Part 6 (1/2)
From the other side of the great hall, intense blasts of energy were still arching between the pillars as Ashok stood his ground and unleashed his psychic fury, punching his rage into the flailing bodies of the slender aliens as the force ripped them off their sky-boards and sent them tumbling to their deaths.
The hall was transformed into a deathtrap, with projectiles pinging rapidly between the innumerable pillars, with bolter sh.e.l.ls exploding into shrapnel, and great sheets of psychic fire interweaving the carnage. The surviving dark eldar responded by dropping their skyboards down low to the ground and using them to skim along the surface in rapid attack runs.
The kill-team regrouped into a circle around the pillar that Kruidan had crashed into a he was back on his feet with his bolter and chainsword brandished, and with his boots coated in the thick ichor of the pulverised alien that had broken his fall. The team kept the pillar at their backs as they fended off the swooping h.e.l.lion raiders. On the far side of the hall, Octavius could see that Ashok was still standing alone, he did not have time to work out whether he should praise the Angel Sanguine for his valour or condemn him for his failure to play in the team. Either way, the librarian was succeeding in dividing the attentions of the h.e.l.lions, so Octavius was pleased that he was there.
aWhere is that warlock?a snarled Pelias, stepping forward of the defensive ring as he parried a swooping blade with the barrel of his bolter. In the same movement, he deflected the blade of the h.e.l.lglaive down next to the feet of the h.e.l.lion, driving it into the structure of the skyboard itself. The fragile vehicle sparked and whinnied, bucking its rider before spiralling off into a fireball against one of the other columns. The rider crashed to the ground at Peliasa feet and, without hesitation, the Black Consul tugged his combat knife out of the holster in his boot and drove it into the alienas throat.
aThe eldar are nowhere,a growled Sulphus, three bolters coughing simultaneously from one organic and two mechanical arms.
aWe should not place our faith in the aliens, brothers,a yelled Luthar over the din. aFaith is reserved for the Emperor. Ask rather where are our souls!a As he spoke, the chaplain took a mighty swing with his crozius arcanum, bringing it up in a powerful arc that met the front of an incoming skyboard. There was an explosion of blue power as the h.e.l.lion stopped abruptly and was thrown back by the impact. The skyboard simply shattered, and its rider skidded to the ground beyond it. Even as it tried to climb to its feet, Kruidan and Pelias both levelled their bolters and shredded it with a concentrated volley of fire.
aThere!a cried Atreus, jabbing the direction with the tip of his staff.
Without releasing the pressure of his trigger finger, Octavius glanced over towards the far side of the cavernous chamber. He could see Ashok running with his staff spinning into a sphere of pristine energy around him. He could see a line of speeding Reavers in front of the librarian emerging out of the shadows of a wide side pa.s.sage, heading directly at him with their nose mounted splinter cannons flaring. Behind them, he could see a formation of Ulthwe jetbikes in pursuit, including the dazzling white form of the female warrior and the menacing visage of the warlock.
Even as he watched, Octavius saw Ashok sidestep the first Reaver, bringing his staff cras.h.i.+ng down onto its nosecone as it flashed past him. Without pausing to watch the dark eldar vehicle spark and convulse with explosions, ploughing spectacularly into the deck, Ashok spun and brought his searing staff around in a wide horizontal sweep, smas.h.i.+ng it into the path of a second Reaver, which detonated ma.s.sively, obscuring the entire scene behind a mushrooming cloud of brilliant light for several seconds.
As the cloud cleared, the remaining Reavers burst out of it, weaving in and out of the pillars in the great hall, flas.h.i.+ng through the s.p.a.ce towards one of the arches on the other side. Even from that distance, Octavius could see that the dark eldar riders had prisoners bound, gagged and secured to the back of their vehicles, where they also served as an extra layer of organic armour. In close pursuit went the Ulthwe jetbikes; the white rider was far out in front, manoeuvring her bike with breathtaking skill and grace a she brought down two more of the Reavers before they vanished again into the darkness of the infrastructural tunnels.
Scanning back to the site of the first two explosions, Octavius could no longer see Ashok. He was gone.
