by C. L. Werner
Vakaan pointed at Urbaal, gesturing for the Spear. The Chosen stared at the magus, a last flicker of doubt in his eyes, then unslung the Spear from his back. A last moment of hesitation, and the Spear was in Vakaan’s hands. If the magus noticed Urbaal’s hand fall back to the hilt of his sword, he gave no sign.
The magus set down his staff and tightened his grip on the Spear of Myrmidia. His expression darkened as he felt its aura of purity, its hostility to the powers he served and invoked. The membranes over his eyes slid closed. Vakaan’s fingers tapped against the head of the Spear, words slithering from his lips in a subdued whisper. Nine times he tapped his fingers against the head of the Spear, then, with abrupt suddenness, he shifted his grip on the weapon.
‘The blood of innocence!’ Vakaan crowed and drove the point of the Spear into the heart of Dolchir. The archmage shrieked as his body was pierced. For an instant he writhed upon the Spear, then he was still, blood spreading across his breast. Vakaan nodded his head, studying the morbid pattern of the seeping gore.
Vakaan stamped his boot. The disc silently floated away from Dolchir’s body. Now the magus hovered above the wounded figure of Lord Slaurith. The Chaos lord snarled at him, groping futilely for his sword. Urbaal’s boot smashed down upon his hand, pinning it in place.
Again, Vakaan tapped the head of the Spear, elf blood staining his fingers with each touch. Again, the whispered incantation, an invocation to a power even the aura of the arena could not subdue.
‘The blood of corruption!’ Vakaan shrieked, driving the Spear into Slaurith’s breast. The Chaos lord screamed, trying to pull himself up the impaling Spear in a last effort to spill the blood of an enemy. It was an effort beyond his vanquished strength. A shudder, then Slaurith crashed back to the floor. Urbaal gave the corpse a final kick to the side of its withered head, breaking its neck.
Vakaan did not watch Urbaal vent his anger upon the corpse. The magus had eyes only for the Spear in his hand, watching as its once vibrant glow, its golden light, darkened and collapsed. The blood of the twin sacrifices had been enough to allow a different power to invest the relic. All magic, ultimately, was Chaos. Only the slightest nudge was needed to allow it to be reclaimed by the Dark Gods, to become an instrument of the Changer.
What had been the Spear of Myrmidia now burned with a black fire as Vakaan raised it over his head. Shapes and shadows rippled about it, faces that moaned with voices heard by something more primal than simple hearing. The stench of evil billowed from the thing, bringing with it a chill that sank through the flesh to claw at the very bones of all who felt it. Vakaan’s daemon steed gave utterance to a plaintive wail, a sound at once fearful and loathsomely eager.
‘Now,’ Vakaan said, ‘we are ready to face the Portal of Rage and cast aside the chains that bind Kakra the Timeless and the winds of magic.’
The survivors of the Arena of Fury gathered upon Lord Slaurith’s balcony. The battle had taken its toll in blood. Of the elves, only Naagan, Beblieth and three of their warriors remained. Zagbob was the only goblin to escape from the drunken rampage of the bloodgiant, only two squigs remaining from the hunter’s pack. After bringing down the juggernaut, Gorgut only had four orcs and his lieutenant Dregruk left. The warriors of the Raven Host had fared better in comparison. Four had entered Slaurith’s trap. Four would leave it.
While Naagan and Tolkku tended the wounded, Vakaan and Urbaal made their plans.
‘I say it is too dangerous to attempt,’ Vakaan warned the Chosen. ‘The Blood God despises sorcery in all its forms. Do not think that this arena will be the only place my magic might fail us.’
Urbaal watched as Tolkku ministered to him, keeping his eyes fixed on the zealot even as he spoke to Vakaan. ‘We cannot hope to prevail climbing the Bastion Stair. We will be challenged at each step, and by more than mortal enemies. The Blood God’s daemons will be eager for our skulls to set before the Skull Throne.’
‘Then we must turn back,’ Vakaan said. ‘We can bring the Spear to Tchar’zanek. He can give us more warriors so we can try again.’
The Chosen shook his head. ‘We might never find the Stair again,’ he said. ‘There is always that chance. No mortal can predict the will of the Wastes. Someplace becomes noplace at the whim of the gods.’ Urbaal shifted his gaze, watching the dark elves as they repaired their armour and inspected their weapons. ‘Besides, I think it would be unsafe to turn back. There are some here who are waiting for just such a chance. Remember Tchar’zanek’s warning. Do not mistake the intentions of allies as being your own.’
