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Ghosts of Khaphtar – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Ghosts of Khaphtar

Miles A. Drake

Her feet squelched in the putrid mud, pressed down by an unfamiliar weight. The hem of her dusky robe and much of her dark, glassy purple armour was caked in the necrogenous ooze. The noxious haze emanating from the landscape of rotting benthic matter grated at her lungs and burned her eyes.

The foggy currents of the aethersea that might once have brought comfort were stagnant, though she could still feel the ripples of movement cast by the exhausted strides of the namarti at her flanks, and the lethargic circling of her rakerdart. The latter emerged from behind the immense, bleached ribs of a rotting murkwhale, whose skeleton she strode through.

‘Heel, Ionian,’ Akhlys whispered.

The rakerdart did as it was bid. Its scales had turned a hypoxic purple.

‘It won’t be long now,’ she said, mournfully stroking the rakerdart’s dorsal fin with a gauntleted hand.

Death was everywhere, splayed out across the seabed. The decay made a final banquet for millions of chitinous scavengers, who glutted themselves on the rotting world they once flourished in, even as they slowly asphyxiated beneath the wilting, purple radiance that pierced the eerie haze.

She closed her eyes as another beast thrashed behind her. The last fangmora.

Hardening her resolve, she turned, seeing the ragged band file into the colossal ribcage of the murkwhale.

The namarti, several dozen in number, paused, listening to the dying eel. Their once lithe and imposing figures had given way to slumped exhaustion, and the runes on their foreheads, once glimmering with the light of stolen souls, were dull and muted. Several of them carried stretchers bearing comatose compatriots wrapped in damp, saline gauze.

Her gaze panned over to the convulsing fangmora, whose scales showed a more severe discolouration than Ionian’s. A trio of akhelians knelt beside it. Two held it down, easily overpowering its weak spasms. The third, the beast’s bonded master, removed his helm and drew his helsabre.

With a single word of deliverance, he opened the beast’s throat with the inward curve of his blade. A flood of purple sprayed, misting in the air for a moment, caught in the aethersea’s stagnant current, before condensing to sink into the mud.

The akhelian stood, head bowed, helm clutched in the crook of his arm. His regal poise had faded, and his expression showed a blank, hopeless void. He turned as Tethyssian, the tidecaster, approached. The isharann’s loose robes were weighed down by caked mud as he drew back his cowl. He regarded the dead fangmora, before looking up to its former master. ‘May I speak the Rite of Severance?’ he asked, his voice solemn and tired.

‘For what?’ The akhelian stared blankly at the tidecaster, his voice barely a whisper. ‘There are no ebbing tides to dispatch the beast’s spirit upon. The sea is dead. And so is that which was bound to me.’

As an isharann, Akhlys knew the rite bore no true sorrow. The akhelians shared no emotional bond with their enslaved beasts. But it still held significance.

Tethyssian’s lips tightened. ‘Ceremony and tradition, Saturiandi. What we once took solace in are the only truths that can keep us whole through this nightmare. We must preserve the nobility of our forebears, lest we slip further into the abyss of soulless pragmatism.’ His reprimand was as loud as he dared, given the danger that might still lurk in the fog, but it was enough for the others to hear. It was addressed to everyone.

Saturiandi turned away from Tethyssian, leaving the carcass of his eel behind. ‘We can afford no sentiment that does not help our immediate survival,’ he spat.

‘That is the current to oblivion,’ Tethyssian scolded. ‘If we abandon what is ours, what purpose is there to our salv–’

The akhelian wheeled around, his pale visage flushing a furious grey. ‘Salvation is an end unto itself!’ he hissed. ‘What was the purpose of the death of our ocean? What was the purpose of the destruction of our encla–’

‘Enough!’ Akhlys stepped forward, thudding the butt of her talúnhook onto the shell of a rotting ammonite. ‘You will draw more of the thrice-cursed vermin down upon us if you continue bickering. And our enclave is not dead. The Laebreans came to our people’s aid. They will have saved many.’

