William King - Stealer of Flesh

Kormak saw an opening. He knocked Scar’s blade aside and stabbed his dwarf-forged sword into the orc’s heart. Scar twisted, turning sideways. The blade passed through his side but not fatally. It had been a feint of a most daring and bloody kind.

Scar’s massive hand reached out and he caught the Elder Sign hanging by its chain around Kormak’s neck. It snapped and the sign went skittering free across the floor.

Before he could withdraw his blade, Razhak struck. He darted forward and stabbed out with his hand. Pain spasmed through Kormak and for a moment he lost control of his limbs. While he thrashed, two of Scar’s men raced forward. Bludgeons slammed into Kormak’s head. He fell to the floor, twisting to tell Nuala to get away. He need not have bothered. The girl was already gone.

Kormak awoke feeling bruised and chilled. Metal chains restrained his limbs and chilled him where they touched flesh. He looked up and saw Ana. Rotten skin had sloughed away from her flesh now. An eerie green glow glittered within her eyes. Looking around Kormak saw frightened thugs looking at her in horror. Behind her was Scar repairing the links of the chain of Kormak’s damaged Elder Sign. The orc’s wounded side was bound. Seeing Kormak awake, he showed his fangs, put down the amulet and picked up his blades.

Kormak realised his mail shirt had been removed and his amulets. His blade lay on a table in the far corner of the room. He had been stripped of all protection, physical and spiritual, and he doubted his life had been spared for any good reason.

“I had to use up most of my energy with that last spell,” said Razhak. “It ruined this body, took the life from it. I need a new form so I have patched yours up. It is magnificent, a shell that should house me till I reach Tanyth.”

“Kill me and my order will send two more to hunt you.”

A soft, corrupt phlegmy laugh emerged from the possessed woman’s throat. “I have heard enough about your order. I shall leave the blade here with my friend Scar and I shall disappear. They can reclaim the sword. That is all they care about.”

Kormak felt the touch of the Ghul. It was chill and clammy. Ana’s hand felt oddly sticky as if some small vampiric creeper was attaching itself to his breast. A coldness radiated out from the point of contact, sending tendrils burrowing deep into Kormak’s chest, through his veins and up his spine. At first it was not painful, not even unpleasant, only faintly disturbing.

He looked up into Ana’s face. The possessed woman’s face glowed from within. Her flesh was starting to turn black and liquefy. A reddish glow burned in her eyes, growing brighter with every passing heartbeat. Through Ana’s stolen eyes, something ageless watched him, her lips twisted into a smile as the skin ran like wax from a melting candle.

Suddenly, Kormak felt as if a thousand needles stabbed into his flesh where the cold hand rested above his heart. The chill spread suddenly and searingly, so cold it burned, along all those lines of power. His whole body spasmed as his muscles reacted. His fingers opened and closed and they did not do so at his command, nor at the command of anyone else… yet.

He felt in some way like a puppet at the end of a string and at the same time could feel an ominous sense of presence growing in his mind, as in some dreadful dream. It was as if some dark and awful monster, lurking out of sight, was coming ever closer.

His heart raced. His mouth went dry. He felt dizzy and if it was not for the chains, he would not have been able to stand up right. He felt as if he was falling into a black pit that yawned at his feet, an endless, empty chasm in which he would never hit bottom.

His limbs thrashed. He bit on his tongue. He felt a tearing sensation as if his spirit was being ripped free of his body and something else was trying to elbow it aside and take its place within the house of his flesh.

Images started to flicker into his mind. Bubbling up like old memories suddenly remembered. Some of them belonged to him and some of them belonged to someone else. He felt tendrils of alien thought riffle through his mind, like a burglar looking through the possessions found in a trunk. He felt an eager, gloating presence, keen to take possession of all of them, of every little thing he remembered.

He saw a village in the mountains of Aquilea, everyone dead, corpses sprawling in the muddy streets, as cold as the fingers that touched his chest, dead eyes staring at the sky, mouths open in prayer to a god that never answered. He saw an eight year old boy standing in the ruins of a smithy, clutching his father’s hammer, confronting an evil as old as the world while that evil watched him with mocking eyes. The ancient being walked over to the boy and took away the hammer, and it reached out and touched his cheek. You I will spare to take word to the world but one day, child, when you least expect it, I will come for you again. On that day, you will die!

He felt Razhak’s sense of shock in the invading presence. It realised what it was seeing. It was looking on something coeval with itself, a thing that had once been its master, a Lord of the Old Ones, a renegade outside the Law.

Kormak took advantage of its surprise to strike back, as he had been taught by the masters of Mount Aethelas long ago. He threw all of his willpower into envisioning an Elder Sign in his mind. The Ghul recoiled from him, leaving him with a fragment of its memories. Of a world before the coming of men, of ancient beings who had once served the Old Ones and who sought to emulate them.

He watched the Sunlanders arrive borne on the wings of storm from their sinking island continent to claim the lands of the Old Ones in the name of their brilliant, solar god. He saw the Ghul take advantage of the war to rebel against their masters.

He saw Tanyth, a gigantic city with a dome of magic over it and towers whose minarets glowed like the moon as lightning danced from spire to spire. He saw the things that looked somewhat like men, but were not, lie down in sarcophagi and have their essence strengthened until they could exist outside the housing of flesh. He felt a sense of triumph. They had emulated their masters. They were immortal.

The Ghul struck back at him. A wave of power rushed inwards battering at the walls he had created around his self with the Elder Sign. It smashed through them and dug its talons into his soul and began to shake lose his memories once more. He saw that eight year old boy still standing in the ruins of an empty village. The ancient evil was gone, as inexplicably as it had come, leaving him alone in the place of death. He heard the sound of a horse. He looked up and he saw a grim-faced man ride in, with a dwarf-forged sword slung on his back. The man looked wary at the sight but he did not look afraid. He dismounted and moved towards the boy suspiciously, as if he thought the child might be a demon wearing a different form. The boy stood watching, clutching his father’s hammer. The man reached out and touched him with an amulet, which did not burn and then asked him what had happened.

Kormak saw that Razhak was beginning to understand. Taking advantage of the demon’s confusion, he countered. The memories came in a tide of images, intermingling as the two spirits fought for possession of his body. Kormak was not going to give up. The tide of memories brought back fresh recollections of his training in how to resist magical influence. He strengthened his wards, clawed back at Razhak.

Images flickered through his mind. The bodiless Ghuls raced around the world, disembodied immortal creatures that yet had the appetites born of flesh and which now hungered for the experiences they could no longer have. Disquieting tidings came, as Ghuls started to flicker and fade. There was a flaw in their magic. They had not become as independent of the flesh as they had thought. They could still die, coming apart in a welter of entropic energy, losing form and coherence, as if there was nothing to anchor them to reality.