Eldar Prophecy

by C. S. Goto

  intoxicated by the Ohlipsean. Now matters are worse.

  Extremes give birth to extremes. Kuarwar's thoughts slid like oil. You speak of your pet Lhykosidae? The Wraith Spider? You

  blame his metastasis on the rule of the Teirtu?

  The Zhogahn has set the stage for the prophecy. It is his own doing, replied Aingeal simply.

  С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»

  Ah, the prophecy, exclaimed Kuarwar. You speak of the vision of Lady Ione? An unearthly laugh crackled around the chamber. Do

  you really understand her motives, I wonder? Subtle and intricate was the mind of that Yuthran Seer. The future is not a simple

  place, even for a warrior; how much more complex must it be for the visionary?

  She sought to maintain balance! insisted Aingeal. Preserving the heirs of Ansgar ensured that the decadent peace of the time from

  before the House Wars could not return. She told Iden that the survival of his greatest enemies would mean the salvation of his

  soul and the entrenchment of his power. Had all of the Ansgar been slaughtered, like Bedwyr, then even the House of Teirtu

  would have collapsed into the decadence of the Sentrium! Without a foe, what need is there for a Vanquisher of Sin or his army?

  Whilst Iden listened to her pleas for mercy, he did not understand her reasons, and his soul has grown flabby. He has lost himself

  in the pleasures of the court and he has driven the Ansgar to the point of annihilation, while his repulsive son has indulged

  himself to an unprecedented degree. He has created greater foes that even Ione could not have foreseen.

  The other exarchs listened carefully to Aingeal's impassioned speech. They could see the possibilities of truth that it contained. There is much truth in what you have said, Spider of the Warp, said Kuarwar eventually, but I think that Ione was not so blind that

  she could not see how Iden would interpret and act upon her prophecy. Her farsight was powerful. In another place she may have

  become the farseer. You neglect the possibility of the subtlety of her mind, and of the independence of her soul. She was a seer of

  House Yuthran, not a Spider Warrior of Khaine. Her motivations lie elsewhere than yours.

  You suggest that the Lady of the Hidden Joy meant for the end of days to befall us? challenged Aingeal, with passionate

  incredulity tingeing her thoughts.

  You believe that we are facing the end of days? asked Andraste in disbelief. That is precisely what Gwrih set out to avoid. He

  foresaw it in the endless wars of our kin, not in the creative peace of the Knavir.

  His bias made him blind! snapped Aingeal. Both of his routes into the future were imaginary and flawed. There is no hope of a

  Utopia, of eternal peace for the sons of Asuryan. There is no dystopia of perpetual war and bloodshed for the children of Isha. It

  was a false choice! It ignores the most important thing about Kaelor: it ignored the fact that we are eldar! Even the most pious of

  shrine-keepers cannot avoid battle forever, but even the exarchs of Khaine cannot fight all the time; how much less so can the

  normal wayfarers of Kaelor?

  Gwrih was a politician, not a messiah. Can't you see that his greatest achievement was to make us all confuse one for the other.

  He made use of the turmoil and uncertainty at the end of the House Wars to consolidate his grip on power and to recreate his

  image for posterity. We all believed him at the time, but it is not heresy to say that he was wrong!

  Are you saying that the Covenant of the Asurya's Helm was a trick? asked Waendre.

  Not a trick, a political device.

  And now you want us to shatter the Helm in order to stand with you against House Teirtu. Is that correct? Moina's thoughts were

  deceptive in their softness.

  Iden must not be permitted to regain the farseer, answered Aingeal, feeling the indecision in the chamber. It was not a simple or

  trivial thing that she was asking of the exarchs, and she knew that she was asking for more faith than she had earned from them. Her various recent interventions in alliance with the Ansgar made her seem partisan and unreliable. Her argument was malformed and incoherent, and she was relying on the emotional resonance of her conclusions. The tyranny must end before it creates a foe too terrible for us to confront.

