by Nick Horth
He began to laugh, hacking up more silver liquid.
Despite his hatred for the man, Toll could not help feeling a stab of pity. He could not comprehend what it must have been like, feeling one’s body shifting and transforming into something monstrously wrong, the fear and revulsion of one’s own flesh. Then he recalled the blood that had flooded the streets of the City of Secrets, and the thousands of honest souls that had burned in witchfire. He remembered his old friend Kazrug, shot down by this very man, and his compassion melted away in an instant.
He fired four blasts.
Toll was stunned when Vermyre did not even raise the staff. Instead of striking their target, the bullets were transformed into four yellow-feathered hawks with needle fangs and long, drooping tail feathers. They swooped into the air, cawing and screeching.
Vermyre laughed. ‘I did not even mean to do that. I think that mastering this Silver Shard is going be a most interesting diversion.’
‘You’re not leaving here alive,’ said Toll. He was vaguely aware of Callis rushing past him, helping Shev up from the floor.
‘You’ve already lost, Hanniver. By the Changemaker, this… thing. The sheer power of it, it’s incredible.’
Callis felt a wave of relief wash through him when he saw Shev was still alive and apparently unharmed. A dozen yards ahead of her, Vermyre’s pet beastmen continued to pour a stream of liquid flame onto the throne of that strange, squat creature, and so involved were they in the spellcraft that they did not seem to notice him at all as he slid into position behind the aelf, nestling his duardin wheel lock against the lip of the shallow staircase.
‘By the God-King, it’s good to see you’re all right,’ he said, then pulled his backup pistol from beneath his coat and offered it to her, grip first. ‘It’s loaded and primed. I know you don’t much like these, but…’
She practically tore it from his hand, and leaned over to plant a fierce kiss on his lips.
‘Err…’ was all he managed as she pulled free.
Shev just laughed, shaking her head. ‘I thought you were dead. Gods, I thought I was dead as well.’
‘Yes, well,’ said Callis, trying to recover his composure. ‘Don’t give up hope just yet. I assume you’ve noticed that we very much failed to keep Vermyre away from that thing.’
He raised his head and fired towards the traitor. He’d made kills at a similar range a hundred times before, but this time nothing happened. He thought he saw a faint ripple of effervescent light, like a miniature rainbow, but Vermyre did not react.
‘There’s some kind of spell-field around him,’ said Shev, after firing her own weapon to no greater effect. ‘Our guns are useless.’
There was a sudden rush of air, and Callis was struck with a feeling of intense disorientation, as if he were dangling from the highest mast of the Thrice Lucky in a raging storm. The room seemed to vibrate and roll, and he staggered backwards, seeing Shev roll aside with a groan.
The wide chamber rocked with an eruption of immense power. Callis and Shev were sent hurtling backwards, rolling and sliding across the smooth ground. Dust and shattered masonry rained from the ceiling.
Through bleary eyes, Callis looked up to see a radiant light where the flaming throne had been only a moment before. Silhouetted before that blazing light were the thin, bent skeletons of the tzaangor shamans, little more than etchings made from ash. The light dimmed, and Callis saw the throne descend from on high with slow and steady grace. A creature rested upon that conveyance, charred and burned but unbowed. Its rheumy, ancient eyes seemed to bore straight into Callis. It waved a stubby hand in a gesture of utter indifference, and the beastmen’s skeletons scattered into nothing. Only the melted husks of their weapons remained, rattling to the floor.
The monster that had once been Vermyre turned, raising the Silver Shard high. Before Callis’ eyes, the immense power melted into quicksilver and reformed itself around the shape of his golden staff.
The creature upon the throne said nothing, but it gazed imperiously at the twisted human.
‘You want this back, do you not?’ said Vermyre. Then he rapped the staff against the chamber floor. A ripple of light ran across the length of his body, and when it receded, that hideous, malformed face was once again the visage of the man who had betrayed Toll and Callis, and had set Excelsis aflame. Round, slightly boyish, with a smile that did not reach his eyes. Though the mutations had disappeared, Callis’ sense of revulsion did not subside. He could still smell the corruption upon the man, a sickly-sweet stench like incense mixed with decaying flesh.
