by William King
At first, it was as if I had stepped through into formless nothingness. All around me was only swirling, multicoloured mists of the sort that had been visible through the walls to either side of the roadway we had walked. I wondered if we had passed through some sort of final barrier and into what lay beyond the cosmic structure the xenos had built. Ahead of me, floating, were the others. Ahead of them, in the distance, was a glowing platform. I could see a small figure moving towards it. I tried to move myself but nothing happened. It was like trying to swim in a medium that had no resistance. I could move my limbs but there was nothing for them to gain traction against. I writhed and twisted my body but my wriggling could not move me from the spot.
I noticed my surroundings were starting to change, that the clouds of floating colours were taking on shape and density. I ignored them and drifted through the ether towards our distant goal. I could see it now. There was an altar. It glowed with holy light, a transcendental energy. Near it stood one of the xenos, the tallest and most powerful looking I had yet seen. It carried itself with an aura of utter confidence, and the glance it directed at us held only the purest contempt. In such a way a man might contemplate an insect he was going to squash.
Even as I felt the chilling gaze pass over me, I noticed that the clouds of formless matter were taking on a new shape. They were becoming more solid, acquiring the look of the ruined city we had seen outside or something much worse, an almost infinitely large fortress of xenos build stretching as far as the eye could see. From each building peered out a hundred xenos faces. I wondered what had happened. Was this some sort of transportation device? Had we suddenly been shifted through space and time to some new alien realm? Were we about to be overwhelmed by legions of eldar desperate to rend our flesh and feast on our agony?
The air shimmered, and more and more of the xenos came into being. How had they achieved this? I had heard of teleportation devices but never of them being used on so vast a scale.
The whole thing had the aspect of a dream. If this were a portal to some distant realm we were not all the way through it yet; reality had not yet twisted all the way. Drake seemed to be shouting something at Macharius. Grimnar ignored him and moved towards the xenos. A score of the newly materialised eldar threw themselves in the way. Grimnar’s chainsword flickered out and rent through them.
At first they came apart like ghosts, as if their flesh were nothing more than mist. The Space Marine moved forwards, chopping through them, and as he did so they became progressively more solid. Not only that, more and more of them kept appearing, out of nowhere. For every one he cut down, two more materialised. They moved swiftly, with eerie grace, fast enough to match even his superhumanly swift movements. The tide of the combat turned. Grimnar found himself on the defensive, beaten back till he stood beside Macharius and Drake. A hail of fire from the warriors mowed down the eldar, and for a moment things seemed stable.
I paused to look around. Gigantic, dark crystalline structures had somehow swung into place all around me, unfolding out of nothingness until they loomed overhead like the castle of some childhood ogre. Again I was struck by the dream-like quality of all of this. It could not be real. And yet when I reached out my hand, I felt smooth, cool stone beneath it. When I glanced around, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of eldar infantry moving towards me. I knew the moment of my death had arrived. There were far too many of them to be resisted. Still there was something not quite right. The eldar’s armour did not have all the details I expected, the hieroglyphs that marked rank or status or role or function, whatever it was they did. The xenos’s movements while graceful were repetitive and similar. They all appeared to move in perfect synchronisation.
I clutched the shotgun tighter and noticed there was ground beneath my feet. It was dark and shimmering like the structures around me, and although crystalline it was not slippery but seemed to have been designed to allow traction. I began to move towards the conflict. There was not really anything else to do. I could remain on my own in the strange city taking shape around me, but that would have meant soon being surrounded by hordes of murderous xenos. I saw Anton and Ivan close by. They looked just as lost and confused as I felt, but they were doing what they could always be relied on to do when in trouble. They were following me. The Undertaker was there and various members of Macharius’s Lion Guard, too.
More and more units of xenos were coming into view. There were thousands of them and only a comparative handful of us. I knew the time was fast approaching when I was going to have to sell my life as dearly as possible.