‘But to try such a thing, here, on the very doorstep of the Blood God’s throne,’ Vakaan muttered.
‘You have worked such magic before,’ Urbaal stated. The Chosen shrugged his shoulders. ‘And there is no other way. If we are not to fail, we must reach the Portal of Rage.’
Vakaan trembled at the prospect. ‘I dare not,’ he gasped. ‘The Portal opens upon the Realm of Chaos itself. We would be hurled into eternity, cast into the Winds of Chaos, doomed things neither dead or alive. I dare not!’
Tolkku pulled away from Urbaal as he heard Vakaan’s protest. The zealot’s eyes were wide with alarm. He stared in open-mouthed horror at the Chosen.
‘Yes, Kurgan,’ Urbaal told him. ‘I intend to use magic to breech the Blood God’s inner sanctum.’
‘I dare not open a gate to the Portal of Rage!’ Vakaan repeated.
‘Then open a gate as near to it as you do dare, sorcerer!’ Urbaal snapped.
The magus recoiled from the violence in the Chosen’s growl. He tried to hold Urbaal’s smouldering stare, but found himself unable to match the warrior’s determination. Subdued, Vakaan reluctantly nodded his head.
‘The Portal of Rage sits beyond the Fortress of Brass,’ Vakaan said. ‘Upon the very peak of the Bastion Stair. Even with the power of the Spear to draw upon it is too far for my sorcery. Not without a proper sacrifice.’
Urbaal waved his gauntlet in the direction of Gorgut. ‘Ask him for the loan of one of his orcs,’ Urbaal told Vakaan.
‘I’m sure if you are persuasive, he will be agreeable.’
Chapter Eighteen
Vakaan’s sorcerous gateway was a pulsating, whirling mass of purple cloud and black lightning, a tear through the substance of space and time. Through the churning mist could be seen the Arena of Fury and the dead they had left behind.
Their new surroundings were gigantic in proportion, immense walls of shining brass that rose about them in dizzying angles, tilting crazily into one another, then impossibly bending back. It was an architecture of insanity, the madness of the Blood God cast into walls of metal. The floor beneath their feet was polished bone, shifting and creaking beneath their tread. No braziers of smouldering oil, no smoky torches or macabre chandeliers, the brass corridors were illuminated by a scarlet light that seemed to emanate from nowhere and everywhere. Great columns of bronze rose from the floor to support the distant ruby-tiled ceiling, and upon each column a giant skull leered down at them, the rune of Khorne stamped upon their foreheads. Huge stakes surrounded the columns, impaled upon the spike of each was a smaller skull, a thing that had once been living unlike the brass gargoyles of the columns.
More than the morbid surroundings, the aura of the place impressed itself upon the small party of intruders. It was an air of brooding hostility, the spectral hate of an insane god. Its ghostly presence pawed at them, oozing through their flesh to defile the soul within.
Vakaan shared a look with Urbaal. The Chosen gave him a slight nod. Vakaan’s membranes slid shut over his eyes. Gesturing with his staff, he banished the gate. The clouds collapsed in upon themselves until with a thunderous crack, the gate was gone.
‘Bravo, barbarian,’ Naagan congratulated the magus. The elf’s voice was thin as a knife. ‘Whatever infests these halls knows we are here now.’
Vakaan shook his head and glowered at the disciple of Khaine. ‘The daemons of this place knew we were here the moment I opened the gate
,’ he corrected the dark elf.
‘Then why were they not waiting for us?’ Tolkku asked. The zealot’s eyes were wide with fear, constantly shifting to the columns and the lurking daemons that might be hiding within their shadows.
‘They are here,’ Vakaan told the Kurgan. ‘Do not think they are not watching us.’
Kormak studied one of the stakes, his hand brushing against the skull impaled upon it. He wondered who the dead man had been, if he had died as a warrior or been butchered as a sacrifice. Hero or carrion, his doom had been the same. Another trophy to adorn the Blood God’s halls.
‘Why have they not attacked us?’ Kormak wondered.
