03 - The Hour of Shadows

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  “Fast-quick,” Huskk hissed at his grave rats. “Hurry-scurry!” The Golden Pool was near, but the Hour of Shadows would soon begin to wane. He would need to act fast if he wanted to siphon off the pool’s power into his canopic jars.

  The necromancer and his minions scurried onwards, the pulsations of dark energy growing as they advanced. Huskk bruxed his fangs, feeling his belly growl in sympathy to the hunger he felt.

  Huskk blinked in confusion as the forest suddenly opened out into a wide clearing. He would have expected some sort of barrier, some kind of wall to contain the power of the Golden Pool. Yet there was no mistaking the smell of its dark energies, no denying the cold chill of dark magic in the air and the fiery glow of the pool’s witch-light. Impatient, eager to slake his lust for power, the necromancer hurried onwards, snarling at his zombies to quicken their pace.

  It was when the Black Seer crept out into the clearing and felt the black soil under his paws that he became aware that something was wrong. A great geyser of golden liquid gyrated and pulsated at the centre of the clearing. It was only when he raised a paw to his face, shielding his eyes against the glow that he saw the slender figure poised high atop the magical fulcrum.

  Horror filled Huskk’s heart. The blind, stupid fool-meat! One sniff told him the figure atop the fulcrum was a she-elf tree-mage. The idiot was trying to use the power of the pool, not by siphoning it off, but by tapping it directly!

  The mad fool-meat! She didn’t understand what she was doing! She might think she was using the pool, but it was using her, using her to escape, to explode across the world in a storm of havoc and atrocity!

  Huskk’s ambitions wilted beneath a tide of raw terror. Better than the she-elf, he understood the force her magic had unleashed. Then his eyes caught a suggestion of motion beyond the writhing geyser. Squinting against the glare, he voided his glands as he saw a gigantic figure stride forth.

  In shape it was like an elf, though vastly magnified in proportions. Great curved legs ended in splayed hooves, slender arms terminated in enormous claws. A horned head leered downwards from a serpentine neck, a sinewy tongue flickering between its sharp teeth. Staring up at the horrific thing, Huskk understood why the forest had seemed so desolate, for the monstrous creature had crafted its body from trees and bushes, luring them into its phantom clutches and reshaping them into a daemonic form.

  The great daemon’s eyes blazed as it met Huskk’s stare. At once, the beast read the necromancer’s intention, understood why the ratman had penetrated the forest to the Golden Pool and what he had hoped to accomplish. The daemon’s gaze shifted to the canopic jars. Wooden lips curled back in a leering scowl. High atop the fulcrum, the tiny figure of the she-elf twisted around. She pointed her hands down at the zombies.

  Huskk could feel the dark energies explode around him as the elf’s spell crashed down upon the zombies. The canopic jars exploded, detonating like bombs as the enraged daemonic power smashed them asunder. The undead skaven were torn to ribbons in the explosion, their dismembered fragments strewn about the clearing.

  The Black Seer squeaked in fright. Before he could flee, however, the daemon’s claw swept downwards, snapping tight about his body. Desperately, the necromancer evoked one of his spells, using his full energies to attack the ghoulish monster. Possessed wood peeled away, blistered and rotting as Huskk’s malign spell consumed it. The energies of the Hour of Shadows continued to augment the Black Seer’s dark magic.

  But the boon the Hour of Shadows presented Huskk Gnawbone was as nothing compared to that which it gave the daemon. A being whose essence was dark magic, the entity’s entire substance was swollen with the fell energies. Even as Huskk’s spell ate away its claw, the splinters coalesced into a new limb, a vicious snapping pincer that shot outwards. Darting towards the Black Seer, the daemon’s pincer clacked shut about the skaven’s neck. Huskk’s final squeak of horror went unvoiced as his leprous head leapt from his shoulders.

