by David Guymer
Of course, Grimnir had likely built this shrine himself. And the Vengeful Ancestor was not so boastful as to ornament it with his own likeness.
The argent surface was semi-translucent, a film rather than a barrier, and the visions that passed within it were in a state of constant flux. The only object of permanence was Grimnir himself. Locked in his eternal battle, the Ancestor was a true colossus. The being that Felix watched through rippling silver was greater even than the avatar that had vanquished Gotrek so off-handedly in the halls above, his scale more readily comparable to large buildings or small hills than mortal flesh. How much of that impression was due to Grimnir’s own godly proportions and how much was affected by the portal’s distortions, Felix could not say. However, in the brief period Felix had to observe he saw the Ancestor grapple with a two-headed daemon whose own rust-red torso was muscled like a mountain, levering the bawling monster to its knees and cracking its spine with his knee before moving on, all in utter silence but for that charged hum.
Felix wanted to see more. There was something hypnotic about the endless flow. But there was no time and he forced himself to look away.
He turned back the way they had come, raising his sword with a frustrated hiss as semi-feral daemonic footsoldiers poured in through the ravaged door. They swarmed around the walls, forming a horseshoe-like body of gibbered taunts and twitching claws, but avoiding the central floor space as a night goblin would the sun.
Felix backed away from them, risking a glance over his shoulder and noticing only then that his companion was no longer with him. Gotrek was a few paces ahead, just about at the centre point of the circular chamber between the two hanging chandeliers and glaring up at the portal.
No. Not at the portal. Something in front of it.
Hidden within the portal’s radiant light, enthroned upon a seat of brazen skulls, sat Be’lakor. With the light shining fiercely behind him, the Dark Master was a void from which the eight-pointed star of Chaos blazed, as if the portal shone through him for the sole benefit of illuminating that ill-starred sigil of ruin. Upon his horned head was a crown, and at the foot of his throne four huge and equally terrible figures abased themselves before him.
One was ruddy-fleshed and bestial, clad in archaic armour of rune-scored bronze and clenching an axe that seemed to keen in hunger over its bent knee. Where the first was a brutal knot of blood-caked armour and savagery, the second was supple and slender, a subtle suggestiveness to the bend of her leg. Felix felt an unsettling alchemy of desire and self-disgust gurgle within him. He wasn’t even sure what made him label the creature ‘her’ but nor did it seem to matter; her hideous, inhuman beauty transcended such prosaic delimitations of lust. The third was as different from the preceding two as one monster could be from another. Too bloated to kneel, it squatted, a miasma of brownish gases rising from its pestilential hulk. Rusted chains hung from its horns like jewellery. Maggots crawled through its flesh. Buboes swelled and popped, disgorging buzzing flies that swarmed around its head, settling occasionally to lay eggs under sagging folds of dead flesh. Nauseated, Felix turned to regard the final figure. Its avian physique was strangely jointed, bobbing lightly as if it stood upon a raft. It was wrapped up in robes that shimmered like an oasis under the Arabyan sun. A long, bird-like beak protruded from its hood. Above, hidden within the shadows of the hood, deep blue eyes glowed with enlightenment. It held a staff in one scaly, four-clawed hand. It was dazzling, and even before the brilliance of the portal it shone with every colour of the rainbow plus a few extra that Felix had not previously been aware existed.
Greater daemons, Felix thought, an unsteadiness of nerve creeping into his sword’s grip. Four of them! One for each of the Great Powers. This is my destiny, Felix reminded himself. He swallowed hard.
He had always hated prophecy.
Be’lakor clasped the arms of his skull throne and rose, to the thrilled murmur of his infernal supplicants.
‘Your greatest wish is granted, Gotrek Gurnisson. Your name will ring down the aeons, but as he who opened the doorway to divinity for the fifth Great Power. You are witness to the commencement of a new era, when four powers unchanged since the birthing cries of creation must bow and admit the Master of Darkness to their pantheon.’
