Fire Warrior

VI

16.12 HRS (SYS. LOCAL — DOLUMAR IV, Ultima Seg. #4356/E)

The man in the dark place faced his captives and wet his lips. One of them moaned quietly, chains clinking in the gloom. The man took a deep breath, allowing a predatory smile to spread across his face, and began.

“Now be quiet and pay attention, please. I won’t repeat myself and, let’s be clear about this, one way or another you will listen to me. We can do this the easy way or... the other way. The choice is yours, gentlemen.

“Admiral? Do stop struggling. You’ll miss the good parts.

“Now Where to begin? This is a story, I suppose, so one rather feels the need for a ‘Grand Opening’...”

The man stroked at his immaculately sculpted beard thoughtfully. “People,” he said, with something akin to disgust in his voice, “have skewed views on what makes a story. They forget that everything we do, every day, every second of our small little lives, is part of a story’s middle; its guts, if you like. You’re born, you do things, you die. Where’s the begi

“Oh, for warp’s sake — Aun! If you don’t stop fiddling with those chains I’ll have your hands removed. You’re putting me off.”

He shook his head, exasperated, and began again.

There was a begi

There was a begi

“There was a begi

“Of course your species, Aun, back then, was lurking in a puddle of primordial ooze. Perhaps... Perhaps things would have gone better for you if you’d stayed there.

“But, listen. There’s another begi

There was an army. A Chaos army—”

The admiral began to thrash and groan, voice muffled behind the gag in his mouth. His face was twisted with revulsion and terror. Severus fixed him with a stare and shook his head.

“Come now, Constantine. You shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Closing your mind is the first step to mundanity, and we can’t have that, can we?

“Now this warhost... This tide of black death, this... this Chaos Undivided... It dragged a net of nightmares across the sector. It toppled a dozen systems, murdered a hundred planets. It spread the Dark Word throughout the Segmentum and doused a hundred cities in blood and plague and stink. It knocked down temples, laughed at the sanctity of Imperial shrines, built statues out of bone and pieces of meat... How does the ancient hymn go? “Mere Anarchy is loosed upon the world.” Yes, that’s it. Then it reached Dolumar IV.

“Imagine the sight! Black clouds on every horizon! A million shrieking daemon things filling the skies. Drums! Oh, the drums! There were humans, even here. Some forgotten colony, lost since the Age of Apostasy or before, it doesn’t matter. They lasted all of five minutes.

“The warhost ordered their slaves to begin the excavation of a great pit; a Temple Abyss to collect and focus the energies of their Dark Lords. This pit, in fact. Oh yes: it’s still here, all these mille

He spread wide his arms and gloried in the cool darkness of the vast pit, sunlight little more than a distant memory at the top of the shaft.

“To cut a long story short,” he smiled, locking eyes with the deadpan ethereal, “they summoned a daemon. Its name — oh, admiral, shut up!—its name was Tarkh’ax. Beneath the daemonlord’s dominion the warhost went on to greater obscenities, greater carnage, greater Chaos. Nothing could stand against them, and anyone idiotic enough to try was crushed underfoot.

“What’s all this got to do with us? That’s what you’re wondering. Oh, don’t worry, Aun: all will become clear.

“Here’s the thing. Just when Tarkh’ax was at the height of his power, when all the filth of the galaxy was drawn to his ba

“Oh, don’t ask me how or why. Maybe some broad-minded Imperium fop decided that consorting with aliens has benefits over total a

“It turns out — and it took me three years of borrowing xenolinguitor servitors to unravel this — that the eldar established quickly that their hopes of a

“The cartouche they left behind them explains it all, though deciphering its mysteries has cost me much of my life and my fortune. They opened up a sealed pocket of warp-space... part of a ‘webway’, the text says. We can’t even begin to fathom its workings but... I like to think of it as a cage, outside of space and time, cut off even from the warp. They closed off all the exits, detached it from their network of warp tu

“The mightiest of their warlocks, commanded by the Farseer Jur Telissa, constructed a ‘songweave’—like a psychic melody, holding it together, stitching the prison closed piece by piece. Out on the plains Tarkh’ax was moments from crushing their forces when the spell was finished and... Hh...A-and every last unit, every daemon and Marine, every warp thing and every warrior in that glorious army — disappeared. The pe

“The effort killed almost all the eldar warlocks. Small comfort.”

His lip curled, the unquenchable agonies of his master wracking through his body, filling him with despair.

“Imagine,” he hissed, the sensation too much to bear, “being sealed away for three thousand years, unable to move or think or feel. Cut off from the rage and the power of your gods. Separated by impossible energies from the howling, insane fury of your daemonlord. His cage was — is—the strongest of all.

“It took me three years to discern what those meddling, arrogant xenogen warlocks had done. It has taken me sixteen to work out how to undo it — but I’m close. Oh, terror’s-face, so close! All but one of the prisons are sundered. The army is released. Praise be the Ruinous Ones! Oh, stories can get away with not having a real begi