Author's Note: Greetings to you all, my chosen moniker is Gunny Stacker. This story is my first here, or at least the first I want to publish for other people to read after having it stewing around in my head for a year. Still keep criticisms constructive and feedback civil. I would like to thank Solvdrage for inspiring me with his story, Chains of the Kindred. The concept of a Halo and Warhammer 40K crossover is an intriguing concept seeing how the universes are both equally crazy-powerful in their respective forms. Here is my take on it.

Second Chances

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die. Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: The Imperial Guard and countless planetary defense forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to humanity from aliens, heretics, mutants - and far, far worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war.

Before Man, there were the Eldar. A race naturally endowed with the gifts of eternal youth, grace of body, wisdom of mind, the ability to psychically bend reality to their will and read the strands of fate that govern all life. An inheritance of innumerable blessings befell them after the demise of the ones that came before them and for millennia unremembered their empire spanned the galaxy, built upon the great psychic roadway partitioned within the warp, known as the Webway. Theirs was a shining example of civilization to which the Imperium of Man is but a bare mockery of what once was. The Eldar's history was a rich one filled with a wide expanse of tales now long forgotten even by the most ancient of their kind. So great they were, that they could see no fault within themselves, blinded by their hubris. A vast many sought out pleasures of greater and greater scale, losing sight of their own souls as darker lusts began to consume all but those who dwelt upon continent sized Craftworld ships that traveled the stars. Only these Eldar could see with clear eyes the shadow that had befallen the once noble race, only they could sense the oncoming storm that would become the birth of another dark god, raped into existence by their kin's debauchery and powerful psychic imprint upon the warp. Trillions of Eldar kind perished in an instant and their souls consumed by the God of their own sins, the Eldar's Empire shattered in a moment and their gods slain to all but a barely existing handful. A single moment creating a lasting impact felt for millennia to come. The surviving Eldar barely hold on to what they have in the face of a hostile galaxy. Some hold to a ridged code upon their Craftworlds to ward against the dark temptations that lead to their fall and safeguarding their souls with precious psychic stones. They use their psychic gifts and what strength they have to protect the worlds on which others of their kind try to rebuild their civilization. Others exist as corsairs upon great ships sailing the great black sea of space, bringing woe to those races who befall of their pirating. The darkest of their kin continue their quest for pleasure through torment and pain based in the Dark City of Commorragh secreted within the tangled passages of the Webway. They are the most reviled outcasts, staving off She Who Thirsts by the vampiristic drinking of souls of other beings. In the modern age the Eldar exist upon a knife's edge, doomed by their arrogance, beset by enemies on all sides, a civilization fractured beyond repair and perhaps redemption. But there is always hope, even in a time where there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Imperial Date 999.M41

Ultima Segmentum

Eldar Exodite World Eq'Hai

Void Stalker Battleship Herald of Asurryan

Low Orbit

Asurr walked the dusk-blue and starlight colored corridor of wraithbone in as great a stride as the gravitic restraints upon him allowed, a scowl upon his faire face as he was lead to the bridge of the vessel he had grown to despise. To any human, an eldar would appear much like them in shape, though of much greater refinement compared to those basic mammals, the mon-keigh. He was of average height for his kind, standing at just over two meters with his slender but hardly weak body. Beneath the sour expression, Asurr was considered handsome among eldar and beautiful by any other species, his face far less bony than his father's was. His skin was pale yet warm, highlighting his eyes, the color of polished high quality jade. The pearlescent restraints blighted the metallic hues of his bioplastic suit of armor. Between the upright bladed wings upon his back-plate, his hair the color of dark nightshade berries brushed at a pair of long force knives that hung unavailable to him upon his belt. Behind the eldar, his guarded escort consisting of Lysandur Nimanthire Exarch to the Dire Avengers Shrine of the Bright Phoenix, ally to House Ythanyll for millennia and a practical godfather to the House's heir. Beside the exarch walked the treacherous leader to Asurrr's Blade Sworn Retinue, and his own actual godfather, Fenryr Wyndrunn, still traitorously adorned with the armor of the Steeleye Reavers. He passed a holographic window that peered out into the void where he could clearly see the six undamaged ships that were supposed to be under his command, whose crews defied his orders to attack and instead gave him up, cowed by a single ship and battleship or not, he believed they should have fought.

