The wild lands were well named.

The aeldari of Mathara had abandoned this side of the continent almost half a millennium ago, when the Great Rift had opened and a small warp storm overtook their civilization. The survivors had fled over the mountains, escaping the roving monsters spewing forth from dread realms and leaving their herds and possessions behind. They reformed their government in the only other true city on the planet, mourned their dead, and moved on. No one had considered making the journey back, even after the storm dissipated a few decades later. There were never enough soldiers, enough resources, enough need.

They told stories of the horrors that still waited in the shadows of the remnants of the old capital.

Liriel had never considered the stories true. The idea that true daemons could still walk the earth after the storm had passed was preposterous. They required constant energy to exist in this dimension; so all the old teachings had said. But the further she ventured into the steaming jungles and swamps of the wild lands, the less certain she became. The animals, the plants, the very air here seemed to reek of corruption. Despite her gnawing hunger, it turned her stomach to eat anything in this polluted land.

But it was the warp beast that had convinced her.

Liriel saw it from afar and had, at first, taken it for a mutated megadon separated from a nearby herd. It was only as it began to move towards the others that she realized her error. It was like no creature Liriel had ever seen, seemingly comprised more of parts than any purposeful whole. Heads of animals and aeldar jutted out of its lumpy, malformed body at every angle. Eyes studded the thing's skin, each unique in some horrific way. Tentacles emerged from gasping mouths, ending in hooks, hands, scythes, and bony clubs. It had what looked like dozens of legs, all different lengths, Some ended in hooves, others aeldari feet, and still others with more exotic features. Its gait was shambling - the thing seemed to roll more than run, always veering to one side or another depending on which set of legs could reach the ground.

It should not have existed. Could not have existed, in this reality. She realized the reason for its presence soon after. The Webway portal. Seqieth had said said the portal had been ordered closed by royal decree to prevent an incursion by daemons. But what if the sealing had failed? Even a thin link to the Warp would be enough to sustain daemons and the corruption of the land. Perhaps that was why the things had never spread further east, past the mountains. They could not live long away from the source of that link.

She passed the hunting warp-beast and continued on her journey, even more wary of the hostility of the territory around her. Insects stung at her; fat buzzing things whose bites rose into pus-filled welts. Her body fought off the infection as long as it could, but in its deprived state could not resist forever. She felt the fever coming for days, but could not stop to rest. It was not determination that filled her, but a kind of fanaticism, a thirst that could not be slaked. She ate and drank on the run, stopping only when too exhausted to move further.

She drove westwards always. In her waking hours, thoughts of pursuit consumed her and the shadows under the trees were filled with stalking foes. Sometimes aeldari, sometimes daemonic, sometimes things she could not describe. When she slept, she dreamt only of the World Stone at Kyrial's Peak; the answers it would provide and the vindication it would bring.

Liriel remembered nothing of her dreams.

She passed through fading signs of civilization. Gardens and villages decayed by neglect, or roads almost swallowed by wetlands and young trees. Cairns overgrown with sickly vegetation and shrines to the gods toppled and desecrated. She saw the dead, watching her with hollow eyes. The pursuers in the trees took more definite form. Her fevered madness deepened.

She came across a fair-sized town, blessedly spared the fetid corruption of the surrounding landscape. Exhausted by the pace she had set, she stumbled along the road, her natural wariness muted. She could see aeldar forms moving between the buildings, hear snatches of conversation, but it was as if her senses could not focus on them. She raised her voice to them, and it broke in the calling, "Hail! Isha's blessings to you!"

No one responded.

Liriel walked further along the main road, hurrying now to meet the residents of this place. No one welcomed her as she passed the outlying buildings, nor could she see any silhouettes in the windows. Yet still, she could hear faintly snatches of a song and what sounded like music at the edges of her perception, and as she scanned the streets could have sworn she caught a glimpse of people moving just out of sight, through alleyways and around corners.

"I need help! Food, water, a place to rest - please!"

