The Soulblight Gravelords are rising to stamp out the light of the living – and they’re coming for everyone, Sigmarite and Darkoath alike, in our latest short story…
Standing atop a jagged shelf of rock, Chieftain Lavka can see the dust trail of her prey as they flee west. They are heading towards a swathe of dark forest that stretches along the Golvarian horizon. She frowns. These lands are not of the Crowblade Clan. The tribe passed beyond the limits of their territorial knowledge many days ago, lost in the exaltation of the Great Onslaught and the heady massacres that followed. Lavka does not like the look of that forest, nor the dark and smoky mists that crown its skeletal trees.
And yet there are oaths that have been sworn. She wears the rune-etched stones at her belt, a constant, wearying reminder of her obligations. The Crowblade Clan has pledged to wipe out every one of the fleeing Sigmarites. Their bloodthirsty deities are not the sort to accept a promise reneged upon.
‘No rest,’ the chieftain shouts to her waiting killers. ‘We have them. They are so close I can smell their fear. The gods will feast well tonight.’
The Crowblade warriors howled, clattering their axes on their shields.
With luck, they will catch the enemy on the open ground.
In the event, they do not. A sudden ash storm comes rushing in from the east – a furious one, animated by a cruel hunger. The Crowblades are forced to take cover before they are flayed alive by whipping debris. When it clears, the sky is almost entirely concealed behind blood-coloured banks of cloud, and the world is cast in lurid crimson.
They find a few shredded corpses at the mouth of the forest, presumably those who failed to reach safety in time. The rest made it to the treeline at least, arranging their steam carriages in a semicircle to fend off the deadly hail. The vehicles lie abandoned on the forest’s outskirts, wrecked beyond repair.
Drajak, the Crowblades’ best tracker, easily finds the trail. Blood, dust and trampled grass are ample evidence of a panicked, clumsy flight. Lavka sends a spearband led by Broja and Tul to scout ahead and lay eyes on the Sigmarites, while the rest of the Crowblade Clan follow close behind. After several hours of travel, they find more dead men. The Sigmarite soldiers lie strewn in a bloody pile, their flesh so pale it looks almost translucent. Some have been run through, others sliced apart by wide, raking blows. A few are little more than chunks of decaying flesh, and Lavka presumes these have provided a meal to whatever carrion-eaters live in this forest.
As she thinks this, she notices something else that disturbs her. They have heard no bird calls since entering the place. Nor the snorts or cries of distant animals, nor even the gentle rustle of leaves. There seems to be no life here at all.
Drajak summons her over to one of the corpses. There are puncture marks in the dead woman’s neck. Not the ugly wounds caused by arrows or gunshot, but neat, precise marks, right over the neck’s major blood vessel. Lavka looks up at the sky, half visible beneath the crooked fingers of the branches. Hysh is descending, and night is surging in to fill its place. In the distance, there is a bellowed curse, then a long scream. The ragged, mindless shriek of an animal in dreadful pain.
‘Sounds like Broja,’ says Drajak, echoing Lavka’s own unpleasant thought.
Even though Darkoath seldom admit to fear, Lavka can sense the trepidation that has settled over the Crowblade Clan like an enervating shadow. But there are few bolder warriors in existence, and they are not ready to give in to that unease just yet.
‘We go on,’ the chieftain says. None object.
Broja’s death was neither easy nor quick. He has been impaled upon a broken branch, his flesh pockmarked by vicious gouges. His eyes have been torn out, and he is as pallid as the slain Sigmar worshippers they came across earlier. A trail of gore leads away into a clearing to the left. They follow it, axes raised, expecting the darkness to unfold around them in the form of some hellish monstrosity. At the centre of the clearing, there is a strange form: a pile of leathery hides, lying in a roughly humanoid shape. There is a rustling that stirs when the Darkoath draw close, and then something worse – a series of awful sucking sounds.
Mirad swipes his axe at the prone shape. There is a sudden surge of fur and flesh as bats the size of hounds flap into the air, screeching angrily as they are driven from their meal. Some cling on like bloated leeches, too glutted to move. Tul’s eyes bulge out from beneath a bloody mask, white and utterly insane. Lavka realises with a sickening lurch in her gut that the man is somehow still alive.
‘Kill me,’ he whines.
Spears and axes are hurled. The blood-drunk creatures are too clumsy to avoid them all. Those struck burst like waterskins, showering the ground with Tul’s gore. The entire forest seems to awaken at that moment. More bats burst from the trees, swirling and diving in a maddening tempest. The air is full of a reeking scent – not just the acrid spoor of the oversized creatures but a mouldy, wet smell like marsh gas.
Howls. Howls in the distance, keening and hungry. And behind that dreadful cacophony, the peal of horns. Despite her dread, Lavka does not panic. Neither do the warriors of the Crowblade Clan. Immediately, they form the shieldwall, a clenched fist ready to strike.
They do not expect the first assault to come from below.
