Shades of Altansar: That Old Familiar Feeling

Even among the dour, warp-cursed population of Altansar, Yasna was a hard one to like.

The Dire Avengers came closest to understanding him, because he was once one of them. But murderous intent clung like smoke to Yasna’s mind ever since he walked away from their Aspect Shrine. In a peaceful society, Yasna supposed he would have either been treated, or dealt with as the serial murderer he would have otherwise become.

But his trauma was a powerful asset to the Craftworld. So he took up the Warlock’s regalia and set foot on the Witch Path.

Tonight, though, he and the rest of his warband set foot through a ruined human settlement. Hardy vegetation had already broken through the paved roads and crumbling, prefabricated structures. He felt the prickle of lingering radiation against his rune armor. Yasna watched a band of Guardian conscripts chatting near their Wave Serpent and thought about how he would kill them all.

Yasna didn’t hate them. But the impulse had buried itself in his mind, beneath strata of rational thought, morality and self-preservation. It was a reflex he felt whenever he perceived another living thing. Even as he had treated Farseer Vatami’s terrible wounds, Yasna thought about how he could finish what the Genestealer lord had started. And he thought about how Vatami could hear all of Yasna’s treasonous thoughts while he mended her flesh.

“Why do you get to ride, while we walk?” said one of the Guardians, not bothering to hide his resentment. (One shuriken round to the throat, below the helm)

“Because we do our best work up close,” said another conscript, a female with one foot planted on the Wave Serpent’s boarding hatch, one hand patting a stolen Imperial fusion weapon. (Ghost-step close, sweep the weight-bearing leg, pierce her heart with the witchblade while she lies supine)

“If you Omen Dogs were good at anything besides getting ambushed, you could ride in our pretty tank too? Don’t worry, we will watch and see what gets you this time, hehe!” Her mask hid her expression, but the insouciant lean forward and upward tilt of her chin told all. “Maybe it will be children with rocks?”

The rest of the Hellrunners hissed their laughter. The Omen Dogs answered with curses, their backs straightening. (Shoot the cannon gunner in the thigh, commandeer his gun, shred them all with heavy shuriken fire)

“Look, here is the Warlock,” the first Hellrunner said. Pranamin was her name, Yasna recalled. “Come, ride to glory with us! Teach us how you murder tanks!”

Yasna drew closer to the two groups of conscripts, and they turned to him. The choice was his to make. Yasna’s soul brushed against Pranamin’s, and they came to understand each other. The conscript found war to her liking. When Pranamin killed, she delighted in proving her strength.

For Yasna, murder was a primary sense, like sight or smell. It was how he understood the world around him.

Bravado drained from the Hellrunners. In the distance, he could see the crested helms of the Dire Avengers as they took positions around the small warhost. One of them sensed Yasna and nodded to him. (Use the Guardians’ bodies to absorb the first volley of shuriken fire, disemboweling strikes with the witchblade)

“I am with you,” Yasna said to the Omen Dogs. None of them said much of anything else for the next several hours.

𝚿

Las-fire cracked through the ruins, answered by the whistle of shurikens cutting through the air, ripsawing through foliage and flesh. Yasna heard the bullgryns roar before he saw them, bulky, humanoid shadows in the night that surged forward and crashed into the skirmishing line of Omen Dogs and Dire Avengers.

Screams and bone-crunching impacts followed. Yasna could feel the approach of Prince Dakhma’s blazing, wrathful soul as his wraithbone body sprinted forward to rescue his living kin. Yasna raised his witchblade, channeling his psychic might through battle runes to bless the Shades of Altansar with victory.

Then he heard the rising roar of Imperial jet engines. Yasna saw the gunship’s approach. He could barely make out its profile in the murky night air: its nose and wings sloping downward, crouching in on itself.

+Beware!+ Yasna cast the thought to Dakhma. The pilot would see the Wraithlord as the greatest threat. The prince might be able to drive it away with lance fire-

-and then the gunship’s stablights flared to life. They bathed Yasna in a circle of harsh light, as though he were a virtuoso about to perform.

Now Yasna heard the rising whine of the gunship’s rotary cannons. He lifted a warding gesture to the sky.

“For pity’s sake,” Yasna had time to say, before hundreds of ferro-carbide rounds churned through the ground, the trees, and his own body.

𝚿

This isn’t how I imagined the afterlife would feel.

The aeldari’s mind had never moved so slowly. Yasna had to push conscious thought through the gelatin of a heavy fugue. The ghost warriors never talked about the Infinity Circuit hurting this much.

Yasna opened his eyes. Soon, he realized he had eyes to open.

He tasted the chemical tang of heavy tubes that had been shoved into his nose and mouth. Tubes everywhere. Machines that forced Yasna to breathe, machines that forced blood through his body in place of his pulped heart, machines that injected him with soporifics that almost masked the pain of his injuries.

Heavy manacles pinned the Warlock to a steel table, canted at an angle. Light, again, shone down on his ruined body. Cameras recorded his pupils narrowing in response to the fluorescent glare, recorded the drool gathering where his lips and tongue met life-support tubes.

Yasna heard human speech. He never bothered to learn Imperial Gothic, but they sounded excited. With excruciating difficulty, he rolled his gaze to the source of the voices. Through the glare of the lights, Yasna could barely make out the uniforms of Patriot Guard officers.

Yasna couldn’t move. He had been stripped of his clothes, regalia and weapons. He couldn’t invoke his psychic power. He couldn't do anything. He was helpless.

One of the officers stepped forward. Fit, middle-aged. Unscarred. The human looked revolted at the sight of Yasna.

The human barked something at him. A demand, as though Yasna could answer him. The Warlock struggled to focus on his interrogator.

(Bite through the life support tubes then bite through his throat)

Ah, Yasna thought. So that still works.

The aeldari made a wet sound. The cameras recorded his lips peeling away from the tubes that filled his mouth, forming a ghastly smile.