Inferno Volume 2 - Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

He fought back with fury. His helglaive whipped to and fro, tearing rifts through the smoke and cleaving through flesh. The rangers had just been sport. They had been children before an angry ursodon. The wyches had skill. They could strike and withdraw, leaving his counter-blows to slash in the air. In the final tally, however, they were still common rabble. He was the product of thousands of years of noble blood, tempered with the finest training and outfitted with the most masterful equipment that could be crafted, purchased or stolen.

  Naeddre swept his helglaive in great arcs, keeping his enemies at as great a distance as possible. Their chemical-laden blood sprayed in broad fans across the walls of the antechamber with each hit. The discipline of the gladiatrixes broke at some point; he began to hear high-pitched screaming coming from all around him. The shadow field robbed the wyches’ blows of real power. Still, it was only a matter of time before he felt a jab, a stinging sharpness in the broad meat of his left shoulder. The back of the same damn shoulder the ranger had shot. His arrogant bravado faltered for the briefest of moments, and with it the shadow field collapsed.

  Nearly a dozen wyches lay dead at his feet. Phaerl and his compatriots had joined the fight somewhere along the line. In a straight fight, they might have been more evenly matched; both wyches and incubi were the peak of martial skill in the Dark City. The incubi had superior arms and armour, but the wyches had the advantage of speed, agility and numbers. Unfortunately for the Labyrinthae, it had not been a fair fight. Focused on the whirling, spinning form of the archon they’d surrounded, they’d been unprepared for the incubi to hit their line from behind.

  Phaerl and his men moved through the carnage of the room, dispatching the wounded with cold, mechanical precision. The lead incubus gave a cry of protest when Naeddre skipped past him towards the command centre, but he ignored his father’s lackey.

  The command centre was a hollow icosahedron, carved from a single massive crystal, the nexus around which the entire garrison had been built. Floating images projected from each of its faces, showing the progress of the battle outside, which was grinding on towards an eventual victory for the Commorrites. Naeddre had been expecting a hekatrix, perhaps even a syren. The sight of an incubus was one he hadn’t prepared for.

  The rebel commander could never have been mistaken for one of the Stalking Fiends. Where their armour was the deep, sullen purple of a fresh, brutally swollen bruise, the Ynnari’s was a pale, yellowish cream, like sun-dried bones, and trimmed with bright crimson. He wore a long red cape draped from his warsuit, bearing the same jagged sigil of Ynnead the hellions had flown.

  ‘Hold and speak,’ he said. ‘We are all brothers and sisters here.’

  Naeddre might have heard him out, but for Phaerl. At the entreaty to peace, the incubus let out a bellow, as if the Ynnari had personally befouled everything that Phaerl held dear. As one, the three incubi rushed their outcast brother.

  ‘We have each performed this dance so many times,’ the rebel commander said. He lashed the blade back and forth faster than a master heliarch could wield a much lighter, slimmer helglaive. It was as if it weighed nothing at all in his hands. ‘Has its tune not grown dull to you? Its steps mono­tonous? Can you not hear the call of something different?’

  The three incubi circled their quarry like khymerae, but his skill proved more than sufficient to hold their murderous pack at bay.

  Naeddre leaned against the wall of the command centre and watched. If his father’s bodyguards were so intent on proving themselves that they would attack without command, then they were welcome to do so alone.

  ‘You can feel the pull,’ the rebel incubus said again. ‘The Shrine of the Slit Throat heard it. You surely hear it, too.’ He slashed his blade in a blinding series of cuts and swipes that drove all three of his attackers back a pace. ‘Here, in this place, you can surely feel the souls of the fallen called to Ynnead’s glory.’

  Phaerl made a clicking sound in his throat, high and sharp. His brothers fell in beside him, their blades crossing over one another, forming a barrier of razored death.

  ‘The Slit Throat are deluded soul drinkers,’ Phaerl snarled. ‘The Shrine of the Stalking Fiend shares neither their weakness, nor the rewards of their treachery.’ He began stalking forward, his blade weaving through the air, over and under those of his brothers. The practised coordination of the blades left no gap, no weakness to exploit. They sacrificed personal glory for the surety of the kill. A tactic unnatural to the drukhari, of course, but utterly lethal when required.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said the rebel commander. He nodded.

