The Lumineth Realm-lords were in dire straits last week, but now it’s their turn to strike in a new piece of Warhammer Age of Sigmar fiction. Lyrior Uthralle is on the warpath, in a story packed with action and introspection in equal measure.
They created us to shine, the twin gods. Through impossible daring, by impossible means, they captured light out of the heart of the most heinous shadows and gave it purpose once more. Into us, their Lumineth scions, they invested all that was theirs to give: nobility, skill, strength, wisdom.
And something else, I think. Harder to quantify. If I were compelled to try, then I might name it as earnest hope. Or, more accurately… expectation.
I am no mage, but nor am I obtuse. I have climbed the Teclamentari’s rungs of erudition and know that we were not the first aelves – not in these realms nor before them. Cycles revolve; kalpas bloom. Perhaps we too, in time, shall be but mythic antecedents. Still, qualities are expected of us, as they were of those who preceded our steps. We have history to teach us, living gods to guide our path. We are granted many gifts, physical and arcane, and yet these come with an unspoken obligation. We must be clear of thought, precise of action, pure of heart.
We must be the ideal.
High in the saddle of his steed Farael, surrounded by billowing banners and mages conjuring luminosity into being, Lyrior Uthralle watched the Ossian legion launch its third advance.
‘They endure beyond words, Regent Supreme.’ Thaena spoke smoothly, but not enough to hide the tension that had been worming through her ever since the battle had begun. The Vanari officer did not allow it to infringe upon her duties as she whispered clipped commands to her scryhawk and bade the bird take wing.
‘Only because they know the day is lost.’ Lyrior had been told that he spoke with an aristocratic disdain. It was not intentional – a quirk of Muavheil Province’s accent compared to the typical, coarse Ymetrican dialect – but he saw no benefit in contradicting the sentiment. Contempt was often interpreted as a fortifying confidence by those under one’s aegis, provided you were winning.
A prosaic manner of thinking. Perhaps unworthy of one chosen to speak with the authority of a god, even to the point of contradicting the words of that god’s twin. But then, Lyrior had long since seen the fragility of ideals.
‘All is analysis to them. A scale to be weighed. Should they begin to lose more resources than they think they gain, they will call off the attack. We know their ways by now.’ The Lord Regent’s face was grim as ever, even as he ran his gauntlet through Farael’s mane with a calm, stately surety. ‘Imminently, this will be done.’
As he spoke, he watched his prediction play out in the movement of his cohorts on the sand plains, the tinkling crystal mechanisms of the day’s strategy working through their last, crisp patterns. Glittering Vanari pikewalls marched to intercept Mortek echelons, the Ossiarchs’ own wall of polearms parted so that larger, more lumbering constructs could bear down upon the aelves, and then blazing sunmetal arrows burned through the brutes’ thick carapaces. As the Mortek advance faltered on the left, aelven cavalry finally committed themselves, piercing the dead ranks with cracks of shattering bone.
The undead’s cavalry on the right flank were pinned by the goliath forms of sacred Kjengi, Tattanu, and Eventonor: three incarnate mountain spirits who broke several bodies with each swing of their huge stone hammers. Dedicated fire from the Ossian ranged battalions might have threatened the aelementors, but this they could not offer, owing to the arrows of the Hurakan temple and blades of the river-swift Ydrilan splitting and carving through them. A tempest, a mandala, each synchronous motion illuminated by the flare of empowering aetherquartz or banishing beams of Hyshian aether-craft.
At last, the horns blew. Sonorous and deep, as only Shyishan instruments could be. The Ossian host began to retreat. They did so in good order, but not without radiating the cold bitterness of defeat. More than defeat: the knowledge that they, created for nothing besides martial perfection, had been outclassed today.
‘Victory, my regent,’ Thaena finally allowed herself to let out the breath she had been holding, standing a measure taller as she looked to her commander. ‘Should I give the word to pursue?’
‘They will enter the mountains soon. Too great a risk. Their ambition is checked, and for now, that will suffice.’ Lyrior had already turned away. His mind had moved on to the next battle, the next campaign. Ymetrica still crawled with foes. The bones of aelven cities still rang to their howls and were stained by their indulgences. This, today, was the minimum expectation. The bare minimum.
