The Talos Pain Engine

Kaleb followed several Primaris Space Marines through the ruined Aeldari buildings. The Word Bearers had made no attempt to clear the world's ancient remains. They seemed to have hurriedly built a temple for a blasphemous ritual, then neglected its upkeep. Aeldari structures crowded the surrounding area. Lonely streets and broken towers stood upon land scarred beyond recognition. Looking up, Kaleb saw further clusters of wraithbone buildings several miles apart.

He noticed a statue of a young female xenos, her face fixed in a plea whose meaning he could not understand. Farther away, a colossal figure towered into the clouds: Asuryan, father of the gods and creator of all things in Aeldari myth. This vast planet had once been the site of a magnificent temple built in his honor, a monument to his greatness and divinity. The highest spire rose within the city. Broken statues littered the long corridors leading to it.

Kaleb led the Primaris through the passageways of the ancient, abandoned city. They were doing everything they could to find a Webway entrance. Only then could they truly shake off the enemy.

“Statues of their heroes, aren't they?” a Primaris asked. A holographic image appeared before Kaleb, who shook his head. “Not heroes. Their gods. I have studied their foolish, blasphemous legends. These are all images of their deities.”

They discussed Aeldari legends as they walked through the ruined corridor. Even its remains showed what an astonishing creation it had once been, beautiful by human and alien standards alike. The prosperity of the ancient Aeldari was extraordinary. They would have passed this way through gardens glittering with cold crystalline light, crossing platform after platform before reaching the city's central spire to worship their gods.

Kaleb and the others entered a sanctuary. There they found another statue of an alien goddess, a profane creation forever gazing down upon them. Its surface had grown dull and gray, its body weathered and broken. Its eyes made Kaleb uncomfortable. He felt mockery in that gaze: contempt for fools who had refused to obey their commander and allowed the enemy to toy with them, driving them onto this ruined planet to disturb its sleepers.

His companions felt it too. They drew power swords. One stroke severed the statue's outstretched arm, scattering shattered wraithbone across the floor. Another pierced its heart. The powerful disruption field made it collapse in an instant. Once the statue lay in fragments, they felt a sudden relief.

They continued searching the eerie sanctuary. Somewhere within its intricate, winding architecture might be what they needed.

Elsewhere, inside the profane temple of black stone, Celestine was trying to contact Guilliman. She had to tell him everything that had happened and ensure that the Regent was not deceived by the Warp's tricks. Otherwise, even death would not absolve her. If dying could undo it all, she would not hesitate. But she knew that her death would not improve matters. The enemy might use it to deceive the Imperium. Chaos seized upon every weakness, magnified it, and finally used it to crush its victims.

The hastily assembled command center contained three psykers, installed in a broad circular chamber. Dim lamps lit its edges, casting weak light over their frail bodies. A translucent, veil-like substance covered the astropaths like another skin. They seemed joined in some way, sharing one another's feelings as though they were a single person. This was the protection granted by Soul Binding, shielding them from Warp corruption. The ritual bound them to the Emperor, drawing upon his strength to cleanse the Warp's taint and keep its unveiled horrors from driving them mad.

Before Guilliman developed communication across space-time, psykers had been essential to the Imperium's functioning. Without them, information could not reach its scattered worlds, and its armies could neither prepare nor coordinate.

The three astropaths were two men and a woman. Their eye sockets were empty. The Emperor's immense psychic power had burned out their eyes during Soul Binding, an agony words could scarcely describe. They had endured the trial and become astropaths. Cables connected to their brains wound toward the cogitator center. The messages they received generally consisted of disjointed images and indistinct words. Only interpretation could extract precise information.

Celestine stood nearby, watching the three emaciated figures. Their souls raised a choral lament, their bodies trembling with the echoes of the aether. Thousand Sons sorcerers within the Warp were interfering. Powerful psychic reverberations made the astropaths convulse. Power lines flickered and spat sparks.

The cogitators flashed wildly, then overloaded with piercing sounds. One astropath threw back his head and screamed.

A surge of pure psychic force burst outward in rippling waves. A mournful cry filled the command center. Blinding white light made it impossible to look straight ahead. Only after a long time did the radiance fade. One of the men collapsed limply to the floor, his face deathly pale and his body covered in crimson blood. The other two bled from every orifice in their heads, a ghastly sight.

“The storm is too strong. We have no way to break through...” the intelligence chief said. Celestine frowned slightly.

As she considered what to do, a thunderous explosion sounded in the distance. Several Thunderbolt fighters roared overhead toward it. “What happened?” she asked. “One of our teams has been attacked. Dark Eldar.” The intelligence chief brought up a hololithic panel displaying the incoming reports. “Which team?” “Kaleb's.” “Let's go and see,” Celestine said.

Kaleb and his companions had indeed run into trouble. Destroying a statue of Isha, goddess of life, had provoked Dark Eldar lurking in the shadows. The Dark Eldar's origins lay in the fall of the Aeldari empire. That catastrophe had almost destroyed their species. Countless Aeldari had died; a rift had torn open between reality and the Warp, swallowing millions of worlds and forming the Eye of Terror. Slaanesh had been born. Yet the god would spare none of the Aeldari and still sought to devour all their souls.

Some Aeldari had developed the discipline of the Paths and become the Craftworld Aeldari. Others had abandoned redemption for ever greater indulgence, surrendering wholly to depravity, sadism, and pleasure. They formed one pirate force after another and plundered human worlds. But they were unlike ordinary pirates.

They did not conquer a world to occupy it. Instead, they killed everyone upon it to harvest souls and keep Slaanesh from devouring their own. Their continued excesses meant that Slaanesh constantly drained their souls. They had to keep killing to preserve those souls' integrity and survive.

The more savage and deranged the slaughter, the greater their satisfaction. All Aeldari were swift and agile, but the Dark Eldar excelled even among their kind, appearing and vanishing like ghosts. In repeated clashes, only saturation fire had brought victory against them. Humans seldom won in close combat; their reactions were far too slow. Countless encounters had made this an understanding shared by both species. Humans faced with Dark Eldar called for artillery. Dark Eldar tried to close the distance as quickly as possible.

Kaleb's group had barely destroyed the statue when a Talos Pain Engine and Incubi rushed out of the darkness. The sudden attack caught them off guard. The Pain Engine was one of the Aeldari's most common weapons of war, and among the most horrifying and chilling things any living creature could construct.

The crimes of humanity's cruelest, most brutal murderers could not equal a ten-thousandth of this machine's atrocities. What humans imagined as torture scarcely seemed threatening to the Dark Eldar. A Talos was a weapon, a jailer, and a mobile torture rack. It existed to torment captives for its masters' pleasure, carrying an assortment of vicious tools for use upon prisoners taken on the battlefield.

When a victim fell into its grasp, its claws held them fast. Keeping its captive conscious, it dismembered them in whatever manner inflicted the most pain. Throughout the process, a Talos generally sustained its victim's life, forcing them to watch, in unbearable agony and despair, as their organs and flesh were separated piece by piece.