Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  On the eleventh day they had found other survivors. They were members of the fen clans that had hidden themselves in underground holdfasts until the trembling of the earth drove them to the surface. They found the world transformed. As the days drew into weeks they found other survivors or were found by them. Singly or in small groups they drifted in day after day, shocked, confused, and increasingly malnourished. The lake clan took all of them in and cared for them as best they could, although they had precious little to share. Other than the steady trickle of fellow survivors, they saw virtually nothing else alive in all of the regions they travelled through – every creature still able to move had long since fled or given up its bones to join the blackened pyres scattered across the forest floor.

  At the time of the calamity the skies had closed over with thick, ominous clouds and the temperature had begun to drop. The sun became visible only at dawn and dusk, red and bulbous as it peered out briefly beneath a solid roof of heavy cloud. The trapped heat from the forest fires and volcanoes had compensated at first with an unhealthy, bonfire-scented breeze but this subsided as the fires marched away south and east. Three weeks after the march had begun the morning dew settled as frost and brought a blessed respite from the omnipresent ash. From the fortieth day onward they began to encounter snow. These were real crystals of frozen water that were totally unlike the flakes of settling ash that had become such a part of their daily misery. A few nights later the first deaths began to occur as the bone-wracking chill and malnutrition took their toll. Their path north became marked by lonely little cairns of stones thrown up over the bodies of those that succumbed each night.

  Some had left the march, dropped out to find their own ways and hack out a new existence from the world that had so suddenly turned against them. More joined to take their place, and still more, until the tiny rivulet of lake clan members became an intermingled stream with other clans and then a flood of the surviving peoples of Lileathanir. Most of the travellers seemed to be motivated by the urge to cling together and to reassure themselves that they were still part of a greater whole. All craved some understanding of what had occurred to their world. Some sought a means to avenge themselves upon the guilty. At some point it had taken on the aspect of a pilgrimage with the normally fractious clans of Lileathanir bonding together in the face of their common adversity. That was when Sardon had started to become afraid.

  Sardon certainly believed the journey had taken on a higher meaning for the people, yet as the weeks passed she had become increasingly frightened by what she might find at the holy mountain. She could still feel her connection to the world spirit lurking the edge of her consciousness. The presence that had been with her from childhood was still there but not as she remembered it. The collective essence of the world spirit had encompassed many aspects: playful, nurturing, protective, wise, but its beneficent presence was a constant source of joy and reassurance to all. Now that had changed. A twisting serpent of atavistic rage boiled at the back of her mind: furious, negative, destructive, terrifying. All of them could feel the change yet none of them dared speak of it. They all looked to Sardon with pleading eyes as if somehow, miraculously, she could mend the unmendable and set the world to rights.

  The burden on her soul had grown heavier with each step that she took towards her destination. When the holy mountain came in to sight many of the pilgrims danced and sang at the prospect of an end to their journey. Sardon did not rejoice with them, it felt to her too much like her journey was only just beginning.

  Lil’esh Eldan Ay’Morai was a truly titanic peak. Its flattened top was normally wreathed in a permanent cloud layer that laced its flanks with rainbow-girt waterfalls and sparkling rivulets. Now it seemed as black and frozen as the dead forests below, with leprous-looking snow banks dotted across its jagged rock face like growths of mould. A series of black-mouthed openings had been torn into the mountain by the violence of the earth. Vapours issued from them as if a whole nest of dragons was laired below. The World Shrine had existed within the roots of the mountain safely protected by hundreds of metres of solid rock. It had been only reachable through the most secret of the ghost paths with no physical connection to the outside world. Sardon had dared to hope that the World Shrine would still be unreachable but looking at the broken mountain she knew with a grim sense of inevitability that there would be a path down to the World Shrine through one of those fissures.

