At over 5000 words, this one is by far my longest :D This is in the past tense, and after writing it, I feel that I can go into more detail into the two of them. It also sounds more professional. I dunno, present always sounded sort of odd to me, even though I nearly default to it :P I'd still like your input, but I really enjoyed having this in the past tense, and I may very well keep it that way.
I HAVE CHANGED A KEY PLOT ELEMENT TOWARD THE END. PLEASE REREAD THE LAST 1/3 OF THE CHAPTER. Sorry I didn't think of this earlier, as it's a MUCH better way to progress the story. To those of you who have yet to read this chapter, just read the whole thing. To those of you who HAVE read it, sorry that you'll miss out on the added immersion that this little change incorporates regarding the point. There's more reader-character synchronization in terms of knowledge of events.
An impenetrable haze blanketed the ground up to their waists, and visibility was poor. Andron could see no more than fifty yards ahead of him through the thick smoke. His squad was packed tight, eyes and lasrifles scanning the rooftops and habs, their spires and curved facades creating a truly alien landscape. They had donned their rebreather masks, their faces covered as a precaution, and to avoid the haze from having too much of an impact on their eyes. All that could be heard was the endless ringing in their ears, their pulses pounding in their heads, and the insidious far-off din of war. Their boots scuffed the ground in an erratic pattern as they moved toward the city center. Andron scanned back and forth, wary of any movement ahead.
The street was wide, nearly twenty yards, lined on both sides by alien trees and floating globes that emitted a soft light. Behind the trees and lights were the buildings; what appeared to be habs with elegantly curving facades and spires, and storefronts.
The piece of cloth protruded slightly from his pocket, and he brought his left hand from the handguard of his lasrifle, pinching the silken fabric between his fingers before continuing on.
They'd been walking for hours at a snail's pace, partly due to the haze, and also out of caution. They were Guardsmen, but they weren't foolish. Where caution was warranted, it would be used. Andron could see the other men creeping forward with raised rifles and stable postures. Anything caught out in the open would be slaughtered by a phalanx of lasfire. The entire situation, however, screamed of an impending ambush. Better to carefully tread into one, however, than blindly sprint into one.
"Stay sharp. These bastards are elusive," Andron's new squad leader, a man of forty, was one of the most physically imposing men in the squad despite his age.
"I'd like to see them face us hea—"The soldier was cut short as he and the rest of the squad saw it at the same time.
A figure reared up from behind a small wall in the haze. Andron's blood surged, his stomach tightened into a knot, and he squeezed the trigger on his lasrifle as a mind-bogglingly fast strobe of light emanated from the figure, heralding a storm of shuriken that sang across the fifty yards in nearly an instant before ripping into their ranks. Fatigues, bone, and flesh alike were shredded like wet paper, men falling to the ground with bodies utterly eviscerated by thousands of tiny blades.
The remaining men took firing positions on their knees, and lasfire lanced from the line toward the Eldar warrior, who then returned to cover, yielding to a hail of fire from his comrades on the rooftops. More men fell to the onslaught, and all the rest could do is present as small a target as they can while maintaining as heavy fire as possible on the roofs. Andron scooted on one knee toward a tree planted on the edge of the street, his shots going wild, but contributing to their response nonetheless. With more solid cover, he was able to fire more precisely, bracing himself against the tree.
He squeezed the trigger three times, each initiating the sharp crack of superheated air expanding around the lasbolt as it instantly impacted its target. The Eldar he was aiming at jerked three times before falling limp over the edge of the roof and onto the street twenty feet below, clean holes punched into the armor in his neck and shoulder.
Joakarn roared as he fired his bolt pistol, paying no heed to the shuriken whistling past him, several tearing tiny holes in his coat. The pistol barked in his hands, hurling mass reactive bolts toward the enemy. A bolt impacted an Eldar on top of one of the habs, before detonating in a spray of blood, bone, and armor fragments a split second later. The warrior fell limp, slumping out of sight.
