by David Guymer
‘Peasant fool,’ Golkhan bellowed, raising his sword for an over-arm slash. The sorcerous after-glare from the nearby Chaos star glittered across his armour. ‘You could not best me before and you would try now? Fate will not spare you a second time.’
Felix clenched his eyes and waited for the cut of hell-steel to part lungs from liver.
Instead, there was a shiver of starmetal and a shriek of pain. Something heavy and metallic punched Felix in the belly and, on reflex, he curled into a ball. The object that had struck him rolled off him and onto the floor. He opened his eyes and touched it.
It was the right arm of Golkhan the Anointed. The Chaos warrior’s claymore lay a few feet away. Black horrors clustered protectively over the severed pieces and snarled.
Gotrek stood over him, the silver-blue blade of his axe struck crimson with human blood. ‘Carry your own bloody banner. I’ve been to the Wastes and returned. Twice.’ And then, to Felix, as the champion continued to scream. ‘Does like the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he.’ Felix offered his arm and Gotrek lifted him one-handed before shoving him on his way. ‘Go, manling. Deal with the sorcerers. Leave this lot to me.’
Before Felix could protest, the Beast returned with a roar.
Gotrek’s parry sheared a claw from its hand, but it did not feel it. Its fist impacted like a meteor, lifting the dwarf a foot from the ground and two dozen back. Somehow, he landed on his feet. He puffed out his cheeks and gave an ugly grin. The shaking ground made him sway but otherwise he kept his balance.
‘The sorcerers,’ Gotrek roared. ‘Go.’
The Beast’s rotten gaze rolled over Felix. There was no hint of recognition.
Finish the human, Be’lakor interceded. Let him disturb the ritual and I promise your damnation will be eternal.
The Beast grunted obeisance. It sniffed him, as if to get Felix’s measure, then huffed with a fraught, wheezing laugh at the soft man it smelled. Felix backed off. With a deliberate flex of its claws, the Beast followed. He glanced to his left, expecting aid from that quarter, but none was forthcoming.
His companion’s attention had been drawn elsewhere.
I will handle the dwarf myself.
Between the serried columns, air was flowing like oil, layered waves of quasi-reality rolling back to unveil a single point of elemental darkness. It was empty, like a hole, no larger than a nail. But it was widening, colours and sounds streaming into the vortex as it grew and stretched into a tear. Felix felt the unchained energies spilling from the void, heard and saw the reaction of the Chaos star to this new outpouring of power. The black horrors gibbered, prancing over only to bury their faces in their palms and look away. Their anarchic cries became shrieks as an arm drove through the tear. It was twice as long as a man’s, musculature like a classical hero sculpted in black marble, and fingered with black talons that raked through the thickness of reality. Another set of claws forced their way beneath its triceps and, with the bellow of a god seeking escape from hell, it strained. The tear widened.
Felix caught glimpse of a face, of wings, of a black crown.
Gotrek cracked a smile and readied his axe, nothing but grim anticipation in his one good eye.
Wracked by a shuddering pain, Morzanna forced the ritual incantation through her teeth. She tasted blood. Her gums were bleeding. Be’lakor arose. Chaos streamed from the tear he had made. Morzanna gagged on its fury. It was like holding a leak only to be suddenly overwhelmed by a flood.
What could have driven one so all-powerful to do something so stupid?
Before she had been floundering, but now she drowned. Power within, power without. It was too much. She felt it rise above her neck, felt her mouth go under, the waters closing over the horns on her head.
It was the dwarf. The bane of the Master’s kind.
‘Hold,’ she hissed aloud to the buckling sorcerers. ‘Until the Master can seal the rift behind him.’
She groaned, gritting her teeth to resist, when a sudden shock to the barrier dashed her focus. Something had struck the warding lines and was trying to push through. An aethyric counterforce rippled across the point of intrusion. A heartless fiend like Golkhan could brave the raw essence of Chaos and hope to emerge unchanged, but otherwise the torment on a man’s soul would be excruciating. She could not imagine the man who would be mad enough to try.
‘Repent, schwester.’ The burning silhouette of a one-armed man hammered against the wards, white fire and spears of warp-lightning flying from the blows. ‘The Lord Sigmar longs to be gracious. He offers justice. Be purged in flesh and let your spirit meet him blessed.’
