by C. S. Goto
Scilti ducked to one side to avoid the diresword, bringing his deathspinner around and squeezing off a spray of discharge in counter-attack. The gush of monofilament wires riddled into Yseult's armour even as her blade hacked straight through the Warp Spider's gun and struck solidly into his forearm. Both of them fell back, bleeding and stunned by the immediate ferocity of the other.
Meanwhile, Lhir held his ground in front of the charging Khukulyn. His pistol was levelled directly between the eyes of the veteran Ansgar Guardian, and he seemed to smile faintly as though his aim was perfect and true, but he did not take the shot. Instead, he simply stood with his gun outstretched in readiness as Khukulyn's blades sliced into both sides of his abdomen at once, screaming in an echo of the psychic force of his weapons. There was another finely balanced silence as Yseult and Scilti disengaged and renegotiated their positions, prowling around each other to hide their wounds and present only their strengths. They were searching for glitches or gaps in the stance of the other. At the same time, Khukulyn froze in horror: Lhir had not even raised a fight. The Teirtu Guardian still stood with his pistol raised and with a faint, fading smile on his face. Two fatal gashes had opened up diagonally through his abdomen, cutting him through from both sides at once. He had been sliced into thirds by Khukulyn's raging blades, even before the old warrior had realised that the young Teirtu-ann had no intention of fighting back. Lhir nodded into Khukulyn's appalled face as though thanking him for the release. Then a trickle of blood appeared in the corner of his mouth and his eyes glazed over. A moment later his body simply fell apart, sliding and slumping into three bloody sections on the ground at Khukulyn's feet.
С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»
Aingeal could feel genuine horror spreading through Khukulyn's soul. The veteran Guardian had expected to find his own death in this fight. He wanted it. He craved it, and Aingeal could see the frustrated rage building in his mind, as though he felt cheated by Lhir's self-sacrifice. He wanted nothing more than to make recompense for his own guilt by laying down his life for the Ansgar. When faced with the choice between life and death, he had chosen death, but his choice had been taken from him. Lhir's desire for death had been even more extreme than his own. He had not even felt himself worthy of dying in the throes of combat. Death had been enough, even the ignoble death of utter, pointless surrender. Khukulyn, on the other hand, needed to die trying. His horror turned quickly into rage, and he spun on his heel to face the lines of Teirtu Guardians. He yelled incoherently at them, lashing his blades in fury and sending droplets of Lhir's blood speckling over the ground. Then he started to charge again, slowly at first but accelerating steadily, just wanting to throw himself into the mire of enemies and fall whilst fighting without hope. However, following his inspiration, the other Ansgar Guardians stormed into the charge behind him, yelling, crying and brandishing the dual banners of Ansgar and Rivalin. Aingeal watched motionless. This was not her fight, but it would have its uses. She waited while the charge skirted around the duel of Scilti and Yseult and then parted around the almost absurd figure of Ela, rushing past her like an insentient river flooding around a rock. She held the child's tragic, sapphire gaze for a moment and then signalled to the other Warp Spiders, who remained in formation behind her. There was an instant's delay, and then they blinked out of existence, one after another in rapid succession. LOOKING DOWN AT his hands, Naois realised that he was still attached to the umbhala shafts that he had buried in the roof by thin lengths of wraithweb that seemed to have seeped out of his body. There was a mess of glittering scales coating his body like the outer layer of a caecilian's skin, but the tiny, crystalline scales had somehow formed into long, delicate chains. Holding up his arms, Naois lifted himself into the air, using the tensile strength of the criss-crossing webs around him. He pulled himself up into the middle of the elaborate and complicated array of webs that laced and interwove throughout the space above the temple arena.
After a few moments, he found himself suspended in the heart of the glittering wraithweb, which reached from the web-cut ground up into the glowing veins of webbing in the domed ceiling. It was as though the interior of the temple had been trans- formed into a giant lair.
