Harrowdeep, p.21
Harrowdeep, page 21
The shape in the darkness stirs, a jarring motion, like black velvet rustling in ink. ‘We are not Falsehome!’ it hisses. ‘We’re prisoners. Like her.’
‘You are not like me.’
‘No. No, not a realm-dweller, not a worm, even a worm with lightning-blood and thunder-heart. But she is still a worm, still nothing. We are trapped, as she is trapped. Yes.’
‘If you are truly a prisoner, help me,’ I say. ‘Tell me your name, that I may speak to my god of you. We will come for you when the time comes.’
Again, the greasy laugh. ‘Some worms called us Architects. Others called us Shadowsmiths. Or Malefic Ones. Or Makers. Worm names are like fake faces. A new one, for every deceit, just like Falsehome. Truth is hard to grasp. Yes? A writhing, squirming thing.’
Makers. The Misthåvners spoke of these creatures. Entities that hail from the Orb Duplicita, with blood of purest darkness, who bestride the Realm of Shadows when their moon reaches its apogee. I heard a dozen tales of the Makers’ origins, a dozen explanations as to why they built Harrowdeep, and for what.
All raised more questions than they answered. And all, on the surface, seemed impossible. Yet here I am, standing before one of them.
‘I heard Malerion destroyed you,’ I say. ‘That he could not tolerate what you created here and punished you for it.’
‘Malerion? She thinks him capable of it?’ The shadows gurgle with laughter, like wet murk sloshing at the bottom of a bucket. ‘He always had ambition, like his spoilt mother. Yes. But even the worms’ gods are just godly worms, writhing and wrestling over their patches of mud from one cycle to the next. Malerion could have tried. Perhaps then he would be here, and not her. Yes? He did not destroy us, and we did not build Falsehome. We survived the cycles. We were old when your old ones were new. But Falsehome? It is elder still. Falsehome calls none master but its own bottomless want. The death-curse does not change that. She won’t either. She and her worm-seekers are slaves, like us.’
‘I am no slave,’ I say.
‘No? Then maybe she’s a fool. Like Kia’tan. Yes? She believes triumph awaits her. Truth to be found. To be conquered. She seeks to understand this place and defeat it. She is capable of neither. Too puny. Yes? Her very presence is her defeat. Her god sent her here to be forgotten. That is what she shall do.’
I ignore the acid in the words, reaching for the truth beneath them. There is knowledge to be gained here, and all knowledge is strength. ‘If you’re truly trapped, you are not our enemy. We seek Nadir and the Harrowstone. Help us destroy this place. Help us escape.’
‘She is bold. But Falsehome is not destroyed any more than fire is burned. This is a graveyard for gods, worm. Maybe she believes her lightning-king is powerful. Maybe she even worships him. This will not help. We have seen the void in her soul. We have smelt the fear. She is a failure among her kind. No?’
These words, like Mannok’s envenomed traps, are meant to fracture my courage and calm. I would be lying if I said I was above such cheap tricks. I have failed. My very delay here is a failure, for my brother and sister remain at the mercies of these shifting vaults and whatever they contain. They await my help.
Still, I cannot bring myself to go. My heart grows heady with anger and shame, and still my feet remain locked to the ground. The miserable truth resounds in me, anchoring me where I stand…
I was brought into Sigmar’s Stormhosts for reasons I cannot name, for the sake of faith I neither sense nor believe in. I was told I was a heroine, one of many who laid down their lives for Sigmar.
But I do not believe this, because I cannot remember! I try. I try so hard, yet I see only the blackness beckoning before my eyes, like smoke limned in shadows. I feel only the sleep-hunger thudding in the base of my skull.
I lower my blade. Long have I lied to myself. The hole in the core of me cannot be filled. Dhoraz’s faith in me changes nothing; neither does Luxa’s friendship. I feel my emptiness in sharper relief than ever before.
‘Tell me, worm-thing,’ the darkness growls. ‘Are we the truth she seeks?’
Contours swell from the nook. The outline of a basalt throne, and sitting upon it, an emaciated figure mantled in shadows. Only his haggard knuckles and his pencil-thin legs are visible, long and fleshy like pale, bony eels.
It is the thing from the Hall of Hidden Eyes and the solitude of my first fall. I crave so badly to rush forward, to slaughter it where it sits.
