They were outnumbered three to one, not that it mattered. Skaven were rarely a significant threat, and against the Dread Pageant, blessed by the Dark Prince Slaanesh, they were laughably outclassed. Glissete paused for a second to watch as Hadzu, the Pageant’s archer, who crouched atop a cracked stone pillar, sent an arrow infused with madness down into the nearest ratman. The skaven squealed and kicked, ripping the barbed head from its thigh, but the poison was already streaking through its system. It leapt at one of its own pack and bore it to the ground, yellowed incisors burrowing through thick fur to the other skaven’s throat while its back feet kicked, trying to rip through the chainmail so its long claws could disembowel its pack-mate.

Glissete laughed as they rolled and fought, squealing, their thick bald tails whipping about. She shook skaven blood from her glaive and sprinted forward, leaping the thrashing creatures and using the momentum to carry her up the wall of the cavern. Beastgrave’s Direchasm was jagged and unfinished, and there were outcrops and ledges and footholds everywhere she could exploit. Glissete twisted back on herself and fell upon another skaven, this one waiting near the back of the pack for its turn to face Vasillac the Gifted, the Pageant’s leader, and his slaangor companion, Slakeslash.

‘Hiding won’t save you, rodent,’ Glissete grunted as the blade found the angle between the skaven’s neck and shoulder. The backswing crunched the butt of the glaive into its chest, and a third strike took off its bony paw at the wrist. The paw and the knife it held clattered to the stone and the rest of the dying creature followed as she hacked the glaive into its skull.

The skaven’s hot, sticky blood sprayed into her face and she shivered with delight as its very life ran down her cheek and neck. She paused to rub the blood between her fingertips; its thick, oily texture like stinking liquid silk to her senses. Two more skaven attacked her in that moment, approaching from either side. Perhaps they thought that, as the smallest member of the Dread Pageant, Glissete would be the easiest to kill. They were mistaken, for the reach of her glaive was deceptive. She twisted between their raking, serrated knives and their slashing claws, leaping to one side and carving the weapon down across chainmail as she passed. It raised a painful screech of metal on metal that made the skaven’s ears press back against their heads, but it did not bite flesh.

Glissete threw herself into a tumble to find space and then dived back in as Slakeslash raced up behind one of the skaven and rammed his serrated claw through the ratman’s back. The skaven roared and thrashed, distracting its pack-mate. Glissete stroked her blade down the side of its head, removing an ear and laying open fur and scalp. Black blood flowed and the skaven squealed and turned to flee. Glissete swept low and hamstrung it and the creature collapsed, screaming. The ratman’s pain was pleasure nestled in the woman’s heart, dark and brooding and begging to be drunk.

Slakeslash was hacking apart his own victim, intent on the almostcorpse shivering and flailing beneath his blade and pincer. Glissete stalked the hamstrung, earless skaven as Vasillac and Hadzu finished the rest. The pathetic creature was dragging itself away, gibbering pleas for mercy lost in the echoes of screams and Beastgrave’s own mingled bellowing of triumph and despair. The sentient mountain that crouched like a monstrous predator on the plains of Ghur feasted on those who died within its passages and caverns – or it had.

Not any more, not since the Katophrane curse had infected it, leaking through the cracks in reality between the Realm of Beasts and Uhl-Gysh, resting place of the cursed Mirrored City of Shadespire. And now death was not the end, for the dead rose to fight and run and kill again, forever, and so Beastgrave’s appetite went unanswered. The mountain hungered and suffered and raged and begged. A whole mountain, a whole sentient landscape, screaming its want. And if the Dread Pageant was good at anything, it was good at denying the wants of others and indulging their own.

And so they had. As Vasillac followed the call of the visions of Slaanesh deeper into Beastgrave and the rest of the Pageant followed him, they fought and killed and discovered what the curse actually meant when their victims rose again. They learnt of the mountain’s sorrowing, gnawing hunger that could never be sated. Soon, they realised that they could bring Beastgrave even greater despair by finding and torturing victims – tormenting them to the very point of death and potential sustenance for it – and then leaving them alive, even if only just. The mountain lusted after death to feed its echoing emptiness, and so each one they deprived it of was a further layer of anguish for it to endure.

To so tempt and then deny the mountain, to revel in the rage and impotence of a mind so incalculably huge and alien, was the most transcendent experience of Glissete’s life. The screams and pain of the victim, the screams and pain of the mountain, combined and multiplied in such a way that it was as if she were breathing sunlight, her every nerve and sense alight and golden and vibrating. It was the closest she would ever get to having the power of a god. And it was addictive.

Glissete stamped down on the skaven’s tail as it dragged itself away, eliciting another screech, and then she brought down her glaive with all the strength of her shoulders, back and thighs, severing the ratman’s spine. There was less screaming this time as the kicking legs fell still. Now only whimpers rasped their way from its throat amid the bubbling gulps for air. Glissete crouched next to its head.

‘Does it hurt?’ she asked. The skaven mewled but didn’t answer. ‘Good,’ she whispered, but before she could increase the torment and offer the creature’s suffering to the Lord of Excess, a furtive slide of movement caught the corner of her eye.

It was another skaven, neither smaller nor seemingly weaker than its pack-mates, but this one made only a token attempt to defend itself.

‘No no no,’ it begged as Glissete prepared to stab. ‘No no, no no. I show you the stash. You can have the stash, please, Ytash doesn’t want it, oh no. Ytash will starve and be glad, beautiful lady. Only don’t put the metal in him. I show you the stash.’

The babbling drew the others’ attention. Even Slakeslash ceased cutting his victims into pieces and rose to see what was happening. The slaangor paused over Glissete’s paralysed victim, staring down at it as skaven blood dripped from the ends of the pincer that was his right arm. He sat on his haunches and reached out to stroke the soft, velvety fur of the skaven’s left ear.

‘Don’t,’ Glissete warned as the slaangor’s slit-pupilled eyes narrowed. ‘That one’s mine.’

Slakeslash looked up from beneath curling antelope horns, ears flicking forward at Glissete’s words. Glissete tightened her grip on the skaven – Ytash – and growled a low threat.

