A shower of sulphuric tracer rounds tore through the alien canopy, belched forth from the oversized bolter in a deluge of mass-reactive ammunition. The acrid stench of freshly burst Tyranid flesh permeated the jungle. Pools coagulating viscera smeared the flora, ragdolled corpses of desiccated termagants strewn about in impromptu funeral mounds, yet they kept coming.
Vandros was the last. His auspex flared with movement, an incessant chime that bleated his impending doom. But the Iron Warrior did not relent. He was unafraid of their grotesque forms, unflinching, even as they exploded forth from dense foliage mere meters away, narrowly bisected by a stream of explosive-tipped rounds. There was no thrill in killing these soulless insectoids, for they gave no walloping cries nor the hastened screams of desperation. The swarm was a mass of black-eyed horrors, devoid of singular sentience and driven by purposeful, unified hunger. These were the lesser of Tyranid combat forms, yet numerous beyond count.
Ammunition wasn’t Vandros’ issue; spare belts of unused munitions draped about his fallen comrades like spandrels of segmented tendrils. It was that he was surrounded, cursed to die in the expeditionary ambitions of a careless Chaos Lord.
“Iron Within, Iron Without.” The havoc recited mechanically, voice augmitters crackling with distortion. A lone warrior against innumerable xenos beasts, he continued to hold the line, sparing no mercy for those who dared encroach upon sacred ground. The jungle around him had become a hellscape of bursting organs and dismembered limbs, a veritable graveyard of alien carrion.
They had nearly broken his flank when he saw her, a pirouetting shadow of lithe limbs and wraithbone. Her weapon sang with the discordant melody of death, slicing through swarms of bio-forms with precision. She was otherworldly, moving as if weightless, cutting down xenos by the dozen with a slender scythe-sword. There were short lapses where the savage Eldar could not cover her rear, brief moments of opening for the chitinous hive mind to strike, but havoc provided covering support. Vandros did not despise the xenos with the same zeal as his brothers, preferring the death-kiss of an exodite to the ravenous frenzy of Tyranids. Yet, this Eldar fought alongside him, and he would see her survive.
The havoc took pause amidst the onslaught, eyes transfixed on the Eldar dancer. An instant later, he felt pain blossom across his left side, a barbed claw digging deep into ceramite plating. He had let his guard down, lost in fascination of the ethereal figure. Vandros spun towards the source of the attack, bolter aimed at its center mass. He fired once. Twice. Three times.
They were not entirely mindless. As too many of their brood perished, the remaining Tyranids scurried back into the jungle depths, leaving behind their dead. The Aeldari cursed the creatures in her unknowable tongue, a syllabic hiss of bared incisors and a scrunched nose. Vandros watched her scan the horizon, ever vigilant. Her gaze then fell upon him, and she approached slowly, cautiously.
She spoke again, words clipped with suspicion, this time in a broken high-gothic, “Mon-keigh, why fight alone? Where are your kin-sects, other than these fallen ones?”
Vandros met her with silence, his mechanical façade betraying nothing. He lowered his belt-fed bolter to the ground, raising both hands in gesture of peace, and replied, “I was sent here to die. We knew not of the Tyranid presence on this planet, nor Aeldari. My master will most likely abandon the front for less resource costly endeavors; there is little in the way of sentimentality amongst my brothers.” Lying was beyond him at this point. He was stranded here, on this hellish marble of tangling vines and gnashing talons. The exodite would either aid in his survival or cut him down as he stood; Vandros possessed the grim fatalism of his primarch to a flaw.
"You do not reek of corruption as some of your ilk do…I suppose we could hunt together, until the horde consumes you."
Wiping some of the purplish viscera from his helmet's primary targeting lens, Vandros caught a much clearer look at his would-be savior. She wore what appeared to be a formfitting suit of eldar armor, though far more elaborate in design than any of his brothers' battleplate. Its surface shimmered under filtered sunlight, a lustrous midnight blue that darkened further along the edges. Sparse plates covered strategic locations of her body, while the rest of her form was protected by a thin layer of chainmail. Vandros noted how her hips swayed with each step, a subtle twitch of muscle beneath the lightweight fabric, before snapping his attention upwards. She had stopped mere inches from him, head cocked sideways as if examining a particularly interesting specimen. He noticed the absence of a helm, allowing strands of silver hair to dangle freely from her scalp, framing a face of sharp angles and feline features.
"Do keep up, Mon-keigh."