Battle of Port Demesnus - The Path Divides: The Corvus Blackstar Lethal Intent soared through the thin atmosphere of Coheria. The planet had long been forsaken, the hab-blocks thrown up by ancient Demesnan settlers no more than jutting ruins upon the horizon.Despite the strange mist banks that swirled like a slow-motion tempest around part of the planet's surface, the Lethal Intent's scry-augurs registered the atmosphere as still breathable. Better yet, the drifts of crystal powder that passed for its surface were firm enough to land the Space Marines' aircraft on.Watch-Captain Artemis and his battle-brothers noted with focused interest the flicker of engagement sigils upon the periphery of the cogitator readout. They knew there must be more Aeldari upon Coheria when the scans registered as humanoid but not Imperial.Xenos presence was confirmed by the data lattice of the Stormraven that was deploying the Deathwatch Venerable Dreadnought Nihilus nearby. Artemis' decision to leave the Port Demesnus war zone against orders was one step closer to being vindicated. If the Aeldari were working some nefarious scheme, and Watch Force Artemis could slay them in time to prevent it, perhaps they could return to Talasa Prime in victory rather than disgrace.A split second after Artemis ordered the attack, his combat veterans took heavy fire. The thickening mists were no wider than an Aeldari's wrist, but the incoming projectiles were impossibly sharp. Where they scored telling hits, they sliced through ceramite to draw blood, slash fingers from hands or take limbs from torsos. A hollow laugh rang eerily in the mist as a shuriken slashed the eyes from a battle-brother's head in a spray of broken visorglass and murky liquids.The Deathwatch were already returning fire. Even those who were badly wounded shot from the hip without faltering. Kraken bolts hammered out into the gloom towards the long-limbed figures cavorting on the cusp of vision. Here and there, a satisfying boom rang out as bolt shells struck something solid and detonated hard.Artemis levelled shot after shot as he charged forward, struggling to see the tall-helmed Farseer through the mist. His vanguard elements boosted alongside him with a roar of Jump Pack engines. There was a sudden storm of multicoloured light, the mist flashing a hundred shades at once, and the tall Aeldari was gone.Actinic lightning blasted from the mist, a skein of electricity that left runic symbols behind Artemis' eyes as it hurled him skidding sidelong into a drift of crystal sands. A red-stockinged foot pressed his helmet down, seeking to trap him immobile for a coup de grace, but the Watch Captain jabbed his Power Sword high, impaling the Harlequin. He sprung up, gripping the falling body and breaking its spine even as he used it as a shield against the blinding laser beam that shot at him from the gloom. The corpse came apart in a puff of blood.Sleek-hulled attack craft swooped through the swirling, shimmering mist, adding to the confusion with crackling lasers and shuriken volleys. The Deathwatch, knowing that to remain stationary was to court disaster, had already spread out into pairs. What had started as a meeting of battle lines had devolved into a fast-paced hunt in the mists. Artemis growled in frustration; in a battle of agility, the Aeldari held all the cards.There was a sudden "whump" of ignition as a swathe of the battlefield was consumed in plasma fire, spindle-limbed xenos dancing spasmodically as they melted to nothing in the intense flames. The Dreadnought Nihilus stomped into the fray from the west, Storm Bolter barking as it tracked a passing Jetbike.A long-hafted Harlquin blade lashed out, deftly slicing through the weapon system's ammo feed, but Nihilus had fought Aeldari before and knew the tolerances of a Plasma Cannon well. A second explosion of eye-searing energies and the Jetbike -- brightly unformed riders and all -- was reduced to scattered ash.The tide of battle ebbed back and forth as each side attempted to encircle the other, only to find itself ambushed in turn. The mists swirled thick, the dull crump of explosions and the high shriek of dying xenos sounding strangely far away. Barking curt imperatives to fight on to the last man, Artemis plunged into the thickest part of the mist, seeking its source. He was determined to slay every last Aeldari upon Coheria, even if he died in the process.All around the Deathwatch, faces they could swear were familiar flashed in the flashed in the gloom; visages of the dead, of sisters and brothers, of the hated, of heroes long passed into legend. They blurred together, laughing, crying, a surreal kaleidoscope of imagery punctuated by intense flashes of gory violence.The distorting masks of the Harlequins, combined with the strangely reflective mist, left Watch Force Artemis with no option but to fight on using only their instincts, trusting their hearts instead of their heads.The vanguard of the Deathwatch force aimed their assault towards the highest concentration of Harlequins. They lashed out with Thunder Hammers and Power Mauls, but their targets simply vaulted and tumbled over the attacks as if in a long-practised performance.As their foes dodged, however, two of the veterans flicked Frag Grenades from the mag-lock points of their belts, and the sudden detonations sent three Harlequins reeling. It was all the opportunity the Space Marines needed. Heavy hammers arced overhead to smash dazed Harlequins into mangled heaps of broken bone and burst flesh, blood painting black ceramite red.Then, a cruelly laughing Death Jester was among them. A point-blank volley sliced an armoured torso into ragged meat, the shuriken's poison sending vital organs spattering with a bang. A blow from the scythe blade took a battle-brother's jaw, cutting his battle cry to a single gurgling words, "death," before Inriam's Spectre pushed a Plasma Grenade into his ruined mouth. Brother Galatael kicked out hard, sending the Death Jester rolling into the mist.Despite being blinded by a hundred stimuli, Watch Captain Artemis fought on with primal savagery. Once more, his mind told him he was surrounded by warriors hungry to devour him, similar to the same murderous kinsmen that had cut him down on his homeworld of Posul.The hungry faces of the Harlequins' masks loomed large in the mist. Artemis span and slashed, punched and stamped, crunched his helm into the face of one assailant and his elbow into the throat of another. He fought like a captured beast, proud and ferocious, but every return blow somehow connected, drawing blood from him with each strike.The Watch Captain felt a curved blade slide into his lower back. Another came in to sever his hand at the wrist, but glanced hard from the metal of Artemis' bionic arm. He spun, his mind flaring with pain as he ripped the sword lodged in his back from his attacker's hand. He shoved hard and primed his stasis bomb before flinging it towards the dancing shadows.A mind-numbing detonation and a shroud of stillness froze Artemis' assailants as if trapping them in a glacier. The mist, banished by the arcane explosion, parted to reveal grinning Aeldari trapped in the last act of a play that would never end. An arrowhead-shaped gunship swerved abruptly to avoid being being caught in the dislocation of time and space that rippled out from the stasis bomb's detonation.The machine's evasive manoeuvre put it right in the path of the Dreadnought Nihilus, who took some relish in backhanding it into scrap with a blow from his giant Dreadnought Power Fist. Artemis gave a shout of joy. With a single strike, the tide had turned.