Path of the Outcast

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘Pirate filth!’ roared De’vaque. He tried to snatch a boltgun from the grip of one of the stasis-bound Space Marines, but it would not move.

  ‘Stand back, Imperial commander,’ said Nadeus. The Chapter Master’s bolt pistol was in his hand and pointed at De’vaque’s chest. ‘Tell me that these are more lies. Let me see your face when you do it. And tell me how you came to find this place, or how this pirate came to know your name?’

  ‘They cannot turn you against the Emperor’s will,’ said De’vaque, holding his hands out in front of him as a barrier to the pistol.

  ‘How many thousands have died already?’ whispered Alaitin. ‘How many of your warriors have fallen to clean the blood from this man’s hands, Chapter Master?’

  The boom of the pistol caused Aradryan to jump. De’vaque’s head disappeared in a cloud of blood and bone and his headless corpse collapsed to the pavement.

  ‘Too many,’ snarled the Chapter Master. ‘Call off your ships and I will cease the attack.’

  Epilogue

  There were thousands of dead, too many for the Dome of Everlasting Stillness. Those Aspect Warriors who had fallen were laid to rest in the catacombs of their shrines until the Guardians and civilians had been conducted through the ceremony of internment. Only seven of Alaitoc’s spiritseers had survived the battle, and so they were aided by the others of the Path of the Seer. They moved silently along the long rows of the dead, followed by floating caskets into which they placed the glowing spirit stones of the fallen. There was not time to give thanks and bear witness to the passing of every individual – to do so would take hundreds of cycles.

  Aradryan drew up the hood of his white robe and stepped across the threshold of the dome. Just as there were too few spiritseers to conduct the dead to the infinity circuit, there were not enough Mourners for there to be one for every fallen eldar.

  When the humans had eventually left, four cycles after the showdown in the Dome of Crystal Seers, Aradryan had been faced with the awful truth of what had happened. There was no way to extinguish the guilt; it was so great it would crush the greatest of minds and the most patient of philosophers. He had known, as he had watched the first of the bodies being lifted from the blood-slicked field, that he would tread the Path of Grieving. There was no other way to deal with the loss and the hurt that was created by the knowledge that so many had been slain because of his actions.

  It was easy to cry. Tears rolled down his cheeks in a constant stream, every droplet shed in memory of a lost life. The magnitude of what he had perpetrated threatened to overwhelm him, and his tears became choking sobs. To Mourn came easily; he trod the Path of Grieving to learn how he might eventually stop.

  Nearly a third of Alaitoc lay in ruins, from rim to core, the swathe cut by the Imperial troops a scar that would take generations to heal. Some domes would never recover. They would be let free from the base of the craftworld and sent into the fiery heart of dying Mirianathir, to be reborn one day as particles that would fuel the craftworld again.

  He thought of so many spirits to be absorbed by the infinity circuit. The thought had horrified him before, and sent him into the stars to seek escape from his own mortality. The irony was not lost on him; of how everything had come full cycle and here he was again surrounded by corpses. This time he was not afraid. He had come to terms with death, and though he could not end his own life without atoning for what he had done, he would welcome the release when it eventually came.

  ‘We must all bear a heavy burden.’

  Aradryan stopped and turned to find Thirianna following him along the path between the lines of the dead. Her seer robes were overlaid with a belt and sash of white, and after her came one of the spirit-caskets.

  ‘There are not enough tears in the universe to wash away the guilt of what I have done,’ said Aradryan, choking back his sobs. ‘Not just those here, but the blood that I spilled by my own hand, and the lives that were taken by my words. The fallen will never have justice.’

  ‘There is no justice, just fate,’ said Thirianna, ‘and I have found that even fate is not so immutable as we might think. I must share the blame for this cataclysm, for I have been guilty of one of the grossest crimes of the seer.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ said Aradryan. He motioned Thirianna to a bench and the pair of them sat down, heads bowed. They did not look at each other.

  ‘It may have been your actions that set in motion events that would bring down the hatred of Commander De’vaque, but it was my actions that ensured those events culminated in the disaster that befell our home. Without my intervention, Alaitoc would have been safe.’

  ‘I am still unclear what you mean,’ said Aradryan. He produced a square of linen from a pocket inside his sleeve, its corners embroidered with runes of comfort, and dabbed at his eyes. He pushed a wisp of white-coloured hair back inside his hood. ‘If you think that you could have made me stay on Alaitoc, then that is just foolishness. You cannot feel guilty for that – you take no responsibility for my subsequent actions.’

