Macharius had already begun to climb, Drake as well. Grimnar was moving ahead of us. I looked around and saw Anton and Ivan. We looked at each other, slung our weapons over our shoulders and started to climb using both hands to pull ourselves up.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I reach out through the device and I touch infinity. I feel the pulse of creation around me. I sense the flow of cosmic energy. Beyond that I sense something else, the infinite power of Chaos in that universe that runs conterminous with ours. I feel my mind start to buckle under the pressure of the inputs.
This is not how the machine was supposed to work. Or was it? It was intended to make thoughts and dreams real. How does it do that? I begin to concentrate, to fight back against the waves of pleasure and pain that pulse through my brain. I began to imagine the shape of reality changing around me, responding to my will. I begin to understand what I have found.
This whole sub-universe is malleable. All of the matter here can be, and has been, changed. I visualise the streets of Commorragh, and they coalesce around me. I picture Sileria writhing naked, and she dances before me in her skin. There is a ghastly, ghostly quality to this, of the not quite real of illusion, but I know that if only I concentrate hard enough, what I wish will take shape. I see what those long gone eldar were working on before they were devoured. They were trying to tap the forbidden power of Chaos to allow them to reshape reality. And they succeeded. Although their success may have contributed to their downfall.
I know that if I work on this I can summon armies to my aid, armies that will worship me like a god, which will allow me to raise myself to heights undreamed of by the inferior intellects around me. I hear the whisper temptations of absolute power and I do not resist them. Who would?
We swarmed up the web of pulsing light towards the strangeness at its centre. Ahead of me I could see Macharius and Drake and Grimnar. The Space Wolf moved with an inhuman speed and grace that no mortal man could match, although Macharius was close. When Grimnar reached the pattern in the centre of the web, he vanished, simply shimmered out as if he had never been. I wondered where he had gone. Macharius paused for a moment then followed. Drake went next. I reached the portal and paused, drawing breath, suddenly very afraid.
It was another gateway, opening into I knew not where. It was not going to be good, I was sure. I felt my heart pounding against my ribs, a small frightened animal pounding against the bars of its cage. In the end it was sheer momentum that decided me. The need to follow Macharius and not remain behind, waiting for who knew what, perhaps for the xenos to return and torture me. Offering up a prayer to the Emperor, I threw myself through the portal and into a world of strangeness.
At first, it was as if I had stepped through into formless nothingness. All around me was only swirling, multicoloured mists of the sort that had been visible through the walls to either side of the roadway we had walked. I wondered if we had passed through some sort of final barrier and into what lay beyond the cosmic structure the xenos had built. Ahead of me, floating, were the others. Ahead of them, in the distance, was a glowing platform. I could see a small figure moving towards it. I tried to move myself but nothing happened. It was like trying to swim in a medium that had no resistance. I could move my limbs but there was nothing for them to gain traction against. I writhed and twisted my body but my wriggling could not move me from the spot.
I noticed my surroundings were starting to change, that the clouds of floating colours were taking on shape and density. I ignored them and drifted through the ether towards our distant goal. I could see it now. There was an altar. It glowed with holy light, a transcendental energy. Near it stood one of the xenos, the tallest and most powerful looking I had yet seen. It carried itself with an aura of utter confidence, and the glance it directed at us held only the purest contempt. In such a way a man might contemplate an insect he was going to squash.
Even as I felt the chilling gaze pass over me, I noticed that the clouds of formless matter were taking on a new shape. They were becoming more solid, acquiring the look of the ruined city we had seen outside or something much worse, an almost infinitely large fortress of xenos build stretching as far as the eye could see. From each building peered out a hundred xenos faces. I wondered what had happened. Was this some sort of transportation device? Had we suddenly been shifted through space and time to some new alien realm? Were we about to be overwhelmed by legions of eldar desperate to rend our flesh and feast on our agony?
The air shimmered, and more and more of the xenos came into being. How had they achieved this? I had heard of teleportation devices but never of them being used on so vast a scale.
The whole thing had the aspect of a dream. If this were a portal to some distant realm we were not all the way through it yet; reality had not yet twisted all the way. Drake seemed to be shouting something at Macharius. Grimnar ignored him and moved towards the xenos. A score of the newly materialised eldar threw themselves in the way. Grimnar’s chainsword flickered out and rent through them.
At first they came apart like ghosts, as if their flesh were nothing more than mist. The Space Marine moved forwards, chopping through them, and as he did so they became progressively more solid. Not only that, more and more of them kept appearing, out of nowhere. For every one he cut down, two more materialised. They moved swiftly, with eerie grace, fast enough to match even his superhumanly swift movements. The tide of the combat turned. Grimnar found himself on the defensive, beaten back till he stood beside Macharius and Drake. A hail of fire from the warriors mowed down the eldar, and for a moment things seemed stable.
I paused to look around. Gigantic, dark crystalline structures had somehow swung into place all around me, unfolding out of nothingness until they loomed overhead like the castle of some childhood ogre. Again I was struck by the dream-like quality of all of this. It could not be real. And yet when I reached out my hand, I felt smooth, cool stone beneath it. When I glanced around, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of eldar infantry moving towards me. I knew the moment of my death had arrived. There were far too many of them to be resisted. Still there was something not quite right. The eldar’s armour did not have all the details I expected, the hieroglyphs that marked rank or status or role or function, whatever it was they did. The xenos’s movements while graceful were repetitive and similar. They all appeared to move in perfect synchronisation.
I clutched the shotgun tighter and noticed there was ground beneath my feet. It was dark and shimmering like the structures around me, and although crystalline it was not slippery but seemed to have been designed to allow traction. I began to move towards the conflict. There was not really anything else to do. I could remain on my own in the strange city taking shape around me, but that would have meant soon being surrounded by hordes of murderous xenos. I saw Anton and Ivan close by. They looked just as lost and confused as I felt, but they were doing what they could always be relied on to do when in trouble. They were following me. The Undertaker was there and various members of Macharius’s Lion Guard, too.
More and more units of xenos were coming into view. There were thousands of them and only a comparative handful of us. I knew the time was fast approaching when I was going to have to sell my life as dearly as possible.
Drake seemed to be trying to explain something to the others and I could not work out what he was saying. I found a low barrier wall to use as cover, took up a position behind it and looked at the oncoming horde. Incoming fire whined around my head. I popped up and opened fire, hitting one of the oncoming xenos at almost point-blank range.