by Rob Sanders
‘Explain it to them,’ Starbane said before shuffling on through the walking wounded. Turning his great wraithbone body southward, Kael Ra led his unliving army on through the withdrawing Alaitoc and towards the invader’s indomitable approach.
Half an alien horror crawling through the devastation of the battlefield, its byzantine workings trailing behind it where its metal legs used to be. Kael Ra’s wraithbone foot came down on the abominate thing, crushing it into the scorched earth. An emerald light blazed beneath the foot and when it was lifted, the Prince Ecliptic found the remains of the mechanical menace to have been teleported away.
‘What do the exodites call this place?’ Kael Ra asked.
‘Valatar-el Ossieth, the Plain of Bone,’ Orphiel told him. ‘The clans claim that the great beasts of their herds come here to die. It is littered with the generational remains of such gargantuan animals.’
Kael Ra had seen the skeletons. As the Continuum marched impassively through the destruction, the shattered shells of Alaitoc grav-tanks and the mighty Engines of Vaul burned about them, the green phase-flash of vectored recalls claimed the mangled metal bodies of yngiract construct warriors that had been left behind.
‘The enemy claim their dead,’ Kael Ra said. It was both statement and question.
Nestra Orphiel came forward on the broad strides of her war walker.
‘No less than we do,’ the spiritseer said before bringing the vehicle to a halt and climbing down from the pilot capsule.
‘What are you doing?’ the autarch said. He cast his wraithsight out across their position. Carnacian highlands rose either side of them, turning the ashen plain upon which they were standing into a broad pass. It was large enough to allow the derelict tank formations that decorated it manoeuvrability they never got to exploit, while not narrow enough to warrant an enemy ambush.
‘Honouring our dead,’ Nestra Orphiel told him. She moved from body to armoured Alaitoc body on the battlefield, extracting the spirit stones of dead warriors with ritual reverence and care. As she moved from the flayed corpse of an Aspect Warrior to the spirit system crystals implanted in the ruined superstructures of smashed grav-tanks, she told the autarch, ‘Under dire circumstance such as these, we may request the aid of our ancestors. The constructs of the yngiract are recalled for purely practical reasons. Each warrior machine is maintained in a constant state of repair and adaptation. They will be vectored back to their unholy tombs, restored, improved and sent back out to fight you again, perhaps only hours later.’
‘What are our options?’ Kael Ra said.
‘Overwhelming force,’ Orphiel replied, returning to her war walker with her robe pockets full of spirit stones.
‘I think we can manage that,’ the Prince Ecliptic said.
‘Kael Ra,’ the seer said as she climbed back into the pilot’s capsule. ‘They cannot just be defeated. They must be destroyed.’
‘You heard her,’ Kael Ra called through the wraithscape to the spirits of the Continuum. ‘Dispense with economy and grace. I want these things blasted apart. I want them cut to pieces. I want there to be nothing left worth recalling.’
‘We go on?’ Nestra Orphiel asked.
‘No,’ Kael Ra said, looking across the field of battle – the grav-tank graveyard a nightmarish landscape of smoke-streaming wrecks and fresh death. ‘The Alaitoc commanders were right to choose this place to hold the enemy off.’
‘Those commanders died in this place,’ Orphiel reminded him.
‘And that was their tactical mistake,’ the autarch countered. ‘The surrounding relief funnels the enemy into the plain.’
‘So what was the problem?’
‘It funnels the enemy into the plain,’ Kael Ra repeated. ‘The Traveller hit them with everything he had and the Engines of Vaul failed to hold the choke point. They bought Starbane and his exodus a few hours, but the yngiract main body force will march across this plain and down on the Carnacian world spirit.’
‘Wouldn’t the geography beyond offer a greater range of strategic options?’ Orphiel asked. ‘If craftworld tank formations could not hold the enemy here then what chance have we?’
‘This invader calls himself the Traveller,’ Kael Ra said. ‘With so many of his machines on foot he will take the most economical route to the world spirit and his retreating foe. We will be the immovable obstacle in his path.’
‘Like the Engines of Vaul briefly were?’
‘They failed,’ The Prince Ecliptic said. ‘We shall not. Besides – the remnants of their failure shall provide extra protection for our stand and break up the Traveller’s slave formations as they pass through.’
The spiritseer nodded.
