Chapter 24:Darkness Falls
Kieran reveled in the speed of his Reaver. He didn't care for stealth, for he knew these creatures could never hope to compete with such speed, let them see him coming.
The Reaver pilot was delightfully surprised when the revoltingly pleasant area and blue sky gave way to dark foreboding storm.
As though the very heavens signal their doom. Kieran thought to himself as he led the vanguard up into the clouds to dive from the heavens upon their prey.
As the Drukhari leveled out his craft he allowed memories of past raids to play through his mind. He couldn't count the timeshe had used cloud cover to great effect, dropping from the sky in a spin so that the bladed keels of his deadly vehicle could tear the lesser races to shreds. He vividly remembered every look of shock and horror.
Such a look marked his own face when the dark clouds suddenly ignited with the fury of Khaine. Singular lightning bolts were no problem for Aeldari technology, but this wasn't natural. The omen of doom now appeared to be the very planet defending its people.
Kieran swerved through the narrowest gap between strikes as an electric net ensnared his brethren and sent numerous vessels crashing to the ground. One strike snaked its way from the tip of a sharpened keel, scarring the wraithbone.
Kieran dived in a calm spot. Questioning how the storm could erupt in multiple locations simultaneously and yet remain idle in others.
He received his answer when he came under the clouds. Winged quadrupedal Mon'Keigh were kicking the clouds from below and somehow spurred the lightning.
Kieran didn't waste time warning his slower kin, he opened up with his nose mounted Splinter Cannon.
Five winged creatures fell to him before they broke ranks. Most fled from his vengeance, but some dared to challenge him.
"Come then." The Drukhari said with a sadistic grin as he gunned the engines. His Reaver flew far faster than any organic creature, and the scar they left on one of his keels was quickly hidden by the first kill's blood.
Kieran spun like an arrow, eviscerating any foe that dared to challenge him, before leveling out and pursuing those that fled.
Some of the creatures had fled into the clouds to avoid him, alerting the other Drukhari to their presence. Reavers and Raiders plunged through the clouds in pursuit of their new prey. The ambush quickly became a bloodbath...but not quite a massacre.
The winged creatures were still striking the clouds. Spurring lightning above and below. 8 Drukhari craft had already plummeted to the ground.
To add to the frustration, the alarm had been raised. Kieran saw multiple winged hostiles of various species take flight from the enemy village and make all haste towards him. This is going to be annoying.
Elsewhere
Aries watched as Garble led a Counterstrike of Dragons, Griffins, and Hyppogriffs to the struggling Pegasai. The Xenos vehicles were far faster than the winged equines, but Aries took note of Spitfire and her Wonderbolts making tighter turns and forcing their pursuers to overshoot, but he knew it wouldn't be long before the Raiders were close enough to deploy their waiting landing parties.
He turned to the three Alicorns beside him. "Will your shields be powerful enough to encompass our entire defense?"
Celestia turned to him. "Our efforts in the Crystal Empire may have been daunting, but we can manage."
"I-I know my shields aren't better than my brother's, but I'll do what can to keep Equestria safe." Twilight said more to herself than anyone else.
Luna simply staired angrily. Aries could understand her frustration, few were the World Eaters trusted to hold defensive perimeters, as it was just not in their nature to refrain from joining the fight as soon as possible.
He at least could reason with himself that he couldn't join this fight, as it was in the sky, but Luna did not have that luxury. Her feathers twitched and shook with the burning need to join the fray and leave the Ponies on the ground to fend for themselves.
"We will have our chance Luna, there is plenty of blood to be spilled." Aries said in an attempt to calm her.
The Lunar Princess looked to him to reply, but was brought back to the fight by the scream of a Pegasus robbed of a wing falling to the earth.
Luna's wings spread half their length as the Alicorn stepped forward, only to snarl and scream before resetting herself.
Aries allowed her to see him hang his head in more shame than he actually felt at his mistake, she wasn't desperate to end lives, but to save them.
Elsewhere
Kieran was the first to engage the reinforcements. He had first sought to take the head of the leader, a winged reptile with a bejeweled scepter, but the beast spat a ball of fire from its maw that struck the Drukhari's Reaver with enough force to alter his trajectory.
