sinned and erred against the grace of their god. They are flagellants. They know they must atone in pain and blood for their transgressions.
A lit torch is thrown. Screaming monks, wreathed head to foot in flame, run willingly into the hungry embrace of their mutated former brethren. The flames leap from body to body consuming everything. So ends the line of the Order of the Holy Three.
Soon the fire will burn out of control, spreading to the rest of the monastery. The daemon-thing realises this, and does not care. By the time the flames reach its prison, it will be long gone from this place where it has been confined for so many years.
Another footstep on the stairs.
The past. Seventeen years ago. Plague burns and ravages the monastery. Fully a third of the brethren are afflicted. The abbot, the good and wise Brother Radolphus, himself bearing the deadly plague-marks, orders that all those so stricken be confined in the empty west tower. The only entrance to the place is sealed up in order to prevent the contagion spreading to the rest of the monastery.
His plan works and, by the grace of Sigmar, the other holy brethren of Alt Krantzstein are spared the plague's withering, deadly touch.
Meanwhile, in the chill darkness of the sealed-up tower, their stricken brethren endure torments beyond measure.
Radolphus sits in his place, facing his silent congregation of the dead and dying. The holy book he had been reading aloud from these last few days lies forgotten in his lap. Even if he had any voice and sanity left to continue reading from it, the last of the lamp oil ran out a day or so ago.
There are others still alive in the room with him - there are the sounds of the occasional moan or pain-wracked sob from the darkness before him - but he no longer has the wits or reason to hear them. Fever burns through his brain. His blood, curdled into a vile black treacle and laden with plague-death, oozes out from his eyes and nostrils. Flies hatch out from his flesh. His organs are dead and rotting inside his still-living body. His tongue, black and swollen, pushes out to fill his sore-filled mouth. Only his lips keep on
moving, silently forming the words of a prayer over and over again.
He prays for death. He prays for salvation. And, from the darkness, his prayers are answered. The source of his salvation comes not from the heavens above, but from the earth beneath. The old monk's pain and plague-born madness reawakens the corruption that lies in the earth beneath the rock, opening up a conduit to the Realm of Chaos.
To the halls of the plague lord, Grandfather Nurgle.
Another footstep, very close now.
The present. The passageway at the foot of the stairs. The two men, Chaos warrior and Emperor's servant, wheel and dance, trading blows and feints in a flurry of flashing sword metal too fast for anyone other than themselves to follow. They seem perfectly matched, and, for the first time in more than half a century, the Chaos warrior feels the first stirrings of doubt.
Arek realises now that his opponent is no mere woodsman peasant. His reactions and abilities are those of a skilled and highly capable killer. The man's two-bladed fighting style is dangerously unfamiliar to the Chaos warrior, and Arek has never before faced an opponent who can wield a blade in each hand with such easy and deadly skill. Twice already, while Arek used his own black metal Chaos blade to parry away the man's own sword, the point of the long knife in the man's other hand flicked through his guard, one time piercing between the armour plates of Arek's shoulder, and the second time slashing him across the face.
Arek looks into the man's cold, grey eyes, and sees only the promise of swift, merciless death staring back at him. He wonders if that is what all his countless victims over the last century saw then they looked into his eyes too.
Then he snarls in fury, angrily dispelling such weakling thoughts from his mind, as he throws himself forward at his opponent, raining blows at him. The man's own blades flicker and spin in the air, parrying away everything Arek throws at him, but in doing so he is forced to concede ground to the Chaos warrior. He tries to dodge sideways, but Arek forces him back with a sudden, cunning sword swing which almost separates the man's head from his shoulders,
the impenetrable metal of his sword point missing its target by a hair's breadth and gouging a deep groove in the stonework of the wall.
