Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  ‘Surely you can’t mean to wipe out absolutely everybody down there?’ the Harlequin objected incredulously. ‘Why don’t you simply support the winning side and speed their victory?’

  Sythrac, who had been about to turn on his heel to leave and join his warriors, paused to glance at Vect for direction. The supreme overlord smiled cruelly and gestured for Sythrac to wait for a moment. ‘Explain your mission to the outsider, Valossian,’ Vect said equably. ‘I think he misunderstands the nature of it.’

  ‘Of course, supreme overlord,’ Sythrac replied before tersely addressing the Harlequin with tones of contempt. ‘Support the winners and you gain allies of dubious worth, ones already flushed with their own success. Later their gratitude will turn into demands and then plots to gain what they claim should have been theirs by right of conquest. Better to destroy them now while they’re hard-pressed.’

  ‘Then why not buoy up the losers and force the winners to negotiate?’ the Harlequin persisted in the face of Sythrac’s warning glower. ‘Surely even that is preferable to going headlong down the route of mass slaughter?’

  ‘The losers have proven themselves weak and now deserve only death,’ Sythrac snarled. ‘All those fighting below us have defied the supreme overlord and broken his laws. They will pay for that transgression with their lives so that their deaths serve as a warning to others. Obey or die. There is no other path, no negotiation, no compromise to be had. That time has already passed, and now we’ve come to the moment of retribution.’

  Even as Sythrac spoke shatterfield missiles were raining down on Alzos’Querion Vha. As each Voidraven bomber swooped down it birthed a quartet of the streaking projectiles. The shatterfields produced their own unique detonation signatures on impact – a double blast with the two explosions microseconds apart. The first detonation plunged the ambient temperature around the target to absolute zero so that it flash-froze everything in the area. The second detonation then propagated a vicious shockwave to shatter anything affected by the first. Seen through the displays the explosions flashed black then white as shattered, crystalline debris was thrown up into the air by the secondary blasts. The chain of detonations ravened up the processional and across the spires on both sides.

  Sythrac watched avidly as the bombers did their work. In the aftermath the Razorwing escorts swooped down to annihilate any surviving grav-craft in a fury of missiles and darklight blasts. There was so little hunting to be done in the air that some of the Razorwings peeled off to begin strafing the processional itself. Return fire from the ground had dropped away to virtually nil, the warring kabalites too stunned to organise a coherent defence. Sythrac looked towards Vect with a pained expression.

  ‘I must go,’ Sythrac pleaded. Vect gave a small nod and the archon strode away.

  Motley remained silent, too stunned by what he had seen to interject. He knew that the city had suffered terribly already; millions, perhaps even billions must be dead. Even so the level of violence Vect was willing to casually unleash against his own unruly subjects was coming as something of a shock. Motley was a great believer in negotiation and compromise (and, he had to admit, even a little targeted assassination when it was called for) as ways to ensure that everybody got what they wanted. In this case that would seem to be no one else dying.

  Vect didn’t see it that way at all, nor did Sythrac. Even the tragic imitation of Vect currently sitting in his throne placed no sanctity on life for its own sake. Obedience was the only matter of importance to them, and even obedience was valueless without enough strength to be useful backing it up. Motley shook his head ruefully as he contemplated his own naivety. He was still seeing every surviving Commorrite as something precious, a soul to be saved that had, if anything, become even more valuable after living through the trauma of the Dysjunction. It seemed a cosmic injustice for them to live through a daemonic invasion and randomly warping reality only to be killed off by their own kind.

  Motley had wondered at first how anyone aboard the ziggurat actually believed they were in the presence of Asdrubael Vect. To Motley, the aura of the creature was completely different; a thin and hollow presence compared to the towering black colossus projected by the tyrant himself. Then had come the realisation of how completely insensitive the Commorrites had made themselves in the psychic realm as a matter of survival. Centuries of excessive perfectionism had trained Commorrites to overcome the forfeit of something that, for Motley at least, was an essential part of his sensory landscape. Even so the Commorrites were blind in this regard and the real Asdrubael Vect had known how to turn that to his advantage.

