Path of the Renegade

by Andy Chambers

  ‘It looks more inviting than I’d imagined,’ whispered Aez’ashya. ‘How are we going to find anything in that?’

  ‘El’Uriaq was no fool, the roots of his palace burrow deep,’ replied Xyriadh. ‘I’ll wager his bones are underground.’

  Morr shook his head. ‘We see only ruins now,’ the incubus said. ‘Closer to the breach things will be… different.’

  Morr hefted his blade and moved forwards more cautiously than the others had seen him wont to do in the past. The towering incubus moved with surprising grace, gliding through the expanse of tumbled stone with barely a sound. The others followed, emulating his stealth with more or less success. They skirted open areas and worked their way carefully forwards. The first few soulless they encountered still seemed to be unaware of their presence, but as they came closer to the hydra-headed storm cloud marking the breach the wretches began sensing a disturbance. The emaciated figures started to lurch around randomly, heads twisting as if they were casting about for a scent.

  ‘The amulets are failing!’ hissed Kharbyr. ‘We’ll never make it!’

  ‘Silence,’ said Morr. ‘Retreat is not an option.’

  They could all feel the sinister thrill of She Who Thirsts brushing at their souls by now. The faint fish-scale shimmer that had surrounded them when they first entered Shaa-dom had intensified into a solid glow. The spiritstones they wore around their necks shone like red embers.

  ‘No, no. Not failing,’ muttered Xagor quietly. ‘Straining, working hard.’

  ‘Well, that’s reassuring,’ said Aez’ashya. ‘Like Morr said, there’s no use talking about going back, Yllithian will feed us to the daemons personally if we fail him now.’ Her voice sounded brittle, apt to break into hysterics at any moment.

  Ahead of them the palace was breaking up into fractal landscapes of possibilities. Towers reared and fell, walls crumbled and rebuilt themselves. Warring shards of possibility inverted the topography at will, doorways opened on empty air and stairs spiralled through impossible geometries.

  Gazing into the maelstrom Sindiel felt a persistent part of his mind gibbering at him to flee, but the terror of having to do so alone still kept him trapped in lockstep with the others. His companions might not help him survive individually but they would defend themselves as a group, knowing that therein lay their only chance of survival. He felt a strange mixture of admiration and abhorrence for the Dark Kin in that moment, even though the torch of his hatred for them was undimmed. That they could be so seemingly undaunted by such a place almost defied his belief. It was as if they were all deaf and he was the only one that could hear the roaring, snorting monstrosity that was treading at their heels.

  Each step they took brought the confused whirl ahead into sharper focus, slowly resolving into what was at once a parody of what had been the palace of El’Uriaq and an outraged denial of what had become of it. Its walls reared above them like a giant’s castle, decked with kilometre-long banners proclaiming the ascendance of the emperor of Shaa-dom. Horrid seneschals mounted on strange beasts stood guard before a gate shaped like an open maw. The change in perspective reduced the agents to crawling insects inching below the titanic fortifications as they made for the gate. The seneschals regarded their slow approach with amused disdain.

  Without doubt these were daemons of the old tales, sinister and beautiful in some lights but hideously twisted in others. The slender arms terminated in long crab-like claws and their knowing smiles revealed rows of sharpened fangs. Six of them sat before the gate upon sinuous bipedal beasts with curiously equine heads that tasted the air with obscenely long pink tongues. As the agents came closer the daemons chattered excitedly among themselves in a dark tongue that hurt the ears and seemed to brand the air with its eldritch tones. One more supremely hideous and beautiful than the others spurred her mount forwards and called out in a honeyed travesty of the ancient eldar tongue.

  ‘Welcome, brothers and sisters!’ the thing said. ‘You’ve chosen to cast aside those tiresome bonds of mortality and join us at last. Your coming will be exalted until the stars burn out! A billion slaves will scream your praises for all eternity!’

  The agents felt joy at the warmth and friendship in the thing’s words and at the thrilling, secret promise that lay beneath every syllable. Morr’s voice croaked unpleasantly by comparison, filled with doom and woe.

  ‘Our business is with El’Uriaq and not for the likes of you. Stand aside and let us pass,’ the incubus intoned.

