by Gav Thorpe
Coming closer to Hirith-Hreslain, Thirianna could see the evidence of the ork occupation. Several towers had broken roofs and the walls were pocked with shell holes. Soot from burning marked many buildings, windows had been smashed and doorways broken in.
Worryingly, Thirianna could see no bodies and she shuddered to think of what had become of the Exodites slain in the ork attack.
The raucous talk of the orks echoed along the white-paved streets, along with the crackle of fires and the snap of random gunshots. Engines could be heard from across the river, faint but discordant against the sighing of the wind and the calls of night birds in the forest surrounding the settlement.
‘Join me,’ said Kelamith, coming to a halt in an arched alleyway at the edge of the town.
It was a moment before Thirianna realised the farseer wished her to conjoin their minds. Thirianna whispered the mantras, letting her psychic defences slip away so that her spirit and Kelamith’s could enter the skein together. She felt the farseer’s thoughts overlapping hers, soft but insistent. Relaxing, Thirianna allowed herself to drift into a psychic trance, trusting the warriors around her to protect them in this vulnerable state. Her last sight was of a dozen runes dancing above Kelamith’s outstretched palm, and then she was inside the skein.
At first everything seemed to be anarchy.
Threads of fate wound about each other in impossible knots, tying together and splitting, writhing like a disturbed nest of serpents. Dozens of images flashed through Thirianna’s thoughts: images of death and destruction, of dying orks and slain eldar. It was impossible to make any sense of the confusion, to discern meaning from the mass of seemingly random information. Her mind recoiled as it had done during her first foray into the infinity circuit, but now she knew how to respond.
Thirianna ignored the huge tides of fate washing over her and picked out a single thread, as she might locate a node or conduit of the infinity circuit. She concentrated all of her thoughts on that short stretch of time, pushing away everything else. Like leaves falling from the tree, the other fates being revealed to her fell away, allowing the thread on which she was focussed to expand and gain detail.
Before she could work out what she was looking at, Thirianna felt Kelamith’s touch on her thoughts. Runes appeared across the skein, glowing with power, moving in strange patterns, interacting with the ever-shifting warp and weft of time.
‘Follow me,’ said Kelamith.
He seemed like a bolt of gold on the threads of fate. Latching on to Kelamith’s psychic signature, Thirianna allowed herself to be dragged along in the wake of his divination, seeing flashes of the battle unfold. The runes acted as navigation beacons, and Kelamith steered towards one and then another, before veering wildly from the path for a short time to investigate a newly unfolding passage of events.
As they travelled, Thirianna was bombarded with sights and sensations. The crackle and bark of guns, the hiss of shurikens cutting the night air, the roars of the orks and the war shouts of the eldar. Warriors fought and died over and over, buildings crumbled and rebuilt, vehicles exploded and were miraculously restored as possible futures laid themselves upon Thirianna’s mind.
The filth of the orks was everywhere, a cloying, overwhelming brutality that blotted out rational thought and compassion. Their bestial urges ran through every future, a mass of green-skinned violence and anger. Its power obliterated armies and engulfed planetary populations, fuelled by war and domination. It was in every ork and every ork was in the mass, a surging force of nature, elemental in its randomness, cataclysmic in its devastation. It could be beaten back, sometimes even tamed, but never destroyed.
And then came fire and blood.
‘The Avatar!’ said Thirianna.
It was like a vortex of fate, dragging in hundreds of other threads to itself, the rune of Khaine lingering above it. The Avatar’s presence was like flames on a woven cloth, burning along the weave, destroying everything nearby. Blood soaked the skein, drowning lives by the score, washing over Thirianna with a wave of hatred and base rage.
The sensation almost overwhelmed her as her war-mask surged from the depths of her psyche, threatening to obscure her witch-sight. She struggled to keep her bloodlust at bay, to concentrate on the unfolding patterns of destiny, and after some struggle she repressed the urge to kill, the desire for war and death.
In doing so, she looked upon the skein with greater clarity. Suppressing the bright glare of the Avatar, she could see the winding and unwinding of lives in the knots and coils that had formed around it; enemies slain and followers tainted.
