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Children of Teclis – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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CHAPTER ONE

The day had dawned cold and grey, corpse-pale clouds rolling in from the Dwindlesea to strangle what little light pierced the oppressive gloom. Pinpricks of icy rain stippled Loreseeker Elarin the Illuminated’s face. Sharp on her cheeks, they bled into her robes, sending icy fingers tickling beneath her breastplate and greaves.

Like the Realm of Death itself, Shyish’s weather cared little for the living.

Elarin bore the discomfort without complaint, pausing only to adjust one of the braids of dark hair the wind had teased from her coiled topknot. She picked her way across the broken cliff, careful to avoid the bits of weathered bone jutting from under rocks and poking from crevasses. Although Lord Regent Chariel’s forces had scoured most of the unquiet dead from this blighted stretch of shore, the Ouroboran Coast was far from safe.

‘We should not be here.’ Celastir’s voice came sharp as her bared blade. The Bladelord was helmetless, auburn hair swept up with a sunmetal clasp, her pale, sharp-chinned face seeming set in a perpetual scowl. Celastir’s gaze flitted across the ragged cliffside like a prism hawk searching for prey, the tip of her rune-etched greatsword twitching as if the blade itself were impatient.

‘It is close.’ Elarin cocked her head. Lips moving in cants of seeking, she sought to tease threads of necromantic power from amidst Shyish’s funereal winds.

‘Lord Regent Chariel would not approve of–’

Elarin turned away with a cluck of her tongue, leaving her bodyguard to scowl at the rocks and sand. Celastir was right, of course, Chariel would be furious to discover one of her sorcerous advisors had wandered into the Shyish hinterlands, chasing a strange eddy of necromancy. Unfair as it was, this would be exactly the type of thing Prince Sennareth could use to paint Elarin as a danger to the Lumineth salient.

Elarin felt her lip curl at the thought of Regent Chariel’s Bannerblade. If anything, Sennareth was the danger. If the prince had his way, the Lumineth would simply sit back and await Nagash’s return.

As they always did, thoughts of the God of Death conjured a tightness in Elarin’s chest, the shadowed scars along her ribs prickling with cold fire. She had seen Nagash fall, broken on the peak of Mount Avalenor, his body pierced by shafts of brilliant light, scoured by the God-Mage Teclis’ holy wrath.

It had been a close thing, closer perhaps than many realised. Even in victory the Lumineth had paid a terrible price. One Elarin would see they never had to suffer again.

As if to echo her dire thoughts, a chill wind blew off the Dwindlesea. Short, sharp gusts like the thrusts of enemy spears whipped the dark waters into a frenzy, waves crashing against the maddening gyre of cliffs that gave the Ouroboran Coast its name.

Elarin craned her neck to peer down at the snarled bluffs below. Pale bones stood stark against the slate-grey stone. Arms, legs, ribs, even the occasional grinning skull, speckled the vast expanse of rock like shells cast upon windswept sands. Entombed by tons of stone, the skeletons snapped and scrabbled, pulled and flexed, vainly trying to tear themselves from the rocky cliffs. Occasionally, a bit would fall free, only to be snapped up by the waves and bludgeoned back into the hungry stone. The constant churn of bone, breaker and boulder made the cliffs appear to move, as if the Ouroboran Coast were some vast, skeletal beast slowly devouring itself over the course of millennia.

Prince Sennareth claimed it was the army of some rebellious Necrarch lord, cursed by Nagash to remain conscious as they were forever consumed by Shyish’s cruel geography.

Sennareth was a liar, of course, but Elarin hardly cared.

In their way, the cliffs were almost beautiful.

‘There.’ Steadying herself with her rune-etched staff, Elarin drew her blade to gesture at a shadowed overhang some fifty paces distant. Although there was nothing to distinguish this particular shelf of rock from a thousand other wind-scarred crags, it glittered in Elarin’s sorcerous sight, the snarled weave of necromancy writ cold upon the ancient stone.

