the same, a thin layer of spores covered every surface of the city, while the skyline was occasionally dotted with towers made of the former residents and flesh eating fungal growth. What differentiated the imperial capital from other cities Terra had seen so far was the amount of battle damage, not only from Dax's a.s.sault which had happened only moments before the elder's invasion, but also a significant amount of destruction caused by the elder's themselves, with large chunks of buildings missing it was like someone had edited what Terra saw with her own eyes, cutting out strange shapes from the buildings seemingly at random.

(... Now for the hard part of this mission.)

As Terra had finally reached the final objective of her recon mission, she prepared for the undeniable chance that she would be spotted by an elder, hiding a few containers with the data she had already collected in case she would be unable to make it back. Terra didn't really think all that deeply about those actions, nor did she consider the chance of her possible demise any longer, if this was her end of the road then so be it.

That's not to say she wouldn't fight against her death, far from it, it was just that she was too tired to consider the deeper implications. With her final rites taken care of, Terra activated the flight function in her valkyrie armour before using it to jump into a nearby half destroyed skysc.r.a.per before making her way to the upper floors while continuously keeping track on the levels on her acoustic sensor. Reaching the roof of the skysc.r.a.per Terra kept to the shadows as she scouted further into the imperial capital, spotting at least 4 different elders which floated around above the skysc.r.a.pers as if they were looking for something.

(That's strange… Although they don't seem to have spotted me, which is nice. The issue is going to be navigating past them while remaining unseen.)

Terra's original plan was to stick to the skysc.r.a.pers and their interconnecting pathways, potentially using them to lose an elder as the countless interwoven connections made of a 3 dimensional maze with very short lines of sight, something which would make it difficult for the elders to target her as long as she kept moving erratically. 

(But if I do that I'll be getting closer to the elders than I would like… Which leaves me with 2 other options…)

The first option would be travelling at city level, while that would be faster than moving between the skysc.r.a.pers as she had originally planned it would leave her extremely exposed due to the long sightlines, on the other hand, it would also allow her the possibility of spotting the elders before they saw her, although it would be a coin flip as to who saw who first.

The second option would be travelling through the numerous maintenance and sewage tunnels which ran beneath the city, the advantage to that would be a radically lower chance of detection but also make it harder for Terra to do the scouting she had come here to do, conversely, there was also the chance of running into an elder down there, something which would be a definite death sentence as she couldn't escape their line of sight in those long narrow tunnels.

(Yeah no, there's no way I'll risk getting caught down in those tunnels, and I don't even have a map of them, which would likely mean getting lost down there… That only leaves me the first option, which is sort of fine if I move fast and through the buildings at ground level to keep hidden.)

With her plan of action settled on Terra made her way back down the skysc.r.a.per before she started making her way towards the imperial castle at the centre of the city.

-

On the way to the imperial castle, Terra had numerous close encounters with elders, along with the sound of distant rifle fire, something which told her that at least some of her comrades from the different units had made it as far as herself, although the rifle fire signalled that they had been spotted and abandoned all attempts at survival, resigning their fate to become live bait in the hopes of drawing elders away from their comrades. 

(This is where I was ambushed by those imperial knights, which means I should be able to see all the way to the imperial castle if I scale that vertical farm over there.)

Having found her bearings Terra ran past numerous destroyed drones which had remained behind to delay the elders when Terra last left the capital. Reaching the vertical farm which was lined with gla.s.s windows on all sides she gradually started making her way to the top, pa.s.sing fields of ruined crops which were in the process of being eaten by the all consuming fungus which the elders carried. with them wherever they went. Reaching the top of the farm Terra used the numerous lines of half eaten vines as cover while slowly moving closer to the edge where she would be able to get a glimpse of the imperial castle.

(Here we go…)

Sealing all external vents and cooling arrays on her armour Terra suppressed the overwhelming feeling of dread which came from her subconsciousness. Looking over the railing Terra immediately spotted the grand although half destroyed the imperial castle, that wasn't what drew her attention.

"What the f.u.c.k is that…)

Half way between her current location and the imperial castle, where the grand plaza which was normally used to hold parades to signify the unification of the empire was a large several hundred metre deep hole with some kind of strange obelisk with a half melted surface and charred alien markings all over it. While Terra was still trying to understand exactly what that strange object was one of the elders which seemed to be examining the strange obelisk started closing in on it, but after it had floated a few metres closer to it something strange suddenly happened. First the sensors on Terra's armour all seemed to go nuts as warnings of all different kinds suddenly lit up on her heads up display, then some sort of deep rumble started, like the kind which one felt in the stomach when a jet plane pa.s.sed right overhead. 

Then everything came to a stop all at once.

The elder who had tried closing in on the obelisk was suddenly smashed from all sides all at once, as it had suddenly entered a super powered hydraulic press it was squeezed into a ball no larger than Terra's fist, after maintaining that shape for a few minutes another low rumble could be heard, then without warning, the squished elder was shot away from the obelisk like a bullet, cras.h.i.+ng into a building a few hundred meters away.

(That's the part of Dax's s.h.i.+p he has been looking for!)

Seeing the interaction between the obelisk and the elder who tried to get close to it, Terra finally realized what she was looking at. From what she had been told from Dax, 'the FTL drive' as he called it, had been the reason for conflict with the empire in the first place.

(If I remember right Dax needs that thing to get home, or at least invent a method to get home… I thought its location was unknown, but apparently it was here in the capital all along.)

Evaluating the information she had just obtained Terra decided to cut her mission short and return home, the fact that the FTL drive had been found in the imperial capital would need to be reported immediately.

While Terra left the capital behind all the elders inside it gradually came to a complete halt, stopping whatever they had been doing. As if they had all realized something at the same they the half decaying cybernetic implants fixed themselves on the direction Terra had left in, then the elders started silently floating up into the sky where they started stalking their new prey in unison.