Xenos Horrificus Ch. 1 - Den of Wraiths

(Nine Years After Au'Taal)

The Kabal of the Wraithkind, exiles of Commorragh in all but name, have endured a painful transition. No longer able to reside in the Webway, the disgraced Archon Tilensic D'raque has been forced to carve out a new realm in the wilderness of Realspace. Despite this increased vulnerability the Kabal has made three entire sectors of Imperial Space their exclusive hunting grounds.

Their initial culling had obliterated the Merchant Fleets of over 180 planets, destroying five sector-economies, triggering society-destroying famines on two Hive Worlds, and indirectly causing Imperial defeats in seven different warzones for lack of critical supplies. All counted the Kabal had cost 12 billion human lives in two years. Clearly the Imperium was being made to suffer for D'raque's mistake of opposing Asdrubael Vect.

Deprived of the ability to escape into the Webway, the Kabal instead operates from carefully concealed bases in remote systems. One such installation was the Haven Spire Vanishing Scream , an Eldar space station orbiting the depopulated Frontier World of Cyka Valah. The pirate fleet typically docked there was currently terrorizing the Doltine Sub-Sector, but the Dark Eldar felt no vulnerability from their absence. The Imperial Navy posed no threat to them.

The Kabal suffered for its hubris when torpedoes struck the solar sails that powered the Vanishing Scream's defense guns. However this was not the Imperium seeking righteous vengeance. It was impossible for their ships to get withing striking distance undetected. This attack was being carried out by a most unexpected enemy. The Eldar of Craftworld Iyanden.
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"Prepare yourselves children, the raid begins shortly", warned Warlock Thulltey.

He was addressing the thirty Aspect Warriors in meditation with him inside an Eldar transport moving towards the Vanishing Scream . The journey had been long and discipline had demanded they suppressed their violent urges until it was time for war. Now with their Warlock's blessings, the killing instincts within them awoke like the hunger of a hibernating predator.

Of the thirty, it was Darsk and Indala whose blood boiled most with warrior passion. As a Fire Dragon Darsk reveled in the fire and destruction of war like no other Aspect. Indala however had a greater stake in this raid than all of them. It was quickly driving the young Howling Banshee towards obsession.

"The station's weapons are disabled", announced Thulltey while he communed with the ship's spirits. His trance was brief, the business of war was at hand. "Do not forget your roles children. Prince Yriel is the spear that will pierce the heart of our enemy. We must impede the enemy until the space dock is secure. Then it will be the wraithguards who push on our foes. Glory goes to the dead!"

"Glory to the dead!!!" chanted the gathered warriors.

As if on cue, the ship shook from impact with the Dark Eldar space station. Ramming a boarding ship into the enemy was a tactic of the Mon-Keigh, the ignorant humans and savage Orks, instead the Eldar fused the wraithbone of their delicate ships into the targets hull. A door was always preferable to a hull breach.

The first to cross the threshold was Darsk. His fusion gun would be most effective in this close quarters environment. The station corridor was free of enemies for now, but the sounds of fighting elsewhere already echoed across the station.

Behind Darsk came the rest of the boarding party who swiftly moved down the corridor towards a major junction. Indala took point with her sister Banshees from here on. Their psychic screams cracking the wraithbone walls as they sprinted past. First kill would belong to them as a lone Kabalite Warrior was foolish enough to investigate the sound of death.

The boarding party faced minimal resistance until they reached the junction point. Dozens of Kabalite Warriors rushed through here every minute to join the fight at the space dock. If the beachhead was to be established quickly, this bottleneck had to be denied to enemy reinforcements.

Indala and the other Banshees charged forward into the splinter rifles of waiting Kabalite Warriors. Their ghastly howls demoralized the Dark Eldar until they were among them. Eleven Dark Eldar fell at the cost of only one Banshee. The junction had nearly been secured by themselves until a party of graceful Wyches jumped into the fray.

The two warrior sisterhoods, equaled in speed and dexterity, entered a death struggle the way only perfect rivals could. It was as brutal as it was quick. Arterial blood of both races sprayed across the walls as the warrioresses canceled each other out. By the time Darsk had ended the clash with fire, Indala was the only Banshee still alive while the last Wych retreated.

With the junction taken, an uncomfortable stalemate settles in. The boarding party was quickly surrounded, but any approaching enemies were incinerated by Darsk's fusion gun. He could not cover all three corridors of the Y-Shaped junction at once, so the Dark Eldar risked simultaneous pushes that the other Aspect Warriors had to block. When these attacks were thrown back the Dark Eldar spitefully responded with splinter fire safely out of range of Darsk's flames. The Eldar defenders were then obligated to respond with their own long-range shuriken weapons until both sides felt they have sustained too many losses and the Dark Eldar risk another push.