The bridge doors opened and before him stood the Ulthwé Farseer Dyresh Ythanyll who had unrelentingly dogged him across the southern galactic arm for the past two hundred days. He stood in his subtly ornate rune armor, a short raven feathered cape hung over his left shoulder with a singing spear held on the same arm it covered and upon his belt a sheath containing a slender curved witchblade. He wore no mask traditional of Farseers upon his face, in its stead was a sheet of material that actively absorbed light faster than it could be reflected, blacker than the void that lie outside the border of the galaxy.

Around him in the half oval shaped bridge it was apparent to Asurr the greater effort put into the battleship's construction when compared to his own vessels. Like his, there were seven stations made in arcing lines on either side of the room spaced five meters from the outer wall, only the computers installed in the were of sleeker and more modern design. Over the whole of the bridge save the floor was woven elegant latticework of webbing platinum wraithbone, flowing down from the highest point and blending the bridge in with the rest of the ship while creating an ever changing mosaic of the cosmos.

"Asurr, Prince of the Steeleye Reavers, how gracious of you to finally accept my invitation." he mocked despite his even tone.

"Do not mock me with your sarcasm. Father." He spat with revile.

Dyresh Ythanyll approached, his posture portraying calm, peace and yet Asurr knew it was only a front, a display of his perceived superiority over him. "You think it is ill will that motivates me? I who spent two hundred days pursuing you in order to hold a simple conversation?"

Asurr gave a short laugh. "I need not be a seer to know the future in what you would say, and you as a seer should know my answer. This meeting is only a wasteful expenditure of your time and the resources of our craftworld."

"So you still think of it as home, do you?" His father's question had caught him off guard.

For a second his reply lingered as he analyzed his words, concluding it was the resurfacing of past memories brought forth by his father's presence. "A slip of the tongue, a mistake that shall not be repeated. The same as what should apply to the situation you place us in now."

"I do as what my scryings reveal to me. The strands of fate guided me to here as they did you because my son, you are destined for things of greater importance than being leader to a minor band of corsairs. I have seen runes upon the skein nigh forgotten by our kind. The Expecting Mother, Iliathin holding hands with the child Faraethil, the Springing of the Life Tree, Renewing of The War in Heaven and the Laughing God Upon the Stage. Others and more gather son, and we are to be at the center of whatever event is to come."

"Those mean nothing to me father." Asurr's eyes fell to the floor, his face fading from anger to a look of somberness. "You fight is foolish. The Eldar are over, we have been since the fall but foolishness blinds us to the fact. We fight and we die holding off the inevitable, I knew this every time I looked from our home on Ulthwé to the Eye which marks our greatest failing. Better to be like Ulthyr Ellarion and Yriel of the Eldritch Raiders. Flying free, enjoying life in the moment and praying upon the misfortunes of the lesser races than fight the inevitable."

"Are you so without hope?" His father asked but Farseer Dyresh Ythanyll would receive no answer. "We depart for Ulthwe. Your fleet will be joining us as well. The Despoiler renews his dark crusade against the Imperium of Man once more and our aid will be needed to rebuff his latest task set forth by the dark gods."

Asurr nearly gaged in disgust. "Why aid the Imperium? They are a primitive closeminded race who desire to take eldar life at every opportunity. They are mon-keigh, little better than animals whose claim to galactic rule is an appalling mockery to civilization itself. How many times have you fought them and manipulated their armies to their doom to protect Ulthwé?"

"We do battle with our opponents, but we do not hate them." Dyresh quoted Asurr's mother, a subject which brought the Prince's blood to boil once more. "I had thought your mother and I had raised you better."

"You are not fit to recite those words." Asurr hissed.

