A War of Words and Worlds: The Fall of Harlech VI

The mirage unfurled a thousand ways in a thousand minds, each instance a uniquely tailored vision of perfection and horror. Some saw it in a flash, keeping pace with their memories that ran backwards through time. Some saw it as an eons-long struggle as, in a second that lasted eternity, the other world rent and tore through the boundaries of reality to send its sons forth among the living. Others still saw nothing, blinded by the impossibility their eyes would not permit them to see, and simply felt the fabrics that held them in one place and time split apart, casting them far and wide, atom by atom, through everywhere and forever.

In the eye of the storm, there was a serenity, for only the willing remained, and as the Others seeped into their souls, melding their darkest fears and brightest dreams into a form made manifest. Bliss and agony were one, fear and hope combined to give life to their new realities. The whispered prayers in dark corners of unquiet minds were answered at last, and it was glorious, terrifying. It took mere moments for anything left of their humanity to slough away into the ether, exchanged, soul for soul, for something greater.

And then it was over, and the tide burst forth.

For those few that remained, hell was come. Night and day were replaced by an endless bright darkness, for the Others needed no sun to warm their bones, nor dark to hide their pain. Air boiled and water burned, and no consequence or possibility dared to halt it. What power man had against such a power was lost in seconds, and now it was man who hid, cowering in their holy places with holy words, hoping beyond hope that they might be absolved before the end.


***

The corporeal form blurred around Ethan’s blade as he thrust through, and then reformed in the corner of his eye, a leering face mocking him, inviting him to surrender. He spat a blasphemy that burned his throat, for the unholy had more power here that he dared note. He retched, wiped his mouth of bile, and stood again, and now the face was in front, barely inches away. He lunged again, powered blade flickering, and the face was his wife’s, mouth frozen in mid cry, and his son’s, tears flowing red down his too young cheeks.

“No!” Ethan cried out to the nothingness as the body slid away, slumping to the ground. He shook his head; it could not be them. They were dead a lifetime ago, and he had cut them down a hundred times since. “I am the Emperor’s,” he recited to himself as he stabbed down at the corpse, “and he shall show me truth.” The crumpled form shifted, became a seething burning pool of blood, and he discharged a fiery ball of plasma into it, scattering it to the winds. He stepped back inside the great door of the Temple to His Glory, and surveyed the phantasmagoria.

Away to the left, or maybe the right, a huge form became solid and bowled through the makeshift barricade, before dissipating into a dozen smaller beings that surged through the breach. Elian, the last of the temple’s Preachers, bolstered the discombobulated Guardsmen with his holy words, cutting through whatever visions they were seeing, and a fusillade of lasgun fire and promethium drove the Demons back. It would not last, but as long as Elian’s oratory burned in their hearts and minds, the Enemy could come no closer, such was the Emperor’s Mercy.

Ethan added his own pistol’s fire to the barrage and stepped once more over the threshold and into hell. Instantly, his sight clouded, and he was in a better place, surrounded by those he had loved and who had loved him, and they surged towards him in a great wave, arms outstretched-
“And it is in His name that we smite the unbeliever!” Elian’s words were enough to shatter the dream, and Ethan saw the unreality for what it was. A horde of bodies with too many heads stepped forward from a red mist towards him, and he opened up with the pistol, heedless of the heat. He raised his own voice in prayer, for he too knew all of Elian’s recitations by now, and the force of the words was enough to lend a purity to his deeds enough even to harm the Demonic forms.

The pistol hissed, its charge and fury spent, and he thumbed the activation rune of his sabre, an ancient weapon that had seen too many years of bloodshed. He swiped in an arc that opened a dozen wounds in the creatures, which spilt out ichor and maggots and fire. Undeterred, he swung again, severing heads and limbs even as they reached out to consume him.

