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 raging 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 tow
ards 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 was 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.
The target was aware of Cho’s presence now, as was designated target D crouching at his side. This was irrelevant as Cho had already scanned them both for weaponry and found none capable of breaching her spun-metal hide. Designated targets A and B were inactive flatlines, lying together in a crumpled heap beside the wreck of the Raider. At this close range Cho could determine that target B was in fact a contained essence, a life-without-body in a metal prison. No other threats or potential escape routes could be detected within Cho’s considerable sensor range, the target was completely trapped with barely enough control of its body to stand up, let alone flee.
Cho slowly extended her spirit syphon. She took pleasure in considering whether to destroy the primary target first and then hunt designated target D afterwards for sport, or whether to simply drain them both with a single wide-setting, maximum-strength feedback loop. Caution came to the fore once again. Designated target D could not be allowed to become a distraction. She should attempt to rejoin the doubtless frustrated Vhi-engine as soon as possible and share knowledge of the kill. Their creator would be proud and recognise Cho’s accomplishment. The bothersome fact that Vhi’s attack had precipitated Cho’s opportunity meant he could still claim a victory of sorts. It mattered not at all. Vhi could maintain his rude pride and sense of superiority while Cho would know that whatever Vhi’s claims she was the one that had made the kill.
The calculation had taken only a fraction of a second. Satisfied with her conclusions Cho struck. Baleful energies played over the targets, relentlessly sucking away their life essence. Their bodies began shrivelling as if the march of decades was passing within seconds. Vitality surged into Cho’s capacitor-valves in a flood of dark energy – a fine, fortified wine in comparison to the small beer of the ur-ghuls’ crude, short lives. Cho crooned with pleasure as she drank it in.
The foot of the tower above Gorath was a charnel house. Eldar, possessed and Chaos warriors littered the flagged terrace two and three deep in many places. Even with the timely arrival of the Blades of Desire the toll of the fighting had been heavy and barely half of Yllithian’s White Flames kabalites were still on their feet. Overhead a swirl of hellions, reavers and Venoms snarled around the tower answering any shots from the defenders on the upper levels with a storm of fire. Aez’ashya – Archon Aez’ashya as Yllithian reminded himself – sauntered over to him with a hip-swinging gait that was filled with ribald mockery.
‘Nice work, Yllithian, you distracted them long enough for my blades to do all the work,’ she smiled.
‘This kind of butcher’s work you are very welcome to,’ Yllithian said coldly, ‘but sadly I expect our opponents haven’t been helpful enough to commit their entire force to be cut up out here in the open.’ He gazed up at the enormity of the tower and the ongoing skirmish significantly. Aez’ashya merely shrugged.
‘I’m happy to defer to your superior knowledge of our opponent’s dispositions,’ she said, ‘even if I find it a more than a little curious you’re so well-informed – these aren’t more friends of yours, are they Yllithian?’
‘Simple logic, no more,’ Yllithian snapped. He kicked at one the bulky corpses littering the terrace. It split open, leaking foul ichor and a sickening stench. ‘See? These are mortal servants of the Ruinous Powers – devotees of the entity we know as Nurgle. An incursion by the followers the plague lord is not just another random manifestation from beyond the veil. If they came here with a purpose I’ll wager that it had nothing to do with standing around waiting to get attacked by us. We need to organise our forces and start clearing the rest of the tower from top to bottom. We have to find out what they’re doing and put a stop to it.’
‘Oh we do, do we?’ Aez’ashya purred coolly, deliberately goading him. ‘I don’t believe that I’m under your command, Yllithian, my orders from the supreme overlord said nothing at all about that.’
‘Just what did your orders say, Aez’ashya?’ Yllithian replied acidly. ‘Something along the lines of “follow Yllithian and support him until”… Oh I don’t know, let’s just say… “until further notice?” How close does that sound?’ He noticed Aez’ashya’s eyebrows twitch upward slightly in surprise and knew that his barb was close to the mark. The pertinent question was really whether Aez’ashya’s other orders were to wait for an opportune moment to kill him, but even Aez’ashya wasn’t going to be naïve enough to give away that little nugget of information.
Yllithian hesitated momentarily as he tried to decide what to do. He desperately wanted to be away from here as quickly as possible, but leaving before the Ilmaea was stabilised would be a virtual death sentence that Aez’ashya would no doubt be happy to execute. If the forces of Chaos could take over the stolen suns during the Dysjunction then all of Commorragh would be finished anyway, doomed to drown beneath a tide of daemonic filth from above. There was really no option except to go onward.
Just as Yllithian reached his conclusion the tower trembled slightly, a momentary, vertiginous ripple across the entire structure that
hinted at the massive forces being focused upon it from elsewhere in the universe. The terrace suddenly lurched beneath their feet and cracked, fissures opening in its surface as whole chunks of it fell away into the blazing inferno of Gorath below. There was a general rush for the towers with White Flames warriors and Blades of Desire wyches elbowing each other aside to get up the shallow steps at their base. As befitted the true state of Commorrite politics Yllithian and Aez’ashya led the charge, their differences and suspicions temporarily forgotten in the face of a common threat.
A set of recessed archways in the flanks of the tower opened into a lofty chamber similarly pierced on all sides. The space was dominated by a wide, spiralling ramp that disappeared up into the ceiling and down through the floor. Muzzle flashes stabbed at the top of the ramp and a spray of explosives bolts bit chunks out of the floor at their feet.
‘Up!’ both archons cried in unison and led their combined forces storming up the ramp. Through the arches Yllithian glimpsed the last vestiges of the terrace outside collapsing, the air above it filled with a chaotic, spiralling swarm of reavers, Raiders and hellions as the stonework fell away. He was stranded in the tower, at least temporarily, until another platform could be found for disembarkation. He glanced up to see the top of the ramp crowded with hulking green-armoured shapes, muzzle flashes stabbed down at the running eldar like the opening of a set of fanged-filled jaws.
A chain of explosions whipped across Yllithian’s shadow field. Dark ink-blots enveloped each impact as the entropic forces of the field dissipated the energy into shadows and dust. Other eldar around him were not so well protected and detonated in bright crimson novas as the mass-reactive rounds penetrated their bodies. The rush of eldar hesitated for an instant as those coming the head of the ramp flinched in the onslaught.
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