"Where are we?" Davinda asked.
"We haven't moved," Sitting Bear realised. Indeed, the same forest, the same butterflies, and the same rabbits were all there. "Everyone's gone!"
"What are those aliens? Are they Eldar?"
"They look like Eldar, but nasty. All Eldar are nasty, all aliens are nasty, these are just more nasty."
"Are those humans?"
Sitting Bear and Davinda hid behind a bush as men and women- humans- walked through the forest. They wore checked and striped clothes, and some had blue tattoos. No, some were blue all over. Davinda recognised this as woad- a dye from a plant that could change the colour of skin like paint changed a wall. She turned her glasses' virtual systems on and zoomed in on rising smoke. A village! But where were the automobiles, the planes, and the rest? These people only had horse-drawn carriages. They didn't even have pocket cogitators! How did they call each other? Shouting? "2 miles to the village," she said.
"We can get there," Sitting Bear said. He got up and, without looking at his sister, started walking. Davinda had to run to catch up.
Nobody stopped the children and they reached the Corvonii village in under an hour. It was less dark than usual and the kids wondered why nobody was paying them any attention. Were they invisible? "Excuse me," Sitting Bear asked a big, bare-chested man with a winged helmet.
The man looked down, frowning. "Children? You Imperial?"
"We are Rogue Traders," Davinda said eagerly. She took a short copy Warrant of Trade out of her pocket, or at least tried to. Instead, she pulled out a red circle with a huge I
The man suddenly smiled unconvincingly and showed the children to a hut. "We eager to hear how warriors of stars are."
The children were about to enter the wooden house when someone screamed. Evil laughing echoed throughout the settlement, which the ear translators said processed as, "I am the last thing you will see!"
Pink armoured-creatures rushed into the village, alongside a floating platform brimming with guns. Despite this, not one splinter cannon, dark lance, or disintegrator fired. Instead, the Dark Eldar threw glowing purple balls at everyone they could see.
The children's jaws dropped at the big man took a ball to the chest. Before he could scream, he vanished in a burst of purple light. Sitting Bear stared, frozen, which nearly caused the aliens to see him. Davinda pulled him down.
Soon, once the village was cleared, a warrior jumped down from the platform. She was smaller than the rest but her armour was even spikier and she held a staff. "This is Archon Faxa, we have abducted the first settlement. Tell the Haemonculi their system is working. We will now find the Mon'Keigh children that are here, know we're here, and think we don't know they're here. We hope they beg for mercy."
The children had no weapons, no way of fighting, and no backup. What could they do against such fearsome beings? "Run," Sitting Bear said. "We must run."
"We are of the Emperor," Davinda whispered. "We do not run like weaklings. We will stop these xenos."
"Is that correct?" Faxa asked as she and two warriors with guns in their helmets pulled the children out of the hut. "What are you going to do, shorties? Whine in hope we let you go? No, we will make you scream. We will we enjoy hurting you. We will get the material we need..."
The Dark Eldar laughed. One came towards the children with a super-thin knife. The children had never been so scared.
Davinda's glasses blinked. At first, it was a blink. Suddenly, the eyepieces glowed brighter than they ever had before. The warrior with the monomolecular blade backed off, his armour scorched and broken by the laser blast.
"Fascinating," the warrior said. "A lasgun goggle. You Mon'Keighs will..."
"Emergency," Faxa called out. "We need to get to the next village. They're encountering heavy resistance from prey! Go!"
The Dark Eldar jumped back onto their Raiders and Ravagers and sped off, leaving the children behind.
"I could've killed them all," Davinda said as she and her brother waited in the village for time to catch up. They'd gone countless daysback into the past and the only way back was the long way around.
"I believe you," Sitting Bear said. "I can't wait until I grow up. We can then fight back properly. These xenos are bullies, nothing more. It's time somebody started standing up to them. That will be us."
Purple smoke burst forth and wrapped around the children. The Dark Eldar grenade the first warrior had thrown had malfunctioned, which was why Davinda and Sitting Bear time travelled rather than end up in a prisoner cage. The system tried correcting itself but all it did was send the children back to the start. "Davinda! Sitting Bear!" Gaius called out. "What happened?"
"The Dark Eldar tried to hurt us," Davinda said. "My glasses stopped them. Did you make them as lasgun?"
"Yes. Thank the Emperor. We can tell the Imperium that the Dark Eldar raided Birmingham and that's why we couldn't talk to them. How did you handle them?"
"We stood up to them," Sitting Bear said. "As I said to Davinda, they're bullies, nothing more. We will stop them bullying any more planets."