Path of the Incubus

by Andy Chambers

  ‘There’s something out there, Xagor,’ Kharbyr hissed. ‘I heard it just before you came. I think I just saw it.’

  ‘Yes. Stalker. Is hunting us,’ the wrack said nervously as he looked around. He gave a slight shiver before returning to his work.

  ‘What is it? You said it didn’t hit us, what did?’

  ‘This one is not sure…’ Xagor said quietly as if the same answer applied to both questions. Kharbyr glared at him silently waiting for a proper answer.

  ‘The… the darkness,’ Xagor said after a moment. ‘The darkness reached for us, Kharbyr could not see because he was looking ahead, but Xagor saw. It came for us from below.’

  Kharbyr’s mouth went dry at the wrack’s words. ‘That was back in the vertical shaft, so what’s hunting us now?’

  ‘This one does not know,’ Xagor repeated.

  Kharbyr thought he glimpsed the silver crescent again, high on the wall. This time he heard the swish of air displaced by a flying body as it vanished from view.

  ‘Why doesn’t it attack? We’re in no position to stop it dancing on our skulls if it wanted.’

  ‘This one–’

  ‘–does not know, yes I get it, thanks for nothing.’

  A fierce tingling started without warning on Kharbyr’s chest. At first he though it must be something Xagor was doing but the wrack was busy working on his legs. The tingling grew into a sensation of heat as if someone was holding a flame close to Kharbyr’s flesh.

  ‘Xagor! I can feel something! The nerve block isn’t – ahhh!’

  Kharbyr’s body contorted, back arching and limbs flailing as the pain blazed up into an inferno. The injuries from the crash had been sickening but this was far, far worse, something beyond physical hurt that clawed at Kharbyr’s soul. Xagor leapt back in alarm as a bright glow began to crawl across Kharbyr’s flesh, radiating outward from a pentagonal spot on his chest to encompass his writhing form. Kharbyr unleashed a long, ululating scream that tailed off into grim silence as his thrashing body finally became still. Xagor edged closer uncertainly.

  ‘Kharbyr is–?’ Xagor said plaintively just as another spasm gripped the prone form, arching it almost double and sending the wrack scurrying back again. Kharbyr’s ragged breaths were just audible, but after a second they changed, becoming a coughing, sobbing sound. Little by little that changed into a burbling chuckle and then what could only be wheezing laughter. Kharbyr sat up suddenly despite his injuries and looked Xagor straight in the eye.

  ‘Excellent. Excellent and distinctly well-timed too,’ Kharbyr said with a distinctly un-Kharbyr-like inflection in his voice. ‘Oh Xagor, do stop acting so shocked.’ Xagor recognised the admonishing tones instantly.

  ‘M-master?’ the wrack asked cautiously.

  ‘Welcome offerings!’ the machine-enhanced voice cracked across the terrace like synthesised thunder, cutting across the barrage of weapons fire with a wall of noise. A corpulent champion of Chaos heavily armoured in bile-green plating that leaked pus from prominent boils brandished a rusting sword at the approaching dark eldar. ‘YOUR SACRIFICE IS EAGERLY AWAITED,’ the voice boomed. ‘THE LORD OF DECAY EMBRACES YOUR FURY AND RETURNS IT A THOUSANDFOLD! THIS IS A GLORIOUS DAY!’

  There was more of the same, much more and Yllithian instructed his armour to block it out. Their enemies comprised two distinct forces – three if you counted the flying daemons, which Yllithian decided could be safely ignored for now. Compared to what they had found at the tower orbiting Gorath the flying daemons were an irrelevance.

  Their ground-bound enemies were split into a shambolic horde of possessed and a lesser number of thick-bodied figures in filth-encrusted heavy armour. The latter moved with a singular lack of grace and a kind of crude stolidity no eldar could ever emulate. Mere dogs of the Ruinous Powers, Yllithian told himself, the sort of crudely augmented warriors that the lesser slave races produced and expended by the million. The lie tasted bitter on his tongue. His studies of the daemonic powers had warned of the Traitor Legions and their corruption by the Dark Gods. The legionaries had become champions of Chaos that enjoyed the fickle favour of their deity, and to find them abroad within Commorragh was a dire portent indeed.

