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The Harrowing Deep – Miles A. Drake

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Court of the Blind King’

A Black Library Publication

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The Harrowing Deep

Miles A. Drake

Prince Cycladaean was surrounded by the unfamiliar. But then, he had been for many years. Ever since he’d parted ways with his Motlynian kin, he had roamed the seas. But he was no mere nomad that had lost his way. His exile had been calculated. It served an agenda. Wherever he went, he sought to remind his kin of their potential. Of the realms they’d fled from.

Were the idoneth not sculpted by a god of light and illumination? Why should they hide in the depths, ashamed of their very nature, when there was so much to reclaim?

Some enclaves, the Ionrach, the Nautilar and the Briomdar to name a few, had already taken their first steps towards unifying the idoneth. Towards proving to their creator that, regardless of their flaws, they were worthy of his blessing. Even if these steps had been taken unwittingly, out of pragmatism rather than an effort to redeem themselves in the eyes of Teclis, they had served Cycladaean’s goal. There was, as such, no need for him to guide those enclaves when there were others that were less enlightened…

And so he chose to seek the dismal, dark places where the idoneth clung to suspicion and cold pragmatism above all else. He could have gone to many places, for the majority of the enclaves were still mired in such ideology, but he had felt a calling to Ghur. To the Dhom-hain.

And so Rúndhar, the Dhom-hain city nestled deep in the darkness of the Black Trough, became Cycladaean’s home.

It was a dismal home, to be sure, for the Dhom-hain lacked much of the refinement of other enclaves. And that could be seen no more clearly than in the very structure of their royal court. The Maw Court, as it was aptly named, rested inside the skull of an ancient god-beast, long buried beneath aeons of siltfalls. Cycladaean moved past rows of colossal teeth that flanked the gloomy interior of the court, the buoyancy granted to him by the ethersea allowing him to drift between the sculpted coral forms growing across the chamber’s floor. The ethersea seemed cold and heavy, and though he had acclimated to the unsettling sensation, it served as a perpetual reminder that he did not belong.

But Rúndhar was full of such reminders.

In the dim ambiance, illuminated by clusters of glowing anemones and transient shoals of bioluminescent squid, he saw more akhelian enter the court. He couldn’t see their eyes in the gloom, but he could feel their cold stares. The mix of disdain, suspicion and predatory hostility served as an ever-present reminder that he was an outsider in a court that hated outsiders. But he showed no fear. If one cowered before a circling allopex, it would go for the throat, and the Dhom-hain were no different. They lived off the hunt. They lived for the hunt. And somewhere throughout their brutal history, they became the hunt.

Ignoring the glances, he took his customary place at the edge of the court, leaning back into one of the sculpted coral thrones, feeling its fanlike branches bend around him. His section of the court was meant for foreign envoys, and as such, he was alone.

As more akhelian filtered in, the presence of so many warriors bearing the colours of the Hunting Phalanxes gave Cycladaean a clear indication as to why the court had been summoned, though the presence of the Lasroch Host was certainly new. They were the Dhom-hain elite, the finest veterans of the Hunting, Raiding and Warden Phalanxes that the enclave could offer. If they had been called, then it was drawing nearer.

That, of course, presented an opportunity. If the Dhom-hain grew too desperate, then perhaps they would allow an outsider to join their sacred hunt, and in doing so, he could well earn their respect – a necessity if he was to have any success in swaying them to rejoin the assembrals.

But his musings were interrupted when three figures emerged from the gloomy tunnel disappearing into the throat of the god-beast. Even in shadow, they were as resplendent as any Dhom-hain akhelian could be, wielding serrated hunting glaives and clad in armour sculpted like organic waveforms, gleaming green in stark contrast to the dark mesh they wore beneath. At their head, King Akhamar, the royal consort and lord of the High Guard stood as the epitome of what it meant to be Dhom-hain. The gracefulness of his armour was offset by the tattered allopex-scale cloak hanging from his pauldrons, and the thin, spiny crown of fin bones jutting from his barbute helm like a crown of thorns.

The king panned his gaze over the gathering crowd, and thudded the butt of his glaive onto the coral dais that extended from the throat of the court. ‘All silence for the high queen!’ he roared, before bowing his head and stepping aside.

The rest of the court made gestures of respect as High Queen Mheáve emerged from the inky darkness behind him. She had all the grace and poise of an ancient statue, rugged and scarred, but no less beautiful for it. Armoured in an ornately sculpted breastplate and a surcoat of glittering scales, her arms were bare, marked by claw-marks and fang-scars. Winding eel tattoos coiled down from her shoulders, and an open-faced barbute helm crowned by the dagger-fangs of a lampmouth adorned her regal visage. The cloak of kelp-fibre streamers hanging from her fin-like pauldrons resembled the tentacles of an ochtar as it billowed behind her.

‘Court of Rúndhar, voice of Dhom-hain, I call this assembly once more to address that which plagues us.’ Her voice was sonorous, and easily captured the attention of any in the court. Cycladaean recognised the power that radiated from her, and had long reckoned that she was a descendant three, perhaps four generations removed from the ancient cythai. He knew such things, because that power was in his blood too.

‘It has been six tides since Prince Maghadrym led his hunters after the beast. That he has not returned can mean only one thing…’ she continued, eliciting a chorus of whispers from the crowd.

It was as Cycladaean had expected, then.

She waited for them to subside. ‘Further word from the dredger colonies speaks of the beast’s continued rampage. It goes unimpeded beyond the colonies of the Abyssal Rim. It draws nearer to the continental rise. To the Black Trough…’

The whispers became more hushed, and more tense. The beast’s marauding trail of slaughter was bringing it steadily closer to their city, and while Cycladaean doubted the Dhom-hain were truly afraid, he imagined the mere existence of a beast that defied them so would at least upset them. And that would work to his advantage.

The court grumbled, but soon enough, a scarred Lochian prince stood. He was a veteran hunter, given his heraldry.

‘Perhaps this is best suited for the Lasroch Host,’ he called. ‘If this beast knows the scent of idoneth blood, then it is only a matter of time before it decides to make a foray into the Black Trough. Rúndhar could be in danger.’

‘Are you a coward, Prince Achúlainn?’ another prince, bearing the heraldry of the Lasroch Host, interjected. ‘Are you shying away from hunting a beast that your hunters have thus far failed to slay?’

The scarred hunter turned to face his accuser, his features curled into an unsubtle snarl. ‘What I am saying is that if my hunters have been unable to fell this monster, then perhaps it is time we devote more resources to the problem. And yes, this insinuates I believe it to be beyond my phalanx’s capabilities. Better my humility and a dead beast than my pride and a living beast rampaging through the Bryozoan Groves!’

The rebuke was sharper than it sounded, for Cycladaean knew that Prince Mhazaer, the accuser, held the fertile outer Bryozoan Groves as his personal demesne.

The back and forth continued, and Cycladaean took a deep breath, tasting the thick salt suffusing the ethersea. There might never be a better opportunity. He stood, and at first, only the high queen and Akhamar noticed. The arguing continued, and Cycladaean saw Akhamar whisper something into the high queen’s ear, no doubt attempting to dissuade her from listening to whatever the outsider had to say. But eventually she brushed him off, and waved her hand to silence the court.

‘My brethren,’ Cycladaean began, taking a diplomatic tone, even if he knew most in the court would loathe him using that word to address them. ‘It is clear this monster presents a significant threat to Rúndhar, and the rest of the enclave. The mere fact that it has not only evaded but also killed multiple hunting parties belonging to the enclave boasting the finest hunters in all the seas is testament to its threat. And that it has done so without a single survivor returning to report should only emphasise that now is not the time for division. Now is the time that differe–’

‘The reason our hunters have failed…’ King Akhamar cut in, stepping forward to cast a withering glare at Cycladaean, ‘is that we have yet to send a party of our finest. Samarghainn led the first party, Cairweath the second, and now Maghadrym. All names of renown. But only one name per hunt. If we assemble a hunt comprising only our finest, then we can surely track down and slay this beast!’

Cycladaean was certain he could best any of them in single combat, but that accounted for nothing when he hadn’t had the chance to prove himself. He gave an exasperated sigh as Achúlainn countered.

‘Or perhaps we will be risking our best, when this is truly a matter that requires a more heavy-handed approach. If our hunters have failed three times, perhaps now is the moment to unleash the full might of the phalanxes.’

The master of the Lasroch Host muttered something, and stood. ‘Yes, I am loath to agree, but from what I’ve heard, this predator is confined to the seabed. We can strike it from above.’

‘Or it will scurry away into one of the many crannies in which it can hide, only to return later once we’ve lowered our guard,’ another akhelian countered. ‘Or did you plan on devoting part of the Lasroch Host as a garrison to keep the beast cornered? We are not numberless. Think of what might slip our patrols, should too much of the phalanx be deployed.’

Cycladaean took a deep breath and spoke again. ‘If you are concerned for the lives of your capable hunters, then send me. Surely there are many that would not shed a tear if I end up in the gullet of the beast.’ Such was the truth, unfortunately. Cycladaean would play to their hearts, even at his own expense.

‘That… is an affront to tradition,’ King Akhamar called, voicing his typical protest against any and every one of Cycladaean’s suggestions. ‘We are Dhom-hain, the honour of the hunt is–’

‘Irrelevant.’ The high queen’s voice cut through the chatter, silencing them, and earning a glare from Akhamar that some might consider treasonous. ‘The outer reaches of Rúndhar are threatened, and a beast has slaughtered the namarti colonies along the abyssal rim. This is no longer a matter of honour. This is a matter of survival.’

Cycladaean exchanged a barely perceptible nod with the high queen, one that would undoubtedly cause a stir if any of the other akhelian had sense enough to notice. High Queen Mheáve had been a traveller once too. During the few times they had managed to speak to one another, Cycladaean had found her to be almost… agreeable.

‘If the outsider Prince Cycladaean wishes to accompany our hunt, then so it shall be, tradition be damned!’ she continued.

Cycladaean bowed low in genuine respect. ‘Then I humbly request to join the next hunt.’ He was starting to like the high queen. Perhaps he could make her see the light, and rejoin the assembrals. He only needed to prove his worth.

That was why he was here, of course. During his exile in Príom, he had done exactly that with the Ionrach, and he had learned that they needed allies in all of the realms. They sought to create a unified front against the threats of Primordial Chaos and the Soul Collector all at once. And as mighty as he was, High King Volturnos could not do so alone. And so Cycladaean had sworn allegiance to the Ionrach, and come to the Dhom-hain court as an envoy. Given that the Dhom-hain accepted no diplomats from other enclaves, Cycladaean had been forced to adopt an exile’s disguise… though there was truth in that as well.