Thirianna had come to a standstill, halted by the encroachment of the Avatar; Kelamith blazed across the skein, seeming to be everywhere at once. Through his mere observations the skein was changing, becoming simpler, as redundant fates were cast away, never coming to pass. To see and reject a future was to consign it to non-existence, paving the way for new threads to emerge, new fresh possibilities to weaken or grow in strength.
All of a sudden, the farseer was back with Thirianna, surrounding her in an aura of gold.
‘Tell me what you see,’ said Kelamith.
Thirianna concentrated again, not seeing the skein itself but delving into its contents. She noticed a rune she recognised from her teachings – the Cave of the Mon-keigh. She allowed her thoughts to be guided by it, plunging into one possible future. She saw a massive ork, blade in hand, cutting apart Striking Scorpions, only to fall to the blades and shimmering fists of their exarchs; the alien’s death howl echoed in her thoughts.
As she was about to depart, Thirianna caught a sense of something else, flavoured with recognition. Retracing her steps, the scene seeming to rewind through her thoughts, Thirianna paid more attention to the ork warlord’s victims.
She froze, gripped by sudden anguish.
Korlandril was one of those that would fall to the ork’s attack. Panicked, Thirianna pulled back, seeking the life-cord of Korlandril. It continued for a little while and then frayed, becoming dozens of ragged threads before disappearing into a haze of uncertainty.
‘Does he die?’ she asked.
‘I cannot see any more than you,’ said Kelamith.
‘I should warn him,’ said Thirianna. ‘He could die.’
‘There are some that die tonight and he may be one of them,’ said Kelamith. ‘You cannot prevent them all, and it may not even be desirable to save them.’
‘He is my friend,’ said Thirianna. ‘I cannot just ignore this.’
‘You focus on the wrong detail, child,’ replied Kelamith. ‘It is not the injury of your friend that is important. The ork warlord will die if we follow that path, and in its death others will be saved.’
‘How…’ Thirianna gave up trying to argue.
A miniature battle raged inside her thoughts. Her instinct was to save her friend, but Kelamith’s logic fought back and the two sides reached an impasse. Was Korlandril’s life worth two other eldar? Ten? Twenty?
‘I understand,’ she said, guilt threatening to consume her.
‘There is no time for self-pity, child,’ said Kelamith. ‘The battle begins and Arhathain must make a few changes to the plan.’
Blotting the image of wounded Korlandril from her memory, Thirianna allowed herself to be drawn back into her body. She opened her eyes and saw in the small time display of her helmet that everything she had seen had taken less than two heartbeats to pass in the physical world.
Even as she was making sense of this, feeling disjointed and split between the real and the psychic, another presence intruded on her thoughts. It was like the bow wave of a boat, pushing everything before it, sending ripples far out through the skein.
Blood and fire.
Thirianna turned, as did many of the eldar moving into the town. A patch of air was alive with psychic energy, like fire crawling along an ember. The scent of blood, of charring flesh and melting iron filled the air, and again Thirianna was forced to fight back against her rising war
-mask.
In the skein it had only been the Avatar’s potential that she had fought against. Here she struggled against its actuality, with her mind still open like a portal left unlocked.
Waves of anger and hatred poured into her. Her witchblade threw itself out of its sheath into her hand, crackling with psychic energy, its edge keening for blood. As the air split and a coruscating ring of fire appeared, Thirianna gritted her teeth and fought back the urge to slay and maim.
Feeling her will buckling as the Avatar approached, Thirianna became desperate. She ripped her mind free from the skein altogether, letting the barriers of her mind slam back into place, shutting her off from the deluge of rage. She fought to stay conscious, blood pounding through her veins, vision swimming.
The Avatar stepped from its portal, trailing smoke and sparks.
More than twice the height of Thirianna, the incarnation of the war god was a towering creature of metal and flame. The air around the Avatar recoiled from its heat, causing smoke and steam to writhe wildly. Psychic energy emanated from the creature, bringing a distant screaming and wailing to the edge of hearing. Its body was of ancient iron, a form of shifting plates barely holding in check the fiery being within.