  The daemon licked its fangs lasciviously. ‘I think not. One of you must remain with us for our mutual satisfaction, and know that once you enter the palace you will not be permitted to leave it under any circumstances.’ The agents glanced around at one another wondering who might be chosen, and Kharbyr took an excited half-step forwards before Morr’s grating voice halted him.

  ‘I will not bargain with you, daemon,’ the incubus said. His words were still hanging in the turgid air when his two-metre blade flicked out like a serpent’s tongue. The daemon’s headless mount began collapsing, almost unravelling as the energies holding it together flew apart. Morr neatly caught the daemon on his outstretched weapon as it fell forwards, and flung its thrashing, disintegrating shape into the path of its compatriots as they spurred in to attack.

  The glamour of the daemon’s words fell away as violence flared. Xyriadh’s shredder immediately puffed out a cloud of harmless-looking gossamer strands that carved apart one charging mount and rider as if they had run headlong into a wall of rotating blades. Sindiel’s blaster burped out a gob of emerald fire that ate straight through another daemon. Aez’ashya and Kharbyr leapt forwards to fight off the questing tongues of the mounts and the flashing claws of their riders.

  An obscene tongue wrapped around Kharbyr’s ankle, writhing up his leg like a constricting snake. The pain of his recent wound rekindled into an incandescent ecstasy that made him howl like an animal. Aez’ashya’s knives lashed out and cut him free. The sellsword rolled on the ground moaning as the succubus stood over him with her blades carving a protective web.

  Morr’s blade crashed through another mount and rider in a single stroke, just as Aez’ashya’s knives slashed across an equine face and sent a mount rearing backwards. A cloud of monofilament strands from Xyriadh’s shredder engulfed a daemon rider before it could bring its mount back under control.

  Kharbyr recovered sufficiently to redeem some shred of his ego by shooting the last daemon in the face. Psychically infused splinters from his pistol cratered its head as if it were made of soft clay, the daemon collapsing into a cloud of sickly sweet vapour. Morr dispatched the remaining riding beasts with economic sweeps of his great blade.

  ‘Daemons,’ Morr spat with contempt. ‘Come, we must move on. They will soon reconstitute themselves and return with others.’ He turned and vanished into the shadows that clustered within the maw-like gate.

  ‘You never even considered accepting their bargain?’ asked Sindiel as he hurried after the disappearing incubus.

  ‘Daemons always lie,’ Morr said with finality.

  Beyond the gate lay a restless columned hall, at one moment the pillars standing proud and upright to support the high roof like mature trees, the next tumbled like the vanquished ranks of a defending army. Ghostly shapes moved through the hall, servants, guards, courtiers and patricians faded into view and vanished again, spirit shadows left behind when the blade of Vect plunged into the heart of the palace and annihilated them in a nuclear inferno. The agents’ amulets blazed brighter than ever, painting the scene with a lurid ruddy hue. At the end of the shuddering hall double doors ran from the mosaiced floor to the high-groined roof. The mind’s eye sometimes caught the unbreakable panels of the doors being hurled to the floor bent and twisted by unthinkable fury, chunks of frescoed ceiling raining down from above.

  They stepped through the doors into a vast amphitheatre hung with a galaxy of golden lamps. Another glance saw a blast crater, glowing shrapnel caught in a timeless
moment, spinning in place as it blossomed outwards in an imperfect sphere. At its centre a handsome eldar knight sat deep in thought upon the steps of a mountainous throne. From a different angle the throne was a kilometres-high mass of blackened wreckage and the pondering knight was a grinning crimson skull that peeked from the edge of it, preserved from the annihilating fires that had consumed its owner. A raging darkness split the air above the throne-wreck, the breach itself rippling and convulsing as it fed raw warp energy into the corrupted sub-realm.

  To speak, even to think so close to the breach was almost impossible. Words took flight as half-formed living things, ideas became jerky flick-book montages of potential outcomes. Yet when three red-eyed, black armoured shapes rose to bar their path the intent of the guardians was clear.

  You will not disturb our archon, the shadow-incubi seemed to say. Long have we watched over him in this place, our souls forever bound to him. You shall not have him now or ever.

