Contents

Cover

Blessed Oblivion – Dale Lucas

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Blacktalon: First Mark’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Blessed Oblivion

Dale Lucas

‘Shield to shield, brothers!’ the Liberator-Prime barked. ‘Close ranks the moment the refugees are through the lines!’

Klytos fell into formation, tower shield at the ready, warblade heavy in his gauntleted fist. He took a moment – the briefest of moments – to close his eyes and summon his last, fragmentary memories of the people he had loved in life.

A woman: sea-green eyes in a smooth, tanned face.

A newborn: small, impossibly fragile in his seemingly enormous hands.

An old man: face eroded like a time-worn cliff, tears on his filthy cheeks.

He stirred his memories before each battle, knowing that if he fell, he would next incarnate with even fewer of them dwelling inside him. He’d already lost their names, most meaningful details of the life he’d lived, even the smallest inkling of where or when that long-ago lifetime had unfolded. When next he was smashed and reforged upon the Anvil of Apotheosis, there was no telling what might remain, if anything.

That thought terrified him.

A jostling. Klytos opened his eyes. His fellow Celestial Vindicators formed a vast wall of shield bosses, gleaming blades and shining turquoise armour to either side of him. For days they had protected a massive refugee band effecting a desperate retreat across the Hallost Plains towards the sea, mere hours ahead of the trailing Khornate warhost. Now, at last, the servants of the Blood God bore down upon them.

They could run no further. It was time to make a stand, however desperate.

‘Prepare to close ranks!’ the Liberator-Prime shouted. Klytos’ world was a storm of panic and terror as the refugees fled through their spaced ranks. As he often did, Klytos saw the ghosts of his lost loved ones in the faces of the mortals they now stood to defend: there, his wife, as a fleeing mother clutching her infant; nearby, an old man with a face like his father’s – or was it his grandfather’s? – hobbling along on a crutch. Phantoms. Echoes of a past that every death and rebirth took him farther and farther away from.

The last of the refugees – the lucky ones – were just about to pass through the massed ranks of the Stormhost. Out on the plain, scores of unlucky stragglers were overtaken by ravening Flesh Hounds or cleaved by bloodied hellblades.

The order came. ‘Shoulder to shoulder, my brothers!’

The shield wall closed. A shock wave rippled through the Stormhost, Klytos and his comrades absorbing the impact of hundreds of charging, screaming bodies as the Khornate vanguard met them. Barbed spear tips and bloodied sword blades thrust and swiped at Klytos and his Stormcast brethren around their enormous shields.

Barely discernible above the tumult: ‘Make them pay, brothers! Strike! Forward!’

The battle line moved as one, the shield wall crushing the forward ranks of barbarian marauders and lesser daemonspawn. Klytos lowered his shield, warblade thrusting and slashing, mowing a bloody swathe through his amassed adversaries. All was chaos and slaughter: a storm of churned soil, clods of torn-up turf, gouts of diseased blood, gobbets of hewn flesh, the deafening ring of steel upon adamant sigmarite. Klytos revelled in the carnage: it filled him with a dutiful calm.

Then, a blasphemy enormous and terrifying advanced from the surging fray: an Exalted Deathbringer, a tower of rippling, knotted sinews and taut, leathery skin the colour of dried blood. Tall and looming, it waded through the massed bloodletters and skullreapers clogging Klytos’ vision like a man striding out of a rolling surf.

The monstrosity bore in its hands an enormous, double-headed axe. As it closed on the front rank of the Stormhost – on Klytos – it drew that axe back over its broad shoulders and began hewing, right and left, indiscriminately slashing down foul comrades and shining enemies alike.

Its monstrous blade split Klytos in two, and the holy lightning of Sigmar Heldenhammer stole him from the field of battle…

That night, the slaughter abated and the plain secured, the Stormhost established a perimeter around the refugee camp. Inside that perimeter, the mortals stoked cook fires, fed empty bellies with meagre provisions, tended the wounded and comforted the dying. A chill wind skated over the Shyish plain, now moaning, now sighing, offering melancholy harmony to the hymns of the Knights-Incantor.

The songs, which should have stoked Klytos’ courage and focused his warrior’s heart, now filled him with a strange sense of disaffected dread. True, he was now reforged, ready once more to rejoin the eternal struggle against Chaos… yet he was nonetheless diminished; thinned, like clouds effaced by the wind.

Klytos had died many times, his very essence torn out of the Mortal Realms and returned to the Chamber of the Broken World, there to be superheated into molten impermanence, smashed by the Six Smiths upon the Anvil of Apotheosis, and finally reformed. Vague recollections of some of those deaths yet haunted him: the searing pain as his skull was crushed beneath the hammer of a beastlord; the taste of blood as he was ridden down by the thundering hooves of charging Gore-Gruntas; the panic and terror that gripped him as he was butchered and dismembered by the accursed blade of a laughing daemon prince. He even suffered a recurring nightmare of slowly succumbing to suppurating pustules and a writhing maggot infestation courtesy of the vile plague sorcerers of Nurgle… though he was not sure if that benighted vision was a true memory or only a dream.

He had once tried to keep count of his many deaths and Reforgings, but that count was now lost, like so many other expendable bits of him – gaping, bleeding spaces in the fabric of his consciousness that should contain something yet did not, like the persistent itch of a long-lost phantom limb, empty cavities in his memory stirring impulses he could barely understand or articulate.

The woman was a ghost in his imagination now. He remembered the wood-brown colour of her skin, the cool depths of her eyes, but he could no longer conjure features to make her face anything more than a blurred mask.

Or the babe. Was it a boy? A girl? He yet recalled how small it was in his seemingly enormous hands, but that image – a trembling newborn – was all he could summon.

Then there was the old man… Klytos no longer remembered a face, or a voice, or any wisdom imparted. All he could remember, with great effort and concentration, was the feeling of bony, arthritic hands in his own. A presence, not a person.

Why? Why could he not simply forget, and be content to do so? He saw the after-effects of Reforging in every member of his conclave: the way Barnavos eternally stared into the middle distance, reciting chains of numbers and formulae; the way Hareggar treated the scouring of his war-plate and the oiling of his sword blade as crucial rituals, demanding almost religious fixation; the way Jennaeus, when he thought no one was listening, recited a constantly transforming list of all the ways he had died, making of his many, painful ends a strange, martial litany.

‘The sting of a spear, the bite of a blade,’ he would mutter. ‘Cleft in twain, unwound, unmade…’

Eagerly, hungrily, he listened to the holy hymns of the God-King, praying that the deep and sonorous harmonies of the Knights-Incantor might banish his doubt and grief entirely. He knew that such merciful amnesia, the salvation of an eternal present, should beckon to him, tempt him… but it only filled him with a sense of overwhelming panic and impending tragedy.

A great shadow fell over him. Klytos raised his eyes to find Liberator-Prime Gracchus looming at his elbow. Klytos shot to his feet. Gracchus laid one gauntleted hand on his shoulder pauldron.

‘You fought well today, young Klytos,’ the Liberator-Prime said gravely.

Klytos nodded. So far as he could reason out, he had been fighting in this Stormhost for several centuries… and yet, to every Liberator-Prime who had ever commanded, he was always ‘Young Klytos’.

‘I am proud to serve,’ Klytos said, and meant it.

‘I am surprised,’ the Liberator-Prime said, ‘to find you back in our midst so quickly. Sigmar must have great need of you.’

In truth, Klytos had been just as surprised. Reforgings usually took longer than several short hours to complete. He had idly wondered if his rushed reconstitution might account for how disordered his thoughts now were, how rattled and empty he felt.

‘Sigmar’s will is all,’ Klytos said, and he meant that too. Or did he? His own feelings defied his understanding.

The Liberator-Prime studied him for a long, curious moment. ‘Something troubles you,’ he said. It was not a question.

Klytos felt fear stir in him. He could not tell Liberator-Prime Gracchus the truth. Give voice to his shame? His fear? Impossible!

Luckily, Gracchus spoke again before Klytos was forced to. ‘Duty,’ he said at last. ‘Your Reforging has left you disoriented, and only duty will restore the sense of order your still-adjusting psyche now desires.’

Klytos nodded eagerly. ‘Command me,’ he said, all but begging. Anything but sitting here, contemplating it all.

The Liberator-Prime turned towards the dark landscape stretching beyond the ragged edge of the camp’s firelight. He indicated a cluster of low, rolling hills to the north-east. ‘Earlier, patrols reported signs of scouts in those hills. Investigate and report. And if you find anything, your first task is to make the Stormhost aware, not to slay those you find single-handed. Am I understood?’

Klytos saluted his commander. ‘Understood, Liberator-Prime. I live to serve.’

Eager for a purpose – a mission – his mind still awhirl with self-recrimination, Klytos took up his shield and his warblade and trudged off into the night, as commanded, each long stride leading him farther from the camp. In truth, he was thankful for the lone patrol, dearly hoping that duty and vigilance might somehow assuage the storm raging inside him.

