Asmodai strode through the ruined remnants of Eldar architecture, accompanied by several grim Primaris Space Marines. The xenos city lay in eerie silence—its streets broken, towers crumbled, its proud beauty defiled.
The Word Bearers had not bothered to purge the alien structures on this world. Their goal, if it could even be called one, was as cryptic as Lorgar himself. The Arch-Heretic had descended upon this world with his legionaries, built a temple in haste, and departed—leaving behind a corrupted sanctum and a world only half-conquered.
Cracked spires still loomed near the profaned temple-city. The empty roads, once echoing with life, were now lined with shattered columns and moss-covered archways. Asmodai tilted his helm upward, his crimson lenses sweeping over the distant silhouettes of more Eldar structures. Time had not been kind—what remained of once-proud bell towers now bore only rust and rot.
Among the scattered ruins, Asmodai halted before a statue—an Eldar maiden carved from pale stone, draped in delicate tulle. Though damaged, the artistry spoke of a master sculptor. The fine lines and spiritual grace of the figure seemed almost alive, exuding an aura of gentleness and sanctity.
But the statue was desecrated. Blood smeared across its surface. Crude, blasphemous runes—etched with malice—violated its sanctity. A foul, unidentified ichor had pooled at its base.
Once, this statue represented Isha, the Eldar goddess of life. Revered second only to Asuryan, Isha's cult was once a cornerstone of Eldar belief—holy, nurturing, eternal.
Now, she stood forgotten and defiled. Dark Eldar and the sycophants of She Who Thirsts had scrawled their venomous mockeries across her form. Where once offerings of reverence were made, now only depravity lingered.
And this was not the only atrocity.
Farther ahead, the tallest spire remained partially intact, flanked by a long corridor of broken statues—smashed effigies of ancient divinities.
Asmodai, Interrogator-Chaplain of the Dark Angels, walked those halls in silence, the Primaris Astartes behind him casting long shadows. He sought something far more elusive than vengeance—he sought an entrance to the Eldar Webway, hoping to extract his team from this precarious trap.
"Are these statues of Eldar heroes?" one of the Primaris asked, voice heavy with unspoken awe.
Asmodai shook his head slowly. "These are not heroes. These are gods. The Eldar once reigned over the stars, their empire glorious beyond reckoning. But their gods have long since fallen—cast down and left to rot among rubble."
It was rare for Asmodai to show sentiment. Known for his relentless discipline and brutal interrogations, even he now betrayed a flicker of solemnity as he gazed upon the ruins.
Human lives were fleeting. Even the Astartes, long-lived though they were, were but sparks compared to the millennia that had shaped this place. In the face of such immense history, even the strongest hearts could feel a chill of fragility.
All civilizations fell eventually. And when the shrines and dreams of the ancients crumbled into dust, one could not help but ask: What was it all for?
The Astartes murmured among themselves, discussing tales they had heard of the Eldar's past. Even in ruin, the grace of the xenos city could not be denied. Crystalline gardens, glittering pavilions, and radiant towers once adorned this sacred corridor. Now, iron-shod boots crushed its memory beneath adamantium tread.
They pressed on until they reached a derelict temple.
Within stood a statue—another goddess, or something that once pretended to be one. Unlike the earlier effigies, this idol was malignant. Where others were serene, this was profane. Its stone had darkened into something unnatural, chipped and oozing rot.
Asmodai studied it, and unease stirred within him. The statue seemed aware—its expression twisted into a sneer of mockery. The air felt heavy, tainted by its presence.
One of the Primaris drew his power sword with grim purpose and swung. The statue's arm shattered. With a second blow, he plunged the blade into its chest, and the field-disintegration emitter detonated the idol into fragments.
The oppressive feeling lifted.
Without a word, the group pushed deeper into the temple's winding interior. They were running out of time.
Elsewhere, within the temple-city of Vigilus, the warrior-saint Efilar lay in recuperation. The last battle had left her drained—physically and psychically. She needed to recover swiftly; danger was ever near.
