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The House of Moons – Jeremy Lambert

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Godsbane’

A Black Library Publication

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The House of Moons

Jeremy Lambert

Each and every night, Velithor was defeated.

He would relive memories. Moments in time, frozen. Whole armies stilled by his mind, all so he could envision a different outcome. One that did not end with him here in this forsaken place. It never worked.

So many memories, so many choices made and deaths averted. Everything to protect aelven life and realm… Choices made to the best of his ability, regardless of the result.

But all his efforts had earned him was an ancient museum atop a forgotten mountain.

Lord Regent Velithor Cellenya, entrusted protector of the Moon Gate and its garrisoned Tower of Tyrr in the Lunarest Mountains… a post in which ‘any fool could succeed’, according to Lord Regent Lyrior Uthralle himself.

An easy assignment. The one no one wanted, because all of them knew what it meant and none more than Velithor, who was still nursing his pride from his latest rout. It was the lowest, the least prestigious, given to the Lord Regent least trusted by Tyrion and the council: an easily defensible tower and gate blocking the mountain pass, far from pillaging forces… complete with a ceaseless, unforgiving winter.

And tonight, like every night, Velithor’s memories were intrusive things he had no control over, stampeding through his head with no rhyme or reason other than a common theme of failure. At some point he would get up to retrieve the aetherquartz necklace and the reserves that he carried into battle. He loathed using them like this, but it was the only way to welcome sleep. To pull as much of the shadow from his mind as he could… silence the voices that cried out as if they were in this very room, hissing through the air like arrows fletched with guilt and shame.

Coward, they whispered. Over and over.

But this time a short, clipped knocking at his door interrupted them.

His head swam with possibilities, none of them good and all of them urgent. ‘Enter,’ Velithor uttered hoarsely, standing from his bed in the roomy chamber. Long strands of brown hair clung to the sweat on his brow and he pulled them back behind his ears. He realised too late that he was still in silk-lined bedclothes. Regardless, Velithor struck an imposing figure, looking every bit the Lord Regent – tall and proud, his deep-set eyes imposing.

The door opened, revealing High Sentinel Lloryl. It was morning, then. Early, dark morning. He had assigned her second watch when she arrived here because she had the keenest eyes in the garrison, and would suffer no flights of fancy in the night like others might. But Lloryl was worried, her breath a ragged tattoo, straw-coloured hair a halo of flyaways. The stone floor of the bedchamber was a block of ice beneath Velithor’s feet, climbing up his legs. And the High Sentinel’s red cheeks told a tale of colder things outside.

‘Daemons on the mountain pass,’ Lloryl said. ‘Horrors of Tzeentch.’ He saw her short sword was already drawn.

Velithor nodded. Errant vanguards and roaming parties were not uncommon. Two volleys fired from Lloryl’s company of Sentinels was usually a sufficient response. Perhaps three, in this case, if it was Horrors they were dealing with.

‘Lord… their… their number is unclear. I think it prudent to send a rider up the mountain so that they might bring word to the lodge, should we require–’

‘No.’ Velithor cut her off, his tone firm and final. ‘Raise no alarm. We must be silent,’ he whispered, taking his own command. ‘Reveal only the presence of those already on the walls. But rouse every other arrow, take them to the gate. Hide them until it’s time. Make the daemons think they can take the gate with ease.’

Velithor grabbed a necklace with shards of aetherquartz hanging from it. He hung the aetherquartz around his neck, and closed his eyes, breathing deep. It was a sobering thing. Hope dwelled in its shards, and he would need all of it.

The Moon Gate and its garrisoned tower were far older than any aelf dwelling within them.

Originally built as a sentry among the glimmering peaks of the Lunarest Mountains to protect the bustling trade city of Calthrys on its other side, it now served as little more than a museum of the arcane and ancient – artefacts considered antiquated even by the Lumineth. Some of these were battle relics: skeletal weapons of the dead, Fyreslayer talismans, orruk cleavers – all things to be housed in a place rarely threatened. And now fully armed and armoured, Lord Regent Velithor Cellenya hurried through its rounded, curving hallways without so much as a glance towards its amulets and talismans, shields and swords, even a spear composed entirely of pale moonlight – they were forgotten treasures in a forgotten waypoint.

Two Wardens stood guard on either side, raising their spears in a silent salute as Velithor met them. The door opened onto a forked stone path: one side led down to the massive Moon Gate itself, and the other to the stables on the right. All was covered in snow, and the frigid mountain air hit Velithor’s lungs, killing off the last vestiges of his troubled sleep. It was a bitter cold. Like plunging beneath the ice of a frozen lake.

Velithor could feel his feet beginning to numb inside his boots as he took the right path. It was only a handful of paces from him now, the large stone oval of the building that was the stables, where a fire was kept, ever-burning, to stave off the cold. In addition to the Wardens and Sentinels that garrisoned the Moon Gate, Velithor had made only one request: that he be given a small company of Hurakan Windchargers, for their swift, sure-footed treerunner mounts could navigate the rocky terrain better than any steed in the stable, save for his own lightcourser, Nathyr. His wish had been granted, though begrudgingly. The Windchargers had made a request of their own, that their bedchamber be next to their steeds in the stables. Odd, but so were all the windfolk, and Velithor allowed it.

At the stable’s entrance, Velithor could see the stern, scarred and eternally frowning aelf who led the Windchargers. Fylael had them saddled atop their long-limbed treerunners and in formation. His gaze found Velithor. Fylael nodded and Velithor returned the gesture, grateful he could always count on Fylael’s vigilance. Something emerged from behind the ranks of Windchargers, larger even than their mounts: Nathyr, her paws treading the snowy mountain pass, deft and silent.

She stopped in front of him, her brown eyes staring out from silver-white fur. She bent her knees slightly and Velithor pulled himself into the saddle. Velithor pointed her to the gate and they made it over in a few bounding leaps, moonlight reflecting off her horns.

The Wardens readied spear and shield, arrayed to cover the full width of the gate. The Sentinels, with bows and full quivers, were along the walls above already, crouched and hurrying along in both directions on the battlements, silent shadows in the night.

He reached the front of the Wardens’ ranks and pointed his sword towards the massive wooden doors. Moonlight glinted off the silver blade. ‘Shield wall behind the gate,’ Velithor instructed, as quietly as he could. The aelves obeyed immediately, shields interlocked in an oblong phalanx. He looked for High Warden Thevyn and found her behind the Wardens, offering hushed guidance to the second and third ranks of spears. He hurried to her. ‘Take the reserves to the battlements. Swords, no spears. Keep them out of sight. Kill any who scale the walls, so that Lloryl’s Sentinels suffer no interruption.’

Thevyn nodded, turning back to her Wardens with quiet orders. Velithor urged Nathyr to the mountain wall east of the gate. They passed by the Wardens taking position nearby, and the Wardens turned to them, faces set in determination. They raised their spears as Nathyr galloped past them in the snow. Velithor looked to the walls and caught the sign from a crouching High Sentinel Lloryl, a raised fist: arrows ready. Readied and assembled with a speed that would impress Tyrion himself, even if Velithor did not.

There were actually two paths to continue up or down the mountain, though all but the aelves knew only one: the Moon Gate. But the Lumineth’s knowledge of these peaks was second to none. They had long ago carved a tunnel through the mountain itself, just east of the gate. The Eastern Door. It was no rough-hewn passage, but an intricate hall which exited on the other side of the gate and in the shadow of the mountain’s ridges, meaning it could be used to surprise a force from flank or rear.

Fylael had his Windchargers in line formation, two by two, ready to enter through the Eastern Door. Velithor took position at their head. Fylael had only to give a slight nod in Velithor’s direction and the Windchargers were in motion. Velithor knew the connection they had with their own mounts was similar to his own. Similar, he reflected, as Nathyr picked up on her master’s thoughts and leapt another full stride ahead of the treerunners. But not equal.

As they approached the Eastern Door, a portal carved out of the mountain rock itself, Velithor spoke the words of power and a shard of aetherquartz crystal grew brighter above the entranceway until the stone doors opened, slow and silent. The tunnel carved into the darkness beyond them was tall enough for riders, wide enough for two abreast. More shards lined the walls, providing dim illumination to see by. Nathyr strode inside. The tunnel went on long enough that you couldn’t see the light at the other end for a while. And when Velithor did, it led to a rocky outcrop, the entrance covered by a winding path that snaked its way through the mountain on this side of the pass, so that their passage would be hidden from view.

Nathyr traversed the path outside the opening as easily as even ground. The light of the moon was as close to daylight as they would get.

And Velithor could hear them, now.

The cacophony of snarls and the sickening sound of tearing flesh – or its daemonic equivalent – was horrible enough on its own, but the throaty chanting of the Tzeentchian Horrors was a sound one could never get used to. It was as if they were bringing forth some grave spell known only to their twisted god. The one benefit to it all, of course, was that it gave away their position above the outcrop that shielded Velithor and the Windchargers from view. They were now to the rear of the daemonic force, from the sound of it.

Velithor held his sword out to his side, an easy tell for the company of Windchargers behind him. He angled it to catch the moonlight and brought it around to his left, pointed towards the rocky climb that shielded them from view. Nathyr obeyed the unspoken command, bounding over the wall of stone in a few leaps, landing upon the snow-covered main mountain pass on the other side. The Windchargers followed close behind them, their padded paws muffled by the snow.

