Book 1: A Law Unto Her Own - Chap. 9-15

[The Brotherhood of Necros]

Chapter 9: The Heart Never Lies.
IC -1152

Nehekhara lay in ruins.

Darkness clouded the skies; a fell shadow, thick and hungry, devoured the sunlight and bathed the sands below with inky blackness. For all his godly might, Ptra was powerless against the wicked sorcery of Nagash.

Blessed Ptra. Radiant Ptra. Impotent Ptra.

It had spread from the east like some disease of the skies, creeping slowly but inexorably across the mountains toward the Great Desert. Mahrak was swallowed first, vanishing beneath the oily-black veil. Lybaras and Rasetra were cut off from the rest of the kingdom, their fates unknown, abandoned to the vile depredations of the undying corpses that followed in the wake of the darkness.

At Quatar, the shadow halted, and for a time at least it seemed as though the guardians of the Valley of the Kings would triumph. The White Palace shone, a beacon of hope in the eyes of the desert men, and they fought with a stubborn grit that defied mortal potential. The Gateway of Eternity could not be allowed to fall.

All manner of priests invoked their gods, in vain hope of salvation from a fate worse than death. The twin lights of Ptra and Neru for a time dispelled the shambling dead, the nightmarish monsters recoiling from the touch of the sacred lights of sun and moon. Dazed and diminished, they made easy prey for Quatar’s army, and the men of the city found hope, where before there had been none.

It did not last.

In a terrible battle that rent the clouds asunder, and turned the very sands of the desert black and ashen, W’soran and his dark disciples murdered the High Priestess of Neru. Bolts of dark lightning scoured the city walls and struck at the woman, and a hundred revenant shades, their chill touch enough to stop a man’s heart, raked at her with their claws. When she most needed her goddess, Neru failed her, and the High Priestess died alone, a scream frozen on her twisted blue lips.

The north and west gates fell first, followed swiftly by the south and east. The charnel reek of death stank out the city, and carrion flooded the skies, their raucous caws like death-knells for its last inhabitants. Within days of the High Priestess’ death, what little remained of Quatar’s resistance was holed up in its White Palace, like rabbits trapped in their rocky burrows. The foxes, their lips still bloody from the chase, smelled their pitiful quarry’s fear, and they grinned.

Safe in the knowledge that Quatar was broken, and the Gateway of Eternity was theirs, the darkness washed over the city and crept ever northwards, and all of the kingdoms of the western desert felt its coming. Dark thoughts invaded men’s dreams, insidious and unsettling, sowing the seeds of fear in their hearts, and when they woke, no amount of exposure to the fierce Nehekharan sun could banish the chill that had settled under their flesh, a layer of cold and misery.

The dead were coming.

Maatmeses had some heirlooms. She had a pendant, which she wore around her neck at all times. It was the ancient Lahmian symbol of justice, and all members of the judiciary system - her judiciary system - had been required to wear one. All who saw them knew that their bearer’s words carried the authority of the Lahmian government. To disobey them and the moral right they invoked was to invite the worst kinds of punishment.

When the Dread Lord slept fitfully, her dreams plagued by memories of death and fire and screams, her hands clutched tight around the pendant, and often she awoke with its details imprinted onto her hands, so vivid were her nightmares. Her memories.

She had a statue. Rescued from the Temple of Blood as it had collapsed in flame around her, she had managed to save this one thing. It was tiny, barely larger than the palm of her hand, and was made of a rough desert stone. It depicted the Great Necromancer as he had looked when he had still resided in Khemri, and answered to his king and brother there. His godly visage now was incomparable in its horror, and many a time it haunted Maatmeses’ dreams, visiting her in the dead of night and whispering wicked words in her thoughts.

There was no escaping him.

He was everywhere she turned, from the twisted faces of the dead that served her, to the darkest, most intimate thoughts in the back of her mind, to the very voices of those around her. He was everywhere.

She also had a pair of golden khopesh. The sickle-like blades had taken a deadly toll on the peoples of Nehekhara, when they had first stormed Lahmia’s mighty gates. Then they had taken a toll on those who had pursued Maatmeses and her children through the merciless desert, more extensions of the vampire’s vengeance and retribution than mere weapons. She had screamed for her revenge, and the sun-gold blades had answered, leaving bloody ruin on the sands.

And they took their toll now, as the Dread Lords ravaged the kingdoms of the living with their vengeance and their bloodlust. They were weapons, and in the hands of Maatmeses, they did that which weapons do best. They killed.

But she was not the only one with heirlooms.

The sound of the undead armies was unlike anything Issa had heard before. Even after nearly a decade of war against the people of the Kingdom of the Great River, it still haunted him. Not in the sense that it made him afraid, but that the sounds struck a certain chord inside of him, playing in accompaniment to his morose heart.

It was heavy and bloated with grief.

The strained creaks of the skeletons’ bones stretched out in the wind, sounding to Issa like a groan of anguish, as the stressed bones pleaded to be laid to rest, to be left to endure the centuries in the cool of their tombs, where they belonged. The piercing shrieks and rasping sighs of the spectres and walking corpses respectively were more blunt in their effect, reminding Issa of the agony that lay beyond the threshold of death. The agony that awaited him, should he succumb to the enemy.

The agony that inflicted Eshe, and had done now for nearly fifty years. Her death had smote him of his rationality. Before, control and discipline had been everything to him. It had been everything to all of Maatmeses’ children. She had chosen them for their rigorous discipline, and righteous belief in law and order.

Now, control was as alien to him as mercy. The senseless wails of the ghostly spectres held no meaning, served no purpose. They had no identity anymore, their personalities, their selves, having rotted and decayed along with their mortal remains. They were nothing but pale shadows.

He would not have this for himself. Worse, he could not bear that Eshe might be counted amongst their number! Within the confines of Maatmeses’ tent, Issa wept. The crimson tears crept unashamed down his cheeks, staining his eyes red and bloody. Maddened. There was as much sanity in those eyes as there was in the hollow sockets of the skeleton warriors.

His Eshe was out there, somewhere. Her spirit was broken. Fragment into a thousand pieces by the ignorant depredations of the Nehekharans. Maatmeses had shown him what they had done. He had seen it with his own eyes. They had condemned her to a fate far, far worse than any mortal death. A fate undeserved by the woman he had loved.

“I beg of you, Maatmeses, raise her. Use your magics and bring her back to me. I have waited so patiently for your skills to grow, for Nagash to teach you the necessary arts, and now they are yours!” Issa stood before the Dread Lord, his arms outstretched, face lit with hope.

“I cannot.”

“Why not!” he said, and his voice was like a scream. “Please, you know the hold she has over my heart. You know her importance to me. Maatmeses, she is everything. She is the blood that slakes my thirst, the sun that lights my days.”

“I said that I cannot, Issa. Do not make me say it again, I cannot bear to see you so incited.”

“She died at your command -”

“Do not say that-”

“She died at your command and now you owe her this. You bid her stay and defend your offices of law, and she did. She did so unquestioningly, knowing full well that it would be the death of her.”

“My son, I cannot do this. It is impossible.” He fell at her feet, and a single red tear squeezed itself into the corner of her eye.

“I have seen you raise the dead! Ragged spirits, living corpses, even the bones of men so ancient they predate our kingdom itself!” He reached out and clutched at the greave of her left shin, his vice like grip tethering himself to Maatmeses. “Mother, help me…”

“They burned her,” she spat, with poison enough to kill a man. Then, more considerately: “You are right, Nagash taught me much. He told me how when a mortal, such as we were, becomes a vampire, our very souls are bound into our flesh. We become as one with them, Issa. It is what grants us our prodigious strength, our terrible fortitude.” Issa shook, silently save for erratic breaths which snagged in his throat. “If we are slain, there is a chance for us to return. A chance. If our remains are recovered, then our souls still exist inside of them, and through certain rites, we can be made alive and whole once more.” There was a moment of silence, broken only by the fluttering of the tent. “I have no part of Eshe. They took her apart, and burned her away, and then they will have ground her bones and thrown them to the winds. Her soul is broken, scattered in the skies and gone up in smoke. She is gone, Issa.”

“No,” he said desperately. “I have a piece of her essence…” His iron grip released itself from her bronze greaves and slipped into a pouch beneath his own armour. It returned clutching a folded lock of black hair. It shone with a lustrous sheen, despite being decades old, Maatmeses realised. Issa went on, words tumbling from his lips as he held reverentially onto the hair.

“She gave this to me the day before she died. She said I should never let it go, that as long as I had this, I would have her. She was right!” Silence ensued, and he realised that Maatmeses remained unchanged. No smile split her lips. No flash of relief across her forehead. “What is wrong? We can use this! It holds her essence, just as you said, just as Nagash taught you!”

“It is not enough, Issa.”

“It is!”

“It is not. The soul consists of a variety of elements. You know that of which I speak. There is not a man or woman in all Nehekhara who does not.”

“You speak of Ka, and Ba, and Ab, and Sekhem, amongst others?” Something akin to understanding flashed across his face, before vanishing again beneath an expression of anguish.

“I do. It is not possible for all of these parts of Eshe’s soul to be contained in a single lock of her hair, Issa.” It was killing her to tell him this. She had not felt such emotion in so long. All she knew was vengeance, and anger, and hate, and even, lately, fear and helplessness, as she found herself doing and saying things without thinking, or remembering.

This was something different. Issa had brought something out, something long buried, something…maternal. It burned her heart with its searing intensity.

“But we can try! We can try, and see! I won’t abandon her, mother!”

“What if the effects are undesirable? What if something comes back that you do not recognise, or that you do not like?”

“I would risk it, for Eshe.” He looked up into her eyes, imploring, desperate, and saw the tear that sat, engorged and unbroken, in the corner of her eye. “I know that you loved, once, long ago.”

She stiffened.

“Dredge back those memories, those feelings, and feel my pain for yourself.” When she replied, her voice was curt.

“You know full well not to speak to me of such things. Those feelings belonged to a different woman.” Issa began to weep.

“Mother, please…”

“I will do this, for you, because my love for you transcends anything I ever felt for any man before, and I know that I will always love you, my son.”

She had tried to warn him, but hope and pain had clouded any semblance of reason. All he wanted was to see Eshe again, to speak with her, to ask her a thousand questions that had kept him awake at night, unable to rest, to sleep, buzzing like corpse flies incessantly in his head. Was she proud of him, of his loyalty to Maatmeses? Would she fight by his side, were she here? Did she miss him?

Did she still love him?

The slightest of chances had revealed itself to him in her lock of hair, that precious, precious heirloom, and he would not pass it up. Maatmeses had relinquished, because she loved him, and could not bear to see him so tortured. He knew that it was his own fault. His own relentless efforts had driven her to appease his requests, for good or bad. He had only himself to blame, in that respect. A bestial madness glimmered in the back of his eyes.

Words slipped like shadows from between Maatmeses’ lips, filling the tent and buffeting its sides with their unnatural force. It was night, the twin moons visible as glowing slivers through the dense cloud cover, and all was silent about the camp. A guard of skeletons surrounded her quarters, stationed there by Maatmeses herself. None would intrude on her task tonight.

Sat opposite from his mother was Issa. The vampire mirrored Maatmeses’ poise, the two of them knelt on the sands, across from the lock of hair that was so integral to the ritual.

Maatmeses’ eyes were locked on the small token. She focussed her will on it, concentrating on the blasphemous incantation that would rouse the essence of the hair, Eshe’s essence, and bring her into life. She would do her best. She owed Issa that much. She could remember nothing of her own brief love, but she knew that at the time, she had been happy, and that Issa and Eshe’s own love was a thousand times anything she had experienced. It deserved her efforts.

