This is the second story in the Ravendark Saga – click here for the first one.
Even after my return from madness to what passes for reality, I still feel my journey across the Wastes was the worst part. Alone, wounded, not entirely sane, I was taken from my followers – assuming that any of them but Nethrak were my followers – and carried deep into the Realm of Chaos itself.
On angel’s wings, through the endless tormented storm of Chaos, with the panoramic polar Realm spread out below me. The night becomes a blur of speed, wings beating about me, and I feel my eyes shut with exhaustion and pain. For the first time in what feels like days, I sleep.
And when I do, the nightmare returns.
The lodge was burning down around me – I was the only living thing there, every other being, man, woman, child, even animal was dead, my entire body slick with their blood and mine. I prowled about the wreckage, crouched low, what little human left in me watching in horror from the back of my mind. The sun drifts into view over the road to the lake, and silhouetted against the rising sun I saw a beautiful winged figure standing on the hill, her back turned to the sun and the dawn light in her hair. With one beat of those wings she was aloft and soaring across the cold morning sky, oblivious to the world below, wheeling and turning in a cascade of gold. With every passing minute I felt my mind and my emotions returning, and when she finally swooped down to join me in the ruins my thoughts were flowing smoothly, though I would never be truly sane again.
“Now the last trace of your old self is destroyed. Come with me, north to the Realm of the Gods.” A glowing red portal, easily twice my size, yawned open before me, and I followed Rai’elle through into the fire.
A terrifying blur of changes, that in life took years to experience, pass over me in seconds. My face changes from human to mortal god, champion of Khaine, pale, drawn and darkly handsome, eternally young in death, the eyes that hold the fierce glow of murder. It has become a match for the inhuman body I have occupied since one dark night in the Blackheart guildhouse. At last my mind and body are one again, unified in my love for Chaos and the angel who found my faith.
Then a part of the dream I barely recall, but now seems embellished if not detailed. Things are so much more real in dreams, aren’t they? I dream on, remembering my return to Kislev and the mortal world.
Some of the Blackhearts did survive; the furthest gone in treachery fought their way to the Realm of Chaos, trying to become closer to Khaine. Over ten years Rai’elle and I tracked them down and make them more worthy followers for Khaine’s newest champion. They became shadows of the soon-to-be-great Ravendark, himself only a lowly aspirant among Champions – and they are just the first.
Word trickled in with them that the imprisoned Blackhearts were sent to a mine in the Troll Country, and my entourage of freshly dedicated Chaos warriors set out. Time had not passed for us within the Blessed Realm, and only a year had gone by since the Blackhearts were wiped out in the wake of my passing.
We came upon the mine workings in the dead of night and scourged the place clean of Kislevite defenders. The few lazy, ill-trained guards were used to broken, weak prisoners, not daemons clad in Khaine’s armour and wielding Khaine’s weapons. The fat man who led the militia quailed as I stood over him, my hands slick with blood, and drew his sword, waving it vaguely at the armoured fiend I have become.
“Go back to the Wastes, daemon, and trouble me no more!” he squeaked, pulling himself together as I stalked smiling towards him.
“I am no daemon. I am, or was, human. Now I have become so much more than that.”
“You bear the mark of the Lord of Murder,” he said flatly. “Such things are said to be the work of daemons.”
“Do you know of what you speak when you say ‘Lord of Murder’? I think not. You cannot hope to understand Khaine.”
“I do not need to. You are evil, and I will,” he swallowed, “I will face you man to beast.”
“I relish the challenge!” I snarled at him, my hands rising to throat height – and then something happened that I had never imagined in my wildest dreams. Tendrils of black smoke shot from my fingers and wrapped around the man’s neck, squeezing it tight. I watched in wonder as the hands of night forced the blood from his head and snapped his spine in two, and then dissolved into the night air.
“Well done,” said a voice behind me. I looked on the pale smiling face of Rai’elle. “You’ve taken your first steps into a greater world.”
