The two Librarians looked down from the elevated podium in the apse with horror dawning onto their features. The beacon was still burning, but it had ruptured utterly, and as much energy spilled out of it onto the altar as was thrown into it by the heavily reinforced choir. It took all of the reserves of the entire choir telepathica just to keep the pearl of energy flickering with life.
In the midst of the torrent, the sword fragment glowed and radiated life, but it hissed and fizzled under the flood of silvering energy, as though the two energies were rejecting each other. The downpour from the beacon bubbled and blistered as it struck the alien shard, and it seemed clear to Korinth that Rhamah’s unusual weapon was the cause of the tumult. He took a step back away from the edge of the podium before darting forward and vaulting off the lip, splashing down into the waves of energy that lapped across the floor of the Sanctorium. Pushing in between the ambulating astropaths, the Librarian strode towards the altar spinning his staff into readiness.
“No, wait!” bellowed Zhaphel from the podium as Korinth brought his staff back in an arc, ready to smash it into the shard of metal on the altar.
Korinth hesitated, looking up at his battle-brother for an explanation. “Look,” stated Zhaphel simply.
Turning back to the roiling, curdling confusion of energy on the altar, Korinth let his eyes focus more deeply into the myriad reflections. There were other colours hidden in the depths—not only silver and alien green. Flecks of red and blue swam in random patterns, questing for coherence in dizzying whirls. As he stared into the mire, Korinth watched the colours swim into recognisable shapes; after a few seconds his eyes widened in recognition. It was Rhamah. The lost Blood Raven was prone in a desert, surrounded by crackling and impenetrable energy fields. His helmet was missing, and Korinth could see his battle-brother’s face blistering in the heat.
As he watched, Korinth saw the eddying swirls of ineffable energy lance and spike into Rhamah’s eyes, bursting them open into a maniacal gleam. The eyes expanded suddenly until Korinth could see nothing else in the mess of mercury, and he had to avert his own eyes from the chaotic intensity of the massive stare.
“I remember lights… They danced and riddled my mind.” I struggled to find the words to express the memories that rushed back into my head. There was a mixture of humiliation and intrigue in my thoughts as I realised that whatever had caused those lights was probably an even greater threat to me than the stranger who knelt at my side.
Yes, brother, there were lights. The aliens lured you into this trap, tempting your soul down from the cliff-top and into this forsaken city. We found you just in time.
Once again I stared into the Space Marine’s face, trying to find the inexpressible comfort of familiarity in his implacable eyes. They shone back at me without light, as though sketched in by a clever but soulless artist. Every time I looked at him, I felt as though I was looking upon a different man, as though myriad souls were competing for expression on his face; all the time, a seething sea of souls simmered below the surface.
“I was like this when you found me?”
Yes, brother. We found you already unconscious, with your blade drawn and discarded. The aliens filled this hall, dancing their decadence and profanation into the fabric of this theatre. The shadows themselves conspired against you as the alien sorceries worked their magic on your broken mind. They gave you answers to questions that you had never thought to ask… which is why you were so vulnerable to them. You need to ask more questions, Son of Ahriman. The boundaries around your thoughts make you weak.
“And, what happened to the aliens?” I asked, trying to assimilate the information that the stranger kept pushing into my head.
I was not comfortable with this kind of communication, and I found it difficult to take possession of the thoughts that ran through my mind. I needed to feel that they were mine, that I had interrogated them and indigenised them before I could let them settle back into my memory, otherwise it would be as though this strange Marine were simply giving me knowledge and memories that I had not considered—he would be changing me from within, making me into somebody else. Stay out of my mind! It was a subconscious impulse; the thought fired out of my head like a volley from an automatic defence cannon. The stranger had gone too far, and my primal instincts suddenly kicked in where my will had failed me.
The Space Marine’s face twitched slightly, like a candle flickering in a sudden draft. His eyes narrowed in marked displeasure. “The aliens are dead, friend. Look around.”