Suddenly, the distant rumble of engines snapped her alert. She rose and moved to a window just in time to witness a formation of Thunderhawk gunships streaking overhead in tight formation.
An explosion sounded in the far distance.
"What's happening?" she asked curtly.
A Magos of Intelligence summoned a hololithic feed.
"The recon team sent to locate the Webway gate has encountered resistance. We believe it is the Dark Eldar."
Efilar's gaze narrowed. "Which team?"
"It is the one led by Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai."
"Transmit the coordinates. I will investigate personally," Efilar ordered without hesitation. Something in her instincts whispered this was no simple ambush.
"As you command, my lord."
The attack on Asmodai's unit had begun moments after the cursed statue's destruction.
From the shadows of the ruined temple, the Dark Eldar sprang—murderous and swift. Blades sang through the air, shuriken rounds hissed past ceramite armor, and eldritch poisons glinted on every edge.
These were no mere raiders—they were Drukhari, the corrupted kin of the Eldar. Born of the same cataclysm that had torn their empire apart. When Slaanesh was born in the psychic immaterium, his first scream devoured billions and ripped open the Eye of Terror. The Eldar were all but annihilated.
And yet, some escaped.
The Craftworlders created the Path, a rigid way of life that suppressed their emotions and protected their souls from the Prince of Excess. They became stoic wanderers aboard vast world-ships.
But others—the Dark Eldar—embraced the very excess that doomed their race. They bathed in agony and carved life from suffering, sustaining themselves on the torment of others to keep their souls from Slaanesh's grasp.
And now they had come, once again, to harvest pain.
But there were Eldar who abandoned all restraint, plunging into total depravity.
These outcasts formed raiding bands and pirate covens, spreading terror across the stars and slaughtering all they encountered. Thus were born the Drukhari—the Dark Eldar—whose goal was not conquest, but soul-thirsted plunder, desperate to stave off damnation at the hands of She Who Thirsts.
In their grotesque hedonism, they willingly committed acts of unspeakable cruelty, feeding the entity they feared most—Slaanesh—in order to postpone the consumption of their own souls. Their solution to this paradox was twisted: to prolong their lives and souls through greater suffering inflicted on others.
Each atrocity was a sacrament. Each victim, a tithe.
Even among the galaxy's most agile species, the Drukhari were unnaturally fast—wraithlike killers that seemed to phase in and out of shadow. In battle, their speed rendered most Imperial countermeasures ineffective. Only massed firepower, deployed without hesitation, could bring them down.
Historically, mankind rarely triumphed against them in direct combat. The speed gap was simply too great.
So when Asmodai and his Primaris detachment shattered the profane statue, they did not expect the sudden lunge of shadowy figures from the ruins. Talos Pain Engines and Incubi emerged from the dark like coiled serpents, their ambush perfectly timed to catch the Space Marines mid-movement.
The Pain Engine was one of the most horrific weapons ever conceived—a macabre fusion of flesh, steel, and torment. Forged in the mad haemonculi laboratories of Commorragh, these engines were not merely weapons of war but mobile altars to suffering, designed to prolong agony and broadcast pain.
Their limbs bristled with cruel instruments—scalpels, hooks, bone saws—and their victims were never allowed the mercy of death. Instead, they were kept alive and conscious for every moment of torment.
Alongside the Pain Engines came the Incubi, elite mercenaries clad in baroque armor, wielding klaives with lethal grace. Their creed was simple: perfect the kill. They sought the elegance of the killstroke, the artistry of butchery, and delighted in rending flesh with surgical precision.
These Drukhari had waited patiently in the shadows, their aura of death cloaked in the silence of anticipation. When the trap was sprung, they descended in a blur, confident in their superiority.
From behind their barbed helmets, the Incubi's eyes gleamed with contemptuous certainty. They had already sentenced the trespassing humans to death.
No creature, they believed, could escape the Drukhari's precision ambush.
But something went wrong.
Even as the minds of the Primaris Marines lagged a split second behind the ambush, their bodies—honed by decades of war and centuries of gene-seeded instinct—acted with ruthless efficiency.
