Editing Eternity (Warhammer High) (section)

=== Life Goes On ===


Ela Whitefist leaned back against the shattered wall of thatch and stone behind him, feeling his life drain into the snow at his feet.  The battle was over.  His people had won.  And now, he was going to die.

It wasn’t a hard guess to make, mortality.  Life on Fenris was short and violent.  Rare were the souls that lived past forty.  Ela glanced down at the gaping hole in his stomach, through which his intestines were clearly visible, and noted that he wasn’t even going to make it to twenty.

Oh well.  He had tasted fine wine, bedded fine women, won a glorious battle against his clan’s enemies, and unless he was very much mistaken (he hoped he wasn’t), impressed the gods themselves.  Even at that moment, two were watching him.

Their fiery chariot had descended from above to observe the battle, between the Whitefists and the Dragonsons.  The battle had frozen at a halt when they had arrived, with combatants on each side making the sign of the All-Father in reverent awe.  The chariot had circled above them, leaking fire from massive engines.  Then, to the shock of all watching, two massive men with the heads of wolves, armor of metal, and talismaned weapons fell from the sky and landed in their midst.  The warriors of the Whitefists had frozen stock-still, gaping at them, while the attacking Dragonsons had faltered, staring in shock and glee.  The Choosers were with them, now.

The Dragonsons had fallen back to their boats to fetch more weapons, while the Whitefists had packed their daughters and wives off to the hills of the little island, to spare them from the carnage.  It wouldn’t make a difference, of course, the Dragonsons would just enslave them if they won even if they did have to find them first.  Still, the chance to earn a place in the halls of the Kings on Asaheim itself was worth a momentary distraction.

Ela had fought like a man possessed in the battle.  His spear was slick with blood, and other, darker fluids.  The elaborate tattoo on his arm was ripped clean off, along with some of the arm itself, taken by the axes of the Dragonsons’ chieftain.  Ela had let himself fall forward after the injury, and driven his spear up into the taller man’s stomach, pulling it out with his spearhead.  A worthy end, to be sure, but an end.

The bedraggled nineteen-year-old had fallen to his knees in a pool of his own blood.  The women and children were coming back, now, keeping reverent distances from the silent Choosers even as they wept over the broken bodies of sons and husbands.

A child – not his – ran up to him and squeezed his shoulder, pale and blanching.  “Ela!  What happened?”

“I died, child,” Ela managed, collapsing against the wall with a groan of agony.  “Go and get the others.”

The child scampered off, casting worried looks over his shoulder as he did.  The Chooser nearest Ela stepped aside to let him pass, staring at the carnage with dead eyes behind his helm.

Ela felt anger stir in what was left of his stomach as he looked on the massive man.  Was this not enough?  Was the death of the entire Dragonsons and half of the Whitefists not enough?  Had none been found worthy?

A stirring of cloth behind the giant Chooser caught his eyes as he sank back on the ground.  A figure in a cloak of pelt and fabric appeared from where the chariot had set down on the distant hill.  The figure moved over the ground with grace that bespoke incredible strength, like the Choosers, but also restraint.  As the figure walked up behind the Choosers, it paused, and seemed to be looking over the battlefield from within its hood.

One Chooser paused beside the body of a fallen warrior, too mangled to recognize.  With the press of a gauntleted finger to the body’s neck, the Chooser rose, then walked up to one of the Dragonsons that had died late in the fighting.  That one Ela DID know: one of their Clanguards, a warrior of great skill who had managed to take Ela’s brother down with him.

Ela’s teeth ground together as the possibility that that…BUTCHER would be given the honor of ascension!  The spearman tried to rise, but the unthinkable agony – and more worryingly, growing numbness – from his crippled stomach brought him back down with a muted scream of pain.

The eyes of the Choosers were on him in a moment.  The lithe figure in the cloak seemed to pause what it was doing, as well.  Slowly, the figure walked up to him, its eyes inscrutable in the darkness of the hood.  As it reached Ela, it knelt, hiking its cloak up to keep the pelt from dipping into the blood pools.

“Have you a name, fighter?” a soft voice from within asked.  A woman’s voice?

“Ela…Whitefist…son of…Kaer Whitefist…” he managed.

A hand in a delicate leather glove emerged from the folds of the cloak, and another tugged the glove free.  The hand freed from the doeskin was undeniably that of a woman, too, and a young one.  The hand travelled up to Ela’s shoulder, and gripped it with a strength that would have hurt like a bastard if he were in better shape to feel it.

“Hmm...how many Dragons did you kill today, Ela Whitefist?” the voice asked, contemplatively.

“…Seven…eight,” Ela replied, gasping for air.  His soul was slipping away into hell and he was being quizzed on killing by a woman with no face?  What was this?

