Editing Warhammer 60K: Age of Dusk (Continued) (section)

==Section 50: The Three Wanderers. The Prince and The Serpent==


<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">History is fickle and changeable; twisting in the grasp of those who seek to pin it down and fix it in a single position, a single continuity of events. Through this chronicle, many a time have my reports forced me to be vague, and to conflate great stretches of time where a lack of accurate sources have left their voids in the history, to be filled with conjecture, myth and mad ramblings.

Thus, I return to the tale of the Three Wanderers, the fugitives of Trayzn, decades from when we, Vasiri and Greal, last left their narrative strand. In this time, the sphere was opened, the Triarch necrons were rendered extinct then reborn in flesh, Imperiums burned and the hero of Macharius was murdered. For the three, Allaten the silver skulled warlock, Myrinmar the ranger and Julius Hawke, the eternal survivor, this time passed only as a couple of months. They were lost in the myriad pathways of the Labyrinth dimension, far from hearth, home and sanity; set adrift without a map in a maze that moved. Not only was space a perplexing maze there, but time too. They walked through tunnels that bypassed centuries, only to stumble into temporal dead zones that left them weary after barely an inch of travel.<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The further they traveled, the smaller the pathways became, winding in and out and upon themselves, like woven threads in a wicker chair. Several time they had to hide themselves, as earlier versions of the trio crossed in front of them, or older versions in pitted armor with withered faces collapsed behind them. The webway had grown wild and untempered in the millennia following the fall of the craftworlds, and the rise of the Ne-[hushlittlesecretsin the darklittleones] – quins fought a rearguard to their black stronghold, leaving the labyrinth to grow like creepers through a dead woman’s garden. Also like a garden, strange plant-like fronds, and alien growths ringed the narrowest routes. Allaten and Myrinmar had efficient and resilient guts, and subsisted easily on the preserved rations they had managed to liberate from the Infinite’s collections. Hawke was mortal however, and thus soon he was depleted. Ever the opportunist, he harvested the frond-creatures as he trekked, eating them, much to the disgust of Myrinmar, and the unvoiced amusement of Allaten.

After the initial few weeks, the archives do not record their further labours in the webway, but there were spurious accounts of giant wasps and eyeless troglodytes infesting some routes, which the three had to slay, and of whispering, tempting siren-devils that called out longingly to the eldar amongst them, making her soul stone burn a bright white hue, and the wraithbone choir she carried to sing with psychic righteousness. They battled orks, which surprised both sides of the conflict, and only ended when the brutish leader of the orks dragged his waaagh off to find the ‘Pretty Wurld’ of myth. There was some mention of Hawke briefly getting sick from the fronds he subsisted upon, but these legends descended into metaphor very rapidly (talk of ‘the song of spiders, sleeping in the humours’ and other such fanciful imagery).

All through this journey, there was the ever present dread of the necrons. Though Trayzn’s ships could only travel the dolmen routes, the furious necron had marked Myrinmar for death. She kept hold of the wraithbone choir through all this, clutching it closely, ever listening for the shimmer of teleporting deathmarks, the cyclopean assassins of the ancient enemy.

The three might have been trapped in this system of tunnels for all the ages of the universe, if it was not for Allaten. Though his psychic gifts were powerful and brutally blunt, they allowed him some measure of communion with the Anathame. The blade was a hateful thing; an insane presence filled with half-formed thoughts of ancient alien notions. Yet, something was drawing it forwards, guiding Allaten down the true path. Where they were going, none of the group knew. The only coherent thought of the sword was like attracts like, which only served to confuse the Prognosticator further.

Eventually, they were led to a portal, shimmering like a rippling pond tilted to the vertical plane. Desperate to be anywhere but in the webway, they threw themselves through the portal, and emerged on the smooth, fragrant deck of an eldar vessel. The vessel was dark, walls only sluggishly illuminating in their presence, and their breath misted on the chilly air. Nevertheless, Myrinmar knew this ship anywhere.

