Ghost warrior, p.3
Ghost Warrior, page 3
Guided by this, she led Althenian down a winding trail that had once been lined with glorious scarlet-barked phoenix-branch. The ancient trees had been reduced to stumps and cankered roots by the burrowing mites and bacterial plague of the tyranid onslaught. Though all had been purged of the physical taint, the lingering pall of death hung over them, clouding Iyanna’s senses and thoughts.
They came upon a small dome-ceiling abode, a shrinestone marked with runes of Asuryan and Lileath fallen across the pathway in front of it. The roof had partly collapsed, leaving four pillars standing at the corners, a pile of shattered rubble within.
‘Here,’ said Iyanna, the soul-burning in her thoughts as distinct as the hot presence of the wraithlord beside her. ‘In here.’
The wraithlord stepped forward and stooped to pick up a piece of stone as large as the spiritseer. Articulated fingers as deft as any living digits yet more powerful than a metalworker’s vice closed on the broken edges and, powered by his puissant spirit, the gigantic construct easily lifted away the debris.
‘Three hundred and one battles, a hero…’ he said. ‘Or perhaps, counting three hundred and two, with the last.’ He turned slightly to grab another slab, revealing acid-scarred wraithbone on his back. ‘Now, here I am, employed as a labourer. What glory.’
‘Your strength can be put to other tasks than crushing alien skulls,’ Iyanna said. ‘Be thankful you have a use at all.’
‘Wars remain, so too those that must fight them, such as me,’ Althenian replied, his projected vision-thoughts becoming a shadow of storm clouds in the spiritseer’s othersight. ‘Even more, now that Ynnead has been stirred.’
‘Do not confuse the God of the Dead with your master, the God of Murder. Ynnead is our salvation, not a curse.’
‘Spoken well, the lips of Yvraine herself, given voice,’ said Althenian. He pulled away the last piece of rubble, revealing an emerald gleam in the dust below. A spirit stone, oval, of a size to sit comfortably in the palm.
Iyanna hurried forward, plucking the stone from the floor. A flare of heat and joy flashed into her thoughts. She stroked the spirit stone, proffering empathy and sanctuary with her mind.
‘For one that chose in life to eschew the company of others,’ she said to the stone, ‘you seem grateful for the presence of your fellow aeldari in death.’
‘A stark truth, something you must think about, Iyanna,’ Althenian told her, straightening. ‘Know yourself. The company of the dead is too much. Unhealthy, when one is still counted among the living.’
‘Do not confuse my dedication to the raising of Ynnead as a desire for death. My family are gone, no matter if Ynnead destroys the Great Enemy. It is for the sake of the living that I fight.’
She slipped the spirit stone into a pouch at her belt and stalked away.
CHAPTER 3
BATTLE IN EINERASH
At the other end of the guttering vortex created by Yvraine lay the long-dead city of Einerash. At the height of the aeldari’s power Einerash had been a teeming metropolis, home to millions and a centre of culture and learning. Like all of that ancient civilisation, it was laid low by the coming of the Great Enemy. Its only saving grace was the archives of its elders, the primary reason why the creators of the fabled Black Library had dragged the bulk of the city into the webway at the point of its demise, to act as one of the hidden portals to their burgeoning creation.
That the forced transition into the webway slew any survivors of the Fall was felt to be a sad but necessary consequence.
That route into the Black Library – known by the few aware of its existence as the Endless Stair – was the reason Yvraine’s portal had been opened there, and also why the city was yet wracked by intense battle. A host of daemons had been conjured by sorcerers aligned to the renegade Ahzek Ahriman, who had long desired access to the crucible of all aeldari knowledge of Chaos.
Ahriman himself was no longer present, nor those warriors of his old Legion afflicted with the curse of their kind. For those unaware of such a curse, in a bid to reverse terrible mutations inflicted upon his Thousand Sons by their reckless dabbling in the ways of the Architect of Change, the ineffable Tzeentch, Lord of Magic, Ahriman inadvertently turned his battle-brothers to dust encased within rune-sealed armour. An unfortunate series of events, to be sure, but not undeserved when one tries to harness the dark energies of Chaos.