Sitting back down, he let the ripples of dissension flow around him. While most opposed the high queen’s decision to allow him to join the hunt, some did not, and Cycladaean made mental note of those few. It was only when Akhamar spoke up again that Cycladaean’s attention snapped back to the matters at hand.

‘Then I will lead this expedition,’ he said. ‘It is only fitting that a matter sanctioned by the high queen is led by her hand.’

While Cycladaean loathed the fact that he’d have to play subordinate to his greatest nemesis in the court, he gave Akhamar a cold smile, bowing ever so slightly. Akhamar or not, things were at last beginning to fall into place.

After the assembly was adjourned, Cycladaean retreated to his private guest quarters in the Leviathanbane Ward, following a series of silty trenches between the ruddy-hued, overhanging table corals that made up Rúndhar’s akhelian estates. Schools of axehead lanternfish and glowsquid darted away from him as he weaved his way through the warren of jagged basalt, gnarled coral roots and fanlike bryozoans. Eventually, he reached his personal lodgings, an elegant, hollow coral spire, hanging from the ceiling of a larger cavern in the wall of the Black Trough.

It was a meagre abode, but it served him well enough. He drifted through a gloomy series of chambers, devoid of much decor and lit by sparse clusters of bioluminescent anemones. The pallid light did little justice to the stunning kelp-fibre tapestries of Hyshite sunsets and Barricadian reefscapes that he had brought with him.

Upon his arrival, Aimheáre, his assigned namarti retainer, began the process of armouring him. Even if Cycladaean had shared accommodations with the namarti for several cycles, she’d spoken little. With practised grace she assembled his ornate armour, fastening its glassy platinum plates over his garish mesh of teal, crimson and white. While he might abide by the drab dress code of the Dhom-hain in court, during the hunt he would fly his true colours.

‘There is a possibility that I might not return,’ he mused, attempting to elicit a response. ‘Actually, I should say the chance is rather large. I fear I might have chosen a poor beast to gamble my capabilities on.’

‘The beast…’ Aimheáre whispered, fastening one of his sleek, fin-like pauldrons to his shoulder.

‘Yes. That beast, I’m afraid.’

‘It has killed many of us…’

Cycladaean detected the hint of mourning in her monotone voice. Emotion was always difficult to read in the half-souled namarti, and while there were plenty that argued the namarti felt less than the higher castes, Cycladaean wasn’t so certain.

‘Well, then let us hope the fourth hunt shall yield success,’ he offered. ‘Because if it doesn’t, it will mean I am dead. And I’d prefer to delay that inevitability for as long as possible.’

Aimheáre said nothing as she fastened his cloak to his pauldrons. It was a mesh of crimson and white kelp-fibre, bound with a lattice of spindle-quartz thread from Hysh. As she handed him his warhelm, a close-faced barbute bearing a lateral crest resembling the dorsal fin of a sail-fish, she finally spoke.

‘Then may the Ghost of Mathlann favour you.’

Cycladaean smiled. It was a touching gesture from a namarti. He rose, resplendent in his panoply, and took his helm under the crook of his arm, moving into his personal quarters. A net hammock hung between two coral pillars, wrapped in blankets of dense kelp-weed. In typical Dhom-hain fashion, the skulls of fangmora eels decorated the tops of the pillars. But what he sought leaned on the weapon rack in the corner, casting its golden light around the chamber.

Reaching forth, he felt the heat of the weapon a heartbeat before he gripped it. It was a trident sculpted from living diamond, a relic rumoured to have been forged by the ancient cythai, and said to have received the blessing of the great illuminator, Teclis, himself.

‘Pontumahár,’ Cycladaean addressed it. ‘It is time, once again.’ He held it aloft as he moved through the main chamber. That Aimheáre seemed to react in the same way any other idoneth would when confronted with its light always marvelled him. Could the namarti see it?

‘Well,’ he said, partly to Aimheáre, partly to nobody in particular. ‘We have sought shelter in this place of shadows and gloom. Perhaps it is time to cast a light into our dark world…’ Saying nothing further, he strode out, setting off in the direction of the stables.

At the end of a long trench, a massive warren of sculpted coral growth marked the akhelian stables. It delved deeper into the bedrock of the cliff-face to open into a network of vacuous interior chambers that housed the akhelian’s bond-beasts. Harpoon-armed namarti thralls patrolled the dark corridors, while embailors, dark robed and silver masked, worked within the black cells to repurpose the souls of new captured beasts. Cycladaean’s beast lurked in one of the more spacious cells. Opening the leviadon-shell doors, Cycladaean entered a sizeable natural cavern in the basalt and greeted the beast that had accompanied him into exile.

Ishcetus uncoiled its tentacles from an outcropping and descended into the main chamber to circle around Cycladaean, its form sinuous and lithe, its flesh scarred. Aquamarine and viridian scales shone a muted grey in the pallid anemone-light as it pushed its head towards Cycladaean. The deepmare’s horn had been broken off years ago, and so Cycladaean had fashioned it a skull-plate, befitted with a crest of four horns sculpted from hooked, serrated blades.

‘At long last, Ishcetus,’ he said. ‘We may ride again.’

Exiting the labyrinthine structure, Cycladaean mounted, and stared up into the twilight, bathyal gloom of the sea above, feeling the primal power of the deepmare flow through him. ‘Ride, Ishcetus,’ he urged. After so long confined in the courts, he longed to feel the rushing currents of the ethersea.

Ishcetus’ tentacles coiled, and propelled them both upwards into the open water. Gripping the reins with one hand and his glowing trident in the other, Cycladaean could not help but grin as the deepmare tore through the ethersea bubble surrounding Rúndhar.

At the city’s edge, the ledge dropped off into the inky abyssal darkness, and beyond Cycladaean could make out hints of the opposing wall of the Black Trough, leagues away. Motes of light hung suspended in the water column. From the lures of fanged anglerfish to the bale-lights of their larger, more monstrous lampmouth kin, the entire ocean was a dizzying tapestry of shifting, blinking false stars. Cycladaean saw the vast, netlike forms of siphonophores undulate in the deep currents, while the titanic shapes of distant ghyrwhales silhouetted the dim light filtering in from above.

Satisfied with his freedom, he slowly urged Ishcetus back down, to where a congregation of akhelian gathered before the fanged entrance of the Maw Court. A dozen fangmora riders were suspended not far above the city’s trench-avenues, while a pair of allopexes, each bearing a duo of akhelian huntresses circled, ever eager to be on the move. As Cycladaean joined them he was greeted by suspicious whispers and turned faces.

Eventually, King Akhamar emerged from one of the towers above, riding resplendent atop a deepmare of his own. His beast’s scales were drab brown and deep red, much like those of the fangmoras. Such beasts were clearly creatures of the lightless deep, where such colouration acted as perfect camouflage.

The hunters brandished their weapons in salute as the king pulled the reins of his deepmare, halting it just before Cycladaean’s mount.

‘I hope you enjoyed your gallivanting,’ Akhamar said dourly. ‘There will be no room for that once we begin the hunt.’

‘I did enjoy my gallivanting.’ Cycladaean gave a cold smile. ‘I think you mistake those of the Barricadius Reef to be soft-skinned sponge-farmers. But know that we hunt krakigon and megallopex just as you do…’

Akhamar snorted. ‘The beasts of Ghyran are but tame infants compared to those of our seas.’

‘Says one who has never left Ghur,’ Cycladaean retorted. He knew full well there were some he could never make peace with.

‘Careful, outsider,’ Akhamar hissed. ‘The high queen may have wished for you to join this hunt… but you have no friends among us. With a favourable current, perhaps you shall die down there in the darkness, and rid us of your meddling ways…’

With that, the akhelian king spurred his deepmare and accelerated up into the open water, calling his party to the hunt. Cycladaean wondered if Akhamar’s words were merely a morbid, idle hope, or a promised threat.

‘Wouldn’t that be convenient,’ he said to himself as he shrugged, squeezing Ishcetus’ flanks with his knees to follow the pack out into the gloom beyond the safety of Rúndhar.

As they set off, they were joined by the massive form of a Ghurite leviadon, its knobby shell a dark, mottled grey, and its beaklike jaw befitted with bladed protrusions that almost resembled fangs. The bone howdah mounted atop its jagged, ridged shell bore a pair of akhelian hunters manning harpoon launchers, and a lone ma’harr at its prow, clutching the chains that would direct the beast. Standing at the stern of the howdah, another figure leaned on a staff headed by a searingly bright lantern that cast a halo of illumination for several hundred paces around the party. She was robed and cowled in black, and armoured in exaggerated, winglike pauldrons. The barely visible ethersea currents, resembling strands of disturbed water emanating around her, indicated her to be the expedition’s tidecaster.

After exiting the ethersea bubble surrounding Rúndhar, the hunting party descended the gradual decline of the ledge that contoured the Black Trough. The fangmora riders fanned out in a scouting shoal pattern, and all was silent, save for the periodic alarm bells sounded by the forward allopex riders, warning of potential dangers along their path. While most of these dangers involved easily avoidable benthic predators – like swarms of spindly carcinarians, and their solitary, more gargantuan cousins, the bulky, spike-shelled carcinclaws – the occasional pelagic predator gave Cycladaean at least a hint of the thrill he had been anticipating. Even so, it wasn’t enough to stir him completely. The wild allopexes, demikrakens and wolf-gnarcuda packs the band evaded were certainly larger, more brutish and outwardly more intimidating than the predators of his home-sea, but Cycladaean couldn’t help but notice a lack of subtlety. While the Ghurite predators he had seen thus far easily outmatched the predators of the Barricadius Reef in size and ferocity, the hunting beasts of the colourful and shallow reefs his enclave made their home in more than compensated for such inadequacies by hiding more subtle weaponry amidst their garish colours and lithe forms. Here, in the Black Trough, there were no ambush predators, or scheming mimic creatures that would feign the appearance of something more benign, only to lash out with envenomed spines. Here, danger was far more blatant, and Cycladaean wondered if the Dhom-hain would ever even acknowledge that any other danger could exist.

After an hour, the lights of a sizeable settlement came into view, and the hunting party passed what Cycladaean assumed was the Bryozoan Groves. Massive, shelflike table corals climbed up the cliffs, sporting latticed dwellings of twisting bone, and tangled forests of fanlike growths that Cycladaean assumed were the bryozoans the settlement took its name from. Groups of namarti moved amidst the groves, harvesting the flesh pieces from the ends of the frill-like growths, and Akhamar quickly questioned a local patrol of fangmora riders, though Cycladaean could not hear the exchange. Afterwards, the king did not deign to inform him if anything of value was learned.

