The idea for this story was hanging in the air for about two years. But only after I dug up some info about certain bacteriological weapon experiments in real history, followed by re-reading the bit of fluff about Nurgle and Isha in the Chaos Daemons codex, the pieces of the puzzle came together with a loud click.
What I put up at this moment is about 1/2 of what I had planned. The ending is already written, but I need to fill in the Khorne characters POV chapters, and before that, I’d like to take a break. Because, you know, it calls for a certain mood.
Besides, it’s always better to put up a shorter text first. It makes the chance of someone taking the time to read it a bit bigger.
Oh, and while technically it’s more of a Nurgle (and eldar) themed story, it’s also linked to my older World Eaters story, which you can read here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/455655.page
I would welcome a bit of proofreading before I finalize it (although I’m pretty sure it’s quite clean), and I would certainly be grateful for any additional info for eldar tech I mention in the story – all those crystals and haemonculus mumbo-jumbo. I don’t have the latest eldar BL books on my hands so I may be contradicting the canon here.
Happy reading, and remember, no living eldar were hurt in any way during the writing of this/
Or so I hope.
LIKE GRANDFATHER, LIKE GRANDSON
By Dmitry Rommel, 2012
Prologue
Jareth Garre took a long draw off his lho stick and brought the lit end to the dead xeno’s forehead, tracing it over the ivory skin to mark his trophy with the eight-edged mark of the Blood God.
“Khorne, Lord of Battle, give me the strength to slaughter for Your glory. Khorne, Lord of Murder, guide my hand so I deliver more skulls to Your brass throne.”
As the artillery roared in blind fury, spitting Earthshaker rounds at the doomed city, more of frail xeno buildings collapsed in clouds of dust. Jareth smiled, knowing that the explosions bury the weak and unworthy alive, sparing his men the honorless duty of gunning them down. Thus far, his boys only got the prime cuts of white xeno meat. That which fought back.
“Khorne, Lord of Hunger, allow me no saturation before I slay the last enemy in today’s battle. Khorne, Lord of Thirst, keep my throat dry so each drop of my prey’s blood is sweet and welcome.”
A bloated, glossy-bottomed fly landed on the dead eldar’s cheek with a loud buzz, making Jareth instinctively pull his hand back and thus ruin the drawing. He cursed, reaching to press the burning ash into the nasty insect for that, but it took off with alarming speed only to land on Garre’s hand instead.
Jareth hissed, feeling the tiny black sting piercing his skin.
It did hurt.
1.
- I am not yours!
He felt their gaze, now stronger than ever. Even the very thought of closing his sore, strain-tormented eyes promised the return of the vision that’s been haunting him for centuries. Piercing the void of space and the thickness of wraithbone walls, it followed him everywhere, mocking his efforts, denying him of what little sanity he still had.
“You are.”
A more superstitious creature in his place would have considered that the gods’ will, for his sins were many.
But he knew the gods were dead.
“Far worse than dead. Far worse.”
A momentary weakness, an attempt of brief relaxation immediately backfired at him. Trapped, being unable to turn away, he had to stare at the myriad bodies making one of many walls in Her palace. Rubbing against each other in pain and desire, they were held in place by hooked metal and glistening pink flesh. Swift, predatory figures crawled up and down the living wall, their pauses immediately followed by loud cries of what could be both agony and ecstasy. Each and every creature was staring at him as the blood and ooze ran down their elegant claws and sleek, barbed tentacles. The gaze of matt black, soulless eyes on lustful faces was what almost made him cry out in terror. Only through extreme concentration was he able to suppress it.
Because, after all, crying out in terror was the exclusive privilege of his own victims.
“Before the sun sets, your soul will fall to fear. And then you will die. To meet Her.”
He shook his head.
- No. I won’t.
Visions or not, Avellath Rodas, a rogue haemonculus possessing the power to purge whole worlds clean of life, was not going to die here today.
2.
