30 Revenant Horde

ASTRA STOOD ON the balcony of the jagged tower, looking out over a wide courtyard. Arrayed in ranks were all the revenants she’d stolen from Nalrost, once living people from many worlds, souls torn from their bodies. Where before they were eyeless, lifeless automatons with a ceaseless hunger for flesh, they now possessed a new form.

‘The Grim had no imagination,’ came Lucifer’s voice as though he stood beside her. Without a mirror she couldn’t see him and was glad. She’d made certain there were none anywhere in the tower. ‘Look upon them, sorceress, and weep. The beauty of Tartaros is something to behold is it not?’

Maybe I’m going insane. She would have preferred if it were true.

‘Come now,’ cooed Lucifer, as though his lips brushed her ear. ‘I’m not as bad as all that, am I? Besides, insanity is a matter of perspective. Everything exists in the mind. Who is to say what is real and what is not?’

She was trembling as she gripped the stone rail, hair and clothing assaulted by an icy wind. Clothed in black writhing chains, the revenants’ bodies no longer had flesh. Lucifer, through her of course, had transformed them; each was now a contortion of bones resembling a human form.

The bones came from various creatures, known and unknown to Astra. Some of them had heads like bulls or a creature she’d once heard of called a dragon. Others had human-like heads but with elongated fangs. Some still had eyes, while some retained those gaping pits. She spotted a revenant whose back legs resembled the double-jointed limbs of a Nephilim Avim, but the rest of it was human. All of them were armed with jagged notched swords. Not bronze or iron, but weapons made of Nephilim steel and imbued with Darkness.

Each revenant cohort had a vanth in command. Those fallen angels stood silent, feathered wings folded, awaiting her command. Their multiple eyes and empty pits looked up at her, unblinking.

Waiting.

Or, she thought, awaiting his command. After all, I am just a tool in his hands.

‘Oh, no, not at all my dear. You are much more than that. You are a weapon. Do not sell yourself short. I could not do any of this without you.’

She was no longer certain where she ended and Lucifer began. Sometimes she could think without him interrupting, as though he wasn’t there. If she was insane, then those must have been moments of lucidity, and she cherished them. She knew Lucifer was not a real person, but a manifestation of Tartaros’ will, an infection of her fractured soul. Knowing didn’t help.

Far below, moving through a space between the ranks was a much larger creature. It crept on six legs, and had two elongated heads filled with jagged teeth. The size of a small house, its disjointed legs ended in long sharp talons. Behind it swept a long-horned tail. She had never seen this creature before, but Lucifer didn’t let her wonder for long.

‘Beautiful, isn’t he,’ he cooed like a proud father. ‘One of his many incarnations. My child’s name is, Gressil.’ The bastard sounded fond of the monster. ‘He will lead our armies for us. After all, it would not do to let your flesh be destroyed, not when we have such wonderful plans for it. After all, my child may need to mate in time. I wonder what such a union might bring? Isn’t this all so exciting?’

I will destroy this world, she thought, and felt the tears wetting her cheeks, eyes stinging from the wind. She could no longer see the force arrayed below, everything blurred. She turned to go back inside, but found her body refusing to comply. Panic rose within her, and she tried to fight it, but the Darkness kept its hold. The infection within her was progressing faster.

‘You obey me, sorceress,’ hissed Lucifer. ‘You are the vessel of our will, and you will oversee this coming war. Yes, you will destroy this world, and you will learn to enjoy it.’

‘I will not,’ she whispered, fighting to regain control. ‘I never claimed to be good, but I have no desire to serve you.’

The laughter erupting from her own lips shocked her, for like the voice, it held both a male and female quality. ‘A millennium ago, you bargained with us for your son’s life. Don’t you remember? We did our part and returned him to you, if not quite in the way you expected. Ralan was his name, was it not?’

‘You leave him out of this.’

‘Poetic, that he should now align himself against you, but it is not our problem. You must live up to your half of the bargain. There is no escape, and if you believe suicide an option, look below and see the power we hold. Death is a form of existence too.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Ah, to strategy and military tactics. You learn quickly. Accept your fate, and perhaps we might save a piece of existence as a trophy of our victory. You could rule over it for an eternity or two. I think I am beginning to find ... pleasure in this existence myself. Yes, I might just keep you after all. A trophy, a prize, a distraction. And why not?’

Astra had no intention of being kept as anything, but as despair consumed her, she realised she wouldn’t have a say in the matter.

Oh, Ralan, my son, she wailed in her mind, my boy, I am so sorry. It was the part of her that was the original Astra Dar, although not much of that woman remained.

Another part was planning on how to fight back, to defeat this Lucifer entity. Ironically, these parts of her were the reason she would fail. All the fractured pieces of her warred with one another, each with its own fears, desires, and plans. They did not unite, and Astra knew she had already lost the war.

