The Failure

[Andrew Benn]

The Failure

 

The vortices filled Charn’s vision. They had eclipsed all else in the Gallery long before the mortal eyes of his brethren had even seen them. They built like collapsing stars, sucking the warp into their fiery hearts, fueling his will, driving them like folds in paper against each other and the universe, bridging the gap, opening the crack. When his staff released the pent up energy and the whirlpools of light swallowed them Charn could already see the other side. The dim hall, with dark, angular statues and walls. Blood was thick on the walls and floor, congealed into a thick, hard, slightly gelatinous carpet that deadened the sounds of the dozens of armoured boots landing on them as the warp ejected them like sand through a sieve.

 

As his feet felt the material realm again Charn pulled the bandages from his eyes. He could see them clearly now, before they had been diffuse but bright clouds, now they were the deep, blood red of rapacious souls. Crucibles of hate and pain and death. The Dark Eldar. His cabal had arrived in a large chamber, high ceilings and dimly light steps on either side told of galleries and hallways more like an anthill than an outpost. And from all directions Charn could see the aliens coming. They moved like worms of fire through their tunnels, alerted to the intruders perhaps ten seconds too late. His Thousand Sons responded without hesitation. They formed four lines in a square, two files of blank faces with those fiery blue eyes staring outwards, with their Captains, Charn and his Acolytes in the centre. As the first Eldar appeared at the stairs they opened fire.

 

Bolts spat through the dark heavy air and the aliens recoiled, their light dexterous bodies kicked back against the wide stone flags by the withering fire from Charn’s Cabal. Another archway was suddenly lit up with a shower of explosive shells as more aliens raced to the scene, desperate to overwhelm the attackers before they could gain a foot hold. In moments more Eldar had arrived and on all sides there was the relentless, deafening crackle of bolter fire. As more aliens clustered around the killing fields under the wide arches sporadic return fire began. Singing fragments of razor-sharp and nano-meter thick projectiles spun towards the Cabal in answer to their continued volleys. They lacerated through Charn’s automatons, slicing armour, shattering weapons, and carving limbs. He watched one crumple to the floor, his trapped soul flickering and sputtering as it railed against this damage. Then the former space marine creaked and groaned to its feet and levelled its gun once more. Joining in seamlessly with its fellows, matching them movement for movement. Charn fancied he could hear the ghostly whisper coming from the Rubricae, the terrible battle chant of the Thousand Sons.

‘All is dust.’

They chanted it without feeling, relentless like their fire, never faltering, never stumbling. Utterly mechanical they performed their task, ruthlessly, and soon the corpses of Dark Eldar warriors littered the entrances to the hall.

Charn signalled the advance with a silent command. The four lines broke, each advancing towards one of the walls, keeping their weapons trained on the doors. Behind them their champions walked,  while Charn stayed in the centre, where he had landed. He was searching again, looking through the warp at the newly revealed interior of the pirate base, looking what he came for.

 

---

 

Semik kept his eyes on the door, the hail the automatons were laying down kept the Dark Eldar out of sight. One hand he held his halberd, in his free hand a ball of red fire was held. With a psychic command the automatons parted for a moment, long enough for him to hurl the pulsing, living spell at the cowering aliens. It crashed against the stairs, releasing its power and enveloping them in its warp fire. Semik smiled as he heard them scream over the endless whispers from the Rubricae. They rolled and flailed on the steps as the fire melted them body and soul. By the time the steadily advancing lines of Thousand Sons reached them the last survivor had twitched its last and, like the rest, was trampled under the unstoppable boots of the Cabal.

