by Graeme Lyon
‘I know much, for I see clearly,’ said Swiftblade quietly as he pulled himself to his feet and stood before the exarch. ‘I see that your name is apt, Ragefyre, for you have been consumed by the flames of your fury. I pray that you can emulate the Phoenix and emerge unscathed.’
‘As do I.’ A dry voice, redolent with age, sounded from behind the trio.
Maireth turned slowly, and fell to one knee as she saw who had spoken. Swathed in robes of the deepest blue, adorned with eldritch runes and representations of the skeins of fate picked out in golden thread, stood Eldorath Starbane. The farseer leant heavily on his long wraithbone staff as he moved slowly towards the exarch and autarch.
‘Off your knees, spiritseer,’ he whispered to her as he passed. ‘I am unworthy of worship. Save that for the gods and those with the egos of gods. Like these fools.’ He gestured towards the pair of warriors with his left hand, and Maireth marvelled at the glittering crystalline limb. Seeing her staring, Eldorath shrugged his long sleeves back over the artificial hand and smiled sadly at her.
‘One way or another, my limbs would be crystal eventually. This was simply sooner than I had expected.’ His gaze hardened again as he looked at the autarch. ‘The threat we face here on Carnac is grave. If we are to defeat it, we must all be working as one, not pursuing our own agendas.’
‘If we are to defeat it…?’ echoed Maireth. ‘Then we are not abandoning the world to the souldark?’
‘Abandon Carnac? Certainly not.’ There was steel in Eldorath’s voice and he clenched his crystal fist so hard that Maireth feared it might shatter. ‘While a single yngiract walks on this world, we shall defend it.’
‘Even at the cost of all our lives?’ asked Elarique quietly. Starbane turned to him with an appraising look, but said nothing. He returned his gaze to Maireth.
‘You will be the key to our next attack, you and your wraithfighters.’
A thrill of fear ran through the spiritseer, but she fought it down and proudly lifted her head. Elarique’s words had inspired her. She would face what came, and she would do so with courage. ‘What would you have us do, lord?’
‘We return to the original plan,’ said Eldorath, casting a pointed look at Elarique. ‘The assassination of the necron commanders.’
‘Tried once before, by the Nightspear and his starstriders,’ said Elarique. ‘At your command, Lord Starbane. What makes you think we will fare any better this time?’
Maireth could see anger and sorrow warring on the farseer’s face. ‘Many died, Alaitocii and Carnacian,’ he whispered. ‘More blood on my… hands. And more still, perhaps, but we must save this world. We cannot let another planet fall to the souldark. I will not.’
Elarique continued as the farseer fell silent. ‘Cut their Crone’s Cords, Maireth Voidwalker. The Traveller, the Diviner, the Infinite–’
‘And the Stormlord.’ Eldorath’s voice was steel again, his artificial fist clenched. ‘Send his twisted soul screaming to oblivion.’
Elarique stepped close to Maireth and lowered his voice.
‘This will be dangerous, spiritseer, and will require much courage and no little sacrifice. Are you ready for that?’
‘I am, Lord Swiftblade. If giving my life will help to win this war, then that will be a fair price to pay.’
‘And you, Keladry Ragefyre?’ asked Eldorath, his voice ancient and dry. ‘Would you allow the effort I put into saving your life to be wasted?’
‘No, my lord Starbane. If there is a craft for me, I will fight for you.’
‘Then we may have a small chance of victory. Protect the wraithships, Ragefyre. Live, so that our foes may die. Let Maireth and her spiritseers do their work, and we may see Carnac saved.’ The farseer paused. ‘One spiritseer must return to Alaitoc, Maireth. For… reinforcements. A precaution.’
She nodded, his meaning clear. ‘Nestra Orphiel’s ship was damaged. I will send her back. She will gather souls.’
The dead would walk on Carnac. As if they weren’t already.
Maireth scanned the enemy army for signs of its commanders. The horde below was stretched to the horizon. Even the monstrous firepower of the Engines of Vaul was making only the barest dent in their lines. Super-heavy Scorpions and Cobras destroyed entire phalanxes of souldark with single shots, while nimble Vypers and Lynx attack craft targeted low-ranking leaders, disrupting the command structure to draw out the enemy commanders.
How many tomb worlds had been emptied to field this army, Maireth wondered? What victories could Alaitoc have had by striking elsewhere, sacrificing Carnac for the greater good of the ongoing war?
Focus, little spiritseer, cautioned Kyanorath. A target awaits.
Maireth saw what the spirit meant. At the heart of a tight knot of heavily armed and armoured yngiract stood the golden necron lord who had duelled with Swiftblade the previous day. The damage wrought by the autarch was gone and the overlord directed its servants as they poured fire at the skimmers that harassed them. Maireth sent a psychic command to her fellow spiritseers and guided the Hemlock towards the enemy leader.