Be’lakor laughed coldly, stepping from the throne and spreading his arms as if eulogising to the daemon hordes that were still piling into the rear of the chamber. ‘I am the Dark Master. Prodigal. Pariah. Everchosen. Only I can unite the forgotten servants of the Four and at long last put an end to Grimnir’s eternal war.’
The Bloodthirster snarled, turning its animalistic visage towards Gotrek and Felix. Fire dribbled from its maw. Hatred burned in its eyes.
Be’lakor gestured back to the stone dolmen. ‘Here is where the banished fall, this purgatory, here to rage in mindlessness and hunger for millennia or else to relent and perish on Grimnir’s axe. Only I can free them. Only I can lead their legions to ash and hellfire upon your world.’
The exquisite daemon-woman of Slaanesh climbed languorously to her feet and stretched, running her gaze over Felix and then Gotrek. A knowing half-smile played on her lips. ‘I prophesied that one greater than I was to die killing you, Slayer, do you remember? He has killed you. And now he must die. You opened the door for the Dark Master, my jewel, and now your death will be the death of Grimnir himself.’
‘Come on down here, daemon,’ Gotrek shouted, brandishing both his axes. ‘One at a time or all together, this here is as close to Grimnir as you’ll come today. Don’t make me walk up those stairs or on my oath it’ll go harder on you.’
The Bloodthirster bristled and made to rise, only for Be’lakor’s firm hand on its shoulder to hold it at bay.
‘The leash suits you,’ Gotrek leered, drawing a vengeful snarl from the daemon of Khorne.
‘I will feast on your brain yet, mortal. Do not for one second of your short life believe that I will not.’
‘Leave these two rats to the dogs,’ said Be’lakor, releasing the Bloodthirster and raising a beneficent claw to the rabid daemon pack that gibbered and howled, inching forward in response. Felix tightened his grip on his sword. ‘You have greater concerns. Rally your legions. You all know what I require of you.’
The androgyne, the plague hulk and the shimmering oracle bowed their heads and rose – each to their abilities – before turning towards Grimnir’s dolmen.
They were going after Grimnir!
‘When I give the word, manling, you run.’ Gotrek had turned his body so one axe was held ready for the daemonic foot-soldiers behind them while the other remained on Be’lakor and the remaining greater daemon. With his eyebrows he gestured to the alcove beneath the mezzanine. It was about man-height, separated from the portal by a layer of stone and from the daemon tide by Gotrek and his axes.
It was probably the safest place in the temple, although all things were admittedly relative.
Setting his jaw, Felix slid up against his companion’s back and raised his sword. ‘Not this time. We’ll fight them together.’
‘It’s your funeral,’ Gotrek grunted, and then, with a grumbling melancholy: ‘This isn’t getting into my death poem, is it?’
‘Probably not, no.’
‘Pity.’
One after the next, the greater daemons passed through the silvery waters of the portal and Be’lakor turned to the unmoving Bloodthirster. The Khornate daemon was still glaring down at Gotrek and Felix, pinions flexing as though mentally powering it through the air towards its hated foes. Be’lakor’s regal features twisted with impatience, but before he could utter a word of admonition the Bloodthirster exploded forward, giving vent to a soul-tearing howl as it pounded towards the balcony’s edge, flung out its wings, and leapt.
Felix felt his courage shrivel as its wings blacked out the portal’s light.
The daemon’s cloven feet punched into the flagsto
nes. Felix felt the impacts shake him. He watched as the berserker shook off its wings, whipped up its axe, and bellowed. Blood and flame spittled its knife-edged teeth. The runes of its armour shone. The fire-crack of its whip startled Felix out of his horror that he might cower before it more completely, but he didn’t get the opportunity.
As if given a signal, the daemon mob bayed and surged forward.
Without a word spoken between them, Gotrek gave a roar and charged towards the Bloodthirster while Felix spun around to address the lesser daemons galloping for his back.
There was an apocalyptic clang as meteoric iron clashed against infernal brass, and then every last one of Felix’s senses was overwhelmed by a tidal wall of scabs, claws, eye-sacks and twisted blades.
