‘I must go,’ he said to his retinue. ‘This quest can only be undertaken alone. Wait out the night. If I have not returned by the time this smoke lightens or lifts, depart. Find my sister, Warqueen Jevcha, with the Darkoath, and tell her of my death.’
‘May the Eightstar guide you, sire,’ Modred said, cuffing his cap from his head and using it to wipe the blood from his youthful face. He made the sign of the eight-pointed Star of Chaos, four fingers from each hand interlocked.
‘And you, boy,’ Vanik responded tersely. He clapped his heavy warpsteel shield across his back and moved off down the slope, sheathing Serpent’s Fang as he went. He didn’t bother to clean its edge of Fellwind’s blood. It would be wet again soon enough, of that he was certain.
In the decades since Vanik had first set foot upon the Path to Glory, fear had become a stranger to him. Even when he had been young, the threat of blood and battle had served only to set his spirits soaring, as it did with any lodge-son of the Splintered Coast. The shattered ice-crags and long winters of that harsh corner of Ghur bred a warrior people well suited to the service of the four True Gods. Fear was a luxury no hearthguard or dragonship oarsman could afford. Here, however, the sensation stirring in his gut felt different entirely.
To fight what was seen was simple. To do so against something that was unseen was altogether less so. It created a creeping, slithering unknown that set the nerves on edge and honed the senses to a painful edge. The uncertainty of stepping out into the choking pall of ash and smoke made Vanik grimace. Still, it was to the Cinderwood that his Black Pilgrimage had brought him, and he would not depart until this latest quest was completed. He would become a Knight of Ruin, one of Archaon’s chosen, a warrior of the Varanguard. If not, his soul was already forfeit.
He progressed over the broken and burned corpses littering the plain, his boots crunching through brittle bone and blackened flesh. The smoke around him shifted and twisted, and more than once he thought he caught shapes darting around him, or features leering from the constantly falling ash. Whether they were signs from the True Gods or something more malevolent, he could not tell, but he kept one gauntlet on the hilt of Serpent’s Fang as he walked.
‘Eightfold Path guide me,’ he murmured, forging on deeper into the malevolent smog.
It wasn’t long before he lost the outline of the ridge behind him. That in itself was no concern. He had come here to lose himself. That was the only chance he had of finding what he sought. He was in the hands of the True Gods now.
He realised there were shapes ahead, more permanent than the phantoms haunting him. For a moment, he tensed, hand tight around his sword’s hilt. A few more steps, however, revealed that the looming shades were the beginnings of a forest, swathed in the smoke that seemed to perpetually cloud this part of Aqshy. It was the Cinderwood, he realised. The thrice-cursed place he’d been searching for. He moved in among the boughs, treading carefully, his fangs bared and yellow eyes straining in the gloom.
The woodland was quite dead. An expanse of burned trunks and skeletal branches, it closed in around Vanik, a thicket of scorched and blackened timber that looked as though it had only just fallen victim to the most ferocious of forest fires. Crisped undergrowth cracked and snapped beneath his boots, and more ash rose up with every step. He continued to battle the urge to draw his sword. He was being watched, he was sure of it.
He moved a bough aside, the ancient tree groaning like a soul weary of torment. Something dark and heavy shifted in the branches above, and tumbled down towards him. Serpent’s Fang was free in an instant, a dash of silvered steel in the singed landscape.
The blade stopped inches from the thing that had almost hit him. He found himself face-to-face with a withered skull, its sockets glaring at him, leathery flesh clinging to the rictus grin of its jaw. The thing swayed as he stepped back, and he realised the corpse was hanging from a length of knotted ashvine, the blackened cords wrapped tight around its throat from the branches overhead. The body dangled like a mad child’s mannequin, head bowed, shrivelled and shrunken by the heat. For the first time, Vanik noticed more hanging from the boughs round about, unmoving in the still air, their rotted sockets staring blindly into the smoky woodland where they’d choked and burned.