  Unfortunately they were also very heavily armed. Explosive bolts roared across the open terrace and tore bloody holes in the ranks of Yllithian’s disembarking forces. A missile flew up and gutted an incoming Raider in a dirty yellow explosion. Yllithian called in his reavers and hellions to distract the opposing firepower while he led his warriors directly against the onrushing possessed.

  Splinter fire scythed down the shambling, putrescent figures like ripe wheat. The hell-born vitality of the fiends availed them little protection against the kind of poisons the White Flames warriors were using: fleshrot, inkblind, scald-lotus, wryther and a dozen other deadly toxins burned, blinded and twisted the stolen bodies of the possessed into useless, fleshy prisons. Warriors armed with Shredders were moving up to liquidate the surviving possessed even as Yllithian’s incubi bodyguard cut a path through the flopping, flailing mass.

  As they broke through Yllithian saw instantly that his reavers and hellions had failed to break the phalanx of Chaos warriors clustered at the base of the tower. Crumpled bodies, burning jetbikes and broken skyboards scattered across the terrace gave mute testimony to their efforts. The survivors were scattering, jinking and dodging desperately to evade the withering fire coming at them from below.

  Yllithian cursed, realising there was still over a hundred metres to go into the teeth of ruinous firepower before his forces could close. The Chaos warriors had already realised the possessed were falling faster than they had thought possible. The wide maws of their big, ugly guns were swinging around, levelling for a salvo that would tear Yllithian’s lightly armoured foot troops to pieces.

  The howl of engines from above presaged a sudden deluge of sickle-winged shapes diving straight into the Chaos ranks. Hellions, reavers and Venoms swept past at breakneck speed, impaling and decapitating with their bladevanes and hellglaives. For an instant Yllithian thought his own auxiliaries had rallied and returned to the fray before realising his error. The newcomers were from another kabal entirely, their colours familiar to him even in the heat of battle. The Blades of Desire had arrived.

  Frenzied wyches leapt down directly into hand-to-hand combat from the decks of speeding Venoms. Yllithian, never one to miss an opportunity, led his incubi into the heart of the struggling mass while the Chaos warriors were distracted. He ducked a snarling chainsword and cut the arm from its wielder with a quick riposte. Rotting face-plates whirled before him as the Chaos warriors fought back with stubborn tenacity.

  The hulking warriors were horribly strong and seemed virtually immune to pain. Yllithian saw slender eldar snapped like twigs in their gauntleted grasp, whirling chainblades driven with unstoppable force through the writhing bodies of wyches and bloodied, roaring giants that fought on when they had been virtually cut to pieces.

  Yllithian found himself beginning to see why such warriors made such popular arena slaves. They could absorb punishment like Donorian fiends, and took full advantage of the fact. Time and again the hulking warriors shrugged off fatal wounds and unleashed a deadly counterattack. But the Chaos warriors were also fatally slow and clumsy in comparison to the eldar. When a bare-headed warrior grasped at him with lightning-sheathed claws Yllithian simply sidestepped and decapitated his attacker with a backhand flick of his sword. Another attacker came surging forward only to find Yllithian’s blade sheathed in his eye socket before he could swing his own rust-covered sword. At Yllithian’s signal his incubi bodyguards closed protectively around him, carving him a space in the melee with sweeps of their mighty klaives.

  Yllithian glanced around to assess the battle beyond his immediate vicinity. The enemy seemed heavily outnumbered, islands of resistance in a mounting sea. With their formation broken the invaders stood
no chance against the ravening dark eldar attacking from all sides. The hulking, armoured figures were dragged down one by one in a frenzy of bloodlust; dismembered and decapitated by the bright, deadly blades of the wyches and Yllithian’s incubi.

  Across the carnage he saw Aez’ashya weaving a sinuous dance of death through the last handful of foes. She was wielding twin daggers that shone like crimson ribbons as she carved a bloody swathe through their thickly armoured hides. She laughed lasciviously as she caught his glance, revelling in her moment as a terrible, magnificent goddess of murder unleashed.

  Yllithian had a chill premonition as he looked upon her. There was death for him, too, laughing in that unguarded glance – a delectable thirst for his own murder that had yet to be quenched. Vect had sent the new mistress of the Blades of Desire to fight at his side, but under what orders?

