More tales of the eldar from Black Library

PATH OF THE ELDAR
Contains the novels Path of the Warrior, Path of the Seer and Path of the Outcast.

PATH OF THE DARK ELDAR
Contains the novels Path of the Renegade, Path of the Incubus and Path of the Archon.

HOWL OF THE BANSHEE
A Warhammer 40,000 audio drama

THE PATH FORSAKEN
A Warhammer 40,000 audio drama

WRAITHFLIGHT
A Warhammer 40,000 Quick Read

VALEDOR
A Warhammer 40,000 novel

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

NIGHTSPEAR

JOE PARRINO

They waited for three days and three nights. They waited while the snow fell, while the darkness consumed, while the moon pierced the clouds and the sky. Cold light illuminated cold ground, set shadows to dancing, roiling and writhing. Geometric stones rose and fell all around them, the evidence of past geological upheaval. The stones were silent now, carved deep with the warding superstitions of Exodite clans. The world spirit’s song was silent in this place, cowed by the taint of death that hung metal-heavy on the air.

Those gathered, hidden, interspersed among snowdrifts, overhangs, clawed into ambush points, rifles pointing, hidden in the whisperquiet.

One hundred eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworlds, clan-blooded Exodites of Carnac, gathered, waited and prepared for death. Nigh invisible, they hid as the snow crawled around them, as the moonlight caressed the rocks.

Prophecy called the eldar to war. The ringing words of Eldorath Starbane, farseer of Alaitoc, wisewitch, deathfriend, bonecaster, led them to this place. The ancient foe, the deathless ones, the souldark, waited in slumber to march out from the nightblack depths.

Illic, called the Nightspear, took it upon himself to halt this. This was his doom, his destiny. He was the voice that cried to his people, that warned of ancient foes. He was the messenger of the past. He would deny the necrons their vengeance.

He nestled deep between the crags. His rifle, Voidbringer, rested lightly in his long-fingered hands. The snow felt cold against his cheek, pale skin blending with pale snow, with pale rock. The discomfort was momentary. He had endured it for three days. He would have endured it for three months more were it necessary.

It was not.

The souldark were fated to descend on this night, fated to gather, fated to blight the maiden world of Carnac.

Starbane, eyes red in mourning, stained with the ashes of Somonor, blazing with revenge, had spoken. This war had become an obsession for the farseer. The anger of Khaine burned bright in his heart. Vengeance: deep, throbbing, emotions steeped far from those offered by any Path save that of the Bloody-Handed One. The Exodites and their plight were merely another tool to be used in the war against the souldark.

Illic accepted this, for this drove him too. He knew, perhaps better than any other eldar alive, the threat posed by the souldark to his people. The mon-keigh, the Lost Kin, She Who Thirsts, all these foes paled before the soulless evil of the necrons.

He walked the Hidden Paths, sought the ancient truths. He spoke with ancient voices, the warnings of eldar long since passed to dust, long since passed out of the memory of his long-lived race. Illic, those few who followed him and scattered others among the craftworlds knew the threat posed by the souldark. They knew and they raged against it. They sought the places once claimed by the souldark, pushed the lesser races towards conflict, towards their own destruction of the necrons.

Nothing else mattered.

Illic came to Carnac to serve his once-home, to answer the call of Eldorath Starbane the One-handed. To answer the call of Alaitoc. With him he brought his followers, outcast sons and daughters of the craftworlds, peerless rangers and pathfinders in his service.

This night would see the souldark gather, descending to tear this jewel from the crown of the eldar. Illic, decisive, swift, gathered his rangers and pathfinders and struck for the north.

The clan-blooded Exodites of Carnac joined them on the path, their barbaric faces scarred and painted, tattooed and menacing. Illic greeted them as friends, knowing well their worth.

Now they waited, sons and daughters of the craftworld, of the Exodites. The souldark would die, decapitated by the swift vengeance of the eldar.

Illic Nightspear let slip a breath, snow melting before him, cameleoline cloaked against the chill, against sight. His eyes, the arctic blue of glacial melt, glanced to his right, to the nearest eldar. It took his eyes no time to see her. She was hidden, this was true, against the prying eyes of lesser races. To Illic’s practiced gaze she was as obvious as a mon-keigh. She was no expert at this craft, no wanderer on the Path of the Outcast.

Catritheyn, farseer, adept of Eldorath Starbane, was draped in the same cameleoline Illic was, camouflaged against casual observance. Her breath steamed in the chill night air, her eyes crackled with witchlight as she read the skein. Orange and purple, the skein bled from her eyes. Words, the hissed and hunched words of the skein itself, boiled from her mouth. A smile played along her lips.

The witchlights faded. She nodded towards Illic.

‘The souldark come,’ she whispered over the gentle hiss of falling snow.

A subtle ripple passed along the gorge as eldar shifted, readied, focused. There was no telltale glint, no glimpse of flesh, tattooed or otherwise, no other marker or signifier to hint that the strike force was there. There was merely the drifting snow and the deep, dark night of the gorge.

Seconds later Illic’s eyes registered a difference within the blackness. Green, unhealthy, alien, bright and unearthly light squirmed up from the depths.

The souldark. He had seen the colours before, the evidence of their passage, on Cano’var, on Gellyk, on other worlds and other places. He remembered it all too well. He almost wished for the mon-keigh to stand beside him once more. Illic fingered the tribal fetish gifted to him by the human Space Marine.

There was no noise. There was no sound of the souldark, no sight, merely the neon green. The light flickered, grew, deepened.

Cold unease crawled down Illic’s spine. Where were the sounds? Where were the souldark themselves? There was only the glow to meet his eyes.

The green light flashed. The darkness illuminated with eldritch symbols, flaring painfully bright.

Skeletal shapes scrawled across the walls, shadows leaping, marching. The eldritch glow grew, revealing horror.

Rank after rank of souldark, deathless, ancient foes of the eldar race, silver bones tarnished by the passage of aeons, emerged from the darkness.

They marched in silence. They marched in ranks. Illic felt the old hatred flare in his breast, felt it burn.

Souldark. Necrons. The ancient foe.

At the heart of the souldark legions, at the centre, stood three figures. They alone did not march. They alone did not move. One stood hunched, cyclopean, lurking with staff clutched in clawed hands. Burnished blades rose from the head of another, axe-keen over a crested skeletal visage.

Illic Nightspear knew this one’s name. ‘Anrakyr,’ he whispered. An ancient overlord of the souldark. The word was a curse from the pathfinder’s thin lips, red with murder, black with anger. His finger tightened on the trigger of Voidbringer. Uldanoreth whispered into his mind, the warrior-smith’s spirit claiming assurances, vengeance, hatred.

Emotions and memories roiled within Illic’s breast. ‘Justice,’ Uldanoreth whispered to Illic. ‘Justice for all those killed by the souldark. Justice for me. For the eldar. Kill it. Kill it!’

The other pathfinders, the other Exodites, waited on his shot.

Imperious at the heart of their legion, the souldark were unaware of the doom that would claim them.

Suddenly the cyclopean one jerked its head up, its single eye glaring straight at Illic. It blinked. The necrons, legion and leaders, vanished.

Illic fired a split second too late. Voidbringer screamed, the shot punching through reality, punching through the veil, tearing open a hole into the other, into the immaterium. Non-colours spilled out, non-sounds, non-voices, non-reality. The non-void called to their souls. All the eldar averted their gaze, not wishing to tempt She Who Thirsts. The hole in reality’s fabric lasted for less than a second before it snapped closed with a lightning crack and the screaming of the damned.

There was a high-pitched whine, a sound that lanced deep into the keen ears of the assembled eldar. Illic felt a tug at his cloak. He turned and saw a shadow standing over him.

Lightning stabbed out from the blackness, out from the depths, cracking into stone, spearing in every direction. The gorge shuddered, great columns of rock falling into the depths. Shards of stone broke away, flash-burning through snow, and whickered like shrapnel, carving deep furrows into Illic’s face. The pain was blinding, staggering. Blood wept freely from his split features. What was more was the rage that accompanied it. The shame of exposure, of wounding by the necrons, wept freely from the wounds upon his face.

More lightning, bright and green and blinding, lanced out from nowhere. Eldar cried out in pain. They fell, slumping to knees, falling away into the depths. Illic nearly blacked out, but clung on to consciousness with sheer willpower.

The shadow stared down with dispassionate eyes, hidden beneath swathes of dark-patterned cloth. ‘We should leave.’ The words were soft, whispersoft, hissed in the cadences of old Alaitoc, almost deadpan. Ruterias, dubbed the Shadow by the other Outcasts, was among Illic’s first disciples, those first few who followed the Alaitocii pathfinder in search of the hidden knowledge of empire and ancient secrets.

The whine deepened, thrummed, keened, howled. Catritheyn, eyes shining with the skein, turned to Illic in alarm.

‘The skein is changed. The souldark… They no longer wander its paths,’ Catritheyn whispered frantically.

Illic snarled, cameleoline cloak swirling about him. The shadow-swathed eldar followed like a pet raven.

The whine changed, transformed, rising into a crackling carrying over the snow.

The green glow in the depths of the gorge intensified, flickering, climbing. The eldar pulled back in alarm, still stealthy, still hidden, but now frantic.

‘We are undone,’ Illic snarled, voice fierce and low-pitched.

A knot of eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworlds, clan-blooded Exodites of Carnac, gathered around the Nightspear.

They turned first from the Nightspear to the farseer by his side. She offered no answer. Her face was a scowl, angry.

Teryen Telerath, his face broad for an Alaitocii, tanned ruddy by the light of countless suns, hair a riot of greens and reds and blues, old friend of Illic Nightspear, spoke first. ‘Starbane was wrong. Where are the souldark?’

The crackling ceased.

A scarred Exodite, an eldar known as the Fachan, one-eyed, tattooed with loops and whirls and Exodite sigils spat, ‘We must leave this place. The Dead Ones are not here.’

The Exodite spoke too soon. Inrithiel, sweethearted, wanderer of Alaitoc, cried out. A green sigil floated above her head, haloing it in ghostly green. A question formed on her lips.

Illic’s eyes grew wide. He knew the mark. He knew what it meant. He had seen it before.

Unbidden his advice, issued centuries earlier, rose to the fore of his mind. He had told the mon-keigh, in rare words of friendship between their two races, ‘Once you are marked, there can be no escape.’ Now the souldark issued their marks once more. The sigil was one of death, a halo echoing in the chill night air.

Inrithiel, sweethearted, wanderer of Alaitoc, crumpled into the snow with barely a cry, blood and pink matter leaking from her nose. There was a whipcrack of sound, a crackle of energy. It echoed through the gorge.

More marks flickered. More eldar painted for death by hidden souldark.

The eldar did not panic. They reacted swiftly, with discipline, with stealth. Illic issued a single order.

‘Flee,’ he said. ‘We must warn Starbane that the souldark twist the Skein of Fate.’

The pathfinders, the Outcasts, the rangers, the Exodites understood. In moments the heights were emptied as the eldar fled, swift, sure-footed. They fled singly, in groups, in pairs. Each one would seek a different path from this place, from this knot of canyons, stone and snow, back to the webway, back to the Alaitocii host.

Afallech Maladruen turned west. A side canyon, grey stone rising through the swirling snow, offered a promising route. He took it, steps sure and swift. Three other rangers, Outcasts all, followed Afallech.

There was no chatter between them. Their faces were grim and set. There was no fear. They were Outcasts, rangers, men and women who had left the safety of the craftworlds behind, to stride the old paths between the stars, to visit the hidden places of their old empire, to see sights that few remembered, that few dared.

They were a hundred metres into the canyon when the first green lights began to flicker. Afallech Maladruen, outcast son of Alaitoc, had no time to react to the green mark.

Where once they were alone in the canyon, now there were skeletal souldark, hunched, vile, dead but moving. Energy crackled in the longrifles they clutched in bony fingers. Afallech and the three rangers could not move before the souldark opened fire.

They fell to their knees. Fluid erupted from their eyes, their noses, their ears, their mouths, staining the snow and the dark stone red with their lifeblood.

Amonther Numeriel, lost son of Iyanden, was a coward. His thoughts told him this again and again. Flight. Running. These were the themes of his long life. Darkness, darkness that hungered, vile and alien.

He clutched the soulstones to his chest, five winking brightly in the moonlight. They were all that remained of kin, friends, those lost to the teeth and claws of the Doom of Iyanden.

His tanned face, stippled with acid scars, bruised by doubt, by self-judgement, stood out against the grey rock. He ran. His footsteps left no mark. He was a true student of Illic, driven to follow the Path of the Outcast by his shame.

The grey walls surrounded him. Alone, save for the soulstones he carried, Amonther Numeriel fled deep into the canyons and gorges, seeking safety in the webway, just as he had before.

The Nightspear struck due south. Instinct and experience guided him. He knew the patterns of the necrons, perhaps better than any other eldar alive. Catritheyn, Teryen, Ruterias the Shadow, craftworlder and Exodite alike, fled with Illic. Twenty eldar. Their group was large, but not unwieldy. They were eldar, sons and daughters of Kurnous, dead god of the hunt.

Their gods may have been dead, but the skills they passed on to their children in the Long Ago were still remembered.

They ran for minutes, through the falling snow, through the darkness, between looming pillars of rock. They ran without sight of the souldark, without sight of other eldar.

Illic’s mind raced, following the paths of his feet. He sought ideas, solutions, survival. He carried the warning, the hope, the burden, clawed and taken upon himself. Survival, the thought echoed, pulled at his mind, warring with anger, shame and grief.

The paths they took were twisting, winding. Beneath a knot of trees, Catritheyn begged they stop. Ruterias, swathed and cloaked in shadows and cloth, grunted a denial.

‘The skein,’ she said. ‘I will find us a path through the skein.’

The scattered Exodites spat and made warding gestures, scrawling intricate non-verbal hand sigils into the air. The craftworld eldar ignored their superstitions. Illic respected them. Gestures had power. He had learned this in the long years of his search.

Illic gave Catritheyn a nod. Permission was granted. The shifting paths of the future might provide succour, solution and survival. She did not respond. Runes floated out from a pouch near her waist, swirling about her. Witchlight burned in her eye sockets. Her eyes closed. She saw nothing.

Her eyes opened. She saw everything.

She sees the skein.

A young man, coloured in the muted garb of the… Angry, she feels anger bleeding from him, dissatisfaction. These are the flavours on the skein. He stands before a portal. He stands before the future. He walks through and leaves the craftworld behind.

A book. It is full of the ancient legends, the darkest times. War in Heaven. War between two races that never should have… Illic is reading it. He is reading and he is thinking. He comes to a decision.

A swirling wrongness in the skies. The planet is blank. No, not blank. There are ruins. Illic’s footsteps leave no prints. He is searching. He finds…

Another world. The sky is normal. It is orange. The air feels ancient. It feels… familiar. There is a rifle in Illic’s hand. A soul lives inside. It whispers…

Darkness. Utter black. Soul destroying. Souldark. The walls are not black. They are worse. They hunger. A lone eldar wanders between them. His eyes are glacial blue. His cloak swirls behind him. His eyes are wide. He sees what has not been seen for aeons. Ambition burns in his breast. He is…

He is arguing. A troupe of Harlequins, masks blank, eyes merry. Behind this eldar, behind the Harlequin wait a group of other Outcasts, hidden. Mon-keigh war in the background. Illic argues with the Harlequins. They bar his passage. Illic will not allow them to do so. His resolve is a terrible thing. A living thing. The Harlequins dance. The Outcasts open…

Souldark. They shamble, cloaked in the flesh of the freshdead. Their eyes are hungry. Illic does not see them. He stands lost in thought. They approach. She wants to yell. She wants to scream. The souldark reach for Illic Nightspear…

A world fallen. The world burns in green flame. There are bodies, blue with blood everywhere. Death. Death. Death. Illic stands with one of the mon-keigh. The human’s armour is white and yellow and red. The beast is cloaked in fur. His face is brutal, tattooed and scarred in the manner of his upstart race. He is fierce of aspect. Illic is fiercer. Souldark approach them. They are trapped. They cannot escape. They…

A souldark stares. It is cyclopean, vile. It stares at her. There is no sign of Illic. It stares…

Carnac. The depths. They wait. Eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworld, clan-blooded Exodites. They are waiting. They wait for the souldark. She hears something. Something on the wind. It… whispers. There is a green glow. Illic sights through his rifle. The voice inside whispers. Illic’s finger tightens on the trigger. The souldark vanish. Green flickers above eldar heads…

They are running between steep walls of canyon rock. The way lies before them. They are nearly free. A memory, a route, burns in her mind. She sees souldark waiting, hidden from normal sight, hidden behind a veil. The necrons know where they are. They will kill… They die.

Shadows throbbing with green veins. Shadows mar the skein. Each future, each path, each flickers with green. The souldark march through each path, through each thread. She watches them wink out one by one as the future becomes more certain. She sees eldar dead. She sees Alaitoc dead.

She sees Illic Nightspear, the Walker of the Hidden Path. She sees the Doom that rides him. She sees the Hope that shadows him.

There is one path. One future. It is shadows, hazy, indistinct. It is death. It is safe.

She knows. She knows. She knows…

She knew a route through the canyons. A route that they would take in the future, brought back to guide them in the now. The memory burned. It felt false, tampered with. The skein shifted. Catritheyn turned to Illic, witchlight fading from her eyes.

He returned her gaze with disgust.

‘We find our own path,’ the Nightspear said.

Ruterias and the others nodded. Only Illic met Catritheyn’s eyes as they left the trees. His eyes, glacial blue, stared without blinking. It was worse than the avoidance of the others.

The Crobh Derg tried to keep her identity fixed foremost in her mind. She was Exodite, living promise of future glory. Her arms, tattooed red into claws, were corded with lithe muscle. Her hair, auburn red and rich with life, was stirred by the wind and the falling water that echoed through the caves.

She was Exodite. She said this again and again.

None of the Exodites believed her, something indefinable in her psychic presence betraying her. They tolerated her nonetheless. Biel-tan sang to her soul. She had arrived on Carnac centuries before, stepping forth from the webway much in the same way Illic and his band had done. Her purpose was different. She was no ranger. She followed the careful plans of her own craftworld.

She heralded nothing less than the promise of a renewed eldar empire.

The Alaitocii farseer, skeinwitch, fatereader, knew. The Crobh Derg had seen it in her eyes. Some glimpse of the skein showed her the machinations at play. But the farseer was away, gone with the Nightspear, the Traveller who stood between the eldar and the Rhana Dandra.

She walked with the Mawr, great chief of the Carnac Exodites. He was large for an eldar, tattooed with sigils of protection, sigils of the dead gods. The Bloody-Handed stretched his hand over the Mawr, but it was tempered with age, with thought and with foresight. He saw the doom the souldark presented. He listened to the councils of the Crobh Derg, to her whispered promises of glory reborn.

They walked through the caves, the silent places beneath the canyons.

The Exodites rarely came to this place, naming it a place of fear, of aversion. This was where their underworld merged with reality. Where the dreaded dead slumbered and dreamed of the end of all things. The walls were marked with their runes, ritually split here and there by Exodite markings.

Water dripped, dropped, fell among them, echoing memories of the snowfall in the world above. Darkness enshrouded them. Silence folded over them. Their feet made no sound as they moved, swift and sure, through the cave systems.

The smooth black walls swallowed the light, swallowed the sound. Green cracks split through the black walls, marring formations of natural stone. The Exodites whispered warding rituals, scrawled runes in the air.

The Crobh Derg could feel the emotions of the other Exodites around her bleeding, blending. She could feel the anger that wound tight through their hearts, the shame. They were running, pulling away from the souldark when they wanted to turn and face them with the harsh words of war on their lips. They listened to the Nightspear, marking well his words. So through the caves they fled, surrounded by dark rock, by dark air, by dark thoughts.

Distant rockfalls, distant rumbling reached their ears. The Mawr ordered them to stop.

They stood in a knot, clan deference determining their stance, their pose. The Crobh Derg had her place. Fionn, the Mawr’s son, had his own near his father.

She could see the anger in his eyes, the slighted honour, the murderlust clouding his orange irises. She saw his eyes widen as the cave illuminated, flaring with bright light.

There was a mechanical buzzing, a thrumming deep in their ears. It spoke to their souls, bringing fear to the fore.

Fionn was marked. The souldark had found them. More marks flickered. More marks haloed clan-blooded Exodites.

The Mawr’s face turned stony. His son, his heir, was marked for death.

The Exodites grasped their weapons. Swords, knives, spears, rifles. Each was prepared to face the souldark, to embrace the Bloody-Handed One.

Fionn, true son of the Mawr, true son of Carnac, turned to his father. ‘Run!’ he yelled.

The Mawr nodded once. There were no tears in his eyes, but the Crobh Derg could feel his sadness.

Fionn and the other marked ran back the way they had come, hoping to draw the necrons away, hoping to die with souldark threads cut.

Ruterias led them. He left no mark in the passing snow, no footprints against the powder white. He was true to his title. The dark rocks enfolded him, swallowed him. He ranged ahead, along with other Outcasts, seeking the path, seeking safety.

Illic followed him without hesitation. The trust of millennia bound the pair. Catritheyn walked by his side. She felt alone. She could not see the Nightspear, only felt that he was near, so great was his skill at passing unseen. She caught sight of the others, even Ruterias once or twice, but never Illic. He walked Kurnous’s own path with Kurnous’s own skill.

Ruterias led them down random paths, only ever moving south, away from the gorge, towards the waiting Alaitocii host. They followed no logical paths, moving at odds with expected behaviour. They would move at random. Unexpected turns, unexpected twists. They played the skein, seeking to twist the paths through random actions, through erratic choices.

The rocks mumbled, the canyons split with cries of frustration as eldar souls died.

Catritheyn could feel Illic’s anger, for she felt it too. It was terrifying, deeper than any ocean, tempered with a resolve stronger than wraithbone. Eldar were dying. Even individuals who discarded the Paths, those who left the regimented life of the craftworld, were still losses the dwindling race could ill afford.

She could feel Illic’s thoughts, his anger, his rage that the souldark had tricked him, outmanoeuvred him, hunted him. He was the Walker of the Hidden Path, the Keeper of the Subtle Gift, and he was hunted, forced to flee.

Catritheyn felt the skein tugging at her thoughts, tugging at her mind. She rode its paths, just for a moment. She felt no necron interference.

She smiled at what she saw.

‘Not for long,’ she whispered. ‘Not for long.’

Adobhnan and Edarnan Huvrineyn had not strode the Path of the Outcast for long. They were young, idealistic, following Illic as they had followed their exarch, as their exarch followed her Phoenix Lord. Khaine’s sibilant whispers still caressed their souls. His voice spoke with each beat of their hearts.

They were fresh from the Aspects, fresh from the service to Khaine, god of war, blood, murder, of the darkness that lurked in eldar souls. Khaine, in his aspect as the Shadow Spectre, had once called to their souls, bringing them down the Path of the Warrior. Their choler still rose easily, emotions freed by the Path of the Outcast. Their war-masks floated near the surface now, brought by stress, attracted by death.

The Fachan joined them, separated from the other Seeth. The Exodite was a silent, dour companion to the twins. His features were puckered, scarred, hardened by a lifetime on Carnac. His tattoos writhed. The cold bothered him little, if at all.

The rock walls rose around them, towering into the black night. They could hear the cracking of stone, the hiss of snow, the screaming deaths of eldar.

Adobhnan felt his war-mask pulse in time to each death. The soulstone on his chest flared with sympathy, with each heartbeat. He moved with stealth, as did his twin, as did the Exodite.

Freedom beckoned. It sang in his blood with the voice of murder.

He could hear a whining in his ears. The Fachan vanished.

‘Coward,’ Edarnan hissed with the voice of the Bloody-Handed.

Adobhnan agreed. ‘Coward,’ he said.

The whining rose, becoming a howl, a screech, alien and vile.

Green light flickered. Edarnan, marked, met his brother’s eyes. The pair ran. They fled the souldark. Dark walls flew by on either side. They ran from shadow to shadow, darkness to darkness, chased by the green. For five minutes they ran, outpacing the mark. For five minutes they escaped the fate spun by Morai-Heg in the Long Ago.

There was a crack, the sound of atoms screaming, atoms violated. Edarnan fell without a sound, blood standing out against his pale features.

