Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

"That isn't even funny," said Nienna, eyes wide.

"Who said I was joking?"

"Shut up," said Kell. "Look. Something is happening."

They watched. A hundred soldiers marched into the cavern, and arranged themselves around a circle of five pods. A tall albino warrior stepped forward, and drawing a short silver dagger, he cautiously inserted it into the nearest pod and, with intricate care, cut a long curve downwards. Flesh bulged, and was followed by a flood of white which sluiced across the stone floor. There followed a tumble of cords, like thin white tree roots, and then there was a shape nestled amongst the mess, amidst the thick strands and gooey white fluid. It slopped, spread-eagled to the floor, and several of the soldiers stepped forward and…

"Holy Mother," said Saark, mouth open.

"So this is where the bastards emerge," growled Kell.

"What are they?" whispered Nienna, stunned by what she saw.

The soldiers wrapped the newly born, nearly-adult albino soldier, naked, flesh white and pure, scalp bald and glistening with milk, limbs shaking and unable to stand without support, in a blanket. The man was like a newborn foal, weak and quivering. The surrounding soldiers led the blanket-trussed newborn down a corridor in almost reverent silence.

"They're hatching," said Saark, without humour. "The human maggots are hatching."

"They're not fucking human," snarled Kell.

"Well," continued Saark, in the same cool, level voice, detached and not quite believing as he tried to comprehend the magnitude of what he was witnessing, "what actually are they, then?"

"They're the enemy," said Kell, "here for us to kill."

"An interesting viewpoint," came the smooth, neutral voice of the albino warrior. He stood, and behind him were thirty soldiers. All had bows bent, arrows aimed at the three peering intruders. "They are, in fact, our alshina larvae. As you so quite rightly put it, young man, we are not human. This is where we are hatched – eggs laid, implanted, and hatched by our queen." He drew a short black sword, and used it to point. "Ironic, that you refer to us as the albino. That would be your arrogance speaking. To think we are simply humans without pigmentation. Man, we are a different species."

He turned, then, and surveyed the bent bows of his warriors. Several smiled.

"What do you want?" growled Kell, and slowly stood. He flexed his shoulders, and his face was thun der. Saark stood next, and he placed a warning hand on Kell's shoulder.

"Look," said Saark. "They have Widowmakers."

The dandy was right; some of the warriors carried the same weapon that Myriam and her little band had used back in Falanor; the same weapon which had taken Katrina's life.

"If you know what these Widowmakers are," said the leader, smoothly, with no hint of fear or panic, "then you obviously know what they can do. I suggest you drop your weapons. My soldiers have been primed to kill the girl first."

"Why, you bastards," frowned Kell, stepping forward. The Widowmakers lifted in response to his antagonism. They were surrounded, heavily outnumbered, and even the mighty Kell could not fight with thirty arrows in his chest.

"We have to do it," urged Saark, and was the first one to lay down his rapier. Nienna, wide-eyed, fearful, threw down her own sword and reluctantly Kell knelt and placed Ilanna reverently on the rocky ground.

"Take care of her, lads. I'll be wanting her back real soon. And if there's a single mark on her, I'll be cracking some skulls."

"Fine words," smiled the leader, but then the smile fell like plague rain. "Restrain them."

They had hands tied tightly before them, Kell grumbling and growling all the time, facing out into the great hatching chamber where yet more newborns were eased from their larvae pods and into the cool air of the chamber; into the real world. Like insects, thought Kell with a shudder. They are hatched like insects.

He was spun round by surprisingly strong hands, and a huge white-skinned soldier smiled at him, crimson eyes fixed on his, hand on the hilt of his short black sword. "You'll be cracking skulls will you, Fat Man?" he hissed.

Kell's head snapped forward, delivering a terrific head-butt that dropped the albino warrior in a second, and had him crawling around in circles, blinded.

"There's the first one," growled Kell. "Any more fools want to try me out for size?"

The leader pressed a razor dagger to Nienna's throat. He still retained his air of calm, of clarity, as he stared down at his disabled soldier who – even as he watched, died on the floor. His skull was indeed cracked. Broken, like a raw egg.

"Anything else, Kell, anything at all, and I'll cut her up. A piece at a time."

"You've made your point, lad," said Kell, showing no surprise that the leader knew his name. "Just as I have made mine. So tell me – what happens next in this vile and acid-stinking albino piss-hole? You got any more surprises for us?"

"Just one," said the leader, words soft as he caressed Nienna's trembling throat with his blade. "Somebody wants to meet you."

"And who would that be? My mother?"

"No," said the leader. His crimson eyes twinkled. "His name is Graal. He's been expecting you."

Skaringa Dak was a huge, evil mountain, even by the usual standards of the Black Pikes which in themselves had a reputation for being huge, evil, merciless and downright impenetrable. Skaringa Dak towered over surrounding peaks, and to one side, between hooked crags and violent obstacles, if one was to stand just right between jagged teeth, a person might, when the mists and snowstorms cleared, see the distant, widening spread of Silva Valley, home of the vachine, home of the engineered vampire race.

Near the summit, surrounded by glossy knives of rock sat ragged slopes containing millions of glossy, polished marble daggers, impossible to traverse on foot and a natural – or maybe not so natural – barrier to the flat circle of Helltop, five hundred metres beneath the mountain's true summit.

Helltop.

A place of mystery and magick for ten thousand years, surrounded by walls and fissures, crevices and crags, hooks and knives, and accessed only by a narrow, sloping tunnel which led deep inside the bowels of Skaringa Dak, and welcomed the foolish to explore.

Helltop.

A five hundred-metre circle of flat rock, polished marble, inlaid with natural lodes of silver and gold so that it twinkled under snow-melt. The surrounding peaks lay deep in snow, but not so the circle of Helltop. Helltop was immune to snow. Some said it was a volcanic fissure from deep within the mountain that channelled heat from unfathomable places; others said it was acts of evil magick which had taken place there over the centuries, ranging back past even the Vampire Warlords of Blood Legend – and which lingered, invisible, like esoteric radiation.

Set in the centre of Helltop and criss-crossed with thick bands of gold and silver in the glossy floor, sat the three Granite Thrones. They were ancient, and hewn by primitive hand-tools centuries before. They were jagged, and rough, and basic. And they were old beyond the comprehension of modern civilisation. Before the three Thrones there was a small, circular pool of liquid, like a glass platter of black water. This natural chute fed down, down through a thousand vertical tunnels, natural fissures and chutes and stone tubes cutting through the rock to the very roots of the mountain. These were the arteries of the mountain. These were its life.

Graal stood beside the Granite Thrones dressed in a white robe. Wild mountain winds whipped his fine white hair, and his unusual blue eyes surveyed this, the scene he had awaited for nearly a thousand years.

A mournful howling echoed through the mountains. Graal smiled. He could feel the pull of so much bloodoil and its associated magick of the soul. Now, all they needed were the Soul Gems and the Sacrifice to finalise and bind the spell. To bring back the Vampire Warlords. To control the Vampire Warlords.