Shrieking spirits raced towards him through a storm of glass. He swept his staff out and caught one a solid blow. It convulsed as lightning danced across the links of its chains, and was reduced to a charnel mist. He did not stop, but remained in motion - thrusting, slashing, spinning. A few moments, well spent. A dozen spirits, laid to rest. He stepped back, and resumed his composition.
A dull boom sounded from the main doors of the temple. Spirits clustered in the broken windows, murmuring and rattling their chains. Helios did not look up as the bravest of their number rushed at him. The poem claimed the entirety of his attentions. His staff lashed out, and a spirit was reduced to tatters. The others retreated. As he scratched words into stone, arcs of celestial energy flickered about him and danced along the lengths of his weapons.
Another boom, accompanied this time by a sizzle-scorch sound, as the mystic barriers gave way. And, at last, the sound of splintering wood. An eerie mist seeped through the archways, slithering about the pillars and coiling in the alcoves. Still, the Celestor-Prime did not look up. The poem was close to completion.
Heavy boots thudded against the stone. An incongruous sound, utterly at odds with the hissing, sand-scrape of the nighthaunts. A smell, like ionised metal mingled with rotting meat, invaded his senses. He paused. ‘You are a new thing, under the sun.’
The figure stood before him, a black pillar amid the ghostly mist. He was thin, almost spindly, as if all that was not bone and muscle had been sheared away, leaving but a shadow in its place. The armour he wore drank in the light, as did the blade he held balanced across his shoulders.
‘I am the truth,’ the dead man intoned.
‘How portentous. A moment… I have almost completed my poem.’
‘Poem?’ The dead man sounded bemused.
‘It is important to finish what one begins. Don’t you agree?’
Silence was the only reply. Helios scratched a final word and stepped back. ‘There. Now, we can speak.’ He planted his blade before him, his hand resting on the pommel as he tapped his shoulder with his staff. ‘Tell me your name, spirit, so that I might recount it, in moments to come.’
‘I am Thaum. And once, I was as you are.’
‘Oh, I doubt that. There is no one like me.’
‘Regardless, you are here, and your soul is forfeit.’ Thaum gestured, and a spectre, wreathed in chains and padlocks, drifted forwards. ‘You will be made to see, as I have seen. Falsehood will be burned from you, by the radiance of the black sun.’
‘All things are possible.’ Helios studied the spirit, noting the amethyst light that bled from its padlocks. ‘But we have not come to that moment, yet.’
‘It is inevitable.’ Thaum stepped closer, his black eyes empty of anything save purpose. Helios nodded.
‘And yet, here I stand.’
‘Not for long.’ Thaum thrust his blade out, and the nighthaunts swept forwards in a howling typhoon. Helios sprang to meet them, moving swiftly. With every gesture, lightning arced out to ripsaw through the legion of spirits. It was rare that Helios could fight to the fullest, for the energies within him were as dangerous to his fellow Stormcasts as they were to the enemy. But here, now, in this moment, he was free to do so.
Chains struck the floor or tore divots from the pillars as the fight moved through the temple. Helios allowed the nighthaunts to drive him where they would, for he had no strategy beyond holding their attentions. He swept staff and blade out, catching unwary spirits in chains of his own - ones made from lightning.
Still, they pursued him, flooding through the temple in a wave of tattered shadows. Distorted faces grimaced and yowled, as clammy hands fumbled at him or rusty chains drew sparks from his war-plate. For every one he destroyed, two more took its place. Spiked clubs and ruined swords bit at him as he spun and twisted, staying out of reach.
He could feel their madness clawing at him, a tangible chill that made his limbs heavy and his head reel. A miasmatic frost clung to the plates of his armour. But the lightning within him carried him on, if not so fast or so sure.
Slowed, he found himself being driven back towards a semicircle of drifting shapes. He heard the thump of rawhide drums and glimpsed the leer of bestial skulls within ragged cowls. The nighthaunts, wielding long, black glaives, began to close in on him as their lesser kin continued to harry and hamper him.