  The Vect-double was gazing at Motley intently as if it were aware of his thoughts. Vect’s curious ‘pet’, the Medusae collective, was ignoring him after initiating numerous unsuccessful psychic probes in an attempt to harvest some of his emotions. The thing was weak but exceptionally subtle in its approach – something that made Motley wonder how long Vect had been keeping it around for.

  ‘You shake your head and sigh, outsider,’ the doppelgänger said, its pitch and tenor absolutely perfect matches for the original. ‘Your overt demonstrations of disapproval offend me.’

  ‘Forgive me, eminent dominator,’ Motley said with little real enthusiasm for the play-acting, ‘my disapproval was directed inwards at myself for my foolishness. I thank you for taking some of Sythrac’s valuable time to instruct me to my betterment.’

  ‘Lies flow from your lips like water,’ the false-Vect observed coldly. ‘You should know that Valossian will hate you now for keeping him from his troops at a critical moment. You should try not to be left alone with him, or indeed be around him at all, when he returns.’

  Motley smiled at the little performance. It was a trifle petty for the true tyrant, he thought, but the doppelgänger was probably a better judge of whether or not that was the case than he was. Motley’s welcome was certainly wearing thin, he thought; it could be time to move on soon. However, it was hard to tear himself away from the hypnotically shifting displays and their constant outpouring of information. He needed to understand more about what was going on in the city to watch for signs of corruption. Here he was at the heart of things, at least for now.

  On the displays the barbed wall of grav-craft that had been hanging motionless at one end of the Alzos’Querion Vha was beginning to move. It rolled down the processional at what appeared to be a surprisingly leisurely pace. Raiders descended to disembark squads of blood-mad warriors onto the bridges between the spires and in a strict grid arrangement along the rubble-strewn processional itself. The last few enemy gunners on the ground that were feeling foolish enough to take their chances against the slow-moving mass were instantly countered by pinpoint salvoes of cannon fire from squadrons of Ravagers drifting overhead. The overall advance was smooth and machine-like in its precision.

  The real trouble began at the far end of the processional, where two intact spires stood like bastions to either side of the open path to the lower tiers. One of the spires took the form of a double helix of lustrous jade. The other rose in bladed tiers of polished silver. As the Black Heart advanced on the latter, concealed weapon ports swung open and bulbous-looking cannon appeared. Motley’s heart clenched at the sight of the weapons; he knew their kind and could only watch with horrified fascination at what happened next.

  The weapons belched forth not fire or lightning but gossamer sprays of dark strands so fine that they were almost imperceptible on the ziggurat’s displays except as a blurring in the air. Where the dark clouds drifted into the vanguard of the Black Heart’s force the Raiders and Ravagers seemed to simply unravel at their touch. Slivers of metal and flesh rained down from the stricken craft as the dark strands glided effortlessly through them.

  The Black Hearts saw the danger and frantically twisted their craft around to escape the all-destroying strands. In the ensuing confusion craft collided or were caught in more clouds as the bulbous cannon filled the a
ir with their lethal payload. In a few moments the rest of the Black Heart grav-craft had pulled clear of the danger zone. The warriors that were left behind on the ground were doomed. They tried to run, until the dark clouds drifted down to cover them like a shroud.

  The defenders were using monofilament webs, nets of wires so fine that they slipped between molecules, severing sub-atomic bonds as they went. Motley used hand-held weapons of similar ilk and witnessed first-hand their truly awful effectiveness at flensing through armour, flesh and bone with the lightest touch. The very idea of using monofilament weaponry indiscriminately on such a scale as he’d just seen made him feel a little queasy.

