by Rob Sanders
‘Dravik…’ Sularii moaned once more. The sorceress ached for her captain. It was his genius that had led them to this. To the darkness below the Citadel and a shrine of Chaos unseen. Blind to both the dangers of treason and the blood-drenched altar before which he kneeled, Dravik Vayne – champion-subject of Slaanesh – had run his fingers over the symbols and sigils crafted into the erotic suggestion of the shrine’s stone. The Prince of Pleasure had promised him such raptures. Such satisfactions. Such sorrows. Gone were notions of fearful allegiance. The Ruinous Powers unified in one goal and behind one champion. The god-serpent that had him in the snaking, crushing coils of euphoria had whispered secrets to the dark elf’s soul. That Archaon the Chosen was a false prophet of darkness. That Slaanesh did not share glory. Slaanesh the Selfish. Slaanesh the Craving. That the Hag Queen of all Naggaroth was but the Prince of Pleasure’s concubine. That she would be Dravik Vayne’s also and see him to the Witch King’s throne.
‘Dravik…’
The serpent promised him such wondrous things. Arousing within him appetites unknown. The depths of bottomless greed. Lust for absolute power. The serpent wounded him with taunts and accusations. It laughed through the echo of his excuses and passed water on his pride. The Prince of Chaos told him that above this Altar of Ultimate Darkness lay a vessel that was his to command alone and an army that awaited enslavement. Above lay a legend to be claimed; that Archaon’s great accomplishments could become his own. That in a death claimed, the Chaos warlord and his infamy would become Vayne’s own. Dravik Vayne – corsair, captain and champion of Slaanesh. Slayer of slayers. Averter of the World’s End. The times would not be Archaon’s to end – for without the endless pleasures of the world and time to enjoy them, there would be no need for a prince to champion them.
‘Dravik…’
The bright rising star that was Archaon’s soul would belong to Slaanesh. He would not be fought or brought to battle. Such delusions were suicide. Rather than face the certain slaughter of Archaon’s sword, Vayne had used the blade against him. The corsair-captain had his sorceress – who was not without skill in outlandish potions and poisons – concoct an intoxicant of power and potency.
Without wanting to risk discovery in the poisoning of his overlord’s meat or wine, or the swift death that would come of spilling even a single drop of his master’s unholy blood with bane-smeared needle-knife or stiletto blade, Vayne decided on Terminus as the mode of deathly transmission. At opportunity and in secret, Vayne massaged the metal of the weapon with Sularii’s intoxicant. A poison of the soul, it moved quickly through the blood. With every foe that fell beneath the blade, the intoxicant spread – entering the unfortunate victim on the sword and infecting their blood with an unthinking ecstasy. Each soul in such taking became the Prince of Pleasure’s own. As Archaon finished his infected foes with skill and economic butchery, he breathed the blood of the fallen that hung on the air like a red mist in the warlord’s murderous wake. Speck by speck, droplet by airborne droplet, Vayne found a way through the Chaos warrior’s considerable defences without even having to lift a blade of his own. Day by day and death by death, Archaon fell into the Prince of Pleasure’s embrace. He became a degenerate. A wanton savage. Moaning the incomprehension of what was happening to him. Insensible to everything but the murderlust of his flesh’s own fire, Archaon fell from the certitude of his apocalyptic path and into an exultant bliss.
Dravik Vayne had been an adoring follower of both Khaine and the Prince of Chaos. He was a lover rather than a fighter. He was not some bludgeoning champion of the Blood God or the Ruinous Star, mindlessly swinging his weapon like a woodcutter at the trunks of trees in a forest without end. His talents lay in the glories of murder. In the taking of a life before his foes knew that it had even been lost to them. So it was with his master Archaon.