The Farseer ignored his outburst, speaking to the battleship's captain. He was a tall man even for an eldar standing at two and a third meters tall with silver hair and vibrant green eyes and clad in ebony armor inscribed with ivory script detailing his many battles, storied in their number. Asurr knew who this was, though he had never had the honor of meeting Autarch Faerelon Voidborn. One of Ulthwé's most respected Mariners, called the Lance Weaver for his actions during the Battle of Kaveltorax. "Captain Faerelon, the Void Dreamers of the Reavers' vessels must be informed our path through the warp takes us through the Maelstrom, this I have scryed and must be so." he dictated.

Captain Faerelon and steersman looked visibly unsettled by Farseer Dyresh's command and they were rightly disconcerted. The Maelstrom was a warp storm unsurpassed save by the Eye of Terror itself.

"Are you certain?" Captain Faerelon asked of the Farseer.

"I speak what the skein reveals to me." Dyresh replied cryptically.

The Captain of the Void Stalker turned toward the three steersman, his posture radiating authority. "Make for the Maelstrom, we do as the wisdom of the farseers reveal to us."

"The capricious madness of farseers others call wisdom. You save me only to drive us through the heart of death." Asurr claimed.

"Nonetheless, it is our path." Dyresh spoke with certainty.

Moments later, the seven eldar ships disappeared into the untamed realm of the warp where emotion was made reality and the realm of possibility was postulated as infinite. This day it would be the crucible to which a new fate would be forged.

October 20 2552

Cairo Orbital Defense Platform

Earth Orbit, Sol System

0900 Hours Local Standard Time

"…That MAC gun can put a round clean through a Covenant capital ship." Bragged the soon to be Sergeant Major Avery Johnson as the dark brown skinned Marine admired Cairo Station's 800-meter-long magnetic acceleration cannon. Beside him in the station's transport tram stood a seven-foot-tall Spartan super soldier clad in a metric ton of olive-green MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor, his face completely obscured by the polarized golden visor of his helmet. To the Covenant, he had become known as The Demon, by UNSC record he was Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN John-117.

The reason for he and Johnson's presence aboard the Cairo was for an award ceremony. Almost exactly a month ago they were aboard the Halcyon-class Cruiser Pillar of Autumn fleeing from the fall of humanity's greatest fortress world of Reach. Per the Cole Protocol, the ship's AI Cortana initiated a series of random slipspace jumps as to not lead the murderous Covenant to Earth but instead encountered something completely unexpected. In the orbit of a gas giant laid a massive alien construct created by an unknown civilization. The Covenant called it Halo. At a distance, it appeared as a massive ring technological in design with its diameter nearly that of Earth's, but upon its inner band it contained a vast number of differentiating habitable environment. From his time there it was beautiful and eerily serine but in truth held dark and terrible secrets. The Covenant believed foolishly that Halo was an engine of transcendence that would propel them to a higher plain of existence, they were gravely mistaken. Halo was a weapon, a machine capable of annihilating life on a galactic scale, built unknowable millennia ago by an ancient civilization called Forerunners to combat the nigh unstoppable parasitic plague known as The Flood. In the battle for the ring, the Covenant unwittingly unleashed the Flood that had been locked away for experimentation by the installation's AI Monitor 343 Guilty Spark. The AI construct then almost tricked John into activating Halo to eliminate the Flood threat. Thankfully Cortana was there to stop him. The two then went about causing the destruction of Halo by overloading the Pillar of Autumn's fusion drives and were successful. However, John, Cortana, Johnson and one other Spartan, Linda-058 were the only survivors out of over two-thousand. Among those lost was Captain Jacob Keyes. His daughter would be present in the award ceremony about to take place. John wondered how she was taking the news.

"…Ships have been arriving all morning." Johnson continued unaware to the Master Chief's inattentiveness as the tram approached the platform situated right outside of the primary bridge. A crowd of Marines and a number of camera drones were gathered on the platform, celebrating them with cheers and applause as if they were conquering heroes. "Nobody's saying much but I bet something big is about to go…"

Johnson's speech was cut short as he was bucked out the tram's door and the whole of the station shook around them. Something that should have been impossible in the vacuum of space. The crowd of Marines toppled over, one John saw fall of the platform's balcony to an uncertain fate. The Master Chief only stayed standing in part to his armor's weight which gave him enough time to activate the magnetic soles in his boots. He hauled up Johnson, hooking his arm around the Sergeant Major's torso and pushed forward into the bridge, thankfully the door was still functional.