  The incubus at Phaerl’s right hand stopped, his steps faltering. Phaerl spared a single glance towards his brother, whose arms had ceased their synchronised weaving. The hesitating drukhari dropped his klaive with a clatter. A moment later, his head tumbled from his shoulders, blood pumping furiously from the vacant neck stump. The corpse toppled to its knees, revealing the figure that had been hidden behind it.

  No matter how many times Naeddre saw the Striking Scorpions in battle, they never ceased to amaze. Their segmented armour was as resilient as the wrist-thick plates of the giant gene-altered mon-keigh, but the brilliant green plates moved over one another silently. Every facet of them boasted of their skill. Bulky armour, rotating chainsword, even a mane of clacking beads streaming from their helms: each should have precluded the possibility of stealth, yet the Aspect Warriors went unheard and unseen, unless they wished otherwise.

  To Phaerl’s credit, he jerked away from the Striking Scorpion with lightning speed, a reflex that saved him from the flashing, whirring chainblade that slashed past his face a heartbeat later. The rebel incubus pressed the attack from the other side. The Commorrite incubi, on the offensive a moment ago, now found themselves fighting to retreat from the Ynnari.

  ‘If you need some assistance, you had but to ask,’ Naeddre said, peeling himself away from the wall. ‘Don’t fret, Phaerl – I’ll rescue you.’

  The stolid incubus couldn’t contain a grunt of consternation as he desperately defended himself.

  Naeddre leapt into the fight, his helglaive flashing. The Striking Scorpion turned on him, deflecting his blows defiantly. The Ynnari traitor swung his off hand to bring his shuriken pistol to bear. Naeddre cartwheeled to the side, letting the discs ping off the floor, trusting his spinning glaive to keep the ravenous teeth of the chainblade at bay.

  With the fury of a hurricane, the Aspect Warrior moved from the younger drukhari to cross the room in a single bound and plunge his chainsword into the exposed back of Phaerl’s other companion.

  Phaerl kicked at the Striking Scorpion, who turned to meet Naeddre’s furious rush.

  ‘Shoulder to shoulder?’ screamed Phaerl. Naeddre had spent decades taunting the temperamental incubus his father sent to watch him, but had never seen Phaerl so unhinged. Phaerl’s klaive rose and fell in brutal, undisciplined hacks, his wrath stoked so greatly it threatened to burn them all. ‘You stand shoulder to shoulder with the brood of Karandras? Does your dishonour have no limit?’

  ‘It is you who dishonours yourself,’ said the Ynnari incubus.

  The Striking Scorpion pressed his assault against Naeddre, forcing the archon to spare his attention from the spectacle of Phaerl’s meltdown. He gripped his helglaive close to the middle, closing as tightly as possible and weaving the ends like two separate weapons. Vicious little jolts from the Aspect Warrior’s mandiblasters drove him away every time an opening presented itself.

  ‘My friend seems quite perturbed,’ Naeddre told the Striking Scorpion.

  ‘That’s because he feels the weight of his own shame,’ said the craftworlder. ‘He hears the call of the Whispering God, but his heart is too filled with fear to heed.’

  The aeldari was masterful. His humming chainsword buzzed close enough to breathe across Naeddre’s flesh, his pistol spat to hem the archon’s movements one moment a
nd blocked the haft of his glaive the next, and the stinging laser spikes of his mandiblasters forced the drukhari into contorting evasive twists and rolls. ‘So he beats his breast and proclaims his greatness even as his soul slips away to feed She-Who-Thirsts.’

  Naeddre ducked the chainsword and slashed in with a series of staccato hacks and chops, forcing the Striking Scorpion to back further and further away.

  ‘When I win here,’ Naeddre said, ‘I’m going to drag you back to the Amaranth Spire, to fight over and over until I learn all these marvellous techniques of yours.’

  The craftworlder didn’t fight like a wych or a hellion; he never retreated. When he moved, it was to gain an advantageous position. When he withdrew, it was to goad his opponent into a mistake. Every one of Naeddre’s blows was met not with a dodge or a weave, but with a bone-jarring parry.

  ‘When this battle is concluded,’ said the Striking Scorpion, ‘you could command an army larger even than your father’s.’