He parried the first blow, a meat cleaver smeared with bilious juices, and exerted the least possible effort to divert it across his body. He had to conserve his strength if he was going to last more than a few seconds. Unable to fight the momentum of the tide, he gave ground. A brown-skinned daemon with three asymmetrically positioned horns and a swinging ball-and-chain lunged for him. Felix sidestepped. The spiked mace-head swept across his turning body as a well-timed elbow from Felix caused the daemon’s soft jaw to erupt. White maggots slopped over Felix’s arm and he backed hurriedly away. A squat, simian horror armed with nothing but its maul-like fists barrelled straight past Felix towards Gotrek. Felix stuck out a leg and brought the daemon crashing down. A vicious satisfaction gave him the strength to hold his ground a minute longer; short, economical cuts making the tiniest of nicks in the unending body of the horde.
Ignore Felix Jaeger, will you?
Parry, feint, riposte; his sword whipped out as though drawn to the blades and weaponised appendages of his attackers. His arms were numb up to the shoulders. His breath came in rasps that his chest seemed to resist accepting, as if doing so was a burden it could do without. Every so often the opportunity presented itself to slide Karaghul through some monster’s belly, but more often than not he let it pass – better to live a moment longer than risk it. No two daemons were even superficially alike, he knew, and it was impossible to say which would have entrails that would tighten around his sword like a boa, or which would have abdominals of iron that would ring the blade from Felix’s hands.
Something tore open the mail beneath his left armpit and gouged into flesh. Felix didn’t see what it was. He barely even felt it. If he survived, then he would look forward to feeling it then. Under the circumstances, that passed for optimism. If he were to somehow find the strength and the luck to fight on all day there would still be thousands of enemies left to kill, and for every daemon he blocked or cut down, dozens more swarmed past him.
He was just one man: waist deep in the sea, holding out his arms, trying to defend the beach from the rising tide.
The ground beneath him went from being flat to being tiered. He backed up a step and then another, realising only after taking the third step that despite his efforts he had been driven back onto the left-hand staircase. He sought out Gotrek, whose back he was at least notionally defending, and found him almost exactly where he had left him in the middle of the chamber.
The Slayer was a runic ghost within a swirl of starmetal, the iron core within a firestorm of raging brass and crimson flesh. Fiery ropes of saliva spooled out from the melee, scalding the lesser daemons that came too close. Others were pulped under the Bloodthirster’s feet or else carelessly eviscerated by stray lashes of its axe and whip. Its weapons beat against Gotrek’s axes like hammers striking an anvil. Conflicting magicks produced sparks of scarlet and gold, and occasionally the almighty coming together of blades evinced a shockwave that sent daemons flying and cracked the surrounding stone. The presence of both of Grimnir’s axes and the activation of the Rune of Unbinding had made a more even contest than had been the case when these two had last crossed paths within the bowels of Karag Dum, but to Felix’s snap impression the raw ferocity and overwhelming power of the Bloodthirster still held the advantage.
A molten-faced monstrosity came for Felix with a pair of spike-arms working like pistons and he was forced to look away from his companion and attend to his own peril.
He didn’t know what he was doing now, but he couldn’t call it fighting. He was dodging, backing off, only occasionally parrying. It was a dance, a drunken, fumbling, exhausted parody of a dance, one that had been described to him in a hurry but that he had never had the chance to practise before the most important performance of his life. He retreated another step.
The whine from the portal grew incrementally more focused and shrill. Its radiance shimmered across the corner of his eye, and he turned his face towards it slightly to prevent the glare from straining his eyes. In so doing he unwittingly caught sight of what was happening on the other side of the portal.
The image was garbled and difficult to make sense of, forcing a vast, perhaps infinite field into two dimensions upon a rippling, semi-translucent pool of silver. Rolling distortions confused things further. There were random bursts of light. Magical attacks, Felix realised, almost constant volleys cast from the daemon hordes towards Grimnir. A concentrated burst blistered the surface of the portal as if a source of heat had just been turned upon it. Distance did not exist within the image insofar as Felix could discern, but he saw what looked like the three greater daemons advancing on Grimnir’s back, unleashing a concerted salvo of magical fire. The Ancestor staggered. It all occurred without sound, but Felix saw pain ripple across Grimnir’s face.
