---Phase 1: Detection---

Deep in the void, something moved.

Starlight glittered across ice-strewn carapaces. Tentacles long enough to scrape the surface of a planet danced like water-weed caught by a current. Three vast, bloated shapes drifted through a shroud of endless night, their faint consciousnesses nestled in dreamless sleep. They had done so for hundreds of years and left to their own devices likely would have done for a hundred more, for these were predators of a very specific kind. Already they had passed worlds that their genetic kin would have devoured without consideration.

Then, something changed. 

One of the cyclopean creatures stirred. Complex sensory organs buried deep in its dorsal carapace twitched, frond-like antennae bristling in response to a new stimulus. In of itself, this was not unusual. Countless times the great, glacial mind which united the trio had roused itself, briefly tasting the psychic spoor of other races before slumping back into sullen unconsciousness. But this was different. The mind tasted hunger, need, and a desperation as all-consuming as its own, and knew its long search was over. 
 
One by one the leviathans began to rouse themselves, meters-thick carapace plates shedding their coats of frost as they began to ripple with slow motion. Deep within their fleshy bodies, broods of scythe-armed monsters clawed their way free of hibernation blisters, shaking glutinous liquids from their lithely muscled forms. Larger creatures moved among them, clawed hands flexing, and through them the mind directed the building multitude into swarming, organised broods. None paused to look at the mummified husks which rose over them, their birthing chambers dry and ovipositor tubes hollow.

If they had, and if they had been capable of feeling emotion, they might have felt a sense of loss. They might have understood how far their evolutionary path had diverged from the rest of their distant kin, how stunted and inefficient they had become. But the mind which guided them was a thing of necessity. The continuity of their species was all that mattered. 

Silently, the Hive Fleet altered its course.

---

The Yearning. That was what they called it. The curse of Seminoth the Virile One, the Keeper of Secrets which had come so close to devouring them all.

Eshana Kel'yrith, High Autarch of Craftworld Morrigan, splashed water across her face and stared balefully into her mirror. It was always worse at night, where there was nothing to distract her from the hollowness she felt in her core, the feeling of being somehow incomplete. Unconsciously she brushed a hand over her flat, toned midsection and forced down a pang of regret, reminding herself how often the Yearning had brought her to this dark place and how, every time, she had triumphed over it.

And yet the feeling remained, pulling at her thoughts like an Exodite's fishing hook caught in her brain. She glanced at herself in the mirror a second time, taking in the lean, wolfish face, the dark, predator's eyes and sleek black hair which framed them. 

Would she look like me? Would she have my eyes?

The thought came out of nowhere. Eshana growled angrily and stalked away, clutching the waystone which hung on its fine silver chain around her neck for reassurance. Day would bring the distractions and duties of her office, and the comfort of her companions among the Craftworld's leaders, but it was becoming harder to keep her mind clear during the stillness and silence of night.

It had been centuries since the last breeding cycle. That was the cause, of course. But she had done her job too well, safeguarding her people from the dangers of a hostile galaxy, and initiating another round of births would stretch their limited resources to breaking point. There was nothing she - or any other member of Morrigan's all-female population - could do but endure, crushing the Yearning's endless, invasive thoughts beneath the iron strictures of the Path.

Eshana was saved from further ruminations by a soft chime from the other side of the room. Her dwelling was modest but comfortable, containing little more than a bed, a chamber for her clothing, an attached washroom and a handful of trophies and curios collected over her long life. Here and there, gems were set into the walls, allowing the Autarch to contact the psychic matrix which ran through the bones of her Craftworld. It was from one of these that the sound and came from, and she strode over to press a finger against it.

Immediately, she felt herself relax. It was dangerous to spend too long communing with the spirits which inhabited the Infinity Circuit, but contact with them was one of the few things which could help sooth the Yearning's pangs. She formed a question in her mind and pushed, letting the thought slide into the gentle song of the dead.

Who summons me at this late hour?

There was a moment's pause, and the dead replied.

High Farseer Auriel. There is a danger. She awaits you in the Dome of Sleepers.

Eshana lingered a moment longer, then when she was sure Morrigan's spirits had no further information, stepped away. "A danger?" she murmured, thoughtfully resting a hand against her pointed chin. A thin, humourless smile spread across her face. "No, not a danger, I think. A distraction, thank the Crone."

The High Autarch was dressed within minutes, clad in sweeping magenta robes and bearing an ornate power sword at her hip as a symbol of office. Pale starlight fell upon a sweeping horizon of elegant towers and branch-like aerial walkways as Eshana left her domicile, selected a small, arrow-shaped skimmer from her spire's public hanger and input her destination. It was a simple thing, linked to the Infinity Circuit and directed by the memories of the dead, but comfortable, and Eshana reclined into her seat with a lazy smile as it lifted off.

Before her, Craftworld Morrigan's primary habitation dome unveiled itself in all its glory. The forest of towers in which the world-ship's population dwelled rose from a seemingly endless expanse of lush parkland, the gently rolling hills crested with bright sprays of flowers and fat-leaved trees heavy with ripening fruit. Artificial rivers snaked through the vast garden, winding around open plazas of white stone ringed with merchant stalls and decorative works shaped by the Craftworld's many artisans. But most striking of all were the statues. Some so lifelike Eshana half expected them to blink as she passed, others so heavily stylised she wouldn't have recognised the subjects they depicted, all were crafted to represent one of the four Eldar goddesses or their mythic handmaidens.

A second, smaller habitation dome clung to Morrigan's spine along with the first, along with two others maintained for a population boom Eshana doubted would ever come. Below them lay a network of hangers, workshops and aspect shrines, transport tubes and chambers of fertile farmland where the bulk of the Craftworld's food was grown. And below that there was nothing but the arcane machines which sustained the world-ship itself, and the hollow spaces left fallow since Morrigan's desperate flight in the days of the Fall.

But while the divine gaze of Isha, Morai-Heg, Lileath and Gea stared serenely down from every tower and plaza, the goddess' male counterparts were nowhere to be seen. That was as it should be, Eshana thought. It had been a long time since men and their influence had been welcome aboard the world-ship. Not since the days of Seminoth, who had brought their Craftworld to the brink of ruin. Accidentally summoned by a gang of Artists, Dreamers and Pleasure-seekers who's passions had led them far from their respective Paths, the resultant Daemonic incursion had seen almost a fifth of Morrigan's population slain and its womanfolk afflicted by the Keeper of Secrets' final, spiteful curse.

The Yearning. The desperate, all-consuming need to bear children.

Eshana let out a soft noise of frustration and shook her head, banishing the intrusive thought once more as the Dome of Sleepers rose up before her. It seemed a simple thing from the outside, a smooth construction of Wraithbone similar to an Exodite's primitive temple, etched with stylised depictions of the Craftworld's greatest heroines. It lay at the peak of a narrow oval of ripe grassland, itself ringed by halo of artfully fortified towers which surrounded the Dome like honour guards beside their queen.

It was a simple thing by the standards of her people, but it was by far the most precious place aboard the world-ship. Eshana disembarked and swept inside, her towering, regal figure reflected over and over in the hundreds of crystal statues which filled the empty space. Four great renditions of the Eldar goddesses swept overhead, their hands joined around the room's centre point, eyes trained upon the scrying dais around which the room had been built. The only light came from the hundreds of thousands of soulstones embedded in the walls, and Eshana felt the stifling closeness of the dead as they pressed in at the edge of her perceptions.

Here, surrounded by the remains of those Farseers aged to crystal, at the nexus point of Morrigan's Infinity Circuit, the high council met to discuss the future of their home.

"Am I late, then?" Eshana's voice was high and clear, and echoed from the walls as she approached the four other figures who awaited her. One was clad in the robes of a Farseer, her ghosthelm tucked under one arm, revealing a striking face lined with age and experience. "You seem to have started without me, Auriel."

"We saw no need to disturb your rest, High Autarch." High Farseer Auriel's voice was husky and dreamlike, and her eyes glittered with traceries of crystal beneath their painted lids. "Not until we knew your skills would  be required."

"Because you already know what I'm going to say?" Eshana replied, prompting a short laugh from the woman next to her. Fleetmistress Aydona was short and spiky, her light mesh armour hung with trophies and supplemented by a high-collared coat of alien leather. She had been a Corsair, once, before settling upon Morrigan, and there were persistent rumours she was descended from Commorite stock. Her bearing proud and savage in equal measure, and Eshana liked her immensely.

"Because they know what summoning you here means," Aydona said. The Fleetmistress' voice was eager, and her eyes were wide with the promise of violence. "It's war, then?"

"There is little choice," spoke the fourth figure. "The Hive comes from an unexpected quarter, hidden from Auriel's scrying in the darkness between stars. Fortune alone led my vessel into their path, and only by Isha's grace did we return alive with our warning."

Ylluia stood as the Craftworld's Ranger-Captain, the voice of its exiles and outcasts. Her kinbands were responsible for scouting ahead of the world-ship and identifying those dangers to go unnoticed by Auriel's scrying. She was a slight figure, eerily pale, her porcelain features hidden behind a shroud of white-blonde hair, and stared at Eshana with carefully concealed disdain. "Though from the numbers we have seen, High Autarch, any attempts at defence may already be doomed. We should have initiated another breeding cycle years ago."

"Your inability to control the Yearning is noted, Ranger-Captain," Eshana's reply was carefully neutral, but her stance shifted, and the complex body language of her kind conveyed nothing but scorn. "But I cannot - will not - lend my support to any action which could imperil our future. These are dangerous times, and the opening of the Dathedian has only seen the time ahead grow darker. Enemies have found us, yes - but they have found a society of warriors, not mothers."

Ylluia's eyes narrowed. "Don't pretend you don't feel it, Eshana. We all do." She looked around at the rest of the council. "There's a tension in the air I haven't felt in a long time. What do you think will happen if our need exceeds our ability to contain it? Have you considered that the daemon's curse was not the Yearning itself, but what our attempts at denying it would lead to? By the Maiden, it's even become contagious! New arrivals begin to feel the Yearning's first pangs within days of settling here. We need - " Ylluia hesitated, faltering for a moment before regaining her composure. "We need men."

"We need nothing!" Eshana shot back, louder than she had intended. "At least, I need nothing. The rituals of sapphery suffice for our baser instincts, and I will not give any more ground to the temptations forced upon me by a scion of She-Who-Thirsts." 

Ylluia's retort died in her throat as the fifth member of the council rapped her executioner blade against the Crystal Dome's stone floor. Unlike the others, she was clad from head to toe in her ceremonial Aspect suit, the sculpted musculature and blood-red plume spilling from her helm lending her a uniquely Amazonian look.

"This argument is meaningless." First Exarch Maerai intoned. Her voice was a low dirge, distorted into something harsh and cruel by the screaming emitters of her ghoulish Banshee Mask. "If we survive, another breeding cycle will be necessary to restore our losses. Remember the fate of Iyanden. Remember the doom of Malan'tai. If we are to avoid such disaster, our attention must be upon the foe, not one another." 

"Quite." Auriel smoothly slipped back into the conversation as Ylluia and Eshana fell into a mollified silence. "Once again, we are thankful for your directness, First Exarch."

Maerai simply bowed. Aydona rolled her eyes and stepped forwards. "Ylluia is right in one regard. This will be an ugly battle." The Fleetmistress crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her companions. "If the readings she took are accurate, we're looking at well over a hundred Tyranid vessels, and that'll probably have doubled by the time they reach us. Mostly drones, thankfully, but their numbers will make striking at the Hive Ships challenging."

There was little fear in Aydona's voice, and she exchanged a glance with Eshana, grinning at the eagerness she saw upon the High Autarch's face. They had ever been the bloodthirstiest members of the council, and had consistently supported one another's calls for war despite Auriel and Ylluia's words of restraint. Eshana licked her lips and leaned forwards, grasping the edges of the scrying table and looking to the rest of her companions.

"War has found us, Sisters, and by my summoning here I assume you are all in favour of fight over flight." There was a murmur of assent from the others. "Fate has granted us a little time to make preparations. I suggest we be about them quickly."

---Phase 2: Approach---

For a time, the Yearning seemed to fade from Craftworld Morrigan. It was always there, in the back of their minds like an itch that refused to be scratched, but the necessities of mobilising for war served as an able distraction. The Craftworld had a long history of bolstering its numbers with women exiled or displaced from their homes, and those with prior experience battling the Tyranids were called to speak before the council, pooling their wisdom even as Guardian hosts were assembled and Spiritseers awoke the first Wraith-constructs from their dreamlike slumber.

To another Craftworld, the threat they faced might have caused them to turn tail and run, or plumb the skiens of fate in the hope of redirecting their enemy upon another. But the harsh lessons Morrigan had learned from Seminoth's invasion had forged them into a warrior society, and in the time since, they had taken in thousands of women who had suffered their own, terrible losses. Here was a chance to  vent their fury upon a foe utterly deserving of obliteration, they thought. Here was a chance to avenge some of the hurts inflicted upon their ailing race. 

They were strong. They were fierce. There was no foe they could not triumph over.

Did a few feel a tremour of fear as the first Tyranid vessels crept into sensor range? Did the sheer number of thrashing bio-vessels bearing down upon their home elicit a moment of doubt? Did a handful of their warriors, caught in the throes of the Yearning, look to the women around them and wonder how many would be left, and if they might finally be granted the opportunity to seek the catharsis they craved with a man from another Craftworld?

Perhaps. But none voiced such thoughts. Arrayed in wargear of deep purple and purest white, they watched in silence as Fleetmistress Aydona guided her flagship, the Crone's Breath, from Morrigan's cavernous hanger bays. Formed up around the ancient Void Stalker was the might of her fleet; sleek Shadow and Eclipse cruisers bristling with lances and oversized starcannons, swift hunting packs of escorts, wings of darting fighters and bombers. Aydona herself sat slouched in her throne, a half-moon shaped interface panel before her and the rest of her command crew arranged in sunken recesses before the main viewing screen. 