Shuriken stitched a path toward Andron's position, and he ducked behind the tree as it began withering away under the assault of saw blades it was put up against. He had to move, and fast. He opened his comm to the squad.
"I need help over here! Someone get a bead on him!"
Numerous responses, all negative, came in return.
Pieces of the tree continued to fly in all directions as it continued to erode. He had mere seconds left.
A ball of fire left a trail of smoke as it screamed down the street into one of the buildings. It detonated with a deafening roar, and all of the Eldar above the impact were sent falling to the ground below if they were not vaporized in the impact to begin with. The fire slackened on Andron's position, and he made his way back to more solid cover behind the stone fountain and other stronger structures around which his squad mates took shelter.
A soft purple glow filled the cabin of the Wave Serpent, and Aureleth sat secured in one of the seats in the troop cabin as it soared towards Thalmadren. The city elegantly speared up into the Dome of Soaring Dreams, the heartland of Yul'te's culture. Pillars of smoke were slowly beginning to rise from the city, marring its beauty with signs of war. They would be hot-dropped in to an engagement taking place currently in the city, providing support to a force that was taking considerable losses. They would arrive in fifteen minutes. She passes the time remembering the cause of the war she was entangled in.
—Auraxis, 4 years prior—
They were destined to return, and return they had. Chaos had resurged on the planet, and with even more power than before. It would have to be beat down once again, even if that meant crossing paths with the Imperials. Slaanesh could not be allowed into reality, regardless of the cost. The city lied in ruins. Shortly before they made to leave, the Imperials had arrived, and they were now locked in a battle to escape before they were wiped out by the far larger force. Their cruiser was currently avoiding the Imperial fleet as it waited for the moment to scoop up the ground forces and make a hasty retreat. The ground forces had sustained heavy casualties, and were now making their way to an extraction point where they would be picked up by transports and whisked away to the cruiser in orbit. It had to be timed perfectly, and anyone who missed the extraction had little hope of survival, as risking a second pass on the area would be suicide.
Aureleth sprinted through the ruins of a bombed out building, dust and debris reducing visibility inside of it to less than twenty feet. Her squad had been nearly wiped out by Space Marines, her exarch killed and only one other squad member remaining, her friend since childhood, Erheil, remained. She and Aureleth made their way through the ruins, weary and battered from their previous engagement from which they had barely escaped with their lives. The sounds of war reverberated eerily through the halls. Explosions, gunfire, the shriek of shuriken and screams all indicated the intensity of the fighting going on outside. Aureleth and Erheil were side by side, bounding toward their only hope of escape.
And explosion rocked the building, and they stumble through a doorway into a lobby. They stood face to face with a squad of Guardsmen. Aureleth regained her balance, charging forward, Erheil following suit. The Guardsmen in a state of minor panic the sudden appearance of the dangerous enemy that they faced, opened fire, most of their shots going wide. Lasfire lanced past them, and they could hear the guttural barks of their squad leader has he fired his rifle. They were upon them in seconds.
Aureleth positioned herself in their midst, and swung a wide arc with her power sword, cleaving a soldier in two, following through with her momentum to bring it down through the shoulder of another Guardsman, the blade hissing out of his thigh. She activated her psychoemitter, and the men immediately around her fell to the ground, their ears and eyes bleeding and roaring in agony. She dispatched them with curt bursts from her shuriken pistol, their bodies falling lifeless.
Erheil pulled her sword from the stomach of a soldier as she let off a burst toward another with her pistol. She pivoted around, her sword raised and ready to strike again. A loud blast rang out and Erheil froze. Looking down, the front of her armor was shredded, that being the exit wound from the shotgun blast to her back. She fell to her knee, her vision blurring, and leaned on her sword for support. She turned and, using the last ounce of life left in her body, took the life of the man who had killed her, eviscerating him with a full three second burst from her pistol.
