Shades of Altansar: Lament of the Dead

“Would you say this is better than the craftworld?” Arteban asked, as soon as he was finished vomiting. “Or worse?”

Pranamin canted her head to one side, considering the question. She sat on the curved bow of the Wave Serpent, feet kicking back and forth as they dangled over the edge.

“I’m having a wonderful time,” she said. Her guardian helm hid her expression, but Arteban could hear the aeldari’s smile. “The food here is good, no haunted skies full of daevas, and plenty of war machines to hunt with my new friend Sweet Pea.” Pranamin patted her stolen Imperial melta gun.

“I could do without the radiation,” she admitted after a pause.

Arteban groaned and wiped his mouth before replacing his own conscript helm. “You don’t know the half of it.” Exposure to baleful energy did not especially bother the Shades of Altansar. They had built a tolerance after thousands of years within the Eye of Terror. Arteban recalled an encounter with a disbelieving seer of Alaitoc who demanded to know how the craftworld’s inhabitants escaped widespread contamination.

“There’s a trick to it,” Arteban had said. “You just have to stand somewhere else when the waves come.”

But precognition and biomantic cleansing rituals could only do so much in a protracted war with a foe that gleefully hosed the aeldari with rad-saturated ammunition. Arteban and the rest of the Omen Dogs needed medicine, and there wasn’t enough to go around.

“There’s not enough of anything to go around, Ban,” Pranamin said to the aeldari’s unspoken complaint. She gave a meaningful nod to the Wave Serpent on which she perched. A riveted metal plate covered a crater in the grav tank’s hull exposing one of its propulsion engines. The warband’s bonesingers promised they would soon mend Ma Barahi to its full splendor. Just not now.

“Nayaka won’t even give us shields. And I have to steal grenades. What kind of a war is this?” Pranamin huffed.

“Shirin Zar isn’t giving you shields because your lot never follows orders in a fight,” Arteban said.

“Well. If he means to punish us, then obviously it shouldn’t be so easy to filch grenades from the Dire Avengers. I think one of them fancies me.” Pranamin fanned her fingers above the waystone over her heart.

Arteban snorted. “Then they have terrible taste. Your hair smells like cooking grease.”

Pranamin leaned forward, tilting up her chin. “You smell like turds tumbling out of an ass. And you’re bad at war. How many tanks have you killed, Ban? None? Is it none tanks?”

The conscripts bickered in their furtive, hissing voices until another bout of nausea forced Arteban to pull off his helm and dry-heave. Pranamin laughed until she fell off the side of the Wave Serpent. Then they competed over which of their squads had the worst of it.

No one heard them but the dead.

𝚿

In better circumstances, the excarnation ritual would take place in a ceremonial chamber adorned with calming runes and murals depicting the righteous sacrifices of the ancestors. Today Yasna conducted the ritual in a damp, concrete pit that was once a basement.

The Warlock’s right hand tapped his brow, his chest, and rested on his belly. He pressed the palm of his left hand against a spirit stone and began to tease open the psychoreactive locks fastening it to a wraith construct that lay shattered on the ground.

Restored and fully roused, the construct would have towered over Yasna: one of the Thousand Frozen Dirge Bells, warriors of dreadful necessity awakened to answer daeva incursions too fearsome for the living. But this one lacked an arm and both legs, and much of its head and chest were chewed away with craters from bolter fire.

+It is time to rest, ancestor. Dream now of better days than these.+

The construct twitched. The force shield projector on its good arm spat sparks.

Return me to the Infinity Circuit! Haven’t I given enough? Trauma had bleached the ancestor’s sending of emotion. Yasna slowed his work.

+It is time to rest and dream. We need to mend your war-form, ancestor. The bells must ring again.+

Please. This is hell. This is hell! The ancestor cringed within its spirit stone like a chained, beaten animal. The Warlock sighed and halted the ritual. The ancestor’s whispers had awakened the rest of the Dirge Bells. He waited through their curses and lamentations. In a just world, they would have their rest.

You are hurt. One of the voices thundered above the rest. The other spirits reacted with immediate ire.

Hush! Too loud!

You are hurt, the louder spirit repeated. What happened?

Yasna winced, grateful the spirits could not see his expression. The young lord was of the new generation, born after the craftworld had pulled free from the Eye of Terror: as loud and brash as their forebears were silent and grim.

Not even death could introduce Dakhma to the concept of an “inside voice.”

+You are perceptive, my prince,+ Yasna sent. +The Witch Path is dangerous. I took a risk and paid for it.+

The Warlock was still in considerable pain. In their last clash with the Imperium's armored brutes, he was forced to vent eldritch overspill through his left eye to keep his skull from exploding. The young lord could not see the empty socket, but he could sense Yasna’s extensive neural and psychic wounds.

Oh, Dakhma sent. The other spirits admonished the young lord in sibilant voices. Their corresponding, ruined wraith constructs twitched in response to their ire.

Be silent, stupid child! Your voice is agony!

They sounded like a nest of provoked snakes. It was a feeble echo of the battle fury Yasna needed from them.

+Show some respect,+ Yasna sent. +The prince bears your burden.+

What do you know of our burden? Now the spirits turned on Yasna. You cannot conceive of the horrors we have faced so our children could draw breath for one more day. And neither can this puling shoat!

The Warlock tightened his grip on the spirit stone. +I honor your diligent sacrifice, ancestor.+ And then he twisted the gem free, undoing the remaining locks with violent speed. The spirit cried out, and the wraith construct slumped into stillness. Yasna went to each construct in turn, yanking each spirit stone free with a brutal economy of motion. He dumped each into a scavenged, plastic trash bag, cinching it closed.

“But when I want your opinions, I’ll give them to you,” Yasna finished.

You shouldn’t have done that. You are too cruel to them.

The Warlock turned to address Dakhma. The Heir of Grief’s war-form curled into a fetal ball in a corner of the dismal, concrete pit. It could not fit otherwise. Dakhma was in better condition than the Dirge Bells, only because the bonesingers had labored for longer to repair him.

“You’re right. We must treat our ancestors with respect. And they have suffered more than their share,” Yasna said, still speaking aloud. He dropped the trash bag of spirit stones to the floor. “But in my defense, I offer this: I wanted to, and I enjoyed it.”