Issa’s eyes were shut. He fought the trembles that ran amok throughout his limbs. Anticipation came in ragged gasps. She was doing it! She was invoking his Eshe. Soon, he would speak with her again. Soon, they would be reunited, even for a moment. If it could be done once, it could be done again. He would have her back, if only in spirit.

Maatmeses’ words came strong and steady, her voice ringing with determination and force. The dead would respond. The dead would respond.

The dead would respond!

An ice cold breeze washed suddenly over Issa, and Maatmeses stopped chanting. His eyelids fluttered open.

Stood before him was Eshe.

She wavered in and out of consistency, easily mistakable for a trick of the light, except there was none. The apparition swayed slowly, pulled left, then right, by some invisible tide. Issa studied her lips as they faded in and out of visibility, a wisp of white. She reminded him of the slim wreathes of smoke that crept sinuously up from the braziers of incense Maatmeses sometimes used in her magics. It was astounding. Unbelievable. He offered a thousand thanks to Nagash for enabling this. The Great Necromancer’s works had brought his love back to him.

“Eshe…” he said with a whisper. “Eshe…its you…its you!” And it was her, down to the slender curve of her waist, the slight shape of her shoulders, the lift of her head - proud and confidant. She faded completely from view for a second, then came slowly back, first her hands, then her neck and face, and finally her body. Maatmeses sat quietly still, watching the product of her sorcery as it drifted slowly back and forth, her lost daughter.

“There is so much I have wanted to ask you.” His tongue faltered at the incredulity of what he saw. He had wanted this for so long, and had clung to it as a last hope, and now it was here, happening.

“Why did you have to go and leave me? We could have spent all eternity together, Eshe.” Her ghostly lips moved, and a whisper floated on the air. He dared not move, for fear of scattering it.

“I was doing what was right…” At the sound of her voice, he didn’t know whether to smile or cry. Her work had been her life. Her duty as a judge of Lahmia had been everything to her. It really was Eshe! Overcome, he gave in to both feelings, his lips curling into a smile even as ruby tears trickled down his face.

“Do you still love me, after everything I have done? After what I have become?”

She didn’t answer. Her arms faded again, then re-materialised. After a moment, his smile similarly vanished.

“I know I have killed, I know I have become a monster in my grief, but you killed too. We both killed, to defend Lahmia, to uphold our city and the honour of Maatmeses. You can’t begrudge me that!”

“I was doing what was right…”

“So was I. So am I!” Again, the ghost was silent. When Issa spoke again, it was not to Eshe.

“What is wrong with her?”

“She is only Ab. She has an awareness of right and wrong, but is stripped of all other understanding. Right and wrong meant so much to her in life, her Ab is strong.” She looked through the spirit and into the eyes of her son. “I am sorry Issa.”

He sat and watched the shade of Eshe wavering before him. He had waited so long, and for this. It wasn’t Eshe. She was incomplete. It was wrong. She had no passion, no flare, no stubbornness. Aside from her physical manifestation, there was little recognisable in her now.

Had his heart still beat, it would have stopped again now. A cold, lifeless calm settled over him.

“It is not fair.”

“Nothing in this world is fair, Issa. Injustice waits around every corner, and there is no preparing for it, no anticipating it. All that is certain is vengeance, just as I have taught you.”

“Yes, Maatmeses.”

“Only vengeance compensates for the chaos that life throws at us. The Nehekharans have done all this. It is they who slew your only love. They who have brought ruin to your city. They who are deserving of punishment.”

“Yes, yes…”

“Do not forget Eshe, but remember her how she was in life, what she meant to you, as I have done, and use it as a source of strength. Of bitterness. Of hatred. Use it to kill the Nehekharans, as I do.”

Maatmeses’ eyes flashed yellow and reptilian, and the fragmented spirit of Eshe faltered under a sudden gust. She peeled away in wispy strips, coming apart before Issa, and each ethereal layer bore with it a reminder of his sanity, until there was nothing left save the lock of hair.

Eshe was gone, and the Nehekharans were to blame. So ruthless had their savage genocide against the vampires been that they had eradicated every trace of Eshe, every possibility of ever bringing her back, and in doing so damned Issa to an eternity of loneliness. His lips tore back and a snarl ripped passed the row of savage fangs within.

He would have his revenge. They could not destroy his love and expect to get away with it. For years he had haunted the streets of the cities of men, killing but always hopeful.

Now he didn’t have even that. He had nothing to live for, save vengeance. He would make Maatmeses proud. He would make them pay for Eshe, pay with their blood. He would drink them dry in an orgy of feasting and grow strong and terrible on their lifeblood!

Nebtawi stuck his head into the tent, his ancient eyes settling on Issa. The man had been ancient when he was turned, and he was even older now. Were it not for his gleaming fangs and lurid gaze, he would have looked comical in this heavy suit of Lahmian armour.

“The order is given, Issa. We attack the east gate again, any minute now. The blood of the city of Numas awaits!”

 

[Azahul]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

i swear, im going to stop posting soon, ive run out of things to say :grin: i was more than half-expecting Maatmeses to refuse to even attempt the ritual and Issa to try and kill her, but this way looks to be more interesting in the long run

 

[Get of W'soran]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Wonderful yet again, a true pleasure to read =]

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Superb - More please!

 

[The Brotherhood of Necros]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Chapter 10: City in Flames
IC -1152

With a sickening crunch the city gates burst open. The slabs of thick wood that barred the mighty gate of Numas splintered, mere spears against the unholy strength of the monsters that stepped through the ruined east gate and into the courtyard behind.

They were five in number, and such was their appearance that the men of Numas recoiled on seeing them. A flurry of arrows came thick and fast from the wall above, flashing through the air to skewer the undead, but at the last moment a storm of sand erupted from the ground and tossed the arrows away.

The courtyard was plunged into disarray. A regiment of soldiers swept forward into the screams and shouts, their spears lowered. Above them, the archers drew more arrows, even as a sixth figure scrambled over the final heights of the wall and into their midst. Bodies fell, broken and crumpled, into the ranks of the soldiers below, a sign to the five at the gates that Shepsit was fulfilling her duty.

The air was thick with the iron tang of blood, and choking sand, and curses as ancient the vampires themselves sounded aloud and mingled with the screams and moans of the dying:

“Listen all you men of Numas; for those that burned the city of Lahmia, they will know their necks broken by a godly strength!”

The regiment of city guard smashed into the five vampires with a force driven purely by fear. Their spears stabbed forward. Snarls twisted their faces. Terror shone in their eyes.

“Any man who does lay a finger on myself or my bloodline, he will have lain a finger on death itself, and a thousand plagues will take him for his trespasses!”

The savage spear-points missed their marks, the vampires slipping and darting easily aside. A wayward arrow struck Nebtawi in the thigh, but it was no more than an annoyance to the ancient being. Then the Maatmesin pounced, the soldiers’ impetus lost, and a cacophony of screams shattered the air. From out of the gloom of the broken gate, hordes of skeletons spilled into the courtyard.

“And for every man who has ever cursed the name of Lahmia, or whose forefather did so, their flesh will be devoured by the scarabs of their tombs, and they will know a pain unlike any other!”

Clutching one of the mortals by the neck, Maatmeses hurled him bodily from the swirling melee. The crunch of his neck was he landed was drowned by the sounds of butchery as her children claimed their blood-debt, their golden khopesh slicing through flesh, muscle and bone with equal ease. She watched, her curses for a moment contained, as they murdered the men of Numas, as they snapped bones and bathed in showers of hot, fresh blood, and pride burned at her cheeks. They were doing so well. Every drop of blood they spilled was in commemoration of Lahmia! Every cry if pain that split the mortals’ lips consecrated the deaths of her children and her city. This was revenge. This was the punishment they deserved.

Vengeance would be theirs!

The archer moaned and bent double, but it was a futile effort. His innards dripped like slippery eels through his grasp, landing with a sodden thump onto the sandy paving. Shepsit relieved him of his pain with almost clinical precision, snapping back his head and breaking his spine before moving onto the next mortal without so much as a second’s pause.

Her duty was to clear the wall of archers. Maatmeses had been right in her prediction that they would turn their attentions away from the undead hordes outside the city when the gates of Numas fell. It was all the distraction she had needed to scale the last few metres of wall in safety, and begin her task of neutralising the archers. They were a distraction her kin could do without, and she was doing an excellent job, she thought self-critically, as another of the incompetent mortals was cast to his death on the flagstones far below. That brought her tally to a score. The neat number gave her satisfaction, something only a child of Maatmeses could appreciate.

Her pursed lips parted and a tongue flashed out to sample the blood on her forearm. The gesture could not have been more lizard-like. It was salty, and hot. Thick. The very best quality. Men’s blood always did taste better in the heat of battle. She presumed it was something to do with the adrenaline, the thrill of death and killing. It heightened all he flavours.

The second’s distraction was all the archer needed to knock an arrow to his bow and let fly at her face. Movement caught her eye and her head flicked up, just in time to see the arrow loose.

The unmistakable clicks of Maatmeses' skeleton legions became louder and louder as more of the walking dead stepped regimented into the courtyard. They saw the death that the vampires wreaked; the bloodied bodies that lay ruined on the ground, the limbless stumps that gathered sand, the unblinking eyes of the pathetic mortals, and they grinned as only skeletons can. Maatmeses knew that every second passed was a second gained by her forces, as they poured through the shattered gate and into Numas itself. Briefly she wondered if any of the other Dread Lords were having so much success. The other gates were much too far away for her to make out. She had heard that Harakhte and Neferata especially were proving most fierce in their assaults, W’soran having come to their aid at the west gate. If any of the other entrances had fallen, it would be that one.

Up ahead, more warriors were appearing. They came from down the causeway that connected the east gate to the main city, and from between arches, like soldier ants drawn to a breach in the nest. Hastily they assembled into something resembling regiments, spears, axes and the infamous khopesh clutched tight in shaking, bloodless grasps. Their fear was palpable.

They could not hope to contest against the righteous fury of her gets and she, not these men. They were city guard, not hardened veterans. She doubted that half their number had seen full-scale warfare before. It was obvious to her from their stagnant fear, the pitch of their voices, the thoughts that shadowed their minds like black shrouds.

They were going to die, and they knew it.

Her lips curving in grim determination, Maatmeses gave herself to the bitter memories. She saw the flames that taunted her as they danced over the smouldering ruins of Lahmia’s offices of law. She felt the heat and ash that washed from the burned-out ruins of the Temple of Blood and blasted her face. She heard the jubilant shouts of the men of Nehekhara as they torched and stabbed and cursed her kind with their petty magics, invoking their gods in their desperation to cleanse her city.

Cleanse her city! The very words brought a feral hiss from her throat. These men would suffer for their depredations! They would know the pain that they, and their cursed ancestors, had inflicted upon her!

“Justice!” she screamed, and at the word her skeleton warriors marched forward, unleashed upon the men of Numas, and such was her unbridled fury that they strode long and fast across the bloodied sands to reach the flesh of the living. Her curses raced through the air over their gleaming skulls, and for every intonation, a city guard fell. They died instantly, stone cold, their minds broken beneath the onslaught of nightmares she unleashed on them. There was none of her usual style, none of her malicious flare as she sought to stretch out the mental suffering of her victims. She struck them dead as surely as if her hands were grasping their necks and twisting.

