by Gav Thorpe
Hylandris gestured for Zarathuin to follow as he headed towards the winding stair that led down into the bowels of the massive rock spire that had been carved into the Vault Tower by ancient hands. The warlock kept pace with him, his disapproval as tangible to the farseer as the protective aura of the rune armour that pulsed in time to Zarathuin’s heartbeat.
‘There have been setbacks, but the skein has not been significantly changed,’ Hylandris said as they descended the steps. ‘We will remove the Ankathalamon from its hiding place and ensure that the humans do not discover and activate it. These Chaos savages will survive long enough to halt Ulthwé’s task force in Nerashemanthiash. For once it is the destination and not the journey that is important.’
‘One can easily trip if one’s eyes are forever on the horizon,’ the warlock retorted. Hylandris always detected a hint of suspicion and jealousy from his far older companion. Zarathuin put on his helm. ‘Sometimes, Hylandris, you need to look at your feet, not the stars.’
‘You might have given me instruction in the philosophies when I was younger, but in matters of foresight you must remember that I am now the tutor, not the pupil.’
‘Forgive my impertinence, great master of the skein,’ said Zarathuin with a mocking inclination of the head, ‘but do the runes tell you, when we are cut off from the webway gate and our starship has crashed, how we are to get off this fates-forsaken moon with the prize?’
Hylandris said nothing, his mood soured by Zarathuin’s accusations. They descended without further words for some time, the wide stairwell lit by a ghostglow coming from the tip of the farseer’s staff, the monotony of the many steps helping to centre his thoughts. The two seers passed level after level, each archway they passed sealed with flickering runes.
Eventually they stopped at one of the landings. Extending his will, Hylandris opened the portal to reveal the interior of a gravity cage. Once they were inside the door closed and a shimmering field encapsulated the platform on which they stood. There was no sensation of movement, the walls of the descent tube being a uniform light grey, but the gravity conveyor was soon descending at incredible speed.
‘Of course,’ said Zarathuin, ‘it might not matter that we can’t get back to the craftworld. If you can’t find the solution to the vault key we might as well all die here anyway.’
The farseer turned his head to his companion. His ghosthelm concealed his grimace of distaste, but the rest of his posture conveyed his feelings well enough. Even so, he felt the need to put them into words.
‘Have you nothing better to do than bait me with these jibes?’
Zarathuin returned his look, the farseer’s reflection distorted in the yellow lenses of the warlock’s helmet.
‘Nothing until this pod reaches the vault level. Perhaps we could discuss why you think you can pit your skills of prescience against the greatest farseer our species has ever created? Why not simply ask Ulthran to help us avoid both fates? Oh, I remember. It’s because you have already seen our victory. Tell me, during our philosophy lessons, did I ever tell you about circular arguments?’
‘I despise you. I really do.’
8
There was silence in the small docking vestibule. The female shuddered as the words of the Phoenix Lord hit home. The rest of the crew looked on in stunned disbelief. Asurmen was used to such behaviour, an unavoidable effect of his nature. It was important not to allow distraction to impede his purpose.
‘You are the pilot?’ he asked.
‘I am.’ She seemed hesitant to confirm this fact. ‘I am Neridiath.’
‘I have need of your assistance,’ the Phoenix Lord told her. He looked at the other members of the starship’s crew. ‘There is very little time to explain and we must get under way quickly. I need you to save questions for the moment. I must speak with Neridiath alone.’
The authority in his voice could not be gainsaid. Nodding numbly, eyeing the Phoenix Lord with amazement, the others left, leaving only the pilot with Asurmen.
Neridiath hugged her arms tightly about her body as though she were cold. The Phoenix Lord realised it was his presence that disturbed her, his spirit like nothing she had encountered before. Asurmen knew from previous experience that he felt hollow to others. Not psychically dull like the humans and other mon-keigh, and not a complete void as Harlequin solitaires were sometimes described. Asurmen was simply elsewhere. His thoughts, his spirit permeated the armour, but she had no sense there was a living breathing person inside the suit.