  ‘It was not that of which I am guilty, though thank you for reminding me,’ Thirianna replied with a soft laugh. ‘When you became involved with Yrithain, confrontation with De’vaque became a distinct possibility. I glimpsed the narrowest of futures, possible only by the most complex chain of events, and hence far more unlikely to happen than likely. Yet for my own selfishness, I manipulated people and fate to satisfy my curiosity and sate my fear, and in doing so I brought about the very catastrophe I sought to avoid.’

  ‘There must be some kind of seer’s logic in your words, because I do not know what it is you have done.’

  ‘I manipulated Korlandril, and through him Arhathain, to make the council of seers investigate my glimpse of Alaitoc’s doom. From that moment, a sequence of thread came together which turned a remote possibility into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we looked, the more we were likely to bring it about, because as soon as we found the danger and saw your part in the doom that would come, I sent warning to you, across the gulf of space through the eternal matrix that underpins the webway.’

  ‘My dreams... They are coming for us. We will all burn. Such nightmares I have never known.’

  Thirianna stared at him, hand lifted to her mouth in shock.

  ‘I meant to warn you, not to torment you.’

  ‘Yet it is still not such a grave transgression as I have committed,’ said Aradryan. ‘If it were not for that warning, I would not have been on Alaitoc, and present to intervene against De’vaque. Without me, our people might never have stopped the humans. And that brings to mind a question I have not yet been given clear answer to. Why is it that I could not tell the tale of De’vaque’s treachery to Nadeus earlier? If he had known from the outset what a venal creature he was allied with, the attack might never have taken place.’

  ‘You heard it from the lips of De’vaque: our words cannot be trusted. De’vaque had to betray himself, to show his guilt to Nadeus, in order that the Chapter Master would be convinced. We tried many threads to bring about that fate, but the only one that had any measure of success was to draw the human forces on, to allow them to sear into the heart of Alaitoc. Only at the moment of apparent victory would De’vaque himself come to the craftworld, and only by placing him alongside the thread of Nadeus and yours could we bring about the conclusion we so desired.’

  ‘And so it was well that you sent me warning,’ said Aradryan, standing up. He offered a hand to Thirianna and helped her to her feet. ‘Many have died, but annihilation has been averted.’

  ‘Had I not implanted that psychic message in your dreams, you would not have woken from the Dreaming that gripped you,’ Thirianna whispered, laying her head against his shoulder. ‘I did not realise this at the time, but that act brought grave consequences, and I should have known not to interfere in such a delicate matter. Had you been Dreaming when the Naestro came to Nathai-athil the fleet would have been caught in the ambush laid by De’vaque and Khi
adysis.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Aradryan, stepping away from Thirianna. ‘You mean we would have been killed there? If that is the case, I owe you my life!’

  ‘When you survived Nathai-athil you were set on a course, driven by my dream-borne warnings, to return to Alaitoc. With your return to Alaitoc you brought Khiadysis to the craftworld.’ Aradryan followed the logic and a sickness began to well up in his stomach as he realised the import of Thirianna’s words. ‘Once Khiadysis knew you were at Alaitoc, he passed this to De’vaque and the human warriors who had been mobilised to hunt you down came here also.

  ‘I became a seer to know what would happen to my friends, and I doomed us all. Korlandril was taken by his anger and consumed by the Phoenix Lord Karandras. You might never overcome the grief and guilt of what you are responsible for. And me... I saved your life, yes, but almost at the cost of Alaitoc...’

  There was no comfort for Aradryan to offer his friend. Each in his way, he and Thirianna and Korlandril had been victims of their own nature. The Path and all its protections could only offer a means by which they might survive themselves. Whatever calling, whether of Commorragh or the maiden worlds, on the Path or Outcast, no eldar could fully escape himself or herself. They had been the seed of their own doom, and thus would it be until the Rhana Dandra and the end of all things.

  Aradryan stood up and could not look at his friend. He looked at the lines of the dead that had been the victims of their mistakes, and walked away.

  The greatest truth about the Path is the simplest to say and yet the hardest to comprehend. In this profound moment comes a realisation of the genius of the Asuryas, and the flaw in their genius.

  There is only one Path, and it binds all of us together.

  We seers may pick apart the strands, until we reach the infinitesimally small details, but their presence is a distraction to the overall flow of the skein. Be you Poet or Dreamer or Mourner, Warrior or Seer or Outcast, as the events in your life are but threads in the cord of your fate, so your whole life is but a thread in the cord of the fate of the eldar. We all walk the Path as a single species, and as a collective we must learn to control our passions and our fears together, or face destruction from one and the same.

