Path of the Incubus

by Andy Chambers

  Looking over the warriors Yllithian noticed a certain air of reluctance about them – downcast eyes, backward glances, a nervousness that was readily spreading to the undisciplined hellions and reavers. He thought it appropriate to address his retinue and remind them of their obligations so he raised his voice so that it would carry to all of those assembled.

  ‘Hear me! Our city is in peril and our Supreme Overlord calls for our aid in setting all to rights – as well he should, knowing the power of the White Flames! We go now to Corespur to hear his counsel and accept his just commandments. Now is not a time for fear, now is a time for strength and rigor of the highest order, any who stand before us are abominations to be destroyed, any who fall along the way are lost. Now I bid you by my lawful command as your archon and master in all things, obey me now or I shall end your existence before you take your next breath. Look up! Look up and gaze upon what we must overcome ere we reach our destination this day!’

  As one they looked up into the hellish, vaulted skies over High Commorragh and beheld a scene from nightmares. The Ilmaea were weeping black tears. The stolen sun’s ragged coronae flared with multi-hued energies from beyond the veil and dripped foulness. The suns gazed down from the heavens like monstrous burning eyes in whose awful light there could be seen twisting clouds of their pinioned offspring. What could be glimpsed of the warding beyond the now twice-stolen suns was a vivid riot of colour: thick brush strokes of blue and purple clashing against swirls of jade and emerald, lugubrious clouds of grey and brown swelling out of nowhere only to be dispersed by flickering storms of blue-white static.

  Another storm was about to break upon them. Etheric energies crackled through the air, ghostly fire danced on pinnacles and livid thunderbolts made the whole fortress quiver with their impact. Harsh cries and screams were carried on the rushing winds, alien tongues crying out in languages that were forgotten before the eldar race ever took to the stars. Yllithian gazed upward without fear and noted with pride that his kabalites obeyed promptly and without question. A few individuals had fallen to the ground convulsing horribly at the sight, it was true, but they were weaklings best disposed of now before they failed him later.

  Satisfied, Yllithian stepped aboard his personal barque, a singular grav-craft of quite stunning beauty. Its fiercely jutting prow was inlaid with ruby and alabaster depicting the icon of the White Flames. The graceful lines of the barque’s narrow hull swept majestically backward from the prow before flaring to accommodate pods containing gravitic engines at the rear. Yllithian mounted the open platform at the centre of the barque and settled himself into a richly appointed throne. His incubi bodyguards moved to take their positions at long-throated splinter cannon and disintegrators ranged on mountings along the barque’s bulwarks. At a nod to his steersman Yllithian’s craft smoothly ascended from the landing field. A swirl of Raiders, scourges, jetbikes and skyboards rose below his craft and swiftly oriented themselves around the barque. Yllithian gestured again and the barque shot forward like an arrow released from a bow.

  The jagged landscape of High Commorragh lay before them, its dark towers, bladed spires and sharp-spined steeples pushing upwards in mad profusion. Fires were burning in many places, the winds pushing dirty streamers of smoke outward like tattered banners. Partially collapsed towers and ruined manses jutted out of the haze like broken teeth. Here and there the flash of weapons fire lit the darker recesses between mountainous spires. Vicious battles were being fought, no doubt, neighbours exorcising their pent-up frustrations and ambitions against neighbours, kin set against kin. Some of Yllithian’s own allies were fighting down there, but in comparison to the awesome energies roiling overhead their squabbles seemed petty and inconsequential. Yllithian and his retinue swept implacably onwards across Sorrow Fell.

  Yllithian indicated for his steersman to climb higher to avoid weapons fire striking at them from below. It was a calculated risk to accept the greater odds of lightning strikes and flying daemons coming against them but Yllithian knew all too well the awful accuracy and potency of the armaments in use by the warring kabals. He would take his chances with daemon claws rather than suffer his meagre force being gutted by a burst of well-directed lance fire from ambush. As they rose thunderbolts smote the air with retina-burning strokes of raw energy all about them. The crash and roar of the storm shook every cell in the body, jarred the skeleton and made the ears quail at the unleashed violence. There was blinding flash and a pair of hellions simply vanished, their racing skyboards instantly smashed into flaming fragments falling away from the formation.