  CHAPTER 22

  Return to Lileathanir

  The travellers stepped away from the portal, the silver light of its activation draining away to be replaced by the flickering glow of ice-trapped fires. The travellers’ breath steamed in the sub-zero air and the frozen mud beneath their feet was as hard as iron. Around them the living rock walls of the World Shrine had been transformed into a fractured landscape of ice. A pitiful figure was huddled on the slope above, crouching in an attitude that indicated it had waited long at that spot watching the portals for any sign of life.

  ‘It’s… it’s you? I-I’d never thought to see you again,’ the wretch said in a tone of wonder that cracked into hysteria at the sight of the second traveller. ‘You and… him!’

  ‘Hush now, Sardon Tir Laniel,’ Motley said gently. ‘He’s come here to help and so have I. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.’

  The current worldsinger of Lileathanir raked back her greying locks to stare at the shrine’s violator unmasked. Here was the one that had defiled the World Shrine and stolen her predecessor, the one who had unleashed such a cataclysm on her world that barely one in ten lived through it. She could feel a gathering rush of emotions in her belly: rage, fear, hate all boiling together into something foul and potent. The shrine shook in empathy, the rock trembling in subliminal response to her anger as hissing flames leapt up behind the ice. Morr returned her gaze steadily, his pitiless black eyes showing no glimmer of sympathy or remorse.

  ‘Sardon!’ Motley said less gently. ‘It’s not your place to judge him for his actions. He’s come here to set things right willingly, we can’t expect contrition as well.’

  Sardon blinked, looked at the warrior again and saw him more clearly: battered, bloodied, a face etched with an awful hunger that could not hide the weariness and desperation in is soul. It was a figure to be pitied rather than hated, a hollowed out, broken puppet propped up only by its vainglorious pride. She had boasted to Caraeis that she would feed the defilers of the shrine to the dragon in vengeance for what they’d done. Confronted with the reality of it she realised there was an all-consuming sickness in the cycle of vengeance. Vengeance begets hatred, hatred begets vengeance.The warrior at Motley’s side was as much a victim of it as any. After a moment the trembling of the shrine subsided and the flames sank lower as the dragon spirit returned to a fitful slumber.

  ‘Well then, dark one,’ Sardon said eventually as she painfully pushed herself upright on half-frozen limbs. ‘You should come and see what you’ve made.’

  Great ice sheets sheathed the World Shrine of Lileathanir. Thick, glassy bulwarks hid the scorched rock and steaming crevasses, fringes of icicles hung from fuming chimneys and frost-rimed boulders. Impossibly, fires still burned just behind the ice. The frozen flames that gleamed through it with undimmed fury, held in check for the present but trembling at the point of bursting into new life.

  ‘You’re too late,’ the worldsinger said hopelessly. ‘I had to do something… I couldn’t just sit and wait. I tried to heal it myself, soothe the Dragon, but it only grew fiercer. In the end I was just trying to contain it and I couldn’t even do that. Look.’

  They looked to where Sardon was pointing. In the depths of the shrine a rough arch pierced the ice sheets, a blackened scar running from floor to roof that oozed smoke and noxious fumes. Red, poisonous light leaked through the crack as if coming from otherworldly depths. In it something was stirring, something vast and unthinkably primordial.

  ‘Ah well, that’s… to be expected I suppose,’ Motley muttered uneasily before rallying to say, ‘but it’s never too late! You did a good thing and bought us some time and that’s a precious commodity right now!’

  Morr ignored both of them, his eyes fixed rigidly on the ominous-looking arch at the far end of the ice-gripped cavern. Without a word he gripped his klaive in both hands and started marching resolutely towards the entrance.

  ‘What is he–?’ Sardon gasped before Motley shushed her and whispered in her ear:

  ‘He knows he helped to turn your world spirit to its dragon aspect by stoking all that unreasoning fury and vengeance into what it is now – a rageing beast with quite staggering potential to do harm or, worse still, metamorphose into a form that the Ruinous Powers would welcome as their new plaything. You’ve been able to quiet the worst of the dragon’s effect here temporarily, but ripples of that fury are still causing immense harm elsewhere. Morr has, very bravely in my opinion, volunteered to help quell the dragon in the only way he knows how.’