  THE ANSGAR FORCE moved smoothly and silently along the Innis Straight, pushing through the Faerulh Prairies like an army of ghost riders on phantom steeds. There were two squadrons of silver jetbikes, each edged in touches of midnight-blue. A clutch of aging Wave Serpents occupied the core of the convoy, their paintwork blistered and scored as though they hadn't received any attention for years. The remnants of foliage still clung to the armour, betraying the fact that the transports had been hidden in the forest since last they were used. Two shining Falcons flanked the open-topped gun deck that held the vanguard of the convoy, immaculate in the reds and golds of the Warp Spiders. The gun deck itself supported an improbable alliance of figures: the abominable infant Ela, the bandaged and bleeding Scilti, the polished and alert Arachnir Adsulata, and the eerily magnificent, golden-armoured Naois.

  The banners of Ansgar, of Rivalin and of the Warp Spiders flew above the unlikely convoy, each fluttering splendidly in the breeze of motion. There was also an additional banner, held high at the front of the column as though attempting to cast its shadow over each of the others. It was made of a shimmering fabric that looked like liquid gold, rippling in the gusts of faerulh, and its face was marked with a black web of such impossible and painful intricacy that it brought tears to the eyes of those who looked at it. It was the banner of the Lhykosidae, and he held it aloft with the kind of implacable certainly that left no mistake in whose name he marched into battle. The Wraith Spider was fighting under his own colours. His comrades just happened to be marching at the same time.

  In the distance, over the vast, barren and metallic expanse of the Faerulh Prairies, the huge vertical wall of warp energy that marked the Styhxlin Perimeter could just be seen, like the burning line of a sunrise over an ocean. The blood-soaked Ula Pass was still some distance away when Naois vaulted down from the gun platform and planted his standard in the ground, thrusting its umbhala staff through the decking as though it were soil. He looked towards the horizon with a fixed stare, holding the Styhxlin Perimeter in his gaze as though he could control it with his eyes. The rest of the convoy came to a halt behind him, confused and anxious because of the interruption to their journey. They had all assumed that their march would end at the Farseer's Gates on the border of the Sentrium. Scilti stared down at his incorrigible cousin from the platform, unable to understand why he did not push on towards the Sentrium. 'Do you intend to make your stand here?' called Scilti, climbing down to stand with Naois. He did not know how to address his cousin any more. He could not bring himself to call this golden creature Naois, so he simply omitted a name altogether. 'You do not wish to take the pass?'

  С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»

  Naois turned his gaze from the distance and inspected the bloody figure of Scilti. For the first time since Scilti had defeated him in his last dual as a tyro of the Warp Spiders, he acknowledged his cousin's presence. The pass will fall.

  Turning his attention back to the horizon, Naois lifted his hand and pointed up towards the highest reaches of the perimeter, where the Innis Straight curved up towards the Ula Pass. Even from that distance, Scilti could see a sudden flash of darkness appear in the blue flames of the Styhxlin barrier as the portal to the pass opened and tiny movements of greens and gold started to pour out onto the elevated sections of the path of Innis. The battle for the pass will be fought before it is breached.

  Naois leant forwards slightly, as though he had caught sight of something unexpected and distant. For a moment, he thought that he had seen a series of purple flecks amongst the flood of Teirtu green as the stream of Guardians
and vehicles flowed down towards the prairies, but then the purple was gone, and Naois dismissed it from his mind. His concern was for the realities of battle, not for flights of fantasy or paranoia. If those distant flecks of purple turned out to be Aspect Warriors of the Dire Avengers, it would become evident soon enough. As the Teirtu forces reached the level of the prairies, they started to fan out, spreading over the wide, expansive plain like a wave of oozing, green effluent. They had probably sighted the Ansgar column from the portal of the pass, and they were already beginning to deploy into their attack formation. It was a premature move, and the tactics of the Teirtu commander were instantly telegraphed across the flat unobstructed plain. The squadrons of jetbikes moved out to the flanks while the Falcons and Fire Prism tanks dropped to the rear to provide ordi- nance, leaving the loping wraithguard and the Wave Serpents to push through the middle. The Teirtu set out their forces to defend the pass when they had the superior numbers needed for an overwhelming attack. Had they wanted merely to block the advance of the Ansgar, it could have been done less expensively in the pass itself, just as the talented Yseult had shown against Scilti. It was an army assembled for the annihilation of the Ansgar, but it was being commanded by a coward.

