“What—?” he began, but then cut himself off mid-sentence. Although he had spoken quietly, his words boomed through the tower.
His question was answered by the scraping sound of fingers scrabbling over rock. Caspar looked down and saw that Razumov was climbing back up the tower. His earlier urgency had vanished, and there was now a sardonic smile on his rotting face as he pulled himself up the stones.
“Razumov,” cried the woman sprawled at the base of the tower. “My love? Don’t you recognise me? It’s Natalya!”
Her voice was cracked and inhuman but Caspar realised he could now understand every word. I’m omniscient, he thought, thrilled by his growing power.
Razumov did not look back as he answered in the same shredded tones. “Of course I remember you, you wretched witch. I remember everything.”
Natalya shook her head fiercely. “Razumov, please! I’ve turned the world on its head, just so that the Emperor’s stargazers would come here and return you to me. I even kept your staff safe, so you could continue your work. I’ve paid for my treachery!”
Razumov paused to glare at her. “You’ve paid for nothing!” He levelled his staff at the woman. “You ruined everything. Everything! I have lain rotting in the ground for all these long centuries, because of you! I could have been a god by now, if you had not let me down.”
Natalya clutched her grey, sunken cheeks and shrieked. “I panicked! I thought that I would lose you forever if you completed the ritual.”
“So you murdered me?”
“No!” Natalya’s voice became an agonised screech. “I never meant for you to die. I thought that if I omitted one small phrase, the spell would simply fail and we could continue as we were, together!”
Razumov whined, clawing at his own face as he listened to the woman’s words. “You betrayed me!” he cried, jabbing his staff in her direction. A deafening boom filled the tower and a finger of lightning splintered from the crescent-shaped horns, knifing into the woman’s chest.
She spun from view with a final hideous croak.
Caspar shook his head, amazed by the bickering Kislevites. Then he raised his own staff and unleashed a gout of blue fire.
Razumov blocked the column of light, catching it in the circle of horns for a second time and hurling it back.
Caspar screamed as a terrible grinding sound filled his ears. It felt as though his mind were being torn apart. For a few seconds he could do nothing but crouch in a ball and shiver as white noise tore through his head. Then the sound cut off and silence returned.
Caspar opened his eyes to an inky void speckled with shimmering points of light. He was drifting through vague, luminous clouds and as he looked down at his own body, he cried out in confusion and delight. “I’m made of stars!” He tried to reach out and touch his new form, but instead of an arm he saw a trail of meteors burning through the darkness. He laughed at the beauty of it but, instead of sound, he emitted a spiral of astral particles. Stars, gas and dust clouds poured out of him, looping, billowing and spinning through the empyrean. Caspar’s laughter grew hysterical as his mind dissolved into the waltzing heavens. Then he paused, trying to steady himself, sensing danger.
There was another presence in this celestial dream.
Somewhere beneath him a shadow was forming, devouring light as it tumbled and writhed through the firmament. Caspar’s laughter became a scream as the blackness engulfed him, filling his astral flesh with agony.
Grasping for the remnants of his physical self, Caspar recalled his hand, clutching a gnarled staff. He breathed a half-remembered spell and replaced the darkness with a dazzling green fire.
The awful grinding sound returned and when it stopped, the scene had changed again.
Caspar was swimming through an ocean of red. He was material once more, but rather than seeing the tower, he found himself hurtling through a vast quivering tunnel. He panicked, believing he was drowning, but then realised he had no lungs or mouth. He was a pulse of blood, thundering through warm, living flesh. The world was filled with the sound of a massive, booming drum and as Caspar surged along the tunnel, the sound grew louder. In the liquid darkness ahead, he saw a vast shape, pulsing in time to the beat—a crimson cathedral of muscle, pounding faster and faster as he approached it.
My heart, he thought.
As the booming grew in volume, Caspar sensed the same malignant presence he had felt in the stars. It was Razumov, he realised, pursuing him through the heaving tide.
A shadow was spreading across the walls of the tunnel, painting the glistening red walls grey as it raced towards the pounding heart.