‘Mine,’ she repeated, swinging her glaive towards the pair. Almost a threat. Almost a challenge to the slaangor.

Slakeslash tossed his horns and stroked the fur of the skaven’s face again. His wide nostrils flared as he drank in the scent of pain and fear and the bitter tang of blood. Then he rose slightly and threw his weight downwards, ramming his pincer into the hole Glissete had made in the ratman’s back with a grunt.

The skaven’s mouth opened in a soundless scream drowned in blood until, muscles bulging as they flexed beneath the fur of its upper arm and shoulder, the slaangor opened the pincer and ripped the skaven in half. His bleat of pleasure was lost beneath Ytash’s wail and Hadzu’s laughter.

Glissete threw the gibbering skaven at Hadzu and lunged forward; Vasillac stepped between her and Slakeslash. ‘Let me past,’ she snarled. ‘I’m going to carve its face off.’

Vasillac slapped her. ‘Remember who you speak to,’ he growled, and the Hedonite shut her mouth on the unwise response that sprang to her tongue. Her cheek stung but she refused to raise a hand to it.

Rage boiled in her veins. ‘Lord Vasillac, this is the third time the slaangor has taken a kill from me in the last days. He is a liability–’

‘Liability?’ the Godseeker interrupted in tones of steel. ‘Slakeslash is an exquisite warrior. He has saved your life at least once. How is this a liability?’

Glissete didn’t notice the warning in her lord’s voice. ‘This place. What it’s doing to him – doing to us all. He is out of control…’

‘Which is itself an act of worship of Slaanesh, the Lord of Excess. Is your faith faltering, Hedonite? Have you found reason to doubt the Dark Prince here in the belly of the Beastgrave?’ Vasillac stepped even closer, only the line of his perfect jaw and a few stray tumbled blond locks visible beneath his helm. His eyes were lost in blackness, but they glittered down at her. ‘Did I choose poorly when I chose you to accompany me here in search of the truth of the visions of Slaanesh?’

‘But were they true?’ Glissete demanded. Beastgrave’s fury was nothing compared with hers. Vasillac would permit no questioning of the slaangor’s place in the Pageant or his loyalty or ability. ‘We have learnt nothing since we came here, nothing of Slaanesh or why he absents himself from us. Those were not true visions, lord – they were sent by the mountain. It lured us here and now we’re trapped and lost inside it.’

‘Then the mountain will rue the day it called to the Dread Pageant, for we turn its desires back on it and use them to our advantage,’ Vasillac shouted in her face. Glissete flinched. ‘We will make its suffering our delight. We will wring every drop of sensation from this place and despite Beastgrave’s greatest efforts, we will be triumphant and it will wallow in eternal anguish. For Slaanesh is our god and we will make him proud.’

The Dread Pageant roared back their faith and their joy at the Godseeker’s prayer and Glissete shouted with them. Vasillac’s eloquence always found its way around her defences and her fury retreated – for now – beneath the promise of glory.

Retreated, but did not die. Could not die. Anger was as much a part of her these days as her glaive or her skin. As if she’d been angry all her life, and Beastgrave had unlocked the chamber of her heart where it resided and called it forth. Slakeslash would get them all killed in his recklessness. Hadzu was a rotten tooth, a constant irritant. And Vasillac…

‘As to your accusation, Hedonite, I promise you that we are exactly where we need to be,’ the Godseeker said. ‘Haven’t you noticed the difference in our movements the last two days? There is more to sensation than just torture, Glissete. The Dark Prince teaches us to crave intensity in all its forms. Observation. Stealth. The simple pleasure of eating or sleeping or searching for a thing. Have you forgotten what true worship is in your single-minded quest for blood? Is that as far as your imagination stretches these days? I had expected better.’

The whisper of his threat was like fingers over her skin. Glissete shivered, longing to press against him; she did not. Vasillac no longer desired her and the rejection was a bitter wound.

‘I have noticed,’ she said instead, ‘you are following the ghastlight.’

‘The crack between realms, yes. The fissure through which the glow of Shadespire shines. We were brought here by visions of Slaanesh – they called to me and I answered, for my purpose is to better understand my lord. Those visions were not a lie, whether or not Beastgrave generated them. The crack between here and Uhl-Gysh is real. It is a door, a passage, as close to a Realmgate as a mindless curse can fashion.’ He seized Glissete’s shoulders and squeezed, his fingers digging into hard muscle with bruising force. ‘Shadespire. The Mirrored City.’

‘Home of the Katophrane curse,’ Glissete agreed, accepting the pain of his grip and offering it to her god, as she likewise offered the pain of Vasillac’s indifference.

‘Home of the Book of Pleasure,’ the Godseeker hissed, and that stopped her. Hadzu cursed in surprise.

‘It is lost,’ Glissete said, but her heart was beginning to pound. Could it be true?

‘As is Shadespire. Where better to hide the book that is said to tell the secrets of Slaanesh himself than in a place thought impossible to reach?’

His teeth flashed in the shadows of his helm and he let go of her and spread his arms wide.

‘The Dread Pageant will cross into Uhl-Gysh itself and find the Book of Pleasure. We will bring it back to the Mortal Realms and with it we will learn all we need to know to bring mighty Slaanesh back to us. After aeons of absence, he will once more have dominion. That is our purpose in Beastgrave. That is our glory and our fate. But if the stolen death of a single pathetic skaven is more important…’ Vasillac trailed off and shrugged, and his excited good humour vanished as if it had never been. He gestured to Slakeslash and the two halves of the ratman.

Glissete swallowed. ‘No, lord. You chose well when you chose me,’ she promised him. ‘My life is dedicated to Slaanesh and his teachings. My blade is yours, you must know that. But Slakeslash is–’

‘Slakeslash is my creature and he is loyal. Question me on this again and I will ensure you live a long time in agony to regret it. An agony not even you can turn to worship.’

‘I too am loyal,’ Glissete said, embracing the anger that roiled once more within her. That he would think the slaangor better than her…

Vasillac stopped her words with his mouth, the kiss unexpected and deep and familiar as he wrapped her in hard, scarred arms and pressed his body against hers. Desire replaced anger in a hot rush beginning in her belly, but the kiss was over all too soon and he shoved her away.

