by Joe Parrino
They are running between steep walls of canyon rock. The way lies before them. They are nearly free. A memory, a route, burns in her mind. She sees souldark waiting, hidden from normal sight, hidden behind a veil. The necrons know where they are. They will kill…They die.
Shadows throbbing with green veins. Shadows mar the skein. Each future, each path, each flickers with green. The souldark march through each path, through each thread. She watches them wink out one by one by one as the future becomes more certain. She sees eldar dead. She sees Alaitoc dead.
She sees Illic Nightspear, the Walker of the Hidden Path. She sees the Doom that rides him. She sees the Hope that shadows him.
There is one path. One future. It is shadows, hazy, indistinct. It is death. It is safe.
She knows. She knows. She knows…
She knew a route through the canyons. A route that they would take in the future, brought back to guide them in the now. The memory burned. It felt false, tampered with. The skein shifted. Catritheyn turned to Illic, witchlight fading from her eyes.
He returned her gaze with disgust.
‘We find our own path,’ the Nightspear said.
Ruterias and the others nodded. Only Illic met Catritheyn’s eyes as they left the trees. His eyes, glacial blue, stared without blinking. It was worse than the avoidance of the others.
The Crobh Derg tried to keep her identity fixed foremost in her mind. She was exodite, living promise of future glory. Her arms, tattooed red into claws, were corded with lithe muscle. Her hair, auburn red and rich with life, was stirred by the wind and the falling water that echoed through the caves.
She was exodite. She said this again and again.
None of the exodites believed her, something indefinable in her psychic presence betraying her. They tolerated her presence nonetheless. Biel-tan sang to her soul. She had arrived on Carnac centuries before, stepping forth from the webway much in the same way Illic and his band had done. Her purpose was different. She was no ranger. She followed the careful plans of her own craftworld.
Her presence heralded nothing less than the promise of a renewed eldar empire.
The Alaitocii farseer, skeinwitch, fatereader, knew. The Crobh Derg had seen it in her eyes. Some glimpse of the skein showed her the machinations at play. But the farseer was away, gone with the Nightspear, the Traveller who stood between the eldar and the Rhana Dandra.
She walked with the Mawr, great chief of the Carnac exodites. He was large for an eldar, tattooed with sigils of protection, sigils of the dead gods. The Bloody-Handed stretched his hand over the Mawr, but it was tempered with age, with thought and with foresight. He saw the doom the souldark presented. He listened to the councils of the Crobh Derg, to her whispered promises of glory reborn.
They walked through the caves, the silent places beneath the canyons.
The exodites rarely came to this place, naming it a place of fear, of aversion. This was where their underworld merged with reality. Where the dreaded dead slumbered and dreamed of the end of all things. The walls were marked with their runes, ritually split here and there by exodite markings.
Water dripped, dropped, fell among them, echoing memories of the snowfall in the world above. Darkness enshrouded them. Silence folded over them. Their feet made no sound as they moved, swift and sure, through the cave systems.
The smooth black walls swallowed the light, swallowed the sound. Green cracks split through the black walls, marring formations of natural stone. The exodites whispered warding rituals, scrawled runes in the air.
The Crobh Derg could feel the emotions of the other exodites around her bleeding, blending. She could feel the anger that wound tight through their hearts, the shame. They were running, pulling away from the souldark when they wanted to turn and face them with the harsh words of war on their lips. They listened to the Nightspear, marking well his words. So through the caves they fled, surrounded by dark rock, by dark air, by dark thoughts.
Distant rockfalls, distant rumbling reached their ears. The Mawr ordered them stop.
They stood in a knot, clan deference determining their stance, their pose. The Crobh Derg had her place. Fionn, the Mawr’s son, had his own near his father.
She could see the anger in his eyes, the slighted honour, the murderlust clouding his orange irises. She saw his eyes widen as the cave illuminated, flaring with bright light.
There was a mechanical buzzing, a thrumming deep in their ears. It spoke to their souls, bringing fear to the fore.
Fionn was marked. The souldark had found them. More marks flickered. More marks haloed clan-blooded exodites.
