Something I thought up on the spot because I was bored. Also thought it was a nice change of pace from the usual fast paced, dark, gory 40K tales. Though I tried to be as artistic and 'surreal' as possible, some of the sentences and structuring are a bit clumsy. Might not be for everybody, but I hope you all enjoy it all the same. Comments and Criticism always welcome.
Cheers, Cal
Of Rain and Mist
The rain had fallen the night before, leaving the forest floor supple, wet, impressionable. The air is thick with moisture, and the cold bites at any skin left uncovered and stabs at the lungs when breathed. Thick clouds still hang in the sky, locking away the warmth of the sun. They threaten to rain again, but instead release a slow falling mist that creeps into every bog, under every root, and around every branch. The forest itself is asleep, most creatures here hibernating in the wet season and hidden from sight. Yet the trees themselves seem to breath, and talk amongst themselves whenever their leafs are disturbed by a slight breeze.
Your name is X'dnir, and you are a Pathfinder. You crouch silently on one of the strong branches of the behemoth trees inhabiting this place, looking into the mist and waiting. Far below, you can hear the rush of a running stream, its banks swelled and current stronger due to the rain. In a neighbouring tree a bird screeches out a raspy note, before spreading its blue wings and gliding away with only the whisper of a sound.
You find this place so peaceful, so calming and natural. You enjoy standing upon the warm soil and malleable wood of a living planet, than within the cold hard and artificial constructs of the Craftworld. You left your people to visit places like this. Yet despite your comfort you are fully aware of yourself, and intact with your surroundings. Swathed in robes and light armour similar to your surroundings, you are near invisible as you sit still. A guardian of the forest, you can see and hear and smell every action taken within a radius of yourself, yet you do not disturb the natural events as they occur. You are only a watcher. A wraith. Unexisting.
Unlike the clumsy scouts of other races, you do not require the night to hide yourself in. You need only a surrounding, and you become like a breath of air; swift and unknowable.
'It is time, X'dnir. We are ready.'
You hear this voice as if it were your own thoughts speaking to you, commanding your body into action. Yet you recognise it immediately as an order from your ally. Such personal methods of communication are necessary to avoid all kinds of detection, and cannot be tapped or traced by enemy equipment. You become like a single entity with the rest of your allies, sharing thoughts and visions as if you have eyes and ears beyond your own. Stirring a comrad into aiding you is only a thought away, akin to them being an extension of your own self.
Slowly you rise from a crouching position, and drop from your resting place. You only allow yourself to fall a small distance before catching onto another branch, and then swing yourself onto the next. In such an agile fashion you quickly step onto the soft soil of the forest floor, barely leaving the imprint of your boot behind you. Calmly you walk towards the banks of the swollen stream, watching the water splash against the rocks jutting out of the river bed, and slither quickly between them in a rapid current. It is not deep, but the water could be strong enough to sweep anyone off their feet if they attempted to wade through it.
On the far bank you can barely makeout the rise of a rocky outcrop through the white mist, as if the stream had cut into a small hill and the rest had been swept away. Mud seemed to seep between the cracks in the rock like ichor, and was then sank below the water to either bed swept away or rest where the disturbed soil had been before the rain.
Such obstacles would make any mon-keigh tracker move further downstream to
search for a safer place to cross. But you are not a mon-keigh, and between you and your target stands nothing but the entrapping ideas that such obstacles could not be crossed.
Swiftly, gracefully, you leap out across the river. Your foot finds a smooth rock spied just below the waters' surface, and quickly you skip to the next one before you can lose your balance. Swiftly, carefully, you tiptoe to the opposite bank leaving only silence in your wake. When you have made it to the sheer rockface, you reach for a muddy ledge and place your feet against the wall, halting only a moment to listen for the sounds of of anyone that might have spotted you. But you hear nothing.
