Had any other witness seen, they would have called it an apocalypse.
Deep, deep in the black, an unstoppable force met an immovable object, and the very fabric of reality was set aflame.
Gleaming engines the size of worlds were little more than escorts to monolithic constructions of mind boggling scale, energy weapons and exotic war-engines that could destroy entire star-systems merely by their passage fired as rapidly as they could be cycled.
Yet despite the nearly incomprehensible power unleashed, energies measured in the outputs of entire stellar clusters lashing out every second, the enemy came on.
Shields of energy and barriers of frozen time intercepted the most dangerous fire from the enemy, portals and pocket-dimensions captured more, and flashing weapons that would have obliterated the most powerful capital ships of most species rained fire to intercept more, reduced to little more than point-defenses by the sheer scale of the conflict.
Yet despite defenses that entire species could, and had, break themselves upon without inflicting so much as a single scratch, still wound after wound ripped and gashed and tore.
Nigh perfect regeneration healed even the most grievous wounds in an instant, and when that failed, time itself shuddered and quaked as damage was simply
unmade. Legions upon legions of repair-constructs were guided by the greatest technical savants their masters had ever produced to heal any wound these measures could not, drawing on the nigh inexhaustible reserves of matter-energy conversion for material.
Yet despite this, ships still died. Slowly. Painfully. Inflicting casualties so disproportionate for each loss that it would, and had, break entire species to achieve.
Brilliant tactics and masterful strategies were employed by the greatest war-leaders of one of the greatest wars their home galaxy has ever known, tempered by countless millennia of experience in battle. No long, slow sleep, no unhealable wound, no creeping madness had eroded these chosen, and they demonstrated the fullness of the race that had pushed a once galactic hegemon to the brink despite being mayflies to that people's dominion, had killed gods and made gods, builders and breakers both.
Yet despite this, the horde would not break. It had no tactics, no stratagem, no brilliant leaders.
Only the raw, brute force of a galaxy devoured.
For the enemy came as a cloud, a tide, blotting out the light of distant galaxies in size and number so great as to make attempts to count them pointless.
The very fabric of space and time bent and twisted under the impossible weight of the creature's mind, for it
was a single creature, impossibly vast with bodies uncountable, and it knew only
hunger.
Calculations on both sides—one of ruthless, mechanical mathematics and the other of ancient, animalistic instinct—showed no true advantage to either side.
A stalemate, even as the void burned and unfathomable counts of vessels died in the firestorm every minute.
Deep in the space between galaxies, the Highfleet of Szarekh and the horde of what would one day be called the Tyranid clashed,
An immovable object,
against an unstoppable force.
Stand by…
(I technically had this ready yesterday but ah. forgot to post it. hahaha.)