"Cortana, what the HELL is going on?!" Fleet Admiral Hood's voice carried through the din of chaos consuming the bridge, demanding answer from Cortana who was currently interfaced in the Cairo's systems. John pushed through the door to the wide area at the center of the room where the Admiral stood braced against the bridge's large tactical display. To the left a tiered series of tactical station terminals going four rows up, plateauing into two long observation balconies that flanked the room's sides.

"I don't know sir," Cortana answered as her blue-purple holographic figure appeared upon her pedestal not far from the Admiral. She sounded flabbergasted, panicked, he hadn't seen this since discovering Halo's true purpose. "It's some kind of spatial anomaly. I'm getting all kinds of crazy readings that shouldn't be physically possible!"

A glimmer caught John's eye high above outside the center's windowed ceiling.

"Determine its source!" Hood ordered.

"There." The Chief called out in his gravely monotone, calling out to the area of space where the image of the Ukraine was distorted by interweaving curtains of warping space-time curled around into a rough sphere.

"Can we destroy it?" Admiral Hood questioned. Before he could get an answer, the anomaly exploded, momentarily blinding all save John whose visor polarized to a greater degree to compensate. He witnessed the distortion in space expand in a single violent moment, thin ribbons of electrical arcs and curtains of aurorae filled with colors that did not exist blanketed the adjacent area of empty space between the Cairo, Athens and Malta defense platforms. John saw the black forms of several objects manifest at the core of the spatial anomaly, a whisper in the back of his mind instinctually telling him this moment heralded something of grave terribleness.

The warping curtain of unknown energy that comprised the explosion's impossibly existing blast wave drew quickly upon the Cairo. The Chief quickly knelt down and held Johnson tighter. "Brace!"

John felt the energy wave break upon the Cairo and strangely upon himself, like a strong oceanic wave brought on by the tide it washed over him. The Spartan's mind surged from a battering storm of memories, of the countless pitched and desperate battles he fought, of his training in his youth in the forests of Reach with his fellow Spartan recruits and the comradery founded there. And others from before his conscription, his childhood and family, happy memories long buried by the decades. John experienced them all so lucidly and so quick, what was happening?

And then it all left him and the wave dissipated past the Spartan. He stood with Johnson hanging from his arm, the Sergeant's eyes wide and his breathing bordering on a panic attack.

"Johnson!" The Chief called out to the Marine.

The Sergeant's teeth were gritted his teeth and his pupils shrunk into pinpoints. Johnson forced his eyes shut and shook his head, clearing out his mind from whatever experience he was arising from. "Ah-I'm good..." He grumbled. John gently set him down and then moved forward toward the Admiral and a young female naval officer he recognized from her picture in the Cairo's news bulletin as Jacob Keyes' daughter, Miranda. She was young, very young, especially with her short-cut dark brown hair framing her youthful face. Only in her mid-twenties, Miranda Keyes was one of the youngest officer's ever to command a warship. Hers was the In Amber Clad a Stalwart-class Light Frigate currently in moored at one of the Cairo's two docking ports. She helped the Admiral rise to his feet, her hair swinging in front of her pale face which seemed a shade paler from the battering they had just taken both physically and mentally.

"Lord Hood, are you alright?" Keyes asked.

The Master Chief stopped in his tracks as he saw a number of alien ships in the place of the anomaly. Six of them seemed to be of roughly the same design, all having an elongated conical shaped main body and narrow handle shaped aft section, like the handle of an ancient sword. But rising from these sections bizarrely seemed to be one or up to three massive sails of varying length and design. Their hulls were colored black but stood out clearly with the Earth's imposing presence to their starboard sides and they were marked by large artistic runes metallic silver in color. Upon the strange vessels the Chief could also clearly make out a large number of turrets, weapon ports and large underslung spinal guns but these seemed tiny in comparison to the weapons upon the largest of the five vessels. Azure in color, the behemoth the size of a Valiant-class Super-Heavy Cruiser, had a long conical body broken by a horizontal line of weapon ports along its midsection and its aft tailed by four reaching wing-like sails of brilliant luminescent orange.

