Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  The ranks of pets snarled and reared dangerously at the intrusion, the warriors flourished their weapons defiantly and the artisans carefully watched the unfolding events. As the reavers reached the rear of the procession Bezieth reared up from her palanquin with an inarticulate roar, seeming ready to swat the interlopers out of the air with her djin-blade. Violence shivered in the air. Its imminence was almost palpable, crystallised and ready to fly apart into a frenzy of action at any moment.

  A few sharp words from Lord Naxipael seemed to abruptly quell Bezieth’s ire. She sat down with a thump as the reaver pack raced away over the canal and scattered upward like windblown leaves.

  ‘They’re nothing but bait,’ Naxipael hissed.

  And so they were. A few moments later a second, and far larger, pack of reavers droned overhead with insouciant slowness as they trailed after the first. The first group had been a decoy to provoke an attack and draw fire while the real threat manoeuvred for position above. Someone was trying to draw the epicureans into a messy brawl along the Grand Canal – doubtless a setback intended to illustrate to the individual kabals that their loose coalition offered no real protection. A simple test passed just as simply by not rising to the bait.

  However, the procession remained stationary even after the reavers departed. Every eye was drawn to the warding where it rose from the far bank of the Grand Canal. The warding extended as far as the eye could perceive, a swirling, darkly opalescent boundary that curved away in all directions. Beyond it lay the untamed energies of the void held forever in check by arcane technologies. Nearby a slender bridge curved across the canal to seemingly pierce the warding at the Beryl Gate, a permanent portal to the sub-realm of the Aviaries of Malixian. Hazy images of other realms occasionally swam into view within the warding, visions of fey towers or strange landscapes, but to the inhabitants of lower Metzuh the shimmering energy was a boundary as solid and unremarkable as a stone wall.

  Now it was obvious that something was changing.

  The oily, sickly colours of the void were swirling faster, now whirling into impossible new shapes, now pulsating as if shot through with lightning. A spider’s web of bright and terrible light was slowly spreading outwards over the surface of the warding from the beryl gate, chinks of a deadly effulgence leaking in from realities beyond Commorragh. A low, animalistic moan of terror swept through the procession at the sight. Some individuals broke and ran for the palaces but it was already too late for anyone to save themselves. The Dysjunction had begun.

  The first shock was physical; the city shook as if it were in the grip of an angry giant. The canal churned to froth as shockwaves ran through it. Pleasure craft were upended and tipped their occupants into waters where their screams were rapidly stilled. On the bank people were thrown off their feet as chasms yawned in the polished stone that swallowed parts of the procession whole. Stone split and metal screamed as portions of the lower palaces gave way and toppled outward to crush those unlucky enough to be beneath them.

  On the heels of the first physical shock a psychic shock came blasting through the warding, a wave of empyrean energy that twisted reality itself before it.

  Some simply went mad as the stones rippled beneath their feet and sprouted screaming faces or clutching hands. These tore at one another like wild beasts, snarling wordlessly as they clawed and bit. Others cast themselves into the churning canal, screaming with laughter as the black, viscid ooze closed over them. Some died where they stood, bursting into incandescent flames, or being torn asunder by lightning, or ravaged by invisible claws or melted like hot wax. These were all the lucky ones. The rest, by far the bulk of those present, survived the immediate shock only to attract the attention of other, more sentient entities as they breached the warding.

  These predatory beings feasted on souls and the raw suffering of mortals. In some ways they were very much like the Commorrites themselves, but where the methods of Commorrites were refined to a high art of sensuous cruelty, these beings were crude and atavistic. Their manifestations were the stuff of nightmares – pincer clawed temptresses, whirligigs of living flames, foetid cadaverous things lurching on stick-thin limbs and a hundred other daemonic terrors made real. Their appearance was accompanied by waves of sickness, fever-dream emotions and hysteria. The spectral horde coalesced, spread and tainted the air before it like ink dropped into a pail of clear water. They tore into the epicureans with joyous abandon and weapons flashed as the Commorrites tried to defend themselves, but for each abomination that was shredded or blasted apart a dozen more crowded forward to take its place.