Vanik thrust the hanging body aside and strode on, his anger flaring. He had not come here to skulk around a charred, corpse-draped forest. His quest would not allow him to leave until he’d found what he sought – nothing else mattered, and if anything sought to impede him, it would die, and die a second death if necessary. He kept Serpent’s Fang’s bloody blade drawn and pressed on, deeper into the Cinderwood.
She watched the mortal pass on into the crackling, blistered shadows beneath the boughs, his tread growing firmer as his soul flared with blessed anger, hot like the smouldering remains of the woodland that surrounded him. She had been aware of him almost since he had stepped foot into Aqshy, his quest drawing her wandering, hungry soul. Like all of her kind, she sought companionship almost as greedily as she reviled authority. This one was touched by the will of the high powers, though. Such an opportunity did not present itself often. He was worthy of her attentions.
He could also prove to be a most favourable source of fresh meat.
How long had it been since she had last enjoyed the primal pleasures of flesh and blood? She was clad in it now, the Pilgrim’s presence sufficient to draw her soul into corporeal form, little by little. She passed through the woodland after the mortal champion, relishing the new reality she found herself in. The hot ash underfoot, the rough boughs that nicked and scraped against her spiked hide, the overpowering scents of burned wood and charred meat. She bared her fangs, newly formed. The shadows avoided her, the forest not yet comprehending her presence. She kept her own distance from the mortal ahead of her. There were others coming, some drawn by the flare of angry emotion, others simply because the knight was trespassing. All would test him.
If he bested them, she would be waiting.
Vanik stopped. Something had moved in the smoke ahead, a shadow within the shadows, darting between the brittle trunks.
He could hear it, too: a low crackling noise, the snapping of crisped leaves and twigs.
The sensation of being hunted was another one Vanik was unaccustomed to. It made his heart race and his sword-arm ache. The urge to lash out was confounded by the lack of an enemy before him. It was nothing short of infuriating.
He turned in a half-circle, sensing more movement to his right. There was more than one, and they were surrounding him. The longer he stayed still, the more time he gave them to pick their moment.
He advanced, broadsword still drawn. The creature ahead kept well back, its form shrouded by the ash and smoke that seemed to reign perpetually in the burned forest. The bodies dangling around him seemed to grin wider, white teeth in blackened, shrivelled skin. Vanik snarled, his anger rising.
A screech came from his right. He heard the crack of more branches snapping as something thrust its weight between the trees. The smoke that had been coiling around him seemed to recede, and he just had time to unfasten his warpsteel shield from his back before a heavy-set shape reared up before him.
It was a beast of the shadow realms, made manifest by the will of the True Gods. Vanik caught only an impression of a snapping maw and predatory green frills as the thing lunged. It crashed against his shield, the brute force driving him back and grinding his boots into the thick bed of ash underfoot. Claws and jaws scraped, and he was forced to lash out with Serpent’s Fang as a muscular limb snapped around the edge of his shield, seeking yielding flesh and blood amidst the black steel plate of the Chaos knight.
The broadsword bit, and the limb retracted with a guttural yelp. Vanik lowered his shield a fraction, panting, and got his first good look at the creature.
It resembled a warhound, if such a beast had been bred from the nightmares of daemons. It was huge
and muscular, its furless flesh a bloody crimson hue, mottled with darker spots. Around its thick skull and slavering maw were frills of membranous green skin, raised in a display of hunger and rage. Its small eyes burned in the forest’s charred smoke, like smouldering coals fresh from the daemon forges of the Varanspire.
Vanik knew its name instinctively. His own presence had drawn it here and bound it, both a test and an opportunity.
‘Korhel,’ he said aloud, speaking the name slowly. ‘Hound of the Wrath.’
The beast snarled, and lunged.
This time Vanik met it squarely, taking the impact against his shield and holding his ground. The beast was fast, lunging under and then over the warpsteel. Its sharp talons scraped sparks from pauldron and greave, bright in the smoke, and Vanik grunted as he felt it draw blood. He struck back, his anger brighter, snarling in the beast’s face as he forced one of its forelegs to one side and rammed Serpent’s Fang into its flank. Dark ichor gouged over the wicked steel, and he twisted it, batting aside the beast’s scrambling talons and maw with his other arm.