Caspar cried out again and pictured his staff once more, imagining his previous self launching another bolt at the hooded Kislevite.
The heartbeat doubled in speed and Caspar spun out control, losing all sense of self and purpose.
The grinding sound wrenched through the tunnel and the scene changed again.
Caspar was perched once more at the top of the tower, but for a few seconds he could not recognise anything. Even his own body looked utterly alien. He panted in confusion, feeling his heart racing beneath his scorched robes. He clutched his chest, recalling the grey stain that was racing towards his heart.
A bitter curse rang out from below.
Caspar looked down to see Razumov, sprawled on one of the tower’s ancient steps, with a blackened hole where his chest should have been.
The sorcerer groaned and hauled himself into a sitting position, grabbing his staff from the floor and looking up at Caspar with a dazed expression.
As Caspar looked at the ragged wound, his eyes began to play tricks on him. It looked as though the hole was turning into a mouth. The torn flesh and shattered bones reminded him of the fanged grin he had seen earlier that day, when he and Gabriel began their spell. A strange hysteria gripped him and as he stared into the bloody hole he began to giggle.
Razumov saw his chance and clambered to his feet, ignoring the glut of black liquid that poured from between his broken ribs. The wound seemed to have no effect on him as he bounded up the now-stationary rocks. Within seconds he was at Caspar’s side.
The astromancer came to his senses with Razumov just a few feet away. He swung his staff, smashing it into the sorcerer’s corpse-face with a wet crunch and lighting up his skull like a green lantern.
At the same instant, Razumov jabbed the horns of his staff into Caspar’s belly, filling his robes with crimson fire.
The two colours combined into a dazzling white flash, silhouetting the two men in a blazing corona. They both froze, fixed in place by the currents raging through their bodies.
The smell of cooking meat filled the air.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gabriel woke with a start. The ground was heaving beneath him like the deck of a ship and the town was filled with light. It looked as though Morrslieb had achieved its aim and enveloped the landscape. The wizard climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked around. He could just about make out the vague shapes of knights, beastmen, dragons and other, even stranger things. The whole riotous menagerie was tumbling back and forth across the square and none of the combatants seemed quite sure who they were meant to be fighting. It was less like a battle than a panicked riot. Buildings were toppling all over the town and the people of Schwarzbach had abandoned the relative safety of their cellars and lofts to flee in terror. Monsters devoured half of them before they reached the town gates, and Gabriel dreaded to think what would be waiting for those who reached the hills.
He looked back towards the tower, wondering how things could have gone so spectacularly wrong. He had to shield his eyes from the incandescent column of light and, as he stepped closer, his hairless face started to redden and blister. He ignored the pain and peered into the blaze. After a few seconds he saw a rotund, silhouetted figure, standing near the base of the fire.
He hurried towards him. “Move back! You’ll be destroyed!”
As the bürgermeister turned around, Gab
riel saw that even though his face was hideously burned, it was locked in a manic grin.
“It’s working!” he cried, his voice little more than a croak.
Gabriel stepped closer, grimacing at the heat. “What? Has my master harnessed the power of the stars?”
Groot laughed wildly and dropped to his knees. “No, you idiot. I’m talking about my mistress. Natalya’s centuries of grief are finally over.” He collapsed onto his back, still laughing as blood bubbled up between his teeth.
Gabriel reached into the inferno and grabbed the man’s foot. Groot was much lighter than he expected and he managed to drag him back across the rippling flagstones to the steps. He shoved him behind a stump of ruined wall and knelt by his side. “What do you mean? Who is Natalya?”
Groot was seconds from death, but his blood-slick chins were still quivering with laughter. “Razumov’s love, you pallid freak. You and your senile master have done nothing but her bidding since you left Altdorf.”
“Her bidding?”
“Yes, her bidding, you simpleton!”
Gabriel leaned back, shaking his head. “How—” he began, but he realised that Groot was beyond hearing. The flames had utterly destroyed his lungs and he was coughing up thick, clotted lumps of blackened flesh. As his massive body shook, a morbid curiosity overtook the wizard and he gently pulled open the man’s robes, confused as to how someone so huge could weigh so little.
