THE HALT
They were so close.
Sevora had led Brevin across the strange, circular chamber to that glowing, terrifying heart, and she had watched him raise his hands to it, and for a moment she thought this might be it. That they might be finally done. And then she had seen his ruined face, and one thought had whispered through her mind.
Hope is a lie.
Brevin’s mouth was stretching open, wider and wider, into a silent shriek. He couldn’t give voice to whatever agony filled him as his wounded throat spilled fresh blood, but Sevora could see his pain, pain so vast it must have been tearing the Hallowed Knight apart.
And then she could see the blood on his chest.
It pushed through the bandages, swallowing his runes, a triangle of blood. Then something pushed through the stained cloth, cutting the bandages away, a thing of metal and bone, a blood-coated instrument tearing out of the Stormcast’s flesh. It began to grow. The ugly thing stretched, and there was a terrible crunching noise of ribs shattering, the ugly squelch of organs being ripped apart, the awful shredding noise of muscle and skin ripping as the triangular thing expanded, opening Brevin up like a butchered animal.
It was terribly like when the skaven things had torn Avil apart, but also hideously worse. This wasn’t monsters tearing their way out, this was like a door being forced open in the Lord-Ordinator’s flesh – a door through which something was pushing its way out of his blood, starting to step through from the other side, and Sevora fell back, trying to get away from whatever was coming.
But Brevin, still horribly alive, still horribly aware, jerked his hand down from the Heart and caught hers, holding her so she couldn’t escape. She pulled at his iron grip, staring at the bulging blood that slicked over the triangular door, the thin skin of red going tight over the muzzle of a skaven shoving its way out of his ruined chest. They were coming: the skaven were coming, murder-birthing themselves into the world, and she couldn’t get away because Brevin was holding her. She could feel Corus behind her, his fingers catching her shoulder to pull her back, but it was too late. The Lord-Ordinator dragged her hand up and slammed her palm against the Heart.
The world exploded then, into pain, and heat, and red, red light.
The hiss of the skaven echoed through Brevin’s head and into his soul. Hearing it hurt him, worse than whatever terrible thing was happening in his heart. He’d been tricked again, manipulated into doing Skein’s bidding, and there was nothing he could do, no way he could fight, no hope–
Hope when hope is dying.
The phrase rang through his head, and with it came an idea. A desperate gamble, but what else did he have? He forced his hand away from the Heart, and reached through the darkness for the knot of yellow that marked Sevora’s magic. His hand found her arm, and he grabbed her, pulling her forward, whispering a prayer as he slammed her hand against the Heart.
‘–and so I call upon you, Master of the Heavens, guide my hand and guide my heart, and let me serve you now, in my last moments in the Mortal Realms, until you see fit to bring me forth again.’
The light was fading around Sevora, dying back until she could see, but still it surrounded her. Red light, everywhere, and she floated in it like a piece of ash drifting through a fire. And beside her was a man, a Stormcast, wrapped in silver armour, a massive hammer leaning over one shoulder.
‘Lord-Ordinator,’ she said. It had to be him, though she barely recognised him. His skin was smooth and whole, and brown eyes gleamed in his face, reflecting the red light as the Hallowed Knight finished his prayer.
‘Sevora. Thank Sigmar I didn’t kill you.’ His voice was deep, flowing from his unwounded throat.
‘What did you do?’ Sevora had thought this was another of Corus’ memories tearing through her head, but no, apparently this was yet another kind of vision sent to plague her.
‘I acted on impulse,’ he said. ‘Something I am prone to do, despite all it has cost me. My eyes, my voice, and my life, very soon. I made you touch the Heart. I saw your connection to magic, and…’ Brevin shook his head. ‘I don’t have time. This moment is without time, without place, but it won’t last. We’ll be back in the Halt all too soon, and I will be rejoining Sigmar. If Skein’s corruption hasn’t taken that from me too.’
‘Skein,’ Sevora said. ‘Who is that? What is this?’