A feeling of calm embraced him for the first time since he could remember. He felt suddenly at home, as though he were in touch with the whole of Kaelor. His resentment at having been left behind by his cousin and sister gradually dissipated, and he reclined in the interweave beneath him.
The threads of his gigantic, otherworldly web seemed to tremble and quiver as he lay in them. Tiny vibrations pulsed along them and oscillated against his skin where strands touched his crystal-speckled body. At the same time, a whispered cacophony of voices whirled around him, as though each of the threads was speaking to him. Quieting his mind, Naois listened to the myriad souls that coursed through the strands, and he realised that his web had reached into the infinity circuit itself, like a series of precise spider bites into the veins of a massive body. The web pulsed with energy, like a matrix of capillaries drawn out in the material realm. In that moment, a vision of the shattered and ruined webs of the interior of the Shrine of Fluir-haern flashed before his eyes, filling his mind with anger once again. In the ghostly echoes of the immediate past, he could see Iden of Teirtu ripping through the ancient and delicate structures with his alien sword, unleashing his own fury at the spiders of the warp and venting his rage against the soul of Kaelor itself. He could feel the violence of opposition swelling through the arteries of the craftworld and pulsing in his mind. It was as though Kaelor itself wanted this eldar stopped. It was as though the Fluir-haern was searching for an agent to express its will.
The image was followed by a barrage of other pictures and voices, flickering one after the other and pouring into his mind with relentless force. Fragments of Kaelor's past intermingled with whispers thrown back from the future until Naois's mind reeled under the cascade. He saw the starving masses in the outer realms of Kaelor, deprived and suffering after years of oppression and neglect by the court. He saw the glittering radiance of the Sentrium and the decadent, oblivious splendour of the Knavir. He saw the Exarch Aingeal, dripping with blood, suddenly grasping at the slumped and age-ruined form of the farseer in his tower. He saw Ela standing unmolested and untouched in the middle of a battlefield with her sapphire eyes ablaze in red flame, while shuriken and lasfire lashed past her on all sides. Then the detailed scenes shrank into points of light, spinning into a spiralling galaxy through the darkness until they exploded into a picture of Kaelor itself. The craftworld hung in the murky depths of the void, massive and incredible as only the architecture of the ancients could be. But it teetered on the brink of an abyss, like an ocean-ship on the point of falling over the edge of the world. The screams of daemons emerged from the abyss and great lashing tendrils of bloodlust reached up to claw at the majestic form of the craftworld, dragging it closer and sucking on its armoured shell as though drawing out its marrow. The maelstrom, Naois realised, his eyes snapping open and widening unnaturally. Kaelor is heading for the roiling warp-wastes
of the maelstrom, and Ahearn is too blind to notice, or too wrapped in the decadence of the moment to care.
THE ULA PASS was ripped through by lasfire and sleeting volleys of shuriken. They rained down from the hidden gun emplacements high above the pass, apparently obscured amongst the stars and nebulae that glittered within the Styhxlin Perimeter. Lashes of fire also tore along the pathway, exploding out of the tanks that faced each other from either end of the narrow corridor, flashing around and over the heads of the dozens of eldar warriors that hacked and danced in combat between them. Only the child seer, Ela'Ashbel, wandered unphased, untouched and unperturbed by the dense mire of violence that filled the pass. She shuffled through the smoke and the flames, pushing past the battling warriors and sliding in between the streaking lines of munitions fire. It was as though neither the Ansgar nor the Teirtu even noticed her presence. Or, if they did, they simply cou
ld not bring themselves to lay hands on her.
С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»
At the rear of the Teirtu lines, Ela could see the ostentatious Falcon of Iden. It was decorated wildly in the house colours of Teirtu, with an awesome golden serpent snaking around its dark jade hull, its fanged mouth wide open across the prow. With slow, delicate determination, little Ela started to make her way through the raging battlefield towards it. After only a few steps, she emerged into a small clearing in the battle. The Guardians of both sides had instinctively left the area clear, as though it were reserved for some higher purpose. No fire rained into it from above, and the vicious crossfire that sliced through the rest of the pass seemed to slide around it. In it, Ela saw the prowling forms of Yseult and Scilti, still locked in their duel.