The grotesque rushed against the mon-keigh, ignoring crude autogun bullets tearing its flesh apart. Avellath could not tell the details through the blurry picture provided by the monitoring crystal, but the size of jagged holes in the construct’s back made it clear the enemies were using modified ammunition. Carving eight-pointed stars on the bullets served more than only ritual purpose. While being extremely bad at piercing armor, such projectiles parted upon hitting living flesh, sprouting out deadly lead petals, causing tremendous damage and literally gutting the victims.
Nevertheless, the stopping power of such bullets was not enough to halt the raging construct. It crashed into the firing mon-keigh, ripping them apart one after one. Three surviving facility guards, dressed in a combination of craftworld-produced wraithbone, kabalite armor and colorful corsair velvet, took the opportunity and attempted a counterattack, their shuriken rifles mowing remaining mon-keigh down. Part of Avellakh was amused to see the guards finally working in symphony with the grotesques. Usually, they regarded his flesh constructs as somewhat nearly as abominable as the works of the Great Enemy.
The success, however, was short-lived. A massive figure clad in bulky armor charged at the grotesque, paying no heed to crushing the dying under massive boots. While even the Astartes strain logically stood no chance in battling the flesh construct one on one, this renegade well compensated for the frailty of his non-augmented underlings. Managing to evade the barbed claws, he severed the grotesque’s arm with a well-placed swing, and then, outflanking his opponent, simply rammed his chainsword into the creature’s spinal power node. The guards ran, but didn’t make it. Their blood painted the wraithbone walls deep crimson.
Things did look pretty grim at this point. Switching attention to other monitoring crystals, Avellath could see only the scenes of ruin and defeat. His flesh constructs, hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, falling one by one. The guards either fleeing or fighting cornered, perishing regardless of their actions. The mon-keigh advancing through the wraithbone corridors, crushing what they could not burn and toppling what they could not crush. Even the laboratories’ and test subject pens’ security was compromised. Avellath took a few extra moments, watching the invaders enter the rooms where main experiments were carried out. The squad leader, gesturing his men to stand down, took a few steps forward, eyeing rows of metal racks, upon which the dissected test subjects were crucified. Realizing all of these males and females were still alive, he spat on the floor and barked a command, letting the flamethrowers put an end to months of Avellath’s hard work.
The haemonculus could not read the expression of the ugly face shadowed by a blood-soaked field cap. This act sparked his curiosity. Was the Enemy’s toy soldier driven by disgust, desire to purge a source of potential threat, or, most unlikely, pity? Probably not. Most likely, it was envy. Each and every of these primitives thrived on war. Murder, rape and torture were both their leisure and daily labor. What they saw here was simply a step beyond their limited imagination and lack of purpose.
Besides, they were already dead. Entering the virus laboratory without proper equipment signed their one-way rides to the Warp, and Avellath could bet one who meets them there won’t be pleased to know their last deed in life was an act of pity, willing or not.
Stepping back, Avellath folded his many limbs in perfect symmetry. His multi-faceted eye implants projected the monitoring crystals’ feed into his mind, shaping a clear picture of events.
This facility was lost. A calculated and expected outcome. There was no way to win this battle with the forces Avellath had at his disposal. Yet he was going to win it. On his own.
At the price of wiping organic life from the face of this world.
“This won’t work. Won’t help you. You are ours.”
It was the most acceptable price for cheating death.
“Ours.”
Cheating the afterlife.
“Ours.”
- Never.
3.
…Avellath recalled nothing of his meaningless, non-productive youth back in Commoragh. He was truly born only under the surgeon’s scalpel, soon after the Coven considered him possessing the skills required for apprenticeship. At best, he was going to become a wrack, a miserable yet sadistic creature doomed to stay forever at his master’s heel. More likely, he was going to end as another pile of flayed skin and dissected organs, the paint for his superiors’ canvas.
Instead, he became a full-fledged haemonculus. An architect of flesh. An artist of pain. The universe feared the dark eldar, and the dark eldar feared only their haemonculi.
