by Evan Dicken
Livius shivered at the memory of the Lofnir lodge’s vast empty halls and vacant chambers, its duardin inhabitants having abandoned the great bronze citadel in their mad lust for ur-gold. The channels and sluices had overflowed, molten iron spilling onto the broad thoroughfares, drowning the duardin halls and forges in a mass of cooling slag. Many had been overcome by the fumes, tumbling from the high bridges to disappear into the deep red of Chamon’s lifeblood. Livius would have been one of them if Sulla hadn’t ordered her legionaries to carry him. Thankfully, the lodge was stifling, and Livius’ humiliated flush was mistaken for heat stroke.
‘If Bloodtongue catches us, we’ll lose everyone,’ Kaslon said.
‘It would take him days to cross the Ringing Hills overland,’ Sulla stepped up to glare down at the mage. ‘And the palace gates are barred, remember?’
They looked to Livius. Responsibility hung like a noose around his neck, slowly strangling him. He chewed his lower lip, glancing at the jagged horizon. ‘Is that the Steamgird?’
Sulla grunted. ‘What’s left of it.’
‘We’ll rest there,’ Livius said.
Perhaps an hour later they collapsed in the derelict shadow of the Gilded Steamgird, its broken walls still bristling with the shattered remnants of cannons, arc casters, galvanic trip hammers, organ guns, and other war dynamos.
‘The empire will never see its like again.’ Sulla sat next to Livius, passing him a canteen.
The water was warm and tasted of rust, but Livius drank greedily before passing it back. ‘The Lofnir, why do you think they did it?’
‘Why do duardin do anything?’ Sulla shrugged. ‘Their reason doesn’t concern me, only their actions. And they will pay for those.’
The barely leashed anger in Captain Sulla’s voice made Livius uncomfortable. It reminded him too much of his mother. So he changed the subject. ‘You fought with Empress Xerastia?’
Sulla straightened a bit. ‘I did.’
‘What was she like?’
‘Xerastia?’ She sat quietly for a long while. ‘She was a hero.’
‘I’m sorry about back at the palace, I just couldn’t see any other way.’ He glanced away. ‘I’m no hero.’
‘I think the time for heroes is long past.’ She gave a tight smile, then clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Now get some rest, emperor. It might be your last chance.’
It seemed like Livius had just closed his eyes when he was shaken awake, but the sun was already slipping below the horizon.
Kaslon loomed over him. ‘He comes – Skayne Bloodtongue.’
Livius jolted up, rubbing his eyes. ‘Through the tunnel? So quickly?’
Kaslon frowned. ‘No. He comes overland.’
‘Impossible.’ A nearby shadow resolved into Captain Sulla. ‘The Ringing Hills would take days to cross.’
‘With Chaos, nothing is impossible,’ Kaslon said with a thin smile. ‘Bloodtongue flies. He hunts us with a small force.’
‘How small a force?’ Sulla asked, one hand drifting to the hilt of her greatsword.
‘I don’t know,’ Kaslon replied, gaze flicking to his staff. ‘I can only sense the echoes of his coming.’
Sulla made a fist, her grin as fierce as it was sudden. ‘This is our chance.’
Livius blinked.
‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘Bloodtongue overreaches. My soldiers and I can set an ambush, cut the head from the serpent!’
‘You may be all that remains of your legion,’ Kaslon said, his words taking on a deep, resonant quality. They seemed to slip inside Livius’ skull to echo through his thoughts. ‘We can’t afford to risk–’
‘I don’t follow your orders, mage. And if you try to enchant me again, I’ll break your legs and leave you for Bloodtongue.’ Sulla’s voice was low and threatening. She looked at Livius, her expression furious as she thrust her chin at Kaslon. ‘I saw it back at the city, this one’s been using sorcery to get his way.’
‘It was necessary.’ Kaslon crossed his arms. ‘Just like it’s necessary that we stay together.’
Livius glanced between them, wanting to run even though he knew there was no escape. Back at the palace, when Kaslon had spoken, Livius had felt, if not heroic, then brave, at least. He’d felt like the mage believed in him, like they all believed in him.
Just another lie.
A strange calmness settled on Livius. What did it matter? There was no escape. What did any of it matter? The only real choice that remained was how they would die.