Scilti's deathspinner lay in pieces on the floor, and great chunks of his warp-pack had been hacked clear away from his back, its smoking remains crackling with unleashed and uncontrolled energies. His arms ran with blood from the various gashes that Yseult's blade had ripped through his thick armour and his flesh, and a number of the powerblades on his gauntlets had broken off, but he still moved with sure-footed focus. For her part, Yseult moved with a rare delicacy. Her diresword was a blur of elegant motion around her, defining a sphere of energy that crackled with menace. She seemed light on her feet and almost unaffected by the exertions of the duel. A number of thin cuts had been sliced across her face by Scilti's blades, and trickles of blood ran down her neck. A long spike protruded from her shoulder, where one of Scilti's powerblades had penetrated straight through and then snapped off in her armour. With a sudden movement, Scilti feinted to his right and then spun back to his left, bringing the bladed back of his right hand around in a sweeping arc towards the side of Yseult's head, but the Teirtu Guardian was faster. She swayed back, letting the blow pass harmlessly but fractionally in front of her face. As its motion continued, she brought her blade up into a vertical arc, driving its live edge into the underside of Scilti's arm. There was a moment of resistance, but then Scilti's forearm flew clear, spraying a bloody arc as it tumbled to the ground.
The Warp Spider wailed and spun, bringing his other arm around instinctively, trying to protect himself, but Yseult stepped smoothly inside the flailing arm, blocking it with the hilt of her sword even as she jammed her shoulder forcefully into Scilti's chest, lifting him off his feet for an instant and then sending him crashing to the ground at Ela's feet. Before he could find his feet again, Yseult was upon him, straddling his abdomen and pinning his remaining arm under her knee. The Teirtu Guardian lifted her diresword above her head, flipping it around ready for a downwards thrust into the Warp Spider's neck. Just at that moment, her eyes caught the blue and gold waft of the hem of Ela's robes in front of her. She hesitated for an instant, glancing up at the incongruous and calm face of the child who stood alone, ghostly and apparently unfazed by the battle raging around her. For a fraction of an instant, she tried to rationalise the presence of the childling. In that moment, she looked into Ela's radiant sapphire eyes and she felt something shift inside her, like clouds suddenly blowing clear of the moon. THERE WAS A ripple in space and then Exarch Aingeal burst silently into the corridor. A moment later five more Warp Spiders erupted into existence behind her. This was as close as they could get to the farseer's chamber. The chamber itself was powerfully shielded against any and all psychic infringements, no matter how small, and the passage of a detachment of Warp Spiders through the warp would hardly constitute a small disturbance. Indeed, it was only thanks to the incredible disruption in the sha'iel fields throughout Kaelor caused by the battle that was raging within the Styhxlin Perimeter that the squad had managed to penetrate so far into the Sentrium without detection. Detection was now inevitable.
Stalking to the end of the ostentatiously decorated corridor, Aingeal peered around the final corner. Four Teirtu Guardians stood guard in front of the heavy doors at the end of the immaculately polished passageway. They held shuriken catapults diagonally across their chests, braced and ready. Aingeal ducked back into the corridor with her squad. How many? asked Adsulata.
Four.
There will be others on this level.
Yes. This should be done quietly, agreed Aingeal. The rest of you will stay here. Others will come, but let nobody pass.
The exarch and her Arachnir nodded silently to each other and then vanished. An instant later, they reappeared before the doorway into the farseer's chambers, standing in-between the two pairs of Guardians. Before the Teirtu even had chance to shift the balance of their weapons, Aingeal punched out with both hands simultaneously, driving them through the chest plates of two of the Guardians, shattering their spines under the force of her burning fists. At the same time, Adsulata spun her powerblades across the throat of one while she swept the feet out from under the other. Even as the falling Guardian hit the ground, she was already unloading clouds of shimmering monofilaments from her deathspinner into his face.
