by Warhammer
The daemon was falling back before the Slayer, who had somehow climbed back onto the platform. Purple blood spewed from a deep wound in the daemon’s leg, and the edges of it boiled and sizzled as if they had been splashed with acid.
‘Exquisite,’ rumbled the apparition’s beautiful voice, as it slashed at Gotrek with an enormous black sword that it plucked from thin air. The Slayer ducked the blow and chopped at its other leg. A new claw parried the blow, and a suddenly-appearing mace smashed down at him from above.
Felix’s waves of pain subsided as the daemon’s attention was narrowed to fighting Gotrek, and he found he could move again. He crawled to the stone table and pulled himself up on it. Close to, Max and Claudia looked even worse than they had at a distance. Their cheeks were hollow and their skin slack and filthy. Scrapes and bruises and ritual cuts covered them from head to toe, and their fingernails were cracked and bloody, as if they had tried to dig their way through stone. Max had a black eye and Claudia a split lip. The seeress was unconscious, and Max only a little better. His eyes rolled madly when he saw Felix and he mumbled something behind his gag.
Felix reached trembling hands forwards and sawed through the silk cords that held the gag in place, then pulled it from his lips.
‘My hands,’ mouthed the wizard, his voice rattling like paper. ‘Then I can defend you.’
Felix almost laughed at this. Max didn’t look like he could defend himself against a strong wind, let alone daemons and sorceresses. Nonetheless, he went to work on the braided leather that held Max’s wrists. He didn’t get far, for the daemon wailed again and its pain drove all thought and ability out of Felix’s head. The screams of the sorceresses told him that they too were affected.
One of the daemon’s arms was effervescing away and it staggered back to the limits of its circle as it defended itself against the Slayer with three other limbs.
‘That axe,’ it moaned. ‘I know it now.’ It shifted the weight of its attention to Heshor. ‘Release me back to the void, mortal. I crave sensation, not destruction.’
‘No!’ shrieked the high sorceress, some resonance with the daemon’s all-encompassing consciousness allowing Felix to understand her though she spoke in the druchii tongue. ‘You must fulfil your bargain! Finish the dwarf and resume!’
‘You will hold me to your regret, hag,’ it rumbled, as Gotrek attacked it again.
Felix recovered himself and finished cutting through Max’s wrist bonds and started on Claudia’s. He looked back. The sorceresses were standing again.
‘Kill the human!’ cried Heshor, pointing a black-nailed finger at him. ‘He must not disturb the sacrifices!’
She and the three still-standing sorceresses turned towards him, spouting vile incantations as Max mumbled a protection, moving his hands weakly through the ritual motions.
But then, before either spells or counter-spells could be completed, the daemon smashed Gotrek in the chest with an armoured fist the size of a boulder and sent him flying back again. This time the Slayer hit the platform shoulder-first and skidded backwards towards the edge – straight through the purple powder boundary of the binding circle, wiping it away. Blood welled from the Slayer’s nose and mouth as he came to a stop. He didn’t move.
Heshor and her sorceresses gasped and faltered in their incantations at this momentous accident. The daemon laughed.
‘Did I not say?’ it chuckled, then strode out of the circle, straight towards Heshor. ‘Come, daughter, I will make you a guest of my realm, as you have welcomed me to yours.’
The sorceress screamed and backed away, snatching up the harp as her remaining sisters stepped before her to guard her retreat, blasting the daemon with their black sorcery.
The daemon appeared to relish the attack, moaning with pleasure but slowing not one whit. It caressed the three sorceresses with probing tentacles and they collapsed in paroxysms of ecstasy so intense that they snapped their own spines.
Heshor turned and ran with the harp, but then a bloody figure rose up and tackled her, stabbing at her with a dagger. Felix was shocked to see that it was Aethenir.
‘For Ulthuan and the asur!’ he cried as they slammed to the ground, the harp between them. ‘For Rion and the path of honour!’
‘No, scholar,’ shrilled Belryeth as she stood and leapt to defend her mistress. ‘You will win no redemption.’ She dragged Aethenir off Heshor as the daemon stepped closer.