‘Skein. The Grey Seer. Skaven sorcerer. He’s the one who was taking my shadow and attacking the Halt with it. The one who is trying to destroy the wall and its Heart with warpstone.’ Brevin shuddered, and his body blurred, changed. For a second his armour was gone, his eyes were gone, he was battered and bloody – and then he was back, whole. ‘He used me to reach the Heart by hiding inside me. But now he’s tearing his way out, and I can see.’
Brevin crouched and wrapped his hands around her shoulders. His hammer was gone, the way things flickered in and out in dreams. No, this wasn’t a memory, but not quite a dream either.
‘What is this?’ she asked again. Heat was creeping through her, up her arm and into her body. Concentrating in her chest. In her heart.
‘I can see,’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘He was in me, using me, but now that he is coming out I am in him too. Skein came for the Heart. He has always wanted the Heart. The wall destroyed – Reekbite wanted that, but Skein always wanted the Heart, and that is why he wanted me.’
The heat was in all of her now, and in her heart it was beginning to burn. Like a ball of flame. ‘What–’ she gasped, but that was all she could choke out.
‘Skein wants to destroy it,’ Brevin said. ‘I see it now. He wants to destroy the Heart with warpstone. But not to break the Halt. He thinks he can capture it, all the destruction, all the poison smoke that would come from touching warpstone to the Heart. He thinks he can make it into a weapon, to be released where he wants, when he wants. He wants to be able to turn a city like Hammerhal Aqsha into a wasteland like the Vale.’
Brevin looked at her with eyes he didn’t have any more. ‘It’s in you. The Heart. I made you touch it, to see if it would forge a link to you the way it did to me. You can channel magic, you can reach it, and you have to do something. You have to stop him. Use the Heart, and stop Skein.’
The fire in her was growing, growing with her every heartbeat, and the pain with it, overwhelming Sevora. It was too much, it was going to kill her, and she fought for some way to contain it, to keep it from burning her up from the inside.
‘I am untrained,’ she gasped. ‘Uncontrolled. Flux-touched. I can’t–’
‘Flux-touched,’ he whispered, finally hearing her. ‘I don’t know. Maybe that’s better. Maybe that’s what the Heart needs. Wild magic for wild magic. Or maybe I’ve killed you, killed us all. But this was all the hope I had. To strip the Heart from me, and give it to you.’
‘Hope.’ Sevora’s voice was a whisper of pain. ‘Hope is a lie.’
‘No,’ Brevin said. ‘No!’
His eyes grew wide, wider, and then they were gone, caving into hollows of blood and pain as his last word stretched into a howl of denial.
‘No!’
Then there was silence, their surroundings corroding to nothing as Brevin’s face grew dirty and bloody; as his armour fell away; as his chest opened and out spilled darkness, darkness that swallowed everything.
There was darkness. Darkness tinted with the red of flames, flames that felt like they were licking beneath the surface of Sevora’s skin.
Then there was confusion.
Sevora was on the wrought-iron floor, gasping, burning up from the inside. Something hit the bars beside her, splashing her with blood. She jerked up and saw teeth – yellow teeth spattered with red.
Yellow teeth. Yevin’s warning went through her head, but it was far too late for warnings.
Skaven teeth, the eyes set in the face over them gone, sockets covered by eyelids stitched shut with yellow thread. Sevora twitched back, and only then realised that the head was also missing a body, the stump of its neck dripping blood.
Sevora scrambled to her feet, pulling her knife even as the world swung around her. Heat filled her like a fever, but she fought through it to try to understand what was happening. She was still in the centre of that great circular chamber, that Heart beside her, pulsing with light. Brevin–
Brevin’s body was sprawled a little way away on the wrought-iron bars of this treacherous floor. The triangle in his chest had ripped open wide enough for her to fall into, the crude metal and bone marking the edges of a massive wound. By everything holy, the Lord-Ordinator should have been dead. But one arm still reached up, fingers clawing for the Heart. Still alive, somehow, even as something moved in the dark triangle that had ripped him open. A skaven, its fur brown and red and white, its eyes blinking.
‘Yes,’ it muttered as it dragged itself out of the Lord-Ordinator, trembling and silently snarling as the darkness in Brevin’s chest stirred once again. But Sevora’s attention went to the shower of sparks bursting out beside her.
