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The Lightning Golem – Nick Kyme

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Soul Wars’

A Black Library Publication

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The Lightning Golem

By Nick Kyme

Rassia trembled in his arms.

‘Rest now,’ he said.

She half turned her head, her dark eyes blinking.

‘Rest, and fight no more.’

Issakian Swordborne gently stroked the gryph-hound’s flank, his armoured fingers stopping before they touched the arrow that had killed her. He felt her heart thudding weakly.

Rassia opened her beak. Her purple tongue lolled against her sharp teeth.

‘Rest,’ Issakian said again as he cradled her head in one hand. ‘No more pain.’

She shuddered once and breathed her last breath.

Issakian bowed his head, and fought down the grief. She had been with him since he joined the Celestial Knights, a bond that had lasted many years.

‘You have served me faithfully, Rassia,’ he whispered. ‘I could not have wished for better.’ Anguish turned to anger, and his fingers clenched into fists as he rose to his feet. He cut through the fog as he swirled his blood-red cloak. It was the same colour as the pteruges of his night-blue armour. The cloak revealed a sheathed sword. He uttered three words.

‘Judgement is coming.’

Then he drew the blade, which shone like twilight. He knew they would see it. He wanted them to see it.

A cry pierced the fog, ululating through the ruins of Harobard. Hammered footsteps came after, followed by panting.

A brawny figure burst into being, tendrils of pinkish vapour clinging to his body like grasping fingers. Blood matted his beard. His bare flesh had the tattoo of the Hektate rune inked onto it, the hook and eye wreathed in flame. Feathers pierced his skin, pink and blue and purple. Eyes, wild and delirious, glared at Issakian from behind a half-bird mask.

The axe whistled as it cut the air, arcing straight for Issakian’s head. The edge looked stained, notched. Well used.

Issakian put his bracer in the way and the axe raked across it, spitting sparks like starbursts before the haft gave way and snapped. The axe head spiralled off as Issakian filled the Hektate’s gut with a foot of gleaming sigmarite.

Scowling at the muddying of his blade, he shucked the Hektate loose as another of the barbarians came screaming for his blood. Issakian dropped to a crouch and impaled this one through the groin. He then rose to meet a third, hacking off a hand that had clenched a heavy hammer, before taking the head and ending the Hektate’s plaintive wailing. A jet of dark arterial blood shone brightly as it struck the Stormcast’s white shoulder guard.

A fourth Hektate wielded a double-handed axe and let out an avian shriek as he swung for a killing blow. Issakian leaned aside a moment before the axe landed. The Hektate had overcommitted and pitched forwards, overbalanced and vulnerable. His head rolled off his shoulders a moment later. Issakian barely gave the wretch a second glance as he pressed further into the fog.

By now, he had caught the faint echoes of the battle. Somewhere in this filth, Vasselius and his warriors fought hard. A muted lightning arc lit the sky, softened by the haze.

‘I am coming, brother,’ said Issakian.

He sought out the fifth attacker, the archer whose arrow had ended Rassia’s life. A hastily notched arrow was turned aside by Issakian’s bracer. The archer retreated in fear, hoping to escape in the pink miasma.

Issakian had a different fate in mind.

‘This is judgement,’ he said. ‘This is Sigmar!’ He hurled his sword like a spear and the blade struck the Hektate in the chest.

Issakian closed the distance between them at a run, his pace inhuman. He wrenched his sword loose with a spurt of blood and plunged it into the Hektate’s throat before the wretch could fall. Death followed. Revenge felt hollow. The Hektate tribe, though corrupt, were not his prey. He had come here seeking something else, a creature more than a man, but he would not find it in this abysmal cloud. It had settled quickly, drowning out the larger battle and separating Vasselius’ forces, of which Issakian counted himself a part.

He breathed hard, painting the inside of his helm with flecks of spittle, and tried not to take in too much of the fog. It put Issakian’s teeth on edge. He set his will against it. Magic threaded the air. He could taste it like acid on his tongue. His mind briefly filled with psychedelic images… The Summoner with the head of a purple crow… A cloak of variegated feathers… The lightning golem. He shook it off. He had seen them before, dreamed them before. He focused on his purpose. Vasselius would not be far.

‘Rassia… lantern,’ he called out, and then cursed under his breath. ‘Fool…’

Issakian found the lantern where he had left it, thrust into the hard earth, shining like a beacon.

He raised it high upon its staff, his arm fully extended.

‘Sorcery,’ he bellowed, ‘I abjure thee!’

The unearthly fog recoiled as if burned. It shrieked, and like morning mist before the sun it steadily diminished until it was no more. The sight and sound of battle rushed in, abruptly renewed.

All around him, Harobard burned. Its wooden arbours were aflame, its streets thronged with desperate fighters. Skirmishes had erupted throughout the city, the Stormcasts scattered by the fog and only now regaining some kind of coherency.

Issakian found Vasselius amongst the warriors, right in the teeth of the battle. A warrior-god clad in the ivory armour and blue pauldrons of his Stormhost. He fought at the foot of the temple stairs against the dwindling Hektates. Statues carved out of glittering marble honouring the great beasts of the land rose up on either side of him, framing rugged stone steps. Vasselius quickly gained the stairway with his men and forced the horde back behind raised shields and cutting swords.

On one flank were the pale-armoured warriors of the Knights Excelsior, on the other the spearmen of the Bruhghar Kings in thick furs and skull helms, who fought with the fury of the recently liberated, letting off horn blasts and setting up a thunderous drum tattoo.

Issakian made for the narrow gap between the beast statues, where the fighting was at its fiercest.

Nigh on a hundred Stormcasts battled shoulder to shoulder, pushing into arrows and flung spears. Now they were freed of the fog’s taint, nothing could stop them, though Issakian saw a white-clad warrior struck in the throat. He fell, lost to sight, before a lightning arc cascaded upwards.

It was to be a last act of defiance.

The Hektate broke and scattered, unable to match the ferocity of the Stormcasts or the warriors whose lands they had usurped.

The Bruhghar roared, exultant. Stormcast Heraldors trumpeted the victory, shaking the very earth.

Vasselius gave a shout that sent hunters into the skies and the ruins to seek out the fleeing Hektates and make sure they were dead. He turned, and raised his hammer aloft in triumph.

Issakian raised his own sword in salute as he met him at the foot of the temple steps.

‘Don’t rest yet, brother,’ Vasselius told him. The Lord-Celestant went bareheaded, his red hair as bright and vivid as fire against his ivory armour, his eyes wild with the promise of further battle.

‘Ever since we met, you have bent towards violence, Vasselius.’

‘And you are too soft of heart, Issakian,’ he said with good humour. ‘A fine pair we make, eh?’

‘That we do.’

Vasselius gestured with his hammer to the ruins beyond the temple.

‘My hunters are hard at work. Shall we join them? There are many of these wretches that yet live, despoiling Sigmar’s fine lands.’

Issakian nodded. ‘I’ll follow you into the ruins, but leave the killing to you, Lord Ironshield.’

