Victory Pointless

Farreskh stepped out of the translocation beam and marched forwards, her Lychguard in lockstep behind her.  The Night Scythe that had delivered them peeled away back into the upper atmosphere, dodging flak explosions as it went.

“Ah, Lady Farreskh,” Klotophis came towards her over the rubble, shimmering occasionally as he adjusted his personal timestream to avoid flying bolt shells.  “I am of course delighted to see you, but in the interests of Your Majesty’s safety I wonder if you might not be more comfortable back aboard the ship?” He ducked into cover and bade her follow.

“Noble Chronomancer, your concern for my safety is as appreciated as it is sincere.  But perhaps you forget we are immortal?  Besides, I have always found it somewhat unseemly to command from orbit.”

“Reanimation is not without its risks,” Klotophis remarked darkly.  “And I beg Your Ladyship’s pardon, but the Phaeron commands here.”

“Ah yes, my beloved husband.  Where is he, pray?”

“Away, leading the Royal Hunt.  He will return shortly.  In the meantime he has left me in charge here to secure the landing site.”

“I see.  Well, you’re doing a marvellous job.” She eyed the ornately-armoured figures that were approaching through the ruins, seemingly from all directions.  “What are these creatures?  Their garb looks almost Necrontyr…”

Klotophis scoffed.  “I think not, Majesty!  Pale imitations at best.  They are humans, or used to be.  Most of them are mere automatons, empty suits of armour.  Their gods tricked them into giving up their physical forms, I believe.”

“Oh, no similarities at all, then.”

Klotophis ignored this.  “They call themselves the Thousand Sons.”

“Indeed, a thousand?” She turned the idea over in her mind.  “We really must introduce these humans to the concept of contraception.”

“Quite.  Well, as charming as this little visit has been, my lady, I must insist that you return to the ship.  Everything is well under control here, as you can clearly-”

The incoming fire grew in intensity as the Thousand Sons began their assault in earnest.  Necron Warriors began to drop faster than they could be replaced.

Ahead of the main Chaos lines came huge shambling monstrosities, forms rippling with perpetual mutation.  They hurt to even look at, the Necrons’ purely material senses struggling to make sense of the waves of warp emanations surrounding them and glitching uncontrollably in response.  The largest of these – a Mutilith Vortex Beast, an info-drop from Klotophis helpfully but distractingly informed her – barrelled forwards, blasting apart the last of the Warriors and thundering into her retinue of Lychguard while a pair of hideous Chaos Spawn slammed into them from the other side.  The Lychguard ended up back-to-back, sandwiched between tentacled horrors, dispersion shields forming twin walls against which slimy pseudopods and a variety of malformed limbs beat fiercely.

Farreskh slammed the butt of her staff on the ground and the glowing scythe blade sprang out, folding into reality from interdimensional space.  “It looks like you could use my help after all, Chronomancer,” she remarked, but he had already vanished.

Klotophis scuttled away from the conflict, body weaving low through the rubble like a fish seeking refuge from predators in the jagged rocks of a reef.

His flight was halted as a Rhino transport skidded to a halt in front of him, disgorging a squad of Rubric Marines who wasted no time in opening fire.

Enchanted bolt rounds rammed into him, blasting him apart from the inside and scattering his-

He rewound back a second, undoing his destruction, then timejumped forwards again, skipping through the fusilade of shells.  They did not hit, but now the Chaos marines were upon him.  He scrubbed frantically through possible future timelines, searching for one that did not involve him being repeatedly punched in the face.  He did not find one.  His chronomantic energy stores depleted, he turned down his pain receptors and accepted his fate.

The last thing he saw before his ocular shattered was the Rhino first rocking on its tracks and then being hacked cleanly through the middle, separating into two parts through which stalked the great form of Phaeron Barrakhad the Black.  The king had returned.

The last thing Klotophis did before losing consciousness was to trigger the interstitial signal.

NOW!

Across the battlefield the air cracked and split, disgorging Deathmarks from the dimensional oubliettes where they had waited in ambush.  They picked their targets and fired in coordinated patterns, first taking out the Sorcerers then moving onto the Rubricae, the remainder of which were finished off by Ophidian Destroyers bursting up out of the ground.  Doomsday Arks sailed in in a pincer move, cannons blasting streams of exotic energy into the enemy war machines.

The trap had been sprung.

Farreskh swung her voidscythe around in an arc that severed the Vortex Beast’s leg.  It slumped forwards onto the stump and the Lychguard surged in, surrounded it, hacking at it, using their hyperphase swords like butcher’s cleavers.  Eventually, the creature stopped writhing.

She wiped her brow, realising only afterwards that this was merely a residual habit that no longer served a purpose.  The mutant beasts had taken a lot of killing and she’d had to channel a substantial portion of her own energy reserves into her Lychguard to keep them operational.

The sounds of further combat came from the other side of a nearby wall.  She sighed – another vestigial habit with no breath to exhale – channeled power into her limbs and smashed her way through the flimsy Imperial masonry.

She found herself face to face with the enemy general and immediately enacted duelling protocols.  Sparks and small fissures in the fabric of reality burst around them as the contradictory notions of voidblade and force weapon met and deflected one another again and again.

Over the Sorcerer’s decorated pauldron she caught sight of the great tripod form of Phaeron Barrakhad the Black, standing alone in a ring of Rubric Marines, his bladed limbs moving with perfectly optimised brutality.

“Ah, Beloved Husband!” She called to him.  “It is good that you could join us!”

He glanced over at her quickly and then again, more slowly, taking in the scythe whirling through precise martial routines in her hands, seeing the spattered warp-beast blood that still gleamed and dripped from her plating.  For the first time since she had awakened Barrakhad seemed to truly look at her.

“…Beloved…” He growled, softly.

+Nachmund Gauntlet Strike Force Crusade Battle+

Mission: Vital Stronghold

Forces: Necrons (Awakened Dynasty) vs Thousand Sons (Grand Coven)

Result: Necron Victory, 7:3.