Sacrosanct & Other Stories

by Various Authors

  One cultist remained standing, drenched in the blood of his fellows even as their bodies crumpled, spurting, to the ground. He raised his stave with shaking hands and pointed it in Neave’s direction. A crackling arrow slammed into his throat with such force that it passed clean through. She heard the man’s heart stop as celestial lightnings coursed through his body and killed him even before his blood began to jet from the wound.

  Wordlessly, she raised an axe to Tarion in thanks, then sped on towards the heart of the village. The drums had increased their tempo and the chanting had transformed into warlike cries.

  ‘They now know we are coming,’ muttered Neave to herself. ‘It becomes more interesting from here.’

  Neave rounded the corner between a tumbledown cottage and a mouldering tavern, and found herself confronted by a hellish spectacle. At the heart of the village lay a rude square, in the middle of which a well had been raised. Into the sulphurous dirt around the well, Xelkyn’s followers had driven nine tall silver pillars, each topped with an icon of Tzeentch, the Chaos God of change, fate, magic and mutation. Sorcerous energies crackled between the pillars, weaving a complex web of vivid blues, purples, greens and yellows that hurt Neave’s eyes to look at. A monstrous light beamed up from the well’s depths, hues of indescribable madness that seemed to crystallise and warp in the air as they rose.

  Around the pillars was arrayed the remaining strength of Xelkyn’s coven. They packed the square to capacity, a throng of the deformed and the deranged all turning towards her with blades drawn and screams of hatred contorting their monstrous features.

  With predatory speed she took in the enemies that confronted her, assessed which were the greatest threats, which would be the hardest to slay, which could be ignored or evaded altogether. The vast bulk of the enemy were human cultists like those she had already butchered, yet amongst them she saw knots of Tzaangor, blue-skinned and corded with wiry muscle, their bodies deformed with features both bestial and avian. A few hovered above their fellows, riding on fleshy, daemonic discs. They wielded twisted bows of silver and sinew.

  Here and there, Stiltkin loomed, their bodies little more than masses of blue rags and dirty feathers, their masks beaklike. The weird creatures towered over their comrades on stilts of bone and gold sutured directly into the stumps of their legs, and they held long-hafted silver scythes which Neave knew from painful experience could cut through sigmarite with ease.

  Most dangerous of all, several ogroid Thaumaturges rose like muscular islands amidst the press of foes, their flesh branded with glowing runes, their bull-like features and flowing manes crackling with power as they hefted sorcerous staves.

  ‘There,’ shouted Tarion from on high. ‘Amidst the pillars. Xelkyn.’

  Neave saw her mark standing within the shimmering aegis of the pillars, looming over the well with his arms raised. Xelkyn was every bit as hideous as she remembered, with his spiralling robes of flame and light, his painfully elongated limbs, squirming mouthparts that dripped acidic drool, and iridescent eyes formed from fractured domes of crystal.

  All this information flowed through Neave’s mind in a split-second. She didn’t even slow, instead angling her assault for a slight weakness that she perceived in the enemy’s lines, trusting that Tarion would cover her from on high. She was not mistaken.

  As Neave charged, and the enemy raised their weapons to fight, a storm of lightning-wreathed arrows fell amongst them. Cultists and Tzaangor crashed to the ground, twitching and shrieking as their lives were snuffed out. One of the Stiltkin toppled like a tree as an arrow punched through its leg, sending its scythe blade swinging out of control to lop the head from a bellowing ogroid. Neave’s path was cleared amidst concussive blasts of celestial energy as she arced towards her target.

  Still, the foe were many, the Stormcasts just two. Tarion could not suppress all Xelkyn’s coven at once.

  ‘Beware the soulfire,’ she shouted to him, catching flaring energies in her peripheral vision. Neave leapt aside as one of the ogroids hurled a ravening column of flame from the tip of his staff. The sorcerous energies bit into the ground, raising dust and steam as they blasted a trench where Neave had been. They clipped several luckless cultists, whose screams distorted into gibbering howls as their flesh melted and mutated beyond recognition.

  Bands of cultists raised their staves and sent balls of magical fire leaping skywards, a meteor storm that set the air alight. Neave saw Tarion weave through the hail of projectiles, drawing and loosing arrows with inhuman speed as he did. His shots reaped a tally amongst the enemy, hurling more from their feet by the second. Yet they struck him in return, a blast of energy blackening his breastplate, another smashing shards of crystal from his left wing.

  In response, there came a piercing shriek as Krien soared down from the night sky. The star eagle ploughed through the cultists’ ranks like a blazing comet, raking eyes and setting light to robes with his magical energies. A knot of Tzeentch worshippers scattered before the proud hunting bird, and Neave cut them down as she sprinted through their midst.

  She dived beneath the swing of a Stiltkin scythe, hacking her attacker’s legs out from beneath it even as she heard the whoosh of its blade passing perilously close above her. Coming up in a headlong charge, Neave bisected a Tzaangor then spun around another as it swung its falchion at her.