Throwing her weight to one side, she made the jetbike bank and start to roll, but by gunning the engine she held the angle and brought the machine upright again, even closer to the fleeing Reaver that flashed in between the great pillars of Khalandhrielas Hall. Lying flat over the fuel tank, Dhrykna willed her s.h.i.+ning bike to even greater speeds. She could see the p.r.o.ne body of a ceremonial dancer from the local eldar community strapped across the back of the darklingas ride, and she was determined not to bring the wretched machine down until she had rescued the prisoner.
The darkling was good, weaving and darting between the columns with consummate ease. Despite the severity of the situation, Dhrykna thrilled at the challenge, and she could feel the air of contemptuous pleasure flooding back from the darkling in his backwash, as though he was enjoying it too. She grinned, pus.h.i.+ng the s.h.i.+mmering white bike to even faster speeds and gaining another few metres on the meandering darkling. It was exactly for moments such as this that she had wanted to rejoin the s.h.i.+ning Path. This was what she had been born for, flas.h.i.+ng through the shadows like the spear of Khaine in the service of Ulthwe.
As the distance closed almost to within reach of a harpoon grappler, Dhrykna looked ahead, antic.i.p.ating the future course of the chase before committing herself to trying to recover the dancer. A flare of light in the middle distance caught her eye, distracting her from the chase for a moment. She cursed under her breath as she realised that the distance to her quarry had stretched even in that briefest of instants. Inhaling sharply, she willed an extra burst of speed and raced after the Reaver again, sc.r.a.ping past the next few pillars so closely that she left fragments of paint etched into them.
But there was something about that burst of light up ahead that Dhrykna could not ignore. Even as she focused all of her attention on the speeding darkling raider, part of her mind kept replaying the flare over and over again, as though trying to discern more details in a slow motion replay. Before she could work it out, the present interrupted her attempts to a.n.a.lyse the past and the Reaver in front of her suddenly coughed and sparked, decelerating sharply as though struck from the front, where an intense burst of light had suddenly erupted.
Dhrykna had to bank sharply to the side to avoid smas.h.i.+ng into the back of the hobbled Reaver as its nose dipped and ploughed into the ground, digging a trench in the polished floor of Khalandhrielas Hall. As she rolled her bike she craned her neck back round to see what had happened to her darkling.
Prey-Standing in a ferocious halo of light was one of the mon-keigh warriors, its force staff still ablaze with power, the edges of its heavy hood crackling with blue flames, and its eyes alight with a terrible red glow. Even a she watched, it brought its staff down from the point where it had struck the speeding Reaver, and the mon-keigh psyker spun on its heel, bringing the staff around in a surprisingly graceful curve until it smashed into the front of another Reaver, exploding it instantly.
Although she would be giving the remaining Reavers a lead, the s.h.i.+ning Spear pulled her bike around in a tight curve, peeling off to the side and circling back to retrace her path through the glittering fireball that now engulfed the two downed Reavers. As she flew through the flames it became clear that the prisoners tied to the back of the two darkling vessels were dead; their bodies were broken and twisted unnaturally, and their skin was already ruined by the fire. Dhryknaas eyes narrowed as she realised that the mon-keigh had killed the dancers along with the darklings. They narrowed even further when she realised that that mon-keigh psyker had vanished. She had known from the start that the psyker was going to cause problems.
Lifting her head and pressing herself low over the body of her bike, she opened the throttle as far as it would go and flashed off in pursuit of the remaining Reavers, her fury dripping out behind her like fuel from a faulty afterburner. If she could not vent her pa.s.sion against the mon-keigh, at least she could show the darklings the meaning of death.
There was so little light in the corridors that even Ashokas enhanced occulobes struggled to resolve the images around him. The narrow, winding pa.s.sageways were in stark contrast to the ma.s.sive, expansive open s.p.a.ces in which the Deathwatch had fought its first two encounters. The librarian could see and hear the impacts and concussions of combat behind him, but he felt sure that Octavius had the situation under control. The h.e.l.lions were all but defeated already, and the Ulthwe jetbikes were dealing with the Reavers. He a.s.sured himself that his absence would not be missed, even if it would be noticed.