As he spoke, the Marine gestured with a glittering, golden gauntlet, indicating the circumference of the circular hall.
For the first time, I noticed the slick patterns of red blood that coated his fingertips, and I saw the destruction that had been wrought around the once-beautiful hall. There were slim, humanoid bodies, snapped and broken, slumped into bloody piles around the perimeter of the chamber. Each of the corpses wore brightly coloured and immaculately fitted armour. One or two of the aliens had made it to within a few strides of my position, but they lay prostrate on the ground at the end of a sliding wake of blood, their bodies shredded with bolter fire and ripped open with energy gashes. Their hands were outstretched before them, as through they had been reaching for me when the fire had punched into them.
“Come,” said the Marine, rising to his feet at last. He had watched carefully as I had taken in the scene around me, and something in my reaction had brought him to a decision. “The Great Lord will want to see you now. He left clear instructions that you should be brought to him when you awoke. It has been so long since last we encountered a brother on our travels. You will come with me, now.”
The Great Lord? Did he mean the Great Father? Are we brothers after all? Taking a final look at the blood-drenched scene around me, I clambered to my feet and stood before the Marine. Our physiques were comparable; we were of similar height and build, and our armour gave us both the same air of formidable strength. Despite facing each other directly, neither of us stepped back. In both of our minds, this was a moment of test.
“Where is this lord?” I asked, challenging him to turn and lead the way.
Bedecked in his ancient and glorious Terminator armour, Tanthius stepped past Gabriel to flank Corallis, positioning himself between the raised weapons and his captain.
“Lower your weapon, sergeant,” he said to Saulh, his voice low and rumbling like a landslide. But Saulh’s resolve did not waver and his gaze did not shift from Corallis. “Sergeant,” he repeated. “This is mutiny and it is heresy. You were there at Rahe’s Paradise. You saw what happened. You know that Captain Angelos was right then, and you must suspect that he is right now. Lower your weapon.”
Saulh eye-checked his own captain, looking for direction, and Ulantus nodded slowly. With a complicated mixture of deliberate slowness, reluctance and relief, Saulh lowered his pistol to his side. He did not holster it. How had it come to this?
For his part, Corallis showed no signs of having noticed the release of tension, and he remained alert, his eyes burning with intensity and his pistol trained on Ulantus’ head.
“I do not question your intentions, Gabriel,” said Ulantus, letting his eyes reveal the desperateness of the situation. “But you must see this from my point of view.”
“Must I? Again you seem to fail to appreciate your position on this ship, captain. There is very little that I must do for you, short of preventing you from being flushed out into space. The Chapter Masters have faith in my judgment, which is why I am Commander of the Watch and you are not. Are you questioning their judgment too, even if not their intentions?”
“It is not my place to question such things,” conceded Ulantus, feeling the teeth of the trap snap closed around him. “Explain what you need, commander, and I will see what can realistically be done to support you without compromising the position of the Blood Ravens in the Lorn system. This is my warzone, Gabriel, and I will not permit the Ninth Company to be left short.”
“Very well,” said Gabriel calmly, nodding to Corallis to lower his weapon. “It is imperative that we return to the place in the warp where you lost Librarian Rhamah. It seems likely that there is a rupture in the fabric of the eldar webway at that point. I intend to enter the webway and follow its course. I am given to understand that its terminus is an ancient eldar world of knowledge, and it would be unwise to permit it to fall into less well-intentioned hands.”
Despite his scepticism, Ulantus was still a Blood Raven, and the mention of a world of lost eldar knowledge made his eyes sparkle with interest. “You have said this much already, captain. I assume that the source of your information on this topic is the injured alien witch?”
“Taldeer, yes.” Gabriel was unphased; they had dealt with this question already, and Ulantus knew better than to start that argument again.
“And how will we find this rupture? Our Navigator made no mention of seeing the webway during the trip through the warp. Indeed, I can recall only myths and legends of any such sightings—are you sure that it is even possible for a Navigator to see this devious alien structure?”