Livius looked to Sulla, and nodded. ‘Go.’
She turned away, already shouting orders.
‘She’s going to get them all killed,’ Kaslon said.
‘They want to die like heroes,’ Livius said quietly. ‘I’d be a poor emperor if I didn’t let them.’
‘We should make sure their sacrifice isn’t in vain.’ Disdain whetted Kaslon’s words to razor sharpness, but the resonance was gone from his voice.
Livius took a long, slow breath, wondering if he should have gone with Sulla and put an end to his sad charade of a reign, but knowing he was still too much of a coward. ‘Wake the others. We make for the realmgate.’
Sulla
The fury shrieked as Sulla pinioned it with her greatsword, its filthy claws slashing bare inches from her face. Bloodtongue had brought with him a flock of the batlike humanoids, their membranous wings propelling them through the air. Sulla had fought monsters and daemons before – red-skinned devils with blades of pitted steel, great bronze-clad monstrosities that scattered men like pebbles – but none of it had prepared her for the speed and viciousness of the furies’ attack.
They clawed through the air like vultures, their high, teeth-gritting shrieks seeming to bore into Sulla’s skull as they darted through the dusky shadows. The first volley of crossbow bolts had downed a score of the monsters, but not nearly enough. Men and women fell, gutted by jagged talons, blood gurgling from slashed throats and ruined mouths.
With a snarl, Sulla twisted her blade, ripping it free from the monster in a spray of stinking ichor. It fell away to flop on the ground like a landed fish. Her soldiers reacted quickly, forming a rough phalanx to fend off the furies’ attack with spear and pike while the crossbows reloaded. Ardahir stood among them, shouting encouragement as he waved the broken banner pole above his head. The sight conjured a wild joy in Sulla’s breast. She was no leader, no politician, spending lives like coin; she was a soldier, she belonged in the press.
Here, at least, everything made sense.
Something flashed through her peripheral vision and she pivoted, bringing her blade around in a tight arc. Another monster came diving down, clawed hands and feet flexing to snatch Sulla up. Her slash left the fury with bleeding stumps and her backswing hammered it to the ground.
She twisted as another fury shrieked by, letting the sword’s momentum carry the blade around in a looping cut. It struck one of the creature’s wings, cleaving through muscle and bone. The thing’s shrieking ceased as she swept the sword down to divide its body neatly in half.
Panting, she scanned the ruins of the Steamgird, stalking through the scaffolded shadows, her blade at the ready. Kaslon had said the furies were Bloodtongue’s hunting hounds, but where was the huntsman?
It was the Chaos sorcerer’s armour that caught Sulla’s eye. It glittered like cut glass in the light of the setting sun, oil-slick colours sliding across the laminated scales. Skayne Bloodtongue floated over the battle on a disc of barbed flesh, watching with an air of detached interest.
Sulla crept closer, sheathing her sword to work her fingers into the carved runes of one of the cracked pillars of the Steamgird. Bloodtongue hovered perhaps ten yards above her, apparently blind to all but the desperate combat below. It seemed strange he hadn’t yet intervened, but Sulla was beyond questioning the motives of a madman.
The shouts of
Sulla’s comrades lent urgency to her climb. Every pained cry was a knife dragged across her flesh. There would be a reckoning. Bloodtongue, the Winnower, the Lofnir lodge, even Sigmar. Somehow, she would find a way to make them pay.
The jagged metal cut Sulla’s fingers, hot runnels of blood trickling down her forearms. At last, she reached a ledge above Bloodtongue, who continued to hover above the battle. There was no time to judge the distance, so she drew her blade and jumped.
The Chaos sorcerer turned at the last moment, his eyebrows raised in an expression that seemed more amused than surprised. Sulla’s strike skittered from Bloodtongue’s armour in a spray of chromatic sparks. It was as if she’d struck an iron wall. Sulla rebounded from the sorcerer, her arms flailing as she tipped backwards through empty air.
Bloodtongue caught her by the shoulder. The sorcerer’s grip was light, but Sulla felt as if she’d been dropped into a forge, multicoloured flames licking across her skin, her every muscle contorted in agony.
