Josh Reynolds: Master of Death

‘Did Ushoran really think that he could overcome me this way, with simple brute force? Has his famous guile deserted him?’ he cackled, knowing even as he said it that there was something he was missing. It nagged at him. What was he not seeing? If Melkhior had wanted him dead, why not simply let the assassins kill him while he meditated? Why wake him up?

The Strigoi came at him from either side, confident in their strength. W’soran killed them both with a gesture, his magics flaying the meat from their bones before they could so much as scream. Overconfidence was a persistent weakness of their kind, a predatory surety which served as a crude population control. He had noted it early on in his studies. The only cure was age. Age brought cunning to temper the ferocity. Age brought wisdom, the wisdom to hide his strength, and his secrets; that was why he had built his vault. Nagash had been too trusting with his secrets, or perhaps simply too arrogant to consider that anyone might covet them more than they feared him.

‘Master of Death,’ he murmured, ‘Master of Fools, more like.’

He turned as a heavy body crashed to the ground. Melkhior raised the sword and brought it down, lopping off the twitching Strigoi’s head. His former apprentice kicked the head aside and looked at him. ‘Do you still doubt me, old monster?’ he growled.

‘I never doubted you,’ W’soran said smoothly. He gestured. ‘I knew, here in my heart, that you would come to your senses eventually and return to me.’

Melkhior gave a grunt of bitter laughter. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I am going to collect something very valuable and then I am going to flee,’ W’soran said. Melkhior could prove useful, though only in the short term.

‘The books, you mean,’ Melkhior said softly.

W’soran’s good eye narrowed. Melkhior shook his head. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You prize Nagash’s scrawling even over your own life.’ His eyes flashed. ‘How many of them do you possess now… two, perhaps three?’

Before W’soran could answer, the sound of monstrous shrieks echoed through the forecourt. More than three, or four or even five of them this time, he realised. It sounded like a dozen or more, and all of them looking to take his head. ‘They are coming,’ Melkhior said, backing away. ‘We must go!’

‘Not without those books,’ W’soran snarled, shoving him aside. ‘I require them for a bit longer yet.’

‘Then we had better hurry,’ Melkhior said. They moved swiftly, robes flapping. They sped across the forecourt and through another archway. W’soran led the way, running smoothly despite the fact that he’d been as stiff as a corpse earlier.

The vault lay at the juncture where the fastness gave way to solid rock. W’soran had devised it in such a way that even if his sanctum was wiped from the side of the crag, his vault, and the precious artefacts and tomes within, would remain untouched. Rock walls rose around them and over them in a rough, curved tunnel, braced by heavy wooden beams set into place by dead hands. It was as wide as a plaza and a force of men could pass through it easily. There was no light, for they needed none. They’d left the howls of their pursuers behind, but W’soran knew they would be on them soon enough. The Strigoi could be relentless in pursuit of prey.

At the end of the tunnel sat the vault. It was a simple enough thing… a great wedge of stone, set into a gap like a cork into a bottle. Hundreds of chains, coated in dust and rust in equal measure, lay before it, connected to the wedge by a massive iron ring. As W’soran approached, he saw that the dust on the floor, and on the chains, had been disturbed. He smiled crookedly. Melkhior stood behind him, casting nervous glances back up the corridor.

‘How do you get in?’ Melkhior asked. ‘I see no lock, no handle, save those chains.’

‘The chains are the handle,’ W’soran said. Then, he spoke a single word. It hummed through the air and the stone of the walls and link by link, the chains began to rattle. Melkhior stepped back with an oath, as the chains rose to the height of a man and in the wide space before the stone, motes of pale light appeared and blossomed into ragged phantoms. Men, women and children, their hazy features twisted with incomprehensible agony. They moaned and screamed in silence, writhing beneath the weight of the chains. ‘I forged them in the blood of the former inhabitants of this place as well as my own,’ W’soran explained, ‘and bound their shrivelled little souls to the links… and to me. Only my voice can awaken them. Only my will can make them open the vault.’

Even as he said it, the ghosts began to move forward, straining against the wedge, pulling the chains. Melkhior watched in awe and, W’soran was pleased to note, not a little fear. To bind the dead to their own corpses was a parlour trick compared to this. W’soran preened slightly as the wedge groaned in its housing and began to pull free of the hole, releasing a burst of foul air. It was a ponderous affair, and with every step, the ghosts flickered and twitched in mute agony. That they still felt the weight and pain of their last moments was, to W’soran’s mind, of the utmost delight. They had dared set themselves against him, tried to prevent him from taking what was his, and now they would suffer for eternity for that hubris.

After long moments, the vault was open and the spirits slumped or sank to their knees, as if they were still prone to the fatigue that might cripple living flesh. ‘Only my will,’ W’soran said again. He turned with a nasty smile on his face. At a single twitch of his fingers, the spirits rose as one, screaming silently as their ghostly forms were caught up in a maelstrom and flung together, causing the chains to clash and rattle thunderously. The spirits were smashed against one another, and they merged, still shrieking, into a colossal figure, a giant made of writhing shapes and weeping faces that gathered up the chains and then drove one heaving, squirming shoulder into the vault door. The vault was slammed shut with a roar and the phantoms vanished. The chains fell, and the stone echoed loudly with the sound. Melkhior gaped, uncomprehending. ‘That was why Urdek and the others couldn’t open it, of course,’ W’soran said, examining his talons.

Melkhior froze. W’soran nodded in satisfaction. ‘No bodies. No hint of them. What happened to them, I wonder?’ His smile became sharp and feral. ‘Did you eat them? I recall that’s what you did to that one young fellow, the ajal with the golden hair… did you crack Urdek’s thick skull open and eat the sweetness within when you realised he couldn’t aid you? Maybe your Strigoi friends helped you, hmm? How long have you lot squatted here, in my lair, trying to get at my secrets while I slumbered unawares?’ He exposed his fangs. ‘And then, when you could not, you decided to wake me up and play me for a fool, yes, with staged attacks to harry me and confuse me? Oh Melkhior, you are too clever by half, my sweet boy,’ W’soran said. Black fire crackled between his fingers and he held up a hand. Melkhior glanced back. W’soran clucked his tongue. ‘They won’t get here in time to help you,’ he said.

‘Actually, we are already here,’ a feminine voice said. W’soran glanced up in shock as a lithe shape dropped from the ceiling and a blade flashed. Pain tore through him as one of his hands was removed at the wrist and he yowled, releasing the deadly magics contained in the other at the pale shape of his attacker.

Laughing, she sprang to the wall and nimbly leapt over the coruscating lance of black flame. ‘Now, Melkhior,’ she howled. ‘Take him!’

Melkhior charged forward, bat-face split in a roar of pure hatred. He brought the sword down on W’soran’s shoulder, driving the blade down through bone and muscle in a burst of inhuman strength. W’soran staggered and nearly fell. Shrieking, he slapped Melkhior away with his bloody stump and faced his other attacker. His good eye widened in shock. ‘You,’ he hissed.