Having cleared the ragged edge of the firelight, he scanned the doleful, moonlit landscape surrounding him. To the north, the bright crimson bonfires of Khorne’s warband littered the plain to the black horizon. He knew their withdrawal after the day’s bloodshed was only a brief reprieve before another, inevitable clash.

He was closer to the hills than the camp he had left behind when he heard the sound of excited voices, followed by the unmistakable tumult of a battle: barked orders, pounding feet and ringing steel.

‘Take them!’ he heard. The voice was throaty, inhuman.

Behind the hill directly ahead of him, there came a flash of bright green light.

Klytos broke into a run, aiming to remain both swift and silent. He mounted the low slope before him, trudging up towards the broad hilltop. The voices from the other side were much louder now, the din of battle more frantic.

Klytos reached the hilltop, took shelter behind a ragged line of stunted, wind-wracked old trees, and took in the scene below.

Seven enormous figures encircled a lone swordsman, trading blows with the trapped fighter and making escape impossible. An eighth large figure stood apart, watching the proceedings. A smaller figure, wrapped in a flowing cloak and cowl and bearing a wizard’s staff capped by a scintillating green gemstone, haunted the edge of the melee, two bulky adversaries lying dead at his feet.

The big loner and the encircling forces were easy enough to identify, even at this distance. Only a slaughterpriest possessed such magically swollen slabs of muscle, and only Chaos-tainted skullreapers could stand beside such a preternaturally massive servant of the Blood God and not be dwarfed by him. The swordsman – lithe and swift amid those lumbering, oversized bodies – stood his ground against the attackers, but it was clear that his defences were flagging.

The cloaked figure suddenly shouted to the swordsman. ‘Malazar, fall back!’

The voice was female.

The swordsman, Malazar, met three attackers who all rushed him at once. One felt the bite of his steel. The other two parried the deft, deadly blows he rained upon them. Then, in desperation, the swordsman withdrew. He put his body between the cloaked woman and their slowly closing adversaries.

Part of Klytos bade himself burst from hiding and rush to their aid – but there was another impulse, a subtler one. Wait, it said. Watch. Something in this makes me uneasy…

As Klytos watched, the still-cowled woman drew a knife from beneath her cloak. She said something to her companion, but Klytos could barely hear the words.

The swordsman dropped his sword and raised his chin, exposing his throat. He acted swiftly, obediently, never taking his eyes off the advancing skullreapers.

‘Back, you fools!’ the slaughterpriest suddenly roared.

Two of the Bloodbound withdrew, as ordered, but the rest, rendered reckless by battle lust, advanced towards the woman, blades ready to rip and tear.

The woman stepped close to her sword-wielding companion, placed her knife at his offered throat, and sliced it open. As blood sheeted, thick and hot, from the gaping wound, she shouted strange, guttural words in a language Klytos did not recognise. With each word, the gemstone on her staff pulsed, its luminescence intensifying in seconds.

A great explosion of light suddenly erupted from the staff, an expanding corona of emerald energy that tore through the five advancing skullreapers, ripping the life right out of them and throwing their hellishly enlarged bodies to the earth. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the great cloud of energy dissipated. Its thinned, ragged edges never touched the plot of ground to which the last two skullreapers and their slaughterpriest master had retreated.

Klytos could not believe his eyes. The woman had slain her own companion – her protector! – and used the dark energy of his sacrifice to fuel that lethal, magical discharge. Nor had the swordsman hesitated. She demanded his life: he gave it.

But now, magical energies spent, the woman was helpless. The two remaining skullreapers charged, eager to subdue her.

‘Blood for the Blood God,’ one snarled in ecstasy.

‘Aelven blood for the Lord of Slaughter!’ his companion growled.

Aelven?

Klytos had to help her. He burst through the screen of twisted trees, ready to join the fight.

‘Two Darklings,’ the slaughterpriest below said slowly, ‘skulking about alone in the night, between two camped armies? Why?’

Klytos froze. Darklings. No wonder he had hesitated when moving to defend her. He knew well the blasphemies and dark sorceries attributed to the Darkling Covens. Clearly, some part of him had sensed that darkness emanating from the sorceress and her companion.

The skullreapers were upon her. She fought bravely, using her staff as a weapon with practised assurance, but her adversaries were too large, too savage. In moments, one wrested her staff from her and tossed it aside. The other locked the aelf woman’s arms in his huge, muscular hands.

The slaughterpriest approached, all but swaggering in the moonlight. ‘Tell us what you’re after,’ he demanded, ‘and the master just might make your end quick and relatively painless.’

Darkling or no, Klytos thought, she needs help. Is Chaos not the greater foe?

Klytos found his voice. ‘Unhand her!’ he bellowed.

The Bloodbound all turned towards him. Klytos did not move. Being outnumbered, he knew he would maintain his advantage only if he could draw them up the hillside and hold the high ground.

‘What is this?’ the slaughterpriest snarled.

‘Just out for an evening stroll,’ Klytos said coldly. ‘And look what I find…’

‘I suppose,’ the slaughterpriest answered, ‘you shall now tell me there are more of your infernal kind waiting, just over that rise? A battle chamber, ready to destroy us?’

‘No,’ Klytos said. ‘Just me.’

‘Kill him,’ the slaughterpriest commanded. His two lumbering subordinates unhanded the sorceress, eager for a bloody duel with what they considered a more worthy adversary, and advanced up the slope. One bore a nasty-looking hellblade, encrusted with dried blood that looked black in the moonlight. The other wielded a large, lethal warhammer. Only when the first of them was nearly upon him, raising that warhammer and sounding a hideous battle cry, did Klytos finally move.

He thrust his shield forward, throwing it edge-on. The leading edge of the heavy sigmarite slab slammed hard into the mutant marauder’s face and sent the hideous creature toppling backwards, blood gushing from its crushed and broken nose. As the first skullreaper fell, Klytos pivoted to meet its sword-wielding companion, that ugly blade rising high for a killing blow. Klytos blocked the blade with a powerful, two-handed stroke, then swept his own warblade in a broad, sideward arc while his adversary’s steel yet rang. The slash bit deep into the creature’s muscular torso. The skullreaper roared, enraged by the painful, seeping wound, but its shock was only momentary. With a monstrous battle cry, it charged Klytos, hellblade crashing down time and again in ferocious hammer blows, its speed and savagery more than a match for Klytos’ skill and strength.

As Klytos danced across the hillside, parrying and dodging his would-be killer’s attacks and struggling to land his own, he caught sight of the first skullreaper – the one stunned by his shield attack – now creeping in from the right. Below, at the foot of the hill, the slaughterpriest struggled to bind the belligerent prisoner so that he, too, could safely turn his back on her and join the fight. Klytos was fairly certain he could slay the two Bloodbound that he now faced… but if that slaughterpriest entered the fray before the other two were neutralised, any hope of survival – let alone victory – would evaporate.

The shield-stricken skullreaper suddenly charged, bellowing through a face sticky with coagulating gore. Klytos barely avoided a deadly blow from its monstrous warhammer, then ducked under the Khorne-worshipper’s reach and lunged sidewards, throwing all of his armoured bulk against the charging monster.

The gambit worked. The hammer-wielder crashed hard into its sword-swinging comrade and the two hit the hillside in a tangle of limbs, weapons and rusted armour. Before either could rise again, Klytos rushed to meet them. His warblade sliced the air once, twice. The heads of both skullreapers thumped down the hillside.

Klytos turned, expecting to find the slaughterpriest still trudging up the slope towards him – but the demagogue was already upon him, having closed the distance that separated them with inhuman speed. The slaughterpriest bellowed praise to Khorne as he revealed his own weapon of choice: an enormous, broad-bladed battle scythe. The blade flashed in the moonlight, sweeping in a wide, savage arc towards Klytos’ head.

Klytos ducked the whistling blade… barely. Half-crouched and unbalanced, Klytos thrust his sword deep into the slaughterpriest’s exposed flank. The hellish prophet threw back his head and roared, but pain did not deter him. His movement yanked Klytos’ warblade from his grip. Already unbalanced, Klytos was thrown to the ground. As the Stormcast raised his eyes, seeking a means of escape or some weapon close at hand, the slaughterpriest brought his death-dealing scythe down towards Klytos’ hunkered form.

No escape. Another death. More pieces of Klytos, soon to be lost.

There came a sudden, blinding, sun-bright flash of emerald light. Klytos shrank from the burst, sure that, in the next instant, he would feel the bite of the slaughterpriest’s scythe blade.

No killing blow came. Instead, Klytos heard the sound of sizzling, as of meat in a hot frying pan. The stink of burning flesh assailed him. Then, the night was split by an unholy scream of rage and agony. He opened his eyes.

The slaughterpriest twisted and writhed on the hillside, his enormous, muscular frame smoking as his foul skin blistered and cracked. As Klytos stared, horrified, the slaughterpriest’s body seemed to be eaten from the inside out by squirming, devouring worms of pure light. The whole process took seconds. In the span of a breath, the slaughterpriest’s scream was cut off, echoing into the void that claimed him as the writhing, devouring glow-worms guttered out like spent embers and disappeared.

