Upon the twisted landscape, a colossal warp portal flickered incessantly, bleeding eerie arcs of witch-light. A vast host of daemons, led by Chaos warbands and Daemonic Overlords, stood in stagnant anticipation at the threshold.
The Doomrider, a Daemon Prince of the Dark Prince, had already plunged into the rift alongside a vanguard of daemons and Renegade Astartes. Behind them, the remaining traitors and Warp-spawn waited with bated breath, their warped desires screaming for release. Agony, torment, lechery, and avarice swelled within them, a collective psychic cancer seeking a host.
BOOM!
A geyser of incandescent, white-hot flame erupted from the throat of the warp conduit.
"ERRAGHHH!!!!"
The extreme thermal output stripped the physical form from a Daemonic Overlord standing sentinel at the gate. Even as its essence was reduced to a formless soul-wraith, the searing agony of that heat clung to it, refusing to dissipate. The fires roared, scouring the length of the warp tunnel.
As the disparate forces of Chaos recoiled in confusion, the spewing flames gradually subsided. A single soul surfaced from the turbulent Sea of Souls, the Doomrider, the very Prince who had led the charge into the reality beyond.
"Doomrider, Herald of our Lord, you—"
Pfft!
A towering daemon, a hermaphroditic horror of shifting flesh and perverse elegance, began to speak, only to be torn into psychic confetti by a sudden surge of overwhelming force. Tyrannical fury radiated from the Doomrider's tattered soul-form.
A sharp, piercing cackle echoed through the air, dripping with mockery and disdain.
"Haha! Look at this wretched sight. The so-called 'Doomrider' is nothing but a pretender, a failure. To be broken by so simple a skirmish? Your power is a hollow jest."
A daemon of exquisite, lithe proportions stepped forth from the ranks of grotesque monsters. Its skin was as smooth and flawless as polished marble, its movements a choreographed display of unnatural grace. Where a face should have been, a cluster of eerie tentacles rose like a magnificent, blasphemous crown.
"Shalaxi Helbane! Hmph. Have you forgotten the sting of our Lord's chastisement?"
Stung by the truth, Shalaxi Helbane manifested a spear and lashed out at the ethereal remains of the Doomrider. In its last foray into the Materium, the daemon had been forcibly banished back to the Warp by the Grey Knights, a failure that had incensed Slaanesh. Shalaxi had been cast into the Palace of Pains to endure agonizing penance, only released when the Dark Prince sought to thwart the rise of the Ynnari.
During the Battle of Iathglas, Shalaxi had led a Slaaneshi host to ambush the Ynnari gathering, single-handedly dueling and defeating five of the Aeldari's greatest champions: Lelith Hesperax, the Queen of Knives; Jain Zar, the Phoenix Lord of the Howling Banshees; the Solitaire of the Masque; and Yvraine alongside her mentor, the Visarch. It had beaten them to their knees, retreating only when Yvraine summoned the Avatar of Ynnead. Later, it had broadcast a mocking psychic transmission to the Aeldari, claiming they had merely fought a mere shard of its true power.
"You boastful fool," the Doomrider hissed. "My failure is a momentary lapse. My devotion to Slaanesh remains absolute. Every charge I lead, every soul I claim, is an offering of ecstasy. You stand here cackling like a common gossip; what have you truly achieved in His name?"
Shalaxi Helbane's origin was singular—it was a Greater Daemon crafted personally by Slaanesh's hand. Yet, since its inception, aside from dueling the champions of the other Ruinous Powers, it lacked a legacy of true conquest. It had disrupted the Ynnari, yes, but it had reaped no lasting fruit. The Doomrider, conversely, had brought world after world to ruin, drowning entire populations in the decadent embrace of the Prince of Pleasure.
Irritated by the Doomrider's scorn, Shalaxi Helbane cast a contemptuous glance at its rival and strode confidently into the warp portal.
Its bravado lasted seconds. A massive metallic object suddenly surged backward through the conduit, forcibly ejecting the daemon. The sphere, a gargantuan mechanical orb, pulsed with a lethality so profound it sent a wave of instinctive terror through the daemonic host.
As a blinding radiance ignited, a horrific Dimension Collapse detonated.
A surge of titanic power erupted from Slaanesh's Palace of Pleasure, wrapping around the burgeoning explosion. With a psychic shove, the Dark Prince's will forced the cataclysm back into the warp tunnel. Deprived of its containment fields, the Dimension Collapse Bomb detonated within the conduit. The malfunctioning Dimensional Distortion Engine whipped the Warp into a frenzy.
The resulting shockwave tore a localized wound in the Empyrean, sending tides of raw energy cascading into reality. The ripple reached the Screaming Vortex between the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse, tearing a new jagged rent in the fabric of space. Countless Slaaneshi daemons were annihilated, their very essences ground into pure, nameless energy by the void.
"SHALAXI HELBANE! DOOMRIDER!"
Slaanesh's furious shriek reverberated from the palace. Two barbed, thorny chains lashed out, ensnaring the souls of the two failures and dragging them screaming back toward the Palace of Pains.
…
"Hmm. It vanished."
Observing that the warp portal had remained unresponsive despite being scorched by the Destroyer-class Heavy Automata, Axion ordered several Eight-Legs to retrieve a Dimension Collapse Bomb from the armory.
The Iron Man did not know what lay on the other side, nor did it care. The most efficient method to seal a breach was to destabilize the environmental energy of the aperture. While detonating such a device within the Titan's Spear was illogical, delivering it directly into the enemy's teeth was a sound tactical solution.
To ensure a permanent closure and maximize lethality, Axion had selected the most potent ordnance available without hesitation. Since time within the Warp functioned non-linearly and would sever the quantum command link, Axion opted for a manual timer.
It set the fuse for a mere three seconds to prevent any chance of interception.
As the timer began its rhythmic countdown, the Eight-Legs synchronized their efforts and hurled the device into the shimmering maw of the rift. Axion began a silent internal chronometric count.
This time, the temporal flows appeared to synchronize. At the three-second mark, the portal within the Titan's Spear buckled and twisted before reality slammed shut, knitting itself whole. The unnatural energies dissipated into nothingness.
The Aeldari captives sat on the deck, stunned into a catatonic silence. They had just witnessed the entities their ancient seers called the Federation's Iron Men, beings of cold logic and silver steel, forcibly banish a Daemon Prince and slaughter hundreds of Heretic Astartes and thousands of Warp-spawn with the clinical detachment of a machine.