Part 31

“Jakera and Veros are dead. They fell when the eastern cities were taken.”

“The southern islands… they were destroyed. Light from the heavens fell. There is nothing left. Pael is gone.”

“They descended on Paldoro. The kingdom has denounced the royal family. What is left of their forces aid our enemies. Their navy scours the seas of pirates with aid from offworld. Boestro has nowhere to run. He might already be dead.”

And I had seen Kaeliss die myself. On the walls of what should have been our greatest conquest. The memory of it filled my mind as I heard the reports, my few remaining scouts scattered wide to retrieve such information.

A thunderclap had sounded, and her torso had exploded, offal showering those around her. Beauty turned to the grotesque in a second. Victory turned to defeat in minutes. An army turned to meat, bone, and blood. My goal had been so close, my effort so near an end, the beauty of Lachrys almost restored.

And yet a part of me had breathed in the charnel air, and revelled in it. Only the hand of Shiss’kill, and the words of Naryssa, had managed to drag me from that place.

Now the glory of the slaughter was far distant, as distant as the eastern deserts themselves. Warmth was a fading memory, one restored to me each night in the comforting embrace of Naryssa, Shiss’kill, and Laena, who had long ago given up her disguise. There was no one left to fool with it. A bare handful of the tribal warriors remained with us, and none of the soldiers from Paldoro. The Nine were now Four, and that’s if Mordred remained alive. He was why we were here, braving the frigid mountains with scant supplies.

If he’d united the northern barbarians, we could put up a fight.

If he had not, it was only a matter of time.

I did not feel the cold. Not when my armored feet slogged through it. Not when it fell upon my bare arms and midriff. Not when it accumulated in the hide breast wrap I wore. My priestess clothes had long ago become a lie, no matter that I had tried to lead my people toward the Truth. I no longer represented the being upheld by those wearing such garb. The one nod to my old culture, my old people, was the mourning mask I had donned.

The skull of a great Barokk, predatory bird of the peaks, adorned my head. A purple hood covered it, and white feathers stained with the blood of the fallen dangled from leather straps about my figure. Snow fell and I did not feel it. I felt precious little of anything. I hadn’t for weeks now. Not since one of the remaining tribesmen had demanded to know why I had led them astray, told me that they were going home. I had gone numb as I drew my obsidian blade and cut him in two. I had been numb ever since.

Bodies stricken with blue and black on their limbs fell in our wake, asleep in snow drifts or already dead. But they pressed on. They kept going for they knew that turning back, turning away from the Truth even now, meant that I would kill them all. Blades could touch me no more than the cold could. They’d seen it many times.

I had yet to test my new invulnerability against the weapons of the invaders.

Soon, I would. Tzeentch assured me this was so, yet he did not speak of the outcome.

So I walked, and they followed. Shiss’kill behind me, her monstrous form carving a great furrow through the snow. Laena and Naryssa followed, side by side. I could see their wavering faith in every look they shared when they thought my gaze was elsewhere. I could see the hollowness of their smiles. They had lost their faith in me as we had lost all else.

As I had very nearly lost mine.

What purpose could this serve? How did the extermination of my forces, the loss of my comrades, help the Dark Gods? Did they derive some amusement from it? Were we just puppets, dangling from strings upon the galactic stage, dancing to a mad tune? Shiss’kill didn’t seem any more amused than I, and if anyone were to see the amusing side of this, it would be her. If this was a trick pulled by those above her, surely she would know? And if she knew, those sweet whispers would be filled with taunts, with gloating. Not with sorrow and reassurance, encouragement even.

No, each night when I would share my lamentations, my regrets and uncertainties, she would calm me. And she would end each time with the same phrase, the one spoken so long ago before grand armies had answered my call.

“You will become glorious, my lovely. But only if you allow yourself to be.”

There was hope. There had to be. I hadn’t torn my life down, torn this continent apart, for a lie or falsehood. The Chaos Gods were real. They were powerful. They were True as no word I’d ever spoken of the Amorok had ever been.

We crested a ridge, and there it struck me.

A realization as profound as the Truth itself hammered into my soul as I looked out across fields of red. Bones jutted up from the snowfield, armor and weapons lying beside them. Bodies were frozen stiff, their insides decorating the white around them. Fresh. The snowfall, quickly approaching a blizzard, had not yet covered the remains of this battle. A thousand barbarian corpses lay before us, and among them was Mordred, of this I was certain.

And among them, like carrion birds picking over the dead, drifted our fell enemy.

And it struck me. The Chaos Gods were True, and they were real. But their foes were just as real. I may have dismissed the defunct religion of the star spanning empire that had claimed my world, I may have scoffed at their beliefs. I had known my own power could overturn theirs. My might would turn this world to Chaos. But now, now I saw that there was so much to this struggle I had not seen.

An empire spanning the stars had claimed this world, and however determined, one woman alone would not cast off their yoke. This was the might of those who opposed the Truth. It was not the huddled masses in cities besieged by armies and demons alike. It was beams of horrendous light that carved the earth apart. It was warriors wearing armor thick enough to shrug off the most powerful blow from a mortal man. It was guns that spat explosive death, carving through ranks of soldiers like a scythe through wheat. It was chanted battle hymns to match my own, coming from the throats of a hundred women.

It was fire. It was metal. It was crackling blades of lighting, roaring swords of many teeth, the flare of cannons that incinerated all they touched.

Laughter erupted from my lungs as I surveyed the death of our last hope. I didn’t know why the Gods had chosen to send me this lesson, why they had felt my failure was necessary. Perhaps I would be a lesson for a future demagogue, someone truly meant to lead this world to greatness. Maybe I was nothing more than a warning footnote in a history book that some prophet would read in the far future.

Perhaps I’d be completely forgotten.

It mattered not.

Exposed heads turned toward my laughter, white hair cut into bobs swinging. It didn’t matter why I had been brought to this place. It didn’t matter why my armies had fallen, or that they fell at all. All that mattered was that I knew the Truth, and that to my last breath, I would fight for it. I would fight the servants of that which was False, not because it gained me anything other than freedom, or because I thought I could win.

But because they were as False as their Emperor.