“And so I observed,” the voice said, this time with a faint note of approval.  Had she expected some other answer?

“What…did you…think I’d…say?” he managed.

“More.  Men feel the strangest need to exaggerate their accomplishments in the face of death, as if they had anything left to prove,” the woman said.  “But death in honest battle is the highest honor, anyway.”  She slid the glove back on and sank to sit on her ankles.  “I know what awaits us after death in battle, Ela Whitefist.  Shall I tell you?  Or would you find out firsthand?” she asked, her voice soft and growing harsh.

“…I would…know…so I have…no fear…” he said after a moment.

The figure nodded, and this time there was open approval.  The woman reached back her hand to pull free her hood-

Ela felt the pain in his guts fade a little at the sight.  She was…without a doubt…the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his entire life.  Magnificent rolls of clean, braided red hair spilled from around a youthful, healthy face, with glorious, wide eyes of an inhuman green set in in the middle like gemstones.  Her face was angelic, sculpted.  Was she a Valkyrie?  One of the spirits who ferried the greatest fallen warriors to a rousing, triumphal eternity?

The cloak was fastened below her collarbone, and her red hair flowed out over the soft fabric of her cloak to hang over the blood-drenched ground.  Her red lips were turned in a slight smile, behind which two small, pointed fangs were visible.  She was of their blood?  She was a Chooser as well, an immortal scion of King Russ?

“When one dies in battle, their soul falls from the body, into the roiling stuff of the Warp, from which all souls come,” the beautiful young woman said.  “This you know.  After all, it was across the seas of the Warp that Father Russ came to this world.  After a time, most souls fall into the formless darkness of space in rest, and return to the things from which the universe is made.  No pain, no fear, no lust, no love or hate.  Just a dreamless sleep.”  She smiled again, her fangs glinting in the blue light.  “Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”

“…I…suppose not…” Ela admitted.

The beautiful woman grabbed his spear, fallen from numbing hands.  “Swing this at me.”

He stared.  “What?”

The woman stood, crossing her arms.  “Swing it at me.  Now.”

Ela gripped the wooden haft, searching for a trap in her words, but finding none.  He swung the gory weapon at her legs, and she effortlessly leaped the clumsy arc.  “Hmph.  Not much to speak of,” she said dismissively.

Ela felt his anger and fear surge through him, even as his imminent death fought to pull feeling from his arms.  He swung the spear again, and again she jumped it.  He made to swing again when the darkness flooding in at the corners of his eyes overwhelmed him, and he collapsed backwards, unconscious.

Freya Russ watched the spearman fall, her mind working idly.  “Hmm.  Argun, what do you think?” she asked.

“He has fire, certainly,” the Wolf Priest said, staring at the body.  “Bit old.”

Freya nodded.  “Yep.  Think he deserves a shot?”

“I think so, yes.  He took on those men two at a time, and only went down when the fight was over,” the Wolf Priest replied, in Gothic.  Their words were not for the wounded.

“I like him.  He wanted to know more about death for the sake of facing it without fear,” Freya said.  “He’ll face his training head-on.”

“Sure.”  Argun nodded, lifting the blood-slicked spear from the ground beside the fallen fighter.  “He will be taken to Kerrvik.  If he can survive it, we’ll go through training.”

“Good.”  Freya watched as the body levitated onto the small medical platform the Wolf Priest was operating.  “Anyone else?”

“This makes three.  The others are either useless or beyond us,” the Priest said flatly.

“All right.  Off we go,” Freya said, pulling her hood back up.

“NO!” a woman screamed from the village behind the battlefield on the icy beach.  Freya turned to look at her as the bodies floated into the back of the Thunderhawk for resuscitation.  “No, Ela, no, don’t go!” she cried.

Freya held up her arm to block the woman’s path.  “Sorry, lass, but your man is destined for a greater fate than ignominy,” she said softly, in Juvjk that time.

The woman tried to push past her into the hold of the Thunderhawk, but Freya was as strong as a Long Fang, and did not relent.  “Don’t take my husband,” she begged, tears pouring from her eyes.  “Please!  Don’t make his son grow up without him!”

Freya grimaced under her hood.  “Your husband is dead.  He goes now to Asaheim, that he may live forever with the blood of the Russ,” she said.  “Mourn him, and remember him well,” she added, turning to go.

“What possible use could you have for him above that of his family?” the hysterical woman demanded.

Freya’s shoulders rose as she sighed.  “More than you know.  With any luck at all, lass…more than you will EVER know.”

