Dancing Out from Oblivion

by Keolah

The Interdimensional Bridge is open. The forces of Chaos have begun to invade other universes. An Eldar finds himself far from home, but going up against an all too familiar threat.

21. Memories of Blood and Fire

So, after the predetermined amount of time had passed, Kalli and Dolen's ships emerged from hyperspace into the designated system, and found... it was pretty damn quiet here. Nothing of interest showed up on sensors. No signs of anyone even having been anywhere near here lately.

Scanning diligently, Dolen was unconvinced that something might yet await their arrival, perhaps hidden elsewhere in the system beneath a cloak such as their own. He didn't allow that paranoia to interfere, however, instead shifting his course to intersect with the planet they'd come so far to see.

"Well, I'm not even picking up any traces of ship engines around here recently. Going to drop into orbit and scan the surface a bit..." Kalli said, proceeding to do so.

"I shall observe the reverse," Dolen replied, diverging from her course to follow a curve along the planet in the opposite direction, allowing for maximum coverage in minimal time.

Some ways along the planet's surface, Dolen picked up a small colony of humans on a forest river below. No traces of advanced technology, however. Dolen relayed the information to Kalli, along with the confirmation that absolutely nothing else was to be found.

"I would wonder, however, whether the presence of the humans was detected in your prior survey?" Dolen asked via comm. "If not, their appearance in such short order is highly unusual."

"I wouldn't be too surprised if somebody had wandered in in the last four hundred years," Kalli said. "I'm not picking up anything else, either."

"Their apparent lack of the technological means to avail themselves of arrival is what puzzles me," Dolen responded. "Yet it is ultimately a separate issue, one hopes, and seeing nothing of suspicious nature I shall descend toward the specified site."

"They're probably hippies or Amish," Kalli said. "Humans who want to live without the presence of technology on the core worlds. Might've gotten a lift from a transport which left them here and flew off again."

Dolen stored away a couple more references for later research, but could not find immediate fault in her reasoning, merely the long earned suspicion. The Phoenix bit into the atmosphere, its energy fields eliminating the natural friction of the air as it descended toward the coordinates from her survey. Kalli headed down along with him, continuing to run scans and peer at the viewscreen. Dolen did not descend directly to the site of the ruins at the last, instead veering off on a slightly different vector to land a few kilometers away.

"I would not tempt the fates and El'dari defensive screens to appear directly above," he explained for the change of course. Though it would likely allow his craft to pass, he would not risk the Darknova as well.

Kalli was heading toward the site some ways away in which she landed originally. Landing outside the parameters of a combat drop was little more than an exercise in docking, and it passed without event, minutes later finding Dolen emerging and sealing the craft again behind him before crossing to the Darknova.

Kalli set the ship down easily, popped the hatch and climbed out, peering about the vicinity and glancing up at the trees. "Well, here we are..."

Having left the heaviest of his weapons aboard the ship, Dolen was instead carrying a small case with him as he stopped beside her. "Indeed," he replied quietly, the serenity of the place appealing and yet edged with tension.

Kalli had her luminite blaster and lightsaber at her side as usual. She gave a nod and started heading off cautiously in the direction she remembered it as having been.

Dolen opened the case as she started off, removing a scanner from within which remained attached for power and recording, then followed silently in her wake.

"This should detect the presence of such traps..." he faltered for a moment, then continued brusquely, "as the one you encountered before. It is likely that it remains effective even now, if no threat to either of us, and will provide an indication of the power which yet remains available to the defensive system."

Kalli gave a nod and headed along with him, making her way through the forest moving carefully without constantly getting a face full of spiderwebs or tangled up in underbrush or anything, like some people generally ended up doing when walking through the forest. Dolen followed after, ducking through the foliage almost as an afterthought as he watched the crystalline display intently for signs and warning, puzzled that nothing had yet registered. At all.

"That is odd," he murmured after a little while, "What distance would you place us from your original contact point?"

Kalli checked the coordinates and said, "We should be close." She continued on through the forest, peering about the vicinity carefully.

Dolen flickered through a quick diagnostic on the instrument and puzzled further as nothing was amiss. It was not until an almost subliminal remembrance triggered that he barked a sharp warning, "Stand your ground, Kalli May!"