Drake seemed to be trying to explain something to the others and I could not work out what he was saying. I found a low barrier wall to use as cover, took up a position behind it and looked at the oncoming horde. Incoming fire whined around my head. I popped up and opened fire, hitting one of the oncoming xenos at almost point-blank range.
I sense the approach of others. Foolish flies have entered the web woven by my god-like consciousness. I will devour them now. I begin to spin a new reality from dreams and visions, summoning a world into being around me, creating legions of lost souls to serve me.
This time I will destroy my foes.
Anton looked at me. He frowned his puzzlement and popped up and aimed a shot. More eldar raced towards us. Our surroundings continued to change as well. They were more solid, more real than they had even a few moments ago.
I shook my head, wondering whether I was going mad, whether too much fatigue and too much stimm were affecting my brain. I wriggled along on my belly towards where Macharius and Drake were. Grimnar stood watch with them. A massive explosion ripped the ground, throwing us apart. I fell to land beside the Space Wolf. Somehow he had managed to keep his feet. Where the others had been was only a tangle of broken crystal and strange flickering lines. Hails of fire from the eldar splintered the wreckage around us. I lay prone and still for a moment.
Looking up into Grimnar’s face, I noticed that his eyes were yellowish, like those of a dog.
‘What is happening?’ I shouted over the roar of the carnage around us.
‘The reality here is mutable. It responds to a sufficiently strong will. The foes we face have been conjured by the eldar.’
I thought about what I was seeing. The way reality continued to swim and shift. An enormous tower collapsed under the impact of an artillery barrage. A plume of dust rose up as if to touch the sky.
‘It looks so real,’ I said.
‘It is real,’ said Grimnar. ‘In this place, it is real.’
A look almost of dismay flickered across his face. I tried to imagine what all of this strangeness must be like to him. His senses were keener than mine. He could see things I could not, hear them and smell them as well. It could not be pleasant to have the very forms of reality dance and transform before him.
He shook his head and growled, and seemed like his fierce, determined self once more. ‘What can we do?’ I said.
‘I will seek the Fist of Russ,’ he said. ‘It is out there in all this Chaos.’
Without another word he threw himself over the wall, rolled to his feet, chopped down some eldar soldiers and ran off. I saw the others moving into place to guard Macharius. I doubted that one more soldier would make any difference, so prompted by some inner daemon, I followed along in the wake of the Space Wolf. I was not sure why. If Grimnar could not handle what he met out here, I was not sure I could make any difference. I went anyway.
I raced across a landscape torn by war, chaotic beyond belief, twisted by a kind of madness that was all but incomprehensible. Overhead loomed a city built by maddened eldar. It shimmered and bent and moved as if part of the flickering imagination of a demented god.
I dived into a trench as wide as the tracks of a Baneblade and wriggled along in the direction Grimnar had gone. I could hear the distinctive sound of a bolter being fired and knew I was on the right track still.
I popped my head up and saw the Space Wolf hacking his way through a group of
eldar warriors. Limbs flew trailing droplets of blood. A spine, partially severed, unwound through a broken backplate of crystalline armour. A xenos leapt behind the Space Marine. I raised and fired the shotgun. The shell took it in the back at the same time as Grimnar’s bolter butt smashed into its helmet, crushing it. I sensed the Space Wolf’s eyes on me, then he turned and moved on. I wondered whether it was my imagination or whether he was moving fractionally more slowly to enable me to keep up.
He paused occasionally to sniff the air, then moved swiftly and surely onwards, always moving as though towards a goal. I followed, trusting to the idea that he knew what he was doing. He entered a long hall and moved through it. An eldar dropped down on him, somehow moving faster and with more skill than the others he had faced so far. The two of them exchanged blows so swiftly it was impossible for me to follow. I ran up, not wanting to get too close to the eldar but wanting to be close enough to shoot if the opportunity arose.
