The ancient treeman gave a cry, like the splintering of a great oak, and collapsed. Alarielle whipped around, the pain of the world’s dying a drumbeat in her temples, and stared in shock as Skarana, eldest of the oldest, toppled down into death. The bloodthirster roared in triumph and ripped its axe free of the treeman’s body, scattering charred splinters across the heads of the wailing dryads which flung themselves on the daemon’s followers. The daemon charged towards her and Durthu, wings flared, arms wide, as if inviting them to meet it in battle. She could feel her protector stiffen in anticipation, and then relax.
Durthu would not leave her side willingly. Not while only a thin wall of spears separated her from Hellebron’s maddened servants. The treeman did not trust the dwarfs to reach her in time. But he was the only one among them strong enough to dispatch the daemon even now charging towards them. She placed a hand on the rough bark of his wrist. Durthu was the greatest of Athel Loren’s children. In his mighty frame was the strength of the forest itself, and the blade he carried had been forged by the gods.
‘Go,’ Alarielle said. Durthu looked down at her, silently. Alarielle frowned. ‘Go, Durthu. Go begrudgingly, or willingly, but go. Do as I command. I will be here when you return.’ Durthu reached out, and brushed a lock of hair from her face. Then, with a sound like an avalanche, the treeman turned and strode to meet the daemon.
Durthu picked up speed as he moved past the spear-wall of the defenders, and his great root-feet trampled the enemy as he charged towards the approaching daemon, his massive blade held out behind him. He reached out with his free hand, and roared with all the fury of Athel Loren as he smashed into the bloodthirster, sending the daemon staggering sideways into the Middenplatz wall. There was a crackle of snapping bone as the force of the impact shattered the daemon’s wings, and the beast howled in agony.
Durthu didn’t slacken his assault. Even as the bloodthirster tried to rise, the treeman swung his Daith-forged blade up and drove it down through his opponent’s breastplate and into the unnatural flesh beneath. The bloodthirster shrieked and grasped the blade. It hauled itself up and smashed at Durthu with its axe, hacking deep grooves into the treeman’s bark. Durthu ignored the frenzied assault and twisted around, wrenching his blade free of the bloodthirster’s chest. Without pausing, he whirled about, bringing the sword about to chop clean through the daemon’s thick neck.
The treeman stepped aside as the daemon collapsed, but Alarielle did not see what happened next. Her attentions were dragged back to her own predicament, as one of her warriors gave a shout. Alarielle grimaced as the corpse impaled on the woman’s spear abruptly flopped into motion and pulled itself off the point of the weapon. Others began to rise as well, slipping and sliding in their own blood as they struggled upright. Alarielle hissed in pain as the Winds of Life recoiled from the abomination taking place before her. She raised her hand, ready to sweep the risen dead aside with her magics before they could attack, when a sudden shout stayed her hand. A familiar form had dropped from the Middenplatz wall and into the battle, laying about him with a deadly blade.
‘Take heart, dear lady,’ Vlad von Carstein called out as he sprinted past her warriors, accompanied by the staggering forms of the newly slain, who stumbled in his wake. ‘Your champions are legion, be they man, dwarf or heroic tree-stump. Your burying place is not here, and not today. So swears Vlad von Carstein, Elector of Sylvania,’ he shouted, flinging himself into battle like a dark thunderbolt. Where he moved, the enemy fell, only to rise again at his command. With every corpse that rose, a jagged thorn of pain cut into her heart. But those pains were but pinpricks compared to the agony she felt with every breath. The world itself was coming undone, collapsing in on itself like a rotten tree, and she could feel the sharp ache of the artefact Archaon was employing to accomplish the unmaking.
The vampire slithered into the heart of the ranks of the bloodthirster’s followers, his sword flickering like lightning. He employed finesse and brutality in equal measure, and moved with such grace that Alarielle thought even Tyrion might have looked upon him with envy. He employed the risen dead like ambulatory shields, using them to create opportunities for his kills. She shook her head, grateful and disturbed in equal measure, and turned her attentions to her own battle.
Despite the aid of the dead and the dwarfs, Hellebron’s forces had reached the ring of dryads who protected Alarielle, sacrificing their lives to keep her safe. She felt every death, every mangling blow that afflicted the tree-spirits, and it was all she could do to stay on her feet. She watched in dull-eyed horror as dryads flung themselves up the iron stairs of the cauldron-shrine that steadily bore down on her. The spirits attacked Hellebron, who hacked them down with shrieks of laughter. Alarielle closed her eyes. She felt every blow, and her body shuddered as each spirit fell. Hellebron bounded off the cauldron, her lithe shape covered in blood and sap. ‘I see you, queen of weeds and maggots,’ she screeched, gesturing with one of her cruelly curved blades. ‘I see you, and I will wear your pretty skin as a cloak.’ She darted forwards, and two of Alarielle’s guards moved to intercept her. Without slowing, Hellebron swept her blades out and removed their heads.
Alarielle stepped up. Her asrai fell back at her command, clearing a path. She wanted no more of them to die in a futile attempt to stop the Blood Queen. Hellebron danced towards her, grinning madly, and Alarielle wondered how it had come to this. What had set the Blood Queen on this course? She had come to Athel Loren with Malekith and the others, but her loyalty to her people had faded like a morning mist, leaving only this… thing which now capered and shrieked at her in challenge. A challenge that she would meet, though she was no warrior. Though she had learned blade-craft from the finest warriors in Ulthuan, the Everqueen was a creature of peace, rather than war, and even with the power of Life Incarnate, she was little match for the former ruler of Har Ganeth.
‘We looked for you,’ Alarielle said, ‘after Be’lakor’s attack on the Oak of Ages. We thought you had been slain.’ She waited for Hellebron, trying to conserve her strength.
‘That would have pleased you to no end, I’m certain,’ Hellebron cackled. She pulled the edges of her blades across each other, filling the air with their shriek.
‘If you think that, then you are truly demented,’ Alarielle said. ‘You were welcomed into Athel Loren, sorceress. You and your followers both, despite your foul ways. You are of the asur, despite your predilections, and I would not see you dead.’
Hellebron grimaced. ‘You lie,’ she spat. Her grimace twisted into a manic grin. ‘And now, you die!’ She lunged, and Alarielle interposed her staff. The cobblestoned street ruptured as a writhing thicket of thorn-vines burst upwards to ensnare the leaping form of Hellebron. The Blood Queen shrieked in pain, but did not stop. Her blades flashed out, chopping through the vines, and a moment later, she was free. She snarled and drove one of her blades into Alarielle’s belly.
Alarielle screamed as Hellebron jerked the blade free, and clapped a hand to the wound in her stomach. She slumped to her knees, the pain overwhelming her. Her staff rolled away, forgotten. The world seemed to shudder around her, as if in sympathy, and she bowed her head, trying to concentrate through her own internal din. She could feel the essence of Ghyran trying to mend her torn flesh, but she was too weak. The world’s pain, added to her own, was too much to bear. Nonetheless, she could not give in. Too much counted on her. She tried to focus her own magics through those of Ghyran, to bolster her flagging body.