“How… what…”
“One of the differences between our beloved Lord of Murder and the brute Khorne is that Khaine will use any means to kill. Even magic. Your gifts are powerful, but you must repay our Lord. Every warrior slain unlocks a greater blessing, pays off the debt a little more.”
“I have to know. Am I a daemon? Have I changed so much?”
“To me? No. To a mortal, perhaps yes.” She sighed and smiled cheerlessly. “Their eyes see evil in everything. To them, experience, sensation, the roar of the gods in your ears; it is all forbidden. Those who venture out of their hopelessly bucolic little lives are branded heretic, outcast. Those like you.”
My eyes flick open, the blur slowing, turning to a harsh coastal landscape; on the right bloodstained cliffs set against the roaring shadow of the Great Ocean that forever lashes at their roots. To my left, the howling abyss of the Wastes of Chaos, dark crimson clouds spat forth from the hulking void of the Gate, far to the north. Swiftly she rises above the clouds, and once again I see a beauty in Chaos that I could never have considered as the mortal Raven, the Raven I thought I had finally slain.
The stars are clear, picked out on the midnight sky, tiny twinkling lights picking out the deep red sea below us. Rai’elle’s eyes are wide, unreadable, her feelings long since passed out of the human range. We head down, back through the clouds, down towards a towering enclave of black mountains. My fevered mind, only just recovered from the shock of abandoning Chaos, is lost in confusion. The only constant, dancing through the howls and screams of my thoughts, is love. I don’t care what she is; I don’t care what I am… Rai’elle is my last link to my self. I can’t leave her. I won’t leave her.
That’s not to say she won’t leave me. Gently, without the slightest feeling of impact, she lands, and glides across the snow without leaving footprints, laying me in the shadow of the largest available dune.
“Don’t leave…” I manage to whisper through the stunning cold of this place.
“Do not think you can command me, Ravendark. I am Khaine’s bride, not yours.”
“Where?” One word is all I can manage, but she seems to understand.
“You are in the New World, twenty leagues north of the border with Naggaroth. That is all I will say, for now.”
“Why?”
“That is for you to decide. I cannot control your destiny.” In a blur of pale flesh, she is gone, leaving me here in the shadow of Chaos and with something worse to the south. My hunger for life flutters and dies inside me, and closing my eyes once more I lie back in the snow and laugh, waiting for death to claim me. But it does not. Khaine has not finished mocking me, it seems, and instead of dying I fall back into sleep, the last place I want to be.
For the most part the Blackhearts were like the old Raven Grishenkov; disillusioned young men with a lust for war and a fear of death, fighters without a war to fire their hearts into the state a true warrior desires. The worst of them had become my champions, the leaders of their less dedicated brethren. You see, most of them, nearly all, were mercenaries. Their faith was there not because they believed in Khaine but because they wanted someone to call on, someone who would bless them with survival, loot, a strong sword arm, whatever they wanted. They would take and take but never give; they were called to but not chosen by Khaine. Some, though, were better. Some believed. Some of them wanted only to serve, to belong again, in the brotherhood of Khaine, where all murderers find their way in the end. But the bride of Khaine chose only one of them. And, may I be forgiven, she chose me.
That was when Ravendark was born, mortal no longer, blessed by the gods and eager to serve, to claim souls for his master. At the head of my army of rescued prisoners I led a dozen small campaigns against the realms of men and dwarfs. And yet the notoriety I craved forever eluded me, and I sensed my angelic companion becoming more and more distant, her gaze cast longingly to the north. She was disappointed with me, I could tell.
But before she could leave, I finally proved myself to her, and to Khaine.
The Great War Against Chaos, as mortal men know it, is just the Great War to us within the Realm. After a century of wasted time, I decided to join the great conquest, the crusade that would scourge the world.
And I was there, at the Siege of Erengrad, the battle that time forgot. In the shadow of the defeat at Kislev nobody seems to remember the fall of the port-city that spawned Ravendark, but it fell, and I was there. It was a Blackheart ram that broke the Inner Gate and it was a Blackheart torch that razed the Grand Palace to the ground. Khaine smiled on me as I broke the body of the Grand Duke of Erengrad and hurled his shredded remnants to the ground, and as the city burned I knew that I was ready to take my place at the Lord of Murder’s side.