“This is the Flame of Asuryan. The Phoenix ship. This is King Yriel’s vessel,” she breathed. This was once the greatest reaving vessel of the eldar, before it became the grand flagship of the Biel-Tan alliance, earning many famous victories.

Hawke was considerably less impressed, judging by the fact he was said to have vomited profusely upon arrival. (It was said his vomit sparkled, but I attribute no special significance to this. My vomit might shine if I ate a bag of silver shavings for instance.)

Initially, as they explored the vessel, it seemed as though it were entirely dead; becalmed and derelict. Through transparent sections of the hull, the webway could be seen. The vessel had been trapped in the webway too, to their collective disappointment. Hawke, desperate for some actually edible food, got Myrinmar to tell him where the food supplies were located onboard. She directed him to the orchards, and the former bondsman made his excuses before departing on his foraging quest.

Soon enough, they found evidence of battle; spent shuriken, shattered crystals, blades, dried blood redder than any human viscera, and, heartbreakingly, broken waystones, cold and dull. But no bodies.

“We cannot linger here. We must find another portal,” Allaten warned her, predicting her desires before she voiced them.

“My race needs me. Our lost king is here... or was here. I must aid him.”

Allaten shook his head. “I understand the call of brotherhood, or kinship. I am Astartes, and brotherhood is the foundation of our existence. But we have a mission; your mission, if I recall correctly. You claim this choir is pivotal, to not just your race’s survival, but mine as well. Your aid on Varsavia and Solemnance has proven that not all xenos are made of lies, but if you are willing to abandon a quest you vowed to complete, I question whether all our prejudices against your race were true,” he said, in her own eldar tongue, as best as he could manage.

This gave the ranger pause. “Vows are the only thing that controls one on the Path of the Outcast. Vows to craftworld and kin, ever anchoring even the flightiest of us to home. Yriel... he was a renegade, a corsair, for millennia. But when Iyanden needed him most... he returned. He cast of the Path of the Outcast, and gave the eldar there hope,” she looked to the spherical artefact in her hands, the conjoined souls of the best and brightest beings ever to walk the domes of fabled Altansar. This was the key; the salvation of the eldar race, and all races who fought the dissolution. “We must get to Biel-Tan. You are right mon ke... Librarian,” she finally admitted.

They searched for another portal chamber aboard the great capital ship, but as they did, they saw other vessels, to the port and starboard flanks of the Flame of Asuryan’s outer hull. Where the Flame of Asuryan was a bejewelled lance, these were dark, serrated daggers, flanked by wicked bladed fins and red tiger-stripe war paint daubing the hulls. The three black cruisers had anchored themselves to the Flame via great harpoons fired from their prows, deep into the guts of the larger eldar battleship. Myrinmar hissed.

“Eldar Corsairs,” Allaten growled.

“Commorrite raiders,” Myrinmar corrected him. “All the worst stories you mon keigh tell of the eldar, are earned by the denizens of Commorragh. The things onboard those vessels aren’t fit to kiss the feet of true corsairs,” she cursed, drawing her rifle involuntarily.

But Allaten reminded her of her vow, and they continued on towards the next portal room. Myrinmar was not to be disappointed however, because soon after, they were set upon by those same pirates. A hundred black shadows leapt from concealed ambush points, daggers drawn and splinters flying. Even before the first degenerate eldar howled their mocking battlecry, five of them were slain by Myrinmar’s rifle; a dozen more by the flickering arc of Allaten’s warp lightning. Ambushing a ranger and a psyker with precognition, it transpired, was very difficult. Nevertheless, the dark eldar had numbers on their side, and their frenzied hunger for pain and souls drove them onwards with the fevered desperation of consumptives. Allaten conjured a ring of fire from the warp, but the eldar capered deftly over the conflagration, their eyes glowing green with soul-hunger. The corsairs were a ragged mix of wych cultists, kabalites, half-crippled scourges, ex-craftworlders wearing desecrated soulstones, parched scum, board-less hellions and all other forms of commorrite scum under the stolen suns. Discipline had long fled these degenerates, for they had been trapped outside their sanctuary when the doors to Commorragh had sealed. But despite that, their furious hunger lent them a potency all their own.