  The Keeper of Secrets gazed upon the twitching corpse of Huskk Gnawbone, savouring the sight and smells of its would-be exploiter’s demise. The daemon had been chained within the Golden Pool for millennia, shackled within its amber prison since a time before time, when even the god it served was yet unborn.

  A daemon of sensations and emotions, of sights and smells, of touch and sound, the millennia of isolation and deprivation had been an endless torment to it. Yet even its suffering had been an experience towards an end. It had penetrated the deceit of time, seen the world before the world, known the shape of what had been before the gods and what would be after even the gods were no more. It knew, and knowing, it could reshape the toils of fate. It could break the wheel and end the cycle of things that had been and would be.

  The daemon lifted its silvery voice, crying out to the darkened sky. Soon it would be free from the pool. Soon the last of its essence would pass through the sacrifice, freed from the prison which had held it for so very long. The daemon closed its eyes, indulging in the agonies of the she-elf’s body as she struggled to contain the power cascading through her. The Keeper forced itself to slow the escape of its essence from the pool, appreciating that there was a limit to what mortal flesh could withstand. It had to be patient, and careful. If the elf expired before it was free from the pool, it might never escape.

  Escape! Even as that long-cherished word exploded across the daemon’s mind, the Keeper’s awareness was drawn back to the floor of the clearing. Its wooden lips pulled back in a sneer of contempt as it observed a lone elf coming forward. It recognized the impudent little mortal who had defied its investigation earlier, the bold creature who dared to carry a sliver of its prison in his hand.

  The Keeper laughed, the sound keening through the forest like the moan of a lyre. The elf’s sword had been broken somehow. There was not enough of it left to menace the daemon, not in its body of living wood. The Keeper would take its time destroying this one, peeling away each layer of skin with its claws, relishing every cry of agony as it stripped the elf’s body down to the bone.

  Before the daemon could take more than one lumbering step towards its prey, the giant froze. It turned its head, staring at the one stand of trees which had defied its call. The trees were in motion, scuttling aside on their roots, drawing apart like the gates of a fortress.

  The daemon’s wooden lips curled as it sensed the presence of its captor, the coming of the Warden of the Wood.

  Thalos trembled as he felt the malign attention of the hideous daemon focused upon him. He recognized this horror for what it was—a creature of Slaanesh, the profane Prince of Pleasures whose corruption had sundered the asur and brought evil into the heart of Ulthuan with its lustful malice. Now that evil power had been set loose in Athel Loren.

  Remembering the spectral touch of the daemon and how it had recoiled from the Dawnblade, Thalos raised the broken fragment of sword he yet retained, hoping to drive back the abomination. His heart went cold when he saw the daemon snicker at his bravado. Clearly, it had no fear of a shattered sword.

  Suddenly, the daemon’s attention was diverted. It shifted its bulk about, staring into the forest. The trees parted, shambling away on their roots, opening a path for… something.

  The highborn gawped at the weird creature which came stomping out from among the trees. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, a great reptilian beast with a scaly brown and black hide. It tromped down the trail on four massive, pillar-like legs. A great, club-like tail swung from its hindquarters, sharp barbs running along the sides of the cudgellike button on its tip. A humanoid torso rose from the fore of the creature’s lower body, muscular arms descending from broad shoulders, a lizard-like head perched atop the merest stump of a neck. In the creature’s hands, a bladed staff of silver and white shone with the brilliance of starfire. Even from a distance, he could tell it was no natural denizen of Athel Loren, nor yet some strange manifestation of the fey. He was reminded of Ywain’s words, her insistence that the Warden of the Wood wa
s not a creature of the forest but rather something far older.

  Ywain! Thalos forgot about daemons and monsters, turning his frantic attention to the swirling pillar of molten amber. He could see the spellweaver standing atop of the fulcrum, her arms outstretched, her lips locked in the cadence of a spell.

  The spell must be broken.

