The atmosphere screamed.
Across the Khyzai Pass, binharic warning-chants cascaded through the data-streams of the Adeptus Mechanicus, cold, precise, and utterly panicked in their own way. Strings of logic-code fractured as auspex arrays overloaded in rapid succession. Sensoria returned impossible readings—pleasure spikes where there should have been nothing but wind-scoured rock, mountainous terrain, and open fields of dull grass. Harmonic distortions rippled outward, folding reality into shapes that were not merely illogical, but mathematically offensive, offending even the cold certainties of the Machine God.
Senioris Princeps Scrum sat rigid upon his throne within the command sanctum of his Reaver-class Titan. Sacred cables pierced his spine and skull, iron and gold conduits threading flesh and bone, binding his nervous system to the roaring machine-spirit of the god-engine. Each colossal footstep sent seismic shudders through the Khyzai Pass, avalanches spilling from distant cliffs as ancient stone protested the Titan's advance. His consciousness hovered in an uneasy half-state, neither fully human nor fully machine, suspended between thought and code.
Following in the Reaver's wake strode the Warhounds of Titanicus Noyoleais—ten lean hunter-engines at maximum stride, their smaller frames moving with brutal speed and predatory intent. Between the towering adamantine legs of the Titans flowed twelve full legions of Skitarii Noyolis, their advance disciplined and relentless. Steel boots struck the ground in perfect unison, rifles held with mechanical precision, their flesh reduced to little more than biological housing for the Omnissiah's will.
---WARP RESONANCE ESCALATING---
---PATTERN IDENTIFIED: SLAANESH---
---THREAT INDEX: APOCALYPTIC---
Scrum tasted the incoming data like blood across his tongue, sharp and metallic.
"This is no mere incursion," he intoned, his voice layered with binharic harmonics and vox-filtered authority. "This is a full warband."
The land itself began to change.
The stone softened, its hard edges melting into curved, sensuous lines that defied geometry. Grass rippled and bent as if stroked by unseen hands, each blade shivering with unnatural anticipation. The air grew heavy and perfumed, thick with sensation that clawed at the flesh-components of even the most heavily augmented Skitarii. Several cohorts reported sensory bleed-through—pleasure-feedback corrupting pain suppressors, emotional regulators screaming as they strained against hard-coded limits never meant to be tested.
Then the daemons revealed themselves.
They came in waves of colour and motion. Daemonettes first—dozens becoming hundreds—pouring over the slopes of the Khyzai Pass. Their forms were elegant and obscene in equal measure, every movement a mockery of grace. They danced rather than ran, claws tracing sigils through the air, each mark leaving reality gasping and unsteady. Behind them strode heretics in gilded armour and flensed robes: once-human cultists whose bodies had been reshaped into living instruments of sensation and war. Sonic weaponry thrummed in their hands, each note a weaponised ecstasy that rippled through armour and bone alike.
And then the ground split wide.
Reality screamed as Shalaxi Hellbane emerged.
The greater daemon rose from the fractured earth like a nightmare sculpted by a perfectionist god—towering, sinuous, and impossibly graceful. Four arms bore blades of alien make, their edges singing softly as they sliced the air itself. Its form radiated excess and control in equal measure, every movement deliberate and intimate. Its eyes fixed upon the advancing Titans, and its smile was appreciative, almost affectionate.
"Such magnificent machines," Shalaxi purred, its voice bypassing vox-channels and noospheric filters alike, sliding directly into cortex and cogitator. "So much devotion. So much restraint. Let me see how beautifully you break."
Several Skitarii units too close to Shalaxi's emergence faltered. Heptic feedback surged through their augmetics, overwhelming logic-cores and sensory governors. Many collapsed outright, data-spirits screaming as priests of the Mechanicus went into catastrophic overload while attempting to contain the corruption.
Scrum looked out through the red-tinted visual feed from the Reaver's head.
"All engines," he commanded, his tone cold, absolute, and without hesitation. "Engage."
The Reaver's volcano cannon spoke first.
A sun-hot lance of annihilation tore through the pass, vapourising daemonettes by the score and carving a molten trench through the warped stone. The air burned, reality recoiling from the sheer violence of the discharge. Warhounds joined the chorus—turbo-lasers and plasma blastguns roaring as hunter-engines surged forward, their machine-spirits howling in predatory delight.
Beneath the Titan guns, Skitarii legions advanced without pause. Radium carbines spat lethal fire, phosphor weapons lit the battlefield in burning white arcs, reducing heretic infantry to glowing ruin. The ground became awash with ichor, oil, ash, and twisted metal.
Shalaxi laughed.
The sound alone shattered targeting solutions and corrupted range data. The air twisted as the Dark Prince's favoured champion moved. One moment, Shalaxi stood amidst the daemonic host; the next, it was among the Warhounds. Blades flashed in arcs of impossible speed. A hunter-engine shrieked as its void shields collapsed beneath caressing, precise strikes. Armour peeled back not through brute force, but through exquisite control. The Titan toppled, its reactor breaching in a blossom of incandescent ruin.
---WARHOUND-SEVEN: TERMINATED---
Pleasure-static surged through the air as Slaanesh's legions fed upon excess—excess firepower, excess faith, excess destruction.
Scrum felt the machine-spirit of his Reaver strain violently, its emotion-cores assaulted by alien sensation. He slammed himself deeper into the throne, forcing his will through steel and code alike, sending commands of restraint and endurance to the spirit as it buckled beneath the daemonic assault.
"By the Omnissiah's will," he snarled, "you will endure."
The Reaver advanced once more, macro-cannon thundering as it locked directly onto Shalaxi Hellbane. The greater daemon turned, blades raised. Steel met excess. Shalaxi reeled from the Titan's body; the certainty of plasteel meeting the impossible of the immaterium caused a snarl of inhumanity to escape Shalaxi's mouth.
The Reaver body of Scrum's Titan roared as its plasma engines flared, leaving puffs of engine smoke as the surrounding oxygen was forcefully drawn in and ignited. The piston legs of the Reaver began to reach their maximum extension.
The battle for Khyzai Pass became a storm of fire, sensation, and screaming data—Titans striding through daemonic hordes, the Skitarii legions and heretics of Slaanesh alike burning and melting under both allied and enemy fire.
The targeting arrays of the Skitarii constantly jumped, from foe to ally alike; they could not fire without risking hitting one of their own.
The heretics and harpies who had just arrived looked on with happiness at the new toys that had appeared; their talons and weapons gleamed like flowers as they cleaved through the steel bodies of the Skitarii.
Mechanicus priests shouted in fervour of the Lord's codes whilst spraying photon-powered lasers, ploughing through lines of heretics.
The daemons and heretics alike fell, some screaming from the pleasure of being struck, others screaming from the pain of their flesh being melted and cauterised.
From behind the battle lines came heavy armoured servitors bearing heavy flamers. With one simple line of code emitted from a priest, these barrels of hell unleashed torrents of promethium fire upon the daemons.
Daemons shrieked as their bodies melted, their souls forcibly dragged back into the Warp as the battle became ever more saturated in the psychic power of the Dark Prince.
(AN: Hope you enjoyed, and please leave a comment and see you guys next time! )