She ran faster, hoping to catch one of the elusive forms, and her foot slipped. Rising from her fall, she glanced behind her and saw a shallow puddle of water muddled with thin blood. She turned again to the exit of the alley she had entered and caught sight of one of the aeldar in the window opposite. Water dripped off her form, joined by blood from gaping wounds spread unevenly across her body.

The aeldar moved away from the window before Liriel could do more than gasp. The aeldar had worn the uniform of the Royal Guard.

She recognized the music now. A marching drumbeat. She walked more slowly into the village, dreading what she would find but unable to stop herself.

More forms appeared in the windows. She knew they were there, but could not bring herself to look at them. She walked through the streets, back straight and eyes forward. Until she came to the obelisk at the centre.

Until she saw Anathan.

He looked as he had been when she had left him. His head lolled drunkenly when he tried to face her. The ugly red marks on his neck were still vivid. She could feel his neck in her hands still.

She said nothing to the apparition, or the ghosts of those she had led to their deaths watching from the buildings around her. Liriel just sank to her knees, sobbing.

When she rose, many hours later, they were gone.


Liriel suppressed a shiver as the beast approached the leaf pile below her. She was cold; much too cold for the mugginess of the jungle around her. Steam still rose from the treetops, the sun baking the morning's brief precipitation from the leaves. And yet her body was freezing.

Clinging as she was to lower branches of a tree, the prey did not see her. It was slightly smaller than her - a juvenile brachiosaur, ranging far from its herd. She slavered at the thought of the meat on its bones and clung tighter to the thick branch, willing the hesitant animal on.

It paused just out of her reach, glancing about itself. It sniffed at the air, and Liriel held her breath. She had no way of masking her scent, and could only hope that the accumulated grime of her journey blended into the stink of the vegetation around her.

Liriel felt her blood pound through her veins, her booming heart surely loud enough for the wary megadon below to notice. And yet it stepped closer, intent on the maggoty fruit she had laid as a prize on the fallen foliage. She felt the world spin around her, dizziness coming in waves. Fortunately, she had wedged herself in the branches, and minutes spent out of balance were not enough to dislodge her.

The megadon was eating. It would come no closer. Taking a silent breath to steady herself, Liriel dropped from the tree, thrusting her fire-hardened spear downwards.

It sank two hands deep into the flank of the animal, but she missed its heart, landing with a crash on its back. The megadon roared, bucking her off and charging away.

Liriel soared through the air, her head cracking against the tree she had just dropped from. The world broke apart into millions of pinwheeling shards, and blackness overtook her.

She awoke with her head still fuzzy, blood and dried mud caking her hair. Staggering to her feet, she cast about for the trail of the megadon. Injured as she was, she was not going to let her prey escape her.

Its escape route was obvious. The thing was rampaging blindly through the jungle, the spear in its hide dragging against low-hanging vines. Blood marked the trail it took, and she ran after it, her every step accompanied by jarring pain in her head.

The hunters had chased her all through the night, but she knew this area. She'd hunted here ever since the villagers had chased her away, after all. She had doubled back before the false dawn, past their hunting animals and mounted riders. There were only a few left now between her and freedom.

Nausea overtook her. She leaned against the nearest tree and vomited a thin, weak bile. There was nothing substantial left in her to eject. The chase continued.

It had gone downhill, towards a rocky stream. She saw it as she emerged from the underbrush, struggling and failing to climb the opposite bank. The spear had broken sometime during its flight, but a good part still remained in the thing, and it bellowed in pain as the wood drove deeper inside.

He was a young man, probably no older than she. He held his bow awkwardly, unused to its handling. But he was in her way, keeping watch over this bend in the river. There was no cover she could take, no nearby path to circumvent him. The others would be circling back soon. She had no chance in a fight against experienced hunters. She dug deep into herself, and tore open the veil.

Liriel crouched to pick up a rock from the edge of the stream, then stepped forward. It did not notice her approach, collapsing again and again on the steep rise. But megadons had been bred for endurance; it would take a long time to die. Time enough for something else to hear it and fight her for her prize.