Korhel made a barking sound and dragged itself away, Vanik’s broadsword hauled free of its muscled body. There was more anger than pain in its smouldering gaze as it rounded on him, fangs bared in a snarl to match that of the Black Pilgrim.
‘Submit to me,’ Vanik demanded.
The bloodhound had struck, as she had known it would. It was a lowly creature, a base predator, unaware of the other hunters already prowling the forest. It would pay dearly for its lack of perception.
She remembered this place now, this realm of fire and scorched souls. She had been bound once before in a place like this, by a great Knight of Change. They had spent an age together, if her memories were still true. Their final battle had been a great one, before a Realmgate of Azyr, locked in battle against the false Lightning God’s golden slaves. They had both fallen, and the gateway had been shattered. Now his soul was in torment, while she returned once more to the Mortal Realms, her soul riven with hunger. She still had the aftertaste of his final damnation on her tongue.
Perhaps this one would be different. She slipped between low, charred boughs, a phantom in the smoke, trailing him like a shadow. Every moment she spent in his questing presence bound more flesh to her bones, making her stronger. She could taste the air now, the ash, the blood pumping through the veins of the mortal knight, lessening the bitter taste of failure. She hungered like never before. Ahead, she saw the bloodhound crash into the bold champion, heard their intertwined roars echo away through the burned woodland. He would not bind that brute.
Whether he survived its fury was another matter.
Korhel snapped at Vanik, its claws raking up the layer of ash underfoot.
‘Submit,’ Vanik repeated as he faced the monstrous creature, levelling Serpent’s Fang. Ichor pattered from the blade. ‘My rage will master yours. There can be no other outcome, beast.’
What came next was not what Vanik expected. The great hound let out a yelp and twisted, turning back on itself. The movement revealed its right flank to him, and the heavy arrow lodged deep within its flesh.
The hound locked its jaws around the projectile and snapped its shaft with a savage twist. It didn’t have time to move again before two more thuds heralded the impact of another pair, just back from the knotted musculature of the beast’s trunk-like neck. It let out a roar that made the very air around Vanik shudder and rattled the bone-dry branches of the surrounding trees. Its only answer was more arrows.
They flew from either side, flickers of movement in the shadows, hissing and whistling between boughs and trunks. Korhel twisted back and forth, driven into a frenzy. There was no respite though, and no sign of its attackers amidst the fire-touched smog.
It could withstand no more. Wounded, its furless hide thick with shafts and slick with ichor, it launched itself between the trees to Vanik’s right, snapping branches and splitting bark.
The knight barely had a chance to draw a lungful of the hot air before the shapes in the gloom, the shadows that had hunted him since he had set foot in the Cinderwood, coalesced around him.
‘Eightstar take you,’ he snapped, and began to run.
His position in the clearing would leave him surrounded, and he wasn’t fool enough to believe he could survive against such creatures with them all around him.
A cracking noise filled the forest as he went, like the splitting of bark in the heat of an inferno. He heard the thud of arrows striking the woodland around him. Breath rasping and eyes stinging in the smoke, he carried on.
The pilgrim fled. She did not detest that, as the great hound would have. She was no fool. The paths to victory were many and changing, and she would not suffer an idiot who fought and died without purpose.
She had known enough of those in the aeons since the dark needs of mortal champions had first dragged her into existence.
She followed him, darting between the trees and the dangling, shrunken bodies. More arrows slashed through the smoke, quivering in dead wood. One almost found its mark, thudding into the mortal’s heavy shield. She snarled. They would slay him, and she would be flung back into the listless nothingness that tormented her whenever she was banished from the Mortal Realms. There was no pain like that of oblivion.
The forest was hunting him. A place like this, though scorched and burned, was not as dead as it first seemed. There were enemies of the True Gods here, long abandoned and forgotten by their own creator, primal, vengeful things riven with the flames of this realm. They had not yet sensed her own, semi-corporeal intrusion, so focused were they on the trespassing of the mortal. His anger had drawn them the way it had drawn the great hound, the kindling spark in this forest of deadwood.