With Akhamar giving the signal to continue, the hunters set off again, eventually reaching the point where the shelf fell away entirely. As they approached the edge, Cycladaean almost balked at the black, seemingly endless void that waited beyond. The idoneth had long curbed their fear of the depths – that deep-seated dread felt when staring into the sea, unable to perceive what horrors might be contained within its seemingly endless gloom – but perhaps, for an idoneth used to the comparative shallows, a small sliver of that fear still remained.

The hulking shape of the leviadon drifted beneath Cycladaean, coming to a halt just below where he and Ishcetus were suspended in the darkness.

‘Afraid?’ the black-robed tidecaster called up from below. Her voice bore no taunt, curiously.

Cycladaean shrugged, glancing down at the isharann, guiding Ishcetus to keep pace with the leviadon. ‘The echo of a long-forgotten fear, perhaps… I suppose I was more confused by its presence than I was vexed by its passing…’

‘Philosophical,’ she muttered. ‘Even down here, in the darkness.’

‘It is precisely in the dark that the light of clarity must shine.’ Cycladaean gave a thin smile, pleased to finally speak to someone.

‘The light of clarity,’ she scoffed. ‘You speak of cythai philosophies. You know that such light would have burnt us to ash had we not fled into the darkness?’

‘Perhaps…’ Cycladaean admitted. ‘But we do not know if that was Teclis’ intent. Our ancestors fled because they saw the corruption within themselves, and feared Teclis would burn them away for it. Whether our creator truly desired that… none save he can know. But I choose to believe that if we prove we have fought to conquer our flaws, he will allow us to return to his light once again.’

‘And what flaws must we conquer, oh exiled philosopher prince? I daresay the plague of the unsouled is well beyond our capacity to heal.’ Even if her words were phrased like a taunt, Cycladaean sensed she wished to hear his answer. The taunt was for her own sake, meant for the ears of any that might be eavesdropping.

He decided to humour her. ‘Perhaps that woe lies beyond our reach. But there are others that are well within our grasp to conquer and heal. Fear,’ he said with a certain finality. ‘We fled into isolation, both from the realms and from our own souls. We fear ourselves, and so we deprive ourselves of all impulse and life to focus on the eternal battle of mere survival. It is a defence mechanism, of course, and a pragmatic approach to that which vexes us. But what would our cythai ancestors think of the muted, dead things we have chosen to become?’

The tidecaster did not immediately respond. ‘A deviant philosophy, to be sure. I wonder how many within the court share our high queen’s curiosity towards it? Towards you, outsider…’ Again, Cycladaean suspected she veiled her intent behind intonations of disapproval.

He chuckled. The tidecaster’s words were true. While the high queen had at least entertained his pleas for her to rejoin the assembrals and reforge contact with the Ionrach, much of the rest of the court was opposed to the notion. There were old wounds between the Dhom-hain and Ionrach that would not easily heal. But he decided to play aloof.

‘Well, that would explain why most of the court stares daggers at me.’

‘Those daggers might not always remain proverbial,’ she warned. She turned away and said no more.

Pulling at Ishcetus’ reins, Cycladaean slowed, drifting behind the leviadon as he pondered this new development. Glancing at Akhamar at the head of the hunting party, he watched the king converse with his morrsarr guard retainers. When one of them looked back towards him, it took considerable effort not to indulge in the paranoia that there was more to this hunt than he’d expected.

Cycladaean’s lips tightened. The Dhom-hain were so very unsubtle. Even so, whether he believed the tidecaster’s warning or not, he rode on, now aware that Akhamar’s animosity might extend beyond normal rivalry.

As the hunters descended over the course of several hours, the light dimmed, fading from a barely perceptible twilight gloom to an impenetrable aphotic darkness. The knowledge that this was a place that had never known – and would never know – the mere concept of light made him queasy. The immensity of the darkness pushed at Cycladaean, and he saw the tidecaster locked deep in a trance, her sorcery keeping the ethersea bubble around the hunters intact, even against the immense pressure of the abyss.

Deeper down, the silence became ever more oppressive, and the intermittent howls seemed to draw ever nearer. The party’s bond-beasts shuddered at the sound, their animal instincts shifting to fear each time the eerie call tore through the darkness. Passing another pair of smaller colonies, they continued following the chain of bells further out until eventually, the howls stopped and the remnants of a larger colony came into view, illuminated beneath the leviadon’s lantern.

Cycladaean shivered as the carnage wrought upon the settlement became apparent. The colony had been obliterated, its makeshift dwellings and brimstone chimneys torn asunder, as though smashed by the force of a pyroclastic flow. Piles of shattered debris were scattered around dozens of collapsed chimneys. The acrid, boiling fluid billowed up like smoke from the wreckage, sparse around the edges of the settlement, but denser to the point of being impossible to see through near the centre. It rippled eerily as it entered the invisible ethersea bubble surrounding the hunters. Within the pall, Cycladaean saw the vague shapes of three massive chimneys that had survived the carnage.

Most disturbing of all was the tattered remnants of organic refuse, the mangled pieces of corpses scattered about to make a macabre feast for wriggling masses of hagfish.

‘Blood of Mathlann…’ Akhamar growled from atop his deepmare, his hand gripped, white-knuckled, around the haft of his glaive.

‘What did this?’ another akhelian hissed.

As Cycladaean circled the settlement, he saw that it was built along the edge of another drop-off, where the seabed oozed over a ledge into an even deeper darkness.

‘Ighruín’s Bight,’ the tidecaster called. ‘The edge of the Halosheen Void, where it draws nearest to the Black Trough.’

‘Morrsarr, dismount!’ Akhamar called. ‘Sift through this mess and see if you can find anything.’

The allopexes continued to circle, keeping vigilant while Akhamar and a few of his akhelian remained mounted, surveying the ruin from above.

Seeking a better look, Cycladaean dismounted, taking hold of Ishcetus’ reins as he moved through the remnants of an old dwelling, scattering the swarms of hagfish that writhed across a dismembered namarti. Grimacing, he followed the trail of carnage, noting how the pale murk underfoot had been gouged by some manner of thrashing, clawed mass. Whatever this beast was, its tracks indicated that it moved by dragging itself along, rather than truly walking. Other akhelian discovered similar tracks, and fanned out to investigate, while Cycladaean moved towards the smoking mess of fissures and collapsed chimneys at the centre of the colony.

The tidecaster suddenly appeared alongside him. She’d dismounted, leaving her beast and retinue drifting above.

‘Do your outsider eyes see clues ours do not?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Cycladaean admitted, gripping his trident firmly. ‘The waters I hail from do not run so deep… And the Motlynians rarely venture deeper than they must.’

The isharann followed him as he approached the mess of debris and billowing smoke. ‘Deep questors we may be, but there are places that even our hunters dare not go. We stake a fleeting claim along the edge of the abyss, but the vast expanses beyond our meagre foothold are as unexplored as they are to any enclave.’

Cycladaean nodded in understanding. ‘There are places no light can ever illuminate… shrouded for all eternity from Hysh.’

The pair of akhelian nearest to them were a few dozen paces ahead, prodding at the edge of the smoke. Cycladaean could overhear them arguing about where the beast might have gone, and decided to make use of their momentary seclusion.

‘I should point out that you have me at a disadvantage. You know who I am, but I know very little of you. I know not even your name.’

Her features remained impassive, obscured beneath her cowl. ‘Call me Saranyss. Attendant of the high queen.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘And why would an attendant of the high queen seek to aid me?’

Saranyss gave a thin smile. ‘Times are changing. The lone allopex is devoured by the krakigon, but a pack of allopex can tear the krakigon to pieces.’ She paused. ‘There are those in the court that agree with your sentiment. That you are the first outsider permitted to live among us in so long is an opportunity…’

Cycladaean raised an eyebrow.

‘Few of our enclave leave our waters,’ she continued. ‘Fewer still leave Ghur. But I am one that has. I have travelled the whirlways. I have visited Príom and I too have learned the ways of the Ionrach.’

Cycladaean nodded in understanding. ‘So it all aligns…’

‘I might not share your sentiment about redemption… Teclis abandoned us, after all, and so we choose to remain godless. But perhaps your methods might yield more… pragmatic benefits. Reconnecting the enclaves has its merits.’

Cycladaean was about to comment that he did not expect her, nor many other idoneth to agree with his deviant views, but his words trailed off as he noticed something amiss.

The scrabbling, thrashing tracks of the beast led into the colossal pile of smouldering debris. Ahead, the akhelian kept their distance from the giant, obscured smoke chimneys, steering clear of the boiling fumes as they continued their discussion.

Cycladaean narrowed his eyes as his heart began to beat faster. The tracks did not lead out of the debris.

‘The currents…’ Saranyss said suddenly. ‘Something–’

A ripple of water disturbed the smoke, and something writhed within the brimstone haze. Something massive.

Cycladaean realised the beast had never left the ruin.

It was right in their midst, waiting for them.

He cried out in alarm, just as a serpentine tentacle ending in a mandibled lamprey maw slithered out from the smoke and grasped one of the akhelian. The serrated fangs of its circular mouth latched onto the warrior even as the four bladed mandibles pierced through the gaps in his armour. Blood haloed around him for a brief instant as his scream gurgled into silence.

And then he was gone, wrenched back into the boiling haze just as another maw erupted from the roiling smoke to grab the second, retreating akhelian. Alarm calls went up, and harpoons scythed down into the smoke from above. But it was too late: the second akhelian vanished as swiftly and as brutally as the first.

Cycladaean was well on his way to mounting Ishcetus when a gigantic, serpentine shape emerged from the boiling smoke. Five heads, mandibled, jawless and eyeless, and a razor-pronged, finned tail extended from a slimy body befitted with raking claw-fins. Its hide was a mottled red, almost black in the wan light. Cycladaean had seen etchings of such a beast before, within the ancient, long-lost ruins that dotted the lower Barricadius Reef of his younger years.

‘Kharibdyss!’ he roared as the beast towered overhead, its size easily matching that of a krakigon.

Several of its heads howled, drowning out everything else. The beast lurched forward, its fins carving deep gouges into the tortured, fissured seabed, tearing up plumes of boiling black smoke that wreathed its form as it clawed forward.

He saw Saranyss below, dazed by the approaching horror. She had nowhere to run, and so he dipped down, fighting Ishcetus’ animal flight instinct to extend a hand to the tidecaster, which she eagerly took. Hoisting her up onto his saddle before him just as the deepmare made a hard vertical ascent, they narrowly avoided the thrashing, monstrous mass that barrelled towards them.

