The Neverspike

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.

When I see what he’s about to attack, I can’t help but laugh. It’s a drake. One of the stone-clad behemoths that thrive in the brutal heat of the Slain Peak. It’s as tall as a watchtower and its spreading wings block out the sky, throwing us all into shadow.

The duardin must be insane. Even I would baulk at tackling such a colossus.

The drake opens its long, sabre-crowded jaws and spews a landslide, hurling rock and scree across the hollow.

I shake my head and turn to leave. The duardin is doomed. There’s nothing I could do to help even if I wished it.

The duardin keeps roaring as the rocks smash into him.

I hesitate, looking back.

Dust and flying debris fill the hollow and, for a moment, I’m blinded. When the clouds fade, I laugh again.

The duardin is still standing. There are mounds of rock and gravel heaped around him and he’s shrouded in dust but the drake has failed to injure him.

I shake my head. That blast could have levelled a fortress.

The aelf is hunched next to him and she seems unharmed too, protected by his bulk.

The drake hesitates, confused, as the duardin shrugs off the rubble and rushes forwards, rune-light sparking in his beard and pulsing through his veins.

The drake recovers from its surprise and screams. Then it rears on its haunches and spews more rock.

Again, the hollow fills with noise and dust. Again, when it clears, the duardin is unharmed, chin raised defiantly, infernal light burning in his eye.

The drake leaps forwards, landing with such force that the rocks beneath my feet slide away and I stumble down into the hollow.

It swings a tail the size of an oak, bringing it down towards the duardin’s head.

There’s a seismic boom as the duardin smashes the tail away, parrying it as easily as a sword-strike.

The drake stumbles, claws scrambling on the rocks, vast wings kicking up dust clouds.

As the drake struggles to right itself, the duardin runs across the hollow, bounds off a rock and leaps through the air, axe gripped in both fists and raised over his head.

The drake spews more rock, but the duardin is too fast, slamming his axe into its chest like he’s attacking a cliff face.

The drake is about to launch itself into the air when the aelf sprints through the dust clouds and plunges her daggers into its leg. The blades are clearly no ordinary weapons. They cut through the drake’s stone hide and the aelf has to dive away as black, steaming blood hisses from the wound.

As the aelf rolls clear, the duardin climbs higher, slamming his axe into the drake’s jaw, knocking its head back.

I race for cover as the creature staggers towards me, ripping rock from the walls and thrashing its wings.

The aelf flips onto her feet and plants her blades in the drake’s other leg and, as the monster falls, the duardin slams his axe into its skull.

There’s another resounding boom as the drake hits the rubble-strewn ground.

When the dust clears, I find myself face to face with the duardin.

He’s standing on the stone carcass, glaring at me with his single, infernal eye, axe raised and beard sparking, his whole body trembling with violence.

‘Maybe we should gut this one too?’ His voice is a low snarl. He glances from me back to the aelf.

I raise my warhammers and face him side-on.

‘Wait!’ cries the aelf, rushing forwards and grabbing the duardin’s arm. ‘He’s one of us.’

The duardin grips his axe tighter. ‘One of you, maybe.’

‘He serves Sigmar.’ She steps in front of him.

The duardin looks unimpressed, but allows her to speak.

‘I’m Maleneth,’ she says, still gripping her daggers as she approaches me. ‘I belong to the Order of Sigmar.’

She’s a Khainite. I’ve dealt with the Murder Cults before. Her blades are most likely edged with poison. I keep my hammers raised.

I nod to the duardin. ‘And this?’

She gives me a strange look. I can’t tell if it’s a warning or a plea. Despite fighting beside him, she does not look comfortable in his presence. ‘Gotrek.’

This close, he cuts an even stranger figure. The light is fading from the rune in his chest, but it’s still fierce enough to give his face a hellish aspect. I notice that one side of his head is oddly weathered, as though scorched by acid. His only concession to armour is a metal pauldron on his left shoulder, but that’s clearly borrowed, its design too crude to be of duardin manufacture.

‘Show your face, manling,’ he growls, narrowing his eye. His beard bristles as he barges past the aelf and squares up to me. He slams into my armour and I stagger. His head barely reaches my chest but I feel like a cart has thudded into me.

I remove my helmet and glare back at him.

He holds my stare, then, just as I think he’s about to attack, he shrugs and turns away. ‘Another prancing knight.’ He mutters something in his own language as he heads back over to the fallen drake.

I look at the aelf. ‘Does he serve Sigmar?’

