"Scan result! Eldar battleship!"
"Escape from the warp!"
Under the full force of its engines, the cruiser slid through the space-time tunnel back to reality, breaking free from a void wound and returning to the physical universe, the smoky tide of madness still clinging to its hull.
A storm of colors, sounds, and screams surrounded them as they passed through the Sea of Souls.
Selion had to admit that, although this kind of trip was full of violence and trauma, it was at least familiar.
The Eldar warships were playing their own game nearby.
They show no trace of attachment to eternal energy, nor do they appear to be an explosion of evil within the fabric of chaos.
For a moment, the crew of the Echo of the Damned saw nothing but stars.
Eldar ships shimmered, more shadows looming among other shadows, gliding towards the cursed echo.
Selion knew almost nothing about the mysticism of Eldar void travel, and he had no intention of caring.
Although he had heard of the term Webway, this weird interstellar wandering, the concept made no sense to him.
The few meetings the Legion had had with the Eldar in the past had rarely ended well, and he disliked them even more than he did most of his brothers, a hatred of great intensity.
He saw the battleships approaching the eyeball display, as if space itself was sucking them into the air, and he immediately acted instinctively.
One of the first things he does as Cerion is curse loudly and emotionally.
Then the second thing he did was order all personnel to return to their respective combat positions.
Finally, the third thing he did was to swear again, a long river of curses that even the Primarch might blink.
But this didn't quite work. The Eldar warships raised their unique solar sails and moved in a huge arc, never going straight.
Each of them turned around in the void in an impressive and dramatic arc. This was almost impossible for most human warships, and when Selion saw how elegant the Eldar warships were, As he danced to the ground, he immediately felt a raw taste on his tongue - even his acidic salivary glands reacted instinctively to his disgust,
Because human technology, even tainted with the taint of the Chaos Gods, cannot imitate the alien's dive.
It is difficult to reconcile what his senses see with the laws of physics in the depths of space.
"where are you."
he shouted to a crew member.
"Yes, you, get ready for an emergency subspace flight."
"Understood, sir, we have heard Lord Talos's order before."
"very good."
Cerion nodded and ignored the man.
"Activate the void shield and empty all missiles...if you wish."
In fact, whatever accident happened to him towards the Eldar, it was all just anger before daily battles.
He sat on the command throne - the throne of Talos, watching the eye monitor with wary eyes.
"Shall we accept the challenge, my lord?"
asked an officer in a weapons operator's uniform.
"This is a good idea. Measured in terms of tonnage, our ship is much larger than all of them put together, but they are likely to be the vanguard, followed by the big guys... So let's stop now and concentrate on getting ready. The Navigator can enter the Warp when she decides to use her abilities."
Suddenly, on the eyeball monitor, a distant image was discerned behind the first two images.
This is a behemoth that is much larger than the surrounding ones, with huge horn wings, bones and glittering scales all over its body, and is bigger than the cursed echo.
Its glassy sails shimmered with the light of distant stars, and its speed continued to increase.
"Another Eldar warship has entered the long-range scanning thread."
The Lord of the Oracles cried:
“It’s a battleship level!!!”
"Now, what did I just say? The one before was just the first one."
Selion sighed:
"How long will it take for them to catch up to us?"
The hunchbacked Lord of the Oracles shook his head.
"It's hard to say, sir. Based on conventional thrust guesses, it will be 30 minutes later. But if the Eldar keep dancing in the void like this, I'm afraid the time may be shortened to 10 minutes, or maybe 20 minutes."
Sirion leaned back in his chair and put his boots on the armrest of the throne.
"Well then, my dear and faithful fellows, wouldn't it be nice to at least have a little while before we die to enjoy each other's company?"
While the bridge was busy, Talos had already passed through the bulkhead in a blur of blue ceramite and a roar of armor joints.
Navigator Octavia's attendants fled before him like mice from a pursuing cat.
Even her maids flinched.
"My lord?"
Talos didn't even bother to answer.
Octavia had come to, awakened by the emergency siren, and jumped onto her seat before Talos stopped with a thud, his boot hitting the deck hard enough to shake her throne.
She looked almost dizzy from exhaustion, and despite having slept for hours on end and eating nutritional supplements tailored to her constitution, the torture of the murder he had forced her to commit days before was still etched on her face. Taking on dark shades, like this point in her long flight to the edge of the Empire.
Dark circles of tiredness clung to her eyes, and her damp skin looked greasy in the dim light of the room.
She looked up at Talos, her head bouncing against the sore neck muscles that suggested she still had a migraine.
"Eldar?"
Octavia tilted her head and asked in confusion.
"Did I hear it wrong?"
"Let's jump."
Talos said bluntly:
"Do it now."
"What?"
"listen to me!"
Finally, losing his patience, he roared.
"The Eldar are coming! They can feel the psychic scream from the cursed echo, or worse, their wizards have predicted our location in advance, and there is a high probability that there is a fleet waiting in front, more It's coming, Octavia, jump now or we'll all die."
Shocked by Talos's roar, Octavia swallowed her smoke and reached for the first connecting cable of the throne.
Weakness made her hands tremble, but her voice was firm and clear.
"Where? Where should we go? The Eye of Terror?"
"Anywhere but here or there, Octavia! You're the one making the decisions now! Find us a place to hide as soon as possible."
"Let me see where we are now... We are at the edge of the Storm Star Territory. We can't get to the Eye of Terror in a short time, so we can only move forward."