  Sardon eventually took her leave of her companions and set out on the last leg alone. They tearfully bid her farewell but none of them tried to follow her. They understood that one must go alone to confront the dragon spirit, they would wait at the foot of the holy mountain until she returned or the cold and hunger took them. Sardon clambered inexpertly away under a crushing sense of responsibility towards her people. She slowly edged her way towards the lowest opening she had seen from below, crawling across rocks, pulling herself up ridges and jumping across crevasses. The mountain trembled beneath her feet and hands constantly, often dislodging gravel and stones that rattled and chattered dangerously past her head.

  Many times the opening was lost from her view but the plumes of vapour rising from it guided her inexorably towards it. As she got closer she began to appreciate just how big the opening really was. Seen from miles away it had looked like a thin black crack, up close it yawned across a vast swathe of the mountainside, higher than a carnosaur and wide enough for a whole clan to march inside shoulder to shoulder. Sardon slithered across the last few fallen stones to reach the ledge jutting out before the entrance and peered uncertainly inside.

  Hot, sulphurous breath washed across her face, a stiff, constant breeze coming up from below. Distant grinding, hissing sounds welled up from the depths in a fearsome medley. Sardon nerved herself as best she could and began her descent.

  Simply, and with what he felt to be creditable brevity Motley explained the cause of the Dysjunction wracking Commorragh and Morr’s own role in creating it. The incubus had received the news in silence and then continued on his way as if Motley did not exist. In truth it was a better reaction than Motley had hoped for.

  Morr’s silence had stretched out for what seemed to be aeons while they marched through the webway. Motley chattered, observed and even sang at times to fill the emptiness but he could draw nothing from the towering incubus he followed. Motley took Morr’s lack of overt hostility as a positive sign and simply smiled through it. The incubus had, after all, asked him for a direct answer and it wasn’t Motley’s concern if he didn’t like what he heard. The webway flowed smoothly past as they took smaller and smaller filaments, the incubus seemingly sure of his path at every turn. The curving etheric walls became increasingly tenuous as they advanced into regions where the cohesion of the webway had become broken and discontinuous. There Morr stopped, turned to Motley and finally spoke again.

  ‘I have considered your premise,’ Morr said slowly, ‘and I find it… feasible… that you may be correct.’

  Motley smiled with genuine warmth. ‘Then things may still be rectified! Come with me and, while I can’t guarantee all will be forgiven and forgotten, you can most certainly save Commorragh.’

  ‘I cannot,’ said Morr.

  Motley’s smile vanished as quickly as the sun going behind a cloud. He sighed heavily. ‘You still feel you must go to the shrine of Arhra and atone for killing your archon. This, of course, before you’ll even consider going about the clearly less pressing business of saving your city from imminent destruction. Predictable enough, I suppose.’

  Morr nodded solemnly.

  ‘And you still feel the need to present yourself for judgment before these hierarchs of yours at the shrine even though you know that they will probably kill you for what you’ve done.’

  Morr nodded solemnly again. Motley rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he said somewhat desperately, ‘that you’ve con–’

  ‘I ask that you accompany me to the shrine
,’ Morr said.

  Motley shut his mouth in surprise, but only for a moment. ‘Well, I’m flattered, Morr, not as a sacrifice, I hope, or perhaps a scapegoat?’

  Motley’s impudence had no visible effect on the armoured incubus. ‘I see now that should the hierarchs see fit not to end my existence that I may need you,’ Morr continued imperturbably, ‘and it would be expeditious for you to be close at hand.’

  ‘And what if the hierarchs should see fit to try to end my existence on, oh I don’t know, some obscure point of principle?’

  ‘As to the chance of that I cannot say.’

  ‘Hmmph, well regardless of that possibility I will be delighted to accompany you to the dance, Morr,’ Motley said brightly. ‘It makes me very happy that we’re becoming such good friends, companions, and, if I may say it, scions of a better future battling in the face of adversity.’

  ‘Do not mistake an alliance of convenience for friendship, little clown.’

  ‘All right, all right don’t worry I won’t,’ Motley replied a little peevishly. ‘I sought only to elevate our unique association as it rightly deserves, knowing that I could trust you to once more lower our collective expectations almost immediately.’

