Jailis fought like a daemon. Mangled and scorched corpses, some of them with wounds still pumping blood littered the alley where Jailis made his stand. Yet the eldar sill came to him. Wytches, some of them terrible experts in their art, eager to prove themselves against this seemingly invulnerable foe dissolved before the mad warrior. Jailis stared without feeling at the spasming corpse of an eldar warrior, still impaled on his lightning claw. He was disappointed that the warrior had worn a helmet; he relished the sight of seeing an enemy of the chaos gods perish, the corpse slid to the ground with a wet thud. Jailis thumped his chest in triumph; there was a hollow clunk as his mailed fist struck the daemonic armour. "Is this what has become of the old foe?" Jailis mocked, "You prey so willingly on the innocent and the helpless but scores of you fall before a single worthy foe." A wytch, enraged by Jailis's taunts flung himself at the armoured warrior. Jailis simply held out his lighting claw and allowed the eldar gladiator to impale himself on it. Jailis scanned his surroundings, the alley, littered with sprays of blood and mangled bodies, was now silent. Jailis strode confidently out into the streets.
His mighty predators crushed dozens of unfortunate attackers under withering hails of gunfire. High in the skies the Tau gunships struggled to pursue the far more manoeuvrable eldar raiders. Even so, the raiders were only able to run for so long, and they were being picked off by the Tau railguns, one by one.
Then came the counterattack. Several eldar skimmers turned about in the air, discharging thick bolts of black light into the oncoming gunships. The Tau reacted too slowly. The darklance lasers tore into the burnished, yellow hulls of the Hammerhead gunships, several of the Tau weapons platforms came crashing to the ground, throwing up clouds of . With the Tau almost routed the Raiders began to discharge their cargo. Eldar warriors repelled down from the skimmers, landing on the rooftops. Jailis heard Ghorn's last words ring out over the Vox net. The Chaos lord hung his head as an explosion rocked a nearby tower. Ghorn's melta bomb. Black masonry rained down on the streets below.
Jailis heard the crackle of electricity behind him and wheeled about just as a heavily armed and armoured eldar warrior brought a large glaive, buzzing with electricity down where until recently he had stood. An Incubus, Jailis thought fondly, finally some sport. Compared to the other eldar, who attacked with near feral ferocity, the Incubus advanced in a slow, methodical manner. Jailis was so busy studying his foe it nearly cost him his life. There was a short, electric whirr and a hale of splinter like projectiles shot from an attachment on the eldar's helm. Jailis rushed forward, shrugging off the blinding pain, and rammed a lightning claw into the Incubus's stomach. Lifting the struggling alien from his feet, Jailis flung him over his shoulder. There was a sickening crack as it collided with the wall of a building. There was a chorus of similar electric whirrs and Jailis turned in time to see several more incubi fire. This time the pain was too intense. Jailis staggered forward, trying to take a swipe at one of his foes. He fell short. Jailis's vision tunnelled, his limbs refused to obey him. Every part of Jailis's body and mind fought against the pain. He let out a long groan and his world went black.
Logan soared through the evening skies. Waves of eldar hellions and scourges poured through a series of webway portals, their arcane weapons opening fire on the combatants below. Logan's Raptors charged to intercept the airborne foes. A hellion took a sweep at Logan with a jagged glaive. Logan ducked expertly under the clumsy strike and with a swing of his crackling powersword, severed the eldar's skyboard in two. Logan smirked as the shrieking eldar plummeted towards the streets below. "See you in hell bastard!" he shouted at the rapidly shrinking black dot. The remainder of the hellion squad fell in around Logan's embattled unit. Logan whipped the buzzing powersword about, the weapon dismembering more eldar with every sweep, a whirling dervish of hellfire. Logan kicked hard at the chest of the last hellion. The taloned feet of his raptor armour dug through the eldar's mesh armour and soft flesh. For the longest time the two hung there, then with one motion, Logan drew his bolt pistol and unloaded a clip into the alien's unshielded head. The shattered carcass dislodged itself from Logan's claws and plummeted to earth. The skies were clear for the moment. They did not remain so.
There was a roar of engines and a small fleet of reaver jetbikes tore through the air, sending the raptors squad spinning. Growling and swearing, Logan turned to face the attackers. The reavers were advancing for another assault, several of them brandishing chains, or long cruel looking blades. Logan loaded another clip into his bolt pistol, wishing very dearly that he had armed himself with a larger weapon. The reavers hurtled towards Logan's squad. Logan gritted his teeth and fired his jump pack. The reavers, for all their agility, passed harmlessly beneath Logan and his squad. The jetbikes ground to a halt in midair and rounded on the raptors. The moment of hesitation cost many of the eldar their lives. "Raptors! To the hunt!" Logan shouted, his battle brothers charged the eldar, eagerly revving chainswords drawn. The eldar jetbikes, however, proved to be more formidable. Several of Logan's squad mates were cut down by a hail of splinter-projectiles, even those who managed to connect with their foes found that reaching the rider behind a veritable wall of spiky protrusions and the armoured chassis of the eldar jetbikes. Logan dug his powersword into the hull of one of the bikes and quickly wished he hadn't. The alien vehicle shuttered and groaned as the arcane machinery ruptured beneath the fiery touch of Logan's weapon. There sickening crack, then Logan's world became fire.
