With the manifestation of the Megalith, the Necron Doom Phalanx was rapidly coalescing. The previously extinguished Blackstone Pylons began to flicker with malevolent light once more, and amidst the swarming Canoptek Scarabs in the rear, two more Blackstone Pylons stood completed.
The warp energy projected from the Void Sword onto the planet's surface was forcefully dissipated. The severe interference successfully crippled three arrays within the already overloaded warp-energy guidance mechanisms.
A cohort of Destroyer-class Heavy Automatons, originally designated for a standard surface insertion, was violently wrenched out of the Warp a thousand meters in the air. Even equipped with gravity-regulating devices, these massive chassis were never meant for aerial deployment. Nearly thirty Destroyers were shattered mid-air, entirely incapable of evading the incoming fire.
Necron Obelisks hovered in the skies, unleashing arcs of crushing force from their gravity pulse cannons. These binding beams snared the plunging Destroyer-class Heavy Automatons, seeking to grind the sudden interloper metal to absolute ruin before they could even strike the ground.
Yet, the vast majority of the Destroyers corrected their descent trajectories mid-fall. Utilizing their onboard gravity-tethering arrays, the machines calculated and constructed mutual gravitational vectors between one another, forging impromptu orbital paths. Spurred by sudden, violent shifts in gravitational acceleration, the behemoths slammed heavily into the ponderous Necron Obelisks.
Torrential fire battered the carapaces of the Destroyer-class Heavy Automatons. Form-fitting void-shields flickered frantically across their armored plates, yet stubbornly refused to fail. Over a hundred Destroyers descended like a catastrophic meteor shower from the sky.
The heaviest losses, however, were inflicted by those terrifying, floating Doomsday Monolith towers. Particle whips lashed through the air, tearing apart any Destroyer-class Heavy Automaton that dared draw close. Upon impacting the earth, the majority of these battered chassis suffered catastrophic structural failures.
Conversely, those Destroyers that hurled themselves directly at the Obelisks managed to secure a foothold. The firepower of the Obelisks was insufficient to vaporize the incoming Destroyers, and their physical mass was hardly larger than the automatons themselves. In a single wave of kinetic impacts, more than half of the Necron Obelisks rain-bombarding the ground were smashed to splinters.
Yet, landfall was merely the prelude to the slaughter. Having witnessed the terrifying destructive potential of the Megalith, the tightly clustered Adaptive Combat Cores splintered into countless smaller, independent entities, surging forward toward the towering monument.
As they advanced, the Adaptive Combat Cores cycled through their arsenals seamlessly, unleashing indiscriminate devastation upon every Necron unit in their path. They shifted fluidly from rudimentary neutron beams and small-caliber lascannons to voidship-grade rapid-fire plasma cannons and railguns. Energy beams, radiation bursts, and solid-shot munitions alternated in a dizzying cadence. Concurrently, they began devouring the living metal scrap of fallen Necrons, alongside the shattered remains of ruined Destroyer-class Heavy Automatons and other destroyed combat units.
The Adaptive Combat Cores operated with terrifying efficacy, their numbers snowballing exponentially. Against this plague-like spread, the Necrons deployed their own cold calculations. From the flanks, Doomsday Arks loosed synchronized volleys. If the localized nano-cores within a primary Adaptive Combat Core were completely vaporized by overlapping strikes, a violent chain reaction would rip through its constructs, causing the sub-clones to disintegrate in unison.
Meanwhile, the long-range Armored Wardens, originally tasked with silencing those Doomsday Arks, were desperately entangled. They used their agility to fend off sudden, underground ambushes from Tomb Stalkers and Tomb Sentinels. The sheer, apocalyptic yields of their Magaron-class Atomic Pulse Cannons proved a liability in close-quarters melee, forcing the Armored Wardens to fight in tight, mutual-support pairs while seeking an opening. This horrific metal-grinder, where all units were hopelessly intertwined, inadvertently suppressed the devastating fire of the weapons mounted upon the Megalith.
The grounded Destroyers now unleashed their savage close-quarters fury. Gravity-tethering fields yanked them into melee range with blistering speed. Massive power claws tore through Necron Tomb Stalkers like parchment, while weapon-arms bathed wide swathes of the line in roaring, incinerating torrents. This unholy heat melted living metal into sloshing, warped slag, detonating the weapon systems of the Necron phalanxes. Uncontrolled energies, accompanied by shockwaves and emerald lightning arcs, tore across the battlefield, washing over the Destroyers' form-fitting shields and leaving faint ripples across their heavy plating.
The massive engines moved with surprising grace across the churning mud, evading the descending lash of particle whips from the floating Doomsday Monolith towers. Despite standing twenty-five meters tall, the Destroyers possessed a terrifying, agile swiftness. For a fleeting microsecond, the sight stirred ancient data-crypts within the Necron Lord. It was a haunting echo of a time uncounted eons ago, when the frail creatures who first awoke him had fought his legions with that same desperate, feral defiance.
The Necron Lord raised his staff high, and once more, trans-dimensional gates tore open across the battlefield.
"All life must meet its end. We are no exception. But you shall precede us into the dark!"
A phalanx of Seraptek Heavy Constructs materialized in the epicenter of the carnage. The colossal warmachines strode forward, attempting to hunt down the nimble Destroyer-class Heavy Automatons. These horrific Necron engines rested upon massive, eight-legged chassis, standing nearly forty meters tall like titanic arachnids.
Their massive alloy limbs could impale armor or sweep horizontally with enough kinetic force to easily topple an Imperial Titan or shatter its chassis entirely. Flanking each construct were a Singularity Generator and a Transdimensional Projector. Deep within the central chassis lay a bizarre, skull-like head structure housing a terrifying, long-range weapon, a Synaptic Obliterator.
As a dozen beams of baleful, deep-emerald light erupted from the brows of the Seraptek Heavy Constructs, a vanguard of Destroyer-class Heavy Automatons was instantly impaled. The devastating energy punched clean through void-shields, shearing through armor plates and internal frameworks alike. The destructive force clung to the ragged entry wounds, chewing away at the surviving systems like molecular rot.
Those whose core components were pierced fell instantly dark and silent. Yet, others whose heads had been melted away pressed on as headless revenants, charging blindly toward the towering Seraptek Heavy Constructs. But these massive Necron war-engines possessed a terrifying mobility of their own; only their unique, multi-limbed design made them marginally less agile than the Wraithknights of the Aeldari.
Titanic armored legs clashed with the charging Destroyers. Power claws bit deep, carving ragged chasms into the xenos metal, while the constructs' heavy limbs batted the massive automatons through the air like discarded toys.
Recognizing the slaughter, Axion commanded the heavily damaged Destroyers to clamp onto the Seraptek Heavy Constructs' armored limbs, attempting to scale the behemoths. After sacrificing several more chassis, Axion found a desperate countermeasure to halt the colossi. Crippled Destroyers lunged at the thick mechanical legs, dragging themselves close to the joint articulations before triggering their self-detonation subroutines. The resulting concussive blasts were violent enough to shatter the equilibrium of the Seraptek Heavy Constructs.
Yet, after three of their number were brought low, the remaining constructs completely disengaged from close quarters, refusing to let the Destroyer-class Heavy Automatons draw near. The attrition rate began to climb drastically.
——————
If you want to read ahead of everyone, go to my pat-reon: pat-re-on.c-om/magnor (remove the hyphen to access normally)