by Warhammer
There was a hole in the raised platform where the bed had rested, with marble stairs that led down into darkness.
‘Sigmar and Manann preserve us,’ said Jochen.
Felix had the sinking suspicion that they would shortly need the help of every god they could call upon.
The stairs went straight down for so long that Felix was afraid they would come out at the bottom of the floating island and be dumped in the sea again. There were no torches mounted on the walls. They felt their way down in utter darkness but for a reddish glow far below them that bobbed and weaved with each step. The further down they went, the thicker the air became – a cloying soup of incense, lotus smoke, and something sharp and bitter.
Then another, closer glow began to light their steps. Felix looked around and saw that the runes on Gotrek’s axe were pulsing as if fire was coursing through them.
‘Gotrek…’ he said.
‘Aye, manling.’
As they descended further, the red glow resolved itself into the reflection of crimson light shining upon a black marble floor at the base of the stairs. Gotrek and Felix stepped cautiously down to it and looked along a short corridor that ended at a pair of half-open, unguarded doors, through which came the red light, accompanied by the sound of voices raised in a high, wailing chant that set Felix’s teeth on edge.
With the others edging forwards behind them, Gotrek and Felix crept to the doors, a pair of heavy gold panels crusted with rubies, amethysts and lapis lazuli in patterns that depicted thousands of naked bodies entwined in impossible, painful ways. Felix looked through the gap between them, then jerked his head back, startled, for a face was staring directly at them.
‘It’s only a statue, manling,’ said Gotrek.
Felix looked again. The air inside was so hazed with violet smoke that it was hard to make out details, but directly ahead of them, in the middle of a circular, brazier-lit chamber, was a statue of a six-headed snake that reared up twice as high as a man. Each of the heads was fronted with a beautiful white marble druchii face of indeterminate gender, one of them looking directly at the door with eyes that glittered like living onyx. Half-hidden behind the statue, on the far side of the room, was a pillared archway that opened into a further chamber, within which Felix could see shadows of sinuous movement that seemed to follow the rhythms of the chanting.
Gotrek pushed through the obscene doors and entered. Felix tried to follow, but as he put his hand on the door, his mind whirled with unbidden emotions. All in an instant he wanted to weep and rage, laugh and kill, love and torture. A vision of writing the Slayer‘s story in the Slayer‘s blood on vellum made from the Slayer‘s flesh crawled up into his brain, and he found he could not push it away.
‘This is an evil place,’ said Aethenir, behind him.
The words brought Felix back to himself. He forced the horrid visions back down into his subconscious and followed the Slayer into the chamber. Aethenir, Farnir, Jochen and the pirates edged in even more reluctantly. The pirates huddled together like frightened cattle, and Farnir clutched a stolen sword like it was a lifeline. Under his druchii helm, Aethenir’s eyes showed white all around, and he murmured a constant stream of elven prayers.
The chamber was perfectly circular. Walls of pink stone glittered like mica, and it throbbed with low moans of pain and ecstasy, counterpoint to the wailing chant that continued to grate on Felix’s ears. Purple flames leapt in golden braziers set at regular intervals around the walls, and the floor was a mosaic of golden tiles with a large offset ring of purple tiles within them, surrounded by strange runes. The six-headed snake sat at the centre of the room, with its pedestal touching the arc of the offset ring.
As they crept across the golden floor towards the far archway, they passed close to the statue, and Felix saw around its base offerings of wine, blood, ink and other intimate liquids shimmered in little golden dishes amidst pink, red and purple candles. The pirates skirted warily around the thing, spitting and making warding signs.
Beyond the archway was the second chamber. Thick purple smoke made it hard to tell just how large it was, but if there was a back wall Felix couldn’t see it. It appeared though to be another circle, with pillars ringing a sunken central area in which there was a broad circular platform. Braziers as big as shields were set between the pillars, within which smouldering mounds of incense raised columns of curling smoke that seemed to form into semi-human shapes if Felix looked at them too long.