‘Still on the hunt then?’ asked Vasselius.

‘I haven’t found him yet. But if he’s here, if it’s here, I will.’ Issakian sheathed his sword. ‘I saw captives amongst the Hektate horde. Who will save them if you’re about the killing?’

Vasselius smiled broadly, but his sharp green eyes betrayed a little of his inner sadness. ‘I’d say we best leave that to you.’

Issakian gave a short bark of laughter.

‘That sounds like wisdom.’

Vasselius didn’t reply. He grinned, revealing pearl-white teeth, and turned on his heel. He called out to his warriors and the Bruhghar, who needed little encouragement, urging them on.

Issakian followed more slowly, leaving his lantern behind. No Hektate, if they even returned to this part of the city, could touch it. He didn’t need it for the moment and it was too unwieldy to carry into the narrow places created by the ruination of Harobard.

As he searched, Issakian heard the slaughtering of the Hektates. A necessary task, but a grim one that left him wondering how much humanity the Stormcasts had surrendered to the lightning. How much of the soul remained each time he rode the storm?

His thoughts clouded his senses enough that he almost missed the girl taking shelter under a half-collapsed arch. It had been a bridge once, but the Hektates had destroyed it. Only rubble and the broken arch remained.

The girl, half shrouded in shadow, looked up as Issakian approached. She appeared scared and clutched something she had been playing with to her chest, as if afraid he would steal it.

‘It’s all right, child,’ said Issakian, crouching down as he lifted up his hands to show the girl he was unarmed, and then slowly removed his helm. His close-cut hair and beard felt damp with sweat, but a human face was preferable to one forged of unfeeling sigmarite.

She appeared to relax, loosening her grip on the wooden toy and proffering it to Issakian.

‘What is your name, ch–’ he began, but found his eye drawn to the wooden toy. He had seen its like before, a zoetrope, a cylinder that spun upon its central axis, with tiny apertures cut into its surface that, when looked through, would reveal a moving image lit by a solitary candle flame.

This device had exactly the same design, and the girl had already set it spinning.

‘Look…’ she invited, her voice soft and infantile. ‘See…’

Issakian caught the edge of the flickering candle flame, and the smallest glimpse of the moving images within. He drew closer, thinking to earn the girl’s trust, but then felt a compulsion to watch the shadow play unfolding against the zoetrope’s cylinder walls.

The scratchy man totters on sharp and scratchy legs. He walks and walks and walks, until he is struck by a bolt from the heavens and becomes the night-clad king. His head spits forks of lightning and he holds a starlit sword.

Smash, smash, smash goes the night-clad king, smiting every monster and horror of the land until he finds the lightning golem and the purple crow upon its shoulder. And lo upon the slopes of the claw-handed mountain do the night-clad king and the lightning golem give battle.

Swish goes the night-clad king’s sword; crash goes the lightning golem’s thunder; caw, caw speaks the purple crow, delighted at such spectacle. The mountain trembles and the night-clad king fights with all his strength, but he cannot best the lightning golem.

Bleeding black, scratchy blood, the night-clad king can fight no more. He kneels before the lightning golem, powerless against it. And as the purple crow looks on, the lightning golem opens its maw as wide as a cave and swallows the night-clad king whole.

Then there is only the lightning golem, a purple crow upon its shoulder, and the night-clad king is no more.

Issakian gasped, suddenly starved of breath. He leaned over, sucking in great gulps of air as he tried to banish a heavy sense of foreboding. His left hand was shaking. He felt sore, as if from battle.

The girl had gone, though when he heard footsteps approaching he turned and drew his sword.

‘Lord-Veritant,’ said one of Vasselius’ men. He carried a chipped shield, and a chin flecked with peppery stubble jutted out where part of his helm’s mask was missing. It had been hacked off during the battle. The mouth curled in surprise. The Knight Excelsior had half drawn his sword. Issakian heard it thrum with Azyrite power.

‘How long have you been standing there?’

‘Only a moment, Lord-Veritant. I was sent by Lord Ironshield,’ he explained. ‘They have him…’ Now the face changed again, surprise turning into the eagerness for retribution. A dark smile turned his lips. ‘The Hektate shaman.’

Issakian donned his helm.

‘Take me there. Now.’

The shaman kneeled in the blood and filth of the battle’s aftermath, his dead around him.

One of Vasselius’ warriors, Agrevaine, had her axe blade against the shaman’s neck. Her eyes were storm-grey and thunderous. She wanted to kill him.

‘He is the last of them,’ declared Vasselius. He stood with the Bruhghar Kings, a little way off from where the shaman knelt in defeat. The prisoner looked cowed, like a beaten dog.

Issakian walked up to him, urging the shaman to lift his chin with the tip of his sword.

‘Thunder and lightning… Thunder and lightning…’ murmured the shaman. An avian skull with a feathered headdress lay split and scattered nearby. He was old, his wiry beard painted blue and pink to please his god. Fever burned in his eyes. Issakian had heard the Hektates brewed potions to improve their prowess in battle and the potency of their sorcery. It had not availed them in the end. He met the shaman’s eyes and peered deeply. None alive could hide their true nature from the Lords-Veritant. He turned away, lowering his sword.

‘It’s not him,’ he said, unable to hide the frustration in his voice.

Vasselius looked as if he was about to argue, but thought better of it. He nodded to Agrevaine. ‘Finish it.’

She raised her axe for the killing cut, before the shaman spoke and she hesitated.

‘The purple crow…’ he rasped. ‘The purple crow and the lightning golem.’

Issakian spun around and rushed up to the shaman.

Agrevaine’s axe hovered, stuck mid-execution.

‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded Issakian.

‘The purple crow…’ said the shaman, ‘and the night-clad king is no more…’ Then he laughed, shrill like a death scream.

Issakian stepped back, both disturbed and enraged.

Agrevaine’s axe fell. The laughter stopped.

Issakian barely heard it. He had turned his back, walking away into the ruins where Rassia was waiting.

She lay still, and Issakian confessed to a private hope that he might have been wrong and that she yet lived. It was not to be.

Kneeling by her side, he unclasped his cloak and laid it down. Then he took off his helm and set that down too.

Reverently, Issakian wrapped Rassia in his cloak. Then he laid his hand upon her body, closed his eyes and sang softly of his lament. He stayed like that for a while, remembering but also trying to forget what he had seen in the zoetrope. It haunted him, but he could not ignore its significance.

‘No arc of lightning for her,’ said Issakian as he heard Vasselius approach.

‘Perhaps not,’ answered the Lord-Celestant, offering a gauntleted hand, which Issakian accepted as he got to his feet, ‘but she will be reforged in our memory.’

‘A good thought.’

‘I hoped so.’ Vasselius had not come alone. The hunter, Agrevaine, joined them. She had a mane of white hair with a sheathed hand-axe and boltstorm pistol at her belt. She had cleaned her blade since dealing with the shaman. ‘Agrevaine, see that Lord Swordborne’s companion is properly tended to.’

‘Of course, Lord Ironshield.’