  The Knight-Zephyros moved so fast she knew her enemies would be fighting nothing but a blur that rendered even the most skilful of them clumsy by comparison. Yet they had the numbers, and she could not slow long enough for them to overwhelm her. She left her flailing attacker behind, hurling an axe spinning to thump into the face of an ogroid. As the monster toppled she leapt over it, snatching her blade free from its skull with a sucking squelch and a spray of golden blood.

  Sorcerous fire blazed around her in an inferno, bolts of mutating energy missing her by the barest of margins. The pillars were close. Xelkyn was close. But the cult was surrounding her, contracting like a gnarled fist, massing between her and her mark. She could hear Xelkyn’s malevolent laughter ringing over the battle.

  Tarion’s shadow raced overhead as he peppered another knot of enemies with arrows. His armour trailed magical flames and dirty smoke, and she could see lightning crackling around bloody wounds in his torso.

  ‘I’ll clear you a path – just end this before they overwhelm us,’ he shouted.

  Neave saw Tarion draw a gleaming golden arrow from his quiver, star-fated sigmarite glinting in the witchlight of the pillars. Flames leapt around him. Tzaangor arrows punched through his body, each fresh wound causing Neave’s rage to burn hotter. Ignoring the pain, Tarion drew back his bowstring and loosed his enchanted projectile. It whistled down at a sharp angle, punching clean through the skull of the last ogroid and flying on with a mind of its own, through cultists and Tzaangor, leaving a bloody trail in the air behind it. A dozen foes fell at a stroke before Xelkyn snatched the projectile out of the air and snapped it with a contemptuous snarl.

  The next instant, arrows and spellflame struck Tarion from three directions at once. His proud wings shattered. His armour was rent and torn, and his roar of pain cut out as a searing blast of magic blew his head from his body. Krien gave a dismal shriek as his master’s corpse fell from the air, discorporating into arcs of lightning and racing upwards into the void above. The star eagle followed, becoming nothing but a streak of light as it raced after its master’s unfettered soul.

  ‘May we meet beyond the anvils,’ said Neave, even as she charged through the gap that Tarion had wrought. Her axes windmilled, sending cultists and Tzaangor tumbling with heads and limbs shorn away. Moving at breakneck pace, Neave saw Xelkyn gather a shimmering ball of magical energy at the tip of his serpent staff. He hurled the projectile at her with a hiss and she slid beneath it. She launched herself back onto her feet in time to block the swing of a Stiltkin scythe, but she barked a cry of pain as a Tzaang
or arrow punched through her ribs.

  She spun, lashing out with her whirlwind axes, sending the Stiltkin toppling backwards and felling two more cultists before snapping the shaft off in her side. Another arrow whistled past her helm and shattered against a silver pillar. A third struck her breastplate and buckled, driving the air from her lungs. Neave saw enemies massing all around and knew she had seconds at best.

  ‘You did not die for nothing,’ she spat, hooking a toe under one of the cultists’ corpses and kicking it into the air. The body flipped, limbs flailing, into a mass of enemies and drove them back. At the same time, Neave dived around the silver pillar at her back, hearing more arrows smashing against it as she went.

  Bloody and bruised, she rose to confront Xelkyn Xerkanos. Neave saw herself reflected in the crystal shards of her mark’s eyes, every reflection warped and subtly different from the one beside it. She screamed in pain. In one image her flesh burned with unholy fire; in another it crawled with crystal insects. In yet another, it was not her at all but Tarion reflected in the sorcerer’s gaze.

  Xelkyn favoured her with a leer and slammed the haft of his staff against the ground. Light pulsed from the well, and the energies crackling around the pillars billowed into a dome. Neave stopped, suddenly wary as she found herself cut off from the cult warriors, alone in this prison of crystalline light with he who she had hunted for so many months.

  ‘So obliging, spiteful huntress,’ spat Xelkyn, his insectile jaw mangling his words in a way Neave had long come to despise. ‘To spend your comrade’s life, just so you might offer yourself up to my master as a sacrifice…’

  Neave rose and paced warily around the dome, a hunting beast stalking the edge of its enclosure. Blood dripped from her wounds, but she ignored it, instead taking in every possible element of her surroundings. She kept her movements relaxed, her expression neutral, while within her mind she sought furiously for the nature of her enemy’s trap.

  ‘You have trammelled yourself in a prison of your own making, cut off from your followers, with the most dangerous close-quarters combatant that has ever sought your death,’ said Neave, her tone low and angry. ‘Hardly a masterstroke.’

  ‘And yet, the power that burns from the beyond in this place, the power I have conjured, that will spell your utter annihilation, huntress,’ crooned Xelkyn. The sorcerer kept his stave levelled at her with one taloned hand. The fingers of the other were twitching, she saw, working some incantation while he kept her busy with words.

  Neave tilted her head, frowning at her mark with scornful disappointment. Fast as lightning, she sent one of her whirlwind axes spinning across the dome. At the same time, she flung herself sideways, evading the inevitable blast of fire from Xelkyn’s staff.