 

 

Reaching out with his warp-borne sight Semik surveyed the levels beyond the front line of Rubricae. The Cabal had arrived in some large chamber on the bottom-most level of the complex, Semik could feel Charn’s will searching back and forth over the floors above, and the orders that filtered down from his mind into those of his Acolytes as they directed the Rubricae brethren further into the Eldar base. Semik and his charges reached the top of the winding, bone-carved stairs with implacable slowness, stepping over the many fallen aliens and their own fallen comrades with the same disinterest a mortal man might tread on dead dry leaves. Through his mind Semik scrutinised the shadow images of the corridor above and ahead. In fractal slow motion he watched the lithe feminine figures dart out of the concealing shadows at a bend in the corridor, he saw them dance towards his Rubricae ducking and weaving with preternatural speed around the hails of bolter shells. They closed the distance with eerie ease and were suddenly there under the guard of Semik’s brethren their cruel barbed blades flashed down and up in shimmering arcs scything open armour and reducing marine after marine to piles of shredded metal fragments.

 

All this Semik saw, foresaw even, as he and his Cabal crested the stairs, all this he had been told by the whispers of his dark patron. So when he looked at last with his material eyes down the empty and deceptively quiet corridor he was ready. Binding oneself with the twisting powers of the warp grants perceptions that transcended mortal imitations of time and space, so as Semik sent his mind forward to spy on the future intentions of his enemy, he was already aware of them, he had already seen it, and was already preparing an apt response. In his outstretched hand a point of blue-white light had begun to form before ever his eye-lenses saw the spot where he knew the Eldar witches were hiding and with a sardonic grin, a lazy flick of his wrist and the sound like a rapidly approaching scream, he let the energy loose.

 

The powers of the warp are fickle, and not without a sense of dramatic irony so in choosing his course Semik had, instead of merely dowsing the corridor with mutating flame or blowing the xenos apart with blasts of sorcery, he used his own preternatural abilities to guide the aim and bolts of his Rubricae, to guide them unerringly to the targets they would otherwise have missed. So when the Eldar burst forth from their hiding place what would have been, what could have been, their intricately evasive dance ended rapidly. Each side-step and pirouette that had taken them spiralling out of the path of the oncoming fire now brought them around and back into the path of other bullets streaking out on trajectories subtly nudged and redirected by Semik’s will, and each musical laugh and ululating war cry became a shriek of rapturous pain as their inhuman skills were twisted and manipulated, were used against them to seal their fate.

 

With mechanical precision and ever directed by their champion the Rubricae mowed down the charging Eldar and in a few brief and bloody moments all of them had been reduce to sprawling, mangled heaps of dying flesh. The Cabal never broke step nor uttered a single word beyond their ghostly chant as they passed over the bodies and rounded the corner to face the next wave of increasingly desperate defenders.

 

---

 

In a nearby and structurally identical corridor Charn was directing another group of identical Rubricae against an equally doomed knot of Eldar. They had fought a rear-guard action up the spiralling stairs, using the darkness and the higher ground to land crippling blows on the heads of the advancing marines. In the end they had been unable to stop the march of those automatons, but the cost had been high and Charn now walked over the cluttered fragments of increasing numbers of his Rubricae. He listened with detached irritation as their psychic screams marked the dragging of their trapped souls back into the warp. Ahead, withering before the continued fire of the surviving marines the Eldar were falling back, trying to make the bend in the corridor where they could regroup and reform the line before the sorcerous projectiles of the Thousand Sons send them too screaming into the warp.

 

Through the glowing, erupting rifts that were his eyes Charn was already among them, his terrible will was waiting for them when the handful of unscathed Eldar rounded the corner and turned at bay, he was there inside the mind of one of them, inside their body. He was there to listen to the grotesque gurgling of its alien innards and he was there to pour heat into those innards. He let the naked burning heat of the warp leak into the unfortunate Eldar. He watched as it felt the burning pain, while it pawed weakly at its armour and limbs, when the pressure mounted inside, when it clasped its hands over its head and screamed in agony. He only receded when the explosion had enveloped its fellows and left them all writhing and burning as the momentarily liberated warp energy sought frantically to dissolve all it connected with. When the Rubricae turned the corner they found only a blasted crater, were the stone and and corpse alike was rapidly cooling and re-solidifying. At odd angles and in odd forms the remains of the Eldar jutted and bulged from the heat-warped walls. The boots of the Thousands Sons left deep, smouldering prints in the still semi-molten floor as they passed on to another set of stairs.