Then the undead warriors crashed into the mortal defenders, and death knew no bounds.

Nebtawi hefted his khopesh and, grasping it in both hands, swung it forcibly into the chest of a soldier. The gleaming weapon tore through the breastplate and hewed deep into the man’s chest cavity, splintering ribs and cleaving into the heart. His torso flopped uselessly onto the sands.

Kicking it aside, Nebtawi stalked deeper into the fray. The uselessness of Numas’ city guard astounded him. He had personally captained Lahmia’s own city guard for the entirety of his lifetime, working closely with Maatmeses and her law to keep Lahmia in the tight grip of justice. They had been a disciplined fighting force, maintaining constant vigil about the city’s walls and ensuring that none passed in or out without his knowledge. They had been his joy and pride.

These…men, these mortals, they were an embarrassment. He had heard rumours of the legendary guardians of the gates of Numas, renowned for their battle prowess and steely nerve.

His blade snuck out and gutted another unsuspecting guard. The tales, it seemed, had been greatly exaggerated.

Two more guards raced toward him, weapons at the ready. The spear of the first lanced out to take him in the heart, even as the second came at him from the right, axe swinging. His eyes narrowed to slits of ancient cunning, and at the last moment he ducked.

He moved as a blur, despite the heavy bronze armour that covered him. Spear-point passed overhead, and the axe blow sliced through its shaft. Then Nebtawi sprang.

Darting up, he span around, and his trusted khopesh followed suit. The blade span round, ripping into the first’s abdomen and continuing through into the second’s chest. They fell amid twin sprays of blood.

“This is the pride of Numas?” he yelled, his voice rife with contempt. “This is what you send to stop us? You do us insult!”

As though on command, a horn blared stark and true over the din of battle, and an intense gold light seared into his vision.

Maatmeses recoiled from the sudden brightness, white circles eating away at her sight. She blinked furiously, even as the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. What was that? It resembled the banished sun itself in its intensity!

Slowly, the dull, monotonous sound of chanting reached her ears, and while her sight returned, the golden aura of brightness did not diminish. Realisation struck her like a tomb blade: they were invoking the power of their gods to hold her legions back. They had resorted to the same desperate trickery back in Quatar, in vain hope of preserving their city.

It had not saved them, in the end. Their gods were no equal to Nagash’s potent sorcery.

She watched as the first of her minions encountered the sun-shield. Their skeletal claws flew to their faces in the face of the arcane light, as if they were actually blinded by its golden aura. She knew this was impossible. They no more saw through their hollow sockets than they felt pain when a blade struck them.

Before her very eyes they began to crumble. Their bones blackened and charred, before finally turning ashen and disintegrating to the sands. Ptra’s brilliance was undoing her magic in every sense - she could not even raise the fallen from their graves, so utterly destroyed were their ashy remains.

A growl rumbling in her throat, the ancient woman began to chant. She would put an end to this enchantment, before their losses were too great. They had finally broken into the city, after a month of bitter warfare, and she was not going to lose ground now! Her eyes swam black and oily and dark magic coursed through her body, as subservient to her commands as criminals before the word of the law. Great black swathes of energy crept forward from her fingertips, converging slowly but irresistibly toward the chanting priests of Ptra.

A shout snapped her from her focus, and before her eyes a contingent of soldiers marched into view. They kept pace with the advancing sun-shield, a press of glorious warriors, their blades undoing her own undead soldiers as quickly as Ptra’s light was. Their golden banners were like beacons to the men of Numas, rallying the few surviving city guard beneath their heights. Maatmeses saw the insignia and spat.

“The Sun Cohort of Prince Imrathepis.” She did not have long. With a bitter grimace, she gave herself completely to the winds. The cries of the carrion as they circled overhead faded into silence. The clash of axe on sword became but background noise. The screams of the dying faded into the air.

All that mattered was her sorcery.

Words dripped from her tongue like a noxious poison and the very air around her turned black and sour. Nothing was incorruptible. The dark magic tainted everything it touched.

Slowly, but with increasing speed, the obsidian swathes cut through the air. They channeled toward the line of priests, who seemed if anything to chant louder on their approach, their monotonous tones boring into her skull.

Her head began to hurt.

Flashes of white light flared before her eyes, and she fought the urge to avert her gaze. The sorcery needed her full attention. To slip could prove fatal. She could not falter now!

More of her skeletons crumbled before the combined onslaught of the fabled Sun Cohort and the Ptra’s wall of light. They inched closer and closer with every moment. Even her vampires were pushed back under the steely defence. She could feel their pain in her very blood, as the godly light scorched their vampire souls and stung their brains. Their pain was her pain, their bond blood-deep.

She would not fail them.

Her claws of midnight were moments away from the priests now. In seconds, they would be dead men, their flesh struck from their bones in a frenzy of movement. Their god could not save them, not from her. Their hide-less husks would serve her in the afterlife! Her flesh tickled. Her eyes swam. Veins, dark and ugly, strained at the confines of her skin.

The lurid black energy struck the golden shield wall of Ptra, and in an instant they were undone. They dissipated like sand in the wind, and the ensuing backlash struck Maatmeses with the force of twenty men.

She was hurled backwards, for those precious seconds as vulnerable as any of the mortals before her, and crashed into a rank of skeletons. Blackness took her.

She came to with a start. Her fangs strained from her gums, and her body convulsed with renewed vigour. The sounds of battle blasted her senses. Screams. Shouts. Cries. The savage caws of a hundred hungry carrion.

The brazen horns of the Sun Cohort.

Struggling to her feet, she reviewed her surroundings. The Cohort surged nearer, their expressions grim, defiant. Her forces fled, or else crumbled and broke beneath the weapons of the men of Numas, and that terrible light-shield.

From out of the melee three of her offspring emerged. Their mouths were bloodied, and a lustrous light gleamed in their eyes, but they were otherwise unharmed. Her chest heaved.

“Where are Shepsit, and Issa?”

Ammon’s chariot easily kept pace alongside the Sun Cohort, the Khemrian steeds that pulled it used to much more stressful speeds than this. His blade flickered erratically out, to decapitate any of the shambling Abominations that wandered too close, but he was otherwise uninvolved in the combat.

The Sun Cohort had saved Numas, for another day at least. Their arrival could not have been more timely. The east gate was as good as taken by the enemy, their monstrous hordes spilling through it and into the city proper. If they had been only minutes later…He shuddered to think of the carnage that would have unfolded, had the undead creatures made it into the streets.

With a start he became aware of the constant voices of the priests. Their tones droned into the background, dull and uninspiring, yet responsible for the towering wall of fierce light that banished the monsters so effectively from the desert. Even as he watched, another of their ranks dissolved on contact with the shield of Ptra, rotten flesh and brittle bone slewing into ash before its divine heat.

The Incantation of Searing Brilliance was as much their saviour as the Sun Cohort.

Wiping sweat from his brow, Ammon ordered the chariot forwards. The walking dead were almost beaten. They numbered less than a third of their original number, and the courtyard was black with their charred remains. The skeletons’ best weapon was there fear, he had quickly realised, and in the face of Ptra’s priests, even that was nullified. What had the Sun Cohort to fear, when their glorious god bestowed his priests with such radiant power?

“Forward!” he shouted, urging Numas’ renowned regiment onwards.

Movement caught his attention up ahead, and he called over to his charioteer to steer left. In spite of everything a small conflict still raged, one of the monstrous blood-drinkers tearing into the surviving city guard as though they were but children, and not grown men. Its fury was breath-taking to behold. The unholy creature did not even use weapons, its bare hands and fearsome strength more than enough to tear open the bodies of his men and lay their bloodied souls to rest. It ranted and spat as it ripped savagely into the men with its fangs and claws, little more than a beast in human guise.

A rabid beast, he thought as he hefted his blade. One that needed putting down. Reins cracked, horses whinnied, and his chariot raced onward toward the enemy. There would be no escaping its spinning scythes, or the sharp edge of his blade. He would make sure of that.

“For Numas!” he cried as he drew level with the monster. The stench of hot ash and rotten flesh mingled in his nose. The light of Ptra illuminated his features. His throat cut raw from shouting.

His golden blade drew a bee-line for the creature’s neck.

At the last moment it rolled aside, and suddenly he was passed it, and veering round for a second run. It had moved so fast! He readjusted his grip on his weapon and grit his teeth.

This time the beast was waiting. He was barely three feet away when it pounced, its face twisted into an expression of sheer hatred. Its claws raked at his thick bronze armour and bowled him over, and the two tumbled from the chariot and onto the bloodied sands. Ammon choked back a mouthful of sand and rolled to his feet, blade at the ready. His head thumped and his vision blurred, but only for a second. He had fought past greater wounds than this and survived to tell the tale.

The beast was already on its feet and coming towards him. Armour was strapped to its chest and limbs, in parody of how a mortal would have worn them, but he was not fooled. It was no more a man than he was the undead. By blessed Ptra, it deserved death.

It came at him again, its fingers - more claws - scrabbling at his breastplate. They sank into the metal and peeled it effortlessly apart.

With an earthy grunt he brought the shaft of his blade cracking down on its head, and the beast staggered back. Blood trickled from between its gums and down its lips, but if anything, that seemed to spur it on. An eerie glow filled its eyes.

“Eshe is dead, Eshe is dead, Eshe is dead!” It repeated the words over and over, chanting them as though they were an incantation. The thing repulsed him with its base savagery. He had heard the tales of the blood-drinkers, the fell nobles of Lahmia, with their mastery over death itself and their vile sorceries, but this was something else.

It was like an animal. A rogue crocodile, wandered far from its waterhole, maddened and hungry.

Dangerous.

He span around, his blade a ray of golden light. It cut a deep gash into the monster’s neck, opening up the cold, pale-bronze flesh there. The blow would have killed a mortal man instantly. The thing barely bled.

Enraged, it struck back. Guided by an ancient strength it smashed its fists into his chest, and Ammon was sent sprawling backwards. The breath flew from his lungs. His head span and stars exploded in his vision. Any second he expected to feel its grave-breath on his face, its fangs in his neck, his blood pumping thick and hot down his skin…

It didn’t come. He raised his head high enough to review his surroundings. Soldiers marched behind him, the Sun Cohort, guardians of the Gates of Numas. To his left and right, the skeleton legions of their enemy crumbled, their yellowing bones collapsing as the devilry that held them was unbound. The sand was black with their purged remains.

And to his fore stood the beast.

Except now there were two.

The newcomer dragged desperately at the first’s arms, pulling it away from the advancing Cohort and their impending deaths. It looked like a woman, although it was hard to tell beneath all the blood that covered her armour and matted her face. A snapped arrow protruded from her neck.

He couldn’t make out what she was saying, but her lips definitely moved, and her eyes burned with an intensity that matched anything Ptra could conjure. The blood-drinker was resisting her efforts. Its head snapped this way and that, looking but not seeing, as though embroiled in a battle of wills. The creature looked sick.

The creature was sick, he reminded himself.

His fingers found his weapon. It felt warm in his grasp. Familiar. Staggering to his feet, he lurched forward, and in four steps reached the unclean monsters. His arms swung out with a strength borne out of desperation. This had gone on long enough.

The gleaming weapon clove deep into the neck of the newcomer, sinking smoothly through flesh until it jarred at the bone. Her head flopped almost casually to the side, connected by little more than a flap of flesh. Her scream was nothing short of primal.