Vakaan bowed his head in thought at the question. Even he did not like the only answer that came to his mind. ‘Perhaps they have been warned away,’ he said, his voice a shallow whisper. ‘Perhaps something else has already claimed us for its own.’
Naagan stared hard at the magus, disliking the sorcerer’s enigmatic words. He glanced at Beblieth, then at Tolkku. If they were going to act, it would be best to do so before Vakaan’s mysterious monster presented itself.
‘Too much talk!’ snarled Gorgut, slapping the head of his axe into the flat of his hand. The black orc spat onto the floor, watching with keen interest as the spittle vanished down between the slender gaps. ‘Wherez dis port… door yer lotz’s lookin’ fer?’ Gorgut demanded.
Vakaan gestured with his hand towards a broad flight of brass steps that climbed upwards toward a spike-fringed archway. The black orc nodded his head and grunted at his fellows. Obediently, the other orcs started to trudge off towards the stairs, the memory of the comrade slaughtered to fuel Vakaan’s magic still fresh in their minds. Gorgut glowered as he saw Zagbob lingering behind. A savage kick sent the goblin scout scurrying ahead of the larger orcs.
‘Follow them,’ Urbaal’s steel voice growled. ‘In this place, it is foolish to be separated.’
Naagan sneered at the Chosen. ‘Follow the beasts if you like, human. It is just like your kind to run blindly into battle. I prefer to know what I am fighting.’ The disciple gave another knowing look to Beblieth and Tolkku. With the orcs distracted, the time had come.
Before Naagan could spring his treachery, the shrieking body of an orc came hurtling down the stairs, thrown by some incredible force. The fearless bloodthirst of the others collapsed; even Gorgut’s eyes were wide with terror as the greenskins retreated back down the steps. Something followed them, something that gouged huge smouldering hoofprints in the floor as it stalked after its prey. Unseen, invisible at first, soon a crimson mist began to take shape. The blood of the thrown orc was running back up the stairs, moving like some liquid serpent to merge with the mist, to help it as it coalesced into a physical form.
The cloud paused upon the top step. Now it had assumed the rough outline of a human shape, but of gigantic proportions. Twenty-feet tall, its hunched shoulders impossibly broad, its limbs thick with muscle. A brutish head jutted directly from the shoulders, only the merest stump of neck supporting it. As the cloud took on greater solidity, armour of blackened steel and burnished brass sprouted from the huge body’s crimson skin, each vambrace and sabaton sporting the leering visage of a skull. Upon the blackened cuirass were the arrows of Chaos and the skull-rune of Khorne, each picked out in bronze. Iron chains dripped from the monster’s arms, brass hooks securing them into the creature’s flesh. Immense axes of bronze and steel took shape in the thing’s hands. Finally, the head assumed greater definition, a bald, hound-like countenance with jutting fangs and burning eyes, a hoop of steel piercing its snout-like nose. From each side of the head, drooping down to curl across its chest, stabbing forward like the tusks of a mastodon, were two enormous horns capped in steel. The monster glowered as it felt the horrified eyes of the intruders staring at it and a gruesome smile twisted its face.
‘Kaarn the Vanquisher,’ Vakaan hissed, his voice shivering with fear. ‘A warlord so bloodthirsty he massacred his own army with his own hand. For such carnage, the Blood God exalted him, transformed him into one of his daemon princes.’
‘I only care about one thing,’ Urbaal growled back at the magus. ‘How do we kill it?’
Vakaan’s voice shuddered and cracked. ‘I don’t think it can die,’ he whispered.
Mortal or deathless, once they could see their enemy, Gorgut’s mob lost much of their fear. Roaring, the orcs charged the daemon, chopping at it with their cruel axes and butchering swords. Zagbob crept along behind them, sending poisoned arrows slamming into the daemon’s chest, the feathered shafts whistling only inches from the helmets of his comrades. The goblin’s squigs snapped and snarled, bounding forwards to join the attack, their tiny brains converted by the bloodlust of the orcs.
