A thing with eldars

The Craftworld Sgathan-Ra drifted elegantly through the streams of chromatic gas and dust that orbited the avalon system. A squadron of scouts drew streaks through the rainbow bands, making a trail towards the gleaming, translucent city-ship. The eldar spacecraft floated into the arched landing bay, swerving between flowing architecture and alien geometry. The leader of the eldar scout vanguard rushed through the organic walkways, pushing aside robed warlocks and seers, a look of worry in his eyes. The void-man rushed through an ornate holo-port, and fell into a bow in front of a gathered mass of advisors and seers. The Banshee Lord raised his hand and with a gesture shooed the company away. He set his steely, red gaze on the kneeling pilot, and said one word;
"Speak".
"My reverence, an impossibly large vessel has entered a collision course with Avalon. W-we're not sure, but we think it may have come from..."
the eldar looked away for a moment, but regained his composure.
"The Magm'ell."
The night-cloaked king rested his hands on the massive obsidian throne that meshed to his body, elegantly connected by crystal tubes and faint glowing threads of psychic energy.
"Triana, Dianue, take twelve of the selene guard and investigate the anomalous craft."
The daughters of the lord, two eldar farseers, emerged from the shadow of the dark throne.
"Yes, my lord father." responded the eldest, Triasha.
"Escort my progenies to the dropships. The selene guard will be waiting." the black king said to the pilot.
"of course, my lord" The robed women followed the squadron leader through the holo-port.
"Isha be just" The shadow lord whispered.

An avian-like eldar intercepter slipped through the blackness of the void, zipping towards the mysterious hulk that was their target. Triasha, the eldest daughter of the Banshee Lord and inheritor of the exodite mantle, held her plasma-casted war scythe as she stared out the starboard port. even from this distance, she could see Avalon glistening in the distance.
Dianue, the youngest of the Banshee Lord's kin, sat in the corner of the alien craft, caressing it's organic curves and shapes as she fiddled nervously with her void saber's sheathe. A cadre of heavily-armored, plasma-wielding troopers lined the walls of the transport, motionless and vigilant as they stood guard.
"Our approach vector is lining up, we will make contact with the target in 10 minutes."
informed the pilot. The voidcraft lurched slightly, and the leviathan relic came into view.
"By the Creators..." Gasped Triana.
The thing was a gargantuan void vessel, akin to a warmachine, a tomb, and a cathedral all at once. its sides were plastered with behemoth cannons, most larger than the craft they were riding by several degrees. Spires and pointed arches riddled the lithic walls, interlaced with ribbed columns and ornate buttresses all adding to a plan so obfuscate and inorganic, it made Triasha uneasy deep into her core. It's length was comparable to a small craftworld, but with such brutish and rigid construction it couldn't possibly be of eldar design. Between her nausea, she also noticed significant damage to massive portions of the ship, in the form of craters and scorch marks several hundreds of meters wide. Dianue gazed out the opposite window, taking in the horrific majesty of the titanic vessel.

The pilot sent out a sensor burst, searching the obtuse surface of the hulk for some kind of entry point. A tiny dot pinged on the holographic viewport, and the ship made a sharp turn through a massive set of arches, delving straight into the euclidian maze of architecture. The ship reached what they thought was some kind of loading bay, and rotated 90° upwards. A port on the belly of the interceptor projected a stream of light onto the closed doors of the bay as it opened, and a void-suited technician emerged, tethered to the ship by a cable. The exo-suited eldar gracefully drifted onto the skin of the eldritch spacecraft, and activated a bright-magenta plasma cutter. He carefully cut out a circle on the door, just wide enough for the docking clamp that was slowly descending onto the stone-like wall of the void vessel.
"Prepare for docking and depressurization. All systems nominal, thrusters engaging." repeated the pilot. Triasha and Dianue both stood at attention, and readied their weapons and gear. The ship could host any kind hazards or perils, and they didn't want to take any chances. They carried with them a very special payload: a plasma-bomb, to destroy the hulk before it got too close to the exodite worlds and spread whatever infestations the diseased vessel harboured.