Then it was on him, the first, its fangs sinking into his neck, its arms pinning him down. Ropes of saliva dripped into his skin even as its teeth clamped down, releasing streams of hot blood into its willing mouth. He could feel it as it sucked at the wounds, drawing ever more of his precious blood out of him and into its mouth, its throat, its stomach.

It fed off him like some obscene leech.

Shadows flourished in the corners of his eyes, and he had the sudden sensation of being watched, of eyes boring into his mind, his soul. The last thing he felt before the darkness took him was its release on his neck.

 

[Get of W'soran]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Nice addition =) I always love reading your stories

Can't wait for more!

 

[Azahul]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

... :grin:

 

[Azahul]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

fantastic, as always. hurry up and post the next part!

 

[The Brotherhood of Necros]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Chapter 11: The Weight of the World
IC -1152

Priest King Qua of Numas surveyed the guardians of the east gate with a weary gaze. He himself had been fighting to defend the northern quarter of the city for most of the week, and it had taken a lot out of him. That week alone had seen enough horrors to last a man a lifetime, and the fighting was not over yet. Shadows clung to the undersides of his eyes, visible even through his majestic make-up.

King Qua was exhausted.

Beside him, to his left and right, were the High Priests of Ptra and Phakth, both wise men, whom Qua had confided in on many an eve of battle. Their gods had the power to make or break a battle, such was their vast omniscience and divine strength, and as such, their High Priests counted amongst his most trusted councilors.

A dozen slaves surrounded the king and his priests, their eyes lowered, great fans in hand. They wafted Qua and his councilors, to keep the fierce desert heat at bay, which if anything had intensified since the disappearance of the sun. High Priest Ankh of Phakth had said it had something to do with the dense cloud cover, and the unnatural sorceries of their cursed enemies, trapping the heat of the desert beneath their impenetrable clouds.

Several more of the mindless servants skirted the edges of the chamber, leaving and returning with bowls of water and platters of food. He ate and drank thanklessly, as conscious of the slaves as he was of the cats that wandered the palace. There were much greater matters that occupied his thoughts.

“My most beloved and wise father, the east gate was briefly lost under the endless tides of Abominations, but we fought back and recovered the ground lost, and even now it is being refortified and strengthened.” Prince Imrathepis bowed reverentially before his father from his kneeling position, then lifted his head to meet his gaze. His eyes were strong. Fearless. They made Qua proud.

“Indeed, my king, chosen one of all the gods above, my priests help too by inscribing ancient curses onto the rebuilt gates. If the Unclean Ones try to breach it now, his holiness Ptra’s blazing ire will strike them down.”

“This news gladdens my heart,” spoke the king, and his voice was deep, and articulate. The voice of both a scholar and a warrior. “The east gate is secure then?”

“For a time, my father, yes. But despite the words of High Priest Harkhef, I do not believe they will hold for long.” The High Priest of Ptra muttered something under his breath but was otherwise silent. “The enemy is too numerous. They will return, and no matter how vindictive and deadly are Ptra’s curses, they cannot smite every one of the walking dead that opposes us. We will drown in their stagnant masses.”

Qua nodded once to his son. He had seen the limitless hordes of the walking dead that opposed him. The enemy’s sacrilege knew no bounds. Its blasphemy burned into his soul.

“We need a plan, then, some tactic that will undo the pressure at the east gate, for a while at least. The armies of Khemri are coming, we need but to hold out long enough for them to reach us.” A fifth voice spoke up, from amongst the three knelt at King Qua’s throne. His words were quiet, and carried and undercurrent of pain, but they were noble and confidant nonetheless. They held the king’s attention.

“We could march out.”

“Do not be so ridiculous,” quaffed High Priest Ankh of Phakth. “To march out against the skeletal hordes is to walk openly into Usirian’s dark Underworld! You would be killed instantly, and then they would raise you back in soulless servitude of their armies!”

“But we cannot sit here and wait for them to break down the gates and bring ruination and death to your city. Until my kinsmen from Khemri arrive, under charge of almighty King Alcadizzar himself, we are the walking dead ourselves.”

“What do you mean, Ammon of Khemri?” King Qua’s regal tones reverberated throughout the torch-lit chamber, bouncing off the myriad of statues of the Nehekharan pantheon. The gods listened intently.

“They have broken through the gates once already, and they will do so again. When they do, there will be a terror the likes of which this city has never before witnessed, stalking the very streets, devouring your people and growing ever stronger with every man slain.” His hand flickered unconsciously to his bandaged neck. “They will not expect us to march on them. We will catch them by surprise.”

“You will catch them by surprise, and kill a handful, but they will retaliate and you will die,” said Ankh with more than necessary force. “We need every available soldier to defend the walls. High Priest Harkhef and his Incantation of Searing Brilliance cannot hold the shambling dead off forever. The cost for such strenuous and glorious blessings as that is not light.”

Qua knew that Ammon spoke the truth. While they did nothing, they were as good as dead already. Numas was a corpse, and their enemy the carrion, come flocking around to pick at the carcass at their leisure. It was humiliating, and undignified, and ignoble. His brow darkened.

“You would march from the city to battle the enemy on the desert sands outside then, Captain Ammon? And what when High Priest Ankh’s words come to pass, and the rolling hordes of rot and bone and spirit turn back against you and your men?”

“I will aid him.” At the sound of his son’s voice, Qua started somewhat. His own son, battling outside the safety of the city’s walls!

“My son, I could not -”

“I will lead the Sun Cohort of Numas and Captain Ammon of Khemri can lead his chariots. Together we will catch the awoken dead in a trap, his chariots riding deep into their left flank and through to meet us at the centre. The walking corpses of the enemy are soft, and weak. Even the skeletons will crumble before the scythes and blades of his chariots and their men. I would do this, for Numas, and for you, my king.” Qua’s breath caught in his throat.

“And what when they turn their vile magics on you, Prince Imrathepis? You have seen what they are capable of. They would no sooner rip your flesh from your bones than boil your very blood, or curse your sight from your head, and raise you again to fight for them!” Qua had to hand it High Priest Ankh, he was raising every point under the sun in his examination of their plan. Truly, he was a valued councilor.

“High Priest Harkhef and the priesthood of Ptra can march with us. You have seen the potency of their dazzling incantations on the shambling dead, it burns their despoiled flesh and they cower before it as though Ptra himself has come to banish their tainted souls from our deserts.”

“This is unwise…” started Harkhef uneasily, from the right of the king’s throne. “My disciples and I should not leave the city. You have stressed our importance already, and we are Numas’ last defence against the blood-drinkers and their foul servants. If something were to befall us, and our priesthood was no more, there is little stopping the enemy from walking into our city and taking it for their own in an orgy of death and blood.” A silence settled over the chamber, as each turned the possibilities of what they heard over in their heads. Then, speaking for the first time since abasing herself before the throne of King Qua:

“Basth will protect them.” High Priestess Istnofret lifted her head, vibrant green eyes settling on those of the king. They were like emeralds, sparkling eyes of the goddess Basth herself. “I and my priests will march out with your son, and with Ammon of Khemri, and through our invocations we will protect their men from harmful spells.” Her voice was like velvet, sliding easily into the ears of all assembled and assuaging their worries.

Prince Imrathepis turned to look into her eyes, which seemed to swim with sensuality, and nodded. “And the Sun Cohort will guard your most beautiful and sacred life, and those of your priests, from the unclean blades of the enemies. A small smile twitched at the corners of her lips. “Worry about my priests, not me.”

“It is decided then,” said King Qua, a single deep breath rocking his chest. “My son will lead our fabled Sun Cohort out of Numas and into battle against the godless hordes of the enemy, and with him shall march High Priestess Istnofret, and her servants of Basth. Ammon and his Khemrian chariots will make a wide berth and come sweeping over the dunes into the flank of the enemy, in a glorious charge that will shake the heavens themselves with their magnificence and daring. You,” he indicated the two High Priests that surrounded his throne, “will invoke your own gods, Ptra and Phakth, and through their blessings bring terror to the enemy. Clear the skies. Disperse the clouds. Reveal the sun in all his magnificence once more. I would have the eyes of the gods for this day at least watching over our army from high above, so that they can better protect us all from the vile undead, and witness this pivotal attack for themselves.”

They each nodded, looks of consternation shifting over their features. “We will grant the gift of fear to our enemy,” he said defiantly, “and they will learn a new respect for the men of the kingdom of the Great River!”

Istnofret walked slowly down the long, open corridor toward Numas’ temple of Basth. It was smaller than her own temple, and inferior in almost every way, but it was a shrine to Basth nonetheless, and she would pray there. A handful of adorers easily kept pace with her, slaves, and women of Numas, come seeking her goddess’ favour in love, but she paid them no heed. High Priestess Istnofret was deep in thought.

It had been half a century since she had fought against the cursed denizens of Lahmia, and longer still since she had fled that place in her sorrow and terror. She had been a different woman back then; young, naïve, and in the tumultuous throws of love. She knew little of the world outside of Lahmia, of the numerous dangers that lurked in the barren emptiness of the desert.

Her eyes shifted smoothly over to regard the sky outside, the open air revealed to her through the spaces between the regular columns that supported the ceiling above. It was grey, and over-cast. Dingy. Such a thing was unheard of in the middle of the Nehekharan day, or at least, only a few years ago it would have been.

It had become somewhat expected, so long now had the corruption of Lahmia spread over the deserts.

She would have died for sure, had Basth not felt her love, and taken pity on her. The graceful goddess saw the pain that held her heart in the wraps of love, and knew that here was a woman worthy of her blessings. Only one who knew true love would have risked everything for it, risked everything from her home, her family, and her very love itself.

Risked everything and lost.

Basth had guided her through the deserts, in the guise of a fearsome lioness. The sleek creature was almost unheard of this far north, but it had appeared anyway, and kept constant vigil over young Istnofret. It guarded her when she slept, and when she awoke, it lead the way across the desert, until the morning came when she had stirred from her slumber to find herself alone.

That day, she had stumbled, hungry and alone, upon the Temple of Basth, and her life had changed forever.

She took another right, her feet gliding noiselessly over the sandy paving and deeper into the palace. The temple was not far now. She would pray to Basth for the coming morn, when battle would be met, and she could lay the treacherous Lahmians to rest once and for all. It was her duty, she sensed it. They had been her people, once, long ago, and it was her responsibility to end that legacy. Basth would guide her, and ensure that her will was done.

In the goddess, she trusted.

 

[Get of W'soran]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Awesome writing once agian =]
You never cease to amaze

Gief Moar plz

 

[Crimson]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Another great piece, can't wait for the next.

 

[The Brotherhood of Necros]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Chapter 12: Maatmeses’ Gift
IC -1152

His fingers found his weapon. It felt warm in his grasp. Familiar. Staggering to his feet, he lurched forward, and in four steps reached the unclean monsters. His arms swung out with a strength borne out of desperation. This had gone on long enough.

The gleaming weapon clove deep into the neck of the newcomer, sinking smoothly through flesh until it jarred at the bone. Her head flopped almost casually to the side, connected by little more than a flap of flesh. Her scream was nothing short of primal.

Ammon blinked, and when he looked again, it was his own head hanging lopsided, hanging from a stretch of skin. His weapon fell from his nerveless grasp.

Veins spider-webbed across his eyes, the eyes of the twin-Ammon, angry and red against the whites. Blood erupted from the wound like one of the many fountains that filled his home, only to fall back in a crimson shower. He gurgled, the words struggling to emerge from his ruined throat. He managed a messy sentence, amid the blood that spilled from between his lips.