The icy winds brought more snow and the fell voices of the daemons with them, gusting against the aelven riders. The horde was ahead of them, a swirling sea of colour and flame, of teeth and claws and limbs so strange they had no purpose save for ripping, tearing. They were charging the Moon Gate, two hundred paces away. He sent up a silent prayer for the volleys to be enough. There was no risk of defeat, but the Horrors’ numbers might overwhelm some of the Sentinels on the wall, weakening an already small garrison. There would be no Chaos retreat, Velithor knew. No picking off the fleeing stragglers from an ambush position. This host of Horrors would split themselves over and over, renewing their attack until they were finally extinguished.

Velithor raised his sword again, stabbing the air first to his left, then his right. The Windchargers divided into two formations, each following one of Velithor’s sword thrusts, breaking off to form a single rank blocking the mountain pass.

He saw the first volley from Lloryl’s Sentinels. They were the bulk of the garrison, nearly fifty in number, and the gleaming points of their arrows caught the moonlight as they rose above the gates and then fell, pinning Horrors and Flamers to the ground: skewered insects in a frozen display. But the fallen daemons still writhed upon the snow and Velithor knew what was to come. Every felled Horror split into two shapes, their heads, eyes and limbs manifesting from the ripped ruins of the previous ones. The smaller, now far more numerous Horrors redoubled their efforts, more blue and red than before. Flames of every colour imaginable soared through the air, some directed at the Sentinels, some crashing into the door, leaving blackened soot-splatter.

Velithor raised his sword high and held it. The Windchargers nocked arrows into their bows, at the ready.

The second volley from the Sentinels atop the wall was even more precise than the first. A score more of the things fell, some of them splitting again, some of them drained of their infernal magic to cease entirely. More arrows, now at will, rained down upon the daemons.

‘Forth! Close range! Fylael gives the signal!’ Velithor shouted to the Windchargers, pointing his sunmetal blade in front of him. Nathyr leapt forwards and the Windchargers followed suit, closing the distance in no time at all. They formed a crescent moon around the rear of the force, both flanks arcing ahead, bows still deftly held in position. Velithor muttered a practised incantation, closing his eyes and drawing as much as he could from the aetherquartz for borrowed strength. When he opened them again, feathered arrows were already whistling past him from the Windchargers, hissing through the air towards the daemons, their points aglow as soon as the last word left Velithor’s lips. The famed precision of the Windchargers coupled with Velithor’s spell allowed all manner of Horrors to meet their end in ash.

The bulk of the daemonic force was now of reds and blues, some much larger pink Horrors remaining. The ones nearest to Velithor turned to face him and the Windchargers that attacked them from the rear… nearly half of the force that remained, a score at most, charging back at their new enemy.

Good, Velithor thought. He pulled Nathyr back and signalled the retreat.

Bursts of flame shot past them but Nathyr and the treerunners were too sure-footed in the snow, dodging any that came close. Fylael’s riders were turned in their saddles, maintaining their rate of fire with deadly accuracy. Nock, aim, release, nock, aim, release, looking more like archers standing on solid, stable ground than astride galloping mounts.

But the oncoming Horrors still needed to be slowed down.

‘Erenoth! Hallyn! With me!’ Velithor shouted, doubling Nathyr back towards the ridge as two Windchargers broke formation and followed him on either side. They climbed the ridge, above the Horrors that had peeled away from the main force.

‘Swords!’ he shouted, then, ‘Charge!’ and they leapt back down the ridge towards the Horrors. Fylael and the other Windchargers trained their arrows on the daemons furthest from Velithor.

Velithor and the Windchargers crashed into the horde, swords slicing downwards, spilling flames and ichor as they bit home. Nathyr lowered her horns to meet a daemon, skewering the thing, then shaking herself free.

A flaming mass in the air leapt towards Velithor, slamming into his chest and latching on like a parasite. The thing’s limbs and unlimbs writhed all over him, burning him where they met bare skin. He slammed a greave into it, careful to avoid the gaping mouth of teeth and buying himself enough time to bring his blade up through its body. It fell apart like a rotten carcass, the two halves of it shrieking. They formed two bodies of their own, writhing on the ground. Two Windcharger arrows, almost in unison, buried into what was left of the daemons, corporeal no more.

He felt a breeze around his neck, the cold of the early morning returning to him. He put a hand to his throat, but his necklace of aetherquartz was no longer there. Broken, somewhere, on the ground, chain burned through by the Horror. Velithor cursed.

Fylael had put an arrow into the last of the Horrors outside the gate, their diversion successful. No Windcharger or treerunner seemed the worse for wear. A cheer sounded from the gate, the last of the daemons dispatched there too, then.

But Nathyr was restless, rearing her head back.

‘Hold, Nathyr, hold!’ he said, but nothing calmed her. She had turned him around so he faced the southern mountain pass – the descent into snow and darkness. The wind itself died and the snowfall ceased, as if something else, some more powerful force, held them at bay.

And now he saw a light in the dark of the pass. Violet hues like he had never seen, shifting about like an unholy lantern in the night. Nathyr strode forwards, slowly, Velithor peering into the black for answers.

The light grew closer. It was like a ghost… an after-image, growing more corporeal every moment that passed. Another light, below it, a reflection catching the gleam of the first one, like the moon and Velithor’s blade. And then Velithor knew what it was.

A rounded disc floated above the ground like a raft on water, held aloft by magic. The disc was rimmed with mouths, their many fangs gnashing at the mountain air. The air turned thick with the smell of something like ash and damp, and it all came into sharp relief. A Magister of Tzeentch was atop it, a warping sorcerer of Chaos, his staff aglow with some violet, infernal magic. The shrivelled magician looked feeble in physical form, but Velithor knew better and even the Windchargers could likely feel his power in the air around them, seemingly electrified with it. Charged. Ready, for some spell that would harm the aelves that stood beside him, and even break through to those protected by the Moon Gate.

Behind the floating sorcerer, as if they were merely waiting for their leader to make their presence known, a horde easily ten times the size of the one they had just encountered appeared in the dark.

From the dark, Velithor thought, like the shadows of the mountain itself birthed them.

It was a force of Horrors, of the ones they called Flamers, and a thousand more that Velithor could not even discern among them.

It was a force unlike any seen on the mountain for an age or more, charging up the snowy incline like rabid, shrieking beasts on all fours or however many limbs they had.

Velithor’s heart sank. He could feel the despair. Coward, he heard inside his head as the failures flooded back, the memories creeping all around the edge of his consciousness.

The daemons they destroyed were a vanguard, only. A feint, Velithor realised too late, by someone who knew their tactics. Velithor had let his fears get the better of him in the end. Had he grown complacent? Predictable?

No time to dwell. A Chaos sorcerer led a massive force towards the Lord Regent and his small company of light cavalry, far from the protection of the Moon Gate. The city of Calthrys stood on the other side of the mountain, trusting him, Velithor, to protect their borders. If this force broke through, nothing would stand in its way from reaching the city.

Nothing but a lodge, delved into the peak of the mountain itself, Velithor thought, remembering how swiftly he had refused Lloryl’s recommendation. The sounds of the force reached them, a clamouring, snarling horde of Chaos, a disc that sounded like an approaching scream… and with them came Velithor’s training. Logic and reason took over. He could only hope they would stay. He looked back to the gate, his Sentinels and Wardens recovering from the first assault, hurrying along the battlements.

‘Fylael!’ Velithor shouted. There was no more need for whispers. He brought Nathyr around, meeting back up with the Windchargers, all of their eyes fixed on the horde.

‘We are caught, friend. We must buy the garrison time for our best chances. Who is your swiftest rider? We must bring word to the lodge.’

Velithor was met with surprise from Fylael at first, but the veteran overcame it, his face resolute. He looked Velithor in the eye and shook his head. ‘There’s only one of us who could make that journey, lord,’ he said. ‘Nathyr is swiftest. You know this. Most suitable in the mountain’s chill and she’ll bear no other rider.’

Velithor looked around him, as if looking for another option, another way. But Fylael was right. And worse, Velithor felt… relieved. Relieved that he would be the one with the only chance to escape this. It swirled inside him alongside guilt, and fear, and all the rest. But relief stood front and centre.

Coward.

‘We will slow them,’ Fylael said. ‘Give the garrison as much time as we can. It’s the only way.’

‘Feint a charge so they concentrate at the centre,’ Velithor said. ‘With luck, the sorcerer will do the same. You’re swift enough to break formation and harry both flanks. Regroup at the rear.’

‘Thank you, lord,’ said Fylael, the hint of a smile on his face, ‘for reminding me of the very strategy I taught you.’

Velithor put his fist to his heart, and Fylael did the same – a salute Velithor realised might be his last. Fylael turned to his Windchargers, who were already in formation. ‘Split arrow!’ Fylael shouted to his riders and Velithor reined Nathyr in an about face, back over the ridge at full speed, wind ripping through them.

There was only one hope for Calthrys and the other cities beneath the mountain, now. Only one force that could oppose the daemons arrayed against them, and Velithor cursed his stubbornness. The likelihood of this working was miniscule. He must worry later. For now, orders needed to be given. Orders that aelves would not return from.