Stunned, Klytos turned towards the aelf woman. Her cowl had finally been removed. Her long, dark hair waved placidly in the night winds, the tapered points of her ears now visible. Though she was dishevelled and slightly worse for wear, her stark, frighteningly beautiful face suggested a calm strength – fierce determination and indomitable will in equal measure. Clearly, she was not one to be trifled with.

Klytos stood and snatched his warblade from where it lay among the ashen remains of the slaughterpriest. ‘My thanks,’ he said, nodding towards her. ‘But, I had hoped to do the rescuing, not to be rescued.’

‘Such gratitude,’ the aelven sorceress said drolly, then lowered her staff and turned round. She moved to the still, prone figure of her swordsman companion – the one slain by her own hand as a blood sacrifice – and knelt beside him.

‘Who was he?’ Klytos asked. ‘A servant? A slave?’

‘A friend,’ the sorceress said, almost to herself. ‘True and faithful. He knew his death could fuel magic sufficient to lay them low. Most of them, anyway.’ She laid a single, pale hand upon his still body.

‘What were the two of you doing here,’ Klytos pressed, ‘in sight of a Khornate battle camp?’

The aelf sorceress stood again.

‘Don’t worry your shiny, empty head over it,’ she said. Then, staff in hand, she turned northward and began a confident march.

‘Hold on!’ Klytos shouted. ‘You can’t go that way! There are more of them!’

‘Your grasp of the obvious is astounding,’ she said, not stopping. ‘I’ll find a way through. I have to.’

‘That’s folly, and you know it,’ Klytos said, following close behind her.

She was not listening. Well ahead of him, she mounted the slope of another hill and trudged upwards towards the ridgeline.

It was at the crest of the hill that Klytos finally caught up with her. She stared down upon the vast, level plain, the Khornate horde’s camp blighting the landscape like a festering burn scar. On the soughing winds, Klytos heard the rattle of chains and the crackle of flames, mingled with cruel laughter and mournful lamentations. Beyond the Khornate camp, an eerie blue-green glow marked the place where horizon and sky met.

‘What is that?’ the aelven sorceress asked, eyes narrowing.

‘A procession of nighthaunts,’ Klytos said. ‘They sometimes follow in the wake of the Blood God’s minions here in Shyish, scavenging tortured spirits from the battlefield.’

The sorceress stared, eyes locked on the spectral light. Klytos studied her by the glow of the gibbous moon. Her face was a mask of cold analysis: weighing all options, considering all variables.

‘Where is it you’re trying to get to?’ Klytos asked.

The sorceress turned then and seemed to study him, long and hard. Klytos knew that all she saw was the implacable, unreadable mask of his great sigmarite helm, but there was still a strange, probing quality to her gaze that seemed to penetrate beyond the mask, behind his hazel eyes, into the very locus of his soul and consciousness. Though armoured from head to toe, he suddenly felt naked, exposed.

Instinctively, Klytos took a single step backwards – the only retreat he could remember making since being plucked out of mortality by Holy Sigmar.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘My name,’ the aelven sorceress said, ‘is Lichis Evermourn. My companion and I were sent by our coven to recover something very precious, lost on the other side of that.’ She gestured to the vast Khornate camp. ‘I need to reach a citadel back in the foothills. That is what my companion and protector died for.’

‘Impossible,’ Klytos said. ‘Even if you get past the camp itself, the country in its wake will be crawling with the servants of Khorne. And that’s to say nothing of the terrors of Shyish itself, both living and dead.’

‘Then come with me,’ Lichis Evermourn said. ‘As you’ve seen, I have powers of my own, but I could use a strong warrior – a faithful warrior – at my side.’

‘No,’ Klytos said flatly. ‘I cannot abandon my Stormhost – my duty.’

‘Your duty is not only to Sigmar,’ Lichis said, ‘but to Order and Light. Believe me when I say, the artefact I seek is powerful enough to risk anything for its recovery… because if the enemy discovers it, its power will be theirs, and serve their vile ends alone.’

‘What is this artefact?’ Klytos asked.

‘A stone,’ Lichis said. ‘Pure Shyish realmstone, calcified and bound into the form of a large amethyst. In the simplest terms, it restores all things – rebuilds that which is broken, regenerates that which was lost. It’s remained safe and hidden in an out-of-the-way redoubt in the foothills, but its keeper and her initiates were forced to flee before she could recover the stone from its hiding place. She tried to backtrack and retrieve it, but her attempt was… unsuccessful.’

Klytos barely heard any of the words she said after it restores all things – rebuilds that which is broken, regenerates that which was lost.

No, he thought. Impossible. It is heresy. Betrayal!

‘If it is so precious,’ he said, ‘so powerful, then go to the Stormhost commander and ask for a full conclave–’

‘There is no time,’ Lichis snapped dismissively. ‘Besides, a larger force would be a larger target. Malazar and I had thought to slip through alone, the two of us, but now, I am forced to continue without him. And seeing what lies before me…’

She stared down at the plain.

‘I need your help, Klytos,’ she finally said, eyes still on the enemy camp below. ‘And I will reward you for your aid.’

He had not told her his name, nor anything about himself. It had not been his imagination. She had opened him, examined him, and learned of his secret yearning.

Lichis Evermourn turned her large, dark eyes upon him. There was pity in those eyes now, even understanding.

‘I know what you desire most of all, Klytos. The realmstone can provide it.’

He thought of the child. The woman. That rough, wizened hand in his own.

I could have them again! he thought. In my mind, in my heart, part of me–

‘No,’ Klytos said, turning from her. ‘I cannot. This is a violation of my oaths… of my duty…’

He started to descend the hill.

‘It’s true what they say, then,’ Lichis Evermourn said. ‘You Stormcasts are a horde of mindless automatons, slaves without a speck of self-awareness or free will–’

Klytos stopped. Rounded on her. ‘I am no slave! I serve because I was chosen!’

She moved closer, her gaze meeting his. ‘Then prove it and help me. I know you want to. You’ll remember everything, Klytos. Their names. The life you shared with them. If your existence, for all the ages yet to come, is to consist of endless cycles of death and resurrection in the name of Holy Sigmar, should you not be granted the recollection of who you were and what you lived for?’

Their names. Their faces. The woman’s dark skin against his own. Songs he sang to his newborn babe. Lazy afternoons among wildflowers under sunny skies. All that, and more, could be his again, his last memento of all they shared…

‘The Reforging,’ Klytos said, mind already turning to the future.

‘Immaterial,’ Lichis said. ‘Once I restore what’s been lost to you, it cannot be taken away again. I swear it.’

This is folly, he thought. Only disaster can come of this. To abandon your Stormhost? To aid this woman? To feed a selfish desire?

I serve, he reminded himself. I fight and I have been loyal unto death, a thousand times over. Should I not reclaim this one, small thing?

Klytos sighed. He had already made his decision, hadn’t he?

‘Let me recover my shield,’ he said, and marched down the hill.

Their way through the hills was slow and treacherous, but they eventually cleared the Khornate camp. Once upon the open plain, Klytos allowed Lichis to guide them. The only words they shared were pointed, utilitarian: time to rest; time to camp; movement ahead, proceed with caution. The farther they wandered from his Stormhost, the more despondent he became, his hope and guilt at war within him.

It was during their second night on the plain that Lichis made an effort to speak with him.

‘You’re not much for conversation,’ she said.

Klytos raised his eyes. He had been contemplating the crackling flames of the pitiful fire before them. The night was cold and dark, and they had not found food since the day before. Even sufficient kindling was in short supply. He could go a long time without sustenance – any Stormcast could – but the lack of need did not quell the desire.

‘I have nothing to say,’ Klytos answered.

‘That may be the case,’ Lichis said, ‘but I am hungry and bored. Make the effort, for my sake.’

‘For your sake,’ Klytos scoffed. ‘We have nothing in common.’

‘You might be surprised,’ Lichis said. ‘Do endless Reforgings blunt your curiosity, as well? Your ability to empathise?’

Klytos sighed. ‘I shall be damned for this. Cast out. Possibly obliterated.’

‘Simply for reclaiming your past?’ Lichis asked. ‘Restoring your soul? I had no idea Sigmar was so cruel.’

Klytos raised his eyes. ‘Sigmar is worthy of all praise, all admiration. He is the paragon of virtue. If he punishes me, I well deserve it.’

The sorceress smiled a little. ‘And yet, you came.’

‘Do not mock me!’ Klytos snapped. ‘You cannot understand what this feels like.’

‘That’s a foolish assumption,’ Lichis said. ‘Let me assure you, Stormcast, I’ve forgotten a dozen lifetimes and barely wondered what became of them. I know well what it means to lose pieces of oneself, be it to hungry time or soul-flaying trauma.’

‘How do you endure it, then?’ Klytos asked.

‘I remind myself,’ Lichis said, ‘that I am not what I remember, or who I was in the past. I am only what I do in the present. Actions define me, not memories.’

Klytos nodded. He could appreciate that ethos – he truly could – and yet, he still felt she could not wholly comprehend his predicament.