Celastir stepped to her side, squinting at the rock. There was no uncertainty in her bearing, no apprehension, only the steady regard of a duellist sizing up an opponent. The Bladelord might question Elarin’s decision to leave the safety of camp, she might question the wisdom of seeking a place steeped in such dark power, but she did not question Elarin’s skill.

‘Should we inform the Lord Regent?’ Celastir asked.

‘There might not be time.’ Jaw tight, Elarin studied the flow of amethyst energy. In addition to unleashing a tide of death upon the Mortal Realms, Nagash’s Necroquake had unearthed many things that were better forgotten. This could be one such evil, locked away by some long-departed psychopomp to protect Shyish.

It had been months since Chariel Thrice-Burnished had led her gleaming host through the Shyish Realmgate to establish a Lumineth bulwark in the Realm of Death. Even amidst the battles and strife, this place would have called to Elarin.

Which meant it had been opened recently.

Elarin’s incantation set twinkling motes of light swirling up through the air. Bits of native Hyshian brilliance, they guttered like dying embers, golden brilliance tarnished by the oppressive weight of Shyish. Even so, it was enough to illuminate the outline of a heavy door set into the rock, its face covered with sigils of warding and concealment. Stepping closer, Elarin could see the runes were not etched into the black basalt, but set within the stone itself. The ossified remnants of fish and nautili and other small sea creatures, their bodies had been twisted into uncomfortable sigils then left to fossilise within the rock.

The door sat ajar, its wards broken. They had been strong enchantments, steeped in the weight of ages. Such spells would have taken time, power and most of all patience to unravel. Although the Lumineth possessed all these traits, such dogged persistence spoke to a more ageless mind, one that thought nothing of months or years.

The thought of confronting such terrible patience sat like a stone in Elarin’s stomach.

Whatever had opened this tomb, it was not mortal.

Even so, she was not afraid. If anything, her limbs tingled with a strange species of excitement. Elarin was a Loreseeker, sent to prise open Shyish’s sepulchral depths and bring the Realm of Death’s secrets to light. If she turned away, it would be as much as admitting she was not up to the task, that all the struggle, all the destruction, all the death had been for naught.

The names of her slain comrades slipped from Elarin’s cold lips. Repeating them gave her strength. The others had fallen with the Inscribed Citadel, buried beneath the rubble. But Elarin remained. She must act for all of them, carrying the weight of the memory, their sacrifice.

She glanced to Celastir. Apparently sensing her resolve, the Bladelord gave a tight-lipped nod. Elarin drew her blade. Forged for another, the hilt did not fit her hand as well as it might. Nonetheless, she took comfort from Glimmerdark’s familiar weight.

Staff held high to illuminate their way, she stepped into shadow.

The passage was smooth, walls free of cracks or mortar, the floor dipping towards the centre as if the rock had simply been boiled away. They had gone but a few dozen paces when the tunnel opened up, stone giving way to rib-like sheafs of bone. Interlaced like fingers and bound by coils of whip-tight sinew and stretched tendon, they lined the walls and ceiling, forming a wide dome perhaps twenty paces across.

Several tunnels led away from the central nave, their walls scored by the marks of ancient teeth, honeycombed by bits of calcified marrow. Not even the slightest breeze moved the stagnant air, as if the whole place held its breath.

It had the look of an Ossiarch crypt. Elarin had scoured enough of them to recognise the skeletal architecture, but where the others had housed vaults and sarcophagi, this bone cathedral held nothing but echoing stillness.

Celastir shifted amidst the clinging shadows. ‘Whatever was once here is gone now.’

‘No.’ Elarin’s reply was barely a whisper, but she could feel the rightness of it. The bone cathedral practically vibrated with spiritual force. It permeated the walls, the stone, the very air, seeping through Elarin’s wards to settle like oil on her skin. So strong was the gyre of necromantic force she could barely get a sense of its distance, let alone direction.

