The Whole Team!
19: Chapter 19: Elves?
The Whole Team!
Alex was moving the unused las-packs onto the chimera.
“Eldar…” As he moved them, he mulled over the word, “Eldar…
sounds like Elves?” [As a reward, I will send you to a Terra with elves, beast-eared girls, and female angels…] Elves.
Pointy ears.
Mysterious.
All correct!
Alex’s eyes slowly lit up.
He had fought all his life, facing either metal hulks or burly mercenaries.
Could it be—the promised benefits were finally here?
Elegant and noble space elf girls wearing veils or skin-tight armor?
“Big guy.” Alex leaned in toward Thaddeus, who was checking his Chainsword, his tone carrying an uncontrollable anticipation.
“Those Eldar…
what do they look like?
I mean—do they fit human aesthetics?” Thaddeus stopped what he was doing.
He looked at Alex with an extremely strange expression.
As if he were looking at a madman asking a meat grinder, “Can this thing do a massage?” “Aesthetics?” The young Space Marine sneered and revved his Chainsword.
The teeth shrieked, echoing through the staging area.
“They are indeed ‘beautiful,’ brother.” His tone carried a grim chill.
“Wait until you hear a Banshee’s howl—that sound will snap your nerves like harp strings.
Then, before you even fall, they’ll cleave you from head to crotch with their blades.” He paused, then added: “And then there’s the other kind.
The ones that slip out of the Webway gates.
They’ll flay your skin to make cloaks and grind your bones into ornaments.” “Are those…
the same kind?” “Who cares?” Thaddeus snorted, “Ark Eldar, Drukhari / Dark Aeldari—to the Imperium, they’re all xenos.” “Don’t think too much.” Tarkus’s voice came from beside the drop pod, interrupting Alex’s fantasy.
“Brother, get in the pod.” “We’re not taking vehicles this time—we’re slamming directly onto the top of the communication tower.” Alex sighed.
He stuffed the last of his fantasies about a “beautiful alternate world” into the depths of his heart and crawled into the cramped individual insertion pod.
A boarding torpedo variant modified by Chapter Artificers, specialized for precision delivery.
“Fine then.” The mag-locks snapped shut.
Darkness descended.
Inside the pod, Alex closed his eyes and muttered to himself: “Whatever kind of elves they are…
as long as they can kill me, they’re good elves.” Boom—!
The landing gear unlocked.
The insertion pods slammed like iron rain toward the gray planet shrouded in industrial smog.
Below, in the shadows of the Hive City spires, several slender and agile figures were flickering between the void and the curtain of rain.
The streamlined weapons in their hands gleamed with a lethal cold light.
They were indeed waiting, but certainly not for an embrace.
— Boom—!
It wasn’t a landing; it was practically a directed impact.
Alex felt like his internal organs had been tossed into his throat.
The insertion pod’s retro-rockets only fired for the last half-second—less to cushion the blow and more to shake him up more evenly.
Explosive bolts detonated with a dull thud, and the doors blasted outward.
A damp, cold wind rushed in, mixed with the metallic tang of acid rain unique to the upper atmosphere.
Alex unfastened the mag-locks and stumbled out of the smoking insertion pod.
He looked up—and then took a deep breath of cold air.
This was truly the closest he’d ever been to going home.
The landing site was at the summit of a Gothic spire that pierced the clouds.
Beneath his feet were slippery gargoyle sculptures and hollow metal grates.
Through the gaps, he could see the abyss thousands of meters below—the lights of the Underhive were like a sea of stars, with roiling clouds of industrial toxins surging within.
Countless massive statues of saints stood all around.
Draped in the curtain of rain, their hollow eyes watched these uninvited guests.
“So this is the upper levels of Meridian…” Alex held onto a dripping gargoyle head, feeling a bit of acrophobia.
“You call this a communication station?
This looks like some vampire’s castle.” Boom!
Red drop pods smashed craters into the rooftop.
The Astartes stepped out from the dust and smoke, their red power armor exceptionally striking in the gray rain, like fresh blood forced into stone.
Tarkus raised a fist, signaling to halt.
“Heat signatures ahead.” Cyrus’s extremely low voice came through the comm channel.
The Scout Sergeant had already vanished into the rain and shadows the moment he landed.