Adobhnan howled. He screamed to the heavens. The Bloody-Handed spoke through his mouth. The war-mask consumed the ranger. One of the last remaining gods of the eldar gave voice to mourning, gave voice to anger, gave voice to rage, gave voice to blood.

The deathmarks stepped from the darkness, their skeletal faces impassive. The eldar who was once Adobhnan Huvrineyn, twinsouled brother to Edarnan, opened fire.

Tight beams of laser fire lanced into the souldark. Two were split apart by pinpoint fire, limbs dismembered by clean shots.

Adobhnan continued to fire, continued to kill the souldark when a mark flickered into being above his head, twin to the one that still played about his brother’s.

The souldark, implacable, returned fire.

Adobhnan fell beside his twin.

The world spirit’s song filled the night air, filled the darkness. It keened in mourning for the loss of dead eldar, for the violation of the necrons. It brought meaning to the snow, to the night. It brought vengeance to the hearts of all those who heard it.

Illic passed between standing stones, ancient menhirs carved of the same dark grey stone, marked in the ancient symbols of the dead eldar gods. Illic cared little for the dead gods, for they offered no succour to their living children.

Illic heard Teryen cursing, a string of invectives both psychic, physical and vocal. Illic’s thin lips curled with the hint of a smile, a brief memory surfacing. It lasted for the tiniest moment before dissipating.

They had entered a dead end, a bowl carved into the rock by the hands of ancient eldar. There was only one entrance, one exit.

The world spirit’s voice became a howl.

Ruterias, hands swathed, pointed towards the cliffs. ‘We climb,’ he urged.

Runes floated about the farseer’s head, orbiting her, whirling in the snow. Her eyes were bright with witchlight. The world spirit screamed through the wind.

‘No,’ the farseer denied. ‘We kill.’

Illic rounded on her, the other rangers bristling at their leader’s anger.

‘Explain,’ the Nightspear demanded.

The look on her face was sad, her lips downturned, eyes downcast. She pointed at Teryen Telerath. The Outcasts stared in horror. The mark, green, threatening, flickered about his head. More marks appeared.

Teryen met Illic’s gaze. There was no sadness in the Outcast’s eyes, only resolve. Teryen Telerath, his face broad for an Alaitocii, tanned ruddy by the light of countless suns, hair a riot of greens and reds and blues, marched to the centre of the standing stones. He crouched and waited, prepared to embrace death. The mark about his head called to the souldark, bringing them out from their pocket dimensions, bringing them into the waiting guns of the Outcasts and the Exodites.

There was a ripping sound, a cracking, a tearing. Green lightning flashed. The eldar’s keen ears could hear metal clacking against stone, crunching against snow.

The eldar, emotions roiling, stepped aside, melting away into the snow and the dark. Teryen stood alone, his face grim. The mark twinkled above his head, full of threat, full of the promise of death. He stood in the middle of the standing stones, his hands loosely clutching the long rifle. He waited. The soulstone on his breast flared with each beat of the Outcast’s heart, with each flicker of the brand above his head.

Illic watched. He breathed slow, measured, while inside his thoughts leapt. ‘Sacrifice,’ Uldanoreth whispered from within Voidbringer. ‘Kill the souldark. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them.’ The warrior-smith’s words were inciting, urging, calling. Illic’s long fingers tightened along the gun, caressed the barrel. He stared through the scope, eyes locked on the entrance to the circle of stone.

Illic could see Ruterias near to him, a shadow within the shadows.

The clacking grew louder, a march of metal, a tick tick tick, snicking against the stones.

The deathmarks entered cautiously, green lightning playing about around their limbs. They raised their rifles, sighting down at Teryen. Voidbringer, speaking with the rage and the loyalty of Illic Nightspear, tore one apart. Reality screamed. The world spirit howled.

The eldar reacted with feral intensity. The prey became the hunter as the cornered eldar unleashed their ambush. Desperation drove their movements. Each shot, each attack, was an act of defiance, an act of survival.

Filthy light flared as the immaterium was called through. Grasping hands slithered from the hole in reality. Others clawed at the rent in reality, trying to keep it open, trying to make it wider. Voices screamed through the aether as the gate snapped closed.

Illic was already sighting again, already firing. The next rent tore open into utter darkness, sentient, hungry. The wailing of damned souls from countless races accompanied it. Illic could hear a voice, familiar, insistent. Uldanoreth’s fingers on his consciousness tore away the whispering voice.

The other eldar added their own fire. The deathmarks fell apart, sliced by laser fire, ripped into by pale crystals, carved by shurikens. Their mouthparts clacked opened and closed. The eldar ended their cursed half-lives, cast them into whatever darkness awaited the souldark.

Green haloes appeared as deathmarks painted eldar targets. One Outcast, scaled halfway up the cliff, longrifle clutched in long-fingered hands, fell. Blood streamed from his nose, eyes and ears. The body hit the ground with a sickening crunch of broken bone.

Another Outcast, hidden beneath the cold weight of a snow drift, calmly sighted a deathmark through the scope of her longrifle. The souldark, cyclopean eye glaring green, scanned back and forth, searching for eldar. She sighted, sighed and fired. Its head snapped back, pierced by laser fire. It clattered to its knees, metal ringing. She rose from the snow and moved to another snow bank to repeat the process.

One of the necrons, one of the deathmarks, staggered backwards as it was caught by splinters of crystal launched by howling Exodites. The metal that made up the deathmark’s body cracked, crumpled, broke. Splinters of green and purple crystal stabbed into it, embedding themselves in the necron’s body. It kept trying to lock on to the Exodites, searching to fire, searching to paint its mark. The Exodites proved too fleet of foot. The Carnac eldar fired, ran, adjusted and melted into the snow and the dark before firing again.

Two of the Exodites were caught in the open, caught between reaping their vengeance. The green mark had scarcely appeared above their heads before they fell in the act of running. Arms pinwheeling, all forward momentum stopped as they staggered into the snow, staggered to their knees. Blood dappled the snow. The standing stones flared with each eldar death as the world spirit absorbed their souls.

Reality screamed. Reality bawled, bellowed, squealed as Illic fired Voidbringer. Each shot tore the fabric of the veil, opened Carnac to the vile attentions of the warp. Each shot culled souldark, carved them from existence.

Illic’s fury, Illic’s incandescent emotions, blurred the skein. His emotions were mercurial, bleeding, jumping, shifting, unfettered by the regimented life of the eldar. The Nightspear, the Walker on the Hidden Path, was an avatar of death. He fired Voidbringer and moved, shadowfast, to a new position before firing again. Each shot was judged with precision. Each shot was perfectly accurate, perfectly deadly.

One shot caught a deathmark in the chest, opening a hole, opening a breach. Tongues licked out, wrapping around the souldark’s limbs, pulling the struggling necron into the hole, into the warp, into damnation. Laughter echoed out of the breach, the laughter of thirsting gods. The voices, the twisted joy lasted only briefly before the hole snapped closed.

It was the last deathmark to die in the ambush. Silence reigned in the bowl, in the depression. It was the silence of the dead. The Outcasts, the Exodites, Catritheyn and Illic gathered between the standing stones. Their numbers were diminished. They could feel the gaps where comrades once stood.

Ten of the twenty eldar were dead, killed by souldark. The marks still played faintly around their heads.

One of the dead, Teryen Telerath, his face broad for an Alaitocii, tanned ruddy by the light of countless suns, hair a riot of greens and reds and blues, lay slumped between the stones, blood and brain leaking from his nose.

Illic howled his grief to the skies. He crouched by his fallen friend. The Nightspear stared, tears streaming down his face. He took Teryen’s blood and marked his face with the sigils of Khaine and Kurnous. He grabbed the soulstone winking on Teryen Telerath’s chest.

Ruterias stood near Illic saying nothing, his eyes downcast.

Catritheyn stood near, but apart. More distant even than the Exodites.

She spoke hesitantly, daring to break the silence. Her question was addressed to Illic. ‘Where do we go next?’

The Nightspear met her eyes, his face an aspect of dread and death, blood still drying on the sigils. His eyes were dead, brutal things, carved of ice.

‘We climb,’ he said.

Amonther Numeriel, lost son of Iyanden, ran. His feet slipped against the snow, breath streaming from his lips, writhing before him like the ghosts of lost kin. It was tinged with green. His whole vision was tinged with green.

Panic gripped his soul. Panic and resignation. Death stalked him.

He could hear the souldark coming. He could hear their clanking steps. He could hear their laughter, buzzing back and forth. He could hear the tyranids that followed them, feel their claws, feel their acid across his face.

The soulstones, last remnants of lost kin, lost friends, lost souls of Iyanden, jangled across his chest, the light within accusing. He almost sobbed. He had failed. He had failed Iyanden. He had failed his family and his friends. He had failed the Nightspear.

Now he would die, unredeemed, unremembered, unlamented.

He stumbled in the snow. The normally sure-footed pathfinder, boot caught on some grasping rock, stumbled to one knee.

His skills were failing him. The shadowcraft, learned from Illic, had kept him alive. Now the memories slipped from his mind, memories of life on Iyanden, memories of horror and terror.

The green filled his vision. The slavering silence of the tyranids filled his ears, filled his mind, unleashed by fear. He could feel the Shadow in the Warp pressing at his mind.

He shook and shivered, crawled forwards on hands and knees.

The webway.

He needed to find the webway. He needed to flee, to run. To abandon.

Amonther Numeriel, lost son of Iyanden, memories clawing at him, stumbled to his feet, filled with sudden resolve. The shadowcraft returned with his surety.

Thoughts still dogged by accusation, with memories of death in the dark, the pathfinder fled deeper into the canyons, towards the safety offered by the webway. All the while the green mark danced about his head, stealing the shadows.

The sudden transition from darkness to half-light was almost blinding to the keen-eyed eldar. The Mawr, stony-faced, clan-chief of the Carnac Exodites, stared in wide-eyed wonder at the skies above. The darkness of the caverns was forgotten. The sacrifice of the Mawr’s son, of the other clan-blooded Exodites, was forgotten in the wake of the vista that met them.

The clouds, still dropping snow, were illuminated green and red and blue. Aircraft danced in the heavens. They moved almost too fast for the eyes to follow. A fierce whine lanced into sensitive eldar ears, painfully loud, deafening.

Snow swirled around them, the clouds whipped to and fro, driven by air pressure created in the wake of duelling aircraft.

They clashed with a sound like rolling thunder. Lightning spat from souldark machines, curious crescent shapes of brushed silver metal, tarnished and jagged.

Eldar craft, hulls Alaitoc-blue, sweeping, noble, jinked and fired. Aircraft exploded, showering sparks, metal and flame over the night-shrouded landscape.

The Crobh Derg stood by the Mawr’s side. She hissed words. ‘We must keep moving,’ she urged.

The Mawr grunted his assent. The Exodites, what few remained, clambered down from their perch and re-entered the canyons, fleeing back into the night.

Illic Nightspear stood at the top of the cliffs, Teryen’s soulstone clutched in his hand. He stared down, deep into the bowl. The landscape flickered around him. Lit by green and yellow and red.

Deep booms split the night, tore apart the silence. The scream of tortured metal, the howl of the world spirit, the chattering fire of Nightwing interceptors and Phoenix fighters, the reality tearing sound of souldark tesla weaponry. More green lights split the canyons, illuminating the shadows. There were no screams. Here and there, Illic could see the telltale glimmer of a longrifle firing, evidence that some of his band yet lived. He lingered for a moment, keen eyes picking out the body of his fallen friend. He swore vengeance. One more grievance against the souldark. One more act cast at their feet.

Idly his left hand traced the runes he had marked in blood across his face.

Catritheyn stood by his left side, Ruterias his right.

Ruterias only spoke two words. Two words to split Illic’s reverie. ‘The webway,’ the shadow-swathed pathfinder reminded him.

Illic nodded.

The ground shook. Stone screeched as canyon walls collapsed, tortured by awakening souldark technology. Carnac itself shuddered, violated by the presence of the necrons.

The eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworld, clan-blooded Exodites of Carnac, fled across the tops of the canyons, feet moving shadowfast. They left little mark of their passage. No souldark marred their flight.

They were alone with the night for the moment.

Alone while the snow fell. Alone while eldar and souldark duelled in the heavens above.

Amonther Numeriel, vision filled with green, had almost made it out of the canyons. He was close. Close to freedom. Close to survival.

He would not make it.

The souldark emerged with no warning.

One second Numeriel was alone, fleeing down through rocky canyon walls, flitting from shadow to shadow. The next he was surrounded by a knot of necrons.

The air crackled as they stepped from nowhere, green eyes flaring. They stared at him.

Amonther Numeriel, lost son of Iyanden, met their implacable gaze. The fear left his heart, replaced by shame, replaced by dishonour. The soulstones. Last remnants of dead kin, dead friends, dead eldar. They would be trapped here in the darkness of the canyons, lost on Carnac, denied final unity in the infinity circuit of Iyanden.

This was his doom. This was the moment of his death. His heart beat faster. Thumping away in his chest.

The soulstones, clustered across his chest, mirrored his heart.

He stared over the necrons’ shoulders, stared past the burnished metal, through the flickering green, and into the darkness beyond. One eye glimmered out there.

Amonther Numeriel met the one-eye’s gaze. Please, he thought, begged, pleaded. The pathfinder from Iyanden nodded once. The shame fell away and hope dawned.

One of the necrons, one of the damned souldark, raised its long-barrelled weapon.

There was a flash.

Then blood and oblivion.

The Fachan watched as the craftworld pathfinder died, watched as blood spattered the snow, as the body slumped to the ground, thudding wetly into the rock.

He waited with the patience of a hunter. He ignored the ache in his bones, ignored the thudding of his heart. He waited with the souldark, standing forgotten vigil over a forgotten son.

The Fachan felt fury. The Fachan felt anger.

He was no young man hungry for glory, however. He would not act on this, not cast away his life in some foolish display. He knew the significance of the glowing stones.

The Fachan waited, crouched in the snow, silent, still, hidden.

He waited for the necrons to step back into the Otherworld from which they came, to leave this benighted place, to leave this death and search out others. Subconsciously, the Exodite traced warding gestures in the air, taking care to move slowly. They were appeals to Kurnous, dead god of the hunt. There was no answer.

Minutes trickled by. Time crawled as the snow fell.

The necrons stood, green lightning flickering along their limbs. They made no move.

They emerged from the canyons, grassland stretching before them. The sky burned over their heads, snow vaporising into rain, cascading down in fat sheets. The air filled with the stink of wet grass, wet leather and burned metal. The eldar were losing the aerial war for the skies as souldark machines emerged from the depths. The ground was a sodden mess.

The Mawr was tired, no longer a young man. Running by his side was the Crobh Derg, a solid presence. Her mind whispered reassurances to the Exodite, redolent with a strange accent.

The clan-blooded Exodites, tribal scouts of Carnac, were nearly to the webway, nearly to freedom. The warning they carried burned bright in their minds, while sadness and grief pulled at their souls.

They could all feel the world spirit fuelling their flight, hastening their limbs. Images flashed through their minds; warnings and glimpses of the future provided by the world spirit, rumblings of possible futures. All present except the Crobh Derg saw them.

Carnac dies in green fire.

The Exodites evacuated onto spacefaring craft, taken to the craftworlds, taken from freedom in the name of survival.

Skeletons, skeletons carved from burnished metal.

Pain, flashing through the molten heart of Carnac.

Illic Nightspear dead, deathmark still flickering about his bloodied head.

The Mawr stands by Illic’s side, the webway blaring open behind them. The Exodites sacrificing themselves to see them safe, brought into the bosom of the eldar.

Resolve burning in their breasts; survival, of family, of clan, of their world rested on their shoulders, rested on the survival of Illic Nightspear.

They stepped sure and fast through the mud, through blades of grass, through rain and darkness.

The Exodites, clan-blooded scouts of Carnac, raced for the webway, splinter rifles, shuriken catapults, spears, swords clutched between scarred and tattooed knuckles.

Catritheyn ran alongside Illic, tasting his anger. Runes floated about her, keeping pace, orbiting her head. She could not resist riding the skein. It had been ingrained in her over the centuries. Sight the future. Follow its paths. Use it to guide the now. This was the way of the farseers, the way of the eldar. Tradition could not be denied. Habits could not be discarded. She could not abandon her Path, even in the face of catastrophe.

Her eyes were open. They saw nothing.

She closed them and saw everything.

She saw the skein.

Death.

It is everywhere, all along the skein. She searches for Illic’s thread, trusting in his fate. She cannot find it. It is lost in the shadows. She sees others.

Ailill Allithuel runs. She is swift-footed. She is running, fleeing, hiding. She is clever. She has doubled back and waits. Her patience will keep her safe. It does not. There are beings more patient than she. They watch. They wait. She runs. A green flash. She dies.

Keladry Ragefyre’s mind is made up. Sacrifice. Sadness, but exultation. These are the flavours of his thread. She can taste his death. Taste it on the wind. His death, moments, heartbeats away, screams for him. Khaine’s mask hides in his mind, driving his thoughts, driving his actions. Sacrifice. He is a Crimson Hunter, at one with the skies, floating like a leaf on the breeze. She watches him soar through the night and the snow. His guns spit. Souldark die. Lightning fills his vision. A Doom Scythe rushes for him, lightning crackling… Keladry Ragefyre meets it…

A one-eyed Exodite waits, metres away from waiting deathmarks. He waits. She can taste his thoughts, taste the duty imparted onto him. She sees the necrons leave, stepping away into some other place, some other pocket. The Exodite moves furtively forwards, hands outstretched towards a body, reaching towards bright souls. He reaches…

She finds Illic.

Illic’s fury is terrifying. Vast, deep, it surges in his mind like an ocean. Grief, deep, appalling. The aching loss of an old friend. The aching loss of an old… failure. It haunts him, pulls at him like the wind tearing at his topknot. Resolve burns in his breast, cradled in the ocean of grief, cradled in the ocean of hatred. There is an eldar running alongside him, eyes crackling with witchlight, distracted. She sees herself.

She moves forwards along his thread but loses it amid the deaths of others.

There is a light. Bright, pure. Six souls wait at the bottom of a gorge. There was a seventh but it is lost. Maireth Voidwalker jinks and dives, souldark Doom Scythes following her path. She leads them away. Distraction, misdirection. Draw the necrons away. Keep the Alaitocii host safe. The voice of Khaine rumbles loud in her ears, it sounds like blood pumping through her heart. The ground rushes up to meet her. Missile pods fire. There is a massive explosion of light, fire. It consumes, cleanses. Maireth Voidwalker dies with a smile on her face.

The skein blurs. She draws back, driven into the sky. She sees so much. She sees what happens elsewhere on Carnac, what will happen.

They are nearly out of the canyons. Nearly safe. The horizon is no longer dark. It is green, bright, unwholesome. She tastes death on the wind. It burns. It devours. Souls wink out. Some are drawn into the world spirit, others are caught by She Who Thirsts, torn apart by waiting Neverborn. Distractions. Misdirection.

Illic. The Nightspear. There is an ambush. There are deathmarks. He is marked…

Paths branch, moving from this moment.

Death.

Illic dies, flopping lifeless, hand reaching towards the webway gate. The future, his future, his hope. The Alaitocii host dies in a climactic battle afterwards, Starbane’s rage leading to the loss of priceless eldar lives, of priceless eldar souls.

Alaitoc falling, trampled beneath the metal feet of necron vengeance. The mon-keigh corpse-kingdom burning, the upstart race rendered extinct by dynastic struggles.

Nothing stands between the corrupt legions of the Eye, the Neverborn, the great evils lurking within the immaterium and reality.

The Rhana Dandra begins.

The last hope of the eldar race dies with Illic Nightspear, lost on Carnac.

Another path stretches from this moment.

Illic dies, slaughtered in the webway by the Lost Kin as he races to warn Eldorath Starbane. They stand over his body, over her body. Laughing in cruel voices, armoured in cruel spikes, black and purple and green. They take the bodies with them, melting away back to their dark city. She follows this path to its end.

The Rhana Dandra begins.

In another the Harlequins bar their egress, trapping them on Carnac. They do not laugh. They do not move. Illic and his Outcasts die dashing themselves against the bulwark of the Laughing God’s followers.

Almost every path leads to death, both for Illic, for the eldar. Almost every path leads to disaster, to catastrophe, to apocalypse. Almost every path save one.

Illic lives. The path is shadowed, obscured, coated with death. There is apocalypse at its end, but she sees survival too. It starts with a scream. A scream with her voice.

She opens her eyes. She voices a warning.

She screamed a warning, voice high. Illic snarled at her, eyes blank, devoid of compassion or feeling.

There was a flash, a massive crashing sound. Explosive, loud, booming, carried on a shock wave of air from deep within the canyons. The eldar are blinded for a moment, sensitive eyes overwhelmed by night turning into day. The sky screamed. The world spirit bellowed in pain, in rage. Aftershocks shook the ground, diminishing, unsteadying. An electric buzzing suffused the air as souldark technology awoke.

Sight returned.

The moonlight was no longer pure, no longer natural. The whole landscape was covered in the hellish neon green of necron light. The shadows in the canyons dissipated, shrank, receded, disappeared.

The canyons ended before them, descending down to grassland coated in snow. The moon rode high in the sky, impassive.

She was too late. Green haloed Illic’s head, marking him for death.

The Fachan reached forwards, furtive. He already had five of the soulstones and was reaching for the last.

A whining stole into the Exodite’s ears. He was already turning, already running.

He was too late. Green blinded him, neon bright.

He could hear the muffled stomping of deathmarks, could hear the buzzing crackle of their movements. He could smell the death they brought, metal-heavy on the air. Their tomb stink was obnoxious, foul, ancient.

Blinded, the Fachan crashed into a metallic chest. He gasped as cold metal slid through his stomach, breaking the soulstone on its cord, cutting through the leather and scales armouring him.

The soulstones tumbled from his scarred hands.

The Exodite twitched, once, twice. Then was still.

He screamed in his head, pain burning.

Then there was laughter, deep, roaring, ancient.

The Neverborn tore his soul apart.

Illic, marked and coloured by the necrons, ran. The webway beckoned, safety, warning, hope. He moved faster than he had ever done, faster than he had fled the cage of Cano’var.

He would not die on Carnac. In his heart, buried beneath hatred and grief, lay a greater destiny for the Nightspear.

Ruterias ran by his side, the shadow-swathed eldar making no sound. Green lightning licked towards the running eldar, lancing through the snow and the dark.

Running Outcasts, driven towards their path by inherent selfishness, interposed themselves between the souldark pursuers and their pathfinder lord. They died with Illic’s name on their lips, with sacrifice in their hearts. His survival was paramount; their own lives given meaning through their sacrifice.

Lightning stabbed towards Illic, missing, confounded by his skill.

The webway shone before them, a glittering tear in reality held between slender pillars of wraithbone. Outcasts and pathfinders had taken up position around it, firing into the dark, culling the souldark.

The green filled Illic’s eyes, turning the blood-red runes black in the light. His face was a chilling thing, a mask, impassive, deadly.

He was one hundred metres from the webway when waiting necron deathmarks stepped from their pockets of nowhere. They stood, hunched, vapour flowing from their shoulders, lightning crackling along their joints. As one they raised their weapons and sighted at the rushing eldar.

Illic flung himself to the ground.

Others, reactions timed poorly, were caught in the fusillade, minds disintegrated by the pernicious technology of the necrons.

Illic sighted down Voidbringer and ignored Uldanoreth’s voice in his mind.

They came out of the darkness, ululating war cries streaming from lips, weapons steaming, firing, killing. Their words were shrill, carrying over the pounding rain, carrying over the buzzing of the souldark.

Their crested hair was a sodden mess, flopping about. Eyes burned with fury in their faces, mouths wide. Shuriken fire, laser fire streamed from clutched weapons and sliced through deathmarks.

Green marks flickered at them. Exodites, clan-blooded warriors and scouts of Carnac, died, brains melted by necron guns. They came on anyway, swords and spears flashing in the moonlight, flashing beneath the lit sky.

Bright, fast, they struck. The Outcasts joined the attack, their own weapons firing into clumsily moving souldark.