She spared a glance for Issakian, lingering only a moment before she went to the body and gently lifted it, cloak and all, into her arms.

‘I am sorry…’ she whispered, and then she carried Rassia away.

‘I’ll see to it she is given proper burial and honour,’ said Vasselius once Agrevaine had gone. ‘I sense you and I are about to part ways soon and will have little time for such observances.’

‘You have good instincts,’ Issakian replied, looking out into the horizon where a savage land beckoned. ‘Have you heard of a mountain in these parts,’ he held up his hand and made the shape of it, ‘like this, like a claw?’

Vasselius considered the question, then nodded.

‘I’ve seen it. The Ironshields have fought in Bruhghar for a while. We passed a mountain like that a few months ago, before you joined us. It’s near a realm-edge, where Ghur meets Aqshy.’ He sucked at his teeth, as if assessing Issakian’s mood. ‘What interest does it hold for you?’

‘I… saw it. Have seen it. I don’t know. Dreams, prophecies… These are odd times. Portents are as thick on the air as fire and death these days.’

‘A little melancholy, aren’t you? You have always struck me as more hopeful than that, Issakian.’

‘I am. Then I lost Rassia. Hope lives on, but it is still recovering from that blow.’

‘You dreamt of it, the mountain?’

Issakian nodded.

‘And you think it is… what? Providence?’ asked Vasselius. ‘It will lead you to the Summoner?’

‘The lords of the Silver Tower are cunning but even they can’t escape my sight forever. This is Sigmar’s will. I can’t just ignore it.’

Vasselius rubbed his clean-shaven jaw, thinking. ‘No, I suppose you cannot. The lands beyond the Bruhghar borders are perilous. There are beasts.’

‘I seek a beast.’

Vasselius laughed. ‘I don’t doubt it, or that you’ll find one.’ He looked to the darkening horizon. ‘We’ll make camp here tonight. I doubt the Bruhghar will allow us to do anything else.’

‘They are… exuberant.’

‘Indeed. You should stay. Rest before your journey.’

Issakian considered it. He wanted to be on his way, but there were certain ties here that would keep him. At least for the night. He agreed.

‘Good. Very good,’ said Vasselius, evidently pleased. ‘And in the morning you’ll take some of my warriors with you. You shouldn’t travel alone. Not out here. Besides, they know where the mountain is. They can take you to it.’

Issakian smiled. ‘It’s almost as if you knew I would object.’

‘Did I convince you?’

Issakian held out his arm.

‘It has been an honour,’ he said.

Vasselius clasped it, and each grasped the other’s forearm in the manner of warriors.

‘No, Lord Swordborne,’ he said, nodding, ‘the honour is mine.’

Lightning speared the heavens in a brief storm of six bolts, one slightly after the other.

His head spits forks of lightning

‘You’ve lost brothers here, Vasselius. Too many.’

‘Ah, they will return. They always return,’ he said, unconcerned as they looked into the sky and tried to imagine Sigmaron somewhere beyond it.

‘At a cost.’

‘Yes,’ Vasselius nodded sadly, ‘at a cost. We are all just spirits of the lightning now, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not,’ he said, walking away.

‘And do you?’ asked Issakian, calling out. ‘Acknowledge it?’

‘Oh,’ said Vasselius, still walking, ‘I try not to worry.’

‘That sounds like wisdom.’

‘You should heed it.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ Issakian replied softly as another bolt of lightning cut the sky.

Issakian awoke, his naked body covered in sweat. The dream. Again.

And the night-clad king is no more…

The words came back, gradually resolving in his mind. He tried to steady his breathing, slow the hammering of his heart… Then he felt a light touch upon his shoulder, delicate but strong, and the pain eased.

‘I hoped you would sleep,’ said Agrevaine, and slid up beside him.

Her bare skin felt warm, welcoming. Issakian touched her hand with his then leaned over to softly kiss her fingers.

‘I did for a while,’ he said, and listened to the howl of the wind outside their tent. The leather creaked ominously; the ropes pulled but held. ‘But I am glad I can wake up to you.’

She gently turned his head, so he was facing her.

Issakian frowned. ‘You seem sad.’

‘You are leaving in the morning.’

‘And you will miss me,’ he laughed, gently mocking. Her thigh poked out from underneath the bedroll and he traced its supple curve with his finger.

Agrevaine hastily looked away.

‘You are too flippant,’ she said, angry.

‘Come now,’ Issakian replied, smiling as he tucked a strand of errant white hair back around her ear. ‘We have this night.’

‘Let me come with you,’ she said, meeting his gaze.

Issakian’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly. He shook his head.

‘I cannot ask that of you.’

‘I offer it freely.’

‘Then I cannot accept it.’

‘Then you are a fool!’

‘No,’ he said, and tenderly cradled her cheek, ‘I would be a fool if I let you. I cannot take you where I am going. I won’t risk it.’

Now it was Agrevaine’s turn to laugh. She had drawn a blade, no longer than a dagger, and held it up to Issakian’s throat. ‘It is hardly your decision. I am born of the lightning, as you are.’

‘And as fierce, I know. I don’t doubt your blade or your courage. It’s why I love you, Agrevaine. But I have seen… darkness. This portent, it bodes ill. I am bound to it, to whatever fate it leads me to. Do not force me to make you a part of it.’

Agrevaine glared, but after a few moments relented.

‘Damn you,’ she murmured.

‘I will admit,’ Issakian said, eyeing the blade warily, ‘this is not how I thought this would unfold.’

Agrevaine scowled, but lowered the knife.

‘We have this night,’ he said softly.

‘We do,’ she whispered, drawing close to him. ‘My blood, the thunder…’

‘My heart, the lightning.’

The flap of the tent parted, prised loose by the wind. Night scents washed in, redolent of wood smoke and presaging rain. Issakian and Agrevaine barely noticed as they drew together, their bodies limned by the moonlight.

The mountain rose up in the distance, a monstrous and ugly thing. Its five peaks did indeed put Issakian in mind of a clawed hand, and he scowled at the thought of it.

‘How far?’ he asked as a scout alighted on the rocky promontory where Issakian had made his vantage.

‘Another day hence,’ came the gruff reply, the scout folding lightning-wreathed pinions behind his back as he approached the Lord-Veritant. His name was Leonus.

Issakian nodded. ‘Good. I’ll not fail again.’

‘Do we rest tonight?’

The night drew in, sweeping soft and deadly. Issakian briefly thought of Agrevaine, but the memory faded quickly with the calls of the nocturnes, the beasts that preyed in the darkness. One such creature turned on a spit, its flensed flanks cooking slowly. The smell was not appetising but it was still meat.

Issakian’s eyes were drawn to the meagre feast, and to the eight warriors sat around it whose armour glinted gold in the firelight, their violet spaulders dark like patches of twilight.

One of the warriors looked up. Vitus. He had a recent scar that went from cheek to brow in a ragged line. Like the others’, his sigmarite armour was chipped and hastily repaired in places. A shrine stood nearby. It was just beyond the glow of the fire, but still visible. It comprised a notched shield, strapped to a sword that had once belonged to Lord Brightclaw. Marks had been cut into the shield’s face. They numbered almost thirty now.