‘Leave me,’ Morzanna moaned, trying to concentrate on survival, but the pounding and prayers would not stop.
She knew well this man’s monstrous dreams. It could be no coincidence that he had come to this city, survived its horrors, and found his way to Morzanna’s side. In a way she was glad.
Like Hurrlk, he felt almost like family.
Morzanna ground the hurt beneath bedevilled teeth. They had been a gift from Be’lakor, the one god that had yet to turn his back. Her master was near. It hurt now, but soon it would all be over.
For everyone.
Felix retreated from the advancing Beast, closer to the altar, pulling his sword and dodging back as the monster tested his reflexes with a sweep of its claws. It panted breathily, clearly finding them wanting.
‘Gotrek!’ Felix shouted, scrambling back as the Beast came again, this time for the kill, not even bothering to entertain the broken arm that a parry promised.
Felix pirouetted, the monster’s fist breezing past his shoulder, and thrust back, but the creature’s reach was long and his sword barely tapped its bone-plated belly. Snarling frustration he wove between the monster’s fists, seeking in vain to strike a telling blow of his own.
An eruption of light from the direction of the altar suddenly seared his peripheral vision with gibbering pink lights. Unsighted, Felix retreated on instinct, feeling death streak past his burning eyes in the paw of the Beast. Blinking away colours, he rolled across the blow, coming in to hack an inch through the bandaged flesh of the monster’s forearm. The Beast grunted and flung him off. Felix landed cleanly, leapt its scything tail and slipped around its back. Aiming for what he prayed was the twisted monster’s heart he drove his sword into it. His runesword struck bone and bounced clear. Felix gave a disbelieving moan, then staggered back as a mace-like fist swung around.
Felix winced and lifted his arm to his brow. The Beast was hidden in the glare of the Chaos star. Something had happened to make it burn magnesium white. And from somewhere, he could hear a hymn.
The glowing monster growled, spreading its lumpen paws as if wanting Felix to observe the shadow of its bulk. And then, to Felix’s horrified amazement, it spoke, issuing a rasping stream of words.
‘See-smell, man-thing. Hear us, touch us. We are broken. Many times we die-die. Change bodies to burn and still back we come. Many times, again, and again, and again, forever-ever.’ The Beast snapped for the tip of Karaghul that waved before its snout. Felix pulled back, eyes watering, and the Beast snarled. ‘Never-not let you stop us. When this ends then we die-die.’ The Beast drew up from its hunch, glaring over Felix’s head to the emergent daemon prince. It released a sharp breath that sounded almost like a sob. ‘We wish-ready to die.’
Felix crouched back, angling his sword into the glare, waiting for the animal bellow or the eruption of shadow that would betray an attack. Instead, it came slowly. It did not have to kill, only keep him from the sorcerers. Its bulk blocked the light, enough for Felix to see the broken intellect that glowed within its hood. A scabrous tongue flopped from its muzzle, licking across the teeth Gotrek had shattered.
Just as it withdrew the muscle, a short blade erupted from the front of its throat. For a moment the Beast just stood there, its tongue probing for the steel tip is if to taste it and judge it real. Then, with a grunt, the monster heaved forward.
Ligh
t seared again into Felix’s eyes, leaving the redly glowing after-image of Rudi Hartmann clinging to the grip of the short sword like a climber to a piton. The young man lay amidst the monster’s rags, feet lost somewhere in the folds that enwrapped its tail. He yanked on his buried short sword. There was a crunch of splitting vertebrae and a paltry spurt of thick, warpstone-flecked blood as the blade came loose.
‘That was for my brother,’ Rudi hissed. ‘And this,’ with his off-hand he rammed a knife into the orbit of the monster’s left eye, ‘is for my father. And this…’ He stood, bent across the monster’s giant back, shifted his grip on his sword and then buried it to the hilt in the Beast’s black heart. Breathing hard, he pulled back. The dirty pommel stone quivered in place a clear foot to the left of where Felix had aimed his blow. Rudi regarded it appreciatively, signed the hammer with deliberate strokes across his breast, then brought the pewter talisman to his lips for a kiss. ‘That was for almighty Sigmar, may He take pity on my unclean soul.’