The Mawr’s face turned stony. His son, his heir, was marked for death.
The exodites grasped their weapons. Swords, knives, spears, rifles. Each was prepared to face the souldark, to embrace the Bloody-Handed One.
Fionn, true son of the Mawr, true son of Carnac, turned to his father. ‘Run!’ he yelled.
The Mawr nodded once. There were no tears in his eyes, but the Crobh Derg could feel his sadness.
Fionn and the other marked ran back the way they had come, hoping to draw the necrons away, hoping to die with souldark threads cut.
Ruterias led them. He left no mark in the passing snow, no footprints against the powder white. He was true to his title. The dark rocks enfolded him, swallowed him. He ranged ahead, along with other Outcasts, seeking the path, seeking safety.
Illic followed him without hesitation. The trust of millennia bound the pair. Catritheyn walked by his side. She felt alone. She could not see the Nightspear, only felt that he was near, so great was his skill at passing unseen. She caught sight of the others, even Ruterias once or twice, but never Illic. He walked Kurnous’s own path with Kurnous’s own skill.
Ruterias led them down random paths, only ever moving south, away from the gorge, towards the waiting Alaitocii host. They followed no logical paths, moving at odds with expected behaviour. They would move at random. Unexpected turns, unexpected twists. They played the skein, seeking to twist the paths through random actions, through erratic choices.
The rocks mumbled, the canyons split with cries of frustration as eldar souls died.
Catritheyn could feel Illic’s anger, for she felt it too. It was terrifying, deeper than any ocean, tempered with a resolve stronger than wraithbone. Eldar were dying. Even individuals who discarded the Paths, those who left the regimented life of the craftworld, were still losses the dwindling race could ill afford.
She could feel Illic’s thoughts, his anger, his rage that the souldark had tricked him, outmanoeuvred him, hunted him. He was the Walker of the Hidden Path, the Keeper of the Subtle Gift, and he was hunted, forced to flee.
Catritheyn felt the skein tugging at her thoughts, tugging at her mind. She rode its paths, just for a moment. She felt no necron interference.
She smiled at what she saw.
‘Not for long,’ she whispered. ‘Not for long.’
Adobhnan and Edarnan Huvrineyn had not strode the Path of the Outcast for long. They were young, idealistic, following Illic as they had followed their exarch, as their exarch followed her Phoenix Lord. Khaine’s sibilant whispers still caressed their souls. His voice spoke with each beat of their hearts.
They were fresh from the Aspects, fresh from the service to Khaine, god of war, blood, murder, of the darkness that lurked in eldar souls. Khaine, in his aspect as the Shadow Spectre, had once called to their souls, bringing them down the Path of the Warrior. Their choler still rose easily, emotions freed by the Path of the Outcast. Their war-masks floated near the surface now, brought by stress, attracted by death.
The Fachan joined them, separated from the other Seeth. The exodite was a silent, dour companion to the twins. His features were puckered, scarred, hardened by a lifetime on Carnac. His tattoos writhed. The cold bothered him little, if at all.
Th
e rock walls rose around them, towering into the black night. They could hear the cracking of stone, the hiss of snow, the screaming deaths of eldar.
Adobhnan felt his war-mask pulse in time to each death. The soulstone on his chest flared with sympathy, with each heartbeat. He moved with stealth, as did his twin, as did the exodite.
Freedom beckoned. It sang in his blood with the voice of murder.
He could hear a whining in his ears. The Fachan vanished.
‘Coward,’ Edarnan hissed with the voice of the Bloody-Handed.
Adobhnan agreed. ‘Coward,’ he said.
The whining rose, becoming a howl, a screech, alien and vile.
Green light flickered. Edarnan, marked, met his brother’s eyes. The pair ran. They fled the souldark. Dark walls flew by on either side. They ran from shadow to shadow, darkness to darkness, chased by the green. For five minutes they ran, outpacing the mark. For five minutes they escaped the fate spun by Morai-Heg in the Long Ago.
There was a crack, the sound of atoms screaming, atoms violated. Edarnan fell without a sound, blood standing out against his pale features.
