Farseer Emrana turned as soon as he sensed the anomaly. His second sight seemed dulled, numb, as if a greater power had laid a veil across his mind and now he realized it he could not recall when it had begun. Still, the rift in reality was as clear as if someone had gashed open his own flesh. Such an intrusion was near impossible in realspace but for the art of the Warp Spider Aspect, who achieved it with far greater finesse. Some crude form of teleportation? But the heavens were clear. No xenos ships, indeed no starships at all but for the craftworld’s escort of dragon- ghost- and other ships...but perhaps for how long?
The warlocks at his side turned a microsecond after him, sensing the same. An intrusion yet not an invasion, they could sense as much. Who would be insane enough to attack craftworld Carth-Lar in such small numbers with even a madman’s confidence of success? Unless the attackers knew of the losses the Eldar had sustained on Viarphia not long ago...
His attending warlocks immediately made for the rift they had sensed, Aislin turning back when she noticed Emrana was not following them.
“Go,” he jerked his sharp chin in the direction the other warlocks were headed in. “Rally and direct our defence.”
Aislin nodded, her fine features already hidden by her tall helm, “And what of you, master Emrana?”
He looked up once again to the star-field overhead, searching the void but finding naught, before replying.
“I will ensure no more come.”
The Erinyes had not dallied in the houses of healing. They were no butchers who bent their knees to lay skulls at the foot of Khorne’s throne. There was no glory in the butchering of invalids. It was true that Slaanesh thirsted for every Eldar soul, but the Dark Prince would have a fine banquet soon enough if the Warp Talons stuck to their mission rather than lingering to slaughter the sick. The urge to revel in killing, to desecrate the bodies and minds of the Eldar pulled at their souls. Pulled achingly strongly, but they steeled their wills and denied the lust of the neverborn ichor pumping through their veins. They cut their way through patients and healers alike, bursting from a high window, their jump packs screaming like hellhounds and spitting baleful green fire. Though their mission was paramount in their minds they were not without a spite born of their devotion to Slaanesh: The last of their number to leap from the window gave in a little to temptation and jumped with an injured Eldar under each arm, the turbines of his jump pack screeching in protest as they were pushed past their limits...until the Erinys, at the apex of his leap, released the two Xenos, letting them fall to their deaths below.
Before their jumps took them back to the wraithbone streets and paradisiacal gardens of the craftworld, there came a high fluted note which carried eerily throughout the great starship from its towering minarets through statue-filled courtyards to winding labyrinthine alleys.
A call to arms.
The pavement cracked as their claw-toed, ceramite boots struck its surface. One of their number came down upon an Eldar rushing to the nearest armoury, crushing the slender alien under his immense weight. Before the Eldar could even get a good look at the intruders the Erinyes leapt into the sky once more. No deception, no misdirection, they made directly for their target as they knew time was paramount. Should they fail in their mission the craftworld would slip from the fleet’s grasp...and they themselves would be stranded aboard it. Thus they shot upwards, kicking off walls and rooftops as they bounded, beast-like toward the aft quarters of the craftworld.
Towards its engines.
Angra, dark apostle of the Psychopomps, turned his asymmetric visage upon the sorcerer Holusiax across from him on the bridge. Truly they embodied the fallen chapter’s worship of the Dark Prince of Chaos: the former master of sanctity had been struck down, his body split from crown to groin, by a chaplain of the Black Templars during the flight from their homeworld and had for his multifarious sins been saved by Slaanesh. The left side of his face - and perhaps that of his mind too - was now that of a Q’tlahs’itsu’aksho. A daemonette.
Holusiax, once the chapter’s chief librarian, had lost his lower body in the blast of a battle cannon on the planet where they had all fallen. Captured by the cults of that world he had been visited, tempted and seduced by a herald of the Lord of Pleasure, and his body remade in the form of a naga, complete with a second pair of daemonic arms beneath his great Astartes limbs.
The sorcerer ended his meditation, his astral communion, opening his eyes to meet Angra’s steady gaze and nodded.
The daemonette half of Angra’s mouth pulled wide in a feral grin revealing ranks of needle-like teeth and its green eye widened in anticipation while he turned to the bridge crew. The deck plates beneath their feet shook and the moan of stressed metal echoed throughout like the wails of a tormented captive, for Charon’s warp engines were propelling the craft beyond its limits. Nor was it alone, for the chapter had gathered its disparate cults and ships for this climactic assault. The favour of the Dark Prince and the infernal artifice of his daemonic servants stilled the sea of souls before the Psychopomp fleet, both aiding its swift passage and dampening bow waves of wild emotion which might have alerted their prey of their coming.
Receiving the signal from the dark apostle, the helmsman began the countdown. As soon as he began, the two senior officers turned and made their way aft toward the launch bays for the entire warband would descend upon Carth-Lar to feast upon the souls of the Eldar and they would not be absent from the reaping.