Rudi cleaned his knife on his breeches, then looked up and shuddered, trying with all his might not to wilt before the daemon prince that inched his portal ever wider. The talisman did not leave his lips.
‘Gotrek has it occupied,’ said Felix, mouthing a ‘thank Sigmar’ as he felt out Rudi’s trembling shoulders, expressing through touch the thanks that he could not, just then, put into words.
‘We have to stop the sorcerers,’ said Rudi. ‘Can’t you feel what they’re doing?’
Felix could feel it.
It was like the earth was being lifted beneath his feet. Stone screamed with the conjoined voices of the Damned. This close to the Chaos star, the brightness was fierce, the heat punishing, the noise enough to make Felix want to tear off his ears and bury them under a rock. Blind as a beggar, gloved hands over closed eyes, Felix discovered what it was that made the power of Chaos rage and curse.
‘Repent now and die early, for Sigmar is a god of vengeance…’
Felix opened his eye the narrowest split, peering between glowing fingers. The whole front of Nikolaus Straum’s tattooed body was consumed in white fire. His one hand was crisp but continued to hammer at the unyielding barrier.
Whatever the flagellant had in mind was clearly not working.
‘We need Gotrek for this,’ Felix shouted. ‘We need his axe.’
Rudi regarded him, eyes wide and uncowed by the nearness of Chaos. ‘I have faith that Sigmar wouldn’t have led us here for no reason. Don’t you?’
Felix bit his lip, staring into the incandescent fury that burned right through his hands and gloves. He was not sure what he believed anymore.
Without waiting for him, Rudi hastened to Nikolaus’s side. He squared his shoulders alongside the flagellant’s, following the stream of verse until it neared a passage he knew. Adding his prayer to the prophet’s, Rudi opened both palms, withholding a moment before the unholy fire, then turned his face away, clenched his eyes, lifted his voice that Sigmar himself might hear and plunged both hands into the barrier. His voice lifted into a wail, but he belted his hymn through the pain. Felix felt his respect for the flagellant’s fortitude grow. Not a single tremor disturbed his faded tattoos, sea maidens and monsters unmoistened by so much as a bead of sweat.
Silvery balefire flared to white, energetic sparks jetting around the two men’s hands. But the wards did not yield.
‘Is this your plan?’ Felix yelled, body shaking with frustration and guilt. ‘We may as well battle the daemon prince!’
‘Find strength and be faithful, Brüder Felix,’ Nikolaus roared, not looking up. ‘Even in this place, in the bowels of the daemon’s own hell, we bring Sigmar with us.’
Felix bit back the angry retort that owed as much to fear as to faithlessness.
This chamber existed outside of time, and of space, a temple to a daemon that scorned the gods. A daemon whose laughter grew ever more real.
How could any being of light exist in such a place?
In a rush, he recalled his experience within the amphitheatre, an outpouring of remembered fervour so potent that it swept him back to another time no less dark. To the halls of Karag Dum, where he had felt the strength of the Heldenhammer flush his veins of doubt, replenished them with the strength to wield the Hammer of Fate and strike a blow upon a daemon of the Blood God.
What he would give for such a weapon now.
The hammer charm at Rudi’s breast flashed silver.
Perhaps he did not need one. Forgoing hesitation lest zeal fade as swiftly as it had flared, Felix joined Nikolaus. Green-black chalk glittered by his toes, flames playing over his fingers as he raised them to the fire. He struggled to keep up with the flow of Nikolaus’s words, but gave up.
Maybe Felix could not quote the teaching of each of Sigmar’s carls as the hermit could, but Sigmar was a warrior and, much to Felix’s ongoing dismay, so was he. He took a deep breath.
‘Sigmar aid me!’
And thrust his palms into the fire.
Far beneath the black waves of Dhar, Morzanna perceived many untruths. Drowning in delirium, Morzanna saw images scatter like moonlight upon the ocean waves, lost lives and forsaken destines, fates worse than damnation.
She would have wept had she not already been subsumed by a sea of tears.