Corus was there, shield and axe raised. A blade was smashing into his helm, a blade connected to a long barbed chain. The strike was eerily silent, but the tip of the chain whip tore sparks from her great-grandfather’s helm as it came away. Then there was another hit, crashing off his shield, and she saw them: more of the eyeless skaven in their black robes, whipping those barbed and bladed chains around them, sending them out like striking snakes at Corus.
And being stopped.
With shield and axe and armour, Corus moved, blocking and dodging, yet holding his position between the ratmen and Sevora. He was protecting her, battling the eyeless skaven and keeping their weapons away. Three of the assassins lay dead around him, and another was writhing across the bars of the floor, biting at the bloody stump of its leg. There were more, throwing their weapons out as they tried to catch Corus. But he leaned and shifted, raised his shield and swung his axe, and stayed in his spot, unmoving, indomitable, the lightning flashing furiously in his eyes. He was a force of nature, the sparks showering off him like a stone struck by lightning, but by the gods he couldn’t do this alone.
‘Corus!’ she shouted. ‘What should I do?’
‘Sevora!’ One of the chain whips snapped at his face and he ducked the blow, but as he did another wrapped around his arm, and another his leg. They jerked at him, trying to pull him down, but he raised his shield and blocked two more strikes as he spun his arm in a quick, snapping circle that shed the chain that was snagged to it. Axe free, he slammed it down on the chain that was hooked to his leg. The sigmarite blade cut through the chain as though it were links of dry grass, and then bit into the wrought-iron bars of the floor in another shower of sparks. The skaven holding the chain snarled as it stumbled back with its broken weapon.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked as he turned sideways, avoiding one strike while he punched another away with his shield.
All right. She wavered on her feet, fire roaring through her. The Heart was in her, its heat unrelenting. She felt like she was going to dissolve into ash and smoke and failure. What had Brevin meant to do? What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t control her own sorcery, what was she supposed to do with this elemental force burning through her? She would have cursed the Hallowed Knight, but whatever was happening to him was worse than anything she could imagine.
‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘What–’
She cut off as another light, garish green, bloomed to life in the chamber.
Another skaven had pulled itself out of Brevin, this one robed in yellow, the same colour as the thread that stitched its eyes shut. Its fur was grey, and on its thumbs silver hooks gleamed. Around its neck it wore a sphere of warpstone, a yellow flaw marking it like the pupil of an eye, and in its hand it held another piece of warpstone as big as a fist. The stone’s radiance pushed back the crimson glow of the Heart, somehow making shadows gather around the grey rat.
Grey Seer. The one Brevin had called Skein. The skaven lifted his eyeless head to the Heart and licked his lips, whiskers quivering. Then he pulled the smaller warpstone from around his neck and pushed it into the hands of the spotted skaven, the only one that still had eyes.
‘Varus, take!’ he hissed. ‘Take to Heart!’
‘Yes,’ the smaller skaven answered, but he was cowering away from the warpstone and from Skein, terrified, it seemed, of both.
Take to the heart. Emberstone, warpstone, smoke, destruction.
‘No,’ Sevora shouted, raising her blade, and the one called Varus looked to her, while Skein hissed.
That sibilant threat may have once given her pause, but she’d seen too much, and the heat in her made her uncaring, half-crazed. She tried to call the wind that lay in her, but she found only fire, fire that burned her inside and made her gasp and stumble forward. She caught herself, but it was already too late.
She’d moved away from the shelter of Corus’ shield. He tried to move with her, but a barbed chain caught the top of his shield, slowing him. One of the skaven spun its chain whip in a hard loop and smashed the weapon’s blade across the front of Corus’ helm, sending out blood and sparks. Sevora had stopped and was trying to turn back when another chain whip lashed out and caught her around the waist.
Metal barbs drove through her robes and caught in her skin. Sevora fell, her father’s knife skittering across the floor, snagging between the wrought-iron rods. Sevora grabbed onto the symbols woven into the floor, trying to keep from being pulled closer to the skaven. The chain whip tightened, barbs digging in, and the pain of its grip grew to match the fire burning in her. Still she hung on, wrapped in steel and agony, and tried not to howl as Skein finally forced Varus to take the warpstone pendant and shoved him towards the Heart.