‘The memories you’ve lost were erased by time itself,’ he said, ‘and ultimately replaced with new experiences. My mind feels like a haunted castle that’s collapsed and been sloppily rebuilt a hundred times over. The rooms and corridors keep shifting, changing, yet always, the ghosts remain…’

Lichis studied him in the firelight, like a wizard closely observing a newly fashioned homunculus.

‘No wonder you Stormcasts are all so dour,’ she finally said. ‘You’ve lost everything that makes you human.’

‘You mock me,’ Klytos said.

‘I pity you,’ Lichis countered. ‘There is a difference.’

They spent four days trekking steadily towards the mountains. In the foothills, folded into a dreary vale shrouded in mist and shadows, the citadel they sought loomed, dark and ancient upon a craggy promontory, a cluster of gloomy towers, sharp spires and peaked roofs clustered behind high, sheer curtain walls.

Klytos shuddered inwardly upon first espying the bleak old fortress. It was all the darkest essences of Shyish, extracted and distilled into a single agglomeration of sweating, night-black stone, pallid, half-dead creeper vines and brooding shadows. The front gate – tall, narrow and dark as a mountain crevasse – stood wide open, daring them to enter.

‘What was this place?’ Klytos asked, peering from cover behind a wall of fallen boulders and rocky scree.

Lichis, secreted beside him, met his wondering gaze with her own.

‘My coven holds many such redoubts,’ she said, ‘in all the Mortal Realms. Places where sensitive objects of power can be hidden and guarded.’

Something moved behind the battlements: a figure visible between the crumbling merlons of the parapet. It paused in the gap and glanced out casually, scanning the grey, rocky landscape beneath the wall. It was a man, apparently human.

‘Scavenger?’ Klytos wondered aloud.

‘Not alone, I’ll wager,’ Lichis said, then pointed. ‘Look there.’

Something moved in the citadel’s ward-yard, visible through the tall, open gateway. Another man, carrying in his arms an unwieldy pile of some sort: plundered provisions or stolen treasure, perhaps. Above, the skulker on the rampart turned and shouted something down to his companion. An unintelligible answer was given. The man on the rampart withdrew into a corner tower. The one in the courtyard disappeared from view.

‘The way is clear,’ Lichis said. ‘Let’s go.’

They hurried over the bleak, open ground before the citadel and shortly arrived at the yawning gate. There before them stretched a deep, dark alley between high, sweating walls, all shrouded in darkness under the looming bulk of the gatehouse. The lower extremities of not one, but two raised portcullises hovered high in the murk above them like titanic jaws, poised to snap. The passage stank of mildew, mould and stale ash.

As they advanced, Klytos more clearly heard voices from the courtyard. He discerned only two of them.

‘A good haul,’ one of them said.

‘How far back to the crossroads?’ the other asked. ‘A day? Two?’

‘It’s west for us,’ the first answered. ‘Over the mountains.’

The second man cursed such a long, dispiriting journey. Klytos was just about to step into the yard, when Lichis suddenly swept past him. Heedless and impatient, the sorceress strode forwards, staff in hand, wearing a narrow-eyed grimace that suggested she deeply disapproved of finding thieves in this place.

‘Lichis,’ Klytos hissed. ‘What are you doing?’

The two men – busy packing the overstuffed saddlebags on their horses – bickered on for a moment before finally noticing that they were not alone.

Lichis stood in the centre of the courtyard, the ferrule of her staff planted firmly beside her. Klytos hurried out of hiding to join her.

‘What’s this?’ the first man asked. ‘Some aelven conjuress and her pet Stormcast?’

‘Better than a pair of diseased vultures,’ Lichis said, ‘picking over the bones of a fresh corpse.’

The gem at the head of Lichis’ staff pulsed impatiently.

The second man drew a short sword sheathed at his hip, though he looked far too scared to use it. The first man held out a hand, calming his companion.

‘Now see here,’ he said to Lichis. ‘The place was abandoned–’

‘So,’ Lichis said, ‘you thought to help yourself to its treasures?’

‘And its stores,’ the second man said. ‘We were hungry.’

‘Lichis,’ Klytos said quietly, ‘these two are no threat. Settle this peacefully.’

‘We don’t want any trouble,’ the first man said.

‘There will be no trouble,’ Lichis said. ‘Go now, with only the clothes on your back and you shall not be harmed. None of what you found shall leave with you.’

‘Just a minute,’ the first man said, impatient.

The second man, trembling, suddenly dropped his sword and tried to bolt for the citadel gate.

Lichis levelled her staff. A fat green fireball shot from the pulsing gem and enveloped the fleeing looter mid-stride.

Klytos lunged for his companion. ‘Lichis, no!’

The first man stared, goggle-eyed, at his screaming, writhing comrade, now swathed in livid green flames. The looter turned to Lichis, eyes wide, opening his mouth. Klytos guessed he was about to beg for mercy.

Lichis loosed another fireball. The man burst into flame. His words became agonised screams, echoing in the courtyard in atonal harmony with his still-dying companion. Klytos smelled the sickly-sweet stench of burning flesh. Those flames, despite their wholly unnatural green hue, burned forge-hot. In seconds, both men lay still and silent on the debris-strewn earth of the courtyard.

Klytos grabbed Lichis by one thin arm and whirled her round to face him.

‘Murderer!’ he growled.

‘Think of me as an exterminator,’ Lichis said. ‘Rousting out and eradicating the vermin.’ With that, she shook loose from Klytos’ grip and marched across the yard. The laden horses had shied from the flames and retreated. Lichis chose the nearer of the two, drew the knife at her belt – the same knife used to sacrifice her companion, Malazar – and slashed the over-stuffed saddlebags it bore. The contents tumbled out in a clamorous clatter.

Klytos stared, stunned and silent as Lichis began rifling through the trinkets and provisions and small, second-rate treasures freed from the saddlebags. She seemed to be searching for something but finding no sign of it. Disgusted, she closed on the second horse, some distance away. In seconds, its saddlebags were slashed and emptied as well.

Klytos looked to the two flaming corpses now bleeding gouts of thick, black smoke. Thieves? Perhaps. Small men, of mean character? Certainly. But worthy of death? And such hideous, agonising deaths, at that? Hardly.

He might have been with his Stormhost at that very moment, doing what he was forged to do: slaying minions of Chaos, shielding those innocent, frightened refugees as they raced for the coast and the ships waiting to bear them away. He should have been serving a greater good… but instead, here he stood, a party to murder, serving his own selfish ends.

I’ve proven Lichis wrong in this, at least, Klytos thought mordantly. I am no slave. I have free will. I can make my own choices.

And I am starting to believe I made the wrong one.

All at once, Klytos found his Stormcast helm constricting, practically choking him. Irritated, he yanked the helm free and tossed it to the ground. He paced the yard, drinking deeply of the stale air.

He suddenly realised that the sorceress was studying him, her normally unreadable face evincing bewilderment, even a kind of wonder.

‘What are you staring at?’ Klytos asked.

‘Your face,’ she said. ‘I’m shocked by just how ordinary you look.’

‘Why did you kill them?’ Klytos asked. ‘These weren’t the servants of the Dark Gods. They were two fools looking for baubles to sell and provisions to see them through a night or two!’

‘How do you know who they were?’ Lichis shot back, voice cold. ‘Or what they were capable of?’

‘You read me,’ Klytos answered. ‘Are you saying you read them? Saw undeniable evidence of the threat they posed?’

‘A waste of time,’ Lichis said. ‘Besides, I had to be sure.’

‘Sure of what?’ Klytos demanded.

‘That they hadn’t found it first,’ Lichis answered.

Klytos had no reply. His presence here, with this woman, was a blight upon his honour as a Stormcast, a stain upon his soul. Suddenly weary and eager to be away from her, he sighed.

‘Where is it, then?’ he asked.

Lichis turned and set out towards a gloomy span of wall crowded between a looming keep and a low, squat chapel beside it. Only when Klytos squinted and studied the wall did he realise there was an open doorway set into it.

‘Follow me,’ Lichis said without looking back.

They descended by way of a narrow stone stairway into a winding catacomb littered with ancient bones and choked with cobwebs bestirred by soft, phantom breezes that slithered up and down the subterranean passage. The only light was the sickly green glow from the gem on Lichis’ staff.

‘I am starting to believe you tricked me,’ Klytos said darkly after a long silence.

Lichis stopped. Turned. She clearly wanted him to see her face – to look into her dark, ageless eyes – as she spoke.

‘If I wanted to send you back to Sigmar for yet another Reforging, I could have done so long before now. I brought you with me for a reason, Stormcast. Until your purpose is served, it is my responsibility to protect you, not to endanger you.’

Klytos studied the aelven sorceress. He found her face alternately beautiful and terrible in the garish green light of that jewel on her staff. Her dark eyes appraised him, deconstructed him. All he could do was stand, enduring it like a helpless, scolded child.

‘And just what is my purpose?’ Klytos asked her.

A strange, sly half-smile bloomed on Lichis’ face. ‘What you were made for. Come along, now. We’re almost there.’

With that, Lichis carried on down the passage. Klytos marched after her.