Issakian met the hardened gaze of the warrior and felt the smallest pang of regret. They were not the first to die in service to his quest. He felt the tremor again in his left hand, his lantern-bearing hand, but mastered it. Vasselius’ words returned to him. We are all just spirits of the lightning now.

That seemed a lifetime ago.

‘Let’s eat, Leonus, and march again in the morning,’ Issakian told the scout.

‘Should I post a watch, Lord Swordborne?’

Issakian looked out into the darkness. His eyes took a moment to adjust after staring at the fire, but eventually he saw the shadows of the nocturnes creeping in. Long-limbed, with grey, pallid skin and lamprey mouths, they chattered excitedly as they drew nearer.

‘We won’t need it. They’ll be upon us soon.’

A cloying mist lay upon the ground the next morning as five warriors reached the foot of the mountain. A narrow pass led to a cleft in the mountainside, the only way in that Issakian knew of.

A hollow wind blew through the pass, cold and desolate. It sang to the Stormcasts’ heavy hearts.

Issakian looked to the peak. Between wreathes of cloud, a slate-grey sky promised snow.

‘We should not linger,’ he told Vitus, who had taken up position just behind the Lord-Veritant. ‘It’s half a day through the pass, and if snow comes it will be treacherous. And without Leonus to watch over us from above we could be easy prey.’

Vitus called to the men, declaring a forced march up the pass.

They left all unnecessary trappings behind, their food and shelter, spare weapons. A sigmarite treasure hoard glittered in their wake, a notched shield and sword sat on top like a sacrificial offering.

Issakian entered a large cavern through a jagged mouth of stone in the mountain. He was glad to be out of the wind. Snow clung to his cloak like mould and he brushed it loose.

The storm had risen swiftly and without warning. As Vitus and the other two survivors joined him, Issakian lifted his lantern.

Sharp, gilded light described a grand chamber. Its depths went well beyond the lantern’s reach but at the periphery of the light, a host of ivory statues looked on stoically. They resembled warriors, but of an order unknown to Issakian. Stone flags defined a processional that led to a throne. Upon it sat a knight in frostbitten trappings. He wore a tabard over his armour, the sigil of a chalice still discernible despite its threadbare state. His skin was deathly grey and rimed with thick ice. The crown upon his head suggested nobility. A sword rested in his hand, the blade touching the floor. A shield sat against one arm of the throne and displayed the knight’s heraldry, a lion rampant.

Issakian was about to make for the throne when he felt a hand upon his shoulder.

‘What is it, Vitus?’

He gestured to the ground where the shadows grew thickest.

‘Bones…’ he murmured. ‘Some beast has made this place its lair.’

‘It may have moved on,’ suggested Issakian, ‘but we take no chances.’

The Stormcasts drew their weapons and the air sang to the crackle of sigmarite.

‘Spread out,’ said Issakian. ‘Search this place. I will have an answer. I must have an answer.’

Warily, they began to search the chamber. Breath misted the air through the mouth slits of their helmets.

Issakian reached the throne and crouched down by its incumbent, surprised at how well the knight had been preserved. His greying skin suggested profound age. It had not decayed though, merely withered.

Then he spoke.

Issakian recoiled in shock.

‘You should not have come…’ the knight rasped, the voice of a revenant. ‘Turn back… Turn back…’

If the others had heard this, they gave no sign. Issakian looked up and caught the figure of Vitus disappearing into the darkness. He returned his attention to the knight.

‘How are you alive?’ asked Issakian. ‘Are you cursed?’

‘Turn back… You should not have come.’

‘I cannot. This is my path. I have sworn to find the Summoner, the purple crow. Tell me, what do you know of it?’

‘Turn back… or be consumed by the lightning golem.’

‘I fear no monster. I have killed many to get here. Know that I will not relent. I have already lost so much. This place came to me in a vision. You are the only living thing in this mountain. Now. Tell me!’

The knight grasped Issakian’s vambrace before the Stormcast could stop him. He tried to free himself, but the revenant’s grip was strong.

‘You doom yourself, warrior,’ he said, and regarded Issakian as if for the first time. ‘What manner of champion are you? I have never seen the like, but then I have dwelled here for what seems like aeons. Are you here to break this curse, I wonder?’

Issakian tried to answer, but his tongue felt leaden in his mouth. A cold vice had closed around his body and drew tight.

‘Find him…’ said the knight. ‘Kill him.’

‘W-where?’ Issakian snarled through clenched teeth.

The knight smiled as coldly as a winter storm.

‘Closer…’ he said, ‘and I will tell you.’

Issakian leaned in and listened as the knight whispered into his ear.

A low rumble sounded from somewhere in the depths. Then came shouting and the clatter of blades.

Issakian looked up, startled. The pain lifted. He was free. It was as if the knight had not moved at all, and Issakian began to question if what he had experienced was even real.

‘Turn back… You should not have come.’

‘Turn back!’ he cried out to the others, standing and about to raise the lantern. He was too late.

A Stormcast flew across the chamber, hitting one of the statues and shattering it. He crumpled in a heap of broken stone and sigmarite. He tried to rise, reaching for his hammer but fell back, his breastplate a red ruin of protruding bone. The lightning arc hurt Issakian’s eyes as it hurtled skywards and tore the ceiling in half.

‘Beast!’ roared Vitus, emerging from the shadows at a run. Another warrior followed a few paces behind, unleashing crackling lightning arrows at something huge and looming behind him.

Realising his arrows could not prevail, the archer turned. A massive hoof crushed him before he could flee any further.

The beast reared up, its shaggy hide thrown into stark relief by a bolt of coruscating light from the archer’s death. It bellowed, half in pain, half in fury, a feral snarl upon its brutish face.

‘Stonehorn!’ Vitus yelled, brandishing both swords as the beast towered over him.

Armour festooned with studs and spikes sheathed its muscular shoulders, but the true threat lay in the long horns that protruded from its snout. Formed of overlapping plates of hardened bone, they curved into a wicked points as sharp as flint-ice.

It stank of dank places, of hoarfrost and dead meat.

And it wasn’t alone.

Another stonehorn thundered out of the darkness. It stood before the entrance to the chamber, crushing any hopes of retreat.

The cavern had begun to collapse. Hunks of rock plummeted from the roof. One struck Vitus, who fell to his knees. The first stonehorn gored him through the chest, piercing his armour as if it were parchment not thrice-blessed sigmarite.

As Vitus died, Issakian wrenched off his helm and touched his sword to his lips.

‘For Sigmar and Azyr,’ he breathed, provoking an old memory. ‘Agrevaine…’

He caught a last glimpse of the ancient knight before the end, silent but his lips moving to form a familiar phrase.

Turn back… You should not have come… Turn back…

And then the mountain collapsed and Issakian had but a moment to consider the knight’s words before the rocks crushed him.