Sparks flew as impacts rained upon the metal bones of the necrons. Sparks flew as limbs were cleaved from the slow-moving machines. Reality howled as Illic fired Voidbringer, the cold of the void seeped over the battlefield as holes were punched into space, drawing pieces of deathmark away. Illic’s voice was a howl on the wind, a scream, a promise of bloody vengeance. Deathmarks felt the kiss of Voidbringer, the pain of the void, of the warp as their metallic forms were blasted into other places.

The Mawr, spittle streaming from his lips, hair lank and matted with rain, spun and swirled: graceful eldar sword licking out to carve clutching souldark limbs. Each stroke, each cleave, was an act of grief, an act of vengeance, for his fallen son, for his fallen world, for the loss of his way of life. The Crobh Derg was a blur beside him, slender claws of red wraithbone glittered on her hands, sparking into deathmarks. Every attack of hers was both offensive and defensive, aimed at preserving the reckless Exodite clan chieftain. Her face was grim as she killed.

Catritheyn rode the skein in quick jumps, plucking at its strands, peering down its paths with all the skill of the virtuoso she was. She pushed events, prodded, stepping forth in each path, ensuring Illic survived, ensuring that his hope remained undimmed. Witchlight bled from her eyes, bled from the sword in her hand. Even as she followed the twisting paths of the skein she killed, ending necrons.

The webway beckoned, its welcoming light bleeding into the Carnac night. The eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworld, clan-blooded Exodites of Carnac, desperately shoved and killed their way through the necrons standing between them and safety. Shots strobed through the night. Green lightning, green marks, flickered towards eldar, spelling death.

Some fell, caught by the clumsy swings of the deathmarks, clubbed into the mud, battered, bloody. Others were marked, marked and shot. The rifles of the deathmarks destroyed their minds, destroyed their brains, left them pouring from noses, eyes, ears.

But the necron numbers were thinning, as souldark died beneath the fury of caged eldar. They could not bring their fearsome weapons to bear in such close quarters, could not move fast enough to counter the swiftness of the eldar.

The only thing they could do was die, crushed into the mud and the grass.

Suddenly the way was clear. Ruterias dragged Illic towards the webway. The other eldar joined, running, jumping towards safety.

Behind them the canyons erupted in fire, lurid and green.

Illic Nightspear burst through, stepping from the bloody mud of Carnac, away from the grasping hands of the souldark. He wasted no time, made no pause. Vengeance drove him forwards. He had a message to impart to Eldorath Starbane, a warning. His followers, both Outcast and Exodite, swept up in his wake.

The eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworlds, clan-blooded Exodites of Carnac, united by survival, numbers dimmed, souls missing, followed Illic Nightspear as he walked the Hidden Paths, as he brought warning and words of doom and hope to his people.

SKY HUNTER

GRAEME LYON

In the interstellar depths, far from the eyes of man, lay a world that was not a world. No sun shone upon this structure of soaring wraithbone spires, great crystal domes and delicate walkways. No other planets circled with it, awaiting the inevitable death of the star around which they clustered.

This was Alaitoc, craftworld of the eldar, home to millions of souls, and though it orbited nothing, it had satellites of its own, smaller conglomerations that encircled it, performing a leisurely dance as Alaitoc slowly, ever so slowly, travelled between the stars.

One such satellite looked for all the universe like a miniature version of the great craftworld itself, with domes and connecting passages and wraithbone spires. It was the Bloody Blade shrine, home of Alaitoc’s small cadre of Crimson Hunters, those who walked the Path of the Warrior and practised their killing arts from the cockpit of a flyer.

Keladry Ragefyre pulled his fighter into a steep dive and wove through the narrow confines of a covered walkway barely larger than his Nightshade interceptor. He was a mere heartbeat behind his opponent, but the gracefully curving tunnel precluded a killing shot.

Then the tunnel was behind him and he flew out into a massive open dome, filled with trees older than entire civilisations and architecture that had been crafted more than ten millennia before. He twisted the ship around sharply and slipped beneath a finely carved archway representing Khaine and Vaul locked in combat. With a thought, he fired.

Two bolts of light lanced towards his opponent, who jinked out of the way at the last moment. Keladry smiled. His foe was good. As well she should be.

Ilthana was his prize pupil, the greatest of his Bloody Blades. She had already lasted more than twice as long as any of the others.

The deep red craft – shaped to resemble a gore-soaked weapon, sleek, curved and deadly – was the mirror of his own, though his was the black of mourning. Ilthana sped away, accelerating out of his sights. His targeting system chimed sadly at the loss of the target lock.

Keladry flew upwards towards the great expanse of the void above, twisting his Nightshade upside down and bringing it close to the surface of the dome, mere metres away, and speeding forwards. One false move, one stray thought, and he would be dashed against the nigh-impenetrable crystal, his soul lost to She Who Thirsts as his waystone shattered in the explosive destruction of his interceptor.

The thought was exhilarating.

For an exarch of the Crimson Hunters, there was no communion with other souls in his ritual armour, as other Aspects had. When a Crimson Hunter died, it was usually in a fiery explosion, far above the world. There was rarely armour left to recover, let alone a spirit stone. To walk this path was to know that at the end lay damnation.

He wondered – had always wondered – if the tales were true, if the loss of an eldar’s soul to the immaterium really left them prey for She Who Thirsts. Were he to die here, dashed against the surface of the craftworld, lost to the void, would he really be consigned to an eternity of torture as the hungry god the eldar had created feasted on all that he was?

Or would he know oblivion, the sleep of eternity?

Either way, he mused as he followed the gentle curve of the immense dome, it might be better than being trapped within Alaitoc’s infinity circuit, all that he had been in life laid bare to the billions of other spirits that occupied the craftworld’s communal afterlife.

He swept away from the dome’s surface and began a dizzying descent towards the ground far below. Trapped, he considered, in the infinity circuit without the one soul he would want to spend eternity with…

Keladry Ragefyre had become snared on the Path of the Warrior after… Alianna.

‘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…

Keladry shook off the memory. She had been a gentle soul and had kept him grounded when he removed his war-mask. Her loss, and with no spirit stone to recover, had driven Keladry onto the warrior path, and further along it than he had ever wanted to travel, into solitude. Inevitably, into death – and with every cycle that passed, the desire to meet that death became stronger.

A gentle chime interrupted Keladry’s musings. There she was… Ilthana had taken her craft beneath the eaves of the mighty trees, skimming the ground. Daring. Very daring. She had such potential. She was coming now from beneath him, flying directly upwards in defiance of gravity’s pull.

That would work against craft of the lesser races, or even the guardian pilots of a Nightwing. But not a Crimson Hunter, and certainly not an exarch. He watched the vessel, sleek and elegant with its swan neck and dipped wings, speed towards his. At the last moment, even as she fired, he arrested his forward momentum and fired his thrusters, just enough to drop back slightly. Ilthana’s fighter flew past, the two Nightshades almost grazing one another. For a split second, he saw her through the crystal canopy of her cockpit, clad in the blood-red armour of the shrine, with a helm of black, emblazoned with the rune of the Crimson Hunter. The twin pulses of laser light she had fired spattered harmlessly against a wraithbone spire in the distance.

Keladry angled his ship’s nose towards Ilthana and issued the mental order to fire. His bright lances pulsed once and cerulean beams of energy impacted upon Ilthana’s hull. Immediately, her Nightshade shut down, the ship registering the hit and removing the Aspect Warrior from control. The engines flared and the fighter halted, switching to thrusters to keep it aloft.

The last remaining lit sigil on the console before him winked out. It was the twelfth such symbol to do so, and Ilthana’s was the twelfth ship floating amongst the silent domes and walkways of the shrine.

With a thought, Keladry activated the communications system in the Nightshade and broadcast a message to the squadron.

‘Training is complete. Lessons have been learned, I trust. Return to the shrine.’

He received a chorus of acknowledgements as he guided his Nightshade towards the hangar. As he passed back through the corridors and domes, the runes on his console lit back up as the Nightshades returned control to their pilots. One by one, his Aspect Warriors fell into formation around him, all flying in perfect time, their positions creating an aesthetically pleasing symmetry as well as being battle-ready.

Except…

Tuaren Stormwarden, who had felt the war god’s call only recently after many passes walking another Path, though the exarch could not remember which, was out of alignment. Keladry was about to open a channel to him, to chide him for his failure – his second failure of the cycle, as he had been the first to fall prey to the exarch’s fire – when Tuaren’s Nightshade spun on its axis and drifted. Its bladed wing clipped a great wraithbone pillar garlanded with a climbing plant and flowers, and sparks flew. The wing sheared loose in a spray of petals and the Nightshade’s gentle drift became a dangerous fall as its systems cut out.

Before Keladry could react, Ilthana was already in motion, guiding her craft down beneath Tuaren’s and gently nudging him upwards. Abruptly, the fighter’s engines flared back into life and Tuaren corrected his course. His voice came through the communications system.

‘My lord, exarch, I… I apologise for my lapse in concentration. I saw something.’

Keladry frowned. ‘Saw what, Stormwarden? Explain thy meaning, hunter. Help me comprehend.’

The young Aspect Warrior was silent, hesitant, unsure. He had not yet achieved the full discipline that donning his war-mask required. He stood with one foot in the world of the Crimson Hunters and the other…

The Path of the Seer. Tuaren had previously walked the Path of the Seer. Keladry knew now what had happened, had seen it occur before.

‘You had a vision. The skein revealed a future. What fate awaits us?’

Tuaren, his travels on the path of witchery so recent, had experienced an echo of the skein, a glimpse at some possible fate. It was an uncommon occurrence, and one that almost always boded ill.

‘I saw a battle against the ancient foe, my lord Ragefyre. A legion of metal skeletons marching across the plains of a maiden world. I saw, standing against them, the high autarch and her armies, and… I saw her die.’

Horror flooded Keladry. The loss of such a warrior as Elarique Swiftblade would be an immeasurable blow to the embattled Alaitocii. With the upstart Imperium of Man in a state of permanent warfare with the craftworld, along with the myriad other alien foes that stalked the galaxy, and the ever-present threat of Chaos, losing such a mighty leader would be damage unparalleled.

‘Return to the shrine,’ Keladry ordered again, ‘and prepare for departure. I visit the seers.’

If the ancient enemy would dare to try and lay low the high autarch of Alaitoc, the Bloody Blades of Alaitoc would meet them and stop them. And if Keladry Ragefyre could meet his end in saving Swiftblade’s life, then all the better.

Eldorath Starbane flew.

His body was still, cross-legged in the sanctum at the heart of the Dome of Crystal Seers on tranquil Alaitoc, surrounded by his fellow seers and the crystalline remains of those who had once been like them. They were at once a harsh reminder of what Eldorath would one day become, and a reassurance. The dead were never really gone, not on a craftworld.

Eldorath’s body was sedate, but his soul soared. Around him were the glittering threads of time and causality, the skeins of fate itself, and his spirit-form grasped them with both hands – both hands – and followed them to his destination, passing through what had once been, what was, what might yet be…

…and what must never come to pass.

He saw flashes of futures unwritten, lives yet to be lived, wars yet to be won. Or lost.

Carnac.

He had not seen it coming. None of them had. The coming to Carnac of the souldark, ancient enemies of the gods themselves, had taken the Alaitocii seers by surprise. Surprise… It was so rare to one such as he, who walked in eternity; past, present and future open to him. He would have relished it, had it brought joy. But with it had come only pain. Death. And he had not foreseen it. He had failed. Eldorath Starbane had failed his people, and not for the first time. The yngiract – the necrons, as they called themselves – were making a habit of taking from Eldorath. His purpose, his confidence. His hand. His spirit-form was whole and unsullied, but his body was broken, one hand lost on Cano’var. He felt once again the pain, the fury, the humiliation and the overwhelming hatred for the creature that had taken the hand, the Stormlord.

As soon as the call for aid had been received from the Exodites of Carnac, a psychic message that had held such pain and sorrow that even to remember it hurt, a force had been despatched through the webway. Eldorath was determined not to repeat the mistakes of Cano’var, so his response was overwhelming. Elarique led the Alaitocii host, of course. Headstrong Elarique, the Swiftblade.

But if Eldorath did not focus, the autarch would likely die soon. He pulled himself from his thoughts and focused on the threads that led to Carnac, to the acts that he had set in motion. Elarique planned to face the souldark on the field of battle, blades flashing like the heroes of myth. It was commendable, and it might work – but the more likely outcome was that the autarch would lose, that the yngiract would take Carnac and that Eldorath – again – would fail.

The farseer had enacted another plan. He had followed the twisted skein as best he could, had seen the leaders of the souldark force gathered for a council of war: their overlord, Anrakyr, known in the ancient tales of the War in Heaven as the Traveller; Orikan, the Diviner; Trazyn, the Infinite; names that lived in infamy amongst the children of Asuryan. And Imotekh, the so-called Stormlord. Eldorath held an especial hatred for this foe. He would see him dead. He would see all of them dead. He had summoned the outcasts and recalled the Nightspear. They could destroy the commanders of the unliving automata before their attack could be launched.

He found the thread of Illic Nightspear’s life and focused on it, sweeping along hundreds of years of war and death in a heartbeat. Until…

Carnac.

Eldorath watched as Nightspear took aim at the yngiract known as the Traveller… But then the creature was gone. The ranger and his comrades, Alaitocii and Exodite alike, scattered, marked for death by soulless hunters. They fled into canyons and caves, their threads diverging, many of them cut as the soulless predators caught them with their synaptic disintegrators, melting brain tissue and ending lives.

Eldorath held fast to Illic’s thread, watching as he fled, as he fought back, as his fellows died for him. Eventually, he escaped into the webway, through the sacrifice of many. Alaitocii and Carnacian alike. Catritheyn, Eldorath’s pupil, was with Nightspear, as was the Mawr, clan-chief of the Exodites. Eldorath knew where they were going. He let himself slip from the skein, but was wrenched about, his spirit spinning away from the threads of fate. As he grasped for purchase, he saw stars moving and exploding, and a metal skull with a single green orb glowing balefully in its centre. It was haloed by a ring of gold and its monstrous, unmoving maw whispered to him…

Even your prophecies are not safe, Eldorath One-Hand. What does that leave you?

With a jolt, Eldorath felt reality reassert itself. He knew that yngiract, by reputation at least. The Diviner. Was it the source of the problems he and his seers had walking the skein? Senses returned, gravity took its hold and he felt the steady buzz of the infinity circuit, the whispers of seers long gone. Then he heard a voice, tentative and uncertain.

‘My lord Starbane…?’

He opened his eyes and figures resolved before him, seven of his fellow seers, all mighty and wise. They, too, had travelled the skeins, though they had taken different paths and seen different fates, different futures.

‘Nightspear lives.’

A psychic ripple of relief went through the chamber, and the infinity circuit buzzed in sympathetic response. Many of the council – and many of those that had once been but were no more – believed that Illic Nightspear was vital to the future of the eldar race. Some whispered that he was all that stood between their people and the Rhana Dandra, the end of all things. There had been disagreement in the council when Eldorath had sent Nightspear on his mission to Carnac. Some had decried the high farseer, claiming that he allowed his anger to cloud his judgement.

They had been right. He saw that now.

‘Did he achieve his mission?’ asked Thirianna, youngest of the council, and so instrumental in saving the craftworld from destruction just a short time before.

‘He… did not,’ admitted Eldorath. He looked each of his fellow seers in the eyes, one by one, as he spoke.

‘My prophecies were wrong. Again. By some vile sorcery, the necrons are disrupting the skeins of fate. We cannot trust anything that we have seen of Carnac. The Traveller was not in the valley. Nightspear’s force was ambushed. Many… Many died. Through their sacrifice did Illic escape. He returns here now. We must convene a war council.’

Thirianna nodded. ‘And send word to High Autarch Swiftblade that your plan failed. It is time for her to make a stand against the souldark.’

Stiffly, Eldorath nodded. ‘Yes. If we cannot trust the skein, we must turn to the sword and the shuriken for victory. If we cannot trust ourselves, Elarique must be our salvation. Carnac’s salvation. Send word to the high autarch that she may launch her attack when she is ready.’

The tide of metal swept across the plains. Great phalanxes of necron warriors, balefully glowing rifles clutched in skeletal hands, moved thoughtlessly forwards. Swarms of hideous metal insects flowed across the valley ahead of the unliving host, devouring all vegetation from the ground so that the warriors’ feet fell only on bare, dead earth.

‘Even as they move, they destroy,’ muttered Elarique Swiftblade, shaking her head sadly. She stood at the centre of the eldar line, far distant from the advancing enemy. Where the necron line stretched across the plains as far as the eye could see, the eldar were a tight knot of warriors, a single drop against the ocean of enemy, arrayed between tall hills on the approach to the world shrine. Elarique was surrounded by her bodyguard, Dire Avengers sworn to preserve her life. The idea of another eldar laying down their life for hers always made Elarique vaguely uncomfortable, but she bore it with stoicism – her position as high autarch was as much a symbol for the people of the craftworld as it was a necessity of war. When she finally fell – and she would, on the field of battle, as did all of those who trod the Path of Command – she would be spoken of in the same breath as giants of history such as Kael Ra, the Prince Ecliptic, and Amenteth Worldsbane. It was a weighty responsibility. As was the fate of a world.

Elarique prepared to give the order to open fire. She knew every weapon in the force – she had wielded most of them herself as she had walked the various warrior paths on her journey towards becoming an autarch. She retained several – the graceful wings of the Swooping Hawk adorned her back, Scorpion mandiblasters worked into her crested helm allowed her to spit laser death at her foes, and she carried both a delicately curved powered blade and a deadly fusion gun.

Finally, the first of the enemy came into what Elarique judged to be effective range, and she opened a channel.

‘Swiftblade to all forces. What we do this day, we do for Carnac, for Alaitoc and for revenge against the eternal foe… You may fire when ready.’

Maireth Voidwalker strode the paths of the dead.

Spirits surrounded her, clamouring for her attention. Some recently dead wished to pass a message or remembrance to those they had left behind. Some longer gone wondered if their names were remembered. Some of the very oldest, spirits who had wandered the infinity circuit for as long as it had existed, simply desired a moment of contact with a living soul, a reminder of what they had once been, millennia before. She was their conduit to the mortal world, a spiritseer, and she would do their bidding.

But one spirit wanted more.

The spirit of Mardorath Lifestone wanted to tell her that she was going to die.

‘I know this, Mardorath,’ she said, her soulvoice soft and ethereal, echoing through the unworld she inhabited. ‘Death comes to us all.’

It comes to you soon, spiritseer. Very soon. I have seen it. On the world of Carnac, when the dead walk and the threads tangle. The unliving scythe will be sundered and your end will be at hand.

The spirit faded away, rejoining the tumult of the infinity circuit, and Maireth Voidwalker put the strange prophecy from her mind and continued her work.

Elarique fought her way through the throng, power sword flashing. She struck out at a necron warrior, removing its head. As it fell, another three fired their rifles and, with a cry, Elarique beat her wings, flying above the streams of energy before throwing herself towards the necrons, mandiblasters peppering them with laser fire. Her blade met their living metal forms, carving through vital systems and ending the warriors, who phased out even as their skeletal remains crumpled to the ground.

As she landed, Elarique was seeking another foe to kill. A bladed skimmer floated towards her, weapon barrels crackling with electrical energy. The Dire Avengers fired shurikens at it, but they did not even graze it. If it fired, they would all die. Elarique would not allow it. No more eldar would die if she could prevent it.

Sheathing her sword, she pulled the fusion gun from her back and loosed nuclear fury at the vehicle. Parts of it turned molten and dripped from the craft, splattering the necrons below with boiling metal that burned through them, reducing them to scrap.

The skimmer exploded and more necrons were destroyed, pierced by shards of spinning metal or consumed by the fiery blast. Elarique exulted at the carnage she had unleashed.

But at the same time, she knew that her kills were as nothing compared to the sheer weight of the foe. She was the commander of this army, not a soldier, and she needed to look at the bigger picture. The necron numbers were fearsome and, around her, eldar died in droves. Her Dire Avenger bodyguard dwindled, and each death stabbed at her heart like a cold blade.

She remembered the words of Eldorath Starbane when he had sent Nightspear on his mission: Cut off the head and the body will die. A rudimentary tactic, but an effective one. Casting her gaze around, she saw her quarry – a leader of the souldark, its golden frame twice the size of even its heavily armoured guards. It carried a great staff that crackled with eldritch energy, and the green balefire of its eyes was deeper and more disturbing than looking into the void at the heart of the galaxy.

It saw her, and pointed its weapon in challenge. Elarique returned the gesture and inclined her head. One of the enemy commander’s bodyguards stepped forwards, a huge shield clutched in one hand and a great crackling axe in the other. The overlord held out a hand and shook its head, cackling something in their ancient tongue. The praetorian took a step back and lowered its weapon, though its infernal gaze remained fixed upon the autarch.

Elarique gestured for her remaining Dire Avengers to remain where they were, and leapt at her foe. Her hissing blade was met by the enemy’s staff and, for a moment, the two weapons crackled together, energy fields clashing, before the necron pulled away and readdressed, swinging its weapon round in a blindingly fast arc and smashing the autarch’s flight pack. The sundered wings dropped to the ground and the necron barked what Elarique supposed to be laughter.

‘You like playing, do you?’ asked the autarch through gritted teeth, pain coursing down her spine. ‘I shall remember that when I carve you into a hundred pieces.’ She lunged low and her blade struck an armoured leg, carving a deep gash into the golden plate. Almost instantly, it closed and repaired, and in moments there was no sign that the necron had ever been struck.

‘Foolish mortal,’ grated her opponent in an approximation of the ancient eldar language, his clumsy mispronunciations stoking Elarique’s fury. ‘I am eternal. I cannot tire. I cannot slow. I cannot fail. You will do all of these, and you will die.’ It swung the staff in an overhead blow. Elarique threw herself to the side and barely avoided being gutted by the backswing. She rolled to her feet, under the necron’s guard, and battered its chest and shoulder with a flurry of blows. One of its arms fell limp, useless until it repaired. The autarch did not intend to give it the chance.

Suddenly, the waystone on her chest flared with heat and she felt a presence, the warmth of another eldar soul sharing her form. She smiled as this interloper’s thoughts mingled with hers and she understood what – who – she was. Then she returned her full focus to the battle before her.

She swung her blade high, aiming directly for the grinning metal skull. The overlord moved faster than seemed possible for its bulky metal frame, and then Elarique was sprawled on her belly. She rolled and was up, shuriken pistol pulled from its holster and firing shots into the necron at the speed of thought. It staggered, projectiles jutting from its chest, vital systems sparking, and it slowed. Elarique pressed the attack, blade flashing as she forced it back step by step, its staff a blur as it parried every strike.

Then Elarique dropped and drove her sword through the souldark’s leg, severing it. As it fell, as if in slow motion, she spun around and removed its head, which hit the hard earth and bounced, landing at the feet of its one remaining praetorian, the rest laid low by the Dire Avengers, who now cheered Elarique’s name.

The autarch paused, allowing herself a moment to collect her thoughts. She made to commune with the spirit that had entered her waystone, but the interloper was gone. She wondered… But there was no time for that. The necron commander may have been defeated, but the battle was still in the balance.

And then it no longer was.

A crescent-shaped aircraft swooped down and opened fire, and Elarique Swiftblade rolled to avoid the deadly blasts from its weapons. She watched in horror as her remaining Dire Avengers were consumed by fire, and she screamed, a sound of rage and fury. So busy was she mourning that she never saw the necron overlord rise from where it had fallen, still headless, staff clutched in skeletal hands, raised to strike. So busy was Elarique Swiftblade screaming her grief to the heavens that she never felt the blow that killed her.

Eldorath loosed his grip on the skeins and fell back into himself. His eyes snapped open.

‘Swiftblade!’

‘My lord Starbane?’

Eldorath focused and saw a figure kneeling before him, camouflaged robes sweeping the floor and covering form-fitting blue armour. Grey hair was pulled into a tall topknot held with a golden band, and a long rifle, worked with an amethyst stone, was strapped across his back.

‘Illic,’ said the seer, his voice quavering with grief and fear. ‘My foresight has failed again. I have just seen… Autarch Swiftblade…’

‘Aye, lord seer,’ whispered Illic Nightspear. ‘The situation on Carnac is graver than we thought.’

Both eldar, seer and outcast, were silent for a moment. Eldorath calmed himself, immersed himself briefly in the infinity circuit, allowing the thoughts and perceptions of the long-dead to flow over, around, through him. The mood was mournful, and angry. Alaitocii were dead. Revenge must be had. Eldorath came back to himself.