Velithor made his way back through the tunnel, behind the Moon Gate once more. The full force of Sentinels was along the gate’s walls firing at will, the daemons now close enough that any shot counted. Velithor searched the sky for the Magister of Tzeentch, knew he was fast enough to be there, above them now, to rain fire down on them… but there was no sign.

‘Hold your lines!’ Velithor shouted to stir the Wardens. ‘They will break upon shield and spear like all before them! The Moon Gate has never been lost! Nor shall it be!’

High Sentinel Lloryl was shouting similarly to the Sentinels, her own bow in hand. Directing fire. She turned at Velithor’s commands, looking down at him from the battlements. Velithor turned, urging Nathyr behind the Wardens, heading up the mountain pass.

‘Command of the gate is yours!’ Velithor shouted up to her, pointing his sword in the direction Nathyr was now running.

Lloryl nodded. She understood, accepting her charge without question. ‘We will hold as long as we–’

And then everything was fire.

A ball of bright flame seemed to explode from within her, a light that engulfed even the aelves around her. It grew brighter until her body was ripped apart. The Sentinels next to her may have met the same fate, but Velithor could no longer see them. They were thrust over the wall as if pushed by an invisible hand.

The air crackled overhead, charged with something. And then a sound like the splitting of wood. An eldritch light, the same violet of before, was wrapping itself around the doors of the Moon Gate like tendrils of flame, gripping the massive structure. Threatening it. The wood and its metal beams groaned as if under the weight of the mountain itself before shattering, exploding outwards, the magician’s spell doing the work of a hundred warriors in mere seconds.

As Lord Regent Velithor Cellenya fled up the pass, his aelven comrades did as they were commanded. They held the gate… until none were left to defend it.

Something cold and soft and wet nudged Velithor’s neck. His mind raced with the foul visions of daemons and all their many eyes and limbs, their skin slick with blood and all manner of things that Velithor could not and did not want to imagine. But they were not cold. Never cold.

It nudged him again.

He opened his eyes and found only frozen darkness. Snow, he realised. His hand was numb, devoid of feeling. It felt like it belonged to someone else when he brushed the snow from his face. More snow surrounded him on the ground and Nathyr was prodding him.

He remembered falling. It had only grown colder on the ascent, and his exhaustion from battle joined forces with the chill. The cold was such that Velithor knew he would not last very long, not if he didn’t make it to the lodge soon. And the Fyreslayers within could be dead, for all he knew, victims of another Chaos army. The thought filled him with despair.

But he struggled to his knees anyway, with limbs he could barely feel, his frozen joints and armour creaking their equal displeasure. He had to keep moving. Velithor’s breath fogged the air as he climbed back into Nathyr’s saddle.

They moved swiftly again, up the pass, though the climb seemed unending. And just when Velithor was beginning to think the steep road was cursed by some spell of the Magister to extend itself forevermore to foil him… he heard them. Nathyr raised her head in alert. She sniffed the air and bolted to the side of the pass, where mountain rock could hide them.

It was the Fyreslayers. A patrol of them making their rounds, their shocks of red hair like braziers in the night. Ur-gold runes were hammered into naked flesh dark and pale. Their bare feet trod through the snow as though it were green grass on a fine day.

‘Sons of the Moon Lodge! Dire news from the gate!’ Velithor shouted, throat stiff with cold.

Beards bristled and eyes narrowed in his direction. Most of them moved swiftly, encircling him with a speed he didn’t think possible. One of them, seemingly the largest of the squat, muscular duardin, stood in the pass before him as the others surrounded him with the sharp blades of their axes raised, scanning for any sign of other aelves.

The Fyreslayer in front of him had a beard and crest threaded with white hairs. The rest of him was bare skin even out here in the unending mountain blizzard, with only the leathers of an unknown beast around his waist, heavily buckled and ornamented in gold. Yet the duardin did not even so much as shiver. He only had one eye – a massive gash that once must have split the skin from forehead to ear ran down his face and right over where the other should be. His thick hands were folded over the hilt of a large axe, its blade on the ground beneath his feet. He was leaning on it, his one good eye boring into Velithor.

‘Surprised you’re still breathing,’ he said with a voice as grim as the weather.

One of the other Fyreslayers thrust a large magmapike towards Velithor. He knew it could produce bolts of fire and magma – a miniature volcano pointed right at him. Velithor almost laughed aloud, thinking it would not be so bad to be on the receiving end of such a weapon, atop this frigid mountain.

Nathyr growled a low rumble of warning at the weapon.

The one-eyed Fyreslayer shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘’Fraid you should know. We don’t let nothin’ pass this point on the mountain. Like your lot with the Moon Gate. Oh, yes, I’ve seen the shoddy build myself. You might even remember, all those duardin that came down to defend your gate. We were promised payment. Payment that never came. And now here we stand, a score of Slayers poorer and none the richer.’

‘I am Lord Regent Velithor Cellenya, but for now I am but a mere messenger and I stand before you…’

‘Helgar,’ the one in front of him grunted, with an almost imperceptible nod.

‘Helgar. I did not command the gate during the events you’ve spoken of, nor am I responsible for such a slight,’ he said. ‘But please listen to me. I’ve come here alone. A horde of daemons marches for your halls. They’ve overrun the Moon Gate, led by a sorcerer. You must–’

Helgar’s voice lowered and fire danced in his eye.

‘I must do nothing. Other than judge a coward who runs at the first sign of danger.’

‘There is no time to bicker,’ Velithor said. ‘Bring me to your Runefather–’

The Fyreslayer snorted.

‘Here, duardin. Take my weapons,’ Velithor said in a frustrated, uncharacteristic outburst. ‘Keep as many axes pointed towards my neck as you like, but we must warn your people!’

‘So we can do your dirty work again?’

‘Ur-gold,’ Velithor said, desperate.

As soon as the words left his lips, Velithor knew it was a lie. Mostly a lie. One these Fyreslayers had been told before, and the reason for their hostility now, so it was impossible to know how they would react. Velithor did indeed know of the council’s ur-gold with which to pay the Fyreslayers. Whether the council would perform the act on behalf of Velithor was another matter entirely.

Centuries ago, the Fyreslayers had joined forces with the Moon Gate to fight off a Khornate incursion. Payment had been withheld because the Fyreslayers refused to accompany the Lumineth army down the mountain to obliterate the army of Khorne, saying their agreement was in defence of the Moon Gate only. Velithor’s predecessor felt betrayed, and communication between the aelves and duardin of the Lunarest Mountains ceased after that.

There was, however, a small chance the council might indeed follow through on Velithor’s promise. A payment for aelven lives. And there would also be other things to barter with. The artefacts in the Tower of Tyrr were priceless. Besides, they were in the hands of Tzeentch as it was, and surely the hands of Fyreslayers could not be worse?

‘I will deliver what is owed along with your price to fight this daemon horde,’ Velithor said. ‘You will have it, or you will have my life, my weapons, my armour, and all the riches of the Moon Gate,’ Velithor said, struggling to stay standing, feet shifting in the snow. ‘If I die alone on this mountain, you will be none the richer. I promise you, on my word, on my life, that all will be paid in full.’

‘I don’t believe a single word you’ve said, aelf.’ The Fyreslayer glowered at him. ‘But matters of payment, even from your lying lot, are not up to me.’

The Fyreslayer motioned with his axe, sweeping it to point towards Velithor and Nathyr.

‘Your weapons,’ he said. ‘Now.’

Their blades were at his back.

Some even scraped his armour as they walked in the snow. Next to him, Helgar led Nathyr by the reins. She looked furious. Velithor thought the only things keeping her from gouging as much Fyreslayer flesh as she could manage were the axes a mere hand’s-length from Velithor.

‘Right then,’ said Helgar, voice like gravel. ‘We’ve established what you are, you lanky limberin’ tree. But what in the name of Grimnir’s fiery arse is this goat you’re ridin’? Do they breed on the mountain? Good eatin’?’

Nathyr stomped a paw next to the Fyreslayer’s bare foot.

‘I’d recommend wearing boots around Nathyr,’ Velithor said. ‘Unless you enjoy shattered bones.’

The duardin grumbled and led them through a labyrinth of rocky passageways.

The entrance to the lodge was an imposing work carved from the mountain itself: an intricate gate of stone. With the door shut, there would be very little any army could do to get in. The door began to open, slowly, and stopped when it was wide enough to walk through. Helgar disappeared into its depths. They led Nathyr through first, then Velithor. Immediately he noticed the smell, of smoke and wet stone and earth.

The hall was cavernous and long, lit overhead by holes in the rock. Shafts of moonlight pierced through them down to the stone floor, where small pools reflected more light into the cavern itself, catching the snow that fell inside, the flakes swirling in and out of the light like descending motes of dust.

He could see other Fyreslayers, guards of a sort. The scene around him in the mountaintop lodge was unlike any experience he had previously had with Fyreslayers. There were the hardy, bearded folk whom Velithor was used to when dealing with their kind, and then seemingly others with their own outlandish forms of hair and beard and garb which Velithor could not immediately discern. They all watched the aelf and lightcourser being guided through their mountain hall. Velithor was near shaking, with impatience more than chill.