“You…did this…to me…”

He tried to reply, to avert the blame, but his lips were sealed as tight as an ancient tomb. Sweat poured from his flesh, granting him an oily sheen.

“You…murdered me!” The thing that was Ammon lifted its hands and placed them carefully around its loose head. The fingers curled as they found the spots they sought. Its eyes remained fixed on him.

“You were the undead! A blood-drinker!” he managed to gasp, the words emerging all at once.

“If I am the undead, then you are the undead!”

With a nonchalance that defied belief, Ammon’s twin wrenched its own head from the remainder of its neck. There was the soft, wet sound of tearing flesh and a fresh splatter of blood.

His stomach turned and Ammon gagged. Bile rushed up his throat. Stinging. Hot. Sour.

“What are you?”

“I am you,” it spat. “You.”

“You are not me!” The thing appeared to consider his words. Its eyes creased with deliberation.

“Perhaps I am your friend, then…” And it was. Talamanke stared back at him through dead eyes, milky and still. The blood at his neck was black and solid, a thick crust of congealed gore.

It reeked of rot.

“No!” he screamed, turning to run. His feet bore him quickly across the sandy courtyard. He had to escape the horrific scene. Fetch help. Put an end to this madness. Perhaps Talamanke could still be saved, maybe it was not too late!

Rounding an ancient statue of Djaf, Ammon came face to face with himself again.

“You cannot flee me. You cannot outrun your responsibility. Your shame. Your festering guilt.”

“I have not killed myself! I have not killed Talamanke!” he screamed, half a snarl, half a sob. Twin-Ammon’s words chilled his very blood.

“You have as good as, Ammon.” He took an uncertain step back, feeling for the towering edifice of his god, basking in its protection, the aura of security that emanated from its heights.

“What do you mean? Tell me!” The creature chuckled mirthlessly, and shrugged.

“As you wish!”

His fingers found his weapon. It felt warm in his grasp. Familiar. Staggering to his feet, he lurched forward, and in four steps reached the unclean monsters. His arms swung out with a strength borne out of desperation. This had gone on long enough.

The gleaming weapon clove deep into the neck of the newcomer, sinking smoothly through flesh until it jarred at the bone. Her head flopped almost casually to the side, connected by little more than a flap of flesh. Her scream was nothing short of primal.

Ammon blinked, and when he looked again, it was his own head hanging lopsided, hanging from a stretch of skin. His weapon fell from his nerveless grasp.

“No! This is not what I meant!”

“It is this action that has damned you, Ammon of cursed Khemri!”

The thing stepped toward him, only now it was a woman again. The woman he had killed. An ugly red weal marred her neck, but she was otherwise unharmed. Her piercing eyes stabbed critically into his own, as though she were reviewing his innermost secrets and evaluating them.

“You killed me, and for your troubles, you will die. Justice must be done, man of Khemri. Everything must equate, and your debts are mounting. The death of Lahmia weighs heavy on your shoulders-”

“I was but a boy when the priest kings went to war on that city!”

“The destruction of Lahmia is accountable for by every man in all your precious kingdom! You did not see what I saw, what we saw… The atrocities your people partook in are answerable only by death!”

Something soft crept up his legs, and before he knew it Ammon was knee-deep in sand. It suckered hungrily at his thighs, desperate to devour him. He groaned and writhed, but for all his strength, all his dexterity, the man was helpless.

A long shadow swept over him, and looking up, Ammon found himself staring into the eyes of Djaf. The great golden muzzle of the hound-headed god snapped down, its teeth flashing, thick beads of saliva raining about him.

“Vengeance is coming for you, Ammon. To hear the name Maatmeses is to know your doom.”

His eyes shot open, revealing nothing but the inky blackness of his chambers. Somewhere in the corridor a brazier burned; strips of orange light lined the large doors that were the entrance to his bed-chamber. He sought out the light.

Almost as an after-thought, he slipped a pale blue robe over his olive flesh and, wiping away the fresh sheen of sweat that clung feverishly to his forehead, Ammon stepped out into the corridor. The light blazed into his vision, but it was a welcome sight, the shadows of his mind melting away before its influence. He thought of little as me strode slowly through the maze of passages that would lead outside. To think was to fear.

His mind was in turmoil.

The crackling of the torches as they guttered gently in their scones guided Ammon toward the palace’s exit, beckoning him away from his quarters and toward the refreshing cool of the outside. His bed had become a prison, and sleep an impossibility. Every time he shut his eyes and drifted off, the nightmares came surging back, with their claws and their jibes and their mocking ways…

Up ahead, the twin statues of Sokth, guardians of the palace of Numas, towered majestically into view. They were made of a mixture of materials, part gold, part obsidian, and were designed to protect the palace’s entrance from harmful magics, as well as mirror the chitinous black hide of the scorpion god himself. As he approached them, Ammon felt a peace of sorts settle over his heart. Beneath the lidless gaze of Sokth, he was safe.

Safe from that which lurked outside the city walls.

Small black figures moved in the distance, he could see them through the palace entrance. The doors had been left open, doubtless an attempt to clear the bristling heat that had settled over the city, and it was easy to see the small silhouettes of the guards as they patrolled the palace grounds. One figure in particular held his gaze, standing stock-still under the starless sky, and Ammon was reminded suddenly of the Ushabti that stood, unmoving, unwavering, forever guarding the palace of Numas from the depredations of others. Something of a smile tugged at his mouth, the first in many days. He headed toward the stony guardian.

“Greetings, Talamanke.” His own voice sounded weary to him. Not the voice of a strong, experienced veteran, but an old man, laced with fatigue. His friend turned, and allowed a smile to split his stony features.

“Greetings, Ammon. What brings you out at this lightless hour?”

“Is not every hour lightless?” The guard’s smile persisted a few seconds longer, before slipping from his face. He studied his friend.

“How are you holding up?” As he spoke, his eyes settled on the cloth that swathed Ammon’s neck, but the Khemrian captain did not seem to notice. His eyes were in some far-away place.

“Every night they come for me. I cannot sleep, am not allowed a moment’s respite. In the day, I battle monsters with my blade. In the night, they come for me in my dreams. I am a grown man, I have seen more than thrice as many summers as some of the soldiers, and yet these nightmares haunt me, ever stronger. I am exhausted.” A hand clasped his shoulder, his good side, and squeezed.

“Have you taken your angst to the priests? The priesthoods of Ptra and Asaph especially are most adept at dispelling nightmares. Their pungent ointments-”

“I have visited their temples, but each time I have been, it is the same. Men and women pour in and out of the ancient structures, crying out to be saved, to be delivered from the deathless evil that surrounds them. Many scream for similar problems as myself, venting their terrible nightmares to the overwhelmed priests as though in saying them alone, they will somehow free themselves from their nightly torture.” He trailed off. Overhead, the clouds fattened in the night sky, growing swollen and bloated off the misery and fear that flourished within Numas. They squeezed together, as tightly packed as any shield-wall Ammon had ever seen. When the sun rose in the morning, it would once more be denied the people below.

“I have dreamed of you before, Talamanke.”

“You have?” His friend shifted, attentive.

“Nearly ten years ago, when the legions of walking dead first made themselves known, I dreamed then, and I still dream now. Ten years, almost. And they are getting worse.”

“How could they possibly get worse, after such prolonged suffering as you describe?” Ammon shrugged helplessly, an unusual action for such a well-built veteran as he.

“They just are.” He paused, and bit his lip. “I saw you dead tonight.” Talamanke stiffened. “I dreamed that you were dead. Worse still, it was my fault.”

“Do not say that. These nightmares, their purpose is to quell your heart with fear, to freeze your limbs and jar your mind. The dead ones would have you at your weakest for when they attack again. You said it yourself; the whole city is in the grip of their terror. Men and women clamour to the priests for balms, and drinks, and salves that might relieve them of their malignant dreams.” He took a deep breath and lowered his head, eye-to-eye with Ammon.

“Do not give them the satisfaction. You are better than that. Think of everything you have achieved, for Khemri and for the Kingdom. How many orcs lie dead by your hand? How many necropolises have you preserved, through your perseverance and skills? How many men live and breath today by your account, your selflessness and battle-prowess?” Ammon nodded slowly.

“Good, it is settled then. Next time these nightmares of yours come crawling back, you show them why you are Captain of one of Khemri’s finest chariot legions under the sun. You show them why Alcadizzar chose you to lead a contingent here and save Numas. You show them the bite of your blade, dream or otherwise.”

“You are a good friend, Talamanke. The best.”

“I know,” he said, his lips twitching. Ammon chuckled. Somewhere far in the distance, a ghoul or spectre howled, their unearthly voice carrying on the wind. It whistled over Ammon and Talamanke.

“We owe it to the dead to defeat them,” said Ammon. “Their tortured cries are as obvious to me as the rivers run with water. They need releasing from this living death and put to rest once more.”

“They will be, my friend. By all accounts, tomorrow is the day.” He turned away again, scanning the darkness for movement, for untoward signs that might betray a spy or night-time assassin. Ever vigilant. Ever watchful, thought Ammon.

“Even if we are victorious, they will not be beaten, Talamanke. If we are successful in our efforts, and all we hope comes to pass, the most we will have bought is the east gate some extra time.”

“And that is not a victory worth celebrating?”

“Not when we might be dead the day after.”

 

[Get of W'soran]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Yay another awesomely awesome story =D

one of the things I love about reading them is the format All the spacing makes it so no matter how long the post is it doesn't get difficult to read =]

Yay for the continued story *thumbs up*

 

[The Brotherhood of Necros]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Chapter 13: Dread Lords
IC -1152

The sick green light of the goddess Neru’s moons petered through the dense clouds of night, casting a wan glow across the thousands of gleaming bones that littered the desert sands. Even Morrsleib’s tainted light struggled to break through the thick veil that separated the deserts from the skies above, a sure sign if any of the undead’s growing strength. It was a hot night, dry, and an erratic breeze was the only respite from the near-insufferable heat.

A solitary figure stalked through the field of bones. It moved briskly, almost awkwardly, as though it did not want to be abroad this night, but had no choice in the matter. Stripped of its armour, its white robes were revealed, turned jade in the light of the moon. An assortment of bracelets clung tight to its arms, and dull black hair hung from it shoulders.

Maatmeses converged on the great black tents that were her destination. Poison, black and syrupy, flashed in her eyes, and one word repeated itself, over and over in her head. It drove her limbs and stung at the back of her throat, and she had to restrain herself from screaming it out into the empty vastness of the desert. She hadn’t blinked in over ten minutes.

Grief curdled into hatred. Tears into venom. Heart-ache into a cold fury. Shepsit had been taken from her, murdered before her eyes, and because of that accursed light of Ptra she been forced back from the city, back from the ruined body of her get. It had taken every inch of her resolve just to snatch and flee with Issa, before they had claimed him too with their searing invocation.

Maatmeses’ hand shot to the pendant at her neck, feeling for the grooves there. She traced the emblem that was so familiar to her. Clutched it tight, tighter, tighter still, until the hieroglyph had printed into her palm.

Shepsit had been her last daughter-in-blood. A judge of Lahmia, she had been proud, self-aware and driven by a need for precision that had bordered on the obsessed. Her dedication had not been a fault. Far from it, Shepsit’s meticulous attention to detail had aided Maatmeses in condemning hundreds of criminals, who would otherwise have gone undetected by the High Justice.

Shepsit materialised before Maatmeses, an attentive, scrupulous expression on her face. Then her neck tore open, the crack through her spine revealed in all its brutality, and with a whisper of air the head flopped over. The once High Justice’s jaw set.

