by Gav Thorpe
A sudden panic gripped Aradryan, flowing into him from the cruiser. The Fae Taeruth roared in alarm, sending a psychic shockwave rippling across her decks. Aradryan felt the semi-sentience of the ship spearing into his thoughts, his mind awash with scanner readings. The passing Space Marine vessel had targeted the Fae Taeruth with a variety of high-density sensors emanating from its weapon batteries: its guns were locked on!
The distress of the cruiser was matched by Aradryan’s own dread as he saw gun ports sliding open along the starboard side of the strike cruiser. There was no time to activate the holofield, no space in which to manoeuvre away from the worst of the coming bombardment.
Laser, shell and plasma flared from the gun batteries of Gessart’s ship, pounding the flank and mast of the Fae Taeruth. Still enmeshed with the infinity matrix, Aradryan felt every blow as a faint wound on himself, an ache spreading up his spine as the pounding continued, smashing the mast of the primary stellar sail. Secondary flares of pain registered in Aradryan’s mind as gun decks exploded and holds filled with human prisoners were breached, belching atmosphere and corpses into the void.
Reeling, Aradryan staggered from the command pod, gasping heavily. The lights in the chamber had dimmed as the Fae Taeruth struggled to redirect her available power to maintaining the integrity of her compromised hull. Warning chimes and voices sounded a barrage of alerts.
Everything went dark and the ship plunged into silence. Somewhere, on a deck below, Aradryan could hear prisoners distantly shrieking in terror. He staggered back to the interface and laid his hand upon the dull gems. Nothing happened.
‘She is dead,’ muttered Aradryan, numbed by the realisation. ‘Fae Taeruth is dead.’
Escape
The World of Blood and Tears – When the End of the Universe comes, there shall be a great battle to decide the fate of the spirits of the eldar. The Rhana Dandra will see the might of the eldar pitted against the Great Enemy, the Final Battle against Chaos, and all shall perish. The Herald of the Death, Fuegan the Burning Lance, agent of the Rhana Dandra, will call together the Phoenix Lords who forged the Path on which all eldar tread, and they shall be brought as one to Haranshemash, the World of Blood and Tears. Here they will fight their last battle, and the universe shall know peace once more.
Gessart’s parting gesture, a bitter repeat of Aradryan’s slaying of Darson De’vaque, had not quite slain the ship as Aradryan had feared. Minimal life support and the barest vestiges of the psychic matrix were still operational. Communication was compromised – only Kharias’s voice could be heard as the captain of the Naestro offered assistance.
‘Sensors report that the Imperial escort ships are less than a cycle away,’ reported Kharias. ‘Do you wish us to take your survivors on board?’
‘No, we can manage,’ Aradryan snarled in reply. He refused to accept that the Fae Taeruth was finished. ‘There is still time to affect repairs. If we can bring the webway slipstream back to life, the human ships will not be able to follow us.’
‘Such repairs would require many cycles and full dock facilities.’ Kharias spoke patiently, but Aradryan knew that his fellow captain would not remain too long to offer assistance. The risk of being caught by the vengeful human ships increased the longer they remained. ‘See sense, Aradryan.’
Still feeling soreness in his body from the psycho-somatic connection he had shared with the ship when it had been damaged, Aradryan was in no mood to back down. He could remember clearly the words of Taelisieth; to return without the Fae Taeruth would be the deepest humiliation.
‘Come alongside to take possession of the prisoners,’ he snapped. Aradryan addressed the other eldar in the dim light of the command hall. ‘We are not abandoning ship. There is time enough to repair the webway slipstream, I am sure of it.’
He saw several of the other officers shaking their heads despondently.
‘Kharias is right,’ said Laellin, stepping away from her console. ‘There is nothing to be salvaged here. Our prisoners outnumber us by four to one. If any of the holds have been breached internally, they will attack us. We cannot stay.’
‘Nonsense!’ Aradryan looked for support from some of the others, but in the twilight he saw only sad faces and shaking heads. ‘I can’t...’