  At the rear of the procession Bezieth of the Hundred Scars wielded her djin-blade with desperate skill. No daemon-spawn could lay a claw upon her as she hacked her way free of the struggling mass at the head of a handful of other survivors. For once the angry sentience of the djin-blade seemed to be entirely on her side with none of the unexpected twists and turns it liked to make at inopportune moments. The enraged spirit of the previous archon of the Soul Cutters, Axhyrian, was trapped within the crystalline djin-blade and made a ready source of energy for Bezieth to call upon when she needed it. Axhyrian’s rage could make for a treacherous weapon, but right now Bezieth needed every advantage she could lay her hands on. Lord Naxipael followed closely in Bezieth’s wake felling invaders left and right with a pair of finely crafted blast pistols. Behind him a loose wedge of retainers was forming, but their numbers were thinning by the second.

  ‘It seems our superiors in High Commorragh have truly given us the “noble treatment” this time!’ Naxipael cried over the screams.

  ‘No time for talking, snake!’ Bezieth replied furiously. ‘Just… kill!’

  The other members of the procession had completely disappeared under a mass of writhing, feasting daemons. A continuous stream of snapping, clawing monstrosities came against Bezieth and Naxipael as she cut her way towards the ruined palaces hoping to find a place to make a stand. It was only a hundred paces from the canal side to the lower palaces yet it seemed more like a hundred miles. The ghostly energies flowing through the breach in the warding brushed constantly across her mind. They spawned strange visions and alien emotions there: spiralling iron towers that reached up into infinity, skies of blood and rivers of entrails, meadows of fingertips and clouds of lies. Tiny static-like shocks of joy warred with darting release and morbid satisfaction for the contents of her soul.

  A quartet of single-horned, cyclopean daemons with rusting swords came lurching at her out of the kaleidoscopic mental fog, their drooling maws emitting the buzzing of flies. She hacked them down with short, chopping strokes as if she were cutting wood. Their obscene bodies yielded readily to the djin-blade and split like ripe fruit wherever it fell.

  A sixth sense sent her diving to one side just as a barbed and serrated mass of metal crashed down where she had stood a moment before. A glance upwards showed more fragments of pillars, colonnades, statues, minarets and arches tumbling down from high above. Flights of multi-coloured fireballs swept past overhead and plunged into the lower palaces, the dancing flames eating unnaturally into the ruins with joyous screams. Bezieth found that she had made her way to a twisted pile of slave cages and decided that was her best place to turn at bay.

  It was a timely decision. Behind her the ravening horde of entities was spreading out to seek more prey. They had finished feasting on the procession, which by now was just a mess of tattered banners and gory debris, and were looking hungrily towards the palaces and, coincidentally, Bezieth and the other survivors. She spat defiance at the daemons as they bounded forward, seeing them skittering and squabbling with one another over these fresh morsels. The rotting ones and the fiery ones seemed at odds, as apt to attack each other as come for her; a fact she immediately used to her best advantage.

  Bezieth’s djin-blade snarled and sheared through tentacles, claws, tongues and pseudopods with equal abandon. Retina-scarring flashes from Naxipael�
�s pistols burst more of the running bodies and for a brief instant the area around Bezieth was cleared. The creatures seemed to be becoming weak and uncoordinated. A change was sweeping through them and they were beginning to show the first signs of fear. Now Bezieth felt as if she was cutting at smoke, each sweep of her blade seemed to dissipate half a dozen of the entities at a time.

  The pulsing, crackling spider web of light around the Beryl Gate was dimming. Bezieth glanced up to see images in the warding, like great towers or tentacles or tornadoes, vast, titanic forces that were all thrusting blindly at the gate from impossible angles. She forced herself to look away before her sanity unhinged completely, focusing on what was close by and material before she lost her mind to the enormity of the forces raging beyond her reality. The awful light was continuing to dim despite their attempts to bludgeon their way through; the glowing cracks were fading as if they were composed of cooling metal. The daemonic horde wavered in and out of existence as the aeons-old failsafes of the warding struggled to seal the breach. One by one the temptresses, lurching corpses and dancing flames collapsed in on themselves or vanished like wind blown flames.