All the same, for a moment, he paused.
‘Though… perhaps let our noble Hurakan allies relish the chase for a time. Moon and sun, it isn’t as if they much heed us anyway.’
I often consider how we are the Luminant Lords’ second-sired. The Cythai were their firstborn, not us. I hold our sad forebears no malice on this account, not even their spiteful, shrunken Idoneth descendants. Neither their nature nor their fate was of their choosing.
Even so. Our souls were not the strongest, else we may have caught their eye first. We once believed that our only rivals for excellence were ourselves, and such presumption left glorious Hysh all but a wasteland. Does that suggest greater weakness still on our part, for believing ourselves immune to the failings of those who came before – or strength that we managed to pull back from the brink?
Aelven generations have come and gone since the first of us were fashioned by the gods’ hands. Our choices now are entirely our own. Yet never must we forget our origins. The brightest lights can prove the most blinding.
One did not need aelven eyes to see the plains-grots approaching. Dust clouds rose in their wake; light glinted off their dented armour and that strapped to their snarling wolves. As ever, they fought in short-sighted fashion. Each tried to sprint ahead of their packmates, eager to catch up to the aelven cavalry fleeing from them.
‘Have they seen us?’ As he spoke, Lyrior tugged on the eager Farael’s reins lightly. To either side, his riders checked their equipment. Illumination played across their backs from the glowing crystal menhir behind them.
‘The menhir wraps us in the glow of a thousand stars, commanders,’ Thaena said, slipping her plumed helm on. ‘The beady-eyed little monsters cannot look upon it. They must have no idea we are here.’
‘Then let us strike. Our kinsfolk have played their part as bait long enough.’
Light flashed from the lance Daemonbane as Lyrior raised it high. Below, the signal saw aelven cavalry peel to the side as planned. The grot pursuit slowed as they tried to follow suit, some of the wretches hissing at the sudden blinding. By then, Lyrior’s riders were already charging in three fine arrowheads.
Dispassion. Lyrior repeated the word, as he had many times before, right until he met the grot chieftain at the pack’s fore. Then it rose: the old red fury. Daemonbane had been forged by weeping Syari steel-weavers to banish its infernal namesake, but it spilled mundane blood with equal, unseemly vigour. As panic flickered in the grot’s eyes, Lyrior thrust the weapon forward with a roar; it burst through the grot’s spine in a spray of sizzling blood. Screaming, the creature slid down the lance. Lyrior stared into its dying eyes, his face a rictus of hate.
With it came the memory of his dead, dismembered kin in the ruins of Muavheil, orruk war-banners still flapping over the wreckage. And so had he stared at every idiot brute and craven imp he had slain since, exulting in the moment of their demise.
He flicked the grot off his lance before driving the weapon through two wailing riders mounted on a single wolf. He punched Daemonbane’s burning tip through the wooden flank of a chariot, igniting the construct. Only a sharp shout broke his battle furore.
‘They are slain, Regent Supreme.’ Splattered in blood herself, Thaena gestured to the dead grots scattered about. Aelves finished off the last survivors, even while casting wary looks to their commander.
Lyrior breathed. He let Daemonbane hang by his side, still vibrating in his grasp. Once more, his face became the austere mask.
‘Then we move on.’
We do our best, despite all this. We strive to avoid the mistakes of our past. Such is easier said than done, not least for the discontent it causes amongst our allies.
Our manner can be… aloof. Humility had to be learned; it was not inherited. And if we are to live up to our heritage as defenders of order, we must keep our attention on lofty matters. Sentiment, pity: to defeat the scourge of ruin, these notions cannot control us, no matter how we might wish otherwise. To many, this makes us appear callous, unfeeling, conceited. They do not see how we lock our hearts away when cruel decisions beckon. They do not understand how striving for the greater good takes its toll.
Even when we truly do know best.
‘Sivejr’s Rest lies just over the mountains. Our riders shall escort you there, but you must travel with haste.’