Asmodai moved first. The first Incubus barely landed his strike when Asmodai's gauntlet clamped around his waist like a steel vice.
"How...?" the Dark Eldar choked, disbelief widening his eyes. This was not the slow prey they remembered from decades past.
The Primaris Space Marines were something else—transhuman, unstoppable. Their strength shattered the arrogance of their attackers. The finely wrought armor of the Incubi crumpled like foil in their hands.
Even the Pain Engine, a terror of countless battlefields, was unceremoniously kicked over by a charging battle-brother. It lashed out with metallic tendrils, only for a bolt round to shear its limb clean off, a brilliant blue flash marking the impact.
Before it could inflict a single wound, the Pain Engine was reduced to scrap.
The tide of battle turned in seconds. The few surviving Drukhari tried to melt back into the shadows—but were met with a fusillade of bolt fire. Red flame burst from muzzles, and the shadows themselves erupted in death.
One Incubus was struck full-force by a charging Primaris—more than five tons of ceramite and muscle in motion. He was flung through the air like a ragdoll, crashing into a ruined Eldar bone-tower that crumbled under the impact.
He staggered up, sword in hand, swaying, disbelief etched across his ruined helm. How had the humans advanced so far, so fast?
Decades had passed since their last encounter—and now mankind struck like thunder.
"Seize him!" barked Asmodai, his voice cold and commanding. "Bring him to me. I'll rip every secret from his mind—even what he dreamt last night!"
But it was too late.
The last surviving Drukhari, realizing escape was impossible, turned his blade inward and ended his own life in a final defiance.
This scene left Asmodai with a flicker of regret.
"But even this is a gain," muttered the Interrogator-Chaplain of the Dark Angels, lifting the broken corpse of the Dark Eldar warrior.
"In my chamber, even the dead will speak."
The dead could not lie, but the information they offered was always fragmented—a pale reflection of what could be taken from the living.
Asmodai's words drew silent glances from his battle-brothers. The casual cruelty reminded them—once again—why none envied the interrogator's calling.
Before any could speak, the sky ignited.
Efilar descended like a burning seraph, her wings of flame unfurled and spanning more than ten meters. Her form burned against the void like a wrathful angel of the Emperor.
A squadron of Imperial fighters roared overhead, engines howling, scanning the darkened landscape for fleeing xenos.
But even seeing his comrades unharmed did not soften Efilar's gaze. The Dark Eldar were a race of ancient spite. Their vengeance was never delayed, only deferred.
They had to be annihilated, root and stem.
Meanwhile, across the Immaterium, the Imperial fleet en route to reinforce Efilar received an unexpected visitor.
A Curtain-Walker from the Harlequins had crossed the veil.
In the office of the Warmaster, the contrast between hosts could not have been more stark.
Where the Eldar envoy held herself with poised grace, Dukel sat languidly behind his desk, clad not in power armor, but in a dark crimson robe. The dragon-scaled warplate forged by the Fabricator General himself remained idle—displayed, not donned.
Such carelessness would be unthinkable for most generals. To meet with a xenos emissary unarmored was a tactical risk—an opening for assassination that could unravel an entire warhost.
But Dukel did not see danger. He saw only insignificance.
The Harlequin, Synnlaith, sat across from him, saying nothing at first. And in that silence, her spirit sense was overwhelmed. The man before her radiated a force that seared her inner eye—an inferno that defied containment.
In that burning presence, she could barely keep her gaze steady.
"We are here to offer aid to the Warmaster," Synnlaith said, her voice a melody wrapped in magnetism. It danced like sunlight on glass, a sound that stirred even the coldest soul.
Even stone might weep to hear her speak.
But Dukel was no stone. He was a furnace.
"Aid me?" Dukel's voice was calm, but sharp. "You'd do better to aid yourselves."
He leaned forward slightly, the fire in his eyes unyielding.
"I don't know what gave you the courage to stand before me. But it is that courage that stayed my hand… for now."
His fingers drummed once against the desk.
"You will speak two sentences. Only two. Convince me, or I will order your entire kin-circle extinguished—every dancer, every mime, every blade."
...
TN:
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