The man is forced back another step, towards the pile of rubble from the shattered wall, and, a second before it happens, Arek sees his chance. The man's foot shifts on the loose rubble underfoot. His stumble is slight, almost imperceptible, and instantly corrected, but the moment's error is enough for Arek's purposes. The man's blade is a split second late in moving to properly parry Arek's attack. The edge of Arek's sword strikes it at just the right angle, snapping through the metal of the mere human-forged blade.
The impact knocks the man back. He stumbles again, more seriously this time. Arek is on him in an instant, hissing in triumph as he brings his sword down for the killing blow.
Another footstep, almost at the top of the stair now. So close.
The past. Fifteen years ago. The nascent daemon-thing sits in the darkness, its transformation now underway. It has found its first follower. The cellarer, Rynok. Its daemon-sight has not begun to develop yet, but it has a living link with the mind of its new puppet, and, through that link, can dimly perceive what the cellarer sees.
The puppet is in the woods a mile or two from the monastery. Mushroom-collecting or truffle-hunting, he told his brethren. He bends down, raking through the detritus of the forest floor, and then begins to dig, scrabbling at the earth with his bare hands. A few minutes' work, and he finds what he was sent here to find.
It is a piece of glowing black stone. A tiny, scattered piece of the larger shard lodged deep beneath the monastery rock. Nervously, he reaches down to touch it and pick it up, crying out in pain and fright as the thing sears his hand with a freezing, invisible fire. As he touches it, he feels the terrible thing growing under the flesh of his back wriggle and squirm in reaction to the stone's proximity.
Gasping with the pain from his hand and back, he scoops the stone up with the hem of his cassock and drops it into the mushroom-filled sack he carries. He glances around nervously as he makes a feeble effort to cover up the evidence
of his digging, before scurrying off back towards the monastery.
Later, in the privacy of his cell, and under the careful directions of his master, he grinds up the rock and reduces it to a pile of black, powdered stone. His master needs the material to aid him in his transformation, and he watches in quiet and terrified wonder as a small swarm of flies appear from the stones of the floor, buzzing and crawling industriously over the heap of powdered warpstone placed there. Once they have devoured it, they crawl back into the cracks between the stones, carrying the stuff, grain by grain, back to their master.
When they have gone, Rynok carefully gathers up the powdery residue, placing it in a small glass phial. Later, after the hour of compline prayers, he does as his master bids and pours the contents of the phial into the water of the courtyard well.
They are here now. It sees the light of their fire glowing at the entrance of the tower stairwell. It is the first light that has shone in this place for over seventeen years. The creature's mind retreats back from the far edges of its daemon-sight, returning to the reality of the here and now. It sees the two figures at the top of the steps. They have not seen it yet as it sits there in the shadows, and it watches as they nervously step forward into its lair.
It feels a need for speech, a need it has not felt since it left its humanity behind all those many long, lonely years ago. It concentrates for a second, and the creatures nesting within it cluster in the withered cavern of its throat, beating their wings and rubbing insect legs together in compensation for their master's lack of vocal chords, long-ago rotted away.
Welcome, Herr Konniger,' came the strange, inhuman- sounding voice, each word sounded out by the loud buzzing of a chorus of flies.
Eleven
'Abbot Radolphus, I presume,' said Konniger, addressing the figure sitting in the wooden throne at the far end of the chamber at the top of the tower. Vido cowered in his master's shadow, overawed by the repulsive terror of the thing they now faced and the nature of the place it inhabited.
It was some kind of devotional reading room where monks would once have gathered to hear sermons and inspiring passages read from sacred texts held in the monastery library.
There was a small Sigmarite altar - the stone hammer emblem on it broken, Vido saw - with a wooden throne beside it where the lector-priest would have sat as he drilled the meanings of the holy texts into his congregation of young novice apprentices. There were windows in the wide, circular room, although they were smeared with encrusted dirt and filth, and let in very little light.
As he watched, Vido saw some of the dirt moving and crawling across the face of the stained-glass windows. Flies, he realised with a shiver of revulsion, hundreds of them
clustering on the surface of the glass, obscuring the holy images depicted there.