Lyrior’s lordly tone worked to draw several of the humans from their reverie. Others still stared at the corpses of the hedonist cultists as the aelves stacked them into pyres. The degenerates had ambushed the caravan amidst the sand dunes – just as Lyrior’s seers had predicted they would. Their ecstatic shrieks had quickly changed tune when aelven arrows took them in the back, and aelven blades pre-emptively ended their revels.
‘Lambent lord…’ One of the humans, an elderly woman wrapped in dusty white silks, had shuffled forward from the mass. Thin fingers brushed the ivory contours of Lyrior’s plate, before she buried her face in his cloak. ‘Lambent lord… saviour…’ It was a murmur adopted by several of the others. Lyrior permitted it for several moments before gently prising his cloak away and beckoning them onwards.
‘Lord Warden.’
Not Thaena this time. Instead, Sedrell stepped forward. The Scinari seer’s expression was studiously grave, runic charms shimmering lightly.
‘We have tracked the spoor of corruption, my lord.’ Sedrell’s voice was thin, but his demeanour was certain. He nodded towards a set of humans who had been kept from their fellows, seemingly to be tended to by aelven healers. They huddled close to a linen-covered wagon, glancing around and murmuring among themselves. Lyrior’s lips pursed.
‘Them?’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps one of them. Perhaps some foe seeded a cursed trinket into their abode to attract the Hedonites. Perhaps we are…’ Sedrell could not quite bring himself to say ‘incorrect’. His slight half-nod conveyed it well enough.
Once, Lyrior would have bowed his head beneath the weight of it all. But it was a familiar burden now. So did the Regent Supreme ignore the hollowness in his gut, ignore the pang of mortal grief that ran through him, as he turned to the high-helmed Vanari bladesmen flanking Sedrell.
‘Act as necessary. Do it mercifully, if it comes to that,’ he said, motioning his steed to follow the rest of the caravan. ‘But do it thoroughly.’
Flowing water whispered over the ovoid rocks that filled the mountain-shrine’s pools. Wind chimes that hung from elegant bonsai sighed softly as altitudinal airs pushed freely through them. A spiral of flawless quartz wound its way to the centre of the shrine-space.
There knelt Lyrior Uthralle, Warden of Ymetrica, and his breathing was ragged and deep.
‘It is too much.’
He had left his helm and lance with Thaena at the mountain’s base, his cloak of office across Farael’s saddle. He had even left behind the Three Veils, the Cathallars who ministered to his spiritual malaise. Lyrior looked up, and his fine aelven features were drawn in depthless weariness.
‘Each day, the shadow of ruin grows. For each victory we win, five more are demanded. And each choice reverberates through the cosmos. Every word I give may save or damn countless. Did the divine brothers know what they burdened us with when they created us, elder spirit?’ He chuckled, humourlessly. ‘Or am I right in that my only wish is to be… stronger? Purer? To bear it better?’
Avalenor, the Stoneheart King, towered over him in silent repose. The most ancient and venerated of Hysh’s mountain spirits appeared every inch the inanimate rock his form was crafted from. A strange, sourceless shadow seemed to play over the golden contours of its mask. Lyrior had heard tales of Alarith sages kneeling for weeks, unmoving, to hear but a word from the venerable aelementor. In truth, he expected nothing at all.
Yet suddenly the shadow was gone. A strange luminosity played over Avalenor’s horned visage before his rumbling voice filled the shrine.
‘Do you believe your gods felt any different, when they walked in mortal flesh?’ Long minutes passed as Avalenor’s tectonic regard pressed down upon Lyrior. ‘Hysh endures. Its people endure. Not just the aelves. The night draws in. Still you shine.’
Avalenor fell silent, leaving Lyrior alone, kneeling, on the windswept plateau. The Warden of Ymetrica took a breath. Stone filled his spine once more. He stood – yet as he did, a rare smile pulled at his face.
‘Still we shine.’
Amass your own Lumineth Realm-lords legion and lead them with Lyrior Uthralle himself, flanked by elite Dawnrider cavalry and a great selection of units found in Spearhead: Lumineth Realm-lords.