  With a series of brisk signals, Naois indicated that the Ansgar forces and the Warp Spiders should spread into an offensive spearhead on his mark. The line was to be drawn exactly at the point where the banner of the Lhykosidae had been planted. The dusty echo of the once magnificent army of Ansgar fell quickly into formation behind Naois, making him into the advanced point of an attacking wedge. The Wraith Spider was to be driven into the very heart of the Teirtu line. It was here in the Faerulh Prairies on the Path of Innis that the first great battle of the Prophecy Wars would be fought. IDEN HAD SEEN the assembled army of Ansgar with his own eyes as he had emerged from the Ula Pass amongst the detachment of Dire Avengers that Lairgnen had placed at his disposal, and he had felt a thrill of excitement pass through him. It had been so long since he had last looked out onto a battlefield worthy of the name. He had hesitated for a moment to take in the scene before dashing off with his raiding party, splintering away from the main Teirtu force. Not since that last, fateful stand of the Ansgar in that very sector had he felt the burning fire of Khaine in his blood. Not since Bedwyr had he felt the presence of an opponent that made him lust after his own death in mortal combat. Rushing out of the Ula Pass, he had looked out over the Faerulh Prairies and seen the startling golden form of the leader of the Ansgar. It was not the youth Scilti, who had stolen the life of his precious, beautiful Yseult, and it was not the little abomination Ela'Ashbel, although he could feel her presence like a poisonous gas in the air. The golden warrior was someone new. It had hit Iden like a blunt, dull, mon'keigh bullet: it was Naois, Bedwyr's heir. How glorious he looked, and how transformed! For a moment, Iden found himself wishing that he could abandon his mission of vengeance against Aingeal. He wished that he could forget the enfeebled political imperative of recovering the farseer to legitimise his rule. In that moment, for the first time since he had faced Bedwyr, Iden felt his dhamashir-soul cry out for its own death. To meet his end at the hands of Naois would be a glory unattainable in the decadent court of the Ohlipsean, no matter how long he might live and rule. The Dire Avengers around him ushered him quickly from the Innis Straight, leaving that moment of clarity to die slowly in Iden's memory, like the slow fading of the image of a bright light on his retina. They rushed down the suspended section of the path, and then bailed off the lower section, sliding and leaping down the blind side of the sheer embankment to hide themselves from the eyes of the Ansgar.

  The squad made rapid progress over the plains towards the domains of Eaochayn, where there was a sub-temple of the Dire Avengers waiting to provide them with transportation and reinforcements. By the time they approached the edges of the forest zones of Ansgar, skirting around the precincts of the Spider Temple, their numbers had swollen to twenty, and they rode in two purple and green Wave Serpents.

  AS THE FORMATIONS of the two forces settled, Scilti looked back over the blue and silver Guardians, the silver jetbikes and transports, and the shining red grav-tanks. It was a proud army, far superior to the small force that he had led into the pass, but it was little more than a memory of Bedwyr's glorious army. The numbers were significant, but they were less than a quarter of those that they faced. The weapons were formidable, but they were old and untested in years. He could see victory, though, in the confident posture of his kinsmen. He could see the thrill of finding life again in the way that their weapons were braced and their feet were planted. He could see death gleaming in the eyes of each Guardian, as though they had lived all those years in hiding solely so that they could die in glorious carnage on this field of battle He could see power flowing through their souls, as they fed off the sheer presence of Naois, as though he gave them succour in their passion. Naois himself appeared unmoved and unmoving. He stood with one hand clasped around the staff of his banner and gazed across the diminished space at the Teirtu lines. In his other hand he held another, simple staff of umbhala wood. It was as though he were waiting for them to come to him, daring their defensive formation into an attack.

  С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»

  'Are you going to issue a challenge?' asked Scilti, wondering whether this new Naois would honour the rites of commencement. None will fight me. The answer was unequivocal and patently true.

  Scilti inspected Naois, trying to work out whether this meant that he would attack without a challenge, or whether he would wait for a challenge to be issued to him. Then, as he looked at the golden armour, he realised that Naois had armed himself with Khukulyn's twin witchblades, strapping one to the thigh of each leg. 'Naois,' he said, suddenly recognising something of his cousin in the warrior at his side. The small sign of honour to the deceased veteran showed that he was some kind of eldar after all, although what kind of eldar he was remained a mystery. Here it comes. Ela's thoughts pushed into both their minds as she walked up from the gun platform behind them, easing between

  them to stand next to her brother at the head of the army. Scilti looked over towards the Teirtu lines, expecting to see one of their warriors stepping forwards to issue the challenge of commencement, but there was nothing. The lines were unbroken and tightly organised. There was no sign of a champion or marshal moving to the fore. In that moment, Scilti actually wished that Yseult was still alive so that he could confront her once again.

