TURN TWO- Dark Eldar: Lorces Almstet gazed across at his mate, Kaali, who seemed to be pondering the same thing: whether or not to risk the Raiders in battle. With her wry smile of teeth filed to points, Lorces knew the answer... The Raiders hovered closer in at their command, but weapons still failed to reach their targets. That is, all except for the Dark Lance aboard the ominous Ravager. A lightless black ray coruscating with emerald motes seemed to rend the very air with its passing. It struck one of the Death Company falling upon their kin, who erupted in a cloud of putrid steam and cloying ash.
The third Haemonculus, Tain Gormere, flicked his cloak back to reveal an entrail-like pipe running down his arm to his hand. This device vomited forth corrupting fluids that sprayed over the entire Death Company. Two of the crazed Blood Angels absorbed the worst of it, clutching at their dissolving heads and chests with bubbling stumps for hands. From behind, a Dark Lance vaporized a fourth Death Company marine, and a fifth perished from a snub-nosed Blaster. Two more were mourned by the banshee screech of Dark Lances from another supporting squad, and then the field went silent as the equivalent of a locust swarm emerged from the barrels of countless braced splinter rifles. The last Death Company trooper collapsed in spasmodic death throes from a dozen different engineered toxins.
The Chaplain hesitated, just as a Talos sprang from a nearby garbage heap. Knowing of what the macabre contraption was capable, he fiercely swung his Crozius Arcanum at the thing--unable to dent the alien metal. In turn, of what its whirring and clacking riposte he could not parry, his Rosarius guarded him against. However, the knobby hands of the Grotesques were able to overbear him as Tain drove a scissorhand blade beneath Argus' helmet. Gagging from the wound and the searing poison, the Chaplain fled--jetting backwards from the defeat, and well out of pursuit range.
TURN TWO- Blood Angels: The pilot of the Honor Guard Rhino pumped the accelerator repeatedly. Nothing. They had been riding on fumes up until now, and there was nothing left to give. The supercharged engine had burned up the dregs of fuel up in its valor. The same happened with a second Rhino down the line--stone cold dead. With a curse, the Librarian led his Honor Guard out of the armor and into the smog, fingering chainswords and bolt pistols. The two Tactical squads followed his example, girding up for a frontal assault on the Dark Eldar line. The staggering Chaplain marched back up with them, invigorated by renewed strength.
From extreme range, a krak missile whistled past a Raider, but was answered by a barrage of missiles swirling down from the distant Whirlwind. It was consumed in a fireball that enveloped four Warriors standing too close. They blazed like bright effigies, then were smouldered by the rain as they died. Met'is, the Librarian charged up his plasma pistol and took expert aim on the hull of a Raider that ventured too close. In a wave of incredible heat, the nose of the skiff turned to glowing slag--incinerating the gunner and downing the craft. No hands were seen lost on board either ship... Both tactical squads concentrated their fire on the Talos. Bolter rounds exploded harmlessly on the beast's hide, but one meltagun was able to stave in its side. The pair of Land Speeders circled around the tower, utterly bathing the Talos in a holocaust of melta-fire. The arthropodic nightmare was vanquished without a chance to shed a single drop of blood.
Spurred on by this miracle, the Chaplain lunged in and split a Grotesque from its crown to its loin. Sergeant Alcaeus lopped the arms from another and kicked it to the ground, while the rest of the squad closed in murderously, hacking another three of the sideshow offspring apart. As the Haemonculus impaled one of the marines in rebuke, the remaining Grotesque turned and clutched him in abject gibbering fear. Distracted in their retreat, both were run down by the infuriated Blood Angels, who swept on into the throng of Warriors.