Lord Hood and Commander Keyes took notice not long after John had and were equally shocked. Hood began shouting orders to identify the ships, fearing the arrival of the Covenant upon humanity's most secreted world but the Chief's attention was elsewhere. Faint glimmers within the bridge near the starboard side door caught his attention, a dread feeling arcing up his spine as his fear manifested into another anomaly, smaller yet identical to the monster one that existed seconds ago in Earth's orbit, only when this one blossomed there was no dramatic detonation, only the formation of a funnel of exotic energy and colors that defied reality itself.

From it stepped creatures the likes of which he had never seen. Three-meter-tall monsters with slick blood-red skin atop digitigrade legs and sharpened three-toed hooves, their heads long, bony malicious looking things topped with a variety of razor sharp horns, black soulless eyes and long purple tongues that flicked from their lipless predatory maws, licking the blades of the wickedly serrated semi-molten onyx swords they carried.

"Ignorant mortals of this realm!" It screamed in a snarling otherworldly voice. "The walls that bar us from your sanctuary protect you no longer! Thy souls will be consumed in the name of Khorne and your skulls shall decorate his mighty throne! Prepare for an eternity of slaughter!"

Something triggered inside of John's mind similar to what he had felt interacting with the technology on Halo. The instinctual knowledge of exactly what to do that had seemed so odd to the Spartan. This time he felt no such oddness, his whole body screamed for the monsters' destruction. Before he even knew it, he was charging right at them filled with the most consuming intent to wipe them from existence where they should not be.

Imperial Date 999.M41

Sector: Unknown

World: Unknown

Void Stalker Battleship Herald of Asuryan

Low Orbit of Unidentified Planet

Asurr awoke prone upon the cold floor, his head rattled by something that took him a brief second to remember. Using his shackled hands, he rose to a kneeling pose, the furthest he could rise due to the restraints clamped around his ankles.

"As I said, the madness of farseers." Asurr saw his father standing at the fore of the bridge, seemingly unaffected by what should have been a suicidal act of flying through the second most powerful warp-storm in the galaxy.

"I, I know this planet." Asurr could hear him speak softly to no one but himself. "But it differs, it is not as it is. What it should be, it is...It cannot be so but this is no illusion, the threads of fate...I had not expected this. This outcome." The Farseer turned inward toward the rest of the crew and Asurr. "This world is Terra, from its ancient days long before their Emperor will rise to power."

"What?" Asurr asked bewildered. "Navigator, consult your star charts! Disprove this rambling!" He ordered. He was met with look of great annoyance from the violet haired female Navigator, receiving a command from someone who was not only a captain of a different ship but also a prisoner. Nonetheless, she did so if only to confirm her Farseer's claim. A look of shock quickly befell the eldar Mariner's features.

"Autarch!" she exclaimed.

"It is true?" Faerelon spoke, his tone more a statement of fact than an interrogative.

"The stars have reversed their interstellar drift by many millennia. By Terra's date, it is only halfway through its second millennium, but that is not the problem! The Terrible Eye, it is gone!"

Farseer Dyresh as well as the Captain quickly approached the Navigator's podium to witness the data for themselves. Asurr meanwhile waited on bated breath. The Eye gone? How could that be? The culmination of his people's sins, the most awful scar upon the universe itself, missing?

Dyresh knelt over the holographic display and then rose a second later, his posture portraying utter neutrality that did not even hint at any distress. He drew something from his armor, a rune that Asurr recognized as that of Cegorach, the laughing god who dwells within the Webway. Asurr had thought only the Harlequins, those strange eldar who worshiped him carried such a thing.

"I see." Dyresh spoke in a hushed tone.

"Captain," Called out the mariner at the sensors station. "Warp presence has manifested upon the nearest orbital structure."

"We must aid them." Dyresh commanded. "I fear our arrival has brought entities of the warp here."