‘The Avatar will not awaken,’ he murmured. ‘The Young King remains inviolate.’

‘Elarique?’

‘Will die,’ said Starbane, voice cracking.

‘This will not happen,’ said a third voice. Both seer and pathfinder turned to see a figure silhouetted in the light at the entrance to the sanctum. It moved towards them, resolving into a warrior in crimson aspect armour, crafted to appear as if it burned when the light caught it. Over the armour, the eldar wore robes of black in the style of archaic mourning garb. He was unhelmed; his face narrow and pale, with eyes of deep amber burning out from beneath long black hair. ‘This fate cannot come to pass. I will prevent it.’

‘Crimson Hunter…’ breathed Illic Nightspear, awe in his voice. Eldorath understood. It was only rarely that the Aspect Warriors of the Crimson Hunters came aboard the craftworld proper, preferring the sanctuary of their satellite and the kinship with their craft. For their exarch to venture into Alaitoc itself…

‘You know what is to come to pass, Keladry Ragefyre?’ asked Eldorath.

The exarch nodded. ‘I offer my ships, and the lives of my pupils. And my own, of course.’

‘Yes,’ said Eldorath. ‘You can reach Carnac in time to stop the yngiract craft from distracting Swiftblade. Prevent her fall. Perhaps the world can still be saved, and revenge had.’ He paused. ‘Something comes to me. A scrap of prophecy, perhaps, or a dream. It is hard to tell in these days, but… “When the golden one falls beneath the swift blade, strike.” Pass this to all in the force, Ragefyre. It may be of use.’

‘I have something more,’ said Ragefyre, his lilting voice curiously hesitant. ‘The souls of those lost to me, pilots of great skill.’

‘I do not understand,’ Illic said. ‘What use are souls–’

‘You propose to use wraithfighters, Ragefyre?’ Eldorath’s tone was sharp. He had never approved of the terror-weapon that was the Hemlock wraithfighter, or of the sacrifices required by those who piloted them. But still, the situation was desperate. He softened his voice. ‘I agree. I shall rouse the spritseers, and we will depart immediately.’

‘We, my lord Starbane?’ asked the exarch. ‘You will join us on Carnac, though you risk your life?’

‘Aye, exarch,’ said Eldorath, his eyes meeting Keladry’s amber orbs. ‘Through my errors, many eldar have fallen on that world, as Lord Nightspear knows. If any more are to die, I will see it happen with my own eyes. Or I will die with them.’

Maireth Voidwalker rode the waystones of the warriors on Carnac, slipping from one to another, watching for the moment the dead had predicted. She needed to be careful, though… If she lingered too long in any body, she risked losing herself, or dying if her host did. At least that would cheat her fate, though not in the way she would like. She concentrated and–

–Maireth darted across the battlefield clad in the blue armour of a Dire Avenger. She fired her shuriken catapult from the hip as she dove into cover behind a wrecked grav-tank, watching with satisfaction as the blade-edged projectiles slammed into warrior constructs, severing metal limbs and damaging vital systems. Several of the necrons fell, the viridian glow dimming from the eye sockets of their skull-like visages. Several other members of her squad joined her behind the downed Falcon, the exarch amongst them. He signalled to them in Alaitocii battle-sign to target a squad of heavier necrons, armed with great, double-barrelled weapons that glowed the same eldritch green as their eyes.

Maireth exulted in this form of combat. It was alien to her, to be so close to the foe, to see the light bleed from their eyes as death claimed them. To be in this body, fighting in this way… And then, from her left, a great floating machine, long and lined with metal ribs, emerged from behind a cloud of drifting mist. It fired once and the world disappeared and–

–she was a Howling Banshee and parried blows from a necron’s blade, the energised sword gripped in her hand flashing faster than the eye could follow to deflect precise strikes that would have removed her arm or head. The shuriken pistol in her other hand whined and the immortal warrior, towering above her, raised its great coffin-shaped shield to deflect them. She ducked beneath the shield and screamed in rage, channelling all her emotions over her impending death into the shout. Her Banshee mask turned her fury into a monstrous howl that momentarily rocked her foe. She drove her power sword deep into her opponent’s body before spinning. The blade came free, bisecting the necron’s torso.

Maireth barely felt the pain of the necron’s last blow as its hyperphase sword split her from groin to sternum and–

–she hunkered down atop the cliff-face, hidden from view by the cameleoline weave of her cloak, watching the battle unfold. Through the scope of her longrifle, she tracked a group of heavy warrior-forms wired into flying weapons platforms. She calmly followed one as it approached a knot of combatants, green-armoured Striking Scorpions who danced around a necron commander with a long-bladed scythe, trading blows in a blur of chainsword and scythe before darting back out of reach of the necron’s long sweeping strikes. She watched as the barrel of the Destroyer’s weapon glowed with viridian balefire and she breathed out, ordering the psychically attuned rifle to fire.

There was a soft pop and a laser-guided needle lanced from the barrel. The distance was huge, but in moments, the shot hit the necron construct’s weapon power cell, which exploded, consuming the Destroyer in green fire. Two more shots and the other two Destroyers were similarly disabled. Maireth turned her sights back to the combat, seeing that most of the Scorpions were down. Only the exarch remained standing, his heavy powered claw swinging to deflect the blows from the necron’s warscythe.

She aimed for the lord’s eye socket, the baleful green glow the only thing in her consciousness… No, wait, there was a green light, but not from there. She looked up from her scope and saw that a viridian glow pulsed around her. Fear filled her and she turned, staring directly into the single pulsing eye of a necron carrying a long-barrelled weapon, which was pointed directly at her head. She raised her rifle quicker than thought, but it was too late. The necron fired and–

–she steadied the starcannon attached to the Vyper’s weapons platform. Her grip was tight on the gun as the pilot jinked and wove through the chaos of the battle. She saw a group of warriors below, exchanging shots with an entrenched guardian squad. She squeezed the trigger and reduced the necrons to molten slag in a stream of plasma fire, thrilling at the deadly potential of the weapon.

The pilot veered towards a large, spider-like monstrosity that spewed forth swarms of tiny scarabs, and Maireth turned the weapon on it, smoothly loosing a blast of incandescent energy, vaporising it. But the minuscule creatures it had created came for her, taking to the sky on wings of metal. They landed on the Vyper and began eating away at it. Panic filled her as one quickly gnawed through the containment bottle for the starcannon. The Vyper exploded with the unleashed fury of a star gone nova and–

–she stalked through the carnage, turning her Reaper missile launcher left and right, releasing its explosive payload and turning away before the projectile even hit the target. She knew it would. It always did. She exulted in the destruction, in the ruin she brought to this ancient enemy. Her brothers and sisters did likewise, and as one, they sang a deep funereal dirge, a song from the Long Ago that praised the Bloody-Handed One and stirred Maireth’s blood even as their mighty weapons reaped a dreadful harvest in His name.

A sound from behind drew Maireth’s attention and she turned, already firing. Her first missile went straight through her foe, its serpentine metal form simply fading into nothingness as it glided towards her. A second shot missed, and then a third, as the creature evaded the missiles with sinuous movements. And then it was on her, physical again, wrapping itself around her, squeezing the breath from her lungs as its tail constricted. Its claws, great shimmering blades, flashed and–

–she was at the heart of the battle. She was sharing the body of the high autarch herself, Elarique Swiftblade and, unlike the others, the autarch knew that the spiritseer was with her. She laughed as she launched herself at the commander of the yngiract force.

Maireth watched in detached awe as Elarique swung her blade high, bringing it crashing down towards the alien’s grinning gold skull in a graceful arc. The necron stepped to one side faster that she would have believed possible and the blade sliced through empty air. The overlord’s staff struck the autarch across the back and she fell, sprawling on the hard earth. In a heartbeat, she was rolling and up, snap shots from her shuriken pistol causing it to stagger back as she came around and readdressed.

A flurry of blows put it on the back foot, her sword impacting again and again against the ornate staff as the necron desperately parried every strike. Maireth remained in the autarch’s waystone, knowing that Elarique’s skill at arms was greater than she could dream of. If she dared to try to control this body, it would mean the hero’s death. Briefly, she wondered if that had been true of the others she had puppeted, and the thought grieved her.

Around them, a squad of Dire Avengers held off the warlord’s praetorian bodyguards, bursts of pinpoint shuriken fire keeping them away from the duel.

Elarique struck low, her blade cutting through the leg of the enemy commander, and then spun and parted the necron’s head from its shoulders.

It collapsed, and the autarch turned to aid her warriors as an exultant cry of ‘Swiftblade!’ went up from the eldar who had witnessed the combat–

When the golden one falls beneath the swift blade, strike…

Maireth Voidwalker came back to herself. The moment that Eldorath Starbane had foreseen had arrived. The instructions had been given to all those joining the assault, and the golden one had now fallen. And now it was time.

For a second, her body felt alien, other. For a second, she grieved for the deaths she had just witnessed, for the lives that had been sold in the name of stopping the ancient ones, though she also thanked the dead gods of her people that she had fled their waystones in time to allow their souls to be saved. If another’s soul were to be claimed by She Who Thirsts by her actions… The thought chilled her.

She took a deep breath. If the prophecies of the dead were to be believed – and the seers had informed her, sadness in their eyes, that they were – then her purple stone would be warm and filled by the end of this war. Her path, she had been told, would end here, on Carnac. This would be the last world that she would see with living eyes or touch with living flesh. Carnacian air would be the last to fill her lungs. And this would be her last battle, unless she assented to be placed in a wraith construct for some future conflict.

Be not sad, whispered the spirit that shared control of the Hemlock with her, the soul of Kyanorath, a long-dead warrior who had walked the Path of the Crimson Hunter before his fall. Death is not to be feared, Maireth Voidwalker. You, spiritseer, know that more than any.

It was true that death, for an eldar of the craftworlds, was almost a second life. Communion in the infinity circuit was a peace of a kind that the lesser races could never experience. And yet… Maireth was young. There was so much more that she had hoped to do, to experience, to be.

She was roused from her reverie by the singing of the spirits across the squadron of wraithfighters. It was time.

War calls, they chorused, a dozen voices flowing through her. She joined in, and in the psychic communion she felt the spiritseer pilots of the other vessels do the same, their spirits mingling and imbuing her with strength and purpose, and a bravery she did not feel alone. War was calling, and it would bring her death.

With a thought, Maireth Voidwalker ordered the attack.

A crescent-shaped aircraft swooped down and opened fire, and Elarique Swiftblade rolled to avoid the deadly blasts from its weapons. But those blasts never came. Instead, the enemy ship was pierced by a blinding beam of energy. It continued its steep descent and crashed to the ground amongst a knot of souldark warriors, who were consumed in the fiery explosion that destroyed the craft.

A shape shot overhead, black and red, followed by more – a dozen in all – of a deep crimson. Elarique recognised the silhouette of the Nightshade interceptor and realised that – from somewhere, though she knew not where – a squadron of Crimson Hunters Aspect Warriors had arrived to turn the tide. As she gazed upwards, she saw also a flight of elegant ships in the blue and gold of Alaitoc, their profile similar to the Nightshades, but with a distinctive central fin… She fought back a tide of distaste as she realised what these were.

‘Hemlocks,’ she hissed. ‘Starbane has unleashed this witchery?’

The Hemlock wraithfighter was a weapon of terror, not one of war. Elarique watched as one of the craft swooped low over a pack of lumbering necron immortals, who raised their double-barrelled cannons to meet it with ineffectual gauss fire. The Hemlock’s weapons flared, and though there was no sign of a discharge, Elarique heard a discordant wail and the necrons fell, like puppets with cut strings. They did not repair, and their bodies did not phase out. Had they been mortal, their spirits would have been hurled into the warp, doomed to spend eternity as the playthings of daemons. What such infernal devices would do to the souldark, Elarique could not guess.

‘It cannot be pleasant though,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Not even upon my greatest foe would I wish it.’ She heard a sound behind her and turned, activating the power field on her sword with a thought and stabbing it straight through the chest of the golden lord, who had self-repaired and had been about to club Elarique with its great staff. She pulled the sword free and the construct collapsed again. It looked up at her through those baleful green eyes, the hatred of millennia gazing at the autarch. Elarique grinned, the look of a predator.

‘Stay down this time,’ she said, and stabbed the necron through the head.

Keladry pulled up from his dive at the last moment, tail scraping the ground in a spray of sparks, and a thrill ran through him at the close call. The Doom Scythe that had been pursuing him crashed into the hard earth at full speed, a billowing green explosion annihilating it. He jinked left and right to avoid the fire of two more and then looped behind. He fired a stream of pulsar fire that caught one of the crescent-shaped craft on its starboard side, buffeting it to the side, before pulling around and stabbing bright lance fire into the other. One of the beams caught something explosive and the necron ship detonated, a green sun flaring briefly into life in the darkening sky.

The other ship rose unsteadily, wobbling in the air even as the hole torn through it by the pulsar blast began to knit together. Keladry targeted the warrior construct in a nook on top of the ship and let loose more pulsar fire at it. A bright flare erupted around the pilot, clearly an energy field designed to protect it. The exarch let the fire continue as he flew towards the necron ship. Alarms began to blare as collision became imminent.

He grinned and continued. If this would be his death, then what a death!

The stream of crimson pulsar fire battered against the shield until, suddenly, with a blaze of energy, the field collapsed and the pulsar fire destroyed the necron pilot. The Doom Scythe dipped and fell towards the battlefield, and Keladry flew through the space it had occupied moments before, cheated once again of his demise.

The exarch checked the status of his warriors. All were still flying, though he had become separated from them. He located their beacons and turned in their direction. A few seconds and he saw them, locked in battle against ten times their number. The last time he had seen warriors under his command face such odds had been…

‘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…

Pulsar and lance fire speared from elegant eldar craft as they wove through a barrage of crackling electricity that emanated from the long-barrelled cannons underslung on the falcate necron flyers. They jinked from side to side, the arcs of tesla fire bubbling paint from their hulls as they passed, but otherwise missing.

Taking a deep breath and clearing his head, Keladry flew into the midst of the combat, targeting a squadron of three Doom Scythes. He signalled to his Crimson Hunters and five of the warriors peeled off and followed him. The enemy squadron faced away from them, hunting a Hemlock wraithfighter that swept towards the necron ground forces, cutting yngiract down with its blasphemous weaponry.

The Hemlock dove low and the necron flyers followed, tesla blasts burning into the eldar ship’s rear. With a thought, Keladry oriented his fighter towards one of the foes, pulling into a steep dive and unleashing laser fire at the craft. Behind him, his Crimson Hunters did the same. Bright beams of energy tore through the necron ship, reducing it to a hulk that slewed down towards the battlefield below. The other two Doom Scythes pulled away in opposite directions, and Keladry ordered that the Crimson Hunters focus on one of the enemy.

‘Strength is in numbers,’ he said. ‘Focus on one enemy. The other can wait.’

That had always been Keladry Ragefyre’s way. Focus on one enemy to the exclusion of all others. Kill it and target another. It worked for him in the training domes of the shrine, and it had worked on countless battlefields, against the crude ships and unskilled pilots of the humans, tau and orks. It was basic, and it was blunt, but that was what Keladry was – a weapon to be pointed at the foe and fired, a single-minded force of nature. He had not always been so, but the loss of Alianna… She flashed through his mind: her smile, her laugh, the feel of her skin against his. He hardened his thoughts and focused on the battle. On his impending – and oh so welcome – death.

Maireth breathed a sigh of relief as one of the Doom Scythes raking her Hemlock with fierce streams of electricity slewed away, struck by volleys of pulsar and lance fire from the Crimson Hunters. The other two disengaged and Maireth pulled out of her dive and prepared for another pass.

She avoided the main swirl of combat, wary of the great weapons mounted on the vehicles that floated around the centre of the swirling melee. If she was to avoid her fate, she must take no needless risks.

Instead, she looked to the fringes of the battlefield. She spotted a knot of necrons far from the combat, draped in what looked like cloaks of freshly flayed skin. Great claws tipped their long arms and they loped towards a squad of guardians who were pinned down by volleys of gauss fire. She locked the distortion scythes on to them, and Kyanorath chimed agreement.

The Hemlock swooped low and sent what passed for souls in those creatures of the damned to oblivion. Exultation fought with disgust in Maireth Voidwalker at the effects of the infernal weaponry.

She pulled the Hemlock back up, searching for another target, and saw the Nightshade interceptors that had saved her moments before sweep overhead in pursuit of another Doom Scythe. Bright blue streams of energy battered the necron ship, but still it flew. The Crimson Hunters continued on, so focused on their kill that they were oblivious to the death that approached… And not just for them.

A stream of lance fire split the necron craft in two, the broken piece tumbling from the sky.

The unliving scythe will be sundered and your end will be at hand.

The other necron flyer that had fled from them had returned, with reinforcements. Fully five of the enemy craft came from behind and beneath them. Their tesla cannons were silent, but great crystal orbs mounted between the long-barrelled weapons glowed a lambent green. Before Maireth could react or warn the Aspect Warriors, the death rays fired. Beams of blinding white light burst from the necron ships, and three of the blood-coloured craft simply disintegrated. Another two were hit in vital systems and, after a moment, exploded.

The black fighter lost a wing, and plummeted towards the ground below.

And Maireth Voidwalker, doomed to die on this world, at this time, was left vulnerable and without protection in front of five Doom Scythes, their death ray emitters recharging as they circled her like apex predators.

Keladry smiled as his Nightshade hurtled towards the ground. If this was his death, he would meet it as a friend. If he was lost to the depredations of warp beasts, he would go to them with a smile. If today was his last day in the universe, he would–

No, Keladry Ragefyre. Your path does not end here. Your part is yet to be played.

A voice, ancient and dry, echoed in Keladry’s mind and he felt his body move, activating the control for the interceptor’s ejector. The canopy of the ship blasted outwards, carried away by the rushing winds, and as his seat was pushed out of the cockpit with explosive force, his last thought before the gravitational forces threw him into unconsciousness was that he had been cheated of death. Again.

In desperation, Maireth fired her Hemlock’s weapons at the approaching Doom Scythes, to no avail. Designed to bring horrific death to infantry far below, the distortion scythes failed to penetrate the shields around the necron pilots. She screamed her rage at Kyanorath, but the only response was a sad and sympathetic voice in her mind.

Death comes to all, little spiritseer. How we meet it matters as much as that we do.

‘But I’m not ready,’ she wailed. ‘It’s too soon.’

Taking a deep breath, Maireth Voidwalker closed her eyes and began to chant a lament from the Long Ago, a song that was sung even before the Fall, when the eldar race ruled the galaxy. She prepared to meet her death. Through closed eyelids, she saw the bright flare of light that signalled her end.

The light faded, and Maireth opened her eyes. She sat still in the cockpit of the Hemlock. She felt laughter on the edge of her consciousness.

Perhaps it is not yet your time, little spiritseer, whispered Kyanorath.

Maireth surveyed the skies around her Hemlock. The necron ships were all gone. In their place were more Crimson Hunters, four of the red and black craft, wings dipped in mourning for their lost brethren.

A voice came to her over the communications system.

‘The battle in the skies is lost, necromancer. Gather your wraithships. We must flee.’

‘But what of below? What of Autarch Swiftblade?’

‘She has come to the same conclusion, spiritseer. Her forces fall back.’

Maireth turned her sensors on to the battlefield. The Aspect Warrior was right. The eldar forces were falling back in disciplined lines, harrying the enemy with fire as they went. The other Hemlocks – those that had survived – flew low over the retreating craftworld forces, dissuading the foe from following with their deadly distortion scythes. Maireth cursed softly.

‘Very well. I will mourn for your fallen with you when we reach the ground, Crimson Hunter.’

With heavy heart, Maireth Voidwalker joined the retreat.

‘Explain to me,’ said Elarique Swiftblade slowly, ‘what happened up there.’

It was morning, and after a restless night spent tending to the wounded and mourning for the lost Maireth had been summoned to see the autarch.

‘I don’t understand what you–’ she began, before Elarique interrupted.

‘I have spoken to Lord Starbane. You and your fellows were sent to get into the midst of the foe and reap a mighty toll with your blasphemous weapons. Yet you followed your own agenda instead.’

Elarique looked into her eyes.

‘You and I shared my body for a brief time, Maireth Voidwalker. Our spirits mingled, and you were laid bare to me.’

She paused, and the implication of her words hit Maireth. Did she know? How could she?

‘My lord Swiftblade, I–’

‘You seek to avoid a fate foreseen, Voidwalker. This I understand. Know that it is possible. Death can be cheated, but always at a cost. You have avoided the fate that the seers had divined. What will you have to pay, I wonder? What will Alaitoc have to pay?’

Sighing, the autarch turned and walked over to the holo-map of the Carnacian geography, marked with eerie green sigils showing the locations of enemy forces, all moving towards the world shrine. She placed a hand over the marker for that spot, the repository for the souls of millennia of Carnacian Exodites.

‘Sometimes, Maireth, an act of sacrifice is necessary, when there is a greater good to come from it.’

Maireth saw the truth behind her words.

‘My sacrifice, lord autarch?’

‘I rarely speak in such singular terms, Maireth. It is a truth of our galaxy that great acts of conflict are often mirrored in lesser ones. What is true of one is often true of the other. Your sacrifice may be necessary to serve a greater purpose. As may the sacrifice of this world.’

‘You would flee this world? Give the souldark victory? You are a coward!’ Keladry Ragefyre entered, blazing with fury, his usually pale face flushed with blood as he spat invective at Elarique.

The autarch turned from the holographic map table. She stared into the exarch’s face for a long moment, her eyes dark and cold, and when she spoke, it brought a chill to Maireth’s bones.

‘You speak of cowardice, Ragefyre? You who seeks to embrace oblivion? You who are willing to sacrifice other precious souls in your own pursuit of death? How many of your acolytes died?’

Keladry just glared. Elarique shook her head.

‘You disgust me. You have no conception of the greater picture of which Carnac is just a small part. Sometimes, we must accept defeat in order to secure a larger victory.’

‘Larger victory?’ Keladry’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘What use is that to us now?’

‘And what will your own death achieve, especially at the cost of innocent lives?’ Elarique waved a hand towards Maireth. ‘Victory does require sacrifice, it is true. But sacrifice for a cause is not the same as wasting a life that has meaning still. What if I were to tell you, Ragefyre, that the seers have seen a greater role for you in Alaitoc’s future? Darkness is coming, we all know this. The Rhana Dandra approaches, and the skeins of fate draw us together in ways we could never expect. Sometimes, a single life can be all that stands between the craftworld and oblivion.’ The autarch glanced sideways at Maireth. ‘Or sometimes, a single death.’

Keladry snarled. ‘I care not for words. I will seek the fate I choose. Nothing else matters.’

‘You would put your own selfish desires above those of Alaitoc, above those of our very race? Alas, you are truly lost to us. Even the soulthieves of Commorragh would be less vainglorious.’

‘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…

‘You dare say such things?’ shouted the Crimson Hunter, pulling Elarique around and delivering a strike to her face. Lightning-fast, the autarch blocked the blow and punched back. Keladry staggered back, blood flowing from his broken nose. ‘You compare me to the lost? You know not my heart!’

‘I know much, for I see clearly,’ said Swiftblade quietly. ‘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 her 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 there will be 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 her voice.

‘This will be dangerous, spiritseer, and will require much courage and no little sacrifice. Are you ready for that?’

‘I am, Autarch 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 wraithfighters, 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, understanding his meaning. ‘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 Crimson 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, Autarch 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.

SPIRIT WAR

ROB SANDERS

He was Kael Ra – Prince Ecliptic of the Alaitocii. Avenger. Autarch… Legend.

His diresword knew only its desire to end enemies. His aspect armour was slick with the drizzle of barbarian blood. Gore dripped from the plume of his high-helm, while the fury of greenskin shells – crude but as unrelenting as a storm – turned to lead-splatter against the fluxing pulse of his energy shield. His craftworld kin were there: lithe, shadowy figures, whose blades and shuriken-fire were the bladed shaft of a spear thrust through the meat of the enemy ranks – a spear of which Kael Ra was the tip. The monstrous droves – living testaments to obstinate rage – split before the martial grace of the Prince Ecliptic’s advance. The orks bellowed their choler and contempt for the sleight craftworld host but could do nothing to stop the bloody, limb-strewn path the Alaitocii warriors were carving through their hordes. Kael Ra was a vision of serenity – cold, precise and deadly.

