The End Times | The Curse of Khaine
- Автор: Торп Гэв
- Год: 2014
- Язык: английский
- Год: Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd.
- ISBN: 978-1-78251-676-7
- Жанр: Боевая фантастика
Электронная книга - «The End Times | The Curse of Khaine». Краткое содержание книги:
‘We need a bulwark against Chaos. I have done what I can to prepare the humans, the dwarfs will do as they always have done and protect their own. In Lustria the great minds of the Old Ones’ servants account nothing for our survival in their astromantic equations. This place holds our greatest chance of resisting the onslaught to come.’
They ascended, level after level as though they climbed through Mirai itself, the caverns of the damned. The dead in their hundreds of thousands waited in endless ranks for the return of their creator or laboured in mines and forges to furnish wargear to an army three thousand years in the making.
‘He will attempt the Great Ritual of Awakening,’ Malekith said as they came upon the dread throne room, a cavernous hall at the height of the dead city. A hundred thousand tallows made of the fat of the living burned in sconces and candelabras across the titanic chamber.
In the flickering lights a platform of skulls heaped up at one end of the hall, becoming an immense throne of bones. It was empty, leaving Malekith disappointed and relieved in equal measure.
About the Great Necromancer’s dais circled the only living things to be found in Nagashizzar, his disciples, necromancers brought here in fits of madness, chanting his praises as they made offering to the incarnation of undeath.
Malekith could sense the energy of Nagash pulsing like a shadow within the shadows, a constant murmuring on the edge of hearing.
‘I have put in motion a series of events that will bring him back,’ Teclis confessed. ‘It is already too late to prevent his reincarnation.’
‘I am prideful, but your arrogance puts mine to shame,’ hissed Malekith. ‘These are not forces we can control.’
‘When you sought to shut down the vortex and bring about the tide of Chaos, did you think twice?’ Teclis asked, suddenly as bitter as the Witch King. ‘A deed so insane that even now we must deal with its consequences. It is not pride but desperation that pushes me to these extreme deeds.’
‘My past actions do not alter the folly of your current plans. I will not allow this.’
The hall trembled, almost imperceptibly. The winds of magic that had been so sluggish started to swirl, eddying around the throne. The acolytes gave gasps of surprise and fear as the dark winds caused the skulls of the throne to begin chattering their teeth, the echoes of their chorus a hideous cacophony that filled the immense hall.
‘Too late,’ whispered Teclis.
The black furnace of Nagash’s soul was growing in power. More brands on the wall burst into life – the blaze of a thousand torchlights brought fresh horror to the scene. Every surface of the chamber was covered in runes and hieroglyphs, which now danced in the flame light with a life of their own, melting and reforming to channel the winds of magic into the throne, the rumbling growing stronger with every passing heartbeat.
‘All is in hand,’ Teclis tried to assure Malekith. ‘I have made sure that the Great Ritual of Awakening will not succeed, not in its entirety. Nagash will return, strong enough to thwart Chaos for a while yet not so strong that we will not be able to undo what has been done.’
Malekith thought he saw an apparition on the throne, wraith-like but terrifying, armoured and cowled, one hand replaced with a claw of metal clutching the arm of the chair, in the other dead grasp a staff of black iron wrought with Nehekharan sigils. The Great Necromancer raised his head, revealing a skull face, eyes blazing with warp-light. Though Malekith and Teclis were concealed by the greatest enchantments of stealth and darkness that they could weave, for an instant the Witch King was sure that the pale green light of those eyes fell upon him and saw him. There was no life there, no expression that could be read. The visitation lasted only a moment before disappearing.
A sudden blast of Shyish swept along the hall, the magic of death extinguishing every flame, hurling the acolytes to the floor. There was nothing else in the chamber, nothing physical at least, but Malekith sensed a pulsing in his head, as of a deep voice vibrating inside his mind. It was in a human language long dead outside these walls, but in his thoughts he recognised the concept behind the words.
I RETURN
Without thought or word between them, the spirits of Teclis and Malekith fled.
‘Teclis, you are a fool,’ snarled Malekith, aware of the tide of Shyish that was building in the Ulthuan vortex. Darkness swept over the pass as clouds of pure death magic swallowed the Chaos moon. Malekith pulled himself into the throne-saddle, iron skin fizzing with the energy of unlife. ‘Your meddling will destroy us yet.’
He was too spent from his duelling with Ystranna and the opening of the great fissure to counter the rising tide of necromantic power. Likewise the handmaiden and her allies, if they sensed at all the catastrophe about to engulf them, were powerless to prevent the influx of Shyish.
Seraphon sensed something amiss too, snorting and whining with discontent that she had never displayed before. Malekith wrestled the chains of her reins, forcing her to launch into the skies, towards the roiling storm of undeath gathering above. The higher he climbed, the more awestruck Malekith was by the magnitude of the incantation being unleashed. The Circlet of Iron was like a crown of ice on his brow, as the Wind of Shyish blew across Ulthuan, across the whole world, shifted and congealed to a single purpose, bent to a single indomitable will.
Through the power of the Circlet of Iron Malekith’s spirit soared, unexpectedly. Buoyed up by the swell of death magic, the Witch King felt his essence tugging at the bonds of flesh, unwillingly torn from the near-dead shell that had bound his spirit to the realm of the living for six millennia.
In that instant his senses were focused upon a single point, halfway across the world in tainted lands that sat overshadowed by the great mountains of the dwarfs. The region was awash with Shyish, spewing its revivifying energies across the whole of the world. Nagash had returned to the mortal world and now attempted to unleash the Great Awakening once more, as Malekith had feared.
The Witch King was caught on the outer edge of the impossibly powerful conjuration, and with all his willpower strained to maintain a grip on his armoured form, still sat astride Seraphon’s throne-saddle far below. He focused his thoughts on the burning armoured figure of his body, turning his spirit against the raging current of the Great Necromancer’s sorcery, diving back through the storm like a hawk caught in a tornado. Straining, pushing every iota of his last strength into the effort, Malekith seized hold of his body once more, hurling his essence back into the withered husk.
The pain of burning, the agony of Asuryan’s curse, was the most welcome sensation he had ever felt. Tossed upon the brink of oblivion, almost drawn into the dark abyss of endless Mirai, Malekith cried tears of fire, so great was his joy at cheating death, so invigorating was the opportunity to claw another handhold in mortal existence. The pain was life, the agony proof that he could still achieve his ambitions.
Gasping and laughing, Malekith shuddered with ecstasy as around him the necromantic storm raged.
Nagash’s curse of the Great Awakening, the most powerful spell ever unleashed, began with a single shaft of pale green lightning. Where the bolt touched the mountainside the body of a Chracian hunter twitched. Missing an arm, the dead warrior struggled to her feet, her blood staining the fur of her lion pelt cloak. Ghostlight shone from her eyes and with jerking steps she advanced towards the Naggarothi nearby, who stood transfixed by the storm above.