‘We should turn back…’

Endal Cogfinger hung from the rigging with one hand, his iron-shod boots braced against the raised lip of the foredeck. He held a spyglass against the left eye-lens of his mask and leaned out fearlessly into the wind.

They rode low, skirting the crests of lava waves. Fire caressed the keel of the Drekka-Duraz and cast its golden filigree in a hellish glow. A stern ship, laden with guns and with a rune-etched hull formed of steam-bolted plates, even the ancestor figurehead at its prow snarled.

A smouldering, undulating landscape stretched out in every cardinal direction and as far as any mortal eye could see. The Magmaric Sea writhed below, spitting flame and geysering smoke, as volatile and unpredictable as a battlefield. Red-tinged clouds glowered overhead, close to the dirigible’s upper fin, a roiling mass of angry cumulonimbus, threaded with bursts of lightning that lit their insides like incandescent veins.

‘Bah, is it water or iron in your stomach, lad?’ asked Fulson Aethereye. ‘Your father, I swear by the Code, would never have baulked from a storm.’

‘It is no ordinary storm, Fulson,’ said Endal. ‘See for yourself.’ He handed him the glass, but the ship’s aetheric navigator had one of his own.

‘Keep your trinket, arkanaut,’ he grumbled, and took out an arcane device from his trappings. He glanced over his shoulder at the frigate’s sole passenger and muttered proudly, ‘Zephyrscope.’

Fulson also wore a mask. Wrought from iron, chased with gold, it resembled a duardin face. The beard curled, unnecessarily extravagant. The left eye-lens telescoped to examine a sphere clasped to the end of a complex metal armature – the aforementioned zephyrscope.

‘The aether currents are turbulent,’ he admitted. ‘This deep into the firetides… the updraughts are unpredictable, captain. Lad might have a point.’

‘I have been told,’ interrupted the passenger, ‘that the Kharadron do not renege on a bargain once one is struck.’ Issakian Swordborne turned his head to regard the ship’s captain. ‘Or am I mistaken?’

Arms folded, legs braced apart, Zhargan Irynheart looked down from the forecastle at the main deck, where the Stormcast and most of his crew were standing.

Issakian felt the anger in the captain’s stare, even behind the duardin’s mask.

Embers crackled on the hot breeze, underpinning the silence. Ash and cinder lay thick on air that had become hard to breathe.

‘Half before, half after,’ Issakian reminded him, unflinching before the duardin’s contempt. ‘That was our agreement. Do you deny it?’

Zhargan’s mask was more ornate than that of his crew. It signified seniority. His ship, his law.

‘We’ll see it done,’ he growled. ‘Let it be known that no ship of Barak-Urbaz ever refuses profit. But no purse is worth the destruction of this vessel. I’ll sooner throw you to the firetides than court that fate.’

If Issakian felt anything about the thinly veiled threat, his helm hid it well enough.

‘You will be well compensated for the risk.’

‘Aye,’ said the captain, ‘but unlike the blessed of your God-King, we duardin are not reborn from thunder and lightning. We are not so profligate with our lives, Stormcast.’

The ship pitched to its starboard side, dragged by a violent aether current, but soon righted again. The Kharadron hardly seemed to notice. Nor did Issakian.

‘You sound afraid, Irynheart. Are you?’

The arming of several aethershot rifles clacked noisily as the Grundstok Thunderers on the main deck took exception to the slighting of their captain.

Issakian held still. He clenched his left hand to stop it from shaking.

Zhargan waved them back. ‘Six guns aimed and you scarcely take a breath. It’s true then, is it, that your kind have lightning instead of blood running through your veins?’

‘I asked if you were afraid.’

Zhargan gave a slow and rueful shake of the head.

‘Yes, I’m afraid. Any sane person would be. You’ll need to do better than that to raise my ire, though.’

‘The sea aelves who bore me the first time I undertook this journey appeared sane enough, and they did not look scared of the fire.’

With a muttered curse, Zhargan pulled a volley pistol from its holster and pointed it right at Issakian’s head.

‘Oh, now you’re warming up.’

Issakian merely looked back, his face as impassive as the one carved into the mask he wore.

Zhargan snorted, and lowered the weapon.

‘How many ships refused your offer before you came to mine, eh? I’m guessing more than one.’

‘On this occasion? All of them,’ Issakian replied. ‘You alone agreed to take my charter.’

‘Lucky bloody me.’

Zhargan jabbed a gauntleted finger, gesturing to beyond the frigate’s prow. ‘I know why I’m sailing towards that. Greed. I like aether-gold. I want more of it. Being rich is worth a little fear. But you…’ He nodded, and Issakian thought the duardin might have hawked up a gobbet of spit had he not being fully helmed. ‘Why are you doing it?’

‘I seek a creature. I have sought it for a long time. Years, I think. The purple crow, the Summoner.’

‘All this to kill a witch?’

‘It is prophesised. I dreamt of it. I still dream of it.’

A pennant tied to the airship’s uppermost vane snapped noisily, drawing Issakian’s eye. It reminded him of a white mane, gently rippling in the breeze.

‘Breath of Grungni,’ hissed Zhargan, ‘you are insane.’

Issakian looked southwards to the maelstrom.

‘No, I’m not. Not yet.’

The sea churned around the maelstrom. It turned, spilling inwards, caught in a slowly narrowing gyre that fed down to dark oblivion at its nadir. Smoke plumed from this wound in the sea, like air rushing from a pierced lung, and hung over it in a black pall.

‘“The heart of fire”,’ uttered Issakian, bringing the revenant’s words to mind. It had become harder to remember them since that first time, and he sometimes wondered what else he had sacrificed to keep them. ‘“Seek out the heart of fire, where the ocean sinks and the air is black as sackcloth.” It has to be here.’

‘We will find out soon enough,’ said Zhargan, as the air began to burn. He called down to Endal. ‘Endrinmaster, signal the crew. We enter the maelstrom.’

Endal nodded, perhaps reluctant, but gave a curt salute. His heavy armour clanged loudly as he leapt onto the main deck. He swung a massive steam hammer onto his shoulder.

‘All hands to stations,’ he cried, and the crew set to their orders. ‘Roll out the heavy guns, and stoke up the aether-vaults. Make ready those belaying valves.’

‘Do you know what they call this place? What it is?’ said Zhargan to Issakian, but did not wait for an answer. ‘Helmaw. It is a realmgate, but I have no idea where it leads. Do you, Stormcast?’

Issakian didn’t answer. As the Drekka-Duraz flew into the black smoke he raised his lantern. Light spilled forth from the open shutter, reflecting off fiery embers in the darkness.

‘There is debris in the cloud,’ cried Fulson, straining to be heard over the swirling fury of the maelstrom.

Carving through walls of smoke, pitching and yawing amidst the savage updraughts, the frigate fought through the burning air until it hovered, unsteadily, right over the heart of Helmaw.

Issakian drew his sword as his mind revisited familiar horrors. ‘That is not debris.’

Embers became eyes. The darkness came alive and the daemons descended. Ragged wings beat the air in slow, ponderous sweeps. Distended mouths opened, revealing shiny pin-like teeth. Flayed flesh rippled with heat.

