Nykona Sharrowkyn - Folly of Frater Thamatica: Safely back on board the Sisypheum, Wayland took their intelligence straight to the Strike Cruiser's nominal commander, Captain Cadmus Tyro, who acted on behalf of the Sisypheum’s true master, Ulrach Branthan of the Iron Hands' 65th Company.Branthan had been grievously wounded on Istvaan V and had to be put into stasis to keep him alive at all. Whenever the need arose and important decisions had to be made, Branthan was woken for short periods of time. This would be one of those times.With Captain Branthan sanctioning every offensive measure to deny the Traitors the powerful weapons hidden in the Eye of Terror, the Sisypheum set out, led on the secret paths of the Aeldari race by a xenos guide. While the combined fleet of the Emperor's Children and the Iron Warriors travelled on a route known as the Paths Above, the Sisypheum would take an alternate route to which their guide referred to as the Paths Below.It was Tyro's hope that by using this secret path of the Aeldari Webway, they would be able to reach their destination before the Traitors and either destroy the weapon before the enemy could lay their hands on it, or ambush them and claim the weapon for themselves. However, the voyage to Iydris would not go unnoticed.While still travelling to Iydris, the Sisypheum's senior Iron Father, Frater Thamatica, conducted a dangerous experiment whose eventual failure caused an enormous electromagnetic backlash which effectively crippled the warship and left the Sisypheum dead in the void.Worse yet, both enemy fleets and their flagships had picked up the electromagnetic discharge and pinpointed the Strike Cruiser's exact location. The Emperor's Children, determined to get their revenge on the Iron Hands who had tried to assassinate their Primarch on Hydra Cordatus, quickly staged a boarding action.The IIIrd Legion's Strike Cruiser Andronicus soon came alongside the Sisypheum and launched a full boarding assault. Captain Tyro had called all hands to battle stations as soon as Thamatica's folly had been noticed, which meant that when the Emperor's Children came, the Iron Hands were ready to defend their ship, Sharrowkyn amongst them.While the first wave crashed against the defenders, the lone Raven Guard held back, reading the ebb and flow of the battle. As customary in boarding actions, the enemy would try to enter through the Strike Cruiser's landing bays, the sole place on a voidship that allowed the concentrated deployment of troops. This would be where the fighting would be the fiercest.Two targets presented themselves and Sharrowkyn chose to engage the one he judged the most dangerous: a swordsman of infinite grace and speed who wielded two ornate blades -- Captain Lucius. Despite having the element of surprise on his side, Sharrowkyn's first attack did not kill his target outright but merely succeeded in throwing his enemy to the deck.As further proof of his skill, the unknown warrior also parried or dodged the following blows, rolling across the deck and expertly blocking the Raven Guard's strikes until he regained his footing. Having taken the measure of his opponent, Sharrowkyn attacked, lightning-fast, but this time the swordsman was prepared for him and none of his blows were able to pierce his defence.As the duel progressed, the enemy tried to goad him into an impromptu attack, but Sharrowkyn was too experienced to let himself be drawn into such an obvious trap. Like a mortal dance, both duellists circled each other, approaching and exchanging blows and blocks -- both equally gifted. Lucius relished the moment, rejoicing at the very notion that he might have found someone who might actually beat him.Questions followed insults, the swordsman wanting to know the name of his extraordinary opponent, but Sharrowkyn greeted these questions the same as Lucius' more barbed comments: with silence. This seemed to unnerve the Emperor's Children Astartes.His enemy fighting bareheaded, Sharrowkyn exploited this momentary lapse in his opponent's composure to strike at his face, the black gladius opening a deep gash on Lucius' cheek. Astonished by this feat, Lucius took a step back, ecstatic at having been wounded, and thus did not see his "comrade" rushing at him from behind and knocking him over.Intent on stealing Lucius' kill, the newcomer threw himself at the Raven Guard, swinging both his swords in a beheading cut. Compared to Lucius' skill this one's bladework was clumsy at best and Sharrowkyn