The sun broke over the walls of Camp Kerrvik.  The blinding light flooded the training grounds below, covered in fresh snows from the blizzard the previous night.  Atop one ragged wall of wood and stone, a Fenrisian boy sat with legs crossed.  His mess of ruddy blond hair was cropped below his ears, and he had to brush strands out of his shining blue eyes.  [[Image: Olev.png|thumb|Olev as a little boy.  Thanks, SirBriggz!]]


He was easily the youngest person in the camp.  He hated that.  The only people who even seemed to approach him in size were the new aspirants, and they were a dime a dozen.  Half-dead, some of them, and the others never lasted too long.  They either died here or went off to the Fang.  By that time, they were Wolves, Vlka of the Rout, and more like uncles than friends.

The crack of a ship breaking the sound barrier drew his superhuman eyes up.  The streak of fire and metal overhead dropped like a stone towards the camp.  The boy smiled happily.  At least Mom was coming home.

The Thunderhawk settled down on the ground inside the walls, and the ramp dropped into the snow.  A few scared-looking men with scars under their jumpsuits appeared, walking down the ramp into the streets of the tiny township.  “All right, you little bastards, you straighten the hell up!” a voice roared.  The lad recognized the voice as that of Sergeant Hasskald, a Grey Hunter from the Fang that he liked.  Hasskald was happy to take him out to see Fenris from the skies sometimes.  He said it was important.

“You whoresons THINK that you’re CHOSEN ONES!” Hasskald roared at the new guys.  “You AREN’T!  You’re dirt beneath my boots for the next four months!  You’re ghost men, unloved at home and unmourned here, and every single one of you is going to break like glass for the whole time!”  He glared at them all, brandishing the tiny silver talisman in his hands.  “By the end of this training, forty five to fifty five percent of you will be stone dead.  The rest?  The rest of you will graduate to REAL training.  You will fight one another, you will fight the elements, you will fight the Trolls and the Fiends, and you will learn what it is to kill with your bare hands!  And maybe when you’re done, you bone scraps will be VLKA!” he finished, his eyes burning.  “Now…I know that some of you came from clans at war with others.  That’s fine.  As of today, you forget it all.  You will forget your clans, your women, your children.  Today, the only sons you have are the next batch of aspirants, the only brothers you have are the men beside you, and the only father you have is High King Russ!”

The Grey Hunter slammed his ceramite gauntlets together, throwing sparks where metal it metal.  “You will become warriors capable of feats that could and will break lesser men if you live through this, aspirants.  You will walk through the bellies of daemons, and the arms of savages, and you will take the Wolf’s Spirit within yourselves.  I anticipate very few survivors, whether I want there to be or not,” he added.  “I came from a batch of ninety.  Only three remain.”

The aspirants shuffled their feet, some paling.  “You fear that?  Good!  Fear means you’re alive!” Hasskald declared.  “Some of you will become the Skjalds and Kaerls of the Fang, the hall of your father.  Some will become food for the others when winter comes,” he said darkly.

The boy on the walls rolled his eyes.  That never actually happened.  “Some others will actually come to be Vlka, and you will take your claws to the necks of the Emperor’s enemies by the truckload, and learn to love the smell of blood,” Hasskald finished.  “Now fall out, and go to the buildings you’re assigned.  You will be Claws soon enough.”

The men trooped into the buildings scattered over the training grounds, as the Wolf Priests handed them scraps of paper with names on them.  The boy scrambled down from the wall and ambled up to the Thunderhawk, his nine-year-old ears filtering out the sounds of the engines like a veteran deck crewer.

Hasskald looked down at him and smiled.  “Olev.  Lad, what are you doing up this early?”

“Listening to you bellow, apparently,” Olev sighed airily.

Hasskald snorted.  “Lad, when you’re old enough, you’re doing this training whether you plan to become a Marine or not.”

“I sure hope so,” Olev said idly.  “Mom’s sure pressing me not to.”

“Your mother is hopelessly in love with you, pup, and doesn’t want you to come to harm,” Hasskald said.  “Fear not.  There’s strength enough in you to live through my instruction.”

“Oh, there’s strength enough, I’m not worried about that,” Mom said, stepping from the hold, where she had been watching quietly.  She smiled happily down at her son.  “But I couldn’t live with myself if he got eaten up by trolls.”

Olev waved a hand dismissively.  “I’d smell them coming.”

“In your sleep?” she asked pointedly.

Olev shrugged.  His mother leaned over to wrap her arms around her son’s shoulders, hugging him close.  “You know you don’t have to stay here, Love,” she said softly.  “I know you want to see it, but…”

“Mom,” Olev grumbled.  “Come on.  Don’t call me that where the others can hear.”

Freya laughed and stepped back.  “Right, sure.”