Rai’elle still left, but she came back at odd moments for the next hundred years, guiding my path. One of the Blackhearts, a former unit commander, rose higher and higher in my estimations, until eventually we agreed that he would become my standard bearer. His name I forget; such transitory things, humans, it seems inappropriate to name them somehow. Better that true names be reserved for those like me. You are weak, frail, passing away with the blink of an eye. I am strong, immortal, and yet you despise me. Perhaps I hate myself too, but I am not strong enough to let myself perish just yet. The problem is that I could fume about the things Chaos makes you do forever, but that’s the point. Forever. It brings so much. It lifted me out of mortal life and into a new and altogether darker, more breathtaking world. It empowered me to break my links with the mortal species. It made me the god I once thought myself to be.
He wanted to be me. Nethrak. He devoted himself to Khaine one dark night just after the Siege; I found him half-buried in the ashes of the ruined city, his armour daubed with runes in blood. My mouth uttered banalities about the truth of existence and how right he was to follow in my footsteps, but my heart was mad with jealousy. I feel so foolish now, looking back, but at the time I genuinely thought Rai’elle would choose him to take my place. I almost killed him. Almost. But she stayed my hand at the last moment, and left him wounded in the care of most of our army, encamped in the ruined palace, while we headed north again, in search of a sorcerer who would heal Khaine’s newest devotee.
We searched the Realm for many long months, until we came across the Mound of Pandemonium, topped by its single organic-looking Tower. Rai’elle showed me the face of the master of the rocky fortress, the sorcerer Bhale, the horned servant of death, and the effete creature that besieged him here, a champion of Slaanesh going by the name Karrien. She taught me the words of the Clashing of Horns, and I stood before the fop that night, emerging from the shadows to face him down as he stood posing at the head of his army. I felt such disappointment that my first Clashing should be against this wretched being, no true warrior. But I would best him. Khaine would enjoy tearing his tortured soul from that puny body.
“Break the siege. The Tower is mine.”
“Who are you to challenge me?” he hissed through his oh-so-perfect lips, tossing a mane of fair hair back over his half-armoured shoulders. Bands of studded leather crossing a pallid chest branded and tattooed with a mess of runes and random scrawls. Thigh-length boots and spiked greaves. Such a weak, dissolute creature, long gone in hedonistic worship, ignorant of the truth that was war. And yet when I looked into his contemptuous eyes I saw a gaze so very like my own looking back at me, a gaze that said, ‘I have done all this for love and would do it all again.’
“Ravendark of Khaine.”
“Karrien of Slaanesh. Ha!” A thrilling sound indeed, the laugh of the Slaaneshi, that reaches inside you and pulls your deepest desires into their mind for review and scorn. Not mine. I have no desires left to grant, none that Slaanesh would be interested in. Rai’elle appeased that part of my nature long ago. “A follower of a mere avatar against me? You don’t stand a chance.”
“Strange. I was going to say the same thing.” Tradition dictates that the challenged party has the first strike, and Karrien lunged for me with a ridiculously phallic sword. Disgusting. No Champion of Chaos worthy of the name would dream of using a weapon like that. I caught the sword in one hand, and attacked with the other, carving across his face. One ecstatic escape of breath is all I received for my efforts.
“You think you can break me with pain? You fool.” Tugging his sword back, he sliced my hand open and lashed out clumsily, my iron hard skin absorbing both the blow and the flood of power that accompanied it without me feeling a thing. I felt something burning behind my eyes, and two waving lines of shadow emerged and coiled about him, more tendrils bursting from my fingers, flexing him about. To a scream of passion, his limbs broke off in torrents of blood, and it was a simple task for me to tear his head from his body and hurl it into the Slaanesh worshippers.
“Begone, you pathetic pleasure-seekers.” Rai’elle spread her arms towards them and waved them back. Slowly, haltingly, they cleared a path for us to enter the Tower.