The high sorceress scrambled to her feet as the high elf and the young sorceress fought once again, and fled for the door.
The daemon came after her, laughing melodiously. ‘Do you abandon me now, dear heart? Have you not pledged your undying love to me?’
It trod on Aethenir and Belryeth as it followed her, and they screamed, though whether in pain or delight, it was hard to tell. They continued flailing and fighting as the daemon slashed down at Heshor with an arm like a bone scythe.
Heshor leapt away, but the tip of the appendage gashed her trailing leg and she fell on the steps that led to the outer chamber. The daemon loomed over her, raising new arms, but then, just as her fate seemed sealed, a red-crested figure staggered out of the shadows, then leapt up and buried its axe in the base of the daemon’s spine.
‘Die, spawn of the abyss!’ roared the Slayer, blood bubbling from his mouth with every word.
The daemon shrieked with a thousand tortured voices, and its agony once again crushed Felix to the ground with its vastness. It turned and staggered back from the Slayer, bits of it fading in and out as it bled pink mist. The wound in its lower back grew larger as Felix watched, sharing its agony, the edges eating away like parchment attacked by fire.
The daemon glared down at Gotrek as the Slayer stumped doggedly after it. ‘No, little one. I will not fight you. This is not my fate. One greater than I is to die killing you. In the meanwhile, I will relish your disappointment.’
And then, between blinks, it was gone, and the chamber was silent, the sudden vacuum of its absence almost as painful as its presence had been. It felt for a moment as if all the joy and colour and excitement had been bled from the world – as if life wasn’t worth living. Felix almost wept.
Gotrek, on the other hand, roared with rage, slamming his axe down and shattering the marble floor. ‘Craven hellspawn!’ he bellowed. ‘Leavings of the void! Will you rob me of my death? Will you rob me of glory? Come back and face me!’
Felix looked up, terrified, but the daemon failed to reappear. Gotrek bent over and coughed blood all over the floor, the glow fading from the runes on his axe.
Recovering, Felix looked around for High Sorceress Heshor. She was gone – and so was the Harp of Ruin.
‘The harp,’ he said, struggling to stand. ‘We…’
‘Felix,’ came Max’s feeble whisper. ‘Claudia’s bonds.’
Felix returned to the stone table and finished cutting Claudia free. She did not move or open her eyes.
Felix checked her pulse. ‘We had hoped to save you before this,’ he said. There was a faint flutter beneath his fingers. ‘But they moved you.’
Max sat up as if he was made of dry twigs. ‘I am frankly surprised to see you at all. The last we saw of you…’
‘Friends,’ came a weak voice from behind them. ‘Help me. Something has happened.’
Max and Felix turned. Aethenir lay where the daemon had stepped upon him and Belryeth. He was under the sorceress and pushing at her.
‘Release me, cursed asur,’ whined the sorceress, flailing in his grasp.
Max and Felix limped wearily to the two elves, but as they came closer, Felix staggered and nearly vomited. Max choked.
Something had indeed happened. It had appeared from a distance that Belryeth lay on top of Aethenir. This was not the case. In truth, they had become one. The touch of the daemon had fused them in a permanent lovers’ embrace. Their bodies were melted together at the torso, Belryeth’s head looking forever over Aethenir’s shoulder, and their arms and legs intertwined.
&n
bsp; ‘By the gods,’ said Felix, gagging.
‘Horrible,’ agreed Max.
‘Please, friends,’ said Aethenir, looking up at them with frightened eyes. ‘Do something.’
‘Take him away,’ whimpered Belryeth.
Gotrek stepped up and looked down at them. He snorted. ‘A fit punishment for causing all this,’ he said.
Felix glared at him.
‘Don’t be cruel, Slayer,’ said Max.
‘Taking your example, Slayer,’ said Aethenir, ‘I had hoped to die to atone for my sin, But this… this is not to be borne.’
Felix looked at Max. ‘Is there nothing to be done?’
Max shook his head. ‘The unmaking of this would be beyond the greatest of magisters.’
‘Do you still wish for death, elf?’ asked Gotrek.
Aethenir swallowed, then nodded. ‘Aye, dwarf.’
‘Then pray and die well.’