Celastir was speaking, but Elarin could not make out her words through the hollow thrum of energy. Like the beat of distant drums, it seemed to resonate in her bones.

‘This way.’ She needed to move, if only to feel the weight of her limbs. Lips buzzing from the power of the place, Elarin spoke new wards into the air. Runes of strength and stability quieted the churning roar in her thoughts.

She took the leftmost tunnel, which branched, then branched again, twining into other passages, delicate as the weave of burst capillaries on the cheek of a corpse. Here and there, Elarin caught glimmers of clarity amidst the tangled weave, threads of spiritual energy flitting through the gloom like minnows in a shadowed stream.

Seeking clarity, Elarin removed one of the flecks of aetherquartz from her robes. A bit of purest power distilled from the light of Hysh, she gazed into the gem’s flickering depths, letting its facets focus and amplify her reason. It was as if she had stepped below an icy waterfall, the shock washing away the sandy morass of confusion and doubt, leaving a bedrock of uninflected reason.

She gazed upon the numinous interplay with new eyes, vision sharp enough to follow even the smallest thread. Like a hunting hawk, Elarin moved with unrelenting purpose. She did not need to glance back to know that Celastir followed a pace behind, just as she knew they were not alone in the crypt. Something stalked the tangled halls, searching with terrible, uncompromising patience; but it had not found what it sought. Not yet, at least.

The chamber was small, little more than an intersection at the juncture of four tunnels, barren of marks or distinguishing features. They had passed many similar cavities within the bone cathedral, but something gave Elarin pause.

Sheathing her blade, she knelt to press a hand to the bone. Warm beneath her fingers, it pulsed with spiritual energy, aetheric vibrations like the flow of some distant underground river.

‘Old wards.’ She hissed the words through gritted teeth. There were indeed enchantments here, swirls of obfuscating sorcery so faint as to be almost invisible. Elarin prodded at the enchantments, careful not to unleash whatever terrible energies they contained. It was mortal magic, debased aelven runes gathered into a rough semblance of balance. No doubt, the creator had been someone of intelligence and power, but they had also been human, and even the most intricate mortal sorceries seemed base and clumsy when compared to the complexities of Lumineth magic.

Her senses whetted to razor sharpness by the aetherquartz, Elarin quickly found the weaknesses in the wards, bits of extraneous runecraft like rust spots upon a length of chain. She focused on one of these flaws, carefully prising apart the nested declensions to lay the whole eldritch working bare.

The whole chamber seemed to waver as if seen through water, revealing a waist-high plinth in the centre of the room. Upon it rested a small construction of faceted shadeglass. Roughly the size of a clenched fist, the relic was cylindrical in shape, and composed of a collection of tiny shadeglass prisms capped by gilded carvings of clutching, skeletal hands. Shapes swirled within the dark facets, a twisting eddy of contorted faces, all glimmering with pale witchlight.

‘A soul reservoir.’ Elarin reached out a hand. The flesh of her palm felt hot and tight, as if held to a bonfire. ‘I have read of these things – used by Mortarchs and necromancers to power all manner of terrible sorceries.’ She shook her head. ‘Such power. This reliquary must contain thousands of trapped souls.’

‘Then we should destroy it,’ Celastir replied.

‘What would that gain us?’ Elarin grasped the reservoir, feeling a jolt of energy leap up her arm.

‘It would deprive the Ossiarchs of this abomination.’

‘So would returning it to camp for study.’ Elarin gave an irritated hiss. She did not question Celastir on bladework, why did the Vanari feel compelled to challenge her on sorcerous matters? Rather than debate her bodyguard, she gazed deeper into the reliquary, seeking to comprehend the subtle interplay of spiritual force within.