Kalli stopped in her tracks, glancing back over to him. "What is it?"

Dolen froze in place as well, only slowly examining his environment with minimal movement with a coppery tang of remembered terror bitter on his tongue.

"This..." he managed, dryly, "Was not meant merely to conceal from the world at large, but our own as well."

He looked up, past the cover of trees that they were nearly out of, seemingly into the nothingness of the sky.

"What?" Kalli said in confusion, glancing about the vicinity.

"Perhaps it malfunctioned when last you passed this way," Dolen murmured, still intent on a distant point which might shimmer akin to a heat haze. "This is old, ancient, even to me, and I have seen the like only once. If we approach, we may risk the Warp itself if the shielding is malfunctioning as the one I encountered before."

Kalli frowned thoughtfully, staring off to the point where she remembered the buildings to have been. "What do you suggest we do?" she asked him quietly.

Dolen walked to the fringe of the clearing but very deliberately avoids taking a single step further, absently returning the scanner to its case.

"I am not wholly certain," he replied, "Though I am loath to depart without further investigation merely due to unease." Pondering it a moment more, he straightened and glanced over at her with a quiet grin and a shrug. "I have already faced that once. I will test it again."

Without another word, he stepped into the clearing and a deep, rhythmic thrum could be heard, or more accurately felt through the ground as the very air before them shimmered to reveal what she had seen before. A baleful light shimmered atop the structure, crackling and hissing in the otherwise still air.

Kalli stared wordlessly at the construction, then glanced over to Dolen again to make sure nothing bad had happened to him or anything. She didn't exactly fully understand what was going on here. Dolen wasn't fully certain of what's happening himself, only that this structure was somehow connected to the one he had encountered before.

"I have seen such a place before," he said, "Though I would not have expected or recognized it merely on sight." He looked up at the faint pinprick above them, seething with the Warp. "For all I know it may well be the same edifice, if it is connected to the Warp."

"How can that be?" Kalli said in confusion, taking a step forward as she stared as well.

"There are theories," Dolen replied, in quiet reverence, taking a few steps closer. "Though their full extent is beyond what I have studied, scattered records before the Fall spoke of a way that a thing might exist in a myriad shadows, through the Warp. I think that this... may be that of which they spoke."

"Wow," Kalli commented, fairly impressed by how esoteric that sounded, and daring to approach a bit closer herself. "So..."

"So, if its shadow shifted at such a time as last I approached it," Dolen replied, "It would be those very energies which drew me hence, though scattered elsewhere upon a different vector within the Warp. That I emerged at all..." He shook his head. "Not truly relevant to our observation, however. I suspect, however, that the unfamiliar construction is part of what enables this state. Furthermore," he added with a fair confidence, "Such workings would require a great deal of power, and should lay quiescent for some time thereafter. Shall we test that hypothesis?"

The last was asked rhetorically, as he walked forward without hesitation, halting at the outer edge of the structure without any signs of ill fortune. Kalli followed after him with a smirk, not even pretending to have any bloody idea just what in the hell he was talking about now.

"Tis odd that no other defenses have been encountered," Dolen mused. "There is obviously power enough, yet nothing has befallen our efforts thus far. Intriguing. Let us seek a way within."

"There are times, I think, that I'm glad I'm incapable of feeling fear," Kalli commented randomly.

"It is not common for me, either," Dolen answered with a low chuckle. "But I will freely admit to considerable unease at the moment." He began circling cautiously, headed in the direction that he'd originally identified as a ceremonial circle. "Most likely they would stand before the entry to seal it."

Kalli glanced around the door a bit and trailed after him closely and refrained from making any comments or sick jokes about the circumstances.

Dolen moved to the center of the circle, studying the pattern of the design inscribed in stone, and murmured respectfully, "None who walked here left this place, all were sacrificed to protect it." He looked over to her, exceedingly bland, "I cannot fathom what they might go to such lengths to protect. Only once have I heard of such a thing and it was sealing an evil away."

Kalli did not feel the need to state the obvious in observing that whatever was here must be something important. She stared at what he was looking at in vague hopes of being able to decipher what he meant.