The number of hostile signals it displayed would have staggered a lesser captain, but Aydona felt little fear. She had learned much as a Corsair, the methods by which a small, artfully commanded fleet could rip the throat from a more powerful armada among them. The Fleetmistress relaxed, indulging in memory as she often did before battle. It had been a time of wildness and savagery, where blood and wine had flowed across her lips in equal measure and desperate suitors had spent their lives hoping to claim her as their own.

One, a reaver from Commoragh, had even given her a child, and the memories of that night were the jewels she cherished most of all. A smile flitted across Aydona's face as she lost herself in recollection; the way he had pinned her down, his hand tight around her throat, the desperate hunger in his dark eyes as he poured himself into her willing body. Idly, she drummed her hand against her belly, losing herself in the pangs of the Yearning. It wasn't such a terrible thing, she thought. One could even find a certain pleasure there, in the aching dreams of new life.

Perhaps, she thought distantly, when this was over, she would petition the council for some time away from her duties, and sate the Yearning with something more than her imagination.

"Enemy vessels moving into extreme range," The serene voice of Kellae, Aydona's first officer, roused the Fleetmistress from her daydreams. "Craftworld batteries opening fire."

Silence fell across the bridge as the battle began in earnest. City-destroying blasts of plasma began to impact among the swarming broodships as they tried to close with the world-ship. Each wreaked terrible harm upon the attackers, but no sooner was one wave destroyed than another would appear, using the drifting, dying corpses of their kin as cover from Morrigan's guns. Worse, even the slain Tyranid vessels were proving to be a threat. Aydona watched as a cluster of creatures were caught in the energy wash from one of Morrigan's heavy guns. Though burned so deeply she caught sight of carbonised bone and ruptured organs, some final muscular spasm sent them hurtling suicidally towards the plasma batteries, forcing the gunners to shift targets to prevent the vile things from damaging the Craftworld's hull.

That was their fight, though. Aydona had her own task. She opened a link to her other ships and began to distribute orders. Her fleet was outnumbered hundreds to one, and for all the skill of her crews, they could do little to stem the endless flood of drone vessels. But the Hive Ships themselves - each was a bloated monster, swollen and gravid with millions of Tyranid organisms. Their destruction would throw the fleet into chaos, yes, but the real victory would be in slaying their children before they could force a landing upon Morrigan itself.

It was a bold plan - recklessly so, perhaps, in-keeping with the savagery which lurked in the Fleetmistress' heart. But it had the potential to end the danger they all faced outright.

"They've noticed us, Fleetmistress," Kellae reported. "We're taking fire."

"Then by all means, return it." Aydona grinned fiercely, her teeth stark against her black-painted lips. "Bring the Holofields up to full power and charge the Pulsar Lances. Let's give these monsters a lesson in void combat."

---

By the time the fleet launched its attack, dozens of bioships had already been slain by Morrigan's batteries. The Crone's Breath equalled that tally within the first hour of the engagement, its lances picking off one drone ship after another as it swooped and tumbled through the storm of writhing flesh. The rest of the fleet fared little worse. Though the casualties they inflicted were like a drop in the ocean, the Tyranid ships struggled to match the agility of Aydona's fleet and soon she had burned a path almost to the Hive Ships themselves. Though the Craftworld's Wraithbone hull began to ring with the impact of dying drone vessels, its defenders held their breath, some daring to believe that the invasion would be truncated before it could begin.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the situation changed. Two waves of drone vessels launched towards the distant Craftworld suddenly doubled-back. Spurts of fluid and noxious gasses ejected from their gnarled hides arrested their forward motion, spinning them around and sending them screaming back towards Aydona's fleet faster than she could have thought possible. The Fleetmistress cursed, rising from her throne to grip the edge of her sensor desk as the hideous vessels moved to encircle the Eldar ships. She'd expected something like this, of course, but not so soon, and not so quickly...

"Spread out!" She snapped. "Scattered dawn formation, don't give their weapons something to aim at. Hellebore squadrons disengage and come about, keep those new arrivals off our backs. Everyone else, follow my lead - we can punch through the Hive Ships and break out for another pass."

Wraithbone groaned as the Crone's Breath lurched to avoid a bright gout of pyro-acid. Aydona leaned forwards, her knuckles turning white as the first shots from her Pulsar Lances began to carve their way towards the Hive Ships. The lead creature loomed impossibly large on the viewscreen, and Aydona felt a flicker of hope stir in her ****** as glowing rents began to appear in its protective carapace.

"Fleet reports increased fire. Hellebore squadrons lost. Lileath's Kiss has been boarded, the Grace of Ulthanesh is reporting damage to its engines and is seeking to disengage..."

One by one the Eldar ships were being isolated and brought down. Bright sprays of bio-plasma burned away their solar sails, engines were punctured by jagged spines the length of a nightshade interceptor, leaving the stricken vessels to be swiftly overrun by waves of boarding pods vomited forth from the very Hive Ships they had sought to kill. Aydona spat every curse she knew, watching the tally of losses increase with every minute. Every instinct she possessed told her to retreat, but they were so close! She could see the lead Hive Ship reeling, thick, purple ichor spilling out into the void as her lances pummelled its hull. 

"This is Aydona." The communication channels were overwhelmed with screams and hisses, pleas for aid and what for all the stars sounded like moans of pleasure, but Aydona knew she had to try. "All ships, disengage. Get back to the Craftworld if you can, get as far away from here as possible if you can't and try to seek aid. We'll go on alone from here."

Kellae caught her captain's eye, her face grave. "Just us then, Fleetmistress?"

Aydona hesitated, just for a moment, then nodded. "This is my mistake, and mine alone." She smiled, then, a pang of sadness passing over her face. "I'm sorry to have to bring you down with me. You know I'd take a Nightwing out there on my own if I could." 

"And even then, we'd still follow you until the Rhana Dandra itself." Kellae returned her captain's smile and turned back to the viewscreen, watching as the ailing Hive Ship grew larger with every moment. "Out fates are with Morai-Heg. We must pray that will be enough."

---

It wasn't. As bold as Aydona's final sally was, alone against three Hive Ships, the Crone's Breath had little hope. A moan of grief passed through the Craftworld's waiting defenders as they saw the vessel laid low as it attempted to chase down the Hive Ship it had crippled, punctured end to end by a spray of barbed spines and ensnared by a vast tentacle three times as long as the ship itself. But despite the loss, the attack had not been wholly unsuccessful. Two thirds of the Hive Fleet lay in ruins, hundreds of thousands of Tyranids were dead, and thanks to the skill of their crews, fully half the Craftworld's fleet had escaped to limp home or scatter into the void seeking aid. 

Those meagre victories were little comfort to Aydona and her crew. Dragged into the Hive Ship's embrace, the Crone's Breath was swiftly boarded as a dozen esophagus like tubes latched onto its flank and gnawed through the hull. The Fleetmistress did what she could to organise a defence, but as the tide of monsters flowed unstoppably through her ship, even that faint hope was stolen from her. Lights failed and security systems died, and one by one, each knot of defenders was pounced upon and brought low by the endless tide of horrors spilling from the Hive Ship's belly. Silence fell shortly afterwards, broken only by the occasional thin scream and the wet slapping of flesh against flesh.

That, and the incessant scratching at the door.

Aydona, Kellae, and the rest of the bridge crew formed up. They were armed with a motly assortment of shuriken pistols and lasblasters, and to their credit, not one of them wavered as they trained their weapons on the bridge portal. The Fleetmistress and her first officer exchanged a look, resignation and weariness on both of their faces.

"Don't see much point in postponing the inevitable," Aydona tried to smile. "What say we ****** these monsters in, and give them a proper welcome?"

There was a weak chorus of cheers. Kellae nodded and retreated a pace, her long fingers dancing over the control console. "Right you are, captain. In three, two, one - "

The doors opened with a soft hiss. For a moment Aydona caught sight of a pack of blade-armed monsters before they were shredded by a wailing volley of lasers and shuriken. Another cheer went up, stronger this time, and a third as a second brood of hormagaunts was torn to pieces as they fought to rush the Eldar's position. But larger shapes lurked behind them, and Aydona drew her cutlass as the first forced itself through the doorway and onto the bridge, shrugging off their fire like morning rain.

It was horrendously male. Its height, the broadness of its shoulders, the way its ribcage seemed to glisten like an oiled chest in the dim emergency lighting, it all spoke of an aggressive and all-consuming masculinity that was as alien to the women of Morrigan as its chitinous black body or grasping claws. Worse, what the shocked Eldar had initially taken to be a weapon-symbiote was revealed to be a ribbed phallus of monstrous proportions, hanging hard between its legs and dribbling with long strings of precome as it advanced.

The Tyranid Warrior's eyes locked onto Aydona with fearful purpose, and for a moment she froze, transfixed by the terrible strength she saw in its black and hungry gaze.

His gaze.

The Fleetmistress' stomach curdled. Her heart lurched in her chest. She had seen that kind of strength in another being only once before, and she had walked away from the encounter with his child planted deep in her belly.

Suddenly, in a sickly pulse of realisation, the strange noises echoing from deeper within her ship began to make sense. 

Aydona surged forwards with a scream of desperate fury, driving her blade towards the Warrior's throat. It was fast despite its size and parried her sword with its scything forelimbs, snatching for her with its claws and forcing her onto the back foot. More Tyranids flooded into the surrounding bridge, but Aydona barely noticed them; all she cared about was slaying the hideous monster that had stolen her lover's eyes. She struck out again, twice, three times, each blow whickering a notch from the Warrior's midnight-blue carapace or drawing a spray of ichor from its slick black body. Confusion and horror leant strength to the Fleetmistress' blows and she struck half a foot from the end of one talon, forcing a gap in the Warrior's defences through which she slipped.

To her left, someone screamed. Aydona half-turned and caught a glimpse of Kellae falling, her armour in tatters, beneath a rippling tide of Hormagaunts. That was the only opportunity her foe needed; with a triumphant hiss it barrelled forwards, snatching the Fleetmistress up in its lower limbs and slamming her bodily against the interface panel. Claws bit through her armour and undersuit alike and Aydona moaned in horror as she felt herself being stripped, her bare skin prickling as the Tyranid's wet heat washed over her.

A chorus of wails and curses reached her ears as the rest of the bridge crew were overrun. Each met the same fate; they were unceremoniously dragged down, stripped bare and mounted, the seething hormagaunts wasting little time before plunging their drooling alien cocks into the women's bodies. Most still fought, their long legs kicking out savagely at the beasts intent on rutting them into the decking, but with every moment their struggles grew weaker and weaker. 

It's the Yearning, Aydona realised. She moaned again as the Warrior's **** twitched against her thigh, smearing precome and other less identifiable fluids across her flesh, and didn't know if the sound was one of disgust or desire. Seminoth's curse. On some level, they want this. We want this.

I want this.

It took time for the Warrior, working on its own, to strip away the last of her protective garments. Aydona fought the whole time, the queasy awareness of her own growing arousal lending her a desperate, animal strength, but it was like trying to wrestle out from beneath a mountain. As she wriggled fruitlessly in the Tyranid's iron grip, her gaze was dragged irresistibly back to the bloated **** between its legs, sheathed with undulating ridges of chitin and wrapped in veins as thick as her little finger. That, and the swollen, fist-sized testes which hung at its base, pulsing with desperate intent.

That's going to be inside me, she thought dizzily. The Fleetmistress could feel her body reacting of its own accord, her skin flushing red, heat pooling in her belly. It's going to push that thing into my body and - 

- breed - 

And then the final shreds of everything but her tattered longcoat were torn away, and something slick and hard was pushing against her soaking lips, and with a final, sickening lurch, the Tyranid shoved its **** deep into Aydona's aching womanhood.

She screamed. There was a little pain - it had been a long time since she had been with a male of any species, and the Warrior's organ was much larger than any of them had been - but it was quickly swept away by the crushing bow-wave of pleasure which followed. It felt as though every nerve in the Fleetmistress' body had been lit up at once, as though centuries of restraint and self-denial had been torn away in that single bestial motion. The Warrior drove forwards again, pushing deeper, and Aydona let out another wail as the ridges of soft chitin sheathing its organ rubbed over her swollen clit. She could feel every inch of the thing inside her, every twitch and pulse, and could only lie there in horror as her fluttering walls clenched tight around the monstrous invader.

Her crew fared little better, with only a few still putting up any pretence of a fight. Here, one woman weakly beat her fist against the hormagaunt which had folded her into a savage mating press. There, a slurred voice desperately begged for respite, even as her legs shuddered in violent climax. Most had submitted entirely, moaning in wanton pleasure and grinding back against their monstrous attackers, as if desperate to take every inch of the beasts' gnarled pricks as deep as they could. Aydona tried to catch Kellae's eye, but the girl's face was split in a rictus of ecstasy. Her lips worked silently, mouthing encouragement to the whip-thin beast mating with her.

And why shouldn't she?

The thought slid into Aydona's mind like a dagger between the ribs. The strong dominated the weak; that was the credo which had defined her years as a Corsair. It had served her well enough then, as she pillaged the ships of the lesser races, taking their wealth and their lives without so much as a second thought. Was she so hypocritical as to abandon her philosophy the moment she encountered something stronger than herself?

Isn't this natural? Isn't this the way the Galaxy has always worked?

The Warrior hissed as if to push the point home, its fangs inches from the Fleetmistress' face, long strings of drool dripping into her short, dark hair. Its **** sawed relentlessly back and forth, creeping deeper into Aydona's trembling body with every thrust, thick pulses of precome lathering her silken passage and easing the monster's slow march into her core.  

Isn't it beautiful? To bring forth new life, no matter what shape or size? To love it and care for it, to nurture inside you? Isn't that what you want?