Elarin did not intend to draw upon the thing, only to gain some insight into how to transport it safely, but it was as if the relic wanted to be used. She had barely begun to examine the shadeglass when a burst of spiritual energy sent her stumbling back. Not an assault so much as a rush of power. It dragged Elarin from her body, her senses becoming diffuse and distant as she fell deeper into the strange artefact. Like victims fleeing a burning tower, souls jostled her from all sides, pressing against her wards with manic intensity.

Celastir gripped her arm, but Elarin hardly felt her touch, her vision bombarded by wild images. She passed through bone and rock, insubstantial as thought. The Ouroboran Coast spread before her as if in miniature, overlaid by a dense web of pulsing geomantic lines. They flowed with spiritual energy, feeding the necrotic winds of Shyish. In a moment, Elarin knew she could trace them all the way back to Nagashizzar, where dread Nagash lay entombed – asleep, but undying.

Amidst the amethyst web sat a blot of purest void, deep and dark as a vast ocean trench. Although the distant glow of Hysh remained high overhead, a shadow fell over the coast. Night spread across the rocks like spilled ink, a shade with no maker, a swirling void that seemed to enfold all it touched.

Fleshless legions marched in its wake. Weapons bared, fleshless visages raised as if in adulation, they marched in perfect lockstep, moving with nightmarish precision.

Ossiarch Bonereapers. More than Elarin had ever seen. More than she had ever imagined there could be. Where they moved, the shadow grew. It crept along the geomantic lines, runnels of obsidian blood flowing back to Nagashizzar to reinvigorate the Bonereapers’ immortal master.

This time, there would be no reprieve, no salvation. Nagash’s return would herald an end to all things.

‘Something approaches.’ Celastir shook Elarin, causing her eyes to flutter open.

‘They mean to raise him.’ She clutched at her bodyguard’s arm. Still caught by the terrible visions, Elarin blinked at phantom shapes, battles, bodies falling only to rise again.

Teeth bared, Celastir slapped the soul reservoir from her hand.

Like a swimmer surfacing after a long dive, Elarin gasped in a whooping lungful of air. Her gaze crawled across the ossified floor to where the reservoir lay against the far wall.

Celastir took a step towards it, heavy sword raised, but Elarin pulled her back.

‘It is evil.’ The Bladelord almost snarled the words.

‘It is powerful.’ Elarin tried to keep her voice level, biting back the skirl of nervous energy that seemed ready to burst from her lips. ‘But the vision was not evil. If anything, it may hold the secret to frustrating Nagash’s return.’

Celastir half turned, but before the Bladelord could draw breath to speak, her eyes widened. With a grunt, she shoved Elarin back.

Surprise became anger, then shock as a blade of blackened metal cut the air where Elarin had stood but a moment earlier.

Celastir’s sword caught the strike on the backswing, sunmetal shrieking on obsidian nadirite as it drove the blade down. The Vanari was quick to recover, letting the weight of her greatsword turn the block into a wide, looping slash that cleaved armour and bone.

Elarin drew her own sword, staff raised to spread a steady glow. With a muttered curse, she turned to see more skeletal forms advancing amidst the shadows on all sides, spears levelled, shields locked, remorseless eyes bright with pale witchlight.

It had been foolish to unweave the wards that concealed the soul reservoir. By unleashing the relic’s power, Elarin had made it a beacon.

With a flush of cold realisation, she recognised the attackers as Mortek Guard: foot soldiers of the Ossiarchs. Elarin had destroyed scores of the skeletal legionnaires during the Lumineth push into Shyish, but as they moved into the light, she could see these foes were different.

Tiny, intricate engravings covered every bit of exposed bone, scenes of death and entombment interspersed with necromantic sigils delicate as the scrimshawed leviathan bones Elarin’s uncle Zathran used to bring back from far voyages. Their armour was the black of rain-slicked obsidian, heavy nadirite blades appearing almost liquid in the gloom.