Tracing the pattern of the design with his eyes, moving in a slow circle, he brought the various elements represented by the glyphs together, and still their full import swam beyond his reach. He drew a deep breath and followed the final turn, through which the life essences of those ancients had passed up to the sealed doorway.

"There is room for a key," he said softly, tracing a small indentation with a fingertip. "A small crystal of some sort, or a sigil?" he trailed off in puzzled silence.

Kalli moved over to take a closer look at it, raising an eyebrow as she examined it.

Dolen examined the depression closely. "It is not something which we may have seen aboard the El'dari craft, not anything so obvious, but likely deeply intertwined with this galaxy. I could not say, and would not hazard a surmise as to how it might be bypassed."

Kalli put her hands in her pockets thoughtfully. "Hmm. Have I ever mentioned that I hate puzzles?"

"I do believe both you and Alpha have mentioned that fact at one point or another," Dolen replied with dry amusement, though it faded to thoughtfulness. "Perhaps something might be fashioned of one of the crystals from aboard my craft. With a sufficiently detailed scan it may be possible, particularly as it is of such small size."

"Hmm, I wonder." Kalli finally pulled out the thing she keeps fingering in her pocket. The heavy talisman of the rulers of the Karzan, blue and silver. She peered at it for a moment as she dangled it in her fingers.

Dolen looked aside at her movement, curious. "Mm? And what is that, then? Some bauble of one of the human worlds, or perhaps a trophy of Chaos?"

"No," Kalli said. "It's the symbol of the ruler of the Karzan Empire. I took it from the Emperor, but Alisa and her family bore it long before he usurped it..."

"A symbol carried by the El'dari Empress?" Dolen replied with a quirk of brow. "Tis somewhat odd for a leader of my blood to carry anything which did not bear some deep significance or hidden purpose, perhaps merely used to augment their power. What purpose did it serve?"

"I don't know," Kalli admitted. "She never told me..."

Dolen stepped nearer for a closer look at the object, its design seeming somehow alien to him. "Tis odd indeed," he said, "The design is indeed artistic, but far heavier and bulkier than one might expect. Perhaps a crystal is hidden within as a reservoir of power?" He shook his head and steps back, not making the obvious connection, "Strange, but bringing us no further in this."

"I'm not sure..." Kalli murmured. "I have a hunch..."

"Trusting that within was a greater part of what the Matron spoke," Dolen offered quietly. "What does this 'hunch' tell you?"

"I don't know," she said again. "You wanna take a look at it?" she said, offering it to him.

Dolen accepted the talisman, frowning thoughtfully at its weight. "That is odd indeed." He turned it in his hand, examining it closely. "Why would they make it of such crude and heavy materials when it is apparent they had access to far superior craftsmanship? Not only that, but of materials far more resistant to the inevitable wear of time and possibility of damage? Such an item could be shattered and crushed underfoot with hardly a pause." Almost as if that was what it was ultimately designed for, and to be remembered as should ill befall one leader before passing the signet on to the next and its importance... "Surely not," he muttered, glancing aside to her in question. "How much importance do you attach to this heirloom, Kalli May?"

"Er..." Kalli blinked for a moment. "I had considerably more to the ring I'd worn for centuries, and I destroyed that in a bout of 'screw you' some months back anyway."

Dolen offered a shocked, bemused expression to her response, but dispeled the momentary inclination to laugh outright at it in deference to her dignity. "So be it," he merely said, taking the edges of the symbol and bending them savagely. Sharper edges became evident as it deformed, and the object snapped abruptly in half with a bright glitter shooting out from its center.

Kalli looked mildly embarrassed at where it ended up, and pulled it out and examined it, raising an eyebrow as she looked it over. Refraining from any comment, much akin to his avoidance of young Zillah's frustrated question earlier, Dolen approached for a closer look.

"It would appear," he replied with commendably straight expression and offered the twisted remnants of the symbol to her, "That it was indeed something more than it appeared." He gestured to the indentation. "See then, if this is the key which was indeed sought."

Kalli pocketed the silver chain with a bit of a smirk and took the object over to the door to see. The crystal which was hidden within is indeed a perfect match for the indentation after a moment's reorientation, a light flaring deep within it at the same moment that the massive doors began to slide silently open. It seemed fused in place for now. A long hallway extended into darkness within, only a faintly eerie gleam from runes at even intervals intruding on the shadow.