The bark and fizz of aether-rifles tore the air, warring with the infernal shrieking of the damned.

Zhargan looked down into the maelstrom, drawing his cutter and volley pistol. He turned to Issakian, his eyes hidden behind the cold blue of his lenses, and roared.

‘For glory… For plunder… Dive!’

The Drekka-Duraz dropped violently, cutting through veils of smoke. Gobbets of lava sizzled against the hull, spat from the churning walls of the maelstrom.

Down plunged the ship, and Issakian had to brace himself just to stay on his feet. He lashed his lantern to the main dirigible stanchion, the ‘endrin mast’ Zhargan had called it.

Hot cinder raked his armour, carried on burning wind, scorching the sigmarite.

It was nothing compared to the winged furies emerging from the fire itself. Like scraps of smoke given form and with blazing coals for eyes, they swept upon the ship’s crew, as voracious as a plague.

Issakian watched as a rifleman disappeared into the darkness, carried up and away, screaming and fighting. The stink of burning brimstone weighed upon the air, as heavy as a curse. Every taken breath was searing agony.

Something arrowed out of the darkness, shrieking as it came for him. Issakian cut its left pinion and it spiralled madly before clattering into the deck. A pistol shot put the daemon down for good, shattering its skull and reducing it to smeared essence.

Zhargan caught Issakian’s gaze and nodded.

Issakian reciprocated, and then the captain turned, about to extol his crew to even greater efforts, just as a flock of furies took him. One moment Zhargan had been there, fighting hard, bellowing orders; the next, only his cutter remained, dropped as he was carried off. It had landed blade down, embedded in the deck like a grave marker.

Discipline began to waver, but the ship plunged all the same, shuddering and creaking as unnatural forces sought to tear it apart. The roar of fire grew deafening, the heat so intense Issakian could barely breathe. He sank to his knees, dimly aware of the shrieking overhead and the hull cracking below.

And then… nothing.

Darkness.

Shadow.

Aldrineth trod carefully, trying to gauge the strength of the bridge. One misplaced step and the chasmal depths below would embrace her. She saw spirits writhing in the shadows below, incorporeal and angry. She subconsciously touched the talisman around her neck, glad of its presence. Her boots scraped against one of the slats underfoot.

‘It is bone… The bridge is made of bone,’ she said to the others, but didn’t look back.

Don’t ever look back, not in this place, not in Shyish.

A harsh, abrading sand swept down off the hills ahead. It cast Aldrineth’s black attire and scalemail armour in an amethyst patina. There were voices in the sand, of the lost. Aldrineth shut them out.

‘Everything in this benighted realm is bone, sister,’ said Rhethor, tugging his dark cloak more tightly around his shoulders. He kept his sword drawn, but close to his body.

‘Do you smell that?’ asked Valdred, scowling. He had an arrow notched to his shadewood bow, and watched the shadows with a wary disquiet.

‘It’s the dead,’ offered Issakian, a few paces behind the rangers. He had been looking at his left hand but regarded the aelves now. ‘Beyond the bridge, and just past those hills, is the Endless Pyre. That’s where the dead go to burn. They never stop burning.’

Burning… The ship aflame. The duardin screaming in terror… A descent into shadow and the prize awaiting him…

‘A cheery thought,’ muttered Rhethor.

‘I thought we were guiding you, Stormcast,’ said Valdred, his eyes and his bow on Aldrineth as she slowly traversed the bone bridge.

‘I have been this far before,’ said Issakian. ‘But no further – the dead linger in those hills, too.’

‘They are not hills,’ said Rhethor.

‘No,’ Issakian agreed. ‘They are not.’

‘We’ll have to go around,’ said Valdred, sighing with relief as Aldrineth reached the other side of the bridge alive and with soul intact. She urged the others on, just as the sand around the hills began to stir…

Valdred cried out a warning, but Aldrineth was already turning and drawing an arrow from her quiver. She loosed three times in close succession as a monster of bone and scraps of decaying hide hauled itself forth. Immense, it dwarfed the aelf as it bore down on her. Aldrineth’s arrows tore through one of its wings. Its leathery skin sheared like wet parchment, but it gave no cry of pain or discomfort.

Rhethor threw open his cloak and hurried for the bridge as Valdred took aim.

‘Save your arrows,’ Issakian told him.

Valdred looked askance at him, face angry.

‘And do nothing!’ he snapped. ‘Your blood may be ice, Stormcast, but those are my kin.’

‘Save your arrows for them.’ Issakian gestured to a horde of lesser creatures pulling their rancid bodies from the burial mounds. They were pallid, grey and hungry, and cold earth clung to their rangy frames. Aldrineth was trying to fight them off and face the terrorgheist.

Valdred snarled. ‘Flesh-eaters.’

Issakian went after Rhethor, his sword trailing starlight.

Rhethor made it halfway across the bridge before the dead took him. The spirits simply reached up, their angry and despairing voices joining the aelf’s as a host of spectral fingers coiled around him. First the ankles as he hacked and slashed ineffectually at the phantoms, then the legs and abdomen, followed by the torso and arms. Rhethor had begun screaming, shrill and childlike, but the spirits smothered his face and carried him off the bridge into the shadows below.

The screaming persisted as Issakian gained the bridge; his raised lantern – now separated from its staff and clutched in his gauntleted fist – kept the spirits at bay.

The dead on the other side were another matter.

The ghouls recoiled from the light, hissing their pain through withered mouths stuffed with spiny teeth. The skeletal terrorgheist seemed less perturbed by it and lashed out at Issakian with a bony claw.

He leapt aside, narrowly avoiding being impaled but dropping his lantern. The light went out, and at once the ghouls swarmed.

He swept his blade out, cutting dry flesh, severing a hand from a wrist, opening up an emaciated chest. The ghouls snarled.

Aldrineth lay dead, her corpse cradled beneath the terrorgheist’s claw, as though the creature were a hunter jealously guarding its kill. She had been crushed, her armour split apart, her bow snapped in half and trapped under her body. He felt a momentary ache, something only half-forgotten, but that quickly faded.

Issakian heard a cry of anguish, and knew then that Valdred had seen what he had seen.

Arrows whipped through the air. At least the aelf had the presence of mind to aim for the ghouls. He shot one through the neck, another through the eye. Dark, old blood splashed the burial mound.

It did not deter them. Hunger had become a greater motivator than the threat of death.

Issakian cut another of the creatures down as the terrorgheist beat its huge but ragged wings and took to the sky. He looked up as a monstrous shadow fell across him.

‘The tower, inverted, spearing down into the underworld,’ he murmured, trying to commit the image to memory. It had been etched onto a stone tablet, lying at the bottom of the Helmaw like sunken treasure. Not a realmgate, as such, but a near inaccessible vault. A crew of duardin privateers had given their lives so he could obtain this knowledge. He had to keep it. For when he returned…

The terrorgheist bore down on him, claws outstretched to shred him sigmarite from bone.

Issakian raised his sword.

Then lightning struck.