  ‘Very well. Then follow and do not stray from the path I tread.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that, of all people,’ Motley sniffed, and followed closely on the incubus’s heels.

  Before them the webway opened out into a hazy tangle of criss-crossing filaments, some wavering in an ethereal wind, some ragged and showing glimpses of multi-hued colour spilling through. The overall impression was that of a vast cave filled with phosphorescent webs swaying in the spectral breeze. Morr led the way toward a rippling fringe of colour that was alternately shot through with ochre, amber and jade. A broken portal, now a multi-dimensional weak spot that still connected to many other paths and realities, but in an uncertain and capricious fashion.

  ‘Does this lead to the shrine?’ Motley asked as his curiosity got the better of him. ‘We need to be sure of where we’re going before we pass through or we might end up, you know, absolutely anywhere.’ At closer range fine threads of green and blue could also be seen coiling hypnotically in the veil, evidence that the Dysjunction in distant Commorragh had subtle effects reaching even here.

  ‘No, I must retrace my steps to return to the shrine. We must go back to the beginning.’

  Morr swiftly waded into the veil of colours like some titan striding into an ocean. Motley huddled in closely behind the incubus as the swirling energies rose to engulf them. Cross currents tugged fiercely at them as disassociating realities stripped them down into fundamental blocks and whirled the pieces back together again. Floods of alien concepts and strange stimuli washed across them both only to flash away in the instant that they were perceived. Through the horrid rending, tearing, soul-ripping experience Morr’s continuity of purpose drove forward with Motley cowering in his slipstream. Morr’s self-belief was overwhelming, it bent and twisted the vagrant realities to his will. There was a moment of weightlessness as the portal grudgingly surrendered and ejected them…elsewhere.

  They stood upon an expanse of white sand that had the crystalline brilliance of fresh snow. It was night time but the darkness was lit by continuous flashes from horizon to horizon. A staccato drumbeat of explosions melded together into a continuous thunder that rolled back and forth in the sky. In the middle-distance ominous, hulking shapes the size of mountains leapt and shifted in the uncertain light.

  ‘What is this place?’ Motley asked in quiet awe.

  ‘Somewhere that no longer exists, a land of ghosts,’ Morr rumbled enigmatically as he set off across the white sands. Winds had sculpted the sand into a series of perfect ripples across their path. Morr tramped up the ridges and slithered down their opposite sides without breaking stride. The flickering hell-light of explosions and the rolling thunder never lessened.

  ‘Can I at least ask who is, or rather was, fighting then?’ Motley asked after they reached the third such ridge (he ran easily up and down each of them, leaving no imprint). ‘Call me an incurable historian if you will.’

  ‘A people that should have known better are fighting against themselves,’ Morr intoned. ‘Their petty dispute has been entirely resolved now.’

  Motley caught no small sense of satisfaction in Morr’s words. He surveyed the flicker-lit horizon. ‘Why is it that I imagine that there has not been a happy outcome for them?’ he wondered aloud.

  Morr said nothing in reply. He was busy scanning the leaping shadows in the middle distance. The incubus jabbed out an armoured finger, pointing into the darkness. ‘There I am,’ Morr said. ‘Follow, but do not approach too closely and do not speak.’

  Motley obediently followed the dark silhouette of the incubus into the shadows. Morr’s helm and shoulders were hard edged with the reflected glare from the distant barrage but otherwise he was only a blacker shape amid blackness. As they left the wave-like ridges of sand behind them the mass of hunched, mountainous shapes ahead resolved themselves as titanic growths of brain-like coral. A row of calcified ribs protruded from the sand nearby, the self-made tombstones of some megalithic beast. Two shapes were moving in the shadows between the ribs. Morr slowed his pace, dawdling to ensure that both got well ahead before moving after them.

