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3

I sense the approach of others. Foolish flies have entered the web woven by my god-like consciousness. I will devour them now. I begin to spin a new reality from dreams and visions, summoning a world into being around me, creating legions of lost souls to serve me.

This time I will destroy my foes.

4

Anton looked at me. He frowned his puzzlement and popped up and aimed a shot. More eldar raced towards us. Our surroundings continued to change as well. They were more solid, more real than they had even a few moments ago.

I shook my head, wondering whether I was going mad, whether too much fatigue and too much stimm were affecting my brain. I wriggled along on my belly towards where Macharius and Drake were. Grimnar stood watch with them. A massive explosion ripped the ground, throwing us apart. I fell to land beside the Space Wolf. Somehow he had managed to keep his feet. Where the others had been was only a tangle of broken crystal and strange flickering lines. Hails of fire from the eldar splintered the wreckage around us. I lay prone and still for a moment.

Looking up into Grimnar’s face, I noticed that his eyes were yellowish, like those of a dog.

‘What is happening?’ I shouted over the roar of the carnage around us.

‘The reality here is mutable. It responds to a sufficiently strong will. The foes we face have been conjured by the eldar.’

I thought about what I was seeing. The way reality continued to swim and shift. An enormous tower collapsed under the impact of an artillery barrage. A plume of dust rose up as if to touch the sky.

‘It looks so real,’ I said.

‘It is real,’ said Grimnar. ‘In this place, it is real.’

A look almost of dismay flickered across his face. I tried to imagine what all of this strangeness must be like to him. His senses were keener than mine. He could see things I could not, hear them and smell them as well. It could not be pleasant to have the very forms of reality dance and transform before him.

He shook his head and growled, and seemed like his fierce, determined self once more. ‘What can we do?’ I said.

‘I will seek the Fist of Russ,’ he said. ‘It is out there in all this Chaos.’

Without another word he threw himself over the wall, rolled to his feet, chopped down some eldar soldiers and ran off. I saw the others moving into place to guard Macharius. I doubted that one more soldier would make any difference, so prompted by some inner daemon, I followed along in the wake of the Space Wolf. I was not sure why. If Grimnar could not handle what he met out here, I was not sure I could make any difference. I went anyway.

I raced across a landscape torn by war, chaotic beyond belief, twisted by a kind of madness that was all but incomprehensible. Overhead loomed a city built by maddened eldar. It shimmered and bent and moved as if part of the flickering imagination of a demented god.

I dived into a trench as wide as the tracks of a Baneblade and wriggled along in the direction Grimnar had gone. I could hear the distinctive sound of a bolter being fired and knew I was on the right track still.

I popped my head up and saw the Space Wolf hacking his way through a group of eldar warriors. Limbs flew trailing droplets of blood. A spine, partially severed, unwound through a broken backplate of crystalline armour. A xenos leapt behind the Space Marine. I raised and fired the shotgun. The shell took it in the back at the same time as Grimnar’s bolter butt smashed into its helmet, crushing it. I sensed the Space Wolf’s eyes on me, then he turned and moved on. I wondered whether it was my imagination or whether he was moving fractionally more slowly to enable me to keep up.

He paused occasionally to sniff the air, then moved swiftly and surely onwards, always moving as though towards a goal. I followed, trusting to the idea that he knew what he was doing. He entered a long hall and moved through it. An eldar dropped down on him, somehow moving faster and with more skill than the others he had faced so far. The two of them exchanged blows so swiftly it was impossible for me to follow. I ran up, not wanting to get too close to the eldar but wanting to be close enough to shoot if the opportunity arose.

The eldar rained down blows on Grimnar. He parried with the barrel of his bolter. Sparks flew where the two weapons connected. The eldar was the swifter of the two. Its blows made it through Grimnar’s guard and chipped his armour. Suddenly Grimnar let go his bolter; it dropped still attached to his neck by the strap. He reached out with both hands, grasped the eldar’s head and twisted. The xenos’s neck snapped even as its weapons drove into Grimnar’s side.

The Space Marine stood there, mouth open, gasping like a wolf on a hot day. I could see he was reeling on his feet, jaw muscles working as though he were in great pain. I ran up to him. His eyes had a glazed look, were focused into the distance as if he could see something astonishing a long way off. Slowly, his sight came back into focus, his breathing slowed and he became steadier on his feet. It was as though he had been poisoned and then his body had slowly adapted to the toxin, leaving him immune to its effects. Without a word he strolled on.

I recognised where we were. It was an almost exact replica of the atrium of the tower we had passed through to get here, a mirror within a mirror. In the centre of the chamber was an altar and on that altar was a gauntlet. Beside it stood a tall, powerful looking xenos.

The Space Wolf raised his bolter and took swift aim at the eldar’s head. The air between them shimmered and suddenly more eldar warriors were there. The head of one of them exploded. I realised the enemy commander had brought them into being to stop us. All of them looked exactly the same, and exactly like the figure we had seen by the altar. Grimnar did not hesitate for a moment. He sprang into action, blasting and smashing a path towards the altar, killing as he went. I lobbed a grenade into the mass of xenos, as far from the Space Marine as I could get it. The shockwave pulsed through them, throwing broken figures doll-like across the chamber.

I glanced back and saw Grimnar wrestling with a group of xenos. They had swarmed over him with their uncanny swiftness and were cutting and slashing at him with no regard to their own lives. They seemed utterly and maniacally fearless. Potent though the Space Wolf was, no single being, save perhaps the Emperor himself, could have withstood such an assault. His bolter was wrenched from his hands, and blow after blow rained down on his armoured form. Twist as he might some of them got through, and he fell amid a mass of his alien enemies.

Panic surged through me. I cursed myself for ever following Grimnar. If a Space Marine could go down here what chance did I have to survive? Desperately, I tried to recall where we had first seen the eldar leader. I primed a grenade and threw it at the spot, just as every alien head turned to look at me. The grenade burst in the air, sending a wave of shock and shrapnel tearing through the enemy ranks. The effect was startling. The massed ranks of eldar grew insubstantial and vanished, leaving only one, reeling in the middle next to the altar. I do not know why.

5

No! The link with the reality engine is broken. It will take too long to restore it. My legions have vanished. My foes close in. I look up, dazed and nauseous, and I see the human responsible. Of one thing I am certain. On him I will have my vengeance.

6

The sounds of conflict outside fell suddenly silent. A terrible hush filled the air, the sort of quiet you would expect to hear a heartbeat before the end of the world erupted. I wondered what I had done. The only explanation that occurred to me was that the grenade blast had shattered the xenos’s concentration, making it impossible to maintain the armies it had summoned in this strange place. I raised the shotgun to my shoulder, aimed directly at the body and pulled the trigger.