Ahriman had presumably decided at the moment another sizable Ynnari force had arrived that his destiny was better fulfilled elsewhere. A reasonable assumption, for he had suffered terribly at the untimely intervention of the Ynnari in a previous attempt to breach the Black Library. Battle had ensued, during which a great many of the Thousand Sons had been touched by Yvraine’s powers of Rebirth and grown afresh within their powered suits. This unexpected return to mortal form had ended abruptly when the resurrected had been cast into the depths of the warp to be devoured by daemons.
Yet he had left many of his servants to continue the battle, both mortal and daemonic, no doubt in an effort to further weaken the defences of the Black Library for some future assault.
The Ynnari had gained the upper hand, driving back the sorcerous clique at the heart of the Tzeentchian host even as they had attempted to open a portal to summon more daemonic fiends. With an artefact recovered from the Black Library – the fancifully titled Rose of Isha – Yvraine had turned the portal against its perverted masters and breached the barrier between worlds into the Garden of Nurgle. About this vortex the Ynnari still held firm, fighting on though they knew not whether the Opener of the Seventh Way had succeeded or failed, lived or died.
The withdrawal of the Rubric-afflicted was a stroke of good fortune for the Ynnari, robbing the foe of their terrible weapons and relentless purpose. Of those that remained, the greater part of those aligned to the Corrupting Powers were humans, or had once claimed as such, though long exposure to the warp and the sorceries of their allies and daemonic masters had turned them into bizarre creatures. Many wore the colourful robes of acolytes, masks festooned with runic devices with elongated chins and noses, and gem-set eyes that glittered in the trails of magical discharge from the swirling energies of the webway. They carried serrated knives and crude las-weapons, or ornate staves tipped with scything blades shaped in the flame-like device of the Magisterial Power.
With them were even more deformed creatures, more beast than man, with bird visages, and feathers sprouting from body and limb. These Tzeentch-touched half-beasts were fast and strong beyond their tall, lean frames, screeching and hooting archaic cries and the incantations of debilitating hexes.
And daemons. Daemons by the hundreds, of every shape and size and maddening appearance, for Tzeentch is the god of the ever-changing and nothing beneath his sight remains stable. Cavorting fire-bound Horrors and leaping Flamers gabbled and cackled and spewed multicoloured inferno from gaping maw and quivering fingers. In the skies above, things born of drake and vulture and insanity whirled on wings of blue fire through ember-clouds, violet lightning cracking about their fanged maws. The ground itself rippled with mutating power, the infrastructure of the webway corrupted by the presence of so much daemonic energy, became towering spiral-thrusts and edifices of gibbering mouths that spat praise to the Lord of Fate.
Against this horde of the immaterial and the cursed was ranged the remaining force of Yvraine’s followers.
And what a force to behold!
Against the flat blackness of the eternal night a trio of warships shone bright, their weapons raining down the fury of tamed stars and brilliant laser. In the glitter and flare of their attack gleamed the wings of swooping hawks and crimson-hulled fighters, about which spiralled the savage barques and ravagers of Yvraine’s Commorragh-born allies.
Through pale ruin of pillar and wall, across the broken arc of bridges and in the shadow of fallen towers, the red-armoured host of Ynnead clashed with the kaleidoscopic daemons of Tzeentch. Bright splashed the mutating fire from Horrors born of the demented Architect of Fate. Burning rounds from the crude bolters of the Thousand Sons sorcerers cut the cold air to leave scintillating trails. The flash of scatter laser, the slash of brightlances set shadows dancing, joined by supernatural bursts and cruel sacrificial blades to hasten many spirits to the embrace of their god, whether Chaos Power or lord of the aeldari dead.
In Nurgle’s Garden, the diminishing glow of the portal was not far ahead when there came a loud droning from behind the swiftly moving aeldari.
Slashing the head from a plaguebearer, the Visarch looked over his shoulder.