A scream emanated from Aureleth's helmet, however it was not her psychoemitter. She continued to scream in rage and pain as she killed everything around her. She became a whirlwind of blade and shuriken, and all those unfortunate enough to be caught in her reach were gutted, dismembered, or decapitated. She had been trained to control herself, to not lose herself in Khaine's grasp, but she was on the verge of losing control. She cleaves a man in two, before a sharp blow to the back of her head from a large man wielding his lasrifle like a bat made her vision flash white, and she stumbled. As she fell forward, she aimed her pistol behind her and fired, catching the man in the side of the face. She turned to fall on her back, aiming more carefully and shredding his skull in a hail of projectiles before jumping to her feet once again. She was still slightly dazed from the hit, and was unable to react as a grenade from a launcher impacted feet away from her. Her armor absorbed the shrapnel, and deflected the rest, however the force of the blast sent her careening into a wall. She looked up and realized that only one man remained. He was young, even for a human, and wielded the hefty weapon in shaking hands, frozen in fear as he stared down the warrior that had singlehandedly slain his entire squad, and who he had to face alone.
She staggered up, her body flaring in pain from the concussive blast earlier inflicted, and she quickly closed the distance to the man, coming too close for him to use his launcher without killing both of them. He quickly dropped his weapon, reaching for his lasrifle, and barely dodged a drunken swing from the dazed warrior. As she pivoted back, he thrust out, releasing a cry of alarm at his death being a split second away. The bayonet on his lasrifle pierced her armor on the left side of her abdomen, slightly above her hip. She yelled out in pain, and her sword slipped from her grasp. She lashed out with her hand, the armored backside of it connecting with his cloaked face, sending him spinning to the ground. She stumbled forward, holding her stomach with her right hand, and her shuriken pistol with her left. She turned around to see the man holding a broken lasrifle, the object nearest to him, like a club. He charged toward her, yelling in a combination of a battle cry and one of fear. She raised her pistol to fire, but he brought his rifle down, smacking it from her hand and sending it skittering across the floor. He reeled back, and swung a second time. She ducked below the blow and brought her elbow up into his stomach. He huffed, and she could feel a rib crack under the blow.
He had fought valiantly for someone who was so obviously afraid for his life, however he would not leave this place alive, she thought to herself as she drew back, ready to strike again. There was no need, however, as he fell to the ground clutching his stomach. She stood shakily, holding the bleeding wound in her side, towering over the young man who sat on the ground, staring up at her. She imagined how he must have felt, seeing nothing but a mask in a constant howl of rage. He had a look of sad resignation in his eyes. It was different from the endless blind defiance she had always seen in most of the men she had slain. She turned and retrieved her weapons from across the room, confident that the man would not be able to stand, before making her way to her fallen friend. She knelt down at her side, and bowed her head deeply. They had decided to walk the Path of the Warrior together, as they had done everything in the past that way. They had been inseparable. Now, her best friend lay dead, killed by a filthy Mon'Kiegh. She lifted Erheil's helmeted head, and pressed hers against it before gingerly laying her back down again and taking her soulstone.
Meanwhile, the wounded man watched.
She returned to him. He had scooted and rested himself against a wall, clearly resigned to his fate; clearly suffering in anticipation of his death still, however. Aureleth stared at him again. She could see the sad resignation and a hint of fear in his eyes even in the darkness, even with most of his face hidden behind the cloth mask he had made to filter the dust in the air. He stared at her, eyes conveying everything his face could not. He was defeated, and he felt his death was for naught. Those eyes had seen too much, the man had done too much, and was hesitantly and sadly beginning to accept his fate. She could see everything about him just by looking at his eyes, not only as a result of the Eldar's nature, but he was peculiar. She had never seen that look in a human before. He wondered if he made a difference, if his suffering, his sacrifice, would do anything to postpone the universal inevitability of extinction. He was a wise human. He was a human.
She raised her pistol.
As she pulled the trigger, two rooms over a Space Marine drop pod blasted through the roof and impacted with earth shattering force, sending her shots tracing a line up the wall above the young soldier's head. Heavy footsteps heralded their arrival and, knowing that she would stand no chance against such a foe, she staggered as quickly as she could toward the extraction point.
