Isstvan III Atrocity - Last Stand of the Luna Wolves: As the main Traitor attack column was storming the broken holdfast of the Precentor's Palace, in the northern and southern sectors further assaults were taking place to break the back of the Loyalist resistance and hunt down the scattered survivors in the ruins. Against Captain Loken and his Luna Wolves, their former brothers the Sons of Horus under the command of Ezekyle Abaddon mounted their own attack in force, under explicit instructions to return victorious or not return at all. Mounting their attack from multiple directions at once, the Siren Hold came under attack from land and air. Caestus Assault Rams smashed into the upper tomb spires along with flights of Jump Pack-equipped Assault Squads descending from gunship troop bays to take the heights where the gun emplacements and sniper roosts of the Luna Wolves had been set up in defence. At ground level the cityscape trembled before a cluster of armoured spearhead formations, heavy Spartan and Land Raider tanks smashing a path through rubble-piles and barricades alike, the foremost painted not in the sea-verdigris of the Sons of Horus, but the night black and tarnished bronze of the Legion's 1st Company Justaerin elite. The tank spearheads smashed their way into the tangled cemeteries, soaking up the returning fire that flared up to meet them, and punching through shrines and toppling statuary with blasts of Lascannon fire in reply. Despoiler Squads, eager for blood, Chainblades revving and grenades primed, ran headlong in streams out from the wake of the tanks, dodging and weaving towards the defenders' positions, marking them out by the muzzle flash of their enemies' weapons, heedless of their own fallen.The Luna Wolves lacked nothing for courage in the face of their hateful foe, but they were hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered, and their ammunition reserves were low. Some sought to fight free and scatter if they could, for on this day survival itself was a great victory against fearful odds. Others, some injured, cut off or simply too tired and bitter in spite to retreat, stood their ground before the onslaught and brought time for their brothers with their lives, firing to the last bolt shell and the last drop of their blood as the Justaerin Terminators stormed the barricades of broken marble and tomb-sepulchres, smashing aside stone cerements with Power Fist blows and raining hails of bolt shot and blazing plasma on the last few hold-outs within. The Siren Hold fell within an hour, but hundreds had escaped and First Captain Abaddon, victory ashen in his mouth, stalked the ruins, hurling insults and threats of death at those who had failed to close the trap in time. Regaining his composure, he ordered his forces to break up and search the city while he set the Dark Mechanicum and his own Destroyer Squads the task of running down any that had fled below. Soon canisters of burning Phosphex were being emptied into the air vents and catacombs that ran below the Siren Hold, while covens of Davinite witches and Chaos Cultists used their own dark arts to hunt the wastes and rubble for the living.During the subsequent manhunt for Loyalist survivors Abaddon and Horus Aximand confronted Captains Loken and Tarik Torgaddon in the ruins of a burned-out building somewhere in the ruins of Choral City. In the subsequent battle, Little Horus defeated and slew Tarik Torgaddon in single combat in the blasted ruins of that planet's former capital while Loken fought bravely against Abaddon, but was eventually critically wounded, and lay helpless in the subsequent final orbital bombardment of the planet by the Warmaster's fleet, which would bring the resistance of the Loyalists to its end.As the darkness of true night once again fell over the city of the dead, the only light was the stabbing beams of search lamps methodically sweeping the skeletal remains of the city, with the promise of death following in their wake. The only sounds were the immense grinding tread of the Titans stalking through the ruins and the intermittent sounds of gunfire echoing like phantoms through the empty waste of rubble and bone as Traitor found Loyalist in the darkness. The death of Isstvan III had entered its final, murderous phase. It could no longer be called a battle, but was instead a manhunt; the harrowing, cornering and destruction of the most dangerous prey, but prey now nonetheless, to its extinction.