No two craftworlds were identical. Vast spaceships constructed countless millennia earlier, many had at their core originally been trading vessels sailing the void betwixt the worlds of the Eldar empire. Journeys between the stars took centuries and so the massive crews - communities in their own right - had had a sense of independence and self-reliance. In this way they inadvertently saved themselves to a large extent from the decadence of their species. Making contact with Eldar worlds only a handful of times each millennium, the changes coming over their people were glaring to those of the craftworlds. As the end approached, the starfarers had fled the madness of their worlds, finding their planet-born kin wanton and debauched. Sick in both mind and body.
Thus it was the craftworlders were saved from the Fall of the Eldar.
Ulthwe, Biel-Tan, Alaitoc, Saim-hann...some of the largest and strongest of craftworlds. Carth-Lar had forever been in the shadow of its greater cousins; a position it did not resent, for those of Carth-Lar held the rebuilding of their race’s once-supreme empire above all else. The creation of and tending to maiden worlds, and the shunning of contact with the lesser races of the galaxy; that path led only to temptation at best and destruction at worst. So the seer council had ruled and Carth-Lar had sailed the course they charted. The `reign` - for so it was referred at the time with mirth and now with sadness by the Exarchs - of autarch Qarasion had been a thorn in the side of the farseers. A thorn now excised and expelled.
Captain Aedan rested his chin atop his slender, steepled fingers, sat upon the command throne of his dragonship. A barren, lifeless rock of a planet hung in the darkness beyond, and in the foreground the mass of Carth-Lar powering its way through the void off to lower starboard. From this distance - within extreme range of both vessel’s weapons so that each could cover the other - it was impossible to judge the craftworld’s size. The only hint was that fellow ships, on picket duty as he was, were tiny in comparison to the mothership. Still, it was hard to imagine that it could accommodate millions of individuals comfortably. But now a great many of its halls and towers were empty. Entire structures of apartments were devoid of life, the populace having dwindled over the millennia; the desperation of his race weighing heavily upon their souls. Few young, pitifully few young, had been born over recent centuries. That steady decline had been aided by war. No matter how much they strove to avoid conflict, theirs was a universe of unending war, and the populace of Carth-Lar had paid a heavy toll.
He stroked the armrests of his throne. The Spear of Brionach had recently completed repairs after its battle with the Psychopomp fleet in orbit over Viarphia. That his ship of wraithbone had been healed faster than the ghastly injuries of his kin had shaken him. A ghostship, it was crewed by the dead as much as by the living, spiritstones implanted into its superstructure so that Eldar souls might crew it in a manner akin to wraithguard and lords. The Spear had given as good as it had got, taking a good tally of Chaos ships...likely the last combat it would see, he reflected. Since Viarphia the council would be even more careful with the lives of their people. They would sail the interstellar depths, tend their worlds and likely only seed new ones if surveys and prophesies were exceedingly promising. Aedan’s martial training, centuries at the batteries, helm and later command throne of an Eldar battleship, fought with what he knew his destiny to be. The battles he had fought under Qarasion’s fiery command...the assault on Espardu, campaigning through the Tuldar Rift, battling the Orks on Vulkna, Peisu and a dozen other worlds and systems, the nerve-wracking face off with the Tau at Klemetri, the ill-fated mission to Fulcrum...perhaps that last had been the beginning of the end. Their attempt to head off the corruption of the Mon Keigh’s Astartes. Again and again Qarasion had attempted to destroy that cancer, while the council had ordered her to step down and let them take the craftworld as far away as possible. Then they had lost Mesusid...and recently Viarphia. And the Avatar with it.
He nodded gravely to himself as he watched the craftworld on the viewscreen. It was a hollow world now in more ways than one. No longer would anyone oppose the council. No longer would Carth-Lar’s forces sally forth. He would become a custodian now over the crumbling remnants of his people.
And so it was, in his melancholic reverie, that he barely registered the transition alarms as the membrane of reality was rent asunder and ships poured forth from the loins of hell until the psychic scream, the roar of a hungry god come to finish gorging itself as it had ten millennia before, shot out from the rent in space filling every Eldar soul on and above Carth-Lar with terror. Many of the infirm and elderly, those whose time upon the mortal coil was nearing its end, and what few newborns lived on Carth-Lar had their minds torn asunder and their souls ripped from their bodies.
