C. Goto - Dawn of War

“Go for the jewels,” called Jhordine, drawing her own plasma gun and taking aim. “The jewels are their heart stones.”

The inquisitor squeezed off a pulse of plasma that burst against the glowing gem stone on the chest of the leading wraithguard. The creature stopped short and a keening cry erupted from its mouthless head, before it suddenly broke into a run, spraying projectiles from its weapon as it charged towards the team.

Trythos matched the giant creature stride for stride, pounding out into the space that separated the two groups and intercepting the charge. As he ran, Trythos swung his power axe above his head, circling it in crescents of coruscating power. From behind him came the chatter of bolter fire and shells flashed past his head, peppering the charging wraithguard with impacts.

Then they were upon each other, but the wraithguard was not equipped for combat at this range. It was an uneven match. Trythos turned his charge into a dive, swinging his axe into an arc as he cleared the last few metres that separated him from the creature. The wraithguard tried to turn the Deathwatch captain aside with his long elegant limbs, but Trythos smashed through them with the servo-assisted power of his armour, shattering the psycho-plastics like wax, driving his power axe towards the gem stone on the wraithguard’s chest.

The axe cracked into the jewel with a metallic ring that echoed with an incredible volume. The force weapon sputtered and sparked with power as the pressure against the gem increased, but the stone would not break. Trythos drove the head of the axe forward with all of his strength until a huge explosion threw him back from the shattered wraithguard.

As he hit the ground, Trythos saw another blast of energy smash into his kill team, this time coming from further up the mountain. His squad had split, with half of it continuing the assault against the wraithguard, and the other half turning to face the new threat.

A heavy foot crunched into the ground next to his head, bringing Trythos back to the present with a start. He rolled to his feet and shouldered the shaft of his axe, preparing for a strike against another of the wraithguard. But something was wrong-the shaft was light and unbalanced. The axe head was ruined and broken, shattered and rent by the force of the impact against the eldar stone. A burst of bolter fire from his battle-brothers gave him a split second of cover; he snatched his boltgun from its holster and loosed a tirade of shells against the wraithguard as they closed around him.

The Avatar swept his immense sword with incredible ferocity, hacking it into the gradually solidifying form of the daemon prince, who winced slightly under the impact. The sword seemed to hum and glow with a life of its own, crying out for blood, wailing with doom. Its impacts resounded simultaneously in multiple dimensions, slicing into the substance of the prince on both sides of the breach in the immaterium.

The daemon roared in frustration as the rivers of blood cascaded freely down the mountainside. It was being violated even as it was being born into the material world, but the avatar was relentless in its assault. The daemon’s cultists rushed at the towering Avatar of Khaine, but the ancient warrior hardly even noticed them, swatting them away in droves with the back swing of his blade or treading them into the ground under his feet.

The storm was spiralling in and out of the material realm, sucked into focus by the ungodly presence of the daemon prince. The clouds of warp energy just poured into the daemon’s growing form, filling it with power and chaos. The prince lashed out in frustration, raking claws and talons across the body of the avatar, ripping into the warrior’s metallic skin and sending spurts of molten blood jetting into the night. The avatar screamed his defiance to the gods, stepping inside the wildly flailing limbs of the daemon and driving his sword home where the monstrosity’s heart should be.

Standing on the lower summit, her arms outstretched and open to heaven, Macha unleashed another blast of blue fire into the storm, desperate to seal the breach before the daemon could fully materialise. If the prince were permitted to take solid form, not even the Avatar of Khaine would be able to confront it.

Something clawed at her mind, breaking her concentration for a fraction of a second. For a moment she thought that the daemon was whispering into her soul, trying to lure her away from her purpose, but the voice was too weak, plaintive, and familiar. It was weeping into her thoughts and tears started to roll down her face as she realised what it was. Kaerial was gone. His spirit stone, which had been housed in wraithbone armour for centuries after his physical death, permitting the great warrior to go on living for the sake of the Biel-Tan eldar, had been destroyed. His death knell rang through the warp like a beacon of lost hope.

The farseer’s pain was transformed into anger almost immediately, and she focussed her rage into a searing ball of energy that rocketed up towards the main summit of the mountain as she screamed her fury into the darkness. This time it smashed directly into the form of the daemon itself, sending it staggering back towards the precipice at the edge of the peak, pursued at each step by the frenzy of the avatar’s wailing blade.

Tendrils of energy darted out of the daemon’s limbs, questing for purchase to prevent its fall from the summit, from the epicentre of the warp storm that fed its manifestation. They lashed and whipped around the mountain top, vaporising clutches of cultists and lapping at the warp-shields that burned around a group of eldar warlocks, who returned fire with jabs of their own lightning, riddling the daemonic form with javelins of blue flame.

Macha smiled to herself: this was it. She threw back her head and screamed into the sky, channelling the energies of her gods into her chest for a final killing blow. The coruscating ball of energy pulsed in the air before her, eager to be loosed against the forces of damnation.

Then a blast of las-fire punched into the back of Macha’s shoulder, pushing her forward, stumbling to regain her balance. The ball of flame hissed and then blinked into nothingness, as Macha turned to locate the origins of the blast.

A group of Chaos cultists had burst through the defensive line of the Storm squad. The grossly mutated humans bore Chaos brands on their skin, which seemed to be the wrong size for their bones. Two of them brandished primitive lasguns, which whined with energy and heat as they discharged them frantically in the direction of the farseer.

With a cursory brush of her hand, Macha sent a torrent of lightning crashing into the pathetic humanoids. She watched in curiosity as they turned themselves inside out and then imploded into tiny tears in the material fabric of the world, sucked through into the immaterium where their daemon lords waited to consume their souls.

The Storm squad were in some disarray. There were new enemies emerging from the darkness, popping directly out of the warp as the storm drew the fabric of reality perilously thin. But Macha had no time for these bloodletter daemons.

Kaerial… she began before she remembered. Vrequr, you are needed.

Turning back to the battle on the crest of the mountain, she could see that the daemon prince had found his footing once again.

The creature seemed to slip and slide around his blade, as though it were not wholly solid. Jaerielle spun with his sword, taking clutches of clumsy cultists with each turn, but the dancing, devilish form seemed to evade his every move. It glowed with a dark light, making it shimmer in the rain-drenched night. Its fingertips leaked energy, as though it flowed through its body like blood or cascaded down its arms with the rain. With sharp flicks of its wrists, the bloodletter splattered sizzling droplets of warp energy against the eldar warriors and cut into their armour with its scything finger nails.