‘Dravik…’
And it was done. The corsair’s wicked dagger had passed through Archaon’s throat as though it were rancid butter. Blood gushed between them, splashing Vayne’s neck and scale armour with the heat of his master’s blood. The druchii pulled his lips from those of the warlord. The snarl was gone. Archaon didn’t grab for the grievous wound or rise and stumble for help. He sat there in the gore of others, in gore of his own pooling about him. Allowing. Accepting. Enjoying. He grinned like a lust-drunk idiot. The Prince of Pleasure’s glorious torments waited for him beyond a necessary death. Archaon willed it on. Waiting. Wanting. As Archaon died before them, Vayne and the sorceress became lost in their own pleasures. The Chaos warrior was barely aware of the pair as they rolled through the blood and carnage about him. He was lost in death-raptures of his own. The end was coming.
Perhaps I chose unwisely? There is time. There is time, before the end. To start again. To twist the destinies of men unborn and create calamities of my own making. Perhaps the failure is in my blood, forever to repeat itself. Ambition that is blind unto itself. Treachery. Murder. The service of the Ruinous Powers accomplished through the service of the self? The dark nectar of the gods. But in whose service is my pawn? My gods? My daemon need? Doom, plain and simple it seems. His own. And the doom of all else. What kind of corruption is this? What kind of perversity? Nothing I slipped into the ripe fruit of his soul. No blessing he was given by my abyssal overlords. Not my patrons. Not my princely foes. It is a kind of mortal madness. What kind of man lives not for the gifts of greed – for power, for supremacy and eternity? What kind of man exists only to end all other forms of existence? Cannot a man’s future be corralled? Must it buck the saddle, the chains and halters of fate? This soul must be tamed. But not by me. As we all come to learn, the best lessons are those taught to us by our enemies.
CHAPTER XIV
‘To be the hammer or the anvil. Destiny affords only these choices.’
– Khureshi proverb
The Hellespont
The Great Eastern Ocean
The Festival of Ghosts – Year of the Jackal
‘You’re awake.’
Archaon was. It was a statement, but in the accent sounded like a question. Through the haze of a befuddled mind, the Chaos warrior thought it sounded like a celestial or easterner. Archaon began to fade. A slap across the face brought him back to consciousness. He grabbed at the wrist to which the hand belonged and found it to be spindly and ancient, but possessing great strength for such a withered limb. He tore the wrist back from the Chaos warrior’s grasp. ‘You have slept enough,’ the ancient told him.
Rubbing the crusty confusion from his eye, all Archaon could see was a ghoulish blue light. It faded. Then there was movement. Bodies. Rippling skin. Writhing bodies. Archaon kicked back across the rocky floor and found that but for his eye-patch, he too was naked. His mind raced to catch up. He didn’t know where he was or what was happening. Then, in the eerie blue light that illuminated the cave, he recognised the horrific mass. It was the Fleshstorm – the spawn that fought for the Brothers Spasskov, and by extension himself, when their disgusting talents were needed. Unfortunates of the Great Lord of Change, the Fleshstorm was a single morphing entity, made up of thousands of assimilated bodies. Bone creaked, snapped and fused into monstrous frames while the naked flesh of the spawn writhed and stretched, seamlessly melting into one another. Arms reached out for him, while faces pushed through the horror in silent screams. Some individual spawn managed to break free and slowly, painfully tried to crawl away. They were all mangled limb and insanity, however, and rarely got far before the Fleshstorm reclaimed and reabsorbed them.
Archaon’s palms were suddenly wet. He had backed through something warm and slick on the cave floor. He turned and found his face splattered with the same disgusting residue. Archaon had been a slayer of men long enough to know the temperature and copper-tang of blood. Tearing flaps of dribbling flesh from his face and back, Archaon flung them back at the mound of flesh and innards he had backed through. In the blue light the pool of blood and bu
tchery appeared purple and seemed to be dripping from the rocky ceiling above the mound. It appeared as though someone had exploded or been turned inside out.
‘What in the Netherhell do you think you’re doing?’ the cracked, ancient voice complained. ‘So surprised to see these monstrosities that fight in your name? Eh? These things of darkness you gather about you?’
Archaon grunted. He was not used to seeing their insides on display. He felt the bile rise up the back of his throat. The voice was intensely annoying – like a distant scream that would not end or a mosquito buzzing continuously beside the ear.
‘Who are you?’ Archaon demanded to know. ‘Where are we? How did I get down here?’