Rearing up onto a shattered chimney, the kharibdyss’ primary head lashed out. It was larger than the others, and sported a loose lower jaw that resembled a fanged tongue. Ishcetus dodged, and while the maw missed, one mandible raked a deep crimson gouge into the deepmare’s flank, narrowly missing Cycladaean’s leg.

Cycladaean had no angle to retaliate on his own, but Ishcetus responded in kind, lashing out with a taloned forelimb to carve deep slashes into the beast’s throat. Black blood gouted from the wound as the shrieking maw retreated.

Twisting Ishcetus around, Cycladaean thrust with savage force, the diamond prongs of Pontumahár piercing deep into the rubbery flesh of the kharibdyss’ neck. It responded with an ear-splitting, abyssal howl, erupting from all five of its heads. A dissonant ripple tore through the ethersea, loosing a visible shock wave that disrupted the silt and haze before striking Cycladaean with the force of a reef swell. It was testament to his riding prowess that he was able to stay mounted, while keeping a grip on both his trident and the dazed Saranyss, who nearly toppled from the saddle.

His ears rang as Ishcetus propelled him upward, out of reach of the monster. In his daze, he saw Akhamar gesture towards the beast. A pair of barbed retarius nets whistled through the water from different angles, loosed by the allopex riders. As the nets struck home, the kharibdyss shrieked again, but Cycladaean could hardly hear it after the first howl. Looking down, he saw one of the fangmora riders, immobilised by the first debilitating sound. There was nothing he could do as the beast descended, its writhing maws ripping into eel and rider, vivisecting them both with revolting speed.

‘Saranyss!’ he called, shouting directly into her ear. Her cowl had fallen, and her dazed features quickly regained composure. There was a faint discolouration on her skin, the bruising of concussive force, and Cycladaean saw the same on his own arms.

He let go of her to retake Ishcetus’ reins. The deepmare, ordinarily a peerless apex predator, was little more than a frightened, isolated gnarcuda in the face of a charging megallopex. It wanted to flee, and Cycladaean fully understood. Every shred of rational thought pulled him away from the howling, writhing horror. But he grit his teeth, and forced his mount to comply with the irrational. For now, he was the hunter, and the beast was his prey.

As the last of his disorientation faded into the backdrop of his ringing ears, he felt the rush of battle upon him, lending him an almost feral focus as he pulled the reins to wheel Ishcetus around. Akhamar was shouting something as the beast slithered across the ruins, haloed by smoke and debris raked up by its claws. Thrashing as it was, the harpoon-gunners on the leviadon and the netters on the circling allopexes could not easily target it. And worse, the beast was making directly for the abyssal rim. Shots went wide, and it was impossible to tell if those that landed had inflicted any meaningful damage.

They needed to fell it now. If it dropped off the rim, their descent would be slowed, as Saranyss would need to adjust her aetheric channelling to account for the increasing pressure. It would be able to escape and hide once more. For now, in the open as it was, the hunters had the advantage.

Seeing that the Dhom-hain had yet to rally and seize that advantage, Cycladaean raised his gleaming trident. ‘Strike now before it flees! We may not get a better chance!’ he called, though he could barely hear his own voice.

With the leviadon drifting near, Saranyss leaped off the saddle and drifted through the darkness towards her beast as Cycladaean lowered his trident and spurred Ishcetus into a charge. With a rush of speed, the deepmare lowered its horned skull-plate and dived straight towards the kharibdyss.

Somehow, the beast sensed his charge, eyeless though it was. Its heads reared back as it coiled to face him.

Him alone. The other akhelian had not joined him. They hovered above, waiting. It took Cycladaean a moment to realise their delay came neither from hesitation nor cowardice. Akhamar had held them back deliberately. They were waiting for Cycladaean to die.

Two heads lashed at him before he could retreat. Yanking the reins, he spiralled to the left, darting under the maw while thrusting up, his trident flashing with blinding speed. Golden light flared as it punched through the coiling neck of the first head. The other twisted close, lashing up at Ishcetus’ underside, but the deepmare’s tentacles wrapped around it, grappling with it to prevent its bladed mandibles from inflicting anything more than surface wounds. The first head coiled away with a shriek, and Cycladaean angled his trident down, thrusting again, punching two prongs clean through the beast’s lamprey mouth.

A third and fourth head surged in simultaneously, and Cycladaean spurred Ishcetus forward. The deepmare detached itself and hurtled towards the central mass of the monster. Cycladaean skewered the third head with a lightning-quick thrust while the bladed mandible of the fourth tore through his cloak and clanged off his breastplate with staggering force. Nearly knocked from his saddle, he twisted, bringing his trident up and over his mount to strike on the opposite side, landing another thrust into the fourth writhing maw.

His heart thundered as his blood roared through his ringing ears. The thrill of battle was upon him, and he experienced that moment of perfect focus one could only feel when in a situation where one wrong movement would mean certain death. He thrust again towards the main body of the monster, stabbing into yet another mouth, bizarrely leering from the beast’s chest.

The larger, jawed head reared up, and Cycladaean instinctively pulled Ishcetus away. The deepmare’s tentacles were coiled around another maw, which ravenously thrashed up towards his mount’s underside. He thrust down as Ishcetus broke free, skewering the maw and forcing it away, giving himself room to manoeuvre.

He pulled the reins, giving another rearing head a savage thrust as Ishcetus propelled itself upward and away from the monster. The kharibdyss howled again, and while Cycladaean certainly felt the impact, its effects were lessened thanks to his retreat.

Free from immediate danger, he locked his gaze onto that of King Akhamar, who stared back, a cold snarl curling across his features. Cycladaean returned the expression and spurred Ishcetus into another charge, directly towards Akhamar.

The king had left him to die. They’d had the perfect opportunity. Together, they could have ended the beast. But it would seem that King Akhamar had an ulterior agenda, just as Saranyss had warned. Cycladaean was not about to meekly ignore the obvious.

As Cycladaean hurtled closer, the king and his retinue realised what was happening, and began to raise their weapons to receive the charge. Scores needed to be settled, and so Cycladaean angled his trident as Ishcetus propelled him through the ethersea towards his rival. He saw Akhamar’s eyes widen. Whether it was from fear, shock or anticipation, it did not matter. It was immeasurably satisfying. Cycladaean yanked the reins back, and Ishcetus’ finned tentacles splayed out, halting the charge but a few strokes from Akhamar.

He would not shed the blood of his fellow idoneth, not unless he had to. A false charge would be enough of a message. He would not bow meekly to the unsubtle games of the Dhom-hain. It was clear enough why Akhamar and his allies had not lent him their aid, and Cycladaean would leave no doubt that he would repay any further treachery with his own righteous retribution.

False charge aside, there were things that needed to be said, and Cycladaean’s rage would be vented. ‘Scheming coward!’ he roared. ‘We had a chance to slay the beast, and you spoil it for your own petty schemes!’

Akhamar snarled something back, but Cycladaean could not hear it over the thundering of his own heart. A pair of morrsarr guard approached, their crackling lances lowered in threat. Halos of biovoltaic energy sizzled around their undulating mounts.

Sound returned in a disorienting rush, and Cycladaean grit his teeth at the pain reverberating through his skull. He braced his trident, ready to meet the morrsarr guard should they dare attack him.

Akhamar raised his hand, his expression curled into a sneer visible through his visor. ‘Your charge against the beast was most inspiring, outsider. We simply did not wish to steal your glory…’

‘Oh, I’m certain of that,’ Cycladaean spat, his face curled into a rictus as an icy flush of rage coursed through his veins. ‘I’m sure my glory was your chief concern, coward.’ Dimly, Cycladaean realised insulting the king in front of his retinue might not be the wisest idea, but at that moment, he did not care. He glanced back, taking his eyes from Akhamar and his guards for a moment to see the kharibdyss throw itself off the slope of the continental rise in an avalanche of dust and oozing debris. The allopexes broke off their pursuit, and darted back towards the rest of the hunters.

Akhamar and his steed lurched forward in a threatening manner, but Cycladaean did not flinch. The king pointed with his glaive.

‘Insult me again, outsider, and I will cull your treasonous tongue by removing your head. I gave you an opportunity to prove your honour in battle against the beast alone. But you were the one who fled like a coward.’

Cycladaean’s lips curled into a sneer as he let out a cold, caustic laugh. ‘Go on, king, try to take my head.’ He twisted his trident in his grip, and pointed it at Akhamar once more. At their proximity, Pontumahár’s prongs almost touched the serrated tip of the king’s glaive.

The morrsarr guard circled around, and a chorus of whispers went through the akhelian, but they hardly distracted Cycladaean. He knew enough of the Dhom-hain. If a duel was coming, they would not intervene.

The oncoming bulk of the leviadon, approaching from below, did cause him to pull back, however. Its speed was not aggressive, but it was more than enough for both deepmares to part and give it room.

‘Fools! All of you!’ Saranyss shouted from atop the leviadon’s howdah, now at the level of the rest of the hunters. She glanced between Cycladaean and Akhamar. ‘We fight for the safety of Rúndhar and you choose to turn this into a dispute!’ She rounded on the king. ‘Callous and cowardly! Issue a duel in court or send assassins in the night tides, but do not jeopardise the hunt you declared to be so sacred!’

Cycladaean pulled Ishcetus further away. He didn’t know whether or not Saranyss had true authority over Akhamar, but he respected her open rebuke of the king nonetheless. He felt the rage slip away, funnelling into the black, cold void in which all unwanted emotion went to die. When Saranyss turned to Cycladaean, he gave her a nod of acquiescence, and retreated, already following the beast’s path of carnage to the continental shelf. He would be the one to set the example, to set aside their differences, and return to the hunt. Such would play into his endgame.

As the other hunters rallied and followed, the leviadon took up position in the fore of the hunting party. Cycladaean shared a glance with Saranyss. He’d only sought to put the fright of his retribution into Akhamar. That much seemed to have worked, at least. Perhaps now, the Dhom-hain would be more wary of him.

When Akhamar gave the order to begin the descent and pursue the beast deep into the Halosheen Void, Cycladaean waited, ensuring that the other hunters were well ahead of him before doing the same. Beast or no beast, he would not show his back to an enemy again. And now, it seemed, he was surrounded by enemies.

The tracks of the beast scrambled down the oozing slope of the aeons-buried caldera that was the Halosheen Void. The descent was steep, and Cycladaean wondered how the kharibdyss had managed to drag itself up the slopes before.

With the party’s descent slowed by Saranyss’ intense efforts to keep the unbearable pressure of the hadal depths at bay, Cycladaean took the time to lean forward and inspect Ishcetus’ wounds. The deepmare’s movements were ever so slightly slowed by the slashes it had taken, but he knew the beast would not allow itself to be hindered by such minor injuries when the hunt was on once more.