‘I serve no one!’ yells the dwarf, without looking back at me. ‘Least of all gods.’

I give the aelf a questioning look, but she holds up a hand, indicating that I should wait until he is out of earshot.

‘What is that rune in his chest?’ I ask when the duardin has reached the fallen monster.

She speaks in an urgent whisper. ‘I need to explain,’ she begins, but then I cut her off.

‘What’s he doing?’

The duardin has clambered up onto the fallen drake and begun hacking at the carcass, filling the air with sparks and noise. Incredibly, his axe cuts through the stone scales, severing chunks of hide and spilling torrents of black gore. Blood hisses as it splashes across the ground.

‘We’re going to perform a rite,’ she says, sounding weary. ‘He’s going to fish out the innards and then I’ll inspect them. Hopefully it will work this time.’

‘This time?’

‘Someone told him that only drake entrails can point us in the right direction, but we’ve tried five times so far and I’ve found nothing but half-digested herdsmen.’

I can’t hide my shock. ‘This is the sixth drake you’ve killed?’

She nods. ‘If you only count the winged ones.’

I stare at the duardin. ‘What is he?’

‘Gotrek, son of Gurni. Apparently he was born in somewhere called the Everpeak and, if you believe what he says, he belongs to an earlier age than this – and another world, for that matter.’

I raise an eyebrow.

She still has that warning look in her eye. ‘He’s unlike any duardin I’ve ever met. He calls himself a Slayer, but he hates fyreslayers as much as anything else we’ve encountered. They said he’s one of their gods, sent to help them, but that made him even angrier.’ She looks over at him. ‘He’s not keen on gods.’

She scowls at me. ‘Look, I want nothing more than to be rid of him, but that’s the Master Rune of Blackhammer he’s got jammed in his ribs. It’s more powerful than you realise. I’m sworn to return it to Azyr.’

‘To Azyr?’ My pulse quickens. An idea starts to form.

She nods. ‘But Gotrek has other ideas.’

‘Then kill him. If the rune is needed in Azyr, why have you left it in the possession of a lunatic?’

‘Did you see what he did to that drake?’

‘I know your kind, assassin. Brute strength is no protection against you. You could scratch him in his sleep and he’d never wake.’

‘He never sleeps,’ she snaps, but she looks away, suddenly unwilling to meet my gaze. There’s more to their relationship than she will admit.

‘You like him.’

Her face darkens and she tightens her grip on her knives. ‘He’s a fool.’

‘But?’

She glares at me, her eyes full of vitriol. I can’t tell if she’s angry with me or herself. ‘It’s not just the rune. There’s something strange about him.’

I keep looking at her.

She spits, her rage palpable. ‘I can’t explain it. He says there’s a doom hanging over him and, after spending all this time with him, I’m starting to understand what he means. He’s unstoppable. Something wants him to succeed. Or someone.’

I nod. I’ve seen such things before. Primitive savages, sure of their destiny, oblivious to the facts, tumbling headlong through life, gathering doe-eyed disciples until they finally crash, taking everyone else with them. The aelf is beguiled by him. She mistakes his wild momentum for destiny. She’s in thrall to his fearlessness, not seeing that it’s only born of stupidity.

Gotrek laughs as he snaps the drake’s shoulder bones apart, filling the air with a black fountain.

‘You said you’re killing these beasts because you’re trying to find somewhere.’

She nods. ‘The Neverspike.’

The name gives me pause. I’ve heard it before, but can’t place it for a moment. ‘Why?’

‘Because of some drunk in Axantis. He told Gotrek that there’s an immortal there – someone who has been bound to the rocks by Nagash. The drunk called him the Amethyst Prince. And now Gotrek’s got in his head that, if this prince is an immortal, he must be from the same world he’s from.’

My blood cools. ‘I’ve heard of the Neverspike. Your drunk friend was right about the prince but the Neverspike is dangerous. It’s a fragment of the underworld.’

She raises an eyebrow. ‘Gotrek doesn’t go anywhere unless it’s dangerous.’

There’s a thunderous slap as Gotrek rips the drake’s stomach open and spills innards across the rocks.

‘Aelf!’ he cries, backing away from the wound, his arms drenched in blood and triumph flashing in his eye. ‘What do you see?’

She hesitates. Still looking at me. Weighing me up. She wants me to leave. She’s worried about what I might do to the Slayer. She’s protective of him for some reason. It’s the rune, I realise. She’s worried I’ll snatch the rune from under her nose. Then she’d have endured this boorish duardin for nothing. I smile as I follow her over to the mound of innards, my idea crystallising in my head. If the aelf can’t take the rune to Azyr, I’ll do it for her. No one could question my logic. What more important reason could I have for returning home? And then, in Azyr, I will rid myself of all these troubling memories and doubts. I will be renewed.