But I have chased this creature before. Such haste would lead nowhere. The apparition would evade my sword strokes, fading into the shadows which spawned it. My single chance at this dialogue with the darkness would slip from my grasp. It is a far greater success merely to converse with it, for its haunting words scrape away at the mystery of my past. To solve that riddle and understand where I come from would finally explain why Sigmar chose me.
I will not let this opportunity go. I will clutch it tight.
The silhouette’s low-hanging chin droops down to its chest. Briefly, the slack, predatory jaw reminds me of the blind Olaa whales which glide through Chamon’s shifting heavens, albino titans sheathed in miraculous, quartz-like skin, filtering prey creatures from the hazy metal skies.
‘You have joined this place,’ I say. ‘You are part of Harrowdeep.’
The figure shudders. ‘As is she, storm-worm. The shadows in your dreams do not threaten you. They call you home.’ Its drooping jaw twitches. I imagine a drooling grin atop its ugly lips, and fangs like daggers, and a heart that pumps darkness instead of blood.
‘This is not my home,’ I say.
‘She died here,’ the thing hisses. ‘She offered her soul to Falsehome. It wants her back. It cannot forget her.’
In my gut, I feel as if I am falling. ‘I’m a warrior of Sigmar. I am champion to his cause.’
‘Why? Because he snatched her from the shadows she promised herself to? Because there was yet no death-curse to stop him? She mustn’t lie! She mustn’t lie when the truth she seeks stands right before her, in her sleep, beneath her eyelids! She never wanted the lightning-king! She promised herself to another!’
Rage boils up my throat. Hateful tears well in my eyes. ‘No.’
The figure cackles. ‘She doesn’t even know! She doesn’t even remember!’
‘I do,’ I say. I don’t care if it’s a lie or not. ‘We all fell for different reasons. They don’t matter any more. We came to Sigmar’s side with his name on our lips. I am Reforged, no matter who I was, because I am worthy.’
The word fits. I grow encouraged.
‘I kill for Sigmar,’ I say. ‘I destroy for him, and I protect for him. These are my truths, and the only truths that matter.’
The thing erupts into a fit of greasy laughter, like hammers squelching through tar.
‘I don’t care if you don’t believe me,’ I snarl. ‘I don’t care what you say. I came to destroy Harrowdeep. I’ll destroy you with it.’ I sheathe my blade, turning to leave.
‘Calthia?’ the darkness hisses, suddenly urgent. ‘Where? Where will she go? To hunt Mannok and his sadist worms? All paths lead one way in Falsehome. Down.’
My hand falls to the Lantern Astrala. I start towards the opposite corridor.
The creature’s gnarled voice grows halting and desperate. ‘She really thinks this leads somewhere else, no? Doesn’t she remember? We remember! Falsehome craves her! If we help it, it lets us go! Calthia! Kia’tan wishes to greet you!’
Wood creaks at my side. The wardrobe. It’s open.
I draw my runeblade and hack up in the same motion. A withered revenant staggers towards me; my blade skims its breast.
The thing lurches back, a twisted aelf similar to the fiends of the Cannibal Palace, but much further gone. Perhaps it was an aelf queen, once. Now it is a parody of her, encrusted in barnacles, flesh cracked with rot, bone-thin and shrivelled with starvation. She convulses and gyrates in a witless votive dance, her movements spellbinding and maddening. Dizzying shadows turn in her eyes, old magic running in her parched veins like concentrated venom.
Arcane sigmarite wards forged within me sear to life. My soul is a fortress, made by the hands of a god. Focus sharpens my mind like fire hardening wood.
I slash again, dispelling the revenant’s shadow wards, slashing the queen near in two. Her gnarled fingers tear the Lantern Astrala from my belt. Then, with a glancing blow, the shade-revenant bashes me to cold stone with a gargant’s strength.
Like a tower besieged, I go down. Snarling like a dog, I scramble up. I hammer the hilt of my blade into the queen’s flesh. Liquid lightning pours from the gash.
In the nook, the Maker glides out from the darkness. For the first time I see it in knee-weakening detail. It is a parody of the human form, staked into its spiralling throne. The skull of its oversized head is smooth and eyeless. The slash of its mouth zippers around its bulbous head like an opened satchel.
In that gaping maw, I see the omens from my dreams: the animus of Harrowdeep, the boiling blackness. The shadows hover there, the puppeteer behind their cheap marionette, calling to me.
