Faced with the onslaught of the Eldrazi, the Tyranids did not sit idly by.
First came the opening salvo. Countless bio-warships, numbering in the tens of quintillions, unleashed every form of weaponry at once.
Plasma storms, rivers of acid, and torrents of corrosive fluids filled the void. To say they blotted out the void would be an understatement. A single volley was enough to drown an entire star system in fire.
Those Tyranids gifted with special powers also struck.
Some twisted the space at the heart of the Eldrazi legions, attempting to birth black holes that would devour their armies whole.
But the Eldrazi's spatial-class spawn would not permit it. The void itself became their battlefield, spatial power colliding with spatial power.
Stray ripples of their clash created waves of turbulence, spawning chaotic eddies across the front. Unlucky Tyranids or Eldrazi spawn were dragged away, torn through rifts into forgotten corners of space-time.
Meanwhile, the noble-tier Eldrazi spawn—those of patriarchal strength—grappled with the Tyranids' colossal bioforms.
Unlike the fodder that died faster than a flood, their duels were titanic, each clash spanning vast regions of void. Their struggles spilled destruction indiscriminately, and yet, even after hours of violence, victory remained elusive.
Their vitality was too monstrous. Torn in half, brains pierced and scattered—still they endured. Some Eldrazi spawn even bore resurrection-class abilities, rising again seconds after being slain.
The three Eldrazi Overlords, commanding through the collective will of their legions, turned their combined focus upon the Hive Mind itself, seeking to sever its control over its swarms.
And they succeeded, in part. Whenever their interference struck true, Tyranid units froze in place like puppets with cut strings, left helpless before the slaughter.
But the Hive Mind answered in kind. At times, Eldrazi spawn too were caught in the countercurrent, their link disrupted, stumbling lifeless in the fray.
Soldier against soldier, champion against champion, sovereign against sovereign.
The pattern of the war was stark, simple, and merciless.
---
The second day.
The slaughter continued unabated.
For both sides, the losses meant nothing.
The clash of Eldrazi and Tyranids had become the center of the galaxy's attention. Entire civilizations stared in awe and despair at the spectacle—the sheer mass and might of powers they could never hope to touch.
Either side, alone, could reap their races like wheat.
And the manner of the conflict—numbers meeting numbers in unyielding collision—struck fear into the hearts of all who watched.
Millennia ago, the Tyranids had shattered the local coalition of races with overwhelming numbers and biomass, turning this star system into nothing but a colossal resource pit.
Now, a new power had arrived. One no less terrible.
The battlefield was a maelstrom of blood and corpses, strewn across the void.
The star system's original inhabitants could only cower in silence, too terrified even to speak, as monsters fought for dominion over their sky.
It was slaughter without mercy.
---
The third day.
At the heart of the battlefield, with every passing second, enough lives were extinguished to fill entire worlds.
No fear of death. No fear of pain. Endless numbers. Unceasing evolution.
Alone, each of these traits had made both Eldrazi and Tyranids unconquerable throughout history.
Now, facing each other—mirrors of the same design—the result was stalemate.
Yet in this deadlock, the Tyranids held the advantage.
Here, in this system, their forces outnumbered the Eldrazi tenfold.
That the battle had not already turned into rout was due only to the Eldrazi's strange and unfathomable powers, combined with their perfect synergy. Their gifts, templates of power bestowed by Orsaga himself, granted them variety and adaptability that even the Hive Mind could not replicate.
The Tyranids had built themselves through endless struggle, clawing evolution from the void. The Eldrazi had been armed with gifts from a god.
Still, aeons of Tyranid evolution were not false. They had countless methods yet to reveal.
After the first two days of probing, they unveiled darker weapons.
From the swollen bodies of grotesque Tyranids—behemoths with distended bellies that made up three-fourths of their mass—poured clouds of black mist.
Closer inspection revealed the mist for what it was: swarms of microscopic organisms, smaller than nanites.
Upon reaching the battlefield, they devoured indiscriminately, consuming all corpses and wreckage. Fueled by flesh and energy, they split endlessly, some dividing ten times in a second.
In less than a minute, they had become a tidal wave of black, surging to engulf the Eldrazi spawn.
The Eldrazi answered.
Patriarchal curse-class spawn invoked a forbidden rite:
Joint Sorcery — Bloodline Curse.
The hex spread like a plague. Every microbe sharing its genetic chain collapsed in unison, slain across impossible distance.
Their bloated parent-beasts shrieked in agony, blood weeping from their pores, collapsing to the void. Only their sheer vitality and outer armor prevented them from dying outright.
The black swarm was crushed before it could take root.
The Hive Mind, however, was unfazed. It had merely been a trial.
A moment later, it brought forth its true juggernauts.
Colossal beetle-warmachines, each as vast as a planet, their armored shells black as night. From their carapaces extended dozens of tubes, each hundreds of kilometers wide and ten thousand kilometers long.
With thunderous detonations, they spewed bio-munitions into the Eldrazi ranks.
Each impact birthed vast fields of corrosive acid, drowning whole formations.
From within the acid surged threadworm-like Tyranids, tiny but lethal, burrowing into wounded Eldrazi spawn, devouring organs and nerves.
Those that reached the spinal cord or cerebral core seized control of the body, twisting it into another puppet of the Hive.
Even when they failed, the act of feasting transmitted knowledge back to the Hive Mind, allowing it to refine countermeasures against that breed of Eldrazi.
But the Eldrazi answered in kind.
From their own spawn legions came assimilation-class variants.
They hurled themselves upon wounded Tyranids, their forms melting like ink into water, seeping into their prey through open wounds.
With roars of agony, the infected Tyranids grew twisted limbs and warped scales, their bodies reshaped.
Moments later, they rose again—not as Tyranids, but as Eldrazi spawn, conscripted into the ever-growing legion.
_____
T/N:
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