  The figures hefted great two-handed klaives that were cousins to that borne by Morr and strode forwards. At first they were insubstantial, but warp-stuff wove about them as they walked, lending substance to their tenebrous limbs. Morr roared an inarticulate challenge that formed a spectral dragon-head, hissing and spitting flames. He charged into the fray hammering at their blades as a smith hammers on an anvil. Sparks flew as their weapons clashed, carving out arcs of destruction that in this energised air could level mountains or cleave rivers.

  A hissing blade swept down at Kharbyr and sent him sprawling, his knife half-melted by a foolhardy attempt to parry. The others fell back firing their weapons desperately, unable to stand before the tsunami power of the shadow-guardians’ rush. Green fire from Sindiel’s blaster splashed harmlessly from the black carapace of one red-eyed fiend. Xyriadh’s shredder proved equally ineffective, its deadly strands passing through the guardian’s armour like smoke. Splinters from Xagor and Kharbyr rattled off the impervious figures to no avail.

  Aez’ashya sprang forwards with a bright laugh of discovery. Darting beneath a scything blow she struck out with her knives. The gleaming blades sank into the guardian’s armour and tore a ragged wound, its flapping lips drooling multi-hued warp-stuff. Spinning and dodging, the succubus continued to worry at her foe, a slice here and a thrust there, always one step ahead of the swinging blade. Thunder crashed as Morr duelled the other two guardians, the blows they exchanged sending shock waves booming through the amphitheatre.

  Xagor leapt forward with desperate courage, rushing past Sindiel and Xyriadh and their useless weapons before jumping at the guardian attempting to swat Aez’ashya. The wrack grasped the thing’s arm, his hands sizzling at the contact, and wrestled frantically. He might as well have been wrestling a pillar of iron for the impact he made. The red-eyed helm turned towards Xagor and he was flung aside with a contemptuous gesture.

  The momentary distraction was all the opportunity Aez’ashya needed. She leapt and plunged both knives into the thing’s neck with her whole weight behind them. Lightning flashed from the wounds, the invulnerable-seeming guardian lurching backwards and unravelling before the agents’ eyes.

  Xyriadh dropped her shredder and ran towards Morr to help him. However the same trick would not work twice on such superlative opponents. A spinning blade caught Xyriadh and opened her up from shoulder to hip before she could react. She might have survived even such a terrible blow to be rebirthed later, but the scything blade tore away her spiritstone amulet. Xyriadh only had the time for one piteous shriek before her soul was shorn from her body and sucked away into the raging breach. Sindiel, about to follow Xyriadh’s rush, reeled away from her eviscerated corpse with a look of horror on his face.

  More practically minded, Kharbyr, Aez’ashya and Xagor scrambled after the skull at the foot of the wreckage-throne. This proved to be a better distraction than Xyriadh’s unfortunate demise. One of the shadow-incubi fighting Morr attempted to break away, plunging after the thieves before they could lay hands on his master. The creature either underestimated Morr’s speed or overestimated its companion’s ability to keep the towering incubus at bay. It did not get more than one pace away before Morr’s blade separated the fiend’s head from its shoulders.

  The lone survivor wove a dazzling web of defence as it backed towards the throne, but Morr was in full fury now and not to be denied. He beat aside the shadow-incubus’s blade and sent its owner back to hell with a disembowelling sweep of his mighty klaive. Xagor grasped the skull of El’Uriaq with his burned hands and wrenched it forth with a croak of triumph that disintegrated into a rain of crowned frogs. He found the skull to be smooth and heavy as if it had been re-cast in some strange, red metal.

  Images filled Xagor’s mind when he lifted it – parades and palaces, skulduggery and secret pacts, a thousand schemes and plans of the old emperor. With a tiny shriek that fluttered away as birds Xagor stuffed the skull into a casket he had brought for the purpose of containing any relics they might find.

  As the lid clicked shut a tremble ran through the amphitheatre and the raging breach swelled with redoubled fury. The agents turned and ran.