The eldar rained down blows on Grimnar. He parried with the barrel of his bolter. Sparks flew where the two weapons connected. The eldar was the swifter of the two. Its blows made it through Grimnar’s guard and chipped his armour. Suddenly Grimnar let go his bolter; it dropped still attached to his neck by the strap. He reached out with both hands, grasped the eldar’s head and twisted. The xenos’s neck snapped even as its weapons drove into Grimnar’s side.
The Space Marine stood there, mouth open, gasping like a wolf on a hot day. I could see he was reeling on his feet, jaw muscles working as though he were in great pain. I ran up to him. His eyes had a glazed look, were focused into the distance as if he could see something astonishing a long way off. Slowly, his sight came back into focus, his breathing slowed and he became steadier on his feet. It was as though he had been poisoned and then his body had slowly adapted to the toxin, leaving him immune to its effects. Without a word he strolled on.
I recognised where we were. It was an almost exact replica of the atrium of the tower we had passed through to get here, a mirror within a mirror. In the centre of the chamber was an altar and on that altar was a gauntlet. Beside it stood a tall, powerful looking xenos.
The Space Wolf raised his bolter and took swift aim at the eldar’s head. The air between them shimmered and suddenly more eldar warriors were there. The head of one of them exploded. I realised the enemy commander had brought them into being to stop us. All of them looked exactly the same, and exactly like the figure we had seen by the altar. Grimnar did not hesitate for a moment. He sprang into action, blasting and smashing a path towards the altar, killing as he went. I lobbed a grenade into the mass of xenos, as far from the Space Marine as I could get it. The shockwave pulsed through them, throwing broken figures doll-like across the chamber.
I glanced back and saw Grimnar wrestling with a group of xenos. They had swarmed over him with their uncanny swiftness and were cutting and slashing at him with no regard to their own lives. They seemed utterly and maniacally fearless. Potent though the Space Wolf was, no single being, save perhaps the Emperor himself, could have withstood such an assault. His bolter was wrenched from his hands, and blow after blow rained down on his armoured form. Twist as he might some of them got through, and he fell amid a mass of his alien enemies.
Panic surged through me. I cursed myself for ever following Grimnar. If a Space Marine could go down here what chance did I have to survive? Desperately, I tried to recall where we had first seen the eldar leader. I primed a grenade and threw it at the spot, just as every alien head turned to look at me. The grenade burst in the air, sending a wave of shock and shrapnel tearing through the enemy ranks. The effect was startling. The massed ranks of eldar grew insubstantial and vanished, leaving only one, reeling in the middle next to the altar. I do not know why.
No! The link with the reality engine is broken. It will take too long to restore it. My legions have vanished. My foes close in. I look up, dazed and nauseous, and I see the human responsible. Of one thing I am certain. On him I will have my vengeance.
The sounds of conflict outside fell suddenly silent. A terrible hush filled the air, the sort of quiet you would expect to hear a heartbeat before the end of the world erupted. I wondered what I had done. The only explanation that occurred to me was that the grenade blast had shattered the xenos’s concentration, making it impossible to maintain the armies it had summoned in this strange place. I raised the shotgun to my shoulder, aimed directly at the body and pulled the trigger.
The eldar sprang, moving above the blast with one easy, fluid movement. It seemed to be moving more slowly than previously, and it came to me that perhaps it was wounded, or perhaps the disconnection from whatever had allowed it to summon armies had done something to its brain. Nonetheless, I knew it would be more than a match for me if it got within striking distance.
I kept firing, hoping to distract it and prevent it from summoning more eldar to its aid. It came ever closer, holding its blade at the ready. Strange mechanical laughter spilled from the headpiece of its armour.
‘I shall feast on your agony, mortal,’ it said.