Saturiandi spared her a half-glance. ‘Yes, but that doesn’t exactly help us now, does it?’ he hissed, before moving on.

Akhlys turned to follow the akhelian. She could understand his pain. The dying defenders of the Amoch-túr pickets they’d returned to had told them that the death toll had been catastrophic, regardless of the Laebrean intervention.

Glancing back at the namarti, Akhlys could see the same pain written in their stances, even if it was more muted. Most of the namarti had left their kin behind in Amalthussanar when they’d been selected to join Akhlys’ raiding party. Ironically, that selection might have saved them, though many would never know what happened to the kin they’d left behind. The receding sea had cut off the route to the Laebrea Basin, as well as any attempt to search for their lost kin.

But there was nothing Akhlys could say to balm their woes. She could heal their flesh and reinvigorate their souls, but she was no tru’heas. She could not heal their wounded psyches. All she could do was remind them of their purpose, and lead them to deliverance.

As the exhausted caravan ascended the slow incline of the Silence of Songs, the death and decay rampant on the vast mesobenthic plain only sapped the ebbing vigour from the tattered band further.

And worse, the place held a certain, solemn significance to the idoneth. It was where the murkwhales came to die. Their great migrations had once carried them through the dark seas of Shyish, and when their ancients passed through the Khaphtar Sea to come to their final resting grounds, they provided the idoneth sustenance in the form of the chitinous parasites that clung to them.

Akhlys had always marvelled at their songs, lonely and sombre. Her enclave lived in near total silence, fearing to utter any noise, lest it draw the teeming shoals of drowned dead down upon Amalthussanar. Thus was the dirge of the murkwhales the only music her people could readily experience.

But now that was gone… forever.

Their remains were scattered about amidst the noxious fog, the ominous shapes of their colossal skeletons overgrown by thickets of huskworms. Once, the worms had bloomed like violet flowers, nourished by the leviathans’ corpses, but now, their macabre beauty had decayed, having long degenerated into masses of crimson, viscera-like ribbons.

Amidst the husks, the pale, spindly carcasses of the carcinarians that had once pruned the worm colonies with tender grace lay scattered about, twisted in the agony of their last, asphyxiating moments, and making banquets for flocks of squawking, razor-beaked bloodgulls.

Things shambled about in the putrid haze. Vile, barnacled cadavers loped alongside the bones of ancient mariners and the bloated husks of the verminous filth that had died during their attempt to infest the draining sea. Flocks of spectres drifted in eerie gyres, their anguished howls carrying across the dead wind, and many times, the idoneth were forced to change course, to avoid the attention of the dead.

‘The putrid sun allows no rest…’ Tethyssian muttered as they marched, glaring up at the purple gleam above. ‘It is the Soul Collector’s abhorrent will made manifest that such dark animation is breathed into the husks of the dead. If he can sift through the memories of those we have claimed, I wonder what secrets he might glean of our people… now that the drowned are exposed.’

It was an unsettling thought. The Khaphtar’s raiders, and all of the enclaves of Shyish, took extra care to carry those whose souls had been taken down into the murky depths with them. They left nothing for the Soul Collector’s agents to interrogate. But no longer… Now he would know. The draining sea had ended their secrecy.

‘The bones of our chorrileum are open and bared to his gaze,’ Akhlys replied bitterly. ‘The memories of those we have taken will tell him no more than what he already knows. I can only hope the other seas have not met a similar fate…’

‘Surely not,’ the tidecaster said. ‘The Amiritanni Ridge will prevent the Laebrea Basin from draining, and the Bleached Isthmus ahead separates us from the Great Quagmire. I merely wonder if your hope is justified. Do you truly believe the Mor’phann will take us in?’

‘They must,’ Akhlys said grimly.