In moments, they emerged into a large, airy crypt. Its high ceiling was supported by elegant ribbed vaulting crusted with ancient, pale fungi and ragged, long-decaying cobwebs. More tombs for interment were carved into the chamber’s widely spaced walls, some of the vaults sealed, others smashed and yawning wide. The centre of the room was dominated by twin rows of enormous sarcophagi, each capped by a massive, carved stone slab. At least one of those princely tombs had been broken into and rifled through, for its slab lay broken beside it and the bones of its former occupant – now cracked and degraded with age – lay strewn about on all sides. Piles of old crates, haphazardly stacked furniture and ancient hogsheads crammed into out-of-the-way corners suggested that those who dwelt in the citadel had, at some point, so thoroughly disregarded the sanctity of this crypt that they used it as surplus storage.

But the most troubling sight were the skeletons, along with two corpses that looked – by comparison, at least – rather fresh. These remains were tossed about in various locations and positions, most still wearing scraps of old cloth or rusted mail. A fallen weapon lay close to each: a sword, a maul, a hand axe. Instinctively, Klytos knew these could not be the scattered bones of the crypt’s ancient occupants, for the arrangement of each skeleton suggested that it had decayed where it fell. The two fresher corpses, likewise, evidenced signs of distress. One had probably been there four or five years, for it still had skin, though that skin was now dried and wrinkled like old parchment on the cusp of disintegration.

The other corpse, however, looked entirely too fresh. A day old. Maybe two. There was still moisture on the dead man’s bulging, affrighted eyes and signs of bruising under his ashen skin. The man’s face was a horror, frozen in wide-eyed terror and gape-mouthed disbelief, as if he had died of fright.

Klytos studied the grim tableau as Lichis moved quickly among the sarcophagi, hastily perusing the carved glyphs upon each in search of some sign of her quarry.

‘Here,’ she said at last. ‘Help me.’

‘What happened here?’ Klytos demanded. ‘These dead scattered about – they are not the ones buried here.’

‘You’re wasting time,’ Lichis snapped. ‘Help me!’

Klytos, despite his misgivings, hurried to Lichis’ side and laid his weight upon the great, heavy slab that capped the sarcophagus. Inch by inch, the slab slid and groaned, revealing dusty, undisturbed darkness within. Overbalanced, the slab pitched sidewards and tumbled to the floor of the crypt with a thunderous crash.

Lichis hesitated for a moment, then clambered over the lip of the open sarcophagus. Inside, she crouched among the old, rotten shroud and long-undisturbed bones of the tomb’s occupant. Careless and businesslike, Lichis hastily shoved the old bones and decayed rags aside to reveal a hidden, round carving beneath.

The carving was a seal of some sort, though Klytos did not recognise the swirling, interlocking symbols upon it. As he watched, Lichis planted the ferrule of her staff upon the seal, then gripped her staff tightly in both hands.

‘Listen to me carefully,’ she said, ‘for this is why I need you. I have to open this seal, and it will take a great deal of time and energy for me to do so. The moment I begin, the crypt’s guardian will awaken.’

‘The guardian?’ Klytos drew his sword. ‘You bloody, evil witch! You said nothing of–’

‘We both have a part to play in this, Klytos,’ Lichis said testily. ‘You can’t get at the stone without my magic and I can’t work my magic unless you fend off and slay the guardian. This is why I need you. This is how you earn your reward.’

Klytos was filled with a righteous, murderous fury. He wanted to yank the Darkling sorceress out of the open sarcophagus and hack her limb from limb. How could he have been such a fool?

Lichis continued. ‘The guardian is your shadow, Klytos – a Knight of Shrouds, interred here long ago as penance for his betrayal. Your faith is proof against his wickedness. Let that serve you.’

Then she began her working, murmuring a rapid, tripping canticle in an ancient tongue. The green gem at the head of her staff began to glow. Beneath her, the carven inlays on the seal pulsed, the energies locked within them stirring and intensifiying, moment by moment.

Klytos felt a strange prickling at the nape of his neck. The air around him was suddenly cold – unnaturally so. He had also become aware of an eerie glow gathering behind him, casting his own, long shadow on the debris-strewn floor of the crypt. Though encumbered by armour and several layers of cloth, he felt goose pimples rising on his flesh. He even saw his breath, pluming hot from between his gnashed teeth. The very air in the crypt had changed, and something vile now stirred behind him.

It spoke before he ever turned to face it.

‘Foolish plunderers!’ it boomed in a raspy voice like rusted hinges protesting movement after centuries idle. ‘What blasphemy is this?’

Klytos turned, steeling himself for the horror that was about to reveal itself. He had faced a thousand enemies, slain bloodletters, Chaos knights, gargants and orruks. He had stood his ground against charging razorgors, slavering jabberslythes and snapping, venomous chimerae.

But now, it would appear, he faced an enemy unlike any other.

The Knight of Shrouds materialised above another opened sarcophagus and hovered there, seemingly anchored where it floated. The phantom’s leering, skeletal face bore some subtle and dreadful potency – a deeper, more malignant darkness in its gaping eye sockets, a mocking, lopsided set to its rictus grin – that made its visage more frightening than anything Klytos had ever seen. Radiating the same, sickly, blue-green light that all the ghostly damned of Shyish were imbued with, the abomination towered over him, its flowing, spectral robes simultaneously real enough to grasp and as immaterial as swirling smoke. Only the enormous, two-handed blade it held in one skeletal fist seemed truly solid.

Klytos tightened his grip on his warblade. Sigmar, he prayed, forgive me.

‘Stormcast,’ the phantasm said slowly, as if savouring the very word. ‘Quake, fear, for I am your ruin!’

Summoning his courage, Klytos reminded himself why he’d come here. He wanted his past. He wanted the people he’d lost and forgotten restored to him. He wanted to be whole again. If he had to slay this beast to do that… so be it.

‘Creature of the grave,’ he said slowly, ‘I am Stormcast, a Celestial Vindicator, and I have no master but Sigmar Heldenhammer. To claim what I have come for, I will gladly cast you back into the pit you slithered out of!’

The ghostly knight howled – whether in disbelief at Klytos’ bravado or delight in the challenge to come, he could not say. Its foul, shrieking voice stirred a maelstrom of cold, spectral winds in the vast crypt.

Then, it attacked.

The world around Klytos became a storm of frigid, biting air, ghastly cackling and shifting pools of ghastly blue-green luminescence. He spun and pivoted, seemingly beset by the Knight of Shrouds on all sides: in front, behind, to the left, to the right. Its enormous sword sliced the foetid air, again and again, as his own shining sigmarite blade rose and fell with almost painful slowness to fend off its attacks. Here, a lucky parry. There, a blocked thrust. A clumsy dance sidewards, narrowly avoiding a death blow. A skating retreat. A scrambling recovery.

Preparing for another attack, Klytos stole a glance at Lichis. She still crouched in the sarcophagus, rooted and unmoving, the gem on her sorcerer’s staff pulsing brightly as she recited the alien words of the spell intended to unlock that seal. Every muscle in her body was rigid and tense, her immense concentration and adamantine willpower exhausting to behold.

Then the Knight of Shrouds shrieked and charged again. Klytos barely deflected the monster’s first attack, then struck in answer. It was a sloppy but savage blow, his sword blade arcing in a wide horizontal chop. As the bright sigmarite passed through the undead knight’s ghostly, insubstantial form, Klytos felt a strange sensation.

Resistance. Solidity. His blade had hit something.

Confirming his sudden suspicion, the Knight of Shrouds screamed, whirled and retreated. Its cry was high and maddening, boring deep into Klytos’ ears, stabbing at the very centre of his consciousness – but he revelled in it. He had struck the spirit! Hurt it!

The Knight of Shrouds recovered and patiently circled, studying its would-be prey. Its howling shriek subsided to a ragged chuckle, low and ominous. Klytos, glad for the moment’s reprieve, began his own slow circle of his aetheric adversary, blade ready.

‘Despair, Stormcast!’ the knight taunted. ‘Look upon my face and see your own! I betrayed my vows to earn my place here! What shall become of you, oh faithless fool, when I strike you down? Can your shining God-King draw your soul back to Azyr even here, at the threshold of the Afterdark?’

Then, as its taunt still rang in Klytos’ ears, the nighthaunt exploded forwards, swift and shark-like through the empty air. Its sword rose for another attack. Klytos started to retreat, felt one of the sarcophagi blocking that retreat, and knew there was only one choice: forwards.

Without hesitation, he launched himself and his upraised warblade straight towards the onrushing phantom. He managed to get inside the knight’s sword-strike, but this time, Klytos’ own blade seemed to touch nothing at all. He rushed through the bone-chilling cold of the creature’s swirling, spectral essence – through the creature itself – before finally breaking free again on the far side. Shivering with a combination of terror and rage, he crashed to the crypt floor.

Impossible! he thought. Too fast! Too strong! How can I fight it?

‘Your faith, Klytos!’ Lichis suddenly shouted from where she knelt, still at her magical work. ‘Remember why you came here! Why you trusted me!’

Klytos turned, preparing to meet another charge from the Knight of Shrouds – this attack likely to finish him.