Behind drifting veils of smoke, High Sorceress Heshor stood facing away from them in the centre of a circle drawn on the marble surface of the raised platform, her arms raised in supplication. The Harp of Ruin sat upon a tall black iron table before her. A much larger circle bordered – but did not intersect – hers. There was a crude stone table within the larger circle, and something – or some things – lay upon it, obscured by the haze.
Strange, many-limbed shapes writhed to either side of Heshor, and it took Felix a moment to see that the shapes were Heshor’s five sorceresses, lying along the edge of the platform and coupling wildly with five of the Endless, naked but for their skull masks, and drenched with sweat. The lovers tore at each other constantly with sharpened fingernails, and all bled from long weals that criss-crossed their bodies, yet they moaned in a chorus of rising ecstasy. They looked as if they had been at it for hours. Felix shivered in disgust at the sight, and yet it was impossible to deny a horrible arousal as well.
The participants in the strange ceremony were guarded by seven armoured Endless, standing on the steps that descended to the centre, and watching the proceedings while at attention, their swords drawn and point-down on the floor before them.
‘Magister Schreiber,’ breathed Aethenir. ‘And Fraulein Pallenberger.’
Felix frowned, for he had no idea what the high elf meant, then he followed his gaze and saw that the lumps that lay upon the stone table within the larger circle were indeed Max and Claudia, cruelly strapped down with leather ropes and with their mouths bound and gagged. He choked when he saw them. They were almost unrecognisable. They were naked and emaciated, and both had been shaved entirely bald, even unto the eyebrows. Paint had been applied to their faces and their bodies in purple and red swirls, and runes had been carved into their skin with knives. Max looked a hundred years old, Claudia’s ribs stood out through her lacerated skin, and their eyes were shut tight as if in pain.
Gotrek spat, disgusted at the sight.
‘Sigmar,’ murmured Felix. ‘Are they are alive?’
‘They are alive,’ said Aethenir dully. ‘They are sacrifices to the Great Defiler.’
‘Sacrifices!’ said Felix, horrified.
Aethenir shuddered. ‘It appears she intends to raise a daemon, though what purpose that would serve in using the harp I know not.’
Gotrek’s eye lit up. ‘A daemon!’
‘Control your lust for glory, dwarf,’ said Aethenir. ‘If Heshor succeeds in calling something out of the void, your friends will be killed.’ He trembled. ‘Though it must surely mean our death, we must strike before the ceremony is finished.’
The moans of pleasure coming from the archway were growing higher and more urgent, as was Heshor’s chanting. ‘That might be very soon,’ Felix said, swallowing.
‘Leave the skull-faces to me,’ said Gotrek. He turned to Felix and the others. ‘Kill the hags and save Max and the girl.’
Jochen and his men looked at him like he had suggested they run into a burning building, but they nodded. Felix nodded too, though he wondered if it would go quite as neatly as that.
Felix, Farnir and the pirates lined up on either side of the archway, weapons at the ready. Aethenir stood further back, readying spells of healing and protection. Felix was finding it difficult to concentrate. The cries of ecstasy were getting louder and wilder, and try as he might, they were stirring dark thoughts and desires in his depths. He could see that the pirates were affected as well, twitching and grunting and shaking their heads like bulls bes
et by flies.
Gotrek stepped to the centre of the archway, running his thumb along the blade of his axe until it drew blood. The axe’s runes blazed like the glow of a furnace. Gotrek raised it over his head and opened his mouth to roar a challenge, but before he could speak, with simultaneous shrieks, the coupling druchii all climaxed together, while in the same instant, Heshor shrieked the final words of her summoning.
There was a crack like thunder and the room shook, nearly knocking them off their feet. Suddenly the air was filled with the cloying scents of roses and ambergris and sweet milk, and Felix felt the presence of a terrifying intelligence looming within his brain. His vague stirrings of desire were suddenly an all-encompassing lust. He wanted to race into the summoning room, not to kill, but to tear off his clothes and join the druchii in their orgy. Only past experience of alien thoughts invading his mind allowed him to resist the urges and understand that they were not his own. He shook like an aspen as he concentrated on hating the intruding emotions and casting them out.
The pirates, unfortunately, had not encountered such violent attacks on their consciousness before, and knew not how to resist. They shrieked and tore at themselves and their clothes. Some of them pawed at each other like lovers, while others stumbled through the arch towards the chamber, their breeches around their ankles.