Push, Fire, Splinter, and Shuriken. It was a pattern of attrition trying to outlast the invisible clock that was the battle for the space dock. The tiresome ordeal is ended with the chorus of screams and wild panic.

Prince Yriel had finally seized the docks, but the surviving Dark Eldar he routed were making a desperate suicide charge on the junction as their last chance for survival. Despite suffering multiple wounds throughout the fighting, Darsk stoically stands in the face of the Dark Eldar stampede and vaporizes the fiends with burning plasma fire.

Kicking up the ashes of the cremated enemy were the wraithguard reinforcements finally coming to relieve the boarding party. The procession of the dead came three by three down each corridor in a march unfazed by the splinter rounds and haywire grenades used by the retreating Kabalite Warriors. Those masters of pain and poison could do nothing to harm the unfeeling wraithbone constructs.

After what seemed like hundreds of Wraithguard passing by, the tail of the march came in the form of the Spiritseers. Those Eldar psykers who summon, guide, and praise the souls of the dead who inhabit the Wraithguard. Without exception, the Spiritseers cried as they sang incantations that directed the Wraithguards. In Eldar culture it was an act of supreme selfishness to disturb the souls of the dead from their eternal rest within the Infinity Circuit so that they may serve the living, but it was a sin the Eldar of Iyanden would need to bear for generations to come if they were to survive.

Finally, behind the Spiritseers came the healers who immediately went about treating the wounded. Less than half of the boarding party had survived to receive their help, but those that did suffered in silence with the pain inducing toxins infused in every splinter round embedded in their body. Only Warlock Thulltey refused their treatment.

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Fighting remained intense throughout the station, but by now it was mercifully far away from the space dock where the Aspect Warriors rested. Other boarding parties had been tasked with missions of their own, and suffered similar casualties as Warlock Thulltey's. Sixty-eight spirit stones were carefully collected from the fallen whose warrior souls would know a short peace before being called to war again for the next inevitable conflict as Wraithguards.

The survivors were once again led into meditation by the Warlocks so that their bloodlust could slowly recede from their minds. As the fighting quieted to a distant rumble and their minds were at the verge of calm there was a violent transition felt by all. The entire space station went dark from a sudden power drain, and for a moment reality itself felt slightly out of phase with the people on-board. This sensation was very familiar to the Iyanden invaders. The Dark Eldar had used the station's reserve power to enter the Webway, but to what end, none could guess.

Moments after entering the Webway, the mad cackling of a thousand disembodied voices reverberated across the Vanishing Scream as if coming from nowhere and everywhere. This chorus of mocking laughter was soon accompanied by the bloodcurdling screams of a dozen Spiritseers. As the cacophony reached its deafening apex, the source was revealed.

Grey phantoms, in the vague silhouette of an Eldar, were phasing through the walls to kill the invaders. The creatures seemed to bleed in and out of the darkness to appear behind an Aspect Warrior and impale them with hands morphed into blades. Those warriors who fought back were horrified to find their own blades and shuriken passed through the creatures as if through air. None had dared believe that the Kabal of the Wraithkind was actually made of true Wraiths!

Panic reigned supreme at the space dock as the Eldar of Iyanden were being surrounded by an enemy that could not be killed. The mad cackling of the Wraiths had become so pervasive as to invade the mind and banish what little sense remained in any of them. A massacre would have been unavoidable had Warlock Thulltey not silenced the madness with the crack of lightning.

"Light!", declared Thulltey as his entire body radiated with psychic electricity. "Light and Soul shall slay these wretches!"

With his declaration bolts of lightning shot out of his fingertips to vaporize a dozen Wraiths around him. Their deathscreams served to lessen the hold the mad laughter had over the minds of the Aspect Warriors.

Following Thulltey's lead, the other Warlocks began killing the wraiths with psychic fire or with swords crackling with their psychic energy. Enough damage had been done to the illusion of the Wraiths invulnerability that the Aspect Warriors finally understood how to fight them. An immaterial enemy had to be slain with immaterial forces: electricity, fire, sound, and light.

Indala and the other surviving Howling Banshees formed a protective ring around the critically wounded, and kept the Wraiths at bay with their psychic screams. Darsk could not contain his laughter as he chased the shadow creatures with plasma fire and burning light. The screams he heard as the Wraiths died in his fire were like music, and his own laughter was disturbingly similar to the earlier cackling of the Wraiths.

Now rebounding from the initial shock of the ambush, the Eldar regained the initiative and threw back the Kabal's suprise attack all across the Vanishing Scream . When the fighting was over, the space station had been virtually destroyed from the inside out. After towing the derelict installation out of the Webway Portal, the interrogation of the surviving Dark Eldar could begin.