The Godseeker stepped back. ‘Good,’ he said, and the cruel twist to his mouth told her he knew her feelings for him had not faded, and that he relished it. Glissete tried to keep her expression neutral, denying him the pleasure of her pain. It left them both unsatisfied.

‘Bring the skaven – it will be useful when we reach a fissure wide enough to cross.’

‘Useful?’ Hadzu asked.

‘He is risen,’ the slaangor said. ‘Undead. I smell it.’

Glissete swivelled to stare at Ytash; the skaven chittered something that might have been a laugh – or a sob.

‘Ytash will wait for his pack now,’ he said to himself. ‘We will be all together again. They won’t cast out Ytash now. Not now they won’t.’

‘Ytash will come with us,’ Glissete snarled, wrong-footed and trying to cover her mistake. She should have guessed, or seen the peculiar glaze in the skaven’s eyes that was the film of death only partially lifted. They’d encountered it enough times by now. She looked at her lord, unsure why he wanted the undead skaven.

‘About that,’ Hadzu said from his place back atop the pillar. ‘The ghastlight thread has vanished. We moved a good way from the initial ambush to hunt down this scum, and I had a scout around while you were all bickering, but I can’t find it. It’s as if the passages themselves have shifted, or the magic, perhaps. Either way, the fissure’s closed or moved away from us.’

Hadzu had been with Vasillac for years, yet even their long association would not allow such insult to pass. Glissete’s hands tightened on the smooth wood of her glaive, driven by a quicksilver mood change from anger at her lord to anger for him. Vasillac moved first, clenching his fist and then thrusting it towards the archer with fingers splayed wide. A blast of purple-edged magic slammed into Hadzu and he was blown backwards off his perch.

Now it was Glissete’s turn to laugh as the archer dragged himself groaning to his feet. He knew better than to look at or speak to Vasillac; he knew better than to respond in any way, for the Godseeker ruled their warband with absolute control and without mercy. He would take the tongue or eyes of one of his own in an instant and dedicate their suffering to Slaanesh if his orders were questioned.

Chastened and yet furious, Hadzu’s gaze landed on Glissete. He bared his teeth at her laughter and she raised an eyebrow in return, accepting his challenge. She beckoned and tension heated the air between them. Her acrobatics against his arrows; it would be a glorious battle.

‘Be still.’ Vasillac’s voice was implacable, denying their need for violence. ‘Take what you want and get ready to move. We are here for more than our own pleasure, remember that.’

Glissete believed in excess in all things, including extremes of emotion, and Vasillac denying her and Hadzu the opportunity to fight frustrated their bloodlust while stoking resentment. But no one emotion held sway over another, for betrayal could taste just as sweet as love if it was approached with open arms. It was the intensity that was important. And Glissete was intensely resentful. She set it in her heart and fed it patiently, stoking it higher and hotter until she was grinding her teeth and the urge to kill Hadzu faded beneath fantasies of tearing the Godseeker limb from limb.

Glissete looked up. Slakeslash was watching her, his half-antelope face as unreadable as ever. The slaangor had moved between her and Vasillac, a casual repositioning that meant he could protect his lord if necessary.

That the wild and unpredictable slaangor would make such a move told Glissete just how obvious her emotions were – and just how strong. Putting her back to the horned monstrosity, she tied Ytash’s front paws and then rifled through the belongings of the newly dead skaven – trail rations and waterskins, thank Slaanesh – and reflected on the increasing loss of control she and the others had been experiencing. It wasn’t something they could attribute to the cult of excess: something external was manipulating them, Glissete was sure of it now. That manipulation was one of the reasons she no longer trusted Slakeslash, even if Vasillac did.

Glissete knew the others had the same suspicions, and her private conviction was that the source of their emotional warping was Beastgrave itself. Perhaps the mountain was trying to punish them as they punished it. And yet… sensation is all. The mountain is simply another route to intensity, perhaps the greatest route after Slaanesh himself. If it wants to aid us in our quest for sensation, I will not try and stop it.

In fact, she prayed that their route would lead them deeper into Direchasm, the great downward-sloping cavern-and-tunnel complex that seemed to be the heart of Beastgrave’s emotions. The psychic rage and suffering from the mountain had grown every time they had descended deeper, until it was as heady as wine, filling all of the Dread Pageant with shivering ecstasy.

A ruby the size of Glissete’s thumb tumbled from the sack next to a skaven who’d died while trying to stuff its guts back into its belly. It took the torchlight and reflected it back like blood; pretty enough. She put it in a pouch on her belt. The gold statuette next to it, though, was heavy and pointless. It would only weigh her down. Glissete set it at an angle between the ground and a rock and then brought the heel of her boot down across it. It crumpled, the delicate workmanship folding in on itself, the unique decorations flattening or shearing off.

The skaven prisoner squeaked its distress at the loss and Glissete smirked. There were few enough pretty things to break this far below ground, if she didn’t count the skaven corpses, so angular and wet in their pathetic, jumbled deaths. She took satisfaction from the destruction of the treasures, but more from the knowledge of Beastgrave’s fear of the Dread Pageant and their ability to increase its anguish. A sentient mountain feared her; now that was a sensation worth experiencing to its utmost.

‘These’ll be up soon enough, my lord,’ Hadzu said eventually, toeing one of the corpses. Perhaps an offering of apology, though he made no such overture to Glissete. ‘No point us fighting them again so soon. We should get moving, maybe? The captive said there was a stash. Might be worth checking out.’

‘Others stalk us,’ Slakeslash interrupted as he mutilated another corpse. His big ears flicked, but he seemed otherwise unconcerned, his pincer busy lopping claws from ratman fingers and toes. When he had enough, he laid them out in the pattern of Slaanesh’s sigil. When the skaven undead rose, they would be whole again and without injury, like Ytash, but until then the sigil would burn with dark magic, scorching Beastgrave’s hide and casting an aura of dread for any who might come after them.

‘The stash is nothing – we have food and water enough for now. I must find our route,’ Vasillac said and sat cross-legged on the floor, his hands on his knees. Glissete imagined his perfect face smooth and serene beneath his helm as he extended his senses into the tunnels around them, searching for the call of the ghastlight that he believed would eventually lead to a fissure large enough to squeeze through, leaving Ghur for Uhl-Gysh and all that it might contain.