A spear bursts through the wet earth, sinking into Yanach’s groin. The warrior howls, blood gushing from the hideous wound. Gripping the spear’s haft is a fleshless hand, bones smeared with soil. The Crowblades are caught in a kind of horrified trance as they watch the dead thing pull its way loose. Bones and tattered rags are held together by a surcoat of rusted iron scale. The dead thing staggers at Lavka clumsily, leading with its gore-stained spear. She splits its skull in two with her axe.
The terrain below their boots writhes obscenely as more dead warriors claw their way up from shallow graves. Grasping, clicking fingers reach for the Crowblades’ ankles, and the tips of swords emerge from the loam like shoots of razorgrass. They destroy some of the dead before they rise, but there are so many. Too many. The whole forest is a graveyard, and it is waking up around them. More skeletons stagger from the trees behind them and to each flank. They begin to corral the Crowblades, driving them relentlessly back before a grinding wall of spears and pitted blades.
So begins a slow, inexorable retreat. Marauders fall, their necks opened by rusted steel. Others are speared through again and again, jerking spasmodically as they are butchered. More skeletons continue to clamber out from the putrid mud, while the Crowblades’ numbers dwindle. Worse, the enemy is dividing them, pushing their ranks apart and surging in to fill the gaps. Lavka curses and bellows, trying to restore the Crowblades’ cohesion, but to no avail. It is raining heavily now, icy water lashing down in stinging sheets and causing the floor to become even more slippery and treacherous. The Crowblade warriors can do nothing but give ground.
From the gloom rise monoliths of moss-draped stone. Old, old things, from a time when these lands were the province of men and not fiends. They are not buried but built into the ground, which is now thick with ugly tangles of roots and black vines. Lavka looks around desperately for some defensible terrain and sees only one option: the largest of the mounds, circled by a crumbling fortification of rusting iron spikes.
‘There we stand,’ she snarls, rallying as many warriors as she can.
They smash their way through the foes that stumble into their path, and they reach the door. This close to the place, Lavka feels an oppressive weight fall over her, a sensation of age-old malice almost stifling in intensity. She knows, without understanding why, that this is an evil place – a place that has borne eager witness to the most horrific acts. She has visited such sites before, of course. Her gods make them their home. But while the bloodied offering grounds of the Ruinous Ones are rich in potential, a font of power waiting to be drawn by those who have the strength for it, this place is different. It offers nothing but eternal, creeping doom.
Yet their sole other choice is to face those spears.
As soon as they cross the threshold, the skeletons halt. They stop as one, the sudden ceasing of motion uncanny in its synchronicity. The only sound is the wet lash of rain and the screams of those wounded Crowblade warriors who were left behind.
There is a grinding sound so deep it rattles their teeth, and they turn to see another great portal of black stone open behind them, so thick with lichen they had thought it was a wall. Beyond is a wide and ornately decorated chamber, illuminated by dimly smouldering braziers. Lavka wonders how long those fires have burned. The Crowblades enter, for where else might they go? They see the sarcophagi lining the walls and the raised dais at the far end of the hall, occupied by a single tall chair of wrought gold.
A figure sits upon that throne, wreathed in shadow. Two sunken pits of coal blaze in the darkness, filled with monstrous hunger. Lavka looks into those eyes and feels a sudden dizzying sense of vertigo, as if she teeters on the edge of a black pit.
‘Trespassers,’ says the shadowed creature. Its voice is deep yet oddly melodic, with the harsh edge of an accent Lavka does not recognise. ‘Do you so eagerly seek your doom, blood-kine? No mortal has despoiled my family’s crypts for a thousand years.’
‘Vhampir,’ hisses Mirad, using the archaic term. ‘Blood-lapper.’
The Crowblade warriors shift and curse. Few abhor the walking dead more fervently than they, who remember the dark days when the lands were soured by unquiet spirits.
‘There is no domain but that of the thousandfold gods,’ snarls Lavka. Her warriors spread out, advancing towards the seated entity. It smiles, and she sees the gleam of white teeth in the darkness.
‘Mortal arrogance never ceases to amuse me,’ the thing says. ‘I have hunted your kind since the moment you crawled from your caves, begging for salvation from whatever gods would have you. You think the tantrums of your wretched pantheon will last?’
‘In the name of the Blood Eagle, I’ll have your head, fiend,’ Lavka snarls.
The creature rises. Stepping out of the darkness, they see its true form: a tall, gaunt man with a high crown of jet-black hair, clad in ornate enamelled half-plate. One hand rests upon the pommel of a sword, while the other holds a goblet of black crystal. Despite his handsome features, Lavka recoils. She smells the reek of the grave, unmasked by a sickly sweet layer of perfume. He smiles as he watches them approach – an almost pitying expression. Despite herself, the chieftain falters, unnerved by his confidence.
‘At once, then?’ he says, spreading his arms wide. ‘Or in turn?’
