Chapter: 5.4

Chapter: Landfall

Part: 4

Escape Pod Epsilon-III

The Inquisitor froze as the blade stuck in her shoulder shimmered in its eerie blue glow and a jet of searing hot pain shot through her body,

"Frak!"

She glanced at the Aeldari, the Xeno had raised her hand as if she was reaching out for the sword and the blade seemed to be responding. 

"Oi! Quit it!"

The Aeldari didn't stop but renewed her efforts, groaning as she forced the energy to bend to her will despite being heavily injured. 

Greybrand cursed,

"By the Golden Emperor and his bloody Inquisition! I said... STOP!"

She flung her left arm, throwing the metallic pistol at the Aeldari and it hit her square in the face. A muffled *CRUNCH* told her that she had probably broken the Aeldari's nose and she grinned again,

"Servers you right."

"You have some nerve, Mon'keigh..."

The Aeldari scowled, her eyes narrowing into angry slits. She then laughs, coughing up blood as she does so.

"If you had more bullets, you may have won, but you did not, so..."

With a gentle flick of her wrist, the Aeldari flung the pistol back at Greybrand, landing a direct hit on her stomach.

*Cough*

The Inquisitor doubled over, causing even more pain to shoot through her body as the sword's blade scraped against her bone,

"Damn... you... you damn Xenos."

The Inquisitor grunted as she clutched her stomach. The pain was overwhelming which made every breath painful and caused her to wince slightly each time she tried to adjust to a more comfortable position.

"You..."

Greybrand glanced at the Aeldari as she took deep breaths, overwhelming exhaustion and pain clouded her mind, but she had a sword sticking out of her shoulder.

"Are you seriously still trying to insult me, Mon'keigh?"

The Aeldari asked. She was exhausted, but it seemed as though she was enjoying herself at Greybrand's expense. The Inquisitor was in pain, but she couldn't let her consciousness slip. The Aeldari might be a bunch of filthy Xenos but their unique physique and psyke made them faster, stronger, and heal at a frightening rate... compared to an ordinary human at least.

"It seems I've struck a nerve,"

She grinned,

"Or is my sarcasm lost on you?"

The Inquisitor was beginning to lose the battle against exhaustion, each word coming out harder for her than the last,

"I..."

Greybrand breathed deeply and tried to speak, but before she could do so, darkness clouded her mind. Her senses were gradually overcome by the pain and exhaustion that the past few hours had wrought, causing her body to shut down and her consciousness to slip into unconsciousness.

The Aeldari looked at Greybrand, an amused smile slowly making its way on her face as she witnessed the Mon'keigh finally succumbing to exhaustion and pain she had inflicted. She gave a low laugh, trying to taunt the Inquisitor,

"Poor Mon'keigh, how weak you are. How truly pitiful."

No response, Greybrand had fallen into a deep sleep,

"Oi, Mon'keigh!"

The Aeldari called again,

"Wake up or you will die of blood loss!"

Still no response.

The Aeldari waited... one minute.

Five.

Ten.

Half an hour.

A full hour.

Then the Aeldari arose, wobbling on her feet, the chunk of missing flesh from her abdomen had already regenerated... well, mostly. With careful steps, she reached over to the Inquisitor and gently kicked her leg before backing away. 

"I know you are pretending, Mon'keigh!"

She hissed, her fist ready for a scuffle that never came.

And then, with a sudden jolt, she realized that the smelly Mon'keigh was not pretending! She had fainted.

"Ha!"

She shook her head and approached closer, picking up the Mon'keigh's power sword but not activating its energy field, who knows what nasty surprises might be on it? She lifted the sword, preparing to finish off the human, and with a mighty cleave, she brought it down with all her power before stopping barely inches above her face.

*SIGH*

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Farseer Cethlieth Ulthrel, the 'Reclusive Seer of the Crystalline Tribunal' and the 'Perceptive Searcher of the Empty Awakening,' better known as 'Arlenen Saelana, young Farseer of the Danni-gealac Craftworld,' was in a foul mood... a very foul mood indeed.

It was a little over ten cycles ago that a nightmare invaded her dreams, or rather, her search for answers. She saw a world... damnit! No more formal wordings and stuff, she hated the stiff nature of the Aeldari but she complied with it enough to climb to her rank. 