Celastir met the Mortek advance with a storm of cuts and parries, her blade seeming almost to double as it lopped the heads from spears and sought the gaps in their armour.

Incantations blistered the air as Elarin sent a line of coruscating moonlight down the hall to her right. Perfectly straight, it bisected shields, piercing heavy bone plates to send sparks coursing along ribs and spines. The Ossiarchs glowed with an inner light, bones backlit by silver flames, brilliance streaming from their eye sockets. They crumpled like rotten wood, still feebly swiping as they stumbled on legs reduced to pale ash.

A spear thrust from Elarin’s left and she batted it aside with her staff, embers of crackling force filling the air where enchanted wood met the chill of Shyishan nadirite. Deft as a needle, her blade threaded the thin breach between shield and plate.

Had it been but mere steel, the sword would have found little purchase amidst the armoured bone, but Elarin’s blade was Glimmerdark, a relic of days long forgotten. Crafted of purest crystal, it was shaped in the coruscating brilliance of the Perimeter Inimical and cooled in the silvery radiance of Celennar, Hysh’s moon. Glimmerdark was an ancient and powerful blade, traditionally wielded by the Grand Archivist of the Inscribed Citadel.

But Master Uiharan had died with the others, all his wisdom lost when the high spires of the citadel had been ground to dust by Nagash’s hordes. Elarin might not be worthy to draw his blade, but there were none alive who could contest her right to wield it.

Glimmerdark slid into the Mortek’s throat, graceful as a diving cormorant. Bone ran like water along the blade’s crystalline edge, disrupting the admixture of soul energy that flowed through the undead construct. The Mortek fell like an unstringed shadow puppet, the terrible light of its eyes guttering out.

But there were more. There were always more.

Back to back, Elarin and Celastir stood like breakers before the rising flood of bone and shadowed steel. Wherever their blades landed, a Mortek fell, their armour no proof against the scouring light of Hysh.

‘We must retreat.’ Celastir’s words came between measured breaths, the Bladelord’s expression not a warrior’s fearsome scowl, but rather the careful concentration of a master artisan.

‘Not without the relic.’ Elarin cast a quick glance towards the soul reservoir. Although they had succeeded in keeping any of the skeletal legionnaires from reaching the artefact, such was the press of armoured forms that neither she nor Celastir could risk a lunge for it without opening themselves to a killing strike.

Ducking a spear-thrust, Elarin lashed out with her blade. But rather than cut the cords of necromancy that bound the Mortek, she slapped the abomination with the flat of her sword, the bright burst of Hyshian light causing her attacker to stumble back. Seizing on the moment, Elarin drove a hard kick into the Mortek’s shield.

The move bought her barely a heartbeat, but it was enough. At Elarin’s call, a score of gleaming threads lit the chamber. They swirled like wind-caught silk, drifting on an aethereal breeze above the heads of the combatants. Runes spilled from Elarin’s lips, weaving, twisting, knotting, until the threads became a gleaming web of interconnected silver and gold.

The Morteks locked shields.

Elarin snapped her arms out like a fisherman casting a net, and the glittering web settled across the packed ranks. With a final sealing rune, she drew the lattice back, but rather than ensnare the Morteks, the strands sheared through her attackers.

Disjointed, they tumbled like shattered masonry. Elarin spun to draw the gleaming web over the attackers on Celastir’s side, only to see the threads tear and fray, a net snagged on some deep underwater cliff.

Some other sorcerer worked against her.

Teeth clenched, Elarin sought to reweave her spell. Even as she reinforced the runic vertices, her sorcerous gaze sought the author of destruction.

The Morteks did not possess the ability to unweave her spells. Whatever commanded them, it was a creature of frightening power.

Warding runes flickered like dying stars as a blast of necromantic energy hammered into Elarin’s protective enchantments. Such was the power of the assault that Elarin felt the chill even through her wards. Cold as a winter sea, it cut across her cheek, heavy with ageless malice.