The Charon - capital ship of the Psychopomps - lead the renegade battle fleet: Harbinger of Hades, Dionysus, Briseus, Enorches, Supreme Excess, Satyr’s Spear and other battleships following with lesser destroyers and frigates, Naga’s Bite, Nimiety, Rudra’s Trident, Silenus Priapus’s Blade Durga’s Call and the cult troopships Kronia, Pan’s Gathering, Aeogocerus and more in their wake. As soon as they tore their way back into realspace, eddies of impossible colours rippled away as their Gellar fields dropped to be replaced by void shields. Before many had even fully decanted from the warp, they opened fire upon the craftworld and its escort fleet. Lasers split the void with crimson blasts of energy, cannon shells and missiles streaking out painfully slowly in comparison. Caught unawares, many of the Eldar vessels failed to raise their holofields in time and much of the attackers’ opening salvo struck true. Wraithbone was sliced and burned by the blasts of turbolasers, the hulls of ghostships torn outwards by explosive decompression after being punctured, crew screaming impotently as they were sucked out into hard vacuum. Shells similarly chipped, cracked and then tore into hulls, some primed to explode within, blasting apart ships, buckling bulkheads designed to protect against decompression. Others detonated incandescently, vomiting forth payloads of promethium that ran like water within the innards of the alien ships. More reached past the escorting dragonships, aurorae and shadowhunters to strike the craftworld itself, targeting its own formidable armaments. Again and again the Psychopomp fleet fired, great capacitors on gundecks running hot, blistering the flesh of their servitors and filling the arming chambers with the reek of hot electronics and roasted meat. Overseers whipped gun crews to haul vast shells into cannon breaches faster and faster, the strong trampling the bodies of those who fell. Great guns rolled back as they spat forth rounds larger than battle tanks, black clouds of burnt propellant gusting from within breaches hauled open once again, the overseers flogging and gesturing to their deaf-mute charges for more shells to be loaded and launched. None knew whom the enemy were, only that rounds needed to be loaded and fired, loaded and fired lest the ship they were aboard be blasted from the void.
Explosions stitched the cityscape-surface of Carth-Lar, sending plumes of debris and smoke up into the ship’s sky. As point defences were activated torpedoes began to be swatted from the skies by lasers, but one torpedo found its mark: a large pulse lance housed within a dome of thickened wraithbone panels. The resulting fireball threw debris up, out of the craftworld’s atmosphere and sent cracks shooting through the surrounding sectors. Screams echoed through the rubble-strewn avenues of their world as Eldar tore themselves from the casualties of the attack, racing to their guardian arms and armour to prepare defences.
The escort ships raced to react to the sudden assault, activating their holoshields so that they dissolved into blurs of multicoloured light; the faster they moved, the more diffuse they became and thus the harder to target. Even ships’ augurs had trouble locking onto them. They darted away from the craftworld, drawing the enemy’s fire. One, an eclipse carrier whose name translated into Gothic as Bloody Rookery, failed to raise its holoshields fast enough and claxons sounded throughout its hangar bays. The deck crew raced to launch the ship’s compliment of darkstar fighter and eagle bombers before the captain positioned Rookery between the enemy and the craftworld itself, engines failing yet burning brightly with stuttering thrust. She was already taking fire and he knew that he could but sell his life and that of his crew as dearly as possible. Shots speared through her solar sails and engines, crippling her for Satyr’s Spear to skewer her with a concentrated blast of lances followed by shells. Even as she broke up, fighters were screaming from her hangars, the last ones engulfed in a fireball as her engines detonated. While the captain had been valiant in shielding his world with his ship, the sheer volume of fire with which the enemy assaulted his craft drove its burning remains down into the upper reaches of the craftworld’s artificial heavens and, captured by Carth-Lar’s gravity, she fell.
Solidified warp energy shaped by boneseers, wraithbone was one of the toughest materials in the universe yet as the destruction of the Rookery proved it could be broken and as the ship’s hulk plummeted through the craftworld’s atmosphere it burned and fragmented further. Great lengths of superstructure smashed down into the surface of Carth-Lar. Buildings were crushed and flattened, the lives of those within extinguished in an instant, parks and forests peppered with flaming debris which ignited the rich foliage there. A great cloud of dust was kicked up.
As if in vengeance, Satyr’s Spear was the first of the Psychopomp vessels to be destroyed. As soon as the Eldar vessels raised their holoshields it became far more difficult for the forces of Chaos to target them and the Eldar vessels began to make use of their speed and maneuverability. The once-Imperial vessels focused their assault on the craftworld, their eagerness to feast upon it like starved buzzards was both startlingly obvious and their main weakness. The dragonship Wavebreaker came about, forward batteries hammering the Satyr’s escort vessels, but she saved her plasma torpedoes for when the battleship’s drives came into its sights. Concentrated fire from sister ships stripped its rear shields and before a single void could be regenerated Wavebreaker launched a salvo of torpedoes before rolling and pulling away. The plasma warheads struck the engineerium, great blasts of superheated gas burning through thick adamantium plate with ease and destroying several of the Satyr’s engines. The battleship was not driven from her course, however the Wavebreaker’s torpedo run was not the full extent of the attack for as soon as the great dragonship had pulled away a trio of aurora cruisers had fallen into an attack vector behind it, such was the speed and maneuverability of the Eldar vessels that they could change their course and perform deceptive attacks with ease. These three too loosed their torpedoes and the Satyr’s engine decks were punched clean through. Her main reactor went up a split second later, bursting the ship from within like an overripe seedcase. Eldar and Psychopomp vessels alike peeled away as the battleship was engulfed in explosions, having fired off only a fraction of her ordnance. The great barrel of a turbolaser from one of the port batteries flew off into the void, launched by explosions within, cartwheeling a hundred kilometers in seconds and scything through the spine of an escorting cobra destroyer which had not evaded fast enough. The smaller vessel too went up in a blinding blast.
