Ghost warrior, p.4
Ghost Warrior, page 4
Almost immediately, the minions of Tzeentch changed their attacks, like a carrion flock that had been picking on a near-stripped corpse and now discovered a new cadaver close by. The daemonic host had been fractured, drawn along different lines of attack, turned upon itself by the skillful manoeuvring of the aeldari, as a dancer twists streamers on the wrist to create interweaving patterns in the air. Now the daemons pulled back, an ebbing tide, creating a vacuum that threatened to suck in the squads and vehicles of the Ynnari.
Their intent became clear again when the reformed cohort thrust across the bridges and along the streets directly towards the vortex. The air seethed with the concentration of magical energies, distorting the fabric of reality. Claws of intemporal power raked at the substance of the webway infusing the old city.
‘They seek to swell their numbers,’ called Faurasah. His warning was redundant, the sense of impeding power burned upon even the stunted psychic senses of Azkahr and the other drukhari. A discordant, unsettled murmur and whisper rustled through the host of the Ynnari. A lull dragged at the thoughts of everyone, for it was simply a momentary peace, the eye of the storm, before the full tempest returned.
That tempest came in the shape of something vast and terrible and older even than the gods. The twilight of Einerash burst into life with glittering stars of all colours, a new galactic constellation writ upon the membrane between reality and immaterial. The webway itself shuddered, the city vibrating beneath the cosmic forces that clashed around it. With a screech of stone, a tower toppled in the midst of the daemons, their bodies of flame and magic turned to wisps of dissipating azure fume beneath the crushing blocks. Dust danced upon the broken walls, forming sigils that burned the sight and mind to look upon.
All eyes were drawn above, daemon and aeldari alike. The starfield wavered, blinking in and out of inexistence. With each fluctuation the constellation grew sharper in form.
Fiery daemons and cavorting horrors lifted up flame-wreathed limbs, chattering increasing, overlapping cackles and chants rising in volume to create a cacophony that blanketed the mind as well as hearing.
With a psychic exhalation that numbed the thoughts of the Ynnari, the stars fell.
Streaks of lightning crackled about the slowly descending orbs of power, painting the broken city with strobing flashes of crimson and jade, violet and sunburst. Where they struck, symbols of change and mutation etched in blue flame upon the ground.
The counter-chants of the warlocks became horrified shrieks. Wardstones used to safely channel the power of the warp shattered, spraying shards of spark-edged crystal.
As the stars landed, they formed a shape, indistinct at first but growing with clarity as more permeated the webway. It flared within, matching the continuing spectacle of actinic power raining down from the dark sky.
Wings of cerulean feathers highlighted with grey fire spread out, and from their pulsing shadow grew taloned feet and clawed hands, extruded from the gathering psychic mass like ore deposits forming under immense geological pressures. Unreality and reality compressed and in the fault between something entirely unnatural formed a physical shell to contain its essence.
Avian and horrifying. Elegant yet awkward. A ruby-eyed vulture’s visage. Its presence sketched impossibilities on the senses, the bizarre sight accompanied by the stench of thwarted ambition and the perfume of a mother’s last breath. Hourglass eyes regarded the aeldari with infinite patience, looking deep into the soul and fate of every mortal present.
A Lord of Change, greater daemon, Arch-Magicker of Tzeentch the Mutator.
It threw out a clawed hand and a staff grew into its grip, made of solidified lightning, crowned with a coiling serpent whose undulating head and flicking tongue left ochre shadows in the air.
The daemon’s piercing cry made Azkahr take a step back, nerves painfully taut, senses thrumming. He heard a shrill outburst as though through the crash and hush of surf. Only when his vision cleared and he saw the gaze of his companions fixed upon him did the former dracon realise the shriek had been his.
‘All troops converge on the daemon,’ Meliniel commanded. Always one to state the obvious, he added, ‘We cannot allow the daemon to reach the portal. We hold at all costs until Yvraine returns.’
With an unearthly wail the Yncarne rose above the Ynnari. Soulstuff whipped about its shifting body, echoes of the dead that fed its manifestation, their sorrowful dirge drowning out the resonating screech of the greater daemon. Spear thrust towards the Lord of Change in challenge, the Yncarne sped over the embattled hosts.