They passed under a massive archway into an antechamber. Here, even more impressive than the entrance hall, stood a titanic instrument of metal and glass, held at an angle by magic or an engineering marvel, towering over all of them. It was a series of what appeared to be glass lenses, not unlike the kind Velithor had seen atop war machines in his travels among the cities of Sigmar, but far larger. They were arrayed in such a manner that the biggest of them were on the top of the thing, getting smaller until the very bottom, where the smallest lens was fixed into place. Moonlight shone through a hole carved out in the ceiling and into the lenses, its beam growing more concentrated as it passed through each lens, ending in a powerful, near-blinding shaft of light that led to a blazing furnace.

It was no easy thing for Velithor to keep his jaw from dropping. The Fyreslayers were harnessing the light of the moon for their forges. He must have stopped moving though, because a rough push from behind put him stumbling back into motion.

Helgar led them past the room’s huge centrepiece and to a closed door made entirely from stone. Two Fyreslayers tapped upon it with their weapons, a series of strikes almost like music, and it began to open, stone grinding on stone. Beyond was a throne room. It was a practical one, with workers lining the walls, hammering brilliant, gleaming gold into runework. Great fireplaces on either side warmed the hall with roaring fires and kept the chill of the mountain from taking hold in the room.

All went quiet at the sight of Velithor, save for the dull roar of the fires.

At the far end of the room, surrounded by snow falling from the ceiling to the reflecting pools set at the back of the throne in a half-moon, was the seat of the Thungur lodge’s power. In it, sat–

‘Fyrequeen Maegrym,’ Helgar said, stepping in front of Velithor and Nathyr. ‘Auric Runemother of Thungur lodge.’

Maegrym was not what Velithor expected. She sat atop a throne of stone, full and crescent moons expertly chiselled around the high back, which jutted above even Velithor’s height. It was not raised on some dais as in so many of the throne rooms and courts Velithor had been privy to with his own people, but level on the floor, so that even Helgar stood taller than she, when she was seated. Above the throne, however, there was a dais, suspended in the air by chains. Something belonged upon it… a weapon perhaps, an heirloom, or something else important to the lodge. Whatever it was, it was missing, and the dais hung empty.

Large braids of white hair nearly reached the floor in front of her. Her crest was also entirely white, taller even than Helgar’s. Sharp, winter-blue eyes gazed at him from a scar-riddled face. Her hands gripped the arms of the throne, looking like they could crush the stone beneath them with little effort.

Helgar turned back to Velithor, gesturing a large, calloused hand towards him. ‘Runemother,’ he said, reverentially. ‘We intercepted this aelf on the mountain pass, a lord of his people and commander of the Moon Gate. He comes with a message… and an offer of payment.’

Velithor took a step towards Maegrym but two Fyreslayer guards immediately blocked his path, axes raised. He placed his hands up in supplication, taking one knee as he did so.

Coward.

‘Runemother,’ Velithor began, hoping to balance out his eagerness with propriety. ‘Time runs out. Your people are in grave peril. A daemonic horde charges up the mountain pass to your lodge–’

‘You are Lord Regent of the aelven Moon Gate,’ came her voice from the throne. It wasn’t a question. Her voice had all the hallmarks of her people in its coarseness, much like the stone around her.

Velithor picked up his head, and Maegrym now stood in front of him. Helgar and a guard stood at her side with their weapons ready.

‘I am,’ said Velithor.

‘And you abandoned your post,’ she said. She held his gaze, her eyes unwavering. ‘The gate is no more, then?’

‘No more are those who defended it,’ Velithor said, hoping to express the peril of the situation.

‘And yet you stand here in front of me, defender,’ Maegrym said, her voice a low thunder, eyes narrowing. ‘And I wonder why. Why spare you? Why not rid the realms of another deserter?’

The Hearthguard moved, weapons raised… expecting Velithor’s answer to be unsatisfactory.

‘To bring you warning!’ Velithor said, shouting. One of the Fyreslayers grabbed Velithor’s arms from behind. He struggled against them in vain. ‘Of monsters that may already be at your door! But if it is your blunt determination to sit here and grumble in your hall of stone, to condemn duardin lives and abandon ur-gold you so desperately covet, then all is already lost,’ he said, meeting her stoic gaze with his own.

Maegrym held up a hand, stopping the Hearthguard.

‘Best hold your tongue in my hall, Velithor of the Fallen Gate,’ she said. ‘My people are not used to such forked things and are likely to take it from you.’

Nathyr reared at this, as if she would have something to say about that if they were to try it. Maegrym turned to her, the Fyreslayers tightening their grips on the lightcourser’s reins as she did.

‘Do not worry, spirited one. His cowardice is not your fault.’

Velithor’s fist bunched at his sides. ‘What did you say?’

Her voice boomed, now. She wanted all to hear. ‘It is not the duty of my people to save your skin, so no use hammering that anvil. You cannot twist this to turn from aelven interests to our own survival. Our defences would hold even if we were the target of the damnable things. We are not your playthings, little prince.’

Red-hot anger flushed in Velithor’s cheeks. He bit back a response that would have seen him skewered on the spot, his mission failed. ‘It… is not my intent,’ he managed instead. ‘I remind you that I know what your kind seek, and that I have such payment for your services, but we must act quickly if we are to meet them in time–’

‘It is no secret to you that we have already been betrayed by your predecessor? What assurances do you bring other than the ur-gold? For there is no trust, here,’ Maegrym said, leaning forwards for a closer look at Velithor.

Velithor swallowed. He knew the gravity of what he was about to offer. The things he did not have the sole authority to give.

‘The Moon Gate and its garrison tower hold artefacts and weapons sacred to my people… but also to yours,’ Velithor said, his eyes finding the dais suspended over the throne that once held a spear composed entirely of moonlight. Maegrym followed his gaze. There was a silence that fell across the hall. Velithor could practically feel the anger emanating from her when she turned back towards him.

‘You tell me that the Spear of Thungur gathers dust in your thieving hall? And you expect aid? And you expect to leave this chamber alive?’ Her voice barely contained her rage.

‘I make no claim to the weapon, only that I can return it to you. I am a Lord Regent of Hysh, Runemother,’ Velithor said. ‘I also offer my life and belongings as assurance. And if I should fall… you will already have your spear. Take Nathyr and my armour to the city below the mountain. They will return them to Tyrion himself, who will make whole our agreement.’

‘The lord of all aelves is but another aelf,’ Maegrym said.

‘I promise you,’ Velithor said, standing to the shifting of feet on stone and axes at his neck. ‘You will have your payment of all these things and the ur-gold you seek… or my life and all it is worth. It is all I have to give.’

At this rate, Velithor thought, it would surprise him if he survived the night.

‘And what of you during all this, Lord Regent?’ Maegrym growled. ‘Is it your wish to carry on to your gleaming cities below the mountain? Escape while we do the fighting?’

‘No,’ said Velithor. ‘I request a place for myself and my lightcourser at the front. I left the Moon Gate to protect my people, yes. But I was the only one who could do so, who could warn you in time. But I will have my vengeance. Whether it is fighting alongside you or not.’

Velithor’s words echoed in the hall. Maegrym’s face was inscrutable, her stern, piercing eyes never leaving his. She studied him. The uncomfortable silence lingered so long, pregnant with so many outcomes.

‘Helgar!’ Maegrym shouted into the silence, her voice like a rising storm. All eyes were on her.

‘Muster the lodge! And ready Galdragg!’

Helgar hurried from the throne room. Drums sounded from somewhere within the halls… and for once in his long life, Velithor was relieved to hear the heralds of war.

Another Fyreslayer emerged from somewhere behind the throne, carrying a long, ornate axe. White-hot flames burned in the centre of the blade, held there by some form of brazier.

‘They have a sorcerer,’ Velithor said.

‘Aye, and we have me,’ Maegrym said, paying him no heed. ‘They always come along with some hobnob handwaver thinking he’s the next Everchosen.’ But the Fyrequeen looked like she was still thinking something over.

‘We’ll have to march from the safety of the lodge, I wager… so as to secure the mountain pass and stop the damned things from just strolling on by.’

‘Yes,’ Velithor said.

‘Right, that costs extra.’

‘Of course it does…’ he said, under his breath. The Fyreslayers in the hall hurried to make ready their kin. And Maegrym strode over to Nathyr, free hand extending towards her.  ‘I wouldn’t–’ Velithor started. But Maegrym’s hand was already outstretched, grandaxe held behind her. Nathyr lowered her head, bent in an unmistakable bow. Nathyr was too perceptive to risk angering the Fyrequeen.

‘This is a fine beast.’ Maegrym turned to meet Velithor’s stunned gaze and grinned, petting Nathyr. ‘Don’t go getting her killed.’

Back in the hall, one of the Fyreslayers had given him a full flagon. It smelled horrible, like a distillation of the dank and sulphureous stone of these halls, but it immediately warmed him like nothing else he had known. Like an elixir. Nathyr received a metal pail of it.

The act was not out of kindness or hospitality, something Maegrym made plain.

‘You are an asset now,’ Maegrym had said, before leading her army into the chill of the mountain pass. ‘My asset. Ensuring your safety is ensuring my payment. Or, at the very least, ensuring that it is we who get to do the slaying in your cities at the foot of the mountain and not the daemons.’