The troupe of boarders slowly walked into the decrepit ship, which seemed to still have functioning gravity generators. Triana wielded her plasma-scythe in the dark hangar, lighting up a small portion of the room. They all switched to infra-red, which was useful as the ship was several leagues colder than freezing. mist hung low in the long, dark, and cramped halls of the ship. As they proceeded through the tomb-like halls, they noticed tell-tale signs of a struggle. Burn marks and slices on the walls, spent ammunition on the ground, broken barricades, all seeming to indicate a forced entry and boarding. Dianue knelt down and picked up one of the spent casings, and studied it closely; almost as if she recognized it.
"Sister" she said, breaking the silence.
"Yes, Dianue?"
"I've had odd intimations of familiarity looking at the strangeness of this ship. Now I think I know why."
"Why is that?" Triana said, keeping her scythe forward and turning her head slightly.
"These metal artefacts, they are almost identical to the ones those primitive tribal mon'keighs use on the wild planets, albeit much bigger. Moreover, this barbaric geometry is reminiscent of their stone-temples where they raid from." Eldar raids on primitive human tribes were rather common. The humans presented a damgerous element of unpredictable savagery that threatened the exodites and their land.
"T-that's impossible!" Triana said, slightly taken aback by the ridiculousness of her statement.
"The mon'keigh space fleets were all destroyed during the fall, just like all the other petty, fledgling civilizations. Even so, they could have never accomplished something like this!" Triana regained her composure, and noticed Dianue looked frightened by her outburst.
"I am sorry, little sister. You do not know of the terrible things those barbarians did to our people back in the old times. I was young, but I remember it vividly, the way they attacked us while we were weakened by the fall. But, I cannot blame you for ignorance." She rested a hand on her sister's shoulder.
"Let us simply be glad those times are over."

The group proceeded stealthily through the corridors, noticing more and more signs of some kind of battle. Light beams emanated from their helmets, shining light into the dark corners of the dead spacecraft. Suddenly one of the selene guards lurched, then quickly switched to a battle-stance; his light trained on a ghastly husk. The thing appeared to be like a human, but 7 feet tall and covered head-to-toe in black armour. Bulletholes and burn marks riddled the dead thing, along with horrendous imagry and tokens dangling from it's long-dead corpse. It was covered in a heavy layer of dust and frost, but broadcasted an urgent sense of danger regardless.
"Sister, get behind me. Guards, form an attack formation." Triana said, taking on a commanding tone. "I feel a very real and present danger on this doomed vessel."

The troupe journeyed through the seemingly endless corridor, checking adjacent rooms for signs of life, or something more dangerous. All they found were an increasing amount of dead bodies similar to the one they saw initially and more signs of a struggle. Dianue felt an overwhelming sense of dread, which seemed to grow with every new body they found. Something about them was just... wrong. The way the faces of their armour glared, the tokens dangling from tgeir bodies...
Dianue shook the thoughts from her mind, and instead focused on the massive entryway ahead of them.
"Proceed carefully, open spaces are much harder to clear than mere corridors."
The guards lined up against the wall, preparing to enter the cavernous interior and deal with whatever lay inside.
They rushed through the portal, moonbeams and melee weapons at the ready. Before them sat a sight almost unbelievable; a massive formation of statues, forming what looked like a defensive circle centered around a massive, central column. The statues were similar to the bodies they encountered earlier, only much larger. They also lacked an aura of uneasiness, instead replacing it with pure awe. They carried massive fists, hammers, and weapons so enourmous an wraithknight would struggle to use one. As they walked through the forest of stony figures, a psychic presence began to appear. Triasha and Dianue, being farseers, felt it most. It was an emotion, akin to a longing, or a deep desperation. Triasha felt memories of the fall creeping into her mind, and cleared them away before any more unpleasant thoughts found their way in.
Dianue, however, continued to feel the emanations. She felt a strange empathy, as if the statues themselves were feeling them. 'A final stand' she thought to herself. She began wandering through the statues, following the psychic essence that tickled her mind. She fell into a trance-like state, and before she knew it she was in some sort of control room. A single statue stood in front of a large viewport, overlooking the expansive bow of the titanic ship. She was immediately shook from her stupor, when noticing the head of this stone likeness. It was exposed, revealing a disturbingly realistic face. It was obviously human, lacking any of the elegant abd stylized features of an eldar, but was uncannily real all the same. She reached out a hand to touch it, almost to see if it was real rather than some kind of illusion. She touched a single finger to the figure's chest, nervousness and excitement filling her mind.

Triana continued through the forest of stone figures, ignoring the nagging sensation of empathy poking at the back of ger psyche. 'Isha damn it, they're just statues' she thought to herself. She was beginning to lose focus, and her mind was being clouded by foreign thoughts. "The sooner we get off this ship, the better"
Then, one of the guards started firing plasma into the darkness rather suddenly.
"Guard, what are you shooting at?" Shouted Triana. He simply stood with his weapon raised, staring into the darkness unresponsively.
The walls of the ship shook violently, and the creaks and moans of metal buckling and shifting echoed through the halls. Triasha raised her blade to a combat position
"Dianue get beh-"
Khaine be damned, her sister must have wandered off while she herself was distracted by the faint voices of the ship.
"We have to fall back and find the princess!" Triana shouted to the frightened guards.
The warriors fled back, firing arcs of glowing energy into the shifting darkness. A vibraneous cacaphony blasted through the ship, digging into their minds like rusty hooks. Triana felt blood run down from her ears as her vision turned red and blurry. This was no creature of reality.