Myrinmar and Allaten fought back to back as they spindly creatures attacked them, each being swift as quicksilver, and venomous as a viper. Allaten could smell the toxins on their blades as he fought them back blade to blade with the Anathame. But his cursed sword was mighty indeed; wherever it struck, the wound it inflicted was always lethal. Bones were shattered, limbs were severed, and blood, red and vivid even in the gloom, soon coated the walls. Allaten’s berserker charge with the Anathame left him separated from Myrinmar. To his horror, he saw the pirates retreat, as rapidly as they had descended. He fought to reach them, but soon the shadows swallowed them. He found himself alone and lost. Myrinmar was gone, and with her the choir. He had to find her.

The Prognosticator stalked the halls, listening out for either Hawke or Myrinmar’s voices, reaching out with his psychic senses, but only finding confusing interference. It was then he realized this interference was deliberate. The souls behind it were pure and strong, so could never be the shriveled, rotten souls of the commorrites. The original crew, he mused, but despite realizing this, their location was still hidden from him (''and presumably the raiders too''). Mouthing a prayer to the Emperor to guide him, as the Emperor had guided him so many times before, he raised Anathame, and let the hungry blade lead it once again on its inscrutable quest.

When he at last found the shrouded corner of the cavernous vessel, the Silver Skull was set upon again by desperate eldar. But these warriors bore glowing soulstones, and when he summoned warp energy into his radiant soul, he felt other equally powerful entities, holding back his sorcerous fire. As shuriken and las bolts pattered against his armor, Allaten was forced to wade into close combat, weathering the blows against his armor as his singing sword sought to catch one of the cautious eldar.

But before he could land a killing blow, another warrior entered the fray. Almost as tall as the space marine, but slender as a reed, the warrior leapt into combat like a whirling dervish, his spear howling as it swept towards him in a blistering series of arcing blows. The eldar had a single bionic eye that glowed with pleasant amber hues; quite at odds with the harsh crimson bulbs Imperial bionics favored. The man was skilled, and without his psychic abilities, Allaten found himself hard pressed against such a tenacious and skilled combatant. Finally, the spear tip swept down in a decapitating arc, and all Allaten could do was throw up a hasty block with his own weapon.

The two blades crashed together with a thunderclap, flooring both warriors, and all the eldar encircling them. In that instant, the two well-matched foes saw the turn of the universe.

There was a vision of a diminutive hero standing alone before a cliff face of molten metal, a thousand feet high, beneath a red moon’s light. 

In the hero’s hand was the spear of twilight.

In the hero’s hand was the anathame, blade of midnight.

In the hero’s hand was a curving blade, glowing golden with the morning’s early light. Dawn’s sword.

Then the cliff grew claws, and its own great black sword descended. Shadows fell, and the blade fell.

Anaris fell too. It shattered thrice and fell into the river, where its currents carried them all away. The hero was unarmed when the claws came finally to strangle him.

“Yriel... late of Iyanden, protector of Biel-Tan... I presume?” breathed Allaten, the first to rise. He took off his helmet, so Yriel might see his grey eyes.

The ancient eldar warrior, youthful always save for a wisp of grey amidst his thick top knot of soot black hair, held Allaten’s gaze. “Allaten of Varsavia, warrior seer,” he returned, gesturing for his men to lower their weapons, which they did only warily.

