Still the assault continued to rage and roar with undimmed intensity. Gibbering in desperation Caraeis reached deeper within himself, beyond himself, for the strength to endure. From somewhere deep and forbidden in his mind he heard an answering whisper from a presence he now realised had always been with him. A rushing enormity swelled in his mind, something unutterable, ancient and eldritch. He felt himself begin to expand in readiness to receive it; an arrival that he realised would obliterate him like a wind-blown candle. The idea filled his breaking mind with idiotic joy.
‘Caraeis! No!’ Aiosa shouted above the fury.
The mind-shout was close by, it was from a familiar source but such things were irrelevant to Caraeis now. His mind had shrunk to a bisected circle containing only the need to maintain the barrier and an indescribable, almost orgasmic anticipation of the arrival of the Lord of Change. He did not look with his altering eyes to see the sapphire-armoured Dire Avengers level their star throwers at his back, did not feel their monomolecular discs spinning through his mutating flesh as Aiosa ordered her Aspect Warriors to cut down the abomination he was becoming.
Mere physical injury could no longer kill Caraeis. He had become a conduit for something too great to be stopped so easily. But even so he could still be distracted by the external input of severed nerves and gouting blood, the circle of his concentration broken by mortal instincts. The psychic barrier wavered as it stood momentarily unsupported by his will. The mountainous pressures of the world spirit’s attack – strengthened now through its fear and anger at the approach of the Lord of Change – needed no more than that sliver of hesitation to begin overwhelming Caraeis’s defences.
The psychic barrier collapsed sending soul-born fires sweeping down on Caraeis and his constellation of orbiting runes. Rage and burning hate were channelled against the warlock, an endless outpouring that was quelled and dissipated in part by each of the layers of protection Caraeis’s had wrapped around his soul. Each defensive rune absorbed unthinkable amounts of psychic power as it flared and failed, enough to destroy cities and continents, but the rage of Lileathanir was an unstoppable, insatiable thing. Layer by layer, rune by rune the defences were stripped away. At last the quailing, tainted soul of the warlock was laid bare and utterly destroyed with a triumphant, earth-shivering roar.
Aiosa and the stunned Dire Avengers fled from the quaking chamber pursued by a rain of rocks and lava. The walls of the exit tunnel shivered as they ground slowly together, seemingly determined to crush the Aspect Warriors in their implacable embrace. Aiosa urged her squad onward, driving them before her like frightened animals until they tumbled out into the World Shrine.
Behind them, sealed in the deep chamber, the lambent tide of violence began to recede, flowing away down the slope and dimming as it went. The looping crimson coils in the cavern were slowed and dissipated by the touch of the returning tide. A rippling colour change was taking place in the insubstantial tendrils as they retreated, a gradual fading through purples and blues to a clear, wholesome green. Where Caraeis had stood was now only a scar in the rock lit by dancing fires. No trace of either the warlock or the incubus remained to be seen.
For the first time in many moons a hushed silence fell across the World Shrine of Lileathanir. Beyond the holy mountain the clans saw stars again in the night sky and the moving stars that were ships in the firmament coming to their aid.
Despite Bezieth’s warnings they encountered no ur-ghuls in the tunnel. She couldn’t shake the impression that they had all been spooked by something and cleared out. Perhaps the little murder engine had frightened them all off, but the troglodytic predators didn’t scare easily. Once they got closer to the vertical shaft Kharbyr had been so desperately trying to avoid she could see a more probable cause.
Vast, shadowy pseudopods were thrusting up from below, probing at the mouth of the shaft almost tenderly. Bellathonis directed Xagor to carry him right over to the edge without any regard for the sinister ink-black tentacles sweeping past only metres away. Bezieth joined them reluctantly, experiencing a rare twinge of vertigo as she peered over the edge into the kilometres-deep drop. The tentacles seemed to stretch up to impossible lengths from a roiling pit of darkness at the bottom.
‘Look at it,’ Bellathonis said. ‘Aelindrach, the shadow-realm. It has expanded during the Dysjunction by swallowing up more of the city into itself.’