Each thought rose from her subconscious, one after the other, and fell into place with a dreadful sense of inevitability. Aydona couldn't tell if they were hers or a product of the Yearning, or if that even mattered any longer. She still felt them, whatever their origin. She still felt that craving, that hollowness in her belly, and ached for it to be filled. To feel the joy of new life growing inside her once more, no matter how hideous and alien it might be.

"Please," Aydona croaked. "Please."

She didn't know if she was pleading for the Warrior to stop, or to continue on to its final, inescapable conclusion.

It was one many of her crew were already meeting. A chorus of savage hisses and lilting voices filled the air as the lesser creatures began to ejaculate, driving their seed deep into the fertile earth of Aydona's bridge crew. Not one let out a sound of protest; those still able to form words instead begged their alien mates for more, clutching the lithe, chitinous creatures close as one thick pulse of Tyranid semen after another was pumped into their trembling bodies. Each wore an expression of - no, Aydona realised, not just bliss, but something more. Of revelation. Of a satiation that went beyond crude physicality.

With a silent plea for Lileath's forgiveness, Aydona realised she wanted nothing more than to feel the same. She had fought as well as she could, but the Tyranid had proven itself the stronger. Why continue to struggle? Why deny herself the pleasure it was so intent on giving her? Relief swept though her; Aydona fell slack in the Warrior's embrace, abandoning her fitful struggles as the creature finally worked the last few inches of its throbbing organ into her ***. Her cries began gasps, and then moans, as the orgasm which had lurked at the edge of her perceptions began to bloom once more.

Slowly but with growing confidence, Aydona reached for the Warrior and ran her slender fingers across its ribbed chest, before circling her arms around the beast's armoured midsection and looking up into its dark, hungry eyes. The monstrous, drooling organ, packed so tightly between her silken lips that each thrust had become a deep grind of intent, began to twitch. The heavy testes resting against her buttocks roiled in their sac, each bursting of potent, alien seed.

For her. All for her. 

"It's alright," Aydona whispered, as much to herself as to the chitinous alien looming over her. Her legs trembled. They shook. Slowly, as her climax rose, they bent inwards, clasping tight around the Tyranid's chitinous flanks and holding it close against her athletic frame. "Plant a seed in me, monster. Make me whole."

The Warrior tensed, every muscle in its towering body drawn tight, and came. Aydona came with it, shuddering in bliss as the first thick spurts of virile semen flooded her passage and entered her waiting womb. More followed - and more, and more, filling up every space she had until long, pearly strings oozed from around the edges of her aching *** and dripped freely onto the chair from which she had captained her ship. Only then, when the Yearning gave way to a soul-deep calm like she had never felt before, did Aydona release her death-grip upon the monster that had so thoroughly impregnated her and slide onto the floor to join the last of her crew.

The first battle for Craftworld Morrigan was over.

---Phase 3: Attack---

Eros.

To salve their fears, the Eldar of Craftworld Morrigan gave their foe a name, and that name was Eros. 

Eshana, Maerai, Yllia and Auriel sat within the Dome of Sleepers, arranged in a loose circle around the scrying dais. Their goddesses soared overhead, outstretched hands reaching for one another, eyes of the purest white marble staring down at the four women who had gathered beneath them. For almost two hours they had sat, listening to the gristly thumps of boarding spores raining down upon their home, and the distant psychosonic wails of Howling Banshees sent to contain the Tyranid breaching swarms.

That, and to digest Aydona's final communication.

A Craftworld's Infinity Circuit was not purely restricted to the world-ship itself. The dead could reach out into the void, whispering to those spirits invested within nearby Eldar starships and bringing back sounds and images of what they found there.

The portents Morrigan's spirits had brought back from Aydona's flagship were not good. The four remaining council members had watched in silence, each keeping their own thoughts as the Fleetmistress and her crew were overcome. What, after all, was there to be said? They each felt the same hollow pangs in their bellies as their sisters were pushed down and bred by their attackers, the same guilty, envious shudders down their spines as one pristine womanhood after another was pumped full of potent alien sperm.

Yllia had flushed and tried to look away, though the Ranger-Captain was helpless to prevent herself from sneaking glances from the corner of her eye. Eshana's lean features twisted into an expression of disgust, even as her fingers drummed against the sculpted contours of her armoured belly. And while Auriel had bowed her head in grief, she made no motion to sever the connection between the world-ship and the Crone's Breath.

Only Maerai, the First Exarch and bloody hand of the council, remained unmoved. But, Eshana thought, entombed as she was in her ornate suit of armour, it was impossible to tell what the Exarch was thinking at the best of times.

"We all knew this was a fool's errand," Yllia murmured as the communication finally drew to an end. "You led her to this, High Autarch. You should have counselled against such a reckless strategy."

"I spoke in favour of a strategy which could have ended this war before it began." Eshana rose. Her voice was low and dangerous, tight with anger borne from grief. It took the High Autarch a moment to realise she still had a hand pressed to her midsection, and snatched it away as if she had been burned. "You, exile, lacked even the courage to support the High Farseer's opposition. A less charitable mind than mine might wonder if you truly wished Aydona to succeed in the first place."

Maerai's helm snapped around, but this time it was Auriel who intervened. The Farseer stood and rapped her staff sharply across Eshana's shoulder, her silvery gaze hard.

"You go too far, High Autarch. Apologise."

The silence stretched, punctuated by the continued bombardment as the Tyranids assaulted their home. It was that, perhaps, which finally broke through Eshana's sudden fury, and she forced herself to relax with a soft gasp. 

"I know. I'm sorry." Eshana sagged as she spoke, rubbing a hand wearily over her narrow face. "It's just - Aydona was a friend. Seeing what happened to her..."

Seeing how she begged for it. How much pleasure it brought her.

Eshana trailed off, the treacherous thought still echoing through her head. Maerai spoke next, the familiar rasp of her voice like a lifeline dragging the High Autarch back to reality.

"It was difficult for us all to witness, High Autarch, but we must focus. This is a time of war, and the sacred burden of your Path is to command us through it. So. Command."

For a moment, Eshana said nothing, simply staring wearily at the dais, the oppressive weight of responsibility settling across her elegant shoulders. Then she took a breath, centred herself, and began to issue her commands.

---

Craftworld Morrigan's defenders had not sat idle while their leaders argued. As soon as the first spores began to land, sleek Windrider squadrons launched from their hangers, followed swiftly by Wave Serpents bearing chanting Aspect Warriors to battle. Most of Hive Fleet Eros' breaching swarms were thus hunted down and exterminated, but the Eldar were too few to cover every potential landing site, and in a handful of cases found themselves driven off by the congregating masses. The bulk of these first toeholds lay in the Craftworld's abandoned depths, and it was here that Eros focused its attentions.

Initial attempts to dislodge them went poorly. The fluid hit-and-run strategies which served Morrigan's armed forces so well in open combat faltered in such claustrophobic environments. Squads of lithe Eldar warriors struck and retreated, only to find their path cut off by newly-arrived broods of Tyranids fresh from the lurking Hive Ships. Their fate mirrored that of those aboard the Crone's Breath, and soon the Craftworld's lower levels came to resemble nothing less than a series of vast breeding chambers, echoing to a permanent chorus of wanton moans and lusty alien screeches. 

Once more returned to the dignity of her rank, Eshana swiftly assumed control of the situation and began to restore order. Though it broke her heart to do it, she ordered the portals connecting the lower levels sealed, abandoning those already lost to Eros' tender mercies. Though the Tyranids would eventually claw the psychoplastic barriers down, it bought the Autarch time to seal several other passages off in a more permanent fashion and establish a network of defensive emplacements garrisoned by the Craftworld's Guardians.

Thus, Craftworld Morrigan regained the initiative. Though Eros soon began to push deeper into the world-ship, their swarms were herded into Eshana's carefully-planned killing zones and culled without mercy. For almost three days the Eldar weathered the frenzied stampedes, until rivers of ichor flowed underfoot and flamers had to be brought up to keep the firing lines clear of corpses. The Yearning remained, of course. But it was as much of an inspiration as a distraction, for the embattled women knew their fallen still lived, and still held hope they could soon be rescued. 

That a few surrendered to their urges and allowed themselves to be carried off into the hot, throbbing underworld which now spread beneath their feet was undeniable, but Morrigan's warriors could only shrug. There were cowards and deserters in every war, after all.

Then, at the end of the third day and with no apparent warning, the attacks suddenly ceased.

---

It wasn't a victory, Auriel thought. She sat alone in her chambers, her eyes closed, legs folded neatly beneath her. Wooden bowls of lit incense sat here and there, filling the room with thick, perfumed smoke. The High Farseer breathed deep of it, allowing the slight narcotic effect to soothe away the anxiety which lurked in her heart. The constant rain of spores had begun to taper off, with only the occasional heavy bang as a reminder that her Craftworld was not yet out of danger, but some of the warriors she had spoken with were already calling it a sign of victory.

Eshana, thankfully, wasn't one of them. Though they all mourned for their lost Fleetmistress, Aydona's fate had helped to temper the High Autarch's usually bellicose nature. For now she was content to hold ground and wait for Morrigan's Wraith Hosts to be prepared, trusting that the dead would prove immune to Eros' lascivious intent. Still, the Farseer worried. Auriel knew the other woman wasn't sleeping, and that the Yearning bothered her more than she admitted. She had ever been the strongest of them, but of late that strength was becoming dangerously brittle.

That itself was another effect of the Yearning. The more they repressed their urges, the more tense and snappish Morrigan's population became. For centuries that swell of frustration had been channelled into the Craftworld's thriving Aspect Temples, but now Auriel wondered if it had been allowed to fester for too long.

Or perhaps I am simply being selfish, the High Farseer thought, a small smile playing over her lips. And wish to bear children before my body crystallises, and the chance is lost to me forever.

In any case, if the invaders had their way, the choice would soon be made for them. A queasy shudder of something Auriel told herself was disgust ran down her spine at the idea, though the Farseer quickly pushed it aside. She had come to her chambers for a reason.

Reaching into the leather purse at her hip, the High Farseer drew forth a handful of runes and tossed them into the air. They hung there, glowing with a warm, inner light, and began to lazily circle one another as Auriel's long fingers played through their formation like a sculptor working clay. In her mind's eye she saw the Skein opening up before her, a thousand times a thousand potential futures, tangled up like the roots of a great tree and stretching on into infinity. Most, she noticed, turned black and withered away to nothing, symbolising a loss from which her home would never recover.

Taking a deep breath, Auriel danced her perceptions over them, seeking any sign of commonality. Again and again, the same images returned - an ocean of blue-black forms, each hunched over a ***** woman of Morrigan, distended organs digging deep into tender, feminine flesh. She saw herself leading a final, doomed charge into a mass of creatures, and recognised it as her fate if Eshana were to fall first. Even in the midst of her trance, the Farseer let out a breathless moan of desire as she witnessed herself disarmed, pushed down and mated by one of Eros' towering leader-beasts, her belly swelling with the honour of bringing forth its child.  
 
It was only through a supreme effort of will that Auriel pulled herself away from that fate, desperately winding back until the black paths of dead futures shone with hope once more. It was no good staring at the doom which awaited them. She needed to look for a way to avert it.

Why? Why resign ourselves to another era of longing, when the solution now stands before us?

It was almost a mercy to see her visions overcome with violence. Eldar and Tyranids struggled against one another, blade for blade. These were creatures the Farseer had never seen before, though - betentacled leviathans and lithe, gangrel beasts which belched a dense fog of spores from the distended vents upon their backs. But she recognised the First Exarch and her sisters who grappled with them. One Banshee fell, her armour cracked open, and her battle-cry because a drawn out moan of lust as she accidentally drew in a breath of those vapours.

Posion, Auriel realised. She followed one of the divergent threads which led from that moment, watching as the damp, heavy mist spread up through the tunnels and engulfed the Guardians who defended them, addling their minds and leaving them too weak to resist the renewed attacks which followed. They will bring poison and turn the Yearning against us.

But it was not a future set in stone. Along other strands, Auriel saw Maerai standing atop one of the leviathan's corpses as her sisters drove back its lesser kin in a storm of flashing blades. Here, the High Farseer thought excitedly, was a chance to turn the tide. If Eros could neither triumph through brute force nor guile, it would be forced to abandon its attack and return to dark void from which it originated.

Auriel broke her trance and opened her eyes. Before her, all but one of the runes lay blackened and dead at her feet, burned out to force back the Hive Mind's oppressive shadow. Only one remained, circling around the High Farseer's outstretched finger.

It was the rune of the Banshee.

---

"Thirty seconds to arrival, First Exarch."

The pilot's voice was a low murmur in her war-helm's earpiece. Maerai sat on a low bench towards the Wave Serpent's rear, stroking the haft of the long-bladed executioner laid across her knees. She was flanked on each side by five of her finest temple-sisters, the white-armoured Howling Banshees whispering bloody prayers of vengeance as they prepared for battle. Outside, she knew, two more transports were flying in formation behind, each loaded with more sisters drawn from Shrines subordinate to her own. The Swooping Hawks of the Azure Sky were with them as well, along with a fast-moving host of Guardians aboard their Windrider Jetbikes.

Together they hurtled through Morrigan's tainted underworld like a flock of raptors, their hulls so close a child could walk from one to the other with little fear. It was a terribly small force for so vital a task, but the High Farseer had been insistent on attacking before the Hive Fleet could land more troops. Here, she claimed, was an opportunity to irreversibly tip the scales in their favour, but it had to be seized before Eros could dig itself in further. 

What would happen to them if they failed went unsaid. They all knew. 

The First Exarch felt no joy at the prospect of combat, nor anxiety over what they might encounter within the spreading broodhive. She had felt very little of anything, in fact, since the day she had taken the mantle of Exarch and her consciousness had merged with the dozens of other spirits bound to her armour. Bitterness, fury, and the obsessive need for revenge; these were all she had left. Even the Yearning, which hung so heavily over her sister's heads, had faded to little more than a distant awareness that something precious was being denied to her.