He nonetheless managed two kills simultaneously on bird-winged creatures, but he refused to be denied his prize.
He circled back, killing three more fools that dared to challenge him with his Splinter Cannon, his eyes tracing the sky for the enemy commander.
The beast was besieging a Raider, it had landed upon the open craft and had slain the pilot and now sought to send the vehicle plummeting to the ground.
Kieran watched this all take place, ready to lunge and behead the beast with his bladed keels as soon as it took to the skies again.
His keened senses alerted him, he turned his just in time to see one of the creatures from the first wave, a bright orange winged beast similar to those he saw ridden by the humans of Krieg with a blue bodysuit charge into him with its hooves out.
Kieran spun his Reaver to avoid the hit, expecting the creature to overshoot him...only to find it turning with him.
Kieran suddenly stopped and shot forward, hoping it would be caught on his keels. But the creature haddaredto plant its hooves on the nose his Reaver and glare at him.
With a flap of its wings, the creature shot forward. This time its hooves connected, sending it and Kieran plummeting.
Kieran drew a knife from his side and grabbed the creature's jumpsuit, but the beast planted all four hooves onto his chest and kicked off into the sky.
Kieran snarled as he threw down the blue fabric he had ripped away. He refused to plummet to his death. Searching for any means of escaping as the ground grew closer, he quickly spun in midair to redirect his landing to another Reaver flying below him.
Kieran did not recognize the pilot as one of his squad, so he slit her throat and cast her body from the Reaver as he climbed into her seat and sought his new foe. So, you're what passes for a champion among your worthless race. I'll have your hide as a cape.
Elsewhere
Far from the front lines, a certain Centaur turned his head to try and decipher the sounds of war, for he had not heard them before.
"Hey, what's that?" Asked a Pegasus filly beside him.
"If I had to guess, I'd say those Dark Eldar creatures have made their move." Tirek replied.
Cozy Glow's face brightened up. "Oh goody, that means the more cowardly creatures'll run away into the Everfree while the brave ones stay behind to fight."
Tirek grinned. "Which means I can regain the power I was forced to waste on that loathsome ape and then some. And no matter which side wins, they'll never expect another attack from within the Everfree."
"Indeed." Spoke a haunting voice that drew the two local villains attention to a very dreadful sight.
The creature, a female by its voice, had dark purple hair bound in a ponytail by a tiny skull, and deathly pale skin that was both beautiful and terrifying. But the most foreboding thing about her, which told the villains beyond doubt what this creature was, was that it clothed itself in flayed skin and faces, including that of a Changeling over one of its mammeries.
"We were thinking the exact same thing." Belatrixx smiled sadistically as more and more Drukhari emerged to surround the villains.
Elsewhere
Several lesser Mon'Keigh sought to engage him, Kieran used his Splinter Cannon to dispatch the fodder as he sought his prey.
There, it was playing the same games with a lesser Reaver pilot. Using the singular advantage of its slower speed to make tighter turns while seeking to attack the pilot in close quarters.
"You are a fly in the eyes of a hawk." Kieran said aloud. Aiming his Splinter Cannon to take out the creatures wings.
Suddenly, another blue garbed ace struck his Reaver from below, turning its nose upward, before coming back down to strike Kieran from his vehicle once more.
Kieran would show these creatures the superiority of the Dark Eldar. He turned into a bank and gunned his engines.
The enemy aces had been using Drukhari bloodlust against them. Relying on their foes seeking to chase them. Kieran instead evaded, leveling out his bank to fly straight ahead away from his foe before turning back and charging it.
Kieran stared into the flight goggles of his opponent, seeking any clue to anticipate its movements. Then he saw it, the creatures winges turned to spin it's body backward and away from the bladed keels.
The creature spun and Kieran spun with it, angling his Reaver to disembowel his prey.
A wet slash was added to the cacophony of battle as the winged quadruped fell to the ground with its entrails trailing behind it.