‘Come back!’ called Jochen, though it was clear he was only inches from following them.
Felix reached after one to drag him back, and looked into the chamber. He regretted it instantly.
Standing in the large circle before Heshor and wreathed in rose-coloured fog was the most beautiful being Felix had ever seen. She – he? – it? – towered more than twice the height of a man and appeared to be neither male nor female but, unsettlingly, both – a voluptuous icon of lust that looked directly at him and beckoned him hither with violet eyes and luscious lips.
‘What do you desire of me?’ it asked in a voice like honeyed thunder.
High Sorceress Heshor replied in the druchii tongue, her arms spread wide. Felix cursed her. It was speaking to him, not her! Felix stepped forwards, trying to see the beauty more clearly. He caught glimpses of writhing tentacles, or perhaps swaying snakes, graceful limbs and clawed hands, that seemed to flicker in and out of existence. He couldn’t decide if the beauty had two arms or four, if it had breasts or a powerful chest, if its legs were those of a shapely woman or those of a goat.
‘Back, manling,’ said Gotrek.
Felix was jerked roughly back. He turned, snarling at this intrusion into his luscious dream, then blinked. Gotrek had pulled him behind him. He had been halfway into the summoning chamber though he had no memory of moving forwards. A dozen Endless were streaming up the curved steps towards them, half still naked, swords high, cutting down the enraptured pirates as they passed them.
Gotrek bellowed a challenge and slashed with his axe as three armoured Endless reached him. The first blocked the blow, but the force of it pushed him into another, staggering both of them. Felix ran one through before he recovered, but that was the last blood he drew. The rest of the Endless swarmed around him and Gotrek, Farnir, Jochen and the pirates, swords flickering faster than the eye could follow.
Aethenir huddled in the shadow of the arch, waving his hands, though whether he was casting spells or only flailing in fear Felix couldn’t tell.
‘Out of my way!’ Gotrek roared at the Endless. ‘I’ve a daemon to kill!’
The Slayer lashed about him in a blur of steel, his axe’s rune-glow trailing behind it like a comet tail, but he was the only one fast enough to return the dark elves’ attacks. Half the pirates were dead in seconds, and Jochen had a gash on his forehead that showed bone. Even firm of mind and in the best of health they would have been no match for the Endless. Starved on gruel and distracted by unnatural lusts, they fell like wheat before the scythe.
Another Endless went down before Gotrek, but the end was inevitable. There were too many of them. It was just Felix, Farnir, Jochen and the Slayer now. Then Jochen died with a foot of steel sticking from his back. Felix took a savage cut on his left forearm and suddenly his sword felt like lead. Two Endless were stabbing at him at the same time. He couldn’t block both. He fought to raise his sword, knowing that he was going to die.
The two druchii suddenly stumbled aside, their swords missing him. In fact, all around him the druchii were turning and falling and shouting in confusion. Felix blinked, surprised, but didn’t fail to take advantage. He ran one through the neck, then turned to see what had staggered them. He gaped. The chamber was suddenly chest deep in dwarfs, all attacking the Endless.
Gotrek turned as he cut down another masked druchii. ‘You,’ he said.
‘Da!’ cried Farnir.
Birgi saluted them with a bloody shovel. Skalf raised a framing maul. Their heads were bald and bleeding from dozens of little cuts. It looked like they had shaved them with butchers’ cleavers. Felix looked around. All the dwarfs in the room had shaved their heads and had armed themselves with what makeshift weapons they could find – picks, hammers, fireplace pokers, frying pans, pitchforks and roasting spits, and they battered the Endless with terrifying fury. Felix was amazed and relieved.
‘We’ve heeded your words, Slayer,’ Birgi said. ‘Go take your doom. This is ours.’
EIGHTEEN
‘About time,’ said Gotrek, but his voice was gruff. ‘Come on, manling!’