The skaven were going to kill them all, and Sevora couldn’t do anything about it because some eyeless monster was dragging her across the floor like an animal to slaughter. Frustrated anger swept through her and there, there it was, natural as breathing.
Fear had been the key before, the emotion that had made her able to grasp at magic, to make her wind. But she could never control it then. The few times she’d been close to taming it, there had been anger mixed with that fear. The rage had given her an imperfect fraction of control. Sometimes.
Now, the fire that filled her grew with her anger. It hurt, but it made her stronger too. Sevora could use that fire to grasp at the power in her, all around her; to clench it in a fist of heated rage, and then make it flow.
Her control was far from perfect. She raised her hand to lash out at Varus, to knock the warpstone charm from his hand and pin the ragged skaven to the wall. But as the air spun up around her, sparks rose from the wounds the chain whip had gouged into her belly, and with a roar the air raced down the steel links wrapped around her and slammed into the dark-robed skaven that held the weapon. The sparks carried by the wind exploded as they hit, and when the eyeless assassin hit the wall of the chamber it was a bundle of ash and charred bones.
The chain whip went slack, and Sevora came up on one knee, pointing again at Varus. The fire didn’t surprise her. She was filled with fire now, and she aimed that heat at the skaven. But if she had some control, her strength was still something that peaked and waned without warning. The wind that roared away from her hand fell to a breeze, and the sparks that rode it flared briefly and went out, barely singeing the skaven’s fur and little else.
Varus yelped ‘yes,’ as the sparks hit him, but when they faded away he turned towards the Heart again, rushing forward. He was almost there, the glowing charm hanging from his outstretched hand, when he slammed to the floor.
Brevin, blood seeping from the gaping triangle in his chest, had reached out and caught Varus’ tail with his hand as the skaven rushed by, and now he held it and yanked the ratman down. Varus looked at him, eyes wide, and hissed, ‘Yes-yes!’
Brevin shook his head no, and spat a mouthful of blood.
‘Go,’ Skein screamed, but Varus couldn’t move. Trapped, the ragged skaven pulled back his claw and hurled the warpstone at the Heart. The green pendant arced up, an ugly star streaking towards that great red sun – and missed. It flew just below it and clattered onto the wrought iron, rolling to a gap in one of the symbols, then dropping beneath. The copper chain attached to it rattled through the wrought-iron bars as the pendant fell, until it stopped, the chain snagging on something.
The worn hilt of Sevora’s father’s knife.
Skein watched the pendant fall, and the Grey Seer hissed, pointing a claw at Varus, who had twisted around to bite at Brevin’s hand. But the Lord-Ordinator had already let him go, and the spotted skaven shot away, vanishing through the chamber’s door, gone.
And in the mayhem of Sevora’s attack and Varus’ failure, Corus struck.
He’d never stopped fighting, had barely slowed when the chain whip struck him. When her wind and flames lashed out, the roar of them had made the skaven flinch back, and he surged forward. He snagged one chain whip on his axe, jerking its wielder forward to land on its belly. When the skaven tried to rise, Corus’ shield caught it in the face, snapping its neck with a pop. The Reclusian didn’t stop, didn’t slow. He charged forward and took another of the eyeless ones out with a sweep of his axe, his blade carving through shoulder and chest, leaving a wound that spilled viscera across the wrought-iron tracery of the floor.
‘Kill them both, both dead!’ Skein snapped. The Grey Seer was moving around them, staying far from Corus. Heading for where the pendant hung, tangled with the knife Sevora had dropped.
Sevora pulled herself up, the heat still burning in her. Using it to control her wind hadn’t dulled the pain, it had made it worse. She could barely breathe, but it made her rage, and maybe that would make her power grow. She pointed her hand at Skein, and tried to burn him the way she had burned the assassin. Corus was shouting, calling on Sigmar, calling on the storm, and she wanted a storm too. The wind whipped around her, sparks pouring off her body into it, and she could see Skein making a warding gesture, but she didn’t care: she would burn him to bones too.