With a heavy sigh, Aradryan slumped to the floor of the command pod, his back against the main console. He could feel the tiniest tendrils of the Fae Taeruth’s energy circuits stroking gently at his thoughts. Tears filled Aradryan’s eyes; not for himself but for the ship that he had lost. For generations she had survived and it had been his hubris that had destroyed her.
Aradryan tried to speak, but the words stuck against the lump in his throat. He swallowed hard as tears ran down his cheeks. His voice was barely a whisper.
‘Take the survivors aboard, Kharias. Ready weapons batteries to destroy the Fae Taeruth. We will not abandon her to the scavenging grasp of the humans.’
As Aradryan watched the hull of the Fae Taeruth breaking apart under the laser cannonade, part of him wished that he had stayed aboard. He had been tempted, but at the last moment he had crossed the boarding bridge to the Naestro, driven by an instinct to survive that was deeper and stronger than his desire to avoid the humiliation that awaited him when they returned to the rest of the Azure Flame.
Not only had he failed to bring back the Fae Taeruth, nearly a thousand prisoners had been lost with the ship; there was neither the room nor the supplies to keep them on board the remaining two vessels. Aradryan had not been so callous as to leave the humans on board the cruiser during its destruction. Drugged so as not to risk any trouble, they had been ferried back to their ships and left to the attention of their arriving allies. With so many to be abandoned from the Fae Taeruth, it had been pointless taking the others on the Naestro and they too had been deposited unconscious on their vessels.
Leaving the viewing gallery, he headed back to his cabin. There were stares of disgust and pity from the eldar that he passed; disgust from former crewmates and pity from those who served aboard the Naestro and Kaeden Durith. Regardless of whatever retribution Taelisieth decided to impose upon Aradryan, the loss of reputation was absolute, and without it Aradryan knew he was worthless to himself and Maensith.
Aradryan took to his cabin, sealing the door with a mumbled word before he lowered himself onto his bed. On the floor beside him was a small shoulder bag, containing the few possessions he had decided to salvage from the Fae Taeruth. Reaching inside, he brought out a folded packet of dried purple leaves: dreamleaf. He had not dreamed since he had joined Irdiris and for a moment the scent of the narcotic was unfamiliar and frightening. The fear passed as old memories surfaced, of dreams and remembrances filled with joy and wonder.
Licking his fingertip, Aradryan dabbed at the dreamleaf and brought it up to his mouth. He smelt it again, this time the fragrance reminding him of soaring amongst dream-woven clouds and looking upon galaxies of blinding stars. It was dreaming that had set him on the road to where he was now, he thought. A road that had ended in ruin and despair. He took the dried leaf from his finger with the tip of his tongue and laid back, head against the hard surface of the mattress.
The dreamleaf did its job, flowing through his body, relaxing his muscles and dulling his mind. Closing his eyes, Aradryan blocked out external sensation, quietly speaking the mantras he had learnt to disassociate his senses from the rest of his body. It was as if darkness and silence cocooned him, but not in a frightening, cold way. The numbness was a warm embrace, allowing him to slip into the deep meta-sleep of the memedream.
Laughing at noonsparrows courting in the bushes, sat with Korlandril on the flower-decked hillsides of Etherian Tor in the Dome of Magnificent Tribulations.
The look of resignation on Thirianna’s face as she said goodbye, and the warmth of Athelennil beside him.
The touch of Maensith on the first night he had been welcomed aboard the Fae Taeruth. Her joy did not last long; blood started to weep from Maensith�
�s eyes, forcing Aradryan to retreat, seeking sanctuary in pure fantasy.
A volcanic eruption spewed glittering green fire into the heavens, bearing Aradryan up as ash on the superheated winds. Nothing more than a mote of dust in the raging storm, the winds howling around him, he was borne higher and higher, until the fiery plains spread out beneath him. He fluttered for a long time, flicked from one wind to the next, never falling, always carried upwards until the ground itself disappeared and the stars surrounded him.
Now the stellar winds took hold of his immaterial form, swishing him from star to star, sliding his incorporeal body along the clouds of nebulae and through the rings of supernovae. He became starlight itself, as fast and light as thought, and then became nothing; a part of the fabric of the ether that bound together the universe.
And here was peace and freedom.