She had been like a sister to the Maatmeses, something that had meant a great deal to the ancient vampire, considering the vile nature of her birth sister. It had been many years since she wasted any thought towards the memories of that treacherous snake, and she would waste none on it now.

Between them, Maatmeses’ and Shepsit’s fanatical faith in the law matched anything W’soran or his cult had shown for Nagash, and with it the two of them had managed Lahmia safely through the decades.

And because of the Nehekharans, she was dead.

A tent loomed suddenly before her, tall, and black as pitch, and voices crept out into the night. She paused for just a second, allowing them to percolate her head. The first was rich, and evocative, a clear picture of its owner shaping in her mind at the mere sound of his voice. She had expected to find him here; it was his tent, after all. A shudder tickled her spine. It was not a welcome sensation.

The second voice surprised her, although it was no less recognisable in its dusty tone, and the manner in which each individual word was spat like some foul-tasting blood. What was he doing here?

Courtesy long foregone in face of the occupants of the tent, Maatmeses stalked quickly in. She’d be damned if he expected her dignity, after everything he had put her through, and as for the vampire’s other guest, she cared even less. Anger flared renewed inside of her, tempered only by the smooth sound of the first voice.

“Soon, soon! You see our efforts with your own eyes. They grow weak, and sicken. It will not be long now.” Vashanesh glanced over as Maatmeses entered, but gave no other sign of acknowledgement. He stood tall, his head held high. The posture of a priest-king.

“We shall see…My dark lord has made is clear he would have Numas fall soon. It would not do to incite his displeasure, Vashanesh of Lahmia.” Arkhan the Hated. Arkhan the Reviled. Arkhan the Black. The ancient liche was the right hand of Nagash, a fact he made known to all, raping his reputation in order that his commands were followed. He wore respect like a cloak, and fear a prickly crown.

His sorcery was second only to W’soran himself. In appearance, he was more like the revenant dead, a pale, ghastly apparition, all too often sporting the flowing black robes that bestowed him the aspect of some spindly insect. Ancient, yellowing teeth, long and sharp and always exposed, chittered like mandibles in his mouth. A close match for W’soran in the magical arts, and as genius a tactician as Vashanesh himself, it was his quick, wicked tongue that had earned him his place by Nagash’s side. That, and their long history together.

“Do not threaten me, liche, I know what Nagash has in store for us; myself and my kind have served him loyally the length and breadth of Nehekhara-”

“And you will continue to do so, for as long as the Great Necromancer so wishes, vampire.” Something akin to eyes glowed in the hollows of the liche’s skull, like the stirred embers of a fire. They fixed on Vashanesh’s hands, balled tight and pale from clenching, before flickering back to his face. Each gazed deep into the others eyes, vampire and liche, a battle of wills.

Maatmeses was surprised when after a moment’s pause, Vashanesh flinched back. Arkhan grinned a fleshless grin and continued.

“Numas must fall. The dead of Nehekhara are yours - ours - to control. We will send the full might of our armies against the walls of the city, an endless tide of the living, walking dead that will devour the hopes of men even they feast on their flesh, and Numas will fall.” The words dripped from his tongue like a sweet honey, and Arkhan sneered.

“At their forefront will be your vampire captains.” He flicked a wrist in Maatmeses’ direction. The gesture did not go well received by the embittered woman. “Each and every one of them will lead their armies into battle. There will be no arguments, no discussion on the matter. Numas will fall, and after it, Khemri. My master would see all of Nehekhara a land of the dead, a kingdom of obedient subjects, slaves to his every whim. You have one week to see it done.” Vashanesh bowed and, the conversation over, Arkhan stalked from the tent. He did not so much as look as Maatmeses as he passed her on his way out.

A silence filled the tent. Then, as though she had not just witnessed the dark lord’s disciplinary:

“You summoned me?” Vashanesh looked up at her through lack-lustre eyes. Dead eyes, empty of their majesty.

“You lost the east gate this morning.” His voice was accusing.

“We broke through the east gate, my vampires and I, my hordes spilling into the city. We almost took the eastern courtyard, leading toward Numas’ markets, and numerous shrines most sacred to them.”

“But you lost the ground gained. They repulsed you.” A growl rattled in her throat, reptilian and deep.

“They invoked the sun god. His holy light, it is like the acids that W’soran’s priests used to meddle with. It-”

“I have seen the effects of their incantations myself. This is no excuse! Numas must fall, you heard the liche!” Maatmeses took a step forwards. Her own fists clenched tight.

“There were unacceptable loses! My own get, Shep-”

“There are no unacceptable loses. All are expendable in the war! We must fight harder, and faster, to ensure the defeat of the priest-kings’ armies. Only then will all of Nehekhara be at the dark lord Nagash’s complete control.” Were the circumstances different, Maatmeses would have launched herself at him, there and then. As it was, all she could do was shake.

“No unacceptable loses? What has become of you, Vashanesh? The king of Lahmia was a nobler man than this; he was worthy of my respect.” He looked torn. His jaw opened and closed in quick succession. Desperately he shook his head.

“You know full well what has become of me,” he said, lifting a balled fist toward her. It glinted in the flickering torchlight. “And I am not the only one to have changed. When last did you look at yourself, Maatmeses? High Justice of Lahmia indeed. Take a good hard look, tomorrow, under the stark light of the weakened sun, and see what I see.”

She wanted to slap him. She wanted to tear at his face, and punch his chest. More than anything, she wanted to wrench his hand from his arm and cast it far away, deep into the Bitter Sea.

“You heard the liche. We attack soon; I will spread the word amongst the other captains. The day after next, we will crush Numas utterly. In this task, I will bid W‘soran lend you the aid of his priests; you clearly lack the necessary means to successfully storm the eastern gate on your own.”

“And what of Lahmia.” Maatmeses’ inflection betrayed the knowledge that festered in her heart; she knew the answer that Vashanesh would give, even before he said it.

“Do not concern yourself with Lahmia, Maatmeses. We will attack Numas, and then Khemri, and when the capital is fallen, and the deserts belong to our lord Nagash, we will converge on Zandri. Not a soul will breathe in all Nehekhara, once our work is finished.”

“Do not concern…” Her sentence trailed into a gasp of exasperation. She felt betrayed. Wounded. “Lahmia was promised us by Nagash! He swore! We were to return, to rebuild it, to resurrect it to its former glory!”

“Forget Lahmia! We attack Numas the day after next.” An aura of dark ferocity burst from Vashanesh, washing over Maatmeses like a breaking wave. “Go, leave me. Prepare your forces. I will talk with you no more.” Then, as an after-thought, but no less fierce:

“I cannot…”

Were Maatmeses a more sympathetic woman, she might have pitied the vampire then. She might have seen the dull glaze in his eyes, and felt something of remorse, or even an understanding of Vashanesh’s helplessness.

But she was not. She was High Justice of Lahmia. A Dread Lord of Nagash. She was Maatmeses, and she had been cheated, lied to and abused, and her vengeance knew no bounds.

Shepsit was dead. Shepsit was dead, and Vashanesh could not have cared less. He caved pitifully to that cursed liche’s commands, like some pathetic slave, and not the mighty vampire that he had once been. Maatmeses shivered and she fought to restrain the savage fury that coursed through her veins. Wrinkles deepened in the furrows of her brow, and about the corners of her eyes.

What had become of their king? She no more picked at the thought than tore it apart in the recesses of her vicious mind. The question ran deeper than that, she knew, as she found herself storming across the desert sands toward her own tent. Their entire race had suffered some blow, some great disservice. They had been betrayed, the nobles of Lahmia little more than courtiers and foot soldiers under the leaden will of their dark lord.

Their lord. She scoffed at the word. His manipulations were so obvious to her now. His manipulations. His manipulations! Air sucked sharp between her lips, the resulting hiss grating into the darkness. She should have seen this coming, they all should have, but he had blinded them with his insidious ways. They had worshipped him, and he had used their subservience and twisted into something degrading and abhorrent. The more she thought about it, the more it screamed at her, until her head sang with corruption.

A single star winked overhead, revealed for an instant through a chink in the clouds. Maatmeses’ head flashed upward, her head swivelling like a lizard’s that has spotted a fly. The thing glittered like a gem, a single light in the otherwise deathly blackness.

A gem, like Lahmia had been, so long ago. Before Nagash’s betrayal. Before the vampires had made it their home. Before Neferata had brought the taint of undeath to her palace, her court, her city.

Lahmia had been a safe place then. Maatmeses’ eyes shone in the light of the star, glazed with nostalgia. Her laws had kept its people secure, and when the unworthy had broken them, she had exacted justice. Their punished screams had rang out over the deserts, a warning to all who dared to trespass against the High Justice of Lahmia. She could still smell the burned flesh of murders, see the whites of their eyes as they ran like sizzling cream down charred-black cheeks.

A fat cloud crept jealously into the empty inch of sky, and the light faded from Maatmeses’ eyes. Shadows stretched once more in the worn grooves of her face and neck, and her mind returned again to dark places. Neferata and her vampires had poisoned Lahmia with their presence, and their unlawful behaviour. They were inconsiderate, and greedy, and arrogant. Nagash, in his insane lust for power, had played them all for fools, and together the two had damned her city. Its laws were impotent against the vast armies of Nehekhara. She had been stripped of her power, her influence, that which she had trusted most in, and everything had come crumbling down around her.

It was not fair! Vengeance must be had, it must, it was all that she had left! Her chest heaved beneath her robe, filled with an unnatural vigour. The vampires would pay. She would see to it, one day, she swore! On Shepsit, on Eshe, on all her children, on her laws, on ancient Lahmia itself, the immortal aristocrats would suffer for their actions!

Everything had its consequences!

The men, they would pay too. For now her foolish vampire kin were safe, protected by the very prison that kept them all bound here in service. But the men of the desert, the Nehekharans with their soft, fatty flesh and thin, weak bones, they would pay. Already, countless lay dead by her hand. Their cities were sacked, their hopes crushed under the relentless tides of nightmares she unleashed upon them, those darkest of fears that she unshackled and set loose in their minds. The cursed bastard that had slain Shepsit was but one example of the fate she had in store for all the desert kingdom. While she still walked, he would not sleep. Her hatred had unbound every little scrap of fear, anxiety, panic and terror within the mortal’s head. He was as good as dead already, the only deserving fate for the slayer of her own child.

But there were always more.

Always. Always. Tents rose up before her, then slipped past, but she did not notice them. Her tongue darted out to refresh her lips, driven by the subconscious need to feed. The potent feeling, the primary concern of every vampire in existence, that all consuming need to drink and drink to sate the burning hunger, was buried beneath Maatmeses’ vengeance. It could not compete with the iron-hard concept. She had been raised on it, lived by it, and now it was all she knew.

There was only one left to suffer, after all others had been killed. Only one, one man, one monster who needed to account for the ruination of her city and her life. He had a debt to pay, the greatest debt of all, and even as she thought it she shivered and glanced fearfully about, for she knew that her thoughts were his, and that she had wronged him by thinking them.

Nagash knew all things, and he was not a tolerable being. He was beyond justice, if such a thing were possible. The thought nagged at Maatmeses’ brain, but in the face of her fearful admonition, all thoughts of vengeance were quelled somewhat, and it was with a sickening mixture of panic, hatred and hunger that the ancient woman approached her tent. She would sleep now, as instructed, and await the order to attack. Numas would fall, and after it Khemri.