  Kysaduras the Anchorite, afterword to Introspections upon Perfection

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gav Thorpe has been rampaging across the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 for many years as both an author and games developer. He hails from the den of scurvy outlaws called Nottingham and makes regular sorties to unleash bloodshed and mayhem. He shares his hideout with Dennis, a mechanical hamster sworn to enslave mankind.

  Gav’s previous novels include fan-favourite Angels of Darkness, the Time of Legends trilogy, The Sundering, and the Eldar Path series amongst many others.

  An extract from Path of the Renegade

  The first instalment in the Dark Eldar Trilogy by Andy Chambers

  ‘Let the games begin!’

  The horns and sirens sounded out in a shriek that rose into ultrasonics before crashing out in a explosion of bass. White light flared on the thirteen rotating outer platforms before dying away to reveal thirteen slaves. Some wailed and gibbered, others dashed around helplessly, some prayed and others stood defiantly screaming. Young, old, fat, thin, male female, they all swung smoothly around the central stage in their individual bubbles of captivity.

  The platforms began to float higher or sink lower in response to the audience’s interest in them. Those the audience found most intriguing would be matched against combatants by the beastmasters. The least interesting would be fed to warp beasts if their platforms sank low enough, something that often increased their number of viewers markedly.

  After a few seconds the occupant of the highest platform – a hook-armed, red-furred specimen – vanished and reappeared on the central stage to be met by a single wych a moment later. The nearly naked wych looked slender when measured against the brutish human but she moved with a fluid grace that made the human look positively comical. The wych picked up on the possibilities and led the lumpy human around like a shambling ogre chasing a nymph. She improvised a series of slick engagements that sliced the man up so slowly that he wound down like a clockwork toy, quick trysts that left him only kissed by the edge of the blade each time.

  Before she could finish him a white flash erupted and another slave appeared. This one was a shaven-headed, tattooed fanatic that rushed straight at her with a hooked knife held low. The wych pirouetted lazily out of reach before lunging just the tip of her blade into the fanatic’s eye socket. He screamed and staggered, dropping the knife. Flash. A third slave appeared and was hamstrung a heartbeat later. Flash. The wych seemed to barely avoid the sweep of a cleaver; her counter left her opponent dragging his entrails in the sand. Flash. A second wych joined the first, the two of them leaping and cavorting together like lost lovers reunited as they ripped through the injured slaves. Flash. More slaves. Flash. More blood.

  The voice of the crowd rose and fell like surf against a shore, enraptured as they drank in wave after wave of pain and suffering. The first batch of slaves had vanished from the outer platforms, one way or another, and were rapidly replaced. Five wyches were working the central stage by now and they left an ever-speeding influx of slaves leaking their lifeblood out on the sand. Xelian felt satisfied that the opening warm-up was well under way and turned her attention to her two allies.

  Kraillach looked somewhat recovered, his lined face showing patrician features instead of the death mask of a mummy. Yllithian was hunched forwards, careless of the entertainment but obviously eager to talk. The dimension-warping technologies artfully concealed within the arena structure permitted a spectator to cast their presence into the midst of the action, feeling the blood drops on their face and hearing the death-screams ringing in their ears. They also permitted Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian to converse together inside a co-sensual reality safe from outside observation.

  ‘I have found the key to ridding ourselves of Vect,’ Yllithian began without preamble. ‘The answer lies in Shaa-dom as I suspected.’

  ‘How can you know this? Are you telling me you went there yourself?’ Kraillach sniffed derisively.

  ‘I did go there, as you well know from your own spies.’

  ‘Well, I don’t believe it. You’re still alive after all.’

  ‘Enough,’ grated Xelian. She promised herself that one day there would be a reckoning for moments like these. ‘Speak. Tell us what you found out on your… expedition, Nyos.’

  ‘With the right preparations it may be possible to recall El’Uriaq from beyond the veil.’

  ‘El’Uriaq!’ Kraillach spat, his face blanching at the name. ‘What madness is this? The old emperor of Shaa-dom has been dead for three millennia!’

  ‘It can be done,’ Yllithian insisted with surprising vehemence, ‘and it is our path to victory. With one of Vect’s most deadly enemies at our side the kabals would abandon the tyrant in droves. The value of someone who has defied the tyrant previously cannot be over-estimated.’ The sudden tirade seemed to wear Kraillach out and he fell back in his throne waving one hand feebly as if to brush Yllithian away.

  Yllithian lapsed into silence. On the central stage the wyches’ dance of death was almost over. Now they skirmished with each other over the crimson dunes of sliced meat they had made, skipping grotesquely over the still screaming, quivering piles of maimed slaves.

  Available now from blacklibrary.com

  This book is dedicated to Kez, without whom I might still be wandering as an Outcast.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

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  Cover illustration by Neil Roberts

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