The lower levels of Ulthwe were like a maze, riddled with ventilation ducts and service tunnels, all of them shrouded in the oppressive weight of shadows. With a whisper, Ashok set a light flickering on the tip of his force staff, spreading a bluish glow through the pa.s.sageway. He paused to take in the scene and then extinguished the light a there was nothing worthy of his attention in the cramped corridor, and the light would serve only to attract the attention of others. The Ulthwe would be distracted by the raids for only so long, and Ashok was keen to have reached his target before that moment came. It was not often that one of the Emperoras librarians found himself alone and free in the bowels of an eldar craftworld.
After a few more steps, Ashok came to a junction in the pa.s.sage. It split in five directions a a regular cross-roads but with an extra corridor opening out of the ceiling and heading up into the higher reaches of the craftworldas infrastructure. Crouching slightly, the Angel Sanguine sprang into the air, catching hold of the lip of the tunnel with one hand and swinging himself up into it. He needed to go up a he was not going to find what he was looking for down in the lowest dumps of Ulthwe.
Thereafter the corridors all angled upwards, sloping up towards the interior of the alien world, like tunnels into the centre of a planet. Whenever he came to a junction, Ashok selected the route that was most steeply angled or the one that he thought headed most directly towards the geometric heart of the craftworld itself. In the back of his mind, he was drawing a complex and intricate map of his route, hoping that he would be able to find his way back down to the depths once he was finished up there. After a while, however, he began to curse. He had presumed that even the service tunnels of the immense craftworld would contain versions of the infinity portals that the Deathwatch had used to get from Calmainocas dock. It was impossible to believe that service personnel had to travel the incredible distances through the vast vessel in the normal way a it would simply take too long, and Ulthwe would be gradually rotting from the outside in. There had to be shortcuts and portals, even in these cramped and shadowy pa.s.sages.
Just as he was beginning to think that his human logic had failed him and caused him to misunderstand the rationale of the aliens, Ashok emerged into a wide, quasi-spherical chamber, which appeared to function as a confluence point in the midst of the local service systems. The mouths of tunnels and pa.s.sageways yawned into it from all directions, some dropping away from the floor and others vanis.h.i.+ng up into the ceiling. It was some kind of hub.
More interesting than the mult.i.tude of tunnels, however, were the circular pools of s.h.i.+mmering liquid that were held in glistening frames next to each of the tunnel-mouths. Instinctively, Ashokas hand dropped to the pouch on his belt, tapping it to ensure that he had neither forgotten nor lost anything on his way. There would be no point in continuing if he had.
With another silent whisper, Ashok sent a gentle bluish light through the spherical chamber, as he climbed down into the bowl-like floor. The liquefied portals reflected and refracted the light, filling the s.p.a.ce with a subtle spectrum of dancing colours. In his mind, the librarian could hear the faint whispering of voices that he could not understand. They wafted out of the portals, churning and curdling the air in the spherical chamber, concentrating themselves in the epicentre above Ashokas head, as though conducted there by the architecture itself. Closing his eyes, Ashok could hear beckonings and repulsions, temptations and revulsions, each pulling at his soul and competing for the attention of his alien mind. The disembodied voices knew that he was there, and their hostility was plain, even if it was often cloaked and subtle. Their emotive mutterings had insanity and death in mind.
Shaking his head and clearing his thoughts, Ashok surveyed the various pa.s.sageways and portals. One of them was bound to take him in the right direction. Checking back into the spirit pool that churned and rippled next to the tunnel from which he had just emerged, he could sense an image of flas.h.i.+ng lights and violence ebbing and flowing in its depths. It was not the past that he saw, but rather it was the present a that direction would take him back towards the ongoing fight with the dark eldar. He nodded with satisfaction, turning and striding towards one of the pools on the opposite side of the spherical chamber. He did not want to go back, at least not yet.
In the depths of one pool he saw a congregation of eldar warriors, each kneeling to the ground with their heads bowed, and with one fist punched defiantly into the deck. In another he saw a dazzling, crystalline light, refracted and split into myriad colours but somehow organised into a palace or temple that seemed to have been constructed out of light itself.
