Battle of Iyanden - Into the Eye of Terror: The journey into the depths of the Eye of Terror was fraught. The purplish swirl of that vast Warp Storm had the presence of a living, predatory thing. The weight and saturation of its evil pulled at the soul as a black hole devours light.Without the thought of Ynnead's ascension to inspire an icy determination in the Ulthwé pilots carrying the Ynnari into the Eye, those at the helm would likely have turned back a dozen times over. On they went, each soul resolved to live as boldly and fully as the ancient Aeldari rather than to look away or hide in the manner of their present-day kin.The graceful starships moved under the cover of gigantic Holo-Fields, bypassing the embattled Imperial war zones of the Cadian Gate and venturing into the unstable overlap between realspace and the Warp. The Eldar expedition evaded fang-toothed space-time tornadoes, ﬂed from hungry ghost suns, rode out hailstorms of bloody skulls and negotiated crashing tsunamis of raw Warp energy. They did not falter.Whenever the resolve of the Ynnari began to waver in the face of these trials, Yvraine was there to inspire them and lead them on. It was this bravery that came to typify the Ynnari over the Terran months to come, securing their reputation as a force for change from one side of the galaxy to the other.Already the shock waves the Ynnari had sent throughout the Aeldari civilisations were causing ripples of causality in their turn. The transformation of Yvraine in the Crucibael had triggered the invasion and Dysjunction of Commorragh, and Asdrubael Vect himself had abandoned the Dark City as a result.Though the damage to his reign had been cataclysmic, the Supreme Overlord had already set in motion hundreds of plots and schemes that would reaffirm his stranglehold upon Drukhari society. It was the metaphysical danger of the Ynnari's rise that concerned Vect most of all.The harrowing odyssey of Yvraine and the Reborn had been the subject of much interest in the Kabal of the Black Heart. The Supreme Overlord Asdrubael Vect now had far more pressing matters to attend to, for Commorragh was wracked by the most severe of Dysjunctions and his aeons-old power base was literally falling apart.Yet he could not shake the desire for vengeance upon the upstart gladiatrix that had triggered this turbulent uprising that night in the Crucibael arena, and causing division amongst the Commorrites -- a sentiment shared by a great many of the Haemonculi who had long considered themselves the true masters of Drukhari society.The Dysjunction of Commorragh was an eventuality Vect had long planned for. He was a past master at ensuring that when misfortune befell the Drukhari, his rivals suffered the worst; often it transpired that it was Vect's hidden hand behind the disaster in the first place.Though he implied to his servants that he had deliberately triggered the cataclysm to relieve his immortal ennui, Vect was secretly livid that his personal fiefdom had been defiled, and his contingency plans forced into sudden reality.Whilst his rivals scrambled to salvage the remnants of their once-glorious holdings amidst the spreading Warp quake, Vect was already well-established elsewhere, populating the ruins of ancient port cities and turning them into sprawling fortresses.He offered safe haven to those who sought his protection -- at a price, of course -- and prepared for his long campaign of counterattack.Meanwhile, the cataclysm of the Dark City occurred in a series of chain reactions. The underground River Khaïdes burst its banks as a slough of Nurgle daemons ﬂopped into its acrid reaches, surging into the streets above to trigger waves of necrotising plague.With the midspires largely unguarded, Tzeentchian sky-sharks and the fiery chariots of daemon sorcerers roared into the skies, ﬂame spiralling as they clashed with the murder-packs that populate Commorragh's starscrapers.When the daemons of Khorne poured through empty streets to invade the sprawl of Sec Maegra, the most nefarious, hardened mercenaries and pirates of the galaxy united as a single army in the face of swarming Bloodletters and rampaging Greater Daemons. The hordes of Slaanesh, beside themselves with ecstasy, sated themselves with orgies of violence unbound as they massacred Commorrite Kabals spire by spire.That immense and complex Drukhari metropolis had power enough to swallow even a major daemon incursion and cauterise the areas deemed irretrievable, but it was far too fractious a domain for a unified defence.Many of the Dark City's Archons tried to slay their rivals under the pretence of fighting back the daemon hordes, their actions adding to the mayhem. Skirmishes and gang wars broke out in the streets in escalating measure, for this time there was no Kabal of the Black Heart to bring the hyperdimensional city to bloody order.Like a palace made of dominoes given a single push, Commorragh suffered a chain reaction of disasters. Around the Crucibael, the escaped Tyranids that would once have been put down with relative ease carved a red path through the domains of the Wych Cults.Archon