 

Charn urged his Rubricae on up those stairs two at a time, they were getting close, and there were now too few defenders to hope to hold them back. His will walked unclad as his body marched alongside his brethren, his will scoured the many rooms and alcoves for something, he knew not yet what. He dashed aside delicate, bladed implements of pain and upended jars of unspeakable liquids in a room that was half torture chamber, half laboratory. He ripped down shelves of ancient mouldering texts written on flayed skin in languages whose hellish runes pulsed malevolently in the darkness between the pages. These he would later have collected and returned to his library for study, but just now even the desire to peruse these alien texts was eclipsed by his drive to find… It.

 

---

 

With his Rubricae continuing the advance against the Eldar Semik too was searching. Like his master he sent his mind bustling back and forth, but unlike his master, he could not resist the temptation of pausing to examine the wealth of forbidden alien knowledge that he knew Charn would secret away at the first opportunity. The warp-echoes of the books and dataslates tingled with promise and burned deliciously as Semik probed their contents, eagerly absorbing the information within with practiced ease. Their titles and abstracts were depressingly uniform; these Eldar pirates thought of little else than the tortuous infliction of pain, on others and on themselves. If any of the Rubricae retained a flesh and blood form, Semik would almost have considered continuing some of the hideous experiments carried out so diligently by the alien denizens of this hidden outpost.`

 

His indulgent revere was interrupted by the rippling explosion of psychic pain that blossomed suddenly on the floor above. It blotted out every warp-shadow in its stricken fury. Semik flinched and a visible shudder rang through the empty armour of his Rubricae in sympathy. At his urging they sped up, the noise of their armoured boots rising in tempo from a steady drumbeat to a rapid hammering as they mounted the elegant alien stairs two at a time. Semik was in the lead but while still unable to see through the fresh waves of pain breaking all around his mind, was wise enough to slow and allow some of his faithful Rubricae to pass ahead of him and through the door into the room from which the sound both material and immaterial was echoing.

 

It was well that he had done so, for as those unflinching automatons rounded the door and stepped, sorcerous bolters already blaring they were engulfed in a blast in unlight that made Semik step backwards involuntarily. The impossible un-matter of the Eldar weapons impacted the Thousand Sons and annihilated both them and itself in a gout of heat and radiation that did not quite muffle the sound of delirious laughter from beyond. When the shimmering explosions died away molten fragments were all that remained at the head of the stairs. Semik recovered quickly, knowing there would take only a few moments for those arcane weapons to recharge and fire another deadly volley, and willing his remaining Rubricae on. Together they crested the smouldering stairs, crushing the carbonised fragments of their comrades. Ahead Semik could see the Eldar clearly, lithe forms hefting bulky lance-like weapons with ease, taking careful aim.

 

But Semik was already among them, his mind swooping forwards ahead of the bolter fire supplied by his Rubricae. He dived headlong into the many mechanisms and machines driving the  alien weapon. He watched as it powered up, crystalline circuitry funnelling energy from the generators to the firing system. With a ghostly grin Semik flicked one of the thousands of tiny hollow fibres through which the deadly un-light was about to race.

 

Semik returned to his body in time to hear the whine of the weapon’s charge-up sequence shudder and die. For a split second there nothing happened in the middle of the continued fire from both the alien’s fellows and the ponderously charging automata under Semik’s command. Then the explosion of darkness blossomed out as the weapon ripped itself apart. Envelopes of un-light expanded rapidly, consuming the firer, still looking down at his misfiring gun.

 

When the pocket of impossible matter collapsed the blast took the rest of the Eldar from their feet, scattering them across the room. Nothing remained of the unfortunate at the epicentre of the explosion. Semik didn’t pause, three more of his Rubricae had been struck down in the charge, ripped open and destroyed by the xeno-weapons. Silently directing them to continue the advance and deal with the dazed aliens, already rising to their feet, recovering rapidly from the shattering impact.