The knight whirled to face him. It hovered in the stale air of the burial chamber, empty black eyes radiating cruelty and contempt. Its notched and ancient blade reflected the sickly blue-green light emanating from it.

‘Tiring, are you, Stormcast?’ the fiend hissed. ‘Come now! Throw down your sword! Let me show you the way to true eternal life! It has been so long since I’ve known a companion here…’

Klytos felt a fury suddenly rise in him. All at once, he realised that it was not Sigmar he had no faith in – only himself. His shame, his desire to reclaim his past, had convinced him that he was inferior… lesser… unworthy.

But had not Sigmar chosen him?

Whomever he mourned, whatever he desired, it was part of him, the very essence of who and what he was. And Sigmar – his master, his god – knew every dark and shadowed corner of his heart. Sigmar knew what Klytos wanted…

…and he had brought Klytos here, now, into this chamber, to prove his mettle.

To test his faith.

The Knight of Shrouds dived through the air towards him, sword drawn back for a vicious, killing blow.

Klytos sprang to his feet, lunged, and met the falling blade with a mighty blow from his own. The swords rang like bells in the crypt’s dank air.

Determined, enraged, Klytos struck before the knight had even a moment to recover. His blade thrust forwards, its razor-sharp point seeking the misty, blue-green heart of the ’haunt’s diaphanous form.

And there, it seemed to strike something.

The knight’s skeletal jaw fell open and it screeched, a deafening sound drenched in pain, fury and disbelief.

Klytos laid both hands on his sword-grip and twisted the blade.

The knight dropped its sword and the ancient blade hit the crypt stones with a loud clatter. At its extremities, the spectral devil was discorporating, its grasping, skeletal fingers already swirling into the aether, their blue-green light extinguished.

‘For Sigmar!’ Klytos roared.

He withdrew his blade and brought it round in a wide, powerful arc, slashing right through the centre of the floating knight. Again, he felt the blade pass through something solid – something now hewn in twain by his attack. As the blade cut the Knight of Shrouds in two, the creature gave a last, mortified scream, then dissipated into swirling smoke and vanished.

Klytos waited, half expecting the vile guardian to suddenly reappear. But, no… the phantom did not return. He turned towards Lichis. The sorceress yet recited her eldritch incantations, the rich green light from the gemstone capping her staff now blinding, since it was the only light in the chamber. The seal beneath her glowed angrily, as though it might turn to molten rock and swallow her at any moment.

Then, as though some unseen boulder had suddenly fallen upon it, the seal shattered. Simultaneously, its glow was extinguished. Realising her spell was, at last, successful, Lichis lifted her staff and stumbled away from the broken seal. She leaned on the edge of the sarcophagus, gulping air, physically exhausted. As the glow of her gem subsided, her eyes darted about the chamber, searching.

‘The guardian?’ she asked.

‘Destroyed,’ Klytos said.

‘Well done,’ Lichis answered. Her lips curled at the corners in something like a proud smile.

‘Where is it?’ Klytos asked. ‘Let us be done with it.’

Lichis nodded, sighed, and knelt back in the sarcophagus again. She hastily yanked out the shattered pieces of the broken seal and tossed them aside, revealing beneath a shallow depression. In that depression rested a square box of medium size and impressive workmanship. Lichis snatched up the box. Her elegant fingers worked the many cunning latches that held it shut. Inside that box lay Klytos’ salvation.

It was a gem, about the size of a closed fist, possessing planar facets, rough edges and occluded depths that made it seem both naturally occurring and wilfully made, as if the earth itself had set out to fashion a work of art. A hypnotic glow emanated from within the gemstone: amethyst light, just like the inherent magical energies that had powered and pummelled Shyish through the ages, as though a small, purple sun burned at the heart of the great jewel.

Lichis displayed the gem in her outstretched hand. ‘Do you see?’ she asked, evincing something like wonder and piety for the first time in the many days that Klytos had known her.

‘Indeed,’ Klytos breathed in wonder, then glanced at his companion. She wore a strange expression, as if eager to speak but unsure of the right words. Klytos felt cold rage rising in him. ‘Why do you hesitate?’

‘That which you ask,’ Lichis said, ‘you may find that you did not want.’

‘No more games,’ Klytos snarled. ‘Do your work now, witch! Fulfil your vow to me!’

‘I warned you,’ Lichis said, then placed both her hands upon the gem and began a new incantation.

Little by little, the light at the heart of the gem intensified. Klytos instinctively felt that he should look away or cover his eyes, but that light, no matter how bright or blinding it became, all but demanded his hungry gaze. It drew him out of himself. It sang to him. Caressed him.

The light became a void, and Klytos plunged into that void.

The woman, his wife: Nara. His one true love. Beauty and grace incarnate. Her wood-brown skin, so smooth and delicate. Her eyes, green as pale emeralds, deeper than forest pools. He remembered kisses. Lazy afternoons beneath bright summer suns. Seeing dream-beasts in the passing clouds. Lovemaking. The joy that leapt in him when she told him she was with child.

Then, the sights, sounds and smells all changed. He heard the ring of steel on steel mingling with shrill screams. Saw fire and smoke. Smelled burning flesh and the coppery tang of blood. There Nara stood, amid surging, panicked villagers searching for egress from a tightening cordon of bloodthirsty reavers – human and inhuman alike. Klytos was too far away from her. He struggled, feet tugged at by sucking mud, tripping upon hacked corpses, his way barred by fallen, flaming debris.

Nara clutched the baby – Xandia, that was her name! A little girl, swathed in her favourite, hand-stitched blanket. The baby screamed in Nara’s arms. Klytos saw one small hand emerge from the folds of the blanket, clutching at her mother’s trailing braid.

Gods and daemons of an elder age, he knew what was about to happen!

A reaver suddenly towered over Nara. The barbarian’s sword was sharp, his eyes alight with cruelty. Nara screamed. Down came the blade. Nara was silenced, forever.

Xandia still lived, wriggling in her slain mother’s arms. The marauder who had cut Nara down bent, snatched up the baby in its bundle and lumbered away, Klytos’ only child tucked neatly in his filthy embrace.

It did not happen once. It happened again and again, replayed in Klytos’ memory like some foul verse from a catchy tavern song, repeating, repeating, repeating, resisting all attempts to purge it. Klytos tried to close his eyes, to summon memories of love and joy to counter the horror that repeated, time and again, before his unwilling gaze. He tried to recall meeting Nara, courting Nara, holding Nara in his arms on a cold winter’s night, watching Nara scream and cry as she brought their daughter into the world.

But those memories were little more than a cloud of swirling gnats – tiny, unreal, ephemeral. They could not banish the horribly real sight of Nara dying under that reaver’s sword. Of Xandia, borne away to live life as a slave – or worse, as the child of the barbarian that stole her, wholly ignorant that her apparent father had murdered the woman who’d given birth to her. Of Klytos, separated from them by slaughter and ruin, too late to protect them, too weak to pursue and overtake their murderer, to avenge them.

Then the old man returned to him. Phiro, father of Klytos, a simple sort: farmer, village elder, trader in orchard fruits and home-fermented wines. A strong man, a proud man, a good man.

Phiro, ruined by a fall in old age. Phiro, bent and twisted by injury and the indifference of time. Phiro, poisoned by an apothecary’s out-of-date stock, rendered speechless and vegetative. Phiro, a twisted, bony marionette lying prone in a bed beside a fire, shivering because he was cold – he was always so cold – his cataract-clouded eyes begging his son for a final reprieve.

Phiro’s skeletal old hand, thick with calluses, squeezing Klytos’ own. The old man had no words left, but Klytos understood well enough. His father wanted the mercy – the dignity – of a quiet end at the hand of someone who loved him. The old man wanted peace, release… and Klytos was not brave enough to give it. He allowed that poor, wizened creature to lay there on his piss-stained bed for weeks, dying in slow, small increments. Klytos knew what the old man wanted – what the old man needed – but he was too selfish, to craven, to bestow it.

No. This could not be. These were not the memories Klytos wanted. These were not what he had fought to reclaim. He wanted love, joy, familiarity, the prosaic; the simple, long-forgotten pleasures of mortal life.

He rifled his memories in search of pleasure – any pleasure – amid the now swirling storm that assailed him. He tore through them and tossed them about in desperation, as a thirsty traveller in the desert might ransack an abandoned camp for a hidden gourd containing the smallest drink of water. Intermittently, he found those delights. Childhood. Innocence. Play. Imagination. Love and romance. Hopes and dreams born of affection and intimacy. He found cherished memories of his father’s nurturing love and paternal pride, of laughter and friendship, of adventure and excitement. There was dancing. There were drunken revels.

But these pleasures were all isolated, intermittent, fleeting. Sickly, stunted roses on a malignant, ever-expanding thorn bush. Every petal of memory seemed to hide in its shadows a darker twin, the prick of exposed spines, the scuttle of insects and the stains of lurking rot. Slain friends. Ill relatives. His village wracked by plague. A winter famine that forced a nearby tribe to tear itself to pieces, the strong and cunning feasting upon their friends and neighbours. He even relived the bitter, senseless loss of his mother when he was yet a child; how she died twitching after being kicked in the head by a mule.