The chaotic spread of visions twisted before her eyes, showing nothing but herself in a million different ways. She was an old woman in bed; screaming in the embrace of a tattooed pirate; commanding the armies of Chaos across a misted isle; burning on a pyre before a triumphant mob; battling a handsome poet and a tattooed Slayer across a dozen battlefields; a mother of two boys; a child.
Were these illusions, possibilities, or were they memories? The last image lingered.
The child returned her stare. The eyes were the same as hers.
Had she really used to be so… human?
Felix’s hands felt as though they were immersed in fire. The barrier was so bright that it was no different with eyes opened or closed. So he opened them. Lightning arced between eye lash and brow, painful flares earthing at his fingertips and sending glowing tracers spiralling the length of his arms. His reflective mail coat was as brilliant as the full face of Mannslieb.
The barrier held but he felt it waver. The roar was infernal, denying an audience for any sound but that of his own shouted oaths. The agony was indescribable, but in a strange way it helped. Pain tore through the corridors of his mind, slamming doorways as it went, cutting off sense from reason, instinct from purpose. There was nothing left but intent, the sense of something higher.
He had been purified in fire.
With the heightened awareness of near-death, Felix felt the malignant stain on the soul that was Be’lakor. He was not laughing now. Through a skein of magic and hate, he felt the daemon’s panic, the fury of a demigod at the despoliation of its will. But the daemon seemed insignificant.
For there were others with him.
Rudi and Nikolaus yes, their pain incandescent as his own, but more besides. For a blessed instant it felt as though Sigmar had heeded his prayers and dispatched his legions to their aid. In that moment the pain was as nothing and, screaming the name of his god, he pushed.
The verse Be’lakor implanted into Morzanna’s mind grew distant as she sank. She marshalled her strength, managing to grind out a syllable of the Master’s incantation before her mouth filled with power. Three men grasped for her through the torrent of darkness, but they were not kind hands.
Fools, she thought. Did they not understand the balances they upset?
The three were close, forging deeper than she would have thought possible for so few. And then she saw why. They were not just three. They were hundreds. A hundred times a hundred.
Half seen, the expressionless shadows shoaled through the dark. Their faces were like smoke, bodies haloed in the silver witch-light of the grave. Even distant, so distant, she felt their wrath, the pound of their fists as they beat like solid silver upon the surface. Morzann
a opened her mouth to cry out, felt her lungs flood with the seas of change.
The Damned had come as Be’lakor had said they would.
They had come for her.
Rudi could no longer see. All around him was blinding white. The heat was intense but he did not burn. These were the fires of the damned, that would torture for eternity and never consume.
He felt pain.
But also love. The fire scourged his flesh of sin.
It was as if he and his brother had burned alongside his mother after all. He felt their nearness, and that of others he knew. He saw comrades, childhood friends, and distant ancestors. They welcomed him home, celebrated him as one would a returning champion. They were dead, he remembered, but he was neither appalled by their unlife nor horrified by their approach.
They were damned. Sigmar had tested them harshly, but they had passed.
And he would not fail them now.
‘Finish the stunted wretch!’ Golkhan howled, clutching the stump of his arm.
A sea of black horror flowed and shrank around the spinning isle of death and ruin that was Gotrek Gurnisson. Charred black limbs scratched for his chest and arms, only to recoil before the powerful warding runes of his axe and be parted from their bodies in a sweep of super-sharp starmetal and an arterial shower of daemonic essence. Limbs, teeth, heads and foul blood flew up in a storm. The Slayer’s back bled from innumerable cuts, but still he stood, still he waited. The Chaos warrior bellowed to be heard above their gibbering, resorting at last to kicking one into Gotrek’s path. It bounced to its feet and reared, but the moment the red glow of the Slayer’s axe fell upon its face it hissed and shrunk back. Gotrek hacked its head from its shoulders, then spun to split the jaw of an opportunistic lurker with a gleaming uppercut.
Forget the Slayer, Be’lakor bellowed, straining to tear open the streaming vortex to admit the spiked pinion of a bat-like wing. Protect Morzanna.
‘I serve neither her nor you,’ Golkhan returned. Spittle flecked his jaw. His chest heaved with agony. He thumped his cracked set of second ribs, before returning the hand to his stump with a grimace of pain. ‘You serve me! I have what I need from you.’