by William King
‘Everyone dies,’ he told her.
‘I will not,’ she said with certainty. ‘And your son Malekith will not. And if you listen to me, you will not either. If you go today you forfeit immortality. Stay with me and live forever.’ She stretched out her hand in entreaty. It seemed for a moment as if she were actually going to beg. She would not ever do that. And yet...
‘That is not possible,’ he said quickly, to break the spell of the moment.
‘You are the Phoenix King. Anything is possible for you.’
‘Whatever else I am, I am a warrior, and today may be the last battle the elves ever fight.’
‘You are going to help that fool Caledor with his insane plan.’ She was angry now. Rage did not make her ugly. It made her more beautiful and more dangerous. He stared at her, unintimidated. She had never frightened him. He suspected that intrigued her. He was probably the only one her rage had never daunted.
‘It is the only way we can win this war. I know that now,’ he said calmly, because he knew that would goad her more.
‘And I say to you, if you go, you will die.’
He shrugged and began donning his armour. As he fastened the clasps, he spoke the words that activated its dormant power. Titanic fields of protective magic shimmered into place around him. Potent spells amplified his already enormous strength. It was a barrier between himself and her that he wanted at that moment though.
She walked towards him, arms outstretched in entreaty. ‘Please stay with me. I do not want to lose you forever.’
As ever he was astonished by her beauty. He doubted there had ever been a woman as lovely as Morathi. At the same time, he was untouched by her loveliness. It had no hold over him. It never had. And he knew that in some way that was the secret of the power he held over her. Other elves might be driven mad with longing and lust for her. He was not. There was a coldness in him that she could not touch but nothing could stop her trying.
He pulled on his gauntlets and reached out and touched her cheek with his armoured hand. He could not feel the softness of her skin but that was not so different from the normal way of things. He felt neither pleasure nor pain as much as normal mortals did after he passed through the Flame.
‘I will return,’ he said.
She shook her head with absolute finality. ‘No. You will not. You are a fool, Aenarion, but I love you.’
The words hung in the air. It was the first time she had ever said them.
She stood there waiting for him to say something, obvious entreaty in her eyes. He knew how much it cost her to say such words. Not to hear any response must be humiliating to one of her enormous pride.
There was nothing he could say or wanted to. He had only ever loved one woman and she was dead, along with the children she had borne him. Nothing could change that fact. Nothing ever would.
Morathi was merely wicked and she had drawn him into her wickedness. Even now she was trying to prevent him from going forth to face his foes. At that moment he felt certain that she was numbered among his enemies and the enemies of his people, and she would be forever.
Kill her, whispered the Sword.
He would be doing the elves a service if he struck her down. He stared at her for a moment, certain that she knew what he was thinking, and just as certain that at that moment she did not really care what he did.
She moved closer as if daring him to strike. He reached out with one hand, jerked her to him and crushed her lips against his, putting all his lust and rage and hatred into one long and brutal kiss. She responded in kind, writhing against his metal-encased form until he thrust her away, her naked body bleeding in a dozen places from pushing against the edges of his armour.
He smiled at her savagely, turned on his heel and left the pavilion without another word. He thought he heard her crying as he left. He told himself he did not care.
Indraugnir stood before him like a living mountain. The span of the dragon’s wings blocked out the sky. His head arched downwards on the titanic column of his neck. Aenarion looked into his strange glittering eyes and saw a ferocity and anger there that matched his own. The dragon sensed his fey mood and responded with a bellow. The other dragons took up his war cry until the mountains around them echoed as if to the sound of thunder.
Horns rang out summoning the elves to war. Dragon riders rushed forth to greet the dawn, clutching their long spears, strapping on their glittering armour, making the air shimmer with the enchantments on their gear. Grooms attached saddles and harnesses to the dragons’ necks. The air stank of sulphur and leather and the deadly gaseous breath of the great beasts.
All eyes were upon him now. His whole army watched him. All of them were grim, scarred elves with hard eyes and a cruel set to their mouths. All of them had suffered in this long war. All of them were consumed with a mad hatred of their enemy that Aenarion understood only too well. All of them knew they had been summoned forth for some mighty effort. Enormous ranks of ground troops formed up beyond them. They would be useless in the coming battle. They would not be able to travel to the Isle of the Dead fast enough to take part. They expected him to speak. The magic of the dragon armour carried his calm measured tones to the furthest units of the assembled army.
‘You have followed me far. Some of you must follow me a little further. We must ride far and fast and only those mounted on dragons will be swift enough to follow me. The rest of you must remain here and guard my queen.’
He saw anger and pride war in the faces of the infantry and cavalry. They knew he had already lost one wife and they would not let him lose another. These troops had followed him through hell and they loved him in their cold, cruel way. ‘Those of you who stay must guard this place and endure. After today you may be the last elves in the world. You will need to follow my queen and my son and rebuild our kingdom come what may.’
They heard the knowledge of his own death in his voice at the same moment as he heard it himself. He had given them implicit instructions for the succession. These veterans would see they were carried out. He turned his attention to the dragon riders, the elite of the elite, the greatest warriors of the elves. He paused for a moment and let his gaze sweep over them all, meeting the eyes of every soldier. As he did so Indraugnir roared again, and the other dragons took up the chorus till the mountains echoed.