And then light crashed in all around her, and everything was gone, and there was only her rage melting into the memory that consumed her.
The scale came out of the warrior’s skin with a wet ripping sound.
It wasn’t easy. Corus had to put his boot to the man’s belly, to brace so he could tear the piece of brass away. When it finally came, Khorne’s Champion snarled, baring his filed teeth in defiance as blood gushed from the wound. But something flashed through his mad eyes for a moment when Corus pulled the scale free. Pain, yes, but something more. Despair.
Despair. Yes. Corus threw the bloody scale aside and grabbed another. He braced and pulled, muscles bulging, and stared into the warrior’s eyes. The man still snarled, angry, defiant, but again there was that flash when the deep-rooted scale finally ripped free. That instant of despair, and it was a drug that went straight to Corus’ soul.
It had been over a century since he’d been killed. He’d spent a hundred years and more as a Stormcast Eternal, fighting for his lord Sigmar. And in all that time he’d never forgotten his mortal life. His mortal death. He’d never forgotten that pain.
That despair.
He threw the scale away, and reached for another. He was dimly aware of Lavin screaming at the warrior, ‘Revoke him! Revoke him!’ Of the other Hallowed Knights standing silent and reverent, as if in prayer. Of the stink of blood in the heat of the day. He tore the scale away, threw it behind him, and reached for another. For another chance to be the one to inflict pain. To give despair. To take away hope.
Hope.
Remember hope.
Aika’s last words to him. And he had. For a hundred years he had. He’d been reborn, and remembered hope. If he could be Reforged, he could believe that she’d survived. That somewhere in the world she’d lived out her life, caring for their child, giving them the life Corus longed for. He could hope for that, had hoped for that for a century of fighting, of deaths, of rebirths. But…
Corus stopped. He was standing before the warrior, holding a bloody brass scale in his hand. Staring into the man’s mad eyes, hungry to hurt him, and what would Aika say to this? What hope would she see in a mad demigod wallowing in sadism and despair?
‘Another, Stormcast?’ the warrior asked. His body was a mess of wounds, blood pouring out of him, so much blood. More than even his grotesquely swollen body could ever hold, it coated the bottom of the canyon. ‘Another?’ Still vicious as he died, but that despair was there, not as well hidden now, jerked closer to the surface by every wound Corus had inflicted.
What was he doing? What was he becoming? Corus let the scale fall and raised a bloody gauntlet to his face. Remember hope. How could he do that, in a world that was nothing but blood and filth?
‘What are you doing, brother?’ Lavin asked. ‘He has not revoked the Dark Powers. Keep at your good work until he does, or until he dies.’
‘Shut up,’ Corus said, and he didn’t even notice the rage sweeping across Lavin’s face. Or the confusion when a warning shout came up from one of the other Hallowed Knights. Lavin was suddenly moving from him, drawing his warhammer and shouting, arranging his men as howls sounded through the narrow slot canyons that led to this place, howls filled with otherworldly rage.
‘You drew my blood, Stormcast,’ the Champion said. ‘And the scent drew the Flesh Hounds. They come, and they will feast upon you.’
The Hallowed Knights spread out, pairs of them taking each narrow entrance to this wider canyon, and there was a shout, the sounds of growls and claws screeching across sigmarite as they fell on first one pair of Stormcasts, then another, and another, until they were all around them, the Flesh Hounds hitting from every side, maddened by the smell of so much blood.
The warrior smiled, his filed teeth limned in crimson. ‘I hope you had your fill, Stormcast. Now you die.’
‘Hope,’ Corus said. He reached out and grabbed one of the scales that grew from the warrior’s scalp, gripped it tight in one hand. ‘This is what I think about hope.’
He jerked on the scale, fast and hard. Not trying to rip it out, instead using it like a handle to twist the warrior’s head around until his neck snapped and the rabid ferocity in his eyes gave way to nothing, not despair but simply emptiness.
‘I think it’s a lie,’ he said to the corpse. He let the warrior drop face down in the bloody pool.
Corus turned, pulling his weapon, and walked to the fight, to death, to resurrection, with nothing in his heart.