Sythrac, counterattacked after a vicious but costly coup staged against the Lords of the Iron Thorn, was beheaded by Kheradruakh the Decapitator, one of the living shadows known as Mandrakes.With this singular and grisly kill, the Decapitator finally claimed the last "perfect" skull he needed for his dark work. Flaying it and licking his trophy clean, he used it to complete the underground ritual he had been obsessively fashioning from the stolen heads of his prey over the last eight Terran millennia.The gaze of a thousand perfect skulls met in the middle of his lair and bored a hole in the wall between worlds, opening a gateway to the midnight dimension of the Mandrakes. A morass of shadowy assassins and tenebrous monsters spilled like an inky ﬂood through the streets, and slew every soul within a dozen Terran miles.In the space of a single night, that region of Commorragh became the shadow kingdom of the Decapitator, long-lost monarch of the Mandrakes. His was a new reign of terror, his throne set within a sea of living shadow that consumed even the daemon invaders that strayed within its grasp.On the third night that shadow army combined its strength with the ﬂeshy hordes of the Haemonculi Covens. Endless menageries of twisted ﬂesh-things and shadow daemons surged up from the Dark City's underworld, and the mayhem of the daemon incursion begin to lose momentum.The Kabals and Wych Cults regrouped somewhat, using their knowledge of the Dark City to fight back against the Warp-born invaders. As the stolen dark suns burned overhead, Commorragh's fate hung in the balance.In Vect's presence, the topic of the Dysjunction's cause was already taboo. The Supreme Overlord had already claimed he had Yvraine in his power, and that he and his Haemonculus allies were painstakingly extracting every ounce of the power she had shown in the Crucibael. Though there had been no proof of it, none were foolish enough to call him a liar to his face.Vect had publicly tortured the steersmen and Corsair warriors Yvraine had abandoned in her ﬂight from the city during the Night of Revelations, but of the gladiatrix herself, there was no sign.Rumours were circulating that Vect's claim was hollow, and his rivals -- his former paramour, Lady Malys of the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue, foremost amongst them -- were doing everything in their power to ensure that Vect's authority and dominance was undermined.In secret, Vect was sparing no expense in the search for Yvraine, and the Haemonculi Ancient Urien Rakarth's Prophets of Flesh Coven were pulling every string they could in order to track down the Ynnari. Without the aid of their Harlequin allies, the Ynnari would likely already be captured, but for now they had slipped the net.To Rakarth, the rumours of soul magic were both intoxicating and horrifying. They hinted at a prize worth any cost to the nigh-immortal Coven-lords, whilst also representing a manner of death that even a Haemonculus Ancient would not be able to escape.Almost as soon as Yvraine had escaped the Dark City, wheels had been put in motion that had seen a host of Vect's Haemonculi allies depart for the most dangerous reaches of the Webway -- and from there to the same daemon-haunted planet sought by the Reborn. In many ways it was a dark homecoming. Amongst the Haemonculi Covens' founders were the self-same Aeldari whose wanton indulgence had led to the Fall.Elsewhere, after a series of maddening and surreal trials, the Ynnari expedition reached its destination with most of their number still alive. There were those that maintained it was the spirit of the Altansari Warlock Guentilian guiding the Ynnari through the Eye of Terror's hellish reaches that allowed them to reach their destination all but intact.Others said it was the presence of the Yncarne. It may even have been Ynnead himself that held back the infernal tides; certainly that was what Yvraine had claimed since they had passed the Cadian Gate.Though many of the Reborn were slain during daemonic attacks or driven irrevocably insane en route, the core of the Ynnari's expedition was still intact when the convoy of Eldar starships came into orbit around the giant, milk-white orb of Belial IV.When an Ulthwé warhost's grav-tanks bore the Ynnari low into the Crone World's atmosphere, and from there to the surface of the planet, there was not a soul to be seen. Dunes of off-white dust had accumulated everywhere, the residue of a once-mighty civilisation mingled with the remains of its people.The planet's ruin-dotted surface had the stale and unwelcoming atmosphere of a place that had not felt the footfall of a living creature for hundreds of Terran years. Just occasionally, however, the Ynnari saw ﬂickers of movement in their peripheral vision, as if something half-real was watching.As the Ulthwéan contingent split off in a spiralling search pattern, the Harlequins of the Midnight Sorrow too fanned out, making exaggerated gestures of stealth. So swift was their progress than many Ynnari asked themselves if they had visited these ill-fated lands before.It was their Shadowseer that