Finally, in one of the portals that curved up into the ceiling, Ashok saw what he had been looking for. The image was muddied by a shroud of darkness and blurred by the ripples that pulsed across its liquid surface, but Ashok was certain that he perceived it correctly. There was a giant and ornate gate, surrounded on all sides by ancient runic texts inscribed into the wraithbone frame of the gate itself. He could feel a cold pulse of horror wash out of the little portal in front of him as soon as his mind turned to it. Something in Ulthwe knew where he was going, and it was not happy about it at all. Smiling slightly at the thought, Ashok vaulted up towards the s.h.i.+mmering pool. Catching hold of the bottom of the frame that contained it, he hung there for a moment before swinging his legs up around his head and plunging himself into the rippling image.
Leaving the smoke- and debris-filled Khalandhrielas Hall far behind, the gallery stretched on forever, its highly polished wraithbone structure reflecting itself into an infinity of regressions. It was flanked on both sides by low columns that twisted and spiralled around each other, as though they were merely threads in the weave of a giant fabric. The effect was to psychologically shrink the people that walked along the elegant corridor, making them feel like little more than microscopic organisms burrowing through the clothes of an infinitely superior being.
Striding along behind the pristine white female and the sinister warlock, Octavius surveyed his surroundings without betraying any emotion at all. He was quite used to grand locations and magnificent s.p.a.ces. As a captain in the Imperial Fists, he had become acquainted with many of the most auspicious structures in the Imperium. He had maintained close connections with several arms of the Administratum and with various factions within the Imperial Navya he had used the tremendous influence of the Imperial Fists to negotiate the fabled Truce of Gohliath, bringing a viciously evangelical local branch of the Ecclesiarchy to the conference table in the legendary palace on Gohliath IV.
It was said that Rogal Dorn himself had once used that magnificent hall for volatile and delicate talks with Guilliman and Perturabo, the primarchs of the Ultramarines and the Iron Warriors. Octavius was well accustomed to the grandeur of magnificent structures, but there was something profoundly different about this long, interwoven hallway.
As the unlikely group of eldar and s.p.a.ce Marines reached the midway point in the corridor, Octavius realised what had been niggling at his thoughts: there were no pictures or frescoes along the walls or on the ceiling. In the great halls of the Imperium, all of the walls would proudly sport the portraits of magnificent, lost warriors, or would boast frescoes depicting scenes from the glorious battles of the past. The walls of the hallways of Phalanx were virtually invisible behind the stern and heroic faces of Chapter Masters and valiant captains. Even the majestic corridors of Gohliathas Palace and the incredible vaulted ceilings of the Imperial Palace on Terra itself were teeming with images of honour and glory. Every inch was decorated to the point of gothic splendour. But here, in the hallway leading to the Chamber of the Seer Council of Ulthwe, the surfaces were without such ornamentation. They were immaculately smooth and polished to such a l.u.s.tre that they were almost iridescent. Yet they were not plain, and they were certainly not without interest. There were patterns and images swirling through the substance of the wraithbone itself, like wisps of life dancing and playing in a realm that was not quite present but not entirely absent either.
Walking through the glorious hallway was akin to striding through an aesthetic experience a the hall happened as Octavius experienced it. It was not a static monument, but rather an ongoing experience. For a moment, the Imperial Fists captain wondered whether the rest of his team was experiencing the s.p.a.ce in the same way, or whether an aspect of his experience was entirely his own.
Casting his gaze to one side, he could see the confident and powerful figures of Atreus and Pelias striding along behind him, showing no signs of being affected by the breathtaking edifice around them. They were well trained.
Not for the first time, Octavius wondered where Ashok was.
Stop. The thought was a clumsy command and Octavius could feel the discomfort from his team behind him. Their boots sc.r.a.ped against the smooth ground, as though s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g themselves into the floor for extra grip in case further insults followed. Out the corner of his eye, Octavius could see that Peliasa hand had dropped to the hilt of his bolter.
