‘You.’ Daravek’s mouth ran with black blood as he regurgitated the accusation. ‘You betrayed me. You summoned Abaddon’s mongrel. You!’
The shadow-lynx advanced from one side, Ilyaster from the other, wounded but determined.
Now. It had to be now. Daravek could destroy all three of us if he was allowed to retake control of the battle.
But I had nothing left. I hurled myself into him once more. He repelled me without effort, as defiantly as though his soul were warded by steel.
Weakening by the moment, I drove back into his mind, thinning myself into near-nothingness, offering no solid presence for him to repel a third time. I did not need to master his flesh, merely steal a moment of opportunity.
No assault this time. This was attunement, a harmonising with his body’s mortal processes. I flowed through his physical form, riding his blood, feeling the singing sting of adrenaline and electrical impulses from his nervous system.
Pain.
I willed pulses of flame to dance along the cobweb of his nerves, forcing his muscles to contract, to clench, to spasm.
It was enough. Enough to loosen his grip on the axe, enough to paralyse Daravek the span of a single breath.
The daemon-beast was a hammer weight of taloned shadow against my face and chest. The ceremonial scythe was a lance blow cracking into my side. I felt myself falling to the ground, weighed down by the body I had suffused with suffering.
Feed! The daemon’s snarls came with each jarring, reaving blow of his clawed paws. Feed! Blood! Meat! Life!
I was Daravek in that moment. Every word was a thunder crack against my shattering skull. The daemon, the minion of Abaddon’s mongrel assassin, was taking me to pieces. I could not move. My armour was shattered by my own ceremonial scythe in Ilyaster’s hands.
And yet, I was laughing. Daravek was laughing. I had no power to compel him to such a reaction.
Khayon. I spoke my own name, forcing my spirit into cohesion, keeping myself together. I am Khayon. I am Khayon.
Memories flashed, acid-vile in their intensity, of warriors I had never met and wars I had never fought. Strangely it was this, of all things, that Daravek hated me for most. This voyeuristic sharing of his thoughts; this defiling insult of living inside his skull. And yet, even then, his snide laughter echoed all around me.
He backhanded Ilyaster hard enough to shatter the other warrior’s breastplate and moved for the immense doors leading to the fortress’ teleportation chamber. I had to stop him. I had to kill him.
But I could not. I could not hold myself inside his form. He would not let me. He hurled me from his flesh with the ease of a man waving aside an insect. My shock only made it easier for him to shed my consciousness from his own, and he did so with silent psychic laughter.
Almost, Iskandar! Almost, this time.
He repelled me with such brutality that all sense and sensation fled from me. I saw nothing, sensed nothing, and merely plunged through blackness. At the end of my strength, only oblivion awaited.
For a time, I did not exist. For a time, I was past consciousness. In that deep and timeless black, I remember only one thing: when it began to end. There came the sensation of fangs, jaws that closed together in the nothingness. Weapon-teeth sank into whatever was left of Iskandar Khayon, biting down into the matter of his lost soul.
Jaws that arrested my endless fall, that held me in a bladed, impaling embrace… and that brought me back.
I woke with the arrhythmic drumming of my twin hearts straining inside my chest, and a gasp of bitter air spearing its way into my lungs. My vision returned, but slowly, victim to smears and hallucinatory blurs.
When my muscles ceased spasming, I managed to rise on unsteady feet, appalled at the weakness of my limbs. Sweat greased my flesh in a disgusting coat. Blood had trickled from my eyes, my ears, my nose, my gums. The pressure in my skull began to ease as I sucked in great heaves of air, fuelling my locked lungs and overworked hearts.
Nagual emerged from the shadow cast by my crouching form, licking blood from his obsidian teeth.
Master? the daemon lynx asked, as if I were not standing right before him.
Is it done? I was so drained, I could not be certain I was even reaching outside my own head, let alone to my distant daemon. Is he dead?
The great cat turned back towards the burning fortress, kilometres away and far below us in the desert bowl.
The prey fled. Could not kill alone. Had to save you, master. Your soul was lost.
Breathless, exhausted, I exhaled into the nameless world’s reeking wind and looked up at the stars, where Thagus Daravek and his surviving brethren were surely safe aboard one of their warships, no doubt already sailing to yet another hidden sanctuary that would take me years to find.
Defeated, a failure for the fifth time, I looked down at the lynx. I would go to the fortress and claim it for Abaddon. I would find out if Ilyaster still lived. And then, after this latest loss, I would go home.
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To Hannah, with love
A Black Library Publication
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Johan Grenier.
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ISBN: 978-1-78030-960-6
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