"Another wretched prophecy. No wonder the Aeldari are pushing so hard."
Zhou Ye looked at the headless Drukhari corpse and turned the situation over in his mind.
In truth, this entire Aeldari brawl had a simple enough explanation. This planet sat on an important Webway node. If the Webway here became corrupted, Nurgle's daemons would flood through an entire stretch of it. There was even a real chance a significant section of the Webway would collapse entirely.
The Craftworld it served would follow shortly after. So the Craftworld Aeldari had come looking for an alliance with humanity. Not without ulterior motives, but they were willing to put real resources into it.
As for the Drukhari....
This particular Kabal was operating out of Commorragh's far fringes and had come purely to grab what they could carry. The Webway nodes out here were too distant from their territory to pose any meaningful threat. So they had decided to scoop up some Corsairs for fun, then noticed this world was about to die and moved to grab even more before it did. Then the fighting broke out.
"Insufferable rabble-rousers. Ai-chan, wipe them all out. Now that I know this Craftworld faction is going to stake everything on defending the stretch of Webway they depend on, there is no point letting the Corsairs or anyone else find out about it. Otherwise those Aeldari will come knocking at my door, and I will have a permanent headache."
Whether the Aeldari lived or died was not his concern. But Zhou Ye had a working framework now.
Four varieties of bean sprout. Each distinct.
Drukhari: killed on sight. Craftworld Aeldari and Corsairs: watch what they are actually doing before deciding whether to kill them. Harlequins: he found riddle-speakers insufferable on principle. And all four shared one particular trait, which was that regardless of variety, they all operated on a logic so thoroughly alien that it defied rational prediction.
So Zhou Ye had absolutely no interest in managing a collection of Aeldari. Who knew what manner of chaos these creatures with their completely unreadable thought patterns would produce. And more importantly, if he absorbed too many Aeldari souls using Imaginary energy, Slaanesh would inevitably react in some way.
He was not afraid of them pulling off something clever. What he feared was them doing something catastrophically stupid. Aeldari were much more likely to produce the latter. So faced with the remaining Drukhari, he had made a decision: send every last soul to their youngest goddess. Let them reunite with their deity. A perfectly fitting resolution.
"Wipe out the Drukhari. This lot seem to think that since they are going to die anyway, they might as well try to drag everyone back to Commorragh with them."
Zhou Ye glanced at the distant brawl of Aeldari factions tearing each other apart, and quietly reached for his weapon.
Today he was going to cut through the entire Drukhari force single-handedly. Even their strange and esoteric weapon technologies did not concern him.
"Blood for the God-Emperor. Skulls for the Golden Throne. WAAAGH...."
With that peculiar battle cry, Zhou Ye charged forward. The Boltgun he had extensively modified, fitted with unlimited ammunition, harvested enemies in swathes with comfortable ease.
Meanwhile, at the front line.
A massive fortress descended from the sky. This was the planetary Governor's residence, which Zhou Ye had calculated would be too exposed in orbit given how much trouble the void was about to see, and had simply dropped it down whole. He set the newly printed Imperial Fists to reinforcing and refitting the structure, while he watched the different units operate the way different ability-classes do in a strategy game.
Imperial Fists came with the build-fortifications ability. War Hounds came with a morale-bonus aura. Luna Wolves, as it turned out, had a powerful inclination toward forming brotherhoods.
For instance....
"Volvok, do you not find this Chapter a little strange?"
The Space Wolves' other ranking officer, Stroka, turned to his superior. Not long ago a squad of Astartes had warmly invited them to join their brotherhood, then proceeded to spend the session cursing Abaddon the Despoiler with a creativity and intensity of language that had the Astartes themselves looking mildly impressed.
The profanity alone was remarkable. Even by Astartes standards.
"I have no idea. But are those Blood Angels or Salamanders?"
Volvok pointed toward the distant front line, where a different group of Astartes was sharing drinks with mortal soldiers, listening to their troubles, and quietly calming whatever pain they carried. Something felt wrong about it, but he could not isolate exactly what.
The Space Wolves were decent enough to their mortal charges. But they did not empathize to this level. Was this truly the bloodline of the compassionate Sanguinius? That did not seem right either. Even the Lamenters, who would sacrifice everything without hesitation to save mortal lives, could not reach this depth of shared feeling.