I am not who I am.

It was an old thought, but an uncomfortable one. More uncomfortable in some ways than the Yearning itself, dulled as it was by the harsh necessities imposed by the Path of the Warrior. It was a reminder that she had been another person once, someone both much less and somehow much greater than the woman Maerai had turned out to be. Like all Exarchs she was a prisoner upon the Warrior's Path, her soul doomed to an eternity of endless, single-minded war.

She grieved over that, sometimes. An echo of Maerai's past self remained, haunting her bloodied soul like the mythic hawk-spirits who circled endlessly above their murderers. It whispered in her quieter moments, mourning for the monstrous thing she had become. 

"Twenty seconds."

Maerai thrust the intrusive thought away and stood, marching to stand before the Wave Serpent's deployment ramp. The Banshees reached out as she passed, each brushing their fingers reverently along her warplate in turn before rising to join her. The First Exarch was their teacher, their totem, their champion - a bloody-handed killer who had faced down the worst the galaxy could offer and each time returned to tell the tale. A figure of sterile purity, unmoved by the political squabbling of the council, unfazed by the curse which hung over them all.

What she had been before was irrelevant. Now, she was their avatar.

Outside, the Wave Serpent's engines began to hum as it decelerated to attack speed, the sound cut through by the high whine of Windriders passing by overhead. One of the Banshees flinched as their transport opened fire on some distant target with its Brightlances. Something struck the hull and rebounded with a wet crunch. Shurikens began to wail. 

"Ten seconds."

"Remember our mission, sisters," Maerai intoned. "Tonight, the children of Morai-Heg sing for the sporecasters that would taint our home and pollute our bodies with their young. Stop for nothing. Slay for the Craftworld."

The Wave Serpent banked sharply. A resounding thump passed through the transport as it discharged its shields in a crushing wave of force, throwing back whatever horrors were blocking its landing zone, before slewing into position and dropping its assault ramp.

Beyond was a scene of utter chaos. An ocean of lesser bioforms filled the cavernous chamber, seething back and forth in a frenzy as Windriders and Swooping Hawks poured fire into them from above. The air was unnaturally humid and thick with organic matter, and the ground squelched wetly as Maerai and her sisters leapt from their Wave Serpents, some form of blue-black biomass already spreading across the Craftworld's wraithbone superstructure. Here and there the First Exarch could see the larger forms of Warriors and other leader-beasts directing the swarm, but she paid them little heed. The duty of slaying them, if it was at all possible, fell to the rest of the warhost.

There, at the centre of the horde, she spied her goal. A hunchbacked, centauroid monster the size of a tank squatted, surrounded by a gangrel court of lanky, tentacled horrors. Each Tyranid sported a set of towering dorsal vents upon its carapace, and it was from these that the organic mists billowed, forming a dense shroud which grew thicker around them with every passing moment.

Bleakly, the First Exarch noted that even if they slew the creatures, the rippling ocean of flesh packed into the chamber would likely drag them down shortly thereafter. Already the Tyranids were bringing up creatures with strange, spider-like organisms fused to their hands, which spat clouds of sticky filaments to engage their airborne foes. A few had already found their mark, and Maerai watched the horde converge upon those snatched from the skies with grim inevitability. 

None of us will die here. Even if we fall, we will live, and one day rise to fight again. That is a comfort, isn't it?

Signalling the charge, the First Exarch and her sisters struck the Tyranid lines like the blow from a scythe. Their war-cries, amplified by the psychosonic devices in their helmets, liquified the brains of those closest and sent the rest reeling backwards with burst eyeballs and shattered carapaces. Into this gap the Aspect Warriors charged, blades flashing as they began to carve a path towards the Toxicrene and its foul brood. A flight of Windriders passed overhead, shredding a clutch of foes into bloody ruin as they sought to circle around behind the furious Banshees. Swooping Hawks showered Plasma Grenades into the greatest concentrations of enemy resistance. And always, Maerai was there - her executioner flashing, at the forefront of every charge, driving back every counterattack the Tyranids launched. The voices tied to her Exarch suit howled in pleasure, exulting in every life she took and each splash of ichor across her blade.

I am not who I am.

The thought was there and gone in the space between two heartbeats. Maerai ignored it and pushed on, losing herself in the oblivion promised to those lost to the Warrior's Path. Around her, resistance was solidifying; the harder the Eldar struck, the harder Eros fought, as if drawn by the promise of strong mothers for their offspring. Soon Tyranids pressed in from every angle, forming a solid wall of blades and teeth and drooling, dripping phalli. One Banshee fell, then a second; a third took a glancing blow which ruptured her helm and left her exposed to the dense soup of contagions in the air. The woman staggered and let out a low moan, then tore off the remains of her helmet to reveal a face wild-eyed and flushed with arousal.

"I need - I can't help - Isha's love, First Exarch, why are we fighting them?" She cried, already clawing at the clasps and seals of her armour. "They will give us children! Children, after so long!"

Maerai ran on. With every step, she drew closer; with every step, the soup of pheromones and mating-spores in the air grew thicker. A handful more of her sisters were lost. The Windriders were dropping at a terrifying rate, the light armour worn by their Guardian pilots unable to sufficiently protect them against the intoxicating clouds rapidly filling the chamber. Maerai caught a glimpse of three of them, ***** and bent over the canopy of a crashed jetbike, holding hands and moaning in pleasure as a mob of Tyranids gathered to give them the children they so desperately craved.

Did they know? About the Yearning? Is that why they came?

Perversely, the spreading madness among the Eldar ranks was proving to be a boon. Every woman who succumbed to the desperate craving in her belly soon attracted a pack of suitors eager to fill her with young, drawing more and more Tyranids away from their defence of the Toxicrene. Soon it loomed before them, hunched like a beggar in its cloak of spores, each forelimb mutated into a lashing cluster of tendrils which whipped back and forth as Maerai and her remaining Banshees closed upon it. 

"Revenge!" Maerai howled, driving the Venomthropes which surrounded the titan back with a blast from her Banshee mask. Each of her sisters took up the cry, shrieking in hatred as they plunged towards their foe, as if rending it apart might finally silence the hollowness they all felt within. The Toxicrene barely noticed the sonic barrage, but even as its tentacles wrapped around the closest Banshee and flung her disdainfully back into the writhing mass of bodies, the dense shroud of filth parted and the Wave Serpents struck.

With their pilots protected by layers of thick armour and arcane shielding, the transports were the warhost's greatest asset bar Maerai herself. They had waited on the fringe of the engagement, both to facilitate a retreat which now looked increasingly unlikely, and for a moment of opportunity like this. Six Brightlances, each powerful enough to gut a lumbering tank from end to end, speared into the Toxicrene, blasting away one of its weaponsed forelimbs and coring glowing holes through its humped carapace. It lurched to one side, reeling as the remaining Swooping Hawks speckled it with bursts from their lasblasters, punching the bulging spore-sacs which lined its flanks one by one.

Maerai leapt. The beast was wounded, perhaps mortally, but it fought on, snapping out with its remaining tentacle-clusters to sweep aside the circling Hawks. A stomping hind limb crashed down, hard enough to crack the wraithbone beneath its feet, but too slow; the First Exarch wove past and drove the full length of her blade into the Toxicrene's throat and twisted, the powered glaive shearing through muscle, chitin and bone in an instant. A torrent of blood splashed forth, covering the First Exarch from head to toe as the crippled titan stumbled away and collapsed its death throes.

But there was little cause for celebration. Maerai too was sent reeling, clawing at her armour as the enzymes in her foe's blood swiftly devoured the ancient war-plate. The grotesque faceplate of her war-mask sloughed away, ichor eating into the filters and amplifiers behind. Panic set in as her undersuit began to hiss and unravel, peeling away from her toned, powerful body in stinking black strips. Death was not something Maerai feared, so long as it was a good death. Melting away like a candle left lit for too long, as her sisters were bred and befouled around her, was not a fate the First Exarch desired.

Even as she thrashed, tearing great handfuls of smouldering fabric and crumbling armour from her frame, the acid began to neutralise itself. Eros had bred its creatures well, and had no desire to slay even a single potential mate if it could be avoided. By the time the Toxicrene's ichor reached Maerai's flesh it did little more than tingle. 

The damage to her helmet, however, was to prove far worse. The air filters collapsed, and without thinking, Maerai tore it from her head and drew in a frantic gasp of tainted air. 

Lust like she had never known rushed through her. Sweat beaded into life across flushed, ***** flesh. Warmth bloomed in her core, as hot and all-consuming as the heart of a star and growing stronger with every breath. Maerai shuddered and moaned, doubling over as the last of her armour fell away and the vengeful spirits once tied to it were drawn back to their waystones. In their place, waiting like a predator long denied its prey, was the Yearning. It struck without mercy, clawing at her mind, the awful hollowness in her belly almost more than she could stand.

Maerai was tall, even for her kind, as broad-shouldered and statuesque as an Eldar could be, her powerful body etched with the crimson warpaint of her shrine. Her face was as much a mask as the helmet she had once worn - hard and angular, inked with the rune of the banshee on her forehead and stylised tears under each eye, crowned with a enormous plume of blood-red hair.

Around her the last of the warhost was being pulled down. Her Banshees had engaged the Venomthropes and torn half of them apart before succumbing to the airborne toxins. Now the remaining creatures were busily setting themselves to the task of repopulating their numbers, dragging one woman after another into their hideous embrace and languidly mating with them. Each Aspect Warrior wore an expression of bliss and cried out in pleasure as she was impregnated, their long limbs wrapped around the hideous monsters as though they were the most wondrous of lovers imaginable.

I am a woman, a creature of flesh and blood, not this cold thing they made of me! How are we to survive without children? Why fight, if there is no next generation to fight for?

No longer caged by the spirits tied to her armour, the fragment of Maerai's past self swiftly rose to the forefront of her mind, wailing in protest over what had been done to it. She tried to stand, stumbled, and fell back to one knee with a hoarse scream of frustration, crippled by a pang of desire so strong it was almost painful. Nothing made sense. Her mind rebelled. Her body refused to obey her commands. She was a Warrior - no, an Exarch, a paragon of her kind, lost upon the Path. There was no turning back for her. 

No hope of anything better, no hope of bringing something new into the galaxy. Only an endless cycle of death and war, until I am consumed along with it. Is that what they expect of me? Can I be nothing else?

As if sensing that one of the Eldar in its midst had yet to be bred, a Venomthrope pulled itself away from the spreading debauchery and began to slither closer. Even by Tyranid standards, the beast was a horror. Its lower body was little more than a sinuous tail, sucker-tipped phallus and a pair of underdeveloped hind claws, held aloft by the bloated, lung-like sacs of gasses which lined its carapace and bulged from its swollen upper torso. It moved like an undersea mollusc, pulling itself along using the four whip-like tentacles, each as thick as her thigh, which had replaced its upper limbs, and its tiny black eyes stared down at the fallen Exarch with implacable hunger.

Another of the Banshees moaned, one hand pressed against her belly, the other playing lovingly through her mate's facial tendrils. Long strings of semen dripped from her womanhood, matting into the tangled hair of a second woman lying beneath them, her *** already glistening with alien fecundity.

They need us! The seeds planted in their wombs will grow and one day fight to protect us, just as any other child of Morrigan would!  

"No!" Maerai snarled, throwing herself backwards. Her hands scrabbled across the ground, eventually closing around a discarded power sword. The tentacled horror drifted closer, implacable, its prick hard and dripping with glutinous fluids. Her voice cracked with panic. "No, get away!"

Her head spun. Her body throbbed, every inch desperate for relief. Maerai tried to strike as the Venomthrope reached for her, but the blow went wide and it plucked the sword from her hand as easily as she might disarm a novice in a duel. Tentacles caressed the First Exarch's legs, slithering up to wrap tight around her thighs as others twined around her toned midriff. And though she snarled and spat, digging her sharpened fingernails into the Venomthrope's rubbery flesh, it was to no avail. With a burbling grunt of effort, the monster hefted Maerai into the air, forced her legs ajar, and dragged her onto its ****.

Pleasure speared through the her. The First Exarch was no virgin - she had experienced all the tongues, fingers and toys the rituals of sapphery could offer her. But they all paled before the heat and hardness of the Venomthrope's pulsing organ as it plunged deep into her ***, each muscular spasm of movement drawing a brittle gasp from her throat as it began to thrust. But it was more than just physical - it felt right on some deep and primal level, as the oldest and basest instincts of her species were finally sated.

It's the Yearning. It's the pheromones in the air. It's - it's - 

Maerai groaned and snarled, writhing back and forth as the Venomthrope pulled her deeper onto its prick. She could feel the thing moving inside her, creeping closer and closer to her most sacred place, and fought desperately to fend off the monster's attentions. Fists pounded against its carapace. Nails clawed for bulging pheromone-sacs. Nothing worked; every part of the monster oozed and dripped with slime, and her blows slipped harmlessly from its gangrel body. When she clawed for its eyes, the Venomthrope finally tired of her efforts and bound its upper limbs as tightly around her arms as its lower grasped her legs.

Despair tore at Maerai's heart. She was the last one fighting, and with every spike of pleasure from her overburdened womanhood, she felt that fight leaving her. Her warhost had punished the Tyranids terribly, but ultimately failed. Now, all throughout the chamber, the First Exarch's warriors were paying the price of that failure with every load of rich biomass forced into their fertile wombs.  

Swooping Hawks kissed as they were viciously bred by a gang of sickle-armed monsters. Two Guardians held down a Howling Banshee while a third helped guide a Warrior's throbbing prick into her ***. Even one of the Wave Serpents had been brought down, its turret hanging slack and canopy ajar, the pilot's long legs kicking the air as she was mated by the creature sharing her seat. But the sounds, if anything, were worse; blissful moans and trembling cries, desperate pleas and slanderous cries of approval as their long-repressed desires were finally sated. 

