Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  Yllithian’s plan was simply to lure Vect’s forces into an open battle where the sudden appearance of mandrakes could inflict the greatest possible toll. Despite what he’d told Xhakoruakh he had little hope of the children of Aelindrach winning the day. Most likely the horde of mandrakes and ur-ghuls would be massacred once out in the open, but in the course of their destruction they would drag Vect’s forces down with them. Yllithian and Xelian did not need to break the siege in order to score a victory against Vect. All they had to do was give battle, withdraw and leave Vect’s kabals to count the cost. Defections would soon follow.

  Yllithian’s heart leapt as he saw Vect’s ziggurat begin to move. He had never dared to hope that Vect would allow himself to become directly embroiled in the fighting. Entering any combat bore a risk no matter how infinitesimally small the combatant attempted to make it. Chance could always take its toll, Fate might rear its ugly head and bring down the highest as easily as the lowest in the anarchy of war. Yllithian gripped his scope and watched, unable to take his eyes off the ziggurat’s stately progress. If Xhakoruakh saw and understood well enough to wait he could have a chance to strike at Vect himself.

  The battle swirled and flamed as if a million daemons beat upon the anvils of war, yet Yllithian had eyes only for Vect’s progress. It seemed so painfully slow that he began to wonder if Vect were taunting him somehow, aware of Yllithian’s watching eyes and his all-too-obvious plan. No, the shadow of the ziggurat still crept forwards, inching across the war-torn foundation strata. It began to cross one of the ubiquitous yawning pits, the shadows merging…

  The trap was sprung.

  Yllithian’s pulse hammered so hard he found it difficult to keep the scope steady. He glimpsed crowds of pitch-black shapes swarming over the stepped ziggurat, saw it lurch in the air and slide sideways to impact on the surface with deceptive gentleness. Armoured plates bowed and ruptured, flames spurted from splits in the tortured metal as the angular shape crumpled. It was the most orgasmic sight Yllithian had ever witnessed.

  He lowered the scope and issued orders to his helmsman to get him to the fortress as quickly as possible. A thousand possibilities raced through his mind. It could all still be a trick, a counterfeint of Vect’s to draw him in to his doom. He raised the scope again as his Raider began to move. The dark ring formed by Vect’s forces was dissipating like smoke, the kabals breaking away from the equally shocked White Flames to race away into High Commorragh in shameful defeat. He had won.

  Trapped in a place of fire and burning metal, Xhakoruakh strove to free himself from the pillar pinning his lower body. The shadows were close, all he needed to do was stretch far enough and he could slip into the angles between worlds and escape. The shadows were close… but jealous flames kept them at bay. Fire, the old enemy, might yet become his doom.

  The shadow-king cursed his weak minions for fleeing when the tyrant’s palace fell. The eviscerated body of Vect lay among a dozen slain warriors nearby, but none of Xhakoruakh’s own people had been there to witness him deliver the killing blow.

  The shadows, so tantalisingly close, rippled. Someone had returned for him. Xhakoruakh began to call out, but then recognised the shape poised in the darkness with its long, straight blade.

  ‘It’s you,’ Xhakoruakh rumbled. ‘I knew that you would come back for me.’

  Kheradruakh’s slash took the shadow-king’s head from his shoulders in a single, clean cut.

  Chapter 25

  CORESPUR

  They were treated as prisoners, stripped, searched and brought to the scrying chamber atop Corespur, all without comment. The onyx-armoured guards escorting them had a swagger about them as if they were big game hunters bringing in a particularly valuable kill. Motley found the behaviour a little unwarranted considering that he had literally delivered himself and Bellathonis to the front door.

  In the chamber, surrounded by rings of polished crystal, they found Vect himself seated on an ugly metal throne. The great tyrant appeared to be in rare humour, positively overflowing with malicious glee as he watched the scenes displayed in the crystal panes. The inner ring had been entirely dedicated to a single, vast battle involving multiple kabals clashing around a white-walled spire. Vect spared them a glance and a mischievous grin before raising his hand for silence as he stared intently at a single crystal. The viewpoint it showed was a distance from the towering spire, looking up from a low angle as the battle swept around it.