To your left you notice a narrow path through the outcrop, deliberately leading from the top of the hill to the stream. You ignore it, knowing that taking an enemy's track would be both dangerous and predictable. Instead you pull yourself up onto the tiny ledge, before searching for the next handhold to grip onto. As you pull yourself higher, the rocks become less sheer. Near the top you could stand perfectly on top of them, but remain crouched and wary as you draw closer to your destination. You must pick the placement of your feet and hands carefully as you ascend, lest you disturb loose gravel or slip on thick mud.
Finally the rock and boulders' shrink back into the earth, and you find yourself atop a plateau. There are trees in front of you, thick with far reaching branches. But you do not bother climbing them. They are not as tall as the last trees, which even now reach above your eyelevel behind you, and you know that your allies are probably hidden among those thick branches anyway. Instead you dart between their wide brown trunks, crouching among the gnarled roots and pressing against the wood to remain hidden. You make no sound, nor leave any other markings that you had passed this way. Eventually you come to a clearing, and spy the safe haven your enemy has built for himself.
This small refuge was meant to be hidden, its main deffence from the Eldar secrecy of its existence. But the mon-keigh had not expected that their alien foes had spies this far reaching on the planet's surface, foolhardy enough to believe that they could hide away in the wilderness unnoticed. But you and your comrades had found this place only days ago, awaiting the blessing of your Seers to commence an attack. In the meanwhile you had spied on your enemy, watching their every move and mapping their routine to decide upon the best time to attack, and the approach that should be taken. Despite that there were only little more than a dozen enemy soldiers stationed here, you decided that swift and silent retribution was what was required. You did not wish to risk the casualties of an assault or raid, and their lives were inconsequential to you. Taking them would gain you little. The real prize you are after is the information that they are hiding here, a secret that the Eldar wished to know about.
In front of you are to mon-keigh structures, hideous buildings of mudbrick and timber mixed together to make a inadequate and unstable dwelling. The mist clings to them like spiderweb, making it difficult to see between them. You know that there is a road that runs directly between their parallel walls, and that a sentinel walks up and down that road keeping an eye out for intruders. You know that you and your comrads chose a good day to attack. You can only just make out the figure of the sentinel moving towards you now, hidden among the treeline, and you know the mist will provide you with excellent cover.
You wait patiently a the mon-keigh comes closer to you, just beyond the south east walls of buildings facing you, and stares absently and fruitlessly into the mist before him. Slowly he turns around, and begins to trudge away back the way he came. This is when you strike. You break from the treeline and run silently up behind him, burying your curved dagger into the back of his neck. Blood spills from the wound immediately and runs along the blade before dripping off the end and staining the earth. The mon-keigh dies silently, unable to scream for help. Carefully you lower his body to the ground, not allowing it to make a sound.
Then, quickly, you press up against the building on your left and make your way further north to the corner. Here the mist hides a crossroad, but you can just see the outline of another building ahead of you. This is your target. You do not move for it yet, as you know another sentinel will soon emerge from the west, fromthe road between you and your objective. He does not take long to do so, and of course does not see you out of the corner of his eye. He looks confused however, and you realise he expected to meet with your previous victim at the cross road. This makes you act swiftly, without being sure your surroundings. You slice at the mon-keigh's throat with your dagger, spraying his blood as he falls to the ground choking. He takes longer to die than the last, suffocating to death while feebly kicking as if in protest of his fate.
An image flashes in your mind, of a third sentinel approaching the cross roads behind you. You turn quickly, but it is to late to avoid detection. The mon-keigh, coming from the east, has seen you and has his his gun raised to eyelevel. But before he can use his weapon the back of his head exploded from a bullet impact, snipered by one of your allies. You extend a silent thanks through thought.
Finally you turn to your target building, a fortified mon-keigh bunker slightly buried in the dirt around it. You know there is still one more sentinel you must deal with before breaching the bunker, however.
Silently you approach the ugly grey building and leap onto its flat roof. You do not want to be seen up here, so press yourself against its cold wet surface, and like a giant insect, crawl north across the top of it. Once you have reached its far side, you drop back to the ground and crawl to the Northwest corner of the bunker. Peering around it, you spot the sentinal emerging from between two other buildings to the west, completely unaware that anything is amiss. He looks your way briefly, but does not spot you pressed up against the bunker through the mist. Slowly, carefully, you take your own long rifle from your shoulder and take careful aim at your target's head. He turns to go back the way he came, but barely takes a single step before he drops heavily to the ground.