The power ripped at both of them, unmastered and unguided. But she had been expecting it, and recovered more swiftly from the hammerblow of pressure that had blanketed the hummock. He only noticed her when she kicked out his legs from underneath him, raising her rock high. The megadon bellowed in fear as it came crashing down cracking his head open before he could raise his arms to defend himself. "Please, no," the aeldar sobbed as she raised her weapon again, blood gushing from his broken nose and she swung again, but only stunned the beast. It shook its body, trying to fend her off but she ignored his weak, blind blows, bringing the rock down again and again and again. His jaw broken, his eyes blinded, he could only try in vain to cover his head with broken arms, until she finally broke through its thick skull. Brains and blood splattered over her torso until there was nothing left of his head that could identify him as an aeldari. She rolled off of his cooling body and crawled to the stream, desperate to cleanse blood from her hands.

It wouldn't wash off.

It wouldn't wash off.

Liriel stepped away from the corpse of the megadon and fell to her knees, vomiting again into the rocky stream bed. She shivered despite the warmth of the day, but could not stop to rest.

The World Stone would bring her absolution.


Liriel stumbled through a haze of bitter memories and shrouded ghosts. They would not approach her but kept to the shadows of gnarled boughs. She kept her head down, staring only at the path she followed.

"I don't need any of you," she mumbled. Her voice was hoarse and cracked, foreign even to her own ears. She spoke the words tonelessly, more to remind herself than in hopes that the spectres would leave her. "I survived without you. I survived despite you."

Liar, she imagined them whispering back. Thief. Murderer. Traitor.

She knew the faces of the ghosts, though their backs were turned to her. The same backs that she had been faced with long ago, when her parents lay dying, raving in madness. If they heard her own rambling, they gave no sign. They would not listen to her. They never had.

You do not deserve to be heard, a small treacherous voice whispered within her. You who stole what could not be given. You who betrayed all who gave you their trust.

"I was a child," she offered in weak excuse. "I did what I had to to survive. There was no other option." But she knew the voices who had said the last. She remembered the few in the village who had taken pity on the starving wretch. She remembered how little they had, and how much she had taken in desperation. She remembered with perfect clarity their expressions as they led the mob against her when her perfidy had been discovered. Her voice died in her throat.

Liriel's breath came in shallow gasps as she traversed the rocky foothills surrounding Kyrial's Peak. The temperature had dropped precipitously as she had climbed the paths leading to the mountain. Her ankle suddenly twisted beneath her as the ground collapsed, dry soil running down a steep hillside and followed by the tumbling form of the sick aeldar.

At the bottom of the hill was a small clearing, ringed with dry, dying shrubs. She lay in them for a moment, allowing the pain of the fall to fade. She climbed to her feet slowly, ignoring the mounting complaints from her limbs.

She was not alone, even here. She heard them before she saw them, dim forms in the deepening gloom beneath the trees.

Ungrateful child. You abandoned us.

She had no words to answer these. She did not trust her voice to speak. She merely heard them, and was silent. In the edges of her vision, her blood pulsed, anger and shame mixing in dizzying proportion.

You never tried. You were glad to be rid of us, weren't you? Sick as we were, it was a relief when we died. You couldn't wait to run to the forest to play huntress.

Exhausted and numb, Liriel drifted to fitful sleep under the hateful invective of her dead parents.


The fever broke in the night.

Liriel awoke in the clearing beside a dark, still pool reflecting an achingly clear sky and the ominous bulk of Kyrial's Peak.

It had once been a place of holy pilgrimage for the Seers of old. A place to seek counsel of their departed dead, or rouse the World Spirit to righteous anger. To stand in its shadow was to feel the weight and comfort of ages, to know that the numberless ranks of the dead stood with you. Now the mountain stood amid a dread air, and its shadow did nothing but chill the spine.

Part of Liriel wanted to turn away, even now. The voices of the dead still taunted her in the cold light of the morning, incensed at her resolve to desecrate this place with her presence. Grimly, she began her preparations, unwilling to allow the ghosts of the past further control over her destiny.