‘Uladhar-Thwe,’ Kael Ra called to a seer-colossus standing like a grim sculpture nearby. ‘The Shadow That Walks. I am in need of your counsel, Shadow.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Uladhar-Thwe said, the wraithseer passing the length of its crackling spear between its willowy gauntlets.
‘I am told that you were keeper of the Ever Sanctums of V’harquara,’ Kael Ra said. ‘And that you once walked the hallowed halls of the Black Library.’
‘That is true, my lord.’
‘In life you were a reader in the uncertain texts of what will come to pass,’ the Prince Ecliptic said. ‘Tales, poems and histories with beginnings but no end.’
‘All future is in flux, Prince Ecliptic.’
‘And there is no greater proof of that than our standing here today – on this Plain of Bone, that fate has selected for the last of our last stands,’ Kael Ra said. ‘Uladhar-Thwe – the Shadow That Walks – like a greedy child, I need the morrow’s bounty today. Tomorrow will be too late for us. In the Ever Sanctums of V’harquara, there will be a tome – as yet unwritten – describing what happened here on this Plain of Bone. I need you to have read that book, seer, and I need you to regale me with its secrets. Who is coming? Who will hit us first? How does this Traveller intend to reach his destination, given that the forces of the Continuum bar his way? Tell me all, grave seer, so that flux or not, we may fight with the future and count it as our ally in the desperate battle to come.’
‘I will be your guide in these matters, my lord,’ the Shadow said, ‘for as long as I am part of them.’
‘I ask no more of any soul that fights at my side,’ the Prince Ecliptic told the seer with grim honesty.
If the epic poem Vaul’s Sword and the Eastern Adversities had been written, it would have devoted a small but significant section to the trials of the Alaitoc on Carnac. It would have told of the Continuum’s stand against Anrakyr the Traveller, the withdrawal of craftworld forces and the planetary exodus of many thousands of Carnacian exodites – desperate to reach the only warp portal on their lost world still in Alaitoc hands and under the protection of their world spirit. It would have shown that Anrakyr the Traveller – due to cowardice, indifference or expediency – did not take to battle on the Plain of Bone. He had charged one of his Destroyer Lords – Nemesor Raznaak, Emissary of Oblivion, Nomarch of Deneveh and High Slaughtekh of the Cult of the Crimson Doom – with the task of finishing the retreating elder and taking the world spirit in the Traveller’s name. The tome would have detailed that the great vanguard legions of the yngiract were led by the Dynasts of the Karnaq Client Annectate, the Royal Hetch and the Deneveh Imperfecta of The High Slaughtekh’s own Crimson Doom.
The yngiract were coming. The rhythm of their march could be felt through the ash-caked earth of the plain. With the synchronous thunder of every heavy-metal step – a mindless, machine army on the march – soot cascaded from the shattered wraithbone of demolished grav-tanks. The perfection of their ranks divided as the tomb-spawned warriors of the implacable advance marched about the devastation wrought by the advance constructs of their warrior kin. Kin, in turn, that had suffered the wrath of Eldorath Starbane’s heavy gunships and Phoenix fighter craft and whose smashed remains had been vectored back to the stasis-tombs for repair.
Kael Ra
watched the yngiract warriors pass. They were laden, heavy-set things, curved of armoured spine and hunched of shoulder-plate. The broad cages of their torsos and the tarnished sheen of their powerful robotic limbs gave the impression of ancient durability. Their machine bodies were cast in the exotic effulgence of their alien weaponry, while their optics were piercing orbs of emerald incomprehension. These were set in the construct-crania of the alien machines: macabre, metal identi-skulls of the same soulless oblivion. Kael Ra could barely stand to be in the presence of such abominate entities. Their ancient evil was plain to see and their mechanical movements reeked of doom. Kael Ra could stand it no more.
The smouldering wreck of the grav-tank within which his wraithbone form was crouching erupted. The derelict collapsed about the colossus as it rose to full height. The wraithblade came up, arcing and spitting with the flux of destructive energies, before the Prince Ecliptic brought it down through the construct-chassis of the nearest Dynast. The tip of the blade buried itself in ash as the yngiract warrior – split asunder – fell away in two sizzling halves. The colossus moved swiftly for all of its towering size, slipping out of the grav-tank wreckage and stepping lightly and gracefully through the invader ranks. Like vengeance, the length of the wraithbone blade cut through both the air and the Dynasts of the Karnaq Client Annectate with equal ease. There were no screams. Kael Ra’s sword passed through the bodies of the constructs – once, twice – sometimes three times – leaving behind small mounds of armoured limbs, cleaved ribcages and sparking metallic innards.