Adobhnan howled. He screamed to the heavens. The Bloody-Handed spoke through his mouth. The war-mask consumed the ranger. One of the last remaining gods of the eldar gave voice to mourning, gave voice to anger, gave voice to rage, gave voice to blood.
The deathmarks stepped from the darkness, their skeletal faces impassive. The eldar who was once Adobhnan Huvrineyn, twinsouled brother to Edarnan, opened fire.
Tight beams of laser fire lanced into the souldark. Two were split apart by pinpoint fire, limbs dismembered by clean shots.
Adobhnan continued to fire, continued to kill the souldark when a mark flickered into being above his head, twin to the one that still played about his brother’s.
The souldark, implacable, returned fire.
Adobhnan fell beside his twin.
The world spirit’s song filled the night air, filled the darkness. It keened in mourning for the loss of dead eldar, for the violation of the necrons. It brought meaning to the snow, to the night. It brought vengeance to the hearts of all those who heard it.
Illic passed between standing stones, ancient menhirs carved of the same dark grey stone, marked in the ancient symbols of the dead eldar gods. Illic cared little for the dead gods, for they offered no succour to their living children.
Illic heard Teryen cursing, a string of invectives both psychic, physical and vocal. Illic’s thin lips curled with the hint of a smile, a brief memory surfacing. It lasted for the tiniest moment before dissipating.
They had entered a dead end, a bowl carved into the rock by the hands of ancient eldar. There was only one entrance, one exit.
The world spirit’s voice became a howl.
Ruterias, hands swathed, pointed towards the cliffs. ‘We climb,’ he urged.
Runes floated about the farseer’s head, orbiting her, whirling in the snow. Her eyes were bright with witchlight. The world spirit screamed through the wind.
‘No,’ the farseer denied. ‘We kill.’
Illic rounded on her, the other rangers bristling at their leader’s anger.
‘Explain,’ the Nightspear demanded.
The look on her face was sad, her lips downturned, eyes downcast. She pointed at Teryen Telerath. The Outcasts stared in horror. The mark, green, threatening, flickered about his head. More marks appeared.
Teryen met Illic’s gaze. There was no sadness in the Outcast’s eyes, only resolve. Teryen Telerath, his face broad for an Alaitocii, tanned ruddy by the light of countless suns, hair a riot of greens and reds and blues, marched to the centre of the standing stones. He crouched and waited, prepared to embrace death. The mark about his head called to the souldark, bringing them out from their pocket dimensions, bringing them into the waiting guns of the Outcasts and the exodites.
There was a ripping sound, a cracking, a tearing. Green lightning flashed. The eldar’s keen ears could hear metal clacking against stone, crunching against snow.
The eldar, emotions roiling, stepped aside, melting away into the snow and the dark. Teryen stood alone, his face grim. The mark twinkled above his head, full of threat, full of the promise of death. He stood in the middle of the standing stones, his hands loosely clutching the long rifle. He waited. The soulstone on his breast flared with each beat of the Outcast’s heart, with each flicker of the brand above his head.
Illic watched. Illic breathed slow, measured, while inside his thoughts leapt. ‘Sacrifice,’ Uldanoreth whispered from within Voidbringer. ‘Kill the souldark. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them.’ The warrior-smith’s words were inciting, urging, calling. Illic’s long fingers tightened along the gun, caressed the barrel. He stared through the scope, eyes locked on the entrance to the circle of stone.
Illic could see Ruterias near to him, a shadow within the shadows.
The clacking grew louder, a march of metal, a tick tick tick, snicking against the stones.
The deathmarks entered cautiously, green lightning playing about around their limbs. They raised their rifles sighting down at Teryen. Voidbringer, speaking with the rage and the loyalty of Illic Nightspear, tore one apart. Reality screamed. The world spirit howled.
The eldar reacted with feral intensity. The prey became the hunter as the cornered eldar unleashed their ambush. Desperation drove their movements. Each shot, each attack, was an act of defiance, an act of survival.