Sera watched entranced from the rooftops, she saw Logan clash with the black shapes of the eldar jetbikes. She saw the brilliant blast of fire as one of the bikes exploded in midair. She saw Logan falling. Sera's blood ran cold. As far away as he was, Sera could feel that Logan was unconscious. Time seemed to slow about her. Visions flashed before Sera's eyes, she saw Logan's cermite armoured form smash into the city streets. She saw bones shatter like glass. Blood and nightmares raced through her thoughts. Then, quite unexpectedly, it stopped. The world seemed frozen in place now. Without a trace of alarm, Sera whispered, "no." There was a rush of colour and sound. When Sera came to her senses, she saw Logan, drifting like a feather onto a nearby rooftop. Sera breathed a sigh of relief.
Then Sera felt a stab of fear in her heart. Shadows were moving all about her. Sera felt a blade press against her throat. A voice, wheezing and phlegm laced, "Well then, look what we got here." Sera glanced in the direction of the voice. She stared into the deep sunken eyes of an eldar mandrake. The alien's face was wrapped in thick, black bonds, which covered most of his visage, leaving only a small bare patch for his eyes. "Mon-keigh, female by the look of 'er. What ya think we should do with this one?"
Another mandrake laughed; a bitter, gasping sound. Sera swallowed nervously and felt her neck graze against her captor's razor thin blade. "I say we have a littleā¦" he ran his gloved hands over Sera's face, she grimaced at the alien's touch, "fun with her. If you've never heard a human scream you're missing out on something, you are."
"I say we take 'er in." The first mandrake spoke again, "Lord Murad 's pay'n good for anything we catch."
A third mandrake spoke, "He wants gladiators you imbecile, this one looks like it could barely lift a blade, those big ones though, the ones in the armour, Murad will empty his purse to the last coin for a handful of those."
"So just kill her then? Seems like a bit of a waste don't it?" the second mandrake said, somewhat annoyed, "Mon-keigh or not I think I could find some use for her."
"You assume," whispered Sera, "that you are going to leave this encounter with me alive." The first mandrake was about to laugh and slit the woman's throat when he was enveloped in black fire. He let out a cry that was mercifully short, then was no more. Sera rounded on the remaining mandrakes. She was unsure exactly how many there were, the eldar seemed to be made out of the shadows themselves, where once she thought she saw a mandrake there turned out to be nothing, meanwhile mandrakes materialized in places Sera never would have imagined. That however, was irrelevant. The eldritch mark of Tzeentch on Sera's hand began to burn. Runes within runes began to etch themselves into the flesh around it. If there was any pain, Sera did not feel it. The mandrakes charged, their deadly skills honed from years of murder and mayhem in the streets of Comorragh were about to be brought to bear on the mad psyker. These skills, however, were not enough. Flames, manifested as twin serpents darted about Sera, striking with dizzying speed at the attacking eldar, each time felling another alien warrior. In moments, they were all gone, and only a few blackened corpses remained. Sera fell on her hands and knees. She watched as the spidery runes on her body faded and vanished. How long she kneeled there, panting, she was not sure. She was roused, however, from her trans by a pair of steel-toed boots in front of her. Expecting to look up into the face of a space marine Sera lifted her head eagerly. Her hopes died in her chest. Before her stood the grotesque form of a Haemonculus.
The eldar torture-master sneered cruelly down at her. From within his robes he withdrew a small chest, only about the size of an ordinary shoebox. The eldar placed it in front of the petrified Sera. The chest, embroidered with images like screaming faces sent shivers down Sera's spine. The haemonculus whispered something in his language. The lid of the chest gave a slight shudder. Then it burst open.
Staring into hell itself could not have prepared Sera for what she saw. Visions of numberless psykers like herself clawed their way into her mind. Sera saw women raped and brutalized, men torn asunder, children boiled alive in human blood. She gazed into the darkness that is the crucible of malediction. Even the omnipresent warp seemed to abandon her, forcing her to watch the horrible visions. Sera clutched at her head, tearing savagely at her own flesh. Anything, she thought, to remove the terrible visions. How long the phantoms coursed through Sera's mind she could not say. All she knew is that she wanted release, escape, anything to be free of the nightmares. Oddly enough, she found she wanted Logan. She remembered how his armoured form had enveloped her when she faced the culexus. Just as the monster had blotted out the warp, his armoured form blotted out it. If only Logan would be there, there would be no fear. With that last thought filling her mind. The darkness overtook her.