‘Come and take it, if you can,’ Vermyre said.
The lizard-like creature gestured at the sorcerer, and the glass portal high above smashed asunder, raining shards of coloured crystal all around them. A sliver of glass sliced a red furrow down Callis’ face, from his temple to his lower chin, and he cursed and covered his head with his hands. Racing through the shattered window came motes of blazing light, each as large as a human head, burning with the fire of stars. They slammed into Vermyre with horrendous force, but he merely staggered back a few steps and shook his head, laughing. Again, the creature swept its hands out and shaped an arrow of energy that slammed into the former High Arbiter. This strike smashed Vermyre to the floor with the power of a hammerblow. Callis heard the distinct crack of shattering bone, and saw a spiderweb of cracks splinter across the obsidian floor.
‘That will not do it, creature,’ said Vermyre, hauling himself to his feet. Toll ran forward, perhaps hoping to strike at the man with his rapier while the traitor was distracted, but Vermyre absent-mindedly swung his staff out to the side and sent the witch hunter sprawling.
‘Let me show you how to dispose of one’s enemies,’ Vermyre growled, and thrust the staff out towards the reptile. The ground shattered and erupted in spear-length shards of obsidian, a wall of piercing pikes that slammed through the creature’s throne, penetrating stone and flesh alike. The creature hissed in agony and its throne began to soar high towards the ceiling, dripping black blood. Vermyre smiled and gestured again, and this time the very walls of the structure splintered and came apart, forming lashes of stone and crystal which reached out to strike the palanquin. Its occupant wove its arms in desperate patterns, smiting the reaching crystalline whips with blasts of living lightning, but there were simply too many. Callis watched, appalled, as one of the lashing tendrils pierced the bloated beast, tore it bodily from its throne, and flicked its lifeless corpse aside. The creature struck the wall, rolled and hit the floor of the chamber with hideous force.
‘No,’ whispered Shev, and Callis shared her despair. They knew nothing about the mysterious beast, but it had been a protector and a guardian, they understood. And it had been perhaps their only chance of defeating the ascendant Vermyre.
The arch-traitor whirled his arms above his head. The cavernous roof of the hall began to come apart, as if caught in the path of a ferocious hurricane. Round and round swirled those tendrils of splintered stone, unmaking the very foundations of the building, tearing open a great, gaping hole in the featureless dome above.
Callis opened fire, as did Toll and Shev, standing amidst the cataclysm and pouring bullet after bullet towards Vermyre. None connected.
From the corner of his eye, Callis saw the shattered body of the guardian twitch. One of its eyes was little more than a shapeless red ruin, but the other still burned with intensity. It raised a single, webbed hand, and the ground disappeared from underneath his feet.
Chapter Thirty-Five
They had been standing, all of them, within the disintegrating temple. Shev was certain of that. And then, with the abruptness of a flash of lightning, they had been sent… elsewhere. They were falling, weightless through a swirling vortex of colours and shapes that made no sound or sense at all. Freed from gravity and reality and anything comprehensible by the mortal mind. Shev looked down at her body, a
nd saw it morph and twist and reshape itself into an impossible fractal collision of bones and skin and clothing. Callis, to her left, was screaming as his body helixed around itself. She was screaming too, she supposed, though her main feeling was a form of detached, maddened curiosity.
Then, as one, they slammed to solid earth. Dense, overgrown earth, wet with dew and thick with sharp thorns.
Shev staggered to her feet and rose to see…
Xoantica. As it had once been. She did not know how she knew that, but gazing down upon the majestic sweep of the city it seemed an undeniable fact. The skies were such a clear, bright blue it was almost painful to look upon. Surrounding them on all sides were thick, lustrous trees with dangling fronds and brightly-coloured fruits hanging from their boughs. Ahead, through the dense vegetation, she could see a clearing, and the looming shape of some kind of structure. The sounds of life were deafening. The hissing chorus of startled insects, and the hoots and shrieks of birds in the trees. Life, where none had stirred before. She heard rustling movement within the tree-line.