As the charred cloth fell open, Gabriel hissed and leapt to his feet, backing away quickly from the dying man. Groot’s body was covered in gaping mouths, lined with tiny fangs. They were opening and closing as he shivered and moaned, consumed by hunger, even as they died.
Gabriel looked back at the tower. “It’s a trick,” he droned. “A cult.” He lifted his staff, preparing to brave the flames, but before he had taken more than a few steps the world tilted on its axis and threw him through the air, smashing him into the crowds of battling figures. As he rolled and stumbled through the tumult, he saw something almost too strange to bear. The storm was raging with such power that it had torn the whole town from the earth. He glimpsed a crater—a vast bowl of scarred earth, where Schwarzbach should have been—then he slammed into a wall and lost consciousness.
The world swam back into view but it was not the world Gabriel remembered. He was trapped beneath a chunk of masonry. It had shattered a bone in his leg—he could see a pale, bloody shard jutting out from his robes. The pain was breathtaking, but he realised that the stone had probably saved his life. Figures were tumbling past him as the town flew free, unshackled from gravity or logic. He groaned in pain and looked around at the chaos. Schwarzbach was not just in flight, it was collapsing. Whole districts had sheared away, hurled into the ether and leaving the central square with a halo of fractured, cobbled streets.
Beyond the town’s crumbling borders was a confusing montage of shifting hues and strange, briefly glimpsed vistas—landscapes torn from every corner of the world. Gabriel saw places that would have made no sense wherever they were. He saw great oceans of fire and towering forests of ice, but as soon as he tried to focus on any of them, they vanished, replaced by something equally absurd. He used his staff to lever the stone off his leg, then sat up and looked back at the tower. It had vanished, replaced by a slender column of nothing. It looked like a hole had been torn in the air, revealing the blank canvas behind reality.
The strangeness of it hurt Gabriel’s eyes and he looked back at the square. The knights and monsters were clinging desperately to life, hanging onto the rubble as Schwarzbach heaved and rolled. He noticed that one of the knights was struggling towards him and looked familiar.
“Reiksgraf,” said Gabriel.
“Stop it!” cried the knight as he tried to approach. The town was hanging at such a surreal angle that the reiksgraf had to climb down a street as though it were the sheer face of a mountain.
Gabriel shook his head in confusion. “Stop it?”
“We’re dying!” cried the knight, waving his broken sword at the spinning streets. “Stop the town! Land us somewhere!”
Gabriel nodded slowly, recognising the truth of the reiksgraf’s words. If the town continued spinning loose, it would eventually shed every one of its inhabitants, but if he could fix it to one of the scenes hurling past, they might even stand a chance of victory. Half of the beastmen had been left behind when Schwarzbach was torn from reality. And those that remained were consumed by madness—attacking their own kind as ferociously as the knights.
Gabriel closed his eyes and delved deep into his consciousness. As he muttered the first few syllables of a spell, he felt a huge wave of azyr wrench through his limbs. The magic was so overwhelming that he almost dropped his staff. Wherever they were now, the air was pure magic. The astrolabe at the end of his staff lit up like a beacon and began to spin. The celestial discs whirred around the orb at such speed that they blurred into a silver sphere. He stretched his thoughts beyond the rings, out into the vague regions beyond Schwarzbach. Lakes and cities tumbled through his mind in a delirious mess and he laughed at the impossibility of his task. “Where?” he wondered aloud.
“Land us somewhere!” cried the reiksgraf again, his voice shrill with madness.
Gabriel took a deep breath and poured every ounce of his power into the town’s shattered foundations, slamming Schwarzbach down onto the ground.
He did not have the faintest idea where he had taken them.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Caspar lay still for a while with his eyes closed, savouring the peace of his dreams. It must still be very early, he thought, so there was no harm in sleeping a little longer. Soon, the halls of the Celestial College would be full of noise and bustle as his fellow magisters began their work. His whole body ached with exhaustion and he realised he must have studied well into the night. Then a vague, unnamed dread began to gnaw at the edges of his mind. There was something essential he needed to do—some crucial task he had left unfinished. As his mind began to clear, his anguish grew. Why did he feel so hot? His skin was throbbing and tiny needles of pain were prickling his face. There was also an unpleasant sound, a banshee howl that tore through his dreams, forcing him back into the world. A face filled his thoughts. Caspar groaned as he saw Razumov’s necrotic grin. He remembered everything in a sickening flood.