‘Repair that,’ the autarch dared as he guided the wraithbone colossus to greater feats of acrobatic lethality – belying both the size and abstract nature of his own sentient mechanism.
Looming over the legions of yngiract invaders, Kael Ra danced like a jubilant god through the warrior-slaves of the Slaughtekh. His movements were living expressions of frustration and regret. The autarch was making up for thousands of years of lost time. He was there. In battle. In the moment. Taking the half-lives of his craftworld’s foe, the sworn and ancient enemy of his species. The ghostglaive was everywhere. The surrounding Dynasts were slow to react. One moment the great armoured legs were stepping, turning, pirouetting among their number, the next the alien machines were a shower of sheared limbs, shattered armour and the intricacy of polished organs, jangling to the floor.
Kael Ra stamped down on warrior constructs, half burying them in the Carnacian earth. He cleared several ranks of the yngiract – landing with one wraithbone knee to the ground. He circumnavigated his colossal form with the sword, the blade tip searing elegantly through several scores of mindless machines. Crossing beams of emerald energy came at the colossus. Angling his great soulhelm to one side, Kael Ra allowed the flaying blasts to pass harmlessly into the sky. Then he was up again. Spinning. Decapitating. Cleaving through alien machines with clean, cruciform strokes: down through the construct-chassis, across through the neck, down through the construct-chassis, across through the neck. He ran, the broad, sure-footed steps of his willowy limbs taking him through the lines of equidistant Dynasts. The air glowed green with gauss beams that cut through the Prince Ecliptic’s wake. His strides grew broader. His sword sweeps were cyclical and scythed through the yngiract as he passed, clipping metal skulls from hunched shoulders and shattering the long-bladed barrels of beam-casting flayers.
As the mesh of criss-crossing beams intensified and closed in on him like a net, Kael Ra forced the colossus on to its physical limits of speed, precision and grace. He dropped the construct down into a slide, the smooth wraithbone of its leg, side and elbow taking it through the billowing ash, as well as crashing through the Dynasts and into the lines of the Royal Hetch. He came to a stop behind the smashed remains of a super-heavy Scorpion tank. The wreck became a corona of emerald energy as the machine warriors followed their firing protocols and blazed at the obstacle between themselves and their target. The autarch had snatched up a warrior construct of the Royal Hetch as he had slid to a stop. Kael Ra held the yngiract in his crushing gauntlet. The thing fought back. The autarch felt its unthinking hostility. It would never give in. It would never submit. It would fight to be free and then it would attempt to end him in accordance with orders ancient and unforgiving. It would not get the chance. Engaging the shuriken cannon set in his forearm, the Prince Ecliptic shredded the skull, ribcage and grasping appendages from the evil thing as he held it, with a short, controlled blast. Crushing the rest in the palm of his gauntlet, Kael Ra tossed away the slag. It was time. Through the wraithscape, the autarch gave the order.
The derelict Engines of Vaul visited vengeance on the enemy once more. Their cannons and pulsars had been silenced but the army of wraithguard and hero-housing colossi smashing out of the silence of the wrecks gave the surrounding warrior machines more than cause for calculated concern. Construct faced construct. While the yngiract machines moved with a hydraulic skulk and subservience that was coded into their souls, the wraithguard’s advance spoke of an ethereal solidity. They were stalwart and durable in the way only a living thing could be – like an ancient titanwood. Their wraithcannons blasted dimension-splintering riftstreams through the obliging lines of Dynast warriors. Wraithblades swung their ghostswords about them with disciplined, organic flourishes. The sizzling blades took skulls from shoulders and cut down through the living curse-metal of the yngiract warriors before the wraithblades turned the weapons in their willowy hands and smashed the ghoulish glow of alien sentience from their still-standing combat frames.
The Dynasts died without ceremony. Some of the wraithguard were yet to slip their weapons from their dorsal vane-racks and simply seized and smashed the machine-foe with their gauntlets. Flayer and gauss casters were chopped in two; silver, skeletal arms were torn from torsos; protocols were smashed from hangdog yngiract skulls as the ghost warriors attacked their construct-opposites. There was a steadfast inevitability to the combat. Long gone was the frenetic fear and fury of battle involving truly living opponents. Dynasts dropped in riftstream-savaged droves; wraithblades were flayed of their armour, their bone-sung workings and their psycho-infused life as their spirit stones were vaporised from existence. There were no shrieks of death or roars of camaraderie. Warriors were not mourned and avenged with mindless acts of grief-stricken bravado. There was only hatred, eternal and silent. When the dogged, mechanical fortitude of the ancient yngiract warriors met the crafted brawn of the soul-driven wraithguard, the battle seemed to slow to ponderous determination. Constructs – locked in appendage-trembling grapples and death-wrangles – fought for simple supremacy and the right to dispassionately despatch their alien opponent.