Corus’ words went through Sevora’s head, and following them, her father’s.
Hope is a lie.
Almost the same. Why did that hurt so much?
She shook her head, dragging herself out of that hangover of light, leaving the memory and coming back to reality. To pain.
She opened her eyes, and there was darkness below, and crimson above, and her arm was screaming agony.
When Corus’ memory had come, she’d been near the circular opening in the wrought-iron floor where the Heart floated. When she’d gone to that bloody valley, she must have collapsed at the edge of the opening and started to fall through. But Corus had thrown himself across the chamber and caught her wrist. And in doing so, pulled her arm from its socket.
Over her, the chain whips were whirling as they snapped at her great-grandfather. They smashed into his shield, his armour, their blows still weirdly silent. But holding her, Corus couldn’t dodge. The blades on the ends of those chains were drawing blood and adding cuts to the ones that already marked him.
‘Corus!’ she gasped. ‘Pull me up!’
At the sound of her voice, Corus surged to his feet, yanking her up with him, and Sevora had to fight not to pass out as her arm shrieked in agony. But the fire in her, painful or not, helped her cling to consciousness and she watched as Corus slid his shield down his arm and threw it. The heavy sigmarite spun through the air without any grace, but Corus’ strength had given it momentum. It headed straight for the three remaining skaven assassins, and they dove out of the way, save one. The shield smashed into its side, and the skaven’s bones broke with a sound like kindling smashing. The assassin hit the floor, vomiting blood, and went still.
‘I’m sorry,’ Corus said, setting her down. ‘My fault. My memory. I’m sorry!’
Memory. Sevora fought for her balance as the room swung around her. Memory. Memorian. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she gasped. ‘Kill them.’
And as she spoke, an inhuman voice cut across the chamber. ‘Kill! Kill him, Lisstis! Now!’
Skein was creeping close, moving to where the pendant still hung from her father’s knife. Sevora raised her working arm and pointed at him, trying to use the fire in her to reach her magic, but the attempt made the pain in her rise so much she fell to her knees, nauseous.
‘Sevora!’ Corus shouted, and she shook her head.
‘Fight, Reclusian! Fight!’ It was their only hope, and that thought almost pulled a mad peal of laughter from her. But Corus somehow seemed to understand.
‘Hope when hope is dying!’ he shouted, and stepped forward, stamping his boot down on the handle of his axe. He must have dropped it there when he snagged Sevora’s arm, and it flipped up in the air, where he grabbed it and charged forward. The skaven assassins scattered, snapping their chain whips at him. One flung its blade at Corus’ face, but Corus spun away. He didn’t have his shield to block with, but without its weight Corus was agile as a cat, and he turned his dodge into a lunge at the other skaven. His fist smashed that skaven’s head back in a gout of blood and teeth, then his axe sliced across the ratman’s belly. Black robes went darker with blood, and the skaven pressed its chain whip to its belly, as if the barbed coils of the weapon could help to hold the spilled guts in.
Skein was moving around the battle, staying carefully away from Corus but moving closer to the pendant. To her father’s knife. The thought of the skaven closing his claws around that cheap blade made the anger burn in Sevora, and she was moving, ignoring her pain, dashing forward to pick up the knife. The pendant came with it, heavier than it should have been, a weight in her hand as she pushed herself back, away from Skein and towards Corus.
‘Lisstis,’ Skein hissed. The grey skaven clutched the larger warpstone in his claw, holding it before him like a weapon. ‘Lisstis, kill.’ His eyeless head was facing Sevora. ‘Kill, and bring me what they have stolen.’
The skaven assassin began to move, angling towards Sevora, but Corus was moving too. He had no shield, and bled from a dozen wounds, but the lightning in his eyes was a storm as he stepped between Lisstis and his great-granddaughter. ‘Not another step,’ he said, his voice deep as thunder.
Lisstis hissed at him, but he stopped moving, except for the slow circle of the chain whip spinning in his claws, and Skein snarled in frustration.
‘Fool. Useless.’ The Grey Seer raised the warpstone he held, and a burst of light flashed from its ugly facets.