He turned from the newly made Slayers and started towards the summoning chamber. As Felix followed, he saw that the sorceresses had risen and were joining Heshor in a new chant, all calling out an endlessly repeated phrase while extending their arms towards the harp and sending energy pulsing towards it. The daemon too thrust its hands forwards, feeding the harp with its power, and the instrument glowed within a pink and purple aura. Two of the abomination’s other appendages were held out towards Max and Claudia, and curls of white and blue vapour rose from their bodies and trailed towards the daemon.
‘It’s killing them,’ said Felix.
‘Worse,’ said Aethenir, stepping up behind them. ‘Much worse.’ He trembled as he fell in with them, but he did not falter. He held a druchii sword in his hand.
The sorceresses – still naked – were all facing away from them as Gotrek, Felix and Aethenir strode into the chamber, concentrating their attention and their energies on the harp. The daemon too was fixed on the harp, but Felix could feel its attention everywhere at once, a beacon that charred what it illuminated.
‘Your warriors have failed you, daughters,’ it said as Felix, Aethenir and the Slayer ran down the stairs into the circle. ‘Your enemies draw near.’
Heshor did not turn or slacken the flow of energy she was pouring into the harp, but by some silent command, two of her sorceresses did. One was Belryeth, Aethenir’s nemesis, and she laughed when she saw him.
‘Dearest, you return to me!’ she said as she wove her incantations. ‘Love, it seems, conquers all.’
‘Honour conquers all,’ hissed the high elf, and leapt up onto the platform straight at her, sword high.
She and her sister shot streamers of black mist at him and Gotrek and Felix. Aethenir screamed and dropped his sword as it enveloped him, but pitched himself headlong into Belryeth and they went down together on the platform. The Slayer shrugged off the mist and bulled on, but Felix staggered as it blew over him, every inch of his skin screaming as if he was being both frozen and cooked at the same time. His muscles tensed to the point of snapping and he crashed to the floor before the platform.
Gotrek leapt onto the platform and slashed his axe at the second sorceress in passing, his eye never leaving the daemon. She shrieked and fell as it bit into her side.
With her death, the black cloud dissipated, but the effects of the spell lingered, needles of fire and ice stabbing into Felix, and he could only watch as Gotrek plunged across the platform straight for the daemon.
Heshor and the other sorceresses broke off their chanting and shri
eked at this interruption, but the daemon smiled down at Gotrek as he leapt across the warding line that bound it within its circle.
‘Ah, little one,’ it purred. ‘You save me from boredom. Excellent.’
It slashed down at Gotrek with a crab-clawed arm it had not possessed a second before. Gotrek blocked the blow with the flat of his axe and was bowled back like a hedgehog hit with a spade. He bounced twice before he spun off the platform and slammed to the floor of the chamber.
‘Come, try again,’ laughed the daemon. ‘I haven’t experienced a wound in millennia.’
Felix fought to his feet. On the platform, Aethenir and Belryeth were rolling back and forth in a parody of ecstasy as they fought for control of her dagger, while Heshor and her coven blasted the Slayer as he pushed himself up to his knees, shaking his head. The spells seemed only to anger Gotrek, and he roared as he rose to his feet.
Felix saw his chance. Though every sane portion of his brain told him to turn and run the other way, he jumped up onto the platform, weaved through the angry sorceresses and ran into the daemon’s circle – being careful, even in his mad rush, not to disturb the warding line, which appeared to have been drawn with some kind of purple powder – and aimed for the table upon which Max and Claudia were bound.
He didn’t make it. The daemon turned its full attention upon him as he crossed the purple line and he stopped as if he had run into the wall, held by the power of its regard.
‘Have you come to steal my sacrifices, beloved?’ it murmured, reaching hooked claws out towards him. ‘Or to join them?’
Felix’s mouth went slack, overwhelmed by the daemon’s majesty. He stumbled towards it, spreading his arms to receive its cruel embrace. He had never longed for anything more than he longed to be rent apart by those beautiful glistening claws.
Suddenly the daemon shrieked, and Felix collapsed as its pain broadcast through the chamber, sending waves of searing agony through his mind. He hit the ground screaming and writhing and saw that Aethenir and the sorceresses were too. Even Max and Claudia struggled and spasmed in their bonds. Only Heshor remained upright, shaking and tearing at her hair and gouging her face with her nails.