So she had been bidden, so it would come to pass.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Excellent, I like the way your are building up Maatmeses, to show how she got so vengeful.

I also agree with GoW, the layout makes the reading very easy.

 

[Devo]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Very excellent, indeed! I was out for a few days, and just now caught up. You're writing quickly, and well!

I really enjoy your writing, and am looking forward to more of the story. You rock!

 

[Get of W'soran]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

*Jumps up and down Clapping*
YAY! Arkhan was in this story! hehe

WOW I was gone for a day and I get this to read when I get back!
As awesome as ever! Can't wait for the next part of this wonderful story!

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

*Sitting and waiting in anticpation*

 

[Get of W'soran]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Another excellent installation
And I answered that PM =] ((sorry was away all day hehe))

Love your stories TPL =]

 

[The Brotherhood of Necros]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Chapter 14: Sons of W’soran
IC -1152

There was a peculiar stench to W’soran’s disciples that Maatmeses could not place. It had about it the bitter tang of rotten flesh that she had become so accustomed to since her years spent in Nagashizzar. They reeked of the very corpses that served them. More than that, the particular odour of age hung heavy about them, reminding her of the most ancient scrolls she had studied in her role as High Justice. Together, the wet stench and musty aroma made for a revolting combination. It was not helped by the oily tang of the unguents and balms that more often than not dripped from their fingers. What they applied the nauseating potions to, or why, was far beyond her interest. Let them play with their tools, she cared little, so long as they did so far away from her.

The first of the two that stood before her, she had not recognised at first. It was only after lengthy scrutiny that, with a grimace of revulsion, she had seen through the leathery flesh and sunken hollows of his face to the priest beneath. It had been many, many years, more than she cared to remember, since they had last met face-to-face, and only after trawling through years of memories, the likes of which stoked the bitter fires of her heart, could she remember the meeting in detail. Her memory was absolute, when she applied herself to it. It had been a great asset in her work of old.

The Lahmian guards had stripped the priest of his long brown robes. Reduced to a loincloth and some golden trinkets, he pulled at the shackles that bound him, raging like some rabid beast. Dust flew from the chains where they met the wall.

“Release me! You have no authority to hold me here, mortals.” The guards shuffled back, out of reach of the demented scholar. The priests of Lahmia were to be respected by the populace. This was common knowledge, yet something about the ranting vampire unsettled the two men that guarded his cell. This was no scholarly priest, no wise alchemist, or immortal wizard. This was…an animal, sick, hungry. Dangerous.

“We detain you on authority of the High Justice Maatmeses, priest. Control yourself!” The vampire spat at their words.

“I shall do no such thing! It is of the utmost importance that I am let free!” He continued to pull and writhe at the manacles, the clanking of the chains filling the small room. Unnoticed by the guards, his eyes grew black and oily. Tendrils of cloying smoke wound from his outstretched fingertips, converging on his captors. The stench of rotting flesh filled the chamber.

“And what could possibly be of such importance, priest?” Maatmeses strode into the room, Eshe by her side. Upon her arrival the dark magic dissipated as quickly and easily as smoke in the wind. His eyes clearing, the priest fell back into the corner of his cell.

“You… You cannot hold me here -”

“Actually, I can. I can detain you for as long as I deem necessary, and I can do so much more than simply hold you here.” The threat was subtle, but it was not missed. The vampire hissed and burrowed his head in his arms. Maatmeses studied the wretch. He was typical of the priests of Lahmia. Doubtless he spent his days perusing the long, dusty passages of the Great Library, or holding vigil at one of the many shrines that dotted their noble city. His pallor certainly hinted as much. He lacked the golden skin of the Nehekharan, having obviously spent far too long indoors.

What was such a scrawny, pathetic excuse for a vampire doing sneaking from their city? He had not been excused. No official document granted him passage through the desert, so what was he up to?

It was possible that he, like so many of Ushoran’s offspring, had grown bored with Lahmia. Possible, but unlikely. The creature was of W’soran’s blood, to begin with. His life was devoted to scrolls, and rites, and incantations. He was a scholar, not some disinterested noble, grown bored with the city’s offerings.

Something did not add up.

“What is your name, priest?”

“My name…My name is Melkhior.”

“Where were you headed, Melkhior?” The priest chuckled quietly into his arms. “I asked you a question, priest. What was your destination? You have no clearing to leave the city.”

“My destination is my own business, and that of my master. Take it up with him, if this matter is so precious to you, judge.” Maatmeses’ lips curled back over her gums, and with a critical glance she backhanded the get across his cheek.

“You will address me as High Judge, as is appropriate. Do not forget yourself, do not think for an instant that you are protected, because of your lineage. All succumb to the cold hand of law. I will take this up with your master, if you will not divulge your secrets.” Her voice trailing off into a hiss, the ancient vampire turned to Eshe.

“Go to the Temple of Blood, Eshe. High Alchemist W’soran is in council there with the Queen tonight.” Neferata and her pet wizard had taken to spending increasingly large amounts of time around each other recently. They had always been close, but her informants had made it clear the two were thick as thieves of late. She didn’t trust Neferata as far as she could throw her. The woman was a snake in human guise. No, worse than that, a daemon.

W’soran was no better.

“When he leaves council, inform him that I wish to arrange a meeting, tomorrow morning, to discuss this…latest turn of events. I will cancel my duties to attend, and expect him to show the same courtesy.” Eshe nodded and left the chamber.

“You,” she ordered, eyes fixed on the cowering priest, “are coming with me. It seems you cannot be trusted to remain here voluntarily, if your earlier attempt at sorcery was anything to go by. It is the Catacombs for you, until this matter is resolved.”

The whimpers that escaped his throat brought warmth to Maatmeses’ dead heart.

Melkhior. Melkhior. The name grasped at her gut and wrenched it aside, twisting her insides into painful shapes. Melkhior, the servant of W’soran. One of his most trusted. So trusted, that it had been he who Lahmia’s High Alchemist and most learned scholar had first dispatched to deal with Nagash, all those decades ago.

She could still remember the acid burn of uncertainty that had sat in her stomach, when his dealings with the Great Necromancer had been revealed to Lahmia’s court. He was their ally, W’soran had argued. Nagash was a radical, yes, but his views were not so vile as had been previously made out. The Khemrians especially had spurned him and his ideas, uniting his enemies against him in their desperation to force him from the city and out of their minds.

Nagash could be trusted. Nagash would help us. Nagash understands what we are, the ancient power that keeps us strong, and tough, and young.

He understands our thirsts.

Yes, she had met Melkhior before, and in doing so had opened up a pot of rotten worms at the very heart of Lahmia itself. He had a lot to account for, she thought, her gaze like stone. He did not look up from the ground, evidently remembering the turn of events from his own narrow perspective.

The other priest, she had not met before. The creature had introduced itself as V’azrin, an acolyte of W’soran’s. It was not especially imposing, of average height and tarred with the same irrevocable decay that consumed the rest of their priesthood. Long black robes draped across the skeletal-thin figures of both the vampires, offset by the pale gleams in their eyes. A permanent grin tugged at the corners of their faces, sly and gruesome, a bi-product of their fatless bodies. The expression was unnerving.

“You are here on W’soran’s orders, yes?”

“We are,” rasped V’azrin, his lurid gaze almost a match for her own.

“Then you will do as I instruct. Tomorrow, the east gate must fall, and Numas with it. You will aid my forces in this task.” They both stared at her now, their eyes unfaltering. They reminded her of crows, or vultures, watching her carcass with a fierce attention, making certain of its demise before darting close to feed.

She was far from some rotten carcass, she reminded herself.

“What would you have us do?” Melkhior’s voice no more came from his mouth than slid from it, an ancient hiss that rattled in his throat and slipped through his teeth. He sounded exactly as a corpse would have, could it talk, she decided. His voice was much changed from the passionate, desperate, youthful sound she remembered it.

“You will strike the men from the walls with your incantations. Melt their flesh, steal their souls, do whatever you have to, just clear the walls of their soldiers.”

“This is most simple,” scoffed V’azrin, something that Maatmeses decided was a laugh seeping from between his desiccated lips. “You needed us for this? I would have thought it even within your means.”

“Hold your tongue, priest, there is more to come.” He looked fit to argue, but kept his thoughts to himself. She recognised the helplessness, for she had known it herself a thousand times since embarking on the campaign, but she did not pity him. She was largely unfamiliar with the concept.

“The priests of Ptra have been my bane. They invoke their god, and bring about his cursed brilliance to banish the magics that bind my hordes together. Against the flesh of my children they seem to burn and boil, and it is through these defences that the east gate has not fallen.”

“They invoke Ptra himself, and he answers?” V’azrin spoke again, respect audible in his words.

“They do, but I would have you prevent them.”

“You do not know what it is you ask,” snapped Melkhior as though she were some child. His robes shifted as he lifted a hand to scratch his shaven head. He looked the picture of one of the shades that haunted Usirian’s Underworld. “You cannot simply ‘block’ a god’s favour! If Ptra is blessing them so regularly, and with such awe-inspiring power as you describe, it will be no small feat to counter his efforts.”

“Then you will be undertaking a large feat. I do not care. I am relying on your sorceries. If the east gate does not fall, on both your heads be it.” At this the priests looked aghast.

“But Ptra-” hissed V’azrin.

“You will make your sacrifices, cast your incantations, do whatever is necessary! I will not be disobeyed. My word is law! Fail me in this, and I will come looking for recompense!”

“It will be done,” muttered Melkhior and V’azrin together, but before another word could be said, a brazen horn rang out somewhere outside. Another followed suite, followed quickly by a third. Maatmeses recognised the sounds from her previous assault against the gate, and upon hearing them, her face contorted beyond all human recognition. Dark veins crept out from her hairline, her lips drew back over crocodilian teeth and a guttural growl rumbled inside of her.

The Sun Cohort of Prince Imrathepis. The guardians of the gates of Numas marched against her.

The High Priestess of Basth toyed with her gauntlets. A nervous anticipation teased her features, evident only from the slightest crease in her brow. Arrayed before them, a numberless tide of the living dead spilled forth, shambling awkwardly across the uneven sands in a macabre tide of bone and rot.

Istnofret watched the hordes spill closer. She had not been taken aback by their numbers; their armies had staggered the length of Nehekhara, and every victory bolstered their own ranks. It had come as no surprise to her that they were as numerous as the very sands themselves.

What they had in quantity, they lacked in quality. Even as she watched, the graceless corpses tripped and shuffled closer, in retaliation to the Sun Cohort’s sudden appearance. Their limbs shot out before them, legs and arms tugged in a vile parody of the movements of the living. The skeletons were not much better, she noticed, her emerald eyes flashing in the gloom. There was more of a formation to their regiments, more order, but they were thin and brittle. Just bone.

They were less than men in every respect.

By contrast, her own forces were disciplined, strong, skilled, and filled with a passion that the risen dead could never imitate. These men, the Sun Cohort of Prince Imrathepis, were the pride of Numas. They would fight to defend their city, their home, with their very last breath. The dead would crumble before their fearless might, and the brutal strength of their spears and khopesh.

The priestess tugged gently at the gauntlets that clung to her fists, her delicate fingers sliding the length of the talons that emerged, claw-like, from their end. They would tear the soft, spoiled flesh of the enemy, and return them to the sands from whence they came. It was where they belonged. They had no right to walk the deserts, trapped by the dark magics that animated them.

The guardians of Numas advanced, and Istnofret’s priests with them, marching under the clouded skies toward the hordes of dead. The plan had begun. Their fates rested in the hands of the gods now. She took another deep breath, calm and in control. May Basth watch over all of them.