  ‘Perhaps I should go, your incomparable mightiness,’ Motley said. ‘Many thanks for your hospitality, if you could just let me off somewhere…’

  ‘No,’ the false-Vect said flatly. ‘You will remain here until you’ve seen Valossian’s riposte.’

  False-Vect or not, Motley could not simply disobey the creature, for fear of how the Black Heart kabalites might choose to defend their supreme overlord’s authority. The Harlequin settled himself to watch the displays again with an expression of rapt attention. Behind the fixed half-smile he wore Motley’s mind was racing. He wouldn’t find what he was looking for here on the frontlines of Vect’s reconquest of Commorragh. He had to go deeper, go to places where he could see and touch things with mind and hand.

  The Black Heart craft had rallied out of range of the monofilament cannon. No more than one in ten of them had been lost in the initial encounter yet the remainder now circled like frustrated hornets, apparently unwilling to try their luck again. Minutes passed before Motley understood the reason for the delay as the Voidravens reappeared. The cannon belched forth their deadly webs to create once more an impenetrable wall of death at the end of the processional. The blade-winged bombers swept down into the maelstrom without hesitation even though they looked to be rushing headlong to their doom.

  Bright fires kindled beneath the attacking aircraft’s wings as they executed a simultaneous missile launch. The missiles leapt ahead in a fan-shaped arc before plunging into the clouds of drifting monofilament and exploding. The Voidravens were using shatterfield missiles again and the clouds were effectively torn asunder by the double pulse of the detonations. The Voidravens flashed through the gap they had made to deliver their real attack against the spires themselves. Twin ruby-red beams sprang from each craft and gouged deep wounds into the flanks of the spires like fiery claws. The Voidravens pulled up and climbed vertically away at the last possible moment. As they did so each craft released the last part of their payload – a single device that was deadlier than their void lances and shatterfield missiles combined; void mines.

  The void mines detonated in two stages much like the shatterfield missiles. However, in this case the first warhead was in itself harmless. It created a momentary ripple in the fabric of reality, an impenetrable sphere of force to contain the detonation of the second warhead – a single particle of pure darklight energy. The void mine’s destructive potential was so vast and unpredictable that it had to be limited to give the Voidravens a chance to escape the danger zone. Black, crackling spheres began to spring into being at the base of each spire. Some of the Voidravens demonstrated their pinpoint accuracy by dropping their mines directly into the open wounds they had torn in the spires with their void lances. In a few heartbeats the speeding aircraft had vanished into the thin upper air of High Commorragh leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

  Both spires were now deeply pockmarked around their bases as though a giant had been scooping out their innards with a spoon. Motley watched in horrid fascination as the double helix of lustrous jade lurched drunkenly to one side and began to slump against the tiered silver blades of its neighbour. Size and distance made the process appear slow but Motley knew that for those caught in the collapse it would be terrifying and inescapable. Dust and flames billowed up to draw a merciful veil across the scene. Further along the processional the Black Heart kabalites began to move forwards to root out any survivors.

  ‘All this death!’ Motley blurted, unable to contain himself any longer. ‘Don’t you see you’re putting the city at further risk? Commorragh is one of the greatest surviving bastions for our dying race and yet you level it as if such actions hold no consequences.’

  ‘Consequences?’ The false-Vect was smiling at his success in baiting the Harlequin into another outburst. ‘What you are seeing are the consequences of the poor decisions made by others. Do not blame the chirurgeon when he has to cut deep in order to save the subject, blame instead the infection that requires such drastic measures to cure. Rebellion, sedition, civil war – it is these things that threaten Commorragh with complete obliteration and I will see them excised!’

  The Harlequin listened to the tirade with astonishment. Knowingly or not the false-Vect had struck at the very heart of the matter. The fighting was a symptom of a deeper disease. It was ever the way with the Chaos powers that their agents would spread disorder wittingly or unwittingly as they went about their work. As the host society broke down it became ever more vulnerable to their blandishments until the slow dissolution became an unstoppable avalanche.

