‘Sigmar is the only concern,’ Nagash said, again. ‘I will cast down the stars and reduce the sun to a cinder. I will topple his golden towers and make of his people a feast for crows and jackals. This, I command.’
Arkhan hesitated. Then, he bowed his head. ‘And as you command, it must be, my lord. Nagash is all, and all are one in him.’
‘Yes. It is good that you remember this, my servant.’
Arkhan looked at him. ‘Humour, my lord?’
‘No. A statement of fact.’ Nagash looked up, as something drew his attentions. The sky above was in constant flux, rippling and twisting as it became used to its new shape. Light pierced this fluttering shroud at a hundred points – souls, some of them, being drawn down into Shyish. But one of them was different. Stronger.
The fiery comet screamed as it fell through the sea of stars. Caught up in the glacial echoes of the cataclysm, it tumbled faster and faster, burning itself a path through the spaces between realms. It blazed with cold fire as it tore through the purple-black skies. It spun in all directions at once, its crackling form twisting and bending with the celestial wind.
As Nagash watched, the firmament seemed to fold around it, twisting and spinning, stars stretching across the curve, becoming scars of light. It tumbled down through the tunnel of worlds and stars, falling faster and faster, until its very shape seemed to stretch across vast distances, and its screams became a sonorous drone.
He could hear its voice now, and taste the echoes of its memories. He even knew its name. Intrigued, he rose up to meet the thing, as it fell screaming through the void. Nagash expanded as he rose, until he filled the sky. He lifted his hands, cupping them beneath the shimmering comet to catch it. As it tumbled into his grasp, he closed his hands about it and peered into its soul. ‘Ah. What a curious thing you are. Fury, with no form to contain it.’
The lightning-gheist had no shape, no true awareness save that it was in pain, from which there was no respite. The broken shards of its memory would bite into its limited consciousness, briefly flashing into perspective before being torn away. These shards became explosions of colour and sensation, and brought a new type of agony. Its screams redoubled in ferocity as it boiled in his grip, lashing out with claws of lightning.
It reeked of Azyr, and of Shyish as well. He knew a reforged soul when he held one. But never had he beheld one in such a state of flux. ‘You stink of the stars, little thing,’ he intoned, reaching out as if to caress the crackling mass. ‘You smell of clear waters and lightning. Are you a new thing under the moon, or something familiar in a new shape?’
Lightning crashed against his talons as the soul tried to squirm free. It was mad and blind, unable to perceive the nature of the being that held it. Slowly, idly, Nagash sank his claws into it and pulled it apart, strand by crackling strand. He unwound it like a knot of thread, studying each strand for some sign of its identity – its original identity, before Sigmar had twisted it into a shape of his choosing.
‘Ah,’ he said finally. ‘Look, Arkhan – a prodigal soul has returned. One born of Shyish and stolen by Azyr. How strong it is. What a warrior it might have made for my armies, in times past.’ Nagash pulled his hands apart, stretching the soul between them. Its screams rose in pitch as its essence was drawn taut.
‘Perhaps it might still make one, my lord.’
‘And why would I waste my strength on such a deed, Arkhan?’ Nagash asked. Some part of him was genuinely curious. It was not often that Arkhan made such suggestions.
‘Fate, my lord. You are its epitome – the ultimate and untimely. Is this, then, not your will? Such a gift, here, now?’ Arkhan stretched up a hand, as if to touch the crackling, shrieking thing. ‘A portent of things to come. You are superior. What better way to show it than to undo what Sigmar has done?’
Nagash cocked his head. He studied Arkhan for long moments, considering. If such a suggestion had come from one of his other servants – Neferata, for instance, or Mannfred – he would have questioned the motives behind it. But this was Arkhan. Arkhan lacked even the illusion of free will – he was but the echo of his master and thought nothing, save that some part of Nagash had thought it first.
And his suggestion was one Nagash had contemplated at length, since the first moment he had realised what Sigmar had done. Sigmar the Usurper, who had taken the souls of the rightfully dead and made them over into something impossible.
Sigmar, whose work Nagash would now undo.
‘You are correct, my servant. Let us begin as we mean to go on.’ Nagash looked down at the struggling thing in his grip. ‘First, we must strip away all falsehood.’ Nagash spread his talons, stretching the struggling soul even more taut between them. He could see the true soul within, the seed of substance from which this shape had grown.
The Stormcasts were not possessed of mortal souls – instead, something of the divine was grafted to them. A bit of the eternal tempest, nestled within them and growing ever stronger, over time. As Nagash did, so too did Sigmar – hollowing out his worshippers, so that something of him might flourish within them. Whether he admitted it or not.
Nagash could not pluck that mote of celestial power loose, no matter how much he might wish to. It was inextricably intertwined with the essence of the soul. To rip it loose would be to destroy the soul and render it useless. In a way, the Stormcasts were as much a part of Sigmar as the Mortarchs were a part of Nagash. Thus did the God-King seek to protect what he claimed, whether it was rightfully his or not.
He could almost admire such tenacity. Whatever else, Sigmar was strong, and Nagash had always respected strength, even though he sought to humble it. But strength alone was not enough. Not now. Nagash was beyond strength. Beyond tenacity. He was the inevitable, and the inevitable could not be denied, even by gods.
Jaws wide, he shrieked at the stars, and in the sound was the creak of uncounted crypts and the rustle of leather wings. Then, with a roar, he tore the crackling shape in two. Husks of tattered lightning wrapped themselves about his forearms as something pallid and lacking substance sluiced to the ground from within them. The lightning coiled and spat like a thing alive, even as it faded away into nothing.
Arkhan knelt beside the hazy shape. He thrust a hand into its centre and rose, dragging it with him, as if it weighed no more than smoke. It was the barest intimation of a human shape, and its misty substance pulsed and roiled. ‘Even shorn of the lightning, it still persists, my lord.’
‘Not all of it. A spark yet remains within it – a spark I will fan into a fire of my shaping.’ Nagash took hold of the shape and gestured, casting strands of its substance into the air. In moments, the shape was reduced to scattered skeins of soul-stuff, which curled and twisted slowly on the air. Nagash studied them for a moment. ‘Now, we begin.’
And slowly, artfully, he began to weave it together once more.
Pharus Thaum stood alone. The air sparked with lightning, and a flat, grey haze hung over everything, hiding the sky as well as the ground. Something shifted beneath his feet, as he took an uncertain step. He wore unfamiliar armour, and the broken sword he held in his aching hand was of an archaic design. He looked down at his breastplate, with its crowned skull and comet markings. ‘What is this?’ he croaked. ‘Where am I?’ Somewhere far above him, something that might have been a carrion bird mocked his question. He looked up and saw only grey clouds, rolling across a colourless horizon. For a moment, those clouds seemed to twist into a shape he half recalled, before they drifted apart.