The Imperials saw the Eldar retreating from Auraxis as they came to liberate it. The only logical explanation was that Eldar and Chaos had attacked the planet simultaneously. Seeing as the Chaos threat was dealt with by the noble men and women of the PDF, only to be usurped by the devious Eldar, they took pursuit shortly after cleansing the planet of any remaining taint.
"Five minutes! We are being dropped in five minutes!"
The warrior next to Aureleth was anxious to get into battle. "These fools will pay for desecrating our world with their filthy existence!"
"In due time. For now, make sure your equipment is functioning, and prepare yourselves. They will not go down easily."
They flew toward where the battle is taking place, the sound of war slowly beginning to reach the Wave Serpent and the others in the squadron following it.
Rounds whistled past Andron as he hunkered down after firing another burst of shots. Several of the men around him were wounded or dead, but there were still at least forty Guardsmen left in response to the Eldar ambush, which was considerably smaller, and an underestimate on their part. A troop transport swooped overhead before landing slightly behind the Eldar line down the street and taking off again after disgorging its cargo under the cover of a building.
"You!" Joakarn shouted as he pointed toward Andron and his squad. "Take the right flank and intercept the new troops that they are sending us. Try to cut them off before they can get here, or else we're dead men," He ducked quickly as a round impacted slightly above his head before standing again and resuming his firing and yelling.
"You heard him, move out!" Andron followed as they moved into the buildings to their right and began to make their way forward.
Shuriken chased them as they broke cover, however they all made it to the cover of the buildings unscathed. They began to make their way forward through the smoke and dust choked halls of the small buildings. Andron advanced, his rifle trained on the area in front of him, as did the rest of the men with him. Flashlights pierced the dust, creating cylinders of light that moved around the rooms they moved through. They appeared to be in some kind of a shop, with various trinkets and items of unknown use on shelves and tables. Andron bumped into a table by accident, sending a small statue falling to the ground, shattering. The cylinders all jerked and frantically searched abut for the source of the noise before falling on Andron.
"Emperor's blood! I think I need to change my pants!" One of the men joked, drawing a few chuckles from the others as they continued to keep watch for any danger. They resumed their advance.
Andron looked down at the broken statue. He touched the small figurine in his breast pocket.
Three Eldar warriors moved through the shops. Their squad had split up, one section taking the right flank, and the other taking the left. Dust made seeing anything farther than fifteen feet away nearly impossible. They moved swiftly and silently, chainswords and shuriken pistols held at the ready. Outside, the din of war penetrated through the walls, and eerily echoed throughout. They had not come across any hostiles yet, but she had a feeling that that would soon change. A small crash and frantic shuffling echoed down the hall, followed by a human voice. The leader of the group looked to her squad mates, and they nodded.
"Contact! Oh, Gak! Fire, fire!" The man dropped to a knee and let off a long burst with his lasrifle on full auto as the Banshees broke into the shop in what was easily the closest fight of any of their lives. Lasfire lanced from their position, burning and destroying all it touched, and immediately one of the Eldar was staggered as she took a glancing shot to the leg. The continued on, however, and within a split second were upon the Guardsmen. All at once, centuries of combat experience clashed, most of it contained within the three Eldar warriors, though they had to recall it as they went. The Guardsmen were fresh from the battlefield, and were thus in their element. One of the Eldar leaped over a table and drove her whirring chainsword into the neck of a soldier, wrenching it out and decapitating him. She raised her pistol to fire, and her sword to swing, however she was cut down by a flurry of lasbolts from all angles. She squeezed the trigger on her pistol and sprayed in the direction of the Guardsmen, wounding several of them before she collapsed and died.