 

Behind the line that they had formed, the line he had charged and broken, Semik could see the source of the psychic screams that he had felt so keenly from the floor below. The broken body of one of his brother sorcerers lay broken and bleeding at the feet of a leering Eldar. It’s once beautiful form twisted by aeons spent devising tortures and sufferings ever more delicate, ever more intricate, ever more excruciating. It bent low over the body of the Thousand Son, eager to prolong the pain, eager to push its super-human captive to the very limits of his endurance. Semik was not going to give it that chance.

 

He sprinted forward, his armoured boots ringing from what ever xeno-material the floor was made of. He raised his staff and brought to point of the bladed tip down like the lance of a charging knight as he barrelled towards the Eldar. It saw him and in an intricate, spiralling roll, during which it seemed to balance on nothing more than air, it dance out of the way of the oncoming blade. Semik had expected this, had long studied the eldritch abilities and crafts of the Eldar, and had fought them more than once. His other hand was already grasping the weeping hole in reality that was the first epicentre of yet another blast of sorcery.

 

It never came. His stretching arm hurled the ball of blue fire over his head and into the path of the pirouetting alien. With unerring prescience, it struk home in the centre of its torso. It erupted over the creatures body, flames licking over robes, weapons, armour and skin, but doing no harm. The momentary scream of expected pain died in its throat, to be replaced by laughter as, the flames rapidly dying, it drew a short but wickedly barbed blade and lunged for Semik, still off-balance after his headlong charge to the aid of his brother.

 

But not for nothing was Semik First Acolyte of Charn, not for nothing had he survived ten thousand years of service to the Lord of Change. His mind was his shield and his word and with a gesture he summoned a wall of force that caught the alien blade as it stabbed up towards his guts. It stuck there in mid air, held in place by the force of Semik’s will. The alien struggled, gripping the hit tightly, trying to wrench it free. Semik spun, bringing his staff round in a singing arc, the force of his mind joining with the force of his body, combining so that when the glowing blade connected with the alien’s exposed side, the black plate armour it wore, the robes that covered them, the flesh beneath, melted before ever the edge cut into anything. Power discharged rapidly through it’s body as the wide sweep disembowelled it. It screamed, in pleasure.

 

Semik clamped a hand over the high, proud, scarred forehead and with a final blast of energy turned the thing’s brain to bloody mush, which finally ended its rapturous moans as it tried to hold in its escaping entrails.

 

Letting go of the foul creature, which fell with a wet sound to the floor, Semik turned to his fallen brother. Up close he could see it was Ahmenak, a lesser Acolyte than Semik, but still one that should have known better than to let themselves fall into the hands of the Dark Eldar.

 

Ahmenak opened bleeding eyes to see Semik sanding over him. He tried to talk, tried to express his thanks, to lament the loss of his Rubricae, but that never came either. Semik inverted his staff and drove the point down clear through the breast place of his fallen brother.

 

“The Chaos Gods accept no failure, brother.” he whispered as the light died in Ahmenak’s eyelenses.

 

---

 

Elsewhere, at the blackened, blood-soaked heart of the outpost, Charn had also encountered heavier resistance. Tall, heavily armoured aliens with white helmets and heavy glaives had barred his path and cut down many of his Rubricae. He also saw Hastelath beheaded by them, the spell he was casting evaporating on his fingers as his body fell. They had fallen however, their armour still no match for the blast of enchanted bolters and sorcerous minds. There had been others too, the other scattered defenders retreating to hold the chambers of their lord and master, but Charn had cut through them too. He hand his remaining Acolytes and Rubricae had battled through corridors and up stairs carpeted with the dead, now they had battered down the final door and within Charn had found a foe worth of his power.

 

The Dark Eldar Archon was a horrific parody of life. The skin of her face had a pale, deathly quality to it, and Charn realised it had been flayed off and reattached, several times. Her tightly fitting armour was festooned with spikes and blades, from which hung many grizzly trophies; severed heads, severed limbs, even mummified organs danced fitfully as the Eldar advanced on Charn, the last of her body guard engaging his Acolytes. In each hand she held a long, delicate sabre. Power hummed from their blades and poisons dripped from their edges. Her grin was dark, malicious and cruel. She pounced at him without a word, without a sound save an ululating war cry and a whirlwind of shining steel.