The weeping oaks of Nurgle lashed their branches and knotted their roots, desperate in their clawing and agitation. Beneath their sputum-blossomed boughs, the glimmering web portal was little larger than a doorway, its brightness intensified even as its size was diminished. In form its boundary had grown into a wreath of stems with dagger-long thorns, the white rose blooms of Isha ringing the entrance, their gleam holding back the dismal umbra of the Lord of Decay.
Through the woods slashed the Ynnari, Yvraine at their head. Nurglings followed them above, spitting and defecating, littering the churning mulch with their noisomeness. They dropped down upon the heads and shoulders of the sprinting aeldari, tiny clawed hands and gnawing teeth scrabbling and scratching, broken boils smearing pus and blood over the armour of those they assailed. Where it touched flesh this noxious combination burned like acid, and in the weeping whorls cut upon the exposed skin of the wyches, tiny eggs blistered into existence, the squirming pupae of unborn mites dark in centres of each milky bauble.
Alorynis stalked the canopy above Yvraine, fur crackling with psychic static as it hunted. It leapt from branch to trunk, trunk to branch, claws rending the leathery skin of the nurglings, teeth snapping on brittle daemon bones. Whiskers and fur matted with the filth, the gyrinx paused occasionally to lick clean its pelt, immune to the infections of the Plague God.
With the portal almost fully diminished, the Ynnari spent no effort but that which they directed towards reaching their shrinking goal. They ran with light steps, many dropping weapons and shedding armour to speed their passage.
At the rear, the heavily armoured Coiled Blade of the Visarch retreated with slower and more determined purpose. Assisted by the volleys of nearby squads, they launched themselves into the pursuing daemons again and again, cutting a swathe through their foes to hurl them back before giving ground once more.
‘We run,’ the Visarch commanded at last, when he saw that Yvraine was but a score of strides from the portal’s maw.
And with that, the crimson-clad warriors turned as one and joined their companions in running as fast as possible with no thought to the baying horde at their back.
Yvraine, to her credit, spared two heartbeats to look behind as she reached the boundary of the fluctuating webgate. For one of those swift palpitations in her chest, she considered holding back, to assist the retreat of her followers. In the next, such concern was dismissed. Not only was the Hand of Darkness too valuable a prize to be lost in an act of pointless sentiment, she herself as the Opener of the Seventh Way had a grander destiny to fulfil.
Having sensed the intent of his spirit-bonded mistress, Alorynis darted past, hissing a warning as a throng of nurglings tumbled from shuddering boughs and erupted from the sodden bowers. Yvraine followed the gyrinx into the swirling energies, Kha-vir burning bright in her hand.
Still some distance behind, the Visarch saw a few others follow the Emissary of Ynnead into the swirl. With a last spasm, the portal collapsed and a dark shroud of Nurgle seeped back through the limbs and trunks like a living thing, washing over the remaining aeldari. Coldness clad their bodies and permeated their hearts, the grasp of winter squeezing forth last gasps of life’s vitality.
In the freezing fog booming laughter resounded, seeming to come from all directions and none.
‘This is fine,’ said the Visarch, the fur of his armour’s mantle rimed heavy, his breath a steaming cloud around him.
CHAPTER 4
YVRAINE RETURNED
Coming upon a raging battle where she had expected to find, at worst, the force of Meliniel clearing the last of Ahriman’s minions from Einerash, it was no fault of Yvraine that she did not notice the portal behind her implode.
She gazed in shock as the Yncarne and a Lord of Change duelled above the toppled buildings, a psychic storm roiling in their wake as blade rang against staff and shafts of cerulean and purple energy coruscated between the battling immortals. Beasts and beast-faced mutants and robe-clad acolytes poured through the curving thoroughfares. Alongside them, gambolling and cackling daemons like knots of iridescence amongst the streams of blue and yellow. Disk-riding magisters and half-avian champions of the Lord of Magic swept through the skies above, exchanging mutating bolts with the lasblasts of Swooping Hawks and the shrieking volleys of fire from ravagers and venoms, vypers and reaver jetbikes.
Behind her, unseen, the vortex shrank back into the Rose of Isha, which fell to the cracked stones at the feet of her followers that had made it through, petals gradually wilting.
