‘Here you are again. Back in your lair, among the cobwebs and forgotten stories.’
Balthas blinked. ‘Miska,’ he said aloud. ‘Something to report?’
‘Why else would I intrude on your solitude?’ The sound of the mage-sacristan’s voice startled the lizards on their high perches. ‘Though, one would think you’d be half sick of shadows at this point.’ The mage-sacristan peered down the rows as she strode towards his seat. ‘Then, maybe you were just here dealing with the ghosts of librarians past, eh?’
Balthas didn’t turn. ‘You would be surprised.’ He had come back to the library, seeking a moment’s respite from his duties. But even here, the dead had risen. Long-dead librarians, entombed beneath the structure, had awoken. They had clambered from their nooks, eye sockets full of cobwebs and lungs full of dust. Balthas had made short work of them, with the aid of Aderphi and the others.
Miska studied the table. ‘More books.’
‘This is a library.’ Balthas sighed inwardly. He knew she would come to the point of his interruption eventually. He shook his head and bent forwards. He pulled a book close and scanned it quickly. He’d had an idle hope of finding some mention of a similar cataclysm to the necroquake in the history of the Mortal Realms. But so far nothing had revealed itself. Whatever had happened, it was a new thing under the sun. That annoyed him to no end.
Miska leaned over him, as if to read the titles of the books he’d gathered. ‘I don’t see how you can bury yourself back in here, after all that has happened.’
‘I am merely taking a moment to gather my strength.’
‘By sitting in the dark, surrounded by dusty tomes?’
‘You kneel in prayer. I sit in study.’ Balthas set aside the grimoire he’d been perusing and reached for another. ‘We commune with the aether in our own ways.’
‘You’re looking for answers. You won’t find them in here.’
Balthas let a hint of the annoyance he felt creep into his words. ‘Well, I won’t know until I try, will I?’ He glanced at her. ‘If you are bored, you may leave.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘Why?’ she asked simply. ‘Why here, Balthas? Why not with your brothers and sisters? Why seek answers in the dark?’
Balthas sighed, openly this time. ‘Sometimes, I think what we seek is like air and cannot be grasped. Nonetheless, I strain to do so and become a shadow of myself. A shadow among shadows.’ Balthas looked at his second in command. ‘I am close, I think. The answer is here, somewhere, in this library. In these books.’ He picked up the Guelphic Cipher and gestured with it. ‘The accumulated knowledge of centuries. As I’ve said before, what better hunting grounds for such as we?’
‘I can think of several.’
Balthas set the book back down. ‘I’m sure you can. Why are you here, Miska?’
‘I came to tell you that your petition has been heard.’
Balthas blinked. ‘What?’
‘Be of good cheer, Balthas. We are loosed to hunt at last. You got your wish.’
Balthas shook his head. ‘My wish was not to have failed in the first place. That a rogue soul escaped was my doing. I must make amends. That is all.’ Despite his words, a sense of elation filled him. He had not expected Sigmar to allow him to go. Perhaps he was not being judged so harshly as he feared. He stood. ‘When?’
‘As soon as possible.’
Balthas hesitated. An unwelcome thought had occurred to him. ‘I suddenly realise that I do not know where to start looking,’ he said, chagrined that he hadn’t thought of it earlier. Miska snorted.
‘Late to worry about that now, brother.’
‘Quiet. Let me think.’ He turned, scanning the shelves, seeking an answer. He recalled those last moments so clearly – the lightning-gheist had fallen away, into the maw of the cataclysm. For all he knew, it had been destroyed. But he did not think so. And obviously Sigmar didn’t either. If it – if he – had survived the Anvil, he could survive almost anything. But that didn’t bring him any closer to finding it.
It might well have become trapped in any one of the realms. He needed to pick up its trail, somehow. He heard Miska say something, but was already elsewhere in his head, seeking the answer to the problem before him. He looked down at his armour and the marks it still bore – great, scorched scratches. He could sense the touch of the aetheric on them. The lightning-gheist had left some of itself behind. ‘Ah. That will do.’
Balthas touched the marks, lightly, teasing out the aetheric energies that still clung to them. He could feel the residue of the lightning-gheist’s anger and pain. A disordered mind, distilled to the basest impulses. That was the danger of the Anvil. To remake a soul, it first must be broken down into a more malleable shape. That was where things inevitably went wrong. Broken into its base elements, reduced in such a manner, a soul was protean. It lost pieces of itself, or made new ones out of whole cloth. Old memories gave way to new ones, conjured up from dream or nightmare.
One person became another. Almost like the one who had perished, but yet not, changed in some often imperceptible fashion. In that way, a lightning-gheist was akin to an infant – if a singularly dangerous one.
Slowly, he drew out the residual energies. They sparked and hissed about his fingers as he extracted them, and caught them between his hands. He rotated his wrists, shaping the wriggling corposant into a more compact form. ‘Look, Miska. Memories made into talons. That is what a gheist is, after all – a tangle of memories and fears, gone feral. Is it any wonder that they must be put down?’
‘And what memory is that, brother?’ Miska asked. After a moment, she added, ‘Should you be doing that here? Perhaps we should take it elsewhere – somewhere safer.’
Balthas didn’t reply. He had the scent now, and no concern for irrelevant minutiae. He was a lord-arcanum, and there was no place safer than where he currently stood. He raised the flickering essence, studying it from all angles. With the proper rites, he might make it a tether, to lead him to his prey. It would have left vestiges of itself, as it fell away. It would be like stalking a blood trail. Only the creature at the other end would not have weakened appreciably from its loss.
In the squirming facets, he saw rags and tatters of images – a woman’s face, streaked with blood. A blossom of deepest purple. Fire, and the flash of swords. A memory of death, then? The first death or the second? Perhaps it didn’t matter.
He probed deeper, trying to find the strongest thread. The one that would lead him to what he sought. More images now – tombs, rising like crags. Cats, padding through dark passages. Apples, ripe and red. Impatient, he pushed these aside. He needed something more tangible. Something more – ah. ‘There,’ he murmured.
Stormcasts, in the black war-plate of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, fought against a swarm of nighthaunts. The cackling spectres swept over the battle-line like a fog bank. Warriors staggered and fell. Balthas saw – felt – his hand fasten on one and haul her to her feet. She looked at him and spoke, but there was no sound save for a wild roaring, as of water crashing against rock.
And then, one of the nighthaunts was there, a frenzied mist, laden with howling, grimacing faces. Distorted claws plucked at him, seeking a weak point. Blind, he staggered. Felt pain, as something slid between the plates of his armour. He tasted blood. And then… the black swallowed him. A hook of lightning speared through him and drew him up through a twisting tunnel of stars, faster and faster until the innumerable lights bled into a singular radiance that was blinding in its intensity.