Massive legions of automata swiftly seized every critical Webway nexus surrounding Commorragh known to Malys.
Faced with the daemonic incursion, not every Drukhari chose to stand and fight. Many Aeldari, particularly the Haemonculi with their deep reservoirs of technical lore, had already begun evacuating their precious assets. This war was unlike any other; the terror of the Warp was etched into the very soul of every Dark Eldar. To die here meant the final forfeiture of one's soul, and the vast majority of the populace lacked the requisite wealth to purchase a resurrection-tribute from the Master Haemonculi.
The Haemonculi's art of resurrection was, in truth, a daemonic technique, profoundly flawed and offering but a brief extension of existence. Yet these secrets remained hidden from the rest of the Drukhari. To the Haemonculi, the act of restoring the dead was little more than a perverse amusement. Reawakening a corpse simply so it could once again become a subject for torment and play was a cycle they never tired of.
Their process involved forcibly stitching the soul and flesh back into a singular, agonizing whole. To ensure the subject truly roused and regained consciousness, the Haemonculi would inflict extreme agony upon the soul. These Lords of Pain believed that only through the stimulus of absolute pain could the tether between soul and spirit be re-established, rendering the revived individual a sentient, feeling entity once more.
Paradoxically, it was this very stimulation of extreme agony that left the resurrected soul severely traumatized. As for the body, the fact of its death implied it was already ruined material. When two shattered components were fused together, the result was inevitably a "Reborn" riddled with defects. These wretches not only suffered from drastically shortened lifespans but were plagued by mutations and flaws: necrotic flesh, missing limbs, shattered intellects, or depraved psyches. These infirmities were regarded merely as the sacrificial tithe for the resurrection.
…
Lady Malys initially intended to ignore those Drukhari kinsmen attempting to flee, but Axion had no desire to see his "battery reserves" depleted. Under the "amicable" persuasion of the Morlanad automata, Malys used her authority as Archon of the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue to begin corralling her cowardly peers.
Distorted as the Drukhari were, not all were obsessed with slaughter; most of these fugitives were those steeped in carnal lust, indolent cruelty, or other base desires. Those truly addicted to the thrill of the kill were currently standing alongside the warriors of the Kabal of the Black Heart, defending the dark city.
Commorragh was a hive-metropolis of near-infinite expansion. Its lowest levels were over-exploited warrens inhabited primarily by slaves and conquered xenos, subjected to backbreaking labor in construction, manufacturing, and service. These dregs lived in a state of absolute terror, serving as the playthings for the Drukhari's bottomless depravity.
The rest of the city's architecture could only grow vertically. Districts vied for space like parasitic flora competing for sunlight. These structures were interconnected by vaulted arches and gossamer-thin buttresses, forming a labyrinthine, three-dimensional web. The city was a sprawling vista of spires, palaces, fortresses, and maze-like corridors, its aesthetic twisted yet ornate, high-reaching minarets adorned with malevolent runes and macabre sculptures.
Now, all of it was wreathed in the fires of war.
Led by the fallen scions of the Emperor's Children, the daemons launched an organized offensive. In typical conflicts, the Drukhari's signature cruelty would break the morale of their enemies. This time, however, such tactics were useless. The daemons' discordant roars were filled only with exhilaration. The more brutal the combat, the bloodier the methods, the more the Warp-spawn rejoiced. To them, the agony-spells of the Wych Cults of Strife acted like a potent stimulant.
This was doubly true for the fallen Emperor's Children. Often, after being struck by a barrage of torturous sorcery, the combat efficiency of these heretics would actually surge. Blood and death saturated every tier of the city. Most of the harrowing screams emanated from the slave pens—Imperial citizens, disparate xenos, and even captured soldiers of the Astra Militarum. These were the unfortunates plucked from ships following raids by Drukhari pirates.
As the daemons and Dark Eldars descended into a chaotic urban meatgrinder, Malys finally appeared on the outskirts of Commorragh. Every secret passage she knew of had been hermetically sealed by the Iron Men's mechanical legions. The Black Heart guards stationed there had already been eliminated by Malys's own Poisoned Tongue warriors.
In such a convoluted theatre of war, the Poisoned Tongue thrived. Her warriors excelled at assassination, envenomation, and sowing discord. In this twisted city, killing with a whisper was an art form, one they had mastered. Now, Malys intended to return as the "Savior of the Drukhari" before the eyes of Asdrubael Vect and finally consummate her revenge.
In one Webway tunnel, a pack of daemons turned to face Malys as she appeared behind them. With twisted, elongated tongues dripping with ichor, they brandished their weapons and lunged at the female Drukhari with expressions of gluttonous hunger.
Malys summoned her Lady's Blade to meet the charge. However, as a sentient weapon with a will of its own, the blade often acted in defiance of Malys's intent. The exquisite longsword refused to parry; instead, it jerked Malys into a desperate dodge, as if loath to touch the desecrated metal of the daemonic blades.
As Malys completed an ungraceful roll, a flash of pale blue light erupted from behind her. An Automated Sentry-Trooper, moving with a fluid speed rivaling an Aspect Warrior, surged forward. It wielded a neutron beam emitter retrofitted with a Psychic Crystal. With a single swift arc, it cleaved a daemon in two.
Unlike the particle oscillation blades, these neutron beam emitters, modified from ranged weapons into melee implements using small shards of psychic crystal, proved devastatingly effective against the Neverborn. Axion still did not comprehend why the dull-colored crystals could power ranged weaponry normally while these pale blue shards could not.
But there would be time for study later. Axion believed he would eventually solve the logic.
These psychic crystals, harvested from the Aeldari Craftworld, were few in number, only some several hundred thousand. Consequently, only about a hundred thousand Automated Sentry-Troopers had received this psychically-attuned refit. Had the enemy not been daemons, Axion might not have deployed these experimental units. He watched with cold calculation, eager to see the disparity in combat efficacy between these psychic armaments and his standard-issue wargear.