  To describe Motley’s sight as cat-like or hawk-like would do disservice to all of the noble beasts involved. Suffice to say that his vision was of a fine acuity and ranged into wavelengths not normally enjoyed by either mammalian or avian life. He watched the shapes ahead of them carefully, resolving them into: first and closest to the path Morr so carefully tread upon – a young, lanky-looking eldar splashed with blood. The youth was haggard and near-naked, clad only in rags and holding one arm awkwardly as if it were injured. The youth’s other hand clutched a curved cudgel with its ball-like head caked with gore.

  The youth crept after a second figure that could barely be glimpsed with clarity; a night-black armoured warrior whose many-bladed helm would have over-reached even Morr’s lofty height. The figure seemed out of place and unearthly even in this strange setting. Motley gained the impression of burning eyes as it gazed back once before continuing to move unhurriedly in the direction of the coral bluffs. The youth seemed drawn after the armoured figure, fearful yet determined as he crept along in its footsteps.

  Motley glanced from the gangling youth over to Morr and back again, suddenly understanding. ‘There I am,’ Morr had said. His earlier self still lived here where the infinite possibilities of Chaos spilled into the broken coherence of the webway. The frozen instants of Morr’s first steps towards his initiation as an incubus still existed as a shard of memory, a moment to be replayed so that the same path could be found again – a path to the hidden shrine of Arhra.

  Motley wondered if what they saw leading the younger Morr was an avatar of Arhra made manifest. Legends about the father of the incubi were manifold. Most of them were false or contradictory but all agreed on one key point – that Arhra himself was destroyed long ago, and that the foundation of the incubi was his one abiding legacy. More likely they simply saw what the boy saw, or believed that he saw, reflected in this recreation of that explosion-wracked night.

  The coral began to rise in frowning cliffs above them as they drew closer. At the foot of the folded, curving masses of pale stone lay the vast wreck of a vessel. Blunt ribs of rusting iron poked through a patchy hide of rotting armour plates along its broken-backed kilometre of length. Great turret housings on the upper surface of the wreck pointed the frozen fingers of their cannon seemingly at random into the sky. As the dark figure and the youth vanished around the cloven bows of the great wreck Morr increased his pace again to close the distance.

  Motley became aware of more and more detritus lying in the sands at the bottom the coral canyons; metal components mangled and rusted beyond recognition, the half-buri
ed wreckage of many smaller machines ranging in size and design from skeletal-winged flyers to smaller cousins of the great vessel they were approaching. And bones. Bones and teeth were everywhere, sometimes in such density that they covered the sand completely. Thousands, perhaps millions, of bones stretching as far as the eye could see.

  They rounded the bows of the great wreck and ahead Motley could see the sands bulked up higher, forming a saddle between two cliffs. Beyond the saddle the inferno of bombardment could clearly be seen lighting the sky. Long, grotesque shadows leapt out behind the armoured figure and the youth as they climbed upward seemingly heedless of the danger. Morr strode forwards, attention locked on the distant figures as they vanished from view over the top of the saddle.

  The steep slope shook with the fury of the barrage on the other side. Morr forged upward through continual small avalanches of loosened sand. A rank smell of burning hung in the air from the bombardment. It was punctuated by blasts of hot wind being blown into their faces by the crisscrossing pressure waves of the closest impacts.

  Morr and Motley reached the ridge-like saddle together and stopped. Before them spread a vision of hell. A pockmarked plain alive with gouts of flame and whirring traceries of light. No living thing could be seen below but the leaping fires gave an illusion of life given triumphant, elemental form as they cavorted over the tortured sands. A single flame of jade held bright and steady on the horizon, a spear point of green light that had been dug into the earth.

  Morr’s helm turned back and forth frantically looking for his earlier self, but there was no visible sign of the would-be neophyte or his mysterious patron.

  ‘No! This is wrong!’ Morr roared in disbelief above the cacophony of detonations.

  ‘What? Where should we be?’ shouted Motley.

  Morr pointed to the unwavering green flame that hung on the horizon. ‘The gate,’ the incubus said grimly.