Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  Unlike more ‘civilised’ societies, Exodites have no horror of death, they live side by side with the raw thews of nature where death is a daily occurrence. The fleshy vessel in which the spirit had resided was of little consequence to an Exodite like Sardon once the spirit had fled. No, handling the dead did not trouble her, but the sight of their terrible injuries did. A handful had seen quick, clean deaths, sheared into pieces as neatly as if giant shears had shut on them. Most were more like the first she had found. They had been crippled and then carved like joints of meat. It sickened her to imagine the pain that had been so gratuitously inflicted upon them.

  Most troubling to Sardon was that she had found no female remains. The body of the shrine’s worldsinger was missing. Sardon had imagined that it could have been buried in one of the collapsed areas of the shrine, or even that the worldsinger had cast herself into a pit to end her own life rather than fall prey to the Children of Khaine. Deep down she knew that neither was the truth. There was a keen sense of loss in the dragon’s rage that she had struggled to understand at first, now she believed she understood. The young worldsinger who was present at the shrine when the cataclysm began had been taken. She had been kidnapped and dragged off into bondage by a pack of the most evil, sadistic violators imaginable.

  Once the thought had entered her mind it would not leave. Physically and emotionally exhausted Sardon had curled up on a flat slab of fallen stone, shoulders quivering as she allowed herself to weep for wardens and their lost worldsinger. Sleep came as a mercy, her brain finally blotting out the horror beneath a wave of sweet oblivion. But the restful darkness did not endure for her. Freed of their conscious bonds her dreams flew free and became intertwined with those of a greater being. She found herself dreaming the dreams of the world spirit itself.

  At first she saw herself lying in a cave, her pale form looking soft and vulnerable amid the black, jagged rocks. The cave was like and yet unlike the World Shrine. This World Shrine was a vast, shadowy space that was old beyond reckoning, older than the stars themselves. Its wall crumbled and fell back to reveal caverns and tunnels beyond that were beyond numbering. The openings stretched impossibly into the distance. Some held glimpses of other places and other times, bright tableaux that formed for an instant and then were gone. Others moved through stately cycles of ruin and regrowth before Sardon’s dreaming vision.

  Sardon became aware of the invisible conduits of power running through the place, the pulsating life force of the planet whirling past on its eternal loop through the foci spread across its surface. Barrows and cairns and obelisks knit the psychic flow into a lattice, a self-propagating diamond compounded of the spirits of every being that had ever lived and died on Lileathanir. Their essence girdled the world, insulating it from the hostile universe beyond with a psychic shield so dense that no corruption could breach it. The world spirit of Lileathanir had become a mighty thing, the land had become it and it had become the land.

  Hubris. Sardon could sense the bitter reek of it everywhere. The world spirit had become mighty, a nascent godling in its own self-contained universe. In its pride it had overlooked the threat from beyond, trusting that its strength in the metaphysical realm would apply in the material realm also. Instead it had been hurt in a way it could barely understand and now it raged with puerile petulance. In a distant corner of the caverns flames licked hungrily as the dragon grumbled and hissed in its slumber. Sardon’s dream-self quailed. She did not want to get caught in the dreams of the dragon. Its rage would consume her, burn her to ash like the broken lands beyond the holy mountain. Sardon tried to master her fears, to direct herself and travel through the dream as she had been taught long ago.

  Her disquiet made the place she was in even more frightening, solidifying the caverns into dripping walls black with moisture. Stalagmites and stalactites crowded everywhere like petrified piles of dung and hanging slabs of meat. Beyond and around them roamed the hiss and whisper of dead spirits, their dry voices rustling horribly on the edge of perception. The billions of dead souls trapped in the Lileathanir matrix flowed around her like smoke, individually no stronger than any single mortal but collectively… Collectively they became the world spirit and a gestalt psychic power capable of so much more.