Flies as big as jetbikes buzzed between the trees, the branches rising to let them pass. Upon the back of each rode a plaguebearer, pestilent swords gleaming with their own foul power. Behind them appeared a living tide of nurglings – each no larger than a fist, but numbered in the tens of thousands they would sweep through the forests and cleanse all sign of the aeldari intrusion. With them came more of the tallymen, their monotonous chanting a wall of brain-numbing sound. Larger creatures moaned in the shadows, crushing trees, plaguebearers and nurglings as they heaved their bulky, slug-like bodies after the fleeing aeldari.
‘Give no heed to slaying, defend yourselves and run!’ Yvraine called, waving her followers forward with her war-fan.
The Ynnari unconsciously reformed, letting the Harlequins run ahead to seize the portal’s environs. Former kabalites turned and unleashed their splinter weapons, slashing down the incoming fly-riders with sharp volleys of fire. As the fastest of the plague drones reached them, the Visarch signalled his warriors forwards, meeting the daemons’ charge with their own assault. A plaguesword swept out and the Visarch ducked, a trail of rust particles settling on the fur of his cloak. He slashed his own blade upwards as he dodged between the legs of the rot fly, severing thorax from abdomen. In a spume of ichor the creature tumbled into the dirt, spilling its rider into the waiting klaive of an incubi.
In short moments the Coiled Blade had cut down their attackers, though two of their number lay amidst the ruin of plaguebearer and fly, bright splashes in the gloom. Behind, Yvraine and the others had wasted no time in capitalising on the Visarch’s rearguard, and many were out of sight, lost in the fog and shadows of the trees, dim silhouettes against the fading light of the open portal.
The Visarch knew Yvraine would not wait for them.
He knew equally that she should not – her mission, her calling was more important than the lives of her followers.
Even so, as he set off in a run after the figures of his companions disappearing towards the rapidly shrinking vortex, he wished she would show just a little gratitude.
The Ynnari host that battled in Einerash was ably led by another of our major players. Before the half-wakening of Ynnead, Meliniel had trod upon the Path of Command, renowned as an autarch of the bellicose craftworld Biel-tan. As fate and poor fortune combined, Biel-tan suffered terribly during the cataclysms and convulsions that created the Great Rift. Meliniel, touched by the spirit of Ynnead and inspired by the works of Yvraine – eventually tied his destiny to that of the Ynnari.
Though he had forsaken the traditional path, Meliniel still wore the armour of an autarch, the green and white of his native craftworld replaced by the red of Ynnead, the rune of his new patron blazoned in black upon his high helm. He had brought from his craftworld an heirloom of his House, a spear of some repute called the Ahz-ashir, which in the dialect of the Biel-tani means ‘the striking bolt’.
He was, at the very moment Yvraine and her cohort neared the warpside of the portal, putting the spear to good use against a coven of the Tzeentchian sorcerers’ cultists. The tip of Ahz-ashir blazed with lightning as it pierced the robes and armour of his foes. In the half-warp of the contested webway, their escaping psychic matter manifested as shrieking wraiths that twisted about the blade of their killer for several heartbeats before dissipating like fog in the wind. The clatter of falling armour and flutter of empty garb accompanied the advance of the autarch and his close companions.
Of these Ynnari warriors, though exarchs and dracons, succubus of the deadly Crucibael of Commorragh and warlocks of half a dozen craftworlds, accomplished fighters all, perhaps one other is worthy of remark. Azkahr, Meliniel’s subordinate and a former dracon of the Kabal of the Black Heart. His new allegiance was worn only as a scarlet sash across the black and deep blue armour he had worn for a lifetime. His whip-like agoniser sparked and snarled as though a serpent in his grasp, entangling the limbs of the Tzeentchian devoted, sending bolts of energy coursing through armour and bone.
‘She is dead,’ Azkahr said, coiling the agoniser around the neck of a Rubric-cursed legionnaire. He ripped the helm free and with it came the screaming apparition of the former Space Marine’s soul. Gibbering, the wraith threw itself at his face in one last attempt at vengeance before it became a vanishing mist.
‘She lives on,’ insisted Meliniel. His spear brought the end to another pair of enemies, the trail of its head lit by forks of lightning, hence its name. ‘I am sure of it. The portal would fail without her.’