‘Yvraine!’
With this single exclamation across the messenger-waves Meliniel shared his joy and relief – and no small amount of surprise. Later he would claim he had never once doubted the Opener of the Seventh Way would return from her quest. His happiness at her appearance was quickly tempered. ‘So few?’
The question finally brought Yvraine’s attention to the lack of vortex. Dread froze her thoughts, for though she had been willing to leave behind her companions for the greater cause, she had hoped that the sacrifice would not have been needed.
‘Here, mistress.’ One of the wyches that had accompanied her stooped to pick up the dying bloom upon the ground. Confusion creased her bile-scarred face as she lifted up the Rose of Isha.
‘It was for me…’ Yvraine quickly took the blossom. ‘When I passed through, the gateway closed.’
In the dying flower there yet remained some spark of life, the barest ember of its power remained. Yvraine let her spirit unfold, caressing the decaying bloom with her thoughts, imbuing it with the energy of Ynnead.
‘Once, you were sown by the Goddess of Life,’ she whispered to the failing rose. ‘Another power needs you now. From death, life.’
Like smoldering coals stoked and put beneath the bellows, the last fragment of Isha’s power waxed strong under the attention of Yvraine. Coldness seeped into her chest as she channelled the power of the dead, but from her it passed into the artefact. It felt lighter than air and she let go, allowing it to drift from her fingers.
Her view of the city coiled and rippled, as though reflected in a disturbed pool. Broken towers of white and grey shimmered, becoming the immense trunks of moss-clad trees.
The portal shimmered, silvery light spilling forth as it once more breached the Realm of Chaos.
Yvraine gasped as thorny tendrils flailed from the bloom, fixing about her arms and throat. She thought it an assault of Nurgle at first, but at their touch she felt not the hungering maw of decay but the loving touch of a mother. Pain followed, a thousand pinpricks across flesh and soul. The Rose of Isha turned blood red and the portal swelled, supping on the lifeforce of Yvraine.
She resisted the urge to fight the vampiric leeching, her breath short, stabs of pain in her chest. The portal bucked and she extended her will, thrusting her mind into the pulsating aura, using raw willpower to tear open the last fabric dividing realities.
Fog and stench burst through, engulfing her, choking and blinding. Shadows stumbled through the mists; wyches vomiting and clawing at pox-marked skin. After them, came the bulkier armoured silhouettes of kabalite warriors, flailing at the vapours as though the fog assailed them.
Some time passed, the wait accompanied by the slow pulling of the Rose of Isha, even now the rot in its blossom started to spread again.
Finally, the baroque form of the Visarch burst from the coiling umbra, the sword of screams slicked with ichor, his armour and half-cloak thick with mucus and blood. His incubi followed, similarly drenched in filth.
‘Great Unclean One,’ muttered the Lord of Blades as he flicked a gobbet-crusted gauntlet. ‘Don’t ask.’
His gaze slid from Yvraine to the two immortal beings thrashing across the cityscape.
‘Meliniel, can we not trust you to even hold a breach without making matters complicated?’ the Visarch taunted across his message-carrier.
‘Are there any more?’ Yvraine asked, gritting her teeth against the bone-pain crawling along her limbs. ‘Are all recovered?’
The Visarch saw her distress and all humour evaporated.
‘Yes, mistress, we are the last,’ he assured her.
With a shuddering exhalation, the Opener of the Seventh Way tore herself from the embrace of the rose tendrils. She staggered and fell, but the Visarch was swift, ducking into the billow of her cloak and gown to catch her.
Whipping like angered snakes, the thorn-vines latched onto the edges of the throbbing portal, dragging it closed with a final spasm of power. In its place, desiccated petals and leaves circled on a dying breeze.
The return of Yvraine sealed the fate of the battle. Reunited with the emissary of its creator, the Yncarne swelled with the power of the dead. Channelling the escaping spirits of dying Ynnari, the incarnation of Ynnead set upon the Lord of Change with a haunting battle cry, cronesword in hand becoming a short stabbing blade that thrust and gouged at the unnatural flesh of the Lord of Change. Wreathed in magic, the greater daemon spat gouts of fire and lashed claws of lightning against its attacker, screeching incantations of its otherworldly master. But for all its sorcerous power, it could not match the reignited fury of Ynnead’s avatar, which bore the winged daemon to the ground, sword piercing supernal armour and flesh in a flurry of blows.