‘Yes,’ said Lucifer, ‘you see I am right. Plans are in motion to retake the Shathra Stone. It has made its return to the land of Raddhon and those angelic-blooded fools. I have infiltrated the giants’ hierarchy, and one will rise among them to retrieve it for me.

‘In the meantime, you will continue to take this world piece by piece. When the time is ripe, you will strike at the imperium, and destroy its undead horde. You will take its vaunted throne. It remains our single greatest obstacle, and therefore, you will find and destroy their leader too.’

‘The imperatrix?’

‘No, you fool. We set a plan in motion to deal with her already. Remember? No, I mean its true leader, a disgusting undead creature, a hideous excuse for a lump of dead flesh and bone. The interfering big-mouthed mage, Threadfin Todralan.

Against the grain of her feelings of late, Astra smiled on hearing his name. Her feelings came from fractured memories. Oh, how she missed him. ‘He doesn’t go by that name now. It’s Todder, these days.’ Her smile widened just thinking about him, and she felt a change. It was brief but full of hope.

Lucifer screeched. ‘I don’t care what his dratted name is! He has the power within him to disrupt all our plans! You will strike when the time comes, and you will destroy him.’

A part of her soul cried out in anguish knowing she could not stop Lucifer. She would march this horrid force to the imperium, and destroy the undead along with everyone else.

Hidden deep within the broken shell of Astra’s soul, a soul once known as Lorn Larthuz, wept.

‡

THE IMPERIAL MAGE, Threadfin Todder, knelt on a vast plain of swirling red dust and bleached bone. Miniature tornadoes swept over the dead ground, spinning mindlessly, at times tossing broken skulls and stones from one spot to another like magical brooms. The skies above were filled with hurtling clouds and stabs of lightning, though there was no thunder.

Before him, Lyrin lay dead. Not the undead kind of dead, but the never-coming-back-again sort. Her face and body had been severely damaged.

Vampires had caused some of her wounds, but they hadn’t killed her.

‘What happened?’ he whispered, not expecting anyone to answer. Of all of them, he hadn’t expected anything to happen to her. Pole was the one he’d most feared for, being the one breather in their dysfunctional group.

The one remaining elder mage stood a few paces away, hood shielding his features as usual, not showing any sign he cared, though Threadfin suspected her loss cut him deep. ‘Some vampires got behind us,’ Beezer said after a long moment.

A long pause, and then the elder viral snarled at him, ‘Why did you let go of her hand? She might have made it if you’d just held on.’ Beezer turned and stormed off, but there was nowhere he could go to.

It turned out that journeying through a soul-stone was dangerous. By letting go of Threadfin’s hand, Lyrin had broken the circle. Something had entered with them; a vampire had broken her grip. Virtue had also said she could just take two virals, and one of the living. In the end, three undead had attempted to pass, and it was likely Virtue had not had the strength to save them all. Lyrin had arrived separately from everyone else, already dead. A dead vampire lay in several pieces about fifty feet away.

Beezer’s hostility was no surprise. Apart from whatever grief he felt, he would know Lyrin’s wards had died with her. Threadfin was the same as the Grim now, in his eyes.

Threadfin reached out and touched her forehead. It was the first time he’d touched her. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered, ‘for everything you’ve done for me, for all of us.’ He rose and turned to Virtue, who stood some distance away with Pole beside her.

‘Where are we?’ asked the Darken, shading his eyes with his right hand, as he took in the foreign landscape. The breather looked dishevelled, but otherwise in good health.

‘This is Elysium,’ answered Virtue. ‘Once a paradise filled with verdant meadows, forests, and trickling streams. A refuge for our kind who wished to take flesh and to experience this reality, but avoid mortals.’ She nodded towards Lyrin’s body. ‘I am sorry for your friend.’

‘Yes,’ said Threadfin with a nod, ‘she was a friend, but she knew the risks. This war won’t be fought without casualties, and there’s going to be a lot more if we don’t find Volcanus, and ...’ Gripping his sides, he doubled over with a searing agony ripping through his middle.

A voice, distant and indistinct, was shouting at him from inside his skull, though he couldn’t make out the words. He fell to his knees with a cry.

Pole wrapped his arms around him. There came a heat flooding his insides, and the pain subsided. When he could see again, he realised his head was in Virtue’s hands, and there was a pulsing light surrounding them like a white heat.

She let go of him and took a step back, face filled with concern. Beezer shoved past her to examine him.

‘I am not as skilled as your friend was in these matters,’ she said in an apologetic tone, ‘and I think your infection will get worse in time. However, I’ve bought you a few hours. I can try again, but you must alert me at the first sign of trouble.’

Virtue walked away to stare into the distance, perhaps planning their journey through Elysium. They were fully dependent on her now.

