Kyrial's Peak reared up before Liriel, every thin trail rife with sheer cliff faces and scree-covered slopes. Fingers of ice traced its highest reaches, surviving more due to altitude than season. Across the face of it, stubborn shrubs grew nearly horizontal to the ground, filled with squawking meyra.
The ill-tempered birds glared at her as she began to climb, resentful of this intruder in their domain. There would be little food or water on the way up or down. She had prepared as best as she could; two filled waterskins hung from a harness she had crafted of pliable vines, as did a few carefully wrapped leaves of sour berries and dried meat.
The first day was arduous, the physical strain of climbing rivalled only by the mental strain of the focus it took to keep alert on the treacherous path. A false step or too much weight on a handhold could send her pitching from the side. The birds watched her as she climbed, crying viciously when she came too close to their nests. By midday, her nails had cracked, blood oozing between her fingers.
She spent the night cold; it had not been feasible to bring or scavenge firewood. Wrapped her arms around herself, Liriel recited the Song of Eldaneth, and tried to distract herself from the pain and weariness. It was an old song, and her first memory. Her mother had sung it to her, lulling her to sleep with the mournful words. She dozed fitfully under the bright light of the gibbous moon, dreams stalked by ephemeral shadows, never quite coalescing into a foe she could face and fight.
On the second day, the wind began to blow in earnest, dust scouring the cliff faces as she climbed them, biting into her eyes and filling her mouth and nose with sandy gravel. When she had found a crevice to nestle into against the worst of the storm, a particularly irate meyra attacked her, tearing loose one of her packages of berries to tumble to the forest floor far below. She caught the thing as it struggled to escape, tangled in her harness. She broke its neck and dined on its raw flesh instead.
She washed the taste of the foul thing's blood from her mouth with the last of her water and refilled the skins from a vein of ice. But she could not risk washing the blood off of her clothing and freezing thereafter. She was more than halfway up the side of the mountain now, and felt the weariness of the climb less than she ought to have. Her days of rest at its base had not been for naught.
That night was even colder, and she squirmed inside another crack in the side of the mountain, trying desperately to preserve every scrap of body heat. The dreams came again, shadows of failure and isolation taunting her through an infinite labyrinth. She ran, but every path she turned down would double back impossibly, returning her to their clutches. An infinite maze, and every route led to the same location.
On the third day, she nearly fell from the side of the mountain. Fingers numbed by cold gripped icy stones with desperate strength; she could not allow herself to die here, so close to her goal.
By noon, the climb had finally, blessedly, levelled out. A low, easy rise led to the summit. Here, poking out of the ground and through small patches of ice like mushrooms were dull blue crystals. In them was a luminescence almost imperceptible to the naked eye, especially in the light of day. As Liriel walked the path to the center of the plateau, she could hear the whispers, just on the edge of comprehension.
Anathan had warned her about this, when she had learned of the Seer's abilities to commune with the World Spirit. Not the ghosts of the dead, but the random grounding of psychic emanations, souls restlessly pulsing in the matrix of the planet. An aeldar could go insane, listening to the almost-speech of those crystals, trying to divine their meaning. Anathan had told her that many had.
Anathan was probably lying. She realized that now, realized just how deeply set and ancient his madness and spite had been. Was he the one who had roused the World Spirit against the Seer Council? She had not wished to believe the rumours about him true, afraid of what it would mean for herself, but seeing the world through his eyes had opened hers.
No matter. She would have answers, finally. Not through memories, but by communion with other Seers, long dead but still able to help her. And if whatever was causing the sickness, the Blight as Ghira and the others had called it, was here too, she would aid them in clearing it.
An exodite did not die, Liriel reminded herself. She merely joined the chorus of souls, the ultimate defense of the world. It was long past time to awaken that chorus and aim it at whatever was killing them all.
The very peak of the mountain was a massive slab formed of that same blue crystal, warm to the touch, circular and slightly sunken in the center. It was not separate from all the smaller growths dotting the plateau, but rather part of the same network, a single living crystal formation that threaded itself through the mantle of the planet like mycelium. Through it, every exodite on the planet was connected to their ancestors and protected from the predations of She Who Thirsts, their souls safeguarded at the moment of death by their connection to the earth and the concerted forces of the venerated dead.
Liriel climbed to the center of that table and sat, forcing her mind to stillness. She focused on her every sensation, observed it, and allowed it to pass on.
The whispers of the stones swirled around her, babbling just on the edge of comprehensibility. She observed the sound, allowed it to pass through her unremarked and ceased being consciously aware of it. It was background noise, irrelevant to her purpose until she gave it form.
Her body ached, the pains of her climb and privation of her journey combining into a crescendo of misery. Thirst niggled at her throat as hunger gnawed at her belly. The cuts that had opened in the climb stung still, and she could feel infection pulsing in her fingers like hot coals beneath the skin. She accepted the complaints, as it was only right for the body to alert the mind when its limits were being tested, but she could spare no concern for it. Sulking, the pains faded, her body tending to itself as her conscious self expanded away from it.