‘Sigmar’s teeth,’ spat Callis. He clambered to his feet, looking about as startled and discombobulated as Shev felt. He was waving his pistol around like a drunken man, still clearly disorientated from their bizarre journey.
‘Where are we?’ said Toll. The witch hunter knelt, running his hand through the wet grass. ‘This is the very city we entered, but…’
He did not finish the thought, but he and Shev shared a knowing glance. Both of them could feel that something unutterably strange had happened here.
‘We must keep going,’ she urged.
They forced their way through the tangle of thick vines, slapping away thumb-sized mosquitoes that buzzed and droned about them. After some effort, they emerged on the crest of a shallow hill, and looked out over the city of white and gold. She saw the full beauty of Xoantica for the first time. Enormous, spiralling ziggurats rose from a network of immaculate roadways, reaching as high as castle towers. The walls of these great structures were lined in gold, bedecked with strange, asymmetrical runes and intricate engravings of stern figures, heads bowed as if in prayer. Amphora-carrying statues lining the avenues of the city poured streams of crystal-clear water into fountains and softly burbling waterways. There were carriages on the streets, elegantly curved traps pulled by giant, long beaked birds with iridescent feathers. Pedestrians too. Humans mostly, robed and cowled, but here and there the slender forms of aelves.
‘Where the hells are we now?’ whispered Callis.
‘Inside the master, Lord Pa’tha’quen’tos, memories,’ came a chirping voice from behind them, strangely halting in its speech pattern.
They turned to see the same diminutive lizard-priest that had greeted them in the chamber of Xoantica’s great hall. Gone was the ragged tear that Vermyre had opened in the blue-skinned creature’s hide. It walked towards them with an odd, hopping gait.
‘Xoantica, as it was,’ the creature chirped.
‘Quite the place,’ said Callis.
‘A mask. A golden mask, to hide the truth,’ the creature hissed, waving a dismissive claw.
The image of the city blurred and shifted, and they felt the ground surge beneath their feet. When vision came back to them, they were standing inside what appeared to be a temple, shrouded in shadow. Above, braziers of purple fire cast flickering shadows across rows and rows of hooded figures. Each carried a silver knife, and wore an ornate mask of silver studded with gems and engraved with patterns of pale gold. Some of these masks were fashioned in the shape of prey-birds, hooked and avian. Others were shaped like grinning half-moons, or horned and fanged beasts. The fug of incense and burning oils hung heavy in the air, seeming to blur the motions of the robed figures. They were chanting, low and insistently, in a tongue that sounded like the droning of insects. A column of more than a hundred sorry, stick-thin slaves shuffled down towards the centre of the chamber, where there lay a circular pool surrounded by stone pillars marked with profane symbols and engraved script. Liquid boiled erratically within that enormous well, occasionally spitting upwards. It looked like molten silver, though Shev thought she could see shapes moving in that morass, a nightmarish and unformed mass of organic matter, compound eyes and lashing tongues.
‘Sacrifices,’ said Toll softly, staring at the victims as they were led forward. All hope and even fear had gone from their eyes. There was only the dull glaze of resignation.
‘Once scholars and masters of magic, lured here by false promises,’ said their guide, startling Shev. The creature stood only a few yards from her, gazing at the ceremony with narrowed eyes. ‘Xoantica professed to be a city of learning. Of reason. All lies, of course. Its rulers cared only for power. Forbidden knowledge. The Changer of the Ways heard their prayers, and was gratified by their duplicity.’
The slaves lined up around the swirling mass of molten metal. A figure stood upon a raised pulpit at the far end of the room, wielding a silver staff flickering with a turquoise flame. A woman, skeletally thin and with long, white hair bound in a knot on the top of her skull. Her mask was smooth and featureless silver, bound so tightly to her face that it almost seemed the gleaming metal was her skin. She wore magnificent purple robes, high collared and embroidered with intricate patterns of gold and silver. The priestess rapped her staff upon the ground. Several hooded figures below raised their curved daggers and stepped forward. Their knives slashed across the throats of their captives. Shev looked away in revulsion. When she glanced back, trails of bright crimson were mixed in with the shimmering silver, and corpses were strewn across the floor.