"I believe, that was indeed the key," Dolen replied to the obvious and stepped to the entryway.

Kalli said, "Yes, I do believe so," and headed after him with a smirk, staring about intently at the immediate vicinity. "I had a hunch."

Dolen paced evenly down the corridor, faintly uneasy as not even the faintest sound reached them from the world beyond, in fact even that portal seeming to dim as they walk further along. He looked behind them, frowning thoughtfully as the distance traveled seemed far greater than each step would seem to indicate, but continued onward. They came at length to the end of the hall, the fact noted only as a greater opening into darkness and not even the symbols giving faint light.

"Where is the power?" he wondered aloud, "It is obviously still functioning, but not even light within? The runes were sufficient til now, but..." He triggered a switch in his armor, harsh light springing forth to illuminate the vast chamber that opened before them.

Kalli peered about, blinking a moment as her hyper-sensitive eyes had already been trying to adjust to the lack of light. "What..." she murmured, trailing off and leaving the question unasked.

The chamber was a vast dome, arching high above them, the walls completely covered in runes as far as they could see. There was a dais at the center of the chamber, which appeared to be nothing so much as an alter, its flattened top broken by crystalline spires in a circle, their pointed tips reaching toward each other at the center. Nothing else was immediately evident, at least until Dolen stepped through the archway. Something seemed to envelop him, faint ghostly light streaming from the nearest runes and converging, their effect obviously causing distress as he dropped to his knees with a strangled cry.

Kalli, reacting into combat posture almost instantly, tried to drag him out with a combination of gravity manipulation cybernetic implants and use of telekinetics. She easily moved him, the ethereal energies paying no attention to her at all and instead remaining circling about Dolen, diving through him at times, but always in contact. He shuddered violently, whipping his head from side to side, staring at something completely unseen and began to speak in the highly fluid, melodious tongue of his race. His ramblings made no sense at first, as they seemed to largely be identifying himself.

After a few more semi-coherent spates, however, it became apparent that he was answering someone that she could not hear, speaking of events from thousands of years past that meant nothing to this world. The singsong monologue continued, a spattering more of replies, and then he fell suddenly still, apparently unconscious as the wisps of energy dissipated slowly.

Kalli watched with concern, and did a quick check to make sure he was still alive, frowning in confusion and wondering what the hell was going on here. Dolen is indeed still breathing, the experience appearing to have been one more of the mind than the body, though the rigors of the experience might well indicate that the physical consequences could have been quite dire. His eyes flickered open after a few minutes and he looked around with confusion as though expecting to see something else entirely.

"What?" he began, then shook himself and unsteadily pushed up on one elbow. "Where did they..." he trailed off once more, looking around, only now seeming to focus on his companion and the expressed concern. Gathering his scattered thoughts, he tried again, "The guardians, they spoke to me."

"The who where?" Kalli said, looking down at him, then glancing back at the room he'd been in in confusion. She wasn't really too sure just what to make of all this.

Dolen rose stiffly, still unsteady in the wake of the psychic assault. "The guardians of this place," he replied, "Those who sacrificed themselves to remain forever vigilant until their duty be discharged." Taking a deep breath and expelling it slowly, he stepped back to the archway and looks within. "Their souls are bound here, held to make certain that... whatever they protect is not approached without just reason."

"Oh, well that's helpful," Kalli commented without too much sarcasm at least. "So is saving the universe a just enough reason do you suppose? Man, deja vu..."

"Apparently it is," Dolen replied with grim amusement. "Else neither of us should have left this place with souls intact. They were quite thorough in their questioning." The last was said with shadows of pain, but he dismissed it as quickly as it rose. "Thus is the first barrier passed."

"The first?" Kalli wondered aloud. "What else is there?" She peered off into the room again curiously.

"You accuse my blood of being less than helpful," Dolen answered, "And you are quite correct. This secret was one likely passed from one generation of key holder to the next. We are the first since its creation that know not the path. I do believe, however," he added with a gesture toward the altar, "That it shall begin there."

Something was nagging on the edges of Kalli's memory. She just nodded, however, and cautiously went to approach the vicinity slowly, mindful of what happened when Dolen entered.

