Gotrek & Felix- the Third Omnibus - William King & Nathan Long

by Warhammer

  Overhead, the golden figure of Teclis blazed with light; attacked on both sides by the two Chaos wizards it looked like his defences were starting to fail. The brimstone stench of warpstone filled the air as the raw stuff of Chaos started to emerge from one of the gates. The temple shook as if hit by a giant hammer. The earth bucked and shook beneath their feet. Felix did not need to be a wizard to know that the end was very close.

  Teclis cursed his overconfidence as agony wracked his body. He had gone from attack to desperate defence in a heartbeat. Secure in the knowledge that he could overwhelm Blackstaff, and certain that the Chaos mage’s twin would be kept busy trying to control the energies he had unleashed, he had not reckoned on him abandoning the task to come to his brother’s aid. In doing so he had made the situation doubly desperate, for unless something was done about the swiftly unravelling nexus of forces around them, disaster would overwhelm them all. Unfortunately at the moment, all Teclis could do was try to shore up his defences and endure, hoping against hope that some miracle would happen to give him the advantage over his foes before death took him.

  He forced his lips into a smile that had as much agony in it as mirth. Whatever happened, he would go down fighting. If worst came to the worst he would unleash all the energies in his helm and staff in one final cataclysmic strike. In his own death he would take this pair down with him. But who then will save Ulthuan? The thought nagged away at the back of his mind, but he had no answer to it.

  ‘Enough, old man, enough,’ said a familiar gruff voice. ‘Any more of your spells and my head will explode.’

  Felix glanced around to see that the Slayer looked better. Not exactly well, but capable of thought and movement. His blood-caked form was a grim sight but his grip on the axe was firm, and his stride was sure. All around came the sounds of battle as the last of the folk of Albion held their ground against the oncoming hordes. Felix’s arm was tired from swinging it at orcs and beastmen.

  ‘There’s sorcerers to be killed,’ said Felix.

  ‘Is one of them an elf?’ said Gotrek.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Too bad – but I suppose those Chaos-worshipping swine will have to do.’ The Slayer barged forward through the line of men, and like a swimmer casting himself from a high crag into deep water, dove into the battle once more. Felix was right behind him.

  Lhoigor laughed as he summoned more and more energy to throw at the elvish wizard. He was surprised that the mage still endured. He and his twin had thrown enough power at him to have killed a daemon, or levelled a small mountain. Amazingly, their foe still lived, although now Lhoigor could sense him weakening. In a few more heartbeats he would be done. Just as well really, considering how close the nexus point was to erupting. And if that went, this temple, the whole island, and a fair chunk of the continent would go with it.

  Lhoigor smiled. Would that be such a bad thing, he asked himself? Granted, they would no longer be able to move the armies of Chaos through the paths. On the other hand, the lands of men and elves would suffer such devastation as they had not endured in millennia. The cities of men would be overthrown. The survivors would be thrown back into barbarism and be easy prey. The hordes of Chaos would sweep over them. The survivors would grovel before the idols of their new gods, before offering up their weeping souls on the blackened altars.

  Of course, there was the little matter of the fact that he and Kelmain might die as well, but even that might be avoided. There were still means of escape along a few of the Old Ones’ open routes. They could kill the elf and withdraw, leaving their followers and their attackers to their fate. The more he thought of it, the more this appealed to Lhoigor.

  At that moment, he saw a familiar dwarfish figure coming towards him through the press of battle. Even more astounding than the fact that the elf lived was the fact that Gotrek Gurnisson was still alive. That decided him – there was no way he was remaining to face that axe if he could help it. So be it, he thought. Let these fools fight to the death. They could kill the elf and make good their escape.

  Felix dodged a massive chunk of fallen masonry that had crashed down from the ceiling. As he advanced through the melee, he reeled like a drunk man on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. The tremors were getting worse, he knew, the smell of brimstone more intense. Of them all, only Gotrek moved easily, keeping his footing with the sureness of a cat.