  A sudden eruption drew his attention to one of the Falcon tanks in the middle of the Teirtu front line. Its gun barrel barked with flame and the tank shuddered visibly as it spat a missile in a steep parabola. The trail of fire arced up into the air above the bat- tlefield and then tipped its nose down towards the Ansgar formation. So it begins, hissed Naois with disdain for the manner of the first shot of the war.

  He shifted the umbhala staff from his right hand into his left, gripping it at its point of balance like a javelin. He took a quick step back from his banner as he felt the weighting of the shaft, and then darted forwards again, hurling the length of umbhala into the air like a spear.

  It flashed through a straight trajectory, leaving a glowing air-friction trail behind it until it pierced straight into the nose of the plummeting missile, which had just begun its descent towards them. The staff penetrated the warhead and detonated the plasma charge inside. A miniature red star exploded into existence above their heads, sending concentric rings of blinding light pulsing over the plains in all directions and rippling into the Styhxlin barrier behind the Teirtu. After a couple of moments of dazzling brightness, the star collapsed into a rain of superheated plasma globules that splashed down to the ground between the two armies, hissing and bubbling furiously against the metallic deck. A stunned silence settled over the Faerulh Prairies as the warriors of both houses realised what had just happened. The first, ceremonial exchange of the Prophecy Wars had been between a tank and a single warrior, and the warrior had w
on. With a victory cry already formed in their throats, the Guardians of Ansgar and the Warp Spiders charged forwards, flooding around and past Naois and Ela, pressing their wedge formation in the centre of the Teirtu line with Scilti and Adsulata at the spearhead, driving it onwards with inspired self-belief. NONE OF THEM had come. Aingeal stood in the arena of her temple, sheltered under the gradually fading remains of the wraith- webs, facing the ruined but once breathtaking crescent doors. She was in full armour and held her treasured deathspinner braced and primed in both hands. Behind her, in the relative safety of the sanctum, Farseer Ahearn Rivalin was seated in meditation, searching the myriad futures for one in which Kaelor was not consumed by its own daemons. The rest of her Warp Spiders had departed with Naois, hailing him as the Wraith Spider and falling in behind him without question. She had not tried to stop them, and she knew that they would be needed in the coming war. She had remained behind to stand guard over the temple and its precious guest. She had known that Iden would come for the farseer. There was no conceivable future in which he would permit the Radiance of Rivalin to reside in the domains of the Ansgar. His raid was inevitable.

  So she had called on the other exarchs for aid. She had summoned a convocation and challenged them to reconsider their vows of non-interference. It had seemed to her that they had listened to her and taken her seriously. They had said that they would support her, that they would come to her aid. They had promised Aspect Warriors to stand at her side. None had come, and Aingeal stood alone in the crumbling remains of her once glorious temple. In the halcyon days of House Ansgar, before the House Wars, the Warp Spiders had been as numerous as even the Dire Avengers, with shrines and sub-temples in many domains across Kaelor. Since then, Aingeal had overseen the decline of her order. She had watched it wither and shrivel in tandem with the fortunes of the Ansgar themselves, whilst the Avengers had flourished alongside their patrons, the Teirtu. Lairgnen had been the only one of the exarchs that had not responded to her call, but it seemed that his absence had been enough. Now she stood alone between Iden, the Dire Avengers and the final destruction of the last Spider Temple on Kaelor. She stood alone, knowing that this was the end, and knowing that a new future was opening to others elsewhere. As she listened to the deepening whine of Wave Serpents powering down in the clearing outside and saw that she had been abandoned to her fate, she felt death creep into her soul. The thrill of fire started to burn through her veins, and flames of thirst licked at her thoughts. For the first time in countless years, she heard the whisperings of Khaine in her mind, vivid and real as though he had descended from the unseen realms to stand beside her when all his exarchs had abandoned her. She chose death.