It is none of these things. It is us. This is what we want, on some fundamental level; to be mated, to be bred, to bear the children that will carry on our line. All Seminoth did was bring to light what was already there. All Eros has done is give us what we have long denied ourselves.

The Venomthrope's facial tendrils tenderly stroked the Maerai's face and curled around her stiff, sensitive nipples. Beads of viscous slime dribbled down her toned body and matted her crimson hair into a red, ragged mop. Its **** throbbed and twitched, each muscular spasm dragging the Exarch closer to orgasm. And all the while the fragment of Maerai's past self grew in strength, and cried out for more, until she no longer knew where the warrior ended and the woman began.

I am strong. I would carry strong children. Why must I choose between being a mother and a warrior? Why can I not be both?

It made a terrible kind of sense. Slowly, Maerai's struggled ceased. She trembled and let out a soft moan, savouring, for the first time, the gentle ache of her lips stretching around the beast's prick, the tightness with which she clung to it, the satisfaction of its depth inside her. Her life, for so very long, had been an endless, looping cycle of brooding silence and savage bloodshed, and she no longer had the taste for either. An Exarch was trapped upon their Path, but what if the Path itself was to change? Would she not, in turn, change with it?

There was a twinge as the Venomthrope's sucker-like crown kissed her cervix. It latched on, muscle clinging to muscle, and with a deep shudder which ran between woman and monster alike, forced it aside. Maerai's heart leapt in her chest. She knew what was about to happen. If the roiling clouds of mating pheromones and aphrodisiac spores filling the air hadn't been enough to induce ovulation, whatever cocktail simmered in the Venomthrope's throbbing testes, delivered straight to her deepest, most fertile places, certainly would.

The Path of the War-Mother, she who brings forth the Craftworld's endless legions, calls, Maerai. Will you accept?

"I will," the First Exarch hissed, staring up into the Venomthrope's void-black eyes. "Breed me, you loathsome thing. Take me as your mate, and give me the children which will defend our new home." 

The Venomthrope thrust - somehow, impossibly, its crown distending past the sucker which ringed it - and with that, ejaculated directly into Maerai's defenceless womb. 

The sensation was more than the Exarch could take. She felt every spurt, every thick pulse of virile seed as it spilled into her like the sweetest of poisons. Pleasure as raw and debilitating as the caress of a blade along her nerves bloomed forth from the very heart of her, but even as she shook and screamed through her climax, it was nothing compared to the sensation of the Venomthrope's sucker-tip clamping her cervix shut once more. There was no escape now, Maerai thought dizzily. Already she could imagine the trillions of hyper-potent sperm now trapped in her womb, racing towards her waiting eggs with all the rapacity of their kind. 

For the first time in centuries, Maerai knew peace. Her monstrous paramour gently deposited her onto the slickly organic floor and retreated, already picking its way through the chaos in search of any other women yet to accept Eros' gifts. The First Exarch didn't care. It had done its job. Now, she would do hers.

Around her, the intoxicating fog swirled and billowed. Soon it would swell, and rise, and spread across the rest of the Craftworld, and every woman of Morrigan would at last find the relief they secretly craved.

---Phase 4: Subdual---

---Phase 4: Subdual---

Disaster. There was no other word for it. 

Within hours of Maerai's defeat, the pheromone-laden clouds began to rise. Ranger-Captain Yllia had posted scouts around the largest tunnels, waiting for signs of the Warhost's return or a renewed Tyranid attack, but neither their light armour nor chameleonic cloaks offered the slightest protection from the silent, chemical assault. Each was overcome, first by the billowing fog and then by the creatures which lurked within; lanky, muscular things, capable of oozing their own pheromones to summon aid or debilitate their soon-to-be mates, the Lictors snatched away each band of Rangers and planted their seed in the bellies of the strongest. The rest were tossed aside, left like detritus for the rest of the swarm.

And what a swarm it was. Thousands had been slain in the initial tunnel fights, and Maerai's warhost had culled hundreds more, but twice that many Tyranids still lived. They had scurried away from their landing zones and secreted themselves in the Craftworld's labyrinth of abandoned chambers, their rapacious instincts yoked to the Hive Mind's iron will, patiently awaiting the moment they would be called upon. Even as the lead elements of Eros' swarms sated their lusts upon Maerai and her kin, they waited in the dark until, finally, they were let slip and sent forth to hunt.

Eshana's foremost defensive positions were overrun in moments. Each attack was preceded by a rolling fog-bank of spores which fouled the aim of the strongest and debilitated the rest with lust, leaving them vulnerable to the breeding swarms creeping closer within the murk. The small units of Aspect Warriors stationed alongside the Guardians fared better, but they had only ever been expected to repulse whatever trickle of creatures survived the militiawomen's fire. They fought to the last against Eros' renewed attack, but ironically kept the swarm occupied for longer with their bodies than their blades.

It was this lilting chorus of moans and screeches which alerted the Eldar to their peril. It became so loud that the second ring of emplacements heard their fate approaching long before the first wispy tendrils of spore-fog came into view and sent word to the High Autarch, who at the time had been preoccupied with deploying the first elements of Craftworld Morrigan's Wraith Hosts.

To her credit, Eshana reacted quickly. Accepting the tunnels could no longer be held, she personally led a desperate counter-attack to buy time for an evacuation. But while her actions undoubtedly turned what could have been a complete rout into an organised retreat, for every woman who escaped the onslaught, two more fell or were grimly ordered to form rearguard positions to buy time for their withdrawing sisters. Soon the fighting had spilled out into Morrigan's inhabited areas, with Guardians and Aspect Warriors alike engaged in running battles through the world-ship's network of elegant gardens and communal plazas. 

Here, then, the fighting seemed to favour the Eldar once more. Given space to practice their unique style of war, Eshana led her forces in a fluid, ever-changing dance through the Craftworld's spires, drawing Eros' swarms towards seemingly isolated units before pouncing and tearing the invaders apart from all sides. The Hive Fleet's comparative lack of monstrous bio-forms - the result, Yllia suggested, of their unique breeding habits, as few women would be able to carry such a titanic infant to term - was also to the Eldar's advantage, and in the open spaces their fleets of grav-tanks had free reign to punish the swarms with impunity.

But it was ugly, exhausting work. The lurking Hive Ships began to ejaculate new waves of boarding spores into the fertile Craftworld below, seeding it with dozens of new battlefields that even Eshara's inspired strategies struggled to fully contain. No matter how many Tyranids the women of Morrigan slew, they found themselves locked into an endless fighting retreat, unable to fully regain the initiative. And though the pheromonal spore-clouds had dispersed as they entered the vast habitation domes, the Yearning still gnawed at the back of each woman's mind. It was impossible to fully ignore what Eros intended for them; every strike saw more warrior lost to their passions, every retreat was made to a chorus of blissful cries from the fallen, and every day saw the will of those still fighting strained to breaking point.

---

Eshana collaped against the remains of a broken balustrade, ripped off her helmet and buried her face in her hands. She had been fighting for almost thirty-six hours straight now; even in those few moments of relative peace, on a subconscious level she continued to digest the tactical information Yllia's scouts were collecting and murmur new commands to Morrigan's thinly-spread warriors. Not for no reason did an aspirant have to progress through several Aspect Shrines before taking their first steps upon the Path of Command; it was one of the most demanding of all Paths, placing the greatest of responsibilities upon those who walked it.

The High Autarch felt every one of those responsibilities like a chain around her neck. She was tired. She had been tired for years now, Eshana silently realised, but had been too proud to realise it. Around her, the warriors under her command - a loose motley of Exarchs and lesser Autarchs, escorted by one of Morrigan's few shrines of Dire Avengers - were making the most of the few moments of peace Isha had seen fit to grant them, alternately pulling out small, silvery tubes of combat rations or trying to snatch a little sleep of their own. 

Tired? From the responsibilities you have, or the ones you chose to ignore?

Where before the Yearning had only bothered her at night, now it was intruding upon her thoughts during the day. Eshana didn't know if that was the result of the Tyranid spores slowly filling the Craftworld's sweeping habitation domes or simply a sign of how stressed she had become, but either way it only added to her mounting frustrations. Glancing up, the High Autarch saw the same expression mirrored on each of her companions. Even those who retained their helmets were tense, and unconsciously parted their legs or brushed their hands over their bellies whenever their minds wandered to other things.

Yllia was right, I think. I should have pushed for another breeding cycle centuries ago.

It wasn't just Morrigan's population which had felt the effects of the invasion. The Craftworld itself was changing, its carefully maintained ecology spiralling out of control as ever-higher quantities of Tyranid spores entered its fragile biosphere. Pristine public gardens now burst with florid new growth, while tangled knots of strangling vines coiled around the base of the Craftworld's many towers. Those sectors fully lost to the Tyranids were coming to resemble alien mockeries of the lush Exodite worlds Morrigan sometimes visited, smothered by pheromonal smog and overwhelmed with unbound, rampant life.

Just as our own bodies are ripening in turn. Our kind has never been known for its fecundity, has it? But now we blossom  like flowers on the vine, and soon, our genetic lineage will live on within a million new children. Is that not a kind of immortality? What greater legacy could there be than that?

A low moan gathered on Eshana's lips. The High Autarch forced it down and stood, pushing her helmet back into place and striding over to the lip of the balcony, stiff-backed and proud. Even here, away from the front lines, the sounds of combat chased them. The thrum of grav-tank engines and the screech of dying aliens echoed from between the distant towers, and beneath that, on the edge of hearing, Eshana could make out the faint chorus of moans which drifted perpetually from the infested sectors. Casting her gaze in that direction, she could even see faint shapes cavorting on the rooftops, locked in a carnal embrace with their conquerors. 

Not all of them seemed content with simply bearing the Hive's offspring. Seized by morbid curiosity, Eshana sent a thought-pulse to her helm's visor and zoomed in on the scene, watching in disgusted fascination as a group of women enthusiastically pleasured the creatures with their mouths. The utter submissiveness of it turned Eshana's stomach - surely it brought the women themselves neither pleasure nor succour from the Yearning, yet they went about the task with such shameless joy that the High Autarch quickly came to doubt her own conclusions. 

Eshana realised she was panting. Her tongue flicked over her lips, and for a moment she imagined that she tasted something there, something bitter yet rich with potential. The cramp in her belly returned with a vengeance, and she turned away from the scene with a weary sigh. It was a sight, she knew, that was being repeated on every tower and in every street lost to the Tyranids, as if the beasts sought to flaunt each victory they won over the Craftworld's defenders.

Or to show us the bliss they can offer.

Their refuge was a raised terrace, once used by troupes of actors and musicians to put on a public show of their worth. Now it was one of several impromptu command points Eshana and her advisors moved between, stocked with supplies and reinforced by ugly tumours of unworked pyschoplastic. Elevated as it was off the ground, it offered good sight lines in three directions and only two points where Eros' swarms could rush them. Of course, that also limited their options for retreat, but Eshana judged that a fair trade-off for security. She sent a mental pulse into the Infinity Circuit link contained within her helm, and was relieved to hear the High Farseer a moment later.

Eshana. Auriel's voice was warm and strong, and the High Autarch imagined she could hear the touch of a smile to it. How do you fare?

The situation on the front lines continues to deteriorate, Eshana thought back. Slower than I had feared, but we are losing this war. The Guardian militias are suffering terribly. We were able to secure void-harnesses from Aydona's remaining starships, which should give some protection against the fog, but there are nowhere near enough to protect them all.

That isn't what I asked. Yllia keeps me well-informed. How are you?

Eshana had to fight not to sag against the balcony. Auriel had ever been a mother to the rest of the council, soothing disputes and offering gentle advice to its more tempestuous members. She was the one woman Eshana might have opened up to, but as she looked out over her ravaged home, the High Autarch found she lacked the strength even for that. Morale was thin enough already. If rumours of her own growing fatigue began to spread, it would shatter like glass. 

I endure, High Farseer.

There was a pause. 

I see. Well. I can offer you some good news, at least. My Spiritseers have awoken enough of Morrigan's dead for the first Wraith Hosts to march to war. They await only your order.

Eshana felt relief flood through her. The Wraithguard were her final ploy. Hundreds of them had been stationed throughout the Craftworld's habitation domes, hidden in carefully-plotted locations calculated to catch the Tyranids off-guard should the invasion move into Morrigan's urban areas. It had taken time for Auriel's seers to reach them with their animating waystones, but now, it seemed, the time was right.

Do it. But be ready. I do not know how much the Hive Mind understands, but it has been uncannily prescient thus far, and I would be unsurprised if it struck at the Dome of Sleepers next.

Not to worry. Auriel's thoughts were as soothing as an embrace, and Eshana found herself smiling wearily for the first time in days. We have our own defences, and Yllia is here with the seer council to protect me. Have faith, sister. The night is long and dark, but I promise you that dawn is coming.

---

From artfully-disguised vaults and bunkers hidden around the base of Morrigan's elegant spires, the Wraithguard emerged. Each was half again as tall as a living Eldar and twice as broad, their solid Wraithbone shells wrought into stylised feminine forms that slowly and silently began to spread out into the city. They carried weapons of terrible potency - Wraithcannons and Distortion Scythes which hurled their victims in the Warp, or crackling swords and axes infused with the souls of those Eldar spirits lost to homicidal fury. And though not swift, they were utterly relentless, neither stopping nor slowing as they moved to engage the Tyranids which had infested their home.

On a score of different battlefields, Hive Fleet Eros suddenly found itself thrown back. Here was a foe which felt neither fear nor doubt, to whom the Yearning was nothing more than a half-remembered dream from their time in flesh. Here was a foe which cared nothing for the mating-spores and ***-pheromones they pumped into the air. And while the Wraithguard were not indestructible, Eros' scuttling multitudes posed them no more threat than a host of vermin did to a statue. Here and there one of the revenant-women would fall, torn apart by the crackling boneswords of a Warrior or rent apart by a pack of Raveners, but these losses were nothing compared to the tally Morrigan's dead reaped upon the invaders.

