The End Times: The Return of Nagash

‘Very pretty, Kemmler. You’re welcome, by the way. A less genial master might not have allowed you to indulge your appetites for flesh-craft,’ Arkhan said. He was rewarded by a scowl from the necromancer. While Krell’s loyalty was certain, Kemmler had a distaste for servitude that bordered on mania.

‘Allow? We are partners, Nehekharan,’ Kemmler said. ‘You need me.’ He grinned at Ogiers and the others. ‘My power far outstrips that of your cat paws. Between them, they might just manage to summon a small horde, but you’ll never take La Maisontaal Abbey without me.’ He spat the name of their destination like a curse. Then, for Kemmler, perhaps it was. He had tried to assault the abbey more than once in his sordid career, and failed every time. Arkhan wondered if Kemmler could feel the call of the artefact hidden in the abbey’s vaults even as he himself could. He suspected that Nagash whispered in the Lichemaster’s ear, whether Kemmler knew it or not. Else how could he have controlled Krell – if he truly did.

‘Whatever you need to tell yourself, so long as you do as I say,’ Arkhan rasped. Kemmler made a face. He was different. Arkhan could not say why, or how, but it was as if something had been awakened in the necromancer. And Arkhan did not like it. He did not like Kemmler’s newfound lucidity, or the threads of power that ran through him. ‘We are both servants of a higher power. All of us here serve that power, lest anyone has forgotten.’

He turned, taking in the other necromancers, and the lazing vampires, who met his gaze with glittering red glares. ‘Do not think that you can stray. Time runs slow for the dead, but it runs all the same,’ he said, his voice carrying to every corner and ear capable of hearing and comprehending. He raised his staff and gestured to the sky, which boiled like a storm-tossed sea of green and black overhead. Sickly coronas rippled across the shroud of the night, and green scars carved through the black, streaking down towards distant mountains. It reminded Arkhan of the pearlescent flesh of a corpse succumbing to decay.

The world was rotting inside and out. It was dying. But it would linger on its deathbed for millennia, if the thrones and dominations that stood arrayed in his path had their way. The gods of men and daemons fought to own a world that had one foot in its grave. Only in death would it be redeemed. Only by the will of the Undying King.

The cat, in its usual place on his shoulder, stretched, bones and ligaments popping audibly as it dug its claws into his robes. He felt a surge of purpose in him as he continued to speak, though he wondered, deep in the secret places of his mind, whether those words were his, or those of Nagash. ‘We all serve the will and whim of the Undying King, and it is his hand that guides us on this road. It is by his will that we all exist. Vampires were born from his black blood as surely as you walkers of the deathly way follow his wisdom and hearken to his teachings, as certainly as it was by his will that I persist in my task. We owe him our service, our loyalty, for without him, we would be dust and forgotten. Instead, we stand at the threshold of the world’s heart and knock. We were the meek, and now we are the mighty. We serve the King of the World.’ He looked at Kemmler. ‘All of us. Remember that.’