LOST SOULS

She lashed them to the ground by their arms and legs so that the coarse gravel dug into the skin of their backs. Every last hunter in the settlement was to be sacrificed. She told them this much, and the memory of it has lingered in their bones ever since. I can feel it.

She had come with the spring mists, when murk flowed in from the plains to shroud the village huts. They knew the stories of the Shadow Queen – who is called Morathi, the Blood Taker, and a thousand other names – and knew to fear her, but not how to fight her. She was an enchanting embodiment of dread, and wielded magics beyond their imaginations, spitting spiteful oaths like venom as she subdued them one by one and staked them to the cold, black earth. Brave people wailed in terrified desperation. They prayed to the empty void in the hopes that they would be granted salvation, or at the very least the chance for revenge.

One by one she plunged her knife through their hearts, releasing their blood. Through their agony and panic they saw the Shadow Queen standing over them, whispering that by their lives she would bring her children into the realms. As she completed each sacrifice she withdrew her blade, and her victims were left to drift into oblivion. But they did not fade completely. Few ever do. She had taken much of their souls for her own rituals, but remnants of hatred still echoed within their bodies.

Over long centuries the flesh of those sacrificed rotted away, and their bones were slowly buried beneath the gloom-blown dirt. The last lingering spiritual motes that remained were adrift in an endless and unchanging sea of malice. There they waited for an eternity – sightless, formless, without will or thought. They waited for revenge, for their dying prayers to be answered. Now I am here, and their wait is about to be over.

From the skies comes a piercing screech, telling me that the Khinerai have sensed my presence. Lifetakers will be swooping down from on high now, barbed sickles bared, ready to cut me down. I understand why they are coming for me – I am a trespasser in their lands, an interloper sent by the lord of another realm, and I am walking through the site of their ancient sacrifices.

A trio of winged Khainites bursts through the overhanging clouds. They are lithe and terrible, and have marked me for slaughter. But in aloof arrogance they do not see my reason for being here. I have come for them.

‘Arise,’ I say to the buried dead beneath my feet. ‘You are owed vengeance, and those whom the Shadow Queen formed from your blood will soon be within reach.’ The ground quivers.

I look up and see the Lifetakers still speeding towards me, hurling curses into the wind as they prepare for the kill.

‘These Lifetakers are the inheritors of your lives,’ I say to my morbid audience. ‘Each of their souls belongs to another’. The earth around me splits, and I see the first bony protrusions beginning to poke from the fallow soil.

‘Your age-old prayers are now answered,’ I continue. ‘The time for vengeance is now. Arise! ARISE!’

Hundreds of skeletal hands burst up from the ground as the awakened dead stab outward from their graves. As they scrabble free from the earth, clods of black dirt fall away from their bones. Above us, the Lifetakers spread their wings, halting in mid-flight as they catch sight of the freshly-risen horde. They are still above me, hovering out of reach, but they shall not escape the death that now comes for them. I raise a finger towards my quarry and utter my command.

‘Kill.’

All around me the arisen warriors begin climbing up the spines of one another, hands and feet slipping between ribs like rungs on ladders, those on bottom digging their osseous feet into the earth. More and more follow suit, forming a thick column of bodies directly below the winged fiends. The Lifetakers see the skeletal column reaching up like a creeping vine and flap their wings to rise higher, but my vengeful dead climb faster. I watch with joy as the will of my Lord is made manifest, and soon I see the first fleshless hands grasping at the feet of the Lifetakers. They hack at the reaching skeletons, splitting bones and sending hails of desiccated marrow flying, but the dead do not relent.

The first of the winged trio is dragged into the tower of bones, her agonised shrieks drowned out by the clatter as she is torn limb from limb. Then the second is subsumed, her wings ripped from her back and her falling body grabbed by many outstretched hands. At the crest of the tower, skeletons latch onto the ankles and wrists of the final Lifetaker. She struggles to pull away, crying out hateful oaths and shouts of defiance, but her words mean nothing to the fearless revenants. The dead rip at the inheritor of their blood sacrifice, clawing savagely at her flesh until her bones are freed from their sheathing. From the wet remains of her corpse, I see a thin stream of amethyst light pouring down to the ground below, seeping through the soil on its way to Shyish.

Their work now down, the dead fall motionless. I look upon my risen army with pride, and they look back at me, grim visages fixed, waiting for me to speak.

‘You now have your vengeance,’ I say to them, ‘and the souls of these Lifetakers have been returned to their rightful owner. But Nagash’s work has just begun.’

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