“Taldeer will navigate the ship.” A stunned silence gripped the control deck. Even Corallis and Tanthius slowly turned their faces towards their captain, staring at him in disbelief; they had not heard this part of the plan. It was bad enough that Gabriel insisted on giving the creature a name, but giving her a ship was beyond belief.
“She is the only one capable of locating the rupture and manoeuvring the Litany into place. Without her guidance, this mission comes to nothing,” explained Gabriel, ignoring the incredulity and outrage of his battle-brothers.
“You would rest the future of this venerable vessel in the mind of an alien witch, Commander of the Watch?” Ulantus’ eyes had narrowed into slits of disgust.
“I believe that she is trustworthy in this regard. It is not in her interests to lure us into a trap. Her fleet engaged the necron in this sector in order to prevent them from closing the webway portal unearthed by General Sturnn—that portal was the entrance to the route that we must find. The eldar know this ancient enemy, and they know that it fears their control over the immaterium more than anything else. You must also have read the legends, Ulantus? And you are aware of what happened on Rahe’s Paradise. The presence of the eldar and their esoteric lore is the key to the suppression of the necron.”
Ulantus hesitated. “Was the portal destroyed?”
“Yes, but not by the necron.”
“Then by whom?”
A deep, slow voice from behind Gabriel made the group turn. “We saw a Chaos frigate amongst the wreckage as we passed through the Lorn system. It was not an Alpha Legion vessel, and it was shrouded in psychic energy. We have reason to believe that a powerful sorcerer aboard that vessel may have ruptured the webway and somehow disabled the portal.” Jonas’ tone was even and heavy with the authority of scholarship.
“Father Librarian Urelie,” nodded Ulantus, showing his respect for the aging Librarian. “Forgive me for asking, but what reason do you have to suspect this?”
“We saw the vessel vanish into a warp rift. What we witnessed would be consistent with the explanation provided by the Harlequin,” explained Jonas.
“Harlequin?” Ulantus stared; this was getting worse all the time. “Harlequin, captain?”
“When we went down to the surface of Lorn, General Sturnn showed us the webway portal that his men had excavated. Taldeer attempted to activate the portal, but the attempt failed because the portal was damaged. She assumed that the necron had been successful. However, an eldar Harlequin emerged from the ruins of the portal—”
“Do you really expect me to believe all of this, Gabriel? Can’t you see how incredible this story is?”
“These are incredible times, Ulantus. Taldeer interpreted the Harlequin’s dance to mean that a group of Chaos Marines had already made landfall on the ancient eldar world—they shattered the portal as they wrenched it from the planet’s surface. The fear is that these Marines will make use of the untold esoteric knowledge hidden on that world. We cannot permit this to happen, Ulantus.”
Ulantus shook his head slowly. He had heard of the Harlequins. There were one or two tomes dedicated to them in the great librarium of the Omnis Arcanum, but nobody really believed that they were real. All of the evidence had been collected from fragments of forbidden eldar texts, assembled and reconstructed by agents of the Ordo Xenos in times long ago.
It was widely accepted amongst the most learned of the Blood Ravens Librarians that the Harlequins were part of eldar mythology—little more than characters from folklore that appeared in children’s stories. They were supposed to be the guardians of the mythic Black Library—the eldar’s grand repository of wisdom and erudition. They were the sentinels that stood guard over the timeless knowledge of the ancient race. But nobody had ever actually seen one.
“What do you expect me to say, Gabriel? Do you expect me to let you take the Litany of Fury out of a warzone, under the guidance of an alien witch, in pursuit of an unknown alien planet and an enemy that was identified by a mythological creature?”
“Yes,” nodded Gabriel. “That is what I expect.”
“Why? Why should I do this?” Ulantus looked at Gabriel as though he were insane. “I cannot do this, Gabriel. You must see it. This is not a question of your authority or even your judgment. This is a question of your sanity!”