A cloak of red cloth and flame trailed from its shoulders, held in place by a pin shaped like a long dagger. In its right hand, the Avatar held aloft a spear of immense proportion, its triangular head engraved with runes that burned with white flame. The weapon shrieked its bloodthirst – the Wailing Doom. The Avatar’s left hand formed an enormous iron fist, blood dripping and steaming from its spiked knuckles.
Eyes of fire turned on Thirianna, who backed away from the apparition. The Avatar’s gaze pierced her spirit for a moment, burning through her mental defences, bringing forth flashes of dying aliens and slain beasts – memories long repressed. The Avatar turned its head away and Thirianna let out a gasp of relief.
Leaving smoking footprints in its wake, the Avatar strode into the town, the eldar following close behind.
The eldar attack struck like lightning.
Guided by the web-beacons and signalled by Kelamith, the warriors that had remained in the webway opened temporary portals around the centre of Hirith-Hreslain. Tiny stars expanded into glowing gateways through which Dire Avengers, Howling Banshees and Fire Dragons stormed.
Power swords gleamed in the darkness of the night; the whisper of shurikens echoed from the white walls of the half-ruined town; the blaze of thermal guns and detonating plasma grenades lit up the plazas and streets. The orks, many of them still slumbering, died in their dozens to the sudden assault.
Roars and shouts, drums and horns sounded the alarm as the main force of the eldar closed in, sweeping around the ork camps to pin them against the river while the strike force tore into their centre.
The Avatar raced forwards, Wailing Doom in hand, charging directly for the greatest concentration of orks. More Aspect Warriors followed close behind, their exarchs leading their squads along rubble-choked streets and through the shells of destroyed buildings.
Kelamith and Thirianna followed a little distance behind. Every now and then the farseer paused to consult his runes; Thirianna joined with him during these moments to see the battle unfolding upon the skein.
As Kelamith had told her, the battle was a microcosm of the whole skein. Every bullet and shuriken, every sword blow and axe swing created uncertainty and possibility, the future branching out so quickly that it was impossible to follow every thread. Shadowing Kelamith, Thirianna observed how the farseer used his runes to seek out the pivotal moments, following the course of the Avatar, the ork warlord, the autarch, individual exarchs. Through these means, sense could be made of the senseless. The white noise of destruction gave way to specific detail and vivid scenes.
Thirianna moved back from Kelamith as his mind ventured towards the fighting on the bridge, fearing to look again at the fate of Korlandril. Instead she turned her attention to one of the other seers: Simmanain. He had progressed far further along the Path of the Seer than Thirianna, though his presence was a candle flame compared to the bonfires of the farseers. She watched Simmanain dancing along the narrow threads, moving from fate to fate, focussed on a handful of individuals.
As those threads were severed, she realised with a shock that she was witnessing the deaths of those Simmanain was fighting. It was frightening and yet invigorating to see cruel fate in action, brought about by the warlock’s witchblade.
‘Come, child, our presence is needed,’ said Kelamith a moment before he withdrew from the skein.
Thirianna detached her mind and followed the farseer as he broke into a run, stepping nimbly over fallen blocks of masonry that littered the street ahead. Kelamith brought them to a small square just a short distance from the main plaza. Fire and smoke erupted from a building on the opposite side, followed by the crash of large cannons. Shells screamed along a street towards the main eldar attack, detonating out of sight; Thirianna felt the sense of life lost as pinpricks of tragedy on her consciousness.
A squad of Dire Avengers appeared from the rubble to Thirianna’s right, summoned by Kelamith. She recognised the rune on the back banner of their exarch: the Shrine of the Golden Storm. Together the Aspect Warriors and seers converged on the ork artillery.
‘Ready your weapon,’ warned Kelamith.
Thirianna felt the touch of his mind on hers, coaxing her into the skein for an instant. She glimpsed a wall of fanged, green faces and saw herself with witchblade raised, fending off the swing of a heavy maul.
Reacting without thought, Thirianna swung her witchblade up to the guard position as the eldar leapt through a broken wall into the artillery position. Deflected, an ork club swung harmlessly past her shoulder. The witchblade moved in her hands, taking off the beast’s arm below the elbow as it pulled back for another swing.