  Naeddre was shocked, so shocked he faltered. He slashed at his opponent quickly, giving ground to regroup mentally.

  ‘Kysthene tells us the Labyrinthae have always followed the Bladed Lotus in all things. Would it be less so among the Whispering God’s warhost?’ The Aspect Warrior jabbed at Naeddre again. The archon’s mind reeled, trying to determine the craftworlder’s angle. If the Striking Scorpion had wished, he could have torn Naeddre’s throat open in the moment of his hesitation. He wasn’t just trying to rattle Naeddre. But he couldn’t be serious. Could he?

  Behind him, he could hear the two incubi grunting in weary exertion. It seemed likely that they would fight until they died and withered away unless either he or the Aspect Warrior triumphed and came to their ally’s aid.

  ‘You’ve heard the whisper, haven’t you?’

  There was the question, out in the open. K’Shaic had not even dared to ask it of his sons. In the Dark City, no one dared ask. Colleague, compatriot, even brother – no one could tell who had felt the pull of Ynnead, who would be willing to follow his path. Since the disjunction, Naeddre’s greatest fear, the one that squatted in the dark corners of his mind, lurking at the edges of his vision, was that someone would ask him directly if he had considered heeding the summons of the Ynnari.

  For all his fear, there was no need. He didn’t even have to answer aloud. The Striking Scorpion’s shoulders relaxed a fraction; his guard remained up, but his blows were half-hearted, for show rather than to kill.

  ‘If you answer the call, we would follow. We knew K’Shaic would send his sons to these garrisons. Right now your brother is hearing the same message – take up our banner, join our cause and we will follow you. We can fall upon your father like the vengeful storm, crush his forces between our fury and that of the Jade Labyrinth.’ The Aspect Warrior holstered his pistol, holding his hand up as if to take Naeddre’s. ‘All you have to do is let go, to give in to the whisper you hear inside.’

  The word ‘yes’ forced its way up Naeddre’s throat. It nearly made it past his lips. But the sound choked in his mouth. He couldn’t dare to speak it.

  ‘I… cannot,’ said Naeddre. ‘That pull, that whisper… I’ve felt a pull all my life. Just as we all have. I have no way of knowing if this whisper is any different from the other.’

  ‘And if you knew? If you knew that the Whispering God was not She-Who-Thirsts, that he would not tear you apart, but instead that he would put you back together?’

  Naeddre had no words. He didn’t need to speak. His silence was all the Striking Scorpion needed to know the truth, and all Naeddre needed to realise the truth himself: if he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Ynnari spoke true, he would heed the whisper in a heartbeat, without hesitation.

  ‘Then if you will not see, I will show you.’ The Striking Scorpion reversed his chainsword, and plunged it through his own breast.

  Naeddre felt the surge of agony as the teeth mangled the Aspect Warrior’s heart and lungs to shreds. He could feel the pain the Ynnari felt, and for the first time since arriving, could feel the agony in its totality. He could feel the death rush. Then more. The dead aeldari gave his life force, not to Ynnead, but to him.

  He reeled, the flood of sensation unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

  He was a child, sprinting through the draping keldora ferns, laughing and chasing his cousin. He was too young to fully realise they were refugees, drifting through the stars on a craftworld that was as much their tomb as their home.

  He was an aura painter. He stood before the artisans of Yme-Loc, presenting a floating, three-dimensional composition of photoluminens to the approval and emotional outpouring of his peers.

  He was a Guardian, clad in grey-and-orange armour, shuriken catapult clutched to his chest. He stood knee-deep in corpses. For three days the humans in the long grey coats had hurled themselves at the eldar position, dying in droves, but never stopping in their relentless march. He wished beyond anything that he was back in his aura studio.

  He was kneeling in the Shrine of the Veiled Threat. The Striking Scorpion Exarch Vakuna stood over him, asking him if he was ready to follow the footsteps and example of Karandras. He felt a great fear in his gut, but he knew that he would soon learn to summon the war mask, and that fear would be a thing of the past.

  He was fighting again. Greenskins massing for a war against the aeldari. He stalked through their camps with his shrine brothers at his side. They slaughtered their enemies before they were seen, killed droves without a shot being fired. He still made art, but it was writ in blood and spilled viscera across a hundred warzones. He wasn’t even sure he remembered how to paint.