She was light-headed at the promise of it. They would discover new sensations, new experiences and intensities in a demi-realm comprised of both light and shadow magic. They would meet undead mages who haunted their lost city in a desperate dance to undo their own hubris and the will of Nagash that had put them there. The pull of both light and dark upon the soul would be exquisite.

But still, Beastgrave too was exquisite.

The crack in the realm was one thing – one destination and one purpose – but it wasn’t the only direction they could take. They’d been wandering through the mountain for weeks or more as far as they could guess, unable to tell time down here in the endless gloom, pausing to eat and sleep when they needed to, stopping to fight when they had to or they wanted to. They’d learnt how to torment the mountain; they’d destroyed priceless artefacts in front of the thieves who’d stolen them; they’d fought against overwhelming odds and survived because the Dark Prince willed it.

In a life spent searching for new experiences, new sensations ever more extreme, Beastgrave answered their every craving. Even the gnawing emptiness when they ran out of food, or the thick-tongued, fur-throated agony of thirst, could be relished with the correct attitude, the right approach to existence. Whether fear, lust or anger; apathy, agony or sadness; every emotion and action should be experienced to its utmost. The mountain gave them that and more besides. And so, really, did they need to leave?

Did Glissete even want to?

She lived for the moment, for the next experience, and if one didn’t come she created it. For now, their experiences were in Beastgrave and their following of the ghastlight was merely an excuse to move further and deeper into Direchasm, further and deeper into the mountain’s own emotional whirlpool. But the truth was, they might be in here for years if they couldn’t – or didn’t want to – find their way out. For the rest of their lives, however long that might be.

And there was something… alluring about that idea. All the lives they would influence from now on would be the ones they ended in this cursed mountain. The only legends that would spring up about the Dread Pageant would be whispered by other bands of explorers and maddened, starving groups as they fought each other for eternity, first as living offerings to Slaanesh, and then as undead disciples of sensation. And those legends would be glorious.

Logic said they should turn around and flee back the way they had come, ever upwards until they tasted fresh air and saw blessed daylight. Glissete shook her head; logic meant nothing. Where was intensity in logic? Where was sensation and experience in the safe path, the obvious choice? How did one feel or know or live without risk?

The skaven chittered, breaking into her thoughts, and Glissete shook him into silence. Hadzu crept around the closest corpses, pulling his arrows free and examining the heads to see if they were still useable. He took others from a ratman archer and muttered, casting the magic of self-loathing over them. Any enemy struck by one would become desperate to attack themselves and their own instead of the Hedonites.

And then Vasillac rose. He pointed to a branching tunnel with no hint of hesitation. ‘That way. I can smell it.’

Slakeslash looked up from his meal of skaven dead, his fur matted with blood, and examined the tunnel down which Vasillac pointed. With a swift clip of his pincer, he cleaved a skaven’s leg, tearing off mouthfuls as he went first, not waiting to see if the others followed.

Vasillac followed Slakeslash, then Glissete dragging Ytash, chittering and limping and sorrowing over his bound claws and casting many a longing glance back at the carcasses of his kin, and Hadzu came last with an arrow loose on the string. A deep, inhuman rumbling rose from the walls around them as Beastgrave roared its impotence that the dead they’d made could not feed it. Glissete and Hadzu exchanged grins, their past altercation buried for now.

The archer reached out to pat the tunnel wall. ‘So hungry,’ he crooned and chuckled. ‘How absolutely terrible.’

‘Quiet,’ Vasillac snapped back and they fell silent, even Ytash unwilling to incur any more of the Godseeker’s wrath. Soon enough Slakeslash dropped back and took possession of the prisoner. Glissete bared her teeth at the slaangor, who snapped his pincer under the woman’s nose before turning an insulting shoulder to her. Glissete shifted the glaive on her shoulder, picturing how it would feel to ram it through the slaangor’s ribs from behind. But the Godseeker had been more than clear in his threats, so she wallowed in her frustration instead, imagining all the myriad ways she would separate the slaangor from life when the time finally came.

Glissete hurried forward past Vasillac to take the lead Slakeslash had abandoned. She had no wish to feel her lord’s anger again, and putting space between herself and the slaangor was the wisest thing she could do in the circumstances. Slakeslash’s increasing unpredictability was beginning to make her nervous, and even though she was a Slaaneshi Hedonite, that was one emotion with which she had little experience.

The slaangor was losing himself to the warping magics of the mountain faster than the rest of them, and while Glissete couldn’t fault the enthusiasm with which he revelled in the experience, it made him less competent as Vasillac’s protector, and that was a liability rather than an advantage. This far into Direchasm, this deep beneath the mountain, Glissete didn’t trust Slakeslash to be aware of danger to the group while there was a prisoner to torment, let alone honour the bond between himself and the Godseeker.

Striding along at the front, quartering the tunnel ahead for danger, no one could see Glissete’s face or the expression it bore. Slakeslash was going to get them all killed – or Glissete was going to kill him. The slaangor’s binding to Vasillac was a secret known only to the two of them: Glissete didn’t know its terms or limits. What she did know was that she shouldn’t come between the two who had agreed such a compact, but Slakeslash was fracturing the trust that united the Dread Pageant and here, in the bowels of the mountain, mistrust was lethal. Glissete would let no harm come to her lord, yet the slaangor seemed more determined every day to bring harm down upon them.

‘We’re getting close.’

Vasillac’s voice was a low rumble against Glissete’s skin and she shivered. He’d appeared at her side without warning, stalking silently up behind her and taking her unawares.

‘I can smell it. Smell… something.’

‘The Dark Prince will honour our endeavour,’ she said softly. ‘For all we do is in his name. May I ask how the undead skaven will assist us, lord?’

‘He can no longer die, but he can be harmed. He can be bled, and I can use that blood to form a corridor between here and Uhl-Gysh.’

Glissete walked in silence as the implications sank in. They were really doing it; they were going to enter the Mirrored City, lost in a demi-realm and crawling with undead magi, and they were going to find the lost and legendary Book of Pleasure that would lead them to their god.