Reality and possibility flashed together, creating a near-instantaneous flow of images in Thirianna’s mind. With her eyes she saw more than a dozen orks pouring from an adjoining room; with her thoughts she saw the ork next to her blazing a hail of bullets into her chest.
She leapt to the right as the ork opened fire, its shots spewing wide of their mark. Taking her witchblade double-handed, Thirianna thrust the point into the ork’s chest. The psychic sword thirsted for energy and she poured her power into it, plunging the blade through breastbone and heart and spine.
The growls and grunts of the orks filled the room along with the blare of pistols. Muzzle flashes illuminated leering, savage faces. In Thirianna’s mind she saw an ork jumping down from the shattered floor above, its axe carving into the shoulder of a Dire Avenger.
With four swift steps she crossed behind Kelamith and shouted a warning, pointing her witchblade towards the hole in the ceiling. The Dire Avengers parted as an ork almost twice their size plunged into their midst. Shuriken catapults sang, shredding the greenskin from several directions.
A shockwave of psychic power burst from Thirianna and she stumbled forwards as something crashed into her back. Her rune armour crackled with energy as she spun around to face her attacker. She had been too occupied by warning the others to foresee the blast of the ork’s pistol into her back. Kelamith’s sword parted its head from its neck with one sweep, blood spattering across the farseer’s gem-encrusted helm. Kelamith said nothing as he turned away, directing the tip of his staff towards more orks lumbering through a doorway to his left.
Psychic lightning crackled.
The closest ork exploded into a mist of vaporising blood and bone dust. The one behind it was engulfed in flames as its padded jacket caught fire, fat bubbling away, muscle charring. A third juddered uncontrollably, finger tightening on the trigger of its gun, sending a hail of rounds into the back of another green-skinned brute.
As the glow of the attack faded, the Dire Avengers opened fire, sending a storm of shurikens into the survivors, slicing flesh and bone.
Behind their exarch, the Aspect Warriors dashed into
the next room, shuriken catapults at the ready, Kelamith and Thirianna just two steps behind. They opened fire again, cutting down the small slave creatures manning three large-bore cannons.
‘Disable them,’ said Kelamith, nodding towards the artillery pieces.
Thirianna moved forwards, sword gripped in two hands. Copying the exarch, she brought the blade down into the breech of the crude gun, sending up a shower of sparks and droplets of molten metal as she poured psychic energy into the weapon. The witchblade sheared through the breech and lock, cracks running along the poor-quality metal of the barrel with loud crackles and shrieks.
Glancing out of the ragged hole in the wall through which the pieces had been firing, Thirianna could see the main plaza. The Avatar was surrounded by a swarm of greenskins, the war god’s incarnation carving left and right with the Doom that Wails. The flare of Dark Reaper missiles fizzed across the dark sky, exploding inside the buildings where a large number of orks had taken refuge.
‘We must join the battle,’ said Kelamith.
Seers and Aspect Warriors sprinted along the road towards the rest of the Alaitocii. Feeling the presence of other eldar, Thirianna glanced up and saw the dim figures of rangers, their longrifles rested on the broken rails of balconies and the sills of shattered windows. Unseen in the distance, orks died to their silent fire.
Reaching the main space at the heart of Hirith-Hreslain, the picture of the unfolding battle was clear. The orks occupied the few buildings left standing near to the river, a horde of leering faces and muzzle flares at the windows. The wreckage of several vehicles burned on the bridge, and in the light of the flames a squad of Fire Dragons and two groups of Striking Scorpions battled against the ork reinforcements. Thirianna wondered if Korlandril had fallen yet, but could not bring herself to seek the answer in the skein, fearing to see his thread cut short like those of the orks.
Two Falcon grav-tanks pounded the tallest of the remaining towers with pulse laser and shuriken cannon fire while other eldar forces moved from building to building, avoiding the killing field of the open plaza. A wildly corkscrewing rocket erupted from one of the ork lairs, fizzing across the square with a trail of sparks to hit the curved prow of a Falcon grav-tank, ricocheting from the angled armour before exploding. The thud of heavier weapons drowned out the whispering of shurikens and zip of lasers.