‘A wraith-construct,’ he said suddenly, making Neridiath jump.
‘Pardon?’
‘The sensation you are feeling, I have been told it is similar to that experienced in the company of wraithguard, wraithlords and other spirit-walkers. I cannot confirm this as the sensation is very different for me, I expect. I find them… warm, perhaps.’
‘I couldn’t say, I’ve never been close to a wraith-construct.’
‘You are fortunate, there are surprisingly few of our people that have not had to fight alongside the dead at one time or another. Increasingly so as the Rhana Dandra draws closer.’
‘The end of the universe is close?’ Neridiath looked terrified at the thought. She glanced back towards the door to the rest of the ship and Asurmen felt her thoughts flutter on the matrix, unconsciously seeking the infant he had detected when he had arrived. Her first thought was for her daughter but she suppressed it swiftly; her next words were strained. ‘The last war against Chaos is about to begin?’
‘My apologies, I view these matters in a different context. The Rhana Dandra is not fixed, but I have lived a long time and the last war is inevitably closer now than when the craftworlds first launched.’
‘So, not in my lifetime?’
‘No.’
‘Manyia, my daughter?’
Asurmen looked down at the pilot, tilted his head slightly and shrugged.
‘I can make no promise of that. I am a warrior, not a seer. Asuryan guides me, the Wisest of the Wise, but even he did not see all.’
‘I thought Asuryan was dead, killed with the other gods? How can he guide you?’
‘Through visions, which echo forwards through time from the moment he was killed. His final dream-patterns were impregnated onto a crystal and through that his gravest fears can be seen by me and the others of my kind.’
‘This is too much to accept.’ Neridiath held her head in her hands and started to pace, circling the Phoenix Lord in the small room. ‘A warrior of legend turns up on my ship asking for help and starts talking about the Rhana Dandra, and being guided here by the last dreams of a dead god? What do you need me for? I missed that part. Perhaps you should start from the beginning.’
‘I will, the very beginning if that is what you wish, but I do not have the time right now.’ Asurmen held up his hand but withdrew it a moment before his fingers touched her, leaving her to continue pacing. ‘I will tell you plainly what I need. A starship has crashed on a moon not far from here and the pilots have been rendered incapable of steering it back to orbit. I need you to launch that ship and destroy several enemy vessels.’
‘I see. In one sense that is very clear, on the other…’ Neridiath stopped walking and closed her eyes, visibly making an effort to remain calm. Asurmen wondered how he had come to such a position that the future of his people might wholly depend upon this one individual. He had to trust in Asuryan’s wisdom, allow it to guide him without resistance. ‘Rendered incapable? You mean killed?’
‘Unfortunately not.’ Honesty usually served fate better than manipulation. ‘There was an accident, but they were not slain.’
The pilot shuddered visibly at the thought.
‘I have to tell you that I will not fight. I am not a warrior.’ Neridiath looked at him straight, her jaw set, hands forming fists. There was determination there, but also tension and fear. A lot of fear.
‘It… It isn’t in me. To kill. Not idly do the Phoenix Lords enter our lives. I would be a fool to refuse your request. You are a legend, all of the Asurya are. I could not say no to you any more than if Eldanesh himself resurrected and asked for my aid. I will help you rescue this starship, but I will not, cannot unleash that monster for you. If that is what you need, you must look elsewhere.’
‘There are no others that can respond in time. The skein brought me to you, you to me,’ Asurmen told her quietly. He could understand her reluctance to fight, but he was depending upon her to do so. The survival of the battleship was secondary to destroying the Obliterator Shards, but she did not need to know that. ‘You must set course for Escatharinesh immediately. If we delay, all hope is lost.’
‘Hope for whom? You? The ship’s crew?’ Neridiath turned to the door but was stopped mid-step by the Phoenix Lord’s next words.
‘Our people. All of them. There is a war coming that must not escalate, otherwise none of us will survive to see the Rhana Dandra.’
