Vermin-tide versus Bug-tide. Two races, both infamous for their sheer, suffocating weight of numbers, collided in a spectacle of unparalleled carnage and cruelty.
Charging alongside rats the size of hounds were the Skaven Slaves—gaunt, mangy wretches whose fur had largely rotted away due to parasites and chronic malnutrition. Covered in a patchwork of weeping sores and jagged scars, they were a pathetic, hideous sight as they were driven forward.
"SQUEE-SQUEE!"
"Charge! Forward-run!"
Lashed by the whips of the Clanrats behind them, these nearly naked slaves clutched monomolecular bayos looted from the Zavka defenders, or crude spears fashioned from hive-gang cleavers and iron bars. In their other paws, they gripped battered Warp-pistols.
The vermin surged like a foul tsunami, a chattering, manic wave that did not slow even when faced with the terrifying wall of chitin and scythes.
This defiance stemmed from the unique psychological traits of the Skaven. While a lone ratman is a snivelling coward, proverbially prone to the "Scurry Away" instinct, they are also possessed of "Strength in Numbers." In isolation, a Skaven will only steal crumbs; in a teeming mass, their collective courage swells into a delusional fervor, leading them to believe they can devour the very world.
The Tyranid Termagants fired their fleshborers while the Skaven unleashed their Warpstone-shot. Neither side bothered to aim; in such a dense press of bodies, every shot hit something. Whether it was friend or foe mattered little, only the kill-count remained.
Slave-rats and Hormagaunts slammed into one another in a spray of ichor and filth. The Gaunts used their scything talons to effortlessly bisect the vermin, while the Skaven's yellowed fangs and monomolecular blades tore into Tyranid chitin.
Once the Slaves had spent their worthless lives blunting the initial Tyranid impact, the true Skaven military made its entrance.
"FORWARD-RUN! KILL-KILL!!"
Clad in "customized" flak armor, a mosaic of scavenged carapace plates and Astra Militarum issue, the Clanrats advanced. They carried Warp-muskets, long-barreled rifles tipped with Warpstone bayos. Like a lasgun, these weapons were semi-automatic; unlike a lasgun, many Skaven had "improved" their firearms with over-sized, unstable high-capacity magazines.
Bang-bang-bang!
Heavy-caliber Warpstone rounds whistled from the rear, punching through Tyranid carapaces and tumbling the xenos over. The Clanrats pushed forward, using the mounting piles of their fallen kin as mobile cover. They had no choice, behind them, their Chieftains watched with predatory eyes. To retreat was to be branded a traitor and "demoted" to the miserable existence of a Slave-rat.
The battlefield devolved into a chaotic meat-grinder. Sensing the stalemate, the Tyranid Hive Mind deployed its elite synapse units: Tyranid Warriors. Accompanying them were Barbgaunts, living artillery units whose parasitic weapons turned them into biological RPG launchers.
The Barbgaunts hobbled on three legs, their bodies secondary to the massive bio-cannons fused to their forms. They launched chitinous seed-pods in high arcs that fell into the Skaven ranks. Upon impact, the pods detonated into a storm of highly corrosive bone-shrapnel, liquefying rat-flesh into a soup of biomass within seconds.
A dozen Tyranid Warriors waded into the fray. With the cold precision of apex predators and psychic-attuned bone-swords, these four-armed killers reaped a red harvest.
Despair, or rather, "Rat-panic
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