With a triumphant bellow, the Yncarne seized the serpentine throat of the daemon in one hand and plunged Vilith-zhar into its cerulean chest. Sparks of raw warp power fountained from the wound, a stream that turned into a cascade as the deadly cronesword bit deep again and again. The Yncarne crouched over the broken remains of the Lord of Change and sank ice fangs into its breast, sucking deep at the gash upon its empyreal form. Daemon plasma streamed from the mouth of Ynnead’s avatar as it set back its head and howled.
Likewise while the soulbound and Harlequins were not great in number, their emergence from the portal added a sudden and irresistible impetus to the Ynnari attack. Daemons were put to pistol and blade while the living were left carved apart on the pale stones of the ancient aeldari streets. Escaping daemon-matter swirled in clouds through the broken towers, carrying the screams and panicked cries of the outnumbered mortals.
Freed from its duel, the Yncarne rampaged at will. Streamers of soulstuff peeled away from its floating body, wrapping about the Ynnari that advanced beneath. Invigorated by the demigodly being, the followers of Yvraine pressed on without a shred of fear, shrouded in protective energies. Splinter rifle and shuriken catapult tore robe and flesh among the oncoming horde, their whine and song sounding alongside the zip of laser and ghastly shriek of Harlequin cannons.
Renewed attacks from the starships above carved swathes through the retreating masses, cutting off the rout, leaving none to flee into the winding paths of the webway nor tear into the raw warp with spells of relocation. From the Endless Stair the white seers sallied forth, bringing with them weapons of arcane destruction that turned daemonflesh to tatters and mortal bodies to scattered particles.
‘Hi hi,’ laughed Dreamspear, at the tip of the counter-attack, his neuro-disruptor annihilating the minds of hapless cultists and croaking bird-beasts. ‘What bitter spring we bring to these foolish sons and daughters of change. Let them take heart that their misery shall be short-lived, as we rejoice in our own salvation from the murky depths.’
Behind the scintillating offensive of the Harlequins, the soulbound rejoined with their companions from the craftworlds that had been left to contest Einerash. Led by the Visarch and Yvraine, the warhost of the Ynnari swept through the remnants of Ahriman’s allies. The slightest cut from Kha-vir robbed Yvraine’s enemies of their souls to leave withered husks collapsing to dust around her. Beside her the Visarch hewed without care, his armour deflecting the few clumsy attacks made by those that eluded his deadly attention for just a moment – survivors that were not granted a second chance an instant later. Their faces, human, bestial and avian, wrung in anguish, yet not a sound issued from their throats, their voices stolen by the witchery of Asu-var.
Iyanna laid her hand upon the naked crystal of the infinity circuit. She did not allow herself to meld with it, holding back her powers while next to her the bonesinger Lietriam prepared himself also. He and others of his calling had worked tirelessly for many cycles to heal the wounds laid upon Iyanden by the Great Devourer’s invasion. They laboured in a darkened corridor, the only light the glow of their spiritstones and the aura of a lantern globe that hovered just over the bonesinger’s shoulder. They worked in sealed suits, protected from the chill airless void, tethered to the floor and each other. Fully half the craftworld was still uninhabitable even after all of this time, either still breached to the vacuum, quarantined because of parasitic or psychic infection, or simply cut off from the sustaining energies of the infinity circuit.
‘I remember it too,’ said Lietriam, sensing her unguarded memories through the material they both touched. ‘Every dome lost, every conduit severed, like losing a limb. The cancerous growth of the hive mind infecting everything…’
The spiritseer shuddered, sharing the double recollection of her own horror combined with his memory. She glimpsed a towering Hive Tyrant battering at a portal gate with snarling living blades while Lietriam held the breach on the other side, pushing his thoughts in to the darkness to meld together the fraying pieces of psychoplastic. She heard an after-echo of his chanting and felt the cold alienness of the hive mind as it encroached into his thoughts. The aliens had fired a volley of grub-projectiles at the gateway, that spattering ichor passing through the gaps. Pain had seared across his face and neck but not for a heartbeat had he faltered in his attempt to seal the door.