  Motley had heard similar tirades from members of another race – the human race, the latest and most contemptible of the mon-keigh to lay claim to the galaxy. Brutish and contemptible they might be, but the humans had yet to fall completely to Chaos as the eldar had done. The humans had wobbled on the edge of the abyss repeatedly but each time they had avoided their own destruction by doing precisely what Vect was doing now – excising the infection before it killed the host. It was frightening to think that there was something to be learned from a race that was so backward in so many other ways.

  ‘By your leave, gargantuan terror, I must go,’ Motley pleaded again with all the humbleness he could muster. ‘While I benefit greatly from the truths that spill so readily from your wise lips I feel I can serve better by going out into the city…’

  ‘You mean you want to go and spy elsewhere. Fine. Guards, throw this fool out.’

  Two onyx-armoured warriors had evidently been waiting for just such a command. They grabbed Motley by the elbows and hustled him out of the control room. Once outside they thrust him off the bottom step of the ziggurat in what they doubtless felt was an inspired piece of literal-mindedness. If they were hoping that the Harlequin would scream as he plummeted to his doom they were sorely disappointed. Motley smiled, waved at them and fragmented into a kaleidoscopic cloud of colours that drifted away from the processional and its ongoing bloodshed. The scintillating diffraction created by Motley’s holofield quickly disappeared down towards the darkened tiers of Low Commorragh.

  Chapter 8

  CAGED FLAMES

  Archon Nyos Yllithian was strolling casually through his pleasure gardens atop the White Flames fortress as if he had not a care in the world. Beyond the dazzling alabaster parapets the eternal city might shudder and gasp in its agonies, but here Yllithian was untouched by it all. Dressed in loose, comfortable robes and soft shoes he passed between rows of ever-changing fractal sculptures along pathways of crushed sapphires. He paused to breathe deeply of the heady scents of dream poppy and lotus blossoms nodding lazily in the chill air.

  Time was pressing but Yllithian refused to be rushed, even if it was hard for him to maintain the illusion of introspective calm. Beneath the flowing robes he wore concealed body armour and a shadow field projector. Close on his heels there marched all of his surviving incubus bodyguards, their double-handed klaives in hand and their blank-faced helms scanning warily for threats. Behind the incubi were a hand-picked cadre of trueborn White Flames kabalites that Yllithian considered sufficiently trustworthy to protect rather than threaten him in a crisis. A discreet distance away and concealed behind a large pergola were two Venom sky-chariots lurking ready to bring additional reinforcements and serve as a means of escape i
f it became necessary.

  Yllithian might once have found taking such precautions in the heart of his own stronghold a trifle excessive, but not any longer. The time had come to declare himself openly against Vect and that brought with it immeasurable perils. As archon of the White Flames, Yllithian had always been extraordinarily cautious about rooting out spies and traitors within his kabal. Deep in his heart Yllithian had known that inevitably this day would come and yet there could be no certainty that Vect had no agents left within the White Flames fortress. They would watch and wait and work to do the most damage they could whether it was with a backstabbing blade, a disobeyed order or simply a piece of bad advice. From this point forth he could literally trust no one. As he walked further through his sumptuous gardens Yllithian smiled to himself at his conclusion. He had spent his entire life trusting no one and nothing as a general rule of self-preservation; having a specific, definable cause for doing so would be… refreshing.

  Turning a corner of the glittering path Yllithian emerged into a small paved courtyard centred on an intricate, multi-tiered fountain of silver and gold. The fountain had originated in the workshops of Alaitoc craftworld before its installation into an eclipse-class cruiser. That vessel was subsequently looted by the illustrious Zovas Yllithian. Of course that was in the days before Asdrubael Vect would lay claim to any such booty by his right as supreme overlord. Yllithian hoped the underlying message was not lost on the individuals waiting around the fountain for his arrival.