They had been wearing him down. Inevitable, as their master had said. The drifting spectres drew near, and he was forced to turn and parry a blow that would’ve split his heart. His tempest blade swept out, and a ragged cloak folded over as the gheist was torn apart. More blades thrust towards him, and he was forced to retreat.
Everywhere he looked, the dead looked back. He spun and lashed out, his storm staff passing through several grisly visages with little resistance. Lightning sparked out, dancing through their ranks. He turned, spinning his staff. The tempest built within him. But he would not release it for just any spirit. Not when he had gone to the trouble of weaving a trap of his own. They had harried him, and he had allowed it, knowing that they would drive him ever closer to - ah. And there it was.
The jailer-spirit, in its screaming chains, descended on him as he fought, seemingly oblivious to its approach. Miska had told him all about the creature - about what Balthas had seen. The souls of his brothers were caught up in its chains, condemned to an unknown fate. The mage-sacristan hadn’t known if destroying the creature would be enough to free them, but Helios saw no harm in trying.
He waited until it was within reach, then turned, letting his staff slide through his hand, so that the tip slammed into the bestial helmet. The creature squalled and swung its chains at him. He ducked aside and twisted his staff, catching the links. A flip of his wrist further tangled them about the length of the staff, and he could feel the soul within calling out for release. Before the spirit could rip itself free, he lunged, striking it in the head again. As he did so, he let the tempest loose.
Chains of crackling energy lashed out from him, ensnaring the jailer-spirit. Some of it raced along the creature’s own chains, setting the rusty links alight with cobalt flame. The light swelled about him, washing away the shadows and momentarily driving back the dead. Helios felt his staff grow hot as he struck again and again, until it punched through the creature and struck the floor. The jailer-spirit gave an ear-splitting screech as celestial lightning ripsawed through it.
Helios released his stormstaff an instant before it splintered, consumed by the energies racing through it. The explosion hurled him backwards into a pillar. The stone cracked, and he tumbled to the floor. As his staff broke apart, so too did the jailer-spirit, which burned with a purifying radiance. Its chains melted into molten slag. Helios heard the imprisoned souls sing out as they were freed, and lightning speared upwards from the burning links, shattering the great dome above and casting a rain of glass down onto the spirits below.
As the reverberations faded, Helios rose to his feet, bits of glass sliding from him. He tried to take in a breath, and his ribs creaked painfully. His neck and shoulders ached, where he’d struck the pillar. His armour was scorched and dented by the fury of the tempest he’d unleashed. Besides the pain, he felt wrung out - empty. But satisfied. A final bit of good, before the end. Not enough, never enough, but some.
‘You will pay for that,’ Thaum said, in the silence that followed. He emerged slowly through the gathering ranks of the dead, sword-tip carving black trails in the stones at his feet. ‘Your soul will scream in agony, before you are remade in the image of he whom you defy.’
‘To speak and act are one and the same. Nothing will prevent me from doing as I have said.’ Helios swept his tempest blade up, and gripped the hilt with both hands. ‘Can the same be said of you?’ He drew the blade back and readied himself. ‘Come. Let us see.’
Thaum roared, mouth distending abnormally, and charged. Helios stepped forwards.
>
When the moment came around at last, he was ready.
Chapter twenty-one
Descent
Thunder rumbled above.
Balthas paused, listening. Helios had done as promised. He had bought them time enough, and now Juddsson and his warriors were leading Fosko, Obol and the others to the halls of the Riven Clans. Whether there was safety there or not, Balthas could not say. Regardless, the mortals were well out of what came next.
‘Helios has returned to the stars,’ Miska said, from beside him. He looked at her and reached up to ruffle Quicksilver’s feathery mane.
‘He held them longer than I calculated.’
‘He did not return to Azyr alone. Can you feel it?’
Balthas nodded. The aether seemed lighter somehow. As if a burden had been lifted from the realm. He looked around. The tunnel sloped sharply downwards and was narrow enough that the Stormcasts could only move through it three abreast. The shadows were pushed back by the flickering glow of their staves, and the glimmer of corposant that clung to the arms and armour of the warriors following in their wake.