The second warrior slid beneath a table, his whirring chainsword held out to the side. It took the legs off of furniture and human alike, and both fell to the ground, one spilling trinkets, the other blood. He dug his boot into the ground, vaulting into the air maintaining his momentum and sweeping his sword in front of him, hacking the head and arm off of two Guardsmen. He slid on the ground and fired his pistol into the back of another soldier who fell in silence. He stood and rushed back into the maelstrom. Blood slicked the floors as he clove apart another human. There were only six of them left now. The other Eldar warrior dispatched two more with blade and pistol before receiving a staggering blow to the head from a brute of a man, who raised his rifle to strike again. She whipped around and gutted him with a slash to the stomach, and he fell into a pile of his own viscera. He sighted his pistol on another man, but as he made to pull the trigger, a lasbolt burned into the side of his head. He toppled to the ground, his shuriken pistol firing wildly.
Only one Eldar remained against the three humans. An Eldar still walking the Path of the Warrior would have absolutely no trouble dispatching these men, however these warriors had not fought in years, and were therefore less effective in battle. Still, she would not die easily, if at all. She fired her pistol into the nearest man that raised his rifle, before a second man behind her landed a thunderous blow on her back. She stumbled forward twisting and catching his jaw with her elbow as she fell. She lifted her leg, catching him between his, and lifted it, causing him to fall forward onto her raised chainsword which impaled him, and he died with a sickening gurgle. Only one of them was left.
All fell silent, except for the battle still raging outside, muffled somewhat by the walls. He raised his rifle, breathing heavily. The Eldar warrior stood up, and turned to him slowly, menacingly, holding her pistol and chainsword at the ready. He would most likely not make it out of this one, he thought. He steeled himself, flexing his grip on his rifle as he always did when he was nervous. She coiled back, ready to lunge at him at any instant. It was her or him, so Andron pulled the trigger on his lasrifle.
It whined slightly before going completely inactive. His eyes widened in horror as he saw her begin to move toward him when a stray lasbolt punched through the window behind her and impacted a few feet away. Andron seized the opportunity and lunged at her, roaring.
He hit her hard, and they slammed into the wall. Her weapons fell from her hands, and they were both left unarmed. She lifted her legs and kicked out, planting herself on the wall, and Andron was hurled back off his feet. She ran forward, fist raised for a blow to his face. Andron lashed out with his feet, however she flowed around them, barely breaking stride before bringing her fist down to his face. He jerked his head to the side an instant before she landed a hit that would have knocked him unconscious onto the floor, and swung with his right arm, his fist impacting her helmet. She grunted, and he brought up his knee, hitting her in the stomach. The wind knocked out of her, he was able to wrestle himself on top, and landed three good blows into her helmeted head before she smashed her head into his, the rubber mask no match for the composite mesh of her helmet. He was staggered back off of her, and she got to her feet.
The human was fighting quite impressively, she thought as she fought to suppress the throbbing in her head from the punches she had endured. She would be victorious, however. No mere human could best her in hand-to-hand combat, even if her skills had dulled over the time she had spent away from the Path of the Warrior. The lens on his mask was cracked, his face obscured by the tinted glass. That would surely end the fight, she thought. She lunged forward, as did the human, and that impacted once again. She threw a high punch, cracking the lens further, and he landed a left hook into her side as her left arm had been guarding her face. Within arm's reach, he grabbed her and brought his knee up into her stomach. She huffed out the air in her lungs from the force of the blow, but still was able to bring her right elbow into the human's face, taking advantage of him pulling her in and using the momentum.
The glass shield of his rebreather mask caved in and the human stumbled back, the glass falling from its slot in the mask. His eyes were exposed, squinted in reflex to avoid glass fragments from entering his eyes. With both of her palms, she delivered a sharp, powerful blow to his chest, and he was knocked from his feet and spun to land on his stomach. She could hear him gasping for air, his diaphragm experiencing spasms from the force of the blow. She turned and retrieved her weapons before somewhat unsteadily walking back to face him. He had rolled onto his back, and propped himself up laying back on his elbow, still attempting to get up.