Elarin abandoned her lattice of light, arms crossed as she sang new runes into the churning maelstrom of death magic. It raged about them, seeking weaknesses in her wards, questing tendrils of raw spiritstuff like the tentacles of a kraken.

But Elarin was not some mere summoner of tricks. She was Lumineth, the last in a line of Loreseekers stretching back to the very dawn of their race. Try as they might, the Ossiarchs would find no flaw in her incantations.

At last, the flood became a torrent, then a trickle, revealing the form of Elarin’s attacker.

The Ossiarch Mortisan was tall and almost impossibly long-limbed, her glistening obsidian armour studded with the fangs of deep-sea predators. Although the face wrought into her high-crested helm was a barren, alien thing, devoid of motive or emotion, the eyes that burned within radiated cold arrogance. In her hands, the Mortisan bore a scythe of nadirite-tipped bone, its length etched with coils of necromantic sigils that seemed to whirl and eddy, tugging at Elarin’s gaze as if to drag her thoughts into their cold embrace.

She expected another eldritch assault. Instead, the Mortisan stepped forwards, scythe arcing down to carve a glittering trail through Elarin’s runic defences. It might have cut Elarin too, had not Celastir met the slash with a sweep of her broad blade. Even so, the force of the strike drove the Vanari back a step, her breath steaming in air gone suddenly cold as midwinter. Celastir’s stumble became an attack as she spun, blade held in a tight, killing arc.

But the Mortisan had already stepped back into the ranks of her guard, and Celastir’s strike found nothing but the unyielding barrier of a Mortek shield-wall.

Although Celastir spoke not a word, Elarin could tell from the shift in her bodyguard’s stance that the battle was lost. Perhaps together they could have overwhelmed the sorceress, but ringed by scores of guards, the Mortisan was untouchable as Nagash himself.

Elarin cast a desperate glance at the soul reservoir. For a wild, despairing moment, she considered hurling herself at the relic. Although it was powerfully protected, her sorceries might be enough to destroy the reservoir and unleash its army of captured spirits.

It was a foolish thought, unbecoming of a Lumineth. Elarin was not some Sigmarite fanatic, prepared to sacrifice her life in a doomed endeavour. The Ossiarch sorceress would strike her down before she took a step. All Elarin would accomplish would be to add her and Celastir’s bones to the army of their foes.

She needed to return to camp, to warn Lord Regent Chariel.

There was no need to speak, no need to command. Celastir was Lumineth. In the deadly press of battle, she and Elarin acted as one.

At Elarin’s nod, Celastir hurled herself at the massed Morteks, the force of her blows driving a wedge into the ordered ranks. Elarin could have used the respite to reinforce her wards, but she knew that to be a waste.

The Mortisan was not here for them.

Elarin crafted a tumult of piercing radiance, runes of swiftness and sunlight sharp as arrows, that rained destruction down upon the packed phalanx. For all their unshakeable hate, the Morteks could not but buckle before the force of her arcane assault. The path momentarily clear, Elarin and Celastir rushed through the gap.

The Mortisan could have exploited their retreat – another blast of spiritual force would have shattered what remained of Elarin’s wards. But no killing blow fell, no tidal wave of souls came crashing down to sweep them away like flotsam. Instead, the Ossiarch sorceress went for the soul reliquary, her movements swift and focused as a spider slipping towards a web-trapped moth.

There was no comfort in the knowledge Elarin had judged rightly, only a hollow anxiety. Memories of the terrible vision lurked at the back of her thoughts. A night-dark tide sweeping down the coast, flowing back to Nagashizzar, back to the God of Death.

Even as they fled through the coiling tunnels of the cathedral, the hideous clatter of bone and steel behind, Elarin was not wholly dejected. She had lost the reservoir, but had come away with knowledge.

And as any Loreseeker knew, that could be its own reward.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2023.
This eBook edition published in 2023 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Irina Kuzmina.
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