  It was hard not to be distracted by the kaleidoscopic images of closer violence in the other panes. In each one fantastic machines and warriors fought to the death in lightning-fast combats, the barbed, weaponed masses of the opposed kabals grappling like amorphous monsters with ever-shifting limbs of fire and steel. Vect glanced at Motley again and grinned as if reading his thoughts.

  ‘All of the battles are of vital importance to their participants,’ Asdrubael Vect mocked, ‘but only one is relevant now. The others have played out their parts in my design. I see you were thoughtful enough to bring me a gift from your sojourn in my city, Fool. Tell me what it is you think you have brought me.’

  Motley was, rarely for him, nervous as he replied. Vect remained an enigma, there was no telling how he might react. The Harlequin chose his words carefully. ‘This is Bellathonis, a haemonculus who assisted a certain Archon Yllithian in a certain endeavour that eventually led to… well, the Dysjunction happening. You wanted vengeance on the ones responsible – here is one who witnessed everything and can point you to all of the others.’

  Vect laughed, maniacal peals of evil merriment that rebounded from the upright crystal panes and winged their way into the shadowed eaves above. ‘Priceless!’ Vect chuckled. ‘You still believe that some judicial process will be applied, that the guilty will be separated from your precious innocents and justice will be done.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Motley responded. ‘It is simply my earnest hope that with those responsible in hand you can cease punishing the entire city for the actions of a few individuals.’

  Vect smirked and looked at the crystal once more. ‘Again, you make the mistake of believing I do not wish to harm my citizens,’ the supreme overlord said carelessly, ‘that all I do is a matter of sad necessity instead of the exercise of my will. As I recall you also believed servants of the Chaos gods to be loose within my city – tell me what you have found.’

  ‘Many things,’ Motley sighed uncomfortably. ‘From what Bellathonis has told me and what I’ve seen for myself the main threat comes from a sub-realm called Aelindrach. The Architect of Fate and the Plague Lord had found living champions in that place, and after their clash Nurgle’s champion became ascendant. That is the source of the shadows and invasion of Commorragh in the aftermath of the Dysjunction.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Vect murmured condescendingly before issuing a whispered command. The viewpoint that was absorbing all of the tyrant’s attention began to move, sliding slowly forwards across the ruined plain towards the fortress.

  ‘Supreme overlord, may I interject?’ Bellathonis asked with unctuous humbleness.

  ‘It speaks!’ Vect mocked with his attention still on the crystal. ‘Very well. Just do not tell me you have come to throw yourself on my mercy. I have none.’

  ‘Of course, supreme overlord, that is well documented and attested to. Contrary to the Harlequin’s beliefs I have not given myself over to your authority in order to bring your attention to the threat from Aelindrach. Firstly, as a citizen of Commorragh I have always been under your authority and from gestation to dissolution I always will be…’

  Vect smirked, but kept watching the crystal, circling one finger indicating Bellathonis needed to speed up. The haemonculus hurried.

  ‘…but like many others I accept only you as my true master. Yllithian made great promises and I chose to follow him – in doing so I accepted his objectives as my own, and also his failures. In exchange for my continu
ed existence I can offer his life for mine, and in a fashion I think you will find pleasing.’

  Vect’s brows arched and he broke from watching the crystal for long enough to give Bellathonis a penetrating look. ‘You have no conception of what pleases me, haemonculus, although I accept your tribute in the spirit it is offered,’ Vect said before nodding towards where Xagor was quailing as he held out Angevere’s head like an offering. ‘I see you’ve brought me the crone – that was wise too. Now be silent, the final act is beginning – you’re just in time to see it.’

  An eruption of darkness was obscuring the view in the crystal, drowning it beneath what proved to be the shadow-skinned bodies of countless mandrakes. The nightmarish killers vanished from sight just as the whole viewpoint tilted sideways and slid towards the ground. The pane went dark. The scenes in the other crystals changed in a ripple effect, the combatants in one fight after another separating and one side immediately fleeing the battlefield.

