Josh Reynolds - Neferata

Images of vampiric handmaidens spreading outwards from the silent peaks of the Silver Pinnacle, dwarf gold in their saddlebags and her commands in their ears, filled her mind’s eye. She could control nations from the safety of this place; an unseen queen, ruling an invisible empire.

The world would be hers. Nations would rise and fall at her merest whisper. Her daughters would craft empires in the west to match any in the east and they would all bend knee to her as she waited in this place, which straddled the spine of the world.

And then… and then… what?

Before she could come up with an answer, something new intruded on the darkness and silence. Sound carried strongly through the water. Down in the dark, Neferata looked up and saw the teeth of a great wheel bite into the water, and heard the thump and thunder of distant mechanisms. She thrust herself upwards, floating high, reaching out a hand. Her claws sank easily into the tough wood and she was unceremoniously yanked upwards towards the orange glow that lit the surface above. Below her, Naaima and the others followed suit, launching upwards to cling like barnacles to the wheel.

Water cascaded down her face and down in rivulets across the jagged planes of her armour as she burst upwards into the light and heat. Neferata crouched on the wheel as it rose towards the apex of its cycle. The mines of the Silver Pinnacle were as different from the mines of Nagashizzar and Mourkain as the day was from the night. They were places of reverence as well as toil and in the light of the lanterns hanging from the support beams she saw dwarfs everywhere, closing off tunnels and lowering grates over sluice gates. They were obviously sealing the mines in order to prevent just the sort of attack she was planning. They simply hadn’t done it quickly enough.

Neferata balanced on the moving wheel for a moment, readying herself, and then leapt off with a sinuous motion. As she landed, she bisected a surprised-looking dwarf with an almost playful flick of her sword. As the two gushing halves fell, she was already moving. Naaima and the others followed suit with predatory grace. The vampires spread out like a wolf-pack on the hunt. The dwarfs had noticed them by then and a number of them, carrying mine-tools or weapons, moved to meet the invaders with a loud cry. Others rushed for the exits. If they reached them, the alarm would be raised.

Naaima caught up with Neferata. ‘You have a plan, I trust,’ she shouted, trying to make herself heard over the roar of the forges and the cries of the charging dwarfs.

‘Oh yes!’ Neferata said, laughing. ‘We will make them afraid of the dark.’ Neferata spun towards the river. Through the centuries, the Silver Pinnacle had been besieged a thousand times, but it had withstood each and every attack. The bones of those defeated armies lay scattered across the mountains and the spirits of warriors killed by the murder-make of the dawi clung tenaciously to those bones, wherever they might lie. Savages from the north and orc tribes from the east, raiders from the west and monsters from the deep, all had broken themselves on the Silver Pinnacle.

The bottom of the river that coiled around the mountain like some grim, black serpent was littered with the decaying detritus of some of those expeditions. And more besides, for the same river stretched through the mountains, running like a living vein. There were a million dead clutched to the river’s bosom and Neferata intended to rip as many free as she could. As her handmaidens fought the trapped dwarfs, Neferata stared at the black waters. She stepped back and drew the whispering skeins of dark magic to her the way a weaver might pull threads. Black veins pulsed in her pale skin and her countenance became nightmarish as her human seeming died beneath the waves of dark magic washing over and through her.

Morath had been right, in his way. It wasn’t that she possessed an aptitude for the magics, but that the thing that she had become was one with that dark lore. Even as Arkhan and Nagash had replaced their humanity with a swirling void of magics, so too had she become a being of those alien winds. They flowed through her altered form more easily than they did through Morath’s fragile human shape. She could hear the thunder of a hundred thousand voices, caught in the shifting waters.

They rose from the water like a morning mist, threadbare at first and then thicker, more real. The wraiths were not all human. Orcs and other, unrecognisable creatures wafted silently amongst the cloud of summoned spirits. Their essence had been wrung from the water by sheer force of will and Neferata found the strain almost comforting. It was good to know that her mind’s strength was still intact. Hollow eyes met hers and ghostly heads bowed to her will. She gestured without turning. ‘Take them,’ she breathed. A waft of turgid, freezing wind surrounded her as the spectral forms clustered around her swept forwards, trailing tendrils of sickly light.

The host of spirits flowed towards the dwarfs and swept over them like a hot wind over desert dunes. Where they struck, dwarfs died, and soon enough the tunnel had fallen silent, but horns blew in the deep and alarms sounded somewhere close by. Reinforcements would arrive soon. Neferata scanned the tunnel mouths that gaped all around them, and then spotted a strange mechanism composed of a flat wooden platform connected to a complex pulley system. Her eyes narrowed speculatively. ‘There,’ she said.

‘Do you know how to work that device?’ Naaima said.

‘No, nor do we need to. We climb,’ Neferata said. As she spoke she chopped through the pulley system, slicing the thick ropes and sending parts of the mechanism rolling across the floor. ‘And not all of us,’ she added as she turned to her followers. ‘Naaima, Varna and Therise, you will come with me. Iona and Freja will lead the rest in two groups. Iona, you will take those metal aqueducts,’ she said, gesturing to the heavy bronze pipes that were sunk into the river on the other side of the water-wheel. Another strange mechanism, studded with valves and stopcocks, sat high above the water. More pipes led from it into a narrow tunnel cut into the roof of the hall. Neferata suspected that those pipes led throughout the hold. There were likely other reservoirs of water in the mountain, but she suspected the pipes would lead to all of them.

‘The dawi prize their beer almost as much as their gold. Follow those to the breweries. Razek once boasted to me that beer flowed from the breweries even in times of war. Destroy them and damage the aqueducts as you go. Thirsty enemies are weak enemies,’ she said. Iona hissed in pleasure and gestured to three of her sisters. The vampires sprinted towards the pipes. Neferata looked at one of the others, a blonde former slave from one of the tribes that roamed the northern mountains. ‘Freja, find the storehouses. Even dawi need to eat. Destroy their supply lines. Burn them if you can. A fire is as good as an army, especially when they’ll have no warriors to spare in putting it out. Go!’

Neferata watched Freja and her sisters run for the doors. In the weeks they’d spent waiting for the Strigoi to locate the point where the river entered the mountain she had tutored her followers in Khazalid. They knew enough to follow the markings to their targets. And if not… if not, they would serve as a distraction if nothing else.

She looked at Naaima and gestured to the tunnel above them. ‘Now we climb.’

The spirit host filled the tunnel like smoke, accompanying them as they climbed. Even as the first warriors entered the mine in response to the alarm, the vampires were already gone. Nothing was left behind save dead dwarfs.

Such an occurrence was to become common in the days ahead. Neferata and her handmaidens slunk through the side-tunnels and crooked passages of the Lower Deeps, striking where the dwarfs least suspected. There were many places to hide, for creatures used to seeking the darkness. Too, these levels were thinly patrolled. Most of the able-bodied were on the higher levels, fighting the bulk of the forces arrayed against the Silver Pinnacle.