[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake

by Nick Kyme - (ebook by Undead)

  “Of all the Librarians you’ve trained, I am different, aren’t I?”

  The Epistolary nodded. “There’s only been one other that had your natural gifts, but even he pales next to your psychic ability.”

  “Nihilan.”

  “Yes. That is why my master cannot allow you free until we know what the Fire Sword means.”

  “Don’t you mean: what the Fire Sword is?”

  “No, you are the Ferro Ignis. I’m convinced of that.” Pyriel smiled wryly. “But as to what that means for Nocturne, how your destiny will manifest and affect our own. That I am uncertain of.”

  “But you don’t think me a destroyer.”

  Pyriel snorted with dark humour. “Oh, you are a destroyer all right, but whether for our enemies or our world, that’s what is to be decided. For what it’s worth, I think you are our saviour. I must simply trust to the wisdom of my betters to draw that conclusion too.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  Pyriel’s face darkened further. “Then they’ll kill you.”

  Dak’ir lowered his gaze and took a step back from the gate. “Thank you, master. For everything.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  Dak’ir looked up, sensing bad news.

  “Tsu’gan is lost.”

  Confusion and grief warred on Dak’ir’s face. “Lost?”

  “To the warp. I am sorry, brother.”

  Dak’ir was shaking his head. “I don’t understand. He fell in battle? What happened to him?” His eyes narrowed. Tsu’gan was his greatest adversary within the Chapter. They had never seen eye-to-eye. Were it not for their oaths to Vulkan, they would be nemeses. Yet, Tsu’gan was still Dak’ir’s brother. They had bled together. News of his demise brought nothing but hollowness. There was no sense of relief. He had wanted to convince Tsu’gan of his worth, to have him call him brother and mean it. At the very least to draw blades on one another and air their grievances in the battle cages. This only left Dak’ir feeling cheated.

  Pyriel explained. “When Elysius was rescued from the Volgorrah Reef,” he said—by now, they had heard of their Chaplain’s dramatic escape—“the 1st Company had to teleport him out. There was no other way to flee the dusk-wraiths’ hell-realm. During translation back aboard the Firelord something went wrong. Tsu’gan did not return with the others. The warp took him.”

  Dak’ir’s fist slamming into the gate made Pyriel flinch.

  “Calm yourself, brother,” snapped the Epistolary.

  “This reeks of Nihilan and his bastard Dragon Warriors.” Dak’ir was incensed. His eyes blazed, but only red, not cerulean blue, with the psychic dampeners in place. “What is being done to find Tsu’gan?”

  Pyriel looked nonplussed. “Nothing. He is dead, Dak’ir. Tsu’gan won’t be coming back.”

  “It’s a lie, Pyriel. He’s been taken, I know it.”

  “How? How can you be sure of that?”

  Dak’ir’s fiery gaze filled the vision-grille as he came right up to the gate. “It’s Nihilan. He wants us both. Ever since Cirrion, he’s wanted us.”

  “For what? Dak’ir, you are raving. This makes no sense.”

  “To join his brood, to sacrifice to whatever warp-born potentates he serves, who can tell what machinations drive him. But, master, please believe me when I say that Tsu’gan is not dead. He is in danger, not merely his body but his soul too.”

  The pit was dark and smelled of blood. The metal collar around Tsu’gan’s neck was heavy. A chill numbed his exposed skin. His armour was gone, though he didn’t know how or when it had happened. His fists were clenched, tight with anger. His bare feet crushed shards of glass beneath him.

  The pain was purifying.

  He gazed around, interrogating the darkness. The pit was spiked around the edges, the low ceiling too. Eight rusting gates, each set in one wall of an octagonal chamber, offered a way out.

  This was not the Firelord. But he must have been here longer than the few seconds of dislocation after teleporting. The beacon, the one he had worn on his vambrace, had been intercepted. It had brought him to this place instead.

  As Tsu’gan watched, four of the gates, like portcullises, began to rise.

  Eyes, wet and narrowed with malign intelligence, glittered in the gloom beyond as a quartet of creatures shambled out. The gates slammed shut behind them.

  They moved on misshapen limbs, chains clanking and armour plating screeching as they ground against one another. Mutated fists clutched gladiatorial blades and bludgeons. Some of the beasts had claws already and no need of weapons. Slab-shouldered, thick-necked, grotesque with too much muscle, they were taller and broader than the Salamander. Each wore a stylised battle-helm to hide their horrific natures. A stink of offal and foulness pervaded them like a miasma.

  “A fight, is it?” Tsu’gan smiled. He had fought in the Hell-Pits of Themis. Saurox, gorladon and dactylon had all fallen beneath his pugilist’s blade.

  He tugged on a length of chain that was attached to the neck collar. It gave him about five metres before the links would go taut. Tsu’gan scowled and let the anger come.