Sometimes Aradryan ate, and sometimes he drank, though such intermittent breaks in his dreaming barely registered. When wakefulness threatened to hinder his return to the meta-sleep – true waking prompted by physical needs – he returned to the dreamleaf again, forcing back the conscious world so that he could continue to explore the depths and heights of his unconscious. Here he could evade the pain of failure. In the world of the dreams, there was no laughter from Taelisieth. Beyond the veil of consciousness, Aradryan could turn away from the horror and the hurt in Maensith’s eyes when she asked what had become of her ship.
He fled, cycle after cycle, into the dull embrace of the memedreams. Some kind spirit – perhaps ordered by Maensith or perhaps not – left food and drink by his cabin door. Aradryan never turned on the lights, but ate in darkness and silence, his last dreams and his next imagining drifting together, turning every meal into a potential banquet, every glass of water and juice into lavish wine.
It was better this way, he told himself in the few lucid moments between doses of dreamleaf. He was of no use to anybody, least of all himself; too afraid to die and too pointless to live.
Her laughed at his own moroseness and enjoyed the sadness that gripped his heart. His dreams became vistas of Alaitoc’s infinity circuit, trapping him between life and death. He was nothing but a spark of energy in the great craftworld, and it nothing but a glimmer of lights in the galaxy.
Commander De’vaque’s face returned to haunt him, rage incarnate, throwing back Aradryan’s taunts that he was nothing to the universe. Now Aradryan could see that all of life was for nothing. There was no purpose other than to exist, to continue on until the end came, touching briefly upon other lives but leaving no lasting impression on the great turning of the universe.
Aradryan’s dreams became more evocative and less rooted in reality. He knew that he should not indulge any longer, that the dreaming and the dreamleaf would break apart his thoughts. Faces from the past swam together. He saw Rhydathrin as he had been during that last meeting on the Bridge of Yearning Sorrows. Yet Rhydathrin shared Aradryan’s face, and he realised that it was not Rhydathrin at all, but the mirrored mask of the Shadowseer Rhoinithiel. The laughter came then, so hard and loud that Aradryan thought he would rip apart his stomach and chest.
And so he did, pulling apart ribcage to expose his beating heart. Except his heart was no longer there. In his dream, he followed the trail of bloody droplets, and found that his heart was being fought over by tiny figures: Thirianna and Korlandril, Athelennil and Maensith. They bit and clawed at each other, pulling and ripping at Aradryan’s heart with minute hands, their fingers digging into the red flesh.
With a wet popping noise, the heart split asunder, showering Aradryan with sweet nectar.
On the ground where his heart had been lay his waystone, pulsing slowly. He tried to pick it up, to force the stone back into his chest to fill the void left by his missing heart, but his fingers passed through the waystone.
Childish giggling sounded from the shadows of the room, and half-seen, androgynous figures crept in the darkness, their black eyes fixed on Aradryan.
The chamber was huge, as Aradryan found himself asleep on the bed by the sea, in the ancient haunted palace. There were pictures everywhere, images from his life, his friends and family and strangers and enemies; every face he had ever seen. He bounded across the immense room with sudden energy, to lift a silver-framed image from the floor.
‘I am several and one,’ said the picture of Estrathain. The kami’s blank face filled every image around Aradryan, thousands of eyeless, noseless visages staring down at him from the walls and ceiling, glaring up at him with accusation from the tiled floor.
In the distance Aradryan could hear the tootle of Lechthennian’s flute and the strum of his half-lyre, but the Solitaire was becoming quieter, moving away. He was not coming to help.
The dreams came and went, and Aradryan did not care for the real world.
The dreams changed more over time. Aradryan went back again and again to his liaisons with Athelennil. Only he did not spend those moments of passion with Athelennil but with Thirianna. All else was the same, the places and the mood, the laughter and the heat, but Thirianna played the part of his lover in a way that she had never done so in fact.
‘They are coming to kill us,’ Thirianna whispered as she lay next to Aradryan. The heat of her body warmed his arms as she lay cradled against his chest. ‘We will all burn.’
‘I do not understand,’ replied Aradryan, sitting up.