Allaten revealed his mission, and his compact with the Myrinmar and the Biel-Tan eldar. Yriel, in turn, revealed that the foe that had overcome his vessel was a terrible pirate lord, called Duke Sliscus, the Serpent. The serpent’s minions ambushed the Flame of Asuryan as it made to leave a system on the fringes of the Eastern Chaos Imperium; attacking from all vectors with a loose coalition of commorrite raiders, all eager to bring down the pirate who had become a king. Yriel had been forced to breach the webway, diving into the labyrinth, even as the Duke’s men were boarding via their breaching modules. The majority of the hunters were denied their prize, but three of the Duke’s cruisers had remained attached. The craftworlders were few in number at the best of times, and the necessary crew aboard a naval ship was even less. Such a skeleton crew couldn’t hope to resist Sliscus’ veritable hoard of half-born savages and null-city scum. Though it pained Yriel to even remember, he told the Astartes of how his crew had to barricade themselves within the few strongpoints throughout the ship; munitions holds, scrying chambers, the infinity circuit’s domed temple room. One by one, these strongpoints were overwhelmed, until only Yriel’s psychically hidden remained.

Yriel believed he would perish in the hold of his own ship, starving like some urchin wretch. But the sight of Allaten, and the news of the wraithbone choir of Altansar, and the revelation that he and a mon keigh held in their very hands, gave the old reaver prince new resolve. Only a handful of the survivors were eldritch raiders like him, but he determined that this would be the end of Sliscus’ charade. Whether Yriel survived or not, the sociopathic monster lounging on in his bridge would draw his last breath that day!

Meanwhile, Hawke had found the dedicated orchards of the Flame of Asuryan. The forest had grown wild and fecund in its period of becalmment, spreading out across several floors, enclosing unrelated chambers and systems with its pale, fruit-bearing trees. Hawke gorged on the forest. He’d not cared for fruit much as a guardsman, and had nothing but protein paste as a bondsman. But after so long eating nothing but strange crystalline plants, he found the feast irresistible. Those he didn’t devour immediately, he stuffed into his satchel, for later consumption and perhaps distillation, if he could ever find the parts to make a decent still in the labyrinth dimension. 

His meal was disturbed when he heard the sound of cruel alien voices, hissing and hooting at each other in tones he couldn’t hope to understand. He fled from the eldar pirates, rushing through the foliage like a game animal. Much unlike a game animal, he swore in an almost uninterrupted stream of profanity, the entire time he was running. The eldar must have sensed this feeling of being hunted, as they proceeded to set their dogs upon him. The warp beasts were like gigantic, flayed hyenas, large as horses and covered in mouths. Breathless and terrified, Hawke sprinted heedlessly through the orchard jungle, slamming into walls and bulkheads and trunks in his haste.

The daemonic hounds loped after him unhurriedly, as sadistic and cruel as their beastmaster. Soon they were just on his tail, snapping at his heels with skinless jaws of gore-streaked ivory, black tusks of bronze squealing as they snapped shut, closer and closer to him each time. At last, Hawke could run no more, and flung himself forwards into the last chamber he could find. The hell hounds leapt after him.

The crystal dome he found himself in was only devoid of trees. It was an odd thought to have before his death, he considered. Still, a pretty enough sight to go out on.

But this was not the ordained moment of his death it would seem. As the warp beasts entered the dome, the walls came alive with pinpricks of light. Millions upon millions, moving as a great tide or a termite swarm. Each of the scuttling lights was made of crystal and energy. As one, they enveloped the snarling daemonic horrors, which squealed and screeched in oddly human tones as they perished. With morbid fascination, Julius Hawke watched the tide of white spiders deconstruct the daemons bodily, like a sped up pict video of a corpse’s decay. Within moments, the silent warp spiders devoured the corrupted monsters. Even the fetid stench of daemon essence had been drained away, leaving the dome as pristine as it had been moments ago.