Aethenir looked around at them all and spoke. ‘Let it be said that, though I strayed from it, I died upon the path of honour.’ Then he closed his eyes and murmured a prayer as Gotrek raised his axe.
When the scholar’s prayer was finished, the Slayer let the axe fall and beheaded him. Aethenir’s face was peaceful when his head rolled to a stop.
Felix silently bade the high elf farewell. He might have been a fool, and perhaps not the bravest of his race, but, as he had said, in the end he had not flinched from doing what he could to rectify his foolishness.
‘Come on,’ said Gotrek, striding towards the outer chamber. ‘There’s still the sorceress.’
‘Wait!’ cried Belryeth. ‘You can’t leave me like this! Kill me like you killed him.’
They all looked down at her, then at each other.
‘It would be much more fitting to spare your life,’ said Max.
‘Barbarians!’ she cried. ‘You will pay for this indignity!’
They ignored her. Felix draped one of the naked seeress’s discarded black robes around Claudia, picked her up and put her over his shoulder, then hurried after the Slayer. Max donned the surcoat of one of the Endless and joined them.
In the outer chamber the Endless were dead, but so were the dwarf slaves, their bodies strewn about the room with great wounds hacked through them by the Endless’s longswords. By contrast, the druchii had been dragged down and bludgeoned to death. Not one of them still had a face. The mosaic floor was a lake of blood.
Kneeling in the middle of the lake was Farnir, cradling the head of his father in his lap. The young dwarf was near death. There was a wound in his chest that made red bubbles when he breathed. Birgi was dead, a wound in his side opening him up to his spine.
Farnir looked up. There were tears in his eyes. ‘Have we saved the Old World?’ he asked.
Gotrek looked at him, then towards the door that led to the stairs. ‘We will, beardling. Rest easy.’
‘Aye,’ said the slave. ‘Aye, good.’ He closed his eyes and slumped over the body of his father and died.
Gotrek bowed his head. ‘May Grungni welcome you in his halls.’
They hurried on, splashing through the blood to the stairs. Felix found it impossible to dismiss Farnir’s face from his mind as they started up the endless flight of stairs. The young dwarf had lived almost his entire life as a slave of the druchii. He had seen nothing of the world except the inside of the black ark, and yet he had died gladly for a homeland and an idea of honour he knew only from a few old stories told to him by his father. He had died to preserve a whole race’s freedom, a thing he had never known himself.
By the time they had followed Heshor’s trail of blood spatters to the top of the stairs, Max was crawling on his hands and knees, Felix’s legs were like jelly, and even Gotrek, suffering from the daemon’s last hammer-blow punch to the chest, was wheezing, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
A few steps from the top the Slayer paused. Twittering voices and the sound of hurried movement came from the room above.
‘Put down the girl and ready your sword, manling.’
Felix did as he was ordered, giving Claudia over to the care of Max, and sucking in deep breaths to strengthen himself. Then, at a nod from Gotrek, they ran up the stairs and into the druchii boudoir.
A crowd of slaves and harlots and pleasure house guards swarmed around what looked like a litter in the centre of the room. Several of them turned as Gotrek and Felix burst in, and Felix saw that the litter was in fact a low divan, and that Heshor lay on it, clutching the Harp of Ruin as a slave tried to bind the wound in her leg.
The guards shouted and charged Gotrek and Felix, while a majordomo cried orders and four burly human slaves picked the divan up at its four corners and ran towards the door as the whores and slaves shrieked after them.
Gotrek hewed through the guards like they were tall grass. Even Felix cut one down – they were hardly the elite fighters the Endless had been. The fight slowed them down nonetheless, and by the time the last guard fell to Gotrek’s axe, his head dangling from a string of neck flesh, Heshor’s makeshift stretcher was out the door.
Gotrek tramped towards it resolutely. Felix looked behind him. Max was just rising from the opening in the bed platform. Claudia’s arm was draped over his shoulder, but she was moving under her own power.
‘Go,’ said Max. ‘We’ll catch up.’
Felix nodded and hurried after Gotrek. They ran out into the hallway just in time to see the slaves and the divan disappearing up the iron stairs opposite.