To her left, she saw a pair of Crimson Hunters, one of the craft hastily repainted black. Ragefyre. He and his fellow Aspect Warrior swept skywards, vigilant for threats to the wraithfighters. As long as he stayed so and did not give in to his nihilistic urges…
Maireth shook the thought away. Elarique and Eldorath had been persuasive. They had convinced her to put the good of the war first. Surely Keladry would have come to the same conclusion? A soft chime indicated that she was in range of the golden necron. Maireth realised that she was holding her breath. She exhaled slowly, and fired.
The newly-repainted Nightshade felt strange to Keladry. The kinship he had built up with his previous fighter was missing, and this new one felt sluggish and slow to respond to his commands. He would have to be more careful, he had been told. It would take time before he would be able to manoeuvre as fluidly as before. Careful. He had scoffed at the notion.
Ilthana flew alongside him, matching his every movement. He had been pleased that she had been one of the few survivors of the previous battle, though she had not spoken to him since his return to the camp. None of his pupils had, so deep was their mourning.
He did not care particularly. In the end, death was death.
They circled above the Hemlock squadron and watched as the terror-craft fired their distortion scythes. A swathe of the enemy fell, never to rise again, amongst them a golden-skinned lord of their kind. The first of many such, if the day were to be won.
There was a perceptible change in the necron deployment after the lord fell. Keladry watched as heavy craft – great slab-sided constructs bristling with glowing weapons and topped by great luminous crystals – began to drift towards the wraithfighters.
‘It is time to strike,’ he signalled to Ilthana and the other pair of Crimson Hunters who patrolled the skies around the spiritseers. ‘The enemy know our plan. Retribution comes.’
He banked to the left, Ilthana matching the manoeuvre, and trained his weapons on the long, spinal shape of a light necron transport. He opened fire, and laser energy cut through the craft, bisecting it. The two halves crashed into the tightly-packed necrons below, metal skeletons slewing from its remains and knocking others to the ground. Keladry swept around, looking for his next target.
One of the slab-sided monoliths closed on the Hemlocks, the huge crystal embedded in its upper surface glowing with baleful viridian energy. Ilthana fired first, and a pinpoint bright lance strike destroyed one of the smaller weapons mounted at the corners of the great oblong construct. The crystal atop it flared, white-hot, and unleashed great beams of energy, striking a wraithfighter from the sky. Keladry let loose his rage, pulsar and lance fire burning against the infernal vehicle, doing nothing. He fired again, and again, to little effect. The device’s weapons glowed again and another arc of verdant fury split the sky. Another Hemlock was shattered, and two of the three remaining runes representing his Cr
imson Hunters winked out. Only he and Ilthana remained. Keladry focused on the green crystal. If he could destroy that, the vehicle would fall.
His weapons fire continued to batter ineffectually against the monstrosity. Another white glow, another arc of energy and Ilthana was no more. With a wordless cry of rage, the exarch pushed his Nightshade to full speed. This was it. The moment of his death, and he would take this abominable device with him.
Maireth watched in horror as the massive yngiract vehicle blasted fighter after fighter from the sky, Hemlock and Nightshade alike. She jinked and wove to avoid the arcs of cruel energy that it fired, but she knew that her luck could not hold forever. She watched as Ragefyre and his fellow Crimson Hunter poured fire into the Monolith, and she saw that it was useless. She dove low as crackling electrical arcs flared through the space she had occupied, leaving a searing after-image on her retinas. A near-miss. One more like that…
She saw the last remaining Crimson Hunter – besides the exarch himself – fall, caught so directly in a beam of green force that it simply no longer was. Only Keladry Ragefyre remained now, last of his shrine. If he were to die, the Bloody Blades would be no more. No one could walk the path without an exarch to train them. And Keladry, it seemed, did not care. He accelerated towards the Monolith, clearly intent on ramming it in a futile act of self-sacrifice.
‘Ragefyre, no! Remember the autarch’s words!’ she screamed across the communications channels, but there was no response. Only one course of action remained.
Sometimes, a single life can be all that stands between the craftworld and oblivion. Or sometimes, a single death.
Maireth Voidwalker took a deep breath and allowed her consciousness to flow from her body, through the world spirit of Carnac, seeking a particular waystone…
Keladry gasped in shock as suddenly, without warning, he was no longer alone.
‘Damn you, Lord Starbane,’ he muttered. ‘I control my own actions. My end is now here.’
I am not Eldorath Starbane. A voice, soft and mellifluous flowed through him. He knew it; he had heard it already this day. Voidwalker. He went to speak, but could not.