Velithor was atop Nathyr, riding high above the crests of the Fyreslayers around him into the pass. The snow was untouched before them, with no sign of Tzeentch’s minions.

Vast companies of nigh-naked duardin carried massive axes and sharpened shields. They took up position now along the pass. They were fivefold the number of Moon Gate defenders at least, the largest force of Fyreslayers Velithor had ever seen. Helgar and others like him bellowed orders, though it did not seem as if the Fyreslayers needed them, each of them looking the veteran of a hundred such battles.

There was a thunderous trembling of the earth. It was like the duardin’s ancestor god was taking a massive hammer to the ground at their feet, and Velithor turned around, realising why. Velithor had seen the monstrous allies of the Fyreslayers before, but never this close. He had the good fortune of never meeting them directly in combat. Coward, the voice in his head hissed again, at the fear of such a monstrous beast. Instinctively, Velithor reached for the aetherquartz around his neck to combat the fear, but his hand came up empty.

The magmadroth towered over him, a monstrous thing that seemed carved from the mountain itself, burning with the pale light of the moons. Flames of white and blue burned in the heart of her – an ancient engine of firelight within. Heat emanated from her massive jaws as they opened to roar a warning into the night. The falling snowflakes would not touch the magmadroth, her heat evaporating them well before they ever reached her.

Maegrym herself was atop the magmadroth, Galdragg, not so much saddled as throned upon her. She led the magmadroth forwards, in front of the Fyreslayers, turning round to face them.

‘For glory! For Grimnir!’ The magmadroth let out a roar that rattled Velithor’s armour. A shout rose up in response from every Fyreslayer around them.

‘Helgar! Lead Fengryr’s company!’ Maegrym shouted, pointing her axe in the corresponding directions like it was little more than a light spear. It pointed towards him, next.

‘Aelf! Behind the lines!’ Maegrym shouted. She leaned down, her voice raised to be heard over the wind. ‘We will not hesitate to kill you if you try any treachery, Lord Regent,’ she said.

Velithor did his best to calm his own fire of righteous anger within. He couldn’t take his eyes from the magmadroth. Maegrym grinned, and Galdragg roared.

‘Galdragg here,’ she said, patting the rock-like skin of the magmadroth, ‘will swallow you whole for even lookin’ at her wronglike, so… best behave.’

Velithor looked up at the Fyrequeen towering over him, and patted Nathyr.

‘Well in that case, I might offer a warning as well,’ he said, a rare smile on his face, ‘Nathyr’s been known to do the same.’

Maegrym’s laughter was drowned out by another roar of the magmadroth. It seemed the prospect of battle was making the duardin ruler giddy enough to laugh along with an aelf. We’re a strange sight, he thought, looking to either side of him. A Lord Regent atop his lightcourser, flanked by Fyreslayers with more muscle and sinew than three aelves strapped together. These ones carried axes with mace-like braziers hanging from the blades by thick chains. It was likely the reason he had not felt as cold as before, a hundred fires at his back. He thought about the force Maegrym had amassed, at the ready and in formation along the mountain pass in what felt like a handful of minutes.

Velithor’s thoughts drifted to Fylael, Thevyn, Lloryl, and he did not feel so cold any more. He drew his sunmetal blade from its scabbard with a hand that did not shake.

Nathyr pushed her way to the front, standing alongside the magmadroth. She shook her mane and stomped into final formation to the left of the towering beast, eager to prove its equal in determination, if not sheer terror-inducing size.

‘Scared?’ came a voice to Velithor’s left. Helgar stood next to them, his smouldering brazier of an axe illuminating the others close by, holding great, golden effigies of the duardin warrior-god Grimnir atop their staffs. Many runes were hammered into their flesh, even more arrayed on their garments and scaled cloaks. Helgar himself looked as disturbingly unbothered as he had when they first met, leaning on his axe and peering up at Velithor with his one eye.

‘Only that I won’t have the chance to avenge my…’ but Velithor trailed off.

The snow had stopped falling, ushering in an eerie, all-too-familiar quiet.

Velithor remembered how there had been something like a halo, a force field around the daemons like a shield against the chill. A ball of light, a small star in the night, began to glow down the mountain pass. It grew larger, flying rapidly towards them. Velithor saw it for what it was: a spell, crackling with malicious energy, its violet light like lightning.

The Runemaster next to Helgar pushed his way forwards, eyes blazing like the runestaff he held in his hand. He lifted it high, muttering syllables that Velithor couldn’t understand, the runes growing brighter and brighter, and the ground rumbled beneath them, a crack splintering down the pass to a spot halfway between them and the light. Then, an eruption, like a miniature volcano, something trying to get out from underground. A rippling, blue-white curtain of flame began to rise up from the ground, higher and higher in front of them until it shielded Velithor and the Fyreslayers completely. It was one of their runic invocations. There was a deafening crash as the Tzeentchian spell collided with the fyrewall. It was white-hot where the spell had hit it.

The mountain pass filled with the Fyreslayers’ cheers, and the runemaster stood at the ready, holding the defensive wall in place. It was cooling from white to blue when it disappeared entirely like an extinguished flame, swirls of violet light erasing it from existence. Velithor could feel the Tzeentchian sorcerer, now, unbinding the Fyreslayer rune magic.

Where the runic fyrewall once stood was now a multicoloured mass rushing up the mountain pass like a tidal wave. Hundreds, if not thousands, of daemons. They clambered over each other in an eager battle-lust. The only one with any measure of control was the figure glowing with the light of another spell: the Magister of Tzeentch hovered above the daemons, atop his flying mount, hands working furiously and eldritch light dancing between them. Velithor knew that whatever magic held the daemons to this realm started with him, and would be weakened with his death.

Maegrym raised her massive latchkey grandaxe and the many Fyreslayers arrayed behind her raised their axes in response – a thousand gleaming moons in the night. Helgar let out a full-throated war cry, and his brothers soon joined him – a barbaric battle-hymn that drowned out all sound of daemon from the pass below. Nathyr reared again, and Velithor raised his sword, joining his voice with theirs.

The Horrors and daemons and all their horns and fangs and claws would be at them in seconds. They had the high ground… but no cavalry to angle. Just foot soldiers and one massive beast. Maegrym had laughed off his tactics and stratagems to counter the Chaos horde, and he did not have to wait long to realise the lodge’s way of war was as sophisticated as meeting the things head-on with high ground in familiar terrain.

Bolts of fire and magma arced through the air towards the daemons from Fyreslayer magmapikes before Galdragg the magmadroth leapt forward, Maegrym’s latchkey axe raised high. At the same time, a hundred throwing axes flashed through the night air, burying themselves in daemon flesh and snow. Though many were felled or entombed in hardening lava from the magmapikes, the daemon horde barely slowed.

Velithor had only to shift forwards in his saddle and Nathyr leapt into a charge. The Fyreslayers fell behind, but only just.

Velithor watched as Galdragg reached the horde first, her sharp claws cutting through air and daemon, almost the entire first rank of them flying in a mess of blood and flesh in both directions. Searing flame jettisoned from her jaws as Maegrym’s axe rose and fell, casting an untold number of daemons to the ground before Velithor, or any Fyreslayer for that matter, had even reached them.

Bone crunched as Nathyr’s massive front paws met a daemon’s twisted face, shredding it in a spray of blood. Velithor swung his sword, cutting the rest of the daemon down for good measure.

A furious, full-throated chanting sounded from behind Velithor as Helgar charged his company into the daemon ranks. As their voices rose, the blades of the Fyreslayers glowed in the night, as if the moonlight that powered their forge imbued them with more than heat at their song.

Their empowered axes sliced down in unison, blazing through the frigid mountain air and into their first daemons, turning them to cindered ruins.

A roar of pain from somewhere to Velithor’s right. He turned, a brief reprieve from the daemons in front of him thanks to the charge of Helgar’s warriors.

Galdragg. Velithor saw the scalding patch of ruined skin, burning with an unnatural light. It was on her leg. Galdragg was stomping daemons now, crushing them beneath her weight. Her roars were horrendous. The smell was worse. And there was no time to dwell on either. Maegrym was a portrait of fury atop Galdragg, her eyes ablaze and latchkey axe swinging like clockwork.

Everything was snow and blood and flame. Velithor and Nathyr fought together like a single mind, Velithor slicing left, Nathyr impaling a daemon on her great horns to the right. Next to them, Helgar’s axe swung to and fro faster than Velithor could follow.

Together, at the head of the Fyreslayer force, they made for an unlikely and devastating tip of the spear, but the momentum of their charge had been spent, and now the sheer numbers of the daemons threatened to overwhelm on all sides. Velithor dodged the backswing of a Fyreslayer axe just in time, cursing as it missed him. There was such a frenzied strength to the way the Fyreslayers fought, Velithor far too used to the more structured parries and ripostes of the Lumineth. Hardly any orders were being issued, or followed, by the duardin.

A flash of violet arced towards them, Nathyr leaping from its path before Velithor even saw it. He watched as it sizzled past him, singeing something more than the air that filled his nostrils with a horrible smoke: the violet fire had slammed into the chest of a Fyreslayer behind them, knocking the duardin backwards, hair and beard incinerated along with most of his skin. His axe fell, its flamed brazier snuffed out as it sunk into the snow.