Then there was a second group, saying nothing at all, standing with an expression that left genuine uncertainty as to whether they were in a state of absolute focused readiness or simply refusing to do anything.
They concluded that this entire world operated on a level of abstraction they were not equipped to process. At least the battle-brothers working on the fortifications made sense. Though they were forced to actively ignore a small faction within that group, a cluster of warriors locked in mutual verbal combat over fundamentally irreconcilable construction philosophies.
Honestly, if not for the ancient Dreadnoughts telling them to pay it no mind and that every single warrior present was loyal, Volvok would have gone to conduct tests on all of them without a second thought.
Which was also why Zhou Ye had sent several Dreadnoughts down. Internal chaos was simply a part of humanity's experience that had to be managed.
But compared to the heat and noise of everything outside, the atmosphere inside the command room was distinctly different. The Aestia Regiment's Colonel and his Commissar sat there, and something was not right between the two of them.
"I never imagined the Emperor's Angels could be this warm. Fighting beside them is a genuine honor. What are you drinking?"
The Colonel looked out at the scene of unlikely camaraderie and felt something genuine stir in him.
His Commissar, however, had arrived at a state of quiet dissolution. In truth, since being assigned as Commissar to this newly formed Astra Militarum Legion, something in him had come slightly undone.
Even more so than the Commissar assigned to the Death Korps of Krieg regiment next to him. Krieg soldiers were at least human. But what exactly were the Holy Necrons under his command? Every time he gave a speech and looked into the clear and perfectly empty eyes of the undead warriors in front of him, he found himself wondering whether an assignment to an Ogryn regiment might have been preferable by comparison.
At least Ogryns gave some kind of response.
And then....
"Right now my only hope is that the worst does not happen."
His Colonel's ability was beyond question. He had earned the respect of everyone on their homeworld through his own record. But the man's experience was simply too narrow. As someone who had been fighting in this merciless galaxy for over fifty years, who had watched his entire previous regiment ground out of existence, who had been reassigned to this posting when there was nowhere else left to put him.
When he had first seen the four Contemptor Dreadnought Ancients, he had not felt honored. He had felt his heart stop.
Then he had watched the Star of Trailblaze Chapter deploy in its near-entirety under a sky full of streaming light. And now he had only one thought, which was that he wanted to die in a way that meant something. Not the way his previous soldiers had died, their souls left without peace.
Because in fifty-plus years, he had never once witnessed a battlefield that required a full Chapter deployment with Dreadnoughts called up before the main engagement had even begun. Emperor above. What was on this planet.
.....
Meanwhile, in the Corsairs' camp.
A group of Aeldari stared in mute horror at the towering armored figure standing before them. Behind him lay mountains of Drukhari dead, stacked in drifts.
While they had been trading blows with the Drukhari, this individual had carved through the entire Drukhari line on his own. He had disposed of an Archon the way a full-grown man disposes of a small child.
What kind of creature was this? Where had this oversized tin can come from, and why was it so utterly relentless? They were already debating whether to call in their Phantom Titan and their Wraith constructs.
"Why have you come here?"
Zhou Ye tossed a Drukhari corpse aside and walked toward the group of Corsairs, speaking with measured calm. One hand held a singularity, ready at any moment to tear everyone present apart if needed.
"We came to defend Tillius. Human, you do not know what this place is about to face. The revelation of fate....."
"I know. You came to protect the Webway node. We came to resist the corruption. I have now dealt with the Commorragh rabble for you."
"......"
Silence fell over the gathering. Then Zhou Ye stated it simply and directly: "Neither of us can trust the other. What you had best do right now is move to the front line and hold back some portion of the daemon forces. If you choose not to, I will convert this entire area into a forward position against the daemons myself."
Half threat, half blunt summary delivered, Zhou Ye turned and walked. He had no interest in extended conversation with this particular batch of Aeldari. The Nurgle plague zombies and the Orks were currently tearing into each other, and the window that fighting created was narrow.
For his own part, he was planning to slip into the middle of the zombie horde and absorb a few small snacks while he was in there. Convert the energy.
He had reached the point of being hungry enough that even Nurgle's daemons were starting to look edible.
Well then....
---o---