The Frontline.
After weeks of travel, one of the Aeldari's main forces—the Fourth Fleet—arrived at its intended target.
Unlike the Human Federation's crude Warp Jump Drives, the Aeldari traversed the stars through the Webway, an ancient lattice of paths left behind tens of millions of years ago by their creators—the Old Ones.
The difference was vast.
Warp drives were like trudging along muddy country roads—dangerous, chaotic, forever at risk of daemons, storms, or worse.
But the Webway was a highway: structured, warded, insulated from the Warp's madness.
Though the Aeldari no longer commanded all of its routes, it still granted them faster, safer passage than any crude engine of man.
---
The commander of the Fourth Fleet was Kody Kosler, a scion of the Bloodweaver caste.
He stood upon the command dais, four hands outstretched, posture poised with chilling elegance.
Once, he had been a noble among his people—handsome, muscular, the epitome of physical grace.
But Kody was now a Flesh Artist, a devotee of cruelty and mutilation.
His face bore his greatest masterpiece.
He had sliced his lower jaw in two, peeling it back like a banana skin, then sewn each flap to the corners of his eyes with sinew-thread, leaving the exposed muscle and tissue proudly on display.
His eyes were hollowed, carved until only delicate shells remained, each socket sculpted into a miniature idol of meat and nerve—a shrine to his god of art.
Upon each cornea was etched a line of ancient Aeldari script:
"To My Most Beloved God Of Art."
Now, sight came only through an artificial eye embedded in his brow.
And that was merely the beginning.
Two more slender arms sprouted from his waist. Most of his internal organs had been removed, replaced with a living instrument of flesh and windpipes, producing symphonies with every breath.
His legs had been stripped of skin, bones reforged into metallic razors that bent gravity itself, allowing him to dance across the air.
Even his hair was gone, replaced by thousands of nerve-fibers plucked from his slaves—woven together into a flowing, bloody mane that hummed with eerie, rhythmic melodies.
It had taken millions of harvested nerves to perfect the arrangement, but now, his very presence was an instrument of torment and beauty.
To look upon him was to feel both awe and revulsion.
Even demons might have seemed quaint beside him.
Yet Kody carried himself with such regal grace that horror transformed into a perverse magnificence. Each step of his blade-like legs matched the tempo of his internal symphony, a ballet of blood and terror.
Those around him could not help but worship.
His adjutant, entranced, bowed deeply:
"Lord Kody, your orders?"
Kody's voice rasped through a throat drilled with hundreds of holes, yet it rang with grotesque beauty:
"Activate the Chain Resonance Charges. Detonate several star systems as a greeting gift. Let the lesser races know we have arrived."
"By your will, my lord!"
---
Meanwhile, within the Human Federation…
"Abandon non-essential colonies. Pull all available forces back to defensive lines," ordered the Federation President wearily.
Before he could call another commander, his secretary burst into the office, face alight with excitement:
"Good news, sir! An Aeldari battlefleet has struck at the core regions of the Fallen Machines!"
"…What?"
The President blinked, stunned. It took him a long moment to process the words, then he asked, almost incredulous:
"Is that true?"
Since humanity's first encounter with the Aeldari, they had always been regarded as the ultimate threat—the hypothetical enemy in every strategic calculation.
Centuries of study had made the Federation well-acquainted with their nature:
Arrogant beyond comprehension.
Proud to the point of blindness.
Decadent, indulgent, lost in their own glory.
And above all, supremely powerful.
Their disdain for other species bordered on contemptuous neglect. For millennia, they had scarcely acknowledged the rise or fall of lesser civilizations.
And the Fallen Machines' territory lay thousands of light-years from their empire.
They had no quarrel. No reason.
So why intervene now?
The President did not know.
But he was relieved all the same.
Unlike the minor alien powers, who could only skirmish at the fringes, the Aeldari were the undisputed overlords of the galaxy.
Even weakened by decadence, their fleets wielded overwhelming strength.
Federation records told of times when even their scout patrols had fought entire human battlefleets to a standstill.
As for their main fleets? Their power was legend. The very force that had once ruled the Milky Way.
The President stared at maps filled with scarred worlds—green paradises burned into ash, fertile spheres stripped into barren metal husks.
For the first time in years, a bitter smile touched his lips.
"Perhaps… when the dust settles, our losses will not be quite so total."
...
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