Filthy light flared as the immaterium was called through. Grasping hands slithered from the hole in reality. Others clawed at the rent in reality, trying to keep it open, trying to make it wider. Voices screamed through the aethyr as the gate snapped closed.
Illic was already sighting again, already firing. The next rent tore open into utter darkness, sentient, hungry. The wailing of damned souls from countless races accompanied it. Illic could hear a voice, familiar, insistent. Uldanoreth’s fingers on his consciousness tore away the whispering voice.
The other eldar added their own fire. The deathmarks fell apart, sliced by laser fire, ripped into by pale crystals, carved by shurikens. Their mouthparts clacked opened and closed. The eldar ended their cursed half-lives, cast them into whatever darkness awaited the souldark.
Green haloes appeared as deathmarks painted eldar targets. One Outcast, scaled halfway up the cliff, longrifle clutched in long-fingered hands, fell. Blood streamed from his nose, eyes, and ears. The body hit the ground with a sickening crunch of broken bone.
Another Outcast, hidden beneath the cold weight of a snow drift, calmly sighted a deathmark through the scope of her longrifle. The souldark, cyclopean eye glaring green, scanned back and forth, searching for eldar. She sighted, sighed and fired. Its head snapped back, pierced by laser fire. It clattered to its knees, metal ringing. She rose from the snow and moved to another snow bank to repeat the process.
One of the necrons, one of the deathmarks, staggered backwards as it was caught by splinters of crystal launched by howling exodites. The metal that made up the deathmark’s body cracked, crumpled, broke. Splinters of green and purple crystal stabbed into it, embedding themselves in the necron’s body. It kept trying to lock on to the exodites, searching to fire, searching to paint its mark. The exodites proved too fleet of foot. The Carnac eldar fired, ran, adjusted, and melted into the snow and the dark before firing again.
Two of the exodites were caught in the open, caught between reaping their vengeance. The green mark had scarcely appeared above their heads before they fell in the act of running. Arms pinwheeling, all forward momentum stopped as they staggered into the snow, staggered to their knees. Blood dappled the snow. The standing stones flared with each eldar death as the world spirit absorbed their souls.
Reality screamed. Reality bawled, bellowed, squealed as Illic fired Voidbringer. Each shot tore the fabric of the veil, opened Carnac to the vile attentions o
f the warp. Each shot culled souldark, carved them from existence.
Illic’s fury, Illic’s incandescent emotions, blurred the skein. His emotions were mercurial, bleeding, jumping, shifting, unfettered by the regimented life of the eldar. The Nightspear, the Walker on the Hidden Path, was an avatar of death. He fired Voidbringer and moved, shadowfast, to a new position before firing again. Each shot was judged with precision. Each shot was perfectly accurate, perfectly deadly.
One shot caught a deathmark in the chest, opening a hole, opening a breach. Tongues licked out, wrapping around the souldark’s limbs, pulling the struggling necron into the hole, into the warp, into damnation. Laughter echoed out of the breach, the laughter of thirsting gods. The voices, the twisted joy lasted only briefly before the hole snapped closed.
It was the last deathmark to die in the ambush. Silence reigned in the bowl, in the depression. It was the silence of the dead. The Outcasts, the exodites, Catritheyn and Illic gathered between the standing stones. Their numbers were diminished. They could feel the gaps where comrades once stood.
Ten of the twenty eldar were dead, killed by souldark. The marks still played faintly around their heads.
One of the dead, Teryen Telerath, his face broad for an Alaitocii, tanned ruddy by the light of countless suns, hair a riot of greens and reds and blues, lay slumped between the stones, blood and brain leaking from his nose.
Illic howled his grief to the skies. He crouched by his fallen friend. The Nightspear stared, tears streaming down his face. He took Teryen’s blood and marked his face with the sigils of Khaine and Kurnous. He grabbed the soulstone winking on Teryen Telerath’s chest.
Ruterias stood near Illic saying nothing, his eyes downcast.
Catritheyn stood near, but apart. More distant even than the exodites.
She spoke hesitantly, daring to break the silence. Her question was addressed to Illic. ‘Where do we go next?’