Hawke expected to die too, but the spiders merely crawled over him like curious ants, before scuttling back into the walls themselves. He almost laughed in relief. Then, he looked to the bodies laying peacefully all around him, and his smile faded. 
Myrinmar was brought to the bridge of the flagship, where a fop in an extravagant coat of tanned human hides and elaborate ruffles and ribbons, slouched upon the command throne, one leg brazenly flung over the arm of the chair. The man was offensively handsome; his long hair gleaming platinum, his pale, translucent face unblemished by a single year of age. His lips were painted blue, and his eyes glowed with azure fire. Yet, the cold cruelty, and the way the warmth of his smile didn’t reach his piercing eyes robbed him of the title of beautiful.

Duke Sliscus leapt from his throne, and dramatically embraced Myrinmar as she lay bound and helpless in the arms of her captors. Sliscus kissed her cheeks, and welcomed her warmly to his vessel.

“Forgive the current state of disrepair. Some terrible lout sabotaged the central power core. It was almost as if he... resented me taking possession of this wonderful palace of a ship. Can you imagine the nerve?!” Sliscus tittered, and his ragged crew chuckled with forced humour.

His good nature evaporated when Myrinmar refused to tell him what the wraithbone choir was, or how she’d got onto ‘his’ vessel. That was when the torture began.

One thing the commorrites knew intimately was the art of torture. Within minutes, she was screaming in miserable agony, as neural spines were driven into her skull and into her joints. 

(''The chronicles go into what I would call, unseemly detail about the myriad torture techniques Sliscus employed in the short time he was in Myrinmar’s company. I have omitted the worst, for I feel it serve no other purpose than gratuity.'')

“I am afraid we lost our haemonculus on the first day, alas. I am sorry our efforts are so... slapdash, my beautiful little bumpkin,” Sliscus purred softly in her ear, as she dangled from the ceiling on hooks, bleeding from places she had never known possible. She was weeping, but felt no shame in that, for who could resist the torturers of commorragh, truly? She watched the eldar cluster around her, their eyes glowing that little bit more with every shriek she made. She wanted to laugh; laugh at their pathetic state of existence, at their paltry, parasitic lives. They were all doomed; only the craftworlders would be reborn when Ynnead rises, while these monsters would be trapped forever on the path of appeasement, slaved to a murderous bitch goddess until they died. But she couldn’t bring herself to laugh, and the effort only brought more coughing and retching.

Finally, after only an hour of torment, she slurred something. Sliscus smiled. “You will have to speak more clearly child. Haul her down.”

They did so. Sliscus waited patiently for her to speak again.

“You must help me. The choir... it is important. Without it, millions will die... billions... trillions... all life...” she wheezed, begging the cruel dandy to heed her.

Sliscus laughed at her. “And I should care why? I have won!” he cackled, flourishing his twin swords, called ‘the serpent’s bite’, like some swashbuckling hero.

“What have you won?” she spat bitterly, slumping in her captors’ arms.

He grinned. “I have proven that I am the greatest corsair there has ever been! The mighty Prince Yriel, the dashing hero and infamous legend, was humbled by me. Me! The Duke, not the Prince, is the winner!”

“That’s petty, even for you.”

The Duke shrugged. “I don’t care. Let the universe kill itself. We shall wait here, in the webway as we always have. Then, when the dust settles and the mewling survivors scuttle from their holes to see what the damage is, we will hunt them anew. The Sky Serpents shall rain down from the heavens, and the galaxy will know my name and no other! No one will stand before me, and I shall take what has always been mine!”

“This is madness! There won’t be a galaxy Sliscus, or a webway! The dissolution... it will... the N-”

“Don’t speak to me of prophecies of doom, craftworlder! Do you recall your doomsayers, from the time of the Fall? They claimed all would be destroyed, and yet... we endure. We survive, and we...thrive,” he shivered with perverse delight.

She saw the megalomaniac then, and realised any hope of reason was lost. He was insane. Despair took her then. Tears rolled down her fleshly-scarred face, each droplet a stinging reminder of his foul attentions.

She mumbled something else.

“What now child? Do you want to play again? Just deny my demands once more, and we can play all over again. What did you say?”