  Yllithian’s retinue raced on through the tumult, throttles open to the maximum and engines screaming. A reaver was transfixed by another spear of lightning, its power plant detonating instantly in a silent blossom of orange fire. A sleek-hulled Raider was struck and dropped away trailing smoke and flames. Tiny, flailing bodies spilled from its deck as its steersman fought for control. The Raider disappeared amidst the jutting spines and towers beneath with no sign of recovery.

  Yllithian’s retinue began bobbing and weaving instinctively – as if they could somehow spoil the aim of the random discharges. Yllithian rebuked his steersman for his stupidity while inwardly reflecting that he had personally experienced artillery barrages that were less terrifying in their intensity. The untutored mind always refuses to believe that it cannot somehow avert the random strokes of fate. Yllithian had taught himself better than that. His barque had inbuilt force fields that would shrug off the lightning if he had the misfortune to be struck. His only concern, and it was a slight one, was that a sufficient fraction of his force would survive the ordeal to be of use to him in what was to come.

  Bellathonis made his way down through the White Flames’ fortress quite openly. He leaned on Yllithian’s patronage shamelessly to get him past the obstructive incubi, paranoid warriors and overly-inquisitive trueborn that he encountered along the way. The mere mention of the archon seemed enough quell any desire to impede him, so it was really all quite gratifying. The lower reaches of the fortress were in a shambles. Fewer and fewer White Flames kabalites were to be seen, and those that were flitted cautiously through the shadows. The smell of burning was everywhere and Bellathonis came across occasional bodies scattered through the twisting corridors and deep cellars. Psychic phenomena began to manifest as he went lower still: walls that wept crimson tears, hazes of frost and oily mists that muttered and sang in alien tongues.

  Bellathonis sighed and finally resigned himself to draw his own weapon. It was something he ordinarily felt was almost demeaning to do, a sign of poor planning. He consoled himself that the circumstances were far from ordinary. Yllithian had bid him take up residence in Syiin’s old quarters in the pits but Bellathonis found himself rapidly souring on the notion. Who knew what half-finished experiments and maddened, uncaged grotesques roamed free in Syiin’s little kingdom? Before Bellathonis could venture into the pits he would need reinforcements of similar ilk.

  Coming to a decision he turned aside down a little-used stair at the next junction. The narrow stair twisted tortuously towards one of the fortress cisterns, a lapping subterranean lake of ooze and foulness. Within that chamber, Bellathonis knew, lay a certain alcove containing a hidden door that would take him beyond the confines of the fortress. It was a risk, but certainly no greater than counting on the obedience of Syiin’s surviving wracks to the murderer of their master.

  Bellathonis paused at the archway into the cistern, listening intently for any sound that might betray occupants. He heard nothing but the slap of wavelets against stone and stepped cautiously within. Piers of mottled rock reached out over a vast black expanse that was barely visible in the dim light. Countless identical, featureless alcoves etched the walls to either hand. Bellathonis counted his way along to the alcove he and Yllithian had used to enter the fortress after he had discovered the White Flames archon dying of the Glass Plague in the tunnels below.

  Th
e Haemoculus slid one long-fingered hand along the apex of the alcove until he found a series of tiny projections almost impossible to distinguish from the surrounding stonework. As he was about to press them he caught a flicker of movement in his all-round peripheral vision. He focused on it without turning by giving full attention to the eyes implanted into his shoulder blades. He saw two tattooed eldar no more than a dozen metres away creeping silently towards him. They were naked save for fanged helms and scaled loin cloths, their limbs and chests covered by spiralling rows of tooth-like dags. Their bare feet made not a whisper of sound as they advanced and both clutched poison-streaked daggers that promised a quick death with a single scratch. These must be the Venomysts that the guards in the upper part of the fortress had warned him against.