‘Oh.’ Neridiath took a deep breath. ‘Yes, you already said that. I thought, hoped, perhaps I had misheard.’
She looked at Asurmen, her strength wilting under the weight of this revelation. She looked momentarily lost and afraid, like the child for whom she cared so much. Sometimes Asurmen forgot that he and his kind had been in existence since before the Fall and had long grown accustomed to such notions as the Final Battle against Chaos and the end of the known universe. Neridiath was having trouble assimilating this information and words failed her.
He detected a gnawing terror growing inside her, confronted by the enormity of the universe in such abrupt fashion. He needed her to be sharp and focused, now and when the time came for her to act. Better to fix her thoughts on something more tangible.
‘Your daughter needs you to do this. To safeguard her future.’
‘I expect she does.’
Neridiath’s breathing slowed and some measure of control returned at the thought of her child. Asurmen felt a moment of satisfaction. He always did when he saw his lessons, the teachings of the Path, being put into practice, even ten generations after he had first devised them.
‘How am I supposed to deal with all of this? I am just a pilot, from a small craftworld. I do not think anyone from Anuiven has even seen a Phoenix Lord before, much less the legendary Asurmen himself.’
The pilot had a strong will, he could sense it, but it would be of no use if her mind was set against Asuryan’s purpose. He had to make it seem less mythic, less overwhelming for her.
‘Being an optimist helps,’ said the Phoenix Lord. ‘When you have survived the birth-hunger of a Chaos god everything else is a gift.’
‘Comforting. Why don’t you tell me about that while we head to the control pod? Please keep talking so that I don’t have any time to think about what you’ve just told me, about the doom of our entire race resting on my shoulders.’
The door opened and Neridiath led Asurmen into the main part of the ship. Once inside the passageway she started to relax, comforted by her familiar surroundings. Her ease grew as they continued down the corridor. Asurmen felt the thoughts of the other crew filling the ship with a sense of belonging that dulled his otherworldly presence in the pilot’s mind.
‘My granted-name was Illiathin and I was born on the world of Eidafaeron,’ he replied after giving the request some thought. ‘I was an indolent youth and an even more self-absorbed adult.’
I
Along with a crowd of thousands, Illiathin stood on the vast stellar gallery and watched with wide eyes as a coronal ejection lashed out from the star. There were gasps and claps as the prominence of energised particles splashed across the gallery screens, enveloping everybody with a bright yellow glare. Almost as one, the crowd turned to follow the ejection’s course out into the system, watching the massive lick of star-fire slowly dissipate into a gust of stellar wind.
At the last moment a flock of void-suited star-riders descended from their waiting ship. Some rode longboards, others had bodywings or dragchutes. Shimmering as the flare lapped against their personal shields, the star-riders caught the stellar draught and sped away, twisting, turning, performing tricks to outdo each other in skill and daring.
Illiathin gestured, summoning a lens field in the shield surrounding the viewing gallery. In the magnified display he followed the progress of the star-riders, marvelling at their agility and bravery.
‘Ever been tempted?’
He turned as a stranger spoke to him. The eldar who approached was dressed in a figure-hugging black bodysuit beneath a voluminous puff of red-and-white sleeved cape. He looked past Illiathin at the figures dwindling in the view of the lens field.
‘No, it looks far too much like effort,’ Illiathin replied, realising the meaning of the question. ‘Also, I hear it is dangerous. Shields can fail, a missed step or turn can get you flung towards a celestial body.’
‘Fatalities are rare,’ the stranger said. ‘And if there is no risk, it lessens the reward. If you change your mind, beginners can take their first simulated rides at the Horn of Nemideth. My name is Kardollin, ask for me by name.’
‘I will,’ said Illiathin, with no intention of ever doing so.
Kardollin shrugged and memestrands in his cape stiffened, turning it into a broad set of wings. Illiathin detected the subtle pulse of a gravitic impeller as the other eldar took a step and floated into the air, catching the cross-gallery breeze to soar away with a backward glance and a smile.