The insects were everywhere in the room, he saw: buzzing through the chill, dry, befouled air of the place; nesting amongst the remains of mummified, plague-slain, monk corpses which lined the rows of the wooden benches facing the throne and altar, and crawling in adoration around the obscene thing sitting on that throne-chair.
Vido had seen many different kinds of dead bodies. He had once seen an entire battlefield of corpses lying blackened and bloated from the horrible effects of being left for days in the punishing heat of the summer sun. The thing sitting on the wooden throne-chair was something akin to that, but to an even greater and more repulsive effect. Its body was heavy with corruption, obscenely distended to more than twice the normal proportions of the human form. Its skin was black with rot, glistening with slimy residue that wept forth from the sores and lesions marked across it. Its robes had long ago rotted away, revealing the full horror of its disease and Chaos-tainted form. Dark, squirming things could be seen pulsing and squirming beneath its skin, and the impression was one of something swollen, full of pregnant, diseased horror.
The thing's flesh had long ago rotted into the stuff of the chair, which had also been corrupted by the tainted presence of the being sitting upon it. Diseased flesh and wood mixed together as one, fixing the thing on its throne. Only the subtle pulsing beneath its skin and the unnatural radiance that shone from its empty eye sockets betrayed any sign of life.
And its eerie fly-chorus voice, which again buzzed out of the darkness at them.
'I have been waiting for you, Herr Konniger. I bid you welcome to my home.'
'I trust we haven't kept you waiting too long, venerable Radolphus,' replied Konniger, walking directly towards the figure on the throne. His words brought a chorus of buzzing insect laughter from the thing seated there.
'Patience is something I have had plenty of opportunity to practise these last seventeen years here in this place, Herr Konniger. Patience is the way of the Grandfather, for we his servants know that, in time, all things must fall to blessed
corruption and decay. In the end, all things come to the Grandfather. Just as,' it added with a mocking laugh, 'in the end, you have come here to me, as I knew you would.'
Konniger was moving fast now, gesturing towards the altar and chanting Sigmarite prayer words. The daemon-thing that had once been the abbot of Alt Krantzstein buzzed in laughter, and Vido felt - even saw - a palpable wave of energy ripple out from the throne-seated creature. It struck him and Konniger, propelling them backwards and throwing them violently to the stone floor. Vido's head and shoulder struck the corner of one of the wooden benches, stunning him for a few brief but vital moments. The burning torch flew out of his grasp, landing against the wall at the end of the row of pews.
When he looked up again, Konniger was on his hands and knees, lips pared back in voiceless agony as he dragged himself forward towards where his enemy sat laughing at him. Waves of more daemon-born energy lashed into him, and Vido saw his master's body cringe under the impacts.
'Your god will not hear you, sage,' cackled the daemon- thing in its strange, droning fly-voice. 'This place is defiled, and the only god whose spirit dwells here is that of the Plague Lord. My faith is stronger than yours, for your god does not hear you, while the Grandfather has heard my prayers and has delivered you here to me.'
Konniger's face was a taut mask of agony as the daemon's gaze continued to crush him into the flagstones of the floor. With an effort that stole away almost the last of his strength, Konniger raised his head to look at the corrupt thing.
'You expect me to beg for my life, Chaos filth?'
Again, the chamber rang with the sound of the daemon's laughter. Moving as swiftly and as nimbly as he could on his injured ankle, and using the loud, buzzing laughter to mask any noise he might make, Vido crept along the gaps between the pews. His course brought him into contact with the dried, withered remains of the corpses lying or seated on or around the pews. He looked away from their mummified features in revulsion, the agonies of their last disease-consumed moments still clear in their frozen, pain-filled features. As quickly and quietly as he could, he slipped past them, hugging the shadows around the walls as he made his way
towards his objective. As he did so, he heard the voice of the daemon again.