Eventually, the slope flattened into a wide, alien landscape of smoking fissures and overgrown thickets of giant crimson-blooming tubeworms. Boulder-like, slimy stromatolite mounds grew along the edges of glimmering brine pools that eerily resembled the glassy surfaces of the ponds and lakes Cycladaean had seen during the surface raids he’d joined. The ethersea became warmer, and the volcanic fissures became more commonplace as the kharibdyss’ tracks led towards some form of mountain looming in the distance, obscured by the hadal murk.

‘The beast must have its lair in a cavern somewhere within that mountain,’ one of the akhelian called.

But the mountain was not, in fact, a mountain. During Cycladaean’s first foray into the seas of Ghur, he had trodden the warmer Atleus Ocean, and visited the court of the Nautilar. The ‘mountain’ before them bore a close resemblance to the gargantuan being upon which the Nautilar enclave had built its capital. This one was much smaller, but the resemblance was enough for Cycladaean to realise it was the same type of creature.

It was a scaphodon, and by the looks of it, it was aeons dead.

Cycladaean’s jaw tightened as the ossified husk of the immense, many-limbed isopod came into clearer view. The shell of the beast was half a league long, and almost a quarter-league high. The massive bony segments of its dorsal armour were overgrown with a forest of spindly, pale bryozoans, while dozens of massive crustaceanoid limbs, each as thick as a leviadon, jutted from its side. Beneath the flanged protrusions of its upper armour, gargantuan gill-vents were overgrown by drooping, bioluminescent marine lichen.

The rear section of the scaphodon husk had sunk into a network of fissures, putting one of the gill-holes at the relative level of the seabed. The beast’s tracks led inside, into what was undoubtedly a claustrophobic warren that would favour the kharibdyss, rather than the hunters.

Cycladaean shot a caustic glare at Akhamar. ‘I trust your plan to allow the beast to escape to more favourable ground was deliberate?’

‘Silence, you conniving parasite!’ Akhamar hissed. ‘Your words of division have cut deep enough, even out here! If you speak again, I will sever your head, if only to silence your lies!’

‘I’ll give you one swing, before I obliterate your soul with the light of Teclis’ judgement,’ Cycladaean replied, a cold smile twisting his lips. He raised his trident as his grip on Ishcetus’ reins tightened. Pontumahár glowed with savage intensity. ‘In all the courts I have visited, I have never encountered an akhelian as stubborn and regressive as you. Would you wish your people to degenerate into the very beasts we hunt? Into little more than predator or prey? Has Ghur twisted you so?’

The morrsarr guard shifted their position at the insult, curling around Cycladaean’s flanks. Cycladaean smirked, seeing the eyes of the fangmora riders around him. They had once looked upon him with arrogant disdain. The dismissal of a weakling outsider, hiding behind extravagant colours, too soft to ever match one of the Dhom-hain. But now he saw hesitation in their eyes. They saw an outsider that had fought alone against an unknown terror of the deeps. They saw an outsider who openly defied their king, who stood alone against the shoals of foes surrounding him, unblinking and unafraid.

The intensity in their eyes, swallowing their hesitation, told him enough of what was coming. They were going to try and kill him. Saranyss’ warning had not been an unlikely scenario. He did not know whether she knew, or merely suspected, but it was enough. He could see it. The other hunters had instructions to slay him at King Akhamar’s command. The predatory glances he’d received should have warned him prior, but Cycladaean had refused to believe that the Dhom-hain would stoop so low. Even after they’d left him to die against the kharibdyss, he had refused to accept such a possibility. But now he could see their anticipation. Confrontation was coming. And they were afraid of it.

Cycladaean did not let his revelation show. He would play the fool, and ensure that these unsubtle assassins would not gain the advantage they thought they had. Instead, he gestured with his trident towards the half-buried gill-vent the beast had slithered into. He took a diplomatic tone.

‘Or we can finish what we set out to do, and settle our differences later…’

Akhamar stared at him, unblinking hate burning in his gaze, but he said nothing. He spurred his deepmare forward into the gaping tunnel in the scaphodon’s porous exoskeleton, leading the hunting party deep into the gloom of the long-dead behemoth’s innards.

Cycladaean followed just as soon as the other hunters entered, smiling to himself. He would not let them strike at him first.

Inside, the same bioluminescent lichen illuminated the petrified tunnels, while giant, gaunt anemones reached out for them with slimy, translucent tentacles. The tunnels were wide enough for most of the bond-beasts, but there was no way for the leviadon to fit. As such, Saranyss and her beast remained outside, where she could channel the ethersea into the scaphodon husk.

Moving through the labyrinthine warren, they emerged into a massive hollow cavern. Ribbed and vast, it was several hundred strokes across, at least, and blooms of pale bryozoans grew like fanned branches from almost every surface, while veritable drapes of lichen hung like tentacles from the ceilings and walls. Eviscerated pieces of all manner of benthic creatures littered the glassy brine pools dominating most of the chamber’s floor, eerily preserved alongside the desiccated remains of countless smaller crustaceans and fish. Dozens of tunnels branched away in every direction, and Cycladaean realised that the kharibdyss could be hidden within any of them.

‘Fan out, seeker shoal!’ Akhamar commanded.

In response, the morrsarr guard split into small groups, channelling their mounts’ biovoltaic energy into crackling electrical fields that would allow them to flush any hiding creatures out from whatever cover they might find. The allopexes joined the search, relying on their acute sense of smell, and the keen eyes of the huntresses riding them.

Cycladaean panned his gaze across the cavern, directing Ishcetus as close to the ceiling as he could. He glared at Akhamar. Now they had to hunt the kharibdyss in its own territory. Every brine pool, every tunnel and every clump of overgrown mess could contain the beast. Nowhere was safe. Cycladaean was not about to risk his own life to sniff out the beast, for he was certain that when the ambush came, it would be the death of whomever was nearest to it. He’d let someone else be the live bait.

But his thoughts were cut short, for the ambush came sooner than any had expected.

The kharibdyss erupted from one of the lightless, brine-flooded tunnels directly beneath one of the allopexes, voraciously tearing into its prey with all five of its maws. One of the mounted huntresses loosed a single retarius net into its midsection prior to being skewered in the throat by a descending mandible. The allopex thrashed, sinking its dagger-like teeth into one of the serpentine necks, tearing a gaping wound in it before being eviscerated by the other maws.

Akhamar, the next nearest to it, drew his deepmare away from the monster as clouds of brine and crimson haloed around its thrashing form.

‘Dhom-hain!’ the king roared, raising his glaive. ‘Carcinclaw formation!’

It was all the cue the hunters needed.

The gunner on the remaining allopex loosed a harpoon, the missile piercing deep into the beast’s rubbery flank and eliciting another shriek as a trio of morrsarr guard rushed in, their hooked spears crackling with biovoltaic energy as they drew the beast’s attention. Two other groups of fangmora riders darted in from the flanks while Akhamar followed the first group into the charge.

Cycladaean did the same, but arced wide, following one of the flanking parties. Even with the threat of the beast present, he would not show his back to the other hunters.

The first trio of morrsarr guard darted in. Two of the riders deftly evaded the thrashing heads to deliver keening strikes with their biovoltaically charged spears, sending the beast reeling away, its wounds sizzling. The third rider was engulfed, mount and all, by the primary head, which had already consumed much of the allopex and one of the huntresses.

As the survivors of the first group of morrsarr coiled away, deftly avoiding their flanking compatriots, the beast howled again. The ear-splitting roar tore through the ethersea, crippling the fangmoras and sending Akhamar’s deepmare staggering back. Cycladaean had kept his distance this time, recognising the telltale signs of the imminent howl before it happened. The kharibdyss tore into one of the flanking groups of morrsarr guard, eviscerating all three of them in a matter of moments.

As the roiling mess of debris, blood and brine shrouded the beast once more, Cycladaean cursed, realising that their advantage might again be lost. Rushing in alongside Akhamar, he pierced its halo, and caught a glimpse of its rapidly closing wounds before putting the full force of his momentum into a singular thrust, impaling Pontumahár’s prongs deep into the gullet of one of the beast’s heads. Ishcetus’ tentacles coiled around another head to immobilise it as Cycladaean twisted in his saddle and thrust again, spearing another head while Akhamar’s glaive scythed through another throat.

Blinded by a fountain of black blood, Cycladaean barely registered another akhelian darting in, his crackling lance skewering the beast in the flank only moments before the monster’s pronged tail lashed out in retaliation, impaling the rider and his eel.

The kharibdyss staggered back, three of its heads lolling uselessly as it thrashed away, howling in what sounded like pain. While the noise was less debilitating, Ishcetus recoiled nonetheless, narrowly avoiding another swipe of the kharibdyss’ spiked tail. Akhamar’s steed, similarly stunned, was not so lucky, and three of the tail spines pierced its flanks, knocking it and Akhamar away. The king sagged in his saddle, clearly dazed.

Cycladaean wasted no time. The beast was wounded, and it was dragging itself into one of the brine-filled tunnels where they could not follow. If it escaped now, it might regenerate, and Cycladaean did not want to know if it could regain control of its crippled heads. He knew it had to have a weakness, and he realised that such would either be its larger head, or its centre of mass. He could only guess.

Wheeling Ishcetus into another charge, he flipped the grip on his trident, holding it over his shoulder as his deepmare propelled him above the beast. Pontumahár gleamed like a falling star as he thrust it down, sinking its prongs deep into the primary head.

Ishcetus’ momentum, and Cycladaean’s iron grip on his weapon, wrenched it free in a gout of black blood, which misted through the roiling ethersea around the kharibdyss. It slumped, staggering back. Cycladaean felt a surge of satisfaction pump through him as the beast shuddered. It was dying. He had struck the killing blow. It reared, and slid into one of the brine-flooded tunnels, its last thrashes throwing up a cloudy murk into the ethersea around them.

And then, after a few moments of silence, it lurched deeper into the inky darkness, unleashing another ear-splitting howl from its remaining head.

‘Blood of Mathlann,’ Cycladaean cursed, wheeling Ishcetus around to survey the scene. ‘Will you not just die?!’

Blood, brine, debris and mutilated pieces of flesh swirled about the cavern in the beast’s wake. Only five morrsarr guard and a lone allopex remained, outside of himself and Akhamar. As the king recovered, pulling his wounded deepmare out of the bryozoans, Cycladaean narrowed his eyes. Akhamar had pulled away from the carnage, and clutched his side. Both he and his mount were wounded. The other hunters would be too far away to help.

Cycladaean tightened his grip on his trident. He glanced around. The hunters were few. But they were still too many. He would need help to even the odds.