‘Slakeslash is not to be harmed.’

Glissete sucked in a shocked breath at the abrupt change in topic. How does he know? Does his magic extend to reading the thoughts of others?

‘Lord?’ she asked, striving for calm.

He didn’t look at her. ‘I know your mind. I always have and I always will. Leave him be.’ The words did nothing to reassure Glissete, but he spoke again before she could think up some excuse or deflect the conversation somewhere safer.

‘There.’ He pointed a scarred hand: glistening against the amber darkness was an eerie thread of silver and smoke.

Ghastlight. The merest fracture between Ghur and Uhl-Gysh, through which Vasillac intended eventually to pass. The Godseeker hurried to the wall and pressed his face against the silver thread, inhaling.

‘Yes. Yes, it’s there. That smell. That… presence. We must find a way into Shadespire and discover the secrets it holds. Hurry.’

He bounded forward into the darkness, and Slakeslash shoved Ytash at Hadzu and followed, passing Glissete with a flash of tawny fur and the clatter of hooves.

‘Looks like we’re hurrying,’ Hadzu said in his bland, dead voice. ‘Take the rear.’

Glissete watched them hurry into the strange, shifting orange darkness, following the ghastlight down, ever deeper. Down into the mountain’s raging, formless, sweeping emotions. A smile split her face as she followed.

The Dread Pageant revelled in the gloom and the ghastlight, the amber walls and outcrops in which monsters from past and present were entombed, mouths stretched in agony. They revelled in the awful, searing heat of magma that had cut across their path and the intense fear that came with having to leap across it.

They were lost in the guts of Ghur now, and Glissete was glad. She gave in to every urge: treading heavily on the skaven’s tail at irregular moments to make him jerk and stumble and squeak; rasping her blade across the walls in an unholy screech that flattened Ytash’s and Slakeslash’s ears to their heads. She taunted Hadzu and smirked into his black, dead eyes. And yet she checked behind every few paces, pausing to listen for the sounds of pursuit. Direchasm might be eating at her soul, but she was a fighter and a killer and she wouldn’t let her lord be taken unawares by an enemy from behind.

Glissete was filled with joy that her life had led her here into this cloying, claustrophobic, living rock. Even if they were ultimately unable to reach Shadespire and instead forced to wander this underground hellscape, the Hedonite knew that if she somehow stumbled onto the exit out of the mountain, she would turn her face from that daylight, from the promise of escape, and retreat back into this eternal gloom that provided her every sensation she could hope to experience. Even if the rest of the Pageant left, she would not. Glissete’s life down here would be a living monument to Slaanesh, her every movement an act of worship. And she would see out her days here in Beastgrave’s belly.

Curse or not, Glissete was home.

But if they stayed in Beastgrave, or even if they made it to Uhl-Gysh, then everything they were and did would remain unknown, hidden from view. There would be no glory for the Dread Pageant if they did not return to the living world, either with tales of Beastgrave or in possession of the legendary Book of Pleasure. They would be just another group of Slaaneshi loyalists who vanished from the realms and were forgotten.

But what did that matter? They would know, their enemies would know, and Slaanesh would know. Glissete’s thoughts bounced from one outcome to another and back again, unformed hysteria bubbling in her belly.

They had come to Beastgrave in response to Vasillac’s visions of Slaanesh; they had found the tantalising delight of hurting the mountain. And then they had found so much more. Shadespire and the Book of Pleasure was a destiny none of them could have foreseen. Now that they knew of it, to deny that call, that scent which only Vasillac could detect, would be the vilest and most cowardly heresy. Whether their pursuit of a fissure into the Mirrored City led to a lonely and unremarked death and resurrection in the depths of Direchasm or glory beyond telling was unknown. Trepidation warred with anticipation and swirled in a mad dance inside her as the mountain projected its own emotions on top of hers and she drank it all like the sweetest poison.

Glissete embraced her doubts and fears rather than suppressing them, as ordinary, irreligious humans were wont to do. Where her emotions ended and Beastgrave’s began she no longer knew; perhaps the mountain had learnt from their torment of it and was returning the favour, manipulating her consciousness as she did its. She embraced that too and drew strength from it, denying the mountain’s intention to break her. They were in combat now, Hedonite and Beastgrave, and if she should be killed down here, then she would experience the ultimate of all sensations – that of dying and returning to unlife with the memory of her ending intact.

After that, Glissete could spend eternity drinking the mountain’s distress and whipping it ever further into a frenzy. So much raw sensation sparked like lightning across her nerve endings that her breath was high and shallow and waves of heat chased each other through her bones. Everything was so much more down here. It was truly a playground for devotees of Slaanesh. Glissete snorted a ­sudden laugh, the sound echoing back from the weird, blasted rocks that twisted the path so she couldn’t see more than a few paces ahead or behind. The Katophrane curse could well be the most delicious gift it was possible to give a Hedonite.

She trailed a hand lovingly across the smooth amber of the tunnel. The threat of the curse was no longer a threat; the struggle now would be focusing on finding the book instead of chasing death and rebirth. But if they could find such an artefact, the power it granted them would outshine even Beastgrave’s.

Glissete pulled her thoughts into order as best she could down here in the mountain’s heart. They had a job to do. They were the Dread Pageant and they didn’t run from anything.

They ran. Fast and hard and back the way they’d come until the tunnel forked and Vasillac and Slakeslash ran ahead with Glissete hard on their heels. Hadzu and the skaven were behind, but she didn’t wait for them to catch up.

The Fist of Ironjawz they’d come across had numbered at least twenty, and Vasillac had signalled that they should find another way around; the fight was beyond them and the fissure they’d been following for the last days was steadily increasing in size. The importance of crossing had grown in all their minds until it consumed them, as though the magic pulled at them, seductive and beckoning – or perhaps it was the song of the book that drew them now. Either way, none had regretted slipping past the orruks without a fight, despite their wealth of food and water. But then Slakeslash – again, the fault lay with the supposedly faithful slaangor – had scuffed his hoof on the stone, deliberately, Glissete was sure, and drawn the Fist’s attention.

There’d been no option but to run then, despite the Pageant’s proudly stated bravado and lust for battle or the smaller groups of aelves, humans and duardin they’d slaughtered down here. Though to stand and face them, four against twenty, would have been glorious.

