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The Neverspike – Extract

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The Neverspike

Darius Hinks

I glare at the ember-shot tide, listening to the hiss of the waves and the tick of my cooling armour. Escaping death is always so much harder than finding it. Returning from the underworlds has been like another Reforging, another flaying of my soul. My mind is as fractured and distorted as my armour, but slowly my memory pieces itself back together. Every one of my retinue has fallen. My anger flares. They faltered. They failed. They paid the price.

‘We fight. We Kill.’ My voice cracks with rage. ‘We win.’

I am standing on a shoulder of the Slain Peak, three hundred feet above the Ardent Sea, drenched in blood and caked in soot. I look like one of the ruins that litter the foothills below. The Realmgate spat me into the shallows and my warhammers are still smouldering where the god-wrought metal punched through the heat of the Ardent.

I whisper the names of the fallen, in accusation rather than benediction, then turn inland, spilling ash from my blue-green armour. From this height I can see the length of the valley. At the far end is a stormkeep, silhouetted before the hammered-gold sky. Ipsala. Pride of the Zullan coast. Home to five glorious retinues of Celestial Vindicators, all of them veterans of the Realmgate Wars; the guardians of the Southern Wards. Two days’ march. Then I will stand before warriors worthy of the name Stormcast Eternal. My own, vengeful kin. They will understand why I have returned. They would never fail me as the Hammers of Sigmar have done.

As I clamber down the slope, tongues of steam rush up through the blackened rocks, hissing and sighing.

‘The Hammers of Sigmar did not fail you, Trachos. It was the other way around. You failed them.’

The accusation halts me in my tracks and my mind falls back to Shyish. My pulse drums as I recall pale, emaciated bodies, still smouldering in the ruins. Thin, broken limbs, grasping at smoke-filled air.

‘I failed no one. The Hammers lacked steel.’

‘You murdered those people.’

‘I was relentless. As I must be. Those wretched souls all worshipped the Betrayer God. They bore the sigils of Nagash. None of them deserved mercy. The Hammers of Sigmar were blinded by pity. The fault was theirs.’

‘What of their souls, Trachos? This is why you were made. You cannot simply abandon them.’

I limp down the slope, shaking my head, trying to rid myself of the wretched voice. I’d hoped to leave it in Nagash’s underworlds. There’s something unnatural about it. It’s not simply my mind questioning itself – it’s a distinct voice, ringing through my skull, accusing me.

‘If you hadn’t spent so long torching those huts, the Hammers of Sigmar would still be alive. You lost yourself in violence. You forgot what you were doing. The kill-fever took you.’

I clang my gauntleted fist against my helmet.

‘What do you think they’ll say when you reach the stormkeep? When you tell them how many men you’ve lost? What will you say when they ask you how it happened? How will you explain so many deaths? They will know, Trachos. They will know what’s happening to you. Why would they send you back to Azyr? Your work is unfinished. They will send you back into the darkness.’

I can’t go back. Not yet. Not until I can be sure of myself. I struggle to keep my voice level.

‘The Hammers of Sigmar are to blame for what happened. They should have burned the place down before I ever reached it. The gheists were already leaving their roosts. We had to go before–’

‘You’re afraid to go back. You’re a coward.’

‘Who are you?’ I cry. ‘Get out of my–’

A howl rips through the air, silencing me, echoing across steam-shrouded peaks.

I crouch, a hammer in each hand. It was the cry of a beast, a large one by the sound of it.

Something moves on the next outcrop, a monstrous shape, coiling through the clouds.

Someone bellows a war cry, deep and savage, almost as bestial as the howl that preceded it. There’s a flash of light and clang of metal hitting stone.

I look at Zyganium Keep. As soon as I reach it I can make my report and be gone. The voice in my head lies, but its presence troubles me. The gaps in my memory trouble me. I need to get home. I need to see the spires of Azyr and bathe in their holy light. I need to consult with the Lord-Celestant.

‘You’re afraid.’

‘Never,’ I mutter, but I know something is wrong. The voice is too clear. Too alien. Who is speaking to me?

There’s another deafening howl and an answering battle cry, followed by the sound of smashing rocks. I peer into the steam clouds. There’s something big fighting in there. The peaks are juddering like they’re in the grip of an avalanche. I look up at the jagged slopes. Perhaps there will be an avalanche.

‘Run home, Trachos. Hide. Before you lose what’s left of your mind.’

I curse and turn away from the valley and the stormkeep, striding across the rocks towards the opposite crag, my boots pounding through the heat haze as I drop down into a crevasse and haul myself up the opposite side, climbing towards the sound of the fighting. Perhaps some of the Hammers of Sigmar made it back and are trying to reach Zyganium Keep? If there was a survivor, what might he say? My memories of Shyish are a shroud of screams and blood. What exactly did I do down there? Could some of the Hammers of Sigmar have survived? I did not see them all die. Sigmar’s light fell from the clouds, slashing the gloom of Shyish, hauling some of their souls back to Azyr, but I could not count the blasts.

I look around. Slain Peak is a famously treacherous place. Skin-roasting geysers erupt constantly from brazier-pits, and landslides are common, but the wildlife is the real threat. If one of my men is here, I’m duty-bound to help him, whatever he might have seen in Shyish.

The sound of fighting grows more frantic as I crest the ridge and rush through the clouds, hammers glinting.

I break through the clouds and stagger to a halt in shock.

I’ve reached a broad, bowl-shaped hollow, a few hundred feet in circumference and ringed with tusks of rock. There are three figures at its centre and none of them are Stormcast Eternals. The first is inhumanly slender and pale, an aelf, dressed in black, clutching daggers and weaving back and forth, nimble and quick, looking for a chance to lunge. At her side is something peculiar. For a moment, I struggle to name him. He’s shorter than a man, but clad in so much scarred, chiselled muscle that he looks like a piece of the mountain. He’s a duardin, I decide, with the fiery mohawk and beard of a fyreslayer, but he’s big – much bigger than any fyreslayer I’ve seen before. He’s as broad as an ox and his biceps are like tree trunks. I would have placed him as a great king or lord if he didn’t look so deranged. He’s wearing a patch over one eye and there’s a single metal rune embedded in his chest, burning with the ferocity of a fallen star. The rune is the source of the light I saw through the clouds. Even without using one of my implements, I can tell that it’s unlike the runes worn by other fyreslayers. There’s so much aetheric power radiating from it that the devices hung from my belt are crackling and humming in response.

The duardin is naked apart from a loincloth and, as his slab-like fists tighten, rune-light floods his frame, shimmering across his muscles and igniting a brazier at the head of his battleaxe. His gaze is wild and unfocused and there’s sweat pouring down his filthy, tattooed limbs. There’s such a thick animal stink coming from him that I can smell it a dozen feet away. He lets out another war cry and pounds across the rocks towards his foe.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Black Library Events Anthology 2018/19 in Great Britain in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Tomas Duchek.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-752-1

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