Silence, exarch. This is a time for you to listen. You wish to die. I didn’t understand that before, but now, sharing your soul, I see… Alianna. That was her name. You have to let her go. She can never again be yours.
‘No!’ screamed Keladry. ‘She can’t. I lost her to the dark kin. She is dead and our souls will never be joined!’
Show me, Keladry Ragefyre. Let me in. Let me see the death of your love.
Keladry opened his mind and let Maireth in to his darkest memory.
‘Alianna!’
Keladry ran, his voice echoing through wraithbone corridors as he screamed for his love. He heard laughter, the cruel, dark laughter of a soul that was cold and dead, sustained only by suffering and evil. Around him were the corpses of his crew, his friends, slaughtered by the pirates, their spirit stones cracked and broken, their faces locked in the unimaginable agony of their final moments.
He would not allow the same fate to befall. Alianna.
He turned a corridor and there she was, the cameleoline cloak of a ranger over her armour, pistol trained on a Commorrite. She saw him and turned, and the soulthief seized his chance, knocking the pistol from her grasp and pulling her to him, arm around her throat, her own pistol aimed at her head.
Keladry pulled his longrifle from his back, priming and aiming it in a fluid motion.
‘Release her, dark one, or you die.’
The monster laughed that cruel laugh.
‘Then kill me, little outcast. The fleshworkers of Commorragh will clone me and revive me. But your lover here will be dead by my final act in this body. And then I will come for you.’ The soulthief leered at Alianna and whispered something to her that Keladry couldn’t hear. His focus shifted for a moment, from the scope of his rifle to Alianna’s face, the pleading look in her eyes.
He heard, rather than saw, a pistol fire…
He fell, blood spilling from the wound in his stomach. He lay on his back, pain filling him, and looked up at the face that loomed over him.
‘Alianna…’ he breathed.
‘I am sorry, my love. But he offered me my life in exchange for yours. I… don’t want to die.’
Keladry tried to plead with her, to beg for his life, but he couldn’t. He would sacrifice himself for her, he knew that.
‘Come, young one,’ he heard the soulthief say. ‘Your life can begin anew in the dark city.’
‘Alianna…’ he whispered again as darkness took him.
‘You understand now, spiritseer?’ spat Keladry. She did not die, but she is lost all the same. Worse than lost.’
Oh, Keladry, said Maireth. I never imagined… I am so sorry.
‘I was rescued by another ranger ship,’ Keladry told her. ‘Returned to Alaitoc, and restored to health. I fell into rage, into the Path of the Warrior, and became trapped. The only way out now is death, and the end to pain.’
There can be another end, Keladry. While Alianna lives, there is hope. We can find her, you and I, and bring her back.
‘I… Why, Maireth Voidwalker? Why would you do this? Why not, like those before you, tell me that she is lost and to forget her?’
Because you cannot. I know this. I walk with the dead, and through them I understand the living. And I know that you can never live – truly live – until Alianna is returned… or released into the infinity circuit.
‘I… yes. Yes. You are right, and I thank you. Return to your body, seer, before–’
The entire exchange, conducted at the speed of thought, had taken only seconds. But still, it was too late. Keladry watched, and Maireth watched through him, as an arc of electricity from the weapons on the necron war machine annihilated the Hemlock wraithfighter that sat motionless in the sky, and the spiritseer’s body was consumed by fire.
Keladry’s waystone flared a bright crimson and warmed. With a cry of rage, he pulled hard on the throttle, avoiding impact with the monolithic necron construct by mere metres.
‘Maireth?’
I… am here, Keladry. Your waystone saved me. It… is my spirit stone now. You must return me to Alaitoc. And then I will join you, in spirit or in wraith-form, on your quest for Alianna.
He angled back down and surveyed the battlefield. The day was lost. The wrecks of grav-tanks and Engines of Vaul littered the plain, and another trio of heavy necron vehicles closed on the few remaining Hemlocks.
Maireth had destroyed the golden lord – a minor member of the necron hierarchy, at best – and the response was overwhelming. To try to kill the others – the Traveller, the Stormlord – would be ruinous. The day was definitely lost. And, apparently, Lord Swiftblade agreed. Keladry Ragefyre opened his communications channels, to hear orders from the autarch, orders to all forces to disengage, to evacuate to the Crescent-Kharellion, the primary webway gate on the world.
The eldar had failed.
Carnac was lost.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hailing from East Kilbride in Scotland, Graeme Lyon moved to Nottingham in 2011 to join the ranks of the Black Library as a Desk Editor. His first published short story, ‘The Hunted’, was featured in the monthly digital anthology Hammer and Bolter. It is well documented that Graeme has a deep loathing of cheese, likes dogs but fears cats. He also makes a mean chocolate chip cookie.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Mark Holmes.
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