'Beg for your life? If you wish, sage, but it will not save you, I promise. This body has served me well, but it has only been an incubating vessel for the transformation of my soul from human into something far greater. That transformation is now complete, and I will need a fresh physical vessel to carry my new daemon-soul out into the world beyond these walls. Of course,' it buzzed in cruel amusement, 'first the Grandfather's gifts must be bestowed upon you, to make your mortal body a suitable vessel for the spirit of one of his children.'
At last the daemon's magic ripped a scream from Konniger's lips. The sage-detective writhed in agony, his body contorting and twisting on the stone floor as the thing that had once been Radolphus refocused his new Nurgle- given powers on his victim's weak, mortal flesh.
'Which shall it be, sage?' the daemon teased him. 'I can cause serpents to hatch out from your innards. I can send the venom of a hundred scorpions coursing through your veins, and the agonies of your torments will tear your body into a far more pleasing form. I can cause the very flesh of your body to consume itself. I can bestow a thousand different plagues and ailments upon you. Tell me, which shall we try first?'
Vido knew that his master was surely doomed unless he acted now. He rushed forward towards the fallen torch, disturbing a cloud of flies nesting amongst the corpses nearby. They buzzed angrily, warning their own master of the danger. The daemon turned its attention away from Konniger, noticing the small shape of the halfling thief, instantly recognising its peril.
It buzzed shrilly, and Vido's acute senses felt rather than saw the invisible cone of daemonic energy now hurtling towards him. Instinctively, he threw himself forward and rolled low across the ground. Behind him, where he had been a split-second ago, solid flagstones cracked and broke with explosively loud force as the energy bolt broke against them.
Vido came out of the roll, hearing the angry buzzing of the flies grow in intensity as the daemon mustered its powers to
lash out at him again. He grasped the end of the still-burning torch and hurled it at the daemon.
The burning firebrand landed in the immobile creature's lap. Flames licked at its swollen body, its withered, dried flesh instantly catching alight.
The droning, buzzing susurrus of the creature's fly-voice turned to a shrill insect scream as the flames spread into the corruption-filled bulk of the creature's body, burning it alive from within.
Konniger slumped forward, released from the daemon's killing gaze. Vido rushed forward to help his master, running a hazardous path through the milling blizzard of flies stirred up by the daemon-thing's rage and pain.
Ko
nniger stirred as Vido grabbed hold of him, trying to haul him to his feet. Behind them, a solid, black stream of flies rushed out of the burning pyre of the daemon's body. The dry-rotted wood of its throne-chair was alight now too, and the flames rose ever higher, consuming whole ribbons of the insects as they poured out of the creature's now spiritless physical form.
'Cover your face, your mouth and nose particularly,' choked Konniger weakly as Vido helped him up, letting the sage-detective lean his weight heavily upon him as they stumbled together through the thick, shifting blanket of insects that now enveloped everything around them.
Vido led the way, holding his cloak over his face. He risked a look back at the daemon-pyre behind them, and saw in horror the solid, black nucleus mass of what surely must be thousands upon thousands of insects now forming in the air above the burning daemon: Somehow, he understood it for what it was: the daemon's soul-stuff, the part of it that had escaped the destruction of its physical body.
Konniger saw it too, and urged them onwards. 'Hurry, Vido. If we can make it to the stairs we will have crossed the threshold of this defiled place. In its weakened, body-less form, it will be unwilling to pursue us further.'
The insect mass pursued them, rolling across the ceiling of the chamber in single, unified mass. As it did so, it reached down with buzzing tendrils towards the floor of the chamber. Vido instinctively flinched, expecting another direct attack, but the questing tendrils bypassed them.
Instead, they sought other vessels to inhabit, other mouths and throats to pour into. More and more of the tendrils probed downwards, finding what they were seeking. The soul-stuff mass of insects flowed down after them. In seconds, the black mass on the ceiling was gone, siphoned away into its new dwelling places in the chamber below.
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