The Prodigal

David Annandale

The cave was a spiral through darkness, a narrow coil through the core of the mountain. To reach it meant finding a path through a maze of fissures. An impossible task, a barrier to anyone not native-born to the city of Lykerna. The route had been unused now for an age, for who would willingly leave the sanctuary in these terrible days? The people of Lykerna rested secure behind their walls, their city hidden within its mountains, its light concealed from the monsters on the plain. They rested easy. There was no one who would lead the monsters to them.

Except the monster who knew the way.

Graunos had not been a monster when he left Lykerna. Then he had been a victim, doubly cursed because no one but he had acknowledged his plight. Blessed by Tyrion, they had said. Blessed to share his burden.

‘There is light ahead, lord,’ said Therekal.

‘I can see that perfectly well.’

The slaughterpriest bowed his head in a quick apology before Graunos could strike it from his neck.

I can see, he thought. I will see Lykerna.

He would behold its spires for the first time in his life. And this day would be the last they would be seen by anyone.

Graunos rounded the final curve of the spiral. Behind him, the walls of the tunnel echoed with the dread rhythm of thousands of marching boots. The warband of the Brass Gaze had come to Lykerna – at its head, the weakest son of the great city, returned now in strength and wrath.

The cavern ended. Stretching from the precipitous mountainside to the gates of the city was a narrow bridge. There were no ramparts. Though it was wide enough for three warriors to march abreast, it traced a sinuous path through the air. Centuries before, when Graunos had crossed the other way, he had crawled its length on hands and knees, lest his blindness send him plummeting off the edge.

Now, with Khorne’s gift, he gazed upon the bridge, the gate, and the spires. His helmet was fused with his skull. No flesh remained between bone and brass. Graunos and his armour were one. His body was the strength of plate and spikes. His blood was the acid of the Blood God’s rage. His eyes were the graven stare in his helm. Khorne had rewarded him with sight, but it was vision with a purpose. Graunos saw only what must be destroyed, and how to bring it down.

And so he saw all of Lykerna.

The city was built of stone and light. Carved into the mountainsides surrounding the city were vast mirrors of polished marble. They were concave and convex, hemispheres and bowls, their slopes and angles and shapes as varied as the beams of light that struck them. Refracted, reflected, divided and magnified, the rays of Lykerna were a lattice of creation. They were the foundation of the city, suspending it in the air between the mountains, leagues above the distant ground. Lykerna was built upon light, and it was built with light. Every wall, every square, every tower and every palace was a shining composite of resplendent gold, marble and worshipful illumination. Soaring in its heights of pride and glory, the city exalted Tyrion in the totality of its being.

Graunos’ helm covered the top half of his skull. Below it, his face was stripped of its skin. It was exposed muscle, scarred and knotted, pierced with hooks of brass. It was the face of his pain and his hatred. It was a face of thorns. His sharpened teeth parted in a snarl of anticipation as he looked upon the meaning he would destroy and the meaning he would shape.

Meaning. It was the wealth of Lykerna. It was the reason the priests of the city had declared Graunos blessed. They had given thanks for his agony. They had held him up as proof of Tyrion’s favour. Graunos’ blindness had been no simple thing. Because he could see only darkness in the realm of light, his mind could not perceive the play of light. It could not see the symbolism inherent to the material of the world. Instead, all meaning shouted at him at once. Until Khorne had found him in his hate, his darkness had been an endless clamour, a pounding avalanche of significance. Everything had meant everything. There had been no peace, no surcease, no space for his own thoughts until, at last, his hatred had grown so large as to swallow up everything else.

Now he saw only what must fall and the new form that his rage would create. That was more than enough.

He walked onto the bridge. The light trembled beneath his tread. Darkness spread from every footstep, a contagion of night streaming through the veins of the span. It rushed ahead, greedy for the gates. Graunos began to run, charging toward the fulfilment of his vengeance and the preparation of a greater battle to come.

The war horns of the Brass Gaze blasted. Their howl was triumphant in its violence.

‘The towers sway at the sound of our horns,’ said Therekal, awed.

‘But they do not fall,’ Graunos said. ‘Not yet. It is our blows that will topple them.’

The bells in the spires rang out in alarm. The impossible was happening. The hidden city was under attack.

The bridge widened in the final approach to the gate. Here, Graunos paused. He threw his head back and bellowed. ‘Hear me, Lykerna! Your sacrifice has returned! I am Graunos, and I have come to cast you down!’

The bells still rang, yet it seemed to Graunos that a kind of silence fell for a moment over the city when he uttered his name. The Lykernan nobility revelled in the richness of symbols. He had brought them more meaning than even they had wished.