They charged after them, though Gotrek was wheezing and Felix felt like an anvil sat on his chest. At the top of the stairs they saw Heshor’s bearers running down the long purple hall to the foyer and started after them, but it was clear that the sorceress would escape the pleasure house before they caught up with her.
Gotrek skidded to a stop, cocked back his arm, and threw his axe. It spun end over end down the hall and bit into the back of the slave holding the back left corner of the divan with a sickening chunk. The slave screamed and fell. The divan dropped at his corner and Heshor squawked and let go of the harp to steady herself. It bounced across the marble floor.
The other slaves screamed in fear and ran on, steadying the divan. Heshor screamed orders and pointed back at the harp, but they didn’t heed her and ran out through the open door.
Gotrek and Felix thundered into the hexagonal foyer seconds layer. Gotrek wrenched his axe from the dead slave’s back and raced with Felix to the door, but as they burst out onto the shallow front porch they drew up sharply. The street was filled in every direction with what appeared to be the black ark’s entire complement of spear companies, lined up in orderly ranks and all facing the front door of the pleasure house. In their centre, next to an imperious druchii in elaborate armour who Felix deduced must be Lord Tarlkhir, commander of the ark, Heshor sat up on her divan and pointed a trembling finger at Gotrek.
Gotrek chuckled deep in his throat and readied his dripping axe. ‘Foes without number,’ he said, grinning savagely.
At an order from Tarlkhir, the druchii lowered their spears and started to advance.
Felix looked back through the door to the harp, which still rang on the marble floor near the middle of the foyer and seemed, strangely, to be getting louder rather than diminishing.
‘Gotrek,’ he said. ‘Wait. Perhaps we should destroy the harp first, just in case they get through us.’
Gotrek grunted, but he could see the logic in this, because he jumped back through the door, then turned and strode for the harp.
‘Lock it, manling,’ he said.
Felix slammed and locked the door just as the first druchii mounted the house’s steps, then crossed to the Slayer, who was looking down at the harp, which was ringing even louder now, dancing on the tiles of the floor. Felix could feel the vibrations through his feet. The foyer moaned with sympathetic overtones that made Felix want to pop his ears.
‘Foul thing,’ said Gotrek, as the sound of spear butts thudded on the doo
r behind them.
Felix had to agree. Its growing note was a discordant howl that hurt the ears, and its twisted, black, U-shaped body was vibrating so much now that its edges were blurred. Its translucent strings quivered like strands of saliva.
Felix stepped back as Gotrek lifted his axe over his head for a mighty stroke.
A weak voice came from the purple corridor. ‘Slayer, no!’
Gotrek and Felix looked around. Max was limping up the corridor towards them with Claudia stumbling along beside him. ‘Break it, and the energies released could kill us all!’ said Max.
Gotrek raised an eyebrow. ‘Truly?’ An evil smile spread across his ugly face. ‘Good.’
He reached down and grabbed for the harp, but he had trouble reaching it. His thick fingers stopped inches from it, as if blocked by an invisible wall, and his hand and arm shook. He cursed. Dust began sifting down from the roof of the chamber, shaken loose by the harp’s vibrations, and the braziers that ringed the room rattled in their alcoves, spitting sparks.
‘Filthy magic.’
Max looked at the harp with fear. ‘Its strings have been struck. It is releasing its power.’
With bared teeth Gotrek forced his arm forwards, his muscles bulging and the veins popping out on his forearms and neck, then closed his hand around the harp’s vibrating frame. It continued to ring, making his fingers blur as he turned to the door, which was shuddering from the blows of the druchii spears.
‘Open it, manling,’ he said through clenched teeth.
Felix stared at the harp. Pebbles and mortar were now pitter-pattering down along with the dust, and he could feel the vibrations in his chest and heart as if he were standing beside a company of kettle drummers. His knees shook with it. He couldn’t imagine how it must feel to hold it.
‘Manling!’
Felix snapped out of it and ran to the door. He drew the bolt, then pulled it open and jumped to the side. A wave of druchii spearmen stumbled in, caught off balance, and Gotrek slammed into them, chopping one-handed with his axe as he held the roaring harp in the other.