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Galene of Ulgu – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Galene of Ulgu

by Timandra Whitecastle

I was born in the Realm of Shadows, and for a long time, I thought I’d die there.

It is, of course, so incredibly easy to die in Ulgu. Death and terror are everywhere, not only close to the Shyish Realmgates, but in the shadows, the mists and the shifting, twisting darkness that spawns all the monsters and daemons that are found in a young one’s nightmares.

As a child I was lost to the shadows, lost to a fear of dying. But then I was found – taken in by the Daughters of Khaine. In his temples I found a straight path, a solid bedrock of faith. Along with my war coven, the Draichi Ganeth, I was sent beyond Ulgu and came to live and fight in Ghyran.

Our shrine was small, a foothold only, a shadow of our great Blood Temple. Yet our blades and our battle prowess would bring great glory to Khaine in this so-called Realm of Life – the dismal, mist-covered stretch of swampland just outside the city the humans called Greywater Fastness. Sometimes, when the mists curled around the shattered trees, it almost felt like home.

By the will of Khaine, I would bathe in the blood of my enemies: the hosts of Slaanesh, skaven and maggotkin. And for a long time – longer indeed than the lifespan of our human allies – I did.

The blood must flow. The legions of Nagash had risen and were marching on the Fastness, slaughtering whomever they found in the nearby villages and farmsteads and thus growing their ranks. While the Dispossessed duardin held the walls, our shrine had sent out two proud war covens of witch-aelves to make a stand alongside the Greycaps and other Freeguild men. A shadow of the Grand Alliance that would allow the otherwise doomed villagers to run for the safety of the city.

I shuddered when we first strode through this damp, forsaken place – a nameless human village full of ramshackle cottages broken down by moulds and wet with rot. I thirsted for the smoky hagbrew of our shrine’s hag queen to obliterate the residue every breath of the stale air seemed to leave in my lungs, at the back of my throat and on my palate.

I hate fighting against the dead. I hate it nearly as much as I hated the stinking bog we found ourselves in. Skeletons and bloated bog corpses do not bleed out their lives no matter how you cut and slash, no matter how thirsty your blades are. The dead are dry husks, already unmade and unable to bleed, yet still they walk the realms. They are an abomination. Nagash is an abomination. One cannot slay his minions, cannot execute them for the glory of Khaine. One can only unmake them anew.

I roared at the clatter of bones coming towards me. I rent through bone and marrow, slashing across where the thing’s throat once was. Its skull fell to my feet, teeth chattering. I stomped it to dust to silence it. Another wave came at us, and then another. Relentless. Unfeeling. Though my sciansá rose and fell with wicked precision, my forearms weren’t wet with red, nor were the weapons slick in my hands. It did not matter how furiously I fought, how frenzied my faithful slaughter was – we were soon overrun by the endless horde of undead that surrounded the hag queen’s Cauldron.

It was unnatural. The blood must flow.

My blood flowed. It ran in crimson rivulets from a dozen or so wounds.

Pain lets you know you’re alive.

Rissa, my coven sister, screeched a curse beside me, her blades raised high. But by the unholy power of Nagash, another of our sisters rose to fight against us. She tore out Rissa’s throat, her scream breaking into a gargle, blood spraying out of the ragged wound. She stood a moment longer, eyes wide open and staring into the distance as though holding a vigil, watching for Khaine to march across the battleground and sweep her up alongside him. Then she fell, her body crumpled beneath the onslaught of the dead. By the time she hit the ground, she was gone.

‘Fall back!’ a man’s voice shouted. ‘There are too many. Fall back!’

I staggered back over Rissa’s prostrate form, dealing a flurry of blows against bones and joints, against skulls and rusty swords, against skeletons and mindless deadwalkers.

One of the dead came at me – a man, his body still fresh and warm enough for me to get excited about the kill. His lips were tinged with purple as though bruised, and I could see his veins like lines of black ink beneath his skin. A grey cap hung off his head and he wore a Freeguild coat, tattered and stained with his blood. I swung at his throat, my blade cutting deep through soft tissue and cartilage, cracking across his vertebrae. His head toppled to his shoulder, still attached by a ribbon of flesh. I elbowed him in the chest and his lolling head bounced on the ground. Only then did he fall.

I hissed at him. A necromancer’s piece of work.

The other problem with fighting the dead – apart from being an affront to Khaine – is that necromancers have a tendency to raise those fallen to join their ranks against you.

It was inevitable. We had known this bitter truth as we made our stand, and I felt the futility of continuing this fight. But our hag queen had not yet signalled a retreat, and so I fought on.

Rissa’s corpse rose, her ripped jugular still dripping red. She lifted her blades against mine, her movements stiff and puppet-like.

I spun and caught her attack with my blades, deflecting her blow. I took her arm. She didn’t even flinch, not even when I gutted her. I wailed as I fought her undead body. Rissa and I had fought each other ritually many times. I knew her grace and strength, her supple feints and savage blows, but all that skill was now lost. Howling with fury, I crossed my blades and chopped off her head in one sweep.

The blood must flow.

I gasped for breath and scanned the battleground. I was one of the last of my sisters still standing, still fighting.

The Cauldron shook. The hag queen’s spell felt like a high-pitched note reverberating in my head. I screamed my defiance. I would not be cowed. I would not flee like those humans, those menfolk with their sulphurous gun smoke, who had run at the horror of their end. I tried to blink away the blood – my blood – running into my eye. I wanted to look fearlessly at Death.

But instead of Death, I saw Carthum Malicius – the necromancer. Once he had been an Amethyst wizard, but he had been seduced by the hollow promises of Nagash. Tried and exiled by the Collegiate Arcane, he had now returned as a servant of the Lord of Death with a horde of corpses at his beck and call. A tall, hooded figure, Malicius strode towards the thick of the fighting, his crimson cloak billowing about his heels. His eyes were sunken deep in his maggot-white flesh. They gleamed scarlet as he flicked his staff in my direction, his receding lips chanting a spell.

Rissa rose once more, headless. Alongside her stood Suji, Elara, Vee and Jekorra. Each of them my sisters. Each of them dead. Abominations.

Blades at my side, I backed up against the Cauldron. I would take them down. They would end by my hand – their sister’s hand – and perhaps Khaine would reap their souls.

Everything moved quickly: feints, parries, clashes. The hag queen died, her song screeching to a halt in my head, making me wince. I staggered, clutching at the thing that had once been Elara to keep myself upright.

With the death of the hag queen, the Cauldron toppled, its contents pouring over my feet. It cracked apart as it hit the ground and I averted my eyes from the sight. It felt like blasphemy to look upon its broken remains.

I tried to scream, but my voice broke into a hoarse whisper.

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A Black Library Publication

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

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Phil Moss.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-303-1

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