Tethyssian shrugged. ‘I do not know. We broke currents with them because they refused to contact the other enclaves. Do you truly believe they will break their isolation now?’

‘I have to,’ Akhlys said. ‘What other hope is there?’

Tethyssian sighed. ‘None, I’m afraid.’

‘The Bleached Isthmus is not a wide landmass. We can cross it in but a single tide.’

Tethyssian inclined his head. ‘Of course, but such a journey won’t be without its own peril. The Revenant Kingdoms hold the isthmus. We will need to tread carefully.’

‘I’m well aware,’ Akhlys muttered. ‘The shores ahead were my reaping grounds, remember? I will lead us through.’

Tethyssian nodded again. ‘I have faith in you in that regard. I merely…’ He paused, thinking how best to phrase something controversial. ‘I merely wonder if you underestimate what lies beyond that. If we reach the Great Quagmire and find the Mor’phann… if we can convince them not to kill us outright… they will demand a tribute in exchange for their protection.’

‘I’m well aware,’ Akhlys said again, coldly.

‘Perhaps, if we encounter more of the thrice-cursed vermin along our route, or are forced into conflict with the humans of the isthmus, I might suggest saving the souls you harvest.’ He gestured at the doused lantern she carried.

Akhlys had removed it from her helm, and fastened it to her belt. Without the aethersea’s buoyancy, her crested anglerhelm had become too cumbersome to wear. She’d left it behind leagues ago.

Turning her gaze to Tethyssian, Akhlys’ lips curled into a snarl of distaste. ‘That would mean the death of many of the namarti who were weakened by the vermin’s sorcery.’

Tethyssian’s features tightened, and he lowered his voice. ‘I know. But without souls to barter with, I fear we will be turned aside by the Mor’phann… at best. You must consider thi–’

‘No,’ she said flatly, before increasing her pace and leaving the tidecaster behind.

She would sacrifice much to ensure the survival of her people, but to endure whatever trials lay ahead, they would need every namarti ready to fight.

It was hours later, when the caravan began its climb up the continental rise, that they encountered more remnants of the thrice-cursed vermin that had doomed their enclave. Akhlys saw the shape of one of their vile engines ahead, its hull gouged open on the rocks, and was overcome by the tide of bitter memories, fresh and painful in her mind like a festering wound.

Her raiding party had been ascending the rise, several hundred leagues from Amalthussanar, when Tethyssian had detected the shifting tide. When he’d worked out that the sea was draining, the decision to return to the enclave to learn of what was happening was unanimous, and so her band abandoned its task of gathering souls, and began the journey home.

They did not make it, however. Perhaps if the increasingly powerful currents hadn’t made the journey across the abyssal plain so difficult, they might have arrived in time to join the evacuation. But they hadn’t.

They’d barely managed to reach the floating Amoch-túr pickets before the verminous ones attacked in their rattling submersibles. The toxic wakes of their infernal contraptions, and the devastation wrought by their techno-arcane weaponry, halved the strength of Akhlys’ warband.

She’d learned of what was occurring in Amalthussanar then, from one of the dying akhelians that had been part of the Amoch-túr phalanx. The Laebreans had come to evacuate, and, according to the warrior, had somehow managed to distract the dredge-fleets the Soul Collector had sent to investigate. She’d also learned that the currents had grown too powerful in the hadal channels surrounding the massive seamount the enclave was built atop, and that attempting to reach the city, or the Laebrea Basin itself, would be suicide.

With no other option, Akhlys had given the order to make for the second nearest idoneth settlement, the great Mor’phann city of Mor’drechi. All that stood in their way was the relentless pull of the draining currents, and the tide of drowned dead that were caught in them.

It had almost been a relief to exit the waters, for at least that granted the idoneth a reprieve from the harrying vermin submersibles that had trailed them since the pickets. That was about the only mercy they’d been granted since it all began.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Oaths & Conquests Anthology in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Dave Gallagher.

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