  He stood outside his shrine. Without the war mask upon him, he didn’t know if he could bear donning the armour once again. Each time he fought the urge to lose himself to the path, each time he banished the war mask, he could feel a tiny piece of himself being cast aside. He had heard the whispered scream, the birth cry of a god, the whispering demand to open himself to it. He let go, not caring if his soul was obliterated. Anything would be better than an eternity of this torture.

  He was fighting against a horde of daemons. The servants of Slaanesh swarmed the embattled Ynnari. His shrine brothers were dead. He slipped in a pool of gore, and fell. A squealing daemonette lunged over him, her scissoring claw raised for the killing blow. She vanished, cut down in a spray of ichor. A figure in a blood-red warsuit, a black cape draped over his shoulders, offered a hand to lift him back to his feet.

  He was standing side by side with his long-lost spiritual brother, Jazao of the Shrine of the Slit Throat. They could hear the drukhari beyond the walls, see the Commorrites storming the Viscerean Garrison. The son of K’Shaic would arrive soon. He stepped back to blend into the shadows.

  He was dying.

  He opened his eyes.

  Naeddre staggered, even as the body of the Striking Scorpion fell to the ground. He turned to see Phaerl still battling the other incubus. The two warriors had battled to exhaustion, and their blows had become slow and heavy. Before he could move to intervene, the Commorrite incubus brought his klaive down in a brutal overhand chop. Jazao blocked with his klaive in a two-handed grip, but the blow drove him low. Phaerl brought the sword down again, and then again. Each blow forced the other incubus down lower, first to a crouch, then to his knees.

  Jazao caught Naeddre’s dazed stare. He nodded, even as Phaerl smashed the klaive from his hands. The victorious incubus wiped the blood from his eyes and hefted his own klaive overhead.

  ‘Gashvat yandun. Only I remain.’ With a spat death curse, Phaerl struck Jazao’s head from his shoulders.

  Naeddre didn’t just feel the rush as Jazao slipped away. He could feel the incubus, not snatched away to a warp fiend or a soul prison, but flowing through him to join the greater part of the aeldari people.

  ‘Your father is waiting,’ said Phaerl. The incubus had regaine
d his composure for the most part, although Naeddre could see he was still breathing in great heaves.

  ‘Did you hear any of that?’ Naeddre asked.

  ‘You mean the craftworlder wheedling you to join them? What of it?’

  ‘Are you loyal to me?’

  Naeddre’s question went unanswered. The incubus cocked his head for a moment, then arrogantly turned his back to his ward and headed for the door, as if the query weren’t of any merit.

  ‘I am true to my shrine and my oaths,’ Phaerl said. ‘My loyalty has been paid for, and is unshakeable.’

  Naeddre sighed. That’s what he’d thought. He drew his blast pistol and shot Phaerl in the back. The warsuit had withstood wychblade and chainsword with ease, and even mitigated the slashing blows of the enemy klaive, but the lance of anti-light tore through it like it was mere slaveflesh. Naeddre felt the death rush, invigorating him and clearing his head. He paused to pull the red cloak, emblazoned with the drukhari version of Ynnead’s rune, from Jazao’s body. He draped it over his own shoulders, attaching the chain clips to his flight vest.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ he said as he stepped over Phaerl’s smoking corpse, ‘it was my father who paid you.’

  Naeddre whistled as he exited the garrison. Dutifully, his Moonfoe skyboard heeded his call, wrenching itself loose from the wall and skittering to his side.

  ‘Listen closely,’ he said over the command net. All around him, aeldari tore one another apart, with blades and blasters and poisoned shards of glass. ‘The archons in the highest spires of Commorragh have something in common with every one of you low-born gutterscum – every one of us, every single eldar, has heard the whispered invitation of Ynnead. We’ve just been too afraid to take it. We’ve seen what the birth of an eldar god heralds, and no matter how much we boast otherwise, we are terrified that this new god will finish what the first one started.’

  The Moonfoe roared to life, trailing a thin stream of smoke but still capable of flight. The fighting had slowed, as gang leaders and dracons called for fire to be held, and each listened intently, many unable to believe what they were hearing.