  Morr was wading through a stream of bubbling meltwater up to the crack in the ice. Its vast size was more and more apparent the closer he got to it. His tiny, doll-like figure was visible for just an instant between the roiling fumes before he vanished inside. Sardon drew back and stared at Motley in mixed wonder and disbelief.

  ‘He’s going to try and kill it?’ she said incredulously.

  Motley sighed and shrugged his narrow shoulders pensively. ‘He’s going to try, yes.’

  ‘But that’s impossible!’ Sardon cried. ‘And what happens if this death dealer does find a way to kill the dragon? What will happen to Lileathanir then? Without the world spirit to protect us we will be left naked to the universe. The daemons will come for us and nothing will be there to stop them.’

  Motley spread his hands helplessly. ‘I can only believe it’s highly unlikely that he’ll succeed. All I can tell you is that he’ll try. If he fails and the dragon destroys him then it’s going to be satiated, its lust for vengeance at least partially fulfilled. That will buy us more time to take further measures.’

  ‘A living sacrifice? That’s repugnant. Barbaric.’

  Motley looked at the dirty, dishevelled worldsinger in her rough homespun robes and bare feet and he smiled warmly.

  ‘I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear you say that, Sardon,’ the harlequin said without irony. ‘However, it might shock you to know that such practices are more widespread and well-established than you might think… in fact I do believe some of its practitioners are just about to arrive, shall we?’

  Motley nodded back towards the chamber of portals. When Sardon looked around she could just see the silver glimmer of their activation.

  The Raider wreckage was still cooling and creaking around Xagor and Kharbyr. A few dim red telltales on the craft’s controls picked out highlights on Xagor’s barred mask as he leaned in close over Kharbyr’s limp form.

  ‘Kharbyr is true-dead gone?’ the wrack asked.

  What-had-been-Kharbyr flapped its limbs distractedly like a puppet master testing them for function. It flailed at the nerve block on its neck and eventually pried it loose. It grimaced and then thrust Kharbyr’s chin forward aggressively and grinned.

  ‘Ah, that’s better. Xagor, when are you going to understand that it’s all just meat?’ it said in a voice that sounded more and more like Bellathonis with every word. ‘Just meat that we push around with our willpower until it doesn’t work any more. I’ve heard that once upon a time and long ago when the meat stopped working that w
as just The End. One day it was farewell, so long, so-sorry-but-you’re-dead-now. Your will to survive counted for absolutely nothing once your personally apportioned slice of meat was dead, rotting – can you imagine it? Well those days are gone and now everyone can live forever if they simply plan ahead properly.’

  Xagor shook his head. ‘This one still does not understand, very sorry, master.’

  ‘All right, very simply and in short words then: You gave Kharbyr a sort of psychic homing device. I used it to transfer my soul into his body. His soul has gone into my body which is very unfortunate for him because mine is dead meat right about now.’

  ‘Is possible?’ the wrack seemed stunned by the concept and sat back on his haunches, masked face cocked to one side. ‘The master is beyond mighty, beyond death!’ Xagor crowed, exulting for a moment before growing very still again. ‘Wait… what thing dared kill the master’s old body?’

  ‘It was a Talos engine, a very mean little one I was in no position to deal with at the time. It’ll be from the Black Descent. Unlike you, Xagor, they refuse to acknowledge my majestic superiority…’

  ‘Master! There is still danger! Xagor has heard Talos hunting close.’

  ‘That couldn’t possibly be true… unless there were two machines…’

  Bellathonis heard the now-familiar whine of gravitic impellers and caught sight of a flicker of movement above them.

  ‘Oh.’

  Cho drifted down towards the target fully confident of her acquisition. A rush of pride and accomplishment ran through her, extending every vane and sensor probe involuntarily to drink in the revised image of the target. Designated target C now fulfilled the precise metaphysical identification parameters stored in her emgrams. Cho had watched the change take place and listened to the target boast of its accomplishment afterwards. Better yet there was a high probability that the target had been fleeing from Vhi at the moment of attack, unaware that he fled directly into the claws of Cho.