His diresword sang with the balletic demise of invader greenskins, while his body arced and extended about its movements, guiding it to greater devastation. Brute-bore weaponry spat its point-blank-range fury into the sizzling shell of the autarch’s shielding, while Kael Ra whipped his shuriken pistol about him like the grip of a whip, allowing the trailing flourishes of monomolecular death to scythe through the soon-to-be-dead. All the while, Alaitocii guardians, warriors and the high priests of the god of war, fought at their autarch’s back in choreographed darkness and determination.

For a moment, Kael Ra was lost to the battle. It was not rage or confusion. It was fugue not of the body or mind but of the soul. Thousands of foes had died before his blade on hundreds of worlds. Which was this? He had fought the greenskin plague on Ath-Ethon, on Lorachi and Talhennor, and many fringe worlds beyond. The pang of uncertainty shot through his heart, the kind of fear and uncertainty that the alien enemy had failed to put there. As his killing thrusts and elegant bladework took apart oncoming brutes, Kael Ra allowed himself a moment of consideration, a second or two away from the calculating contrivance of battle. Had he become lost on some darkened path? He had walked many but none seemed as potent and captivating as this. The figures about his pirouetting form – both foe and fellow eldar – appeared bleached in darkness. Their shapes were immediate and recognisable but their movements blotted into one another.

His diresword skewered one beastbreed, before slipping it out of the carcass and flicking gore into the face of another. As the monster greenskin blinked the muck from its eyes, it found that its throat had been slashed open by the twirling sweep of the autarch’s shuriken pistol. A clawed arm flew off here, a tusk-twisted head there. Kael Ra ducked. He back-flipped. He rolled, each movement taking him clear of a felling broadblade, crackling power claw or stream of lead. Crouching down in the blood-mulch and dismembered body parts, the Prince Ecliptic span on the toe-tip of his boot, his blade cutting through the gristle and bone of shins and ankles. Monsters fell about him, and like the harvester in the field Kael Ra reared to survey the fruits of his labour. It was then that he saw her.

A single figure in the robes of a seer – her hair plaited into silver buns above her ears – walked through the enemy mobs with a tranquil abandon. It was as though the drooling beasts were not there; charging, wildly swinging and firing their weapons, roaring at the Alaitoc and each other. In turn, the greenskin monstrosities seemed unaware of her. She drifted through their throngs of violence and alien hatred, her steps light and her eyes on the Prince Ecliptic. Unlike the spiky silhouette of the enemy or the dark assurance of the warriors at his back, the wandering eldar ghosted her way through the scene. She positively glowed and Kael Ra felt drawn to her strangeness.

Fearing she was one of his number – a straggler cut off from the spearhead by a barricade of furious green flesh – Kael Ra turned the lethal point of the battle formation aside. With his pistol empty and holstered, the autarch surged into the enemy ranks. With footwork fast and the grace of economical blade work, Kael Ra slipped through the beasts. Using his slender gauntlet like a grapnel, the Prince Ecliptic anchored himself on a greenskin giant, visiting centrifugal kicks and sword sweeps through the surrounding creatures. Greenskins fired on the ghost moving through their ranks but only served to maul further the toppling bodies Kael Ra left in his wake. The shadowy forces of the Alaitoc craftworld moved through the neat carnage, the point-blank shuriken fury of their number like a razored wedge being driven through the muscle and sinew of the ork hordes. Bestial clusters of greenskins fell upon the Prince Ecliptic – drawn down on the threat by animal instinct. Mob after blood-fevered mob dropped about the autarch, his lightning thrusts punching through their heart-skewered carcasses, and arcs gliding through throats and the tops of skulls.

Rising from the demolished collection of greenskin bodies, Kael Ra watched the seer walk purposely towards him. She was a spectral vision advancing through their ranks, unseen by their alien eyes. The Prince Ecliptic’s gaze rose into the murk of the battlefield sky. There too, war was being waged. The heavens were overcast. Cloud banks flashed with the gunfire of dogfights and detonating aircraft. Kael Ra watched as the bulbous outline of a greenskin bomber dropped out of the clouds. Chugging its way in for a low pass, Kael Ra could see its belly, swollen with ordnance. It would have worried the autarch if it were not for the pair of Nightwing fighters searing up behind it, accelerating to attack speed. Within moments they had streamed through the greenskin obscenity with their lances and banked skyward in search of more challenging prey. With precision fire and ease the Alaitocii fighter pilots had burned through the bomber’s engines. As the oppression above swallowed the Nightwings, the ork bomber fell into a messy and inevitable descent.

It was like a nightmare from which the autarch could not wake. Hacking and stabbing his way through the barbarian hordes, Kael Ra was powerless to stop the unfolding tragedy. The bomber turned as it tumbled, rolling onto its side and slamming into the enemy lines. Impossibly, the ork at the stick found its way to some kind of crash landing. Like the fin of an ocean predator, the aircraft’s remaining wing cut its way through the greenskin swarm. Alien brutes died in their droves, splattered against the flaming fuselage or smeared into the landscape under the beastcraft’s bulk. As it came to a stop, fires raging through its superstructure, Kael Ra went to call out. His lips moved but no sound proceeded from them. The Alaitoc force at his back never got the warning he intended for them. The flames had spread through the ordnance bay and like an erupting nova, the fat aircraft exploded – turning the battle gloom to brilliant white.

Moments later, the Prince Ecliptic came to. He was on his back. Somewhere in the distance, the wreckage of the greenskin bomber was still throwing an infernal glow across the battlefield. The force of the explosion had thrown him some distance. He could hear the agonies of his warriors in the darkness beyond and the butchery of greenskin savages falling on the shattered remains of his spearhead force. The autarch’s field protection sizzled and spat to nothingness. Kael Ra went to get to his feet, but he could not. His legs were no longer there. Even for an autarch such as he, the shock was overwhelming. He turned and retched into the dark dirt. The earth was already saturated with his blood. He looked down again at the horror of his ragged midriff and the absence beyond. Through a sickening numbness he could still feel his boots and armour.

Wild gunfire hammered into the ground nearby, alerting the autarch to the barbed silhouettes of alien barbarians in the murk. They were running, their steps heavy and their howls jubilant. The sudden violence of detonation was like a drug to them. Their hunger for further carnage became all that Kael Ra knew. Slapping about in the gore-soaked mulch for his weapon, the Prince Ecliptic found that his diresword had landed a little distance away. Rolling over onto his chest and allowing the agony of his grievous wounds to lance through the numbness of shock and stupefaction, Kael Ra crawled arm over arm towards the weapon.

As the tapering tips of his gauntlet reached the hilt of the sword he felt the beasts all about him. Retracting his arm and rolling, Kael Ra managed to avoid the axe intending to split open his skull and sliced through the throat of its wielder with the tip of his sword. Arching, reaching, slipping and sliding in the mud, the Prince Ecliptic fought for what was left of his life, the life messily bleeding away into the ground about him. He cut out legs from under his attackers. He gored them through their guts. He turned aside heavy blades and the squat barrels of their barbaric weapons. Soon the bloody morass surrounding the prone autarch was carpeted with alien bodies. Just as the Prince Ecliptic thought he might actually escape the butchery of a battlefield death, the studded boot of a greenskin monstrosity slammed down on his wrist, squelching both his gauntlet and diresword into the mud.

Kael Ra fought to free himself but the beast put its other boot on his chest. It looked down the gaping barrel of its obscene weapon. The creature was huge, some kind of tribal boss of chieftain. Beyond, the Prince Ecliptic could hear the sound of guardians and Aspect Warriors trying to reach him but a small mountain range of green flesh – the chieftain’s entourage brute kindred and arch-maniacs – had erupted between them, leaving Kael Ra to their monstrous leader. The thing looked down at the struggling autarch. It was difficult to tell through the set of teeth and tusks sprouting from the horror’s maw but Kael Ra thought that it was smiling. Its beady eyes fixed on him with unbridled hatred and stringy drool slipped out through the gaps in its teeth and splattered against the autarch’s rising and falling chest. Kael Ra found himself snarling back at the creature. He moved his free hand unconsciously over his chest to the ornate spirit stone set in the psycho-plastic intricacies of his armour. He found himself holding his breath, willing the beast on. The greenskin hulk did not require any encouragement, however. Holding the bucking weapon steady in its claws, the monster blasted a long and thunderous stream of lead into the Prince Ecliptic.

Suddenly the chieftain’s attentions were elsewhere. Driven on by concern for their autarch, the regrouping Alaitoc warriors had cut through the muscular ranks of the chieftain’s legion of bodyguards, necessitating intervention from the monstrous leader itself. As the battle raged on in the gloom beyond, the autarch’s chest fell for the final time. Kael Ra – Prince Ecliptic of the Alaitocii – Avenger. Autarch. Legend… was dead. With the light gone from his eyes, the blood-speckled lids drew slowly to a close.

When Kael Ra opened them, the seer was with him. Kneeling in the blood and mud at the side of his corpse, she gave him a kindly smile. Once again, she seemed to glow and was oblivious to the carnage unfolding about her. From the obscurity and darkness, two further eldar presented themselves. The first was a spectral vision, like his mistress; the second shared the bleakness of the surrounding shadow. The pair were dressed in the same bone-woven mesh, clutched matching shuriken catapults and wore the same cold judgement on their identical faces. They were twins, one the disdainful mirror image of the other. They flanked the seer like a watchful escort.

‘Are you sure?’ the first put to his mistress in syllables of broken glass.

‘We can do this…’ the second twin assured her, his voice no less mellifluous and cutting.

‘I am sure,’ the seer answered them. She held out a slender hand to the fallen autarch.

‘Kael Ra of Alaitoc,’ she said, her voice like a half-remembered battle hymn. ‘Prince Ecliptic. Take my hand, if once again, you wish to live.’

Without knowing it, the dead autarch’s hand was in hers. She reared to her full and imposing height, pulling him to her. Together they stood. Kael Ra was unsteady. She held him to her lithe body.

He looked down at the bloody patch of earth from which he had risen. He had risen… The Prince Ecliptic reached down for legs that moments before had not been there. Kael Ra stared about the field of battle and watched as the Alaitocii took the furious fight to the greenskin barbarians. Their rallying advance had the grief-stricken sting of disbelief. Their weapons shredded through the hated enemy. Kael Ra turned to the seer. The fires of battle glinted off the silver buns above her ears. For the first time in forever, the Prince Ecliptic found that words proceeded from the thoughts in his head. It was strange hearing himself again.

‘Who are you.’

It was neither question nor demand and was delivered with all the addled humility a master in the arts of war could muster.

‘My name is Nestra, my lord. Nestra Orphiel,’ the seer told him. Her words proceeded from lips, soft and sharp, but echoed about his skull like distant thunder. She gestured to the members of her escort. ‘This is Castien and this is Ehrendril, the Brothers Rhespasian.’

‘Where am I?’

‘The Darcassion Heights, on Talhennor,’ Orphiel told him, leading the unsteady prince up the incline of a ridge running parallel to the chaos and carnage.

‘Talhennor…’

‘This is the Battle of Talhennor,’ Orphiel said, ‘from which you emerged victorious.’

‘I don’t remember…’

‘You fell at Talhennor, my lord,’ Orphiel confessed, ‘but your death rallied the Alaitoc to a great victory against the greenskin and secured Talhennor for our Exodite kin.’

‘Then I was not victorious,’ Kael Ra said.

‘Spoken like a warrior,’ the seer observed. ‘Your spirit was carried back to the craftworld to great mourning. Alaitoc had lost the Prince Ecliptic but found the strength to eradicate a mighty enemy of the eldar.’

‘You flatter these greenskin savages.’

‘Perhaps,’ Orphiel said, ‘but without your victory, these savages would have mauled many more fringe worlds and drenched the earth with the blood of our cousins. So said our venerable farseers.’

‘Is that your path?’ Kael Ra asked. ‘The gift of foresight?’

‘By the time you secured victory at Talhennor, I had not even been born,’ Orphiel said as she guided him along the gloomy ridge. The Prince Ecliptic pulled away from her.

‘Stop saying that,’ the autarch said imperiously. ‘There is no victory in death.’

‘You are wrong, my lord.’

Kael Ra looked at the seer. He studied the grave lines of her kindly face, the glyphs and symbols of her dark robes.

‘And you are no farseer…’

‘I did not proclaim to be,’ Orphiel insisted.

‘You’re a necromancer…’ Kael Ra accused.

‘My lord,’ Orphiel continued, allowing the insult to pass on the wind, ‘you were brought back to Alaitoc and taken into the craftworld’s hallowed embrace. You reached the great matrix of souls that guide, protect and continue to serve our people. It is from there that I speak to you now.’

‘So this,’ Kael Ra said, gesturing to the unfolding battle. ‘None of this is happening.’

‘It is happening for you,’ Orphiel told him. ‘But it is the distant past of your descendants.’

The Prince Ecliptic stumbled and Nestra Orphiel reached for him. Once again, Kael Ra pulled away. He was overcome with emptiness. A sombre eternity stretched both before and beyond the ancient autarch. Orphiel allowed him a moment. The Alaitoc rally had begun. Grief had turned to anger. Anger to determination. Determination to cold pride. Guardians fought for their fallen autarch. Aspect Warriors fought for the honour of their craftworld war shrines. Illimitar Skystorm – winged death and exarch of the Swooping Hawks – had emerged from the Alaitoc lines to take his place in history. Orphiel nodded to herself. Illimitar would finish what Kael Ra had started and assume the mantle of high autarch.

‘What perversity is this?’ Kael Ra said, witness to a future he had not known. ‘We send our fallen to the infinity circuit, that is no more than a living hell for its assimilates.’

‘The infinity circuit is many things,’ Orphiel told him cryptically, ‘but for the individual soul it is what their spirit makes of it. Your fear of failure has followed you here, my lord. It is how I knew where to find you. You choose to relive this moment from your past. To replay the game – hoping for a different outcome. It is this quality, Prince Ecliptic, which made you – and still makes you – one of the most powerful of Alaitoc’s warriors and leaders. A spirit of purpose. A soul without fear. You are a warrior that refuses to surrender – even in death.’

The pair of ghostly Nightwings fell out of the cloudy sky, rolling wing over wing. Levelling out and skimming the sea of greenskin rage, the aircraft lanced the battlefield with a stream of las-fire, cutting a path up through the shadowy hordes that Illimitar and warriors used to funnel their invigorated assault. Kael Ra found himself nodding in appreciation.

‘I come to you from Eldorath Starbane,’ Orphiel told the Prince Ecliptic.

‘Never heard of him,’ Kael Ra said absently.

‘He leads the Alaitocii now,’ Orphiel said. ‘But against foes galactic, greater and more damning than the savages of the green plague. An enemy of old – an enemy risen from oblivion to take back what was lost in the War in Heaven.’

‘That cannot be–’

‘The yngiract,’ Orphiel insisted. ‘The silver servants of ancient destiny, intent on reclaiming the dynastic glory of a silent kingdom.’

Kael Ra knew the yngiract…

‘This Starbane fights the metal menace?’ asked Kael Ra.

‘As best he can, my lord,’ Orphiel confirmed. ‘He leads the Alaitocii in defending the Exodite world of Carnac against a yngiract overlord known as the Traveller. The Traveller claims Carnac as his own.’

‘It sounds like the Alaitoc face a desperate time,’ Kael Ra said, watching the shades of his eldar battleforce cut through the greenskin swarm.

‘The most desperate of times, my lord,’ Orphiel admitted. ‘Eldorath Starbane has sent me for you, Kael Ra. Alaitoc needs you once more, my Prince Ecliptic.’

‘No…’

‘I have an army, crafted in wraithbone,’ Orphiel said, ‘and a shrine suit waiting to lead it. Vessels through which you might once more walk in the realm of the living and bring death to the enemies of the eldar.’

‘The sorceries you speak of,’ Kael Ra said, ‘are unnatural.’

‘They are necessary,’ the seer told him.

‘No.’

‘Your kindred die,’ Nestra Orphiel said. ‘Enemies of the eldar take our hope from the Eastern Fringe, world by world. Our warriors on Carnac face annihilation. Without a rearguard. Without a defensive line that will not break, from behind which our kindred can evacuate, the Traveller will take the webway gate. The world spirit. The eldar that have fought for a doomed world.’

Kael Ra said nothing. The spiritseer pointed down at the Alaitoc army fighting their way through the greenskin host. ‘You see your warriors down there? Your guardians? Your high priests of war? Like you, they walk the webway no more. Each and every one of them would follow you back into bloodshed, should you ask them to.’ Again, Kael Ra said nothing. ‘The Alaitocii have need of their heroes. Warriors ancient and ancestral would flock to your unliving banner for the chance to fight once more with the Prince Ecliptic. Legends like you, Kael Ra.’

The autarch turned away from the Battle of Talhennor. His defeat. His failure. He found the sneers of the Brothers Rhespasian waiting for him. His judgement was complete.

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Your craftworld calls,’ Nestra Orphiel told him, ‘and when your craftworld calls, you damn well answer.’

‘Or what?’ Kael Ra shot back. ‘A fate worse than death? You can devise no greater punishment for a warrior than shame, necromancer, and I have devised that all for myself.’

For a few seconds, both seer and autarch were silent. The distant dirge of battle intruded on the moment. The autarch heard his warriors fighting. Fighting and dying, for him.

‘Asuryan’s light grows dim, departed brother,’ Orphiel said. ‘We are but a shadow of what we were with you to lead us. So it goes with all the children of Isha. The eldar can ill afford defeat but when doom is inevitable we must save all we can. The future of our race belongs to the living, Kael Ra – just as the glories of our past are yours. Know this, Prince Ecliptic. I cannot compel you. Your aid must be given freely. I can no more promise you success at Carnac than fate could bestow at Talhennor. We have lost the fringe world. Success can only be measured in the number of eldar saved, who in turn may fight another day, for some other cause on some other world. Achievement – in the emptiness of these spectral halls. How many more of your brothers and sisters will you welcome into oblivion’s embrace, Kael Ra?’

‘No more,’ the autarch said finally, his words at once empty and leaden. He spoke with the chill certainty of an eldar who had accepted his fate. ‘The craftworld will reach out, through the fury of its fallen, and bring eternal peace to the enemies of the Alaitoc.’

‘Have no doubt, autarch,’ the seer said. ‘The Traveller is powerful. In putting yourself between him and his victims, you risk your very soul.’

‘Souls are for the taking,’ the Prince Ecliptic told her. ‘I dare this Traveller to try…’

The Exodite world of Carnac was a bad dream that had come true. At least that was the way Kael Ra experienced it through the medium of a living death. It had been a tiny but beautiful corner of the galaxy once. War had come to the Exodite world, however, and brought with it the ugliness of death and destruction. Lush plains were now ashen deserts of razed wilderness. Rivers of blood and rust, choked with bodies. Copse-belts of tropical titanwoods that had been replaced with petrified bone orchards of colossal, black stakes stabbing at the sky.

Beyond the great crumbling archway of the Crescent-Kharellion – the Exodite world’s primary nexus gate – Kael Ra stepped out into the wonder of the Carnacian world spirit. A forest of crystal obelisks and menhirs – all perfectly crafted and inscribed with the runes of the ancients – struck out from the webway gate portal in every direction. The mystery of their workings and the immaterial interrelation of their patterns and equidistant orientations were almost palpable. The stone circles, monolithic grids and clusters of lesser tablets about crystal totems housed the dead ancestors of Carnac’s Exodite clans in the same way that the infinity circuit of the craftworld had provided the safety of a soul matrix for Alaitoc’s fallen.

It was among the stones of the world spirit – in the spaces between, the air thick with the immaterial energies of observance and containment – that the Prince Ecliptic saw the first evidence of an evacuation. Nestra Orphiel had informed him that an exodus was already well under way. While the Exodite clanspeople fled their farms and villages, their domesticated beastherds heavily laden with the nomadic trappings of their former lives, Orphiel’s sister spiritseers evacuated the souls of their long-dead ancestors. Kael Ra saw the essences that powered the world spirit extracted through the observance of solemn ritual and transported in waystones to the safety of the webway and the craftworld beyond. There they would find peace where Kael Ra had failed to achieve, in the wraithscape of the infinity circuit.

Striding through the network of standing stones, at the head of his company of the dead – his Continuum – Kael Ra possessed a giant wraithbone construct, a colossus of gentle lines, psychoactive intricacy and beautiful doom. Its long legs carried the burning soul of the Prince Ecliptic with graceful assurance. In its willowy arms and cannon-mounted gauntlets it carried the broad blade of a mighty ghostglaive that crackled with hate and in length was almost as tall as the towering construct itself. The construct’s breechcloth and mantle fluttered from its slight torso like the tail of a comet. The wraithbone vanes elegantly erupting from its shoulders helped to stabilise the living machine’s mighty movements and functioned as gyroscopic dampeners for the pair of bulbous missile launching pods, mounted either side of the tapering extravagance of its soulmelding helm. Like a shrine statue infused with a living death, the magnificent construct was worthy of the Prince Ecliptic. To Kael Ra, the wraithbone armour felt like a second skin. Weapons burned in his grasp no less than they had when the autarch was alive. He felt more assured, more capable, more powerful than ever and strode through the Carnacian world spirit like the son of a god.

Behind him, marching with the dread synchrony of an army of the dead, were several hundred wraithguard and wraithblade warrior constructs, bearing the dark psychoplastic armour of the Alaitoc. Each was powered by the lost soul of a fallen warrior. Many had fought with Kael Ra at Talhennor. The others simply wished they had. All had traded their souls with the necromancer for the chance to follow the Prince Ecliptic into battle on Carnac. Some carried cannons and vortex weaponry. Some carried pairs of ghost swords – the blades of which crackled with dark energy. Others force shields and axes. Through the Continuum’s ranks strode the legends, heroes and former autarchs Nestra Orphiel had recruited – wraithlords all. Each piloted their own distinctive colossus, equipped with the construct-weaponry of their favouring: magnificent spears, swords and shields; gauntlets glowing with destructive power; the cradled lengths of scatter lasers, cannons, launchers and lances.

The spiritseer herself piloted a war walker, shimmering in a nexus of intensified energy fields. One with the machine, Orphiel travelled high above the wraithguard she united with her necromantic powers on the walker’s towering legs. At that height the seer almost came level with the Prince Ecliptic’s exaggerated helm. Kael Ra informed her that he intended to meet the Traveller’s world-crushing armies with his warriors and without the spiritseer. He suggested that she return with her craftworld kin and entrust the defence of the Alaitoc withdrawal to the Continuum. Orphiel conceded that there was nowhere else she would rather be but told the Prince Ecliptic that without her presence on the field of battle, the wraithbone constructs of the Continuum would give no fight to the enemy at all and stand motionless like the great army of statues they resembled. Feeling the sting of wounded pride through the wraithscape, the spiritseer told the autarch to think of her as the medium through which he commanded rather than the mission commander herself.

‘I am the air through which your orders carry,’ Orphiel had said. ‘Without the air, your orders would not reach those for which they were intended – but without you, Prince Ecliptic, there would be no orders to follow.’

Kael Ra’s grim silence seemed to satisfy the spiritseer but the autarch had insisted that she take to the battlefield within the safety of a vehicle. ‘I have my own protection,’ the seer insisted as they moved through the standing stones of the world spirit. It was not an empty boast. The unliving columns of the Continuum – wraithguard, wraithblades and the wraithlords that led them – marched between the legs of a gargantuan statue. Kael Ra had taken the colossus for some ancient and long-forgotten gate or archway but upon their approach discovered it to be a wraithbone construct like his own. But larger. Far larger. It was something he had never seen. A towering shrine to destruction, that bestrode the world spirit and stood sentinel before the Crescent-Kharellion.

‘What is it?’ the Prince Ecliptic asked.

‘A wraithknight,’ Orphiel told him. She commanded, ‘Brothers Rhespasian – with me.’