‘You’re doing it wrong,’ I say after a few minutes of watching her poke at the sloppy mess, drawing bloody sigils and whispering pointless curses.

‘What?’ She looks up, her eyes flashing.

I take an aetherlabe from my belt and tighten the brass coil at its centre. Slender hoops whiz and click, orbiting its crystal dome until the gemstone inside starts to glow. I hold the device over the steaming intestines. Flies are already starting to gather but the mechanism is unaffected, picking up the aethionic currents with ease, whirring and clicking as its cogs fall into place.

The aelf’s eyes widen. ‘You’re an ordinator.’

I ignore her, adjusting the device, closing in on the current.

Even the Slayer is intrigued. Some of the savagery fades from his face and I see a cunning I had not previously noticed.

‘You’re an engineer?’ he says.

I say nothing.

He looks at me closely, then studies the various measuring instruments attached to my armour. There is a look of recognition in his eye and he mouths a few crude engineering terms.

I use my boot to move some of the intestines as the aetherlabe’s teeth click into place.

I nod to a narrow ravine that leads from the hollow. ‘The Neverspike is that way. You’re only two days away.’

Gotrek laughs and slaps me on the shoulder, causing me to stagger. ‘Finally! Someone with at least half a brain. What did I tell you, witch? We’re almost there.’

He storms down the gulley, humming cheerfully to himself. His mood has changed in a moment from dour and fractious to eager and happy.

Maleneth is still kneeling in the drake’s stomach, covered in blood. She looks at me in disbelief, then shakes her head and hurries after Gotrek, wiping the gore from her face.

‘And this one?’ says Gotrek, prodding another of my instruments with a stubby, spade-like finger.

We’re hunkered in the lee of a scorched tree skeleton. Gotrek was keen to march through the night, but the aelf insisted we stop. The Slain Peak is even more dangerous in the dark than in daylight and the Slayer grudgingly agreed, still buoyed by the news we were close to the Neverspike.

‘It looks like a connecting rod on a turbine,’ he says.

He seems oddly knowledgeable about engineering. All his guesses are wrong, because he understands nothing about aetheric transference, but they are still educated guesses, based on a sound understanding of mechanics. I have never seen a savage so well-versed in science.

‘It’s an adylusscope,’ I explain. ‘A kind of orrery. It tracks the cycles of the realms and all the other heavenly bodies.’ I would not usually be so open with a stranger, but the duardin will be dead in a few hours, so I allow myself a little pride, describing the power of my cosmolabes and other surveying equipment.

‘And this?’ His eye narrows as he looks at the inverussphere.

‘It reverses aetheric polarity,’ I explain, knowing he won’t have any idea what I’m talking about. I baffle him with descriptions of all my instruments, going through them one by one, amused by the disdain on his face. He tuts and shakes his head, muttering something about shoddy work, even though he could never conceive of the machines’ complexity.

The Slayer has a sack filled with skins of ale and we’ve been drinking for over an hour.

‘Not bad for a manling,’ he grunts as I empty another skin.

‘You’ve no idea who or what I am,’ I say. ‘I could drink this for days and still be ready to fight. My flesh was forged in the Anvil of the Apotheosis, not prised from the womb of…’ I hesitate, struggling to imagine what he was prised from.

The rune in his chest glimmers slightly, flashing in his eye, turning it crimson. Then he laughs and throws another skin at me.

‘Let’s see,’ he says, grabbing another skin for himself and poking at part of my armour. ‘What does this do?’

The aelf is somewhere back down the gulley, taking her turn to watch for drakes, so I allow myself to relax. Since I started drinking, the voice in my mind has fallen quiet and I’m feeling a little more at ease. Once the duardin is dead, I can dig the rune from his remains and be on my way. My return to Azyr will be far more glorious than I had expected if the aelf is even half right about the power of the rune – and by the way my instruments are behaving, she is. The witch is a fool to have let the Slayer live so long. He openly derides Sigmar, along with every other god he knows the name of. He’s an enemy of the God-King. And he’s an animal. Just like the drake he left steaming in the hollow. All he cares about is which of us can hold the most ale.

After another hour of drinking, I begin to feel odd. Gotrek’s face shifts in the half-light, swelling and leering like a gargoyle. ‘What is this?’ I say, frowning at the skin I was drinking from.

