While the Jetbike squads locked horns with the daemon-engines, the Falcata Attack Speeders swooped down to join the fray. Swooping from the violet skies in steep, coordinated diving runs, they unleashed salvos of krak missiles and searing lascannon beams, hammering the host of mechanical abominations with surgical precision. The detonations tore through the ranks of the daemon-engines, throwing up immense plumes of suffocating dust and warp-fire, obliterating the localized configurations of the Forge of Souls alongside the constructs themselves.
At the spearhead of the counter-offensive, Jaghatai Khan led an assault echelon comprising high-speed Jetbikes and heavy grav-haulers, plunging directly into the heart of the melee. His personal Jetbike tore across the churning battlefield like a streak of white lightning. In his grasp, the White Tiger Dao gleamed with a cold, lethal refulgence; with every sweeping arc, the Primarch sliced cleanly through the structural joints and unholy articulations of the daemon-engines. Under his peerless martial leadership, the warriors of the White Scars quickly wrested the tactical initiative.
"Hurkha! What have your senses gleaned?"
Even amidst the blinding speed of the skirmish, the Great Khan never ceased evaluating the anomalous topography of the blighted world. He keyed his line to the Stormseer's vox-frequency.
Psychic energies rolled and crackled in a turbulent aura around Hurkha. Visions flickered like dying embers, and chaotic whispers bled into his consciousness, accompanied by the booming, resonant echoes of the Immaterium's dread tides. Yet beneath the majesty of these warp-born pronouncements lay a warped and fragmented reality.
"Great Khan, I see strange, conflicting portents," Hurkha voiced, straining against the psychic backlash. "Two thousand kilometers to the northwest, at the precipice of a jagged mountain range, stands a grotesque citadel. The key to our escape from the Webway may well be housed within its spires."
"However," the Stormseer paused, the strain evident in his transhuman throat, "a malevolent presence of immense power dwells there. The entire structure is choked beneath a suffocating shroud of Chaos energies."
Upon receiving Hurkha's report, Jaghatai executed a hard bank, bringing his Jetbike into a steep climb. His post-human gaze pierced the hazy distance toward the northwest. Though the staggering distance made it impossible to visually discern the mountain range, the Great Khan's instinct could track the roiling pillars of dark energy clawing into the upper atmosphere.
"Two Khans will split their brotherhoods and follow me northwest," Jaghatai commanded, his voice brokers no compromise. "The remaining forces will fan out to reconnoiter the other quadrants. Conserve your strength and fight defensively, we have no reinforcing elements on this world."
Having broken the back of the initial daemon-engine swarm, Jaghatai Khan and his chosen vanguard of two brotherhoods shot across the wasteland like a gathering storm. The banshee wail of their Jetbike engines reverberated across the dead earth, a primeval hymn of war that heralded their absolute defiance.
As they pushed deeper, the terrain grew increasingly hostile. Jagged, misshapen spires of obsidian rock loomed out of the dim haze like the talons of predatory daemons, casting long, twisting shadows that seemed to snap at the passing warriors. The air grew thick with a rancid, sulfurous reek, an unholy miasma that pressed against their power armor with physical weight. With every league claimed, the oppressive malice of the Warp grew heavier.
Though the Scimitar-pattern Jetbikes traveled at breakneck velocities, the reactive instincts of the planet were terrifyingly swift.
A piercing, discordant screech rent the air from the cloud banks directly ahead. The unnatural frequency was so foul it rattled the transhuman focus of the legionaries, scraping against their mental fortitude. Massive, dark silhouettes began to drop from the churning, warp-infused storm clouds.
"Evasive maneuvers!" the Khan roared from the absolute front of the column. Even as he issued the warning, he twisted the throttles of his steed, executing a flawless, high-speed weave while drawing his heavy blade.
One of the diving shadows missed the Khan by a hair's breadth. In the same fluid motion, the Primarch brought his weapon down in a punishing, kinetic arc across the attacker's trajectory.
A wet, mechanical crunch echoed as foul, pressurized ichor sprayed into the air. A massive form crashed violently into the cracked earth, plowing a deep furrow through the dirt.
It was a Heldrake.
The beast's draconic form was a horrific tapestry of flesh and corrupted cybernetics. Where its alloy-plated neck met its torso, a monstrous, ragged gap poured smoking oil and black blood; the Khan's single strike had severed both the daemon's organic spine and its reinforced structural frame.