‘Entirely sure?’ Azkahr ducked as a towering legionnaire fired its bolter, the blazing shells passing his shoulder as he lashed the agoniser around the weapon, severing the wrist of the hand that held it. ‘The power came from the Rose of Isha.’
‘I think the Yncarne would know if she fell,’ countered the autarch.
His gaze moved to the whirling incarnation of Ynnead, avatar of the Whispering God. It roamed at will through the daemonic ranks ranged against the Ynnari, as much the stuff of the immaterium as they.
Bands of azure power wreathed the ghostly figure as it floated above the expanding melee, its uncertain flesh blazing at the strike of coruscating fire and warp-powered blast. A silver gleam in its hand was the third of the recovered croneswords – Vilith-zhar, the Sword of Souls. Against the immortally summoned, the mystically shifting weapon had assumed the shape of a broad tulwar, and with slashing strokes the Yncarne hewed left and right with abandon. Each daemon touched by the enchanted blade exploded into fountains of prismatic sparks, its essence scattered to the warp winds.
‘It could be vengeful…’ ventured Azkahr, though his confidence waned. He rallied, determined not to let his original point be missed. ‘Do you think it right that we expend aeldari lives on the whim of the human champion? It is the errand of Guilliman that brings us here, no business of the Ynnari.’
Meliniel did not reply at first. Above, startling shrieks heralded the swooping attacks of Tzeentchian Screamers accompanied by Heralds of the Master of Magic riding upon barbed-edged discs. The keening of their descent was like a talon thrumming on the nerves of those that heard it, disconcertingly alien and yet hauntingly familiar. Sorcerous green and mauve fire licked down, diverted only at the last moment by the counter-spells of the warlocks. Their rune armour burning with black fire, the aeldari battle-psykers threw back singing spears and conjured storms of crackling energy to meet the onrushing foe.
Meliniel issued a command and within a heartbeat laser fire and hails of shuriken sprang up in response as wave serpents and falcon grav-tanks turned their turret weapons skywards.
‘The enemy of our enemy…’ the autarch began.
‘Is our enemy,’ cut in the former dracon. His sneer was audible even if his masked helm concealed the lips that formed it. ‘We should be using the humans as the shield they were created to be, not expending our effort and lives in their defence.’
‘Our fates cross,’ replied Meliniel. ‘If not for our quest here, the Black Library would be beset by Ahriman’s cohort. Though we seek the croneswords and serve Ynnead, we must remember that our first duty is to oppose the Dark Powers.’
Azkahr was not disposed by nature or experience to argue the trifles of loyalty to others. His rise to the rank of dracon had been liberally lubricated with the blood of many former allies, a trait he did not think worth dropping in light of his defection to the cause of the Ynnari. Even so, he had agreed to defer to the command of Meliniel without any ambition of his own, and gritted his teeth to hold back further retort.
While Meliniel saw the unfolding battle as a great concert of effort, a grand strategy unfolding in a series of movements, harmonies and discords, Azkahr viewed the bloodshed in more personal terms. The Tzeentchian cohort was a body, a being, to be taken apart in specific and painful ways. It could be ended swiftly or made to endure a lingering demise. One merely had to focus on the correct organs.
Meliniel, true to his temperament and the culture of the craftworlds, was going for the heart. Having already sundered the sorcerers from their vortex, he pursued them with vigour through the ruins of Einerash. The bulk of the Ynnari had formed a rearguard of sorts, a collapsing defence that was constantly moving, holding in one place while falling back in another, creating separation between the greater tide of daemons and the company of the autarch.
It was a sound enough plan, minimising the casualties of the Ynnari but at the cost of inflicting little damage also. It was like a fighter parrying constantly, not once looking for the counterstrike. Azkahr itched to deploy his ravagers and raiders, to launch a surprise offensive that would slash through the oncoming daemons. He would sever a limb, isolating one part of the body, to concentrate upon it to the exclusion of all else until it was destroyed.
‘Something stirs in the vortex,’ warned one of the warlocks, Faurasah.
Their attention drawn to the swirling maw of power, Meliniel and Azkahr saw the change that had been wrought. At the heart of the roiling cloud could be seen sparks, like distant suns growing in brightness.