The excitement of the coronal flare and the encounter with the star-rider was quite enough activity for Illiathin, so he sought a space at one of the many hostelries that lined the starward edge of the gallery. Choosing a venue at the very edge of the crowd, he was able to slip into a space recently vacated by another sunwatcher. The disc-like table grew a seating appendage at his approach, extruding itself a little further from the floor to compensate for Illiathin’s long legs. Bathed in the field-dimmed light of the star, Illiathin sat and reviewed the holographic menu before mentally selecting a strong wine and a selection of confectionery to accompany it. Moments after the wish was made a floating tray brought his order to the table, its prehensile limb depositing the jug, glass and plate before him.
He enjoyed watching other people more than joining them. The gallery, one of his favourite haunts, was quiet compared to the many times he had been there before. Most of the stellar fanatics had left Eidafaeron to watch a supernova in Naethamesh a few hundred light years away. Illiathin had decided to forego the occasion, thinking it a little morbid to hold a festival in celebration of the death of a star.
He leaned back, the chair adjusting to his languid recline. Stretching out his legs, Illiathin indulged in his favourite pastime: doing nothing at all except watching others.
Among the throng he noticed a disturbance. People were parting like water before the bow of a sailing yacht. Into the gap strode a severe-looking figure, her hair bound tight with jewelled pins, her cheeks marked by vertical streaks of stylised red tears. Alone amongst the teeming eldar she wore a robe of white, the colour of death and mourning, but it was not this that caused the crowd to retreat from her approach. She was talking, not to herself, but to everyone nearby. Illiathin touched a hand to the lobe of his ear, activating the implants of his inner ear. Instantly he was able to focus on her words.
‘…this shall not end in peace but in war with ourselves. Our great foe remains, within ourselves, when all others have been conquered. To what mischief will idle minds turn? To what depravity will we stoop when our lives no longer have meaning? What sensation shall we crave when the exotic has become mundane?’
As the doomsayer turned towards Illiathin he realised too late that it was not her words that were driving folk away, as ridiculous as they were, but the glow of the projector lenses fitted into her eyes. The moment he met her stare the psychoprojec
tors reached into his mind, conjuring up a scene from his own subconscious.
He saw himself being burned alive by the stellar flare, each layer of his body stripped away an atom at a time. He watched in horror as skin, then fat, then muscle was flensed away, all that he was consumed by the fiery passion of the star. And then came the realisation that it was not the star that devoured him, but his own passions and desires, and that they were eating away inside him, hollowing out his spirit. Into this emptiness poured a filthy black fog, polluting his body, corrupting everything that he was.
Breaking away from her gaze with an effort of will, Illiathin rose to his feet with an angry shout.
‘You’re insane!’ he yelled. ‘Fates-forsaken doom-monger, ply your misery elsewhere!’
The crowd was turning from agitated to hostile, the calls of derision becoming louder, a few threats thrown in with the denouncements.
‘Heed our words and know that our destroyer stalks us,’ the doomsayer shrieked, ducking as something was thrown at her. She had time to hurl one last warning before turning and running, pursued by a hail of insults and a few improvised missiles. ‘The exodus is coming. Only those that join us will be saved!’
Her departure was followed by a hubbub of whispered curses and murmured displeasure. Illiathin turned to the table next to his, where a young couple were holding hands, their faces pensive as they watched the doomsayer disappear into the throng. He saw in their expressions fear and hesitant belief. Most of the doomsayers were young and rebellious, conflating frustration at a lack of personal philosophy with an inherent weakness in wider society.
‘Don’t pay her any heed,’ Illiathin told the couple. ‘You’ll find something of meaning in your lives. We all do eventually.’
They left with polite, unconvinced smiles and Illiathin watched them go. He sat down and took a mouthful of wine. Illiathin savoured the tastes for some time, eyes closed. He swallowed and lifted the goblet in mock salute to the departed doomsayer, the dire vision she had hurled into his thoughts already fading.