Bhale met us at the foot of the Mound, a hunched robed shadow, with the lines of Chaos armour visible under his deep burgundy cloak. He clutched a long, smooth black staff in one hand and a falchion in the other. His brass helmet with its nine horns took both of us in, the eye sockets glowing coldly, and he seemed to reach a decision. A deep and sonorous voice spoke from the skull-mask of the helm.
“You have delivered me from death or worse at the hands of the Prince of Chaos. What service do you require in return?” Rai’elle stood before him, her hands open and weaponless.
“A sorcerer to join with our warband. Turn the Tower over to us; it will serve us well as a base of operations.”
“You ask much, bride of Khaine, but my honour forbids any other answer. My beastman servants I place at your service also, but know that I am not beholden to your god. I do not fight for you, and I do not fight for your devotee there. He will command me in battle, but none may command me at rest.”
“I understand. To one such as you, liberty is everything.”
“We have a wounded champion,” I interrupted. “My standard bearer needs healing, and soon.”
“Bring him to my… your Tower, and I shall see what can be done.”
* * *
Nethrak was healed, and despite my actions he continued to serve me loyally throughout the years of war and bloodshed. But still it was not enough for me simply to fight other Champions, or at best paltry adventurers who roamed into the Wastes in search of gold and never came back. I wanted a challenge in my eternal existence, something worthy of my skills. I wanted it even more so after Torahn joined us.
The brutish Khornate and his marauder warriors were the only tribe sensible enough to join the Blackhearts after word of our victory at Erengrad spread. The half-ogre was and is the greatest warrior I have had the privilege of facing, but his strength is blinded by his rage.
Finally Bhale found me a challenge. He claimed to have a spell that could open a portal in the heart of the Empire; a gateway that could lead me to the victory I so desired. The only thing I needed was to find the physical gate and the warp gem that would open it and send me to the realms of mortal men.
In shock my eyes open again, and blink against the thick white snow that has settled on me. Cold but somehow comforting, cooling, it returns to me the faculties that fled under the onslaught of my madness. Now my tangled mind has untwined the loves and hates that pounded through it the night before. I despise Khaine with all my heart, the Chaos that has ruled my life for so long is still repugnant to me, but the overlying feeling, the only thing that gives me strength enough to claw my way to the surface, is my love for Rai’elle. Beauty from Chaos. A flawed beauty, perhaps, a pitiless lover for this misguided being, but she can do no wrong for me. Whatever she has brought me to Naggaroth for doesn’t matter; I know she will not let me fall.
I have no idea how long I wander the Wastes for, but something draws me south, ever towards Naggaroth. In my mind I think over what I know of the cruel dark elves and their darker still gods. Their souls are forever torn between those vile beings Khaine and Slaanesh, murder and passion fight for the support of the druchii, and in most find a vile union. They kill and torture not because of faith but because they actually enjoy it. They are a truly evil people; but then, what am I if not half as bad? My crimes of love are no worse than their deeds, my history is longer and more despicable than all but the very fewest of them.
After perhaps days, perhaps weeks of this mindless wandering, the patrol finds me. Five pale figures on five black steeds, wielding five long silver spears and five light repeating crossbows. I kneel before them, gazing into harsh dark eyes, and see only hate in their stares.
“What is this thing? Some beast from the Wastes perhaps, to be slain at once? Does it speak?” The leader of the dark riders shifts in his saddle and half-smiles in smug superiority, though I can tell he doesn’t know what to think of me.
“I am no beast. I am, or was, human.”
“Then you are a beast! Khaine’s teeth I love these creatures, they’re so wonderfully crude.”
“I once followed your god, dark elf. I know what Khaine does to minds like yours and mine. I was like you, but I had earned my right to arrogance. I once commanded an army that could have razed you from existence in seconds.”
“Then what brings you to the freezing borders of our land?” He’s confused. Him and me both.
“I wish I knew.”
“Tie this brute and let it run behind our mounts. The sorceress will decide what to make of him.” Two of them dismount and move my unresisting hands together, tie them with black, smooth ropes and lash them to the saddle of the leader’s horse. He turns and stares contemptuously down at me; but I sense the fear in his mind. He’s afraid because he’s used to human slaves who don’t talk back or threaten him, and I’ve done both.