She saw him stumble. He recovered, an arrow clattering from one of the curving ram horns that adorned his helm. The forest was closing in, the flames of its ire rising.
He wouldn’t get much further. He needed a mount.
Vanik stumbled. An arrow struck him in the thigh, the sudden pain making him hiss, but he snapped the shaft and continued. He knew he wouldn’t get far. They were in front of him, behind him. He was surrounded again.
There was little point in carrying on.
He detested running, anyway. The old longhouse saying from the Splintered Coast was true – stand and fight; those who run just die tired.
As he turned, the first of his attackers showed itself, looming from the smoke-shrouded boughs. It was like a tree, had trees been capable of such fiery malice. The bark of its trunk-body and bough-limbs were the same as the rest of the forest, blackened and cracked, the tips of each branch charred like the ends of torches. Fire flickered and smouldered within its core, lighting the splits in its bark and giving a fiery visage to the twisted, knotted timber that constituted its face. In its kindling grasp was a great war bow, the tip of the arrow nocked to its ashvine string, which flickered with fire.
‘Sylvaneth,’ Vanik spat at the smouldering construct, raising Serpent’s Fang once more. Legends long told of the Cinderwood’s guardians, long forgotten by their mistress Alarielle and abandoned in this ever-smouldering corner of Aqshy.
He turned in a half-circle as more timber creaked around him. There were two of them, he realised, two bow-armed Hunters of Kurnoth, hideously burned but still cleaving to the memory of their green glades.
One of the sylvaneth spoke, its voice slow and crackling like the snapping of wood in the fire.
‘This is not your realm, trespasser.’
‘All realms are mine, by the will of the True Gods,’ Vanik snarled. ‘Leave me and live, you deformed, overgrown sapling.’
The sylvaneth answered with a roar like the falling of an oak, and loosed its burning arrow.
Vanik’s shield, already scarred by Korhel’s talons, took the missile. He dropped into a crouch, hearing the deadly whisper of the second hunter’s
arrow as it passed overhead. There was no time for finesse. He lunged forwards, shouting incoherently, his body flushed with the familiar, raw frenzy of battle.
The sylvaneth ahead of him swept its bow around in time to parry Serpent’s Fang. Vanik raked the blade down the tough, blackened timber, the bow’s tip clattering ineffectually against his shield while he turned his blow against the sylvaneth’s trunk. The broadsword cut deep into the wood, and fire and sparks licked from the wound.
If the strike had injured the sylvaneth, it showed no discomfort. It spun its bow, so that the stave slammed down in a head-splitting overhead strike. Vanik was too slow to avoid the blow, though he managed to twist his body so it impacted into his shoulder instead of his head. He grunted as it slammed into his pauldron, buckling the black steel. A fierce pain shot down his right arm. Serpent’s Fang dropped from his numb fingers.
Before he could recover, the sylvaneth lashed out with its other bough-arm, cracking into his breastplate and flinging him back. He slammed into the charred remains of the forest floor, a pall of ash covering him instantly. He tried to roll, tried to draw breath to spit a curse at the vengeful tree construct, but it loomed over him, its roots gripping and dragging him towards it. It glared down at him, fire smouldering behind its terrible, twisted visage.
‘Your foul kind will trespass in our sacred glades no more,’ it crackled, nocking another long arrow to its bow. Vanik tensed, scrabbling ineffectively against the roots binding him, but before the hunter could loose something came shrieking through the woodland to the right.
It caught the sylvaneth as it turned, its arrow whistling wide as twin jaws yawned. There was a crunch, and the crack of splitting timber. Burning shards of wood rained down on Vanik as the creature ripped into the upper part of the sylvaneth, splintering it into pieces.
Lying prone, Vanik got his first clear view of his saviour. The creature looked reptilian, larger than a horse, its scales grey and its limbs ending in splayed claws. Its flanks and neck were thick with spiny quills that bristled as it moved. He stared as it twisted amidst the sylvaneth’s broken remains, apparently furious that its jaws had found wood and flame rather than flesh and blood.
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