The roars and bellows of the Blood Ravens were thick with indignation; star-shorn of critical data, they could not even fathom why the tide of battle had turned so catastrophically against them.
The Librarians swung their force weapons with bitter regret. Unpredictable variables had birthed a slaughterhouse. Despite their centuries of collective experience, this was unavoidable: the psychic ether was utterly suppressed. Even their combined will could not manifest so much as a rudimentary short-range teleportation.
The Aeldari host, once numbering in the hundreds, had been winnowed to fewer than a hundred souls. Of the thousand combat servitors and automata, only a few hundred remained under the relentless erosion of the Necron sea.
And yet, the battle line had not advanced so much as ten meters.
Standing a mere few hundred meters away, Illuminor Szeras mocked the invaders, his amplified voice rasping with contempt for their perceived insignificance.
Just as despair threatened to swallow the survivors, the Aegis Protector, which had stood silent in the rear, suddenly lurched into motion. It pivoted, its massive frame coiling into a throwing stance.
Simultaneously, the remaining Erratana-class Armored Wardens adjusted their footing. They braced their chassis in a staggered formation, angling their heavy weapons toward the lone remaining Lychguard standing at the rear of the plaza.
Clang. Clang. Clang!
The heavy thud of metal meeting metal echoed across the ruins.
The Aegis Protector used the braced Armored Wardens as stepping stones, leaping high into the air. In mid-flight, it hurled a smaller, silver silhouette forward. Below, the Armored Wardens opened fire in perfect synchronization; thick, concentrated beams of energy plowed a furrow of absolute annihilation through the Necron ranks.
The Lychguard at the rear spun with preternatural grace, narrowly evading the devastating salvo.
Szeras, watching from his elevated position, glimpsed an object flying toward him, yet his initial scans detected nothing in the empty air. For a fleeting microsecond, the Illuminor questioned if his ocular sensors required recalibration.
Then, his horizon began to spin.
In the blur of his rotating vision, he saw a silver figure manifest beside him, a figure that, moments ago, had been standing at the furthest rear of the invader's formation.
It was Axion who had claimed the Illuminor's head.
Faced with the imminent failure of the mission, Axion had decided to intervene personally. Though his direct combat parameters were not exceptional, his short-range warp-jump capability was sufficient to complete the breach.
This experimental device was not a mass-produced item; its maximum displacement was limited to a hundred meters. To cross the battlefield on foot would have required multiple jumps, and Axion was not prepared to wager his unshielded frame against the probability of being atomized by Gauss fire. His carapace could withstand minor flaying, but the sheer volume of fire on the field far exceeded its tolerance.
Using the Armored Wardens' suppressive fire to drive off the Lychguard, the only unit likely to detect his approach, Axion gambled that the rank-and-file Necrons, leaderless and rigid, would not look up.
By being launched into the air and performing a series of rapid warp-transpositions before hitting the ground, he could strike the heart of the enemy. If he could sever the Necron power supply and collapse the phase-conduit, there was a non-zero probability of eliminating the remaining thousands of xenos.
Axion had enacted this "all-or-nothing" gambit without a moment's hesitation. Had he failed, he would have been forced to find an alternative, solitary extraction route.
The Pariah Nexus could not suppress this form of jump; it was a displacement based on the fundamental laws of physical reality, not the shifting tides of the Empyrean.
As Szeras's head was sent flying by a golden-edged Particle Vibration Blade, Axion's desperate gamble was vindicated. The Phase Shroud offered no resistance to a warp-jump; Axion had bypassed the barrier entirely.
In that moment, he finally understood why this primitive era still relied so heavily on boarding actions. When shields cannot be breached, one must resort to the blade. Where energy fails, physics prevails.
With Szeras decapitated, the guidance for the phase-gate vanished instantly. The portal snapped shut. One unfortunate Destroyer was caught in the closing aperture, its chassis sheared neatly in half.
As Axion's blade carved through the Breath of the Gods upon its pedestal, the multi-dimensional energy siphoning was violently interrupted. A massive shockwave of energy rippled outward; the resulting arc-flash detonated with enough force to hurl everything within a hundred-meter radius into the air.
The titanic monoliths in the rear began to overload, their obsidian surfaces cracking under the strain. The Necron energy projection system, having absorbed the feedback, vented the surge in a blinding flare. The energy field levels across the entire sector spiked two magnitudes higher before plummeting into silence.
The power of the Warp came rushing back into the sector.
The surviving Blood Ravens and Aeldari warriors froze for a stunned heartbeat before redoubling their assault with newfound ferocity.
Axion, having struck the Breath of the Gods, triggered a warp-jump the microsecond his blade completed its arc. He jumped several hundred meters in rapid succession, never looking back. Only after the surge had detonated the Necron monoliths and the air had returned to a relative calm did he cautiously jump back to the site.
The data-link with the Aegis Protector was restored immediately. Then, Axion's silver-clad form flickered into the sight of the survivors.
The remaining Necron units did not cease their attack, but deprived of reinforcements and decimated by the blast, their numbers had dwindled to barely a hundred. Within two volleys of fire from the survivors, they were wiped out.
Axion turned his gaze toward the Aeldari.
"According to our pact, we shall return to the extraction point via the Aeldari Webway."
Yvraine looked at Axion with a complex, unreadable expression. She said nothing, offering only a silent, solemn nod.
This mission had cost the Ynnari dearly. Even then, it had teetered on the brink of disaster. Yvraine did not blame Guilliman for the size of the force; in the eyes of the Imperium, the Aeldari were the ancient enemy, and few would trust xenos intelligence.
In this god-forsaken place, mortal soldiers would have lost their combat effectiveness in minutes. Utilizing Necron phase-teleportation was an even greater risk; had the Necrons simply closed the gate and initiated orbital bombardment, any number of reinforcements would have been sent to their deaths.
Where numbers failed, quality was the only metric that mattered.
Yvraine had initially believed the core of this strike force to be the Astartes, who looked markedly different from the Ultramarines she knew, but in the end, the pivot of the battle had been these souless servitors and automata.
Meanwhile, the oblivious Blood Ravens were working alongside the remaining Aeldari to recover their dead.
Battle-brothers struck by Gauss weapons were often incomplete; only those slain by phase-blades or bayonets left behind Progenoid Glands for recovery. Of the full Blood Raven company, only thirty-two survived, including three Librarians and the Librarian-commander, Cohn. Only twenty-nine gene-seeds were recovered; the rest had vanished along with the physical forms of the fallen.
Yvraine's party fared no better, recovering only some two hundred and thirty Soulstones. At least four hundred others had been reduced to atomic dust along with their owners.
As the others tended to the dead, Axion hesitated for a moment. With practiced efficiency, he commanded the Aegis Protector and the remaining Erratana-class Armored Wardens to begin piling the shattered Necron remains. He even dragged several Destroyer chassis over, intent on "packaging" them for transport.
Imperial automata were unreliable; he would have to build his own. Though he didn't know if the opportunity would arise again, it was never a mistake to harvest materials while they were available.