Enjoy a rip-roaring tale of chivalry and derring-do, with this latest installment of Chronicles of Ruin.
Once upon a time, there stood a grand castle. In this citadel were many gods worshipped, but the laws of chivalry had not yet been abandoned, so around a many-pointed roundel of gold, the lords of the keep did often meet to hold discourse.
Amongst their hosts was an ambitious warrior by the name of Isdolora. She had ridden well on many tourney fields, breaking a great many lances, yet the spurs of knighthood were ever denied to her. She fought harder and harder, making red tribute in their pursuit. One day, the lords called her into their presence so they might speak thusly:
‘Isdolora, thou wearest favour like a crown. Though we have no desire to share power, many would see thee ascend in this dire hour of ruin, and so we present to thee a trial. Through yonder forest, upon a stately hill, stands an ancient keep. Within the nave of the chapel, there languishes an ensorcelled goblet from the lost age: a treasure of the ancient King Morgos, to whose lineage thou belongest, though thou hast little of his nobility. Only one possessed of knightly Virtues may lay claim to this relic. Go now and recover this treasure, or else perish forlorn. So the gods will.’
And though Isdolora’s heart burned with the shame of implicit insult, still did the warrior don her ancestral cloak and affix her heirloom pennant upon her lance. Then she rode out from the gates of the fort and into the chill night-winds. Under the light of the gheist-moon, she traversed the silent wilderwoods, where bleached trees pulsed with veins of carnelian. Soon, beside a fallen log, she encountered a herald clad in a most marvellous fur coat…
…at least, so it believed…
‘Ho, brave knight!’ spake the herald. ‘Fair tidings unto thee. But how the air bites! I see that thou art cold; wouldst thou take my cloak as an act of charity? Prithee, answer me.’
‘Verily, answer thee I shall,’ said Isdolora, ‘but from thy cloak emanates a scent most foul. Nay, I will not accept thine entreaty, and I would not even for the promise of faithful reward.’
‘Forsooth, it doth appear that thine insight cannot penetrate the thick’ned veil of thy pride, and for this I am aggrieved,’ quoth the herald. ‘Yet still I shall consider thee a fellow traveller in the joyous procession to my lord’s throne, for all the superior cast of thy sneering countenance. Pray join me in the partaking of sacred foodstuffs.’
‘Nay, tempter, no such indulgence shall move my hand,’ said Isdolora, ‘for I shall slay thee now, and no more will thy voice pollute mine ears!’ And as the Herald drew up his staff of office, she drew her blade and cut off her foeman’s head.
And so did Isdolora fail the first test of Virtue: that of gladsome pilgrimage.
From there rode Isdolora along winding and crooked paths. A…
…strange, smothering heat had grown to replace the bitter cold. It clung to the black plate of her armour, beading in trembling droplets. It slipped through her helm’s grille. The harder she inhaled, the closer and more maliciously the trees seemed to crowd in.
Isdolora’s blade was still wet with the black blood of the abomination she had killed. The sound of it dripping upon the earth should have reassured her. Would an unworthy soul, as the lords deemed her, have struck so true? Instead, it only deepened her breathing.
At last the trees opened up, and Isdolora’s steed…
…brought her to a wide pool, whose rippling surface caught the benign face of the moon. There, Isdolora did spy a most peculiar sight: a shrine arrayed as solar rays, each ivory spur garlanded with floral majesty. A clutch of spare-fleshed pilgrims tended this place of holiness, and over them presided a magnificent bat who walked as a man. And this bat was clad in priestly garb, long and tapering vestments, and it held aloft a staff of white oak…
…and redness dripped from its splayed spars of bone…
‘Ho, brave knight!’ spake the bat-priest. ‘Blessings and sacraments unto thee. But I see that upon thy lance flutters a fetching pennant. Be the markings upon this field of cloth the sigils of thine own creed or of our true king? Prithee, answer me.’
‘Verily, answer ye I shall,’ said Isdolora,‘yet your suppositions are false. These are the colours of mine own line and blood, the sigils of mine own glory. Nay, I would not supplant them, and certainly not for a lord to whom I have ne’er borne witness.’
‘Forsooth, it doth appear that thy skill does not extend to thy wisdom, and for this I am aggrieved,’ quoth the bat, as its congregation let loose a keening wail of grief. ‘Yet still we shall consider thee as a sister to us, for all the heat of the blood in thy veins. Pray join us in the performance of joyous worship here before this altar.’
‘Nay, fiend, no such words shall pass my lips,’ said Isdolora, ‘for I shall slay ye now, and no more will your claims pollute my sensibilities!’ And as the bat began to speak its incantations, she did level her lance and drive it through its breast. The grasping hands of the sorrowful congregation seized the edges of her plate and sought to drag her from her saddle with the strength of the zealous, but these she cast off, setting her whinnying mount to gallop deeper into the woods.
And so did Isdolora fail the second test of Virtue: that of pious submission.
As she rode onwards, Isdolora’s mind…
…still rang with the echo of the creature’s hissing, shrieked curses. They refused to leave her, as did the stink that had clung to its stooped minions. She knew that reek: split flesh, torn meat, spilled blood. The vampire – it had to have been, for its fangs had been long, rivalling the length of her fingers – had been utterly bathed in the gore. It had dripped from the still-beating heart impaled upon its staff. She was uncertain whether the undead thing had even been aware of its own defilement as it howled its homilies.
A mindless beast, lost in gore. Never mind how her palate tinged at the sanguinary iron scent rising from her mount’s wounds. Never mind how she glimpsed the shrine hung with guts each time her eyes closed.