almost killed him without effort, instinctively ducking beneath the blow and ramming his left hand short sword into the warrior's midriff, right beneath where his backplate started.Before the Emperor's Children Astartes could react, Sharrowkyn had already struck again, opening his opponent's throat and skull at the same time. Seizing his chance, Sharrowkyn threw himself at Lucius, intent on finishing him while he was still lying on the floor, but before he could reach him, he was thrown back into the air by the shockwave of a teleportation strike: Perturabo and his Iron Circle had joined the attack on the Sisypheum.While the fight for the landing bay was changed by this new turn of events, some separate elements of the Emperor's Children's assault had broken through the Iron Hands' defensive positions. Led by Chief Apothecary Fabius Bile, one party consisting of a collection of Bile's nightmarish creations, including Noise Marines and severely mutated beast-like former Astartes, broke into the Sisypheum's Apothecarian, where they were met by the two valiant Morlocks that had been standing guard over Ulrach Branthan's body -- Septus Thoic and Ignatus Numen -- and the Apothecary Atesh Tarsa.Realising the danger they were in and the horrors unleashed by Bile, Tarsa called for urgent reinforcements. Intercepting Tarsa's vox-message, Sharrowkyn quickly rushed to his friends' aid in a desperate effort to save the Sisypheum's captain. Sharrowkyn wraith-slipped into the Apothecarion, dropping right onto Fabius Bile and piercing his torso with his twin blades.Hurling one of his blades like a throwing knife, Sharrowkyn slew a Noise Marine outright, but before he could finish Bile, the sole remaining abomination threw itself at Sharrowkyn. Rolling over Branthan's casket, Sharrowkyn could only stare in horror as the thing's altered metabolism went into overdrive, its muscles and claws growing and its neck thickening under his very eyes.Fortunately, Sharrowkyn had called for aid himself. The backwall of the Apothecarion was suddenly ripped to shreds as the towering form of a Legiones Astartes Dreadnought entered the fray. Too big to fit through the door, Brother Bombastus, "The Iron Thunder of Medusa," had made his own doorway and answered Tarsa's call.Seizing the frenzied beast in his Power Fist, the Dreadnought repeatedly bludgeoned the mutated thing's head into the wall and floor until it could move no further. To be sure of the aberration's ultimate death, Brother Bombastus activated his fist's underslung Storm Bolter and blew its brains out. Captain Branthan and Apothecary Tarsa had been saved, but Fabius Bile had managed to escape once more.While these dire events unfolded, Frater Thamatica had rushed to the Sisypheum's enginarium, the best-suited place from which to nurse some energy back into the Strike Cruiser. In this task, the Iron Father proved lucky: the emergency venting systems had kept the Plasma Reactors operational and these were still producing power.However this surplus of energy was gradually overloading the Sisypheum's systems. Diverting the available energy to whatever secondary systems were available, Thamatica let the power build up in the generators, simulating an intentional reactor overload.This did not go unnoticed for long, and soon the Iron Warrior's flagship, the Iron Blood, detected this energy spike and alerted Perturabo of it. While the Primarch himself did not believe that the Iron Hands would sacrifice themselves in such a manner, his Triarchs urged him to reconsider his position and take no risks.In the end, the Iron Warriors retreated without warning the Emperor's Children of their impending doom. As soon as he got word of the Iron Warriors' retreat, Thamatica rerouted the colossal amount of energy at his disposal to the voidship's propulsion systems.The engines flared white-hot, their output magnified by the amount of energy that was fed to them. At a moment's notice, the Sisypheum lurched forward, akin to a missile taking flight from its launcher. With phenomenal velocity, it rammed the stationary Andronicus, cleaving it into two drifting hull-portions.The warships' flanks offered no protection at all against the kinetic power of the Sisypheum's mass launched at full-speed.Most of the Emperor's Children Astartes still on board the Iron Hands' Strike Cruiser where sucked out into space by the unexpected acceleration. Its plasma thrusters blazing at maximum capacity, the Sisypheum made good its escape.