‘The first decent ale I’ve found in this sweaty armpit you call a realm.’ He wipes froth from his beard with a forearm that looks like a thigh. Beer glistens on his scarred skin.

I have the disconcerting feeling that I’m drunk.

Gotrek lets out a deep, rattling belch.

‘I need to rest,’ I mutter, falling back against the tree stump, feeling as though the mountain is swaying beneath me.

Gotrek grins, revealing a jumble of broken teeth, then slumps back against a rock, reaching for another skin, ignorant of everything beyond the satisfaction of out-drinking me.

‘So now you’re murdering duardin?’

I wince as I walk. My head is already pounding from the ale I drank last night and the voice in my mind feels like fingernails scraping across the inside of my skull.

I’m not murdering anyone. He wants to reach the Neverspike and I’m taking him there.

‘You know what will happen to him if he approaches the Amethyst Prince. Nagash put him there as punishment for defying him. He’s there as an example. As soon as Gotrek touches him he’ll be ripped apart by death magic.’

If he dies, it’s because he’s a fool. A dangerous fool. And a blasphemer to boot. He talks of killing the gods. Who would blame me for letting someone so stupid destroy themselves?

‘The witch.’

I look around. She’s clambering up the slope behind us, her eyes locked on me. She has spent all this time in service to an impious lunatic and she has done nothing to take the rune. When the duardin is dead, I’ll deal with her. My fingers brush against one of my hammers. I already have a good idea how.

‘Manling!’ bellows Gotrek from further up the slope. ‘You’ve earned your beer!’

I pick up my pace, clambering quickly over the rocks to reach the Slayer’s side. We’re perched on a ledge looking out over another drop and the sight that greets me is horribly familiar. Another world has been smashed into this one: Shyish. The Neverspike is an icy, iridescent spear of rock that juts from the mountain, completely alien from the sun-bleached crags that surround it. The rock is shimmering and rimy, edged with patches of ice. It has no place in the Realm of Fire and the air knows it, billowing around the shard in flickering, static-charged spirals. If we had approached from any other direction, the Neverspike would have remained hidden from view. It is clearly the work of a divine intelligence. Even in Shyish, the shard would not have been a natural formation – it is a single curved talon of rock, and at its summit there is a tall alcove that looks like a shrine. There is a fire burning in the alcove, purple and blue, death magic, engulfing the figure within. It’s impossible to see the prince clearly from here, so I take out one of my looking glasses and turn the shaft until the prince comes into focus.

I grimace. He’s rigid with pain, but still alive, after all these long centuries. The flames are burning him, causing his skin to blister and peel, but he cannot die. His eyes are gone, melted into blackened sockets and his flesh looks like living ash, crumbling and flickering in the blaze, but his agony is eternal – a warning to all who would challenge the so-called God of Death.

I hand the looking glass to Gotrek and he mutters something in the duardin tongue, shaking his head as he sees the prince.

The Slayer is minutes away from death. Nagash’s magic will not preserve Gotrek as it has done the prince; it will simply immolate him. It fascinates me that he can walk so blindly to his death.

‘Why do you seek him?’ I ask. ‘What do you want?’

‘Vengeance,’ he snarls, taking the looking glass from his eye and handing it back to me. ‘The gods lied to me, manling. They promised me a worthy doom, then stole it from me. They brought me to your wretched realms with no explanation. So I’m going to make them bloody pay.’

I am about to explain to Gotrek that the Amethyst Prince is not divine, and never was, when I realise the absurdity of arguing with someone who thinks he can kill gods. The Slayer is insane. I knew it the first moment I laid eyes on him. I look at the rune in his chest. The ur-gold is forged to resemble the face of a deranged, psychotic Slayer. It looks almost identical to Gotrek.

I nod and gesture to a narrow bridge. It leads across a sheer drop to the Neverspike. It’s a single, slender arch of stone, soaring across the chasm like a hurled rope, suspended by some unseen artifice.

The aelf joins us as we make the final approach, grimacing as the air seems to attack us, lashing and hissing around our faces as we cross the bridge.

We are only halfway across when shapes assemble on the far side.

‘Aye,’ laughs the Slayer. ‘Show us what you’ve got.’

As we get nearer, I see that the figures are corpses – the remains of men and women, lurching from the rocks that surround the spike. They are charred beyond recognition but they move with silent purpose, gripping swords and axes as they shuffle onto the bridge. I mutter a curse as I see that the whole spike is spawning similar figures. There are hundreds of them struggling to their feet.