As the chain of explosions reached Satyr’s forward magazines there was a tremendous eruption which momentarily drew the attention of all ship crews who could see it, and those on the surface of the craftworld looked up to the skies, cheering and screaming words of bloody vengeance.
The Erinyes had been drawn from the elite of the Psychopomps’ premier companies and specifically those marine most receptive to the touch of the warp. They had fought on Mesusid and Viarphia amongst other clashes with the forces of the Eldar, and so Eldar architecture and design was not entirely alien to them. To one who had not fought for their life in the twisting confines of Eldar settlements before, the labyrinthine passages and tessellating courtyards of the craftworld would have been disorienting. There was yet one more factor which drove the Warp Talons on toward their target with precision. While the consuming of the Banshee Exarch’s hand had enabled them to track down another of the Exarch’s squad through the warp and facilitated their coming, they had also been granted a feast of Eldar brains. The alien’s equivalents of the hipocampus, amygdala, the cingulate gyrus, the thalamus, hypothalamus, epithalamus...every part of every Eldar brain which could be pried from heads taken on Viarphia had been set before the five Erinyes for consumption. They had gorged themselves upon this grey matter, in some cases too impatient for their servants to kill and scoop the meat from captives, the daemonic astartes had cracked the aliens’ skulls and eaten their brains whilst the captives were still alive. Assailed by the memories and anguish of dozens of Eldar as they ate, they exercised supreme concentration in sifting that which they needed - a sense of familiarity with the craftworld, knowledge of its highways and byways - from what would simply incite and excite them: the memories of pleasure, of wrath, of horror.
But in cutting such a direct course they showed their hand to the Eldar and defences could be directed against them.
Farseer Emrana alit from the gunner’s position of the viper and hurried into the edifice before him, past squads of guardians, their shuriken catapults arrayed outwards. A pair was quickly setting up a weapons platform. Within, he found the bonesinger Aedh.
The two exchanged deep bows, even during such dire straits formalities were not put aside.
“We are assaulted, from within and without.”
The bonesinger, his pale robes decorated with the glyphs of his trade like that of the armour he wore atop it, nodded and bade the senior seer continue. He would not ask questions, for he knew the farseer would tell him all he need know exactly as he needed to know it.
“We must take Carth-Lar to safety.”
Aedh’s eyes immediately moved to the planet far ahead of the craftworld, a barren rock with its star burning brightly beyond, but no more than a second later he realized the true meaning of the farseer’s words and he took a deep, calming breath.
“Open a portal here? With war waged in the void about us?” Perhaps it was born of desperation, their homeworld assaulted, but protocol be damned, he would ask questions, for what the farseer was suggesting was far from standard protocol!
He received a solemn nod in answer, but could feel the Farseer’s anger at his questioning of his superior’s order. So be it; if they survived he would willingly face sanction.
“What you ask of me risks the lives of our fleet-“
“Lives they would give willingly, for it is their duty,” Emrana replied curtly, adding quickly to forestall further protest, “I and the rest of the council have communed.”
Aedh closed his mouth. What good would it do to question the council, his betters? It was they who plotted the craftworld’s course.
“Act quickly while you can, for the enemy are already on Carth-Lar,” Emrana continued before looking to the heavens. Through the collapsing fireball of the enemy battleship’s death could be seen streaks of fire. Engine trails, and worse.
“And have your brethren rouse our sleeping kindred. They will be needed.”
The heavens above burning as starships dueled and brawled, the Erinyes sped toward their target. Human reactions, even the enhanced ones of an Astartes, could not alone have saved Tisiphone, it was the daemonic blood - the ichor of the neverborn - filling his veins which allowed him to fire his jump pack in time and take himself to safety. One of his kin was not so lucky and the Warp Talon screamed in anger as a monomolecular web shot out and spread over him, tightening rapidly. In less than a second the razor wire net had constricted over his twisted power armour and, unimpeded even by the armoured ceramite, it began slicing deep into his armour and the meat within. The other Warp Talons spared their doomed comrade not a glance as they spread out, seeking their foe. The netted Talon’s body collapsed in diced, wet chunks and the pitter-patter of ceramite fragments as his killer stepped from the shadows of the forest the Talons had been traversing. Clad in armour of white and red, of a bulk greater than most aspect warriors, he hefted a bulky, heavy-barrelled weapon. A Warp Spider. The knowledge they had consumed in their pre-mission feast had taught them as much. Though knowledge could not make up for lack of experience: the Talons had never faced a spider before and as the Eldar charged at them the Chaos marines raised their assorted claws, tridents and whips only for the Spider to disappear just before their weapons made contact with him, his jump generator taking him into the Warp.