She held his gaze then, through her one good eye. “I have been in one place too long. Things won’t go well now,” she said, with odd, calm clarity.

Even Sliscus was confused, and his sudden smirk barely concealed his irritation. “Why is that?”

“Because... I am marked.”

She threw herself to the ground, as her two guards suddenly spasmed and died. The Sky Serpents turned as one to a corner of the room, where they were sure there hadn’t been anyone before. Now, there were suddenly five giants; shadowy hunchbacks, with singular orbs, blazing with corpse light. 

Deathmarks. 

Instantly, the two sides opened fire. Within moments, the bridge was a chaotic storm of fire, flame and eldritch energies being unleashed. Myrinmar took her chance. She leapt forwards, ignoring the agony lancing through her bones, and snatched a sword from a sky serpent’s belt, bisecting the commorrite from hip to armpit with a single stroke, before planting the sword up to the hilt in the raider clutching her rifle.

She was still fast, but the pain slowed her just enough, for a green-haired hellion to get the drop on her, hissing through sharpened fangs. Its whip lashed out, snatching her rifle from her grasp, before the fiend struck her dozens of times with its spiked boots and gloves, savouring every cut. Her rifle stock cracked against his body over and over but that only made the eldar stronger, driven to delight by the pain. She stumbled onto her rump, and prepared for the end. It was at that point that the hellion suddenly found its head bisected by a precision shuriken.

The Eldritch Raiders burst into the chamber in a wave of multi-coloured fire. The warlocks unleashed lightning storms and singing spears, as Allaten, wreathed in fire, smote all who came near him, with flame and anathame stroke. Yriel could barely be seen, for he leapt so swiftly and so deftly through the confused throngs of murderers and metal killers. The battle for the bridge became a confused three way skirmish; a storm of blades and discharging weapons. Holes were punched into the hull, and soon ethereal winds from the webway billowed through the tides of carnage and murder.

Myrinmar scuttled on all fours through the press; desperately reaching for the wraithbone construct she had spent so long searching for.

Yriel and Sliscus sought each other out, as both sides knew they always would. The two clashed in a blur of blade against blade, acrobatic and flawlessly graceful despite their advanced ages. These were two supreme eldar warriors, unsullied by the millennia, as fearsome as deadly as ever. But Sliscus, for all that, had one advantage; he had two weapons, against Yriel’s single spear. No matter how potent, the spear struggled to be everywhere at once, which is where Sliscus struck. Every vector, every angle, every blow possible, he struck. Neither opponent could afford to be struck even once; the spear of twilight was a fiery remnant of the elder blade of Eldanesh, and would kill with any solid connecting blow. Meanwhile, Sliscus’ serpent’s bite was so profoundly venomous, but a single cut against flesh would boil the blood and corrode the flesh.

Despite Yriel’s legendary skill, Sliscus was winning, and he knew it, with every cut and thrust he grew stronger, and his grin widened. “I am better than you. I told you, I was always better than you!” he cackled finally, delivering a brutal back kick across Yriel’s face, staggering the eldar lord. But even as he tumbled, Allaten was there, anathame in hand. Allaten was fractionally slower, but his blows were herculean compared to Yriel’s, and this time Sliscus staggered backwards, his arrogance faltering for but a second.

All around them, the Deathmarks calmly walked forward sin unison, killing with the same effort a scythe reaps wheat. The eldar continued acrobatically murdering each other, each side screaming the name of their corsair warbands. 

“Sky Serpents!”

“Eldritch Raiders!”

Myrnimar finally managed to reach the wraithbone artefact. She clutched the choir to her chest, and made a dash for the control console; the heart of the bridge, and the psychic link with the entire flagship. Her body was a ruin, and every motion was an agony akin to walking through fire. But she ignored the pain. She had to.