  Sardon found herself before a crack in the weeping rock wall, wide and low like the one in the mountainside she’d had to crawl through to reach the real World Shrine. She pushed inside, crawling into the narrowing split towards a chink of light on the far side. The roof and floor pressed so closely together that she had to force herself between them, edging forward with shoulders flat and head turned to one side to get closer to the light. Claustrophobia gibbered at the edge of her dream-consciousness, threatening to send her into a blind panic thrashing against the implacable rock. She stopped, and breathed deep (mentally, at least) to quell the emotion. Finally she wriggled herself close enough to bring her eye to where she could peer through the chink.

  Beyond it lay the World Shrine as it had been before the cataclysm, full of light and life. Sardon’s point of view was constrained, seeming to come from high up at one moment, then through the eyes of a different Shrine Warden in the next. Every point of view told the same story with more or less grisly detail. Sardon soon became sickened by the violence and tried to crawl away. She found that she could not back out of the crack. The rock seemed to have closed up even more closely and held her as if petrified. She was constrained to watch the violation of the shrine enacted over and over again.

  A small group in black appearing suddenly, shifting and barely seen… sharp blades glittering as the Shrine Wardens were butchered like children… The worldsinger captured just as she attempted to take her own life… her limp form carried off through a portal into the webway… and the world spirit, for all its metaphysical strength, helpless to intervene.

  It had tried, its attempts wrecked first the shrine and then the world as it lashed blindly at the attackers. It was all for naught. The perpetrators slipped away into the webway like thieves in the night and beyond the reach of the world spirit of Lileathanir almost before it had perceived them. An entity that had dreamed for aeons was stung into wakeful wrath, and the vengeful fury of the dragon found full expression in that waking. The stones around Sardon’s body still shook with the memory of it.

  A sinister, imposing figure in all-enclosing armour had directed the dark kin, its red-eyed helm tusked and horned like a beast. It bore a terrible double-handed blade that was the ruin of all who came before it. This one was the last to leave, turning before the portal to sweep its gaze around the shuddering shrine. The burning eyes seemed to look straight at Sardon and the figure spoke with a voice like the tolling of a great bell.

  ‘Only the naïve try to forgive and forget!’ the voice roared. ‘Arhra remembers.’ As the words were spoken the rock holding Sardon began to move, grinding slowly shut like huge, black jaws. She felt a horrible sensation of compression, suffocation and finally… blackness.

  Sardon awoke in the hot, foetid darkness of the World Shrine gasping for breath.

  ‘Sorrow Fell?’ Kharbyr muttered to Xagor. ‘Just how the hell are we going to get all the way up there on foot?’

  ‘This one does not know,’ the wrack responded mournfully. ‘These were the archon’s words, not Xagor’s.’

  In the baroque, anarchic geography of Commorragh, lowly Metzuh tier was about as far as you could get from Sorrow Fell without disappearing into the pits beneath. Even before the Dysjunction no direct connection had existed between the two districts. The rare physical interactions between their denizens meant chancing a flight through the hostile upper airs or using a well-guarded portal.

  ‘The long stairs might still be standing, I suppose,’ Kharbyr said uncertainly. ‘If we can find our way up to Hy’kran somehow.’

  ‘This one does not know,’ Xagor repeated. The wrack’s passivity was starting to irritate Kharbyr immensely. Given ev
en the most basic leadership the wrack seemed content to go along unquestioningly with whatever he was ordered to do.

  Led by Naxipael and Bezieth, the small band of survivors seemed to be pushing towards the core. They had left the slaughter faire and taken to the covered streets and wider passageways of Metzuh, occasionally crossing open plazas that were eerily devoid of people and mounting stairways more or less choked with debris. As they moved further from the Grand Canal there was less evidence of intrusion. The bodies they found increasingly showed signs that they had died at the hands of mortal foes rather than twisted entities from beyond the veil.