Glissete skidded around a corner and spotted Vasillac on his knees with the slaangor looming over him. She spun the glaive in her hands and sprinted towards them with a howled war cry, then jumped up onto a boulder and threw herself through the air towards Slakeslash’s head.

The slaangor began to turn towards the sound, but it was too late – almost. One of his tall, pointed antelope horns ripped open the underside of Glissete’s upper arm from elbow to armpit. It threw off her aim somewhat, but the bladed end of her polearm went into Slakeslash’s back and tore him open – chainmail, fur and muscle – from shoulder to hip.

The slaangor bleated his agony and collapsed beneath Glissete’s weight, the pair of them flattening Vasillac. Glissete screamed her own pain but also her triumph – the Godseeker wouldn’t die at the pincer or hand of his own bound monster – but then purple-tinged magic blasted from beneath and threw her clear. She slammed into a wall back-first and bounced off; rolled twice before coming to a dazed and bloody stop ten feet down the tunnel, her glaive lost somewhere between her and the traitorous slaangor.

The blast or the impact of their falling bodies had ripped Vasillac’s helm from his head and his handsome face was tight with fury and anguish, pale where his ritually scarred arms and torso were bronze.

‘No.’ His voice was cold and full of disbelief.

‘He was…’ Glissete began, groaning. He didn’t even look at her. She rolled up to her knees and clamped her wounded arm to her side in a futile effort to stem the bleeding. Down the corridor she could hear running feet. Hadzu and the skaven.

‘Don’t.’ The word was death and winter and implacability. The Hedonite swallowed her explanation and instead watched as the lord of the Dread Pageant muttered in an arcane tongue. More purple-edged magic, a seeping vapour this time, puffed out from his mouth and eyes and drifted about the weakly pawing slaangor. The smoke separated into tendrils and poked into the wound at a dozen points along its gaping, wet-mouthed length.

No tendrils of healing magic curled Glissete’s way, and so she pulled a roll of bandage from the pack on her back and clumsily bound her arm. It needed stitching; she didn’t think the Ironjawz were going to wait for her, though.

She found her glaive and cut the bandage on its edge. She flexed her arm, cursing at the hot flash of pain and then accepting it, owning the hurt so that it could not own her. Teeth gritted, she took up her weapon and planted herself at the bend in the tunnel. Hadzu and the skaven would have the enemy close behind them, and Glissete would let the archer and his prisoner through and then hold off the orruks as long as she could. She would die so that Vasillac might live.

The slaangor too.

The words were bitter in her mind, but she pushed them away. When she rose again, she would return to the Dread Pageant and face Vasillac’s wrath. It didn’t matter that she’d acted to save his life, didn’t matter that it had been an honest mistake. Vasillac’s tone was her death sentence, but that death would be of her own choosing.

‘And I choose violence.’ Glissete could feel her body, the slow, stale air currents brushing her face, hear the hitches in Slakeslash’s breathing and Vasillac’s quiet chanting as he healed him. Almost fancied she could hear the healing itself; the hiss of magic knitting together muscle and flesh, dulling pain and restoring blood and sensation and strength.

The hissing grew louder and more urgent. Closer. Glissete glanced back and saw something moving and writhing above Vasillac and the slaangor. The tunnel roof seemed to be alive.

‘Above,’ she yelled, abandoning her position at the bend and racing back towards them. Vasillac looked up just as a great jumbled mass of… something fell on them. It broke apart and resolved itself into scores of beetles, each the length of her blade, with shiny black carapaces and sharp, clacking mandibles. Vasillac was roaring and Slakeslash thrashing beneath the tide of black chitinous death.

Glissete leapt into the fray, using wide slashing sweeps and the flat of her glaive to clear the giant insects from the vicinity and give the other two a chance to reach their feet and begin to fight back. Slakeslash was up – unsteady, but up – his pincer slow as he grabbed for and crushed the beetles that scrabbled up his legs and armour.

The Godseeker’s spear was not the best weapon against the multitude and yet it seemed made for the task, so little was he hindered. Glissete put her back to his, Slakeslash the third point of the defens­ive triangle, and they hacked and cut and stamped and swatted until they were ankle-deep in cracked chitin and ­clotted with ­purple ichor.

The surviving insects abandoned the attack, their feelers questing towards the tunnel instead. As one mass, they headed in that direction, either towards Hadzu and Ytash, or perhaps the Fist of Ironjawz. Glissete wiped her glaive clean of ichor and cracked carapace. Her hands and face and neck were abraded and sliced where the insects’ mandibles had closed on her flesh – the others weren’t much better, though the healing magic Vasillac had poured into the slaangor was still working within him, for his cuts and scratches disappeared beneath Glissete’s envious gaze.

‘Lord Vasillac, forgive me,’ she said, while she still had the chance before the orruks found them. If this was to be their death, she would have Vasillac’s understanding, if not his forgiveness. The Godseeker’s expression was hidden beneath his restored helm, but his mouth was tight.

‘You were told.’

‘I thought he was attacking you!’ Glissete tried. ‘I came around the corner and he was over you and you were on the floor.’

Vasillac scraped his boot through the beetle debris on the ground, clearing a space. Then, with a swiftness she wasn’t prepared for, he grabbed her by the nape of the neck and hurled her onto her knees. ‘Look,’ he spat. ‘Look there.’

The pressure on her neck increased and Glissete crumpled lower, her vision blurry with pain, but still she saw it. The ghastlight. The fissure had widened here, wide enough that she could put her arm in if she wanted to. Fear bloomed in her chest – perhaps that would be her punishment. None of them knew whether they could cross into the demi-realm without being destroyed. What if Vasillac made her shove her arm into Uhl-Gysh to see what would happen? An image of being trapped up to the shoulder in the floor while Ironjawz hacked her apart crossed her mind.

‘I sent my magic through, searching. Slakeslash guarded me while my mind was spooling into Uhl-Gysh. Not only did you nearly kill him, you nearly severed me from my body.’ He shook her hard by her neck and she whimpered.

