The Mirrorknife
an Eldar Short
::::
The Imperial city was a blight to them. The very presence of the blockish, dull buildings made them feel anguish and anger. The Monkieghs had invaded this world a few thousand years before, and had taken it upon themselves to make it theirs. They were wrong. This world was a Maiden World, and it belonged to the Eldar.
They had come to reclaim it.
The power to the city was out. It had been cut weeks before, when the cities power plants suddenly erupted in a giant ball of plasma. That sabotage heralded the beginning of the reclamation.
After the power plant was destroyed, the Eldar begin systematically attacking the outlaying settlements. Always at night and never left any survivors. They never attacked the same place twice, forcing the Imperials to spread their forces thin, with no hope of relief. The crafty Eldar attacked the planet when the surrounding Wrap with turbulent and angry, limiting the opportunity of Imperial reinforcements.
After continual and unabated loses with little or no return value for those loses, the Imperials were eventually forced to give up the outlaying communities and fall back to the main city center. They had spent their time fortifying the city, burrowing like rats, creating a warren of tunnels and trenches. This is where they were at their strongest, embedded like blood-ticks in an ugly beast's hide. They would be hard to break.
The commanding Farseer asked Siuloir Istoiche, a Pathfinder of Alaitoc, famed for having once traveled to the Crone World of Olc'diahbal to retrieve Spirit Stones, to find a way. He said he knew of one.
Death approached the Imperials under the cover of darkness, always under the cover of darkness. Siuloir could smell their rank fear, their fear of the night. As if to highlight the fact, they lobed flare-bust mortars overhead, showering the city with stark white light. Siuloir froze in his ascent. In the light he looked like a shard of ice clinging to section of rockcrete wall.
His armor was white/blue, with yellow boots and gloves. He wore a yellow cloak tightly about his shoulders and neck, the hood pulled up over his head. Weapons hung from his belt and battle harness; a long knife in an ornate scabbard and an elegant shuriken catapult. When the flares sunk below the neighboring buildings he waited to resume his climb. Above him came a roar and tongue of fire, followed by the grunting speak of Humans. He only moved when the weapon roared to life, the noise easily covering his movements. Using his fingertips and toetips he spidered up the wall with delicate and practiced ease.
::::
Sixty meters up, standing beside the window the Imperials were using as a gun nest, Siuloir listened to the humans. They spoke in grunting, brutish tones. He knew their words, but could hardy tolerate them. He felt dumber just listening to them.
One grunted and the weapon fired. Siuloir he knew their inferior nightvision would be ruined by the weapon's discharge for a few vital seconds, and he took a quick glance. He saw four monkeighs.
They were dirty and bearded. Wearing stinking fatigues, greasy with human sweat.
One, with stripes on his shoulder denoting some sub-rank in their military hierarchy was chewing the end of a rank cigar, a pair of crude magnifying glassed to his eyes. He grunted, "Again," and weapon roared loudly. The weapon operator had an outlandish amount of upperlip hair. It was waxed and curled at the ends. Another man lurked nearby, he feed the man with the lip-hair a belt of huge rounds from a metal box. The fourth and final man was a skinny and particularly ugly specimen. He was speaking into a large, heavy-weight box with an antenna. Siuloir heard the sub-leader grunt, "Again," and the weapon spat out a line of red-hot bullets into the dark night.
Siuloir drew his long knife. It was two feet of what looked liked polished blackice. Siuloir raised it to him mouth-grill and lightly blew on the blade, whispering a short prayer. He saw his reflection in the mirrored surface. The knife belonged to his beloved, a howling banshee. She had carried with her to Olc'diahbal. Only the knife had returned.
The Imperial weapon roared again. Without hesitation he stepped forward and into the window. He placed one foot on the barrel of the heavy bolter, ducked his head under the frame and kicked out with is other foot. The pointed tip of his boot smashed the mouth of the sub-leader, ramming the smoking cigar down his throat.
Siuloir causally swung his mirrorknife and nearly completely severed the head of the mustached gunner.
He leapt lightly into the room and stabbed down at the radio-operator, ramming nearly two feet of mirrorknife straight down, from collar bone to his stomach. The ugly monkiegh squealed and died.
Feeling the cloak wrapped about his shoulders move, Siuloir knew the air behind him was being displaced. The Pathfinder spun around, and blocked a clumsy blow of a riflebutt with an armored palm.
The Imperial sub-leader was holding the rifle with both hands, straining to ram it into the Eldar's head. With a quick flick of his mirrorknife Siuloir sliced off the fingers of one of his hands. The sub-leader could no longer hold the weapon and it clattered to the floor. Siuloir punched him the throat, silencing the scream to come.
With a quick head count he realizes one monkeigh was still alive. He turned sharply and saw the fourth and final Imperial cowering in the corner.
Siuloir casually walked up the Imperial, his thin frame towering over the terrified man and blocking out the white flare-light from the window. The silhouetted pathfinder causally stabbed the Imperial in the heart. The man was so overcome with fear he did not even defend himself.
::::
Siuloir bound the sub-leader's arms, legs and mouth with cords. He took a moment to slowly and deliberately clean his mirrorknife on the sub-leader's fatigues and showed him the deadly blade. The sub-leader flinched and attempted to scream. Siuloir nodded, pleased the lesser species comprehended so quickly.
The Elder then lowered the man out of the window on a thin, silvery cable. Then he took a moment to sabotage the vox-pack with a lethal plasma grenade. Whoever moved the pack, and everyone else in the room, would be killed when a lethal blast of heat and light erupted. He thought to do the same to the heavy weapon, but decided it was a waste of time. The plasma explosion would see to its destruction.
He spidered down the wall quickly. Once on the ground he dragged the bound Imperial back to where the others who were waiting for his return. In a surprisingly undamaged, and nearly empty, great hall, Siuloir undid the straps holding the Monkiegh. He sat the man in a huge, throne-like chair, and waited. The man did not try to flee, understanding that he could not get away.
Out of the shadows a dozen Eldar attired like Siuloir materializes. Siuloir's interrogate technique is simple. He asked to know everything about the Imperial defense lines. At first the sub-leader was defiant, raging and screaming hateful words at the Eldar or oaths to his God-Emperor.
However, when the man saw the other rangers all draw out their longknifes, each differently shaped, he fell to his knees and prayed for forgiveness.
He desperately told the towering Eldar everything he knew.