With crisp efficiency, Corallis snapped his pistol back up into Ulantus’ face. “You will watch your tongue, captain.”
The control deck teetered on the brink of the abyss of heresy once again.
At the same moment, Saulh’s pistol was levelled at Corallis, and Tanthius darted forward, forcing himself between the two sergeants and swatting Saulh’s pistol with the palm of his gauntlet.
“I understand your concerns, Ulantus,” answered Gabriel, letting his mind drift momentarily back to his visions in the chapel. “But you must understand that I do not need your approval, I merely demand your compliance.” He made no attempt to make Corallis or Tanthius stand down. “The best solution here is a compromise: I will record your objections, and I will take my strike cruiser, the Ravenous Spirit, on this mission, leaving you with the Litany to consolidate this field of victory. You should be aware, Captain Ulantus, that your actions in this matter will not pass unnoticed.”
“You should also be aware of this, Captain Angelos. But it will be as you say.” With that, Ulantus strode past Tanthius and off the control deck.
Saulh flicked his eyes from Corallis to Tanthius, as though looking for something hidden in their purpose, and then he marched off after his captain, leaving the officers of the Third Company in command of the bridge.
The Space Marine pushed the massive double-doors, leaning into them to shift their immense weight. They cracked open and then gave way, swinging away from us in a cloud of dazzling dust, as the brilliant red light of the triple suns poured out of the ancient room beyond.
I should wait to be summoned. Something in the air told me that I should be careful of the man who waited for me beyond those doors. It was not merely the seriousness of the deference that was suddenly and completely affected by the Space Marine who had escorted me from the grand, circular hall twenty storeys below; there was a subtle power in the air itself, as though it were charged with unspeakable energies just beyond the confines of this reality. It felt as though an electric anticipation was oozing out of the immaterium and into this realm, permeating the very air that I breathed. Whoever waited in the room ahead, he was surrounded by an incalculable field of power.
No, you should merely enter. Unless… unless you are afraid of me.
For the second time, I was shocked to feel the presence of another’s thoughts where I anticipated only my own. I chastised myself silently, feeling the weakness of my control and the vulnerabilities of my mind. Whoever this was, he should not be able to read my thoughts so easily, and he should certainly not be able
to plant his own into my mind so effortlessly.
I will not fear what I do not know. Ignorance is the spark of curiosity, not of fear, I replied.
Noble sentiments, indeed. You have come to the right place, friend of Ahriman.
The thoughts were of an entirely different quality from those of the Marine that had knelt with me in the hall. These were heavy and light all at once. It was like having chilled mercury poured through my mind. The words were icy and yet liquid, viscous without being sticky, substantial but sparkling with reflections.
It was not an alien voice. It didn’t even feel external to my head. It felt as though it entered my mind from some forgotten place in the depths of my soul, rather than trying to prod and force its way in from outside. It felt comfortable and nauseating all at once, like too much rich food.
In front of me, the Space Marine stood with his back to one of the doors, holding it open. He nodded with his spectral, eerie head, gesturing for me to enter the room.
I held his shimmering eyes for a moment, and then walked through the doorway, my strides filled with resolve and confidence.
The doors clanged shut behind me, with the Marine on the outside. I did not look round.
“Welcome.”
For a moment I could not locate the origins of the deep, resonant voice. It seemed to echo around the room, as though refracted and reflected from thousands of mirrors. I turned with slow deliberation, letting my eyes scan over the hundreds of aisles of books and scrolls that filled the room. Great shafts of red light poured in from the circular window cavity that dominated the far wall, casting the thousands of shelves and millions of books into a bloody hue.
There was movement beyond the window opening, presumably from a balcony outside, and an impressive silhouette appeared in the blaze of red light, obliterating the suns. It paused without entering the room.
“You are welcome here, friend of Ahriman. Do you bring questions with you?”
I squinted against the flood of light that the figure wore as an aura, raising one hand to shield my eyes.
[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest Page 14