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"You have stolen from us!", accused Prince Yriel. "Your Kabal intervened only to steal what was in the inner sanctum of Iyanden! We will not allow this crime to go unpunished!"

"We have stolen nothing!" declared the Dark Eldar prisoner now returned to a physical form after leaving the Webway.

"Do you take me for a fool!?" hissed Prince Yriel.

"Yes!!!" screamed the prisoner. His laughter was quickly replaced with excited screams as the torture resumed.

"Sire, this wretch will not speak for some time. The torture will need to procede for several more days." suggested Thulltey has he electrocuted the prisoner with a controlled stream of psychic electricity.

"No. That will take too long", Yriel said dismissively, "Stop the torture, and fetch the healers."

With some reluctance the Eldar did as their lord commanded and gave undeserved mercies to their depraved and malevolent cousins. All the Dark Eldar prisoners received medical attention and were gathered at the space dock as Yriel ordered. Many feared their lord was ready to stoop to bribing the Dark Eldar as it was, historically, a more productive means of extracting information than torture from their sadomasochistic cousins.

"I have an offer for you my wayward cousins.", announced Prince Yriel to the gathered prisoners. "If any of your number can slay me with my own weapon, then they will be rewarded with their lives and my flagship!"

The prisoners and Iyanden Eldar were both equally gasped by this offer. Even more so when Yriel rammed the shaft of the Spear of Twilight into the floor for them to wield it. He was being sincere with his offer!

"My lord this is outrageous!" protested Thulltey.

"Silence!" commanded Prince Yriel. His tone was deathly serious and none of the other Warlocks were brave enough to voice any further dissent.

The Dark Eldar prisoners spoke among themselves in hushed whispers before choosing a champion to face Prince Yriel. The handsome warrior that stepped forward must have been an ambitious Sybarite, or perhaps even the unaccounted for Dracon in command of the space station who had hidden himself until this unexpected opportunity presented itself. Only a Dark Eldar of some rank could obtain the number of slaves necessary to look as beautiful as it did.

Prince Yriel's opponent swaggered to the Spear of Twilight with a confidence undeserving of a prisoner of war and inspected the weapon for any signs of a deception. The Spear of Twilight was product of perfect craftsmanship from a Golden Age passed on eons ago. The spear tip was forged of shining silver with the most elaborate Runes from a lost Eldar dialect etched in gold on the blade. It was clear to the Dark Eldar warrior that the weapon channeled great energies through it even before he touched it. After a final moments hesitation, when his pernicious mind went through every possibility why Prince Yriel was doing this, the Dark Eldar took hold of the Spear.

The scream the warrior let out was a rare kind of scream even for the Dark Eldar prisoners who had reveled in the screams of countless tortured slaves and rivals in their long and evil lives. His hand had turn bony and shriveled with age the very instant it had touched the Spear of Twilight, but for some reason he did not let go. Perhaps his hand muscles had simply deteriorated to the point he could not let go, but for whatever reason the Dark Eldar warrior could only scream in abject horror as this toxic effect went up his arm to affect the rest of his body.

The centuries the Dark Eldar had lived on the borrowed time of countless tortured victims suddenly took hold of his body, as if making up for all aches and ills denied. With shocking speed the Dark Eldar's beautiful alabaster skin had the look of aged, yellowed, crumbled, paper. Clearly he had only moments left to live before being aged to dust.

"The Spear of Twilight!",started Prince Yriel in the nostalgic tone of his arrogant youth, "Also known as The Cursed Blade of the House of Ulthanash is a weapon that holds the baleful energies of a dying sun, but demands the slow and painful consumption of its wielder's soul as fair payment! Tell me, can the withered, rotten soul that inhabits your perfect porcelain body satisfy the hunger of my bloodline's greatest and most terrible treasure!?"  

"TAKE IT BACK!!! TAKE IT BACK!!!!!!" begged the suffering Dark Eldar challenger.

"If you tell me the location of your accursed Archon and the treasure he has stole from Iyanden.

"ULDALTRIA!!! THEY BOTH RESIDE AT THE MAIDEN WORLD ULDALTRIA!!!" the challenger confessed immediately.            

When Prince Yriel took back the spear from the Dark Eldar, he had degenerated to appear on the outside what he was on the inside. A bony, desiccated, and wrinkled wretch of a creature long past its worthiness of life. Yriel left it there gasping for air as he walked away. The triumphant smile Yriel had moments before vanished as he once again accepted the enormous burden that was the Spear of Twilight.

"Kill the rest" Yriel ordered Thulltey before contemplating how he would attack the Maiden World of Uldatria. He paid no mind to the screams of his enemies after that.