The eldar moved towards me so fast I barely had time to raise the shotgun. It made no difference. A fist blurred past it and hit me somewhere over the heart. It was like a blow from a sledgehammer. I felt as though I could be catapulted backwards, but something restrained me: the arm of the xenos, it was holding me in place. I heard something click and blades extruded from its gloves. I flinched as I felt cloth and flesh tear. A flap of skin lifted from my back as it was flayed by multiple scalpels. A searing heat flared around the wound. Briefly, I wondered whether it was shock or poison, and then realised it did not matter. I tried to pull myself free but the xenos held me in place. At first skin and flesh ripped in response to my movement, but then the alien moved to compensate.
I let the shotgun fall forwards and I pulled the trigger. The blast came at an odd angle. The kick broke my wrist. Somehow the eldar swayed backwards and away, but it had been forced to let me go. The blades came clear of my flesh with an odd sucking sound. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to move. I heard that flat, machine-generated laughter behind me.
Something blurred overhead. The eldar was now in front of me as I tried to scramble away. It had somersaulted over me. It held up its gauntlet. I saw my blood on the scalpel blades emerging from its fingertips. It mingled with gobbets of pink stuff which had been attached to my innards not a few moments before. I reached for a grenade left handed. I thought if I could arm it, I could simply hold it and let the explosion get both of us. I knew I was a dead man and that given the slightest opportunity the eldar would torture me. At any moment I expected to feel the nerve-searing pain of neuro-toxins anyway. A quick death seemed preferable to that.
The eldar reached out and batted the grenade away. The action was casual and contemptuous. Behind it, I saw something that made me laugh. It paused for a moment.
Macharius stood there, pistol raised, aiming. He pulled the trigger. The eldar was already in motion, diving to one side. The shell took it in the shoulder and sent it reeling. It rolled over, regaining its feet, twisting to bring its own long-barrelled weapon to bear. Macharius shot again, caught the eldar in the chest. Macharius pulled the trigger again. The shell exploded within the chest cavity exposed by the power of the previous shot. Macharius kept firing shell after shell until his magazine was emptied. Clearly he was taking no chances.
I mumbled my thanks, and then I noticed Macharius’s face, and how strange his expression was. Something about it reminded me of the Undertaker. His features held the look of a man who had seen too much. He stood there for a long time, looking at the dead eldar. Drake entered and behind him came Anton and Ivan and the Undertaker, along with a few surviving Lion Guard.
My old comrades raced over and began to treat my wounds. They slapped synthi-flesh on the ripped skin and applied adhesive bandages. ‘Go look at Grimnar.’ I barely managed to force the words out from between my mangled lips.
Grimnar had a
lready started to rise. His awesome powers of recovery were starting to assert themselves. He was functional again despite having taken a beating that would have killed a normal man. Together he and Macharius and Drake moved towards the altar on which lay the Fist of Russ.
I limped along behind them, determined to witness what came next. I had come a long way and I was not going to miss out on it now.
All three of them stood at the altar looking down on the ancient relic. It was indeed a gauntlet, and it looked like it has been made to fit Space Marine armour. If anything it was bigger than Grimnar’s. It had similar runes inscribed on it too.
I saw Grimnar and Drake and Macharius exchange looks.
‘This is not the Fist of Russ,’ said Grimnar, ‘It is ancient and it belonged to the Wolves, but not to our primarch.’
‘But…’ I heard Anton say. All three of those deadly men looked at him, and even he had the wit to fall silent
‘I will see that this is properly disposed of,’ said Grimnar, picking up the Fist.
All looked bleak, their faces frozen as if their features had been carved from immutable rock.
‘We are done here,’ said Macharius. ‘There is nothing for us.’
His voice had an odd quality to it, the sound of massive boulders grinding together within the cold ice of a glacier. ‘Let us go,’ he said.
With the Space Wolf loping along ahead of us, we departed.
We emerged from the portal. It had taken us what seemed like days to march to it, but when we stepped back into the Valley of the Ancients, it looked like only minutes had passed. The officer set to watch it looked up and blinked in amazement. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘we did not expect you back so soon.’