Dianue stumbled backwards as cracks formed all across stony surface of the Mon'kiegh statue. Centuries-old dust fell from the crumbling figure, as slight movements ripple across the long-dead being. It's fingers and joints extended, breaking apart the rocky prison that bound them. The figure fell to its knees, no longer supported by the stone mold that once held it. The man gasped, as air filled his augmented lungs for the first time in over 500 years. The ancient being supported himself on his massive gauntlets, seemingly mechanical in nature. in fact, all but his face seemed to be covered by some kind of humanly brutish armor, augmented with characteristically abhorrent machinery and mechanisms. Dianue was practically paralyzed by fear; she had been somewhat afraid of the barbaric nature within the primitive tribal mon'keighs, but this creature was an entirely new beast. She clutched her void-saber tightly, pressed up against the wall in fear of the massive savage. The thing opened his eyes, and looked around in confusion in respect to his current situation. She panicked and ran forward, shouting and thrusting her void blade into the beast's gut. She opened her eyes, hoping for a quick kill, but only found the point of her saber embedded slightly in the mon'keigh's ceramic armor. She felt the force of a wraithlord collide with her side, sending her flying into the wall behind her. The hulking human-thing's fist crackled with energy, and his face sported a stone cold stare. The monstrous warrior began to walk towards her, shaking the metallic floor with every step. The barbarian backed her into a corner, with her void-saber shaking in her hands.
Then the floor collapsed.

Triana dashed through the forest of stone giants, weaving through statues as her guards followed suit. Occasionally they would turn to shoot at the horrible abomination chasing them, slowing it down for all of 3 seconds. Triana did notice something peculiar, however. The statues that were being knocked aside by the creature's gangly limbs weren't shattering like normal granite or marble. They were getting up.
"I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS DAMNED SHIP" she exclaimed, whiping the blood streaming down from her face.

Dianue felt like she had been hit by a jetbike at full speed. Her shoulder and side ached like nothing she had ever experienced, and her wraithbone plates were cracked in numerous places. Despite this, she struggled to stand up. When she finally opened her eyes, she wished she hadn't. All around her, the mon'keigh, and the rubble of the floor above were thousands of insectoid cythor fiends. The creatures shrieked with an inhuman shrill, piercing her ears with their terrible noise. The human, however, seemed unphased. He simply drew a massive, cumbersome device from his hip, and weilded it on his shoulder. From the barrel of the weapon shot unimaginably bright, hot flashes of sub-atomic plasma in rapid succession, and the room erupted with white-hot fire and the fluttering of the enraged fiends. Dianue shielded herself from the pandaemonium and closed her eyes, the only thing she could hear being the chaotic chorus of fire and chitin. However, a nearby Cythor warrior, a larger and more vicious subset of fiend, noticed her and attacked rather than being burnt to ash in the blinding crucible. Dianue sensed this, and quickly evaded, narrowly missing the thing's saw-like pincers. She drew her void blade and entered a defensive posture. The creature howled and charged, thrusting its immense mandibles towards the farseer. She leaped into the air, using her natural eldar agility to dodge the juggernaut as it crashed into the wall behind her. The wall began to buckle, its structural integrity having been gnawed away by the insects long ago. The cyclone of light and flying beasts stopped only for a moment, as the south wall collapsed into a massive cloud of dust and debris.