This brought on a look from Captain Faerelon, questioning if the Farseer had truly gone mad. "The plight of the mon-keigh is of no concern to the Eldar." The seasoned Captain then turned to the male Star Caller at the communications podium. "Activate the ship's Wraithgate, we must send word to Ulthwé. We have knowledge of the future that must be made known."

"It is not activating!" The Star Caller returned with rising distress in his voice.

"That is because no Webway exists in this reality," Dyresh spoke up, calling attention to himself once more. "We have not journeyed to the past. We have entered an alternate space-time, a universe separate from our own where the Webway was never made and likely that the Eldar do not exist." Dyresh held up the rune he had drawn from his robes. "This rune guides the Harlequin Shadowseers to all Webway portals both known and long forgotten, always the presence of the Webway can be felt through it but to me it is inert, dead. Captain, there is no other path to take, fate has drawn us here to the cradle of mankind. At this time, they are ignorant to the perils of the warp, the skein calls to us to aid them."

"Perhaps we were called here to destroy them all?" The Autarch countered. "Snuff them out so that they may not rise to become the brutish genocidal Imperium?"

"I am surprised you would so quickly commit yourself to an act of such barbarity my friend. Lose not the thought that as of now, we are the only eldar. Without port or planet to call our own in a galaxy that I sense is far different than the one we left. It may even be we shall never return to our home. Both they and we are in desperate need of allies." Dyresh advised.

"Prepare the Vampire Raiders and call up our contingent of Black Guardians." Captain Faerelon ordered.

Dyresh turned his head toward his son. "I believe I may possess a more expedient method."

October 20 2552

Cairo Orbital Defense Platform

Earth Orbit, Sol System

A metric ton of armor and Spartan collided with one of the horrors that should not be. It fell back, not expecting the Master Chief to bear such weight. John pushed the devilish sword aside with his left arm while his right fist sprung with the force of a loosed ballista into the fiendish beast's skullish face. He felt the left bone of its cheek crack and collapse, continuing into the creature's eye socket. Its free hand attempted to drive its thorny talons into the Chief's shoulder to no avail as it found no purchase to drive forth upon the golden glimmer of slick energy shields. John used this to deliver a second hammering strike upon its throat, in hopes to collapse the creature's windpipe. Before the Spartan could press the advantage further, the beast tossed him back with surprising strength. The Chief rolled backward a single time before he dug his magnetic soles into the deck-plate.

Behind the first creature a second looked on in thirsty desire for the surprisingly skilled green clad warrior his brother was dueling. Such a challenger was a rare thing amongst humans who had not been transformed into the likes of Space Marines. If his brother Bloodletter failed, he would take up the challenge. If his brother won, then he would try to outdo him in scale of slaughter.

"Hey, Goldilocks!" Came a boisterous call for his attention that drew the lesser Bloodletter to the crowd of soldiers gathering amongst the tiers of cogitators, led by one of darker skin with cigar lit and clamped in his jaw. When he had time to light it beforehand was a mystery even to the warp. "Eat lead!" he shouted as he opened fire with the light machinegun clasped tightly in his arms.

The Spartan was on the defensive now, but he was in his element. Around him the world moved at a fifth of its pace, the cause of this dilation known by his own as 'Spartan Time' an unintended result of his physical augmentations. Ahead of him, the creature was making a furious charge. Behind it, another facing off against a growing crowd of Marines, Johnson lighting it up with a righteous fury only 7.62 millimeter incendiary rounds could provide. Unfortunately, even with the Sergeant's enthusiasm, it seemed to have little effect on the creature and the bloodied bodies of four Marines and Sailors could be seen draped over the lines of computer terminals.