 

Charn wielded his staff in both hands, its solid warp burned shaft withstanding the savage blows, though he was forced to exert will to reinforce it as more and more rained down on him. He twirled and spun his weapon, managing by sorcerous power to keep blocking her deadly dance. Every parry and deflection was absorbed by her spinning movements, turned back into another sweeping attack that Charn had again to move to block, each one a killing blow.

 

But as so many times before it was Charn’s will that prevailed. His glowing warp eyes held the gaze of the Dark Eldar, reached into the blackened and hate-filled heart of the alien. That was where it was weak; that was why its body was honed to such a perfect machine of killing. Fear. Fear of what awaited it beyond death, what lurked, hungering for it on the other side of Charn’s warp-eyes. He smiled, and his mind went on the offensive.

 

---

 

Semik rounded the arched doorway at a run, trampling the many bodies piled up underfoot. He fumed silently as the last of his Rubricae thundered along behind him. Charn had deliberately sent him that way, he was sure of it. The old fool had purposefully directed them away from where he expected his prize to wait. He had wanted him to get lost amongst the laboratories of the Dark Eldar, perhaps even wanted him to die at the hands of the Haemonculous. But his gambit had failed. He had not expected Semik to sense the duel his master was engaged in, not expected him to clear the lower levels so rapidly. The old fool.

 

Semik skidded in the archway. His brother Acolytes were battling the last of the heavily armoured guards, and Charn was a blur of movement as he and the Eldar Archon clashed again and again. Semik raised his arm, already preparing to unleash some timely intervention, perhaps he would glue the alien’s feet to the floor, perhaps… He paused…

 

---

 

Charn knew he was winning. Not because the blows of his opponent were weakening or the movements becoming sluggish, quite the reverse. The Archon, fuelled by the pain he was inflicting on her, moved ever faster, struck ever harder. Several times he had been unable to bring his staff around in time to block a blow and had had to rely on his rune encrusted shoulder guards or gauntlets to deflect or absorb the blows. None had yet penetrated his armour, but he could feel the caustic poison deposited from the flashing blades slowly corroding the reinforced places. Yet he knew he was winning.

 

He was winning because the battle being fought with blade and muscle was only a small part of the struggle. The other part, the greater part, was hidden from physical eyes. From his warp-eyes poured forth into the mind of the Eldar a stream of images, whisperings and prophecies. Charn had looked into its perverted soul and seen its fears, now he showed them to her, forcibly playing them on the inside of her skull.

 

The thirsting maw, the screaming fall, the disembodied mutilation, the final dissolution inside the very being of that thing beyond. Oh yes, there were many things that haunted the soul of the Eldar. Now Charn gave them body and voice in her head, sapping her will, tearing at her spirit, wounding her soul. Still that pain fuelled her as much as physical pain would have, still it made her faster, harder, stronger, even as her soul struggled and sputtered under the tirade of psychic torture Charn was subjecting her to. She screamed and laughed to match Charn’s stoic silent concentration. She reveled in the rage, the pain, the death all around. Charn could feel the tiny black mote of her conciousness slipping away under the torrent, feel her grasp on herself slipping, feeling that becoming a weakness as strikes became overstretched, as the dance changed beat randomly.

 

Finally even the dance stopped, the Archon, her limbs quivering dropped her blades, her fists opening and closing reflexively. She sank to her knees, giggling laughter still leaking from between her lack lips. Charn lowered his staff, his eyes still holder hers, still pouring liquid terror into her brain. He reached out a hand, placed it on her forehead. Her eyes closed, she sighed, and fell backwards, blood dribbling from ears, eyes, mouth and nose.

 

---

 

Semik watched his master dispatch the alien. Reluctantly he moved his arm, sending the charged spell streaming at the last standing Dark Eldar. It struck him, held him in place, helpless as one of the Acolytes bisected him with a sword licked by warpflame. When the spell released him, letting the body fall twitching to the floor silence finally reigned. Semik stepped forward into the room, the throne room, he now noticed. Behind the spot where Charn and the Archon had been fighting a once elegantly carved chair rested on a raised dais. Once elegant, it had been scratched, carved and stained so many times in so many ways with so many things it now looked more like an archaic instrument of torture than the seat of a leader. Semik ignored it though, and bowed to his master.