Megaera’s trident and one of his brothers’ claws raked the air where the Spider had been a split second earlier, their blades merely catching the wispy edges of the rift as it sealed, the wound in reality curling and fading like smoke. The two shared an angry look, both having wanted the kill...neither realizing how easily they had been played, for another Spider appeared from the warp with impeccable timing, positioned so that one Talon blocked the other’s view, immediately unleashing a blast from his deathspinner to catch the two renegades so close together.
An elbow shove by Megaera drove his brother into the still-expanding web of wire, eliciting a blood-curdling scream and saving Megaera’s own hide.
This second Spider though was not as agile as the first and he found himself tripped by Tisiphone’s whip of daemonic flesh. The barbed weapon wrapped itself about the aspect warrior’s ankle and cut deeply as it constricted. Before the Eldar could activate its generator, Megaera drove his trident into its abdomen, punching through the carapace armour with ease and pinning the Spider to the wraithbone floor. Tisiphone uncoiled his whip rapidly and though the three knew that they had to keep moving toward their target, for surely there were more ambushes awaiting them, yet the deaths of their two kin demanded immediate retribution.
Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone gathered round the skewered, struggling spider.
The thunderhawk Whipoorwill roared across the void betwixt the Supreme Excess and craftworld Carth-Lar, weaving through the debris which filled the skies, its pilots throwing it into rolls and spiraling dives as Eldar vessels tried to swat it. Even as it closed distance toward its target, a landing zone highlighted on the cockpit HUD, its gunners fired at targets of opportunity: the turbolaser blasting apart a nightwing fighter before it could turn its own weapons on the gunship, and as they neared their destination the sponson and wingtip guns opened fire. While the ship had originally been armed with twin-linked heavy bolters these had since been replaced with great skull-muzzled hades autocannons, their barrels spinning rapidly and roaring like Cerberus himself as they spat hundreds of cannon shells at Eldar ground forces. Squads of Guardians were mown down, support weapons exploded under the fusillade and even darting jetbikes were clipped and sent spiraling into buildings, crews tossed from their mounts.
Even before the Whipoorwill’s landing gear touched down on the greensward its front ramp was down, roseate-clad Psychopomps firing their boltguns, boots mag-locked to the deckplates. Many jumped to the ground before the hawk landed, firing one handed and drawing chainblades, so eager were they to slay the children of Isha. Screaming prayer to the Dark Prince and challenges to the Eldar they raced across the grass toward the hurriedly constructed defences.
As Whipoorwill was pouring power back into its engines and lifting off once more, sister gunships were landing about it, disgorging their forces. From some came more squads of renegade marines, havocs who set their suspensor-fitted boots in wide stances on the turf before opening up with their heavy weapons, the elite of the fallen chapter with their sonic weapons which cut a destructive swathe through the defenders regardless of cover or armour, possessed Astartes from several chapters - a fearsome number of whom had once been fellow scions of Dorn as the Psychopomps had - who bounded toward the enemy with loping gaits, each now more beast than man. Some had the heads of daemonettes and other daemons of Slaanesh, many had powerful slashing claws, some were winged, others quadrupedal and a few were of such unstable form that they changed in the blink of an eye. The armour of many had merged with their flesh so that they were inseparable.
From the mouths of other gunships came the whine of anti-grav engines as landspeeders shot forth, skirts of hook-tipped chains whipping in their wake. The lead speeder struck a wave serpent, its multi-melta penetrating the xeno tank’s shield and obliterating it in a huge explosion. The crew of the speeder howled with joy and banked their vehicle to charge along the line of defenders surrounding the park the gunships were coming down in, a hook caught a guardian who did not manage to duck fast enough, and yanked him screaming into the air.
From yet another gunship’s ramp leapt a squad of pastel-painted bikes. The Black Stallions: scouts and reavers for the Psychopomps with a lust for speed to match that of the maddest of greenskins, they could not wait for their ship to land and launched their promethium-guzzling mounts from its ramp still half a dozen meters from the ground, screaming as they went. Turf and soil exploded upwards as their huge tires bit into it and they accelerated across the grass toward the park’s edge and the city beyond, their eyes wide with the electrifying thrill of racing madly into battle, delirious and frantic wordless cries emanating from their mouths. Most of their bikes were armed with twin boltguns, leaving the riders to their chosen melee arms: whips, axes, chains, tridents and a good number of weapons stolen from conquered enemies. Some had replaced their bolters with melta guns, others plasma. Yet more lacked any armament on their bikes but a second marine rode behind the rider - or even stood, chains anchored to their armour or flesh keeping them from falling - armed with flamers fed from the bike’s own fuel tanks. With these they played flames across the enemy, into buildings they raced past, or onto the chewed up ground behind the bikes, lighting their own trails.