  Always inward, always upward. Kharbyr began to suspect that the archons didn’t really know where they were going and were just making a confident show of following their noses. Kharbyr took another pinch of agarin to clear his head, savouring the clean bite of it and the shiver it sent down his spine. The one bright side of recent events was that Kharbyr’s pouches were now bulging with looted stimulants and narcotics. If he lived through this he would be rich, or at the very least well supplied. The flat metal pentagon Xagor had given to him still rode inside one of his inner pockets. It had remained dead and lifeless but it gave him a vague sense of protection that he was happy to accept under the circumstances. Touching it made him think of a new angle to take in prodding Xagor into action.

  ‘Xagor, we just need to find a good place to hide until this blows over,’ Kharbyr said in what he hoped were his most reasonable and persuasive tones. ‘We both have a duty to protect what the master gave me – it simply isn’t safe to be wandering around with it like this.’

  That made Xagor hesitate for a moment. Kharbyr knew the wrack was dedicated to his master with a kind of pet-like devotion that he found hard to fathom. The very suggestion that Xagor might be in danger of failing Master Bellathonis in some way was enough to give the wrack pause for thought.

  ‘This one is not so sure,’ Xagor admitted eventually, ‘that Sorrow Fell will be safer for anyone except archons.’

  ‘You see! Now you get it!’ Kharbyr hissed. ‘If we show up at Sorrow Fell we’ll just get thrown back into whatever mess happens next, and the one after that, and the one after that until we’re dead!’

  Kharbyr shut up quickly when he saw Bezieth look sharply back in his direction. He prayed she hadn’t overheard his words – Bezieth was looking dangerously frustrated and in need of something to take it out on by way of diversion. The survivors walked on in complete silence for a time accompanied only by the creaks, crashes and distant screams of the disaster-wracked city.

  Eventually Xagor dared to whisper, ‘We two are not strong enough to survive alone,’

  ‘I have a plan,’ Kharbyr said smugly. ‘You just need to stick close and follow my lead when I make my move.’

  Xagor looked at him uncertainly for a moment and then shrugged fatalistically. ‘Xagor will remain with the master’s gift. If need be this one must be on hand to retrieve it.’

  ‘Eh? What do you mean “retrieve it”?’

  ‘If Kharbyr dies, Xagor must retrieve the gift. The master indicated the gift would survive extremely high temperatures, entropic energies and significant crushing forces unharmed.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

  They had come to another shattered street, this one open above to a view of luridly tainted skies. Needle-fine streaks of fire and false lightning flared on high. Their passage traced battles taking place kilometres up in the air at a distance too great to discern the antagonists by anything other than their weapon discharges. Whoever was doing the fighting it seemed very lively up there, reflected Kharbyr. His plans for just stealing a jetbike or skyboard from somewhere and making off suddenly seemed less appealing. The plan had been vague on the where to go part anyway, but the hostile skies definitely weren’t the place to be right now.

  The street ahead widened into an open space, a courtyard the width of a parade ground where broken fountains leaked sluggishly across the flagstones in several places. Three sides of the court held an assortment of tumbled buildings and blocked street entrances. The far side of the court was delineated by an iron-grey wall that rose for half a dozen metres up to a jagged, crenellated top. A good way beyond the fang-like merlons at the top of the wall another sloping face could be seen off in the distance, this one of deeply grooved silver that ran upwards until it vanished from sight. The grey wall had a suspiciously uniform-looking gap running along its base rather than a foundation, and no gate or bridge in evidence. On seeing this Kharbyr suddenly realised at once where they were.

  ‘Latiya’s steps,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It seems our archons knew what they were about after all.’

  Latiya’s steps were an interconnected series of moving platforms that gave access to the higher tiers of Commorragh around Ashkeri Talon. The stories said that long ago Archon Latiya had been so deathly afraid of flying that she had caused the steps to be built to give herself easier access to the upper tiers. It was a farfetched tale but stranger things had happened in Commorragh in the past, and much worse legacies had been left behind by less mundane phobias. The steps were simply considered quaint and old fashioned in modern times, typically well guarded but seldom used for anything practical. Kharbyr had heard the steps operated by some kind of fluid metal under pressure moving the platforms. He’d never considered that they might still be working.

