Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  Morr paused after they passed the threshold, gazing back into the heart of the warp breach dancing triumphantly over the ruins.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Aez’ashya.

  Morr was silent for a long moment before he replied. ‘The bones of El’Uriaq anchored this shadowplay. His ruined palace, his dead courtiers and all the rest of it endured only by his will. With his absence they are lost.’

  ‘Wait, what?’ gasped Sindiel. ‘He’s dead! How can he have willed anything?’

  ‘No, no. Mistaking dead flesh for dead mind,’ whispered Xagor, holding the casket containing the skull at arm’s length from himself.

  Sindiel remained unconvinced. ‘How can his soul have survived? You saw what happened to Xyriadh!’

  ‘Well, maybe you can ask him when we get out of here,’ Aez’ashya replied flippantly, ‘which we had better do soon if we don’t want to stay permanently.’

  Morr straightened as if shaking off a deep reverie. ‘Yes. We must leave now. Prepare yourselves, the return journey will not be so easy.’

  Rushing winds were birthing in the wastes, rapidly growing from vagrant zephyrs to a yelling torrent that beat against their faces as they struggled into the teeth of the tempest. Periodically, soulless wretches blew past, flailing idiotically, their flickering life sparks sucked voraciously into the screaming void. Slowly they struggled towards the shelter of the surrounding ruins, pulling free step-by-step from the kraken-like embrace of the breach.

  ‘Oh no!’ Sindiel gasped, pointing frantically. Riders on sinuous bipedal mounts could be glimpsed in the distance behind them, while ahead of them an emergent glow was painting the shattered walls with reflected glory.

  The Handmaid swept into view, her delicate feet walking on air and with banners of aetheric fire wreathing her limbs. A stillness surrounded her, her own personal eye in the hurricane force of the winds. There was no doubt she perceived them this time. Bright, inhuman eyes looked down on the agents with deliberation. Lambent power flowed from her, forming an incandescent rosette in the darkness. When she spoke her voice was chimes and bird calls, infinitely sweeter than the sickly, persuasive words of daemons.

  ‘What noble suitors are these, that would brave the perils of Shaa-dom?’

  ‘We came to rescue the bones of your old master, El’Uriaq, that he might live again and avenge himself at last. Let us pass and we would leave this place without delay,’ said Morr carefully.

  Complex emotions chased across the Handmaid’s too-beautiful face at Morr’s words. Rage and sadness were there in equal measure and it was a bold heart that did not quail before the sight of her passions aroused. The moment passed as quickly as it had come, and when she addressed them again it was with unreadable serenity.

  ‘You are bold indeed to make such claims. Grant me but one simple boon, noble knight, and I will let you pass.’

  The agents tensed for sudden violence, watching Morr carefully for their cue. To their surprise the incubus did not move.

  ‘What is your desire?’ he asked.

  She smiled with hellfire burning in her eyes. ‘Show him to me.’

  Morr gestured Xagor forwards and with shaking knees the wrack complied. He lifted the casket he bore and opened it to reveal the polished red skull of El’Uriaq. The Handmaid crouched in genuflection, a tragic smile on her ethereal features.

  ‘Long has it been, my lord, since we danced and sang for your pleasure. Do recall it? Endless nights in gardens wrapped in the scents of asphodel and nenuphar. How we loved you and your lady! You were our sun and moon! I’m saddened to see there’s no pleasure left in you now.’

  The too-bright eyes looked away before rising to examine them again, dangerous fires smouldering in their depths.

  ‘Go. Take your prize,’ the Handmaid said. ‘I will spare you in honour of him. Revel in your lives while you still have them, my gift to you for bringing him back into the world. Remember, if you can, that he was once greater than you can know. Remember also that you chose this path for yourselves, wherever it might eventually lead.’

  The Handmaid vanished like a blown-out candle, and as the shadows crowded in closer the sudden absence of her light seemed blinding.

  CHAPTER 12

  A RESURRECTION

  El’Uriaq! El’Uriaq!

  Shaa-dom was his realm.

  How proud he stood! How low he fell!

  El’Uriaq! El’Uriaq!

  Felt Vect’s blade and went to hell!

