Slaying Eidolon

Enraged, Gantula nearly pressed Eidolon into the ground. The immense strength, defense, and transmission response speed of his Star-pattern power armor far surpassed those of Mark IV armor.

The White Scars’ genetic trait was that the angrier they became, the colder they grew. Gantula’s power saber was like thunder on a rainy night, each slash swifter and fiercer than the last.

His speed kept increasing. The snow-white blade light was utterly impossible to follow with the naked eye. After parrying several exchanges, Eidolon realized just how vicious the man before him was.

Eidolon was likewise a swordsmanship master of the Emperor’s Children. Though he was not among the very strongest, he still ranked in the top five in terms of technique.

Yet amid the savage battle, Gantula discovered that this mortal enemy of the White Scars was not as formidable as he had imagined.

His reactions possessed an extremely subtle sluggishness. It seemed that the connection between his surgically grafted head and body was not perfectly seamless, creating a weakness.

Gantula swept aside Eidolon’s warhammer with one slash, then drew back his left fist and drove it forward. His reactor extracted terrifying power, releasing it squarely against the center of the other man’s armor.

Through sheer brute force, the White Scar’s punch drove the Emperor’s Children commander’s breastplate deeply inward. Countless fragments of ceramite and metal exploded outward, piercing the surrounding ground like shotgun pellets.

Seizing the chance, Gantula slashed at the haft of the warhammer. The adamantium weapon was cut with a small notch, while the jet turbine pack on his back completely overwhelmed Eidolon’s resistance.

Gantula turned perfectly to shed the force, while setting his jump pack to maximum output. Pale blue plasma flames surged at once, scorching Eidolon’s ugly face, which looked like charred dead skin.

The Emperor’s Children warrior’s face was destroyed by the blow he had failed to evade. The searing flames burned away his wrinkled skin, leaving his two lifeless pale eyeballs embedded in blackened flesh, fixed rigidly on Gantula’s saber.

The battlefield descended into an utterly chaotic melee, with friend and foe tangled together. Even the Iron Hands’ long-range fire support had to cease temporarily to avoid injuring their allies.

But compared to the undisciplined Emperor’s Children, both the White Scars and the Ultramarines conducted precise coordination and encirclements under the command of a single will and voice.

The essence of war was nothing more than using many to fight few. Even when outnumbered, one could use favorable terrain to create local situations where many fought few.

At the cost of taking a slash, Eidolon used his power hammer to halt Gantula’s lethal saber. He was more bedraggled than ever before. His upper body and head were covered in blackened burn marks, and blisters of every size made for a gruesome sight. The severe burns instead provoked him into a savage grin.

For Emperor’s Children who had fallen into Slaanesh’s Six Circles, pain of this degree was, in a sense, more like a special reward.

Their twisted minds felt only the burning stimulation spreading through their bodies. It was a peculiar state they had never experienced before.

Eidolon screamed wantonly. The alien technological creation in his throat, specially modified by Fabius Bile, released waves of psychic subsonic shrieks.

The other Noise Marines activated their weapons as well, endlessly chanting and shrieking blasphemies against Imperial faith and praise for the Chaos God Slaanesh.

The screams of one Noise Marine after another converged into a tide of sound. They laughed wildly, utterly disregarding the lethal attacks of their former battle-brothers.

Together, the Noise Marines created a sonic boom tempest. Their throats thundered alongside their sonic weapons’ roars, producing sounds and shrieks no human body should have been capable of making.

Among the warriors present, the Aeldari in particular—this ancient race with pointed ears and exceptionally sharp hearing—had virtually no resistance against such screams.

Only Aeldari who had also trained in the Howling Banshee cult could resist somewhat. They clutched their heads, wishing they could cut off their own ears, yet even that could not stop the demonic sound from piercing their minds.

Several Aeldari aspect warriors finally could not endure any longer. Amid the Emperor’s Children Noise Marines’ shrieks, their heads burst like rotten watermelons.

The Aeldari’s sticky pinkish-white brain matter splattered across the Noise Marines. These already frenzied perverts tore off their twisted, deformed helmets and madly licked at the peerless delicacy with tongues that had become long and slick.

Aeldari, Aeldari flesh and blood… and Aeldari souls!