  An awful not-quite silence descended over the scene. There still sounded in the distance wrenching, grinding and screams beyond number, but a momentary bubble of comparative calm seemed to have encompassed the canal bank in the absence of the screeching, whirling daemon horde. The Beryl Gate was gone, replaced by a shifting, multi-hued star that now doubtless led to many places other than the Aviaries of Malixian the Mad. Too many places. The void beyond the warding looked bloated and menacing, storm clouds ready to break. The shrunken band of survivors grouped around Bezieth and Naxipael looked at each other uncertainly. There were many unfamiliar faces among them.

  ‘Is it over?’ one said.

  ‘Over? It has barely begun!’ Naxipael hissed angrily. ‘Until all the gates are sealed–’ As if to underline his words Archon Naxipael was interrupted as another tremor ran through the canal bank. The multi-hued star that had once been the Beryl Gate twinkled ominously. Naxipael refused to be daunted ‘–until all of the gates are locked there will be more incursions, more daemons!’

  ‘That seems like a handy blade to have at a time like this,’ a voice close behind Bezieth remarked casually.

  Bezieth whipped around to cut down the speaker for his impudence, the razor edge of the djin-blade singing through the air. Then it happened, the grim inevitability of it unfurling before her very eyes. The blade was stronger than ever, glutted on stolen daemonic power. It twisted treacherously in her tired grip, the razor-edge slipping sidewise to bite deeply into her thigh. Bezieth felt the sudden, cold rush of adrenaline from a really serious injury. She felt her leg begin to buckle beneath her and fought to push the djin-blade away from her throat as the ground rushed up to meet her. The pounding blood in her ears sounded like the laughter of Axhyrian.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE GLASS PRINCE

  Guided as much by good fortune as quick reflexes, Motley emerged into the webway in an untidy heap but thankfully unharmed. There was no mistaking that it was the webway he’d landed in (which was a relief in itself): the strangeness, the sense of unreality, the feeling that the surrounding gossamer walls were just barely stretched over infinity and that if you peeked behind one you would see the whole universe laid out before you. Motley picked himself up and dusted himself down fastidiously even though there was no dust, dirt or anything else so crude and elemental to be seen. The webway tunnel surrounding him was made up of all-encompassing, hazy whiteness that seemed to slide away from the eye when viewed directly.

  Only as Motley started to walk along did the view resolve itself into wide, almost circular tunnel that undulated gently before him. Behind him there was no sign at all of Kraillach’s secret gate to Commorragh. Ahead of him the pure whiteness stretched away to some infinitely distant vanishing point. The purity was marred only by a stark, black shape that wavered and jumped in the middle distance, no more than finger-tall and fast vanishing from sight altogether. Motley sprinted rapidly after it.

  The distance proved deceptive and Motley soon caught up to Morr, who was striding along with his klaive over one shoulder. As Motley approached Morr seemed to hunch over a little and begin striding faster.

  ‘Fear not, Morr, your trusty companion is unhurt and ready to accompany you once more,’ Motley said brightly to Morr as he jogged up level with him. The spoken words seemed curiously flat and hollow in the webway, as though their tiny noise was lost in the vastness surrounding them. Morr growled deep in his throat, and the guttural sound seemed to be more successful in making an impact.

  ‘So, a ship tunnel, then?’ Motley chattered on. ‘Your archon was an uncannily canny fellow. I don’t suppose he also hid a ship around here too, did he? I have no objections to strolling, but time–’

  ‘Is of the essence. This has been already said,’ Morr said heavily. ‘Repetition of tropes will not serve to endear you to me. No ship exists that can travel to where we must go.’

  ‘Hmm, that’s true enough – though I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you said “we” again.’