“We are His, and He is ours, and in that bond we place our faith,” he chanted in time with the Preacher, and the forms shattered at the touch of his blade. He stepped back towards the lines of Guardsmen, not realising until now that he had become so distant. It was as if the very earth moved under his feet, and it did, even as he watched, carrying him back to his men. They cheered as he stepped over the palisade and rejoined their ranks.

Ethan inserted a new charge into his pistol’s magazine and felt the power hum in his hands. It was reassuringly solid and vibrant, a constant companion and anchor for his reality. With these weapons he was the tip of the Emperor’s Sword, and in his Faith was a shield. He pulled a sergeant away from the firing line and shouted to be heard.

“How long can we hold them?” was all he asked, the sergeant shrugged.

“Don’t know, sir. How long have we held them so far?”

“No idea.” Ethan paused for a moment. “I see the problem.”

“Exactly, sir. What good’s me saying an hour when that could be longer than a day right now? We’ll hold ‘em as long as there’s prayers to pray and shots to fire, though. Can’t do better than that.”

“No, you can’t. Go to it, then, and stray no further from the walls. They’re weaker here.” Ethan dismissed the sergeant and leapt back into the thin line. His fired time and time again into the oncoming hordes of men and creatures and things that were both or neither, and on each one saw the face of a friend passed on. Their tricks were growing in power like waves against a cliff face, and each time they came a little more truth was in their guise.

After some time, although none could say how much, a voice, his sergeant’s, echoed back from the shifting mass, resonating above and below and all around. “We’ll hold ‘em as long as there’s prayers to pray.” A chittering laughter that was more than sound rose up from the horde, piercing the ears and stabbing at his eyes with a million pricks of light. Too late, Ethan understood.

The Guardsmen had gone quiet. No voice had raised itself in song or prayer, and no voice led them. Elian was silent for the first time, and now Ethan saw him, lifted above the demonic horde like a cruel banner, splayed on spears of blood and burning with blue red green white fire. There was no prayer left.

“Back!” Ethan called, “Into the temple! Back!”

The Guardsmen turned as the demon surged forward in a wave that was as much one creature as many, and too few made it over the threshold of the great oakwood door. The demons recoiled as their throng hit the porch, repelled by the holy wood and mortar, but Ethan knew it would not hold them long. He saw bodies of friends, some long dead and others freshly slain, being dragged into the mass of energy and blood and fire, and knew that with every death his force grew weaker, and the Enemy stronger.

***

Ethan stole a precious second to glance at his chronometer, and then regretted it; the hands were running backwards and the ticking was an off-beat rhythm that mirrored his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. He threw the watch down and barely felt the loss as the centuries-old face cracked on the mosaic floor.

He darted to the window and unleashed a hail of lasgun fire into the roiling mass of faces and arms and legs and maws all in the wrong order, before ducking on instinct as a stream of molten fire burst through the arch, melting what was left of the stained glass. One beading drop fell against his arm, but he gritted his teeth and jumped up again to fire. The Demons were closer now that before, he was sure of it. It was a matter of time, and time itself was in the hands of the Enemy now.

He turned back to the room and briefly counted those left. Thirteen Guardsmen remained, the unlucky few, firing from the windows and each bleeding from a score of wounds. Huddled near the altar under the wings of the Holy Aquila the last of their families sat quivering, boys to young and men too old to fight, and their wives and mothers holding them tight. But what was there left to do? He called the elder of the group over.

“I want every soul among them as can hold a lasgun at the windows and firing!” Ethan yelled over the boom of some hellish artillery in the distance, faintly aware of the whine as its deadly payload came closer. “If they’ve got arms and a trigger finger I want them fighting.”

The old man just nodded, and rushed back to the group, explaining the orders with a grey face that had seen too many good men die, and was commanding more to the same fate. Ethan shed a single tear as he watched the group decide how they would make an end. Some, the older boys and younger men, leapt to their feet and scrabbled for rifles faster than he thought was right, some were prised away from loving arms, and some simply stood, already limp as corpses, and wandered wearily to their posts, resigning all but faith.