As one, the two Warp Spiders turned to face the doors. They scanned around its frame, searching for signs of runic seals that would frustrate the entry of the unauthorised, but they could see nothing. Exchanging glances, they pushed the doors experi- mentally, not expecting them to open.
The doors creaked and then cracked open, folding slowly into the room beyond. An abrupt silence flowed back out of the room, as though everyone inside had suddenly stopped talking. Ahearn was standing next to the long table, leaning on his staff as though exhausted. A number of the Knavir sat around the table, reclining and comfortable. A half-drained carafe of Edreacian wine stood in pride of place in the centre of the table, and a number of glasses in various states of emptiness were arranged over the surface. The Iden heir, Morfran, was sitting at the head of the table in place of the farseer, with his feet propped up on the tabletop. With varying speeds, determined by their levels of intoxication and sense of superiority, the Knavir turned to see who was disturbing them. Ahearn reacted first, lifting his gaze to meet Aingeal's almost before the doors had opened. A flash of emotion
С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»
passed between them, making the exarch hesitate on the threshold for an instant. There was something unexpected in the farseer's eyes.
After a lingering moment of slow comprehension, Morfran dropped his feet to the ground and stood up, reaching for the shuriken pistol that he kept ceremonially bound to his thigh. He fumbled at the catch on the holster until he had to look down and unclip it with both hands. Meanwhile, two of the other courtiers at the table rushed over to the farseer, placing themselves between him and the Warp Spiders in the doorway. Two more remained in their seats, watching the events with an unusually detached interest. We mean the farseer no harm, said Aingeal, letting her thoughts touch every mind in the room. She simply ignored the bumbling
attempts at aggression from Morfran. We come at his request. Release him to us, and we will leave you unharmed. Cinnia and Celyddon, the two courtiers standing in front of the farseer as a living barrier, looked suddenly uncertain, but there was a dramatic quality to their hesitancy that made Aingeal uncomfortable. They were not as surprised by her announcement as they pretended, but the exarch had no time to worry about the intricacies of Ohlipsean politics. These twisted contortions of emotion and intellect were some of the principal reasons why the Aspect Temples had sworn not to intervene in the political affairs of Kaelor.
Meanwhile, Uisnech Anyon and Triptri Paraq merely nodded from their seats at the table, showing that they understood. Only Morfran showed any sign of aggression. He had finally managed to produce his pearly pistol, and he had levelled it unsteadily across the chamber in the general direction of the Warp Spiders. 'I cannot permit you to commit this outrage,' he said. His voice trembled slightly, but slurred more. 'We will protect the radiant farseer from your styhx-tann barbarism, as we have done for years, warp spawn.' He swayed slightly. The exarch ignored him. Stand aside, Councillors of the Ohlipsean. We have no dispute w
ith you. Aingeal's tone was flat and direct. The Knavir were feeble, effete and utterly harmless once deprived of the political authority that the presence of the farseer gave to them. For hundreds of generations they had known nothing of the sword or of the dhanir of the warrior. The Sentrium and all of Kaelor had subsisted in an easy peace. It was only in the last generation that things had changed so markedly. There was no need to damage these living anachronisms, unless they decided to cause problems. There was the faint click-whine of a pistol firing. Then again. A tiny shuriken buried itself into Adsulata's chest armour, and another hissed past Aingeal's head and impacted against the wall behind them. Instantly, Adsulata vanished and reappeared directly behind Morfran's swaying figure. He seemed to sense her presence, because he tried to turn to confront her. However, the sudden motion upset his already inebriated balance, and he twisted his body without lifting his feet. In one clumsy, heavy motion, Morfran of Teirtu tripped and fell flat on his face on the tabletop, where he passed out. Do not think that we are unaware of what we gain from this, Exarch of Khaine. The thoughts came from Cinnia of Yuthran as she