All pleasures were tempered by loss and pain. All hope was swallowed, over time, by sudden, foolish calamities or incomprehensible cruelties.

Klytos heard someone screaming. After a time, he realised the cries were his own.

‘Deserted,’ Eigrim said, surveying the citadel’s shadowy inner ward. His four companions spread out, weapons at the ready, searching the sheltered corners of the courtyard, certain that some danger yet awaited them.

A stone’s throw from where Eigrim stood, Torgo poked at a strange, charred mass – one of two – with the beak of his axe.

‘What’d you find there?’ Eigrim asked.

Torgo’s face twisted up mordantly. ‘Dead men,’ he said. ‘Charred to a crisp.’

Rinz toed through a pile of trinkets spread haphazardly over the gravel. ‘Looks like someone was here,’ he said. ‘There’s some good stuff. Trade-worthy, anyway. And look at this…’

Rinz snatched up a large, shining object lying discarded on the well-trod earth. It was a heavy, turquoise-hued helm of a very distinct and unique design.

‘That’s a Stormcast helm,’ Eigrim said.

‘Aye,’ Rinz agreed, turning the big, heavy object over in his hands to study it. ‘But what’s it doing out here?’

Eigrim offered no explanation. He had seen Stormhosts in battle, if only from a distance. Their warriors were demigods. Order, discipline and inhuman devotion were their hallmarks. They did not simply abandon those masked helms of theirs. His eyes skated sideward towards the dead men. Could one of those be the owner of the helm?

Impossible, he reminded himself. When they die, their god yanks them back to his holy halls. If a Stormcast fell here, not a trace would remain.

‘Stormcast or no,’ Torgo insisted, ‘someone was here, and not long ago.’

Eigrim said nothing. He was ready to bolt right back out of that gate without a single bauble in hand. Something strange was afoot.

‘We should go,’ he said. ‘Now.’

Then, a voice boomed into the yard. ‘You there!’ it shouted. ‘Looters! Thieves!’

The men went rigid where they stood. Every weapon rose in readiness.

A huge figure in shining plate armour lurched out of a low, dark doorway across the yard: clearly, the owner of the helm. The Stormcast Eternal’s war-plate trailed wisps of cobwebs and shone dully where ancient dust lay caked upon it, as though the holy paladin of Sigmar had just crawled out of a filthy cellar. An enormous broadsword was gripped in one hand but trailed behind the Stormcast, its point cutting a shallow track through the dirt.

His face was ordinary enough – olive skin; a mop of black, curly hair; piercing hazel eyes under heavy brows – but the way he staggered and blinked under the wan light of the cloud-shrouded Shyish sun made Eigrim uneasy. He looked weary and hysterical at once, like a berzerker whose bloodlust had just abandoned him. His eyes bulged, darting about anxiously.

Eigrim knew a madman when he saw one.

‘Stay where you are,’ the Stormcast commanded, and raised his sword in threat. ‘I have need of you. All of you.’

Eigrim held out a hand. ‘We’re not looking for trouble.’

‘Kill me,’ the Stormcast said.

Eigrim blinked. ‘What’s that?’

‘Kill me,’ the Stormcast said again. ‘Kill me, now, or I’ll hew down the lot of you. This has to stop. If I die, maybe… maybe…’

The others looked to Eigrim. Eigrim looked to them. He had no idea what to do. They were far enough from the stumbling Stormcast that they could, perhaps, make a break for the gate and simply outrun him–

Without warning, the Stormcast charged Rinz, sword rising.

‘Kill me!’ he cried.

Rinz dropped the helm and tried to run, but he was too slow. The Stormcast cleaved him in two with a single stroke.

The others all gasped, shouted, cursed. What was happening? This was insane! A mad Stormcast, begging death and threatening it in the same instant?

Torgo charged, roaring as he went. Rinz had been his oldest friend. Eigrim knew that the warrior had every intention of cutting that Stormcast down where he stood. His big, beaked axe rose high for a mighty chop.

The Stormcast lowered his sword and opened his arms, as if for an embrace.

‘Torgo, stop!’ Eigrim shouted.

Torgo skidded to a halt. His axe still hovered, but he was several yards from where the Stormcast stood, waiting for the death blow. The barbarian looked to his commander. Eigrim shook his head and gave a simple gesture. Torgo, shaking with rage, fell back.

The Stormcast, denied his hoped-for death, looked to Eigrim. ‘You cowards! I slew your companion. Kill me!’

Eigrim spoke, addressing his men. ‘We need to go. Now.’

The Stormcast strode forwards. ‘No! Kill me, I said! Kill me now, where I stand, or I’ll slaughter you all!’

‘Friend,’ Eigrim said. ‘We have no quarrel with you.’

‘I have quarrel with him,’ Torgo snarled.

‘I remember it,’ the Stormcast said quietly, almost to himself, then began babbling. ‘I remember all of it. All of it! Kill me and send me back to Sigmar, I beg you! She said Reforging would change nothing but maybe, just maybe…’

‘Everybody out!’ Eigrim commanded, and began a backward retreat towards the gate. The men obeyed, all effecting their withdrawals in reverse, keeping their eyes on the mad, raving Stormcast.

‘Come back here!’ the Stormcast Eternal cried. ‘I command you, in the name of Sigmar Heldenhammer, to kill me where I stand!’

Eigrim wished he had words. Clearly, this fool was hurting, broken somehow. Stormcasts were, in his experience, creatures barely human. They felt no fear, no hate, no love, no pity – they were simply engines of destruction and wrath, given human form and set against the hordes of Chaos. What could have so bewitched this poor devil to leave him murderous and suicidal in the same instant?

I remember it, he kept saying. What did that even mean?

Eigrim was ready to turn his back, to run for the gate, when the Stormcast’s mad ranting dissolved into a fierce battle cry. The great, plated giant charged Torgo. His sword was high. His face was a mask of fury and desperation.

‘Kill me!’ he cried as he ran Torgo through with his shining blade. ‘Kill me, I beg you!’

The others hesitated in the shadow of the gate, staring, confused.

‘Go!’ Eigrim commanded. ‘Run!’

The three of them went pounding out of the bleak old fortress through the long, dark tunnel under the gatehouse. Behind them, they heard the Stormcast cursing them, challenging them, even as he cried to the indifferent sky.

‘Kill me!’ he howled, his voice broken and desperate. ‘Kill me, in mercy’s name…’

About the Author

Dale Lucas is a novelist, screenwriter, civil servant, and armchair historian from St. Petersburg, Florida. Once described by a colleague as “a compulsive researcher who writes fiction to store his research in,” he’s the author of numerous works of fantasy, neo-pulp, and horror. When not writing at home or trapped in a cubicle at his day job, he loves travel, great food, and amassing more books than he’ll ever be able to read. ‘Blessed Oblivion’ is his first outing for Black Library.

An extract from Blacktalon: First Mark.

Far to the north of the city of Hammerhal Aqsha, amidst the thick, sulphur-fed groves of the Heironyme Jungle, a village stood in ruins. If the place had ever had a name it was gone now, buried beneath the drifts of blackened fronds and sulphurous dust that were slowly reclaiming its buildings.

The bloated jungle moon loomed over a clearing that contained a few dozen crumbling structures. They stood within a rotting palisade wall, just enough buildings to raise the ghosts of streets between them and lend the town an impression of civilisation, of imposed order. Yet the fields outside the walls were overgrown by anyoi trees and strangler’s twist, while the gaping hole in the village wall, and the hacked bones strewn amidst the ruins, put the lie to any notion that this tiny corner of Aqshy had been tamed.

Crouched amidst the jungle’s fringe, Neave Blacktalon studied the settlement intently. The nameless village and all its hopeful, pious settlers were long dead. Yet the prickle on her skin beneath her resilient suit of gilded sigmarite told her that something else had slithered in to inhabit the carcass of their butchered dream. Something that lit the night with eerie witchlight.

Neave’s senses were fully extended, alive to the slightest scent or sound, the merest vibration in the air. She reached out and felt the jungle around her, flitwings and diaphonids drifting through the canopy, treglyngs nosing between tree roots. She felt the strange movements within the slain village before her, long-limbed things stalking like wading birds, drums thumping a chaotic rhythm, unnatural beings cavorting. She sensed other movements amidst the jungle itself, but these concerned her less. Sigmar’s gift tugged at her, the siren sense of her latest mark close at hand, the quarry whose presence she would always feel, no matter how near or far, until she or they were dead.

Neave was one with the world around her, and she tasted the Chaotic taint that soured it. It gathered thick on her tongue and made her scowl with disgust and anger.

From her right, she felt gusts of air stir the jungle foliage. She heard the sounds of subtle movement draw closer, something large doing its utmost not to be heard. She scented the tang of ozone through the jungle’s sulphur. Curling her tongue, she gave a clicking signal: two low, quick sounds, a pause, then a third. The signal was returned, a moment before Tarion Arlor slid through the fronds of two anyois to join her.