  Panic spread through the battle. Even the ferocity of the orcs and the rage of the beastmen could not maintain itself in the face of the collapsing temple. The dying giant in the middle of the battle had cleared a space for itself. Already many of the combatants were starting to flee, hoping to escape the imminent destruction of the temple. Where they thought they were going to hide eluded Felix. If the structure collapsed, as seemed all too likely, there was nowhere safe to go.

  A few of them, in their fear, were throwing themselves into the open portals. Some were swallowed up by the oncoming waves of Chaotic matter. Others vanished into the shadows. After his own encounters within that alien extra-dimensional labyrinth Felix did not envy them. The panic created a different problem. Now they had to fight their way forward through a press of bodies determined to escape at any cost. Goblins scrambled over the shoulders of orcs, beastman and greenskin ran shoulder to shoulder, their animosity overwhelmed by the magnitude of the impending catastrophe.

  Felix followed in the wake of the Slayer as he hewed a path through the press of bodies. Everyone present seemed to have been caught up in the wild panic. All of them shared the same sense of impending doom. Felix stabbed out at anyone who looked like they would get around the Slayer, and so at last, they came to the great plinth atop which stood the altar.

  Enormous whips of dreadful energy leapt from it to lash the floating form of the elven mage. The shields of light protecting him seemed to dim by the second. Felix knew that if they did not save him soon, they would be too late.

  Gotrek vaulted onto the plinth and raced at the golden-robed Chaos sorcerer. The vulture-like man sensed his presence and raised his staff, the smell of ozone and brimstone filling the air as a gigantic bolt of energy arced towards the Slayer. Gotrek raised his axe. The runes blazed so brightly their after-image was engraved on Felix’s field of vision. He half expected the Slayer to be incinerated but no, Gotrek stood although his hair and beard were singed. If anything this seemed to goad him to a berserk madness. Dwarfs took harm to their facial hair very seriously.

  The Slayer charged forward and as he did so, Murdo’s spear hurtled over his shoulder to embed itself in the sorcerer’s flesh. A look of panic crossed his face. Felix knew he would never forget that expression. He looked more stunned than in pain, as if he could not quite believe what was happening to him, then Gotrek was upon him.

  The sorcerer raised his staff to parry the axe. Gotrek laughed dementedly as he brought the axe down in a glittering arc. It impacted on the staff and broke it asunder. Brilliant energy burst forth explosively but the axe continued inexorably and clove the mage in two. Not content with this, Gotrek chopped his corpse into smaller parts. Small lightning bolts earthed themselves from the body as if many spells were being discharged into the altar.

  The second Chaos mage screamed as his twin died. He turned to look at the body and for a second terrible pain, all the agony his brother seemed to have avoided, was written on his face. His concentration lapsed and at that moment a river of molten elvish power descended on him. For a moment, he stood silhouetted in its blaze. Felix saw small lines of darkness unravel within the glow, and then the Chaos mage was gone. The river of power lashed over the corpse of his brother cleansing the earth of its foulness.

  Felix found himself standing with the survivors of the men of Albion atop the great plinth in the central chamber of the Temple of the Old Ones. Teclis descended from above to join them. They stood in what appeared to be an island of sanity as Chaos erupted all around.

  ‘What now?’ Felix said.

  ‘I must unravel the work of these madmen
,’ said the elf. ‘You must go before this place is destroyed.’

  ‘An idea I am all in favour of,’ said Felix, ‘but how do you propose we do it?’ He gestured to the crowds of fleeing enemies and the walls that seemed ready to collapse all around them.

  ‘There is only one way,’ said the elf. He pointed to the still open portals that led down into the Paths of the Old Ones. Several of them appeared clear of the Chaos contamination. Felix shook his head. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I am not going in there again.’

  ‘There is no other way,’ said the elf.

  ‘We don’t know how to find our way through the paths. There are daemons in there.’

  ‘Not all the paths are twisted. I know the way,’ said Murdo. ‘I know the rituals. I can get us out.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the elf. ‘Now get going. I have work to do here.’

