This was no longer a skirmish or small-scale clash. It had evolved into a meat-grinder plain where two great factions committed their main forces, steel and flesh grinding against each other in open battle.
Every second, searing gauss beams reduced green figures to ash. Every second, crude but potent ork shells or rockets burst open among the Necron lines, sending metal wreckage skyward. Every second, units from both sides annihilated each other in close-quarters brawls.
Death was cheap here, as cheap as dust, yet each side spent it with utterly different attitudes—the Necrons with cold indifference, the Orkz with frenzied relish.
War machines poured in from both rear lines in an endless torrent. From within the Necron tomb, more monoliths advanced slowly, wrapped in energy shields, their particle projectors charging and firing to carve burning paths of devastation across the ground.
Swarms of Night Scythes threaded through the low air like lethal hornets, culling Orkz with their gauss blasters, while phalanxes of elite Immortals marched in lockstep, weaving overlapping electrical grids with their tesla carbines.
The Ork side was equally relentless. Driven by Warboss Steeltusk's integration and the propulsive force of the Waaagh!!!, Mekboys frantically kustomized all manner of war machines from mountains of scrap and looted parts.
The enormous, earth-shaking Deff Dreads were crude in construction, leaking black smoke from their joints, yet their multiple big shootas and rokkit launchas still posed a genuine threat to Necron monoliths. More agile Killa Kans and Battlewagons careened across the field, sowing chaos with their kannons and rokkits.
Overhead, ork bommerz painted in garish colors, trailing black smoke and frequently colliding with one another, circled above, occasionally dropping lethal bombs below.
Yet amid this ocean of steel and explosions, all eyes were drawn irresistibly to a single moving epicenter of green fury.
That was the Warboss, Steeltusk.
His frame dwarfed any ordinary Ork boss, standing nearly three meters tall, a small mountain of green flesh and riveted metal.
He was not bare-chested; he was encased in heavy power armor—assembled with brutal Ork ingenuity from assorted armor plates, rivets, energy conduits, and unidentified metals—welded together in a thoroughly inelegant fashion.
The armor appeared rough-hewn, yet its joint hydraulics drove with real force, and key sections were studded with looted energy crystals that pulsed with unstable green light.
Most striking was the enormous powered bionic eye mounted where his left eye had been lost, its crimson glow sweeping continuously across the battlefield, lending him an air of ferocity laced with something almost uncanny.
He carried no ranged weapon, only a two-handed power axe proportioned to match his massive frame. The blade was forged from some dark, unnamed alloy with vicious saw-toothed edges, an energy generator humming on its back face, so that each swing trailed a ghosting afterimage and a deep, tearing groan through the air.
This was plainly no production-line item; it was a masterwork crafted to the boss's exact measure by one or several genius Big Meks.
Steeltusk's stride was heavy and steady. Each footfall seemed to deepen the tremors already running through the ground. He did not charge headlong at the front like other Ork bosses in a frenzied killing spree; instead, he positioned himself well forward in the battle line, though not at its most exposed point.
Around him stood a ring of the most elite, most massively built, and best-equipped Nobz in his retinue. Some gripped enormous chain choppas, others shouldered multi-barrel rokkits; all loyally surrounding their boss and tearing apart any Necron unit that attempted to close the distance.
But what truly made Steeltusk the focal point of the battlefield was not merely his enormous body or his elite guard; it was the Waaagh!!! field radiating from him, almost visible to the naked eye.
Any Ork who entered a certain radius of Steeltusk, whether a Boy, a Grot, or another boss, seemed to receive a tenfold shot of stimulant. Their eyes blazed a brighter green, their war cries rang louder and more savage, their movements grew wilder and faster, and their tolerance for pain and casualties rose noticeably.
They formed spontaneously into a roiling, ever-shifting circle of fanaticism that moved wherever Steeltusk moved, like the ring of a planet in motion, or a living green whirlwind ceaselessly devouring its enemies.
Then something strange happened. A powerful gauss beam fired by a Necron Doomsday Ark crossed hundreds of meters toward Steeltusk, who was shielded by layer upon layer of protection.
That beam, ordinarily capable of instantly disintegrating heavy armor, visibly weakened and distorted as it entered the edge of the Waaagh!!! field surrounding Steeltusk.
The beam's energy seemed intercepted and diluted by countless unseen impulses of battle-lust and Orky finkpower, so that by the time it struck Steeltusk's power armor, it produced only a burst of energy ripples far smaller than expected and a handful of trivial scorch marks on the plating; it failed entirely to penetrate.
The surrounding Orkz witnessed this and erupted not in shock, but in an even more thunderous roar of cheers and Waaagh!!! cries. In their simple, fanatical understanding, this was perfectly natural.
Their boss Steeltusk was the most Waaagh!!! of all! How could the skeletons' little squirt gun possibly hurt him? The green power in the boss must have bounced the beam right off! This only proved they were right to follow Steeltusk! Better loot, better fights, follow the boss!
This interplay between collective belief and Waaagh!!! energy produced a defensive effect that verged on bending reality itself.
As long as the Orkz believed their boss was invincible, as long as the Waaagh!!! will was concentrated and fierce enough, things that seemed impossible could genuinely happen on an Ork battlefield.
And at the fringes of this frenzied, blood-soaked vortex swirling around Steeltusk, a comparatively small but exceptionally nimble figure worked hard to keep pace, angling at every opportunity to clip the edge of that aura.
It was I Will Carry You, Liora.
Her luck had held. During an earlier melee, she had retrieved a chain choppa from beside a fallen Ork boss, its teeth still roaring with decent force. It was a little heavy to swing for her, but it beat a rusted iron slab by a considerable margin.
Better still, she had recruited four or five Grots. Rather than join the rest of their kind as cannon fodder or scrap-scavengers, these short, noisy creatures were directed by her to cobble together, from assorted salvaged parts and a small energy cell, a makeshift, shoulder-mounted, rotating multi-barrel autogun turret.
The barrels were several metal pipes of mismatched diameter lashed together with wire. The ammunition was a chaotic mixture of metal shards and rejected duds from Ork Boys.
Accuracy: virtually none. Sustained fire: dependent on how fast the Grots could fumble the next load into the breech. Deterrence value: marginal at best.
Liora was perfectly satisfied.
Shouldering this improvised Grot-powered shoulder turret and swinging her chain choppa, she stayed close to the flank and rear of Steeltusk's war circle, a spot that was comparatively safe (most incoming fire was drawn to the frenzied Orkz ahead and to Steeltusk himself).
While still letting her feel the surging Waaagh!!! atmosphere, soak up whatever experience bonus she could manage, and occasionally sweep her turret toward distant Necron positions for a casual suppression burst—just to hear it go off, or, on a good day, to land a hit or two by sheer luck.
"Ha! Now this is what I'm talking about! Ride the big boss's coattails, eat the good loot!" she hollered over the squad voice channel.
Steeltusk, the first Warboss born in this conflict, was at this moment the absolute core and spiritual totem of the northern battlefield.
His mere presence continued to gather and amplify the Waaagh!!! energy of the Orkz, pressing hard against the absolute order the Necrons had built on cold technology and inexhaustible numbers.
This colossal, all-consuming brawl had entered a new and wilder phase, far more destructive than before, with the emergence of a true Boss of the Waaagh!!!. The Necrons' plan for systematic extermination seemed to have encountered an unprecedented iron nail, one armored in chaos and sheer will.