  ‘What just happened?’ Motley asked impertinently. Vect shot him a scathing look. Bellathonis cleared his throat, taking his life in his hands.

  ‘Supreme overlord, if I might hazard a guess?’ the haemonculus wheedled. Vect nodded.

  ‘Our supreme overlord has manufactured an event whereby he appears to have fallen on the field of battle, and upon seeing this disaster his loyal kabals are fleeing… or at least the ones that are truly loyal are fleeing… The rebels will now take heart and consolidate at the scene of their victory along with whatever turncoats flock to join their cause.’

  Vect nodded again and smiled approvingly at Bellathonis. ‘Close enough, but you are missing the vital ingredient of what happens next.’

  ‘What happens next?’ Motley asked in mystification. Heartening your enemies and adding to their numbers sounded like a remarkably poor plan to him.

  ‘You almost fatally unhinged affairs without ever knowing it, Fool,’ Vect remarked venomously. ‘It gave me great cause to regret keeping an eye on you. Fortunately you’ve brought me something to make up for it, so I may be able to forgive your transgression.’

  ‘You’re referring to the lady I danced with by the firefalls,’ Motley said contritely, ‘or perhaps the fellow at the Castigator vault? My regrets for the inconvenience in either case.’

  ‘Lady Malys, whom you so inconvenienced that she simply had to run off and duel with you, was supposed to bring back the occupants of Valzho Sinister. In the event she brought back only a handful of survivors, but fortunately for you both they are sufficient for my needs. They have just reached their positions – you are about to witness a miracle.’

  Motley glanced over at Bellathonis to see if the name meant anything to him. The haemonculus’s milk-white face betrayed nothing if it did. Animate shadows were running amok in the circle of crystal faces now, while the tall white spire stood unbroken with long processions of grav-craft passing into and out of it. Lots of new friends arriving, it seemed.

  ‘Valzho Sinister,’ Vect continued, unperturbed and evidently enjoying Motley’s ignorance, ‘contained the last beaten remnants of a cult from far, far back in Commorragh’s history. It was a time so long ago that I had not yet achieved the dominance that I so richly deserve. The cult attempted to seize power over the city, thinking that their eldritch knowledge would be sufficient to keep the noble houses cowed. They were wrong, of course, the nobles cared nothing for the suffering the cultists could inflict on the city, only that they were challenged.

  ‘The most terrible weapon in the cult’s arsenal was prepared, a thing so terrible that it was encoded with safety measures that ensured it could only be activated by members of the cult’s leadership. Yet in the final test they feared to use it. The nobles overthrew the cult but kept the leaders alive and in torment in case they ever required the use of that weapon. They, too, feared to use it when the time came. I gained control of Valzho Sinister when I overthrew the nobles. I am Asdrubael Vect and I fear to use nothing to assert my will.’

  ‘What did the cultists worship?’ Motley whispered, terrified by what Vect’s answer might be. He had thought the supreme overlord too self-assured to resort to calling upon the fickle gods of Chaos. He had been wrong and now Commorragh was surely doomed; there would be an eternity of bondage in the grip of the new tide of unimaginable horrors that Chaos would unleash. Motley had seen it many times over, desperate souls calling for help at any cost without understanding there were costs that no one should ever have to bear.

  The scenes in the crystals were taking on a new aspect; the shadows were becoming hard-edged and blacker by the second, the lone white spire blazing with reflected light. The Ilmaea, usually wan and sickly-looking, had swelled in the sky over High Commorragh until they almost filled it. The light brightened impossibly until the crystal panes looked like sheets of white-hot metal.

  ‘They were the Solar Cultists,’ Vect smiled. ‘They worshipped, and tended to, the Ilmaea.’

  In later times it would become known as ‘The Gaze of Vect’. All Commorrites would shudder to remember the day when Asdrubael Vect called down the Ilmaea to scour the darkness from High Commorragh. All the horrors of the Dysjunction came to be forgotten in the face of the retribution it incurred.