  Thalos staggered as the voice of the Warden echoed through his mind. He looked over at the strange beast, watched as it charged into the wooden daemon. The silver sky staff crackled with eerie lightning as it scorched the daemon’s claws. The daemon retaliated, swatting aside the Warden’s staff, slashing its scaly flesh. The entire clearing quaked as the two monstrous beings brought their terrible power crashing down upon one another.

  The evil must end.

  Thalos felt a sliver of the Warden’s strength flow into him, spurring him towards the Golden Pool. As the creature’s focus was momentarily split, the daemon rallied, driving the reptile back, gouging its side with a thorny talon. The highborn needed no further warning. The reptile was giving him time, holding the daemon’s rage, allowing Thalos to do what must be done.

  Thalos hesitated for only a moment when he stood beside the swirling, gyrating geyser of magic. Tightening his grip upon the Dawnblade, he gave his trust to the Warden and the spirits of Athel Loren. A glance back at the battling behemoths, then the elf cast himself into the roiling pillar.

  Swiftly, the elf lord was borne upwards, rocketing to the summit of the geyser. In the blink of an eye, Thalos found himself standing at the apex of the fulcrum, standing beside Ywain.

  The highborn moved to embrace his lover, to take her away, to bear her to safety, far from battling daemons and raging reptiles. As he stretched forth his hand, however, Thalos drew back in horror. A single glance was enough to see the monstrous changes which the daemon’s essence had inflicted upon Ywain’s flesh. In the eyes of the spellweaver, the woman he loved had vanished, leaving only hollow pits of pain and madness.

  Anger flared up within Thalos’ breast. He cast his furious gaze down upon the wooden daemon. How dearly did he wish he could leap down upon its timber shoulders and drive the Dawnblade into its fiendish brain. But he knew such a gesture would be both foolish and futile. What was a body to a thing that was composed only of intangibles like emotion and thought?

  The spell must be broken. The evil must end.

  Thalos understood the Warden’s meaning now. He shuddered as he considered what he must do. However, he knew there was no other way. The spell had to be broken, and that could not be done while Ywain yet worked her magic, allowing the daemon to escape its prison.

  Thalos approached the spellweaver, wrapping his arms around her tortured body in a final embrace. A single thrust sent the broken sliver of the Dawnblade stabbing through her vitals. The highborn grimaced, then pressed the blade still deeper, not relenting until he had transfixed his own body and felt his own life-blood streaming from his veins.

  Together, slayer and slain sank into the Golden Pool, their bodies drawn into its amber depths as the geyser withdrew, retreating back into the pit. A howling gale accompanied its retreat, the screaming wail of the Keeper as its essence was sucked back into the arcane prison. The great wooden body it had crafted for itself became an empty shell, teetering awkwardly upon its hooved feet as the governing vitality slipped away. A moment the grotesque stood, then it came crashing down to lie in rotten splinters beside the amber pit.

  The Warden of the Wood watched as the fulcrum collapsed back into the earth and the last of the daemon’s power was returned to its prison. The reptile looked skyward, watching as a subtle shifting of the stars heralded the waning of the Hour of Shadows.

  The ancient reptile accepted the end of the present danger with cool detachment. It cast its awareness through the forest. At Hawk Heath, the last of the skaven had been annihilated, the daemons called forth by Ywain’s desperate spell cast back into the Realm of Chaos with the sealing of the Golden Pool.

  The Warden contemplated its fallen acolyte. It had warned the elf, warned that the evil of the pool would seek her through the evil in her own soul. It was a failing of the new races that they could not understand the nature of Chaos, would not see that the spiritual defects they cherished and called emotion were the feeding grounds for evil.

  The age of the new races would pass. The wheel of time would run its course. The Warden and its kindred would await the passing of the warm-flesh.

  One day, it would again be the age of its kind.

  The age of the zoats.

  Scanning, formatting and

  proofing by Flandrel,

  additional formatting and

  proofing by Undead.