I have beheld monsters of slaughter and plague. I have stood under the sanity-corroding light of the Gloomspite clans’ Bad Moon. I have exorcised spirits of the dead and sent man-eating ghouls back to the hells which spawned them.
This is worse than all of those. It besieges the wards in my mind. The darkness is the soundless note of oblivion, the theomachy of being forgotten, a power which slays gods.
Darkness billows from the Maker’s mouth, clawing into the chamber. Kia’tan’s revenant, near cloven in half, screeches.
I scrabble to her, pummelling her bony head, rocking her knobby skull against the stone. Prising my Lantern Astrala from between her nails, I brandish it at the Maker. I tear open the shutter, half fearing the light will not come.
A lance of starlight spears through the Maker’s head, so bright and blazing I hear it, like a Kharadron airship’s foghorn blasting beside my ear.
The Maker splits like a lanced boil. Darkness sputters and splashes from it. Strength drains from my limbs, but I do not shutter the light. I unleash all of it. I let it burn through me.
Then, like eventide’s final fog evaporating at dawn, the Maker disappears.
The stone rumbles. The seams of the Vaults Mysterium come undone, corridors and rooms collapsing. Piece by piece, the incomprehensible machine of stone falls apart, like a rusted-out clock destroying itself with its own function.
I glimpse flashes of light, hear the strident clangour of blades. I spy Luxa fending off a horde of beshadowed wraiths. Dhoraz single-handedly duels Mannok and Torka in a test of animal strength.
For one jarring moment, I see Harrowdeep’s utter lie, as if peering through a cross-section of the universe, its shadows steaming away before my eyes. Then the stones beneath my feet fall away, the image is scoured from my mind, and the vaults regurgitate me back where we started.
I am at the vaults’ entrance, beside the Truthseekers. Dying flames and billowing smoke choke the air. Through a fissure in the wall, a tunnel climbs into twilight.
I struggle to my feet. Smoke wisps from my warplate. I am burnt dry, smouldering and spent, like the charred skeleton of a lightning-struck tree.
Dhoraz helps Luxa up. ‘Xandire? What in all the hells of Shyish is going on?’
I do not answer. Gleaming red trickles down Luxa’s armour. Her hip bleeds, pierced by some shadow-wraith’s chipped blade.
‘Damn,’ I say. ‘Luxa.’
‘I’m all right,’ she says. ‘Look.’
In the tunnel ahead, Mannok berates his hobgrot. The lean orruk boss offers a final, lascivious glare back before kicking his wretched companion into the twilight passage ahead. The two disappear.
‘No more time.’ I drag Luxa to her feet. ‘Come.’
Dhoraz hefts his hammer up, peering after Mannok. ‘A way out?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘A way down.’
CHAPTER TEN
Nadir is here, within a rift at the bottom of a gulf as vast as a valley and as dark as the dusk. A breathtaking cascade of pure shadow pours from a breach in the ceiling. Motes of chilling darkness drift from these Penumbral Falls soundlessly into the chasm at the bottom.
We have no time to enjoy the vista. Dhoraz, running forward with hammer in hand, gestures ahead. ‘The greenskins!’
Mannok leads his hobgrot to Nadir at a loping canter, down the long spiral causeway circling the hollow. He shoots swinish glances over his shoulder, red eyes flashing beside his perched morkrow. I must deny him the triumph he seeks.
Krookgrin, the greedy-eyed hobgrot, shouts back: ‘Gikkit, Shank, you gits! Get movin’!’
Crushed stone rattles behind me. Two breathless grots scurry through an opening in the cave wall. I make a sluggish pivot, runeblade aloft, but the Lantern Astrala has drained the fire from me. I’m in no state for this.
Somewhere behind us, Torka grunts, pounding up the tunnel. Mannok didn’t wait for his companions. In his desperation to reach Nadir, he completely abandoned his Kruleboyz.
I will not do the same. ‘Dhoraz! Wait for the Stormrider!’
Dhoraz roars his acknowledgement as he punts a grot from the causeway. The little devil careens into the hollow, squealing.
Torka bursts from the darkness. ‘Bog-wyrms an’ blood-beans, shinies again.’ He tramps past us, keeping his distance.
I call into the rift behind us: ‘Luxa!’
