Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

You don't need me."

"You are coming," said Kradek-ka, his voice hard and brittle as iron. Then he softened a little. He took a deep breath. He reached out, and helped Anukis rise from the soft, white bed. His hands were gentle. His claws gleamed, sparkling like silver in the diffused light.

"I will stay here. I feel weak. I need to sleep."

"No. Time grows short. You will come now."

Anukis met her father's gaze. "No, father. I will not," she said, voice icy, breaking free of the honey drugs in her veins and mind and wondering just what game was being played here. Anukis was sick to the heartcore of being pushed around, told what to do, used and abused and taken advantage of. She had come through the Vrekken, risked her life for her father, and yet this did not feel like her father; he felt like an imposter, a chameleon, something which changed its skin to please and was yet different inside. A different organism.

Kradek-ka, still smiling, slammed out his fist. At the end, his claws were extended and they were impossibly long, huge curved silver and gold blades which pierced Anukis's throat, driving through her windpipe and neck muscles and spine, appearing at the back of her neck in an explosion of blood that decorated the white walls. With the force of the blow Anukis's body danced like a dropped corpse in a noose, and Kradek-ka stood there, holding Anukis in the air, a punctured ragdoll. Anukis gurgled and kicked, not quite believing the strength of Kradek-ka, not quite believing her own weakness, and not quite believing what had just happened.

"My girl," said Kradek-ka, eyes glowing impossibly dark. "You will do exactly what you are told," he said, and retracted his claws.

General Graal moved to the Blood Refinery. The cold night breeze cooled his naked body. Without clothing and armour, he was tautly muscled and very, very lean. Graal's skin was perfectly white, like fine porcelain, and when he turned the moonlight caught his features and gave him a surreal, dead look. As if carved from stone.

"The Sending Magick is ready, general," came the sibilant hiss of a Harvester, bobbing as it walked towards him. Graal nodded, and moved through the snow, feet crunching, to where the huge Blood Refinery squatted, fat and black and bloated, like a burnt corpse in the sun, like the full belly of a corpse-fed battlefield raven. He turned back, looked at the Harvesters, and beyond, down into Falanor's capital city of Vor. Many buildings burned fiercely. The temples. The libraries. Smoke spiralled into the dark winter sky, fireflies of ash dancing like insects. Graal's nostrils twitched, and he could smell distant smoke. He turned back to the Blood Refinery. It reminded him of an overfull insect.

"We are finished here," he said, voice low. "You know what to do."

"Yes," hissed the Harvester.

Graal stepped forward, and pressed his naked body against the Blood Refinery. He started the incantation, and felt the Sending Magick flow through ancient iron and into his veins and flesh and bones, and he flowed with the magick and was absorbed by the magick, and it smashed his skull with a sudden bright pounding and he flowed with it, and the destination was clear and he felt every component atom in his being broken down and disseminated then reintegrated into a whole, and Graal laughed for this was what insanity must feel like and he revelled in it, this was what being a god must feel like and he bathed in it, gloried in it, and lost his own mind to it all, and it was Good.

Graal swam. He leapt. He flowed. It took a million years.

He eased like a blood cell through the veins of the universe.

He trickled through time, like a virus through an organism.

Graal no longer existed, for his matter was part of all matter, and the magick tugged at him, and directed him and only through the bindings of the spell did he retain some semblance of identity and was not spread across an infinite plane.

And then everything was dark. And it was over.

It felt like being born. Pain lashed him with a million stings in every atom of flesh, and Graal would have screamed but the pain was too great. He squeezed from something soft and slick, pus-filled and flexible and yielding. He slapped to the floor, trembling as if suffering a violent seizure, and cold fluid poured out after him and covered him with thick ice ichor. He felt hands on him, or felt something on him, and they were hard and pointed and pierced his flesh accidentally. He was manhandled into blankets and he realised, with a moment of panic, that he was blind. Towels rubbed his body, rubbing life back into his flesh, rubbing gooey liquid from his eyes, and gradually a soft diffused light began to wander into his eyes and skull. Only then did Graal cough, and disgorged a huge stream of thick pus which pooled on the floor to lie, quivering, like dark blood.

"You did well," said Vishniriak, and the Harvester patted him gently in a rare moment of connection.

Graal focused on the Harvester, but could not speak. His vocal chords were raw, as if rubbed by a grater.

"I felt like God. I felt like Death," he finally managed.

Vishniriak nodded, in understanding. He had travelled The Sending. He understood exactly what Graal meant. To travel the Lines of the Land by magick was to be a part of the earth, of the mountains and oceans and forests and bedrock. It was to lose identity. Without powerful bindings, a mind would snap. But Graal was strong. Graal was very strong.

Graal stood, and clothing and armour were brought for him. He dressed slowly, feeling old, feeling more old than the Black Pike Mountains. Finally, he strapped well-oiled armour into place, and a short black sword by his side.

He nodded at Vishniriak. "Has Kradek-ka arrived?"

"Yes, general."

"And he has the girl?"

"He has, general."

Graal smiled then, his eyes gleaming. "Kell is coming to us. We must prepare," he said. "The time is ready for the Vampire Warlords to return." And he strode confidently, arrogantly, from the chamber deep within the bowels of Skaringa Dak.

The world was shrouded in mist. Kell stood, poised on the high mountain ridgeline, the world around him a blanket interspersed with vast drops and glimpses of the rearing, Black Pike Peaks.

Ahead, the mist thickened momentarily, obscuring the two Soul Stealers. Only the canker came on, and more vachine longbow shafts whistled from the mist and Ilanna slammed left, then right, cutting arrows from flight… as the canker, close now, and amazingly nimble for its bulk, bounded along the narrow, undulating rock path and leapt at Kell with a savage snarl, an ejection of saliva, and Kell's axe slammed left but the canker ducked, equine head swaying back. Claws hammered at Kell but Ilanna deflected the blow on a fast return sweep, and he took a step back, the mist suddenly parting around him to reveal vast drops from nightmare. He ducked another swipe of curved claws and set his chin in a grim line as he clenched teeth hard, brows furrowed, and felt himself descending dropping plummeting into a blood red rage…

I will help, said Ilanna.

Yes, said Kell.

A flickering staccato of images rampaged through his mind. It was the Days of Blood – again. And he welcomed it. He stood, muscles bulging, tensed as if pumped on drugs and violence. His brain ached, and random chaos bounced around the cage of his brain. He lifted Ilanna, and she sang, she sang a high beautiful song only this time THIS TIME the world could hear her lullaby and the people running down the street fleeing the insanity of the army they stopped, and turned, and listened to the stunning ethereal voice of Ilanna as the perfect hypnotising notes reverberated through fire and smoke and sounds of slaughter, and the fleeing refugees paused and Kell strode amongst them Ilanna cutting left and right, and they did not flee, and they did not retaliate, they simply stood staring at this blood soaked figure at Kell's rage and his fury and his madness as Ilanna slammed left and right with economical accuracy, and they had love in their eyes, love for Ilanna's Song, and they welcomed death and in welcoming death their blood fed the butterfly blades and when they were all dead, all cut up in pieces on the muddy cobbles, so Kell fell to his knees amongst the men and women and children, and he cried, his tears running through a mask of blood and he cast Ilanna away and screamed "WHAT HAVE I DONE?" and he knew then, that he was cursed, that he was evil, that ultimately he was trying to be good and just and honourable; but deep down, he was simply a very bad man.