Skalf glared down at the mutilated head, watching in disgust as its wreckage continued to wriggle with obscene life. ‘Burn it,’ he growled at his awestruck subjects, setting Wyrmbiter across his shoulder as he stalked from the hall.
Sylvania
Kaldezeit, 1113
Baron Lothar von Diehl ran his hand across the bare expanse of his scalp, finding even the last trace of his black mane had deserted him. The powers of a necromancer did not come without a price, he reflected, and the greater the power the more taxing that price became. He could feel dark magic flowing through his body, inundating every speck of his being with sorcery. The sensation had only increased as Vanhaldenschlosse came nearer to completion. How much greater might his power become once the tower was finished?
Could mere flesh endure long enough? It was a question he feared to ask himself. The toll such magic was taking upon him was tremendous. Since submitting to Vanhal’s tutelage, Lothar’s body had aged decades, withering from that of a young noble at the prime of life to a scarecrow semblance of elderly decrepitude.
It had cost him much to learn what he had, but Lothar would pry still more secrets from his mentor. Watching the ancient dead rise from the muck of Hel Fenn, seeing those legions of bog-men enslaved to his every command — that was power! It was power that belonged to him, power greater than any man had wielded before.
Any man, except one. How much greater must be the secrets Vanhal yet kept to himself, that he would bestow so casually such spells into the keeping of his apprentice? Lothar had always doubted the wisdom of gods, but to allow such knowledge to be possessed by a mere peasant was proof that whatever gods there were, they must be idiots. By his own words, Vanhal had proven he was an unfit vessel for such powers. He spoke of ability as its own achievement, but of what use was a blade if it were never drawn? What did it matter if one could do a thing if there were no purpose behind it?
As he stalked through the gates of the half-formed castle, his legion of bog-men shambling after him, Lothar felt uneasy. Something was wrong. He could feel a tremendous energy in the air, a force so powerful that it seemed to pluck at his own spirit, as though eager to drag it from his flesh. It was a frightful, abominable sensation, a sickening violation of his innermost being. For all the revulsion it evoked, the experience was even more horrible because Lothar knew it wasn’t even directed against him, he simply happened to be within its reach. He was inconsequential to it, nothing more than a hapless bystander.
Anger flared inside the necromancer. Evoking spells of protection, girding his soul in spectral armour, Lothar dashed inside the unfinished fortress, racing down the length of the vast assembly hall. With every step, he could feel the aethyric vibrations growing, a dull hum of energy that caused his ears to ring and a trickle of blood to stream down his nose. A wave of nausea swept through him, threatening to flatten him as he mounted the spiral staircase and began to climb to the seance room. Lothar dabbed his finger in the blood draining down his nose, using the sanguine medium to strengthen his spells of protection. Refortified, he rushed up the steps.
The seance room was a howling tempest of sorcerous energies, gales of spectral power whipping about the chamber. The circles on the floor were struggling to contain that force; Lothar could see the discordant harmonies whirling about inside each ring, his witchsight giving him a glimpse at formless things struggling to possess shape.
This, however, was the least manifestation of the power being drawn into this place. Arrayed about the seance chamber were the tops of the pre-human menhirs. The ancient stones were ablaze with eldritch emanations, tendrils of light that crackled and danced as they ascended through the half-formed tower. Lothar craned his head, following their gyrations until they were lost in the night sky. For an instant, each stream would flicker, divert itself inwards. With a feeling of dread, he realised that there was a rhythm to those diversions, a horrible suggestiveness. It was like watching the pulsations of a beating heart.
‘Vanhal!’ Lothar cried out. The peasant necromancer had been cagey, dispatching his disciple on a meaningless errand before beginning some forbidden rite he wished to keep secret! Bitterly, the baron reflected on his foolish appreciation of the power he had evoked at Hel Fenn. Beside this, such magic was nothing.
‘Vanhal!’ he shouted once more, making no effort to hide the anger in his tone. The fallen priest had played him for a fool with his talk of enemies and armies. As though any foe would be so mad as to challenge the necromancer in his citadel.
‘Vanhal!’ Lothar roared a third time. There was hesitancy in his voice now. With a full appreciation for the power of this site, he wondered if even Vanhal could manipulate such energies. Perhaps his master had been too ambitious, had initiated an invocation he couldn’t control? The pleasure of seeing Vanhal brought low was tempered by the realisation that if he expired, his secrets would pass with him. Having had a taste of such power, to lose all chance of making it his own was a horror too ghastly to contemplate.
Panicked, Lothar mounted the scaffolding and ascended the rickety framework. For the first time he realised that none of the workers were around. The absence of Vanhal’s undead gave the baron pause. Where had they gone? Had they slipped past the necromancer’s control and simply wandered off, or had they been consumed by the magic he had unleashed? It was a terrifying prospect, to be annihilated by a surge of undirected vibration, consumed so completely that not even dust should remain.
Hundreds of feet above, Lothar could see the pulsing streams of light bowing inwards. Again, he could not shake the impression of a beating heart. There was only one heart that could have provoked such resonance. Whether he was still in control or not, Vanhal was alive.
How long he could remain that way was something Lothar didn’t know. No man could tap into such forces, channel them through mere flesh and spirit for long. Whatever his purpose, Vanhal had to be restrained before the power he had unleashed consumed him.
The altar of bones rotated upon a nimbus of wailing emanations far above the framework of Vanhaldenschlosse’s highest tower. The stone roof below was rendered almost transparent by the phantom harmonies, its substance taking upon itself something of the spectral essence of the forces rushing through it.
Lothar could feel his own flesh fading, evaporating into an ethereal shadow. Only by fierce exertion of his will was he able to maintain his grip on corporeal substance. As he climbed onto the half-circle of the roof, he stared up at Vanhal’s levitating altar above him, at the grotesquery of the necromancer himself, his black robes whipping about him as daemon winds clawed at his spirit. He stood in a nimbus of ghostly fog that blazed with fearful fires. Green ghoul-lights blazed from Vanhal’s eyes, ghostly flashes of energy rippled from his outstretched arms. With each pulsation of the energies rising from the menhirs, the necromancer appeared to flicker, to phase out of reality only to reappear before he could entirely fade away.
Vanhal was doing more than simply harnessing the magic rushing up through his tower — he was becoming one with that power! As impossible as such a thing might seem, when Lothar lifted his gaze to stare at the sky above the skeletal altar, he received an even bigger shock. The stars were aligned differently than they had been when he entered the tower. Somehow, Vanhal had caused the castle to slip through time, to fall into the vacuity between seconds and emerge in another. In the rest of the world, the stars sat in the month of Vorhexen. But the tower had leaped ahead. It existed in the dark hours of Hexentag!