When the late sun fades over the Black Spine Mountains, they ride into their shady tower with the unwilling Ravendark in tow, swords sheathed, and lead me into a dark cell where I gratefully lay my head down to sleep, and fall into dreamless, blissful silence. I am close to what I seek… I must be.
Unfortunately, my first peaceful night in weeks is shattered by sharp jabs of pain. Opening my eyes, I see the room rolling over and over; no, it’s me. A booted foot hits me hard somewhere on my belly, I can’t tell exactly where, and I roll over, only to receive another blow, this time to the chest. There are four or five dark elves gathered around me, laughing, four or five blurs of midnight blue – now three or four. The one who kicked me first has been grabbed from behind, and I hear a muffled death-gasp, then a harsh, whiny but unmistakeably female voice.
“Do you fools never listen to a word I say? This one is not to be beaten. No, I don’t care what you do to the others!” Another dark elf cringes as a long dark whip cracks into his hand, and I see the pallid thing flop uselessly from his wrist. Clean break. Very professional. “Get out, all of you.” Broken-wrist backs off, tears in his eyes, the other three scurry away, one of them picking up the body of their friend. “Two guards on the door – and the remaining one can dispose of that idiot’s body.” The voice becomes low and quiet, tinged with despair. “Can they never wait for blood… now let me see, what do we have here?”
A pale face framed by waves of brown hair descends and glares at me with soulful eyes. The face is attached to… to a typically small and slender elf-woman, clad in not much more than black basque and thigh-length riding boots and midnight blue cloak, and leaning on a gnarled staff, which she proceeds to prod my throat with.
“Can you hear me? No, what am I saying? You probably can’t even understand me.”
Amidst a fit of coughing, I manage to correct her. I can understand Druchii, but there’s a knack to speaking it that I’ve never bothered to attain.
“You speak Druchii? Always so surprising, you humans are. If indeed you are human, and not some devilspawn from the Realm? Which?”
“Was human, now devilspawn.” A pale, thin hand runs over the plates on my chest; oh, if I was mortal I would enjoy the experience, but I’m not and I don’t, and I pull the hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
“You know,” the sorceress – because I’m sure that’s what she is – says, backing away and sitting, clutching her knees as I half-rise onto my elbows, “this is the first time I’ve had a champion of Chaos at my mercy in fifteen years on the garrison.”
“Thought your kind hate watchtowers.” My vision blurs, and I sink back to the floor again. Seeing my weakness, she scampers forward again, kneeling across me, her face inches from my own. She licks her lips, and the reply comes as a whisper, cool breath on my face, a cold smile breaking those dark lips. Like all her kind, she loves tormenting the weak like this – but she wouldn’t love me if I were stronger, she’d hate me more, break me with pain, reduce me to a plaything. Chaos has saved her the trouble.
“I enjoy the solitude – and the duty has its bonuses; like you, for instance, once I decide on your fate. You’re far too interesting to be a slave or a sacrifice… I think I shall pay a little visit to Ghrond and see what the Hierarch thinks of you.”
* * *
I’ve ridden horses many a time, but I’ve never seen one with wings; until the sorceress leads me into the extensive stables of the watchtower and motions to a dark Pegasus standing coolly in one of the stalls, eyes wide and hungry for flight; the same expression Rai’elle had in my dream of days long gone by, I recall. The hunger for flight and freedom. The sorceress leaps up onto the winged horse’s back, and I clamber on behind her, my hands still tied.
“Don’t get any ideas.” She laughs musically at her jest, and her legs jerk as she goads the Pegasus into movement. It trots forward, whinnying, heads for the gates, breaks into a canter, wings beating slowly, and just as we are about to hit the gates it is airborne, head thrown back. The sorceress laughs again, and guides it south with a sharp, spasmodic pressure from her spurs.
Ghrond turns out to be a citadel rather than a city, a single great spiralling tower set atop a lonely mountain between the ice and the forest. Weakened though my magical skills are, even I can see the mists of dark magic, undivided magic, daemon magic, that flow around the purple spire.
