by C. L. Werner
Kormak stood upon the very threshold of the Portal, below the antlers and the chained rings. He stared into the void, the nothingness beyond the physical plane. And as he stared he lifted the blackened Spear he had torn from the bloodthirster’s hoof. Only it was black no longer, now the Spear blazed with light, light of every colour, light that coruscated with life and power of its own. A light that was kindred to that which had rippled about Urbaal’s sword. A light that promised Change even in the endless slaughter of the Blood God’s domain.
Before Var’Ithrok could start to move, Kormak hurled the Spear straight up into the chained rings. It passed through each in turn, shifting and moving, gripped by some invisible force. The imprisoned rings began to turn as they drew the light of the Spear into themselves, grinding against their chains. The thick iron links snapped and melted, their wreckage sucked into the Portal. A howling discord, like the shattering of worlds, boomed from the raging void.
Var’Ithrok turned to flee, its eyes now reduced to embers of fury. The void reached out for the daemon with spectral fingers, hungering for the bloodthirster’s incorporeal essence. The Skull Lord lifted its axe again, smashing it down into the flagstones, trying to use it to anchor itself to the Bastion Stair and the physical world. Var’Ithrok roared as its hooves were pulled out from under it, as it felt its body being pulled back through the Portal. The bloodthirster tried to tighten its hold on the buried axe, struggling to save itself.
Slowly, the daemon’s fingers slipped free. Var’Ithrok gave a mighty surge of its wings, a last effort to defy the void, then it was gone, drawn through the grinding rings, its enormity fading into a malignant speck against the eternity beyond.
Kormak crawled away from the howling Portal, horrified by the prospect of following the bloodthirsty into the void. Dimly, he understood that it was a spiritual whirlwind that raged around him, that it could crush only daemons and ghosts in its ethereal claws. But understanding did not lessen his fear, and so he crawled, like some scurrying insect, from the scene of his victory.
Urbaal’s broken body lay sprawled upon its belly. Kormak stood over the corpse of the Chosen, feeling a sense of loss and shame. He was not worthy of the triumph that had been handed to him. He had been brought upon the quest as a mere slave, a thing to be ordered around like a dog. Urbaal had been the leader, holding the warband together through the force of his will and his determination to succeed. It was he who had been marked by Tzeentch for greatness, not the lowly mutant who now gazed down at his mangled body.
Kormak looked up as a sound intruded upon his guilt. His face twisted with hate as he saw a lithe shape marching towards him across the narrow footbridge.
‘Do not mourn your friend,’ Beblieth said, a cold smile on her lips. ‘You will be joining him in hell soon enough.’
The marauder studied the witch elf as she stalked towards him. For all of her arrogance, there was something different about her. She moved less gracefully, her gait lacked the condescending self-assuredness that had coloured even the slightest motion of her athletic frame. He noted the ugly cut beneath her breast and smiled at the gangrenous discoloration around it.
‘You are already dead on your feet,’ Kormak told her.
‘There was life enough in me to kill your warlock,’ Beblieth snarled back. ‘I will still have enough life in me to spit on your carcass.’
Kormak watched the witch elf finger her daggers, her thumbs rolling against their thorny hilts. Poison might be ravaging her body, but he knew she would have saved some for her blades. The marauder let his mutant arm return to its normal shape, not trusting his natural armour against poisoned steel.
Beblieth frowned as she saw the marauder’s flesh melt and flow, as she watched Kormak retreat from her. ‘You disappoint me, barbarian,’ she hissed. ‘I thought you would make killing you at least exciting.’
The marauder stepped around behind the body of Urbaal. He leaned down and ripped Gorgut’s axe from the Chosen’s back. ‘Just finding the right tool,’ he said, fingers tightening about the heft of the heavy axe.
Beblieth sprang at the marauder, her daggers flashing at him. It was only because of the deadening effect of Naagan’s poison that her leap failed to carry her as far as she intended. She landed a few feet from the warrior and as she slashed at him, her blades carved only the empty air.
The heavy axe struck back at her, a new strength burning inside Kormak’s body, a strength that burned away the fatigue dragging at his limbs. It was the strength of hate, the strength that had given Var’Ithrok its godlike power. Raw and primal, it roared through Kormak’s veins.
Beblieth slid back in the pooled blood of Urbaal as she tried to dodge the brutal swing of the axe. The witch elf had yet to reconcile herself to her leaden limbs and fading agility, her mind still expecting her to move with the grace and ease she had always known. She paid for not adapting. Kormak’s axe smashed into her right hand. The dagger she held went skittering across the ground, followed by several leather-clad fingers.