Heldrakes were typically the product of dark rituals that fused the souls of warp-entities with Imperial fighters and their damned pilots. However, the specimens deployed on Wyrmwood had been meticulously re-engineered by Vashtorr the Arkifane. They were less biological than their counterparts elsewhere in the galaxy, resembling instead twisted, macroscopic bio-mechanical constructs.
Yet even this enhanced durability was nothing before the wrath of a son of the Emperor. With a single, passing blow, a monster that normally required concentrated melta or plasma fire to bring down had been cleanly decapitated.
While the Khan demonstrated the godlike lethality of a Primarch, his veteran Space Marines faced a far more grueling trials.
The remaining aerial horrors, boasting wingspans tens of meters across, thrashed their blade-tipped wings as they dove through the scattered formation. Streams of baleful balefire, capable of vaporizing ceramite, chased the weaving tails of the White Scars' Jetbikes.
Yet the Scars were masters of the mobile hunt. Whenever a Heldrake singled out a battle-brother, the surrounding riders would immediately wheel around, executing a textbook encirclement to harry the beast from its blind spots. A relentless hail of mass-reactive bolter rounds erupted across the metallic hides of the monsters.
However, augmented by Vashtorr's unholy mechanical symbiosis, the already resilient carapaces of these Heldrakes had been hardened to an absurd degree. Standard bolt shells detonated harmlessly against the layered alloy plating.
Seeking to emulate their Primarch's feat, several legionaries drew their power swords and power lances, charging up the flanks of the low-flying beasts. But the mortal Astartes lacked the demi-god strength of Jaghatai; several weapons became wedged in the dense, reinforced hulls of the creatures, forcing the riders to disengage or lose their grip.
Amidst the swirling chaos, a veteran Scars warrior surged ahead, standing flat on the saddle of his speeding Jetbike before leaping blindly into the air. He slammed hard onto the spine of a soaring Heldrake. With crackling blue lightning arcing across his power fist, he drove a devastating blow straight into the construct's primary spinal column, shattering the mechanical linkages beneath.
The legionary plummeted to the earth alongside the thrashing, dying beast, disappearing into a dense shroud of dust and debris.
Moments later, the dust parted to reveal the warrior standing atop the carcass of his quarry, sparking a chorus of triumphant vox-cheers from his brothers. But the victory was short-lived. A sudden wave of ground-based daemon-engines erupted from the nearby craters, swarming the isolated legionary and tearing him apart before help could arrive.
The unending stream of enemy counter-attacks only solidified the Khan's resolve; the sheer desperation of the world's defense proved that whatever lay in the direction of Hurkha's vision was of paramount importance to the Archenemy.
"Disperse! Delegate command to squad level! Outmaneuver and advance!"
It was obvious the master of this world intended to anchor them here, drowning them in a war of attrition against an endless tide of mechanical beasts. The Khan had no intention of playing into the entity's hand.
The Stormseers and the Great Khan's personal Keshig pinned their throttles, keeping pace with the Primarch as he spearheaded a lightning-fast breakthrough. Meanwhile, the split brotherhoods dissolved into independent, scattered hunting packs, scattering across the barren plains in every direction.
This sudden shift in tactical doctrine caught the defensive forces off guard. The Heldrakes and ground-based daemon-engines hesitated for a critical second before splintering their own formations to give chase across the waste.
Punching through several dense curtains of ash and toxic warp-smoke, the looming silhouette of the mountain range finally filled the Great Khan's vision.
The smog arose from a gargantuan, grotesque structure anchoring the valley floor. It was a sprawling nightmare of industrial architecture—countless black towers constructed from massive, grinding gears, exposed ironworks, and anomalous materials that defied structural engineering. It bore all the hallmarks of a demonic assembly complex.
The earth shivered beneath the uninterrupted, industrial thrum of the facility. From its yawning blast-furnaces and assembly gates, a continuous stream of freshly forged daemon-engines marched into the wastes, directed by bizarre, lesser warp-constructs that labored tirelessly along the perimeters.
Staring at the sheer scale of the blasphemous factory, Jaghatai Khan's jaw tightened.
He was utterly spent on labyrinths. By his own reckoning, they had been charting the maddening, shifting corridors of the Webway for years. To attempt a conventional breach into a facility of this magnitude meant enduring another prolonged, claustrophobic maze.
Perhaps it was time for a more direct, characteristically unconventional style of entry.