The third creature was drawing upon Admiral Hood and Commander Keyes, a dozen Honor Guard lie slain at the abomination's hooves, the white of their dress uniforms forever sullied as they had given their greatest effort. Miranda had taken up one of their M7 submachineguns and did what she could by firing into the thing's damned face but John was doubtful she would come out on top, these things were damn tough. Both parties were a dozen meters away across the room he had to help them, stop those things. The Master Chief knew what little margin of error there was but he had to try. A single command traveled from his brain through the implanted cybernetic neural lace to his armor, fully deactivating the safety regulators that restricted the suit's full potential. The creature swung its sword in a great arc meant to break through the golden barrier that had thwarted it a moment ago and cleave through John. The thing found little success as the Spartan sidestepped the swing in a ghostly burst of speed, the foul blade of the monster's sword now jammed into the deck. The Spartan moved in without second wasted, taking two great strides up the scarlet limb of lithe damned muscles, driving the ram of his knee into his foe's jaw, reducing it to a bloody slurry of flesh and ebon bone. Forced back by the sheer momentum, the beast was just a second away from losing its balance with a ton of Spartan on its chest, its sword slipped from its talon just as John planned. Bringing his foot in, John then kicked himself away, propelling himself in an arc that threw the battered creature to the floor and the Spartan landing on his feet adjacent to the entrapped blade.

John's eyes fell upon the unearthly implement, its burning accursed runes making every facet of his being recoil, but he had no other alternative and he took hold of the handle.

A raging maelstrom of aggression was suddenly blasting upon John's mind like wildfire. Mindless unending rage trying to overwhelm him with burning hatred for everything and an unending need for combat. Blood, it wanted blood so badly it was an addiction, it didn't even matter where it came from, so long as was spilt by its edge. It tried to force at John's mind to impose its will on him. But he resisted, pushed back with his stonewall determination the decades of service to Humanity built in him. He was a Spartan, the leader of all Spartans and people's lives were depending on him to do his duty.

'No!' He commanded, pushing the flood of fire and blood back into the sword by sheer force of will. His hand grew tight around the handle and in one clean motion, flung it from the floor up over his head and brought his cold fury down upon his foe, the Daemon who now laid exposed upon his back. The daemonblade came down swiftly into its own master's chest and cleaving down its torso. Shortly theater it began dissolving into smoke and embers.

As one died, four more poured from the portal, coming right for the Master Chief and the Marines. All the while events around him were conspiring against the Spartan. To one side the Admiral and the daughter of the man John had failed to save, and to the other Johnson with two-dozen others, fighting a futile battle against a foe they were ill-equipped to face.

One of the newly arrived scarlet beasts roared an unearthly sound at John, an event overshadowed by the appearance of multiple ripples in reality in the air above the bridge, punctuated by bright strobes of white light.

\Authorized Personnel Only/

Asurr fell through the air and upon the bare metal floor, as did his Blade Sworn Retinue and his father, brought upon this mockery of an orbital fortress by use of the same technology utilized by the Warp Spiders Aspect Warriors. Asurr and his corsairs had used the devices to take the bridge of many a vessel. Never he could have imagined they would be called upon to rescue humans. The Corsair Prince drew his force-saber and shuriken pistol, feeling the taint of daemons near before sighting upon a large olive armor-clad human dueling a pair of lesser Bloodletters, to his shock wielding one of their own accursed blades against them. A third daemon lay split from chest to groin upon the floor, its material burning back into the warp.

The two daemons the Space Marine like human faced were pushing the warrior back though they couldn't seem to land even a glancing blow. This human seemed to possess a baffling speed on par with a warrior of the Striking Scorpions or perhaps even a Harlequin. The human ducked a stroke by one then the other, and swept the chest of the second with the tip of his captured daemonblade, though not enough for a killing blow. The first used this as a distraction, using its warp powers to perform an ethereal dash behind the human.

Asurr took this as his moment to enter the fray, striding forth and loosing a volley of psycho-plastic crystalline shuriken into the soft pit of the Khornate Daemon's side. The beast was knocked from its footing and Asurr vanquished it back to the warp with a sweep of his saber that decapitated it.

The human warrior followed suit, taking his enemy's sword arm at the elbow in a stroke that followed a well-executed, if poorly practiced parry. He spun about, grabbing and twisting the Daemon's other arm back while sweeping out its left leg with a kick to the ankle. The Daemon was upon its death knell when the human thrust the blade down the middle of its elongated skull, the tip cutting out the thorny teeth of its upper jaw as it exited. Even Asurr could appreciate the artfulness of human's execution technique.

