Josh Reynolds - Neferata

‘Then it is best if we take our leave,’ Neferata said. ‘Is that what we came for?’ She gestured to the book in his hands with her sword.

He hesitated. His eyes darted to the other tomes scattered about. ‘I–I think so.’ It was plain that he wanted to claim otherwise. Morath had a hunger for knowledge that rivalled the dwarfs’ love of gold.

‘Do you think, or do you know?’ Neferata snarled, taking a step towards him. ‘I have no time for games, Morath. There’s an army breathing down our neck and we won’t have a second chance at this!’

Morath hugged the book more tightly, but he met her gaze. His posture stiffened. ‘This is the one,’ he said more harshly.

‘We won’t make it ten yards past those doors, mistress,’ Rasha said bluntly. ‘I can hear them out there. They’re all around us. We were under siege the moment we left the ghoul warrens!’

Neferata hissed in exasperation. So close and yet to be deterred by vermin was as complete an insult as she could conceive. Had this been Ushoran’s hope all along? That she would fall here and her bones join those–

‘Ha!’ Neferata pointed to the bones that lined the hall. ‘Here. Here is where we shall find our reinforcements.’

‘It will take all of the strength I have left,’ Morath said, not quite protesting. He was speaking the truth, she knew. He was paler than normal and looked shrunken, somehow. He cradled the mouldering tome to his chest as if it were a child.

‘Do it,’ Neferata demanded. ‘Do it or be damned, Morath. If you want my protection, then make yourself worthy of it.’

Morath nodded, grim-faced. Neferata felt something like a caress across her heart, and then Morath raised his hands and black energies, painful to look upon, curled from his fingers. A strange smell filled the air, which would have choked the living.

To Neferata, however, it smelled like the sweetest of wines. The winds of darkness clamoured to be used, pressing themselves upon the world through Morath’s ritualistic gestures. Neferata gulped down a greedy breath, drinking in the stray magics with instinctive abandon. They invigorated her more than even the headiest swallow of blood. Was this what W’soran felt as he employed his necromantic magics? She glanced to the side. It was obvious that the others were feeling it as well. Even as the living felt repulsed by the magic of the grave, the dead were seemingly drawn to it.

Morath spoke and his voice, while not deep, burned and echoed amongst the stones of the hall. Brown bones which had soaked in the grime of centuries burst upwards on tattered feet and clawed for the sky. Long-dead things lurched into the light of his spell, shedding dirt and immobility like water. Moans that were more a memory of sound than sound itself settled heavily on the air.

Neferata stepped forwards. Ancient weapons rattled as the dead raised them in salute. A hundred skulls, covered in veils of filth, returned her gaze with empty ones of their own. The floor and walls shook and shuddered as a cloud of cold, wet air and mist seeped from the pores of the stones. The mist swept about the feet of the dead and rose up before them like a wave, disgorging the emaciated shapes of warriors in ancient bronze armour, whose eyes glowed with a sinister light.

Morath stepped past them, face drawn and haggard. ‘The Yaghur served Nagash for centuries. As they will now serve you, Lady Neferata,’ he said. He slumped on the dais, his limbs twitching as if they ached. ‘I’ve wrenched the dead from the guts of this place. Hopefully it will be enough.’

‘It tires you,’ Neferata said, looking at him.

‘Of course it tires me,’ Morath said. ‘I am wrenching the dead out of their graves. It is like a game of tug-of-war, between them and me. If I set a foot wrong or make the wrong gesture, I’ll join them in the darkness.’

‘W’soran seems to have none of your difficulties,’ Neferata said. She could hear the skittering of the ratkin in their holes. They were regrouping and regaining their courage in the sanctuary the darkness provided. She wondered at their hesitation. Were they that cowardly, or was it perhaps that they felt the raw essence of evil that lingered here?

‘Your kind ,’ Morath spat the word, ‘have no difficulties channelling the magic required to pull the dead from their sleep. Or so W’soran says, at any rate.’

‘You don’t believe him?’ Neferata said, raising her sword. She glanced at Rasha, who nodded. Shapes moved in the darkness outside the doors to the throne room.

‘Would you? He lies as a matter of course,’ Morath said, clutching the tome he held more tightly. ‘He doesn’t care for Mourkain… only for his damned experiments. If he didn’t have the captives from battles and raids he’d take my folk and make monsters of them!’ His voice rose in pitch.

Neferata watched him reassert control of himself. ‘Teach me,’ she said. ‘Teach us .’

‘What?’ Morath said.

Neferata sank down to her knees before him. ‘Teach us, Morath. W’soran will not do it, the jealous old creature. But you can. Teach us your magics, these magics you say that we can do so well, and we will use them in defence of Mourkain and the Strigoi. We will take on the burden of death, even as we are meant to do,’ she said, letting her will add weight to her words. His mind, normally silver-sharp and bright, was dull now, exhausted and weak. It crumbled beneath her subtle assault, her words and pleas mingling with his until Morath of Mourkain could no longer tell his own thoughts from what she had put into his head.

‘I… yes,’ he said hesitantly, his face crumbling. ‘But first we must escape this trap.’

‘Leave that to me,’ Neferata said, rising to her feet. She looked at Layla and Rasha, both of whom still looked exhausted and weak, though that was changing as they bathed in the raw death-stuff dripping from the floating nightmare forms which surrounded them. ‘Sisters, will you follow me?’

‘Always, my lady,’ Rasha said hoarsely. Layla nodded, her eyes blazing with hunger. Neferata looked to Morath, but he lay on the dais, barely breathing. The necromancer would be of no further help. The dead looked to her silently, their wills bound to hers by Morath’s magic.

‘Then it is time to remind these creatures that they rule here only at our sufferance,’ Neferata said, raising her sword as small, vicious shapes scuttled into the throne room in a verminous tide. They came in a chattering wave, much as they had before, albeit in greater numbers. The front rank of the creatures halted as they caught sight of the newly risen dead and those behind stumbled into them. Neferata seized the opportunity and gestured sharply. ‘Take them,’ she snarled.

Before the vermin could react, Rasha and Layla leapt to the attack, and the dead moved with them in an eerie, creaking harmony. Rasha stretched out an arm and impaled a quivering rat-thing on her blade. With a growl she yanked it up and let the writhing, squealing form slide down her weapon’s length. Layla chopped heads and tails with gleeful abandon, covering herself in the foul blood of the creatures like a child playing in mud. The dead men hewed and hacked at their scurrying enemies with something that might have been personal animosity. Though the creatures they had once fought were long dead and gone, the current generation of ratkin knew just who — and what — it was that they faced and long-buried fear burst through their veneer of menace, puncturing their courage and sending many fleeing into side passages and tunnels, their shrieks and cries adding to the cacophony of the conflict.

Neferata watched the slaughter unfold in satisfaction. The ratkin broke within moments, their organised ranks falling into a disorderly rout. They fled in all directions, and those who didn’t do so fast enough were trampled underfoot. Neferata knew that it was only surprise that had allowed her tiny force to accomplish such a defeat. She also knew that it wouldn’t last long. The rats had lurked in the walls of Nagashizzar for too long; they wouldn’t give up that easily. It was time they took their leave.