‘Then we should be going the other way!’ Bezieth snarled, raising her djin-blade meaningfully.
‘No, not at all, my dear archon,’ Bellathonis said imperturbably. ‘I have friends in Aelindrach, contacts even with the ear of the mandrake kings. What you thought was an attack was them reaching out for me, or what they thought was me at the time. The shadow-realm offers sanctuary for all of us during a Dysjunction, trust me on this.’
‘With mandrakes? They’ll drink our blood and use our skulls for ornaments–’ Bezieth said.
‘Well the choice is yours,’ Bellathonis replied. ‘You must either trust me and follow or make your own way, it is all the same to me – Xagor, go ahead.’
The wrack turned and stepped over the edge without hesitation with Bellathonis still clutching his back. The two vanished from view instantly, swept up effortlessly by one of the questing tentacles. Bezieth hung back uncertainly for moment, watching for any glimpse of their falling bodies and listening for screams. She saw and heard nothing.
‘Oh to hell with that,’ Bezieth muttered to herself as she stalked away from the pit. ‘I’d rather take my chances with the ur-ghuls.’ She was reduced to being a kabal of one, two if you counted the spirit of Axhyrian and she didn’t. Sec Megara wouldn’t be such a bad place to start recruiting, certainly a damn sight better than Aelindrach.
Yllithian teetered on the precipice; thousands of kilometres beneath his heels the stolen sun Gorath blazed hungrily, a medusa’s-nest of black, twisting fires waiting for him below. Aez’ashya’s relentless attack was forcing him back step by step to the edge of the bridge, his blade weaving desperately as he attempted to keep her at bay. Yllithian was a master swordsman in his own right yet he was badly outmatched by her and he knew it.
Only his shadow field had kept him alive so far, a dozen times the inky swirl of darkness had blocked a speeding knife or turned aside a disembowelling thrust. Aez’ashya would know that it was only a matter of time before the energy field failed completely, all she had to do was just keep battering at it for long enough. Yllithian kept expecting his incubi to come up and save him but he was still utterly alone, trapped within an unbreakable web of steel that was tightening by the moment.
Yllithian glimpsed something behind Aez’ashya that surprised him so much it made him momentarily drop his guard. Aez’ahya instantly sprang back out of reach suspecting some sort of a trick. Then she saw it too and her relentless knives hesitated in their courses.
‘Is that–?’
The hideous, vibrant colours that had smeared the wardings since the beginning of the Dysjunction were fading. They were dimming and scattering moment by moment like a storm blown away by a fresh wind. Below their feet Gorath was calming as its fiery corona began shrinking back within its normal parameters.
‘Yes, it’s ending. The Dysjunction is over,’ Yllithian said, sidling carefully away from the edge of the bridge as he spoke. Aez’ashya watched him coolly.
‘You think this changes anything?’ she said.
‘Of course it does! It changes everything!’ Yllithian exclaimed passionately. ‘Clearly our brave assault on the Ilmaea has met with stunning success and put an end to the menace. We should be praised and rewarded to the highest degree for our efforts, don’t you think? Although naturally that will only work if we’re both around corroborate one another’s story to Vect.’
Aez’ashya considered this for a moment and laughed.
‘I like your thinking, Yllithian,’ she smiled nastily, flourishing her daggers, ‘b
ut I think that Vect will reward me quite adequately enough when I bring him your head!’
Yllithian took another step back as Aez’ashya tensed to spring. Over the succubus’s bladed shoulder he could see his incubi bodyguards pounding down the bridge toward them.
‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have to see how he responds when you report your failure instead. Vect’s terribly unforgiving of that kind of thing as you’ll soon come to learn.’
Aez’ashya caught his glance and heard the approaching clatter of their armoured sabatons at the same moment. Yllithian was thrilled to see the anguish in her eyes as she realised she had failed. A few more heartbeats and the mistress of the Blades of Desire would be the one losing her head. He was surprised by the fierce grin she gave him.
‘Until next time, Yllithian,’ Aez’ashya said spitefully, ‘be a darling and try to become more of a worthy opponent by then, won’t you?’ So saying she turned and leapt from the bridge to apparently certain death in the embrace of Gorath.