Shouldering your rifle again, creep around the corner and kneel against the west wall of the bunker, a small slitted window just above your head. Carefully, you detach a plasma grenade from your belt and arm it. You then push it forcefully through the window into the bunker, before ducking down again to protect yourself.
You hear shouts from inside the bunker's walls, and three pairs of feet shuffled quickly for the exit on the south wall. Your heart beats once more and you know they are all dead. If they were not killed by the blast of the plasma grenade, they were snipered as they clambered out of the safety of reinforced concrete.
Rising, you walk briskly but silently around to the bunkers entrance, finding two dead bodies, as you expected, with bullet holes in their heads. The third mon-keigh you found inside of the bunker, still breathing though severely injured by white hot plasma. You unholster your pistol and end his life before beginning your search.
Every wall of the bunker is covered with junk. Unused weapons and artillery, vehicle parts, computers and hardware and an oversized vox unit. Some of it was damaged by the grenade, but nothing consequential. You know exactly what you are looking for, because you saw it when it arrived here. You spot it almost immediately. A large black safety box shoved roughly under a metal desk, perhaps in an attempt to hide it from intruders. Your mission is simply to retrieve this box, but you can feel curiosity begin to creep into your mind. To take the box, heavy as it is, and place it on the metal desk it was under. There is a large official lock is fixed to the front of it, which is easily broken open by a small device you take from your belt. Lifting back the lid, you find inside a single human dataslate on the bottom of the black box. You take it out, and it immediately comes to life, asking for a blood sample. You take out your knife, and scrape some blood onto a small sensory pad.
[Blood Type:Human......processing...,,standby..........begin recording...>]
You watch as the surface of the datapad dissolves to an image, and you realise you are watching a recording. You can see a vast expanse of water before you, the subject of the recording looking out from atop a rugged cliff face above the pounding waves below. He turns his head to his human comrad, before looking back out at the massive lake.
"That's some view, huh?" the subject says, but his companion does not reply.
You recognise this place almost immediately. It is Farif'niar, the pearl sea. It is just north of the fields of blood, where your people and the mon-keigh meet daily to struggle for dominance over that part of this world. The lake itself is not held by either side, though the mon-keigh tried to use the south shore as a means to transport soldiers and supplies behind enemy lines. You remember it well. You and your brethren were the ones who broke up that supply line.
The subject looks back out at the water, sitting placidly it seems for the time being. But you've noticed something about the water, well before either of the mon-keigh in the recording notice it. The waters' of Farif'niar, which are usually a crystal blue, begin to turn a sickly green.
"What's happening to the water?" the subject asks suddenly.
The green glow, which seems to be coming from the exact centre of the lake, spreads quickly to every bank. Eventually the surface of the water begins rippling, and the waves below grow more violent. The frame of the image begins to shake violently, and the subject is thrown to the ground as the earth itself begins to vibrate.
"Earthquake!" the subject's companion shouts, grabbing his comrad and trying to pull him away from the edge of the cliff.
The subject looks back out into the water once more, to see with horrifying clarity the surface of the water break and give way for three objects to emerge. Giant monolithic structures rise from the centre of Farif'niar, black and grotesque, and apparently the source of the sickly green glow. Arcs of green lightning shoot from the top of the three pyramids as they rise higher and higher into the air. A terrifying screeching sound fills the air, like the engine of a star ship is power up. The subject appears to squirm for a moment trying to block his ears, but looks back out to the lake in time to see each of the Monolith's disappear into thin air after a blinding flash of green light.
"Command, we've got a problem," the voice of the subject's comrad can be heard saying. Then the transmission stops.
You stay a moment with frozen breath, staring at the blank screen as if it were still playing what you had just seen. The doom of your people, unless you left this world immediately.
The End