He could hear screams; distant shouts of pain and terror echoed around the room. Aradryan was sure he was awake. The effect of his last dose of dreamleaf had worn off. The dream persisted, though, leaving the stench of burning in his nostrils.
He looked down at the dreamleaf pouch, now only half-full. It did not matter, he told himself. Most dreams meant nothing. He reached for another pinch of dreamleaf, and was soon swept away on a silver cloud of pleasure, Thirianna laughing by his side.
‘They are coming to kill us,’ Thirianna whispered as she lay next to Aradryan. The heat of her body warmed his side as she lay cradled against his chest. ‘We will all burn.’
Sitting up, Aradryan found himself on Alaitoc. It was the Dome of Crystal Seers. Around Aradryan were the glittering statues of seers past, their bodies turned from flesh to glassy immobility. Every face was the same, and the lips of all the seers moved. Every single one had become Thirianna and they all issued the same warning.
‘They are coming to kill us. We will all burn.’
Aradryan reached for the dreamleaf with a shaking hand. No matter how much he took, or how many exercises and mantras he put himself through, he could not rid himself of the nightmares. Whatever venue he took himself to in his dreams, Thirianna was there, with the same message every time.
Fingers touching the pouch, Aradryan stopped himself and rolled back onto the mattress. He stared up at the slowly shifting purple and red that dappled the ceiling. Once he would have been able to turn the shapes into the foundation of any landscape he desired, channelling the gently changing patterns into mountains and seas, cities and forests. Now they just reminded him of burning.
He pushed himself to his feet, trying hard to focus. He had been dreaming for a long time – how long he was not sure, but many cycles. Reality was hard to grasp and he stumbled, his legs weak from inactivity. Bracing himself against the wall with one hand, he arched his back, taking in three deep breaths.
Slowly, painfully, a degree of clarity returned. The light hurt his eyes and the touch of the air on his skin was rasping and cold. He embraced the sensation, drawing it into himself to drive out the vestiges of the dreaming.
Still he heard Thirianna’s warning, a whisper in the air around him.
‘They are coming to kill us. We will all burn.’
Making his way out into the passage, Aradryan took slow steps, acclimatising himself to his waking state. His head throbbed and his gut ached. The taste of dreamleaf was acrid in his mouth and his skin felt stiff and dry. With aching eyes, he peered down the corridor.
‘Wait,’ he croaked, reac
hing out a hand as a shape flittered from one archway to another ahead of him. The figure stopped and turned in surprise.
‘Aradryan? I thought you lost forever to the dreams.’
The voice was familiar, but Aradryan could not place it. He took a few steps closer, the other eldar’s facing resolving into the gaunt features of Nasimieth. The gunnery captain was frowning, more from confusion than anger.
‘Where is Maensith,’ Aradryan said, forcing the words to form with dead lips and thick tongue. ‘I must speak with her.’
‘I do not think she wishes to see you,’ said Nasimieth. Aradryan straightened as best he could, forcing himself to concentrate on Nasimieth’s face.
‘I can find her through the matrix,’ said Aradryan, stepping past the other eldar.
‘Not in that state.’ Nasimieth held out an arm to stop Aradryan. He laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘She is in her chambers.’
It seemed as if Nasimieth whispered something else – ‘They are coming to kill us. We will all burn.’
Shaking his head, Aradryan stumbled on.
Maensith’s chambers were a suite of rooms situated above the command deck, adjoining the observation gallery. Aradryan recovered some of his composure and sense as he walked the length of the Naestro, which had become the new flagship of the Azure Flame. The ship was quiet, the stillness filtering through his dilapidated mind.
It was the stillness of pre-battle tension.
The door to Maensith’s chamber opened to his approach, revealing a circular common area. The captain, Taelisieth and several other lieutenants were sat in the collection of chairs and couches set upon a thick rug that dominated the room. All eyes turned to Aradryan as he entered, apathy in some, outright hostility in others.
‘You should not be here,’ said Taelisieth, getting to his feet. ‘Crawl back to your dreams, cursed one.’
Ignoring the jibe, Aradryan focused on Maensith. She looked on impassively as Aradryan stiffly walked across the carpet and stood before her.