 

“My lord.” he said, “The battle is won. The last pockets of resistance are being purged by the Rubricae, and I see you have now cut the head from the serpent.” he nodded at the prone body of the archon, still bleeding freely.

 

“She is not dead yet.” said Charn, his burning warp-eyes still unclad, even though the battle was done, “And neither am I.” he added, stepping closer to Semik, to stepped back from the brightness of his master’s eyes, “Much to your disappointment I am sure.”

 

“My lord, I rushed to your aid!” Semik protested, though he slowly clenched a fist, just in case, “As soon as the lower levels were clear, I and my Rubricae came directly here, to your aid.”

”Not directly.” said Charn, his eyes still holding Semik’s, “You spared time to murder your brother.”

 

“Ahmenak was a fool, he...”

”Ahmenak was your brother. Ahmenak fought with us on Prospero. Ahmenak has been with us these ten millennia as we plied the tides and flows of the Warp seeking to understand, seeking to learn, seeking to carry on the glorious work of our legion in the name of our Masters. He knew much, he studied well, better than you Brother.”

 

Semik didn’t see the spell. Hadn’t noticed his master’s hand move. He had been held by the hypnotic gaze that contained a portal onto his own soul. The force wrapped itself around his body and squeezed. Semik screamed, fell to his knees, struggled to breath. He heard his armour crack.

 

“You still do not understand. You still see our mission as a means to some other end; power, control, mastery. But that is not our nature, or the nature of our masters. Perhaps,” he Charn added almost thoughtfully, “Another ten thousand years of watching will teach you this lesson.”

 

His hand struck out, his armoured fingers striking the centre of Semik’s helmet, a ripple of eldritch energy passed down his arm and earthed itself through Semik’s brain. It burned, he choked, gurgled, brought up mouthfuls of blood. Charn stepped back, releasing is former Acolyte from the psychic grip in which he had held him. Semik collapsed to his knees, blood coming thickly through the grill of his helmet.

 

His body boiled under his armour, flesh melted together, organs combined, atrophied and grew again in different locations. From behind his arms spears of bone erupted out, spreading and thickening before the onlooking eyes of the other Acolytes into leathery wings. His crouched legs sank back into this body, a long sinewy tail protruded from his back, horns broke through his helmet. His chest rippled and widened, rips breaking through the surface as armour and flesh combined.

 

Inside his head thoughts were dissolving, ideas, concepts, plans, all seemed to melt away in the face of bestial instinct. Semik tried to raise himself to his spasming feet, then Chan stepped forwards again. He raised his armoured boot high and brought it down sharply on Semik’s head. He doubled over and Charn stamped down again onto his back, splitting the powerpack and broadening his mutating body still further.

 

Charn mounted. Stepping up on the foot that now pinned Semik to the floor. Both feet now planet on a back that was already becoming a smooth, black surface for him to ride on. Cowed, the Semik roared and bucked, his short legs and arms leaving the floor like a quadruped. Charn stayed balanced, raised the staff high, and brought its pommel down hard on the back of Semik’s horned, blood stained head.

The last echoes of Semik were vaporised by the precise needles of psychic power Charn drove into the back of his former Acolyte’s head. With that the rebellious, ambitious Thousand Son was gone, and Charn stood resplendent on his back. Charn had not killed him, Charn wanted those eyes to see everything that would come from now onwards, everything that he could have been part of, even if there was nothing left behind those eyes to see them.

 

With a thought Charn whipped Semik into movement. The great leathery wings flapped once and mount and rider rose gently, impossibly into the air to hover at head hight above the remaining Acolytes, all of whom fell to their knees in reverence to their master, and their master’s master.

 

Returning to the ground, Charn stepped off Semik’s back, a slight expression of his will forcing the thing to fall into shuffling, four-legged step behind him as he rounded the marred throne and advanced on what was in truth the final door. The barrier behind which the real prize waited.