  A slow-spreading dawn dogged their heels, a hideous rising light of destruction that pursued them into the columned hall outside. The crowding ghosts perceived them now and they reacted with anger and alarm: spectral fists were raised against them, voiceless mouths opened calling for guards. The agents swept through the ethereal host scattering them like leaves. Bright light burned at their backs, heat and sound seeming to crawl behind it in slow motion, bursting apart the shifting columns and consuming the phantom court. They burst out of the maw-like gate as the fantasy palace of El’Uriaq collapsed in on itself, slumping into a mass of tumbled walls and shattered stone.

  Morr paused after they passed the threshold, gazing back into the heart of the warp breach dancing triumphantly over the ruins.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Aez’ashya.

  Morr was silent for a long moment before he replied. ‘The bones of El’Uriaq anchored this shadowplay. His ruined palace, his dead courtiers and all the rest of it endured only by his will. With his absence they are lost.’

  ‘Wait, what?’ gasped Sindiel. ‘He’s dead! How can he have willed anything?’

  ‘No, no. Mistaking dead flesh for dead mind,’ whispered Xagor, holding the casket containing the skull at arm’s length from himself.

  Sindiel remained unconvinced. ‘How can his soul have survived? You saw what happened to Xyriadh!’

  ‘Well, maybe you can ask him when we get out of here,’ Aez’ashya replied flippantly, ‘which we had better do soon if we don’t want to stay permanently.’

  Morr straightened as if shaking off a deep reverie. ‘Yes. We must leave now. Prepare yourselves, the return journey will not be so easy.’

  Rushing winds were birthing in the wastes, rapidly growing from vagrant zephyrs to a yelling torrent that beat against their faces as they struggled into the teeth of the tempest. Periodically, soulless wretches blew past, flailing idiotically, their flickering life sparks sucked voraciously into the screaming void. Slowly they struggled towards the shelter of the surrounding ruins, pulling free step-by-step from the kraken-like embrace of the breach.

  ‘Oh no!’ Sindiel gasped, pointing frantically. Riders on sinuous bipedal mounts could be glimpsed in the distance behind them, while ahead of them an emergent glow was painting the shattered walls with reflected glory.

  The Handmaid swept into view, her delicate feet walking on air and with banners of aetheric fire wreathing her limbs. A stillness surrounded her, her own personal eye in the hurricane force of the winds. There was no doubt she perceived them this time. Bright, inhuman eyes looked down on the agents with deliberation. Lambent power flowed from her, forming an incandescent rosette in the darkness. When she spoke her voice was chimes and bird calls, infinitely sweeter than the sickly, persuasive words of daemons.

  ‘What noble suitors are these, that would brave the perils of Shaa-dom?’
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  ‘We came to rescue the bones of your old master, El’Uriaq, that he might live again and avenge himself at last. Let us pass and we would leave this place without delay,’ said Morr carefully.

  Complex emotions chased across the Handmaid’s too-beautiful face at Morr’s words. Rage and sadness were there in equal measure and it was a bold heart that did not quail before the sight of her passions aroused. The moment passed as quickly as it had come, and when she addressed them again it was with unreadable serenity.

  ‘You are bold indeed to make such claims. Grant me but one simple boon, noble knight, and I will let you pass.’

  The agents tensed for sudden violence, watching Morr carefully for their cue. To their surprise the incubus did not move.

  ‘What is your desire?’ he asked.

  She smiled with hellfire burning in her eyes. ‘Show him to me.’

  Morr gestured Xagor forwards and with shaking knees the wrack complied. He lifted the casket he bore and opened it to reveal the polished red skull of El’Uriaq. The Handmaid crouched in genuflection, a tragic smile on her ethereal features.

  ‘Long has it been, my lord, since we danced and sang for your pleasure. Do recall it? Endless nights in gardens wrapped in the scents of asphodel and nenuphar. How we loved you and your lady! You were our sun and moon! I’m saddened to see there’s no pleasure left in you now.’

  The too-bright eyes looked away before rising to examine them again, dangerous fires smouldering in their depths.

  ‘Go. Take your prize,’ the Handmaid said. ‘I will spare you in honour of him. Revel in your lives while you still have them, my gift to you for bringing him back into the world. Remember, if you can, that he was once greater than you can know. Remember also that you chose this path for yourselves, wherever it might eventually lead.’