Using the surrounding combat servitors as mobile cover, the Blood Ravens closed the distance rapidly, intercepting the Necron Skorpekh that had lunged into their formation.
Chainswords and power swords clashed against the Skorpekh's underside in a frantic spray of sparks until the necro-constructs were forced to the ground. Immediately, nearby combat servitors swarmed over the fallen chassis, battering at the Stalkers' sensory clusters with relentless, mechanical fury.
One Skorpekh released its grip on its Phase Blades, effortlessly shredding the irritating sub-clones before casting about for its next target. It was a fatal hesitation; a group of Blood Ravens seized the opening, driving a power sword through the construct's neck joint and severing its head.
Those battle-brothers armed with multi-meltas found the task far simpler than those relying on melee blades. With a single servitor providing a momentary distraction, a focused melta blast would reduce a Skorpekh into a heap of slagged, useless metal.
Cohn held his boltgun in a one-handed grip, his movements a blur of practiced precision. Each bark of the weapon sent a bolt-shell into the cranium of an advancing Necron Warrior, shattering living metal into fragments.
Yet, the enemy were legion.
When Necrons managed to bypass the firing line, the Librarians reacted with eerie synchronicity. Slipping into a defensive silence, they raised their force staves, using them as psychically charged power-maces to crush the metallic skulls of the xenos. Here, within the null-field, psychic lightning manifested as nothing more than feeble, dancing arcs of static, devoid of all lethality.
Compared to the hundred-strong contingent of Blood Ravens, the Aeldari losses were mounting at a catastrophic rate. The Aspect Warriors, though masters of the blade, possessed no innate defense against the relentless flaying of Gauss Flayers, and their own ranged capabilities proved frustratingly brittle against the Necrons' regenerative resilience.
Nor were these Necrons the mindless automatons often encountered elsewhere; under the direct command of the Lychguard, the phalanx moved with terrifying efficiency. Within the first ten minutes of the engagement, nearly a third of the Aeldari force had been erased.
The frenzied slaughter wrought by the Incubi quickly drew the ire of the Lychguard. Gripping their heavy Warscythes, the Necron elites glided toward the dark kin's flank.
The air screamed as the massive blades swung in a wide arc.
The Incubi attempted to parry, relying on their legendary martial prowess to deflect the ponderous, thrumming weapons. It was a futile effort. The disparity in raw power was absolute. Driven by the cold strength of the Lychguard, the scythe-blades sheared through an entire squad of Incubi and several combat servitors alike, bisecting them in a single, clean sweep.
The Lychguard paused for a fraction of a second, surveying the carnage with a flicker of cold satisfaction, as if venting the frustrations accumulated under Szeras's command.
Axion, maintaining a real-time tactical overview of the theater, suddenly commanded a synchronized salvo. The Armored Wardens unleashed a simultaneous volley from their Atomic Pulse Cannons.
The Lychguard reacted almost instantly, dropping low to let the searing beams of light pass harmlessly overhead. The beams lanced across the battlefield, striking the pedestal housing the Breath of the Gods, only to be dissipated by the shimmering Phase Shroud.
Entrenched in the meat-grinder of the front lines, the Blood Ravens had ceased to worry about the preservation of the ruins. For them, the priority was clear: facing the xenos threat, it was their duty to shed blood for the Imperium, whatever the cost to the environment.
The Aeldari were the first to notice the flickering of the Phase Shroud.
Axion understood the tactical reality: if twelve Atomic Pulses could not breach the Shroud, no other ranged weaponry on the field stood a chance. Short of a localized orbital bombardment from the fleet, the only solution was to close the distance and settle the matter with cold steel.
Unlike warp-based kine-shields, most energy barriers were designed primarily to deflect high-velocity energy projectiles; solid-state kinetics, while weakened, might still retain a sliver of lethality.
The Aeldari moved faster than Axion anticipated.
Several figures, blades drawn, blurred across the chaotic battlefield. They used the smoking husks of destroyed servitors and the scattered remains of Skorpekhs and Destroyers as cover, vaulting over the debris in a lightning-fast advance. Even Axion was momentarily struck by the sheer, predatory speed of the Aeldari strike.
As they neared the massive pedestal, the lone green eye of Illuminor Szeras flared with baleful light. The staff in his hand pulsed with chronomatic energy.
One by one, Stasis Fields flickered into existence around the base of the pedestal. The charging Aeldari warriors, unable to check their momentum, plunged headlong into the temporal traps.
"Foolish. Arrogant," Szeras spat.
Mocking the remnants of the Aeldari host, Szeras reached into the fields, plucking out the warriors, whose movements had been slowed to a snail's pace, by their throats.
The Illuminor had spent aeons refining his wargear; his staff possessed not only the temporal manipulation of an Eldritch Lance but also various modes of energy absorption and conversion.
A blinding arc of electricity erupted from the staff, instantly "searing" the Aeldari captive who still struggled in his grip. Once he confirmed the subject was incapacitated, Szeras moved to the next field.
It was like harvesting grain. He plucked them out, one by one, and subjected them to agonizing electrical discharge.
"Excellent experimental subjects. Perhaps I should diversify my research parameters."
The staff flared with a brilliant, incandescent white light. The beam engulfed an Aeldari sprawled on the ground, incinerating the body and the empty Soulstone into fine ash.
Bereft of a vessel, the soul flickered into the air, its silent scream visible as a distortion in space.
The expected Warp-vortex did not manifest. Instead, the soul wailed in the cold air before simply unraveling, its essence dissolving into nothingness.
"Ah, a new datum. Fascinating. Within the Dead Zone, even the Curse of Slaanesh is nullified. A most intriguing discovery."
Witnessing their kin being toyed with and discarded as mere laboratory scrap ignited a suicidal fury in the remaining Aeldari. Their assault turned feral, their tactics abandoning all concern for survival in a desperate bid for vengeance.
However, against the constant flicker of Phase-Shift reinforcements, the Necrons were inexhaustible. To win this battle, the power supply had to be severed. Only by cutting the energy flow would the anti-warp field collapse, granting them a slim hope of victory.
But the cost of blind aggression was high; the Aeldari were providing Axion and the Blood Ravens a grim demonstration in the futility of headless assault.
As his mechanical units were whittled away, Axion continued to run probability cycles for victory.
The Blood Ravens had managed to fell another Lychguard using a combination of unorthodox wargear and brute force, but the final remaining Lychguard had learned from its brothers' deaths. It held its Dispersion Shield high, standing behind the Necron ranks and directing the phalanx to drown the interlopers in weight of fire.
Under the saturated Gauss fire, several melee-variant Erratana-class Armored Wardens began to disintegrate. Their shields were overloaded and bypassed, their structural integrity crumbling into atomic dust. Even when Axion triggered their self-destruct protocols before their cores were compromised, the explosions did little to stem the tide.
The Aeldari, though fighting with a manic strength born of rage, were being thinned out even faster.
The Blood Ravens were also reaching their limit. Despite their arsenal of strange and potent relics, they could not overcome the sheer numerical disparity. Cover was vanishing as the Necrons systematically leveled the battlefield.
Destroyed Necron forms were recalled by Phase-out protocols, while the remains of servitors hit by Gauss fire simply ceased to exist.
A stray Gauss beam, refracted off a shield, lanced through the air and struck the Aegis Protector standing directly in front of Axion.