The portal to the Webway was not a simple door. It was a wound in the air, a shimmering, non-Euclidean tear that looked into a corridor of swirling, impossible light and color. To the Imperials, it was an affront to reason, a gateway of xenos sorcery. To Rimuru, it felt… familiar. A complex but orderly application of spatial mechanics.
"The fate of your Imperium is a tangled, bloody knot," Farseer Eldanar's psychic voice whispered as they stood before the gate. "But your path, Singularity, is a straight line through the heart of it. Do not falter."
With a grim nod from Varrus, the small party stepped through.
The transition was instantaneous and deeply unsettling. They were no longer in the ordered, if alien, confines of the Eldar ship. They were standing in a place of breathtaking, terrifying scale. They were on a vast, crystalline causeway that stretched for miles, a bridge made of a luminous, bone-white material that seemed to glow with its own inner light. Above and below, there was no empty space, but a swirling, multi-colored abyss of pure, untamed energy—the raw stuff of the Webway itself. In the distance, other crystalline pathways twisted and turned, forming a labyrinth of impossible scale.
The air was thin, cold, and hummed with a low, psychic resonance that set the teeth on edge.
"This is the Path of Broken Bones," Kael murmured, his hand resting on the grip of his plasma pistol, his eyes scanning the alien vista. "Stay alert. They could come from anywhere."
His warning was barely spoken when the attack came.
Without a sound, shimmering tears in the fabric of the causeway opened, and from them, sleek, blade-prowed anti-grav skimmers emerged. They were Drukhari Raiders and Venoms, moving with an impossible speed and agility, their hulls adorned with wicked spikes and flayed skins.
A storm of tiny, crystalline shards erupted from their splinter rifles, a hail of poison aimed at the small, exposed group.
"Shields!" Varrus roared, a kine-dome of pure psychic energy shimmering into existence around the Imperials, the splinter shards pattering against it like deadly rain. Captain Arken stood like a rock, his storm shield raised, the few shards that got through the psychic barrier pinging harmlessly off his blessed ceramite.
Rimuru simply stood there, letting the splinter shards wash over him. His Absolute Defense was a passive, intrinsic part of his being. The tiny, poisoned projectiles dissolved into motes of light a millimeter from his clothes, their complex neurotoxins utterly negated.
<
"My thoughts exactly," Rimuru murmured.
The Drukhari raiders, seeing their initial volley fail, let out cries of sadistic excitement. A new, more interesting prey. They began to strafe, swooping in for another pass, their pilots laughing with manic glee.
Rimuru raised a hand. "Hold still," he said, his voice calm.
He activated his skill. It was not a grand display. The air around the swooping Drukhari skimmers simply… thickened. Their grav-engines sputtered as the very laws of space around them were rewritten. Spatial Domination locked them in place, their forward momentum ceasing instantly. A dozen vehicles, which had been moving at hundreds of kilometers per hour, were now frozen in the air as if they were flies caught in amber.
The Drukhari were thrown about their decks, their arrogant laughter turning into shrieks of confusion and fury.
On the lead Raider, a figure of cruel elegance rose to his feet. He was the Archon of this warband, tall and slender, clad in intricate, razor-edged armor. His face was a pale, aristocratic mask of boredom and contempt.
"What is this sorcery?" the Archon, Vrexus Scourgeheart, hissed. He looked down at the figures on the causeway, his gaze dismissing the armored Mon-keigh and locking onto the serene, silver-haired being. "You," he purred, a new, predatory interest in his eyes. "You are not one of them. What a fascinating new specimen. You will look exquisite in my gallery of screaming souls."
He pointed a wicked-looking blade at Rimuru. "Kill the armored brutes. Bring me the pretty one. I wish to hear him sing the songs of my craft."
His elite guard, a squad of menacing, horned Incubi, drew their greatswords and prepared to leap from the Raider.
"I'm afraid I'm not much of a singer," Rimuru said.
And then he was gone from the causeway.
He reappeared in the next instant, standing directly on the prow of the Archon's Raider, Soulcleaver already in his hand. The Archon and his Incubi stared, their impossible speed having been outmatched by an impossible teleportation.
"But I can be a very harsh critic," Rimuru finished.
The Incubi, master duelists of their age, reacted with flawless speed, their blades scything towards Rimuru from five different directions.
Rimuru's sword became a blur of pure, silver-white light. There were five quiet shings. The Incubi froze, their blades inches from their target. Then, they simply fell apart, their bodies and armor bisected with a precision so perfect their two halves fell in opposite directions.
But they did not bleed. The moment Soulcleaver's purifying edge touched them, their souls, perpetually starved and drained by the Chaos God Slaanesh, were violently and irrevocably severed from their bodies. With a collective, agonizing psychic scream that only Rimuru and Varrus could truly hear, their essences were snuffed out, instantly devoured by the god they had spent their lives trying to escape.
Archon Vrexus stared in horror at the empty space where his guard had been. This was not death. This was oblivion.
"What… what are you?" he stammered, his aristocratic arrogance shattering.
"I am a king," Rimuru said, stepping forward. "And you are pirates who have blockaded a road I wish to travel. This is simply a toll."
Soulcleaver swept out one last time.
With the Archon's death, the morale of the Drukhari warband, a thing built on fear and the promise of plunder, evaporated completely. The warriors on the other skimmers, seeing their leader and his legendary guard dispatched in seconds by a silent, teleporting swordsman, did not try to avenge him. They scrambled to get their stalled vehicles working, and the moment they were free, they fled back into the hidden portals from whence they came, vanishing into the depths of the Labyrinth.
The Path of Broken Bones was silent once more.
Rimuru stood on the now-empty Raider for a moment before teleporting back to his companions. The Imperial delegation was staring at him, their expressions a mixture of awe, terror, and in Varrus's case, profound, calculating interest.
Before them, the shimmering portal back to the Eldar ship reopened.
The Farseer's voice then took on a more somber, advisory tone, directed solely at Rimuru.