The witch elf shrieked in pain, but it was not pain that ruled her. Combat instincts honed over hundreds of years as a handmaiden of Khaine rose to the fore. She did not cringe away from Kormak’s crippling assault. Even as the marauder recovered, pulled the heavy axe back, she was on him, the dagger in her left hand licking out like the tongue of a cobra. It scraped against the marauder’s waist, trying to eviscerate him. Beblieth’s face pulled back in a spiteful grin as she felt bone crack beneath the slashing steel.
Howling in fury, Kormak drove the butt of his axe into the witch elf, hurling her back. He was only too aware of the lethal venom of the dark elves, where even a single cut meant a lingering death. He had felt her dagger smash into him. Yet he did not feel the searing pain in his belly he expected. Perhaps the poison acted too quickly to be felt. Then he laughed as he felt something fall from his belt and clatter on the ground. Beblieth’s dagger had not struck him, it had struck Tolkku’s skull.
Beblieth saw her mistake. She lunged back at the Norscan, her maimed hand cradled at her side, her dagger raised high. This time she would cut the man’s throat, as she should have done before. Naagan’s poison was clouding her mind now, she did not have time to savour the slow and wretched death of her foe. She would have to be quick, kill him swiftly so that she might know she had sent one last offering to Khaine before she died.
The sweep of Beblieth’s dagger was slow, sloppy for the witch elf. It was still only an amazing effort that allowed Kormak to twist away from the murderous blade, to block it with a downward tilt of his horn. The dagger scraped against the horn, scarring it deeply. Beblieth spun as she struck, turning to attack again as her momentum carried her past the hulking marauder.
She never got the chance to finish the motion.
Kormak roared a Baersonling war cry as he brought the heavy axe smashing into the spinning elf, hewing through her midsection in a single butchering motion. The torso of the witch elf was hurled away by the impact, the legs folding into each other like empty boots.
The marauder let the heavy axe slide through his fingers and crash on the blood-soaked ground. There was a swagger in his step as he walked over to the mangled witch elf. He glared down at the inhumanly cruel, inhumanly beautiful face of Beblieth, watching as death froze her cold eyes. He grunted with satisfaction.
Suddenly his victory over the Bastion Stair did not feel as hollow as it had before.
Kormak turned away from the carcass of Beblieth. The witch elf had tried to the very last to thwart the will of Tzeentch and the glory of Tchar’zanek, but in the end it had been the Changer who triumphed. The marauder lifted his eyes, staring at the great antlers which bound the Portal. The metal rings were still rotating, assuming new shapes with each turn, their arrow-like spines growing and shrinking to accommodate the shifting pattern. He wondered if the chill he felt pulling at his skin were the Winds of Chaos as they swept from the realm of the gods into the world of mortals. Vakaan would have known, so m
ight Urbaal. But Kormak was only a simple warrior, unable to appreciate the fruit of his victory.
As he watched, the sullen sky was transformed, changing from bloodied hues and hidden fires to rich blues and purples, vibrant and magnificent. Kormak thought of the maw beneath the Inevitable City, the raging void that must one day rise from its rocky prison to consume the fortress.
A shape emerged from the Portal, towering and gigantic. For a hideous moment, Kormak wondered if somehow Var’Ithrok had fought its way back from the void to wreak vengeance upon him. The marauder’s fear only lessened slightly when he found that it was not the bloodthirster who loomed over him. This was a different creature, a thing of feathers and robes, not armour and scars. The grey robes draped about a lean shape, gaunt and haggard beside the brawn of the Skull Lord. The wings that stretched from its back were great pinions, feathered with opalescence, their light casting a prismatic sheen that rippled and danced about it. A long, vulture-like neck protruded from its shoulders, supporting a beaked avian head. The eyes of the daemon were swirling pits of shimmering light, constantly pulsing with new colours as they assumed new shapes.
Kakra the Timeless leaned upon its staff, a great spiral of wood and bone and gemstone that curled and churned beneath its feathered hand. The Lord of Change stared down at the little man at its feet.
‘Let us depart, Kormak of Norsca,’ the daemon’s voice shivered through the marauder’s soul. ‘Tchar’zanek has raised an army for me and I would show him how to use it.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C. L. Werner was a diseased servant of the Horned Rat long before his first story in Inferno! magazine. His Black Library credits include the Chaos Wastes books Palace of the Plague Lord and Blood for the Blood God, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer World.
Visit the author’s website at www.vermintime.com
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2009 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Andrea Uderzo.
Map by Nuala Kinrade.
© Games Workshop Limited 2009, 2011. All rights reserved.
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ISBN 978-0-85787-382-8
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