"SOARIN!!!" A feminine voice cries over the battle. Kieran turns to see his initial target staring at the falling carcass of its fellow before turning to Kieran with a primal snarl.
Oh, was he precious to you Mon'Keigh? Kieran thought with a sadistic grin.
The female ace charged in a zigzag that transitioned into diangonal loop-de-loops in an attempt to keep the Drukhari from anticipating her movements.
It was a fool's errand, Kieran read her like a book. Just before the enemy ace made contact with him, Kieran dipped his Reaver downward to cause the creature to slam into his burning engines.
Or at least, he had hoped so. But the Mon'Keigh could read him too, and angled her wings to be caught in the engines thrust. Propelling her away with barely a singe.
Kieran looked behind him to see the creature was turning for another attack. He decided to meet her charge.
He watched, as before, waiting for the slightest hint of where she would dodge...but she didn't.
The enemy charged headlong at the narrow snout of Kieran's Reaver. Then, at the very last second before being impaled, she turned slightly upward in high-risk maneuver that shaved her tail on the Reaver's nose.
Kieran spun just in time to avoid hooves to the face. A sharp klang told him that his enemy had planted her hooves onto one of his bladed keels.
When Kieran slowed his spin, the Mon'Keigh kicked off his keel and shot upward.
Kieran gave chase...but then he realized that his enemy was heading into the storm clouds.
Oh, no you don't. Kieran tired of these games and fired his Splinter Cannon. One shuriken pierced a rear hoof and ceased the Mon'Keigh's flight.
Kieran smiled a slasher's grin as he angled his Reaver to cut his foe in half...but then, an explosion turned the Drukhari's world inside out.
All he could perceive as the darkness fell around him was his Reaver in the ever growing distance. It had been torn in half by, of all things, a multicolored blastwave that looked like the discharge of an artillery gun. A similar colored streak of light trailed from the ruined Reaver to the Mon'Keigh ace that had struck him so hard, her hooves broke through his armor and ribcage alike.
Elsewhere
"GO RAINBOW DASH!!" Shouted Twilight Sparkle. She was far from the only Pony whose grim expression of dreaded anticipation turned upside down at the sight of the rainbow colored Pegasus destroying a Dark Eldar Reaver with her Sonic Rainboom...but Aries was focused on something else entirely.
The Raiders had been drawing closer, as anticipated. And Garble and his Dragons had barely managed to destroy a third of them, but one of thosed that crashed to the once grassy plains, now a scarred and scorched patch of earth, revealed a most unnerving truth to Aries...the Raiders held only their pilots.
Elsewhere
"The time has come. The Mon'Keigh's warriors will have fully committed themselves to their front lines." Observed Fune at the head of his Incubi.
"Poor fools. Did they really think we would attack from one front?" Belatrixx giggled at the thought as she observed the cowarding civilians at the edge of the Everfree Forest.
She and Fune had been deployed at the back end of the forest at the head of their remaining warriors while Praxis added to their forces with hastily added implants to some of the native fauna. He was disappointed that he didn't have time to make improvements...but at least he had that one creature to play with.
Belatrixx caressed her new top as she recalled those creatures, a quadruped with the upper body of a humanoid and one of the natives youths...she hoped she could find with more fitting marks upon their flanks than the two towers that currently covered the Wych's breasts.
Author's Note:
DUH DUH DUUUUHH...It might've been a frontal assault before the Dark Eldar knew what Equestria was capable of, but now the true cunning of the most vile creatures in Warhammer 40k comes out.
Not much to say about this chapter. It was pretty straightforward. But I may go dark for awhile.
The interview I mentioned in my last chapter fell through, they found someone with more experience. But after realizing that trying to go back home was too limiting, I took the plunge and an offer on the other side of the country. This one is guaranteed, and I can leave as soon as Tuesday or as late as next Monday depending on how soon they want me up there.
Oy veh. I am both excited and terrified, mostly because of the weather. I'm known to wear a jacket in 70.
Welp, that's all I got, except for an explanation for my mother: Reavers look roughly like X-Wing fighters when their wings are folded in, and those wings are bladed. Raiders look like flying Spanish Galleons.
See you all next time.