The giant thing moved – its displacements lighter and sharper for a construct so massive it shook the ground upon which it walked. Kael Ra recalled the sentinels that had flanked the seer down in the infinity circuit, one a vision of ghostly life – like his mistress – and the other his fallen twin. Between them, the living and the dead piloted the monstrous structure, giving the war machine unparalleled speed and manoeuvrability among its wraithkind. A pair of scatter lasers sat on its shoulders like birds of prey, while its slender arm bore the seething lengths of a wraithcannon and a suncannon – the monstrous muzzles of which almost reached the ground. It was both wonder and aberration.

‘No,’ the Prince Ecliptic said.

‘Castien and Ehrendril will be a great asset in the battle to come,’ Nestra Orphiel said.

‘This monstrosity is a dealer in death,’ Kael Ra agreed, ‘any fool can see that. But it is the dead that march to meet the yngiract. You said it yourself: success on Carnac can only be measured in the number of eldar saved. With precious few of our kindred enjoying the blessing of Isha, I will not risk the living.’

‘Ehrendril is long fallen but I would not describe what Castien experiences up in that machine as life,’ Orphiel said.

‘Then let him spend whatever miserable existence you have allowed him here,’ Kael Ra said. ‘He can stand sentinel at the gate and watch for our victorious return. If we fail to stop the yngiract, then your Brothers Rhespasian and their monstrous war machine may yet taste of battle.’

The ghost army stomped its way south, leaving the gargantuan wraithknight to tower over the world spirit alone. Their solemn, rhythmic strides took them through collections of standing stones that were beginning to thin. As they did so, the Continuum moved through the withdrawing multitudes of eldar, making for the Crescent-Kharellion under Eldorath Starbane’s orders. Clan eldar, Exodites and outcasts limped on. They led hulking beasts of burden north, the placid monsters carrying all that was left of their farms and homesteads. The Exodites’ rustic robes and labouring garb were torn and bloody, their faces besmirched and blank with the horror of war.

Among their number were the throngs of Alaitoc guardians, Aspect Warriors and exarchs that had fought hard for the preservation of their cousins’ simple lives against an enemy innumerable. While the unfeeling legions of the yngiract trudged across the verdant plains of Carnac with the tireless efficiency of machines, disintegrating their way through villages, rangeland and farmsteads, the main body of Anrakyr the Traveller’s invasion force had marched on the Carnacian world spirit from the south. The Alaitoc had achieved wonders. Their allied pathfinders had created havoc for metal legions en route to wreck genocidal devastation on swiftly evacuating Exodite communities. Their Phoenix fighters had chased enemy scythe ships through Carnac’s once lush valleys and narrow mountain canyons, bringing down death from above and securing safe passage for refugee caravans and withdrawing craftworld forces. The exarchs, seers and Carnacian chieftains had hit the enemy with searing precision – making use of their knowledge of the planet’s geography and using it against the Traveller’s minions. They had failed, however. Even with the prognostic advantage that the Alaitoc’s seers and warlocks could provide, the yngiract were too many and their mindless advance irresistible.

Eldorath Starbane had achieved the impossible in holding off the Traveller’s advance for as long as he had. He had given the eldar tribespeople of Carnac the precious days and hours they needed to reach safety. Withdrawing behind the formations of Alaitoc grav-tanks and the Engines of Vaul, Starbane had turned his attentions to the necessities of survival rather than victory. His farsight had shown him that, in order to save those left living, the Alaitoc would need to turn to the dead. His gift revealed that the successful extraction of the eldar from Carnac and safe passage to the craftworld lay in the hands of a young spiritseer named Nestra Orphiel. Despite his distaste for the dread arts, Starbane understood that it would take sacrificing the craftworld’s past in order to secure its future and had sent for the spiritseer.

As the dour strides of the Continuum took them through the retreating ranks of the Alaitoc, the wounded warriors stared up at the mighty machines and the colossal constructs that loomed above the ordered formations. The weapons of the guardians and Aspect Warriors were empty and their armour smashed. They marched, hobbled and were carried from the smouldering field of battle in their thousands, the weight of their failure apparent on their forlorn faces. Only the sight of unliving legends, crafted from wraithbone and vengeance, seemed to draw their solemn stares. For a merciful moment, the survivors of Carnac were held by the spectacle of the dead walking to their aid and daydreamed of the destruction about to be visited upon enemies that they had left mere hours before.

The wounded and weary warriors parted to allow the small army of wraithguard and colossi through. Kael Ra felt for the devastated Alaitoc and the Exodites that had lost their world. The Prince Ecliptic – like a statue, at once impassive and unheeding, yet inspirational – strode on. He had not come to Carnac to console his descendent kin, he had come to avenge them and ensure that they too survived to have successors. The autarch was no seer but felt that such successors would be needed by the Alaitoc in even darker times to come.

Walking towards Kael Ra with an assurance only foresight could deliver was a small party of warlocks. Their robes were ragged and scorched and the singing spears that they carried smoked with the immaterial energies of their calling. They did not part. They did not step aside. The warlocks stopped before the Prince Ecliptic’s mighty form and brought the autarch and his unliving host to a synchronous stop. Carried forwards on the biped legs of her war walker, Nestra Orphiel came to a halt beside Kael Ra. As the capsule canopy lowered, the spiritseer presented herself to the warlocks. Two of the powerful warriors uncrossed their spears and moved to one side, revealing a figure in the ancient robes of a farseer. Kael Ra studied the figure through his wraithsight. The farseer stepped forwards, the glyphs and symbols on his robes and armour waxing and waning with his movements. He clutched his forearms to his chest within dark sleeves that met, going some way to mask the farseer’s missing right hand. He did not remove his cracked high-helm. Such silent obstinacy spoke of rank and entitlement, but Kael Ra saw shame in the slump of the seer’s shoulders.

‘Farseer,’ Nestra Orphiel said, ‘I bring the reinforcements you sent for.’

For a few moments, the farseer did not speak.

‘You bring me death,’ he said in a voice that was as empty as it was ancient.

‘I do,’ Orphiel admitted. ‘I bring death to our enemies. The great and gone of Alaitoc have returned so that the survivors of Carnac may one day do the same and take back the world for which they fought.’

‘And this is the Prince Ecliptic?’

‘You can speak for me with the living?’ Kael Ra asked.

‘I can,’ Orphiel said. ‘Speak, prince, and I will give voice to your wraith-borne words.’

‘Farseer,’ Kael Ra said. ‘Like you, I once led the Alaitoc to war.’

‘I know who you are, warrior,’ Starbane said. ‘There are few among our people who do not.’

‘I present myself – and many like me – before the Alaitoc,’ Kael Ra said. ‘In not being at your side – in the flesh – in these tumultuous times, we have failed you. We do not aim to repeat that mistake, seer. An ancient and malefic enemy has driven our interests from this world. The Continuum will hold back the main body of this invasion force while you evacuate your honoured warriors. It will be our burden, as it is Vaul’s to support the skies on his great shoulders, and prevent the enemy from coming crashing down on Isha’s sacred children. I pledge my eternal soul to the solemn execution of this endeavour.’

‘Your present sacrifices are be honoured no less than those of your past, Prince Ecliptic,’ Starbane told the colossus.

‘Get your people out, farseer,’ Kael Ra said. The seer nodded grimly.

‘Sister-seer,’ he acknowledged Orphiel, ‘Autarch.’ With that Eldorath Starbane lowered his helm and walked on with his warlocks. The wraithguard army stood motionless as the farseer and his smashed forces headed for the Crescent-Kharellion. The aged seer paused and turned once more to the towering construct.

‘Make them pay,’ Starbane said.

Kael Ra spoke. Orphiel conveyed his dark words to the farseer.

‘This Traveller should know that the galaxy is a dangerous place. That some paths are ill-advised,’ the Prince Ecliptic said. ‘The ancient empire of the yngiract is long at an end. They just don’t know that yet.’

‘Explain it to them,’ Starbane said before shuffling on through the walking wounded. Turning his great wraithbone body southward, Kael Ra led his unliving army on through the withdrawing Alaitoc and towards the invader’s indomitable approach.

Half an alien horror crawling through the devastation of the battlefield, its byzantine workings trailing behind it where its metal legs used to be. Kael Ra’s wraithbone foot came down on the abominate thing, crushing it into the scorched earth. An emerald light blazed beneath the foot and when it was lifted, the Prince Ecliptic found the remains of the mechanical menace to have been teleported away.

‘What do the Exodites call this place?’ Kael Ra asked.

‘Valatar-el Ossieth, the Plain of Bone,’ Orphiel told him. ‘The clans claim that the great beasts of their herds come here to die. It is littered with the generational remains of such gargantuan animals.’

Kael Ra had seen the skeletons. As the Continuum marched impassively through the destruction, the shattered shells of Alaitoc grav-tanks and the mighty Engines of Vaul burned about them, the green phase-flash of vectored recalls claimed the mangled metal bodies of yngiract construct warriors that had been left behind.

‘The enemy claim their dead,’ Kael Ra said. It was both statement and question.

Nestra Orphiel came forwards on the broad strides of her war walker.

‘No less than we do,’ the spiritseer said before bringing the vehicle to a halt and climbing down from the pilot capsule.

‘What are you doing?’ the autarch said. He cast his wraithsight out across their position. Carnacian highlands rose either side of them, turning the ashen plain upon which they were standing into a broad pass. It was large enough to allow the derelict tank formations that decorated it manoeuvrability they never got to exploit, while not narrow enough to warrant an enemy ambush.

‘Honouring our dead,’ Nestra Orphiel told him. She moved from body to armoured Alaitoc body on the battlefield, extracting the spirit stones of dead warriors with ritual reverence and care. As she moved from the flayed corpse of an Aspect Warrior to the spirit system crystals implanted in the ruined superstructures of smashed grav-tanks, she told the autarch, ‘Under dire circumstances such as these, we may request the aid of our ancestors. The constructs of the yngiract are recalled for purely practical reasons. Each warrior machine is maintained in a constant state of repair and adaptation. They will be vectored back to their unholy tombs, restored, improved and sent back out to fight you again, perhaps only hours later.’

‘What are our options?’ Kael Ra said.

‘Overwhelming force,’ Orphiel replied, returning to her war walker with her robe pockets full of spirit stones.

‘I think we can manage that,’ the Prince Ecliptic said.

‘Kael Ra,’ the seer said as she climbed back into the pilot’s capsule. ‘They cannot just be defeated. They must be destroyed.’

‘You heard her,’ Kael Ra called through the wraithscape to the spirits of the Continuum. ‘Dispense with economy and grace. I want these things blasted apart. I want them cut to pieces. I want there to be nothing left worth recalling.’

‘We go on?’ Nestra Orphiel asked.

‘No,’ Kael Ra said, looking across the field of battle – the grav-tank graveyard a nightmarish landscape of smoke-streaming wrecks and fresh death. ‘The Alaitoc commanders were right to choose this place to hold the enemy off.’

‘Those commanders died in this place,’ Orphiel reminded him.

‘And that was their tactical mistake,’ the autarch countered. ‘The surrounding relief funnels the enemy into the plain.’

‘So what was the problem?’

‘It funnels the enemy into the plain,’ Kael Ra repeated. ‘The Traveller hit them with everything he had and the Engines of Vaul failed to hold the choke point. They bought Starbane and his exodus a few hours, but the yngiract main body force will march across this plain and down on the Carnacian world spirit.’

‘Wouldn’t the geography beyond offer a greater range of strategic options?’ Orphiel asked. ‘If craftworld tank formations could not hold the enemy here then what chance have we?’

‘This invader calls himself the Traveller,’ Kael Ra said. ‘With so many of his machines on foot he will take the most economical route to the world spirit and his retreating foe. We will be the immovable obstacle in his path.’

‘Like the Engines of Vaul briefly were?’

‘They failed,’ the Prince Ecliptic said. ‘We shall not. Besides – the remnants of their failure shall provide extra protection for our stand and break up the Traveller’s slave formations as they pass through.’

The spiritseer nodded.

‘Uladhar-Thwe,’ Kael Ra called to a seer-colossus standing like a grim sculpture nearby. ‘The Shadow That Walks. I am in need of your counsel, Shadow.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Uladhar-Thwe said, the wraithseer passing the length of its crackling spear between its willowy gauntlets.

‘I am told that you were keeper of the Ever Sanctums of V’harquara,’ Kael Ra said. ‘And that you once walked the hallowed halls of the Black Library.’

‘That is true, my lord.’

‘In life you were a reader in the uncertain texts of what will come to pass,’ the Prince Ecliptic said. ‘Tales, poems and histories with beginnings but no end.’

‘All future is in flux, Prince Ecliptic.’

‘And there is no greater proof of that than our standing here today – on this Plain of Bone, that fate has selected for the last of our last stands,’ Kael Ra said. ‘Uladhar-Thwe – the Shadow That Walks – like a greedy child, I need the morrow’s bounty today. Tomorrow will be too late for us. In the Ever Sanctums of V’harquara, there will be a tome – as yet unwritten – describing what happened here on this Plain of Bone. I need you to have read that book, seer, and I need you to regale me with its secrets. Who is coming? Who will hit us first? How does this Traveller intend to reach his destination, given that the forces of the Continuum bar his way? Tell me all, grave seer, so that flux or not, we may fight with the future and count it as our ally in the desperate battle to come.’

‘I will be your guide in these matters, my lord,’ the Shadow said, ‘for as long as I am part of them.’

‘I ask no more of any soul that fights at my side,’ the Prince Ecliptic told the seer with grim honesty.

If the epic poem Vaul’s Sword and the Eastern Adversities had been written, it would have devoted a small but significant section to the trials of the Alaitoc on Carnac. It would have told of the Continuum’s stand against Anrakyr the Traveller, the withdrawal of craftworld forces and the planetary exodus of many thousands of Carnacian Exodites – desperate to reach the only warp portal on their lost world still in Alaitoc hands and under the protection of their world spirit. It would have shown that Anrakyr the Traveller – due to cowardice, indifference or expediency – did not take to battle on the Plain of Bone. He had charged one of his Destroyer Lords – Nemesor Raznaak, Emissary of Oblivion, Nomarch of Deneveh and High Slaughtekh of the Cult of the Crimson Doom – with the task of finishing the retreating eldar and taking the world spirit in the Traveller’s name. The tome would have detailed that the great vanguard legions of the yngiract were led by the Dynasts of the Karnaq Client Annectate, the Royal Hetch and the Deneveh Imperfecta of The High Slaughtekh’s own Crimson Doom.

The yngiract were coming. The rhythm of their march could be felt through the ash-caked earth of the plain. With the synchronous thunder of every heavy-metal step – a mindless, machine army on the march – soot cascaded from the shattered wraithbone of demolished grav-tanks. The perfection of their ranks divided as the tomb-spawned warriors of the implacable advance marched about the devastation wrought by the advance constructs of their warrior kin. Kin, in turn, that had suffered the wrath of Eldorath Starbane’s heavy gunships and Phoenix fighter craft and whose smashed remains had been vectored back to the stasis-tombs for repair.

Kael Ra watched the yngiract warriors pass. They were laden, heavy-set things, curved of armoured spine and hunched of shoulder-plate. The broad cages of their torsos and the tarnished sheen of their powerful robotic limbs gave the impression of ancient durability. Their machine bodies were cast in the exotic effulgence of their alien weaponry, while their optics were piercing orbs of emerald incomprehension. These were set in the construct-crania of the alien machines: macabre, metal identi-skulls of the same soulless oblivion. Kael Ra could barely stand to be in the presence of such abominate entities. Their ancient evil was plain to see and their mechanical movements reeked of doom. Kael Ra could stand it no more.

The smouldering wreck of the grav-tank within which his wraithbone form was crouching erupted. The derelict collapsed about the colossus as it rose to full height. The wraithblade came up, arcing and spitting with the flux of destructive energies, before the Prince Ecliptic brought it down through the construct-chassis of the nearest Dynast. The tip of the blade buried itself in ash as the yngiract warrior – split asunder – fell away in two sizzling halves. The colossus moved swiftly for all of its towering size, slipping out of the grav-tank wreckage and stepping lightly and gracefully through the invader ranks. Like vengeance, the length of the wraithbone blade cut through both the air and the Dynasts of the Karnaq Client Annectate with equal ease. There were no screams. Kael Ra’s sword passed through the bodies of the constructs – once, twice – sometimes three times – leaving behind small mounds of armoured limbs, cleaved ribcages and sparking metallic innards.

‘Repair that,’ the autarch dared as he guided the wraithbone colossus to greater feats of acrobatic lethality – belying both the size and abstract nature of his own sentient mechanism.

Looming over the legions of yngiract invaders, Kael Ra danced like a jubilant god through the warrior-slaves of the Slaughtekh. His movements were living expressions of frustration and regret. The autarch was making up for thousands of years of lost time. He was there. In battle. In the moment. Taking the half-lives of his craftworld’s foe, the sworn and ancient enemy of his species. The ghostglaive was everywhere. The surrounding Dynasts were slow to react. One moment the great armoured legs were stepping, turning, pirouetting among their number, the next the alien machines were a shower of sheared limbs, shattered armour and the intricacy of polished organs, jangling to the floor.

Kael Ra stamped down on warrior constructs, half burying them in the Carnacian earth. He cleared several ranks of the yngiract – landing with one wraithbone knee to the ground. He circumnavigated his colossal form with the sword, the blade tip searing elegantly through several scores of mindless machines. Crossing beams of emerald energy came at the colossus. Angling his great soulhelm to one side, Kael Ra allowed the flaying blasts to pass harmlessly into the sky. Then he was up again. Spinning. Decapitating. Cleaving through alien machines with clean, cruciform strokes: down through the construct-chassis, across through the neck, down through the construct-chassis, across through the neck. He ran, the broad, sure-footed steps of his willowy limbs taking him through the lines of equidistant Dynasts. The air glowed green with gauss beams that cut through the Prince Ecliptic’s wake. His strides grew broader. His sword sweeps were cyclical and scythed through the yngiract as he passed, clipping metal skulls from hunched shoulders and shattering the long-bladed barrels of beam-casting flayers.

As the mesh of criss-crossing beams intensified and closed in on him like a net, Kael Ra forced the colossus on to its physical limits of speed, precision and grace. He dropped the construct down into a slide, the smooth wraithbone of its leg, side and elbow taking it through the billowing ash, as well as crashing through the Dynasts and into the lines of the Royal Hetch. He came to a stop behind the smashed remains of a super-heavy Scorpion tank. The wreck became a corona of emerald energy as the machine warriors followed their firing protocols and blazed at the obstacle between themselves and their target. The autarch had snatched up a warrior construct of the Royal Hetch as he had slid to a stop. Kael Ra held the yngiract in his crushing gauntlet. The thing fought back. The autarch felt its unthinking hostility. It would never give in. It would never submit. It would fight to be free and then it would attempt to end him in accordance with orders ancient and unforgiving. It would not get the chance. Engaging the shuriken cannon set in his forearm, the Prince Ecliptic shredded the skull, ribcage and grasping appendages from the evil thing as he held it, with a short, controlled blast. Crushing the rest in the palm of his gauntlet, Kael Ra tossed away the slag. It was time. Through the wraithscape, the autarch gave the order.

The derelict Engines of Vaul visited vengeance on the enemy once more. Their cannons and pulsars had been silenced but the army of wraithguard and hero-housing colossi smashing out of the silence of the wrecks gave the surrounding warrior machines more than cause for calculated concern. Construct faced construct. While the yngiract machines moved with a hydraulic skulk and subservience that was coded into their souls, the wraithguard’s advance spoke of an ethereal solidity. They were stalwart and durable in the way only a living thing could be – like an ancient titanwood. Their wraithcannons blasted dimension-splintering riftstreams through the obliging lines of Dynast warriors. Wraithblades swung their ghostswords about them with disciplined, organic flourishes. The sizzling blades took skulls from shoulders and cut down through the living curse-metal of the yngiract warriors before the wraithblades turned the weapons in their willowy hands and smashed the ghoulish glow of alien sentience from their still-standing combat frames.

The Dynasts died without ceremony. Some of the wraithguard were yet to slip their weapons from their dorsal vane-racks and simply seized and smashed the machine-foe with their gauntlets. Flayer and gauss casters were chopped in two; silver, skeletal arms were torn from torsos; protocols were smashed from hangdog yngiract skulls as the ghost warriors attacked their construct-opposites. There was a steadfast inevitability to the combat. Long gone was the frenetic fear and fury of battle involving truly living opponents. Dynasts dropped in riftstream-savaged droves; wraithblades were flayed of their armour, their bone-sung workings and their psycho-infused life as their spirit stones were vaporised from existence. There were no shrieks of death or roars of camaraderie. Warriors were not mourned and avenged with mindless acts of grief-stricken bravado. There was only hatred, eternal and silent. When the dogged, mechanical fortitude of the ancient yngiract warriors met the crafted brawn of the soul-driven wraithguard, the battle seemed to slow to ponderous determination. Constructs – locked in appendage-trembling grapples and death-wrangles – fought for simple supremacy and the right to dispassionately despatch their alien opponent.

Before long the battlefield was strewn with yngiract skulls, parts and smashed combat chassis. The Dynasts of the Karnaq Client Annectate were no more than scrap and the emerald brilliance of reclaimed warrior-invalids. The steady massacre had given the Royal Hetch time to form their impassive battle lines. The thick, green beams came at the Continuum broadside, forcing wraithguard and the colossi striding through their doughty ranks to make the most of the cover offered by the grav-tank graveyard. The yngiract reduced the redoubtable wrecks to smouldering, emaciated shells, forcing the heroes of the Alaitoc into the necessity of a line-breaking attack.

Towering above their ancient enemies, the craftworld legends moved like the living statues of their personal shrines and dedications. The bright lances of Maldor Nimitar of the Blood Moon and Galadarn the Venerate punched through the tarnished uniformity of the yngiract front line. Delsarion the Lost Autarch was there, snatching up the living metal skeletons with his power-crackling fists. Smashing the combat chassis into one another and the unforgiving ground, Delsarion wrenched the alien machines apart before tossing their shattered frames aside and plucking two more unfortunates from the battlefield. Uladhar-Thwe – the Shadow That Walks – made inroads through the Royal Hetch, swinging his wraithspear about him by the tip of its shaft. The lithe spear blade dreamed through the enemy ranks, smoking with the murderous vapours of the warp. The Royal Hetch were as deadly as they were ancient but little could prepare such mechanised death for the cold elegance of the Continuum’s onslaught.

Kael Ra did not intend on savaging his way through one legion of warrior-constructs, only to have the ranks of another – battle-hardened and patiently waiting behind – benefit from strategic observance and protocol-adapting redeployment.

‘With me!’ Kael Ra called to Great Arquin of the Lords of Death. The Prince Ecliptic slammed his smooth shoulder and the full weight of his looming frame against the wreck of the Engine of Vaul, behind which he had been sheltering from the gauss flaystorm of the Royal Hetch.

The Lords of Death joined the autarch and together they pushed the grav-tank across the battlefield at the machine-foe’s formations. One engine derelict smashed into another, tangling with another and another. Some were just shattered remnants. Others still drifted on partially functioning grav-drives. Before long the colossi had amassed a growing wall of twisted armour and wraithbone wreckage that bulldozed through the disciplined presentations of the Royal Hetch. The yngiract warriors crashed into each other, finding it difficult to bring their weapons to bear in such a tight, clanging crush. Metal bodies became caught beneath the moving barricade of derelict grav-tanks, contorting and shattering before being stamped into the ground by Great Arquin and the Prince Ecliptic as they heaved the relentless wall of beam-soaked wreckage at the enemy. Nestra Orphiel stalked up through their destructive wake on the long legs of her war walker, shredding those trampled abominations that still clung onto artificial life with scything blasts from her shuriken cannons.

Striding up the mauled path in the ash and through the twisted frames of bulldozed bodies, Undwyn Pythax – the Dragon’s Breath – earned his title as he bathed the disordered ranks of the Royal Hetch in a streaming inferno from his forearm-mounted flamers and buried oncoming warriors in the rhythmic procession of miniature suns that he pumped from his starcannon. Securing the breach that ran like a runway through the ranks of the Royal Hetch and into the waiting Deneveh Imperfecta – cold warriors of the High Slaughtekh’s own Crimson Doom – was the Crone Company. The wraithbone colossi of the company stomped up through the collateral devastation in a procession, the unrelenting beam-storm of their scatter lasers searing through any chance for the Royal Hetch to regroup and strike back along their flanks. It was carnage – up through which the Continuum’s own unliving army of wraithguard marched, cutting down the machine menace of fragmenting yngiract formations with volleys of cannon fire. Shoving the ancients back with the shimmering surface of their force shields, wraithblade constructs hacked through their alien foe with sizzling axes before retreating back behind their shields. Shoving their way through the next line of skeletal warriors, they repeated the torso-cleaving onslaught.