  – The March of the Vanquished

  A breathless air of anticipation hung about the shadowy chamber. The worldsinger Laryin lay captive on the examination table at its centre, unrestrained but seemingly pinned beneath the unwinking glare of a dozen harsh spotlights. A diadem of cold metal pressed at her brow, its silky leads trailing off to sinister-looking boxes of equipment to one side. The gaunt scarecrow figure of Bellathonis bent over them, his white, long-fingered hands like anxious birds flitting across the polished controls. Twin crystal-fronted sarcophagi overhung the scene like the faces of eldritch gods sitting in judgment.

  ‘There,’ the master haemonculus said to Laryin, ‘we are almost ready to begin. You must forgive the lack of physical restraints – as I mentioned a sense of utter helplessness does sometimes have its part to play.’ He delicately raised one of her slender wrists between thumb and forefinger before allowing it to drop limply back onto the slab. ‘Have you ever heard of a weapon called a terrorfex, my dear? I suppose it would be surprising if you had, it’s an extremely rare device even here in the eternal city. A terrorfex is made out of wraithbone, you see, and that’s hard to find as it cannot be made in Commorragh. Wraithbone has to be… harvested from the divergent branches of the eldar, like the craftworlders and your own people. We have a lot of other uses for that resource I can assure you, and hence few terrorfexes are made these days. Sad to see such an elegant device fall out of use, but I digress.

  ‘The way the terrorfex works is by psychically inducing visions so nightmarish that the victim is rendered helpless. The wraithbone is imbued with negative energy to act as a sort of catalyst. All it does really is to blow open the gates, so to speak, and allow your own worst fears to reign supreme. You’re placed into a personal hell of your own making.’ The haemonculus paused and turned to smile at her. ‘Quite delicious really.’

  He stepped across to look closely into Laryin’s face. She had spent hours in his presence and not once had he done anything directly to harm her. If anything he had been unctuously charming throughout. She was unable to move but her very psyche still flinched instinctively from his hooded malice, trying to crawl away into some safe inner haven. Bellathonis chuckled.

  ‘I have been working for some time,’ he continued, ‘on isolating the principles of the noble but sadly neglected terrorfex. I believe I can employ those principles in a more carefully metered form suitable for my own purposes. My initial tests have been most promising, and in your case I believe I have hit upon the perfect means to exercise full control.

  ‘Physical pain has its limitations, you see. The body is most wonderfully equipped to inure itself to physical pain, and the mind is equipped to achieve a state of dull acceptance – some would maintain a transcendence – with a rapidity that is really most unhelpful. Mental anguish, on the other hand, is always fresh, immediate and utterly inescapable.’

  ‘Is your creature liable to actually do something anytime soon, Nyos?’ Xelian asked languidly.

  Yllithian shifted uncomfortably beside Xelian where they stood in the shadows watching the haemonculus at work.

  ‘Certain preparations have to be completed in the correct order and at their own pace,’ Yllithian replied, stifling his own irritation at the haemonculus’s lengthy discourses. ‘Such great undertakings cannot be expedited on account of our own level of boredom or discomfort, more’s the pity.’

  Xelian remained petula
nt. ‘El’Uriaq is unlikely to be impressed by resurrection into a dank hole like this one, you know. You could have at least supplied some refreshments or better entertainment than this.’

  In truth Yllithian was beginning to regret choosing what was in effect a deep, dank sub-cellar to conduct these affairs. He’d had several surrounding chambers refurbished and used as stockpiles and armouries, but his fantasies about it being a secret base of operations did nothing to dispel the pervasive miasma of decay.

  ‘What we begin here will be a slow process,’ he explained with a patience he didn’t feel. ‘It could take months, years even, before El’Uriaq is able to fully emerge from his sarcophagus. I’ll move him to suitably salubrious surroundings before that day comes. For the present privacy is more important than an impressive or especially comfortable locale, noble lady.’

  ‘Oh really? And what measures have you taken to silence wagging tongues, Nyos? Aez’ashya can be trusted of course, but Morr is with the Realm Eternal and I see one of the haemonculus’s scrofulous underlings here in this very room. Where’s the other? And the renegade? Considering a loose word from any of these individuals could bring the tyrant down upon us in full fury, your requirements for privacy don’t seem to have extended far enough to my mind.’