‘You have been touched! Touched, by the Architect of Fate!’ the Magister shrieked in joy, flying overhead atop his disc. The disc emitted what sounded like a dozen distant screams as it cut through the cold air overhead. Blades jutted from the edge of the thing, slicing dangerously close to Velithor, whose sword’s upward swing was far too late, the Magister high in the sky by the time Velithor found him again.

He reared Nathyr around. More orbs of unknown flame cascaded from the Magister of Tzeentch, landing among the berzerker ranks of axes and crests, near disintegrating two more Fyreslayers on impact. The duardin, each of whom could hold their own against many of the daemons, could not survive for long if the sorcerer could hover just out of reach and continue the barrage. The magmapikes wouldn’t have the range. Solutions flurried through Velithor’s mind.

‘Runemother!’ Velithor shouted back towards Maegrym. But she was already deep in a fight of her own. He was watching daemons scale Galdragg’s flanks to get to Maegrym when a blast struck him from Nathyr’s back.

The hard impact of the icy ground knocked the wind from him. Velithor tasted dirt and snow. His head throbbed and he struggled to his feet, scared of a claw or blade in the back before he could defend himself. His vision cleared and he scanned the snowy battlefield. The Fyreslayers were the better fighters, felling everything within reach of their axes, but there was just no end to the daemons. Maegrym and Galdragg were in the thick of it.

He couldn’t find Nathyr.

A high-pitched braying sounded and he saw her. She was still standing, surrounded by Horrors, bleeding from several cuts. She fought three daemons, her horns and paws stabbing and slashing, but there were too many of them.

Velithor had never run faster in his life. His sword rose and fell, rose and fell, frantically cutting down any of the daemons in his path.

He leapt the rest of the distance, desperate to close the gap between them, slashing down and cleaving a Horror’s head into halves, breaking into the circle of the things that surrounded her.

Velithor brought his sword back up, defensively, his back to Nathyr. Lightning crackled from somewhere above and Velithor felt Nathyr’s massive paws plant themselves in his back. He was thrown forwards, launched from the ground precisely where the spell connected, where it sent out tendrils of light and burned the ground itself into a small crater.

Velithor slammed into the snow again, picking himself up. Nathyr was next to the crater. One side of her was badly singed.

The Magister was high in the air, a god among insects. He was preparing another spell, hands shaking as he brought the arcane energies to life, his horrifying mount flying towards the magmadroth wreaking havoc on his forces.

Maegrym and Galdragg were overrun with daemons but holding their own. Horrors and other servants of Tzeentch, the ones that made their way past Galdragg’s fire and jaws, climbed the magmadroth in hopes of getting to Maegrym. She cut each of them down, but they didn’t stop coming.

Nathyr was on the move before Velithor could even blink. The injured lightcourser didn’t show it, galloping fast. She moved like a wraith, darting between duardin and daemon alike, to get to him. A Flamer reached its many heads towards her, jaws opened wide, issuing flames from within. They would engulf her. Velithor started a frenzied chant of his own, the words of power spoken swiftly. He reached out with an open hand, a pale, arcane light of his own dancing within it, and he pushed it from himself, hurtling the bolt of energy towards the Flamer with as much force as he could muster. The spell hit home, arcing through the Flamer’s form, ceasing its attack on Nathyr. A Fyreslayer’s axe emerged from a nearby maelstrom, dealing the final blow to the daemon, its owner bellowing in triumph.

It was Helgar. He must have been covered in a hundred cuts and gashes. His right arm looked mangled. ‘I’ll have no daemon stealing such a feast from me!’ he shouted, moving on to the next enemy in sight.

The sorcerer hovered above Maegrym, now. High enough to avoid even Galdragg.

Nathyr continued on, leaping over the bodies of Horrors and landing next to Velithor, who grabbed her saddle at speed, lifting himself onto her back, and turning her around to face Maegrym and the sorcerer. Nathyr leapt forwards and ran straight for the Fyrequeen and magmadroth like a bolt from a ballista.

Maegrym and Galdragg were completely surrounded. Nathyr’s horns punched through the first unfortunate daemon in their way at speed, sending the thing flying in an arc of fluorescent ichor. Velithor, blade slicing through the air, hacked at the next two, and Nathyr took her chance. She leapt.

Velithor offered up a silent prayer that Maegrym’s axe would remain on the other side of Galdragg as he and Nathyr leapt over the daemons… directly at the flank of the magmadroth.

But Maegrym’s head turned, a look of bewilderment on her face. Velithor could see her expression replaced with fury: an assumption of betrayal… with Velithor’s sword held high and threatening. She brought her axe around, swinging it right towards him.

‘No!’ he shouted.

But Nathyr was swifter than Maegrym’s swing. No sooner had the lightcourser landed atop the rocky spine of the magmadroth than she was springing into the snow-filled air once more, and now Velithor and Nathyr soared towards the Magister and his disc, far above the mountain pass.

The distance that grew between Velithor and the ground below had filled him with terror, for they had to return to earth eventually, whether Velithor’s blade found its way to the Magister or not. The terrifying vision came to him clearly: his and Nathyr’s bodies crumpled in the snow, side by side in broken death. His mind clouded with fear and there was no aetherquartz to clear it.

The Magister did not see them, not in time, focused as he was on a spell that would end Maegrym and her magmadroth. The Magister’s eyes – Velithor realised there were many of them now that he was close enough to see his foe properly – never left the Runemother. He was going to finish the spell. Velithor would be too late. There were only moments until the magic was unleashed, only one way to stop the spell from leaving the sorcerer’s infernal lips.

He leapt from the saddle.

At the apex of Nathyr’s leap high above the magmadroth, Fyreslayers and daemons below, Velithor pushed himself from her back, leaving what safety there was in the nimble lightcourser’s saddle, to earn just one more moment of time. He could only hope it was enough.

He thrust his sword in a desperate stab, feeling the sunmetal blade bite home, plunging into the body of the sorcerer with ease. The Magister let out a monstrous, avian shriek. The force of Velithor’s leap carried him into his foe, knocking them both from the disc.

Velithor had lost hold of his sword, lost sight of the sorcerer it was buried in. He saw Nathyr, though, flailing and falling back to the unforgiving rock below, just as he was.

Then he lost sight of Nathyr, and the mountain rose to meet him.

Velithor felt the crack more than heard it.

When he tried to stand, one of his legs disobeyed, and he knew the damage was severe. Something stomped the ground next to him. Nathyr stood over him. She was all right. A stone’s throw away was the body of the sorcerer, twisted in death, Velithor’s sword jutting up from the body, covered in blackened blood. But Velithor’s relief at the sight was brief. The pain arrived and it took everything he had to stop from screaming.

‘Nathyr!’ he shouted. The lightcourser lowered her head next to him and he grabbed hold of one of her horns. She helped lift him to his feet, then shrugged him back into her saddle.

Something slammed into the snow next to them and Nathyr darted to the side.

‘Not bad, aelf!’ shouted Maegrym over the din of the battle. She tossed something towards him and he caught it by the handle. A handaxe, the weight and balance of it an atrocity compared to his fine blade. ‘Not bad! Now keep yourself alive long enough for us to finish this business!’ The Fyreslayer, looking for all the realms like the battle-scarred avatar of Grimnir, turned and slapped a hand on Nathyr’s hindquarters. Nathyr, uncharacteristically, did not remove the duardin’s head as a result.

‘Right then!’ Maegrym shouted. ‘What do you reckon we put an end to this?’

Maegrym raised her axe high, swinging it in a bloody arc in front of her, daemons flying backwards in its wake. Nathyr charged and Velithor held on tight, forcing every ounce of strength he had left into the arm that carried the handaxe, sending another daemon into the snow, trailing blood. He threw it at another daemon, the blade biting home in what passed for its shoulder, and Nathyr swung back around to the sorcerer’s body. Velithor reached down and pulled his sword free.

Galdragg joined them. They carved a bloody swathe through the daemonic horde. An alliance that seemed able to stand against any foe. The pain was immense, but the cold seemed like a distant memory. With the sorcerer dead, the magic that held the Chaos force together was spent… the daemons far fewer and far weaker.

When Velithor looked round to find only Fyreslayers around him, the last of the daemons at the fringes of their ranks, he slid from Nathyr’s back. He had no strength left. He collapsed in the snow, dreaming the fever dream of those on death’s door.

He dreamt of victory.

In his dream, aelves were there with him. He did not flee up the mountain pass.

The defenders of Moon Gate fought bravely. Each and every one of them survived.

‘Bad news, aelf,’ said a voice.

Velithor opened his eyes and stared until the thing in front of him made sense.

Maegrym’s face floated before him, surrounded by snow. One of her braids had been cut or torn in the battle, her mess of white hair blending into the snow of the mountain behind her so that Velithor’s bleary eyes could scarcely tell where Maegrym ended and the mountain began. She looked down at him and grinned through a face full of scars, many of them made fresh by the fight.

‘You’re goin’ to live.’

Velithor was on a sled of some sort, travelling backwards, being pulled along. It was stiff on his back, bumping over the uneven ground. Velithor winced at every jostle of the sled. He looked down to see that his right leg was heavily bandaged, two steel axe handles roped tightly together on both sides, bracing it stiffly in place. A crude form of mending broken bones, he realised, though it was little comfort.