The aspirants walked back out of their new homes, blinking at the unfamiliar environments of the mountain range in which they were staying.  One by one, they lined up in front of Hasskald, trying not to look afraid.

The Grey Hunter tapped the flat of his combat knife in his palm, watching them fall in.  “Now.  There are those of you who may think that even as Aspirants, you have nothing to prove.  Nothing to accomplish.  You made it this far, after all.  You were Chosen!  But let me show you how wrong you are,” he said.  He stepped back, and Freya shooed her son away.  “Before you stand I, boys, one man,” he said flatly.  He hefted his chainsword in one hand and his knife in the other.  “All of you who feel that you need to make up for something…all of you who aren’t smart enough to be afraid or nervous…get up here.”

Nobody moved.

“Smart lads, for once,” Hasskald said.  He dropped his chainsword in the snow and slid his knife into its sheathe.  “How about now?” he asked mildly.

Several of the Aspirants looked at each other and mumbled.  “That armor protects you,” one of them said hesitantly.  “Can we even hurt you?”

“Fair question,” Hasskald admitted.  “And if I were not armored?  Would you find the testicles to fight me then, little boys?”

“I just might,” another said angrily.  He stepped up to the front rank, fists clenched.

“Great.  What if I were not only unarmed, but unarmored, and a young woman to boot?” Hasskald asked, baring his fangs.

“Then I’d call it a complete waste of my time,” the warrior scoffed.

“I did SO hope he’d say that,” Olev said happily.

Freya took her cue.  She stepped up beside Hasskald and drew back her hood.  “If anyone in your little gang can beat me one-on-one,” she said by means of introduction, “he gets double rations tonight.”

The warrior blinked, taken aback by her appearance.  “You send a whore to fight in your stead, Sergeant Hasskald?” he asked.

Freya grinned.  “Now now…harsh words instead of fists?  Do you have no fight in you, child?”

“I came here to fight, not lie with a whore, woman,” the warrior blustered, as several other aspirants chuckled.

“Well, I suppose I did meet my husband here,” Freya admitted.  “Still, something tells me you’d lack any sort of appeal even if I were on the market,” she said idly.

The man snarled and lunged at her.  Freya’s wrist flickered.  She had caved in his nose and stepped aside.  His body tumbled, senseless, to the ground.

The other aspirants froze.  Less than a second had passed.  “Anyone else?” Freya snarled, flashing her fangs.  One or two men gasped as recognition set in, but nobody moved.  “Wise.  My name is Freya Russ, you worthless puppies, and until the day you die, I am your Queen, your elder sister, your personal daemon, and the last thing you see before you die,” she said coldly, her voice biting like the chill of the wind.  “My father will break you down, shatter your preconceptions, grind you into powder, and then sculpt you into REAL fighters, Astartes, Space Marines, Vlka Fenryka.  You will live for eternity, in the halls of the Fang, in the depths of its armory, or in the memories of its warriors, but only if you DAMN WELL DESERVE IT!” she roared, shocking them back a pace.  “This galaxy chews up and shits out the weak, and it took three thousand, seven hundred years of nonstop killing to make it even as habitable as it is!”  Her wolf eyes glimmered in the morning light, glinting off of her fangs like diamonds.  The men were spellbound.  “Does anyone else want to challenge their Queen?” she demanded.

Not a soul twitched.

“Good.  Haul his useless carcass off to a medic and start doing laps of the compound,” Hasskald said.  “The man who does the fewest has to do it again.”

Two men lifted their senseless comrade off to the medical center as Freya brushed a speck of blood off her bare hands before sliding her gloves back on.  Olev meandered over to where she was standing, the chill wind tugging at the sleeves of his jacket.  “Mom, why do you say that you’re the last thing you see before they die?  You don’t fight in the field,” he pointed out.

Freya shrugged as the other Aspirants started running.  “Because every so often, I jump into the training circles to beat some pride out of the ones who have a natural skill that they mistake for discipline.  See, Olev, it’s easy to think that you’re good at something if you were born able to do it well, but I don’t want naturals.  I want men who can fight because they have good training as well as lots of experience and natural talent.  And if they mess up in the ring, fighting me or their brothers, they die.  If they mess up because they’d rather do things their own way instead of the way we train them, that’s hardly my fault.”

“That doesn’t answer my question at all!” Olev protested.

“Olev, men die here.  Sometimes because their trainers killed them.  It happens.”  Freya looked down at him, sadness written on her face.  “That’s why I don’t like it when you’re here.”

“But everyone treats me like a baby on the Fang,” Olev grumbled.

Freya knelt before her son to bring his eyes level with hers.  She gently leaned forward and kissed his forehead.  “I prefer that to treating you like a killer.  For now.  Okay?”

Olev sighed.  “Okay.”