Kael Ra suddenly felt the wall of wreckage before his shoulder grind to an excruciating halt. At first, the Prince Ecliptic assumed the tangled wreckage had hit some kind of natural feature. Peering over the twisted chaos of yngiract bodies behind, Kael Ra found that he had in fact simply run into the disciplined ranks of the Deneveh Imperfecta. The legion of living metal had combined their strength to heave their own tangled barricade of bodies – the frames of Royal Hetch – back at the barricade. Like a prophet of doom, ascending a sacred mount, the Prince Ecliptic heaved himself up the side of the heap of wrecked vehicles and presented himself to the Slaughtekh’s Imperfecta – his instruments of the Crimson Doom. The blank skulls of the yngiract warriors peered up at their end. Kael Ra willed the launch pods on his shoulders to priming. The tubes spat their missiles down on the machines. Kael Ra hit them again – and again. The Deneveh Imperfecta – tightly packed behind the wreckage of both the eldar grav-tanks and Royal Hetch – disappeared in a white-hot wave of destruction that rolled outwards through the derelict Engines of Vaul.

The autarch stood there, observing – enjoying – the decimation he had visited upon his foe. As the smoke cleared, Kael Ra saw the scorched earth below, decorated with silver skeletons. The colossal construct that was Ishandor Soulstrider was beside the Prince Ecliptic on the small mountain of derelicts. Behind him, Illimitar Skystorm and his unbreakable wraithguard were ascending. They had raised the high ground and had taken it. Now, from the advantage of its derelict heights, they would end the yngiract legions sent in the name of the Traveller to smash the Alaitoc retreat and secure the world spirit. The Dynasts of the Karnaq Client Annectate, the Royal Hetch and the Deneveh Imperfecta – who had all been killing for as long as time itself – would be no more.

The last of the yngiract slave machines were dying. As Kael Ra walked the battlefield, his steps crunched through the carpet of mangled, metal appendages, the crushed warrior chassis and severed parts that Nemesor Raznaak had failed to reclaim. The Shadow That Walks was by his side, as was Nestra Orphiel in her bipedal war-machine. The three of them were watching Phasmae Eshunesra – The Vyper’s Kiss. The miserable remnants of Raznaak’s legions were dispersed, isolated and broken – but like the Continuum, the bastard machines knew nothing of defeat and were fighting on. Phasmae Eshunesra, a looming, willowy shape moving through the demolished grav-tanks, was making them question the futility of such protocols. Like a petrified tree, her war-dancing form stepped lightly through the aftermath, her movements fluid and deadly. The flaying beams of gauss-death that came at her from the defiant remainder of Raznaak’s legions were elegantly negotiated, the arch of her colossal form, a skip, a jump. As she passed through the tarnished forms of the alien invader, her blades flicked and flourished their gift of defeat through the living metal forms. It was a grace, an economy, a battlefield poetry that no eldar or enemy had witnessed in the thousand years since the former exarch’s end.

‘The Alaitoc?’ Kael Ra put to the spiritseer. ‘The Exodites?’

‘Eldorath Starbane will get as many of our people back to the craftworld as he can,’ Nestra Orphiel told him, stepping down from her war walker. ‘The Carnacians are coming from all over and have been for a few days now. The world spirit has warned them that the Crescent-Kharellion is the only safe exodus point. Many are transporting wounded. Many are evading movements of the Traveller’s genocidal forces. We have to give them more time.’

‘They will have every moment we can give them,’ Kael Ra promised her. ‘Uladhar-Thwe?’ the autarch addressed the wraithseer.

‘Had they extended their eternities, the legions at our feet were to finish the Alaitoc retreat,’ Uladhar-Thwe said.

‘We may have put our craftworld kin beyond the yngiract’s vengeance. The spiritseer is right, of course. The Traveller can still exercise his murderous frustrations on the fleeing Exodites. Also, he will promise the world spirit to another of cold, metal heart,’ the Shadow That Walked told them. ‘The Traveller will honour his promise in that promises to him will be returned. Nemesor Raznaak, if he did not already owe us the intent of utter destruction, is the guarantor of his master’s promises. He will throw everything he has at us to deliver to the world spirit.’

The Prince Ecliptic was no seer but offered a prediction of his own.

‘The Slaughtekh will try…’

Kael Ra looked down at the sling bag Orphiel carried about her robes. It jangled lightly with the chime of crystal. Spirit stones that she had collected from the wraithguard constructs housing warriors of the dead. The autarch knew that she harboured a pitiful hope that she might get to return the stones to the craftworld and have the heroes of the Alaitoc rejoin their honoured ancestors in the infinity circuit. Also within the bag she carried the spirit stones of legends lost to the Continuum: Great Arquin, one of the Lords of Death; Galadarn the Venerate and several members of the Crone Company. Their colossal constructs had been bathed in a flaystorm of gaussian brilliance and collapsed before the dauntless advance of Raznaak’s skeletal warriors. ‘The Slaughtekh will fail…’ Kael Ra assured the spiritseer. ‘Uladhar-Thwe,’ Kael Ra said. ‘Who comes to their destruction next?’

‘The Slaughtekh sends us the Everliving – Lychguards of the Royal Engrammic Observance,’ the seer told him with prognostic confidence. ‘He sends us the High Judicator Neferkar – Executrix of the Prime Directive with the Praetor-Edictra of the Qa’a Indemnification. He sends us the technosorceries of the Conclave Apocryptex.’

‘Assemble your ghost army,’ Kael Ra said to Nestra Orphiel. ‘The enemy comes. No pretence this time. Our foe will arrive. We will fight. They will die. They might have slept away their existence but only we know the true gifts of death. Let us be generous. Let us share such gifts with the Slaughtekh and the Traveller’s warrior-slaves.’

The Continuum waited. Like still statues of the ancients, they stood motionless among the wrecks of Alaitoc grav-tanks and the shattered remains of their machine enemy. The Carnacian suns made their way gloriously to the horizon, saturating the sky with a bloody haze. In the half-light, the yngiract elite graced the battlefield. Heavily armoured lychguard, marching down on the eldar with scythe, shield and the cold assurance of victory. Battle-hardened praetorians in disciplined ranks – their number a forest of covenant staffs, that advanced on the Continuum. Cryptek sorcerers – weighed down with the technological doom of the ancients – and crackling with the living energies of their anbarmantic studies. The royalists, the technologists and the loyalists hit the wraithforce hard. The Continuum hit back.

The battlefield sang with the clash of metal on wraithbone. It seared with the crackle and snap of cryptek-cast lightning. It blazed with the beams of bright lances and warp-storming wraithcannon. Smashing the Royal Engrammic Observance aside, his ghostglaive sizzling against a wall of presented shields, Kael Ra bestrode the battlefield like the demigods of eldar myth and legend. He shrugged off the living lightning of the Slaughtekh’s techno-sorcerers, scything through several of the ancients with his forearm-mounted shuriken cannons. He stepped through the flaming ash spectre of Maldor Nimitar of the Blood Moon – who moments before had succumbed to the Praetor-Edictra of the Qa’a Indemnification – their covenant staffs blasting the wraithbone colossus apart. Coated in Nimitar’s destruction, Kael Ra took his place and the fight to the yngiract praetorians. The elite ancients in his path died badly, with Kael Ra shredding through their ornate armour and workings. Waiting for the autarch was a hunched tomb – all broad rachidian sheen and serrated spine. A cloak of preserved alien flesh – the skins of a hundred beings on a hundred worlds long conquered – flapped about its thick-set frame and it span a rod in its skeletal fingers, each end adorned with a smoking hyperphase blade. This was the High Judicator Neferkar – Executrix of the Prime Directive that Uladhar-Thwe had warned him of. The Executrix completed his deadly display of scythemanship – the leering metal skull of the thing seeming to dare the Prince Ecliptic from beneath its extravagant headgear. The pod on Kael Ra’s shoulder cycled another missile into the launch tube. The missile launcher streaked destruction at the yngiract before blasting him into a thousand pieces of inferno-surfing frag.

As the wraith-constructs of the Continuum cut through the elite of the Slaughtekh’s army it became apparent that Nemesor Raznaak’s faith in his own ancients to destroy the eldar ghost army was waning. Kael Ra heard the shrieking whine of reinforcements on the horizon. Single-construct grav-crafts screeched through the wraithguard, slashing the unliving warriors apart with lightning bolts from forward-mounted weaponry. The Prince Ecliptic ripped through several oncoming screechers with his shuriken cannon before slicing another in two with the length of his sword as it passed. Again and again the swarms of bikers hit them, often while the wraith constructs’ backs were turned and their attentions fixed on utterly destroying the lychguard and praetorians.

The true purpose of the ear-splitting assault, however, was to distract the eldar from the monstrous metal walkers advancing slowly on their crab-like legs. By the time the huge Carnacian moon had taken to the heavens and the yngiract constructs lit the battlefield up with the ghoulish glow of their inner life, the stabbing-scimitar legs of the walkers brought them into the fray. The Continuum had been smashed but were fighting on. The yngiract’s ancient elite had failed to end them and were now but a few brazen warrior-constructs impassively crossing scythes and ghostswords with equally indifferent wraithblades.

The impact of the walkers was felt immediately. The two remaining Lords of Death were cut in half by the blisteringly focused beams of heat rays the arachnoid walkers streamed from cannons on their undercarriage. Kael Ra took several broad steps towards Nestra Orphiel, who had now been stripped of her bodyguards. Sensing the same danger Ishandor Soulstrider came up behind, smashing a shrieking grav-craft aside with a swing of his wraithbone fist. Finally Uladhar-Thwe was beside his sister-seer, spearing cryptek sorcerers into the ash with his warp-seething weapon. The damage was done, however. Their anbaric assault on the war walker had frazzled the life out of the vehicle, forcing Nestra Orphiel to leap down to safety. Illimitar Skystorm rushed several of the walkers with a group of his wraithblades but swiftly became victim to the scimitar legs of the walkers, which stabbed down through their borrowed bodies with mantid savagery. Kael Ra knew he had to do something.

Putting the remains of flaming grav-tanks between his construct-colossus and the individual walkers, Kael Ra advanced on the vehicles. Derelicts detonated about him as the yngiract pilots attempted to acquire the towering but graceful target. Within moments the Prince Ecliptic was among them, lopping off their arachnoid legs with his ghostglaive and mulching pilots in their cabs with point-blank blasts from his shuriken cannon. One after another the walkers went down. Two were blasted from their needle-point footing by the autarch’s strategic missile fire, while another Kael Ra simply slammed into with his shoulder and flipped the monstrous thing off its feet and over onto its side. Only then could Undwyn Pythax’s starcannon and the las-storm of fire laid down by the remaining members of the Crone Company pin the walkers down.

At false dawn – with the light of the first of the Exodite world’s suns reaching across the razed plains – the Continuum once again found itself alone on the field of battle. With Raznaak’s elite warriors and their heavy support contingents either smashed to oblivion across the ashen wastes or sporadically vanishing in a blaze of emerald light as they responded to their reclamation protocols, the wraith force found themselves once more victorious. If it was a victory, it was a silent one. Nestra Orphiel was making her usual rounds, conducting the ceremonial extraction of spirit stones from their demolished carrier constructs. Her sling bag was heavy with the crystal and responsibility she carried. The yngiract walkers had all but burned the Crone Company out of existence, with only the colossus called Rai-dann remaining. In a desperate battle, Delsarion the Lost Autarch had fought one of the walkers hand-to-hand, tearing the vehicle apart one piece at a time, but had fallen to his wraithbone knees and toppled as a column of grav-craft screamed up behind him and lanced the wraith construct in the back with living lightning.

The wraithguard still operational were a sorry sight. Their armour and wraithbone vanes were smashed and their psychoplastic shell rent and cracked. Some had lost the operation of appendages, while others suffered the shattered remnants of their cranial high-helms. A number bore flash-scarring and evidence of electrical fires while wraithbone of almost all of the surviving constructs displayed the sinks, penetrations and savage molecular withering of the yngiract’s gaussian weaponry.

As the ghost army reassumed defensive positions about the graveyard of grav-tanks and enemy combatants, Kael Ra watched the dawn break with Uladhar-Thwe. The seer knew what he was going to say before the autarch said it.

‘The Khufan Household Bladestorm,’ the seer said of the grav-craft, ‘and the Talons of Tantris-Ah in heavy support.’

‘The Talons earned their master’s appreciations today,’ Kael Ra mused.

‘Yet they won’t ever receive them,’ Uladhar-Thwe said, kicking at the battlefield and the pieces of yngiract walker strewn about the plain.

‘Neither will we,’ Kael Ra replied darkly. ‘The Slaughtekh must be running out of options. At least we have his appreciations.’

‘Raznaak will accompany his Destroyers. He will finally commit the Crimson Doom,’ the seer said.

‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ Kael Ra said with appreciation.

‘Anrakyr the Traveller has sent him a contingent of his own Immortals, the Pyrrhian Eternals.’

‘And now we have the appreciations of the Traveller himself,’ the Prince Ecliptic said. ‘He does not trust that his Slaughtekh will finish us, even like this.’

‘There they are,’ Uladhar-Thwe said, pointing out a horde of yngiract silhouettes, marching and gliding out of the sun towards them. They seemed in no hurry.

‘There is another way,’ Nestra Orphiel said, walking up behind the two colossal constructs. Kael Ra and the Shadow That Walked looked down at the tiny spiritseer.

‘Speak,’ the Prince Ecliptic said. Uladhar-Thwe said nothing. He knew what she was going to say. Knew what the autarch would say in return.

‘We could withdraw,’ Nestra Orphiel said.

‘Withdraw?’ The autarch could not believe what he was hearing.

‘Starbane. Myself. The other seers. No one thought that you would last this long,’ Orphiel said. ‘The Alaitoc are evacuated. The souls of the world spirit transplanted. All Exodites who could reach the Crescent-Kharellion will probably have done so by now.’

‘But not all of them.’

‘This strategy was entertained in order to give our people the chance to escape the alien invader,’ Orphiel insisted. ‘It has succeeded.’

‘Are you afraid, spiritseer?’ Kael Ra accused. ‘Afraid of death?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ she answered honestly. ‘I am. Are you afraid of failing?’

‘I haven’t failed,’ the autarch said.

‘You are not here to win this war,’ Nestra Orphiel told him. ‘You cannot win.’

The spiritseer looked to Uladhar-Thwe. Kael Ra followed her gaze. The wraith seer shook his high-helm slowly from side to side.

‘You asked me to come here…’

‘It’s over,’ the spiritseer said.

‘I’ll decide when it’s over,’ the Prince Ecliptic roared imperiously. ‘I see an enemy. I see an enemy commander. We can’t just walk away, just leave and return to the infinity circuit.’

‘Perhaps that is what you’re most afraid of,’ Nestra Orphiel said to the autarch softly. The pair said nothing for a little while. Uladhar-Thwe watched the blurry silhouettes of the enemy sharpen with their every marching step and become a silver host, glinting with the tarnished dawnlight. Their progress was steady but their course unwavering. Nemesor Raznaak intended to fight his way through the decimated wraithguard and march on the world spirit. Nestra Orphiel lightly jangled the sling bag of crystals and spirit stones. ‘I fear death as all living things do, Kael Ra,’ she told him. ‘But you are no longer a living thing. The spirits of your warriors – these heroes of Alaitoc – were considered collateral damage. An exchange for many more souls of the living, that Eldorath Starbane needed to bring back to our craftworld. As I carry the weight of this bag, I realise that we owe our ancestors better than that. I owe you better than that, Prince Ecliptic – for we don’t know when we will have need of you again.’

Kael Ra remained silent for a few moments more. The battle now took place inside the Prince Ecliptic, rather than on the decimated plain.

‘Enemy entering the range of their heaviest weapons,’ Uladhar-Thwe informed the autarch. ‘And ours.’

Silence.

‘Kael Ra,’ the spiritseer said.

The colossus turned slowly, showing the encroaching enemy the shattered wraithbone vanes of his back before walking north – his stride dark but determined.

‘Order the Continuum to withdraw to the Crescent-Kharellion,’ Orphiel told Uladhar-Thwe before sprinting after the retreating prince.

Across the still air and the heat rising off the sun-kissed plain, came a horrible sound. A booming, metallic laughter – alien but unmistakable. The jubilant derision rolled up into the surrounding highlands and back down onto the plain. Kael Ra felt it pass through the very being of the wraith construct at his command. The colossus stopped. The ghostglaive in his gauntlet crackled back to soul-fuelled life. ‘Kael Ra–’ Orphiel began, but it was too late.

Turning – and with the ghostglaive in hand – the Prince Ecliptic broke into a powerful run. His willowy legs took him swiftly through the demolished tanks and out onto the torched plain. He looked like a god – eager for battle – and attempting to outrun his destiny. Within moments the Continuum were with him. The wraithguard – like the time-ravaged statues of some ancient city – broke into a stately sprint also, weapons held high. The legends of the Alaitoc were with them, striding out of the grav-tank graveyard and across the plain – after the Prince Ecliptic and towards the enemy. Only Uladhar-Thwe and the spiritseer remained. The Shadow That Walks turned to Orphiel.

‘No…’ the seer said to her in terrible realisation.

The Continuum ran. The yngiract laughter had stopped. At the High Slaughtekh’s order, the Destroyers of the Crimson Doom were advancing on their repulsor platforms, their heavy gauss cannons aimed at the oncoming Continuum. The Pyhrrian Eternals were holding back. The gliding serpentine monstrosity with them, carrying a glowing warscythe and surveying the battlefield from the horrid, green optics in its silver skull was Nemesor Raznaak – Emissary of Oblivion, Nomarch of Deneveh and High Slaughtekh of the Crimson Doom.

‘Down!’ Uladhar-Thwe shouted at Nestra Orphiel, shielding her body with the wraithbone construct of his own. A ghostly beam struck the wraithseer at once – straight through the helm. The colossus crashed to the floor – its unliving body motionless and unresponsive to the spiritseer’s calls. Retreating into the burnt out shell of an Engine of Vaul, the spiritseer realised that there were machine assassins hiding among the grav-tanks.

Out of the plain, Kael Ra witnessed the impossible. While the Destroyers of the Crimson Doom floated out to meet him, their High Slaughtekh had become a nexus of emerald light. Nemesor Raznaak was neither being recalled nor retreating from the field of battle. The Prince Ecliptic watched as the enemy he had charged out to destroy was destroyed before him by the Pyhrrian Eternals of Anrakyr the Traveller. The Eternals had turned their gauss blasters on the Slaughtekh and made him pay their master’s price for failure. Within seconds, Nemesor Raznaak was nothing more than vaporised ash on the breeze.

As the green blaze of the execution faded, Kael Ra could see the great floating monoliths, megaliths and the gigantic command necrotaph advancing across the plain. Proceeding from gaping green portals in the monolithic superstructures was a yngiract arkmada – arks and barges bearing machine warriors and unimaginable firepower. The dawn darkened as scythefighters poured from the necrotaph and swarmed through the Carnacian skies. Anrakyr the Traveller had come.

The Prince Ecliptic skidded to a stop in the ash of the plain and turned to run back for the cover of the grav-tank graveyard. The wraith constructs of the Continuum were not watching their autarch. The colossi, the wraithguard and the wraithblades were staring at the oncoming apocalypse. Scythefighters swooped in low, their crescent-mounted destructors tearing up the plain like sheet lightning. Their first victims were Raznaak’s Destroyers. The Crimson Doom was lost in an anbaric blaze.

Kael Ra ran. He willed the battle-scarred colossus on – one foot after another. He dared not look back for the seconds it would cost him. The attack was devastating. It was doom from above. The plain became a lightning storm behind him. Through the wraithscape he felt Undwyn Pythax and Phasmae Eshunesra – The Vyper’s Kiss – slip out of existence. The heroes of the Alaitoc were lost to the craftworld. Kael Ra felt the souls of his warriors from Talhennor go out like candles in a breeze, leaving him alone in the darkness. Rai-dann of the Crone Company was next. By the time the autarch reached the grav-tanks, only Ishandor Soulstrider remained at his side.

As the pair of colossi skidded down into the dirt, the lightning storm struck the side of the Engines of Vaul behind which they had taken cover. The shadow of the scythefighter swarm passed overhead.

‘Orphiel!’ Kael Ra called. The autarch knew she must be alive because his construct was still functioning.

‘Kael Ra!’ The spiritseer called back through the wraithscape. He found her hiding in a toppled tank nearby. ‘Assassins,’ she managed.

The colossus went down on one wraithbone knee and presented his back to the spiritseer. Leaping up into the shattered vanes of the construct, Nestra Orphiel held on tight as Kael Ra reared to his full looming height and broke into a sprint. Pounding through the ash of the plain, Kael Ra and Ishandor Soulstrider ran for their unliving existence. Nothing mattered more than reaching the world spirit and the Crescent-Kharellion. The scythefighters shrieked overhead, scouring the grav-tank graveyard of any remaining life. After the final obliterating pass the swarm banked and came in low. Kael Ra could imagine the Traveller’s glee at breaking the Continuum and taking his monoliths and arkmada through the smouldering remains of the Alaitoc tanks. The world spirit would now be his for the taking and the giving. The Prince Ecliptic remembered Uladhar-Thwe’s insistence that Anrakyr intended to pass the wonder of the world spirit onto another.

‘The stones!’ Kael Ra roared as the two colossi reached the outskirts of the world spirit. The three eldar took cover once more behind the standing stones – but the lightning storm did not come. Suddenly they were plunged into deep shadow. Something colossal was rearing up above them. From a silent, kneeling crouch to the towering heights of its monstrous frame, the wraithknight cut a silhouette into the dark sky. Bringing up their arms and priming the wraith construct’s gargantuan weaponry, the Brothers Rhespasian – the world spirit’s remaining sentries – became aware of the enemy. Scythefighters screamed through the sky, their crescent forms cutting a low course across the menhirs and stone-tops of the world spirit’s ancient architecture. Seething streams of las-fire sliced through the heavens from the scatter lasers mounted on the wraithknight’s shoulders. The blinding staccato of beams lanced through the yngiract flight formations, thinning out the scythefighters and sending the craft spinning into peeling dives.

‘Move!’ Kael Ra commanded, pushing Ishandor from stone to standing stone, with the spiritseer holding onto his back. Yngiract scythefighters rained from the sky as the Brothers Rhespasian visited the full fury of the wraithknight’s shoulder-mounted weaponry on the swarm of craft. Balls of green brilliance reached for the firmament as Doom Scythes crashed into the unforgiving stone of obelisks and monoliths. ‘Go for the gate!’ the Prince Ecliptic said, driving Ishandor Soulstrider’s construct on before him. Kael Ra pushed them on through the maze of stones and circles, scythefighters erupting about them.

As the stream of scythefighters adapted their protocols and broke formation, the Brothers Rhespasian unleashed the devastation of their arm-mounted weaponry on the yngiract storm. Jabbing its colossal gauntlets with each discharge, the wraithknight blasted oncoming scythefighters from their flight paths, one after another. Hurling thick riftstreams of dimension-curdling energy from its wraithcannon and small novas of furious plasma from its suncannon, the wraithknight punched the crescent-shaped craft out of the sky. Those scythefighters that managed to bank and spin through the monstrosity’s scatter storm of las-fire were smashed into streaks of green-glowing wreckage by the construct’s arm-mounted weaponry.

With the chaos of the colossal battle unfolding above them, Kael Ra, Ishandor Soulstrider and the spiritseer sprinted on through the stones. The wraith colossus carrying the sentience of Ishandor Soulstrider was leading the way through a stone circle when it suddenly collapsed like a toppled statue. As the Alaitoc hero fell to the ground, Kael Ra saw the silver form of a cyclopean sniper, standing at a stone they had passed moments before. It was as though the metal menace had simply stepped out of reality behind them. The autarch watched the assassin turn its deadly rifle on his towering form. Leaning into a throw, the Prince Ecliptic launched his ghostglaive at the yngiract. The soul-searing sword flew blade-over-hilt at the ancient before slamming straight through its caged combat chassis and pinning the thing to the standing stone behind it. Kael Ra watched as the green light died from its single eye, ensuring the thing was dead before he turned his back on it.

