‘W’soran — surrender? You must be mad,’ W’soran barked. ‘When I’m winning? When I’m finally on the precipice of victory?’ He hissed an incantation and his scimitar became enveloped in obsidian flames. With a roar worthy of the Strigoi, he launched a flurry of attacks that drove Gashnag back. ‘Surrender is for the weak — for the useless! I am not useless! I am not weak! I am the strongest! I am the master of all I survey — the master of life and death! Surrender — you should all surrender to me!’ He battered the Strigoi backwards, driving into the ranks of the enemy, his swings lopping off limbs and shattering spears as he shoved Gashnag back, deeper into the ranks of men who kept him separated from his goal.
It had all been for this moment — every game, every death, all building to this point in time. Every scheme and plot had all been to buy him time and to arrange things so that the pieces would fall in his favour. He had forced Neferata’s hand, and Ushoran’s as well, forcing them into making the decisions he wanted. He had guided Mourkain, building the perfect cage for death’s tiger. Let the shreds of Nagash’s spirit thunder and rage, let him taunt and whisper. Ushoran knew as well as W’soran did that the game was done. The time for gods and monsters was past and now only two men — two minds — remained, to fight their final duel, a duel that W’soran of Mahrak would win.
He would not wear the crown, but instead shatter it and drain it. He would drink of its power, and with the strength of the Undying King added to his own, he would sink his fangs into the throat of the world and suck it white. He would do what Nagash had only dreamt of, and do it better. The world would bend and break beneath his heel and the sky itself would weep to see the agonies he inflicted.
He would be a god — a god of death and order, come to set the world to rights. He would become a god and put the world and all its peoples where they belonged… at his feet.
‘You wanted me, my master?’ he shrieked, slapping Gashnag’s blade aside. ‘You wanted to see your old student once more? Well, here I am! Here I stand!’ Gashnag’s blade shattered and the Strigoi staggered. W’soran, in his fury, had carved a red crater in the Strigoi ranks and men pressed back from the spider-limbed, splay-fanged apparition that howled and capered in their midst. W’soran tossed his blade aside and pounced on Gashnag, bearing him down. With a ripple of hidden strength, he hauled the Strigoi over his head. ‘Here I stand, master! Here is your truest son! Not Neferata! Not Ushoran! Me! I am your heir, your servant — no, I am your better!’
Then, with a shriek, W’soran twisted Gashnag, shattering his spine and neck. He hurled the howling Strigoi aside and snatched up his scimitar. ‘Here I am! Face me!’ he screamed, gesticulating with his scimitar at the black pyramid. ‘Face me, damn you! I have beaten you!’
NO. YOU HAVE NOT.
The words were like hammer blows on the surface of his mind. They nearly dropped him from his feet and his black heart, pumping sour blood, shuddered in its cage of bone. It was Ushoran’s voice, but it almost wasn’t.
COME, MY SERVANT. COME TO ME.
W’soran shivered as a cold wind cut through him, a cold such as he had not felt in centuries. It was the cold of a damp tomb, or of an open grave… the pure, inexorable cold of death. He hesitated… and almost lost his head as Abhorash’s blade looped out and chopped into a nearby column. W’soran snapped around and his scimitar carved a black trail across Abhorash’s chest.
Abhorash stepped back and touched his chest. He examined the blood and smiled grimly. ‘You are quicker than I remembered,’ he said. He jerked his chin towards the pyramid. ‘You heard him. He’s waiting for you.’
‘And I’m to believe that you’ll just let me go to confront him?’ W’soran snarled, straightening. He had always wondered whether the champion had heard the whispers of Nagash’s shredded spirit as clearly as the rest of them.
‘Yes,’ Abhorash said. ‘You might be the only one who can. Unlike you, I am not blinded by arrogance.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ W’soran spat as they circled each other. Abhorash seemed unconcerned, which infuriated W’soran. ‘Why are you even still here? Do you willingly serve Ushoran, champion? What are you doing here?’
Abhorash was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Repaying a debt.’
W’soran stared at him. Abhorash stepped aside. Behind him, there was a clear path to the pyramid. He could hear the voice of the crown in his head, urging him on, and what might have been Ushoran’s voice as well, pleading with him. He shook his head and asked, ‘Why?’
‘If you have to ask, sorcerer, you wouldn’t understand,’ Abhorash said, turning away. ‘I have a battle to win, W’soran. And you have your own. I would hurry.’
W’soran did. He hurried away from the battle, leaving his men behind. No one tried to stop him from entering the pyramid. All of the guards were otherwise occupied, as he’d planned. But now, at the moment, he almost yearned for opposition, anything to delay what was coming next. What he feared was waiting for him.
He had visited the pyramid often enough in his time in Mourkain. But never before had it seemed so oppressive. The corridors were crafted from slabs of stone and, like the pyramids of home, they moved across from east to west, and then up south to north in a zigzag pattern. It was like following a well-worn path. He knew where it would come out as he recalled the routes he had taken decades before. With every step he took, the whispering in his head grew stronger. It was almost painful in its intensity, and he fought to ignore it.
The throne room crouched in the web of corridors that surrounded it, nestled like a cancer in the heart of the pyramid. Smoking, glowing braziers were scattered throughout the room, their light revealing the high balconies and great expanse of floor. At the other end of the room, a huge flat dais rose, and on it, a throne. The throne was made from the ribcage of some great beast and spread across the rear wall, and on that throne… Ushoran.
He sat slumped, as if bowed beneath an incredible weight, almost to the point of breaking. His shape rippled and contorted as he sat, as if at first assuming one form and then changing to the next in a blur of faces and shapes, both human and otherwise. He moved from monster to man and back again as he sat on his hard-won throne.
But it was not Ushoran alone who sat there; the great iron crown he wore seemed to pulse like the eyes of a predator as it sighted prey. A vast shadow unspooled from Ushoran’s slumped form, spreading across the walls and floor, slithering towards W’soran, who, for a moment, forgot why he had come and what he desired, and wanted only to cower before the awful immensity which squatted in the throne room, looming over everything.
In his time beneath the crown’s influence, Ushoran had grown strong. The Lord of Masks had become something else; something massive and world-breaking. And even as he realised that, W’soran knew that the process was not yet finished. That what Ushoran was now was but the merest shadow of what he would become in time. Like some dreadful seed, the true horror was yet to flower.
‘No,’ W’soran said, forcing himself to step forward. ‘No, I won’t let you… you won’t take it from me. It’s mine — this world, them — Ushoran, Neferata — they’re all mine!’ Even to his own ears, he sounded petulant. Like a child scolding an uncaring parent. The crown couldn’t hear him. Nagash couldn’t hear him, but he still lashed out, hoping to score points against the god that had failed him.
HELLO, W’SORAN.
Ushoran’s mouth was open, but it was not his voice that reverberated from it. His hands reached up and clutched his temples, as if he were in pain. ‘W’soran,’ he gasped a moment later. ‘You came…’
W’soran said nothing. He clutched the hilt of his scimitar so tightly that the bone of the handle cracked. Ushoran’s eyes were tight with pain. ‘I thought — I thought I could control it. I thought I was stronger than Kadon, but it is too strong for me. I need your help,’ he said, between gritted teeth. ‘It’s taking all of my strength — all of me — to resist it, to keep it from killing every living thing in Mourkain and riding their corpses into battle with the world.’ His eyes rolled madly in their sockets and his flesh trembled as if something was moving within him.