‘That is, of course, assuming you make good on the rest of the agreement.’

‘Rest of?’ Velithor asked through a grimace.

Maegrym raised a clenched fist that held the spear of moonlight, shining so brilliantly and brightly that Velithor squinted, bringing a hand to cover his eyes.

They had already journeyed to the Moon Gate.

There was a part of him that regretted his promise, then. But it was a part of the deal, he reminded himself. A deal to save far more precious aelven lives… even though so many had been extinguished atop the mountain.

‘Were there…’ Velithor said, his memory of Lloryl resurfacing in his mind. ‘Did any survive?’

‘No,’ Maegrym said.

With his eyes adjusted, he stared at the massive spear of moonlight in the Runemother’s hand, wistfully.

Maegrym followed his gaze and laughed. ‘Regretting our pact already?’

The many footsteps of barefoot Fyreslayers crunched in the snow ahead of him. It could have been mere moments after the battle. Felt like it, at least. But he knew it couldn’t be. They were on a ledge, descending the mountain. Through the falling snow, Velithor could see the bright lights of a city: Calthrys. Its light was like lingering stars in the morning sky.

‘The daemons are no more, then.’

Maegrym looked at him in disbelief.

‘’Course.’ The Runemother’s expression turned more serious. ‘And never forget it was at the cost of duardin lives, Lord Regent. We’ll waste no time in collecting our payment as an honour to their memory.’

Velithor’s leg was a smouldering fire of pain and he shifted on the sled to find comfort that never came. Maegrym slapped her large, calloused hand on Velithor’s thigh just above the axe handles. He sat bolt upright in the pain.

‘Oh, you’ll be fine! Need to build up some resistance, anyway. Like your friend, here.’ Maegrym nodded to the creature pulling his sled. ‘You’ll be glad to know that, proper fighter as she is, we’ve decided not to cook her up.’

Velithor turned to see Nathyr, relief flooding through him. She was alive. She turned her great horned head, one of her eyes pointed back at Velithor. She was bandaged in more places than he, and yet still she walked on, unfazed. Guilt panged inside him, along with the pain.

‘You have… my thanks, Runemother,’ he said.

Maegrym looked at him, brow raised in surprise. Almost like she expected deceit. But her tone grew sombre as she looked out at Calthrys, below the mountain.

‘Aye.’ She nodded at Velithor, saying no more on the subject.

‘Shall we find somewhere to rest? The journey will be another day, from here–’

Maegrym laughed. ‘What, and wait for you to die? Escape? Am I to absolve you of payment ’cause you cracked your leg pretendin’ you had the wings of a dragon? It took care of our sorcerer problem, I’ll give you that. But sorry, princeling, your magic is not so strong.’

‘I am not a pr–’

‘You’re my collateral,’ Maegrym interrupted. Another bump, and Velithor gasped as his leg hit back onto the sled.

‘But…’ Velithor spluttered, grimacing the pain away. ‘But it is not so swift an ordeal… Your ur-gold does not wait in some vault in Calthrys. I must answer to the court there, then summon my superiors to the city, should they even be free from battlefronts… It could all take a fortnight before the payment can be made,’ Velithor said, growing in desperation.

Maegrym grinned like she expected his answer. ‘Then we will eat your food, drink your ale and sleep in your beds until it’s settled!’

Velithor’s head thumped back down on the sled, a sigh escaping him.

‘Your bill grows long, aelven lord.’ Maegrym chuckled and then lifted the spear of moonlight. She pointed it towards the city below.

‘Come, Fyreslayers!’ she shouted. ‘Quicken your pace! The aelf tells me that ale awaits!’

A cheer sounded, louder than the roar of any magmadroth.

About the Author

Jeremy Lambert writes comic books including Doom Patrol, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Goosebumps. His life was forever changed at age 13 when he started following Gotrek & Felix on their adventures and now he’s convinced that all this actually-writing-for-Warhammer stuff is a dream. ‘The House of Moons’ is his first story for Black Library.

An extract from Godsbane.

‘This world,’ she says, ‘in fact, all the Mortal Realms, are riddled with calamities, just waiting to happen. They lie in wait like the mundane cast-offs of a merchant’s caravan. They moulder, forgotten, in sealed chambers and beneath long-fallen keeps and towers. Sometimes, they wander of their own accord, seeking the perfect victim to aid in their ultimate manifestation.’

Her students baulk. How could that be? The weapons of daemons and gods, artefacts of monstrous power, treasures capable of blights and miracles – just lying about, like a child’s toys? Clearly, they do not believe her.

‘I shall show you,’ she says, and looks to the apprentice at her elbow. The supplicant moves forward, eager to be rid of the heavy chest she’s been holding for her mistress throughout the lecture.

When the ark is laid upon the pedestal before her, Thelana Evenfall deactivates its magical wards, opens each cunning lock in succession, then lifts the heavy lid. In the high tiers of the amphitheatre, some of her students rise on their benches, necks craning to get an early glimpse of the thing she’s about to reveal.

Thelana’s elegant hands display the object for all present: simple, old-fashioned, its lines clean and graceful, miniscule script engraved upon its surface.

‘Here,’ she says, ‘we have a diadem, forged in an elder age, before the Ocari Dara. Not much to look at, is it? And yet, the power once contained within this forgettable bauble could have been used to tear Hysh itself asunder.’

Murmurs and whispers from the risers. Incredulity. Disbelief.

‘How’d it come to be here, then?’ one of them asks. ‘At this university?’

‘You say it once contained power – where’s it all gone?’

‘How do you know it was powerful? Were you ever present for its use?’

Reasonable questions, all.

‘I was present when a would-be claimant unearthed this particular treasure and put it to use,’ she says, knowing already that such a claim will not suffice. They will want more. More than she would like to recount.

‘Tell us,’ more than one of them now beg. ‘Tell us the story.’

Thelana sighs. Stares at the diadem. Remembers.

‘Very well,’ she says, and that is how the tale begins…

Between the Lothil Delt and the Stoical Vast lies a long, deep, twisting canyon that cuts through the southern desert of Ymetrica Coreward known as the Saratrai Chasm. Legend insists that the chasm is a scar upon the land – evidence of an aspiring despot’s immense power and stunning destruction. As you should all know from your studies, Spirefall – which we Lumineth call the Ocari Dara – was the era of this blessed realm’s permanent ruination and disfigurement, a price paid for the titanic hubris of its offspring. The tales of sundered cities, fallen towers and shattered landscapes are too numerous to recount. What is pertinent to our tale is this: once, a thriving city reposed at the very centre of the long, snaking skein of crevasses and canyons that make up the Saratrai Chasm. That city was ruled by a powerful Lumineth mage-king known as Ansorath, and it was Ansorath’s attempt to create an enchanted diadem capable of encompassing a god’s power that resulted in the broken, carved-out ruin that dominates the desert to this day.

Our story begins in one of the deepest and widest box canyons in the vast, meandering Saratrai network. On a morning like any other, a stranger arrived from the outer world, guided by ambition and a wealth of long-collated lore.

This newcomer rides in atop a jouncing, reptilian biped, the sort most of you call a hopdrake. His aspect is silent, stoic, his dour, bearded face shaded under a wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat, the tails of a long, mantled greatcoat fluttering behind him. A long-hafted, heavy warhammer hangs, strapped against his back – a weapon of duardin make – and numerous curious, fat pouches, phials and small, scabbarded tools and weapons encumber a pair of bandoliers crisscrossing his broad, powerful chest. Visible against his leather cuirass is an unusual badge, hand-fashioned from onyx by a skilled jeweller. It is a simple, almond-shaped icon suggesting an open eye. Only upon closer examination might one notice that the eye-shaped signet sports not one pupil but two, one very nearly eclipsing the other, like a moon in-transit before a shining star.

The stranger’s name is Zabayus Tarn. Coolly, appraisingly, he studies a particular recess in the canyon wall, feeling a flutter of vindication.

The recess before him is no natural feature: it was once clearly some sort of tall, broad gateway, carved into the stone. A large, dark gash in the cliff-side indicates that there is still a path into the canyon rock itself; a way still open, awaiting his arrival after a thousand years.

Tarn knots the reins of his hopdrake to a nearby thornwood tree and advances through gardens of fallen boulders, over fallen cyclopean pillars, past rolling bushels of wheel weed driven by the canyon’s hitching winds. At last, he climbs the cracked, wind-scoured steps that rise to a wide portico marking the entrance to this long-forgotten cavern city. There, beneath the shadow of leaning lintels and precarious, half-collapsed archways, he peers into a yawning, ancient darkness that has probably not admitted any explorer for centuries. He produces a white-jewelled torchwand – two cloudy white lumps of aetherquartz at either end of a wooden baton – then ventures into the black of the long-collapsed gateway.