  Bellathonis lowered his arm and turned slowly to face them, clearing his throat as he did so. The two Venomysts froze like statues as if their immobility would somehow render them invisible.

  ‘I really have no argument with you,’ Bellathonis said reasonably. ‘By all means run along and go find yourselves some White Flames to kill.’

  One of the Venomysts glanced minutely to the other one for guidance. Bellathonis raised his pistol and shot that one first, his spiral-barreled stinger pistol emitting only a slight hiss as it punched a toxin-filled glass needle into the Venomyst’s chest. In the twinkling of an eye the Venomyst’s tattooed flesh swelled outward like a balloon, expanding around the wound site to become a sphere that encompassed the unfortunate eldar’s entire body. There was a creak of straining skin and then a snap as the flesh-balloon popped messily to shower his compatriot with gore.

  ‘That one was a compound called Bloatwrack, boring but effective and… so very quick! You might want to run now,’ Bellathonis suggested as he levelled his pistol at the second Venomyst. To the haemonculus’s surprise the Venomyst did nothing of the sort, instead hurling his dagger with deadly accuracy. The stinger pistol fired almost accidentally, Bellathonis’s reflexive shot zipping off into the darkness a hand-span from the Venomyst’s masked face. The haemonculus tried to dodge the spinning blade but he was no wych gladiator that could pluck knives from the air. The dagger took him in the shoulder, provoking a curse of mixed pain and surprise.

  The surviving Venomyst took off running, his bare feet slapping on the stones as he disappeared into the gloom before the haemonculus could fire another shot. Bellathonis gritted his teeth and concentrated on pulling the dagger from his shoulder. He had to admire how quickly the lips of the fresh wound were blackening. The Venomysts may have lost their sartorial sensibilities but they lived up to their name when it came to poisons. He tasted the blade tentatively with his black, pointed tongue and grimaced a little. It was a necrotising soporific, something intended to make you lie down and quietly rot to death. A composite toxin, one with overlapping effects and probably some unpleasant surprises that were only activated by trying to use the appropriate anti-venoms.

  Bellathonis’s gaze swam alarmingly and he dropped the dagger to brace himself against the corner of the alcove in order to avoid falling. The blade striking the stone echoed weirdly in his ears, a stretched and dream-like ringing. The haemonculus tried to summon the will to reach up and trigger the latch to the hidden door, but it suddenly seemed horribly far away.

  Free to chase and hunt at last, the terror engines Vhi and Cho found their way up from the pits into a region known as Splinterbone. Their exit brought them out into the flow of an acid-green subterranean river that wound its way around and through the outermost districts from the Corespur. The engine’s implanted memory engrams told them that this would serve as ideal cover for an approach and the quickest route to their prey’s immediate vicinity. The river’s twisting course was shrouded in darkness and hung with toxic clouds as it slipped beneath arches and through ducts between a series of chambers and atriums that had long since been abandoned by all but the desperate and the wretched.

  The two wasp-like engines sped along just above the river’s toxic surface, the imprint of their gravitic impellers leaving perfect V-shaped wakes behind them. The psychic scent of the prey was weak at this point, but it exerted a definite tug on the engines’ narrow consciousness. Right now the faint spoor could belong any one of the millions of lifeforms detected in the direction the engines were taking. As they drew closer the trace would intensify to the point where they would discern their target as an individual, track its movements and discover its lair. All this was pre-determined, a set of absolutes imprinted into their higher cortex functions that was as inescapable as death itself.

