The End Times | The Curse of Khaine

‘You cannot harm me,’ the handmaiden said, her scornful expression written in creased bark and cracked leaves. ‘This is my realm and you are nothing but a projection of your will.’

The Witch King lunged at Ystranna’s apparition and before she realised what was happening, insubstantial fingers closed on her throat. She gasped in shock as the fires of his projection died, leaving a shadow-figure in their place.

‘Your realm?’

Ystranna looked around to see that the trees were withered, twisted things hunched over sickly-looking fungal growths. The ground had become a black mire, the river bubbling with the movement of fanged, slithering eels, the sun obscured by storm clouds.

‘My will is strong indeed, Ystranna,’ Malekith mocked. His blackened fingers become iron claws, digging into the flesh of Ystranna’s neck, puncturing the blood vessels. His spite bubbled from the wounds like acid, flowing into her body to create a spider’s web of blackening veins and arteries. ‘Thank you so much for coming to me. You are the taproot, the motherstone, the source of the power and now you have opened it to me. You should have stayed hidden.’

Ystranna’s flesh blistered and burned from within, pustules erupting to release clouds of spores that stung her eyes and choked her. She was immobile in Malekith’s grasp, unable to put up the slightest resistance.

‘Ulthuan will never be yours,’ the handmaiden gasped. Ystranna’s swollen veins started to pulse, splitting her bark-skin to allow sap-like fluid to run free, washing away Malekith’s venom. Her form shrank, becoming a tangle of blossoming vines that fell from the Witch King’s grasp. The blooms shattered like glass and where the shards landed, the decay of dark magic was dispelled, greenness and life returning to push back Malekith’s curse.

Assuming his usual form, the Witch King stamped a flaming foot on the spreading patch of earth magic, leaving a cindered footprint. The patch continued to grow, running up the hunched boles of the trees leaving fresh shoots in its wake, cleansing the filth from the brook, changing pale, eyeless eels into gleaming fish once more.

‘So crude, so clumsy,’ Ystranna said, her voice coming to Malekith from all around, carried on the rustle of jade leaves and the trickle of fresh water, the creak of branches and swish of grass mocking him with subtle laughter. The words tore at his pride, so close to those barbed comments his own mother had made.

‘Is that so?’ he snarled in reply, striding up to the closest tree. He punched his fist through the bark and opened his fingers in the heartwood, letting his frustration loose as a flame that consumed the tree from within. Steam and smoke billowed from the wound as the core of the tree disappeared, leaving the mass of branches to collapse in a welter of splinters and cracking wood.

The sun broke through, a ray piercing the storm gloom to light Malekith with a pale glow, blinding him momentarily, forcing him back into the grotto.

‘How can you defeat me when you cannot even find me,’ taunted the handmaiden. As the Witch King recovered his sight he spied a faerie light bobbing in the shadows cast by the canopy, whirling left and right, up and down.

‘You forget to whom you speak, child,’ Malekith said as his body slewed into a new shape, armour dissipating like mist, his form becoming that of a giant panther with burning amber eyes, claws and fangs of iron. With a roar he pounced into the woods towards the light. The gleam dodged and fled, zigzagging between the trees, Malekith’s claws tearing up the mulch as he chased it just a few steps behind, snarling and snapping.

The light cut sharply to the left behind the bole of a huge oak, and Malekith lost sight of it. He skidded to a stop, his gaze like a lantern beam as he passed it to and fro in the arboreal twilight. Suddenly he spied the hovering wisp of energy but before he could set off another appeared, a little further away. A third emerged from the leaves of a holly bush just a little way to his right. Within a dozen heartbeats there were scores of floating spheres, a tiny winged figure with the face of Ystranna in the heart of each.

Malekith looked past the glamour of the artificial world they had created to visualise their immaterial duel, seeing the raw winds of magic at work. Malekith was a knot of raw power, bloated and seething with unreleased energy. Dark magic required a focus, a fulcrum in the real world through which its power was harnessed. For the most powerful magic this was usually a sacrifice, to avoid the corruption of the mortal body of the sorcerer, but Malekith’s immortal form placed him beyond such petty consideration.

In stark contrast, Ystranna’s spirit was dispersed across the forest, absorbing Ghyran from everywhere. It was a structure of harmony and balance, kept alive by the interplay of energies themselves, taking from one area and giving to another. It was a creation of great intricacy, requiring intense concentration to maintain. There was no central point, no convergence for him to use to locate Ystranna. She was, as far as it mattered for the winds of magic, everywhere.