The gates were turning black from the contagion of his rage, becoming brittle. They opened, and the defenders of Lykerna marched to meet the Brass Gaze. Pennants of light and silk flashed in the wind. The warriors of the city were clad in silver armour and white robes. A fine backdrop for the blood to come. At the head of the phalanx was a luminark. Pulled by a brace of armoured horses, it was a reliquary as much as it was an engine of war. The ornate frame waited for Graunos to shatter it. Mounted on its roof was a cannon of light, a cone-shaped assemblage of lenses. An acolyte of Tyrion sat beneath the lenses and guided the horses. A wizard stood beside the largest lens. He was an old man, though his frame thrummed with contained power.

‘Graunos!’ he called. ‘Repent! It is not too late!’

Graunos recognized the voice. Ahnavias, the wizard who had urged him to accept his calling. Urged him to accept the curse of Tyrion.

‘It is too late for your city,’ Graunos hissed. He launched himself forward. Behind him came the thunder of his horde of wrath.

Ahnavias turned to the lens, chanting and casting his hands at its centre. The fire of purest illumination burst from the luminark. The beam sought Graunos. It came to turn his soul and being into an incandescent flash. Instead, it struck the blade of his axe of Khorne. The weapon’s name was Darkfall. The Blood God’s rune glowed crimson against metal of absolute black. The axe devoured the light.

Graunos pushed against the force of the assault. Ahnavias shouted. The beam intensified. Darkfall grew hot, burning through his gauntlet. Yet it took the light, the hunger of the daemon within it goaded by Graunos’ own hunger for revenge.

Then he reached the luminark, and with a single sweep of Darkfall, he shattered the forward lenses. The light dispersed with an explosion. A wind of glass shredded the skin of the acolytes. Graunos leapt aboard. He decapitated the first acolyte, then wrapped his armoured fingers around Ahnavias’ throat.

‘You will watch,’ he said.

He hurled the priest to the warband. Bloodreavers bound him in chains. They dragged him along. They made him see.

The struggle was brief. The Brass Gaze smashed through the defenders of the city. The blood of slaughtered warriors flowed along the bridge and dripped over the edges. And this was a mere prelude, a rivulet that soon vanished in a deluge. Graunos sent his legion through the city. He unleashed butchery so vast, cascades of blood plummeted from the windows of the spires. The light of Lykerna was submerged in waves of crimson. Thousands died, tens of thousands. The blood filled the streets. It covered the plazas. It coated the walls of the palaces and towers. It submerged the light.

The foundations crumbled.

And the city fell.

The drop was not rapid. It was a slow descent into the dark majesty of wrath. Lykerna collapsed in on itself like a closing fist. The towers smashed into each other. Stained glass shattered and became maws of jagged teeth. The city struck the stony ground of the valley, and towering, curved obelisks of brass thrust through the ruins, the gripping claws of Khorne’s domain.

Graunos stood in the centre of the city. He saw the change. He saw the new meaning, and though his work was good, his wrath was not assuaged. It never could be, perhaps not even if the day came at last when he drove his blade into the skull of Tyrion himself.

To the west, the sky flashed with lightning. The greater battle was coming.

Graunos looked down at Ahnavias, the last survivor of Lykerna, kneeling on stone. The wizard looked to the west.

‘Hope is coming,’ he said.

‘It is coming too late,’ Graunos told him. The warriors who thought to bring that hope would find instead ruins in the shape of gargantuan jaws.

‘Light is coming,’ Ahnavias insisted.

‘Then it will show me the shape of the doom I will create,’ said Graunos. With a dismissive blow, he severed the wizard’s head. He picked it up and turned its eyes toward the lightning. ‘Can you still see what is coming?’ he asked. ‘No? I can.’

War was coming. And it would find wrath waiting.

About the Author

David Annandale is the author of the Horus Heresy novel The Damnation of Pythos. He also writes the Yarrick series, consisting of the novella Chains of Golgotha and the novels Imperial Creed and The Pyres of Armageddon. For Space Marine Battles he has written The Death of Antagonis and Overfiend. He is a prolific writer of short fiction, including the novella Mephiston: Lord of Death and numerous short stories set in The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 universes. He has also written several short stories set in the Age of Sigmar. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

The Lords of Chaos gather their forces...
The Call of Chaos echoes across across the Mortal Realms and into the grim darkness of the far future.

Two new serialised supplements, and new fiction for Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar.
Collect them all and answer the Call of Chaos.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-024-6

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