‘I’m sorry, lord,’ she said, her voice tight and high with pain and anxiety. ‘It was an honest mistake. Slakeslash has been–’

He shook her again and she bit her tongue. ‘Get up,’ he snarled, releasing her.

Glissete lurched sideways with none of her usual grace and stood, knowing better than to massage the crushed muscles of her neck. She kept her eyes down, meek in submission. Seething with frightened rage.

‘Where are the others?’

‘I don’t know, lord.’

‘Then go and find them. We’re going that way, away from the orruks and following this fissure, and we’re not waiting for you. I only need the skaven.’

The casual, cruel dismissal in Vasillac’s tone cut at her, but she just nodded and fled. The beetles and the orruks were likely between her and Hadzu with his prisoner, but she could no more argue with her lord’s command than she could fly.

She slowed at the bend, holding her breath and listening as the hot throbbing agony in her arm beat in time with her heart. The scrape of metal and bellowing snarls of battle echoed back to her. They weren’t as close as she’d feared, and it definitely didn’t sound like they were fighting insects. An alien, unidentifiable trumpeting bounced around the cavern and tunnels, louder by far than the orruks’ war cries. Fear slithered up Glissete’s spine.

She dared a glance around the bend and found it empty. She exhaled in silent relief, darted into the space and ran back down the twisting tunnel until she came to the fork. The sounds grew steadily louder, and beyond the fork was the large cavern where they’d first found the Fist. Something, some unknown creature, had appeared between the Pageant and the pursuing orruks and then forced the latter back. Glissete didn’t want to think about what sort of being was capable of stopping a charging Fist of Ironjawz.

The Hedonite took the dogleg into the other tunnel and crept along it, glaive at the ready and senses straining. The urge to call out for Hadzu was strong, but it was almost certain death. It was probably not her own urge, but Beastgrave’s. The mountain was growing in cunning, as well as brutality.

The swirling echo of battle behind disguised the sound of running footsteps; Glissete rounded a corner and came face to face with an orruk that was half again as tall as her and at least three times her weight. Fear and fury mingled within her and she raised her glaive as the orruk’s huge, serrated blade, more club than sword and black with old blood and rust, began to punch forward to cleave her in half. Glissete skidded onto her knees on the rough stone, ripping her trousers and the flesh beneath. The sword split the air above her with a whine, but she was already past it, within the orruk’s guard, and her glaive thudded home deep in its thigh.

The orruk stumbled back, its sword falling with a clatter as one huge hand clamped around the spurting wound and the other closed on her face.

The punch sent her sprawling backwards, lights flashing in her head and blood on her teeth, but she scrambled up using the polearm as a crutch and threw herself back at him. Glissete jumped, evading the orruk’s second swing. The glaive flashed in the gloom as she brought it sweeping down on the Ironjawz brute’s neck. She landed with the weapon in guard, ready for anything and blinking desperately against threatening unconsciousness, but the orruk stood slack and swaying, its eyes glazed as blood fountained from throat and thigh. And then it collapsed backwards like a tree, chainmail and the scraps of stolen armour clattering against the stone.

Glissete fell to one knee, her fingers tight on her glaive, sucking in deep breaths to clear her head. To her right, the direction she’d been heading, she caught what might have been the glint of eyes. The mountain’s madness yammered against her skin and senses until she doubted that she’d seen anything, but she forced herself to stand once more. It could be a trap, but whether one laid by orruks or by Beastgrave she couldn’t say.

No matter what waits for me, I will taste its death before my own finds me. I will meet Slaanesh with blood on my blade and a surfeit of sensation to gift to him. Excess in all things.

With her vow pumping dark and seductive through the chambers of her heart, Glissete broke into a shambling run towards the gleaming eyes. She was a dozen paces away when the skaven prisoner shuffled out of the gloom, his tied paws raised in front of his snout and his ears back in anticipation of pain to come. The effort required to slow and lower her glaive was almost too much – the urge to slam it through the skaven’s chest was a hot need flowing through her chest.

But she slowed. She stopped. She was lowering the glaive as Hadzu sauntered forwards with his habitual grin, at which point it twitched in her hands again.

‘You all went the wrong way,’ he whispered and Glissete scowled.

She held her finger to her lips and motioned back down the tunnel. Hadzu gestured her on, the skaven in between them, and they crept back down the tunnel and past the orruk corpse. They had just reached the left-hand tunnel when a wild victory chant echoed from the cavern to their right, a blast of sound and violence.

‘Go,’ Glissete hissed, ripping her blade through the ropes binding the skaven’s paws. She took the turning and put her head down, accelerating into a hard sprint. Every pump of her arm sent a flash of pain through the tear in her flesh, but she had no time to worry about the wound ripping. The ratman’s paws skittered after her, and Hadzu came last with an arrow nocked and ready to slow down the fastest of the Fist.

The trio trampled through the shattered corpses of the black beetles that had attacked Vasillac and the slaangor and continued into the darkness of the passage the Godseeker had indicated. Behind them, the Ironjawz thundered after, not as swift as the humans and skaven, but relentless.

Over her rasping breath and jangling chainmail, Glissete heard the sound change ahead of her. There was a sudden gust of foul air against her face and the passage opened up. Opened and ended in a sheer cliff that spread to either side, as if the ground had been scooped out by a giant hand. She screeched a warning and skidded to a halt. The skaven thumped into her back, graceless, and she tripped and stumbled at the very edge of the precipice. Slakeslash lunged from the darkness and grabbed her flailing arm and dragged her to safety.

Glissete looked up into the slaangor’s unreadable face, but he had already let go and was beckoning them out onto a tiny ledge leading around the crevasse. Glissete followed, dumb with surprise. After everything, the slaangor had saved her life without hesitation. Vasillac was farther ahead, his outline lit by ghastlight that glowed more brightly than she had ever seen it. The thread had become a fissure had become a crack they could definitely squeeze through, and there was a wide spit of rock hanging over the chasm where they could perform the ritual that would – should – allow them to cross into the demi-realm.

They hurried around the ledge and to the Godseeker’s side.

‘This is it,’ he said as soon as they arrived. ‘This is where we cross. Can you feel it? Feel the magic and the pull of it? The book calls to me.’