He struggled with the words of Elian’s favourite hymn, the song of his homeworld, and as he stood again to fire his voice burst, almost without trying, into loud, deep song. The words seemed to rise up and fill the hall, and somewhere inside him, he felt a greater purpose, and a stronger faith than he knew he had possessed. Now there were no bystanders, all that was left of humanity was united, and they would not be cowed.

“Men of Harlech, march to glory,
Victory is hov'ring o'er ye,
Bright-eyed freedom stands before ye,
Hear ye not her call?”

He fired a long burst into the demons as he sang, and did not flinch as a chunk of masonry fell away above him, landing mere inches away. He heard other voices joining the song, the tide of words rising up over the noise of guns and cries and tears.

“At your sloth she seems to wonder;
Rend the sluggish bonds asunder,
Let the war-cry's deaf'ning thunder
Every foe appall.”

Something huge and black and blinding rose from the sea of monsters and threw itself against the wall, the horns of a bull and the teeth of a dragon and the wings of a great dark raven smashing into the stonework, and the whole building shook. Dust rained down from above, sticking in the tracks of tears on every face.

“Echoes loudly waking,
Hill and valley shaking;
'Till the sound spreads wide around,
The great foe’s courage breaking!”

The beast came again, this time with the tentacle limbs of a great leviathan, and tore away a chunk of the wall, casting the rubble high and bellowing a mighty roar that was at once sweet and tragic, a child’s cry and a grandfather’s last whisper. Ethan fired into it, and the creature recoiled, but its allies surged forward into the breach. As one now, united in prayer and guided by the hand of the Emperor Himself, the Guardsmen and their charges turned as one to face the onrushing tide.

“Your foes on every side assailing,
Forward press with heart unfailing,
'Till invaders learn with quailing,
This our home ne'er can yield!”

Ethan raised a fist and threw it forward, and fury scythed into the demon horde, piercing forms that should never exist and tearing apart even their incorporeal forms in righteous vengeance for the fallen whose faces they had stolen. As Ethan added his own firepower to the salvo, he knew he was truly part of something greater.

“Thou, who noble Mankind wrongest,
Know that freedom's cause is strongest,
Freedom's courage lasts the longest,
Ending but with death!”

The air was ripped apart behind him, an ozone tang suffusing the temple’s ruins, and Ethan did not dare to turn, for fear of what he would see. More stolen echoes, no doubt, the bodies and faces of friends twisted and corrupted for one foul purpose.

“Freedom countless hosts can scatter,
Freedom stoutest mail can shatter,
Freedom thickest walls can batter,
Fate is in her breath.”

But it was not more of the Demon, but the Emperor’s own Angels. What other beings could they be, clad in gleaming silver armour that was solid and real even as the ground and air and flesh itself succumb to the warping touch of hell. The Silver Giants strode forward, wreathed in a purer flame than that which assailed them, and cast that fire out into the ranks of Demons.

“See, they now are flying!
Dead are heap'd with dying!
Over might hath triumph'd right,
Our land to foes denying!”

Wherever the Angels went, reality came flooding back and the demonic ruin was made whole. They turned back the hordes with nothing more than prayer and blade, invincible against the impossible, and soon the guardsmen had lowered their lasguns, sighing in relief. They Emperor had come to save their souls, their prayers were answered, and they had survived through faith. They, truly, were pure. The final words of the song petered out, and the Silver-clad beings turned back. Ethan knelt to them, along with the assembled survivors.

“Upon their soil we never sought them,
Love of conquest hither brought them,
But this lesson we have taught them,
Human kind ne'er can yield!"

At length, Ethan stood, and approached the leader of the Angels, an unhelmed man who was more than a man, and behind whose eyes holy fire crackled, waiting to burst forth. He handed over his sword, a sign of trust rewarded, and met the burning eyes. “Emperor’s mercy upon your soul, good sir!” he cried.

“And yours.” The Angel turn to him, raising a shining blade.