Gotrek roars in delight and thunders across the bridge, his axe flashing as he raises it over his head.

Maleneth hisses a curse and barges past me, drawing her knives as she sprints after him.

I take my time, slowly drawing my hammers as Gotrek crashes into the blackened husks.

He burns brighter than the prince, hacking and roaring through the crush. Blackened bodies fly in every direction, tumbling into the crevasse. Gotrek barely breaks his stride, carving a path through the undead husks with Maleneth keeping pace, lunging and stabbing.

By the time I reach the end of the bridge, dozens of the revenants have been hacked to pieces, but there are plenty left to attack me. I stride out onto the Neverspike, hammering corpses aside, smashing the sorcery from their lifeless flesh.

We fight towards the burning prince, and the battle is bathed in the violet light of his pyre. Gotrek grows even more excited, hacking through the throng with even more ferocity.

‘Hurry, manling!’ he cries, waving me on.

I oblige, picking up my pace. When Gotrek dies, I need to be close. The aelf is not a worthy guardian of the rune. I must be on hand to pluck it from his ashes.

As we approach the alcove holding the Amethyst Prince, it becomes hard to see. The death magic is dazzling, bleeding from the tormented prince and flashing through rows of shuffling corpses, scattering light like strands of purple lightning.

I have to shield my eyes as I battle the final few feet.

I’m so dazzled that it takes me a moment to realise Gotrek has turned to face me. He’s silhouetted by the unholy blaze, but I sense that his mood has changed.

‘What–?’ I manage to say before he pounds the haft of his axe into my stomach.

I’m so surprised I do not prepare myself for the blow. Breath explodes from my lungs. I double over in pain. It’s like being hit by a felled tree.

Before I can straighten up he hits me again, pummelling the side of my helmet and sending me sprawling across the rocks. My hammers slip from my grip and clang down the slope towards the bridge.

When I manage to sit up, my vision is blurry from the blow, but I see that Gotrek is holding my inverussphere. Fury jolts through me. It’s an incredibly sacred device, capable of reversing the polarity of aether currents.

‘Thought you’d kill me?’ There’s a grim smile on his face. He hacks down another revenant but keeps his eye locked on me.

I throw an accusing look at the aelf, then remember I didn’t share my plans with her.

The Slayer laughs. ‘Drunks always talk in their sleep. Especially pompous manling drunks who can’t hold their ale.’

‘What?’ I gasp.

He turns and fights his way up to the blazing prince, ignoring the fury of the flames as he cuts through the rows of undead.

‘I’m not interested in princes,’ he cries, adjusting the inverussphere with surprising skill.

I curse as I stagger to my feet, fending off revenants with my fists. Gotrek wasn’t drunk when I told him how my devices work; he was listening carefully to every word.

He looks at the sky. ‘My quarrel is with the gods!’

He turns a cog on the inverussphere and punches it into the prince’s twitching body.

The light flares, blinding me, then vanishes, plunging the Neverspike into darkness.

Magic rips through the undead, tearing them from their feet and hurling them towards the alcove, lashing across the rocks with such ferocity that I fall again, tumbling across the stones towards the prince, caught like a leaf in a tempest.

Cords of aetheric lightning smash against the Neverspike, ripping the air with a deafening howl, rushing towards the alcove from the surrounding peaks.

Gotrek manages to stay on his feet, staggering but upright as the alcove becomes a vortex of shadows, smoke and body parts.

The Amethyst Prince howls in delight, finally freed from his torment, then disintegrates, obliterated like the rest of the undead, his ashes snatched by the whirlwind.

‘Nagash!’ howls Gotrek. ‘The Slayer comes for you!’

He steps into the vortex, following the dead prince, bellowing a war cry as he vanishes from sight.

I try to crawl away, but the storm is too violent. I’m dragged, inexorably, towards the peak of the Neverspike.

There’s a series of explosions as the Neverspike shatters, spraying amethyst lances into the darkness.

With a final, desperate lunge, I grab hold of the bridge, hanging on to a slender arch as rocks whistle past my head.

Then my fingers slip and I’m thrown forwards, my armour clashing against the rocks.

I hurl towards the vortex, surrounded by a storm of blackened corpses. Then the darkness takes me.

I howl as I feel the morbid chill of Shyish, soaking through my armour and eating into my arms. My memories clear, revealing in horrible clarity all the things I was trying to escape. But there is no escape from death.

As I fall I hear Gotrek, laughing and singing as he dives into the abyss.