Bloodtongue pursed his lips, inspecting Sulla as if she were a piece of fine metalwork. She wanted to hack his wizened face to pieces, but her limbs hung loose and liquid at her sides. It took all her strength just to maintain a hold on her greatsword.
Bloodtongue grinned at her, gesturing towards the packed ranks of Lantic veterans.
Sulla followed the line of his pointing finger, unable to do more than snarl as the realisation hit home. Bloodtongue’s monstrous hounds hadn’t been hunting Sulla’s soldiers, they’d been herding them.
Slowly, the Chaos sorcerer opened his outstretched hand, a ball of roiling balefire glowing between his spread fingers. Then, like a doting grandfather about to share a secret, he winked at Sulla.
Livius
‘We have to help them.’ Livius glowered at Kaslon. The surviving refugees crowded in a ragged circle around them, a few thousand, perhaps less – all that remained of the Lantic Empire. They muttered, casting glances at the battle taking place a few miles distant.
‘She’s dead. They’re all dead,’ Kaslon said.
‘Because we abandoned them.’ Livius glanced at the mage’s staff. It was unsettling how the thing seemed to shift and change, the outline blurring as if seen through warped glass.
Kaslon’s expression turned strange. ‘I thought you understood.’
Livius felt a nervous flutter in his chest as he regarded the mage. The Gilded Order were supposed to serve the empire, but Kaslon seemed different – wilder, less restrained. He glanced towards the distant shadow of the Azyr Realmgate. How easy it would be to just turn his back on Sulla. Still, Livius only had to look at the tired column of refugees to remember the screams of those they’d abandoned back at the palace.
Somehow worse was his memory of the cold scrutiny of the ancestor gears as he’d slunk into the Underway, the first emperor in Lantic history to flee without a fight. Not for the first time, Livius wished the plague hadn’t spared him. He was no emperor, no hero. From the moment he’d sat upon the autarch’s throne, every decision had been a mistake. There was no place for him among the ancestor gears, no glorious page in the Lantic histories. If he survived it would be as an embarrassment, the emperor who let everything fall to ruin.
Better to die, to be forgotten.
‘My people, hear me!’ He faced the gathered refugees, pointing Widowbane at the Azyr Realmgate. ‘There lies safety.’
It took all Livius’ willpower to keep his arm from trembling as he turned to the battle. ‘And there our comrades fight alone. I won’t think less of any who wish to press on to the realmgate, but I am going to stand with my people, my empire.’
The refugees were all watching him now. Kaslon gave an irritated grunt, but Livius pressed on. ‘We are of gold and steel, of fire and light. We are Lantic. Although our foes may rob us of our homes, our lives, they cannot take who we are, what we stand for. Not unless we let them.’
It was a poor speech, cobbled together from some third-dynasty romances Livius had read as a child. For a long moment, the refugees stood in silence, then, from the back came a ragged cheer. It spread like wildfire. People shook their makeshift weapons and roared, already streaming towards the battle.
Livius took a step back, surprised. ‘It worked.’
‘Of course it worked.’ Kaslon snapped back. ‘They’re Lantic.’
Livius turned towards the mage. ‘And you?’
‘I can hardly go through the realmgate alone.’ The sorcerer’s sour expression was spoiled by a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth. ‘What would I tell Sigmar?’
Livius clapped him on the shoulder, grinning despite the terror twisting in his gut. He was going to die. They were all going to die.
Kaslon winced as a flash of distant balefire lit the darkening sky an unhealthy green. ‘They’re not going to make it in time.’
‘Can you?’ Livius asked.
The mage gave a tight nod.
‘Will you be able to hold Bloodtongue until we arrive?’
‘On my own?’ Kaslon’s gaze flicked to the staff. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Do it.’ Livius’ mouth was dry, his fingers buzzing. What did it matter? The empire was gone, better to disappear with it.
Kaslon gripped the staff. Muttering incantations under his breath, the mage conjured a thread of glowing silver. It streaked from Kaslon’s outstretched hand towards the distant battle, straight as a surveyor’s line. Kaslon glanced back at Livius, then, with a pained expression, tugged on the line and was whisked away.
With a deep breath, Livius jogged after. He knew he should be terrified – death was almost certain, now – but the only feeling he could summon was relief.
It would all be over soon.