Glissete didn’t answer. The hungers and rages and bitter hurts of Beastgrave flowed from the pit beneath them, caustic and foul as the air. Despite the glorious promise of what lay ahead of them, she was filled with regret at leaving a sentience so vast and so tormented.

Vasillac gestured and Hadzu shoved the skaven forwards.

Ytash sank onto his haunches and began to chitter. ‘Not the bad light, lords. Don’t put him back in the bad light with the bad people. Ytash will fight at your side, yes he will, yes, all your enemies. Just don’t put him back in the bad light.’

The bad light – the ghastlight – flickered and darkened as if in response to his pleas and then bulged, as if it was a membrane rather than a glow. It deformed and stretched out of the crack and then split open – and a dozen people stepped through. Gaunt and tall, clad in strange armour or flowing, ragged robes with deep hoods, they paused, silhouetted, just this side of the crack.

‘Mages and warriors of the Mirrored City,’ Hadzu breathed, his voice coated with awe.

Vasillac stepped forwards, using his spear as a staff rather than held ready in threat. ‘My lords and high ones, I am Vasillac the Gifted, Godseeker of the Dread Pageant and devotee of the Dark Prince Slaanesh. Tell me, have you come from Shadespire? Is there a book there, somewhere within your famous city, that–’

And then they saw it. Not mages or warriors. These shambling creatures were more bone than flesh, undead skeletons held together with desiccated strips of sinew. A robed one stepped forward and levelled a staff. Green flame burst from the end and raced towards the Godseeker. Vasillac brought his spear down and across, shouting a word of power, and dispelled the blast with one of his own.

The undead attacked, fanning out so that two warriors protected every mage. ‘We wish to cross into Shadespire!’ Vasillac screamed, but the words were lost beneath three concussive booms of magic discharging, the explosions echoing across the vast chasm. The Pageant dived for safety, the skaven too, and Glissete rolled over her shoulder and came up inside the guard of a spear-carrier. Before the undead warrior could react, Glissete hacked off its arm and slashed through its throat.

It fell, and the Hedonite picked up the severed limb and threw it at another, spoiling the aim of its fireball so that it blasted into another of the undead instead of Hadzu’s back. She followed it in, cutting low and shearing through bone even as she ducked its warrior companion’s spear thrust. She spun behind the mage-skeleton and ripped her glaive across the back of its neck, severing the spine. It collapsed, but Glissete was forced to somersault out of the way of the next attack.

Hadzu’s arrows had no effect, some passing harmlessly through robe or armour, unhindered by flesh beneath. Killing them wouldn’t work – they were already centuries dead – but dismemberment might.

Glissete backed away from an undead’s snake-quick spear, butt and blade of her glaive both defending and attacking. Slakeslash appeared on her right. He caught the Katophrane’s spear in his pincer and snapped the head off it so that it was just a useless stick, and between them they cut the warrior onto its knees and then took off its head. But they were outnumbered against an enemy that could not be defeated.

The Dread Pageant backed farther away from the tiny ledge they’d crossed to reach this point. The edge of the lip of rock over the pit was less than twenty paces behind, and every step in that direction took them farther from the crack into Uhl-Gysh. This, then, was the end of their glorious quest. So be it.

‘I will rise again after my death and we will continue this battle for eternity,’ she screamed at the undead bearing down on them. ‘For Slaanesh I will drink deep of pain and suffering and lust and joy. We will all die and rise a million times and each moment of our agony will be a joy to him.’

‘Down!’ Vasillac screamed and she didn’t hesitate, throwing herself into a tumble on the uneven stone, her shoulder and hip bruising bone-deep on jagged rock.

A blast of purple magic bigger than any she’d seen before rippled overhead and into their attackers, forcing them back towards the ledge leading around the chasm and into the tunnels. Back from the Dread Pageant and the way into the Mirrored City. Back into the welcoming arms of the Fist of Ironjawz who had followed them to this place of their final confrontation.

The numbers now were more evenly matched, and both forces seemed to forget about the existence of the Hedonites and their skaven sacrifice.

‘Quickly,’ Vasillac shouted, and the four of them grabbed Ytash by armour and arms and handfuls of fur and dragged him to the ghastlight crack.

‘Not the bad light again. Not the bad light!’ He gibbered and pleaded and struggled, to no avail.

There was no time for grace or a protracted undeath; the Godseeker simply dragged his speartip across Ytash’s throat, holding the shuddering skaven in the ghastlight itself. The tips of his fur silvered and his blood steamed within its glow. Tendrils of shadow-magic stroked towards the skaven and his pooling life force.

They touched him and then shoved down through his gaping mouth and gaping throat and yanked him through the crack.

Vasillac ripped off his helm. He scooped up a handful of blood and smeared it across his face and neck, even licked it from his fingers. Then he reached out with a red palm and grasped the nearest tendril of ghastlight. It curled around his hand and up his wrist, seeming to drink the blood – blood that was not his. Before it could reject him – if such a thing were even possible – the Godseeker stood up, still holding the tendril firmly in his hand, and stepped forward. The crack bulged, light flared, and Vasillac disappeared.

‘Lord!’ Slakeslash bleated. He copied Vasillac’s actions, splashing himself in skaven blood and grabbing onto the magic. Then he shoved forward and muscled his way into the light.

Into the light? Or into Uhl-Gysh? Or just into death, lost between realms in endless black and eternal cold? Glissete didn’t know. She exchanged a glance with Hadzu, who shrugged.

‘It’ll be intense, at least,’ he said.

Together, they repeated the ritual and stepped forward. The ghastlight was both bright and dirty, at once the searing heat of a forge and the cold of an ice storm. It battered at Glissete and she lost sight of Hadzu, lost sight of everything, trapped in an eternity of conflicting sensation that assailed her mind and tore her body. It was exquisite.

And then she was on her knees on unfamiliar stone, beneath a sky that hurt to look at and surrounded by buildings of angular, alien magnificence. Surrounded, too, by the other three members of the Dread Pageant and Ytash, still chittering but in rage now, his yellowed incisors exposed and his fur bristling.

Beyond them, hundreds of undead turned as one to regard them, their fleshless faces set in permanent grins reflected in the dull steel of their weapons.