It was with the Black Stallions that the sorcerer Holusiax came to the field. His mount was what had once been an attack bike. The gunner’s low sidecar and its heavy weapon had been stripped out and replaced with a platform upon which the fallen librarian stood, his snake-like body coiled beneath him. His upper arms, his Astarte ones, gripped the armoured, spike-festooned and glyph-etched front of his chariot-like platform while the lower pair of arms - those of slender daemonic flesh lilac in hue, lay ready upon the hilts of a pair of deep red-bladed daggers, each decorated with the glyph of the masculine or the feminine, sheathed in scabbards of flayed daemon skin. While the Stallions howled with joy he exercised his iron will, repressing his urge to give in to the thrill of the chase and destruction, and maintained vigilance: the Eldar were psykers supreme and while he had clashed with them before, never had there been so many as there would be on the craftworld itself. Here he would find himself tested to the full. A moment’s thought passed over his mind: he would be tested, as his predecessor Diarthet had been by the Cypriusian Magi. Diarthet had burned out and fallen becoming a twisted devourer of souls, a plaything of a rival god to spite the witch.
Holusiax breathed deeply of the warp-taint miasma which flowed about the Psychopomps, fed by the reaping of Eldar souls. No, he would not fall as Diarthet had. Their work here was blessed from upon high.
What had once been a Stormhawk exploded in a ball of fire, twisted flesh-sheathed wings folding as the fighter was torn apart by its detonating engines. Riagan pulled hard on the controls and his nightshade interceptor left its pursuit of the renegade fighter as the burning remains smashed into a wraithbone hab-tower before plummeting to the streets below. The Crimson Hunter spared no thought for any of his kin who might have been within that tower, for all those of Carth-Lar who were able of body were by this point engaged in its defence, and though those fighting-fit like he had been able to recover from the psychic scream which had accompanied the Enemy’s arrival, a sadness deep in his soul told him that many of his less hardy kin had not. That the crash might have inadvertently slain a child or the infirm he could not contemplate for while their soul would be consumed by the ever-hungry She Who Must Not Be Named if indeed it had not already, would they fate not be the same had he hesitated in taking his shot and thus put their life, his own and perhaps more in peril? Such was the aspect of the Crimson Hunter: the embodiment of Khaine the supreme hunter. There was him and his target, and those who could not aid in the hunt were as nothing. And this had turned into a lone hunt for the enemy were numerous and the fighters of Carth-Lar pitifully few. Those who had once flown as his wingmen now fought for their lives in their own duels.
Instinctively he dove, his fighter responding to his every touch, at the earsplitting howl of some new airborne monstrosity inbound. The nightshade wove effortlessly through valleys formed by the cityscape of the craftworld and Riagan’s helm projected apparition-like images into the air before him, indicating the larger enemy attack vessels - the dropships - coming down in the plains and parks toward the center of Carth-Lar, the swarms of bastard fighters and bombers scouring its surface, the latter targeting ground defence batteries...and hot on his rear came some new threat. He had little time to study its form, noting only that if it had once been a plane akin to that he had destroyed scant seconds earlier. The powers of the warp had played cruelly with it, for his fighter’s sensors could make no distinction betwixt craft and crew. As he wove, slaloming through towers, cutting each turn tighter and tighter in an attempt to throw his pursuer into one of the structures while at the same time denying them a clear shot at him, he realized that the vessel hadn’t taken a single shot at him. The once-Stormhawk he had out-flown had sprayed cannon shells wildly, the pilot as happy to let his fire impact the city as much as chancing hits on the crimson hunter itself. But this abomination risked no shots, rather it steadily gained on him, unleashing fearsome bestial roars as it did so.
Riagan, a seasoned pilot in both the void as much as atmosphere, decided to test his stalker and took their chase vertical: throwing his interceptor into a tight turn and nosing over to drop into a deep chasm which ran across the craftworld. Here gantries and transitways spanned the gulf, the dark depths of which glowed red with the forges and generators deep within the craftworld’s innards. Down they dove, Riagan still pushing his fighter and his skill as he threw the nightshade into near-misses with the bridges. Gone were the days when he might have led a foe upon a merry dance whilst his wingmen picked off the pursuer.
He could now hear the baleful roar of the warped creation chasing him and a second later it was beside him. He could not help but glance and look in horror at the madness now flying upon his wing.
From the sides of an armoured carapace which might once have been the fuselage of some form of air or spacecraft came numerous blade-like wings tipped with spikes and horns like saw blades. Where once there might have been a cockpit there was a great bestial head, eyeless or blinded he could not discern but its maw, the jaws opened impossibly wide, glowed with green potency. It lacked any visible undercarriage even clawed limbs as one might have expected, their mind unravelling, such a fiend to possess.