‘Questions,’ the voice bounced about the cave. ‘So many questions, Archaon – chosen of the Infernals – the Daemon-Emperors of the north – the greater darkness beyond the Great Bastion. Perhaps they gave their blessing too easily? Eh? Perhaps you were judged worthy before your time?’
‘Show yourself!’ Archaon roared, smearing blood from his eyes. He squinted into the intensity of the blue light. It seemed to be moving about the rocky chamber with an ungainly motion. Archaon walked straight into the blinding blueness and found the wizened silhouette of a hunchbacked old man. He grabbed the ancient by the neck, despite the intensity of the blue light emanating from his forehead. Lifting the man from his feet, one of which Archaon found to be scaly and clawed like the talon of a bird, he throttled the ancient, shaking him back and forth. The old man shrieked like a strangled hawk as his body bounced about like a bag of bones.
‘Who are you?’ Archaon demanded.
Suddenly the blinding blue light was gone, glowing and growing in another part of the cave. In his murderous grip Archaon held a thing of knotted bone, flesh stretched to transparency and multiple limbs like some kind of human spider. Of the ancient there was no sign. Archaon cursed. The ancient was some kind of sorcerer or magician. Tossing the useless spawn back into the mountain of morphing bodies, Archaon ran at the blue light. It was emanating from the wasted ancient, who was getting to his feet with difficulty after assuming the form of some misshapen thing that was crawling away from the Fleshstorm.
The multiple limbed horror shrivelled to the wizened torso and willowy arms and legs of the ancient. It was as though he had morphed into the unfortunate thing and assumed its flesh for his own form. He squawked in terror as Archaon kicked at him. Taking a second head clean off the spawn, the Chaos warrior snatched up a small boulder of black stone from the cave floor and heaved it above his head. The transformation now complete, Archaon beheld a shrivelled old man, squinting at him in fear from the floor. Like Archaon he was naked but for a brilliant blue jewel – an oval sapphire – that was embedded in the flesh of his forehead. Like a third eye, the jewel was shot through with a sliver of darkness at the heart of its blinding brilliance that made it appear like the eye of some great reptile or dragon. The sliver widened and the ghoulish glow from the gem dimmed while the ancient’s wasted limbs waved out in front of him in panic. The old man was stuck – unable to roll away because of his hunched back.
‘Who are you?’ Archaon bellowed, the bludgeoning rock towering dangerously over the frail form of the old man. Disorientated and agitated like some tormented beast, Archaon was in no mood for games. He wanted answers or people would die.
‘All right, all right, all right,’ the ancient bleated. What was left of his long, grey hair and the lustrous strands of his moustache plastered his age-mottled skull. ‘Help me.’
Archaon tossed the rock aside and took the old man by one gnarled and bony hand. The ancient dusted himself off, untangling his wrinkled head from his hair.
‘Your name,’ Archaon demanded.
‘That is no way to treat your saviour,’ the ancient told him, prompting Archaon to bring up his hand to strike the old man. ‘All right, all right, all right.’ The ancient bent down with difficulty to pick up a bone – a femur – from the floor. He scooped up some scraps of shredded clothing. Filthy rags littered the cave where the Fleshstorm had assimilated fresh unfortunates fed to it by the Brothers Spasskov. As he pulled the shredded Man-Chu robes over his mountainous hunch and his sharp bones, the femur grew in his hand to the length of a warped staff. Without effort, the blue sapphire simply popped from the ancient’s forehead, without leaving a cavity or as much as a dimple in his flesh. Catching the glorious gem, he slotted the eye-gem into the crowning joint-crook of the bone. Archaon found the new dullness of its glow entrancing. The potent energy the jewel seemed to give off made him lightheaded.
‘You are Sheerian…’ Archaon said.
‘I am Khezula Sheerian,’ the ancient repeated.
Except he wasn’t repeating anything. Archaon had the information moments before the sorcerer uttered it in his outlandish accent. The old man emphasised every syllable.
‘Sheeriang,’ Archaon said, but the ancient shook his head with swift anger and annoyance.