The quicksilver began to bubble. Mist filled the room as the hooded figures’ chanting rose to a demented crescendo.
A great claw reached forth from the metallic pool. Then an immense, bird-like arm, shimmering with iridescent feathers. A jagged beak broke the surface next, a lashing tongue tasting the air with obscene delight. Shev felt a wave of purest terror, such as she had never known before. Beside her, Callis’ hand flew to the symbol of the God-King he wore around his neck, his expression panic stricken. The simmering metal and rising steam obscured much, but within the swirling clouds, the shadow of something monstrous, several times the size of a man, could be seen. A hide of iridescent colours, rippling with corded muscle. Coils of night-black scales. An abomination from another realm, forcing its way into reality.
Within the glittering mass, a slimy lens peeled back to reveal a yellow orb that blazed with primordial malevolence. In that gaze was a horrifying madness, a gateway to a trillion nightmarish futures of agony and torment. Shev clutched her chest, staggering backwards.
Time stopped. Around them, the ranks of robed cultists froze in the midst of their exultations, daggers raised high in triumph. The choking fog grew thicker, mercifully masking the horror in the molten pool.
‘What in Sigmar’s name was that thing?’ Callis gasped, wiping blood from a split palm across his coat. Shev realised that he had clutched the God-King’s relic so tightly it had pierced his skin.
‘A daemon,’ Toll answered, suddenly looking very old. ‘A powerful, greater daemon.’
The lizard priest bared his needle-like teeth. ‘Servant to the Lord of Lies,’ it hissed. ‘Thank your gods you did not witness its true form, only an echo of the past. A memory.’
Shev wished she had seen nothing at all. When she closed her eyes, she still saw the malignant eye seared upon her brain, the sulphurous stench of its flesh still souring her nostrils.
‘Nem’k’awet was the name the daemon gave,’ the creature continued. ‘The lord of Silver Skies. Not its true name. The mortals’ worship drew it forth to ravage the realms once more, and in return it offered them a gift of unimaginable power.’
Their surroundings twisted once more; suddenly they were atop the highest peak of Xoantica’s golden tower, an enormous, disc-shaped platform open to the sky. Surrounding the ci
ty on all sides were mountain peaks, obscured by rain that lashed down in stinging sheets. The purple-robed figure they had seen in the sacrificial chamber now stood before a pyre of purple flames, within which writhed malformed shapes. Flames lashed out angrily from the pyre, though they could not breach the warding circle that was marked upon the floor, a hexagrammatic shape formed from bloody corpses. Mortal cultists stood surrounding this hideous scene, divested of robes. Lightning flickered across bare, pale flesh that was marked with tattoos and ritual scars. They were guarding yet more prisoners, these ones shivering and terrified, some lolling and screaming incomprehensibly, clearly driven to madness by their suffering.
The white-haired woman reached a hand into the flames, which coiled around her body to no avail. With a scream of triumph, she drew forth a blade of pure silver. It was almost impossible to fix one’s eyes upon that sword, for it seemed to pulse and flicker in and out of reality, changing form with every passing moment.
‘Nem’k’awet’s gift. A weapon born from the purest insanity of the Chaos realm. Imbued with the stuff of daemonkind,’ the lizard priest spat.
Letting out a howl of exultant triumph, the sorceress flicked the blade at the nearest bound prisoners. A beam of sickening un-light washed across them. They screamed helplessly as their bodies melted into a tangle of yellow-banded, triple-headed serpents.
The cultists of Xoantica fell to their knees, raising their hands in worship of their unspeakable master, their voices frenzied as they screamed their praise to the skies. The priestess raised the weapon again, and muttered a profane incantation.
Corposant light enveloped the platform as a beam of crackling energy reached far into the distance, scattering the tenebrous clouds as it roared above the earth. This lance of silver-white energy struck the distant peak of a mist-shrouded mountain, enveloping it in a writhing web of phosphorescence. With a sound like a great dam bursting, the mountainside melted, pouring down the valley like a golden flood, releasing torrents of glittering steam into the sky.