‘Today will be our last battle. Today, for better or worse, this war ends,’ he shouted, and his voice carried even over the bellowing of the dragons. ‘Today we go forth from this place to victory or to death. Gird on your armour. Make ready your lances. We ride!’
Aenarion leapt into the saddle and tugged the reins. Indraugnir threw himself into the sky, his enormous leathery pinions beating the air with a crack like a storm hitting the sails of an ocean-going ship.
The roar of the wind was loud in his ears as they gained altitude, the great line of dragon-borne elf warriors taking their place in formation until a huge arrowhead filled the sky behind him. For the first time in a long time, wild joy filled him. This might be the last dawn he ever saw but there were still wonders in this world that could stir his heart and make it beat faster.
‘To the Isle of the Dead,’ he shouted and the wind carried away his words so that only Indraugnir could hear him.
He did not need to know the direction in which they should fly. In the distance an eerie glow filled the sky, rivalling the dawn. His elven senses told him that there a great confluence of magical energies gathered. Caledor had lit a beacon that would attract the attention of anything with the slightest sensitivity to magic and there were things out there that could sense the casting of the faintest spell at a distance of a thousand leagues.
Their journey carried the dragons over mountains and forests, plains and seas. He had time to take in the wild beauty of the land he had sworn to protect for one last time. Even marred by the monstrous hordes of Chaos, it was lovely. As the leagues and hours rushed by, the land beneath him came alive with monsters and mutants and daemons all ra
cing towards the place where the most powerful spell ever woven was being cast.
As they approached the Isle of the Dead, horror and wonder filled his mind in equal measure. Thousands of crude ships filled the sea, delivering legions of monsters to the shores of the island.
Hundreds of thousands of twisted beings filled the beaches beneath him, some the size of elves, some the size of dragons and every size and shape in between. Here and there things raised hands or claws or a staff to the sky and a futile bolt of magical energy blasted skyward to strike a dragon impotently. At this range and height there was nothing their foes could do to harm them. Those flying Chaos creatures that dared to rise and challenge them were blasted from the sky by the power of dragon-breath or elven magic.
Ahead of him now, he could see the great open-roofed temple where Caledor had chosen to work his ritual magic. The air above it shimmered with power. Already the sky was changing colour, clouds becoming yellow and gold and crimson and sapphire as they swirled like a great whirlpool in the air. Multi-coloured lightning flickered. The winds became stronger, slowing the flight of even a dragon as mighty as Indraugnir.
Aenarion swooped lower. He saw lines of apprentice wizards standing in geomantic formation around the centre of the temple, chanting words of power, feeding their strength to the archmages who stood at the point of each column, all adding a tiny morsel to the overall pool of energy.
At the centre of it all stood Caledor and his circle of the greatest of all elven magii. Each was limned with an aura of awesome power. From their outstretched hands, writhing bands of energy fed the ever-more complex enchantment growing in their midst. The force of magic at the centre of that web was already so great that nothing unprotected could survive there for long. He sensed that the spell was spinning on the edge of being out of control. Something mighty enough to shatter the world was being shaped down there. Nothing like this had ever been attempted before and Aenarion doubted anything like it would ever be attempted again.
The daemons were drawn to it like sharks to blood. The clever ones must know that what was being done here was not for their benefit. The less clever ones just wanted to reach this great trove of power.
A seemingly endless horde of Chaos worshippers surrounded the place, brandishing the banners of the four great Powers they worshipped: Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle.
Each of the armies was led by a greater daemon sworn to those powers, chosen representatives of the daemon gods. They were mighty beyond the understanding of mortals. They had led their forces to countless victories in countless places. The fact that they were all gathered here argued that the daemonic leaders understood quite as well as he did exactly how important this place was, that the fate of the world would be decided by what happened here today.
He took in the battleground at a glance, understanding the play of forces on it instinctively. The elves were doomed. Their foes were too numerous and too powerful. Nothing could stop the forces of Chaos triumphing today. The best that might be achieved was that they be delayed long enough for Caledor to finish working his spell.
So be it, Aenarion thought. If the only road to victory is by way of death, we will take it.
Kill, whispered the Sword.
Aenarion raised his blade and the first wing of dragons peeled off and descended on the advancing Chaos hordes. They swept over the teeming multitude, breath of fire cleansing the tainted earth. The Chaos worshippers were packed so closely together there was no way to avoid the flames raining down from the sky. They died in their thousands, like a column of warrior ants marching into a pool of burning oil.
Wave after wave of dragons descended. Legion after legion of Chaos worshippers died. The smell of scorched flesh rose to reach even Aenarion’s nostrils as he circled high above the battlefield.
The winds grew stronger. The columns of fire above the temple grew brighter. In the distance the earth erupted as towers of magic sprang into being in answer to the spells of Caledor and his fellow mages. As far as the eye could see fingers of swirling magical light stabbed into the sky, illuminating the darkening land and revealing the great crowds of Chaos monsters racing towards the site of battle. All over Ulthuan the same thing was happening as Caledor’s vortex came to life.