  “Bring it…”

  Tsu’gan dodged a trident lunge, using the first muto-gladiator’s momentum to bring its face into contact with his elbow. The helmet dented, the nose guard crashed inwards and the creature mewled in shock and pain. The second Tsu’gan broke against the chain. He let it come, pulling the chain taut at the last moment. Ribs cracked audibly as the metal links crashed against the gladiator’s body. Snatching up its fallen axe, Tsu’gan went for the third. He blocked a strong but lazy blade sweep with the purloined weapon’s haft then punched the creature in the face to disorientate it before burying the axe in its head. Gore and brain matter washed the Salamander’s honour-scarred body.

  Leaving the axe embedded, Tsu’gan rolled from the path of the fourth. This one was a juggernaut, swinging twin morningstars in both its gnarled fists. It turned quickly, Tsu’gan ducking a blow meant for his head. He went in low, under its second swipe, and came up inside its death arc. Making fists, Tsu’gan boxed either side of the muto-gladiator’s head and it yelped in agony as its ear drams burst. Strange hooting noises, resonating through its metal helmet, issued from the creature as it swung recklessly at the Salamander.

  Tsu’gan took up his chain again and ran around the crazed monster until he’d circled it. As it came for him again, Tsu’gan drew the chain tight. First it snapped against the gladiator’s body, then its neck. The Salamander broke it with a savage twist and the creature slumped dead.

  The sound of moaning behind him brought a dark smile to Tsu’gan’s lips. He’d incapacitated the first two gladiators deliberately. Turning around, he approached them, stooping once to nonchalantly pick up a fallen sword.

  The first he beheaded savagely. The second he ran through, leaving the sword impaled in the body.

  “Your wolves needed sharper fangs,” he roared at the darkness above, where he knew someone was watching him.

  “Such rage…” A disembodied voice echoed from the shadows. An armoured figure came slowly into view, walking to the edge of a lofty platform, looking down into the arena-pit.

  Tsu’gan snarled when he recognised Nihilan. There was something… different about him, though.

  “Sorcerer,” he said through gritted teeth. “Perhaps you’d like to come down here and face me. Or are you afraid?”

  Nihilan merely smiled as if he hadn’t heard the Salamander at all.

  His silence infuriated Tsu’gan. “Give me my armour and weapons!” he shouted. “And I’ll cut my way free of this pathetic prison. You’ll regret snaring me with your warp-born subterfuge.”

  “Such rage,” repeated Nihilan, his voice oddly resonant. “It makes you powerful… Malleable. You will be a worthy vessel for me, Tsu’gan.”

  The Salamander frowned, eyeing the figure of Nihilan carefully. “I’m not speaking to the sorcerer right now, am I.”

  “No,” said the thing usin
g Nihilan’s body, “you’re not.”

  “Then what are you, spawn?”

  “He’s something else,” said another voice from behind him, “though to call it he is a misnomer of huge proportions.”

  Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed and the knuckles in his fists cracked as they clenched.

  “Iagon?” he growled, part anger, part disappointment.

  Cerbius Iagon, Salamander brother-sergeant, once Tsu’gan’s second in the 3rd Company, stepped forwards into the visceral light.

  “You’re probably wondering how you came to be here,” he said.

  “You found a way to infiltrate the beacon?” The chain pulled taut as Tsu’gan came forwards. He wanted to put his hands around his former brother’s throat.

  “Such safeguards are easy to circumvent,” he replied. “They’ve wanted you for a long time, brother.”

  Tsu’gan sniffed his contempt. “But not you, eh? Never you, Iagon. Until you bartered your soul and honour for a moment of usefulness.”

  The barbs stung. Iagon flashed his teeth in a snarl… then regained his composure.

  “I am not the warrior you are, Tsu’gan. Nor do I possess Ba’ken’s strength or Dak’ir’s destiny, but I have other traits.”

  “You are Salamander, Iagon,” Tsu’gan implored him, his fury eroding before a wave of anguish. “I gave my squad to you, entrusted you with its leadership.”

  “You gave me nothing—nothing!” he screamed at him. “Abandonment, left to the dregs of obscurity, was your legacy. You were supposed to become captain, I following in your wake. N’keln died for this. I killed him!”

  The shock upon Tsu’gan’s face curled into hatred.

  “You murdered him? You stabbed N’keln in the back? How could I have missed this madness…” he said to himself.

  “I did it for you, brother. I did it to ensure your ascension.” Iagon’s tone was almost pleading.

  Tsu’gan’s eyes were hard and cold, despite the angry fire burning within them.

  “You damned yourself and in so doing became my enemy.”

  Iagon laughed, but without humour. “This is vengeance, Tsu’gan. This is your damnation.”

  Nihilan, or the thing currently wearing his flesh, snarled.

  The conversation was over. Iagon retreated back into the shadows.

  “More carnage,” said the Nihilan-thing, revealing spine-like teeth and a flickering aspect of its true nature. Tsu’gan’s blood chilled.

  The gates churned open again. This time, all eight. The muto-gladiators brought blades eagerly into the light.

  Tsu’gan grinned ferally.

  “First the dogs, then I come for the master,” he promised, before his voice dropped to a deep whisper. “Then I come for you, Iagon.”

  Scanning and basic

  proofing by Red Dwarf,

  formatting and additional

  proofing by Undead.