Built by duardin engineers, the tunnel was dry and sturdy, with heavy bracers of stone holding the crushing earth at bay. It twisted and turned back in on itself in ways that made sense only to the duardin, but always going down. Several times they came to crossways, and had to wait for Elya to come back and lead them into the correct passage. Smaller tunnels split off from the main, at intervals, but most had been sealed recently - bricked up or otherwise blocked off, and marked with runes of protection and warding.
Despite those runes, even here there were spirits. Balthas could see the dutiful echoes of long-dead duardin, working as they had in life, shoring up the stone and smoothing the floors. He’d read, once, that the duardin afterlife was very much just a continuation of life - the reward for a life of honour and hard labour was to live that life over, forever.
There was a pleasing sensibility to that. Then, Balthas could look forward to much the same - an eternity of war, waged beneath the stars. If he were lucky. He thought of Pharus and flinched away from the implication.
‘The child has vanished again,’ Miska said. Elya ranged far ahead of them, moving more quickly than the column of Stormcasts she led into the underworld.
‘Can you see any cats?’
‘A few.’ Eyes gleamed in the dark, the creatures crouched in nooks and crannies, or slunk along the bracers. The soft pad of cat-feet, beneath the grinding tread of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.
‘Then she is close.’ Balthas was confident that the girl was leading them in the right direction. There was something about the child - an ineffable quality that bemused and intrigued him. The story he’d told her had just been a story. One more folktale culled from his decades of study. That did not mean it wasn’t the truth.
The mortals of the realms worshipped many gods, some old, some new, some real, some false. Who was to say that there hadn’t been a god of cats, who did as cats often do and slunk into some small crack in the universe to wait out catastrophe?
Quicksilver grunted, and Balthas glanced back to see Calys making her way towards him, the gryph-hound, Grip, padding in her wake. She had been bringing up the rear, after having sent the rest of her cohort with the mortals. He knew what she wanted, even before she spoke. ‘We’re close,’ she said. ‘I can feel the vibration in the stones.’
‘Good. Any signs of pursuit?’
‘Not yet. We’ll know as soon as it happens. Juddsson and Fosko left a surprise for them - they hid their remaining stores of powder and silver shot in the reliquary, ready to explode if the passage is opened.’
Balthas grunted. ‘That will do little to deter them’
Miska turned. ‘Perhaps we should consider doing the same ourselves. A few warriors might hold this passage, for a time.’
‘But not long enough to do any good. Besides which, they won’t come this way. Pharus knows the secret route, hidden in the reliquary. He will attempt to force that one.’
‘Then why are we here, rather than there?’ Calys said.
‘To get ahead of them, if possible. There are reinforcements below. Lord-Relictor Dathus, and those forces under his command. If we can join our forces to theirs, while Pharus is still trying to find his way through his own labyrinth, we might stand a chance of bringing him to open battle.’ He looked at her. ‘Without him, without a central, driving will, the nighthaunts will scatter.’ He looked up. ‘The battle for the city will continue. But the horde which follows us will take no further part in it… and the Ten Thousand Tombs will remain sealed.’
‘And you will get to face him head on, once more,’ Miska said.
Before Balthas could reply, a cat yowled. He looked up and spotted the same scar-lipped feline that seemed to shadow Elya wherever she went. He looked ahead and saw the child seated atop a bracer, waiting on them ‘It’s here,’ she said, as she dropped to the ground, light as one of her four-legged companions.
‘Where?’ Balthas looked past her. The tunnel continued on, its end swallowed in darkness. He wondered if it were a false seeming of some sort.
‘Here.’ She pointed down, at a rusty, iron grate set into the floor. Balthas had noticed many such grates since their descent, set every few thousand paces. Presumably these were to prevent flooding, in the case of the Glass Mere’s rise. What marked this one as different, he couldn’t say.
‘Why this one? Why not the others?’
Elya looked up at him ‘Got to go this way, otherwise you can’t follow me.’ She looked down, into the dark. ‘You’re too big to go down the other ones.’