Her mind itself rebelled; anxiety and uncertainty and fear all bubbling to the surface when mere physical suffering faded. The Blight was being caused by Warpcraft of incredible power. How could she possibly stop it? Who was she, to succeed where her predecessors had so dramatically failed? Why struggle so, when the outcome was so clear? Her quest was doomed to failure, and she to ignominy, a shameful outcast deserving nothing but the scorn and derision she had received all her life. These thoughts fed on one another, one emotion building on another in ouroboric frenzy. She isolated them from one another and examined each in turn. She did not address them not with logic, for they were not born of logic and could not be defeated by it, but with emotion. Starved of the fuel of their fellows, they each withered and died under her calm assurance, until once more her mind was unfettered and free.
Thus was the meditative trance of a Seer achieved.
Liriel remained seated at the table for hours, emptying her mind of the detritus that yet shielded it from communion with the spirits. The sun neared the end of its celestial traverse, bathing her side in bloody orange light, before she felt herself truly ready.
The outermost layer of her psychic defenses had been formed by her own efforts in the months since she had left Anathan's tutelage. These defenses had emerged been built slapdash, worked on in spare moments between research, investigation, and eventually escape, and were deconstructed with relative ease. She pictured them as a fortress wall, but one built of varied styles, across time and with irregular materials. Here, it was close-fitted stone, so perfectly cut that no mortar was needed to hold them together. There, mere wooden palisade bound with rope and lit by irregular torchlight. Further, metal-clad merlons and murder-holes to reinforce the gatehouse that allowed her own will to exit and shape the world. The wall fell as the last slivers of light faded from the horizon, the tight bonds of her psyche loosening to allow greater access to the faint echoes of the spirits of the deceased.
Immediately, the whispers became more pressing, individual voices able to be discerned from the susurrus. They formed intelligible syllables, words, even phrases; but there was still no clear intent behind them. They did not respond to her probing mental inquisition, merely increased as the echoes congealed around her. She needed to go deeper, open up further.
The next layer took more time. It had been formed with Anathan's help, the Seer explaining how to build a psychic defense against most forms of mental intrusion and assault. This, at least, he had been skilled in, and the wall was bound tightly together. This was a wraithbone construct in her imagination, brought into being with beautiful song. Every part of it strengthened the whole, a fractal maze-wall hardened against any attack. But this was also a weakness, the defenses stifling her own power and the possibility of communication with the World Spirit. This wall had no gatehouse, but merely small windows, winding through the interior lest an intruder make it past its guardians.
She set about unbinding it from her mind. As she did, the moon rose above her. Full now, it leered down at her as it always did, and she felt the same uncomfortable prickling that she always did in sight of the satellite. Had she but examined that feeling, realized how strange it was for any sensation at all to reach her so deep in the meditative trance, she may have had a chance of understanding. She may have had a chance to escape it.
As the protective barrier fell, a chain seemed to loosen in Liriel's mind, freeing power long since captive to its maintenance. The promise of power glittered inside her, the Warp calling to her, asking to be tapped. She felt freed, as the Stag did from Kurnous's trap, shaking out parts of her psyche long since hobbled by her own defenses.
The whispers grew more intense, almost urgent. Still maddeningly vague, her questing intent to the voices around her rebuffed with irrelevant noise. Liriel called out to a specific spirit instead, forming the image of the Seer Ghira as she had seen him in his own memories. The crystal table thrummed slightly as her will manifested through it, amplifying her call.
All at once, the whispers ceased, as the forest animals cease to call when a true predator appears before them. On the very edge of her perception, Liriel could feel the movement of another mind, the thoughts and messages of another wielder of the Warp. She could see the movements of those thoughts in the flow of the Warp around her, like the shadow of a ripple in the surface of water.
So close; she needed more access. There was only one barrier left, and this was formed without instruction or expertise at all. The first, clumsy attempts at protecting herself from her own power, this she imagined as a fortress built by a child, all stone and metal and wood piled on top of itself. It bound her even more tightly than the last, as it had been formed not in studied caution but fearful reflex, the pain of loss and accident causing her to reflexively constrain herself before she even understood what she had been doing.
She had always intended to fix this barrier, but had never had the time. She set about doing so slowly, wary of toppling the mental construct entirely and damaging her own psyche. Always, the moon was there, the faint interference no more than a buzzing in the base of her skull. Every piece she removed sped up the process, until finally it was done.
Once again, she sent out a call for Ghira. This time, it was not a whisper that responded.
In an instant, she was drowning in vast, alien waters. The mind that answered was measureless and malevolent beyond comprehension. Visions assailed her; treachery and manipulation laid over one another in internecine chaos. Burning poison was leaching into her very soul as she was ripped away from her own mortal shell.
If her body could have retched, she would have.
If she could release the trance, she would have.
If she could have ended her existence, she would have.
When the moon finally set, an aeldar form rose from the crystal table, but it was not an aeldari intelligence that looked out from its eyes.