‘Don’t tell me that Sigmar’s finest Knight-Zephyros needs that damned signal to verify it is me, Blacktalon. I know you heard my approach,’ said the Knight-Venator. Neave heard the smile behind the faceplate of his helm, and snorted with quiet amusement. Tarion was bigger than Neave, his bulky armour and its huge crystalline wings far less suited to slinking through the dense jungle.

‘Where is Krien?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t wish to tangle his wings amidst the foliage?’

‘He is on high, circling well out of sight,’ replied Tarion. ‘Star eagles are not noted for their love of confined terrain.’

‘Krien isn’t well known for his love of anything, save you,’ said Neave. ‘Sometimes I cannot tell if he’s your familiar, or you his.’

Tarion shook his head ruefully. ‘Damn bird is lucky he’s such a gifted fighter.’

‘We may need him to be so very soon,’ said Neave. ‘Xelkyn is here – I sense his taint. The conclusion to our hunt draws near, but something feels wrong. What did you see?’

‘Little,’ confessed Tarion. ‘It’s a clear night and the moon is vast. Even distracted by ritual and blinded by firelight, I could not risk them looking up and seeing my silhouette against the sky. There’s perhaps five or six dozen of his coven in the village. Stiltkin. Disc riders. Ogroids.’

‘I do not see any sentries,’ said Neave.

‘I did not spot any from afar,’ replied Tarion, shaking his head. ‘Xelkyn is arrogant. He no doubt believes himself hidden in this remote location.’

‘The sorcerer knows we hunt him,’ said Neave, not taking her eyes from the village, from the warped kaleidoscope of vivid light that welled up from its heart, the weird shadows that danced across its walls. ‘We almost had him in the Carathacium. You slew his Mutalith. He’s a toweringly arrogant creature, but his mind is a barbed maze. He has let us run him to ground, Tarion. There’s a trap here.’

‘Be that as it may, he’s conducting a ritual in there,’ said the Knight-Venator. ‘Look at the lights. Listen to the drums, the chanting. Feel the power gathering on the air.’

‘You think that slipped my notice?’ asked Neave wryly.

‘You know what I mean, Blacktalon. He may be summoning daemons, or opening a rent into the Crystal Labyrinth. If he slips away into the embrace of his master’s realm, he’ll be beyond even Sigmar’s reach.’

Neave cocked her head, listening intently to the timbre of the drums, the tone of the chanting, shrieking voices. Some sounded human, albeit rendered bestial in their frenzy. Others were cawing and avian. From amongst them she filtered another voice, commanding yet brittle somehow, as though an insect were trying to form human words with mouthparts not meant for the sound. She knew the hateful voice of Xelkyn Xerkanos, favoured covenmaster of Tzeentch and arch-traitor to Sigmar’s great city of Azyrheim, all too well.

‘He does not sound panicked,’ she said softly. ‘Tarion, he sounds angry. Spiteful. Determined. Whatever Xelkyn is conjuring in that village, it is not an escape route. It’s a weapon.’

‘What then?’ asked Tarion. ‘He’s your mark, Blacktalon. I merely hunt at your side.’

Neave paused and removed her helm, letting the foulness in the air wash over her skin, steeling herself against its touch. It thickened imperceptibly as she waited, like gossamer cobwebs caught on her flesh. She ran her gauntleted hand over her face, an unconscious gesture to scour away the invisible strands of Chaos magic that gathered there.

‘There isn’t time to seek aid,’ she said, replacing her helm. ‘Whatever Xelkyn is doing, his power builds by the minute. If we leave now, he will have completed his ritual and quite possibly vanished into the realmscape again long before we can return.’

‘There’s a lot of them,’ said Tarion in a warning tone. ‘You know we likely won’t survive a headlong assault.’

‘Neither will Xelkyn,’ said Neave, steel in her voice. ‘What’s wrong, Tarion? Afraid of death?’

‘Again? So soon after Gallowfall?’ he replied. ‘Could we not formulate some sort of plan that doesn’t involve a suicidal headlong attack on a Tzeentchian arch-sorcerer and his entire coven? Reforging has its price…’

‘And its boons. Did I not develop the talent of windshifting at will after my most recent reincarnation? What is that, if not a blessing from Sigmar himself? Besides, do you see another option?’ she asked, easing her whirlwind axes from their sheaths and spinning them in her hands, refamiliarising herself with their weight. She had fought with the weapons until they were as much a part of her as the hands that held them, but it was a ritual she often undertook.

‘No,’ said Tarion after a few moment’s frustrated thought. ‘If he knows we are coming then any attempt at luring his force away or splitting them up will only alert him to our arrival.’

‘Well then.’ Neave rose into a crouch. ‘Take to the air, do what Sigmar gave you the gifts to do, and if it is such a terrible inconvenience then… I don’t know, try not to get killed?’

‘Why in the realms do I hunt with you?’ Tarion hefted his bow as coruscating arrows of lightning crackled into being in his quiver.

‘Duty?’ suggested Neave. ‘Friendship? The deep-seated need to prove that you can keep up?’

‘Just give me a few moments to get into position, Blacktalon,’ said Tarion, and again she heard the smile behind the impassive mask of his helm.

‘Be swift,’ she said. Tarion spread the crystal-and-sigmarite wings that rose from the shoulders of his armour. Celestial energies glimmered through them, playing across the foliage like the promise of dawn, before he sprang skywards and punched up through the canopy with barely a rustle.

For all their repartee, Neave trusted Tarion more than any other Stormcast Eternal in all of Sigmar’s grand armies. He would cover her assault with a skill few in the Mortal Realms could match.

She glanced up, through the swaying jungle fringe, seeking the distant constellations that marked where the Realm of Heavens hung in the distant reaches of the void. Up there, somewhere, she knew that Sigmar looked down upon the realms and the battles his reforged warriors fought in his name.

‘Sigmar, watch over me now and lend me your strength, that I might do your will and strike down your foes,’ she murmured, before reaching out again with her huntress’ senses. She felt the winds aetheric as they whirled across the lands, gave herself up to their ensorcelled power, let them flow through her limbs and course through her lightning-wreathed soul. Her eyes crackled with barely restrained power, and her heart beat faster as the thrill of the hunt welled up within.

‘You may have laid a trap for Sigmar’s huntress, Xelkyn, but you had better be sure you don’t get caught in it yourself…’

Neave tore across the abandoned fields at such a pace that had any enemy seen her approach, she knew their eyes would have registered little more than a streak of displaced air and lightning. She cleared the village wall with an agile leap that carried her fifteen feet into the air, thumping down in the bone-strewn street beyond without missing a stride. Overhead, Neave caught a fleeting glimpse of Tarion, wings spread wide, storm-charged arrow nocked and ready to loose. The Knight-Venator was no longer trying to hide, and neither was she.

The street led towards the centre of the village, taking a left up ahead as it passed between the tumbledown buildings. In the distance, she saw Tzeentchian cultists clad in bright blue robes and grotesque avian masks wrought from gold. Their exposed flesh displayed forbidden markings and they bore the daggers and staves of minor wizards, while unholy fires sparked around them.

The enemy caught sight of Tarion. Shouting in surprise, they pointed skywards towards the swooping comet of the Knight-Venator’s star eagle.

‘Much too slow,’ hissed Neave as she bore down on the cultists like a meteor.

Tarion unleashed a volley of lightning-wreathed arrows with impossible speed. They shot overhead as Neave charged. The arcing shafts lit the night white with their fury, piercing robed bodies and throwing cultists backwards as though they’d been shot with a bolt thrower. One man slammed into a building wall and was pinioned there, dangling and twitching as lightning cooked his flesh and set fire to his robes. Another took an arrow to the face and was catapulted from his feet to crash through the sagging doorway of a nearby hut. Such was the force of his impact that half the structure’s roof came down upon him, burying the Chaos worshipper in an impromptu cairn.

Then Neave hit the cultists’ lines. She leapt and spun, pirouetting through the foe with her blades angled outward. Blood exploded in fans as her axes bit through cloth, flesh and bone. Tzeentch worshippers were flung away from her, crunching into the sides of the derelict buildings or rolling along the street to lie in crumpled heaps.

The survivors were still reeling, frantic, seeking their assailant even as she hit the building at the street’s end with her feet. Neave bent her knees, taking the shock of the impact and propelling herself back into the enemy like one of Tarion’s arrows. She struck the head from one cultist and lopped an arm from another as she flew, before landing in a roll and coming up in a fighting crouch.

One cultist remained standing, drenched in the blood of his fellows even as their bodies crumpled, spurting, to the ground. He raised his stave with shaking hands and pointed it in Neave’s direction. A crackling arrow slammed into his throat with such force that it passed clean through. She heard the man’s heart stop as celestial lightnings coursed through his body and killed him even before his blood began to jet from the wound.

Wordlessly, she raised an axe to Tarion in thanks, then sped on towards the heart of the village. The drums had increased their tempo and the chanting had transformed into warlike cries.

‘They now know we are coming,’ muttered Neave to herself. ‘It becomes more interesting from here.’

Click here to buy Blacktalon: First Mark.

A Black Library Publication

This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Jon Cave.

Blessed Oblivion © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Blessed Oblivion, 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: 978-1-78999-687-6

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.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.