Before long the battlefield was strewn with yngiract skulls, parts and smashed combat chassis. The Dynasts of the Karnaq Client Annectate were no more than scrap and the emerald brilliance of reclaimed warrior-invalids. The steady massacre had given the Royal Hetch time to form their impassive battle lines. The thick, green beams came at the Continuum broadside, forcing wraithguard and the colossi striding through their doughty ranks to make the most of the cover offered by the grav-tank graveyard. The yngiract reduced the redoubtable wrecks to smouldering, emaciated shells, forcing the heroes of the Alaitoc into the necessity of a line-breaking attack.
Towering above their ancient enemies, the craftworld legends moved like the living statues of their personal shrines and dedications. The bright lances of Maldor Nimitar of the Blood Moon and Galadarn the Venerate punched through the tarnished uniformity of the yngiract front line. Delsarion the Lost Autarch was there, snatching up the living metal skeletons with his power-crackling fists. Smashing the combat chassis into one another and the unforgiving ground, Delsarion wrenched the alien machines apart before tossing their shattered frames aside and plucking two more unfortunates from the battlefield. Uladhar-Thwe – the Shadow That Walks – made inroads through the Royal Hetch, swinging his wraithspear about him by the tip of its shaft. The lithe spear blade dreamed through the enemy ranks, sm
oking with the murderous vapours of the warp. The Royal Hetch were as deadly as they were ancient but little could prepare such mechanised death for the cold elegance of the Continuum’s onslaught.
Kael Ra did not intend on savaging his way through one legion of warrior-constructs, only to have the ranks of another – battle-hardened and patiently waiting behind – benefit from strategic observance and protocol-adapting redeployment.
‘With me!’ Kael Ra called to Great Arquin of the Lords of Death. The Prince Ecliptic slammed his smooth shoulder and the full weight of his looming frame against the wreck of the Engine of Vaul, behind which he had been sheltering from the gauss flaystorm of the Royal Hetch.
The Lords of Death joined the autarch and together they pushed the grav-tank across the battlefield at the machine-foe’s formations. One engine derelict smashed into another, tangling with another and another. Some were just shattered remnants. Others still drifted on partially functioning grav-drives. Before long the colossi had amassed a growing wall of twisted armour and wraithbone wreckage that bulldozed through the disciplined presentations of the Royal Hetch. The yngiract warriors crashed into each other, finding it difficult to bring their weapons to bear in such a tight, clanging crush. Metal bodies became caught beneath the moving barricade of derelict grav-tanks, contorting and shattering before being stamped into the ground by Great Arquin and the Prince Ecliptic as they heaved the relentless wall of beam-soaked wreckage at the enemy. Nestra Orphiel stalked up through their destructive wake on the long legs of her war walker, shredding those trampled abominations that still clung onto artificial life with scything blasts from her shuriken cannons.
Striding up the mauled path in the ash and through the twisted frames of bulldozed bodies, Undwyn Pythax – the Dragon’s Breath – earned his title as he bathed the disordered ranks of the Royal Hetch in a streaming inferno from his forearm-mounted flamers and buried oncoming warriors in the rhythmic procession of miniature suns that he pumped from his starcannon. Securing the breach that ran like a runway through the ranks of the Royal Hetch and into the waiting Deneveh Imperfecta – cold warriors of the High Slaughtekh’s own Crimson Doom – was the Crone Company. The wraithbone colossi of the company stomped up through the collateral devastation in a procession, the unrelenting beam-storm of their scatter lasers searing through any chance for the Royal Hetch to regroup and strike back along their flanks. It was carnage – up through which the Continuum’s own unliving army of wraithguard marched, cutting down the machine menace of fragmenting yngiract formations with volleys of cannon fire. Shoving the ancients back with the shimmering surface of their force shields, wraithblade constructs hacked through their alien foe with sizzling axes before retreating back behind their shields. Shoving their way through the next line of skeletal warriors, they repeated the torso-cleaving onslaught.