A bolt of pure Azyrite, hurled from Sigmaron itself, sheared the monster in half. It fell out of the sky in a hail of bones, as if whatever darkness had held it together had come unstitched.

Further lightning strikes hit the chasm, hammering the spirits harboured there and chasing them into the deepest dark.

And in the storm’s wake… Warriors clad in ivory sigmarite, their spaulders as blue as summer rain.

The Knights Excelsior. It felt like several lifetimes since Issakian had seen them. They set about the flesh-eaters swiftly, cutting them down with hammer and blade. Azyrite arrows crackled and spat cascades of sparks. The horde fled, what few of their kind remained, and from out of this righteous slaughter there came a general riding a fierce gryph-charger, its flanks grey and white, with green feathers around its forelimbs. She carried a spear, though tied it at once to the beast’s saddle when she saw Issakian, and leapt off her mount.

A hand-axe and boltstorm pistol slapped gently against her armoured thighs as she approached him.

‘Palladors!’ she cried. ‘Make sure those creatures are gone for good.’

A host of more lightly armed cavalry on gryph-chargers went immediately to do her bidding. Lord-Aquilor, they called her, but as she took off her helmet and allowed her long white hair to cascade onto her shoulders, Issakian realised he knew her by a different name. He had to reach for it in his mind, like catching a snowflake before it melted in his hand. It took a few moments.

‘Agrevaine…’

He knew her, but chasms of memory kept them apart.

The briefest shadow of sadness passed over her face, before she mastered it. Agrevaine rested her hand on the pommel of her axe.

‘Issakian, I did not expect to see you here.’

‘I seek the Summoner.’

Agrevaine tried to hide her surprise.

‘Still?’

‘It has been a long road, and the storm,’ he uttered, ‘has been… taxing.’

Agrevaine looked as though she was about to say something, but caught her breath. She touched his armoured cheek and whispered, ‘Are you still flesh under that mask, Issakian?’

Issakian did not respond. He remembered the tablet.

‘The tower, inverted, spearing down into the underworld.’

Agrevaine let her hand fall.

‘Is that what you seek?’

‘It is his lair. The creature I have followed through death, through the storm.’

Agrevaine nodded then clenched her teeth. She looked as if she was in pain, though Issakian could discern no injury.

‘We are bound for the Blackstone Gate,’ she said, ‘and from there to a city called Glymmsforge. A muster is gathering. Rumours say that war unbound is coming to Shyish. We shall play a part.’ She paused, as if trying to see through the mask Issakian wore. He could not remember the last time he had removed it. Perhaps he never had, but he found her gaze curious all the same. ‘Come with us,’ she said. ‘I shall have need of a Lord-Veritant. You would be very welcome in our ranks, Issakian.’

‘Abandon my mission?’

‘Before it takes everything you once were, yes. Abandon the mission.’

Issakian was incredulous. ‘I cannot. I have come too far to give up. I have sacrificed…’

‘Obsession drives you now, not duty. Please… Come with us.’ Agrevaine reached out for him, but Issakian stepped back.

‘The tower, inverted, spearing down into the underworld… I will find it, and I will kill the thing that makes its lair within.’

The Palladors had returned, both beasts and their riders eager for the hunt.

‘I cannot stay,’ said Agrevaine. She donned her helmet.

‘Nor I,’ Issakian replied.

‘We will be at Blackstone Gate for three days, awaiting Lord Ironshield and his men…’ She let the implication of that statement linger.

‘That sounds like wisdom,’ said Issakian.

She paused, as if discerning some greater meaning from the words, and whispered.

‘My blood, the thunder…’

Issakian looked back blankly, unsure how to respond.

Her eyes hardened behind her mask. He heard her fist clench.

‘Farewell, Issakian Swordborne,’ she said at length, something in her voice making her sound hollow. Then she turned and deftly leapt onto her mount.

Issakian watched her go, leading off the Palladors at a fearsome pace. In moments they were gone, lost in the distance behind an amethyst sand cloud.

Valdred had taken him the rest of the way. The dead did not bother them. They were in hiding after the storm, but would return soon enough.

Issakian stood facing the tower, its crooked roof stabbing upwards like a dagger thrust, and balanced impossibly on a raised shelf of amethyst sand. A narrow causeway of violet-tinged stone led to an outer door framed by a skull-studded arch.

As Issakian took his first step on the causeway, he heard Valdred slip away. The aelf had done his part. Let him mourn for the dead.

Spectral fog wreathed the tower, thickest at its roof. Incorporeal faces swam in this miasma, reaching up at Issakian from beneath the causeway but almost afraid to touch him.

He felt the storm within, like lightning in his veins instead of blood. His thoughts turned to his prey and a long hunt at last drawing to its end.

Crossing the causeway, Issakian stepped through the arch and let darkness take him.

He saw well enough, but found the halls of the tower lonely and cold. His footsteps echoed. They almost sounded like the voices of the lost. A presence lingered here. Issakian felt it. Slowly, he closed in on it, the instinct that all Veritants have coming to the fore.

‘I seek that which is hidden, the daemon and the sorcerer…’ he murmured. ‘I shine the light where darkness clings deepest.’

He raised the lantern, though it made his hand ache. Its pearlescent light described the edge of a circular dais. Smooth steps led down to a massive chamber, hewn from the same violet-tinged stone as the causeway. The dais lay in the centre, the lines of the chamber’s three walls converging and connecting at this point.

A figure knelt inside the dais with her back to Issakian, scribing on the floor with a piece of purple chalk that had coloured her fingers in the same dust.

The girl. Issakian dimly remembered her and the zoetrope, turning and turning as it revealed its shadow play to him.

‘You are no child…’ he began, and drew his sword.

The girl snickered, and as she turned and rose to her feet she grew. Her bones lengthened, her skin turned a pale, mottled blue, tinged with pink. Her eyes split, multiplying as horns pushed out from her forehead. A third arm sprouted out of her back and her legs bled together, gaudy and iridescent, until they flowed and became robes.

‘Summoner…’ breathed Issakian, recognising the creature now it had transformed utterly. He threw himself at it, prepared to impale the wretch on the point of his sword and…

…pierced nothing except purple dust. It veiled his armour, giving it an ugly amethyst sheen. The reek of dank, mildew and old dusty places fell heavy on the air.

Cackling laughter echoed from the shadows around the dais, and an old, withered man in a black robe shuffled into the light.

Issakian went to confront him but dark energies curling from the Shyish runes etched in the dais kept him firmly rooted.

‘You are persistent,’ said the old man in a reedy voice that cracked like dry parchment. He shuffled closer, leaning on a gnarled staff with three finger bones tied to it. ‘Curious, isn’t it,’ he went on, walking round the edge of the dais and inspecting Issakian from every angle, as if appraising a laboratory specimen, ‘how you can die so many deaths and still come back? I find that interesting.’

‘Release me and I will give you a swift death,’ Issakian promised, his grip tightening around the hilt of his sword. The lightning prickled his skin. He felt its power, and knew he could unleash it if he wanted to.