"They merely watch now, Kalli May," Dolen assured steadily, though he did hesitate briefly upon crossing the threshold once more.

After the momentary hesitation he crossed back to the dais and examined it carefully, frowning thoughtfully at the delicate latticework of crystal that covered it. Kalli went up to it as well and peered at it intently, scratching her head for a moment as she looked. Dolen crouched beside the ornately decorated altar, gently tracing one of the thicker lines from the floor all the way along to the top where it ended in one of the four spires.

"It appears that power should flow through these patterns, but there is nothing for it to flow to," Dolen observed.

Kalli peered at it for a long moment, mumbling something again about hating puzzles, rolled her eyes a little and pulled the box out of her pocket. "Okay, that's not a hunch, that's just a wild guess. Damned if I know what else the thing is for, though." Because, you know, you should always pick up random odd things you don't know what they're for, because they'll be important later.

Dolen looked at her strangely at the comment, the object she produced making no immediate connection to him. "A wild guess?"

Kalli sniggered. "Went to great trouble to get this thing," she commented. "Had to figure out some obscure riddles written in ... well, apparently, the language the El'dari on Lezaria spoke a hundred thousand years ago."

"The ways of the Farseer," Dolen replied quietly, "Are far-reaching indeed, and perhaps the time is not so important when dealing with matters which span the universe entire." He shook his head, considering the object, then motions to the four crystals forming a 'claw'. "Tis as well to try as not, Kalli May."

Kalli took the cube and reached over with it to try to put it in place. The seemingly meaningless depressions in the device didn't seem so random in context, at any rate.

There was a violent reaction as the cube was placed between the crystalline claws, light flaring brilliantly from it and coursing down through the latticework like molten fire. A resounding thrum is heard in the air as a sourceless light appears and reveals the room fully, the glyphs indeed running from floor to tip as might have originally been suspected. Were Dolen to examine it further, he would recognize the history of the race, not merely of this place but in all of the places where the blood had flowed and spilt over all times. That examination did not occur, however, as a new archway irises opened in the formerly seamless wall opposite their entry... and the way behind them closed.

Kalli stared wordlessly as the changes occurred, then looked to the device again and the doors. She finally declared, "I feel like a cliche."

Then she strode purposefully toward the new door. Kalli, at least, didn't seem to have the least bit of concern about being stuck here or being unable to find a way out. She had clearly played far too many video games and watched way too many movies.

"Not so much cliche," Dolen muttered, looking around before following her, "As perhaps expected in this time and place."

He would meditate on the concept of fate and predetermination later, much later. Once more the path continued as before, the light from above dimming gradually as it descended and the walls changed abruptly from the smooth metallic sheen of El'dari construction to rough hewn stone. The passage also began to grow warmer, the heat seeming to flow from further ahead of them and a faint red glow seeping into the darkness. The source of both became immediately clear as they reached the end of the passage and it opened into a huge natural cavern, the ground ahead split irregularly by molten flows. Once more, an altar waited within, of much darker and jagged appearance, a flaming basin at its center.

Kalli definitely refrained from making a Tolkien comment. She gave the immediate vicinity a good look-over and commented, "Well. Now what?" She scratched her chin.

Dolen did not immediately answer, instead walking into the cavern and leaping lightly across one glowing hot river to stand near the altar. It appeared to be hewn of obsidian, black and sharp, and he looked back at her with confusion. "I don't understand..." He turned back to the altar, running a palm with quiet reverence across the smoothly planed top and stopping at the sharp spines which surrounded the basin of flame.

Kalli frowned a bit, likewise hopping over by it and giving it a good look. "I don't have any clues this time, sorry," Kalli said helplessly.

"I do," he murmured quietly, almost lost in the near-living, breathing sounds of the volcanic hall. "There is no Furnace," he continued, removing a gauntlet of his armor with ceremonial formality and laying it gently aside, "But I readily recognize the Chalice." Reaching for one of the spines, blood wells as the sharp volcanic glass slices easily through flesh, and he paused to look at her with a melancholy smile. "If this is as it has been, then you shall leave this place and I shall not, Kalli May. May your Gods watch over you, as we know ours to."