Dyresh upon arrival had instantaneously let fly a storm of psychic lightning upon a Daemon about to prey upon two humans, one an elderly man and the other a young woman with a primitive repeating firearm. The Farseer could feel their life-threads upon the skein, the importance he sensed they bore to future events. He would make it his mission to guard them. The fierce gale of electricity fried the Daemon's body, vaporizing with no delay all liquids in its physical manifestation and reducing it to a shriveled blackened corpse. In this way Dyresh brought the Eldar's spite upon the Blood God.

The pair of humans looked to Dyresh, unsure of his intentions and he was quick to give them relief. "Fear not humans, we come to your aid." Dyresh then looked to the wound in reality from which two more daemons came, engaged by Asurr and the tall armored human with the captured daemonblade.

Psychic energy flowed through the Farseer's body, in his mind he chanted the runes that gave design to the energies into a conjuration of great destruction. Before the portal a shining yellow miniature sun formed from the aether. When another Daemon clawed its way into their reality it was beaten back from whence it came by a prominence of psychic fusion energy. The other arm of the Farseer rose, various runes hanging from his sleeve alight as he cast the Force of Asuryan upon both human and eldar alike, imparting a psychic boost of energy to those in need. That should be enough. The old eldar thought as he now turned his full attention to the portal.

Ahead Asurr's Retinue lead by Dyresh's trusted friend and his son's mentor, Fenryr took flight on their winged jetpacks as to remove the humans from their line of fire as following the Farseer's condition of their release. The six Corsairs soared over the three daemons of Khorne in this glass box of a chamber. Five streams of super-sonic shuriken rained down from above into the daemons' scaly backs and spines of many sharp ridges. Regrettably, daemons they still were and that of the dark god of battle. The daemons pushed into the crowd of humans seeking shelter among the many bodies they wished to claim. Several of humans fell to the charge, one darker skinned guardsman was lifted by the shoulder to act as a shield for one of the warp entities. The man was however disagreeable to this action, using the psychic bolstering of his strength to jam the barrel of the support weapon down his capturer's throat. Seven burning rounds cut through at the neck base, though not enough to slay the supernatural creature. It chomped down with its terrible maw, shredding metal and composite but enough to distract it. Fenryr swooped in, took hold of the human's arm, and hauled him free, turning back only to unleash a blast of hot annihilation from his fusion pistol to finish it off.

Dyresh chanted in open voice, lines of runes both of raised and sunken relief burning bright across the Farseer's armor from head to toe. His hands were nearly clasped together, the index fingers extended and touching at the tips of his digits shaping a point and his knuckles bent inward but not touching to either hand, creating the Rune of the Eldar. At its center a marble-sized orb or blue light grew with intensity. The remaining daemons shrieked with pain and reeled from the psychic light, giving opening to the humans and eldar that now preyed upon them. The air grew dense with the weight of psychic energy it could almost be tasted. With one final effort Dyresh cast the blue bolt of hyper-concentrated psychic energy toward the portal, first forcing the miniature celestial body through it, ending the argument once and for all of whether there were suns in the warp. The blue orb entered and then detonated with a muted bang, dissipating the doorway at long last. Within the warp its effects were far more felt, its gale casting away all daemons who sought to enter reality within this solar system. With the battle now done, both groups were left staring at one another, unsure of what to do next.

Post Reading Note: Well, I hope I've got you interested. That fight on the Cairo's bridge took a lot longer than I thought due to a misconception on my part in how the room was laid out. Please leave a review, let me know what you like and don't like. I did my best editing this but if anyone would like to be my beta, please send me a message. In terms of inspiration for my writing style, I'm trying to draw on Gav Thorpe for the Eldar, Eric Nylund for the UNSC and Dan Abnett over all. Those worried about whether or not the Imperium will be included, don't worry, I have plans for them and Chaos as well. As the story progresses, I'll be drawing on Greg Bear's authorship to give you a hint at what kind of scale I have planned.