Clouds obscured all of the sky now. Below him it was dark as night save where the hellish illumination of the glowing columns lit their surroundings or the dazzling flash of some mighty polychromatic lightning bolt split the sky. The geomantic pattern the elf mages had been arranged in was plain now, a great rune made of flesh and light visible from the sky through which Aenarion flew. The terror and the wonder of it filled his heart.
This was a sight worth seeing even if it cost the life of the world.
In the distance the sea boiled with ships and huge monsters. All sensed that the hour of final battle was at hand. The screaming, chanting horde surged up the stairways of the shrine. The Isle of the Dead was never meant to be a fortress but a holy place. The makeshift defences of the elves were smashed by the rampaging daemon worshippers.
Chaos sorcerers on glowing disks of light rode the skies, howling incantations as they tried to breach the spell walls protecting the shrine. One by one, the barriers fell, for there were not enough elven mages left to maintain them. Too many were committed to the creation of the vortex.
As he passed over, Aenarion saw mighty banners fluttering over enormous moving towers. Each bore the sign of the greater daemons who were the generals and champions of the besieging force. Even in the shadow of the gigantic spell Caledor was weaving, Aenarion sensed the power of these deadly creatures. They were the mightiest of their kind, hardened by millennia of constant warfare in the hells they came from. Normally they would have been the deadliest of enemies, but on this day, in this place, they seemed to have managed a truce in order to crush the one threat remaining to their domination of this world.
The dragons swooped and slew like great birds of prey. Hills of smouldering corpses rose on the way to the temple but it did not matter. No matter how many they killed more came on, rushing forwards to inevitable death as to the embrace of a lover. Now the dragonfire began to weaken as the dragons reached the end of their resources. Flocks of winged daemons surrounded individual dragons and smashed them from the skies.
They could not prevent the great horde reaching the outer defences of the temple and engaging the thin lines of desperate elf soldiers waiting there.
A terrible wave of agony and terror rippled out from the temple. For a moment, the huge spell at the centre of it trembled and threatened to collapse. Aenarion swooped lower and saw that one of the archmages had fallen along with all the apprentices who had been linked to him. The power of the spell had burned the life out of him. The whole mighty edifice Caledor was creating threatened to collapse like a palace hit by an earthquake.
Somehow the mage at the centre of it all managed to stave off the disaster and continue. The structure of the spell stabilised and the ritual went on. Aenarion was not sure how much longer it could endure.
How many of the archmages could die before Caledor was unable to constrain the forces he had unleashed and destruction rained down on them all? For better or worse, Aenarion thought, it would all be over soon.
Four gigantic forms made their way to the temple, each surrounded by a bodyguard of potent worshippers. The greater daemons who led the Chaos horde were vying to see which would be the first to reach Caledor and end the threat he posed. The greatest enemies of all wanted to be in at the kill.
Ahead of them the first wave to reach the walls of the temple looked as if they were about to break through and interrupt the ritual. If they were not stopped, they would succeed.
He dropped Indraugnir into the middle of the melee. They landed on top of a massive self-moving siege engine within which the living essence of a dozen daemons was bound. The dragon took the great battering ram in his claws and beat skyward, lifting it and sending it toppling backwards to crush a hundred foe
s beneath its weight. It lay there broken, like a beetle turned on its back. Indraugnir smashed into the press of bodies, tearing foes asunder with his claws, searing them with his fiery breath, snapping twisted Chaos monsters in half with his jaws.
A group of elf soldiers tried to fight their way towards the embattled Phoenix King but died before they could reach him, overwhelmed by the sheer number of their foes. Aenarion leapt from Indraugnir’s back, like a swimmer diving into a sea of monstrous flesh. His blade flickered faster than mortal eyes could follow, smashing through the bodies of his enemies as if they were made from matchwood. A beastman leapt at him, jaws snapping; he caught it in the air one handed, and sent it flying a hundred yards with a flick of his arm. It cartwheeled through the air to splatter against the walls of the shrine.
Aenarion cleaved through his opponents, killing everything within reach, his blade sending pulses of black light over the battlefield, the red runes glowing ever stronger as it drank life. His enemies died in their hundreds and then their thousands. Nothing could stand against him, and seeing his unleashed wrath his foes turned to flee.
For a moment, Aenarion thought he had turned the battle but then the air in front of him shimmered and a hole appeared in the fabric of reality. A figure of horror emerged, towering twice as high as any beastman, monstrous wings snapping on its back. A huge vulture-like head, gazed down with eyes that held more than elven wisdom. The appearance of this greater daemon, this mighty Lord of Change, halted the rout.
‘Long have I wanted to meet you, Phoenix King. Now the hour of your death is at hand.’ The daemon’s voice was high-pitched and shrieking and it would have broken the nerve of a less bold warrior than Aenarion just to listen to it.
‘What is your name, daemon,’ Aenarion said, ‘so I can have it etched on my victory stella that all may know who I conquered?’
The daemon laughed. There was madness in its mirth that would have blasted the sanity of most mortals. ‘I am Kairos Fateweaver and I will send your soul to Tzeentch so he may use it as a bauble for his pleasure.’