I have to shield my eyes as I battle the final few feet.
I’m so dazzled that it takes me a moment to realise Gotrek has turned to face me. He’s silhouetted by the unholy blaze, but I sense that his mood has changed.
‘What–?’ I manage to say before he pounds the haft of his axe into my stomach.
I’m so surprised I do not prepare myself for the blow. Breath explodes from my lungs. I double over in pain. It’s like being hit by a felled tree.
Before I can straighten up he hits me again, pummelling the side of my helmet and sending me sprawling across the rocks. My hammers slip from my grip and clang down the slope towards the bridge.
When I manage to sit up, my vision is blurry from the blow, but I see that Gotrek is holding my inverussphere. Fury jolts through me. It’s an incredibly sacred device, capable of reversing the polarity of aether currents.
‘Thought you’d kill me?’ There’s a grim smile on his face. He hacks down another revenant but keeps his eye locked on me.
I throw an accusing look at the aelf, then remember I didn’t share my plans with her.
The Slayer laughs. ‘Drunks always talk in their sleep. Especially pompous manling drunks who can’t hold their ale.’
‘What?’ I gasp.
He turns and fights his way up to the blazing prince, ignoring the fury of the flames as he cuts through the rows of undead.
‘I’m not interested in princes,’ he cries, adjusting the inverussphere with surprising skill.
I curse as I stagger to my feet, fending off revenants with my fists. Gotrek wasn’t drunk when I told him how my devices work; he was listening carefully to every word.
He looks at the sky. ‘My quarrel is with the gods!’
He turns a cog on the inverussphere and punches it into the prince’s twitching body.
The light flares, blinding me, then vanishes, plunging the Neverspike into darkness.
Magic rips through the undead, tearing them from their feet and hurling them towards the alcove, lashing across the rocks with such ferocity that I fall again, tumbling across the stones towards the prince, caught like a leaf in a tempest.
Cords of aetheric lightning smash against the Neverspike, ripping the air with a deafening howl, rushing towards the alcove from the surrounding peaks.
Gotrek manages to stay on his feet, staggering but upright as the alcove becomes a vortex of shadows, smoke and body parts.
The Amethyst Prince howls in delight, finally freed from his torment, then disintegrates, obliterated like the rest of the undead, his ashes snatched by the whirlwind.
‘Nagash!’ howls Gotrek. ‘The Slayer comes for you!’
He steps into the vortex, following the dead prince, bellowing a war cry as he vanishes from sight.
I try to crawl away, but the storm is too violent. I’m dragged, inexorably, towards the peak of the Neverspike.
There’s a series of explosions as the Neverspike shatters, spraying amethyst lances into the darkness.
With a final, desperate lunge, I grab hold of the bridge, hanging on to a slender arch as rocks whistle past my head.
Then my fingers slip and I’m thrown forwards, my armour clashing against the rocks.
I hurl towards the vortex, surrounded by a storm of blackened corpses. Then the darkness takes me.
I howl as I feel the morbid chill of Shyish, soaking through my armour and eating into my arms. My memories clear, revealing in horrible clarity all the things I was trying to escape. But there is no escape from death.
As I fall I hear Gotrek, laughing and singing as he dives into the abyss.
About the Author
Darius Hinks’ first novel, Warrior Priest, won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best newcomer. Since then he has ventured into the Warhammer 40,000 universe with the novels Blackstone Fortress, Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius, Mephiston: Revenant Crusade and the Space Marine Battles novella Sanctus, and has carved a bloody swathe through the Warhammer world with Island of Blood, Sigvald, Razumov’s Tomb and the Orion trilogy. He has recently made his first foray into the Age of Sigmar with the novella Warqueen.