She stood half way across the room from him, pistol and chainsword held limply at her sides. He continued to struggle, attempting to stand once again. A few seconds later, his efforts ceased, and he scooted up against the wall a foot behind him and looked at her, waiting.
—Aureleth stared at him again. She could see the sad resignation and a hint of fear in his eyes even in the darkness, even with most of his face hidden behind the cloth mask he had made to filter the dust in the air. He stared at her, eyes conveying everything his face could not. He was defeated, and he felt his death was for naught. Those eyes had seen too much, the man had done too much, and was hesitantly and sadly beginning to accept his fate. She could see everything about him just by looking at his eyes, not only as a result of the Eldar's nature, but he was peculiar. She had never seen that look in a human before. He wondered if he made a difference, if his suffering, his sacrifice, would do anything to postpone the universal inevitability of extinction. —
She looked at him as he sat, staring at her, blinking the sweat from his eyes. His chest heaved occasionally, his eyes squinting from the pain of his injuries. She almost felt pity for him. He looked so defeated, so... resigned, as if he thought his death was f— She looked at his hand. He was holding—
It couldn't be…
Andron clutched the only things he felt had any worth to him anymore. He still had no idea who the woman was depicted as the tiny figurine Aureleth had left, but it brought him peace as he held it. She certainly couldn't have been evil. Maybe he would find himself with her, for nobody knew truly where people went when they died. The silken fabric, an odd memento, he knew, was intertwined in his fingers. She was the only truly good thing he could remember. He had joined the Guard to escape his home and the misery it harbored, and that only entailed worse suffering for the Emperor. Now he lay awaiting his death calmly. Hopefully he would see her one day.
Fate had greater intentions for them, she knew that now. Fate had brought them here again, alone, away from the violence, the carnage. They were meant to be together. Though for reasons yet unknown, even with one beginning to emerge in her whirlwind of thoughts, they were meant to be. She looked more closely at his hand, and saw the figurine as well. The little trinket she had left him as thanks, and a piece of her clothing, were what he clung to as he awaited death. Humans had families, friends, comrades… there were trillions of them, yet he chose to remember her. A reason for their encounter, the reason fate brought them together again, was becoming slightly more concrete. She had never felt anything of the sort in her life, though. To think that it would be a human to coax these emotions out of her was embarrassing, but she cared little for that. Being so long lived, the Eldar develop these feelings slowly, if at all, yet this human had brought them to surface. She sheathed her weapons.
The warrior stood, her weapons sheathed, and he watched as her hands moved to her helmet. She clasped the helmet between her hands, and lifted it off. Andron could not believe his eyes. Was he dead? He did not remember the warrior killing him, then again why should he? His throat tightened as she slowly walked toward him, and he clutched the figurine and cloth as tightly as he could for fear that they were all that kept the vision alive. He could barely breathe in his mask, the heat and sweat stifling. She knelt at his side, and he was once again enthralled by her as she looked into his eyes through the mask. He began to weep, overwhelmed by his emotions. He had another chance. He was able to see her again, a beacon of light in a universe of pain and darkness. She reached out and gently placed her hands on his mask. She slowly lifted it off, careful to not injure his face any further. The mask came off completely, and Andron felt the cool air on his sweaty and battered features.
She reached out, and gingerly brushed away a lock of dark hair that was plastered to his forehead, hanging into his eye. Her hand brushed up against a cut on his forehead, likely inflicted by her, and he winced slightly in pain. She pulled her hand back, but he took hold of it. She froze, and they stared at each other. He reached up with his other hand, the cloth and figurine now resting at his side, and returned her favor, moving a long strand of light golden hair from her face. Aureleth had never experienced any semblance of intimacy whatsoever before, and was therefore unsettled, despite being a warrior a century and a half Andron's senior. She gave a small, nervous smile, and was caught completely off guard when he pulled her into a tight embrace. She stiffened before awkwardly returning it, noting how different it felt than the first time. There was something else there, taking shape slowly, but gaining more form as time went on.