The old man laughed. He laughed so hard he doubled over and began to cough.

‘Death,’ he rasped when he had recovered. ‘This is death. Shyish is death. You offer me nothing by way of trade. But I don’t seek to bargain. I wish to study.’ He leaned closer and outstretched a bony finger to claw at the dark energy caging Issakian. It shrieked to his touch, like nails running across slate.

‘I can smell the magic in you…’ he hissed. ‘The power reforged, remade. Did you think you could escape his gaze? Such arrogance. The hourglass has already tipped, bearer of the storm. Its sands run inexorably towards your end.’ He reached into his filthy robes and brought forth an emaciated bird, its feathers the same hue as the chalk dust. It cawed once in a thin, almost human voice. ‘The purple crow…’ The old man nodded to Issakian, ‘…and the lightning golem.’

Issakian roared. Anger, hot and indignant, rushed through his veins. His left hand burned, trembling with celestial fire. He slammed his sword into the dais and a great storm erupted from the pommel. Lightning lashed out, bright and violent, but as it touched the edge of the darkness, it reflected inwards. The storm struck Issakian repeatedly. A hail of thunderbolts tore at him, stripping back his armour, burning away his flesh, and turning bone to ash, until… nothing.

He died again, but as the storm within tried to leap up and arc for Azyr, it could not. The darkness turned into smoke and then glass, bottling lightning behind a host of potent enchantments. And within the glass was the crackling shape of a man, a lightning golem.

‘And the night-clad king is no more,’ said the old man, shuffling off into the shadows. As the darkness swallowed him, he rasped, ‘How much we will learn… and the God-King’s arrogance shall be his undoing.’

The laughter faded and then the footsteps, until Issakian was alone with his mindless self-pity. He had become the storm, lightning without the lightning rod, rampant and angry.

But a word resounded amidst the impotent rage, the only word the lightning golem could remember.

Agrevaine…

About the Author

Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Old Earth, Deathfire, Vulkan Lives and Sons of the Forge, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio dramas Red-marked and Censure. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Warhammer Chronicles novel The Great Betrayal and the Age of Sigmar story ‘Borne by the Storm’, included in the novel War Storm. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.

An extract from Soul Wars.

The dead thing stumbled slowly across the eternal desert of Shyish. Its bones were baked the colour of a dull bruise by the amethyst sun overhead, and what few pathetic tatters of flesh it retained had become leathery and fragile. Yet the lack of muscle and sinew had proved to be of little impediment in all the slow, countless centuries of its task.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Across burning sands, to the very edge of the Realm of Death, and then back, ten thousand leagues or more. Slowly, but surely.

As sure as death. As certain as the stars.

There was a soul of sorts, in those brown bones. It was a small thing, akin to the last ember of a diminished fire. It had no hopes, no fears, no dreams, no desires. Only purpose. Not a purpose it recognised or understood, for such concepts were beyond such a diminished thing. The directive that provided motive force to its cracked bones had been applied externally, by a will and a mind such as the dead thing could not conceive – and yet recognised all the same.

The master commanded, and it obeyed. The master’s voice, like a great, black bell tolling endlessly in the deep, was the limit of its existence. The reverberation of that awful sound shook its bones to their dusty marrow and dragged them on. The master had sheared away all that the dead thing had been and made it into an engine of singular purpose.

The only purpose.

Cracked finger bones clutched tight about a single grain of pale, purple sand. The mote rested within a cage of bone and was incalculably heavy despite its size, weighed down with potential. Moments unlived, songs unsung. The dead thing knew none of this, and perhaps would not have cared even if it had.

Instead, it simply trudged on, over dunes and swells of windswept sands. It was not alone in this, for it was merely a single link in a great chain, stretching over distance and through time. A thousand similar husks trudged in its wake, and a thousand more stumbled ahead of it. Twice that number lurched past, going in the opposite direction. Their fleshless feet had worn runnels in the stone beneath the sand, and carved strange new formations in what was once a featureless waste. The silent migration had changed the course of rivers and worn down mountains.

Jackals hunted the chain, having grown used to the sport provided by the unresisting dead. They streaked out of the dunes, yipping and howling, to pluck away some morsel of dangling ligament. The dead thing paid them no mind. It could but dimly perceive them, as brief, bright sparks of soul fire, dancing across the dunes. By the time its sluggish attentions had fixed upon them, they were gone, and new fires beckoned elsewhere.

A carrion bird, one of many, circled overhead. Once, twice, and then it alighted on a sand-scoured clavicle. The bird twitched its narrow head, digging its beak into the hollows and crevices of the dead thing’s skull, as generations of its kind had done before it. For wherever the dead went, so too came the birds. Finding nothing of interest, it fluttered away with a skirl in a flurry of loose feathers, leaving the dead thing to its purpose.

On the horizon, a second sun – a black sun – shone. Its corona squirmed like a thing alive, alert to the attentions of the master. As that great voice tolled out, the sun blazed bright with a hazy, bruise-coloured light. When the voice fell silent, the sun shrank, as if receding into some vast distance. But always, its dark light was visible to the dead thing. And always the dead thing followed the light.

It could do nothing else.

All of this its master saw, through its empty eyes and the eyes of the carrion birds and the jackals, as well. All of this, its master knew, for he had willed it so, in dim eternities come and gone. And because he had willed it, it would be done.

For all that lived belonged ultimately to the Undying King.

In every realm, wherever the living met their end, some aspect of Nagash was there. Once, such a menial task would have been undertaken by other, lesser gods. Now, there was only one. Where once there had been many, now there was only Nagash. All were Nagash, and Nagash was all. As it should be, as it must be.

The dead were his. But there were those who sought to deny him his due. Sigmar, God-King of Azyr, was the worst offender. Sigmar the betrayer. Sigmar the deceiver. He had snatched souls on the cusp of death to provide fodder for his celestial armies, imbuing them with a measure of his might and reforging them into new, more powerful beings – the Stormcast Eternals.

Worse still, he had not been content with the nearly dead, and had scoured the pits of antiquity, gathering the spirits of the long forgotten to forge anew into warriors for his cause. Every soul lost in such a fashion was one less soul that might march in defence of Shyish.

Nagash saw the ploy for what it was, and a part of him admired the efficiency of its execution. Sigmar sought to beggar him and leave him broken and defenceless, easy prey for the howlers in the wastes. But it would not work. Could not work.

His servants had been despatched to the edge of Shyish, where the raw energies of the magics that formed the realm coalesced into granules of amethyst and black grave-sand, heaped in grain by grain. Over the course of aeons, he had gathered the necessary components for his design.

Even when the forces of the Ruinous Powers had invaded the Mortal Realms, he had continued. Even when he had been betrayed by one he called ally, and the armies of Azyr had assaulted his demesnes, he had persevered. Unrelenting. Untiring. Inevitable.

Such was the will of Nagash. As hard as iron, and as eternal as the sands.

Click here to buy Soul Wars.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Pavel ‘Cynic’ Romonov.

The Lightning Golem © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. The Lightning Golem, 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.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-978-2

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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