The Helioret Sector had, since the opening years of the 960s.M30, been under escalating attack from eldar corsairs and marauder forces based upon a half-shattered craftworld known as Mac’Sithraal. These eldar were by any example of their species who had been encountered insane, tortured creatures, still reeling from the fall of their ancient power, driven by grief and suicidal with bitter hatred for all other races. They had fallen upon the worlds of Helioret with merciless violence, burning planet after planet, unleashing strange synthetic plagues that fused flesh into bloodied crystal, and fractured moons and orbital stations to tumble down upon the worlds below.
The Imperium’s response to the onslaught soon escalated until scores of regiments of the Auxilia Imperialis had been mobilised against it, with them Taghmata forces from Anvilus and Incaladion, supported by a demi-legio of the Tiger Eyes titans who tried bitterly to hold the line against the splinter-bone Wraith Titans of Mac’Sithraal at Luxor and Ratep. Utter loss of those key worlds was only averted when a full third of the IXth Legion took to the fray with their primarch Sanguinius at the fore. Not even this apocalyptic force could win outright victory, but instead saw the Eldar forced back to a defensive ring around their sundered and debris-trailing craftworld.
It was as the angelic primarch girded his forces for an all-out attack against Mac’Sithraal that he was unexpectedly joined by a squadron bearing the Seal and Writ of Terra and the Imperial Household. With it were a dozen Black Ships carrying within them cohorts of the Silent Sisterhood and a trio of unmarked titan conveyors with the warlords of the Ordo Sinister in their holds. The battle which followed was shocking in its intensity, with the barbed, swift hulls of eldar warships set burning across the void as they fought both the steel-grey war-barques of Anvilus as well as the proud, white-hulled battleships of the Armada Ultima. As the void battle raged, the sleek Black Ships and the crimson predators of the Blood Angels’ fleet dove straight on to their quarry. Crashing through the decaying spires and force-domed atmosphere of the desolate craftworld, the invaders were met by Mac’Sithraal’s army of the dead - thousands of wraith-constructs ranging from swift-footed assassins to towering warriors and titan-walkers, all powered and animated by the vengeful souls of that haunted realm. Reality rippled and shuddered as the eldar distortion weaponry rent the air, tearing crimson gunships from the skies, while below, ancient colonnades and towers toppled, hammered by remorseless shellfire - and as missiles rained down in detonating waves, the landing was forced.
A score of eldar titans rose up from the depths of their ancient vaults, and at their head was a warlock titan, filled with the souls of Mac’Sithraal’s fallen seers. The Imperium had encountered it before and named it the ‘Witch-Idol’. Where it had walked, no Imperial victory had yet been won. Against this massing of force, the Imperial assault first faltered and was checked as even the titans of the Legio Fureans landing with the second wave were swiftly torn apart by the Witch-Idol and its kinsmen, though the Angel Sangunius destroyed one of their number himself, tearing open its head with his bare hands and sending it crashing to destruction before being struck a grievous blow by the Warlock’s psi-lance which none other would have survived. It was then that the three titans of the Ordo Sinister made their landing,and at their footfalls the very fabric of the craftworld shuddered in revulsion.
From their carapace weapons poured volleys of rocket fire and searing turbo-laser blasts as might have been expected from any battle titan, while their right hands were vast power claws which twitched in expectation of the close-quarters kill, but from the baroque and strange weapons that served as their left arms, there spat a silent darkness. These bolts of black nothingness slammed through the ranks of the wraith-constructs, devouring everything they touched. While in the aftershock of their detonation, scores more wraith-kind simply fell like severed marionettes, never again to stir. Howling a great chorus of grief and outrage, the eldar titans rounded on the newly arrived giants and let fly, pulse lasers cutting the sky apart between them while the Witch-Idol conjured a tempest of eldritch warp-lightning, its coruscating wave of destruction suddenly met by an ice-white blaze of force emanating from the god-engines of the Ordo Sinsiter and shattered. The backlash of the negated forces shook the craftworld like an earthquake, tumbling space marine and wraithguard alike to the ground like toys. Empyreal force had been met with empyreal force and it was clear to every spectator how: the god-engines of the Ordo Sinister were psi-titans.
The conflict that followed was a true battle of the gods, and the recovering primarch Sanguinius had wisdom enough to give the titans a wide berth for what was to follow. For three standard hours the titans fought,unleashing destructive forces on a scale enough to break a dozen cities. Pulse laser slashed metre-thick ceramite armour, only to have it melt and reform in the wake of the destruction, though not even such occult protections could hold back the lethal strike of a gigantic eldar power blade plunged deep into the reactor at the heart of one of the Ordo Sinister’s number. Ghostlike holo-fields flickered and shuddered as the eldar titans danced the dance of death with impossible grace, and fusillades of screaming rockets found only empty air, but not even such mastery of speed and confusion could stop the ravaging darkness of the warlords-sinister’s primary weapons. Slowly but surely for the eldar titans, four became three, became two, became only the wounded Witch-Idol beset still by two of the Ordo Sinister’s warlords, although both were damaged. Its lance shattered by a blast of ravening emptiness, it sang its defiance across the empyrean, but was answered by prisoning hurricanes of psychic force against which its superior manoeuvrability became nothing more than the struggle of a battered scarecrow caught in a storm. One of the warlords-sinister then seized the Witch-Idol’s broken shoulder, holding it captive while its dark companion tore off the warlock titan’s head.
With the Witch-Idol’s destruction, it was as if the soul of Mac’Sithraal had died as well. Lights flickered and died across the ruined craftworld, systems failed and the end began. The last remnants of the eldar who had not already fled their dying homes came on in a suicidal frenzy, but found only the fury of the Blood Angels and the cool savagery of the Silent Sisterhood waiting for them. The psi-titans of the Ordo Sinister did not wait, instead they bore up the remains of their fallen comrade and departed the battlefield without further communication. The last of the slaughter was not long in coming, and the final act of the Defence of Helioret was for the wreckage of the broken craftworld to be hurled into a nearby sun to die its final death.
- The Horus Heresy Book Seven: Inferno