‘How long will it take?’
She shrugged. ‘You’re not very fast,’ she said doubtfully.
‘We’re fast enough.’ Balthas pulled his staff to him and murmured a single word. A ball of corposant bloomed atop the staff. He plucked it free and dropped it through the grate. The light split into two, and two into four, until a dozen will o’ the wisps danced in the dark below. ‘And now we can see where we are going.’
A slope - steep and twisting, like a mountain path - descended away from the grate, and into the dark. Balthas could hear a steady crash, as of waves, rising from somewhere out of sight. He murmured a few words and waved his hand over the grate, and the rusty iron became red dust, which sifted away as if it had never been.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘It is time we see what it is that Nagash so desires.’
Close. He was so close, he could feel it.
‘Rip it open,’ Pharus snarled. He slashed his sword out, shattering the holy bones that hid what he sought. The circular stone slab was as almost as large as the wall that held it. It slanted downwards all but imperceptibly. Marked along its circumference were celestial sigils that stung his gaze and forced him to turn away.
Wherever he looked, the skulls of saints grinned mockingly at him He longed to drag them back and raise them up, but the symbol of the High Star carved into them prevented it. To show them that peace was an illusion, save in Nagash. That the dead, as ever, had been denied their true place by the living. As those below had been denied.
Can you hear them, Pharus Thaum? They are calling to you, out of the black.
‘Yes,’ he said. He could hear them Demanding their freedom, pleading for forgiveness for their crimes against the Undying King. An eager army, ready to do battle with the stars themselves. That was what he had been sent to acquire, and he would do so, whatever the cost.
Even if it means your own destruction.
Pharus stopped for a moment, confused. That had almost sounded like a question. His helm seemed to contract about his head, as if to squeeze such thoughts away. He stepped back, head aching, as the few remaining deadwalkers pressed forwards, unhampered by the sigils. Broken fingers gripped the edges of the stone, as sun-dried muscle and ligament strained. A deadwalker tore i
ts arms loose and stumbled back, jaw working. Pharus removed its head and shoved it aside. If it could not move stone, it had no use. ‘Use the bones,’ he croaked, not watching. ‘Lever it out of place.’
Broken femurs and arm bones belonging to the fallen deadwalkers were stabbed into what little gap there was. Rusty blades joined them, as the deadwalkers employed the weapons they might have wielded in life. Slowly, the great slab began to move. Somewhere, unseen levers tripped, and gears began to turn. All it required was a strong enough hand to start the process.
‘I remember opening it once before - my own two hands, then, and those of others… Briaeus…’ he murmured. A name without a face. He shook the memory aside. It did not matter.
‘You have more than two hands now. You have a thousand of them.’ Dohl said, from where he waited just outside of the reliquary. ‘The hands of every dead thing here are yours, my lord, as yours are Nagash’s. All are one in him, and he is all.’
‘Yes,’ Pharus said, stroking the hourglass pommel of his blade. The sands hissed, sifting away. They never seemed to run out. He bowed his head. His helm felt heavy, suddenly. The weight of his armour threatened to drag him down. This place - the air closed around him like stone. It was worse since the death of the Stormcast who’d despatched Fellgrip.
He glanced back at the spot where the body had come apart in an explosion of lightning. The stones, pillars and walls were burnt black. The interior of the temple stank of celestial fire, and many of the weaker chainrasps had been consumed in the warrior’s death throes.
Like the others, he had not understood the gift Pharus had offered him. And now he had returned to the tyrant’s embrace. Angry now, he turned back. The slab was moving, but the deadwalkers continued to heave at it. The rest of them waited to descend. The first wave, to reveal any ambushes or traps.
There was a sound - sharp and rough.
He registered the spark a moment after it occurred. A piece of flint, trapped beneath the slab, scraped by the movement. A spark dancing across a mound of powder. Fire streaked along beneath the piled bones, cutting strange patterns beneath them. He turned, following it, dredging his memory. He had seen this before, what was it? What was-
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