But the Hive Mind was ever an adaptable entity. Even as its foremost swarms hurled themselves against the Wraithguard in a storm of teeth and talons, the great gestalt consciousness which guided them sought a solution. It found one in the silvery mental tethers which arose from each construct; though invisible to normal eyes, to the Hive Mind's psychic sight, each led to the same location. A domed temple-structure at the heart of the Eldar's remaining territory, within which burned a singularly desirable consciousness. Leaving only what rearguard troops were necessary to hold off the Wraithguard, the bulk of Eros' ground swarms broke off their attacks across the habitation domes and began to converge upon their new target.

But the greater threat was to come from orbit. From the bridge of the Crone's Breath, Fleetmistress Aydona watched over the shoulder of her current mate as one of the Hive Ships orbiting the Craftworld ejected a shoal of enormous, fleshy pods from its flank in a spray of unclean fluids. She lounged in her throne, legs spread, arms draped languidly around the bucking Hormagaunt desperately attempting to rut its children into her. Best of luck to it, she thought - the Warrior which had claimed her womb for its own still visited her daily, and her body was already swelling with the growth of their first child. Enough so that when she stood, the pale curve of her belly just protruded past the edges of her long coat, now the only garment beside her waystone she still bothered to wear.

The rest of her crew were showing signs of their own. As would, Aydona assumed, the rest of Morrigan's population before long. She felt little distress over the idea; indeed, part of her desperately hoped that once the last of the defenders fell, she would be returned to the world-ship to mingle with the rest of Eros' newly-claimed mates. After all, the Tyranids had treated them with neither cruelty nor malice so far, and so long as the crew made no attempt to escape they were allowed to freely come and go as they liked. Her ship's recreation hall had become a kind of communal meeting spot, where the *****, semi-pregnant women would come to socialise until, inevitably, being drawn away into a liaison with one of Eros' rampant monsters.

They were prisoners, yes, but Aydona had never felt so free. Even as a Corsair, she had been trapped by expectation and necessity, harried from conflict to conflict by the ever-present need to secure fresh supplies and reassert her dominance over her fractious band. And of Morrigan itself? Were the psychological shackles placed upon them by the Path and the Yearning so much lighter than the physical bondage Eros offered?

Aydona thought not. As if to underline the point, the Hormagaunt hissed sharply in her ear and came, the hot bloom of its seed enough to push her into a small, comfortable climax of her own. As the rush of pleasure faded, the Fleetmistress glanced again at the shrinking pods on the viewscreen. Her eyes were drawn, curiously, to a small, heavily-armoured spore, which tumbled with silent menace amidst its larger kin.

The Hormagaunt licked her face. Aydona snorted a short laugh and patted it affectionately. There was no sense worrying about the Craftworld's fate, she decided. Whatever it was to be, the situation was long out of her hands.

---

Even now, even after everything that had happened to her home, High Farseer Auriel still found solace within the Dome of Sleepers. She sat cross-legged atop her scrying dais, beneath the stone gaze of her goddesses, her painted eyes closed and a small smile upon her placid features. Time and again throughout her centuries-long life she had been drawn here, taking comfort from the idea that one day, her mortal remains might stand beneath the eyes of her goddesses for all eternity.

Now, it was imperilled. The thought alone was enough for a spark of anger to push through Auriel's mask of composure. Her lip twitched, a faint grimace appearing on her face before fading once more. It was impossible to overstate the Dome's importance - it stood as centre of Morrigan's religious rites, the nexus of arcane energies which powered the Craftworld's technologies, and most importantly a precious repository for those souls saved from the maw of She-Who-Thirsts.

The idea that it might fall was unthinkable. It had endured Seminoth's invasion. It would endure this, Auriel told herself. It had to.

Outside, the sound of falling spores beat an endless refrain against Morrigan's hull. Yllia's scouts had reported sightings of hulking shapes moving amidst the towers, lumpen, spore-shrouded monstrosities far larger than anything the Eldar had seen thus far. Rivers of lesser bioforms wound their way through the streets, converging from a score of other battlefronts into a single, overwhelming tide aimed at the Craftworld's heart.

Not a tide. A thrust. Aimed into a far more precious place than our heart.

The High Farseer took a breath, allowing the intrusive thought to pass. Unlike her sisters upon the council, she had never regarded the Yearning as something to be fought. Rather than surrendering to despair or embittering herself through stoicism, Auriel had sought ways to turn the Daemon's curse into something positive. No, she would likely never have children, and the pain of that knowledge ate at her like a hole in her heart. But the High Farseer had endeavoured to make herself a mother to all the Craftworld. She became a mediator, a nurturer, a source of wisdom and calm to soothe Morrigan's furious, warrior spirit.

Was there a part of her which looked back upon her long life, and took silent note of all the opportunities she had denied herself? Of course. It was ever a mother's purpose to sacrifice for her children, after all. But that gnarled core of resentment was buried deep, caged by the same burdens Auriel had taken upon herself to distract from the Yearning.

Around her bustled a multitude of figures, robed in purple and white, their faces hidden behind high-crested Ghosthelms. Ghostly Spiritseers worked in silence, busily drawing forth the Craftworld's dead into new waystones, while a dozen Warlocks stood with their blades held high around the Dome's solitary entrance. Most important were Auriel's subordinate Farseers, Tishria and Kalistri, singing low songs of warding and protection as their mistress' consciousness slipped deeper into the Infinity Circuit.

There were countless risks involved with linking oneself so intimately to the Craftworld's soul, but it was the only way the legions of Wraithguard pushing back against Hive Fleet Eros could be given the purpose and direction they required. The dead were uneasy; not since the time of Seminoth had so many been awakened at once, but there was more to it than that. They hissed and roiled within the Circuit, clawing hungrily at Auriel's mind as she danced through the glowing psychic matrices which lined her home. There was a hunger there, a desperation Auriel was all too familiar with.

They sense it, just as we do. With every new life Eros seeds within us, with every woman who cries out in pleasure as the Yearning is sated, the dead grow ever more bitter. They do not understand that our children will be monsters, only that they cannot partake in these new joys.

"High Farseer?"

Auriel opened her eyes, her smile deepening at the sound of Yllia's voice. The Ranger-Captain paced and fretted, glancing up at the carved ceiling as another wave of gristly impacts echoed from somewhere nearby. Her wan face was pale and drawn with worry, and days of fighting through unkind terrain had left her chameleonic garb torn and dirtied with alien fluids.

"I am here, Yllia. The dead do not speak so loudly that I am deaf to the living. How is the situation outside?"

"The swarms continue to mass. Already they outnumber us ten to one." Yllia pulled her hood down and ran her fingers through her white-blonde hair, disturbing the charms of polished bone woven into it. "Our defences are in place, but High Farseer, I don't - " she paused, struggling to find the words, then shook her head. "I think we need to consider evacuation."

"Evacuation? Truly?"

Yllia nodded. She had ever been an outsider, Auriel knew - a silent, mournful figure who had come to them from the lost Craftworld of Altansar. Her eerie, bleached features, abundance of death-charms and cautious, quiet nature had earned her few friends in a bellicose society of warriors, and it was no surprise that the Path of Exile had come to her so naturally. "The bulk of our forces are concentrated here, and the swarms have retreated from around the world-ship's hangars. We can take our forces, push through to Aydona's vessels, and - "

"And what?" Auriel's words were not unkind, but she delivered them in a tone which brooked no disagreement. "Break ourselves upon the same Hive Ships which wrought the Fleetmistress' doom? Even if we did escape, where would we go? Would you risk the Yearning spreading to others, as it does to those who associate with us here?"

Yllia said nothing. Her head hung, and Auriel sighed softly. For days now, the Ranger-Captain had been operating deep in those areas lost to the Tyranids, tracking their numbers and movements at the High Autarch's behest. She had seen, first hand, the desperate, animal nature which lurked behind Morrigan's militant society, and the eagerness with which its warriors had submitted to their deepest impulses. With the same impulse throbbing in her mind like an inflamed nerve, was it that surprising she wanted nothing more than to flee?

Or to surrender herself to them. Which is as frightening an urge as anything else.

"Child, for better or worse, this is our home." Auriel beckoned her forwards and briefly took the Ranger-Captain's hand. "Our foes are terrible, yes, and they have subjected us to terrible indignities. They have sought to turn the burden we all carry against us. But they have failed - Craftworld Morrigan stands unbowed, and by the might of our dead, these monsters will soon be driven back from our shores."

The Ranger-Captain gave a small nod and looked up. Doubt lingered in her eyes, but Auriel's words had driven back enough of it to keep her fighting. "This is their last throw of the dice, Yllia. I know you see me as a peacemaker, but when the time comes, I will fight no less fiercely than the High Autarch. Will you do the same?"

"I will, High Farseer."

"Good." Auriel released Yllia and leaned back, allowing the war-trance to overtake her once more. "Then go, rally your warriors. Soon, this will all come to an end."

---

It began with the fog. Bilious and swirling, it crept across the starlit dome above before drifting down upon the Eldar's position, seeping through every crack and into every chamber of the defensive towers Morrigan's warriors inhabited. This, at least, they were prepared for. The most lightly-armoured troops, Yllia's Rangers and the ever-present Guardian militia, had been given sealed void-harnesses with an internal air supply, and the heavy armour of their Aspect Warrior kin repelled the worst of the pheromonal soup. But it did nothing for the sense of claustrophobia which descended upon the Eldar's lines. They were trapped, forced into a pitched battle against a foe which vastly outnumbered them, and each of the thousands of women present felt a cold hand of dread tighten around her heart as the first distant shrieks and roars reached them.

Dread, of course, and something else, too. Concealed beneath their sweeping helmets, how many chewed their lips in desperate apprehension, torn between their fury at the invaders desecrating their homes, and the growing, desperate urge to feel that same desecration meted out upon their own bodies? Did the skirmish line of Guardians, deployed to buy time for the heavier weapons behind to wreck greater harm on the foe, covertly loosen the clasps of their armour, hoping that things would be easier when the inevitable occurred? Were the defenders resolved to fight as long and hard as possible, not for the sake of their Craftworld, but by the persistent rumours that Eros singled out the strongest women for particularly thorough insemination?

Some, certainly. Even those women strong enough to resist the Yearning looked at their comrades and felt a seed of doubt worm its way into her mind. I can resist, they thought, but can she? 

It was a feeling which only deepened as the pheromonal mists drew back. Arrayed against them was a swarm magnitudes greater than anything the women of Morrigan had fought before. Thousands upon thousands of creatures, packed so tightly into the main thoroughfare that each creature rubbed shoulders with the ones to its left and right, stared at the Eldar with cold purpose in their black eyes and desperate intent in their swollen erections. Larger creatures stood out amidst the throng; powerful Warriors and serpentine Raveners, their flanged hemipenes drooling precome. Lumbering weapon-beasts, bulging testes heaving with metallophagic enzymes. Carnifexes with lashing clusters of phallic tentacles, each pulsing with sinewy strength. And above them all - towering, bipedal titans which lumbered forwards like oversized apes, each sporting an organ of such absurd proportions that many of the Eldar began to doubt their own sanity.

For a moment, the two sides stared at one another. Alien pricks twitched. Glutinous trails of fluid, each drop seething with hyper-potent sperm, slithered down ribbed shafts which ached to kiss fertile Eldar wombs. A collective shudder ran through the Eldar lines as each woman felt herself scrutinised by some monstrous, far-off presence, its invisible eye gliding hungrily over the curve of their busts, the length of their legs, the flare of their hips.

And then, as if that great mind was satisfied that everything it saw was to its liking, the swarm let out a collective hiss and charged.

Tongues of blazing fire leapt out from the Eldar lines, Starcannons and Brightlances screeching their disgust at the tide of monsters bearing down upon them. Monofillament webs drifted through seething tides of Gaunts, slaughtering lesser creatures by the hundred. The towers arrayed around the Dome revealed themselves are more than purely ornamental, their armoured flanks sliding smoothly back to reveal Pulsars and oversized Vibro-cannons which began to mercilessly pound the lumbering bio-titans advancing at the heart of the swarm.

Closer they came, and closer still. Each step cost Eros dearly, but it had creatures to spare, and the front line of Guardians had only moments before they were overrun. From their position in one of the defence towers, Yllia and her Rangers were forced to watch helplessly as the Eldar buckled and broke under Eros' assault. Lilting songs of war and bloodshed were soon replaced by cries of desperate passion as the swarm's outriders set about their work, mercilessly pinning, stripping, and mating each militiawoman within reach of their claws. Their victims offered little resistance; indeed, their enthusiasm was such that calling them 'victims' seemed somehow inappropriate. 

Volunteers, not victims, Yllia thought. She watched through the scope of her rifle as a pair of Guardians, stripped down to little more than their heeled boots, kissed and caressed a snarling, serpentine Ravener as it set about breeding their unit's leader. Around them lay the rest of the squad; mounted on all fours and rutted like beasts, long legs tight around the monsters forcing them into harsh mating presses, soft lips wrapped lovingly around the ribbed shafts which had impregnated them only moments before. The Ranger-Captain's gorge rose as she played her scope across the carnage, seeing the scene repeated over and over even as the rest of the swarm pressed on deeper into the Eldar lines. 

Their position was the most dangerous of all, so we asked for volunteers. They knew this was going to happen.

A deafening howl stole Yllia's attention as the counter-attack began. Here Eros met the bulk of Morrigan's remaining armies - thousands of Aspect Warriors, led by the towering Wraithknight Llarchani, and here the Hive Fleet encountered stiffer resistance. The swarm crashed into the Eldar lines but, rather than devolving into the same frantic mess which had consumed the Guardian picket, the tight mass of towering beasts at its heart continued to plough relentlessly forwards. Those women who stood in their way were hurled back, their armour clawed from them in strips or reduced to molten ruin by specialist weapon-beasts, but the giants and their scuttling escort spared them not a glance. 

