This time, the Aeldari did not get their wish.
Spurred on by her sacrifice, the entire Knight House battle line surged forward.
The Aeldari had to concentrate their forces on recovering the destroyed Titan, inevitably weakening their defenses elsewhere. The other Three Great Houses attacked with everything they had. Even seizing a single new piece of equipment would be a prize beyond measure.
Her house committed its full strength, rallying the battered remnants of other houses under its banner and advancing together, determined to recover their Patriarch's body.
A formation of Knight suits of every pattern charged forward heedlessly, forcing the enemy to withdraw.
The Aeldari Titan weathered the concentrated fire, retrieved the Soul Reaper Titan's wreckage, and sliced that damned Knight suit in half for good measure.
They withdrew calmly under the concentrated fire of dozens of Knights. All the others recovered was a ruined body cleaved in two.
The Adeptus Mechanicus was nearly losing its mind. This was the Webway, and there were Aeldari on the other side!
But they absolutely could not let their secret slip. Quietly reaping a fortune was the way to go. The other Forge Worlds must never learn the truth.
Absolutely. Never.
They worked extremely hard to answer the Lord Regent's call for an expedition, not only producing military supplies at full capacity but also sending out Tech-Priests just like the other Forge Worlds.
Everything appeared perfectly normal. When the Lord Regent had considered rewarding the Forge Worlds, theirs had even been nominated and made the shortlist.
In reality, the entire Forge World was practically spinning itself into smoke. They had spent ages arguing over whether to deploy the last Skitarii guarding the world's Core Region to the Webway battlefield, where survival was far from assured.
The crucial point was that they