Sliscus now faced both Allaten and Yriel, and now he was hard pressed. Several times, he fled behind his men, and thrust them into the fray, cursing as they died too quickly. His face was full of indignant rage now, his hair a mess, his flesh tainted with blood splashes, his outfit ruined by narrowly avoided blows.

“Curse you! You let mon keigh fight your battles! Truly, you are as weak and pathetic as I suspected! I will not be mocked!” the Duke finally screamed. Desperately, he threw aside one of his sword, and drew his blast pistol. Allaten only just swayed aside as a bolt of pure darkness thundered past him. His psychic hood was shattered by the glancing blow however, exploding in a shower of sparks and psychic feedback that made even Allaten recoil.

Taking this chance, Sliscus skipped from the podium, and fled the bridge. The two sides of eldar had begun to focus on the necrons at last, as the killing machines cut down eldar after eldar with their synaptic disruptors. One by one, the necrons were dragged down, until even their reanimation protocols could not stem the flow of damage against them.

Myrinmar reached the command console, and slotted the wraithbone choir home. The choir seemed to morph and mould itself to the aperture of the console, eagerly merging and communing with the Flame. This was her final gambit; a hundred thousand apex farseers, scholars, bonesingers and warlocks, all plunged into the fiery, living heart of the ship’s living form. She felt the ship shudder in sudden, pleasant undulations. Light played across every surface, like the wheel of a galaxy as seen through a concave mirror.

She smiled serenely. This was what needed to happen, she realised. This was peace.

She kept her smile, as the crackling beam from the last deathmark struck her, and ended her thoughts forever more. It was odd, she thought at the end. It didn’t hurt to die. 

She didn’t even make a sound as she felt.

The Sky Serpents began to flee, as the Flame of Asuryan’s systems began to light up with white fire, lashing out with ghostly tendrils.

Sliscus, who had fled first, was separated from the rest. Each step he took, he gazed backwards, towards the waking ship’s light filled veins. He had to escape. This was not how he would end.

When he rounded the corner, the last thing he had expected to see was a mortal mon keigh with a shard carbine. Distracted, Sliscus didn’t see the carbine fire until it was far too late. The torrent of crystals shredded his crotch and thighs, as Hawke pumped hundreds of shots into the eldar, heedless of who this commorrite was even supposed to be.

Sliscus crumpled to his knees, gasping and mute as he desperately clutched at the ruins meat of his abdomen, his own weapons forgotten. Tears in his eyes, he stared up in disbelief at Julius Hawke.

“That’s embarrassing,” Hawke chortled.

If Sliscus was going to say anything; some final retort or curse, Hawke didn’t give him a chance. He shot Sliscus in the face, splinters tearing his handsome visage to gory ribbons. Hawke continued on his run, desperately searching for his two remaining friends in the entire galaxy. Sliscus died alone; killed while running away by a mon keigh bondsman, more b accident than anything else. Such was his legacy, and such is how I choose to remember such a petty thing. He died writhing on his belly, as all snakes do.

The power of the choir flooded and re energized the Flame of Asuryan. Like the Phoenix King, it was reborn in fire. The first two cruisers were destroyed, as the energies travelled down their umbilical connections to the battleship. The third managed to disengage, but with motive power and weapons active, the Flame made short work of the dark eldar vessel.

Hawke found Allaten and Yriel, slumped either side of the command throne. Upon the throne itself, Myrinmar’s corpse had been placed. Her soulstone was dull. And, surprisingly, her entire body had turned to crystal.

“You won’t believe the trouble I’ve had apple scrumping down there. Wait, we’re moving?” Hawke asked, as he saw the view screen image come about. Allaten simply nodded, too drained to speak. Yriel held the crystal hand of Myrinmar, and said nothing.

Hawke looked around, took a seat at an empty console, and took another fruit from his satchel.

The Flame of Asuryan sped through the webway, given new life by revenant souls. Its destination was clear; the only place where craftworld eldar still lived in any great numbers.

All roads led to Biel-Tan.
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