Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

He released her and stood. There were half a dozen amulets dangling from his long fingers and they seemed to pulse in time to the beat of sour blood in his head. He stared at them, half in longing and half in fear. The first time, there had been no choice. It had been the wyrdstone or entombment, perhaps forever. But now he had a choice. He could escape without them. He was not injured this time.

He looked about him, and felt the closeness clawing at the edges of his mind. He fought it down, wrestling the gibbering terror that clung to him like an unwanted passenger into a box in the back of his mind. ‘I’m not afraid,’ he hissed. ‘I’m not .’ His words sounded petulant, even to him.

This wasn’t about fear this time. It was about expediency. That was all. He needed power. The amulets provided power. And what they took in return, he was willing to sacrifice. He had ever done so, so why hesitate now? He held the amulets up and examined them. The darkling glow of them was comforting at first glance, but it grew less so, the longer he looked.

He needed power, if he was to do what needed doing. He hissed and opened his jaws to skin-splitting width, and dropped the amulets in, one after the other. Fire burst along his mummified nerves, greater than before. His shrivelled muscles swelled and his eyes bulged as a daemon-heat was kindled within him. It happened more quickly than before, and he was almost overwhelmed. Oily smoke issued from his pores, wreathing him in a cloak of foulness. His hands twitched jerkily as he sank to his knees, wheezing and hissing. The mountain seemed to press down on him from all directions — he could feel its weight in every nerve and on the tip of every hair.

He coughed, trying to dredge up a scream, but all that escaped his mouth was an explosion of boiling gas. He felt like a fire-pit overstuffed with kindling, and the very air wavered about him as a vile heat radiated from his scrawny form. He clutched his sides, fearing that the surging energies that roiled in his gut would tear him apart.

The world pressed in on him, and for a moment, he could see everything, every part of the mountain, every battle taking place from its roots to its tip, including those that had yet to take place and those that never would. He saw the heaving veins of raw magic that threaded through the air around him and the frothing abominations that they emanated from, and he knew that they saw him as well. He saw faces as wide across as oceans and full to bursting with such hideous malignancy that even his sour, stunted soul quavered at the atrocities promised in the thinnest of smiles or the briefest flicker of an eye. For a moment, his sanity trembled on the edge of that vast, crumbling precipice.

Then, the rocks echoed with the sounds of insects scrabbling. For a moment, he thought that he had somehow inadvertently summoned his scarabs once more, before he realised that they were not his, for these, rather than being pale phantoms, were as black as Usirian’s pit. Their shells swallowed light and even his inhuman gaze could not fully discern them. They were equal parts smoke, filth and insect and they spun about him in a wild dance.

The voice, when it came, seemed to thrum through him, riding the fires of the abn-i-khat into the very recesses of his soul. I SEE YOU , it seemed to say. I SEE YOU, MY SERVANT, MY MOST FAITHFUL SON.

He watched in horror as the skittering insects flowed over one another, forming the crude approximation of a great face at his feet. It was Ushoran’s face, and yet not. Another face looked through Ushoran’s — a hateful, terrible face that seemed at once pleased and angered.

‘No,’ W’soran said, covering his face. ‘No, not yet! Not yet!’ His former bravado was gone, stripped away in a moment of uncomprehending terror. He was trapped, sealed in rock with the King of Nightmares and beyond him, the Court of Chaos, his mind and soul open for the flaying. He howled and gibbered, flailing at the faces that leered at him, promising torments of exquisite intricacy.

The voice did not respond to his maddened screams. When he finally lowered his hands, the scarabs were gone, as if they had never been. The only sound, in the cramped confines of the space, was Layla’s hoarse, croaking laughter. ‘You — you’re… mad,’ she wheezed. ‘K-killing you would be a mercy…’

W’soran shrieked and threw out a hand. Black energy burst from his crooked fingers and struck the trapped and cackling Lahmian, washing over her face and boiling the flesh from her head. Her screams ended abruptly. Only a blackened skull remained. Panting, W’soran turned and raised his hands. The tumbled rocks turned to slag as he gestured.

Even as he stepped into the newly-made tunnel, he knew that Nagash was watching. He knew, as he strode quickly into the darkness, erasing the stone from his path, that Nagash would always be watching. The shadow of the Undying King would cover his path until he forcibly removed it.

Chewing the shards of abn-i-khat, W’soran lurched onwards, to claim his citadel in fire and blood.

The City of Bel Aliad

(Year -1152 Imperial Calendar)

‘Where is she, Abhorash?’ W’soran growled. He glared at the former champion of Lahmia, his good eye blazing with fury. Ushoran gripped his arm in a calming gesture, but W’soran shook him off irritably. ‘Where is our beloved queen, eh? I would gaze upon her beauty once more,’ he said bitterly.

‘She is… contained,’ Abhorash said, looking out the chamber’s window, down at the war-torn streets of the City of Spices. Neferata’s desert raiders had been driven back, but only at great cost and the city had suffered in the doing of it. Many had died, and many more had been taken as captives by the retreating raiders. Neferata’s handmaidens too — those who had survived — were still at large, prowling the shadows of the city, pining for their imprisoned mistress.

That was the reason Abhorash’s Hand was absent. The four killers were leading the hunt for Neferata’s followers, though, given their proclivities, likely not very seriously. Ushoran had offered to aid them, but Abhorash had turned him down flatly. W’soran suspected that the champion was less than pleased to see them. Then, when had the champion ever been happy to see them? Even in better times, now long dust, Abhorash had been an aloof one.

‘Then the weapon we procured for you was satisfactory?’ Ushoran said, stepping forward. He wore his bland-faced human seeming. It had taken Ushoran some months to gain possession of the sword that Abhorash’s factotum had used to disable Neferata. It had belonged to an eastern war-chief of singularly vicious disposition. The tribe had come west, raiding and burning as they crossed the Badlands. Nagash, unwilling to ignore such an affront to his burgeoning empire, had sent W’soran and Ushoran to deal with the flea-bitten marauders.

In a single night of blood-soaked murder, the two vampires had wiped out Karadok the Conqueror and his pathetic tribe of daemon worshippers. The howling blade had been wrenched from Karadok’s grip by Ushoran, even as the vampire throttled its former wielder. W’soran had driven the remnants of the tribe into the darkness of the Badlands with a barrage of sorcery, and set stalking hounds crafted from the skeletons of desert jackals wrapped in the stitched skins of orcs and men on their trail. It had been an amusing diversion from his duties.

W’soran had, at first, thought that the blade was intended as a trophy for Nagash — Ushoran was forever currying favour with the Undying King. Instead, the other vampire had kept and concealed the weapon, eventually delivering it to Abhorash, who had in turn gifted it to the young nobleman, Khaled al Muntasir. True to form, Abhorash had refused to strike directly at Neferata, until forced to by circumstance.