Yet, while the Coven approved of his skill and dedication, they had little appreciation for the field of expertise the young haemonculus has chosen as his own. Instead of concentrating on perfecting poisons and artificial diseases used for torture and assassination, he took a closer look upon the nature of contagion as a whole. His fascination with unseen creatures that corrupted and devoured living flesh grew with every new test subject passing away after weeks of agony born out of a single cut or injection. But what soon took shape as his grand dream was mastering the power of virus and bacteria on a far bigger scale. Advocated by Avellath as the ultimate weapon of terror, it drew the attention of a certain archon, but the flow of investments and slaves ended once his benefactor was overthrown by the ambitious kinsmen. Facing the perspective of ending crucified on a metal frame himself, Avellath fled the Black City.
His laboratories left behind, his test subjects put down, his records wiped out, the rogue haemonculus cared not for the loss, as his own augmented mind served him better than any archives. Being able to recall everything he learned over centuries, from the rarest chemical formulas to the pattern of wrinkles of archite Sagriss’ left sole (she didn’t need to know what happened to her natural leg anyway after the ever-helpful haemonculus replaced it with a top quality artificial limb, following a very unfortunate meeting with a mon-keigh landmine), he never trusted his research to anything but his own memory.
The fortune smiled upon Avellath soon enough. He got in touch with Ashas Kass’
ini, a self-styled corsair king, exiled and cursed by his native craftworld of Biel-Tan. Ashas’ infamy came from his skill at playing against the rules, the history of making unholy alliances with the enemies of his enemies, and a habit of choosing easy targets over important ones. His cynical bravado served him well as he was yet to suffer a single defeat, preying upon the weak, making the Imperial colossus bleed from myriad small cuts. In the long run, however, Ashas’ game of terror was well-thought as he was driving the mon-keigh away from maiden worlds, allowing his kin to establish their presence at the promised sacred ground. Such end obviously justified any means, and a haemonculus possessing knowledge about creating weapons of mass mon-keigh destruction came in handy, even if some of Ashas’ henchmen considered this stepping a bit too far.
Following a demonstration of his powers against a mon-keigh feudal world (an impressive death toll of seventeen millions within a single week), Avellath was given enough resources to continue his research. A mon-keigh unlucky enough to fall into Kass’
ini corsairs’ hands alive now faced a more gruesome fate than being flayed and left hanging as a warning to his primitive kin. He now was destined to end in one of Avellath’s research camps hidden at the maiden world of Laliath, known to the rest of its eldar inhabitants as harmless facilities related to, as Ashas stated, "epidemic prevention and water purification". Elegant wraithbone structures and blossoming tropical trees there witnessed atrocities beyond scope and measure, but with Ashas’ approval, Avellath was not going to hold back.
It all came to an end as Her older brother, the Hungerer, set his burning eyes upon Laliath. There was no hope of winning this battle, not even of holding long enough for Ashas’ fleet to return. But Avellath had a plan of both surviving and carrying out his most important experiment. Long before the invasion, he ordered to set up a number of massive biochemical weapon caches at the world’s aerial vortex pinnacles. At the same time, he finally perfected his complex internal purification system that he had implanted into his body, intertwining its billion tiny pipes and wires with his own bloodstream and neural nodes.
Now, with a few control crystals touched, Avellath was able to make the whole of Laliath share the fate of his test subjects. And while the haemonculus’ personal shelter was supposed to withstand any level of contamination, his purification implants served as the ultimate backup system, assuring the creator’s body would never fall to his deadly creation.
Al he had to do now is to wait until major eldar settlements on this world drown in flame and blood at the mercy of mon-keigh invaders, and only then let his weapon loose. Avellath was not going to be held responsible for genocide of eldar colonists when Ashas comes back. Instead, he expected his benefactor to give him a hero’s welcome for cleansing a world that was doomed anyway.
The plan was clean, simple and involving a lot of dead mon-keigh. Just as Ashas liked it.
What Ashas did not need to know was that Avellath’s overseer and warden, appointed personally by the corsair king, was taken care of.
- I am not letting you do this.
Nielleh entered the room silently, making even Avellath pause before turning to her. That was unexpected. Injecting his warden with a drug that promised a long trip to the dreamlands, he bargained for enough time to finish with what he was going to do. Yet she was standing before him, conscious and determined to interfere.
Placing all his six palms upon the control crystals and pressing gently, Avellath sighed.
- Too late. It’s already done.
(to be continued)
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