Yllithian knew better and cursed as he bounded to the edge to see her fate. He was just in time to see the blur of a fast moving Venom transport come curving around the tower and intersect with the falling form before speeding away. He was still nodding in admiration when his incubi arrived. He noted with chagrin that only three of them had survived their battle with hekatrix.
‘Better late than never, I suppose,’ he commented acidly. ‘I believe I’ve found myself the motivation to ensure Xelian returns to lead the Blades of Desire, I like not their new archon.’
Aiosa, her armour riven and scored in a dozen places, found the harlequin waiting for her in the World Shrine with a relieved-looking smile on his face. It took all of her considerable self-control not to lay hands upon him and shake him until his neck snapped.
‘What did you do?’ the exarch snarled dangerously.
‘Do? I did nothing but bring people together so that they could mitigate a threat to all of us. Everyone played their appointed part beautifully and now the threat is over. I’m spectacularly happy that you and your warriors survived, and very sorry if I offended you along the way.’
‘You sent Caraeis to his death!’
Motley frowned unhappily at the accusation, stepping back with his hands spread helplessly. ‘No. He found a doom that has been waiting for him for quite some time. I merely ensured that his sacrifice aided the eldar race instead of the Chaos Powers. Caraeis’s overweening ambition did not come entirely from within, Aiosa, surely you must have sensed that.’
Aiosa shook her helm grimly before stopping herself and reconsidering. The tension she’d felt had been real, a sense that the warlock was overstepping boundaries and flaunting traditions without thought. She had repeatedly put it down to youthfulness and arrogance but it had been very real.
‘And the incubus?’ she said more slowly. ‘He was trying to slay the dragon spirit, an impossible task. Did you tell him that he would succeed?’
‘I never lied to him, if that’s what you mean, he took on the task willingly enough for the sake of his honour and his adopted city. He knew if he went in there he wasn’t coming out and that’s what I call bravery no matter where you hail from. He should be mourned rather than vilified.’
‘He created the situation,’ Aiosa said flatly. ‘He led the Commorrites that violated the shrine and they brought their doom upon themselves.’
‘Morr was a weapon wielded by others,’ Motley said wearily. ‘He was no more culpable than a gun can be guilty of murder… May I tell you a fundamental truth, Aiosa?’
The proud mask of the exarch inclined minutely and Motley was struck once again by how much like Morr she looked in that moment.
‘When I became old enough – and I am very, very old despite my youthful appearance – there came a point when I began to question how many lives a difference in philosophy is truly worth. Upon reaching that point and asking myself that question I started to consider just whom all the death and destruction that is visited upon our fractured race really serves.’
The slight harlequin looked up into the hard, crystalline eyes of the exarch for some glimmer of understanding. He found none.
EPILOGUE
And so I stand revealed at the end of my tale. I, the one called Motley, player and orchestrator both. It would be false to claim that I foresaw every outcome, but it would be fair to say I predicted more rightly than wrongly.
It comes to this – the great cosmic joke. All we do is fight against ourselves. The material existence we defer to and rely upon and believe in is illusory; it gives the impression of solidity when in point of fact there’s nothing in the universe more destructible and short-lived. It appears from nothing and it goes to nothing while only the soul endures.
And you see that’s really the key: Immortal souls adrift in an endless sea of aeons eternally at war with themselves, being driven by passions so strong, so primal they have become entities we have come to call gods. Little do those poor souls know that it’s their own belief that gives shape to what oppresses them and that they lend it their strength with every struggle. Poor, lost, immortal souls; they can be crushed, they can be consumed, they can be enslaved, they can be corrupted, but they can never, ever be completely destroyed.
And souls can always be reborn.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of the dark eldar series, along with the novel Survival Instinct and a host of short stories, Andy Chambers has more than twenty years’ experience creating worlds dominated by war machines, spaceships and dangerous aliens. Andy worked at Games Workshop as lead designer of the Warhammer 40,000 miniatures game for three editions before moving to the PC gaming market. He now lives and works in Nottingham.
For Jessica, little Eris.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2013 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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