‘I am Khezula Sheerian…’ the sorcerer said. ‘Not Sheeriang you simpleton with your sharp teeth and bullock’s tongue.’
‘You are a daemon sorcerer…’
‘I am daemon sorcerer of the Great Changer of Ways.’
The ancient’s ugly squint proved even ghastlier with his attempt at a smile. ‘Do not mind the Eye,’ he said, shaking the glorious blue jewel in the head of the staff. ‘It sometimes has that effect on the weak of mind. Like the spyglass, it sees far. Farther than you can possibly imagine. Like the spyglass up close, however, things can become distorted and disorientated.’ Archaon was bewitched by the gem. Drawn to its unnatural power like a man to the spectral hopes and dreams for his future. Under Sheerian’s control the gem dimmed further and the sorcerer knocked the tip of the staff – nestled jewel and all – against the Chaos warrior’s head. Archaon blinked.
‘Who are you?’ Archaon demanded savagely. Sheerian shook his head and began mumbling curses in a language the dark templar did not understand. He walked away, leaning on the staff and dragging his bird’s leg through the grit on the ground. He picked up some rags from the floor of the cave and threw them at the Chaos warrior.
‘Cover yourself,’ the ancient said, ‘for the Great Changer’s sake and the sake of his servants.’
‘I mean,’ Archaon said, anger at himself growing behind his fumbled words. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? What am I doing here? What is happening?’
Sheerian silenced the dark templar’s questions with a scowl and a flap of his bony fingers.
‘I have watched you, chosen one,’ Sheerian said. ‘From afar. The Eye showed me both your victories and your failures. You would be Everchosen – champion of the Daemon Lords of the Great Northern Darkness. You would be herald of the apocalypse. Master of the End Times of both man and god.’
Archaon stared at the ancient as he hobbled about the cave. He tied the rags about his waist like some Darklands barbarian.
‘I am he,’ Archaon said.
‘Did you not think you would face others who would covet such a prize?’ Sheerian put to him.
‘I have put a bloody end to many who harboured such false hopes,’ the Chaos warrior uttered with pride.
‘On the battlefield, yes?’ the ancient sorcerer said. ‘You are a mighty warrior – the Infernals would not doubt it, Archaon of the Western Empire, but there are many mighty warriors from which the Dark Gods of the world may choose their champion. You think that they were all going to come at you head on? Head on, the way you would face them in return. On the field of battle, you look for weaknesses to explore in your enemies’ approach, no? Unprotected flanks? Breaks in formation? Overconfidence in the attack? Did you ever think that the most dangerous of your foes – your competitors for the Ruinous blessings of eternity – might come at you sideways, eh? That they might drop on you from the sky? That they might rise from the deeps?’
; ‘Speak plainly,’ Archaon warned. ‘My patience wears thin with your convolutions.’
‘Always rushing on ahead,’ Sheerian said. ‘Eager to be part of a future you are creating for yourself. Never spending the time to take stock. To consolidate your position before pushing on into the dangers ahead. It is why you have not seen this coming. It is why you are betrayed by those you would trust to prosecute your will. Why the army you have worked so hard to build will tear itself apart above us.’
‘You speak lunacy, sorcerer,’ Archaon said, but his voice lacked its usual booming assuredness.
Sheerian squinted at the gem, moving the headpiece of the staff about him and the chamber like some kind of precious crystalline lens.
‘The Eye shows only the truth as it comes to pass,’ the sorcerer said. ‘If its distant reach shows lunacy then the world must be afflicted with such.’
‘Enough of this,’ Archaon spat and turned to walk away.
‘There you go again,’ said Sheerian. ‘Into an unknown that will end you and bury your path to greatness. Wait!’ As the ancient’s screeching syllables bounced about the environs of the cave, Archaon slowed to a stop. ‘This feverish need of yours to forge on has its uses but sometimes we need to be calm. We need to be patient. Even the servants of the Dark Gods can achieve a kind of peace. It is a peace you have never known, Archaon. It is why,’ Sheerian went on, ‘your treasures elude you.’