  ‘The sell-sword, Kharbyr, is being watched and may have an unfortunate accident very soon, although Bellathonis has some unfathomable attachment to the scum so I have held back my hand thus far. The young renegade, Sindiel, is busy learning to appreciate the pleasures that indulgence can bestow and his loyalty is cheaply bought. All is under control, Xelian, do relax and try to enjoy the moment.’

  Bellathonis glanced somewhat sharply at them both before stepping over sulkily to stand by his torture devices, waiting for permission to proceed. Seeing that the moment was upon them Yllithian raised his chin arrogantly and spoke.

  ‘Begin.’

  Bellathonis made the tiniest of adjustments to the engine and Laryin was instantly plunged into soul-searing horror. She relived her awakening in Bellathonis’s torture laboratory for the first time breath for breath, feeling every pin-point prickle of sweat on her limbs. Her sense of helplessness and sick fear shone so bright and sharp in her mind that it made her gasp. The moment repeated, focused, stabilised and then went on and on and on.

  ‘Perfect,’ a distant voice said. It seemed a complete irrelevance amidst the crashing waves of terror.

  In a flash the memory was gone. The metal diadem pressed coldly against her brow and she fancied she could almost feel it inside her skull, a twisted interloper riffling through her memories. Shame, disgust, humiliation writhed inside her and she could no longer tell if they were creations of her own mind.

  ‘Now that we have a baseline we can proceed,’ the voice went on, sounding pedantic but excited now, almost gleeful.

  The World Shrine rose about her, the dank torture chamber rolling back like stage scenery to be replaced with walls of living rock and gently tinkling waterfalls. She relived the sensations of violation and horror as the Children of Khaine crept into the sanctum. Once again she was paralysed by her own fear, rooted to the spot as the killers moved in and forced to watch as they slew the guards that had given up their lives to protect her. Her fault, her shame, her punishment.

  The twisting rope of psychic energy passing before Kraillach’s sarcophagus thickened into a river, aetheric ambrosia that laved his raw body and fed his parched soul. The breath of true life gusted through him, satiating him in a way he had not known in a thousand years. New skin, fresh and pink as a newborn’s, was already spreading over his red-boned hands. He mewled with pleasure as he basked in the suffering of a pure heart.

  Suddenly Kraillach felt that something was wrong. Very wrong. A… presence was growing close by, a faint trace of spirit that he had originally dismissed as irrelevant. He felt it become stronger, forming a hole like a chink in reality that widened inexorably. The flowing river of revivifying energy was being drawn into it like a whirlpool, torn away from Kraillach to feed the burgeoning entity. He whimpered helplessly as he was starved of the essence he so desperately wanted, but his attempts to attract the attention of the dimly perceived minions below were once again ignored. Worse still, he felt the presence coming to full sentience like the slow unfolding of a dreadful flower.

  No.

  Laryin’s mind reformed around the syllable and clung to it as a rock in the midst of a raging flood. No. She grasped the tiny shred of self, struggling to free her psyche from the mire. No. The deaths and suffering were not her fault, the Children of Khaine had slain them, not her.

  Bellathonis cursed softly as the dark energy pouring out of the girl wavered and dropped to a tenth of what it had been. He adjusted, searching through her consciousness to find new vulnerabilities. Something from her earliest childhood memories perhaps, where reason could less effectively raise blocks. Maiden worlds came with a fine pedigree of voracious, primitive arthropods that could be encountered by a young Exodite… A few seconds of fine-tuning and the full flow of Laryin’s fear was released once more by a tide of bloodsucking ticks that were each larger than one of her young hands.

  Kraillach recoiled as the psychic torrent was unleashed again. For a few precious moments the hideous presence opposite him had receded as the energy flow dropped away. Now it was back, more voracious than ever. The vortex reopened and the awful sentience behind it leapt to full life.