  The sorcerer’s attack missed Neave and washed across the inside of the magical prison, blackening the crystalline light and sending cracks racing through it. In return, her axe lopped Xelkyn’s hand off at the wrist before crunching into the far side of the dome and dropping to the dirt.

  The sorcerer shrieked in agony, an insectile whine that set Neave’s teeth on edge and tore at her sanity. Cracks raced through the crystal dome, spears of light shattering free from it and spiralling away into the night. The cult’s surviving warriors massed frantically beyond, hacking and smashing, trying to ram staves through the gaps to blast her with fire.

  ‘Whatever you planned, Xelkyn, you’ve failed,’ snarled Neave. ‘And now, in Sigmar’s name, you die.’

  Neave Blacktalon launched herself across the dome with her remaining axe held high. She swept the blade down in a killing arc that Xelkyn blocked with his stave. Her weapon swung back and down, then back and down again, battering at the sorcerer’s guard with ferocious speed. Sparks showered them both as his stave was shorn in two, Neave’s fourth blow carrying on to gouge a bloody ­furrow in Xelkyn’s chest.

  Around them, the crystal prison shattered and spun away in a million shards of fractured light. Cultists and Tzaangor reeled, clutching at faces and eyes pierced by melting spears of energy. Neave raised her weapon again and brought it down in a savage blow that hacked deep into Xelkyn’s collarbone and half severed his revolting head. Shimmering blue blood sprayed her armour as her mark sagged, falling against her and clawing at the gorget of her armour with his one remaining hand.

  Neave looked down at him with pitiless eyes, raising her axe for a last, killing blow. Head lolling sideways, blood spurting in gouts, Xelkyn croaked something through a mouthful of ichor. Even Neave’s razor-sharp senses could not discern it precisely. She caught only a handful of words.

  ‘…not… the fate… has wrought… a curse…’

  With that, Xelkyn hurled himself backwards with a last burst of strength. Neave cried out in anger as he pulled her off balance, toppling forward, feet flying out from under her. The dying sorcerer cast himself into the yawning mouth of the well, into the pulsing, dirty light of raw Chaos, and as he went he dragged Neave Blacktalon with him. Her axe fell, splitting Xelkyn’s skull, yet even then she could not prevent his deadweight carrying her with him over the brink. Her stomach lurched with the sudden feeling of precipitous motion.

  Neave bellowed in fury as she tumbled into an impossible, burning abyss whose dimensions the well could never have contained. She plunged into raw madness and lies made of shadows and light. She saw Xelkyn’s body consumed by the raging fires of change, fires that swept through her own armour, her flesh, her bone and soul. In a white-hot wash of agony, she felt herself disintegrate.

  Click here to buy Blacktalon: First Mark.

  About the Authors

  C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Age of Sigmar novels Overlords of the Iron Dragon and The Tainted Heart, the novella ‘Scion of the Storm’ in Hammers of Sigmar, the Warhammer novels novel Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague series. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer worlds.

  Josh Reynolds is the author of the Horus Heresy Primarchs novel Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix, and the audio dramas Blackshields: The False War and Blackshields: The Red Fief. His Warhammer 40,000 work includes Lukas the Trickster, Fabius Bile: Primogenitor, Fabius Bile: Clonelord and Deathstorm, and the novellas Hunter’s Snare and Dante’s Canyon, along with the audio drama Master of the Hunt. He has written many stories set in the Age of Sigmar, including the novels Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows, Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden, Nagash: The Undying King and Soul Wars. His tales of the Warhammer old world include The Return of Nagash and The Lord of the End Times, and two Gotrek & Felix novels. He lives and works in Sheffield.

  Nick Horth is the author of City of Secrets, his first Age of Sigmar novel. Nick works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

  David Annandale is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, several stories involving the Grey Knights, including Warden of the Blade and Castellan, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

  Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Wolfsbane and Pharos, the Primarchs novels Corax: Lord of Shadows, Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia, and the Warhammer 40,000 novels Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Baneblade, Shadowsword, Valedor and Death of Integrity. He has also written Th
roneworld and The Beheading for The Beast Arises series. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

  David Guymer wrote the Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa, and for Warhammer 40,000 The Eye of Medusa, Voice of Mars and the two The Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he wrote the audio dramas The Beasts of Cartha, Fist of Mork, Fist of Gork, Great Red and Only the Faithful. He is also the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned and the audio drama Realmslayer. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Awards for his novel Headtaker.

  Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs, and several audio dramas including the bestselling Raven’s Flight. He has written many novels for Warhammer 40,000, including Ashes of Prospero, Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah, Rise of the Ynnari: Ghost Warrior, Jain Zar: The Storm of Silence and Asurmen: Hand of Asuryan. He also wrote the Path of the Eldar and Legacy of Caliban trilogies, and two volumes in The Beast Arises series. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Warhammer Chronicles omnibus The Sundering, and much more besides. In 2017, Gav won the David Gemmell Legend Award for his Age of Sigmar novel Warbeast. He lives and works in Nottingham.