That, in a way, was more frightening than the frenzy which had defined Eros' previous attacks. Before it seemed like the swarm could barely control itself - monsters would hurl themselves onto fallen Eldar, desperately seeking to mate with them even in the midst of battle. Cynical as it might have been, Eshana had even adopted that behaviour into her battle strategies, using overcome women as bait and slaying the creatures as they sought to relieve their vicious breeding instincts. But now, Eros moved and fought with an eerie, single-minded purpose, driving towards the Dome of Sleepers with a terrifyingly single-minded purpose. 

One of the bio-titans fell, cored from end to end by blazing Pulsars. It staggered like a drunk before crashing into the defence tower that had slain it, smashing its eyeless head through the spire's delicate skin and vomiting forth a tide of scuttling monsters to engage the Guardians and Bonesingers within. Llarchani disembowelled another with a great sweep of her glittering blade, crushing Carnifexes and Warriors underfoot almost as an afterthought. But with every passing second the swarm drew closer to its goal, and with a mighty thrust, the first of its creatures smashed into the Dome of Sleepers' Wraithbone entryway.

---

Dry whispers surrounded the High Farseer. Spectral fingers trailed across her shoulders and caressed her silver hair, each ghostly touch enticing her to abandon the harsh world of the living and let her soul slip free into the embrace of the Infinity Circuit. She pushed the urge aside, her consciousness flitting from one battlefield to the next. Everywhere Auriel looked, her Wraith Hosts were advancing almost unopposed, mercilessly scouring one nest of Tyranids after another. One group had managed to link up with Eshana, rescuing the beleaguered High Autarch from the brood of Raveners which had intercepted her on her way to the Dome, and now the closest units were advancing in silent lockstep upon the amalgamated swarm battering itself bloody upon their defences here.

Something, though, was awry. Auriel's consciousness was not the only one at large. Even as her spirit-form leapt from Wraith to Wraith and ghosted through the twisting matrices of the Infinity Circuit, she had felt the overwhelming pressure of the Hive Mind against her own. It was a vast thing, black and hungry, and barely seemed aware of her on an individual level, but the mere thought of its scrutiny falling upon her had left the High Farseer slick with cold sweat.

Now, it was gone. The creatures her Wraithguard massacred were chaotic and unguided, fleeing like startled rats or dashing themselves to flinders against the undead revenant-women. With a growing sense of dread, Auriel guided her spirit-form back towards the Dome of Sleepers, her stomach curdling at the thought of what she might find.

Below, she saw thousands of bright sparks, each light the soul of an Eldar woman, struggling against a seething mass of shadowy forms. In places the two seemed to have merged, and Auriel realised with shock she was looking upon the conjoined spirits of those Eldar already made to carry the seed of their conquerors. Nearly a third of the army, Auriel thought dizzily, scattered around the battlefield or trapped in one of the defensive spires. The latter held her attention for a moment; almost every woman therein cradled the faint, flickering shadow of a new life in her belly, even as the roiling shapes which surrounded them told of the debauchery continuing within.

It should have disgusted her. These were her children, adopted though they may be, and the sight of their violation should have filled the High Farseer with woe. But to Auriel's horror, it elicited nothing but a hot stab of jealousy. As each woman's spirit merged with that of the alien life being planted in her womb, her light sparked brighter than before, burning with a rare joy the High Farseer had never herself experienced.

Is it fair? That so many, so very many, will know relief from the Yearning, while I do not? Have my centuries of duty earned me so little?

The spirits which surrounded her rippled in agitation. Auriel desperately thrust the idea away, turning her gaze back to the swarm below. It was almost impossible to tell one Tyranid spirit apart from the next, but here and there she saw the darker patches where stronger minds co-ordinated their lesser kin. And there, at the centre of the swarm, Auriel saw a mind so black it seemed to draw in and devour the faint, fitful consciousnesses of its brutish escort. It waited with a patient malevolence before the Dome's great doors, and the High Farseer instinctively knew to allow it access to the Infinity Circuit would herald disaster for them all.

Then, as she mustered her strength for an attack, it turned its sightless gaze towards her.

Loss. Desperation. A great and terrible absence, masked by an endless, unquenchable desire.

The contact lasted less than a second before desperate hands shook Auriel from her trance. The High Farseer snapped awake with a hoarse cry, her face pale and white robes clammy with sweat. For a moment she knew not where she was, and struggled weakly against the other woman's firm grip.

"Ready yourself, High Farseer," Kalistri pushed Auriel's spear into her hands, uncaring of her mistress' confusion. She was young, for a Farseer, with delicate features and blue-tinted hair which spoke of a lingering attachment to her previous, more frivolous, Paths. "The beasts are at our door. The Dead must fight their own battles - it is time for us to fight ours."

As if to underline the other Farseer's worry, a rolling boom echoed through the chamber. Dust fell from the ceiling, speckling Auriel's shoulders as she struggled to reorientate herself. The mind she had touched had been unfathomably ancient and monstrously alien, communicating in instincts rather than emotions. But there had been a horrid sense of familiarity there, a kinship which made the Farseer's skin crawl the more she thought of it.

They suffer as we do. They hunger as we do.

"What is the situation outside?" Auriel asked as she stepped down from the dais. She knew the answer well enough, but asking it helped to distract from the growing pressure in her head as the Tyranid chariot-mind approached. The chamber shook a second time, and the Warlocks tensed as a hairline crack began to spread along the Dome's barred doors. "Has it truly grown so dire?"

"Aye, my lady." Tishria was a savage by contrast, her ruddy hair cropped down to the scalp on one side, harsh features marred with complex patterns of ritual scarification. She grinned, her teeth flashing savagely before she donned her Ghosthelm. "We've reaped a merry tally, but now it seems like they'd rather make mothers of us than our sisters out there."

The woman had always been a savage, hailing from some tiny Exodite colony which made Saim-Haan look like the pinnacle of sophistication, but something about Tishria's tone put Auriel on edge. There was no fear there, no apprehension - as if she had read the skein and found herself comfortable with whatever fate she had foreseen awaited them. But as another impact rocked the dome, cracks spreading like the black threads of dead futures, Auriel found herself wondering if Tishria was more interested in the Craftworld's victory, or the consequences of its defeat.

And if the two might not be the same.

"Sisters," Auriel called. She was a commanding figure, regal and imperious, and every eye turned to her as she rose to her full height beneath the gaze of her Goddesses. Silver hair flashed as beads of lightning flickered around the High Farseer's form, crystalline eyes and veins glowing as she marshalled her power. "Daughters. Seers. Children of Morrigan. I am neither an Autarch, to deliver stirring speeches before battle. Nor an Exarch, to lead you in bloody-handed carnage. But I know you, just as you know me. And I know, though the hour grows dark and dawn seems so very long away, that no woman here will bow before the invaders, in this life or the next."

A brutish, hooked claw punched through the crumbling doorway with a terrible crack. Beyond, a tiny black eye glared at the Seers with vicious intent, quickly hidden by the swarming mass of bodies which seethed around its lumbering form. 

"Our deliverance is at hand. The Dead have swept our home clean of these monsters, and we need only endure this final imposition. So hold, children of Morrigan. Hold, until - "

Wraithbone buckled and gave way, swallowing Auriel's final words in the cacophony. The great doors were swept aside like a dam giving way before a river. Scores of bodies flooded in, bounding over one another in their desperation to close upon the Seer Council. Auriel saw the Carnifex fall, burned to a smouldering crisp by Tishria and Kalistri's psychic might, even as she reduced a clutch of scuttling creatures to windblown ash and etched shadows. Witchblades flashed as the Warlocks cut down anything which came close, their glowing swords forming an unbreakable barrier around their charges. Seeing the danger, every woman outside turned her fury upon the horde spilling towards the temple, and Tyranid corpses fell like rain from the steps which wound towards the Dome's breached entry point.

For a moment, Auriel allowed herself the luxury of hope. Then the pressure in her mind redoubled, the force almost enough to drive her to her knees, and the great mind behind the swarm made itself known.

It was a Neurothrope, a creature unto a Zoanthrope what a Tyranid Warrior was unto a Hive Tyrant. It drifted through the air with loathsome, sinewy grace, delicately bladed limbs hugged tight around its serpentine body. A great, arcing crown of chitin protected the creature's external spinal conductor and grotesquely swollen cranium, throbbing knots of cerebral tissue visible beneath its glistening, grey-black skin. Its eyeless head slowly panned across the chamber, narrow jaws seeming to leer in amusement as the first blasts of psychic energy splashed harmlessly across its shimmering mental barriers.  

"There!" Auriel panted, leaning on her spear for support. The Neurothrope's will flooded into the chamber, a black ocean of crushing alien pressure which threatened to drown all who dared stand against it. Tishria and Kalistri cried out in alarm as their powers dwindled to nothing, blasts of eldritch lightning faltering before the creature's inscrutable mind. Even Auriel found her assault blunted; the Neurothrope seemed to drink psychic energy, devouring all but the most meagre scraps she was able to pull from the Empyrean. "That is the chariot-mind which leads them, the focal point of the Hive! Destroy it, and this invasion will be over!"

Sensing this battle would be won on a more earthly level, the Warlocks charged. The Neurothrope turned to the closest and snatched her from the ground with a pulse of telekinetic force, peeling away her helm like the skin from a sweetfruit before casually dropping her in its wake. She staggered back to her feet, but to Auriel's horror, the damage had already been done - thick tendrils of mating-spores were already coiling into the chamber, and the Warlock offered no resistance as the closest Tyranid tore her robes aside and bore her to the ground, its ribbed phallus dripping and eager.

Two more met the same fate, their Witchblades rebounding harmlessly from the Neurothrope's psychic field. More Tyranids streamed into the Dome, scattering the Warlocks' formation and leaving them vulnerable; though each reaped a bloody tally before being pulled down, alone and isolated from their peers there was little they could do against the sheer number of beasts which surrounded them. Wet, fleshy slapping noises began to fill the chamber as the Tyranids mercilessly set about breeding their new mates, the Warlocks themselves moaning in pleasure and crying out in desperate approval as each thick load of steaming biomatter was forced into their wombs. 

So quickly. Is this what the Yearning has reduced us to? Are we so desperate for children - any children - that we would willingly lie down with these beasts?

It was a question that did not need to be answered. Auriel saw the truth with her own eyes, as each Warlock eagerly proved her speech to be the pretty lie she had feared it to be. Centuries of denial, decades of training, it all amounted to nothing in the face of the gnawing desperation each woman of Morrigan felt in her core. Confronted with the fate of her peers, the last Warlock seemed to sag for a moment. She glanced at the High Farseer and offered a half-hearted gesture of apology before unsealing her helmet and tossing her Witchblade aside, uttering only a final, faltering gasp as she was swept away into the ocean of rutting bodies. 

"Maybe there's wisdom in that," Tishria muttered. She rubbed the seals of her Ghosthelm, even as she and Kalistri backed off to shield Auriel from the spreading madness. "This isn't a fight we can win, High Farseer. Perhaps it's a fight we could never have won."

And is this, then, how defeat is rewarded? With the bliss of true motherhood? While victory will earn us, what - centuries more of bitter longing?

Auriel snarled. Anger seized her - an anger born from long, hollow years of pent-up frustration and resentment, wasted in the face of the curse she had sought to subvert. Whether the feeling was her own, or if it was something forced upon her by the drifting, glistening Neurothrope slowly bearing down upon her, suddenly seemed of little import. It was real, and it was hers, and it shattered the High Farseer's veneer of serenity like a bullet through glass.

"And when the Rhana Dandra comes, will you be so quick to surrender then?" She snapped, rounding on Tishria in spiteful fury. "We are not beaten yet. The Craftworld stands with us, both the living and the dead, and if you will not fight beside me then they shall!"

With Kalistri's shout of warning ringing in her ears, Auriel mustered what little psychic energy she had left and plunged her mind back into Morrigan's Infinity Circuit. 

Instantly, Auriel realised the scope of her mistake. Morrigan's soul had been in turmoil ever since the first Tyranid landed upon its shores. For days, the dead had watched enviously as their living kin viscerally sated their long-repressed urges. They had felt the swell of bliss within each woman as one empty womb after another was filled with alien seed, and watched with desperate longing as their ***** bodies grew heavy and round with children. Trapped in its crystalline prison, the Craftworld's gestalt consciousness had once again remembered the pain of Yearning.

And as each Warlock crooned in pleasure beneath the eyes of her goddesses, stroking the barbed, chitinous monsters with which they would sire their first children in the Craftworld's living memory, that pain had only grown. Unprotected by her seers' songs of warding, unbalanced by her own rampant emotions, Auriel desperately attempted to sever the psychic link. But the attempt came too late - she could still feel the Craftworld's anger simmering within the currents of emotion, but it had long since been eclipsed by the frantic, primal urge Seminoth had awakened within them all. And instead of embodying the world-ship's fury, Auriel instead became a vessel for their collected, unfulfilled, lust.

The Yearning bloomed in Auriel's core like a flower. Heat flooded her; an arousal sharper and more potent than anything she had felt in her long life. She was distantly aware of her subordinate Farseers being overwhelmed, of a second wave of beasts spilling into Morrigan's heart to impregnate and re-impregnate the Warlocks as their reproductive systems were pushed into overdrive, but none of that seemed to matter. All that mattered was the desperate ache in her belly, the shattered cage of lies she had built to keep it contained, and the great shadow of the Hive Mind as it reached out to envelop her.

Need. A desperate, aching need, an unconquerable instinct etched so deeply into every genetic strand it came to eclipse everything else.