  The survivors moved warily into the open space, spreading out instinctively to present a less tempting target for any lurking snipers. When they were part way across the court Kharbyr spotted a flicker of movement between the crenellations and shouted a warning. All nine survivors vanished behind pieces of shattered stonework in the twinkling of any eye. No matter how skilful a fighter was they all knew that a lance blast or disintegrator bolt could end their life in an instant.

  Kharbyr was crouched behind a bitten-off half moon of fountain bowl. Xagor lay a few metres away behind a chunk of fallen rock barely big enough to hide him. The wrack poked out his ridiculous rifle to scan the battlements and Kharbyr watched with interest to see whether Xagor would get shot. Being armed with only a pistol he felt justified in hanging back out of sight for now. Not for the first time he regretted not picking up something heavier back at the processional, but it had looked like a lot of extra weight to be dragging around at the time. Xagor was not shot or even shot at. After a few seconds Kharbyr called softly to the wrack.

  ‘What can you see?’

  ‘Some few heads bobbing,’ Xagor said before adding unnecessarily. ‘No shoot yet.’

  Kharbyr peeped over the rim of the bowl and caught sight of four helmeted heads and gun barrels between the battlements. Nothing bigger than a rifle was in evidence and they were all angled to point at no one in particular – either a good sign or part of a very elaborate trap. Kharbyr ducked back down and checked the streets behind him. A band of warriors (or truth be told even a band of small children) bursting out on them now would put the survivors into a deadly trap. Nothing could be seen or heard in that direction either, but a spot between Kharbyr’s shoulder blades that he’d learned to respect in the past still felt itchy. Something was surely amiss. Naxipael stood up in full view and called out in a commanding voice.

  ‘I am Lord Naxipael of the Venom Brood. Who is it that speaks for you? Come down and join us, our strength must be combined.’

  There was a pause before a shout came back – not from one of the exposed warriors, Kharbyr noted wryly, but from someone keeping out of sight. He wondered how many more of them were hidden behind the wall.

  ‘Venom Brood is lower courts dreck, you shouldn’t even be out of Metzuh,’ came the sneering response.

  That was interesting and said a lot about the respondent. Not from Metzuh or affiliated with the lower courts, that was for sure. The tier rivalry sounded like something Hy’kranite, they always had special contempt for Metzuh being directly bene
ath them, just as Azkhorxi had nothing but contempt for Hy’kran and so on all the way up to Sorrow Fell and Corespur. Just as importantly, the hidden speaker didn’t feel strong enough to face a petty archon or command him to leave, a fact that was not lost on Naxipael. He laughed cynically.

  ‘You can’t come down, can you? You’re stuck up there because the controls are locked. Guess who has the key?’

  A faint horizontal line had appeared on the silver slope beyond the battlements, descending at a deceptively unhurried pace, thickening and darkening swiftly as it came. Naxipael saw it and jabbed a finger towards the approaching apparition.

  ‘You’d best join me while you still can, you’ve got company coming,’ Naxipael shouted merrily. ‘Or perhaps they’ll turn out to be more amenable to using common sense in a crisis.’

  Curses and the rattle of armoured figures running sounded behind the wall as the helmeted heads vanished. The descending line had resolved into another battlemented wall, this one gunmetal in colour and lined with warriors. The sharp crack of splinter fire intermingled with the throatier bark of disintegrators indicated that there was going to be no negotiation with the newcomers. The answering fire from their superior location was immediate and intense.

  ‘All right!’ the voice shouted with a new edge of desperation to it. ‘Help us and we’ll join you!’

  Naxipael sang out five oddly twisting words and, after a slight quiver, the whole iron-grey wall began to descend. First the gap at its base narrowed and vanished, while the battlements kept sliding downwards until they became little more than a row of sharp teeth across the courtyard that could be stepped between. Beyond the row Kharbyr could see a dozen bronze and green warriors crouching behind scanty barricades they had thrown up from fallen rubble. The gunmetal wall was still a dozen metres up, the underside of it clearly showing where its risers connected to the grooved slope.