He opened his eyes and saw a raging sandstorm. He was slumped at the top of the drifting tower, his scorched robes snapping in the wind like a pennant. Below him was Schwarzbach—or at least, some of it. The square and its surrounding streets were carpeted in sand and, half a mile away, the cobbles and flagstones vanished completely, giving way to a fierce, swirling desert.
Caspar groaned as he tried to sit up. Beyond the ruined buildings there was nothing but sand—endless, wind-lashed dunes, undulating into the distance beneath a bottomless azure sky. The hills and forests that should have surrounded the town had vanished. The Empire had vanished. A blazing southern sun now shone over the town, its light mingled with the sordid glow of Morrslieb.
The wizard tried to speak, but his throat was so scorched that all he could manage was a hoarse croak.
All around the square, dazed figures were picking themselves up from the ground and staggering through the spiralling clouds of sand. Monsters and knights stared out at the desert in equal confusion.
The reiksgraf began herding his knights together, handing out weapons and shoving them back towards the steps of the town hall.
Caspar shook his head at the man’s indomitable will. Even after being torn from reality and hurled to gods knew where, he was still trying to lead his knights to victory. He seemed unable to hold his head up properly and his arm was drenched in blood but, as he saw how few of the beastmen had made the journey with them, he let out a furious howl and raised his sword.
“None of this matters!” he cried, his voice knifing through the sandstorm. He waved his sword at the desert. “Wherever we are, we are still sons of Sigmar! If this is where we make ou
r stand, then so be it.”
There was such passion in the reiksgraf’s voice that, despite everything they had been through, the knights began shuffling dutifully to his side, grabbing weapons from the ground, dusting sand from their armour and raising their weary heads.
As the knights rallied to their general, the beastmen faltered. It quickly dawned on them that they were now outnumbered but, rather than grouping together, they flew at the knights in ones and twos, hurtling through the storm like daemons.
As the noise of battle filled the streets once more, Caspar placed a hand on the ruined tower and smiled. The stones were still pulsing with magic and as it rushed through his fingers, he recalled how wonderful it had felt when he embraced it. He closed his eyes, allowing his thoughts to slip free and dissolve into the storm. His mind spiralled up into the sky and, almost immediately, he felt the fury of the wind increase. As the tower began to rotate again, Caspar’s heart started to pound and the broad grin returned to his face. He climbed to his feet more easily than he had done for decades and stretched his limbs, relishing his newfound virility. He peered through the whirling sand, searching for his enemy. There was no sign of Razumov, so he leaned out into the storm, watching the knights as they hacked the beastmen to the ground.
As Caspar admired the soldiers’ bravery, he did not notice a figure emerging from the storm. Razumov’s eyes gleamed as he lifted his staff over Caspar’s head and brought it down to crush his throat.
Gabriel crawled towards the tower, trailing blood and muttering gibberish, his mind as fractured as his leg. As the storm howled around him, he felt it tearing him apart. His consciousness flickered from one place to the next, unable to settle. For a few seconds, he looked through the eyes of an exhausted wizard, dragging himself through a storm, but then he was miles above, surveying the scene through the powerful gaze of a vulture, circling overhead. “I’m not a bird,” he said, shaking his head and passing into another mind. This time he saw the sand from ground level. He was a tiny, iridescent beetle, scuttling over the dunes. “Nor that,” he croaked, reaching out again. As his thoughts drifted down through the sand, they brushed against a consciousness of such rancour and antiquity that he let out a pitiful groan. Somewhere, deep below the desert, a monster was slumbering, a cold, metal behemoth of such vast proportions that it dwarfed anything they had yet faced. “By the comets,” he hissed, withdrawing his mind like a hand snatched away from a flame. The shock of the encounter finally allowed him to focus and look out through his own eyes.
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