  Around the White Flames fortress the air shimmered with heat haze under the focused glare of the Ilmaea as the temperatures skyrocketed. Within seconds mandrakes and ur-ghuls were physically shrivelled in the hideous blaze, their withered forms immolating like scraps of paper beneath a blowtorch. The great, seething mass of the shadow horde caught on the plain was utterly annihilated, torn apart and burned to ash by the unrelenting suns. The handful of survivors fled shrieking into the deepest darkness of Aelindrach to nurse burning scars that would never heal.

  Yllithian’s followers fled for shelter inside the fortress as the plain smouldered and fires leapt up spontaneously on all sides. They were caught inside a ring of flames and as the heat mounted higher the plain itself ran molten. Still they thought themselves safe inside; the White Flames fortress was buttressed by more than metal and stone, impenetrable shields of force protected it on all sides, air and sustenance could be supplied indefinitely. They had only to wait, under siege once more even if it was by Vect’s stolen suns.

  It was not to be. The ring of flames tightened inexorably around the lone white spire and the heat soared still higher. The super-heated air itself burned as the ring closed, a titanic vortex of fire grew, spinning faster and faster as it reached up into the heavens. The fortress shuddered and smouldered under the assault, but still stood defiant as the fiery pillar roiled higher still. Its head split to become hydra-like as it reached out to touch the face of the Ilmaea themselves…

  Raw plasma siphoned into the spinning funnel directly from the bloated bodies of the caged suns. Their coronas were momentarily joined as they poured their fusing mass onto the fortress below. The White Flames fortress was engulfed in the living blood of the suns, pounded by unthinkable energies in the whirling atomic firestorm. No clever construct or adroit technology could keep such energy at bay for long.

  Emitters failed and relays melted, the impenetrable shields of force protecting the fortress collapsed suddenly and catastrophically leaving the structure itself exposed. The inrush of elemental forces ate through stone and drank metal. Organics, the fragile inhabitants of the fortress, flashed into expanding gas in a split second. The whole great edifice with its high white walls and sloping gables, its rooftop gardens and bladed oubliettes, vanished with an ear-splitting roar.

  With their work of destruction complete the Ilmaea split their cyclopean gaze once more, the firestorm dissipating over a bubbling lake of molten metal and stone that slowly drizzled through gaps in the foundation strata to fall into Low Commorragh as a killing rain. The work was not over. The fiery presence of the Ilmaea rushed outwards again, expanding to burn back the encroaching shadows of Aelindrach from Commorragh.

  T
he darkness that had spilled from the shadow-realm’s boundaries recoiled like a living thing, fleeing before the unmasked faces of the captured stars. Flames and destruction followed in their wake as the guttering fires begun by the Dysjunction roared into fresh life. The city would suffer beneath the burning lash for many hours, but never again did the Ilmaea focus fully on a single stronghold as they had on the White Flames fortress.

  Through the billowing smoke and livid flames came marching Vect’s Castigators. Their metal hides were invulnerable to the heat, just as their insensate minds were immune to the pain. They set about completing Vect’s reconquest of Commorragh with indefatigable determination and unshakeable purpose. They terrorised the populace and imposed Vect’s rule of law with unimaginable cruelty – all while dreaming they stood as heroes on the battlefield once more.

  Yllithian’s small force was arrowing towards the fortress and within sight of it when the Ilmaea began to swell in the sky. Ever cautious, he had his helmsman circle for a moment while he determined what new devilry Vect might be brewing. Commorragh was usually a city of perpetual twilight; it was only among the heights of High Commorragh that the Ilmaea shone visible at all times and most often they seemed weak and distant. Recently, over Gorath and in the tortured skies around it, Yllithian had witnessed the potential power of the Ilmaea first-hand so he chose to wait. The suns became more bloated, the fractured light from a million barbs and steeples across the spiretops became blinding. Then it happened.

  Flames rose. Flames higher than the spires themselves. Roaring, inchoate pillars of fire reaching into the heavens before smashing back down again like an enormous fist. The White Flames fortress (oh, the bitter irony of that name now!) seemed to leap upwards for an instant, the whole, vast bulk of it skipping impossibly into the air at the touch of the coruscating rivers of plasma from above.