The Mortal Realms were something new, built on the bones of the old. They were merely the latest iteration of the universal cycle and would one day shatter and reform, as had countless realities before them. As sure as the scythe reaped the grain, all things ended. Nagash knew this and understood, for he was death, and death was the only constant. But what if there had been a time that he had not been as he was?
And what if that time might come again?
What if this was the first step towards that unthinkable moment? And what if he had walked this path before, always with the same beginning and same ending?
Driven by this thought, Nagash let his essence fill the corridor like a graveyard mist, though his body remained in the core, wracked by amethyst lightning. He felt a bite of pain as the rite continued, and he rose up over the ratkin, crackling with wrath. He crushed the closest, snaring it in a foggy talon.
At its demise, he pushed all doubt aside. If this moment had happened before, so be it. The outcome would change. Must change. He would hold fast to his course, whatever the consequences. He would not – could not – be denied. Time itself would buckle before him.
Skaven squealed and scuttled away, fleeing the damp coils of fog. The slowest perished first, bits of shadeglass clattering to the floor as they convulsed and died. The mist filled their contorted forms, dragging them upright and sending them in pursuit of their fellows. The dead ratkin clawed at those they caught, ripping gobbets of fur and meat from their cringing forms. The skaven descended into an orgy of violence, hacking and stabbing at one another in their panic, unable to tell friend from foe.
If this was the first step, he had taken it, and there was nothing to be done. If not, then he still had a chance to see his design through. As the last of the intruders perished, in fear and madness, Nagash dismissed them from his thoughts. Their remains would join the rest of his chattel. There were more important matters to attend to now.
The presence of the intruders had thrown off the delicate balance of the pyramid’s function. He could feel it, in the curdled marrow of his bones. They had polluted it somehow, tainted his Great Work. That had been their purpose all along. He could see it now – an antithetical formula, let loose among the Corpse Geometries, to gnaw at the roots of his perfect order. An artificial miscalculation, meant to break him.
Always, they sought to despoil the order he brought. Always, they made sport of his determination. They sent their servants to cast down his temples, and inflicted a hundred indignities upon his person. Again and again, they drove him to the earth, chaining him in one grave after another. They set stones upon him and sought to bury him where he might be forgotten forevermore. The laughter of the Ruinous Powers shook the pyramid, and shadeglass fissured all about him.
They thought him beaten. They thought that once more he would be cast down into a cairn of their making, to be safely ignored until the next turn of the wheel. Anger pulsed through him, and amethyst light flared from the cracks in his bones.
He was not beaten. And he would never be buried again.
‘Stand not between the Undying King and his chosen course, little gods,’ Nagash said. ‘Nagash is death, and death cannot be defeated.’ As he spoke, his thoughts raced through the structure, seeking a way to compensate for the damage. He was too close to fail now. There must be a way. There was a way. He merely had to divine it.
Skeletons were caught up in a grave-wind, disassembled and reconstructed as Nagash took shape at the points of greatest stress – many Undying Kings rose up, a hundred eyes and a hundred hands, driven by one will. These aspects of him set their shoulders against collapsing archways, or braced sagging walls. ‘I will not be undone. Not again.’ The words echoed from the mouths of each of his selves, as they fought against the pyramid’s dissolution. A chorus of denials.
Shadeglass cracked and splintered as the oscillation sped up. Blocks of vitrified sand shifted and split, sliding from position to crash down around him. But still, the Black Pyramid revolved. Nagash reached out with mind and form, seeking to hold the edifice together through sheer determination. Despite his efforts, sections peeled away and crumbled to dust. Passages collapsed, pulverising thousands of servitors.
The core twisted as if in pain. Cracks raced along its length, leaking tarry magic. The mechanisms of rotation ruptured and burst, hurled aside by the core’s convulsions. Skeletons were dashed against the walls, or sent tumbling into the depths of the pyramid. Nagash ignored all of this, focused on containing the magics that now surged all but unchecked and unfiltered through the structure. The power burned through him, threatening to consume him. But he held tight to it. His Great Work would not be undone. Not like this.
‘I will not be defeated by vermin. I will not be humbled by lesser gods. I am Nagash. I am supreme.’ His denial boomed out, echoing through the pyramid. Through the eyes of innumerable servants, he saw Shyish fold and bend like a burial shroud caught in a cold wind. Wild magic raced outwards, across the amethyst sands.
Across the realms, a rain of black light wept down from the convulsing sky. A million forgotten graves burst open. In vaulted tombs, the honoured dead awoke. Spirits stirred in shadowed bowers and hidden places. Nagash roared wordlessly and drew the power to him, refusing to let it escape. It was his. And he would not let it go. Let the realms crack asunder, let the stars burn out, let silence reign. Nagash would endure.
He could feel the realm buckling around him, changing shape, even as the dark gods laughed mockingly. Reality itself shook, like a tree caught in a hurricane wind.
Until, all at once, their laughter ceased.
And in the long silence that followed… Death smiled.
Chapter two
Glymmsforge
The sun set over the city of Glymmsforge.
The sky darkened, turning a deeper purple than Elya had ever seen before. Something about it chilled her, and she looked back to the heaps of refuse she’d been sorting through. She had to be quick, else the nightsoil men would catch and beat her. It had taken her days to recover last time.
Elya was small, thin and dark. Ten winters, or maybe eleven, but looked eight. Her clothes were loose and oft-mended. She went through the refuse with an experienced eye, picking through what had been dumped by vegetable sellers and butchers. She found a lump of fish meat and tossed it to one of the cats that hunted alongside her.
There were a dozen cats in the alleyway, eating scraps or hunting the vermin attracted by it. Most were the small, black cats native to Shyish, but some were strays from other realms – large, spotted hunters from Ghur, and sleek, almost hairless mousers from the sandy wastes of Aqshy, the Realm of Fire.
Wherever humans went, so did cats. They were as deadly an escort as ever padding through the dim streets. They loved Elya and had since the cradle. She knew this as well as she knew the sun would rise and the dead would walk. As she knew that the sky should not be purple. She glanced up again, chewing on something that was only a bit mushy. It wouldn’t be enough, but it was something. A cat meowed, and she stroked it. The big, brindle tom flashed a scarred lip as it rubbed against her.