He was unwilling to sell his life in ramming the beast but rather pointed them both at a slender bridge spanning the depths below and accelerated. He held the controls tight as both flyers were buffeted violently by thermals from the depths and he watched as his kin raced back and forth across that bridge. Jetbikes, vipers and guardians sprinting aft to the thickest fighting.
There came a howl from the beast at his side as the bridge drew closer and closer and Riagan smiled, confident that he would have the beast trapped. It would be forced to break off its pursuit and he would be able to come about onto its tail. He glanced at it to see its maw glowing brighter and his brow creased. If it meant to brake and fire upon him with whatever armament it possessed, he would have to be ready.
The bridge grew large before them and some upon it spotted the descending flyers, unable to stop themselves from ceasing their crossing of the span and looking up to watch the chase.
It was not the nightshade that the helldrake fired upon, but rather it spat forth a tremendous blaze of fire as it rolled away to one side of the bridge, Riagan taking his fighter the other and into the rain of burning bodies as his kinsmen panicked and fell, their bodies wreathed in unholy fire. The impact of bodies at such speed tore chunks from the nightshade’s wings and fuselage, sending it spinning uncontrollably to its doom.
Angra watched through the lenses of his skull-faced helmet with satisfaction as the invasion continued. In space overhead - and indeed to the sides and `beneath` the craftworld - the Psychopomps fleet continued to engage the Eldar defence fleet in a strange clash of styles: the Astartes vessels brawlers, hitting hard and taking hard hits in turn upon their shields and thick armour, versus the agile, darting fencers the Xenos vessels were akin to. But there were not enough of the latter, either starships or aerospace fighters, to prevent the Chaos forces’ landing. While the battleships of the Psychopomps alone were no match for an Eldar craftworld, even a relatively minor one such as this, the fallen chapter had called upon the Exalted Fecund: their puppet cult, and the faithful from dozens of Imperial worlds had cast off the guise of loyalty to the Corpse God and had answered the call of excess. And the daemon half of him could feel her sisters and other kin being drawn through the veil by Holusiax’s sorcerers even now.
While his own coterie of bodyguards made their way off his personal thunderhawk Violator he observed the warpsmith Thenaros directing the deployment of carriage-mounted conversion beamers and the unleashing of his former superior Zenelaius: now entombed within a twisted dreadnought’s sarcophagus. The towering, slab-armoured construct lumbered off into the thickest of the fighting, wailing morosely. The former master of the forge had been denied fulfillment, denied entry to the gates of their lord’s palace, and his daemonic consort had been destroyed before him. Angra could only jealously imagine such agonizing distress and wonder at how it might drive one to greater feats.
Rockets streaked out from high towers and balconies overlooking the gardens the two thunderhawks had come down in, detonating against the ground and a couple impacting Zenelaius’ thick armour hard enough to stagger him. The ambushers revealed - a squad of Dark Reapers - Thenaros directed the Havocs accompanying him and they fired one of the beamers. A most curious and ancient weapon, it shot forth an energy beam of extreme intensity, transforming matter into purest energy. The greater the density of the matter, the more explosive the blast. And the further from the weapon, the greater the intensity.
The beam caused a massive explosion in the building overlooking the gardens, a blinding flash of light followed by tons of debris sent out on a blast wave. Those caught within the blast were simply erased from existence, their very beings converted into energy, and those nearby were thrown by the explosive release of that power.
A roar went up from the charging renegade Astartes and Thenaros clapped approvingly, nodding to the Havocs.
A greater roar came then: that of retros, signaling the arrival of the huge troop transports. Not as fast or as maneuverable as an Astartes craft, the great shuttles had once been Imperial Guard vessels.
The first was intercepted by a flight of Eldar planes - a hemlock leading nightshades, the hunters having formed a pack to take down this larger game - and their precise fire raked its engines while the shuttle was still high in the air. There was a scream of tortured metal and the roar of retros died, replaced by a growing whistle as the huge vessel plummeted earthward, its killers immediately splitting as Enemy fire chased them. The great shuttle punched through the ground of the Craftworld and through three sub-levels, its nose compacting and lower decks compressing together with the impact, crushing the hundreds within - cultists and more who had been packed tight, hungry to attack and ready to charge from the assault ramps - crushing them into a thin paste.
But even as smoke rose from this wreckage, a sister shuttle settled to the turf, shots impacting its thick armour impotently from panicked defenders further off, its hatches opened and from within poured forth a maddened horde of braying Slaangor. With skin ranging from the palest pinks one might find in the petals of priceless roses through to shocking shades of fuchsia, the mutants were barely clothed, their skin adorned with black tattoos in myriad patterns, and a great number of piercings and chains. Weapons were secured thus to bodies, mouths were pulled wide open by chains and spikes, some even hobbled themselves deliberately with hooked chains which pulled at their legs agonizingly as they raced from their shuttles, flailing about with their weapons. Some particularly blessed members of the flock sported swaying mammaries upon the right side of their bodies and carried standards aloft, declaring themselves slaves to pleasure, excess and damnation.