Images bombarded her - things she had never seen, places she had never been, filtered and distorted through a thousand times a thousand alien eyes. She saw the Great Rift tear the galaxy in half, and felt the momentary death and rebirth of the Hive Mind as it was overwhelmed by psychic trauma. She saw Eros left drifting in the calamity's wake, its towering brood-mothers stricken by irreversible genetic damage, and felt their desperation as they sought to engineer a final generation of children capable of continuing their race without them.

They are broken things. Cursed, as we are, by cruel fate and crueller gods. They feel nothing, and yet they sense the loss of what has been taken from them, and the extent to which they now go in the name of survival.

Protective talismans smouldered and blackened. The etched rune armour which girded the High Farseer's regal form cracked, unable to withstand the psychic immensity bearing down upon her. Auriel let out a soft gasp as the Neurothrope descended. It was gentle, in its way; delicate, clawed limbs cut her robes away in pieces, each sharp nick etched into her pale skin only stoking the fires of her need even higher. A narrow slit opened in the monster's groin as it worked, the ribbed, glistening organ contained therein extending inch after inch as Auriel's bountiful, ***** body was slowly revealed.  

We are two halves of the same whole, grasping blindly at one another in search of relief. We desire to be mothers. They need to create them. It is the most savage of unions, but without it we will both be forever incomplete.

By the time its four testes had spilled forth, each swollen orb shivering with intent, the Neurothrope's **** stood fully erect. Fat beads of semen oozed from the blunt crown like pearly tears, so thick as to be almost gelatinous, each heavy with the complex genetic material the Neurothrope needed to spawn its children. The High Farseer reached for it as if in a dream, wrapping her slender fingers around the beast's organ and stroking it gently towards the tip. It hissed in pleasure and drifted closer, until its elegant, slime-slick body was pressed close against her own, its phallus thrusting between Auriel's ******* to stab insistently at her heart.

Her long life had been spent struggling to turn the Yearning into a force for good. To soothe the fury which burned at Morrigan's heart. She had fought, argued, and sacrificed, over and over, to prove it need not be the curse Seminoth had meant it to be. What was this, she thought, but the answer? The Yearning would finally be sated, while the Hive Fleet would never trouble another soul again. The sounds of battle still echoed from outside the Dome, but compared to the chorus of wet slaps, blissful moans and rasping hisses which surrounded her, it seemed like such a wasted effort.

Why fight, when a better path presents itself? Always, I have sought to be a peacemaker, and how can this be anything other than peace? Eshana, Yllia - in the end, they will come see the wisdom of my choice. They always have. 

The High Farseer looked up at the Neurothrope, into the leering maw of needling fangs which loomed over her. Its segmented form was strangely elegant, with a sinewy strength despite its physical frailty, and the calcified crown it wore was as sure a mark of royalty as any.

And is this not the reward I have so justly earned? To be chosen as queen, and carry forth a princely heir into the world?

The collected need of Morrigan's dead pressed in on one side. The ancient, inscrutable hunger of the Hive Mind waited upon the other. Caught between them both, burning in the fires of her own maternal instincts, Auriel gently led the Neurothope towards the scrying dais and climbed up, bracing herself on all fours beneath the eyes of her goddesses. They watched in stony silence as the High Farseer tossed her silver hair over one shoulder and raised her hindquarters, sucking in a short breath of anticipation as the Neurothrope's delicate limbs brushed across her hips.

"I am ready," she whispered, her voice lost in the orgiastic tumult which had overtaken the Dome of Sleepers. "Make me a mother, creature. Make mothers of us all."

---

Morrigan shook. The world-ship quaked from end to end in the wake of Auriel's decision. A collective howl of release coursed through the Infinity Circuit, so intense that those women fighting closest to the Dome were instantly driven to their knees. All across the Craftworld, systems failed and grav-tanks slewed to a halt as the dead abandoned their duties, savouring the monstrous bliss of Auriel's breeding. Worse, the armies of Wraithguard which had been driving Eros back on every other front suddenly ground to a halt. Riven by the High Farseer's pleasure, desperate to feel some faint echo of it for themselves, they stumbled blindly into the Tyranid swarms in search of relief. Soon, Morrigan's streets were filled with pale statues, their feminine forms dripping with Tyranid ejaculate, grinding themselves hopelessly against the very monsters they had been sent to destroy.

For Yllia, it felt as though the world was ending. She had always found the Yearning a heavy burden to bear, but ever since the drifting, glistening monster had slipped into the Dome like a spermatozoon into Morrigan's womb, it had become nothing short of agony. It felt like something had scooped out a handful of her guts, leaving her broken, hollow and incomplete. It took every ounce of self-control she possessed not to abandon her rifle and tear off her void harness, and descend into the madness spreading below.

And what madness it was. Pressing her eye to the rifle's scope, Yllia let out a muted whimper as she beheld the fate of the remaining defenders. A Striking Scorpion lay on her back, dark ringlets spread in a tangled halo around her head, hips raised to meet the Warrior rutting down into her from above. Another woman, clad in the ruined raiment of a Dark Reaper, bent to meet her lips as she was savaged from behind by a needle-fanged Ravener. The two moaned softly as they came, the chorus of their pleasure melting into the lusty wails of a trio of War Walker pilots nearby. Their fallen machines still kicked weakly, long legs mimicking their operators' spasms as they were rutted in their saddles by the Hormagaunts which had overwhelmed them.

Everywhere Yllia looked, the scene was repeated. For days, the women of Morrigan had endured a near-constant battle against Eros' creatures and the Yearning alike. Now, their morale battered by the Hive's relentless attacks and willpower eroded by the psychic shockwave coursing through the Infinity Circuit, they could take no more. Thousands upon thousands of women, the cream of Morrigan's fighting forces, cast aside their weapons and submitted to the primal urge which had dominated their thoughts for so very long. There was no restraint, no reluctance - they guided throbbing alien pricks into their tender womanhoods with glee, kissing and caressing their mates as they were bent into submissive mating presses, writhing and crying out as the Tyranid swarm pumped them full of the children they longed for in their hearts.

And then, there was the Wraithknight.

No. Impossible.

Panic coiled in Yllia's gut. Somehow, Llarchani too had fallen prey to the psychic shock emanating from the Dome. She had dropped her titanic sword and flung her arms around the remaining bio-titan's neck, which had scooped the construct up in its talons and set about rutting her with thrusts powerful enough to cave in a building. Its elegant Wraithbone legs shuddered and twitched in pleasure, and its war-horns blared an erratic cry of bliss as the bio-titan's hideously oversized organ drove deep into - 

Into what? It's a construct, it doesn't have a - 

Yllia felt her gorge rise. She abandoned her rifle and stepped back. The Llarchani twins had been Bonesingers in life, taking on the mantle of a Wraithknight crew after one was slain in an accident. Together they had fought upon a hundred battlefields, casting down fortresses and crushing fell princes of the Archenemy like heroines of legend. 

Did they reshape their vessel? For this? Were they so desperate to be bred by these monsters, that they altered their own form to allow it?

Another haunting blare emanated from Llarchani's speakers as the bio-titan slammed her into a building, pinning her in place as it thrust aggressively into the construct's hollow, artificial womb. Rivers of thick seed, enough to bathe in, poured from the site of their union, flooding into the ornamental rivers Eros had stampeded through to reach them.

It was too much. Yllia could hear cheers coming from below, passionate shouts of excitement as her kinswomen threw open the defence spire's sealed portals and embraced their conquerors with open arms. The Ranger-Captain's heart thumped in her chest, each beat assailing her with another spike of arousal, but it was all too much. 

Gathering her rifle, Yllia turned her back on Morrigan's final defeat and fled.

Unseen, clinging to the side of the spire like a chameleon, something caught her scent. It paused for a moment, facial tendrils twitching as it searched for the tell-tale pheromonal sign of brood-kin growing in her belly. 

Finding none, with sinewy grace, it moved to follow.

---

Auriel knew she was pregnant twice over. The Neurothrope had sown its seed deep, and with each burst of thick, oozing semen it forced into her overstimulated womb, the High Farseer had felt the dim spark of a new life taking root. She quaked at the thought, ecstasy roiling through her bountiful form as her mate - her king, she thought dizzily - rutted her with another languid thrust, the stimulant-spines lining its organ plucking at her aching womanhood as it prepared to give her a third child. There would be more to come, of that she was sure - Auriel's thighs glistened with overspill, a glistening pool forming atop the scrying dais as testament to the Neurothrope's relentless potency.

She loved it. She adored it. She felt, for the first time in her long life, complete - like Isha in her most fertile of guises, young and ripe with potential. Long centuries of restraint and self-denial had been cast aside, and the High Farseer moaned and gasped with unbridled enthusiasm, grinding back onto the Neurothrope's prick whenever its undulating motions grew too slow for her liking. Long claws folded around her shoulders and her ribs, hugging her possessively against her mate's ribbed, chitinous form. Its enormous head arched over hers, bent so their brows met, strings of drool dripping freely into her silver hair as it bucked and hissed its approval. 

We denied ourselves this for so long! This joy, this pleasure, this fulfilment of purpose! And why? For pride? Is this not something to be proud of?

A shudder of pleasure coursed through the Infinity Circuit as the Neurothrope thrust into her again. Its tongue snaked forth to caress the High Farseer's cheek, and Morrigan's dead keened joyously as they shared in the experience. Just as the Neurothrope was breeding her, Auriel knew, the Hive Mind was driving itself into her Craftworld's collective consciousness, seeking out every last spirit which pulsed in the world-ship's crystalline networks and forcing their submission. The High Farseer could already feel Morrigan's soul changing, the fury borne of its long repression ebbing away in the face of their unleashed maternal craving. 

It left the Dome of Sleepers pulsing with lust, the gestalt mating instincts of two psychic species whipping the orgiastic breeding-frenzy within to ever greater heights. The Seer Council had been completely overcome; no sooner had one creature finished with them than another would take its place, its prick hard and dripping, eager to sow its seed within the bodies of the Craftworld's most powerful women. Any remaining resistance - or even reluctance - had long since melted away, and the seers accepted each new mate with lusty cries of approval, laughing joyously as they felt themselves impregnated over and over, legs trembling and bodies bucking in throes of cathartic release.

This, then, is my triumph. Two broken peoples, brought together in harmony. An end to the Yearning, and an end to whatever harm Eros would do if left to rampage unchecked. This is victory - over ourselves, over the Yearning, over a galaxy which knows only war.  

Many coupled with their sisters as eagerly as they did with the invaders. From the corner of her eye, Auriel watched one woman, still partially clad in a Warlock's ragged finery, push her head into the crotch of another, her tongue lapping hungrily at her kinswoman's *** and the spiny prick embedded within it alike. Two others - bonded lovers, Auriel thought, by the matching anklets they wore - lay side by side, kissing deeply and caressing one another's ******* as they spooned their new alien paramours.

Others had given themselves over entirely to their new mates, hands and lips offering succour to those Tyranids unable to find a ripe womb to breed. Here, a Warlock was mated from either end, both pairs of lips locked tight around throbbing Tyranid erections. There, a lilting cry of pleasure caught the High Farseer' attention, and she watched as one of her Spiritseers was bathed in a thunderous ejaculation from a looming Warrior, leaving her face and chest alike dripping with burning strings of alien seed.

A waste, Auriel thought, as the woman licked the sticky webs of semen from her fingers and reached for another throbbing organ. One less child that could have been planted in her belly.

Her subordinate Farseers, at least, were more appreciative of the Tyranids' breeding urge. They lay at the base of the scying dais, surrounded by a pack of aliens like worshippers before an altar, their ***** enthusiasm matched only by Auriel's own. Kalistri was the more subdued of the two, bent submissively beneath a scarred, oversized hormagaunt, her hindquarters raised and legs wrapped tight around its lithe hips as it drove deep for her womb. Her blue hair was a ragged mop of sweat, seed and drool, and an endless dirge of whispered pleas spilled from her lips, begging the monster to give her a brood of her own.

Tishria, by contrast, had given herself over entirely to her most base of instincts. Somehow she had wrestled a Warrior onto its back and seemed determined to wring every drop of seed from it she could, her flushed womanhood clamped tight around the beast's throbbing organ as its testes roiled beneath her buttocks. One of the flying gargoyles which swooped in Eros' wake had made it into the Chamber and mounted her from behind, its wings draped around her like a shroud and slender prick embedded in her rear. It flapped and screeched, claws drawing blood as it struggled to maintain its grip upon the Farseer's shoulders. 

"Harder!" Tishria gasped, her muscles straining as she shook with pleasure. "Harder, please! Rut your spawn into me, let me take them all!"

Auriel smiled indulgently. Soon, she knew, that cry would be spilling from a thousand different lips, in a thousand different forms, all the way from the Craftworld's highest spires to its lowest chambers. As if sensing her thoughts, the Neurothrope tightened its grip around her hips and shuddered, a deep, muscular spasm rippling through its serpentine body as it prepared to breed her for a third time. The High Farseer reached up and stroked its face, allowing the creature's slender limbs to bare her weight as she pressed her other hand to her tight belly. Soon, too, she would feel her children's first stirrings of life, and ready herself to bring them forth into the world.

Distantly, as her body jerked in the throes of climax, as the Neurothrope poured its virulent seed once more into her chalice, Auriel wondered about Eshara. It seemed wrong, somehow, that the High Autarch had not been here with her, to lie beneath the eyes of her goddesses and feel the Yearning lift from her troubled soul. Yllia, too. The poor girl had been suffering so terribly the last time they had spoken. It seemed cruel that of all of them, she should be left waiting so long.

But no matter, Auriel thought. The Neurothrope let out a rasping hiss, its claws briefly clutching tight around her midriff before it withdrew. She slumped down onto the scrying dais with a weary sigh and looked out at the orgy which filled the chamber. It showed no signs of stopping, after all. Wherever the other two women were, it would find them soon enough. And then, like Auriel and her seers, like the thousands of women who had sought to defend them, they too would at last know the peace of conception.