‘Not yet,’ he whispered to himself, and loosened his grip. He turned to the hunters. ‘We must ride the beast down, while it is wounded!’

They formed up, with Akhamar and his wounded deepmare drifting to the centre of the formation as they moved into the tunnel. This time, Cycladaean would lead, even if it meant showing his back to his enemies.

With the ethersea unable to provide its benefit in the briny tunnel the kharibdyss fled through, he would need to find an alternative route. Glancing around, he settled on another side passage. ‘This way,’ he called.

Miraculously, the others followed. The morrsarr guard surrounded their wounded king, while the allopex kept pace right behind Cycladaean. He assumed his fellows would be more than content to let him lead the way, and trigger any ambush that was coming. But this time, Cycladaean would be ready. The kharibdyss was quick, but now it was wounded. He whispered a silent prayer to Teclis that Ishcetus would be quicker.

Descending, he kept close to the floor of the passage, skimming over the brine-flooded tunnels and glistening clumps of matted lichens.

This time, he would be the bait.

Passing through another, smaller chamber, he glanced behind him to see the remnants of the hunting party keeping pace. Akhamar’s deepmare trailed blood, and listed to the side.

Cycladaean led them through a further twisting tunnel to reach a wide, flattened chamber, his eyes panning about for any sign of their quarry. The ceiling was low, and the entire section was overgrown with lichens and a criss-cross of bryozoan branches. The passage doubled back, and intersected with several of the briny, lower tunnels. His pursuit had been slow, thanks to the king’s wounded mount. The beast would have had ample time to conceal itself once more.

And then he saw it. A disturbed trail of debris leading from the mouth of a tunnel into another, larger brine pool.

‘There you are,’ he hissed as he guided Ishcetus low. He allowed the deepmare’s trailing tentacles to skim the pool. ‘Now, come out, it’s feasting time!’ he roared, pulling the deepmare up at the last possible moment as the kharibdyss, unable to resist its predatory instincts, erupted from the pool directly in front of the allopex.

The riders managed a scream, but stood no chance as the monster’s three functional heads tore into them with savage fury, ripping them and their mount to pieces in moments. Wheeling Ishcetus around, Cycladaean pulled his deepmare into a roll just in time to dodge a savage swipe of the beast’s spiked tail.

The three morrsarr guard riding ahead of their king had only barely managed to halt their momentum when Cycladaean saw the beast rear, its writhing mass half obscured in the halo of debris and blood. It emitted its abyssal howl just as Cycladaean pulled Ishcetus back, his deepmare able to halt and redirect its momentum with ease, thus allowing it to escape what the fangmora riders could not.

Staggered for a single, fatal moment, the three morrsarr guard met the same fate as their allopex vanguard as the beast descended, shredding them with mandible and lamprey maw.

Cycladaean shook his head, disgust flooding through him. He felt a moment of doubt. He had led these akhelian to their doom. He had deliberately triggered the kharibdyss’ ambush, knowing full well that other idoneth would die because of it.

It was a most unpleasant sensation, being the traitor.

But Cycladaean quashed the unwanted emotion, casting it into the thoughtless void where all such misgivings went to die. They would have inevitably betrayed him had he not done so first. If a few idoneth had to perish for him to accomplish his goals, then so be it. The scope of his plans was greater than the petty lives of a few regressive akhelian who would have never seen the light anyway. The Dhom-hain had to rejoin the fold, for the good of all idoneth. These akhelian were but a small, unfortunate sacrifice to pay.

He returned his attention to the carnage. The debris grew denser in the narrow tunnel as the beast thrashed forward, dragging itself across the bony substrate towards Akhamar and the pair of morrsarr guard that flanked him. They were the only ones left. Cycladaean’s lips curled into a grim smile as he caught Akhamar’s gaze a moment before the king was obscured by the cloud. The king’s eyes glared at him, the revelation at Cycladaean’s treachery evident in the murderous malice shining within them. The king’s lips mouthed the word ‘traitor’, even if Cycladaean’s ringing ears could not hear it.

He didn’t see what happened next, but the flashes of biovoltaic energy in the debris cloud told him enough. The fangmoras had charged in to protect their king, and had scored hits. Cycladaean wished them due fortune in their endeavour, hoping they would inflict as much damage as they could before they undoubtedly perished.

But then Akhamar and his deepmare burst through the thrashing carnage, barrelling directly towards Cycladaean. The king had charged through the beast to get at him.

Cycladaean lowered his trident to receive the charge, gritting his teeth in anticipation at finally having the chance to silence the rival that had vexed him so, even if he knew the final confrontation would be disappointing. Even had Akhamar and his beast not been wounded, Cycladaean doubted the fight would have been a fair one.

But the king’s last charge never even reached Cycladaean.

The kharibdyss’ spiked tail lashed up, impaling Akhamar’s deepmare through the underside. One spine pierced up through its jaw, deep into its skull. It died instantly, and Akhamar sailed off, tumbling through the ethersea to crash through several bryozoans and splash into a brine pool only a few strokes in front of Ishcetus.

Cycladaean shook his head. Both of his enemies were in one neat path. It would be an efficient set of kills. Perhaps his finest, had his foes not already been so grievously wounded.

He spurred Ishcetus into a charge.

As Akhamar recovered, standing, he scrambled for his glaive, only to be rammed by the bladed horns of Ishcetus’ skull-plate, mid-charge. His armour buckled and cracked as he was tossed aside with bone-shattering force.

As the kharibdyss wheeled around, rearing up to emit its howl, Cycladaean hurled Pontumahár directly at the central maw jutting from its misshapen torso. The prongs glinted with soul-searing radiance, and embedded themselves deep into the monster’s rubbery flesh.

It did howl, but the noise was weak. A sputtering fire on a beach, drowned by a rogue wave. Cycladaean pulled his deepmare up as it thrashed wildly, its heads flailing about madly as it clawed its way forward. It ground its bulk across the rocks, forcing the trident further into its chest.

And then it collapsed, and all was silent. Nothing moved.

Cycladaean breathed a sigh of relief, his heart thundering in his ringing ears. He drifted down cautiously, patting Ishcetus on the neck. ‘The light blesses,’ he murmured. After a moment, when he was certain the beast wasn’t going to jolt to life once more, he let out a laugh, the euphoria of victory flooding through his veins.

As he circled his kill amidst the halo of wreckage, he saw his glowing trident, embedded deep, but visible. He’d worried for a moment about how the beast had collapsed, and whether he’d ever dig his weapon free from its carcass, but it seemed then that luck had favoured him. He dismounted, and reclaimed Pontumahár, shaking it free of the sticky black ichor.

Ishcetus growled, causing him to turn.

Akhamar was still alive. He was crawling towards where his glaive had sunk into another briny pool. Cycladaean drifted over, skipping across the ribbed bone below to land right behind the king, his trident angled down.

The king turned and gasped something. He’d have many broken ribs, and might well be crippled for life. There was a chance he’d recover, though, and Cycladaean firmly believed that a turned rival could make for the strongest and most faithful ally.

He thrust Pontumahár into Akhamar’s throat.

The king gurgled as golden light blossomed in his eyes, a moment before they smouldered, scorched black by his immolating soul.

Cycladaean wrenched his trident free. Some enemies could not be turned. And Akhamar was certainly among them. He grimaced, and shook his head. Skewering his broken rival had not been his finest moment, but the kill was necessary. Akhamar’s fate had been written the moment he’d revealed his intent to let Cycladaean die.

Gripping Ishcetus’ reins, he remounted, and began the laborious trek out of the scaphodon carcass, back into the open sea.

He found Saranyss waiting atop her hulking leviadon. Her features displayed surprise, a most uncharacteristic expression to an idoneth, though Cycladaean could understand it fully. He had returned alone.

‘The beast,’ he said, taking a deep breath, ‘is dead.’

The tidecaster blinked, and then nodded. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘And the others?’

Cycladaean’s mouth curled into a disappointed grimace. ‘Dead as well, I’m afraid. King Akhamar fought bravely, as did his hunters. They almost succeeded in felling their prey, but their quarry proved too fearsome for them.’

Saranyss gave a slow nod. It was enough to indicate that she understood his meaning. ‘Then you killed the beast alone?’ she asked.

Cycladaean managed a half-smile, and held Pontumahár aloft. Its light burned brighter than ever. ‘By the grace of the Light, I did. Your people can rest easy now.’

Saranyss bowed her head. ‘By the grace of the Light indeed. I’m sure the high queen will offer a great reward for your service.’

Cycladaean nodded, spurring Ishcetus away from the scaphodon husk, and back the way they’d come. The leviadon turned, and kept pace. After a few moments, he spoke again.

‘Then I shall ask the high queen what I’ve asked of every other enclave I have visited.’

The tidecaster looked at him expectantly.

‘I will urge her to send envoys to the assembrals in Príom. The time for seclusion and fear is coming to an end. It is time to unite our people once more.’

Saranyss tilted her head. ‘I’m not sure much of the court will approve of that. And I doubt she’ll find many envoys willing to volunteer for such a journey.’

‘If she honours my boon, the court will do as she says, will they not? She is the high queen.’

The tidecaster nodded.

Cycladaean gave Saranyss a sidelong glance. ‘And I can think of at least one particularly open-minded isharann within your court that might be willing to make such a journey.’

She nodded again, a half-smile on her lips.

Cycladaean bowed his head. ‘Then I believe this hunt was a success. A rather pyrrhic victory, no doubt, but a victory nonetheless. A predator slain… and a door opened. I believe it will soon be time for the Dhom-hain to return to the fold.’

The tidecaster sighed. ‘Oh, I doubt that will happen anytime soon. But perhaps your boon will be the first step.’

‘The first step? No. The first steps have already been taken. But another… another step towards unity,’ Cycladaean whispered, lowering his voice so that only he could hear. His next words were a promise. Not to himself, but to all of his people.

‘Another step towards shedding our fear and returning to the Light that made us.’

About the Author

Miles A Drake is a professional bartender and aspiring author based in Amsterdam, Holland. His work for Black Library includes the short stories ‘The Flesh Tithe’ and ‘Ghosts of Khaphtar’.

An extract from The Court of the Blind King.

Prince Lurien slumped boredly into the Jade Throne of Briomdar. An artefact of whale ivory and aquamarine, it had thin strands of jade woven through an armature of living coral by the shamanic tide magicks of the isharann chorralus. The physical discomfort of that seat was offset somewhat by the novelty, and by the still-fuzzy glow of his mother’s death. Lurien smiled and shifted position. It was the ‘living’ part, he decided. The coral. In essence, he was sitting on a cunningly crafted rock, one that would regrow itself for each new generation of royalty and never be worn to fit an aelf’s shape. There was a lesson from the gods there, his mother would have said, about hubris and impermanence.