Taros shrieks, soaring from the tunnel into the cavern, screaming like an eagle.
Dhoraz bellows with laughter. ‘I told you! Did I not? Did I not tell you?’
Begrudgingly, I nod. The fear Dhoraz’s other tales weren’t as tall as they first seemed flits across my mind, but that is a matter for later, when we are safe in Misthåvn, drowning ourselves in ale. I reach down to help Luxa up the last few feet of rubble.
‘Taros!’ Luxa shouts, bow clutched in one arm, the other cradling her wound. Taros understands, tucking his pinions, diving towards Mannok.
Mannok’s ugly morkrow alights, pumping its muscular, stubby wings, barrelling up towards Taros. Like a shooting star, eyes glinting, the aetherwing sheers towards the morkrow.
‘Dhoraz,’ I say. I help Luxa on, and the Giant-Fell follows.
The long blast of a war-horn resonates through the hollow. It’s almost reassuring to hear battle’s familiar blare, but my comfort soon evaporates. There are no war-horns in Harrowdeep, nor banners, nor legions…
Gargantuan fingers grope through the rift at the top of the hollow. Shadows spill around them, and old stone mulches as if it were no more than crumbling bread. The mammoth tentacles of the Shadowsea’s monstrosity ram into the hollow, widening the breach. Boulders rain down, cratering the bottom, some hurtling into Nadir’s chasm.
The tentacles’ eyes flash with repulsive luminescence, searching for us. Luxa, Dhoraz and I lag behind the Kunnin’ Krew. Yet they are savages, strung out, undisciplined. We are Truthseekers, warriors chosen by our God-King. If we move slowly, so be it – so long as we move together.
A goliath tentacle sweeps towards us. Dhoraz whispers to the head of his hammer. The divine metalwork crackles with the ruthlessness of the storm, and the Giant-Fell pounds his chest, bellowing his name.
He swings in the dark. The hammer strikes true. The monstrosity’s eye flashes and it blares its call again, that war-horn in the dark. The volume is revolting, shaking my bones from my face to my fingertips.
Luxa stops me, nocking an arrow and loosing. Her dart hits true. The monstrosity’s eye snaps shut, bleeding pale fluid and arcing with lightning.
Thus we descend. Dhoraz battles with a hero’s strength and a pagan’s fury. Luxa is stone cold, each loosed arrow a testament to her martial efficiency. Above, Taros wrestles Mannok’s unsightly morkrow, their dogfight vicious, made more perilous by boulders falling like hail and tentacles threshing like whips.
‘Your lantern!’ Dhoraz roars, his face slick with sweat, gasping for air. ‘Use your lantern!’
I cannot. I must save my strength for Nadir. And it is no trivial fact that this leviathan obstructs the Kruleboyz as much as it does us. Kill it now, and Mannok and the Kunnin’ Krew will only reach Nadir that much faster.
The greenskins have their own share of trouble. The leviathan’s tentacles sweep across the hollow, shattering lengths of the causeway. Stone avalanches towards the Kruleboyz, who, too far apart to assist each other, only narrowly avoid being smashed from the walk.
Yet just as the dark beast closes old paths, it opens new ones. Dhoraz, Luxa and I scramble down the great gouges left by its tentacles, rushing down the ragged gullies, straight to Nadir.
Mannok catches on. ‘Down, you maggots!’ his voice echoes harshly. ‘Don’t let the shinies be first!’
Near the bottom, the hollow’s slopes taper flat. The Kunnin’ Krew scrambles piecemeal towards the rift. Above us, the monstrosity’s tentacles seethe like storm clouds. Dhoraz’s strength is all but spent. He whispers angry prayers to his hammer, each crash of his weapon flashing across the gloom with sacred light. The whole picture is beautiful and desperate. It is the last, most glorious moment I will ever know.
For it all ends when we get there.
Dhoraz skids to a halt at the lip of the chasm, gazing into the pooling shadows within the abyss. ‘How do we get down?’
I ease Luxa from my shoulder, joining Dhoraz. The Kruleboyz linger across the pit. Above, the Shadowsea monstrosity pushes through the breach into the hollow, like a giant mollusc working its heaving mass through the mouth of a bottle.
I cannot save my strength any longer. I need it now.
I snatch the Lantern Astrala from my belt. This will take everything I have left. This will burn me dry.