  ‘Are you sure you can do it?’ asked Murdo.

  ‘If I cannot, no one can,’ said the elf. ‘Go.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ said Murdo.

  ‘Pray,’ said the elf. ‘Now go!’

  Murdo led the pitiful band of survivors to the opening in the wall. He glanced at the runes on the archway and gestured for them to pass through it. Gotrek watched the elf as he turned towards the altar. He paused for a long moment, as if about to say something, and then turned on his heel to follow Murdo. He seemed to realise that this was work for wizards and there was nothing he could do here.

  Felix touched the elf on the shoulder. ‘Good luck,’ he said.

  ‘And to you, Felix Jaeger,’ replied the elf. ‘Be careful. In the paths those things might still come for you.’

  Felix reached the arch.

  ‘I hope he succeeds,’ he said to Gotrek.

  ‘If he fails there’s one good thing about it,’ said the Slayer.

  ‘What?’

  ‘One less elf in the world.’

  They moved down into the ancient darkness that led to the Paths of the Old Ones. Behind them, the elf began to sing a spell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Teclis stood atop the ancient altar in the Chamber of Secrets. All around him were signs of imminent catastrophe. The walls shook and huge chunks of rock descended from the ceiling, crushing greenskin and beastman alike. The giant still moved and thrashed, albeit slower now, and its howling was audible even over the shattering of fallen masonry and the panicked screams. The sulphur stench of warpstone and Chaos filled the air. To his mage sight vast interlocking patterns of energy shimmered and danced.

  He touched the amulet the Oracle had given him. Now was the time to use it. Briefly he considered following the others, and seeking refuge within the paths. The scale of the task daunted him. He had minutes at most to shut down the vast network of magic the Old Ones had created. There was no option. There was no place for him to run if he failed anyway, and he would not let down his people. He must do what the Oracle had sent him to do. He must awaken the guardians of the Old Ones.

  He offered up a prayer to Asuryan and took a deep breath, seeking to clear his mind, then he turned to confront the altar. It was a vast square block covered in familiar-looking angular runes. Most of them glowed. All of them represented something. At first they were bafflingly alien, but he realised that somehow his former foes had managed to activate them, and this meant they were not beyond his ability either. Particularly not when he held this ancient talisman. He held it up to the light and recited the spell he had been taught. Instantly power was drained from him into the amulet. Cords of energy seemed to flow out of it to the altar, binding him to it. The runes glowed ever brighter. The earth shook like a frightened beast.

  It was pointless trying to understand the runes themselves. They were merely symbols anyway. What he needed was to comprehend the forces they represented. He opened his mind, bringing all of his mystical acuteness to bear on the problem. One rune was as good as any other for his purposes, so he chose one he recognised as having been present on every portal he had seen, and focused his mage sight on it.

  As his point of view zoomed in, he saw that it was a work of breathtaking delicacy. The rune itself was connected to all the other runes by a vast web of interlocking forces. It was virtually a universe of them in itself. As above, so below, he thought, wondering if by manipulating the rune he could manipulate the forces themselves. Now was not the time to experiment though. Swiftly, working between one heartbeat and another, he allowed his consciousness to flow through the talisman and expand outwards to encompass the whole vast mystical lattice as earlier he had struggled to understand the layout of the pyramid.

  Everything he saw tended to confirm his suspicions. The altar was the fulcrum of a vast system; its pattern held a deeper meaning and there was something about it that was oddly and hauntingly familiar, although at the moment he could not quite put his finger on what.

  The pattern shimmered and started to fade. He saw that the whole thing was on the verge of disintegration and his heart hammered against his ribs. The plinth shook beneath his feet. More stones were dislodged. The giant’s death howls set his teeth on edge. For a moment, he realised that the whole vast intricate web was about to explode and there was nothing he could do about it. The whole unstable system was about to unleash all its energy in a final destructive torrent. He waited for the end to come, knowing that he was at the very epicentre of the coming destruction.