  ‘I have come to accept the burden of your presence as part of my punishment.’

  ‘That’s true enough too, if a little self-castigating, but I think you have cause and effect about right.’

  Morr stopped abruptly and turned to face Motley, swinging his klaive from his shoulder in an easy, practiced motion. ‘You admit that you are here solely to punish me?’ Morr’s question was devoid of all emotion, a dead thing that hung in the air between them. Motley wrung his hands miserably as he stepped adroitly back out of immediate reach.

  ‘No! No! Not at all. I came to help you, Morr. You were the one that asked for help dealing with your archon and his kabal, and I was the one sent to help!’

  The klaive raised fractionally, a movement more subtle than the tremble of an insect’s wing but Motley saw it immediately. He was supremely confident in his ability to avoid Morr’s attacks should it come to that, but the incubus had proved himself quite shockingly quick and possessed of a reach with the massive, two metre-long klaive that was hard to overestimate. Motley took another step back just to be safe as he kept talking.

  ‘Think, Morr! Without my help the corruption would have spread further, more kabals would have fallen under its sway, who knows what might have happened! Your archon was already lost, gone, you only acted because you had to… to…’

  ‘To preserve his memory,’ Morr finished quietly. ‘As he was, not as he became.’

  ‘Yes, yes and you did the right thing, no matter what the hierarchs may say to you when, and if, we reach the shrine of Arhra. Kraillach was already dead, you only killed the thing that was inhabiting his corpse…’ Morr’s klaive twitched at the thought and Motley decided that Kraillach’s death was a bad topic to pursue altogether.

  ‘Look…’ Motley said, moistening his lips and putting on his most earnest expression. ‘You have to see beyond those immediate consequences now and remember that Commorragh itself is at risk!’

  The klaive slowly lowered again. Motley made a mental note to make more capital out of Morr’s sense of duty. Morr’s blank-faced helm turned to Motley, seeming to see him for the first time. Motley kept talking, the words bubbling out of him like a clear flowing brook.

  ‘The city needs your help, Morr! A Dysjunction won’t simply end of its own accord, oh no. That would be too simple! A Dysjunction will only be resolved by identifying the root cause and acting upon it–’

  ‘Do not think to lecture me,’ Morr interrupted. ‘You might have wandered further in the webway than most, but it belongs to Commorragh. Always and forever. These things are known.’

  ‘I don’t doubt the archons will be scratching their heads and looking around for someone to blame, or that Vect is about to make one of those terribly overt demonstrations he is so fond of
. None of it will change anything, don’t you see? The Dysjunction will continue until the real source of the disruption is found, and they won’t be able to find it.’

  Morr simply looked at him, unmoving and unreadable in his dark armour as he lowered his klaive to rest on the hazy, white ground. Motley shut his mouth, conscious that he had probably said too much already. The towering incubus was unwilling to let him off so easily. Long seconds drew out before Morr spoke again, when he did the single word that emerged from his speaker grille was freighted with threat.

  ‘Why?’

  Yllithian had initially been dashed to the floor by the shock of the Dysjunction, the impact triggering howling agony as his skin splintered and drove glass shards into his living flesh. It proved to be just the first in a series of shocks that made the tunnel jump and writhe like a frightened animal. Yllithian could do nothing more than clutch ineffectually at the stonework and try to scream as the roots of the world were shaken.

  An interminable period seemed to pass before the immediate violence of the Dysjunction had quieted to an infrequent trembling. Yllithian found he was lying where he had fallen and was unable to rise. His limbs were now too stiff and heavy to move. One eye was completely blind, and the other dimmed by a layer of glass spreading across it. Despite such impediments Yllithian could sense the Dysjunction was far from over. A sense of wrongness and change pervaded the air that was as distinct and dangerous as the sulphurous fumes of a volcano. Periodically shockwaves ran through the foundation strata, either more of the city wardings being breached or the unthinkable megatonne impacts of falling debris that had been shaken loose from High Commorragh.