She had lost the ghouls on the forest road. Still, their nest could not be far. The trees were beginning to thin out, and the roots that slunk from out the parched ground were lumpen and contorted. They looked more like spines. The wind had fallen silent, though the air remained hot and close, branches rustling at the movement of fat-bodied bats. She passed more pools of stagnant blood, where skeletons still clad in tarnished plate had been set into crude kneeling positions, their hands raised as if to hail the rising sun.
At last…
…Isdolora’s path did lead unto the object of her desires. For before her, upon a weathered motte, rose the keep once ruled by her forebears. Time had weathered those stones, but still they glowed with a red-gold brilliance, and fresh gonfalons ripped from foemen hung from its walls…
…and on some of those flayed lengths of skin, screaming faces could still be seen. But…
…the object of the quest did lie within, and so Isdolora dared walk onwards. And lo! beyond those shattered outer precepts, across the bridge watched by the ten glorious Horrors Rampant, there did stand the solemn chapel of which the lords had spoken. And upon a lintel above its door was the image of a chalice.
Each step Isdolora took rang loud upon the stone flags, though so too did she hear the echo of sublime chants. About her, the honoured dead lay outside their tombs, their bodies carried to the surface by the faithful and subjected to the divine mania of their passions, the bodily remains laid out in the image of the stars and suns. The chanting reached its apex as Isdolora passed shimmering pools of holy libation to approach the great wooden doors. And these now rumbled open so that the faithful might emerge, singing their chansons and carrying their reliquaries. So did Isdolora…
…duck under a lurching ghoul and, grunting, drag her blade across the creature’s torso. Cold blood sprayed as the cannibal collapsed in a heap. Incredibly, it was not dead. It thrashed where it lay, insensate to its own wounds, still trying to rise. She smashed her boot down on its skull, but doing so overbalanced her. Another pack of ghouls saw the opening and leapt, attempting to knock her off her feet. Isdolora almost fell, slipping in the blood sheeting the floor and tripping over one of the mutilated corpses strewn about the former place of worship. Twisting as she fell, Isdolora sliced her blade through the faces of a trio of cannibals who drove their dirty teeth into her armour. One clawed a fierce gash across her brow. She threw them back, roaring. Each of her breaths was a ragged gasp.
‘Come then,’ she spat between gritted teeth, taking her runeblade’s grip in both shaking hands and levelling it at the swarm. ‘Come, fiends, and by the gods, I will gut every last one of you.’
The ghouls cared nothing for her threats. They continued to howl and gibber as they crawled over the dead. They continued, she thought, to sing. They sang as their cloaks of flayed flesh and masks of stripped skin flapped; they sang as they held aloft tarnished blades and cracked relics that glowed in the red lunar light that streamed through the chapel’s broken ceiling. The least amongst them, their eyes shining, lay devoted claws upon the greatest – lank-limbed, misbegotten things smeared in blood, the skulls of the dead speared on their jutting bones. Those monsters prowled towards her, shouldering aside broken statues and their own kind, lines of gore-flecked saliva looping from between their fangs.
From deeper within the chapel, there came a piercing, commanding hiss. Instantly, the jubilation of the ghouls transformed into reverent silence. They prostrated themselves, scuttling back from Isdolora’s blooded form in spite of the hunger-spasms that seized them. Another hiss rang out and a creature emerged, extending a pair of night-black wings. And Isdolora…
…dropped to her knees and wept in awestruck rapture at the advent of good King Morgos. Age had not dimmed the old lord’s visage, nor had it dulled the pearlescence of the white-feathered wings that carried him. He did descend to stand amongst the throng of penitents and templars as they knelt and mouthed prayers, a solarite smile upon his face, and in his hand was clasped a shining goblet of silver.
‘Ho, brave knight!’ spake the king. ‘The peace of true fraternity unto thee. But I see that weariness hath stolen over thee in thy pursuit of this quest. ‘Thou comest for this goblet, dost thou not? Prithee, answer me.’
‘Verily… verily…’ said Isdolora. And yet no more words would leave her lips. She did try to raise her blade, for across its steel swam a strange and monstrous reflection, but then the beneficent gaze of her antecedent fell upon her, and the kindly heat of summer did burn away her doubts.
‘Forsooth, thy soul may prove able to extend beyond the rigours of honour and pains of the flesh, and for this I am gladdened,’ quoth the king. ‘Yet within thee I sense a reticence. Still thou dost fear to step beyond what thou hast known and to stand amongst us. But look upon our courtiers: do we know of want, of suffering or of doubt? Have my servants not treated thee with decorum, despite thine imprecations? All thy sins may yet be forgiven and thy burdens lifted. We demand nothing of thee, save that thou sharest our joys.’
And at this, King Morgos did present the goblet anew. Isdolora’s gaze fell upon the shimmering liquid therein…
…and her own face stared back, distorted by the thick blood in the cup of bone, seeming almost to be locked in a scream. Once more, she raised her eyes to the vampire looming over her, even as she tried to heft her blade. Its face was that of a nightmare, its fangs needle-sharp, its neck sealed in a crude ruff of yellowed bone.
But its eyes. Pools of depthless, arterial red though they were, there was something hypnotic within them. Isdolora tasted sweetmeats upon her tongue and heard clarion horns in her ears. She saw the ghouls staring at her, their once-ravenous glares now showing the deference afforded to a true knight.
Some inner voice screamed and pleaded with Isdolora to rise and strike down the undead monster. It was still screaming as she took the goblet in trembling hands…
…and tipped it so that the cool waters of life might flow across her tongue.
And so did Isdolora pass the third test of Virtue: that of the sacred feast.
The new Battletome: Flesh-eater Courts will be available to pre-order tomorrow, alongside reinforcements and sundries.