Zabayus Tarn is not simply a treasure hunter: he is also a scholar. He has studied every historical account, first- and second-hand, that he could locate regarding this place. He’s braved spiritual scryings with lesser daemonic summonings in an attempt to see through the eyes of spirits who once inhabited it when living. His investigations – factual and supernatural – have given him a masterful understanding of both its architecture and layout, and he has committed this knowledge to memory. That crystal-clear image guides him as he wends his way through the darkness, scrambling over more fallen masonry, squeezing under toppled archways and between leaning columns and sagging walls, leaping deep, seemingly bottomless crevasses and edging precariously along narrow ledges over deep, fathomless gulfs. For hours, Zabayus Tarn braves injury and death as he picks a slow, methodical path through the sepulchral ruins.

More than once, he hears the scrabbling of claws in the dark. Vile things probably nest and hunt here – things eager for the passage of some unwary soul through their domain; things hungry because they rarely venture into the outside world, and even more rarely find trespassers in the ruins to satisfy their considerable hunger. At intervals, the canyon winds penetrate the cliff-side through internecine crevices, shrieking or sighing as they move through the ruined city, sounding like the moans of Chainrasps or the wailing of Banshees.

Tarn loses hours to the dark. He braves crippling injuries, even death, forced more than once to retrace his steps upon finding his chosen routes blocked or impassable. Finally, after completing a long, arduous vertical climb past three separate levels of yawning, empty passageways and ruined chambers, Tarn believes he may have come, at last, to his destination. Muscles aching, stomach growling, senses scrambled by darkness and solitude, he clambers over the rough lip of a ledge of shattered stone and finds himself in a broad, arcaded passageway leading to a tall, wide arch at the far end.

It takes him a moment to consult the mental map that has guided him; to check and double-check his progress against the theoretical arrangement of stacked living spaces, labyrinthine markets, and the core warren of the one-time ruler’s palace. Just ahead, through an open doorway, lies the object of his long and treacherous explorations; the culmination of more than a decade of desperate, some might say obsessive, academic work.

Zabayus Tarn pauses just long enough to restore his strength. He drinks some water; hastily devours a small portion of the rations he carries; rubs the soreness from his burning, aching muscles. Then, satisfied that he’s equal to the revelation awaiting, he steps over the threshold to claim his destiny.

The legends consulted – ancient transcriptions of oral accounts, epic poetry, drama, historiography – differ endlessly on the specifics. The broad strokes are, however, well established: once, a powerful mage-lord named Xymarkias ruled here, and for the greater duration of his rule, he was accounted wise and good, just and courageous. Xymarkias succumbed, however, to the overweening, malignant pride so common among the wisest and most powerful of the Lumineth in those dark days. Seeking ultimate power, ultimate insight, Xymarkias fashioned for himself a blood-gold diadem capable of acting as a second locus for both his memories and his consciousness. His intention was to absorb all of the knowledge, all of the experience, all of the skill and mage-craft that a mortal aelf could, letting what was too great or all-encompassing for his own mind spill over into the diadem itself.

Of course, his obsession and the vast repositories of knowledge that he attempted to take into himself drove him mad.

Unfortunately, Xymarkias’ fears and terrors were visited in corporeal form upon his people. His perversions and depredations held sway, infecting the souls and bodies of those not keen enough to flee the coming disaster. Likewise, his appetites and ambitions were writ large, fusing with aelemental powers already dwelling in that region, becoming stunningly potent and impossible to control. And so, over the course of a terrible, nightmarish day and night, the city in the cliffs was riddled with slaughter and disaster, riven by geomantic quakes and firestorms, and the whole subterranean kingdom tore itself asunder, killing thousands, including mad Xymarkias himself.

Tarn’s theory is that the king would have been reposed upon his throne when the end came and his world imploded upon him. If he could locate the mad king’s last location, then he could also, theoretically, locate the fabled diadem.

And claim it for himself.

The chamber he enters – dark save for the clear, white glow of his lampwand – does indeed have the look of a throne room or formal audience chamber. Within, Tarn finds a broad, ovoid space with vaulted ceilings, its rock and dust-strewn floor composed of handsome, magically shaped interlocking flagstones. These flags are arranged in complex geomantic sigils and knots not uncommon in the architecture of Xymarkias’ era. The walls are lined by enormous pillars – many cracked, some toppled, others simply pulverised. The stone panels between the pillars boast dust-choked sculpture and inlays. All about the chamber stand enormous, unhewn megaliths – great fragments of the cliff’s mantle that sheared away during the cataclysm to punch through the once-vaulted ceiling.

The throne chamber is a ruin. A tomb.

But, at the far end of the chamber, clearly visible beneath one of those enormous, fallen megaliths, Zabayus Tarn sees what he has always hoped to see: telltale steps rising to a dais… the sort of dais that might serve as the base for a monarch’s throne.

A great rugged megalith stands inviolate upon the dais. Any throne or fallen mage-king once occupying that space is now crushed flat, long vanished into dust. But Tarn already has a plan to locate the treasure he’s come in search of. He has eschewed the use of magic all through his terrifying, exhausting day so that every bit of energy and willpower at his disposal will be ready now, when he needs it the most.

He approaches the dais and the great block of broken stone squatting upon it. Tarn produces a small, palm-sized aetherquartz gem from one of the many pouches on his person, a gem attuned to concentrated magical energies. In the presence of such energies, it will glow. The more potent the energies, the brighter its brilliance. He holds the gem in his open palm and slowly edges towards the megalith.

Five steps shy of the great boulder, the gem begins to glow.

Closer. The glow intensifies.

When he is right upon the collapsed stone, squatting at its base, placing the gem flat against it, the gem pulses brilliantly, painfully bright in the darkness. Tarn feels his heart beating double time. Once again, he has been proven right.

Now: the excavation.

The hammer strapped across his back is inscribed on the hammerhead and along its grip-shaft with ancient Fyreslayer runes that glow a sinister vermilion in the darkness. This is no ordinary hammer, of course: Tarn had to trade a great many compromising magical favours and sell a large part of his personal library to acquire it. He has also promised to return it to its rightful owner when his mission is done – presuming he still lives. Going to such lengths for a single weapon might seem obsessive, but he’s known for some time that, if there was a great deal of fallen stone to disperse in order to reach his prize, such a tool would be required.

He utters ancient duardin prayers, calling upon the latent magical energies in his own body to invigorate the weapon and intensify its power.

The hammer all but hums in his sweating hands.

He chooses a target at the base of the great megalith, very near to where he placed the gem against the stone, draws back for a fierce strike, and swings hard.

The hammer shatters the base of the megalith as though it were pottery. It does not destroy the whole boulder – it is far too large to be destroyed in a single strike, even from such a storied weapon as this – but the effect is wide-ranging and immediate. In a shower of fiery sparks amid a sound like the roar of a fired cannon, a wide swathe of the megalith’s base cracks and shears away, the edges of the shattered stone glowing red from their sudden, violent sundering.

He strikes again. Again. Again. He’s like some strange, eldritch mining god, slamming his hammer home time after time, red-hot rock and glowing sparks spreading in all directions. Some of the flying debris slashes his face, rakes his arms or shoulders, splashes off his leather breastplate. He is burned – scarred even – but he does not care.

Finally, after a seeming eternity, Zabayus Tarn steps back to examine his handiwork. A tunnel of sorts has been hollowed out of the base of the great megalith, a ragged depression just wide enough to allow him to enter if he crouches down and shimmies in with his legs folded under him. He uses the haft of the greathammer to sweep the pulverised stone and rubble out of the space he’s made, then wriggles into the narrow aperture.

It has to be here. Somewhere. He’ll tear the whole, great boulder down if he has to, never mind that it’s as tall as a mega-gargant and half-obscured by the collapsed roof it fell through.

As he feverishly sweeps aside the rubble with the hammer’s ferrule, he suddenly hears a strange sound: a clattering, clearly metallic ring. It comes not from within the little space, but behind him where the rubble that he tossed has hit the dais and scattered.

Zabayus Tarn shimmies out, crawling around on the dais among the sharp, still-hot rubble, sweeping his gloved hands back and forth in search of–

There!

He finds it, half-covered with old stone and bone dust fossilised into a rough, uneven crust. Staring at the curious formation in his hand – a ring of something dull and metallic, clodded with stone and compressed earth – Tarn begins to feel a giddy elation. He slams his prize down upon the stone floor. With each impact, more of the crust falls away and more of the treasure is revealed.

It is beautiful despite its simplicity: a simple, blood-gold diadem, inscribed with the small, subtle marks of a long-vanished alphabet. For a long time Zabayus Tarn kneels there in the dark, lampwand throwing garish light and long shadows around him; he studies the treasure in his hands, located and unearthed by virtue of his faith, his scholarship, his courage, even his sweat and blood.

Does it still contain the power that Xymarkias poured into it?

Part of him, no doubt, recoils at the idea of simply placing the diadem upon his head. He is no fool. If the object once drove a Lumineth mage-lord mad and destroyed his kingdom, how treacherous and intoxicating must its power be? And yet, he cannot deny the attraction of such surrender. What good will it do him, to retrace his steps through this subterranean ruin and scurry back through the desert to the city by the Piercing Lakes where his magical laboratory waits, only to find, upon returning, that the diadem’s power was already long-spent? That it offers him nothing at all?

No. Better to test the thing here, in this deserted place, where only he is at risk. If the diadem destroys him, so be it: at least he will die alone and take no innocents with him. But if it proves to be as powerful as he suspects…

Click here to buy Godsbane.

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