The air was thick with charred wraithbone. Above the battle was intensifying. A swarm of scythefighters were shrieking about the colossal form of the wraithknight. As craft routinely plummeted from their course, the victims of the construct’s scatter laser barrage, others were blasted clean out of existence by the brothers’ arm-mounted cannons. Escaping Doom Scythes had banked about the colossus and were proceeding to sear into the construct’s back with streams of living lightning. With exploratory bolts of electricity feeling their way across the wraithknight’s armoured shell and the colossus staggered by scythefighters with doom-laden protocols flying straight into its towering form, the Brothers Rhespasian were losing cooperative control of their war-machine. As the autarch and Nestra Orphiel made their way through the wraithknight’s stumbling legs and up towards the Crescent-Kharellion, the pair felt a rumbling quake pass through the architecture about them.

‘Do you feel that?’ Nestra Orphiel said as the Prince Ecliptic strode on through the sea of standing stones, leading with his fists and ready to shred any assassins haunting the world spirit with his shuriken cannons. As he moved past one particular stone, laying his gauntlet on it for stability, Kael Ra felt the tremors. He could feel them through his feet also. The ground had started to shake. The Prince Ecliptic did not know what it was but it could not be anything good. In the distance, over the tops of the tallest stones, he could see the Crescent-Kharellion.

The quake had been enough to topple the colossal frame of the wraithknight. Failing to recover their balance following a succession of scythefighter impacts and the target of a lightning firestorm, the Brothers Rhespasian could not keep their colossus from falling to its knees. Blasting several incoming craft to flaming wreckage with its suncannon, the wraithknight made an attempt to get back to its feet. As it rose from the sea of standing stones, however, it was struck by a damaged scythefighter in its flank.

‘Castien!’ the spiritseer called. ‘Ehrendril!’

Another – all but a meteoric ball of green flame – slammed into the construct’s chest, followed swiftly by another that span wing over crescent wing in a thunderbolt tumble aimed squarely at the war-engine. The sky lit up in a colossal explosion that scorched the standing stones and rained fragments of wraithbone down on the decimated world spirit.

Kael Ra did not wait to watch the flaming demise of the colossus. The quakes had only grown in intensity. Everything about the autarch was shaking. Stomping his way on through the maze of stones, Kael Ra suddenly saw the crystal monolith before him disappear into the ground. The Carnacian earth rumbled about them.

‘What’s happening?’ Nestra Orphiel cried out. Kael Ra had no idea. Perhaps it was an earthquake. Perhaps some dread weapon of the alien invader. Entire sections of stones were falling through the dirt. The ground was moving. The wraith colossus’s forward motion turned into a drunken stumble, grabbing for the menhirs about them. A huge sinkhole opened to their left forcing the Prince Ecliptic to veer right, but several unsteady steps on the pair found another gaping hole in the ground before them. Looking down into the empty blackness below, Kael Ra found that the darkness had the quality of the grave. The hole was deep but full of dread. It seemed to have had its fill, however, and started vomiting forth something at the sky. A chittering fountain of tiny, silver constructs erupted from the pit. Similar artificial ventings proceeded from the sinkholes opening about Orphiel and the prince. Within stumbling moments, the air was thick with the swarm.

Kael Ra fell against a tall menhir stone, only to have the thing begin to topple in the tumultuous earth. Several dazed steps more took him towards the Crescent-Kharellion, but the earth fell away from his footing – almost causing the great construct to slip down into an opening fissure. The air trembled. The ground moaned. The perfection of the world spirit disintegrated about the pair. Kael Ra pushed himself away from one standing stone to another, attempting to launch the wraith construct’s unsteady form through the quake in stages and on towards the webway portal. The air was a miasma of swirling silver as the plague spilling from the depths achieved some kind of nightmarish organisation.

‘What in the dread Eye is this?’ Orphiel called through the chaos. He lurched this way and that, his sole objective the great wobbling crescent of the webway portal.

‘I think that the world spirit is built on top of an yngiract tomb,’ Kael Ra said. ‘I think the Traveller wants to reclaim legions thought long lost.’

‘Tears of Isha…’ Orphiel said. She imagined the stasis crypts below them – full of machine monstrosities, awoken from aeons’ old slumber by the battles above, and rising indomitably from the grave.

The pair suddenly tumbled. The ground had given way, threatening to swallow the colossus whole. The Prince Ecliptic fell down into the opening pit. Orphiel screamed. Kael Ra clawed his gauntlets into the earth at the pit-edge like grapnels. Dangling by the precarious grip, the autarch felt gravity latch onto the willowy bulk of his colossal form.

‘Climb!’ the Prince Ecliptic ordered, prompting Nestra Orphiel to haul herself up through the smashed vanes of his back and up to firmer ground. Kael Ra felt the darkness of the pit desire him – like the maw of some hungry predator. Swirling clouds of tiny constructs vented from the oblivion out about his hanging form. The Prince Ecliptic could see the webway portal, but knew that he was not going to make it.

‘Get to the gate!’ Kael Ra roared at the spiritseer through the wraithscape.

‘No,’ Orphiel yelled back.

‘Go!’

Tremors threw Orphiel about as she struggled to remain upright. She backed into a standing stone, tearing her sling bag and causing spirit stones to jangle to the ground. Desperately, the spiritseer was down on her knees, trying to reclaim the escaping crystals as they rattled away from her on the trembling ground.

Kael Ra felt the tiny constructs swarming about his wraithbone form. The scarab-like drones had anchored themselves in a silver carpet across the dangling form of the colossus. The alien chittering became the Prince Ecliptic’s world as the swarm began to harvest the wraith-construct’s gigantic frame. Through the glinting clouds, Kael Ra could hear Nestra Orphiel’s screams. She had become lost in a haze of ravenous silver. With cold fury, the Prince Ecliptic willed his colossus up the pit side but it was no use. The swarming plague had already started eating away the crafted workings of the unliving machine. His legs were gone. Kael Ra found himself returning to his first death on Talhennor – lying in the mud, helpless against the enemy as he was now. He prepared himself for the end.

Suddenly there was light in the swarm-cloaked gloom. The Crescent-Kharellion had opened and the trans-dimensional brilliance of the webway intruded on the nightmare. With the colossus failing about his soul-sentience, Kael Ra thought he saw the outline of Eldorath Starbane framed in the blinding portal-light. The farseer’s warlocks were cutting their way through the chittering air with their witchblades, their smoking swords swinging from side to side like the paddle of a canoe.

‘No!’ Orphiel screamed as they grabbed the seer and pulled her towards the webway gate – her arms full of spirit stones. ‘I won’t leave him.’ Starbane’s warlocks gave her little choice, however, and within moments the seer was gone.

Kael Ra – the Prince Ecliptic – once-autarch of Alaitoc – felt his wraithsight fail him. The glory of his colossal frame was all but gone and his guide through the eternity of the soulscape had left him. Darkness took the Prince Ecliptic. He welcomed it. It was time.

‘I won’t leave you!’ Nestra Orphiel shouted, bringing Kael Ra back to the swarming, quaking nightmare of the tomb exodus. She was back with the Prince Ecliptic. Kael Ra felt like he had walked back into the light and warmth of a fire from the bitter cold of darkness.

There was no time for ritual and the honouring of ancestors. Nestra Orphiel was already honouring the Prince Ecliptic by risking her life to reclaim his soul from the precipice of oblivion. She snatched his spirit stone from what was left of the wraithbone colossus. The pit-edge gave way and the emaciated half-construct, that had served the Prince Ecliptic and the Alaitoc so well, tumbled into the deep blackness of the awakening tomb. The warlocks pulled the spiritseer back to the Crescent-Kharellion. Like everything else, the swarm had descended on the wraithbone architecture of the gate. There was little time.

As the warlocks bundled Nestra Orphiel through the portal – her arms full of spirit stones and the souls of Alaitoc’s heroes – she paused to look up at Eldorath Starbane. The farseer was not looking at her, however. He was taking one last, lingering look at the Exodite world he had failed to save from their ancient and indomitable enemy. As the farseer’s silhouette stepped back through the portal and trans-dimensional brilliance about him died, the webway was sealed off from the unfolding destruction. Tiny constructs swarmed the wraithbone elegance of the Crescent-Kharellion. Within moments they completed what the ravages of time had begun and harvested the webway portal. With that the Exodite world’s link with the craftworld that had fought so desperately to save it was broken forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Joe Parrino is the author of a range of Warhammer 40,000 stories, including the novella Shield of Baal: Devourer, the audio dramas Alone and The Shape of the Hunt, and the short stories ‘Witness’, ‘The Patient Hunter’, ‘Nightspear’, ‘In Service to Shadows’ and ‘No Worse Sin’. He lives, writes and works in the American Pacific Northwest.

Graeme Lyon is the author of the Space Marine Battles novella Armour of Faith and the Warhammer 40,000 short stories ‘The Carnac Campaign: Sky Hunter’, ‘From the Flames’ and ‘Kor’sarro Khan: Huntmaster’, along with the Warhammer tale ‘The Hunter’. He hails from Scotland, but now splits his time between Nottingham and Dublin. It is well documented that Graeme has a deep loathing of cheese, but makes a mean chocolate chip cookie.

Rob Sanders is the author of The Serpent Beneath, a novella that appeared in the New York Times bestselling Horus Heresy anthology The Primarchs. His other Black Library credits include the Warhammer 40,000 books Redemption Corps, Atlas Infernal,and Legion of the Damned, the Warhammer novels Archaon: Everchosen and Archaon: Lord of Chaos, and various shorter tales. He lives in the small city of Lincoln, UK.

An extract from Path of the Eldar.
Contains the novels Path of the Warrior, Path of the Seer and Path of the Outcast.

In the time before the War in Heaven, Eldanesh, spear-carrier, hawk-friend, lord of the eldar, faced the armies of the Hresh-selain. Eldanesh was the greatest of the eldar, his spear the finest weapon forged by mortals, yet the king of the Hresh-selain had many warriors. Though he was lord of the eldar and knew it to be his burden alone to protect them, Eldanesh knew also he could not gain victory by himself. He turned to Ulthanesh, second greatest warrior of the eldar, sword-bearer, raven-friend, and asked for his aid in battling the Hresh-selain. Together Eldanesh and Ulthanesh fought, and against their skill and strength the Hresh-selain had no defence. ‘Ever shall it be thus’, said Eldanesh, ‘that when we are most sorely tested, our friends shall stand by our side’.

A star was dying.

To the eldar she was Mirianathir, Mother of the Desert Winds. She hung in the dark firmament, a deep orange, her surface tortured by frenetic bursts of fusion and rampaging electromagnetic winds. Particles streamed from her body and fronds of energy lapped at the closest planets, scourging Mirianathir’s children with their deadly touch. They hung barren around her. For a million years she had been dying and for a million more she would continue to die.

Yet in her death there was life for others.

For the eldar.

Bathed in the radioactive glow of Mirianathir’s death throes, a craftworld floated upon the stellar winds; an artificial, disc-like continent of glowing domes and silvery energy sails, arcing bridges and glittering towers. Wings unfurled, the craftworld soaked in life-giving energy, an inorganic plant with mirrored leaves a hundred kilometres long. Surrounded by the ruddy light of the dying star, Craftworld Alaitoc absorbed all that Mirianathir had to offer, capturing every particle and stellar breeze, feeding it through the spirits of its infinity circuit to sustain the craftworld for a thousand more years.

The space around Alaitoc was as full of movement and energy as the star upon which it fed. Ships whirled and swerved, tacking across the stellar winds, refuelling their own energy stores. The webway gate behind the craftworld swirled and ebbed, a shimmering portal into the space between the material and immaterial. Trade ships with long fluted hulls slipped into and out of the gate; sleek destroyers with night-blue hulls prowled through the traffic, weapons batteries armed, torpedoes loaded; slender yachts darted amongst the shoal of vessels; majestic battleships eased along stately paths through the ordered commotion.

With a fluctuation of golden light, the webway portal dilated for a moment and where there had been vacuum now drifted Lacontiran, a bird-like trading schooner just returned from her long voyage to the stars of the Endless Valley. Trimming her solar sails, she turned easily along the starside rim of the craftworld and followed a course that led her to the Tower of Eternal Welcomes.

The dock tower stretched five kilometres out from the plane of the craftworld, encased in a bluish aura that kept at bay the ravening emptiness of space. Like a narwhal’s horn, the tower spiralled into the darkness, hundreds of figures along its length, lining the elegant gantries and curving walkways. Eldar of all Paths had come to greet their long-travelled ship: poets, engineers, autarchs, gardeners, farseers, Aspect Warriors, stylists and chartmakers. Any and all walks of life were there, dressed in the fineries of heavy robes, or glittering skin-tight suits, or flowing tunics in a riot of colours. Scarves spilled like yellow and red waves and high-crested helms rose above a sea of delicately coiffured heads. Jewels of every colour shone in the glow of the craftworld alongside sparkling bands and rings and necklaces of silver and gold and platinum.

Without conscious thought, the eldar made their way around each other: embracing old friends; exchanging pleasantries with new acquaintances; steering a private course, never encroaching upon the private space of another. Their voices rose together, in a symphony of sound as like to the babbling of a crowd as a full orchestra is to the murmurings of a child. They talked to and around and over each other, their voices lyric, every intonation a note perfected, every gesture measured and precise. Some did not talk at all, their posture conveying their thoughts; the slightest raising of a brow, the quiver of a lip or trembling of a finger displaying agitation or excitement, happiness or anxiety.

In the midst of this kaleidoscope of craftworld life stood Korlandril. His slender frame was draped in an open-fronted robe of shining silk-like gold, his neck and wrists adorned with hundreds of molecule-thin chains in every colour of the spectrum so that it seemed his hands and face were wound with miniature rainbows. His long black hair was bound into a complicated braid that hung across his left shoulder, kept in place with holo-bands that constantly changed from sapphires to diamonds to emeralds and every other beautiful stone known to the eldar. He had taken much time to style himself upon the aesthetics of Arestheina, and had considered long the results in a mirrorfield, knowing that his companion was partial to the ancient artist’s works.

She, Thirianna, was dressed in more simple attire: a white ankle-length dress pleated below the knee, delicately embroidered with thread just the slightest shade greyer than the cloth, like the shadows of a cloud; sleeveless to reveal pale arms painted with waving patterns of henna. She wore a diaphanous scarf about her shoulders, its red and white gossamer coils lapping across her arms and chest. Her white hair, dyed to match her dress, was coloured with two azure streaks that framed her narrow face, accentuating the dark blue of her eyes. Her waystone was also a deep blue, ensconced in a surround of white meresilver, hung upon a fine chain of the same metal.

Korlandril looked at Thirianna, while all other eyes were turned towards the starship now gracefully sliding into place beside the uncoiling walkway of the quay. It had been fifteen cycles since he had last seen her. Fifteen cycles too many – too long to be away from her beauty and her passion, her smile that stirred the soul. He nurtured the hope that she would notice the attention he had laboured upon his appearance, but as yet she had made no remark upon it.

He saw the intensity in her eyes as she looked upon the approaching starship, the faintest glisten of moisture there, and detected an excited tremble throughout her body. He did not know whether it was simply the occasion that generated such anticipation – the gala atmosphere was very infectious – or whether there was some more personal, deeper joy that stirred Thirianna’s heart. Perhaps her feelings for Aradryan’s return were more than Korlandril would like. The notion stirred something within Korlandril’s breast, a serpent uncoiling. He knew his jealousy was unjustified, and that he had made no claim to keep Thirianna for himself, but still the precision of his thoughts failed to quell the emotions that loitered within.

Set within a golden surround, the opal oval of Korlandril’s waystone grew warm upon his chest, its heat passing through the material of his robe. Like a warning light upon a craft’s display the waystone’s agitation caused Korlandril to pause for a moment. His jealousy was not only misplaced, it was dangerous. He allowed the sensation to drift into the recesses of his mind, closed within a mental vault to be removed later when it was safe to do so.

Thoughts of Aradryan reminded Korlandril why he was at the tower: to welcome back an old friend. If Thirianna had wanted to be with Aradryan she would have travelled with him. Korlandril dismissed his fears concerning Thirianna’s affections, finding himself equally eager to greet their returning companion. The serpent within lowered its head and slept again, biding its time.

A dozen gateways along the hull of Lacontiran opened, releasing a wave of iridescent light and a honey-scented breeze along the curving length of the dock. From the high archways passengers and crew disembarked in winding lines. Thirianna stretched to her full height, poised effortlessly on the tips of her boots, to look over the heads of the eldar in front, one hand slightly to one side to maintain her balance.

It was Korlandril’s sharp eyes that caught sight of Aradryan first, which gave him a small thrill of pleasure; a victory won though no competition had been agreed between them.

‘There he is, our wanderer returned to us like Anthemion with the Golden Harp,’ said Korlandril, pointing to a walkway to their left, letting his fingers rest upon Thirianna’s bare arm for the slightest of moments to attract her attention.

Though Korlandril had recognised him immediately, Aradryan looked very different from when he had left. Only by his sharp cheeks and thin lips had Korlandril known him. His hair was cut barbarically short on the left side, almost to the scalp, and hung in unkempt waves to the right, neither bound nor styled. He had dark make-up upon his eyelids, giving him a skull-like, sunken glare, and he was dressed in deep blues and black, wrapped in long ribbons of twilight. His bright yellow waystone was worn as a brooch, mostly hidden by the folds of his robe. Aradryan’s forbidding eyes fell upon Korlandril and then Thirianna, their sinister edge disappearing with a glint of happiness. Aradryan waved a hand in greeting and wove his way effortlessly through the throng to stand in front of the pair.

‘A felicitous return!’ declared Korlandril, opening his arms in welcome, palms angled towards Aradryan’s face. ‘And a happy reunion.’

Thirianna dispensed with words altogether, brushing the back of her hand across Aradryan’s cheek for a moment, before laying her slender fingers upon his shoulder. Aradryan returned the gesture, sparking a flare of jealous annoyance in Korlandril, which he fought hard not to show. The serpent in his gut opened one interested eye, but Korlandril forced it back into subservience. The moment passed and Aradryan stepped away from Thirianna, laying his hands onto those of Korlandril, a wry smile on his lips.

‘Well met, and many thanks for the welcome,’ said Aradryan. Korlandril searched his friend’s face, seeking the impish delight that had once lurked behind the eyes, the ready, contagious smirk that had nestled in every movement of his lips. They were no longer there. Aradryan radiated solemnity and sincerity, warmth even, but Korlandril detected a barrier; Aradryan’s face was turned ever so slightly towards Thirianna, his back arched just the merest fraction away from Korlandril.

Even amongst the eldar such subtle differences might have been missed, but Korlandril was dedicated to the Path of the Artist and had honed his observation and attention to detail to a level bordering on the microscopic. He noticed everything, remembered every nuance and facet, and he knew from his deep studies that everything had a meaning, whether intended or not. There was no such thing as an innocent smile, or a meaningless blink. Every motion betrayed a motive, and it was Aradryan’s subtle reticence that now nagged at Korlandril’s thoughts.

Korlandril held Aradryan’s hands for a moment longer than was necessary, hoping that the extended physicality of the greeting might remind his friend of their bond. If it did, Aradryan gave no sign. With the same slight smile, he withdrew his grasp and clasped his hands behind his back, raising his eyebrows inquisitively.

‘Tell me, dearest and most happily-met of my friends, what have I missed?’

The trio walked along the Avenue of Dreams, a silver passageway that passed beneath a thousand crystal archways into the heart of Alaitoc. The dim light of Mirianathir was caught in the vaulted roof, captured and radiated by the intricately faceted crystal to shine down upon the pedestrians below, glowing with delicate oranges and pinks.

Korlandril had offered to drive Aradryan to his quarters, but his friend had declined, preferring to savour the sensation of his return and the casual crowds of eldar; Korlandril guessed from the little Aradryan said that his had been a mostly solitary journey aboard the Lacontiran. Korlandril glanced with a little envy as slender anti-grav craft slipped by effortlessly, carrying their passengers quickly to their destinations. A younger Korlandril would have been horrified by the indolence that held sway over Korlandril the Sculptor, his abstract thoughts distracted by mundane labour of physical activity. Such introspection was impossible though; he had put aside self-consciousness in his desire to embrace every outside influence, every experience not of his own body and mind. Such were the thoughts of the artist, elevated beyond the practical, dancing upon the starlight of pure observation and imagination.

It was this drive for sensation that led Korlandril to conduct most of the talking. He spoke at length of his works, and of the comings-and-goings of the craftworld since Aradryan had left. For his part, Aradryan kept his comments and answers direct and without flourish, starving Korlandril of inspiration, frustrating his artistic thirst.

When Thirianna spoke, Korlandril noted, Aradryan became more eloquent, and seemed keener to speak about her than himself.

‘I sense that you no longer walk in the shadow of Khaine,’ said Aradryan, nodding in approval as he looked at Thirianna.

‘It is true that the Path of the Warrior has ended for me,’ she replied, thoughtful, her eyes never straying from Aradryan. ‘The aspect of the Dire Avenger has sated my anger, enough for a hundred lifetimes. I write poetry, influenced by the Uriathillin school of verse. I find it has complexities that stimulate both the intellectual and the emotional in equal measure.’

‘I would like to know Thirianna the Poet, and perhaps your verse will introduce me,’ said Aradryan. ‘I would very much like to see a performance, as you see fit.’

‘As would I,’ said Korlandril. ‘Thirianna refuses to share her work with me, though many times I have suggested that we collaborate on a piece that combines her words with my sculpture.’

‘My verse is for myself, and no other,’ Thirianna said quietly. ‘It is not for performance, nor for eyes that are not mine.’

She cast a glance of annoyance towards Korlandril.

‘While some create their art to express themselves to the world, my poems are inner secrets, for me to understand their meaning, to divine my own fears and wishes.’

Admonished, Korlandril fell silent for a moment, but he was quickly uncomfortable with the quiet and gave voice to a question that had scratched at his subconscious since he had heard that Aradryan was returning.

‘Have you come back to Alaitoc to stay?’ he asked. ‘Is your time as a steersman complete, or will you be returning to Lacontiran?’

‘I have only just arrived, are you so eager that I should leave once more?’ replied Aradryan.

Korlandril opened his mouth to protest but the words drifted away as he caught, just for a moment, a hint of the old wit of Aradryan. Korlandril smiled in appreciation of the joke and bowed his head in acknowledgement of his own part as the foil for Aradryan’s humour.

‘I do not yet know,’ Aradryan continued with a thoughtful expression. ‘I have learned all that I can learn as a steersman and I feel complete. Gone is the turbulence that once plagued my thoughts. There is nothing like guiding a ship along the buffeting waves of a nebula or along the swirling channels of the webway to foster control and focus. I have seen many great, many wondrous things out in the stars, but I feel that there is so much more out there to find; to touch and hear and experience. I may return to the starships, I may not. And, of course, I would like to spend a little time with my friends and family, to know again the life of Alaitoc, to see whether I wish to wander again or can be content here.’

Thirianna nodded in agreement at this wise course of action, and even Korlandril, who occasionally succumbed to rash impulse, could see the merits of weighing such a decision well.

‘Your return is most timely, Aradryan,’ he said, again feeling the need to fill the vacuum of conversation. ‘My latest piece is nearing completion. In a few cycles’ time I am hosting an unveiling. It would be a pleasure and an honour if both of you could attend.’

‘I would have come even if you had not invited me!’ laughed Thirianna, her enthusiasm sending a thrill of excitement through Korlandril. ‘I hear your name mentioned quite often, and with much praise attached, and there are high expectations for this new work. It would not be seemly at all to miss such an event if one is to be considered as a person possessing any degree of taste.’

Aradryan did not reply for a moment, and Korlandril could discern nothing of his friend’s thoughts from his expression. It was as if a blank mask had been placed upon his face.

‘Yes, I too would be delighted to attend,’ Aradryan said eventually, animation returning. ‘I am afraid that my tastes may have been left behind compared to yours, but I look forward to seeing what Korlandril the Sculptor has created in my absence.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Nightspear, Sky Hunter and Spirit War published digitally in Great Britain in 2013.
This edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Chun Lo.

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