Felix didn’t want to believe that Grimnir might really be in danger, but it looked like Be’lakor might actually achieve what he had boasted – rally the warring daemons to one leader and bring the mighty Ancestor down.
What would that mean for the world if he succeeded?
A sense of despair rose up to fill Felix. He was mortal, human, what could he do to fight something capable of bringing down a god?
A despairing mittelhau slash opened the throat of a black horror, bringing it down mid-leap and spraying corrosive blood over the near wall. A disgusting centipedal thing scrambled over its body. Felix kicked down at it with a sobbing cry, backing up, lashing out, making it to the edge of the staircase about seven or eight feet off the ground, and looked across to the cratered ring of bodies and gore through which Gotrek and the Bloodthirster still fought.
‘Grimnir, Gotrek! We have to do something.’
The Slayer bared his teeth, possibly an indication that he’d heard, but he was hard-pressed to do anything about it with the frenzied Bloodthirster raining down blows.
Felix quickly looked around for something he could do to help. Anything that was more than simply buying time for Sigmar alone knew what. He looked up. The iron chandelier swayed overhead. He bit his lip, glancing from the chandelier to where Gotrek fought in the middle of the floor. He made a quick mental calculation and cursed himself. Gustav had been right about him.
He really was a pitiably heroic old fool.
Clearing himself a space with a wild sweep of his sword, he dropped to his haunches and then leapt with his left hand outstretched for the base of the chandelier.
He caught an iron bar and swung on it, straining until his face turned red and his body shook, hauling up his armoured weight on the strength of his unfavoured arm alone. A jowly daemon-thing made a grab for his hanging leg. Felix buried his foot in its face, pushing off against it for the lift he needed to swing his sword arm over the iron latticework and pull himself up into the chandelier.
Quivering with exertion, Felix got up. He was in a cage of iron illuminated by tiny glowing stones. It was just spacious enough for him to stand and, provided he wasn’t careless about it, there were enough bars of sufficient width at the base for him to move within it. The chandelier rattled on its sturdy dwarf-made chain. Looking down through the bars, Felix saw dozens of his foul pursuers aping his actions, leaping up and grabbing
on, swaying for a moment before being dragged down by others seeking to use their hanging bodies to climb. Still more surged right on up the stairs as if Felix had always been an utterly incidental concern against the portal. He saw Be’lakor, standing before the dolmen beside his throne of brazen skulls.
The daemon prince raised a claw towards Felix, a sneer on his lips.
Felix swore, charging head down through the lattice of stars and triangles until he reached the end overhanging the chamber floor.
He leapt clear, just a breath ahead of the whine of superheated air that whooshed behind him and ripped a fireball through the chandelier.
A hot rush of displaced air flung him clear, mangled bits of iron firing across him like a hail of crossbow bolts. His cloak tatters fluttered. Below him, the Bloodthirster tore into Gotrek, armoured hide riddled with twisted and still-glowing iron quarrels. He fought down the urge to panic, enough to control his arms and legs and to bring up his sword, upended, blade down.
And then he began to fall.
Felix gripped Karaghul’s hilt in both hands, turning all his strength and the full weight of his fall to plunge the sword into the Bloodthirster’s shoulder.
The brass clasps between breastplate and backplate split open, the enchanted blade sinking through meat and tissue to the jewel-eyed dragonhead hilt. Flame gouted from the wound, as if the likeness within the sword breathed fire, and the Bloodthirster unleashed a seismic bellow of pain. An arch of the back and a buffet of its bloody black wings threw Felix from its shoulders.
He sailed backwards through the air, arms swimming against the current, still grasping for a handhold as his back thumped into the wall.
His mail shirt stiffened painfully against his back and shoulders and the back of his head cracked against the stone. He bit through his tongue, tasted blood, then dropped back down onto the stairs on his knees, almost pitching down them except for the fact that his hands were still flailing and managed to seize a hold of the marble balustrade.