We close on the city, the Pegasus slowing as lesser towers sprouting out of the mountainside begin to slow us down. The city looks like a single vast palace that has grown down over the sides of its mountain, growths of crystal and stone and metal jutting out from its ancient flanks, and we circle between those, heading for one of the largest in the shadow of the original, obviously uninhabited spire. The sorceress must have seen me staring up at it, as she half-turns to address me.
“The Tower of Command – it used to be a palace, before the Sundering, before the Ark of Ghrond was beached, but now it serves as a beacon to the Witch King’s watchtowers. They all report in to a cadre of trusted mages who live near the gates – but that’s not where we’re going.”
“Where we going, then?” I call back, the need to shout gradually seeping away as we near ground level.
“The Hierarch’s chambers in the next tower down.”
The Pegasus lands and is firmly led away by a pair of dark elves armed with whips and spears, while my escort strides confidently off towards an elegant structure of black stone; a gatehouse, curved walls without mortar, held up by silver scaffolds, sweeping around to meet the flank of the great spire, while in the vague centre of the complex there stands a small keep, two storeys high and forged from the same metallic stone as the walls. The guards on the gate nod without respect as we pass between them, and I gasp as I behold what lies within the walls.
A garden, of sorts, but one created by a perversely dark mind, one that impresses its own shadows on its surroundings – one a lot like Bhale’s, in fact. Sinister flowers, all deep red and purple, so dark they’re almost black, frame a murky grey pond, while ivy tangles up the walls and around the cages that dangle from them like hanging baskets, each containing a pale emaciated figure that scrapes pathetically at its bars.
“What are they?”
“Slaves,” replies my escort with a wry smile. “Slaves who have displeased, or failed students – who knows? It all depends on my master’s mood.”
“Man of spellcraft?”
“Don’t be so surprised. King Malekith may be paranoid, but he’s not that paranoid – almost all his city lords are male, and most of them are magically skilled. The Hierarch of Ghrond isn’t the best of them, but he’s close.”
“You druchii confuse me, sorceress.”
“They confuse me, and I am one.” An old voice, an unmistakeably male one, deep, wise and heartlessly cold. An elf wrapped tightly up in black robe and cloak, scarf and fur-lined headdress bearing a druchii insignia, which I guess means ‘Hierarch’. What I can see of his hair is white, like his skin, and his eyes are pale purple. An elderly albino rules this city of knives. “Wait for us here, Iscia – you cannot fly home tonight.”
“Why?” My sorceress pouts charmingly at him, but receives a cruelly barbed response.
“You spend too much time in the garrisons, ingrate! Tonight is Death Night – you shall remain here with me and give thanks to Khaine for our protection.” I can’t resist it – I mutter something along the lines of ‘bugger Khaine’ under my breath, but the old Hierarch still hears and looks up sharply. “And you should show more gratitude to your god, champion of murder. Don’t look so surprised – I can see auras, my boy, and humans are easy to read even if they have come straight from the Sea of Souls and have daemon-spoor all over them. Yours reeks with the curse of Khaine, who personally I have little faith in.” He turns back to the clownishly sad Iscia. “The guards will prepare you a chamber in the tower – go on! I would speak with this prisoner of yours!”
“So you did receive my message?” she asks.
“My eyes may be failing, but my powers are as great as ever, greater far than your gifts, Iscia. Now, leave me be.”
* * *
I am alone with this old man, who alone among his kind seems fairly well disposed towards me, if cold – but I expect nothing less, and return his chilliness in turn.
“You share our god, human. Why? Reply in your own language – I more than understand it, I merely choose not to pollute the air by speaking it.”
“I lost my soul to Khaine three centuries ago, Hierarch – and I am here because I want it back.”
“Hah! You jest, surely! You would dare to turn against the Lord of Murder? You have more spirit in you than I thought, err…” his head turns to one side, and I hear a whispering in the air, a whisper that causes the prisoners to wail and scrape at their cages harder and faster still, which fades away as he begins to speak again, “… Ravendark? Strange name, but appropriate given your history.”