Sevora had to look away from the explosion of poisonous light, and her eyes caught on the corpse of the skaven Corus had just killed. The warpstone’s flash made the body’s shadow enormous on the curved wall of the chamber, and then the shadow came apart. The darkness split, falling into a swarm of black shadow-rats careening off the wall and rushing towards her great-grandfather.
‘Corus!’ she shouted, but the shadow-rats were on him. They swarmed up his leg, black teeth biting. He smashed down with his boots, his fist, his axe, shattering the shadows, cutting them apart, but there were too many. Before he could break them all, they found a gap in his armour behind his knee and bit, their teeth slicing through the tendons that hinged thigh to calf. Corus’ leg folded beneath him, but he kept smashing the last rats with his fists and the haft of his axe, breaking them all into darkness.
But the damage was done. Corus couldn’t rise, and Lisstis was moving around him, claws skittering fast across the wrought-iron floor. Sevora was starting to turn to try to run, but the skaven was already casting his chain whip at her, flinging it out to catch her and yank her back.
In that moment though, focused on his attack, the assassin had forgotten Corus.
The Reclusian threw himself forward with his one good leg. It was an awkward, lurching leap from the ground, but the power behind it was enough to send him after Lisstis. He swung as he dove forward, and his axe caught the assassin in the leg – not hard enough to smash through bone, but it cut flesh and made the skaven stumble. The smooth arc of Lisstis’ chain whip broke, and the steel barbs smashed into the floor at Sevora’s feet, showering her with sparks.
Lisstis flipped himself through the air, landing on Corus’ back. The skaven jerked his chain whip around the Reclusian’s throat, so that the barbs sank into his skin and throttled Corus with the metal links. Corus grabbed for the assassin, rolling, but Lisstis ducked and pulled the chain tighter.
Sevora backed away from the fight, knife and pendant still clutched in her hand, until she heard Skein.
‘You.’ His voice was a low hiss, sharp, grating. ‘You, human. Listen.’ Skein was moving towards her, one claw clutching the larger piece of warpstone, the other extended towards her. ‘Listen, or suffer.’
Skein stopped beside Brevin, who lay on the floor, gutted by that triangle but still somehow alive.
‘Suffer like this one. Suffer, like all who fight will suffer.’ The Grey Seer bent down, and with the hook on his thumb he drew a line across the Lord-Ordinator’s throat, from ear to ear. Blood flowed, a sluggish trickle, and Brevin collapsed. It wasn’t lightning taking him. The Lord-Ordinator pulled in, contracting, as if the hole in his chest were sucking him in, and then he was gone, nothing left but the bone and copper triangle, which rattled hollowly against the wrought iron.
‘Listen, human,’ Skein told her, straightening. ‘That stone. Stone is mine.’ He held out his empty hand, the hook on his thumb dark with blood.
‘Don’t.’ It was Corus’ voice, and Sevora looked back to him. While she had been watching Skein, he had finally got his hands on Lisstis. Corus held the skaven in one hand, his thumb and one finger digging into the assassin’s empty eye sockets, tearing the yellow thread that held the lids closed. Lisstis was still alive, his clawed hand scraping uselessly against Corus’ armour, but he was trapped, helpless.
‘Leave her alone or I’ll crush his skull.’
Skein didn’t turn his eyeless face towards him. He just raised the larger warpstone, and it flashed again, the terrible light driving into Sevora’s eyes like a migraine. When she could see again, Corus was slamming Lisstis down, smashing the skaven’s skull against the floor, breaking it like an egg. But Lisstis’ shadow was already stepping away from the wall, a shade assassin wrought by Skein’s magic. Fast as fear, it scooped up a chain whip and wrapped the steel around Corus’ throat before he could roll away.
The Reclusian reached back, fighting to grab the thing’s wrists, but his hands passed through the shadow thing. Lisstis’ shade was finishing what the skaven hadn’t, and Corus couldn’t stop it.
‘Listen, human,’ Skein said again. ‘Give what you have taken. Or this storm-cursed, their soul I will destroy. Destroy like other, no resurrection, no eternal. Eternal darkness only, human, for him and you. Dark, forever, and that is truth.’