Turning back to his regard of the flame, he thrust his bloodied left hand into it, hissing in pain as it seared the wound. The sound was lost, however, as a molten river on the far side erupted, dark stone thrusting upward from within with a visage of nightmare carved into it.

Kalli was fairly speechless, but certainly hoped that her gods aren't watching over her, considering that she abandoned them and despised them. She had to wonder briefly, as she had on more than one occasion, if there were any gods that didn't suck.

Dolen viewed the rising rock dispassionately, drawing his hand back from the flame and retrieving his gauntlet with equal ceremony to return it to its place. "And so, the Furnace," he said softly, the conviction of his upbringing allowing for no doubt or question as to what such might be doing here, only that it was his fate.

He circled the altar silently and crossed to the hideous sculpture with an easy pace. It was a door, the fact made clear as the face split evenly in half to reveal a passage which went beyond the confines of the stone and into a glowing chamber somewhere within.

Kalli realized that she had even less idea on what the hell was going on here than she had originally thought. She peered into the passageway, quirking an eyebrow but not saying a word.

Dolen began to enter it when a sound, a clanging of monumental proportion emerged, as though the mightiest of gongs was struck in slow, sonorous rhythm, in total six times with each being blindingly painful not only to hear but in the deep throb that seems to pierce to their bones. He dropped to his knees, heedless of the normal process of the ceremony as the sound paralyzed and incapacitated him.

The first sound following the brazen outburst likely went unnoticed, but soon the vibrations of footfalls made themselves felt, their source becoming apparent as a being seeming made of smouldering metal and molten rock emerged from further down the tunnel. Its eyes and mouth were as a furnace, and it carried a sword of considerable size in its right hand... while the left dripped with blood.

Kalli went, "What the ..." and proceeded to be extremely glad that she was not capable of fear as she thought any normal human would be pissing their pants at the moment. She stared motionlessly, fairly wide-eyed and agape.

Dolen's reaction was much the same raw-edged fear as hers, but there was another element to it as the being strode closer and stopped, towering above them... awe that went beyond imagining. There is no obeisance to this one, he knew, as surely as he knew in his soul that this was no mere Avatar, and he stood quickly, drawing his sword and raising it in seeming defiance to the being.

"Who are you that dares waken Khaine?" the entity asked bluntly, not one to parley or dance about in his purpose, his attention from the Eldar to the human woman. "He I know, for the Guardians told me of his coming, even as they stirred my slumber, but you are unknown to me, child of Man."

Kalli stared for a moment, blinked, stopped standing there with her mouth hanging open, and finally found her voice. "I am Kalli May, of the Dancers on the Edge of Death."

It considered her words, searching through the memories which had been instilled within even as he slept, and he replied, "So be it. You seek purpose, and I now give it to you."

He reached the bloodied hand out above her, crimson drops falling to strike and seemingly vanish into her, though their mark would be known.

He turned to the Eldar and reached down to touch his chest. "Both of you are marked by Khaine, and know that this is curse as much as benediction. Just as I stride forward to battle my ancient foes will you do the same. No rest or peace will you find while there yet remain those who need your aid." He considered them a moment more, then said simply, "Begone."

As simply as that, and as quickly, they found themselves back in the clearing. No sign remained of the temple, vanished once more and likely until once again it might be needed.

Kalli stood blinking for several moments, disoriented at the sudden dislocation. "Holy shit," Kalli breathed, staring toward where the building had been.

Dolen was blankly oblivious to the world at first, a shudder of delayed reaction passing over him as he unsteadily sheathes his sword. "'Holy shit' indeed." He looked back at where the temple was and muttered, "Do you have any idea what we have unleashed upon the world, Kalli May? Any clue at all?"

"No, not really, but I'm sure you're going to tell me," Kalli said.

Dolen laughed wildly, the tension flowing from him and a wild, fey energy springing to light within him. "That was Khaine! Not an Avatar, but Khaine the Bloody-Handed God Himself!" He nearly bounded with glee, an unrealized racial weight lifting. "The Defiler thought him destroyed and shattered! Nothing left but pale shadows to snuff out as though candle flames." His exuberance expanded as he bounded over to grab her by the arms. "Chaos, as you might say, is fucked." He released his grasp and laughed once more.