‘I have no idea what she did,’ Beezer muttered. ‘I can’t see it exactly, but somehow the Grim is unconscious. She knocked him out. It shouldn’t be possible.’

Threadfin got to his feet, Pole helping him up. ‘It’ll do until we can reach Volcanus. We must make sure to find him quickly. He’s got to be somewhere around here.’

They buried Lyrin where she’d fallen, having no choice. Beezer used his magic to excavate a hole and then fill it in, since they had nothing to dig with. They couldn’t bring her with them in the hopes of taking her home, and what had once been a paradise but was now a dead land seemed a fitting place.

In the hours that followed, Virtue didn’t speak much, despite several probing questions from Beezer. His foul mood grew darker with the angel’s silence. She spoke only with Threadfin, but for now he let her lead.

The landscape didn’t change, apart from a few hills and valleys, distant mountains never growing closer, suggesting they were indeed far away and impossibly high.

The main feature which presented itself was a group of huge blockish buildings. At least, that was what Threadfin took them for. They grew closer with each hour they walked. Some stood tall and proud, looking as though they’d been constructed recently. Others leaned drunkenly, their facades crumbling. All of them, had huge gigantic lettering across their smooth faces, though Threadfin could make no sense of them.

‘What are those?’ Beezer demanded pointing as they fell beneath the shadow of one such monolith.

Virtue did not answer, just kept walking. Beezer growled at her back, and then snarled at Threadfin. ‘You lead the horde, don’t you? Find out what those things are. It might prove important.’

Threadfin felt sorry for the old viral. He must have loved Lyrin in his way, and now with her death, he was struggling. Anger was an easy way to avoid feeling anything else. I should know.

They reached a circular area which occupied a central spot between several of the massive buildings. It was not unlike the circle through which they’d entered, but it was wider, larger, and didn’t appear to be a soul-stone. Thick columns, most damaged with many nothing more than mere stumps, encircled an area roughly a thousand foot in diameter.

There was a long building at its centre, perhaps a hundred foot wide, and several times that in length and height. Wide stone steps led up to a set of tall golden doors.

Pole whistled as they got closer. ‘You know, I could believe angels live in there. Todder, you and I have seen some strange stuff, but this time ...’

‘Yeah,’ said Threadfin, ‘I know, Pod. I know.’

‘Is Volcanus in there?’ Beezer demanded of Virtue, stabbing a finger at the building as though he meant to destroy it there and then. The mood he was in, Threadfin would not have put it past him to try.

She paused at the foot of the steps and turned, addressing them all. ‘I have taken you as far as I can. Elysium is a dead world and there is nothing here. This is all that remains of a once thriving angelic population. Rebels, Fallen, we’ve had many names, but this was our refuge once, where we hid from our own kind. Those who would destroy us for being different, for thinking differently.’

‘I’ve met the Fallen,’ said Threadfin, thinking of Andromeda and Pen Luthus. ‘They sought to enslave, to destroy.’

Virtue nodded, her expression sad. ‘Many of us, feeling lost and abandoned, turned to the Darkness for answers. But, not all of us.’ She gestured about her. ‘Why do you think our paradise is gone? We did this to ourselves.’

‘Where is Volcanus,’ Beezer demanded, his voice low and dangerous. He stepped towards Virtue, but before he could get closer, she reached out and touched his face.

The same white light Threadfin had seen, enveloped her right arm from shoulder to fingertips. Beezer said nothing, stood there like a statue corroded by time, and forgotten.

When she let go, she gave the old viral one of her smiles. ‘It should help you cope with the pain. All of you, remain here. If he is here, it is better I speak to him first. He sometimes has a ... temper.’ Then she turned and began to climb the steps towards the great doors, leaving them alone.

If he was there? Threadfin sat on the second step from the bottom and waited with Pole beside him. Beezer seemed to be in a trance, staring at nothing and saying nothing.

Must’ve been a religious experience, thought Threadfin watching the elder viral, whatever she did to him. For many undead, angels were revered, worshiped, though Beezer had never expressed an opinion on the subject.

‘You know lad,’ his Darken whispered, giving him a nudge, ‘it’ll all work out. You’ll see.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Eh?’

‘Never mind. Thanks for the effort.’

‘Anytime.’

They didn’t have long to wait. A wind developed; Threadfin felt the currents flowing over him, and in them there was a focus. A presence. ‘Pod, get your ass up those steps. Find somewhere to hide. Get inside if you can.’

‘What?’

Threadfin rose, and dragged his Darken up with him, shoving him up the steps. ‘Just get up there.’

The wind began to howl, and then Threadfin spotted it. A dark funnel of spitting debris eating up the red earth and moving towards them. The funnel split into five, spreading out as they neared the edge of the furthest monoliths.

The Despoiler had arrived.