After briefly surveying the remnants of the Tyranid forces, the mightiest of the Eldrazi's three overlords—Emrakul, the true High Overlord—issued the first command without hesitation:
"All forces, unleash your spawn legions to purge the survivors. Then prepare for the true battle."
Through its innate senses, Emrakul could already perceive vast threats rapidly approaching.
At the order's echo, the trillions of Eldrazi present each opened their personal pocket-dimensions, releasing their Eldrazi Spawn Legions.
Some disgorged billions of refined elites, others unleashed trillions of mindless thralls.
One by one, spatial gateways yawned open, and the legions surged forth in tidal waves. Spawn instantly attuned to the will of their creators and poured into reality like a flood.
In the span of a heartbeat, the number of living entities multiplied hundreds of times over.
The sudden surge of mass warped local gravity itself, bending the void. With every passing second, as the swarm of Eldrazi Spawn grew, the distortion intensified.
Once their numbers passed quintillions, the overlords themselves acted to stabilize the surrounding space—otherwise, the sheer density would collapse into black holes.
Witnessing this flood, the Hive Mind was shaken.
It understood clearly: the enemy's main host had not even fully arrived. The endless portals still spewed forth legions. A sense of foreboding struck deep.
This foe might well be of the same nature as the Tyranids—
a species that wields numbers as its greatest weapon.
'They must not be allowed to grow unchecked…'
The Hive Mind's thoughts sharpened instantly.
Without hesitation, it unleashed a hidden psychic signal that spread across tens of thousands of light-years, surging through the entire system and outward still further.
Across the stellar system, swarms numbering beyond calculation responded as one. The scattered Tyranid fleets immediately abandoned their current prey and converged upon the signal.
For the first time in millennia, since the extermination of this star system's native defenders, the Hive Mind gathered its main host.
These were not the token garrisons that had shadowboxed with Aeon for centuries—these were the Tyranid's true war hosts, each one capable of consuming entire systems on its own.
To meet the Eldrazi threat, the Hive Mind was willing to abandon campaigns in twenty-three neighboring systems. A full tenth of the species' galactic strength would be brought to bear here.
Countless doomed civilizations, spared in an instant as the Tyranids suddenly withdrew, cried out in rapture, praying wildly to their gods.
But the greater galaxy looked on in dread, for the sight of Tyranid armadas blotting out stars, passing overhead like swarms of world-killers, was terror itself. To the lesser races, they were no more than ants before leviathans, trembling only at the thought:
"What has happened, to draw such monsters away?"
---
Though unaware of the Hive Mind's summons, the Eldrazi sensed the distant shift. Their powers attuned to reality itself felt the pressure of the incoming threat.
One of the three Commanders, Kozilek, cast its gaze across the Tyranid remnants, spotting a Hive Tyrant attempting to hide among the swarm.
Its command was merciless:
"Exterminate the survivors."
In the next instant, the Eldrazi Spawn Legions unleashed their fury.
The remaining Tyranid detachment, along with a swath of starfield, was obliterated in a single storm of annihilation.
The Hive Mind did not counterstrike. It understood that even if it called upon the full strength of the swarm immediately, the result would be meaningless—mere droplets hurled against an ocean.
Instead, it withdrew, analyzing the Eldrazi's energy signatures, refining strategies, preparing the galaxy-spanning brood for the war to come.
---
Days passed.
The Tyranid host of the system completed its assembly. Their sheer mass blotted out tens of light-years of space.
Stars, when placed among them, were as insignificant as a quail's egg sinking into a lake.
Their collective presence twisted reality itself. What should have collapsed into black holes became instead a propulsion field, driving the swarm forward.
All matter, all energy in their path was devoured and converted into biomass reserves.
They advanced like erasers across the page of the cosmos, wiping away everything that dared exist before them.
---
And then—impact.
The Eldrazi Spawn and the Tyranid host collided.
Countless Spatial-class Devourer Spawn ripped open chaotic sub-dimensions and hurled them like weapons into the swarm. These unstable pocket-realities detonated with brutal force, dragging everything nearby into unknown abysses.
Temporal-class Devourer Spawn flooded nearby starfields with endless corridors of time. Anything entering was hurled back by a fraction of a microsecond, forced to overlap with its past self—its own cells colliding, crushing, and tearing apart until the organism exploded in gore.
Corruption-class Devourer Spawn twisted entire stars into grotesque abominations, birthing stellar aberrations with limbs tens of thousands of kilometers long, spewing star-core ichor that corroded everything it touched.
Mechanical, spectral, martial, arcane—
Every category of Eldrazi Spawn unleashed its full horror.
They fought with flawless unity. Though trillions, they were one mind, their thoughts emanating from Orsaga. There was no delay, no confusion, no error.
A perfect war engine, composed of uncountable parts, striking in seamless precision under the direction of the three Commanders.
The battle had truly begun.
_____
T/N:
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