It was an incomparably exhilarating climax. The Emperor’s Children convulsed all over, and after tasting Aeldari flesh, they suddenly felt as though the entire world had brightened.

It was not only the Aeldari. Even the massive vehicles fighting on the battlefield, those Knight walkers, swayed and cracked under the resonance of the sound waves. The earth split open, and vast clouds of dust and sand were thrown up by the shrieking.

Those gigantic Pandora trees were shredded into fragments by the sound waves. Ancient boulders weathered into grit, and even super-heavy tanks and Knight walkers had a layer of armor stripped from their surfaces.

The Space Marines closer by suffered horrific damage. Those piercing cries were like invisible files, drilling in through the auditory modules of their power armor before subjecting the flesh within to the cruelest torture, grinding it bit by bit into fragments.

Had the Star-pattern power armor not been sturdy enough, both armor and wearer would likely have been torn apart into the smallest particles.

Gantula drove his saber firmly into the earth to stop himself from being forced backward.

He held on with all his strength. At that moment, he finally understood what the Lord of the Keshig had encountered that had left him mortally wounded by the enemy’s treachery even after winning.

"How is it? Welcome to our chorus. It is the shriek of souls, the call of the Ravenous Lady. I forgot to tell you: your rather capable White Scar leader died to this very move."

"Was his name Qin Xia? I cannot remember. He was far too ordinary."

Eidolon’s vanity and competitive spirit swelled to their limits. The Prince of Pleasure was watching him and would bestow a new blessing upon him.

Perhaps he would qualify to ascend into a Daemon Prince, finally casting off this ugly, feeble mortal body.

That Gantula had not yet lost the ability to resist beneath their sonic boom shrieks already proved the astonishing strength of his will. But at this moment, he could no longer mount further resistance.

His heart pounded madly. His increasingly enhanced dynamic vision could even see the twisted madness flickering in Eidolon’s pale, vacant eyes, along with an unknown violet-pink reflection.

The enemy’s desire was rising. He would go completely mad. Eidolon would kill another powerful White Scars warrior and continue his glory and victories.

Yet just as Eidolon’s power hammer was about to smash into Gantula’s helmet, Qin Xin, the White Scars neophyte who had been moving around nearby, hurled a humanoid object over with all his strength.

It was a blank encased in custom-made mortal power armor. The intense sonic boom shrieks made it difficult for him to approach Eidolon at the core, but Qin Xin’s full-force throw finally sent him through the storm’s barrier.

The blank approached like a black hole. The ever-spreading soulless field devoured the Emperor’s Children’s psychic shrieks, creating a psychic void within them.

The measure Lox had specially prepared for Warp enemies finally came into play. The psychic shrieks circulating within were instantly interrupted. As the core of the psychic shrieks, Eidolon’s alien technological implant in his throat swelled to its limit, then abruptly lost the psychic power sustaining it.

With that expansion and contraction, Eidolon’s biochemical modifications immediately exceeded their limit. Deprived of psychic reinforcement, the shriek could only destroy himself.

That disgusting, filthy shell exploded at once. Pink throat tissue, metal neck armor, pale decayed flesh, and blackish-purple blood burst forth, while Eidolon’s head exploded in an instant just like those dead Aeldari.

His warhammer, named Eternal Glory, dropped limply to the ground, soaked in foul corrupted blood. Eidolon’s headless corpse fell before Gantula Noyan Khan, while Qin Xin arrived panting to assist in the fight.

The blank thrown into the center of the battlefield remained deeply embedded in the soil. Submerged in deep-sea fluid, he was somewhat bewildered, but excited cries from the Space Marines were already ringing out through his power armor.

"Eidolon is dead!"

Countless Noise Marines seemed to awaken from a dream. They stared in horror toward where Eidolon had fallen, their fighting spirit and will to battle melting away as swiftly as spring snow.

"Retreat!"

Had they been Imperial Space Marines, even if their supreme commander had died, lower-ranking captains, company commanders, and other officers would have assumed command and continued fighting.

But Space Marines fallen to Chaos naturally had no intention of fighting unto death. They were merely cannon fodder sent by the Ravenous Lady to seize Aeldari souls. Compared to Slaanesh’s daemons, constrained by the veil of reality, these willing fallen were more useful and convenient.

By the time news of their lord commander’s death reached every Emperor’s Child, the war was already over.