The group had reached the end of the long hallway, and they were confronted with a door of epic proportions, tall and slender like the eldar themselves. Like the rest of the corridor, the door showed no obvious signs of decoration or ornamentation, yet it seemed to exude a kind of ineffable beauty. Looking more closely at its structure, Octavius realised that it appeared to be incredibly thin, almost like gla.s.s. He wondered how much it weighed and how much damage it could withstand. To him, it appeared that the dooras primary defensive merit was a type of aesthetic enchantment a who could want to destroy such a thing? Pelias sprang to mind instantly.
Stop. The thought came again, even more emphatic than the last time.
aWe have stopped,a said Octavius calmly, gesturing with his hands to indicate his indifference and mild confusion. They hadnat had any choice: they had reached the end of the corridor and the mysterious door ahead of them was closed.
For the first time, the warlock turned back to face Octavius. The two warriors were approximately the same height, and the eyes of the warlockas elaborate mask were virtually level with Octaviusa visor. Although they could not see each otheras eyes, they held their pose for a long moment, and Octavius began to wonder whether the alien could see his face after all. No matter, he would not shrink from anybody, especially not from an alien, and particularly not from an alien that had come to the Imperium begging for help.
You will stop. The thoughts were slow and deliberate, as though being spoken to a particularly stubborn or difficult child.
aWe have stopped,a replied Octavius, mimicking the condescension and holding his ground. He looked the warlock up and down, sizing him up as a possible opponent. It was not often that a s.p.a.ce Marine had the chance to stand so close to a living eldar warlock without having to kill it, and Octavius was conscious that this was a strategic opportunity. After all, the Deathwatch were not only a kill-team, and the Ordo Xenos was not only interested in annihilating aliens a if he could discover new and innovative ways to kill more aliens in the future, then he would have done his job perfectly. At that moment he realised that the eldar obviously did not expect the kill-team to survive whatever it was they had in store for them. Why else would they risk bringing a squad of s.p.a.ce Marines into the heart of their craftworld?
The warlock was tall, as tall as most Marines, and his presence was tinged with a kind of gravity that even Octavius found impressive. But the alienas build was slight to the point of being slender. The Imperial Fist realised that the impression was probably false, and that he shouldnat judge the aliens by human standards, but it seemed to him that he could snap the sinister creature in two with his gauntlets. Apart from a number of obvious anatomical differences, the warlockas build was not dissimilar from that of the s.h.i.+mmering, white female.
Wait. The thought was strong and undeniable, belying the relatively fragile body from which it emanated.
Octavius nodded, realising that the eldaras strength was only partly in its body. At the same time, he realised that the warlockas clumsy manner was probably a result of a lack of familiarity with human thoughts. It occurred to him that the alien was actually making an effort to communicate, which was not something that it had to do. Nodding his a.s.sent one more time, Octavius realised that the warlock was trying to honour him.
Cras.h.i.+ng out of the portal in the ceiling and crunching heavily down to the ground, Ashok vowed that he would never enter the spirit-ways of an eldar craftworld again. He skidded across the polished floor and smacked into the back of some kind of console. When he finally stopped moving, he found a moment to smile at the ridiculousness of his last vow. It was certainly not a vow that he had ever antic.i.p.ated needing to make and, to make matters worse, it was one that he was absolutely sure that he would have to break in only a few minutesa time.
Thoughts and whispered voices still spiralled around his head, as though they had bled into his soul while he flashed through the inexplicable dimensions through which the alien portals pa.s.sed. Tiny lights sparkled behind his eyes, like the faint echoes of dying stars. These were not entirely alien experiences for Ashok, and they prompted his soul towards dark places that he had learnt to navigate around through years of pain and horror. There was a rage lurking in the turmoil, and it was not something to which he could surrender now. He needed to be calm and rational for this task.
For a few seconds, the Angel Sanguine did not move. He sat in perfect stillness while he brought his thoughts back to himself, dragging fragments of his soul out of his memory of the sparkling, riddled spirit-way through which he had just flown. His body was unaffected, it was his soul that felt the disorientation of submersion in the profound depths of something wonderful and terrible.