The dark apostle removed his helm, stroking the left side of his face, the daemonic half, with his human right hand as he watched the Slaangor. He had, before his death, been so envious of the Children of Chaos. Their purity of form and devotion, for they were born of Chaos and lived for Chaos. But since his rebirth he now looked upon them as kin to a degree, though in truth he had surpassed them by merging with one of the neverborn.
The revving of Rhino engines behind him signaled his personal forces were ready. Mounting up he motioned with his blasted crozius and they charged forth into the fray.
All across Craftworld Carth-Lar the forces of Chaos began their assault, the majority landing in the gardens and open plains toward the center once air defences had been sufficiently battered, and forcing their way bloodily to unite with one another, while terminators teleported directly into the fray and obliterator teams stepped forth from hellgates behind the Eldar defences to unleash their fearsome arsenals.
Parks, gardens, streets and artillery-pummeled buildings became choked with smoke and dust and splattered with gore as hundreds of Psychopomps pushed outward, some riding dozens of rhinos, others advancing alongside tanks, behind their bike and speeder scouts. More numerous were the thousands of Slaangor and cultist mobs and turncoat guardsmen, driven to berserk madness and elation as the warband’s sorcerers summoned forth neverborn from the empyrean to further bolster their numbers. Grass rotted and wraithbone aged unnaturally at the tread of such abominations upon the surface of the craftworld. And opposing them was the entire populace of Carth-Lar. All those who could wield arms took them up, even those too old or too young for guardian service, for if they did not fight now then their souls would be naught but delectable viands for the Great Corruptor. Hundreds of aspect warriors, the veterans of the battle of Viarphia - all too few in number - were at the forefront of the battle once more. Even those who had taken the very youngest, the treasures of Carth-Lar, to sanctuaries deep within the craftworld quickly took up arms and hurried to the front once their duty was done.
The three remaining warp talons, Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera looked down from their high roost. Below them lay the huge structures which housed the craftworld’s engines, both realspace and otherwise. Their objective.
All three had fought harder than ever to come this far. Temptation had forced them behind schedule and in turn this had forced rashness upon them. Ichor dripped sluggishly from wounds dealt them by monofilament webs, hails of shuriken and various blades, but they had the trophies to show that they had not only overcome their foes but had destroyed them completely. Weapons, helmets, heads, severed ears, flayed faces, hands, jewelry and more adorned their armour, hanging from chains or skewered upon spikes.
Alecto stood, his hook-clawed boots perfectly balanced upon the thin spar the three were perched upon. He raised a clawed fist, brandishing a dozen spirit stones upon his palm and called out to the Dark Prince to witness him! To witness his offering, and his mouth yawned wide - unnaturally so, like that of a serpent - as he poured the sweetmeats into his throat.
It was he with his eyes cast to the heavens who first saw the change that came over the dueling starships overhead. As one almost all the closest of the Eldar vessels swooped close to the craftworld and the warships of his own fleet, daubed with the mark of Slaanesh and other foul sigils, struggled to follow suit. Those Xenos ships further off, as if overcome with a madness, threw themselves into the nearest Psychopomp vessels and Alecto stood speechless as a dozen ships erupted in gigantic fireballs as they were rammed.
The Nimiety and Priapus’ Blade, the Aeogoncerus and even the great Dionysus, Enorches and Supreme Excess were engulfed in blinding explosions and he staggered to behold such wondrous destruction. Thousands of lives wiped out in seconds. Immolated and torn asunder by sudden suicide attacks. The willful giving up of lives by the Eldar, offering up their souls to Slaanesh and taking countless of the Dark Prince’s pawns with them. For a moment he was overcome. The sheer unadulterated madness of it.
It was bliss.
It was glory.
It was rapture.
Then the gate swept over them.
The stars went out, as if a veil had been pulled over them, and only the knowledge they had garnered from the Eldar brains they had consumed allowed them to recognize what had happened.
They were now with the webway.
That Eldar nexus within the warp itself.
The Eldar, in a last resort, had plunged the craftworld into the webway!
He looked back as more destruction was wrought upon the Psychopomp fleet as the gateway began to close behind Carth-Lar. In confusion, some ships tried to veer off and escape the closing portal whilst other went full-burn into order to continue the chase and inevitably ships smashed into one another. Dropships, bombers, gunships and fighters throttled up to make it through, to stick with the craftworld, unwilling to let their quarry escape. But what of the flagship!? What of Charon?
Alecto swore he saw, though the inferno of destruction, the great battleship pull clear before the portal winked shut.
The Erinyes had been too late, for this is what they had been tasked with preventing, and now the Psychopomp forces upon Carth-Lar were stranded.
Deep within Carth-Lar bonesinger Aedh nodded to his kinsmen.
“Awaken the dead.”
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