  But they still had autonomy, that most precious of gifts to automata. Cho wove back and forth happily on the spurious justification of testing attitude controls. Vhi aggressively probed the surrounding sub-strata for information nodes and test-fired its weaponry with joyous abandon at anything that moved. They remained unimpeded in their progress, flashing past a few shattered grav-craft that were drifting lazily in the flow but finding all to be devoid of detectable life signs. Vhi detected ongoing seismic damage to the surrounding structure and advised abandonment of the projected route, citing a high probability of blockage. Cho resisted the proposal, citing the enhanced speed achieved by following the river course as far as possible. Vhi agreed and the pair swept onward together towards Ashkeri Talon.

  Vhi and Cho were soon cruising slowly through the ruins of Lower Metzuh, crossing and re-crossing the psychic spoor they were seeking. The source was close, or had been close to this area in the recent past yet there was confusion in the readings. Cho was the more sensitive of the two and could detect recent indicators that were an acceptable match for their target. Vhi had found older traces that matched the parameters exactly, but that were quickly lost as they entered the vicinity of an uncontrolled webway juncture. They argued silently about their findings, Vhi being quickly overthrown in his proposal to enter the juncture due to the poor probability of re-acquiring the trace on the other side.

  Cho fluttered vanes and sensor rods in agitation. Logic dictated pursuing the most recent traces of the target but Vhi stubbornly refused to accept the validity of Cho’s findings. Vhi proposed backtracking the trails he had detected for further investigation while Cho advocated pursuit of the existing traces before they became diffuse. No precedence had been placed on accuracy over expedience, only blanket elimination protocols applied and so the two engines found themselves to be deadlocked.

  After a few moments of drifting silently in cogitation Cho proposed the solution of exercising the autonomy they had been granted to the fullest. They would split up: Vhi would follow his trace, Cho would follow hers. In the event of both trails leading back to a single lair they would combine their efforts to eliminate the target. In the event that one of the targets was found to be a false positive it would be eliminated and the engine responsible would rejoin the other as quickly as possible. Cho advocated this as the absolutely optimal solution to the problem.

  Vhi pondered the proposal for a considerable time. Core combat algorithms warned of the undesirability of force dispersal, yet a line of reasoning that might be termed ‘experience’ or ‘confidence’ in a living organism encouraged Vhi to accept Cho’s proposal.

  The two engines went their separate ways, Cho nosing deeper into the wreckage beside the Grand Canal while Vhi followed the psychic trace he had detected aloft. The trail had been confused and muddied by the events in the city but Vhi was drawn upward as if by invisible threads. Vhi experienced a rush of conflicting data that a mortal creature would have described as ‘excitement’. The hunt had become a contest between the two engines each following their own course to success or failure. Their beloved creator would be proud.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Quality of Mercy

  Seconds passed and Motley heard nothing. No final curse from the fallen incubus as his doom descended upon him, no meat slicing sound of Drazhar removing Morr’s head for a trophy. The harlequin
peeked between his fingers cautiously. The scene before him was virtually unchanged, Morr lay on the flagstones, with his helm-less head and one shoulder dangling over a pit, his great klaive out of reach. Drazhar was now poised above him like a great, armoured mantis with his demi-klaives crossed at Morr’s throat. A simple twitch of the wrists and Morr would be decapitated in an instant, yet the twin blades were held back, unmoving.

  After a long moment Drazhar slowly withdrew his demi-klaives and straightened. He took a step back, still regarding Morr, nodded curtly and turned away. Within a few steps the master of blades was lost in shadows, vanishing into the darkness as if he had never existed. Motley darted to where Morr lay, hope blossoming in his heart as he saw the towering incubus was still moving. Unmasked, Morr’s pale face turned to Motley with anguish written in every line.

  ‘Even honourable death is denied!’ Morr snarled. ‘Defeated by the master of blades who leaves none alive, yet he leaves me to suffer in my shame!’

  It was an old face, lined and scarred by countless conflicts. Lank, pallid hair framed a strong visage with a sharp jaw line jutting pugnaciously below fierce dark eyes. The passions that had always lurked behind his blank-faced helm now blazed forth like a living thing.