“No footsteps or engine sounds.
But…
there are energy readings.
Strange—it’s like a psychic masking field.” Avitus set up his heavy bolter, its muzzle pointing at the stone bridge leading to the communication array.
“Come out, xenos!” he roared.
“I know you’re there!” No one answered, only the pitter-patter of rain hitting the ceramite armor.
Alex gripped his melta carbine and squinted into the mist ahead.
A small, pitiful shred of expectation remained in his heart—legendary elegant elves, perhaps draped in veils, perhaps holding exquisite longbows.
Then, he saw a cold glint.
It was a disc-shaped blade shadow so thin it almost didn’t exist, spinning into his field of vision, sharp enough to seem to slice through the rain.
Swish—!
The sound was so faint it was almost inaudible.
Alex instinctively tilted his head.
The disc grazed past his ear, shearing off a lock of hair and leaving a numbing chill.
Immediately after, it sliced into the neck of the gargoyle behind him like cutting through tofu.
Crack.
The monomolecular edge tore open a gap.
Vibrations spread along the crack.
Half the head crashed down, and rubble rolled across the grate, making a harsh metallic scraping sound.
Alex touched his chilly ear.
“…Darts?” Countless pairs of eyes lit up in the mist.
They were slender eyes, filled with arrogance and killing intent.
“Mon-keigh.” An ethereal, haughty voice echoed through the rain, and from the depths of the mist, a figure slowly emerged.
She wore a cloak embroidered with runes that glowed faintly in the rain like ghost-fires floating in the air.
Her tall helmet and hood outlined the silhouette of a third “eye”—the symbol of a sorcerous sigil.
A dark gem on her chest glowed dimly in the rain.
Warlock.
“You have defiled this path.” Her voice was devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
“For the future of the ark.
You must die here.” The mist cleared slightly, and Alex finally saw the “elves” he had been longing for.
They indeed had pointy ears, slender and tall builds, and their movements were clean and efficient.
But there were no veils, no tenderness.
They wore form-fitting mesh armor inlaid with streamlined wraithbone plates—pulsing with their breath like living things.
Their tall helmets and masks were painted with eerie runes, and raindrops were silently repelled upon hitting them.
The weapons in their hands were neither guns nor bows, but a strangely shaped, streamlined launcher.
“Expel the Mon-keigh!” Accompanied by a not-so-pleasant shout, the group of “elves” opened fire.
Zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt—!
A sky full of cold light pressed down like a blizzard.
Those were shurikens.
Monomolecular-edged discs, propelled by gravity-acceleration arrays, slicing through flesh like paper.
Alex performed a sliding tackle and ducked behind the base of a saint’s statue.
Even through the cover, he could hear the sound of those shurikens carving into the stone, and stone dust mixed with acid rain splashed across his face.
“Return fire!” Tarkus roared.
Avitus’s heavy bolter began to roar.
Boom, boom, boom!
Thick bolter rounds tore through the rain, striking the Eldar positions and sending stone chips and wraithbone fragments flying everywhere.
But then, something happened that left Alex dumbfounded.
Every step these Eldar took seemed to have been calculated in advance.
They didn’t stand their ground like Orks; every step was perfectly positioned in the bolter rounds’ blind spots.
They repositioned in advance using the rain and the shadows of the statues, as if they had seen the trajectories long before the fire began.
Meanwhile, the Warlock stood at the rear of the line, her hands enveloped in a pale blue psychic glow.
The runes on her fingertips lit up one by one—concealment runes.
The mist wasn’t falling from the sky but rising from the ground and cracks, crawling along the Guardians’ ankles and wrapping around their silhouettes like living things.
Light was bent, the sense of distance was flattened, and human judgment became sluggish within that mist: clearly seeing them standing there, yet also seeing nothing but a blank space.
“Aim for that Warlock!
Kill the Psyker first!” But the Eldar wouldn’t give them the chance.
Two Guardians fell in front of the Warlock almost simultaneously—one was hit directly in the chest by a bolter round, his wraithbone plates and mesh armor exploding into fragments; the other was pierced through the helmet by Cyrus’s sniper round, his slender body toppling backward.
But more Guardians filled the gap.
“And If you’re enjoying it, drop a Power Stone for me!”