Prince Yriel - A Dying Act of Malice: Few of the Shadow Guard long outlived their master, but Yriel had little chance to crow over his victory, or even complete the destruction of the Riot Hunger. Scarcely had Kallorax fallen when a desperate telepathic message from the Flame of Asuryan warned Yriel that a spearhead of three Chaos cruisers had breached the Aeldari cordon and were driving hard for Iyanden itself. Yriel knew that three cruisers was a laughable force to send against an entire craftworld, but he assumed that Kallorax had known it too, which meant some deeper ploy was at hand. Knowing that the Flame of Asuryan was the only ship close enough to intercept the attackers, and ill-inclined to leave the take to another, Yriel abandoned his attack on the Riot Hunger. He was soon aboard his own vessel once more, pushing its engines to their limit.The Flame of Asuryan overtook one of the Chaos ships within minutes, its prow batterings blazing into life to send the cruiser, engines firing fitfully, listing into the darkness. A second vessel was crippled a few minutes later, its engines flaring one last time as the pulsars tore its engine vaults open into space. Only one Chaos cruiser now remained, and the crews of Yriel's ship knew that their victory was sealed. Though there were no vessels escorting the craftworld -- Yriel had commandeered every battle-capable vessel for his attack -- a single cruiser could not hope to endure its weapon batteries long enough to inflict serious damage.Then the Flame's sensors detected a torpedo launch from the cruiser, and everything changed. A spread of three dozen torpedoes had been fired in all, a pitiful gesture that would normally have been laughable against a vessel of Iyanden's enormous size. Alas, the Flame's sensors showed that these were no ordinary warheads, but modified Cyclonic Torpedoes -- one of the Imperium's many tools of planetary Exterminatus. Such weapons were famously inaccurate, and of little use against warships, but a Craftworld was a much larger -- and much slower -- target. If even one of those warheads stuck home, the damage would be incalculable.Now Yriel cursed his folly at stripping Iyanden's defences; the torpedoes were too small, too fast and too distant for the Flame's weapons to target. This wouldn't have mattered if but one squadron of fighters had remained aboard the Craftworld to engage the inbound warheads, but with nothing left to do to save his home, Yriel directed the Flame's weaponry against the third and final cruiser which was soon nothing more than a twisted and slagged ruin of metal. But his eyes never left Iyanden, and the sleek torpedoes he knew were almost upon it.Bright sparks of light flared as the Craftworld's Firestorm defence lasers sought to engage the torpedoes. Here and there, explosions lit the darkness as the incoming warheads were struck and punched into clouds of shrapnel and vapour. All in all, the firestorm batteries tracked and destroyed thirty-five of the inbound torpedoes, but through a malign quirk of fate, the thirty-sixth evaded all efforts and pitted against it. The torpedo struck the craftworld high on its upper port-side quadrant. There was a brilliant flash of light and a portion of the Craftworld's wraithbone hull simply vaporised. Yriel watched, helpless, as fires tore across the Craftworld's outer hull and raced through the passageways exposed by the explosion, and he wept at the terrible beauty of the sight.Knowing that he could do nothing for the dead, Yriel ordered the Flame of Asuryan to come about and return to the battle. It was many hours before the last of the Chaos starships were finally destroyed -- but so great was the wrath of the Aeldari that not even one of the pirate vessels escaped. Yriel saw little of the ensuing battle; the sight of Iyanden afire still danced before his eyes, and he could find nothing to drive the image away. He spoke not another word until the final few Chaos vessels had been reduced to scrap, and the battle was at last finished.Yriel had won the Battle of the Burning Moon, but the cost was more than he had been prepared to pay. No few of Iyanden's starships had been destroyed, and every single vessel was in need of substantial repair. The damage to the craftworld itself was far worse. Tens of thousands of Aeldari had died instantly when the cyclonic torpedo struck; worse, their spirit stones had been destroyed in the same moment, dooming the slain to suffer Slaanesh's cruel embrace.