Following exhaustive data analysis and battlefield assessnt, the order for extraction was issued.
Swarms of Heavy Combat Drones flooded the theater of war, establishing a defensive screen to cover the withdrawal. On the ground, over one-third of the chanical units initiated weapon-overload cycles to provide covering fire, while the remaining two-thirds began boarding transport vessels to depart.
Faced with this sudden surge in firepower, the various Kabals and Wych Cults of the Drukhari scrambled to redeploy their assets. As the preeminent power in Commorragh, the Kabal of the Black Heart moved directly toward long-sealed Webway vaults, attempting to rouse ancient, dust-shrouded relics from their slumber.
Yet, just as the Dark Aeldari steeled themselves for a final, apocalyptic confrontation, their frontline forces realized with a start that the occupied zones had fallen into a tomb-like silence.
The thunder of explosions and the relentless rain of kinetic ordnance had ceased.
The various Archons, suspicious by nature, reached a consensus: this was rely the prelude to an even more devastating assault. They ordered all units to stand ready and await the arrival of Titan support. They had all witnessed the towering majesty of the Punisher-class ga-Titans; without their own god-machines to tie the enemy down, their conventional forces would be nothing more than fodder for those star-shattering cannons, which could vaporize thousands in a single discharge.
Clouds of Heavy Combat Drones choked the skies above the battlefield, denying the Drukhari any chance of aerial reconnaissance. Since the Rhana Dandra, the Fall, the Aeldari's gift of prophecy had withered significantly. Even Aurelia Malys, possessing the Crystal Heart, found her visions of the Iron n clouded and indistinct; other seers were left staring into a murky void, unable to discern the flow of battle.
Haunted by the specter of so unseen stratagem, the Drukhari remained entrenched at their lines, waiting in agonizing suspense.
The second wave of Aeldari Titans arrived shortly thereafter. Though fewer in number than the first, their potency was far greater. At the vanguard glided over a dozen Phantom Titans, their massive wraithbone blades shimring with deadly arcs of energy, followed by several rare Warlock Titans.
However, as these god-machines strode into the war zone, the swarms of Heavy Combat Drones vanished into the Webway portals from which they had first erged. In the fleeting glimpses before they disappeared, the silver hulls of the drones could be seen cluttered with various haphazardly piled salvage.
The Warlock Titans surged with psychic might, weaving a massive scrying spell that bypassed the myriad wards of Commorragh to reveal the sectors previously held by the Iron n.
The streets were hollowed out. Empty. Aside from the occasional shattered silver chassis of a fallen machine, not a single enemy remained.
The colossal psychic projection hung in the high atmosphere like a taunting banner, shouting a silent truth to every Drukhari present: they had been played.
Archons from rival factions imdiately erupted into bitter recrimination, accusing one another of dereliction of duty. Even as they argued, vast detachnts from various factions began a rapid advance into the vacated zones. These districts had been scoured clean of life; it was now imperative to seize the infrastructure within to expand their own political leverage.
Yet, when the Drukhari forces finally set foot in the ruins, they found the reality far grimr than the scrying spells had suggested.
Massive swathes of architecture had been thoroughly gutted.
The Iron n never left a debt unpaid.
In terms of duration, this brief skirmish, lasting a re few dozen hours, was insignificant on a galactic scale. But its results were staggering. The Iron n had not only indirectly caused the death of a Supre Overlord of Commorragh, but they had also abducted tens of millions of Drukhari who had attempted to flee the initial daemonic incursion, along with Aurelia Malys, the Archon of the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue.
In the ensuing battles, they had obliterated fifty ancient Aeldari Titans and liquidated two billion Drukhari souls.
Even more shocking was the systematic dismantling of the city itself. Because Aurelia Malys had acted as a "pathfinder," many of the chanical units had not appeared at the outskirts of Commorragh, but had struck directly into its inner sanctums.
The sheer scale and anomalous nature of the Dark City ant it could not be fortified with walls like an Imperial Hive; the labyrinthine Webway offered infinite escape routes, but it also ant an enemy could strike from anywhere. While traditional early-warning wards were effective against Daemons and biological entities, they were virtually useless against the soulless Iron n. These wards, designed to detect soul-signatures, simply filtered out the movents of the chanical host as background noise or interference.
Upon confirming the Drukhari's theft of Federation assets, the chanical legions had done more than just bared their fangs, their staggering numbers of auxiliary machines had gone to work as well. Aeldari architecture was not composed solely of wraithbone; it was integrated with vast quantities of rare tallic alloys. Entire buildings had been consud by nanite swarms, reduced to raw materials and hauled away.
The Eight-Legs and nurous Sapient Machine Automata were less refined. They simply hauled away massive heaps of rubble and structural remains shattered by the fighting.
Axion had no intention of destroying Commorragh, not yet. As he withdrew, he left behind a few subtle "gifts." Shattered wraithbone fragnts were restructured into strange statues and curios, blending into the surrounding décor. Concealed within each of these objects was a quantum positioning beacon.
These specialized beacons were designed to function for millennia. Although their signals could not be received in realspace, they would radiate throughout the entire interconnected Webway network of Commorragh. In the future, should the chanical host enter the Webway from any point, they could triangulate the distance and position based on signal strength and relocate the Dark City.
Axion did not know if the Drukhari or the Craftworld Aeldari still possessed the capacity to repair the Webway, but the data was clear: this massive artery, large enough to swallow a planet, could be found within a few hundred kiloters of the beacons. If the Aeldari repaired the area, the Federation would rely on the quantum beacons. If they could not, the massive Webway breach would serve as a beacon in its own right.
What Axion did not yet realize was that Commorragh was not rely a city; it was a nomad, capable of shifting its position within the sub-dinsional space of the Webway.
As for the chanical wreckage left behind, the high-value Quantum Energy Cores and sapient processing hubs had already been recovered. Those that could not be retrieved were set to a pre-detonation cycle. The mont the Drukhari began clearing the battlefield, these "corpses" would fulfill their final purpose.
This refusal to leave behind even a "body" was standard operating procedure for the Iron n. Once recovery was deed impossible, the best outco for a machine was to beco a bomb. If it couldn't kill the enemy, it could at least provide a celebratory bang.
Of course, in the event of a victory, these fragnts would be reclaid and slted down to serve once more, provided there was anything left to reclaim. The detonation of a Quantum Energy Core was devastating; even the self-destruction of a simple Automated Sentry-Trooper carried a yield far exceeding that of an Imperial lta bomb.
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