He kills two Crowblades before even drawing his weapon. Mirad is the first to perish. Lavka is not sure precisely what happens, for the motion is so unnaturally fast her eyes cannot explain it. As the Crowblade comes barrelling in at him, the fiend splays his fingers and cuts the air, and suddenly Mirad’s throat is gushing a thick, red spray. Jorac is moving in Mirad’s wake, and the blood splatters across his face, causing him to stumble. Before he can regain his footing, the creature has him, twisting his sword arm until it snaps and driving a fist through the warrior’s gut. Right through, until it bursts through his spine and unfurls like a red flower. Now there is not even a pretence of humanity in the vampire’s visage. The undead lord’s mouth stretches in a wide, mocking smile to reveal monstrous fangs.
They come at him as one, no longer caring who gains the honour of the kill so long as their enemy is destroyed. But the vampire moves like molten silver, avoiding every blow that comes at him, twisting and slashing with his own glittering sabre in return. Two Crowblades topple, split asunder. Another lies screaming, holding handfuls of his own bowels. They have not even marked the foe.
‘Is this all that you can offer?’ he says, and then he lifts one blood-smeared hand to his mouth and licks it. He grimaces. ‘You taste of bland servility.’
Anger overcomes fear, and Lavka screams a wordless plea to the Dark Ones to fill her with their strength. In that moment, she would give it all for the chance to see this thing humbled and pleading before her. The rage drives her forward in a headlong rush, swinging her axe without skill but with fearsome strength. She batters that slender sabre aside, hacks again and carves a thin, deep gouge through her enemy’s chestplate. The vampire’s eyes widen for a moment, and for the first time, she senses that his shield of disdainful pride has been punctured. He hurls one of Lavka’s own warriors in her path, and she cuts the poor fool down without hesitation. She does not stop. Her attacks are so wild and unplanned that despite her opponent’s superior strength and skill, he can barely fend her off.
‘Enough!’ he roars.
He knocks out the last of the Crowblades with a contemptuous backhand blow, then he holds out a hand and turns it into a fist. Coiling snakes of shadow spring from the chamber’s dark corners and envelop Lavka, twisting her limbs and stealing away her gods-given momentum. She topples, her axe falling from nerveless fingers – still snarling and struggling, but unable to tear herself free.
‘You marked my flesh.’ The words are spoken coldly, no longer mocking in the slightest. ‘The last mortal to do so perished centuries ago.’
She struggles and curses, but even in her battle fury, she knows it is futile. He kneels, and suddenly she is staring into those red, depthless eyes – bright, dead pools of infinite hunger. You could lose your mind staring into those eyes, she thinks.
‘You have uncommon strength, for a mortal. But you could be so much more. It has been many years… but perhaps… potential such should not be wasted in these trying times.’
The words are muffled and indistinct, as if from a half-remembered dream. The world falls away. There is nothing but a lake of shimmering crimson, stretching on into infinity, fed by a million trickling rivulets of blood. Lavka is filled with a sudden and terrible craving. For the first time in her life, she does not think of the gods she serves, nor of the consequences of failing them. She wants only to descend into that glistening lake and immerse herself in its ruby waters. The need is almost too much to bear.
She feels a sudden intense pain at her neck. It fades.
When she wakes, Lavka is terribly hungry. She has the hazy impression that much time has passed, though exactly how much she cannot guess. Her surroundings have changed. She is in an unfamiliar place, but she is not restrained. Indeed, the sheets on which she lies are cut from fine satin. Somewhere distant, she hears singing. Or perhaps those are screams? She rises, wondering at the power in her limbs. Despite the craving that stings her belly and her throat, Lavka has never felt so strong.
On the other side of the chamber, several figures are shackled by their wrists to the wall. She dimly recognises some of those faces. There is Drajak. He is kin. Or he was. Looking at him now, Lavka feels nothing but a deep and painful hunger. She can sense the man’s lifeblood pulsing in his veins and smell its piquant richness oozing from shallow cuts that mark his face and arms. She licks her lips and cuts her tongue on the tip of a dagger-sharp canine.
‘Feed,’ comes a voice from the shadows.
Another familiar face. A tall, gaunt man with sunken red eyes.
Drajak’s eyes stare into hers, wide and terrified.
‘He is of my people,’ she says, gazing back. ‘Crowblade Clan.’
The blood-drinker smiles, a crawlingly unpleasant expression.
‘Tell me, do you feel any kinship with this creature?’
Does she? There is a distant ache that might be guilt, but the hunger is so terrible that it drowns out all other thoughts.
The vampire’s smile fades. ‘I know the sensation that burns beneath your skin. You may think it can be denied, but to attempt to do so would bring about a fate more hideous than anything you can imagine. This is your first lesson. There will be others. For now, drink.’
For a moment, Lavka fights the urge. But only for a moment. She is dimly aware of the weight of this choice: that she is exchanging one form of servitude for another, and this will forever mark her as cursed in the eyes of the Ruinous Ones.
Lavka finds she does not care.
She falls upon Drajak first. She gluts herself on his blood like a starving wolf at a carcass, and she feels neither guilt nor shame in doing so. Then she consumes the others in turn. Her oaths, sworn before the watching gods, are no more than forgotten memories.
There is only the craving. It is all that she will ever know.
The Soulblight Gravelords and their Deathrattle minions are marching to a battlefield near you soon – they’ll be up for pre-order this weekend.