"KEEP FIRING! USE THE STATUES AS COVER!" Triana shouted, unloading her shuriken pistol into the hulking beast. She couldn't bare to look at it's hideous form for longer than a few seconds, although she could catch glimpses. It seemed to be a dark grey, with muscular arms close to its huge, gaping maw, and long, gangly arms radiating outward. It had a long tail which thrashed around the cavernous interior, and thick, trunk-like legs. One of the thin arms sideswept one of the guards, and a muscular arm quickly snatched the downed warrior and stuck him in its mouth.
Triana continued trying to contact the craftworld for assistance, but the psychic stress of the abominable horror before her simply drowned out the messages. She had since deduced that the monster had to be a daemon, a wicked being of the warp. Her father had fought one back before the migration, and it was partly responsible for their diaspora from the galaxy. Because of this, she had to maintain mental focus lest the thing's disgusting malevolence incapacitate her. She also noticed the statues, which were beginning to move like living things.
"Wonderful. Just what we needed." She said, preparing to fight her new adversaries. The statues seemed confused, but soon either charged towards the daemon or the farseer. The stone giants began hurling fire at the daemon, and flung themselves onto the beast. They raised massive fists and pummeled the creature's hide, only phasing it slightly. The ones that charged Triana quickly found that eldar had not grown any slower since the other times they had fought. She leaped into the air, bringing her scythe down with deadly percision. However, she found her blade deflected by a massive fist, connected to an even larger stone humanoid. This thing was even bigger and bulkier than the others. It swung its second arm around at her, wielding some sort of large club. She deftly avoided it, only to realise it wasn't just a giant club. It was a weapon. The barrels began to spin, but before it could fire something interrupted the ensuing battle. The massive right wall collapsed, engulfing the room in dust and shaking the walls and floor. Triana was dazed for a brief moment, but was brought back to reality by a high-pitched buzxing noise.
"Damned Cythors!" She shouted, leaping to the side and into cover from the incoming swarm. The daemon and the stone warriors, unfamiliar with cythor fiends, simply turned in reaction to the crash and subsequent noise. Suddenly, an innumerable wave of  thrashing chitin, gnashing teeth, and slashing claws erupted from the dust cloud, swirling around the mammoth interior like a cyclone of pure, animalistic ferocity. The insects slammed into the statue-men doing minimal damage, but were instinctively drawn to the daemic entity due to its unmistakable psychic signature. The creatures dug into its thick, grey hide, and began slashing and hacking at it with their diabolical appendages. The monster thrashed with its numerous arms, putting up a significant fight against the growing swarm. Psychic blasts shot from its invisible eyes, vaporizing the bugs like comets hitting a star. However, for every dead cythor, two more pushed their way in through the swarm. The two unstoppable forces clashed with fire and fury, setting off psychic explosions and psionic arcs of plasma all across the enclosed battlefield. Many of the statue-men were knocked to the ground or to the walls, becoming spectators to the ensuing titanomachy between the psychic entities. Triana and her guards hid behind rubble and debris, struggling to stay sane with all the psychic disturbances tearing their minds apart. The daemon shoveled insect bodies into its terrible gullet with its many arms, and the cythor fiends continued to slash and burrow into the monstrous thing's flesh, forming a mind-shatteringly brutal stalmate of psychic forces. Just as the numbers of cythor fiends began to thin, one of the swarming things had dug far enough into the daemon that it reached its heart. It thrust its mandibles into the dark organ, releasing unimaginable amounts of chaos energy. both the daemon and the swarm were engulfed by a dark void, a hole torn straight into the warp. Dust and debris swirled into the tempest of destruction and the walls buckled and warped as time, space, and reality itself was deformed. Finally, the tear imploded with a sizeable psionic shockwave and the foul things were all banished back to where they came. Triana emerged from the rubble with dried blood streaks on her face, mentally exhausted from repelling the diabolical influence of the monstrous being. She surveyed the wrecked interior, noticing a familiar shape emerging from a pile of debris. She dashed over, embracing her shaken sister, as the remaining selene guards recovered as well. Without the daemon to block any incoming psychic messages, communications came flooding in from the distant craftworld.
"Triana, Dianue, I repeat, what is your situation? Condition? status of the mission? Mother Isha, please let them be safe..."
"Yes! Yes, we are here. The mission was a failure, returning to the craftworld for reinforcements." She said, coughing up minute droplets of blood.
"Affirmative, sending reinforcements."

"Sister... I don't know what happened I-"
Triana silenced her sibling by embracing her once again, tears wetting the dried blood under her eyes.
Another shape dug itself out of the rubble, but this one was far from familiar. The hulking mon'kiegh warrior had blood all over his face, and had his eyes on the two eldar. Triana and Dianue drew their blades, knowing that the fight may not be done yet.
They were vastly outnumbered, with hundreds of stone soldiers surrounding the dwindling eldar platoon. Their fists crackled with electricity and their eyes glowed bright orange.
"It seems that we are not yet out of the crucible." Triana said, glaring at the surrounding army. The human horde stood between the eldar and their only exit, the hall leading back to their ship. Dianue held back tears, accepting the fact that through all of this, they may still not return. The wall behind the Statue-men exploded, heralding multiple troupes of heavy-shock plasma troops and towering wraithknights. They opened fire on the horde, plasma bolts and electrical darts repelling the even-more-heavily-armored human soldiers. A jewel-covered Wraithlord lept into the fray, sending dozens of the stony warriors crashing down onto the ground.
"My Nieces, I will make a path for you. Go now, and let the winds of the spirits hasten you." The dreadnought said in an ethereal, monotone voice.
"Looks like Uncle Viadrel grew impatient." Triana said, sprinting with her sister through the chaos of battle. Fire and plasma littered the air, as the human troops retreated further into the ship. The eldar forces remained only long enough to ensure the safety of the young farseers, then swiftly retreated as well. The docked interceptor and the newly-arrived super transport detached from the skin of the cursed vessel, soon to return with more troops. However, before they could even reach the craftworld, the ship miraculously reactivated, and vanished into the warp.