Anyway, she saw a world overtaken by those soulless abominations, the foot soldiers of the Yngir. But these were strange soldiers, devoid of their minds, hunting for all that lived in this accursed world, and these were chasing one of their own! A Lord of their wretched kind... or maybe a lady, you can't really tell with them being involved.

As if that was not bad enough, upon consulting star charts Arlenen found out that the planet was a Mon'keigh plantation world!

...or was it an agri-world?

Maybe both?

Whatever!

She need not concern herself with those primitive ape's appetite for bad names.

Still, she did what any proud Aeldari would do in her place, of that she was sure and went to her craftworld's Farseer council to inform them of their discovery.

But of course, those fools would wait till it was too late!

So, she demanded a strike force of her own to command and take down the Tomb World... which didn't go quite as planned. She got her ass handed to her by her teacher for insulting the Farseer council... so humiliating!

As a result, she gathered her own force!

The Hemlock-Class Destroyer, 'Tears to Ashes,' and roughly two hundred of her Aeldari brothers and sisters from various disciplines. While she might be seen as a rash child by her elders, her reputation was quite widespread amongst the younger warriors of her craftworld.

That was seven cycles ago... or as the Mon'keigh would call it, a week ago. 

Her ship, why yes, it was hers, arrived in the backwater Mon'keigh system through the webway and took care of their Naval Elements while maintaining a safe distance. It was exactly the kind of operation the Hemlock-Class was made for, to take care of targets swiftly and from a great distance.

Once they dealt with the Naval Elements, all that remained was to find the tomb world and make sure the soulless abominations acted like soulless constructs and stayed in their damned sarcophagi.

Half of her force voted to go down and do a bit of pest control,

"You know, slaughter the primates and destroy the tombs by our own two hands! Just like our ancestors intended."

Said the lizard-faced Aeldari with the ridiculously long neck that SOMEHOW seemed more attractive to her race. 

Arlenen never quite understood what the point of that ridiculous neck was, except for being extremely uncomfortable. Yes, she was jealous that no one, the male Aeldaris, would spare her a glance once that lizard entered a room... no one except the rest of the females... but she was not into women for ISHA'S sake, even some of the older women, the Farseers, and Veterans would eye her and it was only by her master's grace that she survived so long... and somehow even he seemed jealous of her unique talents.

"Alarath's Might, Lathriel! We are not here to start a mindless slaughter, we are here so that it might not happen in the first place."

Admonished Kelmad, a second, even younger farseer. He had tagged along with her at the last moment, but she had a sneaking suspicion that he was trying to run from his master who was famous for her method of teaching that had a 95% fatality rate.

"There is truth in Kelmad's words, we should not unnecessarily provoke the Imperium without a good cause. Those Mon'keigh might die easily, but they have numbers on their sides, and most of them are fanatical zealots."

Added Kaine, her second-in-command, 

"I believe it would be better if we simply wiped out the planet and got on our merry ways."

Grumbled Lathriel once her idea of simply cutting through the Mon'keighs was dismissed.

Thus, they began formulating the plan to destroy a planet without leaving any traces that might give them away. Finally, a mere two cycles later, they decided to overload the primitive Orbital Space Station's engines and send it down on the planet in full force.

Votes were cast and decisions were made, it was decided that Arlenen would lead a group of five Howling Banshees with her to take over the Space Station and overdrive the engines while sending it hurtling down toward the planet below. The ensuing damage should have been enough to crush the Tombs along with all signs of life and if any did survive, the Aeldari would make sure they joined their kin in the damnation of the warp.

The first phase of their plan went soundly, they boarded the Station without being detected, such was the Technology that the inferior Mon'keigh possessed, or rather they lacked pretty much everything.

But what appeared before them was not the panicking Mon'keighs but a three-way war between the Orks, Pirates, and Guardsmen.

Of course, the Aeldari joined the fray as the fourth party and killed everyone else... or at least tried to. The Mon'keigh were easily killed and so were the pirates, the problem was the Orks and their seemingly unlimited numbers on such a small orbital structure. In the end, Arlenen decided that they better split up into groups and search for the 'BOSS'. 

*Sigh*

She should have known better.

As the laughing god would have it, she was the one that came face to face with the Ork Warboss, as well as a group of half a dozen Nobz.

Sometimes, Arlenen hated the gods of her race...

=*=