  A moment passed and then another. Nothing happened. He breathed again, and considered what he had witnessed. He knew now what the pattern reminded him of. Seen from certain angles it was almost identical to the map inscribed in the Haunted Citadel. Swirls of Chaotic energy were moving through the whole structure. The complex of energy represented by the runes was nothing less than a map of the Paths of the Old Ones and the whole complex system of tectonic forces they were interlinked with. He saw how the whole system had its roots in the realm of Chaos, that other space of infinite dangerous energies. He saw how it lay halfway between this world and the realm of daemons. He saw in one sudden blinding flash of insight all the nodal points through which power pulsed.

  He saw too that the system was corrupted now, infected by Chaos, the ancient safeguards destroyed, perhaps by some colossal cosmic accident, perhaps by malevolent design. No matter, he thought. Unless he did something soon it would be too late. But, great though his understanding of sorcery was, whatever was controlling this whole vast world-spanning net of magic was beyond him. There was no way he could hope to understand it in the very limited time he had available. That would be the work of a lifetime, and even then he was not sure mortal minds could comprehend the thing in its entirety. So far he had found no sign of the guardians. He had expected them to come in response to his summons, but there was nothing. Perhaps they had passed into death.

  Frustration and fear gnawed at him. He had come so far and done so much and it looked like he was a lifetime too late. He and all his people were the butt of some vast cosmic joke. He had been brought all this way merely to witness the final doom of his people. He stifled a curse. There must be something he could do. There must be some way to save the situation. If only he could find it.

  Felix followed Murdo down into the bowels of the earth. His mouth felt dry and his hand returned constantly to the amulet the elf had given him. He did not want to go any further. He realised that he had never feared anything as much in his life as he feared returning to the Paths of the Old Ones. His feet felt like they were encased in boots of lead. It was a massive effort to take one step further. I would rather die than pass into that eldritch other world one more time, he thought.

  And that’s exactly what will happen if you don’t. If you stay you will be buried alive at best, or swallowed by the oncoming tide of Chaos at worst. But if you pass through the portal you may lose even your soul. There had to be another way. Perhaps he could find a way back through the tunnels. Even as the thought occurred to him, he knew it was madness. There was no way he could cover that whole vast distance
before the temple collapsed. And even if the gods smiled on him, and he did manage it, he would be in a huge haunted forest surrounded by the survivors of the Chaos army and the greenskins and hundreds of leagues from home. There was no chance of escape that way. He felt like a rat cornered by a cat. He wanted to lash out and hit something, but he knew it would do no good.

  Ahead of him Murdo had stopped at a familiar-looking ramp. Beyond it lay a shimmering portal filled with many shifting colours. Felix thought he could see daemonic forms taking shape in there but told himself it was just his imagination. The old Truthsayer had begun a chant and a change took place in the glistening surface. It began to dim and solidify and Felix thought he saw himself and the others reflected as in some vast dull mirror. What was going on? At least it seemed like the old man had not been lying when he claimed to know something of the secrets of the paths.

  The walls shook once more. The odour of warpstone increased. Felix felt that if he stayed here he would be suffocated by it. It seemed that the elf had failed in his task. The quakes came more swiftly now.

  Murdo spoke to his people. One by one they stepped through the gate and vanished. Felix looked at the Slayer. Gotrek strode forward, axe held ready as if to smite some foe. Felix moved to join him. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I have opened the way, lad. It is safe – have no fear. I must return now and help the elf.’

  Felix paused, half grateful for the interruption, half desperate to get the ordeal over with. ‘Are you sure? He wanted to do it alone.’

  ‘There are some things that cannot be done alone, and this is one. I go now. May the light watch over you.’

  ‘And you,’ said Felix, watching the old man limp back up the corridor. ‘Good luck.’

  Then he strode forward into the vortex. Cold slithered over him. Panic filled him. There was a sudden sensation of tremendous acceleration.