Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

It took W’soran a moment to realise that Faethor wasn’t with them. The big Strigoi had leapt for the wall even as his brethren streamed past, and now scrambled across the cracked ceiling of the tunnel like an oversized spider.

Danger had always lent clarity to thought for W’soran. Obviously, the Lahmians had decided that his time had come, and Faethor was to be their weapon. With a snarl, Faethor dropped towards W’soran, chopping out with his notched blade. W’soran barely interposed his scimitar in time and was forced back against a shifting, groaning wall. He looked about wildly, trying to spy the Lahmians. They would not leave his death to a fool like Faethor.

‘Now you die, leech,’ Faethor said, hacking at him with determined savagery. ‘Rudek was my kin, and I know full well how you served him. And just now, I felt your magics as our dead men quailed. The Lahmians are right — you cannot be trusted!’

W’soran didn’t bother to reply. He blocked another blow and lashed out, trying to drive Faethor back, to clear enough room to work magic. At the other end of the tunnel, the Strigoi tore into the skaven ranks. The dead hesitated, turned and retreated from the battle, closing in on Faethor. Spears dug for the Strigoi, forcing him to leap aside, away from W’soran. ‘Treachery,’ he roared.

‘Indeed,’ W’soran said, almost amused. He directed the dead forward. ‘Kill him.’

The corridor was shaking now. There was no sudden explosion this time, but instead a gradual shifting of weight, as if the skaven were coaxing the mountain to move. Dust and bits of rock fell from the ceiling, pattering across his head. Faethor stepped back, cursing and snarling as the skeletons closed in.

A whisper of sound tugged at W’soran’s attention. He whirled and saw a thread of movement, almost too quick to catch. Black blood burst from his throat. The pain struck him a moment later. He clapped a hand to his torn jugular as he choked on his own fluids. For a moment, just a moment, he was back in Lahmia, in the temple, and Neferata was loping towards him, inexorable and deadly. Again he felt the hot flash of the old familiar terror — the fear that took the form of the dark and cramped confines of a jar.

Layla darted forward, her eyes alight with murder-lust. Her blade bit into his as he wove a desperate defence. ‘She warned us about you, old beast. She warned us that you would try and turn Vorag against us, that you would strike at us through cunning and deception. And she has decreed that you must die!’

W’soran could respond with only a gurgling snarl. He saw Stregga moving in on him from the side, and Khemalla as well, circling him as Layla drove him back. Behind them, Faethor gave a despairing howl as the relentlessness of the true dead won out against the ferocity of the near-dead. Spears pinned the Strigoi to the wall, puncturing his heart and skull. W’soran flung out the hand that had been clutched to his throat, spattering blood across Layla’s face. She reeled with a cry of disgust. W’soran sank beneath Stregga’s blow, and the Lahmian’s sword drew sparks from the tunnel wall. She grunted as W’soran crashed against her, knocking her from her feet.

W’soran whirled, barely countering a blow from Khemalla. The three Lahmians were all on their feet again, and closing in. He swung his scimitar in a wide circle. He was stronger than they, but they were better warriors, and faster. They were hemming him in, keeping him from concentrating for even a moment. Neferata had schooled them well in how to combat sorcerers. The Strigoi were falling back. They had realised that they were alone, and unsupported. The tunnel was shaking now, and the rocks were grinding loudly.

Khemalla shrieked like a banshee and lunged. Her blade skidded along the side of his cuirass as she sought to spit him. Layla darted to the side, climbed the wall, and leapt down, her blade smashing against his pauldron, and he was sent spinning about by the force of the blow. Stregga’s blade chopped down into his forearm. W’soran screamed.

Then, at last, the roof caved in. The returning Strigoi were blotted from sight by the falling rocks. Stregga pulled back for another blow and gaped upwards as the world fell in on them.

W’soran seized his moment. He slithered through the falling rocks like a striking snake. His talons pierced the flesh of Stregga’s throat and he coiled around her with every iota of speed he possessed. Then, with a hiss, he bit down on the other side of her neck, savaging flesh and cartilage, and finally bone, as her black blood — Neferata’s blood — pumped down his throat.

He swallowed Stregga’s final scream as the tunnel fell in on them. Amidst the thunder of rocks and the growl of the mountain, he slapped his palm down flat on the ground and the shadows swirled about him like a swarm of insects. Ghostly scarabs the colour of oil and the grave fluttered around him with a sibilant clatter, their phantom shapes somehow protecting his thin one from the falling rocks. The scarab-jars he had used to escape his enemies in Nehekhara were long gone, but the fluttering spectres of the insects that had been contained in those jars were still his to command, bound to him by unhallowed rites and the force of his own will. They protected him now, their constantly moving forms deflecting the rubble that pounded down on him, creating a cone of safety.

The last rock fell with a crash. It had been his intention to simply allow the skaven to bury his problems for him. The Lahmians had forced him to get his hands dirty. Dust stung his eyes and nose as he slid his fangs from Stregga’s throat. She flopped limply from his grip, her eyes opaque and white and her once lush form withered and thin. He had drained her dry. Her vitality coursed through him, adding to his own and filling him with a feeling of invigoration that left him feeling slightly light-headed. It warred with the old familiar fear of being buried, numbing it.

W’soran paused for a moment, looking down at the corpse, searching for any hint of life. There was none. If a vampire could be said to have met the true death, Stregga had. Perhaps he would tell Vorag that the skaven had taken her captive. A slow grin pulled at his thin lips. Yes, that would be amusing.

The forms of the scarabs faded like an evening mist and he drew his cloak to him. He pulled his amulets from beneath his cuirass and rubbed one with his thumb. It had been years since he had eaten one, but he already felt the craving, almost as strong as his thirst for blood, rising in him. It was like an itch he could not scratch. A soft whisper, just out of earshot, tempting him, reminding him of the power that could be his, if he had but the courage to take it. Stregga’s blank eyes glared at him contemptuously, as if she saw his hesitation and mocked him for it. ‘Your mistress has tried to kill me more than once, witch. And she has failed this time, as she has failed in every other attempt,’ he said to the body.

‘She… only… needs… to… succeed… once,’ a voice coughed, startling him. He turned, and snorted in amusement. Layla had been attempting to reach him, perhaps to save her sister-in-blood, or perhaps simply to take advantage of the distraction Stregga’s death provided. She had been caught in the collapse, half-buried in the rubble. Her head and one arm protruded from the tightly packed rocks and dark blood stained the stone in a cruel halo about her pale flesh. More blood coated her chin and streamed from her nose and eyes. Even with the weight of the mountain on her, the Lahmian still somehow lived. ‘Just once, old monster,’ she whispered hoarsely.

‘Yes, but perhaps she will think better of it henceforth, eh?’ W’soran said, sinking to his haunches in front of her. Still clutching his amulets in one hand, he reached out with his other and grabbed her crimson-stained hair, twisting her head up and to the side so that he could examine her face. ‘Especially when her hunting beasts do not return to their kennel, bearing my scalp,’ he said. ‘If your mistress bothers to rip your screaming spirit from the audient void to question you, you will say this — no more running. W’soran of Mahrak makes his stand here. In this place, I will build my own Lahmia, my own Nagashizzar. A city of the new dawn and corpse winds, wherein I shall build the chains that will drag down this fallen world and make of it something perfect. I will show both Neferata and Nagash for the frauds they are and were, mewling things demanding titles that are not their right. I spit on queens and grind kings beneath my heel, witch.’ He yanked on Layla’s hair, eliciting a grunt of agony. ‘You will tell her this, when you next see her,’ he snarled. ‘Your noisome shade shall pass my words on to your queen, squatting in her tomb.’