Avatar

Sunspear remained to the end, directing the heavy weapons fire of his weapons batteries and tanks to aid the evacuation as best he could. To the west, on a crag below the command post, his Revenants fought with three gigantic hive crones, the bladed tips of the tyranids’ limbs slicing curls of wraithbone from the Titans’ armour. He clenched his teeth as he watched a giant winged creature knock a war walker from a cliff, snatch up a second in its claws and drop it onto the rocks below. In the valley, the Avatar of Khaine battled on, its giant form reduced to a glow surrounded by darting shadows by distance. Sunspear watched as its fires were gradually eclipsed by the creatures attacking it.

He could not save it. Shame filled him.

‘The heavier elements of our force have withdrawn from the valley, Autarch Sunspear,’ said Hethaeliar the Fourth-Blooded, her sing-song voice as empty of emotion as ever.

‘What of Guardian group Whispering Aid?’

‘All dead, autarch. As with so many others, their waystones remain where they have fallen. It is something of good fortune that none, as yet, have been destroyed.’

‘How many dead?’ said Sunspear quietly. A Crimson Hunter exploded in the valley below. To his left, a range of support weapons intensified fire to the front of the rock shelf, battering a rearing harridan out of the sky. Its cargo of gargoyle children shrieked as they burned.

‘Four hundred and eighty-seven,’ she said. She shrugged. ‘None damned. That is a thing.’

‘It is a thing,’ agreed Sunspear without conviction. ‘Sound the final retreat.’

‘What of the Avatar, autarch?’ said Hethaeliar. Sunspear turned away from the battle below, refusing to look at the place he had last seen the god-fragment. His posture told Hethaeliar all she needed to know. Sunspear looked at the farseers by his Wave Serpent, entirely occupied with keeping the morale-sapping presence of the hive mind at bay. His heart was like lead, his tongue ashen.

‘I will inform the farseers myself.’
...
	Sunspear brought up an external view to replace his maps. The mound of Far Ranging Hunger’s corpses appeared bigger close to. North of the Godpeak, three triads of Vypers zoomed around it high above, hidden from the voidspawn by their own spores and the eldar’s technology. A ring of creatures surrounded the mound, clambering over their dead to get to whatever had slain them. There was a flash of firelight, playing through the interlocked limbs of dead voidspawn.

‘No, it can’t be…’ His heart quickened. Involuntarily, he leaned closer to the viewing globe. The globe responded to his movement by expanding and zooming in. There was a flare of orange fire. A spear burst through the chest of a broad-mouthed serpent rearing atop the pile. A bloody fist pulled a warrior beast’s feet from under it, then grabbed at the hissing creature and crushed its skull.

From the heap of dead, the god of war emerged.

‘The Avatar! The Avatar of Khaine lives!’ Sunspear said. He keyed his communications net to widecast, and shouted it again to all the eldar upon Dûriel. ‘The Avatar is with us!’ The Avatar strode down the mound, into the heart of the horde surrounding him. His body leaked molten iron from a dozen wounds, but his fires were undimmed. He cast the Suin Daellae, sending it in a wide circle where it punched through alien after alien. The Avatar punched its fist into the side of a living tank, and pulled out a handful of clotted matter that ignited in its furnace grip. The living statue held out its other hand and snatched the spear from the air as it returned, spinning on its heel to smash it through the face of a warrior beast that ran at him.

‘Attack! Attack!’ cried Sunspear. ‘Aid our Avatar!’ The Falcons following in his wake split wide to either side, the jetbikes and Vypers peeling away. They dropped from the clouds, weapons firing. At the back of his mind, Sunspear felt the deadly intelligence of the hive mind shift, its attention drawn to this troublesome spot on the world. But it was of no matter to him, when some small part of his honour might be restored. ‘Aid the Avatar! For the glory of Khaine!’ The tanks set up a complex fire pattern of interlocked laser blasts, felling voidspawn monstrosities by the score. ‘Create a cordon! Set us down, set us down here! Hethaeliar, send immediate reinforcement!’

Sunspear’s Falcon was first down, others following, swiftly deploying their cargoes of Aspect Warriors before zooming off to take up firing circuits in the air. The Aspect Warriors set about destroying the aliens near the mound, allowing the tanks to range further out.

Valedor