brought their suspicions to Yvraine first, drawing a thin and shimmering veil of darkness behind her as she came. They were not alone amongst the ruins. The creatures that pursued them were not ghosts, nor daemons, but creatures that were very much ﬂesh and blood.No sooner had the Shadowseer confided in Yvraine than a howling menagerie of abhorrent terrors charged headlong from the ruins ahead. They were coming straight for the Ynnari, hungry and focussed on their prey despite the Harlequin psyker's illusory veils. At their fore were eyeless Ur-Ghuls, multiple nostrils twitching as they bounded on all fours towards their prey.Behind the creatures came all manner of twisted anatomies, from musclebound hulks whose spines bristled with steroid injectors to whip-limbed hunchbacks who scuttled on bare feet with the speed of hunting spiders. Floating amongst them were the Haemonculi sent on a mission of murder by the ﬂeshmaster Urien Rakarth, most feared of the Dark City's Haemonucli.Eyes wide, the Haemonculi grinned like ﬂayed skulls as they came, many licking their lips in anticipation of the gruesome experiments they would enact upon the Ynnari. It was as if the vilest elements of the ancient Aeldari society had been resurrected amongst their shattered holdings, and given forms that better mirrored their inner personas -- not those of elegant and athletic paragons, but of ravening monsters, whose surpassing ugliness revealed the parasitic souls beneath.The Ynnari were under attack from the hidden architects of the Fall, an echo of the torrid past come to rip away the brightest hope for the future.As a silver moon glimmered upon the parched surface of Belial IV, the echoes of Aeldari long dead ﬂitted and moaned amongst the ruins, crying out as the darkest incarnation of their ancient society fell upon their would-be saviours.Even the Bloodbrides and Incubi amongst the Ynnari ranks were under no illusions as to what their Commorrite brethren intended for them, and so dived into the fray alongside the Black Guardians of Ulthwé and the Harlequins of the Midnight Sorrow.The razored blades of mercenary and gladiatrix cut away heavily thewed limbs, bisected leaping Ur-Ghuls and decapitated masked monstrosities wherever they came forward. Incredibly, many of the Haemonculi's minions kept fghting even after sustaining grievous wounds, limb-stumps spraying nameless ﬂuids as they thrashed and ﬂailed. Their violence was indiscriminate, but the unnatural strength behind it made it dangerous. Many an Ynnari was hurled broken across the wasteland to skid like a rag doll into the drifts of bluish-white dust.In the centre of it all, a clutch of Talos Pain Engines drifted towards Yvraine, claws and tentacles twitching. The Shuriken Catapults of the Biel-Tani Dire Avengers slashed a hundred wounds in the ﬂeshy war machines, black liquid ﬂying from their ironhard carapaces. The pulsing energies of nearby Cronos Parasite Engines spurred them on regardless.A double rank of Wraithblades loped through the dust to intercept them before they reached Yvraine, elegant Ghostswords gleaming as they sliced and cut.The spirit constructs fought with courage and strength, but the Pain Engines were true masterpieces of the ﬂeshcrafter's art -- one by one the Wraithblades were caught by clacking claws and wrenched apart.Suddenly the Visarch was there, stepping nimbly around the Pain Engines as he ducked, slashed and moved away once more, avoiding whirring chain-ﬂails and jabbing ichor injectors with impressive grace. Soon, all that was left were hovering carapaces that drizzled foul blood.The eldest of the Haemonculi, his mouth twisted in a moue of irritation at the sight of his pets being dismembered, brought forth a rune-engraved box from his robes and opened it. Sickly light ﬂooded out as captive djinn-spirits shrieked towards the Visarch.His long blade whirled and slashed, but no physical foes were these, and they could not be cut. They lifted him bodily into the air and stretched his limbs taut; grinding and snapping sounds were clearly audible as the Ynnari warrior was slowly stretched to breaking point.A moment before the Visarch came apart, the Yncarne burst from the morass of dead Pain Engines with a deafening roar of triumph. With nothing more than its bare hands, the Avatar ripped the djinn-spirits to dissipating wisps of ectoplasm.It ﬂexed a slender claw, and the djinn's Haemonculus master withered away to a puff of dust. In far Commorragh, those samples of the Coven-lord's anatomy that were kept for regrowth turned to dust at the same instant. There could be no proof nor safeguard against the death brought by the Yncarne, for it was the god of the dead given physical form.Seeing their comrade's demise, and fearing that he had died a true death at the hands of a daemon, the rest of the Haemonculi withdrew.No prize was valuable enough to risk their carefully maintained and treasured immortality. Within solar minutes they were gone entirely, their fleshwarped servants vanishing with them.The Ynnari had barely regrouped amongst the ruins when a ululating shriek pierced the air.