And Queen Lágethé, Tidemistress of the City of Seers, a proven authority on hubris, was now well placed to muse on impermanence.

Her soul, on the other hand…

With a weary sigh, Lurien wound a gauntleted finger through the algal strands of his periwig. The lengths were tied into knots and braids, luminescent turquoise wound with coarse-textured gold. The royal colours of Briomdar. With the bone of his jaw resting against his knuckles, he watched the performance.

The néthic dancer swirled, fishlike, between scattered groups of hooded isharann and ceremonially armoured akhelian, swimming through the deep green ethersea of the hall with the glowing chorrileum shard held above her head. Her body had been painted in mourning purple, marked further in subdued golden pigments with the runes of Erek, Thial and Néthu, with long streamers of black algal hair arranged in fishtails that swarmed over the emblems of the old gods of the dead like cleaner fish about a sacred allopex. Slave dancers of both sexes rippled through the hall in her wake, ribbons trailing from poles. With graceful tumbles, they swam together to conjure scenes from the age of eolas: red dragons breathing golden fire, white isles falling under black seas, golden goddesses devouring the world.

Surrounded by whorls of flesh and colour, the nobility of Briomdar engaged in abstinence, performing the solitary dances of the court. The avarai. The sarail. Or even, for those more daring, the iltaer, in which an aelf partnered with another on the opposite side of the hall. Every great house was accounted for but one, and yet the sense Lurien took from it was emptiness.

Nothing upset the sensibilities of the deepkin like the company of another of their kin.

Lurien watched the dancers with a curled lip. The Dance of the First Age, from the epoch before the Awakening, was a little morbid, even for his idea of entertainment.

With his left hand he wiggled the stem of his wine flute.

A girl bearing a conch shell was beside him almost immediately.

She looked about thirteen or fourteen, although her actual age was impossible to determine: namarti souls aged more quickly than the ivory-skinned perfection of their bodies could show. It was her scars, though, that fascinated Lurien. The namastir ‘half-soul’ rune branded into her forehead. The imperfect flesh that had grown over her hollow eye sockets. The hadrilkar slave collar with the swarming reef emblem of the house of Lágethé. Her bald white scalp had been polished with scented fish oils. Lurien held out his flute, already looking away. The girl flinched from the sudden movement, but didn’t allow any of the dark caulep wine to splash the turquoise-and-gold mosaic of the prince’s armour as she poured.

‘Will that be all, my prince?’ she murmured.

‘For now.’ Lurien darkened his ghoulishly white lips with wine. ‘But do not venture far.’ He watched the dancers distractedly as the conch girl eeled away.

He took a sip of the wine, amusing himself with the thought of how much more enthralling it would be to have the slaves calling him ‘my king’ after the assembral.

‘I hear that the Mirai Wardens are going to inter her above King Lorthael.’

Lurien turned to the three knights lounging variously about the foot of the throne. Each had come clad in piecemeal armour of turquoise scalloping and fine lace, the heraldries of their akhelian houses drifting with their long cloaks in the currents. The hall was a lattice woven of coral strands and gossamer algal netting that draped the original wooden scaffold of the Crannstock, and the icy currents in the ethersea that drove through its many openings never ceased. Lurien frowned down at the three. He was not sure which of them had spoken.

‘The namarti wench?’

The three akhelian laughed, a sound like the last air gurgling from the lungs of a drowning man.

‘Only you would have his mind on his slaves at a time like this,’ said Éodrain, his own gaze nevertheless lingering overlong on the departing girl. His colourless eyes were hooded, as though what he saw both bored and disappointed. His chin was pointed. The pale flush of too much caulep blued his cheeks. He drained the flute.

‘He pities you your royal duties,’ said Calohaire. A scar from a fyresteel axe cleft his left eye up the middle, which, coupled with the angular, ashen jawline of the Briomdar idoneth, lent him a permanently critical look. He glanced to Éodrain and smirked. ‘Or should that be envies?’

Éodrain’s shapeless leer took on an appearance of disgust.

Calohaire laughed coldly. ‘A king must set aside his spiritual discomfort and think of the enclave. Would you not agree, Vágös?’

The third aelf gave a disinterested grunt, his eyes fixed on the eolas dances.

‘Your problem, my prince, is that you treat the namarti almost as though they are real people with feelings,’ Calohaire went on. ‘It confuses them. They do not understand it.’

‘Do you not whip a fangmora that defies you?’ said Éodrain, speaking with a faint slur.

‘And when did you last mount a bound-beast, Éodrain?’ Calohaire laughed.

Lurien laughed as well.

Éodrain said nothing, instead summoning the conch girl for more wine.

‘Do you mean to leer through the entire rite of passage, Prince Lurien?’

An aelf in an austere harness of translucent white plate and a high-buckled cloak swam up to the throne. She was as bald and grey as a manatee, and cadaverous as a skeleton crab, all sharp bone and thin cords of muscle. Her cloak bore the spiked-gauntlet emblem of Túrach – the City of Spines. A group of asglir’akhelian in coats of silvered scales, conical helms and cloaks of identical bearing milled amongst the dancers, disarmed as the custom of assembrals required. Lurien put away his smirk. His retainers studiously occupied their gazes elsewhere.

‘Queen Anaer.’ Lurien bowed his head. ‘Do you come to request the next dance?’

Éodrain sniggered softly.

Anaer glared at him, unblinking.

‘I come because this is an assembral, and you are my host.’ She dipped her head to the precise angle of Lurien’s bow. ‘Were it not for our traditions, the descendants of the cythai would have scattered into the oceans when they first found their way from the Bright Haven and lived solitary lives until one by one they perished.’ Her mouth firmed slightly, noticeable only because of the wastage of flesh from her jawline. ‘Traditions such as rising when you address a queen.’

Lurien startled himself by rising, swiftly covering his embarrassment with a florid bow and then offering the Queen of Spines his hand once more.

Éodrain covered his mouth with his hand.

‘I am considered the finest dancer in the Jade Court,’ said Lurien.

‘Lágethé must have been very proud.’

Lurien felt the spite trickle out of him.

He sat back down.

‘I disliked your mother very much,’ said Anaer.

‘You were not alone.’

‘I found her ambition to rule vulgar. Hers and her sister’s. And I thought her energy… distasteful. You.’ She pursed her lips as she appraised him, slumped in his chair, caulep flute hanging limp between the fingers of one hand. ‘You I have not seen since the tyrant of the azydrazor invited me to witness your mhair trials.’

‘I passed, if I remember.’

‘Everyone passes mhair, Prince Lurien. It is how you pass that defines an akhelian warrior.’

Lurien spread his hands. ‘And?’

‘It can take a century to properly appreciate an ishratisar-made sword.’ Her gaze flicked up from her shallow appraisal and back to Lurien’s eyes. Her stare was lazy and unfocused. ‘A glance alone will show the faults in a bad one.’

The queen of Túrach bowed once more, then turned to rejoin the mailed knights of her entourage. Éodrain emitted a snort that Lurien choked, stillborn, with a glare.

‘I am told she does not even eat,’ Calohaire whispered. ‘They say she sustains herself on malice and the beast souls that she consumes.’

Vágös nodded as though this were truth, incontrovertible as the Light of Teclis.

‘My prince?’ Éodrain waved his fingertips across the twisted barbs that decorated Lurien’s pauldrons as a delegation of warriors armoured in lapis blue came next to pay the customary respects to the throne.

Lurien straightened, determined to make more of an impression on the king of Guethen than he had with Anaer.

‘Galrohir,’ he said, bowing his head lower.

The giant aelf’s face was marbled with scars, new and old, from a hairline nick across his pointed chin to an ugly knot of pallid lines around his eyes that were so tightly drawn that Lurien initially thought they had to be tattoos. His eyes were yellowed, his flesh sickly in hue if not obviously deficient in health. His armour was twisted and barbed to evoke angry waves, coloured every blue-green shade of a slaughter at sea. A dark haze of imprisoned magic gave him a shimmering outline, though it was not of the armour. Magic both ancient and potent abounded in the deep places of the oceans, but the Guethen infamously never employed such materials in their armour. It came from the poleaxe sheathed diagonally across his back. A hilt of merkraken bone and black jewels projected over his left shoulder.

‘King Galrohir,’ said the aelf. His voice was like shingle being slowly worked into sand. He did not bow.

Lurien bit his lip. Even Anaer had bowed.

‘I thought there were no titles amongst equals.’

‘There aren’t. You may claim equality when Vanglyr and the akhelian council emerge from conclave to give their verdict to the assembral.’ He looked around. ‘Where is the House of Vanglyr anyway? Is it not time?’

‘I am sure he will be here soon.’ Lurien held on to his smile. The verdict of the akhelian council was, of course, only a formality.

As well as he could remember from the lessons that he had cared to attend in the first instance, only a handful of heirs in the thousand-year history of Briomdar had ever been rejected by the akhelian council. The incompetent generally removed themselves from contention through death and misadventure long before the incumbent’s demise, and Lurien was nothing if not cautious in his misadventures. If that were not reassurance enough for him, and if he were of the kind that sought after reassurance, then Raidlord Vanglyr’s infamous devotion to Queen Lágethé would suffice. Lurien smiled to himself. For a race that clove to material abstinence and seclusion as its ideals, the idoneth took a rare delight in intrigue. The tyrant of the azydrazor was known to have been a frequent night guest of his queen. He would do nothing to harm her legacy now.

Lurien bowed as though accepting Galrohir’s critique. ‘I am just relieved that you could attend, King Galrohir. None of my invitations were returned.’

Galrohir crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I was out raiding. You might be familiar with the idea of it.’

‘I am passingly familiar with the notion,’ Lurien replied, more caustically than he had intended. ‘And in fact it is my opinion that the enclaves have been raiding rather too frequently of late. It is more than just fishing villages and lost sylvaneth for the picking on the shores of the Green Gulch these days. The stormclaimed have raised a mighty keep of Azyrite stone on the mouth of the River Dwell, and claim a thousand leagues of coast for their own. Those fishing villages are great towns now, with walls and armies to defend them.’

He sat forwards, feeling his cold flesh warm to the passion of the old argument.

‘And yet even as the stormed god encroaches, some worm whispers in the mind of the Gulch Empress of Coryza, telling her to cede those territories she still possesses that she might cast yet more bilgeships into the sea. She hunts us, Galrohir. They all hunt us now. Skaven submersibles prowl the shallows of Dwy-Hor. Slaaneshi seekers and soulblight agents of the Undying King pick through the ruins of your raids for whatever clues to our existence you leave behind.’

He slumped back in his throne, sneering.

