Across the lands of Commorragh, shrouded in darkness and chaos, the Iron Men surged forward like a silver deluge.
Wherever this quicksilver tide passed, the daemonic host vanished like pebbles swallowed by a rising sea. Cold, silver-white metallic carapaces gleamed with a frigid light in the gloom. Driven by Quantum Energy Cores, the machines' servo-motors and synthetic musculature emitted a low, predatory hum. The rhythmic thud of their heavy frames announced the arrival of the Iron Men's mechanical legion to the galaxy.
The Drukhari fighting on the front lines had already witnessed the horror of these killing machines. High-intensity energy beams and blades wreathed in pale gold wove a web of death that sent the daemons into piercing shrieks of dissolution. Even the traitors of the Emperor's Children, who normally reveled in pain and ignored sorcerous agony, were utterly overwhelmed by the relentless, tidal advance of the automata.
Suddenly, the Drukhari who had been spearheading the slaughter slunk away like serpents, vanishing into the city's labyrinthine shadows and jagged corners.
Axion, however, had no intention of letting the xenos hide. His vast mechanical host continued its inexorable entry into the Dark City. But then, a peculiar quantum signal pulsed from a bizarre structure deep within Commorragh, immediately seizing Axion's attention.
A detachment consisting of six Automated Sentry-Troopers and two Sapient Machine Automata was dispatched directly toward the source of the transmission.
The towering spire bore a distinct crest: a serpent of interlocking green and black, its maw wide, with a single drop of venom falling from its flickering tongue. This was the sigil of the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue. As an infamous and powerful organization within the Dark City, they maintained their own sovereign citadel, even while locked in perpetual rivalry with the Kabal of the Black Heart.
The Archon of the Poisoned Tongue was none other than Aurelia Malys. It was from the inner sanctums of this very building that the quantum signal originated.
The moment the great doors were breached, guards from the Poisoned Tongue unleashed a desperate ambush. These warriors wore armor that was both functional and baroque – black and dark purple plates etched with intricate, swirling patterns. These engravings held cryptic symbolic significance, marking their lineage and Kabalite standing. Gems emitting a cold, baleful light were embedded into the war-gear of the high-born, shimmering in the half-light and adding an aura of predatory mystery.
Several warriors lunged forward, their power swords humming with dark energy as they struck at the lead Sentry-Troopers. Those further back squeezed the triggers of their splinter pistols and venom flickers. In that heartbeat, the supernatural celerity of the Aeldari was on full display. Even the Emperor's Angels, the Adeptus Astartes, might have fallen before such a calculated strike.
Their blades were infused with the unique psychic malice of the Drukhari; as they swung, dark energy rippled along the edges, designed not only to rend flesh but to shatter the victim's mental fortitude, inflicting a twin agony of body and soul. The venom flickers were loaded with toxins personally concocted by Malys, a mistress of the Haemonculus arts. These lethal, corrosive fluids were designed to melt through ceramite and saturate the nervous system, dealing agonizing, persistent damage to both living tissue and mechanical components.
The splinter pistols, meanwhile, acted as short-range harvesters, saturating the air with clouds of jagged shards.
Yet, there was a fundamental flaw in their tactics.
The Sentry-Trooper at the vanguard had its head sheared off by a psychic blade, and its torso suffered a deep, jagged rent. But a digital consciousness core knows no pain, and an Iron Man possesses no soul. In the face of an Automated Sentry-Trooper, the "suffering" infused into the psychic blades was meaningless; they were merely sharp pieces of metal.
The headless Sentry-Trooper did not cease its function. Its arms blurred in a counter-strike, instantly reducing the two Poisoned Tongue warriors to a spray of gore. Splinter fire hammered against its chassis in a cacophony of sparks, and the corrosive toxins began to hiss and bubble against its plating.
The damaged machine began to vent strange vapors. Its metallic frame was failing; the massive breach in its torso had left the Quantum Energy Core nearly exposed.
Without a moment's hesitation, the Sentry-Trooper behind it delivered a powerful kick, launching the heavily damaged machine directly into the thick of the guard detail. The Drukhari warriors, momentarily stunned by the machine's clinical lack of self-preservation, could only stare in shock.
A blinding flash erupted from the failing automaton's chassis.
BOOM!
The corroded machine detonated. White-hot metal fragments, accelerated by the failing reactor, turned into a storm of shrapnel. Aeldari mesh armor was as fragile as parchment against such a blast. Every guard lying in wait was instantly riddled with holes.
The mechanical squad stepped over the carnage. A Sapient Machine Automaton at the rear knelt to retrieve a twisted, glowing quantum core from the wreckage. A red laser cutter hummed, slicing the housing open so an auxiliary arm could salvage the few remaining functional quantum computation crystals.
Inside the building, the signal strength spiked.
The squad fanned out, utilizing multi-point triangulation to lock onto the source. Once the coordinates were confirmed, the Sentry-Troopers stepped aside. Two Sapient Machine Automata moved forward, their auxiliary arms deploying high-output cutting arrays to breach the floor. These heavy-duty cutters lacked the reach of a particle vibration sword but possessed far superior structural breaching efficiency. Furthermore, the power reserves of a Sapient Automaton far exceeded those of the line-infantry units.
The two machines quickly carved a hole through the floor's exquisite mosaic. Layers of psychoplastic wraithbone and reinforced alloy plummeted into the darkness below. The Sentry-Troopers vaulted through the gap, while the Automata used their auxiliary arms to lower themselves with calculated precision. Unlike combat units designed for any environment, even a Sapient Automaton could not guarantee it wouldn't suffer a malfunction from a fifteen-meter drop.
By the time the Automata touched down, the Sentry-Troopers had already finished the purge. The only guards remaining were scattered chunks of Aeldari flesh and corpses ignited into pyres by neutron beams.
Using the same clinical efficiency, the squad breached another hundred meters into the spire's foundations. As a cutter crudely tore through a final interior wall, an object emitting a faint, ethereal blue glow was revealed resting upon a shelf.
"Federation Standard Material Transfer Crate?"
The squad's discovery was immediately fed back to Axion's sub-consciousness.
An Automaton stepped forward, deploying nanites from its mechanical palm to interface with the crate. To its logic-cores' surprise, the quantum encryption key was not even engaged. Instead, a crude, primitive lock, manufactured by the Imperium of Man, had been retrofitted onto the crate's locking mechanism.
The nanites made short work of the crude lock, dissolving it in seconds while simultaneously repairing the crate's surface. As the Automaton lifted the lid, a semi-transparent crystal resembling a shard of pure light was revealed.
Scanning beams swept over the crystal repeatedly, reading its parameters and encoded data.
"Panacea Standard Template Construct! And it is not a single-use deployment shard... it is a Master Template! The Aeldari have violated the Peace Accords by stealing Federation assets! Such lowly thievery must be met with due punishment!"
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