“What good am I doing here?”
“You exist only to distract me from my purpose, human – a necessary distraction, for obsession is the road to failure. Seek and you shall find – but seek too hard and you risk losing sight of the question.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That is all I have to say to you. Go out into the city now – your destiny lies there, not with this bitter old ruin of a man. I shall deal with Iscia myself.”
I turn and begin to walk away towards the gates, but turn as I reach them and face the albino elf, thinking of something.
“Why are you letting me go?”
“Khaela Mensha Khaine wants you for his own. Whether you like it or not, he will have your soul again.”
* * *
I wander the streets for hours, lost and alone and quite utterly confused. They are empty of life, the only sight or sound a dim red glow from somewhere further down the labyrinthine streets and the sound of drums beating a mess of sound, without a pattern, without any kind of organisation. And the sound of female voices screaming.
They are all around me, in a press of bodies, pale limbs flashing and cavorting in the cold night air, daggers and curved swords scything at their own flesh and that of their fellows. Witch Elves. Brides of Khaine. I know them for what they are; only the Lord of Murder can do this to a soul, instil this kind of madness.
Windows break, shutters and doors are torn away and households butchered in an orgy of killing. Soon those pale, attractive bodies are slick with druchii blood, and still they go on, tireless killing machines, cutting down their kin in rage.
I run and hide down a back alley, watching the cavorting witches go by, white skin and red blood and greenish tainted steel in horrible blurs of movement. I see a house that they have breached and close in on three of them, dancing around a cringing bundle of black rags – a living bundle, a child of parents who lie face-down, immobilised by some vile toxin I have no doubt. A boy of about eight, curled up and frozen with terror amidst the circle of all but naked fiends.
I will not let Khaine take one more innocent soul while I live. Let him have me if he must, but not the child. Not this one.
A clawed hand lifts one of the witches off her feet and hurls her through the smashed door, wood scraping long gashes in the white-ash skin, two swords jamming into the frame as she falls. The other two turn on me and laugh, their words thick with passion, impossible to understand. The lead witch stalks towards me; my eyes are drawn not to her stunning, muscular figure or savage face but to the twin sabres in her hands. Almost dreamily she lashes out at me with one of those swords, but my thick dull silver skin turns it aside and my talons rip at her breasts and belly, gouging muscle and flesh into bloody rags. The third stares on, enraptured, not moving to help her sister, and only attacks as I rise from the corpse and turn on her. This one actually hurts me, her kris knife plunging a little way into my collarbone even as my teeth rip out her pretty throat; a kiss of death from champion to bride of Khaine.
The witch blurs before my eyes, becomes taller, even more spectacularly beautiful than she was before, scanty armour spreading in a shower of gold, hair turning silky and dark, eyes that gaze upon me with something like respect. Rai’elle. Who else?
“Expecting someone else, sister?” I spit at her feet.
“Why him? Why save a child’s life?”
“My destiny belongs to Khaine; like you, I can no longer escape. But he has a life to live, away from their temple.”
“They would have made him an assassin, the finest warrior of their race. You have stolen that destiny from him.” How can she do this to me? How can she be so cold after all I have done for her?
“And what would you have done with him? No doubt this fine young warrior would have replaced the broken failure that was Ravendark. And while I languish in spawndom or slavery you would take him as your new consort! No chance. You chose me and now you’ll just have to live with me.”
Her head bows, though whether in sadness or fear I cannot tell; and then she looks up with ecstasy in her eyes, her wings spread wide, from horizon to horizon, completely enclosing me and my world.
“You want me? You have most certainly earned me, Ravendark of Khaine. Let his destiny pass with him, and forget.” I hear a muffled scream from somewhere outside the white prison – but I no longer care about that child. I’m far too busy staring into those lovely, soul-destroying eyes, drowning in her stare.
“On angel’s wings we fly, my dear. On angel’s wings we fly.”
The third story in the Ravendark Saga is ‘Ravendark’s Rebirth’ – click here.