The Aeldari, or more accurately, Lileath, had long been on their guard. She was, after all, a Primarch raised within the Realm of Ruin. Though she had never been permitted to leave the Black Bell Tower, Lileath possessed an intimate understanding of the treacherous sycophants who served her self-proclaimed father.
Under a devastating, concerted barrage from the assembled Aeldari forces, the ratmen and twisted monstrosities surging up from the subterranean depths were instantly plunged into a horrific meat grinder of death.
As the smoke from the bombardment began to clear, a host of Kabalite Warriors and Storm Guardians broke covert from the surrounding urban greenswards with fluid, lethal agility. Though these Aeldari warriors were drawn from the ranks of civilian militia, their innate martial prowess still placed them far above the mortal echelons of almost any other race.
The shattered streets, ruptured by the Skaven's subterranean incursions, offered scarcely any impediment to their graceful advance. Furthermore, their ancient, pre-Fall auspex arrays, technological relics vastly superior to the clumsy cogitators of the Imperium, proved invaluable in pinpointing the enemy.
"Go! Go-go! Cut them down… slay-kill the pointy-eared things!"
The Skaven were no fools; their commanders knew full well that once they closed the distance and locked the Aeldari in melee, the enemy's heavy artillery would be rendered useless. Stormvermin officers waved rusted chainswords, their voices cracking in high-pitched, frenzied screeches.
Driven by the lash, waves of Clanrats kicked and prodded cowering Skavenslaves forward, forcing them to serve as a living bulwark of meat against the oncoming Aeldari.
Yet this desperate gambit played directly into the Aeldari's hands. At the vanguard of the xenos battleline rode a towering figure bathed in a radiant, golden luminescence. Astride a sleek, single-seat anti-grav jetbike, he wielded a massive weapon resembling a cruciform broadsword.
This was Gilles, the first mortal to drink from the waters of the Holy Grail, hand-picked by Lileath herself.
Flanking him was a cadre of entirely unprecedented Aspect Warriors, the likes of whom none had ever seen. Atop their helms rested golden effigies of Lileath, and their hands gripped cruciform power swords identical to the one borne by Gilles, their movements mirroring the disciplined poise of ancient knights.
"For the Lady—for the Grail!!"
These warriors called themselves the Grail Knights, a newly formed Aspect shrine dedicated entirely to the worship of Lileath.
In the long millennia of Aeldari history, there had never been an Aspect dedicated to Lileath. This particular shrine had been forged by a group of highly skilled Aeldari duelists who, using the thirteen Grail-blessed chosen, including Gilles, as their template, had pioneered a new path of martial discipline.
Though their tenure was brief, the physical presence of Lileath herself seemed to catalyze their progression. Consequently, these self-proclaimed Grail Knights had rapidly manifested astonishing, supernatural power.
Their bodies could now project a temporary, blinding golden aura, effulgence bright enough to sear the vision of their foes and deflect incoming bolt-shells and chainsword strikes.
"For the Lady—!!"
Gilles roared, gunning the engine of his anti-grav skimmer as he spearheaded the assault. Behind him, several hundred Grail Knight Aspect Warriors mirrored his trajectory, launching a suicidal, glorious charge alongside their youngest Phoenix Lord.
Heading the Skaven counter-offensive was a lumbering Brood Horror, acting as a living battering ram. The twisted monstrosity was driven into a state of psychopathic frenzy by the Packmaster lashed to its back, determined to flatten everything in its path.
Gilles did not flinch. He channeled the golden light within him, causing his aura to detonate in a flash of pure, searing radiance. The sudden brilliance inflicted agony upon the Brood Horror's eyes, which had degenerated from generations of subterranean burrowing. Even the Packmaster on its spine began to bleed profusely from his eye sockets before tumbling helplessly from his mount.
With the rhythmic, thunderous roar of his anti-grav engine mimicking the pounding of warhorse hooves, Gilles launched his skimmer airborne. His custom-forged cruciform power sword cleaved through the air, tracing a lethal arc across the Brood Horror's throat.
A rat-head the size of a grown man went flying into the dirt, and Gilles plunged directly into the roiling sea of vermin.
The crude, jagged blades of the Skaven chipped helplessly against his protective golden shroud. Further back, the ratmen found themselves completely incapable of looking directly at Gilles' radiant silhouette; their desperate, blind gunfire missed the mark entirely, chewing through the ranks of their own kin instead.
"Aieeeeee—!!!"
The charge of the hundreds of Grail Knight Aspect Warriors hit the Skaven lines like a golden tidal wave, carving a blood-drenched swathe of slaughter through a vermin horde that outnumbered them a hundredfold.