‘Your akhelian have done more than any to see our namarti…’ He waved his hand vaguely ‘…problem deferred, but enough is enough. A strong king of Briomdar might be wise to rein in the warriors of Guethen.’

Lurien’s retainers were holding their breath. For a moment, he feared he might have gone too far. Assembral was one of the few occasions when a king of the idoneth was permitted to challenge another. By his reputation, the king of Guethen was probably brutish enough to put that little-used law to the test. Slowly, Galrohir began to smile. It was the cruellest, most murderous expression that Lurien had ever seen outside of his own mirror.

‘That is a fine cut to your eye I see, Lord Calohaire.’ Galrohir looked past Lurien to address his retainer. ‘Taken in Vanglyr’s latest raid, correct? I heard you rode your fangmora against the Okthallin lodges with great skill.’ Lurien bristled at the offhand dismissal. His retainer looked genuinely pleased that the king of Guethen knew his name.

‘It was taken,’ said Lurien, clearly enunciating each word lest Galrohir be in danger of misunderstanding, ‘because you and the raidlord have left nothing more on the coast to be won. The soulscryers instead guided Vanglyr’s phalanx onto the mountain lodges of the fyreslayers. Hardly easy pickings.’

‘The only things that come easily are those which no one values,’ said Galrohir, and smiled. ‘Teclis, his fourth lesson to the Awakened. Teclis it was who drew the cythai from the belly of the Gorged God, but it was his brother, Tyrion, who stayed the god’s hand when he saw the cursed things he had made. Blindness, we are, as much as hubris.’

‘I never took you for a student of the gods,’ said Lurien.

Galrohir tilted his head back, as if to look down his hooked half-moon nose at the enthroned prince. ‘When you take a warrior’s soul, he will insist you fight for it. Remember that.’ He turned from Lurien, then nodded. ‘Lord Calohaire.’

Lurien trembled with barely suppressed venom as Galrohir made his departure. ‘Who does that ugly gathal think he is?’

‘The king of Guethen,’ said Calohaire. ‘Perhaps we should not put ourselves on his bad side.’

‘When did you become so friendly with Galrohir?’ said Éodrain, peering over the rim of his flute.

‘I have never met any knight of Guethen before now.’

‘So he just…’ Éodrain waved airily. ‘…heard of your deeds, did he?’

‘Fuéthain,’ Lurien swore.

‘My prince?’ said Calohaire.

‘There are barely a hundred true-souled idoneth in that sulphurous pit to the underworld they call an enclave, you know. And he thinks he can intimidate me.’

‘But over twenty hardened namarti battalions,’ said Calohaire. ‘Their raids bring in a great number of sou–’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Lurien wormed into the back of his throne. ‘His legions of conch girls and eolas dancers terrify me. Guethen is an angry little power that Lágethé tolerated because the growth of the enclaves was in her interests at the time. No. It is only Túrach that comes close to being Briomdar’s rival for influence in the Green Gulch.’

‘And you and Anaer seem to get along so well.’ Éodrain smirked and sipped at his wine.

‘No matter.’ Lurien waved his hand dismissively. ‘Disputes are heated and untidy. Anaer hates that more than she hates me. Mahbòr is… well, he’s Mahbòr.’ They all nodded sagely at that wisdom. ‘And Aunt Laramé loves me.’ He smiled at the rare feeling of genuine affection. Deciphering the family trees of the idoneth nobility was like trying to pick salt out of water. With so few healthy-souled children born and, purely by the arithmetic involved, most of those being born to namarti, the entire edifice of house and heritage was a fascinating charade of adoption and strategic marriage designed to generate the appearance of noble lineages dating back to the cythai. Laramé and Lágethé had been something rarer even than a true-souled child.

They had been blood twins. Isharann queens.

‘The queen of Elgaen would never go against her sister’s heir.’

‘Where is she?’ Calohaire muttered, still glaring ice daggers at Éodrain.

‘She would not want the others to see her grieve,’ said Lurien, his eyes distant. ‘Anaer in particular. They would not understand her loss.’

‘I don’t recall you being so interested in politics at the azydrazor,’ said Calohaire.

‘I simply never set my mind to it before. It’s really not complicated.’

‘The azydrazor was a long time ago for us all,’ Vágös mused.

‘It speaks!’ declared Éodrain, the caulep raising his voice too loud.

Vágös bared translucent teeth, and then, saying nothing further, turned back to the gathering. His mouth parted slightly in surprise.

‘As Mathlann protects…’

‘What?’ said Lurien, sitting up.

‘Oh my,’ said Éodrain.

Calohaire pointed. ‘King Mahbòr has arrived.’

Surrounded by a globe of silent knights in beryl-green warplate and circlets of thorns, the Laughing King of Dwy-Hor danced a traíga quickstep that was completely out of tempo with his fellow guests and the dour mood of the assembral. His partner was a female akhelian in a wooden masque and a long cloak of woven sea-green leaves. Her bare arms were tattooed with a spiralling spread of thorns, one hand upon her king’s shoulder, the other around his waist.

Lurien watched in scandalised fascination.

‘They are… touching.’

‘Is that the queen of Dwy-Hor?’ said Calohaire.

‘No,’ said Lurien. ‘Mahbòr is unwed.’

‘That is not what I heard,’ said Éodrain.

‘No one cares what you heard, Éodrain,’ said Calohaire. ‘Still less where you heard it.’

‘I heard that he wed that tree spirit of his,’ said Éodrain, his voice low.

‘Do not be absurd,’ said Calohaire.

‘It is true.’

‘It is not.’

‘They call her Queen of the Deepgrove.’

‘Enough,’ said Lurien. ‘All of you.’ He stared into the Deep Nothing, frowning through one of Lágethé’s half-remembered contemplation exercises. ‘If there’s one thing I do not want to be thinking about right now, it’s that.’ The three akhelian chuckled, equal parts disgust and lurid fascination. ‘In any case, I heard he adopted her as his daughter.’

Éodrain lowered his caulep flute. ‘He wouldn’t. Even he wouldn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t he?’ said Lurien. ‘Why then does he keep her?’

Vágös shook his head. ‘She is a pet. A trophy. A reminder of his last raid on the Cueth’ene.’

‘Why would he want to remember?’ said Éodrain.

The other akhelian shrugged.

‘They do things differently in Dwy-Hor,’ Lurien mused.

An explosion of brightly coloured heralklir fish burst from the hall’s pearl-inlaid doorway before Lurien could continue. The fish had been bred by the enclave’s embailors over hundreds of generations for their short memories, the tendency to scatter from any significant grouping of aelves and the royal turquoise and gold of their scales. The school ribboned and ballooned towards the heralklirs’ favoured hiding places in the ceiling’s arches, stilling sombre dances and leaving hushed conversation in their wake. Lurien closed his mouth and turned to the doorway, to the armoured aelves whose procession had disturbed the tiny heralds.

Vanglyr.

And the akhelian council.

The prince’s retinue pulled themselves upright and surreptitiously concealed their wine flutes. Despite every conscious effort to remain seated and prideful, Lurien found himself straightening, pushing himself up to hover in the ethersea above the Jade Throne. It did not matter how long it had been since an akhelian passed his mhair. Vanglyr Fellglaive, raidlord of Briomdar and tyrant of the azydrazor, still had the power to command absolute obedience from his former charges.

Where the Fellglaive passed, the water bubbled, agitated even under the tremendous pressures of the ocean floor to boiling by the power he wore. The unformed magic that filled the deepest oceans of the Mortal Realms manifested in numerous ways. In planktonic form it fed the mouths of the great behemoths that prowled below the depths of mortal prey. It sustained empires of daemons unaligned to any god, whose powers waxed and waned with the tides. And it would, in rare conjunctions of the spheres, break in apocalyptic storms that could scour an ocean and leave not a ripple upon its surface. In some rare places it deposited as a metal that some jewel of intuition in the idoneth psyche had bade them to name ithilmhair. Armour forged from its seasilver scales would withstand a blow from Sigmar’s hammer. A blade of it would cleave any ward.

Noble guests and namarti performers alike drifted into a wide circle as the akhelian came to face the Jade Throne. The tyrant said nothing until the hall was quiet and everybody was still. Though Vanglyr was a tall aelf, he did not loom like Galrohir. Rather, he was a cold force of charisma around which brine might freeze and mortal souls hasten to obey. Only the néthic dancer bearing Lágethé’s chorrileum shard continued to twist and gyrate around the circle of souls.

‘For eighty-three years has Queen Lágethé ruled Briomdar,’ said Vanglyr, his voice so resonant and deep that Lurien felt it almost as a vibration on his skin rather than in his ears. ‘She oversaw the growth of the isharann túrscoll to one without rival in the oceans of the seven realms. And she bade Briomdar rise from the old wood citadel of the Crannstock to an enclave of a hundred thousand souls.’ The namarti dancers bowed their heads in homage. A handful of Briomdain nobles mimed silent handclaps. ‘And it was under her rule that Briomdar eclipsed her sister enclave, Túrach, as the pre-eminent civilisation in the Green Gulch.’

Lurien sought out Anaer and her retinue, eager to see what the Queen of Spines made of that remark, only to find her quietly conferring with Galrohir. Both their expressions were inscrutable. Lurien frowned, wondering what those two could possibly have to talk about.

‘But now her body is empty.’ Vanglyr’s voice lowered still further. He growled as he surveyed the gathered nobility. ‘Her soul.’ He raised a hook-taloned gauntlet and gestured to the maroon-painted macabre, the néthic dancer, who swirled uncaringly about the hall, higher, higher in the ethersea where the full stillness of the nobles’ attention could follow, holding the glowing chorrileum stone aloft. ‘Her soul goes to blessed isolation. Lágethé need feel no more.’ If the tyrant suffered any pain at the loss of his lover and queen, there was no way to know it. ‘Briomdar must find its way without her guidance.’

Lurien put his hand to the turquoise-and-gold dominoes that adorned his breastplate. His heart was pounding underneath, so hard it seemed almost perverse that he could not feel it through the metal.

‘I am ready to guide it,’ he said.

Silence overtook the hall.

Anticipation was a vernal tide, swelling around him, bearing him up, lifting him high. He was drunk on caulep, a little, tipsy with expectancy. If there was one thing in the Mortal Realms that could sweeten becoming king of Briomdar, it was being crowned so by Vanglyr Fellglaive.

Lurien closed his eyes.

There was a hiss as an ithilmhair blade left its scabbard.

‘By the custom of assembral,’ said Vanglyr, ‘I challenge your claim to your mother’s crown.’

Click here to buy The Court of the Blind King.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Dave Gallagher.

The Harrowing Deep © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. The Harrowing Deep, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78999-278-6

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