Urbaal lunged up the steps to join Gorgut’s attack, Kormak close beside him. Vakaan swung his staff, commanding his daemon steed to bring him closer to the fight. The magus swept his hands before him in an arcane pattern, the words of the Dark Tongue rasping across his lips. A purple pentagram glowed into life on the floor beside the towering Kaarn. Like the daemon prince, a shape began to swiftly coalesce, a pillar of rippling light that took on an almost fungus-like appearance within the burning star. Fanged mouths slobbered open all along the daemon’s headless trunk. It lifted stalk-like limbs, pointing them at Kaarn. In the twinkling of an eye, the pods upon the tips of the daemon’s stalks split open and gouts of blue fire spewed from the flamer’s limbs, bathing Kaarn in sheets of infernal heat.
Kaarn roared, his savage bellow booming from the brass walls, cracking columns and shattering gargoyles. The daemon prince strode through the clinging fires of the flamer, sweeping his huge axes through the surging ranks of his foes. One orc was torn in half by the hellish blade, its torso dashed against the wall, its legs rolling grotesquely down the steps. The blood that exploded from its destruction flew through the air, swirling like a ribbon of gore to gather about Kaarn’s body and be absorbed into his crimson flesh.
Kormak struck at the daemon as he stood soaking up the life force of the orc. The marauder’s axe clashed against Kaarn’s knee, shattering the ogre-skull covering it, his mutant arm slashed through the daemon’s belly, spilling putrid entrails from a fist-deep gash. A kick from the daemon’s hoof sent the Norscan flying, crashing against the brass wall, denting it with the violence of his impact. Kaarn leaned back, lifting his head in a savage growl, then lumbered after the thrown marauder. With each stomp of his hooves, the daemon’s wounds closed a bit tighter, his exposed organs shrinking back into his body. Kaarn snuffled loudly, relishing the smell of Kormak’s blood.
Another sheet of clinging daemon fire turned Kaarn from his prey. The monster’s flesh boiled beneath the eerie blue fires of the flamer, his armour bubbling and melting. Kaarn poked a thumb into the oozing mess, then thundered across the stairs to face the daemon. Gorgut was brushed aside like a gnat by the monster’s pounding legs, the black orc’s body glancing off the steel of a huge sabaton. The other orcs scattered as well, as frightened of Kaarn’s fury as of the daemon fires of Vakaan’s flamer.
The flamer shrieked from the dozens of mouths peppered across its mushroom-like body. It brought both arms upwards, sending a double-blast of fire searing into Kaarn’s face. The daemon prince howled in pain, but forced itself to press through the flames. Kaarn’s head was little more than a leering skull as he leaned above the flamer and brought both of his monstrous axes smashing down.
The flamer exploded in a ball of ectoplasm and fire as Kaarn’s axes slashed through its body. The daemon prince ground his hoof against the muck of the flamer’s essence, smashing it into the floor. The front of his body was oozing blood, charred and cut by the creature’s caustic death. Kaarn glared at the sticky slime, flesh slowly reforming on his scorched skull as the daemon prince’s hate boiled within him.
Stabbing pain exploded in Kaarn’s leg. He swung about, snarling as Urbaal brought his shining blade slashing against the back of the daemon’s knee for the sec
ond time. The sword that had cut so easily through the bloodgiant’s hoof, however, was finding the murderous essence of Kaarn too tough to chop through. His sword scraped against the iron bones of the daemon, its edge blunting against the thick metal. Kaarn brought his axe chopping down, smashing into the Chosen, hurling him down the stairs. Urbaal struck and rolled with bone-snapping violence, his sword clattering from his hand.
Kaarn snorted, sucking the smell of the Chosen’s blood into his lungs. The daemon’s regenerating face pulled back in a hungry grin and he started after his stunned prey.
Vakaan watched as Kaarn advanced upon the daemon he had summoned. Alone, he knew that a minor daemon such as the flamer had no chance against a beast like Kaarn, but he intended to lend his sorcery to the effort. He concentrated upon a spell, focusing his will upon the head of his staff to weave the nebulous strands of power into a force of destruction.
That was when his daemonic steed squealed and abruptly dove from where it had been hovering. Vakaan staggered upon its back, trying to hold his balance. Through the empty space where he had been only an instant before, a salvo of crossbow bolts stabbed through the air. The magus spun about, glaring as Naagan directed his warriors to shot again.
The spell the magus had been shaping burst from his staff – a boiling mass of orange flame that hurtled down into the dark elves. The druchii cooked within their black armour, their shrieks of pain rippling through Vakaan’s ears as he listened to them burn. They were little more than smoking skeletons when they crashed to the floor.