Kaslon
Kaslon could feel the heat of Bloodtongue’s power. The Chaos sorcerer burned like a tiny star, his aura flickering with bursts of mad energy as he showered the Lantic soldiers with gouts of balefire.
Kaslon hit the ground at a run, feet already tracing lines and vertices. He sketched a triangle ward to shield the soldiers from Bloodtongue’s coarse sorcery. There was still strength in the sacred geometry, more now that Kaslon understood its limitations.
A golden pyramid sprung up around the surviving Lantic legionaries, Bloodtongue’s balefire flickering across its sharp edges. The Chaos sorcerer redoubled his effort, brilliant blue-green flames so bright Kaslon had to look away.
The crystal staff was like a living thing, squirming in Kaslon’s grasp. He could sense the power within, galaxies of untapped energy, but there was too much risk. There was a way to circumscribe the maelstrom, to use Chaos without being used in turn. Kaslon knew he could discover it.
He just needed more time.
Kaslon moved along lines and axes, shoring up his wards with more complicated shapes. Intricate polyhedrals sprang into being, their edges curling like the legs of dying insects before the fury of Bloodtongue’s arcane attack.
The Chaos sorcerer slid through the sky, bludgeoning Kaslon’s wards from every angle, the barrage of spells like stones flung without skill or finesse. As the sorcerer flitted by, Kaslon saw that he held the limp form of Captain Sulla. He could sense the weak pulse of life within her, snared by Bloodtongue’s enervating grasp.
Balefire licked around Kaslon’s feet, the heat growing painful. Blisters formed on his hands, the skin of his face hot and tight from the heat.
No matter Kaslon’s skill, the Chaos sorcerer was simply too powerful. Strangely, the realisation came tinged not with fear or sorrow, but a vague sense of disappointment. Kaslon had just begun to plumb the depths of this new understanding, just begun to grasp the infinite complexity of true sorcery.
He could not die like this.
With a snarl, Kaslon reached for the power in the staff. It came in a torrent, unbridled and uncontrollable. Kaslon did not shape the spell so much as unleash it.
Bloodtongue’s sorceries were devoured by skewed geometries of light, balefire dissipating along jagged lines and uneven vertices, warp bolts lost along twisting paths, arcing back up on themselves.
The tide of madness spread, enveloping the furies and the Lantic troops.
Kaslon could hear them screaming, mutating, but their voices were distant, little more than a fading echo against the power that roared through him. Everything was so clear. The staff was not a conduit, it was a lens, a way to better understand the truth. There could be order without balance, law without symmetry. The lack of a pattern did not preclude understanding, it only complicated it.
Kaslon tried to strike at the Chaos sorcerer, but the flying disc was too quick. Bloodtongue dodged Kaslon’s jagged warp blasts with contemptuous ease. It was like trying to crush a fly with a trebuchet. The energies in the staff were powerful, but difficult to control. Alone, Kaslon still had no chance against the Chaos sorcerer.
Except Kaslon wasn’t alone.
Shielding his eyes from the glare of balefire, Kaslon saw that Bloodtongue still held Sulla. Desperately, he set a tendril of power looping around the captain and, pressing the staff to his forehead, abandoned his wards to tear at the spell that bound Sulla.
Kaslon felt the sorcerous bindings snap a moment before a wave of arcane force knocked him tumbling backwards. There was a moment of sickening disorientation, then the ground hammered the breath from him, setting bright comets streaking across his vision.
He looked up to see Bloodtongue hovering above him. Lambent energy gathered around the sorcerer’s free hand, but Sulla was already moving. Freed of Bloodtongue’s enchantment she brought her greatsword around one-handed, hacking down not at the Chaos sorcerer, but at the disc that bore him.
Sulla’s blade bit deep. The disc wove drunkenly for a moment, then plummeted to the ground.
The roar in Kaslon’s head was replaced by ragged shouts. Dully, he turned to see a mob of refugees surge across the rubble, Livius at their head. They were met by the shambling forms of the Lantic soldiers, their bodies warped by Kaslon’s sorcery, merged with furies in an unholy amalgamation of man and beast. The burst of Chaos energy had spared only a few of the legionaries. Led by the sergeant with the broken standard, they hacked through former comrades, weeping as they did.