  Newly-formed eyes pierced Kraillach from all directions at once, inside and outside and from angles that have no name. It perceived every part of him, every moment of his long life from birth to death was examined, mercilessly turning him inside out in a horrific spiritual vivisection. A conclusion was reached, septic energies narrowing their focus and erupting into Kraillach’s quivering form, psychic pus from cancerous realms outside reality jetting into his hollow soul. Life-matrices were remade and altered accordingly, the daemonic loom of fate howling as it shuttled out his new destiny with feverish intensity. Caught inside his crystal-faced tomb, Kraillach writhed in eight dimensions as he was reborn from within.

  With its seed planted, the multi-dimensional sentience set to completing reconstruction of its own form. Reaching into the energy flow it wrapped itself in the necessary trappings, transfiguring raw warp-stuff into cohesive matter. Bones reknitted, sheathed themselves with cartilage, tendons and ligaments whipped into place and muscle tissue flowed to cover new-formed limbs and torso like hardening wax. Within seconds skin was spreading over the manikin-like cadaver, ballooning to accommodate thickening muscles and a deepening chest. Fingers flexed with new life, balled into fists.

  Yllithian could feel the backwash of psychic energy from the worldsinger even with most of it being channelled to the sarcophagi above. Spectral fingers plucked at his mind, bringing an unbidden smile to his lips. Xelian gave a little moan of pleasure beside him as the flow increased, the ghostly fingers becoming a thrilling caress. Static electricity sparked from every piece of exposed metal and glowing witchfires crawled around the hanging sarcophagi. He felt some alarm, but the sensation transformed into a throb of pleasure.

  Every moment, every detail was pleasurable – the wracks rushing around clownishly in their rubberised coats, the gleam of the lights, the white-faced haemonculus intent at his engine, the pallid pain-bride on her slab and the hungry not-quite-dead raging in their coffins above. It seemed pure theatre being played out for his benefit, comical manikins scurrying on a tiny stage for his pleasure.

  The sense of alarm returned, surfacing from the wave of pleasure like a dark rock at low tide. Too fast. He locked onto the thought and clung to it. Too fast. He had believed the process would be long and tedious, only being begun today and achieving its end at some unforeseen point in the future. Feeling the power unleashed made him know he was wrong. Yllithian was no master Chaotician, his studies of the veil were limited to what was most useful to him. Even so he could feel
the strain on reality building up in the chamber. The energy could not continue to flow at this rate, it had to be stopped before disaster struck.

  He opened his mouth to call on Bellathonis to halt the procedure. Before the words could form, the crystal front of one of the sarcophagi burst in a shattering explosion and simultaneously every light in the room went out. Shouts of dismay went up from the wracks, quickly silenced by a snarl from Bellathonis.

  ‘Lights, quickly!’ Yllithian commanded. Some hand-lamp was kindled and the shadows fled from it grotesquely. In their dim illumination a new figure could be seen beside the slab in the centre of the chamber. Broad-shouldered and golden-haired, it was still slick from the sarcophagus’s amniotic fluids and covered in superficial cuts from the broken crystal.

  He was crouched beside the worldsinger and he was stroking her wide-eyed face. When he glanced up everyone in the chamber was frozen in place for a moment, feeling that he looked straight at them, reading them personally and learning more of them than they knew of themselves.

  ‘She’s been hurt,’ he said in a rich, mellifluous voice. ‘Help her.’

  Fallen shards of crystal had pierced the worldsinger’s pale flesh, and she lay now in a spreading pool of crimson. Wracks tumbled to obey, hurrying forwards with dressings and syringes in an unseemly rush. The newcomer rose and strode confidently to Yllithian and Xelian; completely ignoring, Yllithian noticed, the tumbled shards that cut his feet as he walked across them.

  Yllithian scrabbled for some sense of control over the situation. This was not, in even the vaguest sense, going according to plan. Majesty radiated from the newcomer, a sense of confidence and nobility that inspired admiration and commanded instant obedience. Obedience, thought Yllithian sourly, born not out of fear but from a desire to please him and, perhaps by working long and diligently, earn his praise. Even now, clad only in smeared ichor and his own blood, the stranger dominated the room as if he wore a hidden crown. Yllithian found he hated him immediately.