Facing the core, Nagash gathered more and more of the skeins, and his titanic form became a conductor. Amethyst lightning crawled across him, winnowing into the hollow places and filling him with strength enough to crack the vaults of the heavens. This was not the raw magic that soured the edges of his realm, but a purified form.
He hauled back on the strands of magic he held, lending his strength to that of his servants. As they pushed, he pulled, forcing the great machinery into motion. Around him, the faceted walls began to shift and scrape as slowly, surely, the Black Pyramid began to revolve on its capstone, as he had designed it to do.
The structure rotated faster and faster. The dead sun beneath it flared brightly, as if in panic, and then burst with a cataclysmic scream that shook Nekroheim to its intangible roots. Rivers of cold fire streaked up the sides of the pyramid, flowing towards the base, or else washed across the cavern walls. Nekroheim itself shuddered, as if wounded.
The cavern floor began to churn and shift. Millions of bones clattered as the rotation of the pyramid drew them in its wake. Like some vast, calcified whirlpool, the entirety of the underworld was soon in motion. A storm of bones and tattered spirits, spinning about the ever-turning pyramid.
Within the pyramid’s heart, Nagash felt and saw all of this in the polished walls of shadeglass. He saw the streaks of purple light stretching out, flowering into storms of raging elemental fire as they broke through the borders that separated Nekroheim from the other underworlds. The purple light dug into the metaphysical substance of these other realms, hooking them the way a meat-hook might sink into a side of beef. Steadily, they were drawn towards Nekroheim, becoming part of the growing maelstrom.
Nagash threw back his head and bellowed. He felt as if he was on the cusp of dissolution, as if the monstrous energies he sought to manipulate now threatened to rip him asunder. Only his will prevented him from succumbing to the forces he’d unleashed. A lesser god would have dissolved into howling oblivion. He clawed at the storm of magic, drawing more of it into himself, pulling the world-spanning chains tight.
Outside the pyramid, Nekroheim was crumbling. Changing shape. The underworld bent beneath the oscillating structure, bowing up around it. Becoming something new.
The reverberations rippled outwards across Shyish. Through the eyes of his servants, Nagash saw the skies above Nagashizzar turn purple-black. Orruks wailed as their green flesh sloughed from their bones, and they collapsed in on themselves. Billions of skull-faced beetles poured down from the swirling clouds, devouring those greenskins that were still in one piece. Nagash laughed, low, loud and long as the ground beneath Nagashizzar began to buckle and sink. Soon, every realm would feel the echoes of what he did here. Reality would shape itself to accommodate his will.
His laughter ceased as shadeglass cracked and splintered all around him. Something moved within the polished depths. They came slowly, drifting through the dark: vast impressions with no definable shape or form. The air of the chamber stank of hot iron and spoiled blood, of sour meat and strange incenses. He heard the rasp of sharp-edged feathers and the clank of great chains. He felt the flutter of unseen flies, clustering about his skull, and their hum filled the hollows of his form.
Something that might have been a face slipped across the cracked facets. It gibbered soundlessly, but Nagash heard its words nonetheless. It spoke in a voice that only gods could discern, spewing curses. He turned as something that might have been a blade, wreathed in fire, struck another facet. More cracks shivered outwards from the point of impact. Nagash did not flinch. To his left, enormous talons, as of some great bird, scratched at the shadeglass, while opposite them, a flabby paw-shape, filthy and sore-ridden, left streaks of bubbling excrescence along the facets.
Eyes like dying stars fixed him with a glare, and a howl shook Nekroheim to its roots. Great fangs, made from thousands of splintered swords and molten rock, gnashed in elemental fury. Nagash lifted a hand in mocking greeting. ‘Hail, old horrors – I see that I have your attention.’
The Ruinous Powers had come like sharks, stirred from the deep places by a storm, as he’d known they would. They came roaring, thrusting the barest edges of their inhuman perceptions into his realm. Was it curiosity that had drawn them so – or fear?
He felt their awareness as a sudden pressure upon him, as if a great weight had fallen on him from all angles. The immensities circled him through the facets of the walls, prowling like beasts held at bay by firelight. ‘But you are too late. It is begun.’
Something bellowed, and great claws of brass and fire pressed against the reverse of the shadeglass, cracking it. An avian shadow peered down through the facets of the ceiling, whispering in many voices. The stink of rot and putrification choked the air. Had any of his servants been alive, they might have suffocated from the stench. Voices like the groaning of the earth or the death-screams of stars cursed him and demanded he cease.
He cast his defiance into their teeth. ‘Who are you to demand anything of me? I am Nagash. I am eternal. I have walked in the deep places for long enough and have gathered my strength. I will shatter mountains and dry the seas.’
He turned as they circled him, keeping them in sight. ‘I shall pull down the sun and cast the earth into the sky. All of time will be set aflame and all impurities in the blood of existence burnt away, by my will and mine alone. There shall be no gods before me, and none after.’ He gestured sharply. ‘All will be Nagash. Nagash will be all.’
As the echo of his words faded, something laughed. A ghost of a sound, no more substantial than the wind. Nagash paused. Something was wrong. Belatedly, he realised that the Ruinous Powers would not have come, unless there was some amusement to be had. Not the orruks, but something else. Some other flaw in his design.
‘What mischief have you wrought?’ he intoned. He found it a moment later. Familiar soul-scents, bitter and tarry, wafted on the currents of power flowing through the edifice. Tiny souls, these. Like bits of broken glass. The skaven spoke in hissing, squealing tones as they scuttled through the pyramid, wrapped in cloaks of purest shadow. He did not know by what magics the ratkin had avoided the guardians of this place. Nor did he care. That they were here, now, was the only important thing.
It seemed the orruks were not the only ones who had come seeking the treasures of Nagashizzar. He looked up, into the insubstantial faces of his foes. ‘Is this, then, the best you can do? You send vermin to stop me?’ The laughter of the Dark Gods continued, growing in volume. Incensed, a part of his consciousness sheared off and slipped into the depths of the pyramid, seeking the origin of the disturbance while the rest of him concentrated on completing the ritual he’d begun.
His penumbral facet swept through the passages and pathways like a cold wind, but moving far more swiftly than any natural gust. He found them in the labyrinthine depths, chipping away at the very foundation stones of the pyramid. Their desire for the vitrified magics was palpable. The skaven had ever been a greedy race.
How long had they been here, pilfering the fruits of his labours? How had they gone unnoticed, until now? As their tools scraped at the bricks of shadeglass, crackles of purple lightning flowed through the walls. The more they collected, the greater the destabilisation became. Nagash watched the arcs of lightning, tracing their routes and calculating the destruction they would wreak.
Somewhere, at the bottom of the deep well of his memories, something stirred, and he had the vaguest impression that all of this had happened before. The pyramid, his triumph, the skaven, it all felt suddenly – awfully – familiar. God though he was, he could not well recall his existence before Sigmar had freed him, though he knew that he had existed. He had always existed. But he could recall only a few scattered moments, frozen in his recollections like insects in amber – instances of pain and frustration, of triumph and treachery. Was that what this was? Had he lived through this moment – or something like it – before? Was that why the dark gods laughed so? He paused, considering. The black clockwork of his mind calculating.