Infected by the soaring martial pride of the Grail Knights, the surrounding Aeldari militia found their courage renewed. Like a peasant levy galvanized by the heroism of legendary knights, they surged forward to exploit the breaches torn open by the vanguard.
Gilles pushed onward, leading the spearhead directly toward the most heavily fortified Skaven position, a defensive ring anchored by dozens of hulking Rat Ogres and guarded by hundreds of elite Stormvermin.
"Kill-kill him! I do not want to see-behold that shiny-bright thing!!" a Skaven Warlord shrieked, clamping his paws over his eyes. Even his thickest warpstone goggles could not filter out the strange, soul-searing light.
As if possessed by divine intervention, Gilles' arm suddenly elongated and twisted like an amorphous, predatory appendage. His knightly sword flickered with unnatural, serpentine fluidness, effortlessly butchering the Rat Ogres before he finally broke through to stand directly before the Skaven Warlord.
The Warlord closed his eyes, shrieked the name of the Great Horned Rat in a desperate prayer, and was impaled through the throat a heartbeat later, hoisted high into the air upon the knight's blade.
"The Warlord… the mighty-great Klaw is dead!!"
The relentless detonations echoing through the narrow streets, coupled with the rising, tangled mountains of their dismembered kin, utterly shattered the fragile, numbers-driven courage of the Skaven horde. The very rats that had rushed out of the under-ways with vicious intent broke formation, scattering in blind, chaotic panic.
"The vermin are routing. Cut off their retreat," commanded a Fire Dragon Exarch from the deck of an anti-grav skimmer, his eyes narrowing as he watched the rats scatter like a living pathogen through the lower thoroughfares.
Fire Dragon Aspect Warriors stood like cold, statuesque executioners at every narrow intersection, their melta weapons and heavy flamers unleashing columns of roaring, incandescent promethium.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The ancient Aeldari architecture of Couronne stood tall and resolute. Forged from pure wraithbone, these towering, ivory structures were virtually indestructible, impervious to anything short of a cataclysmic orbital bombardment.
Even the Skaven, natural-born burrowers that they were, found their claws utterly useless against the psycho-reactive bone-matter. Only specialized Warp-drill teams could hope to breach it; the common rat stood no chance.
The Fire Dragons advanced without mercy, pouring out the wrath of their shrines step by methodical step. A suffocating stench of scorched fur and charred, blackened flesh filled the air, coalescing into a foul, choking miasma.
Before long, save for the most cunning, intelligent, or exceptionally lucky Skaven who managed to slip back into the dark drainage pipes, the entire district was carpeted in foul, misshapen corpses.
"Clear the refuse. The Eldest Daughter will not tolerate such filth," Gilles said, disdaining to hunt down the scattering stragglers. He stood amidst the carnage, silent and proud, watching the remnants of the enemy flee.
"O Lady, Eldest Daughter Lileath, I offer my devotion for the strength you have bestowed," Gilles murmured, dropping to one knee and bowing his head reverently toward Lileath's sanctum.
Yet, unknown even to Lileath, deep within the shifting tides of the Immaterium, Lucius watched the consequences of his blessing with immense curiosity.
"So this is the blessing of Formless Distortion? Hahaha—how exquisite," Lucius roared with laughter, as though he had just discovered a fascinating new plaything.
Despite having occupied the mantle of the Lord of Distortion for so long, he had rarely bothered to grant true, systemic blessings to the Skaven. As a result, the metamorphic powers of Formless Distortion had seldom manifested within the mortal realm.
Khorne's blessings bestowed unnatural muscle mass, terrifying strength, and an insatiable battle-rage; Nurgle granted necrotic immortality; Tzeentch offered sorcerous intellect and avian mutations. The blessing of Formless Distortion, however, manifested in three distinct, mutable archetypes.
The first was the Resplendent Shroud, which transformed the blessed into an entity composed of pure, blinding light. The second was the Lashing Pseudopod, allowing the recipient's anatomy to stretch, bend, and warp at will to strike down foes from impossible angles. The third was the Lethal Claws, yielding claws capable of rendering the thickest master-crafted armor into ribbons.
These were features that Lucius himself had only recently uncovered. The Great Horned Rat, constantly obsessed with micromanaging his domain like a tabletop designer, had never noticed these latent traits. Now, Lucius had inadvertently passed them to his 'daughter' to use against his own chosen vermin.
Gazing upon the souls of the Skaven who had been dragged into the Realm of Ruin as a consequence of his blessing, Lucius grinned, exposing a row of sharp, cruel teeth.
"Worthless wretches, bested by a pack of pointy-ears. You can spend eternity scurrying like the vermin you are beneath the floorboards of my Realm!"
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