The enemy were repulsive. She could see them in the distance, her keen sight picking out individual monsters as they stumbled closer. Some were the recently deceased, their bodies corrupted by potent magics, their eyes lit like eerie braziers. Others were little more than skin and bone, dry and papery, having long dwelt under the hot, waterless sands of the deserts.

Their awakening was blasphemy! The dead were sacred! She would see to it that they were banished, laid to rest once more, and Numas saved. It was the least she owed the desert kingdoms, for the involvement that she felt. She was born in Lahmia, and the fell captains of their enemy were once her rulers, her priests, her nobles, all those decades ago.

More horns sounded aloud, ringing stark and true under the overcast skies. The noises echoed the honour and bravery that filled each of the men’s hearts. She could feel it in the air, in the grim grit of their teeth, the steely glares of their eyes. These men would fight for Nehekhara, and she with them.

It was her duty to see the once noble Lahmians slain, and the evil that they stood for destroyed forever. She owed it to Basth, to her priests and to the men and women of Numas, but she owed it to her memory of Lahmia, too. It had not always been a city of monsters. There had been love there, her love, and family. Her mother and father, who had died when she was little more than a child, and her sister, who through her irrepressible love she had hurt so much. They were all long dead, but their memories lived on, and she would honour them.

Basth would honour them!

“Forward!” cried a voice up ahead, that she recognised as belonging to Imrathepis. It was strong. True. A voice worthy of a prince. All around her, his legion picked up their pace, a constant march across the unusually grey sands toward their vile foe. She and her own priests kept pace, marching at the centre of the formation, protected on all sides from the depredations of the undead. Their golden staffs shone dully in the lightless skies. Without the sun, they were robbed of their gleaming magnificence.

That would all change, soon.

To her right, trusted Nebankh clutched a talisman and muttered under his breath. She recognised the blessings of Basth when she heard them; they were as much a part of her as her hair, her eyes, or her soul. All around her, the other priests were invoking similar rites, their mumbled blessings and swift incantations summoning the attentions of the beautiful cat goddess and requesting her aid.

They had nothing to worry about. She could feel the blessing of Basth coursing through her body, filling her limbs with an ancient vigour that belied mortal comprehension. Their goddess was with them, and would watch over her most favoured disciples with a keen interest. Of this, Istnofret was sure.

The dead were almost upon them now. She could hear the groans that burst from their broken throats, the grunts and sighs that slipped into the air in a terrifying chorus of deathly noise. The skeletons marched silently, staring through their eyeless sockets and grinning mockingly, that irreversible smile etched on their taunting skulls. They were a morbid reminder of the fate that awaited the men of Numas, should they fall in battle.

They would make sure they did not.

With the unnatural sounds came an even worse smell, of pus, and grime, and the dust of the necropolises. Istnofret recognised the stench of rotten fish, for she had smelled it before, when scraps were carried into her temple by blessed Basth’s cats. Their enemies’ eyes were creamy white, like spoiled milk, and shone with a sick light that mirrored the glare of the dark moon of Neru.

Everything about them was repulsive.

They were metres away now. In a minute, the Sun Cohort would reach them, with their sharp spears and deadly aim. Now was the time to act. Slowing to a standstill, Istnofret turned to her contingent of priests. They looked at her through aged eyes, rheumy with wisdom and understanding.

“Devoted of blessed Basth, begin the Incantation of Jaded Healing! For the graceful goddess Basth, and for Numas!” Her words slipped strong and husky from between her lips, a voice of defiance, and beauty. Her priests recognised the voice of Basth when they heard it, and as one they began to chant. They spoke in unison, their arms upraised, staffs held high, and slowly, with a confidence amassed from decades of practice, their incantation took form.

Even as she chanted Istnofret looked up, and saw the clouds beginning to move. They barely inched across the skies, great black thunderclouds, swollen and thick in the air, but they moved nevertheless, and she knew that back at Numas, safely behind the city walls, the priests of Phakth had begun their own incantations. That left only High Priest Harkhef and the acolytes of the Sun God.

As though on command, a searing flash of light tore into existence, flashing behind her like breaking dawn, and she knew without turning that the Incantation of Searing Brilliance had taken hold. The walls would be safe from the fell attentions of the undead, while Ptra’s priests chanted.

Then all thought was lost to her mind, for with a gut-wrenching clash the forces of Imrathepis collided with the despondent dead, and reason lost all meaning to the screams and butchery of battle.

Maatmeses stormed out of her tent, Melkhior and V’azrin seconds behind her. Outrage marred the woman’s features. The sheer audacity of the treacherous mortals; that they should dare to make a stand against her forces! Did they not owe her enough already!

Even as she watched, the dead of Nehekhara clashed against the living, bloodied corpses fumbling blindly for the necks and pulses of the soldiers. The men fought back, their shining blades cleaving through rotten flesh and bone with equal ease. The dead were no match for the Sun Cohort, she could see that much. Barely a handful of the hated mortals had fallen in the initial clash, compared to the droves of revenant dead. They were reaping her forces like a scythe through crop.

“What are they doing?” spat V’azrin, watching as the Sun Cohort battled nearer. “They are more stupid than I thought!” Melkhior snickered dustily, and his companion continued. “Let them slay the corpses; we shall raise them back again, and more still, until they drown in a sea of undeath!”

Maatmeses’ eyes flashed like glittering topaz; the foolish men had made her own task a hundred times easier. Without the protection of their tall walls, the mortals had as good as condemned themselves to Usirian’s shadowy Underworld. Her jaw slipped open, as though to savour the taste of death that had filled the air. Blood splashed abound, dripping from the wounded soldiers, and leaking from the broken bodies of her own corpses.

Her hands clenched tight, as, inspired by the rank taste of hot, fresh blood, images flickered through her mind. They vanished the instant they appeared, too quickly for her to decipher, but fuel for the vengeful furnace that smouldered always in her subconscious.

In moments, it had become a raging inferno.

Her face assumed a daemonic visage. She looked as much a woman as a monstrous crocodile, her eyes slits, her nose short, her cheeks askew. The disciples of W’soran took an uncertain step back.

“They set alight to the Temple of Blood,” whispered Maatmeses. “They tore down our statues, they burned my edicts.”

“What are you talking about?” ventured V’azrin, something of disgust registering on his similarly unwholesome features. “None but the oldest amongst them would have been alive when Lahmia burned.” She continued heedless, unhearing.

“They murdered my children, those noble men and women who guarded our city and eased it safely through the decades. They put them down, like animals. Beasts.”

“What-”

“I will have vengeance. I will have vengeance. I will have vengeance!”

There was a subtle change in the air; barely perceptibly, but to the practiced senses of the sons of W’soran, it was like watching the few grains of slipping sand that preceded the collapse of a sand dune. Their bottomless gazes shot upwards, in time to see the clouds shift. A hiss of trepidation escaped V‘azrin. Below, the battle waged nearer.

“They are invoking their gods,” said Melkhior, with more than a hint of curiosity. There was no fear in his voice, despite the gravity of which he spoke. “The clouds are shifting, they mutter the incantations of the great god Phakth, he who sees all, and implore to him to clear the skies.”

“Stop them,” said Maatmeses.

“I cannot simply-”

She turned for a moment, locking gazes with both the dark acolytes, and such was the stony coldness of her ancient gaze that their words died on their thin, dry lips.

“Kill them, corrupt their flesh, inflict a thousand tortures upon them. I don’t care, just stop their incantations. They must pay. They must pay!” The vampires bowed and slipped back into her tent, to retrieve the tools of their trade.

They were already forgotten to the ancient woman. She stared down at the battle unfolding before her through vindictive eyes. Blood and screams filled her head, both past and present, and it was only when a sudden flash of light illuminated the distant wall of Numas that she broke from her reverie. She looked down in time to see a wave of chariots, Khemrian in their insignia, crash into the flank of her undead horde. The shambling dead were no match for their speed, and the sudden smash of their impact. Rank after rank fell beneath their rolling wheels, and the hooves of their desert steeds.

She unsheathed the two khopesh that hung from her waist. It was time. Time for vengeance. Time for death. Time for the men of Numas to feel the weight of their crimes. She would punish them for their indiscretions, and the indiscretions of their forefathers. Her children fought down there, the last of the Maatmesin, and she would join them in their vengeance. In their slaughter. She would have retribution!

With a deep growl, that could have come from the scaly throat of a crocodile itself, Maatmeses raced down the dune and into the fray.

The crunch of snapping bones as they ground beneath the swirling wheels of his chariot was as endless as the Great Desert itself. Captain Ammon of the Chariot Cohort of Khemri rode thick and fast into the fray, his golden weapon biting deep into the necks of the shambling dead. They were as numerous as the waves of the Bitter Sea itself, but he and his chariots were as the great warships of Zandri, streaming through the water’s surface with unstoppable power and grace.

Screams filled his ears, bestial sounds that shook him to his core; the horses whinnied and whickered as they trampled the Abominations beneath their hard hooves. Moans of despair and anguish rose up from the horde, mingled with grunts and cries unnatural hunger. They were almost indistinguishable in their sounds, something that grated on Ammon’s resolve. Were the corpses conscious? Did they know themselves, their former lives? Or were they mindless animations, that knew nothing but a fierce hunger for his flesh?

Chariots streamed forward to his left and right, his closest comrades and most capable of soldiers. To his left, Talamanke struck out with his mighty axe, the weapon cleaving through the stick-thin necks of their enemies. He jeered as he hewed their heads from their shoulders, the morbid chore tickling his grim sense of humour. A madness glinted in his eyes as he hacked and slashed with his giant weapon, something Ammon had seen many times in the heat of battle. It took a hold of you, spurred you on, held you in its bloody confines so that all you knew was death and pain and sweat.

He brought his own gleaming weapon arcing round, burying it in the spine of a former Nehekharan, and barely dragging it free in time before his chariot carried him away. Pride, and a sick satisfaction at the corpses second death, warmed his heart, and Ammon realised with more than an ounce of certainty that his own eyes were probably just as manic.

Overhead, the grey clouds remained, although he noticed small chinks of light pierced its cover. They were had to discern against the glorious light of Ptra, which shone from the eastern wall, but they were definitely there. Phakth, the hawk-headed sky god, was being invoked. If his efforts, and those of his priests, continued, the sky would soon be cleared, and once more the magnificent Nehekharan sun would bathe the deserts in golden light.

Grunting, he tore into the body of another man, whose eyes were empty sockets. Its flesh was soft, and more like wet papyrus than skin. His blade made short work of the unnatural creature.

Their momentum had carried them thick into the fray. The blood-drinker’s hordes were many, and if they did not meet up with Prince Imrathepis and the Sun Cohort soon, he and his chariots would be stranded, islands amid a sea of living dead. It was not a prospect he appreciated.

Two more of the shambling monsters bounced off the chassis of his chariot. The first vanished beneath the wheels of his mount, but the second grabbed on at the last minute. Groans escaped its ruined mouth, and the terrible creature crawled bodily over the side of the chariot, even as its legs and pelvis were ripped out from under it.

This close, the stench was intolerable. Ammon fought the urge to gag, instead stamping down on the head of the thing. It cracked like an egg under his sandaled foot, its grasping arms falling limp. He kicked it away.

Up ahead, the Sun Cohort carved a bloody swathe through the undead ranks. He watched their impressive blades rise and fall, swatting the corpses and skeletons aside and deflecting their feeble blows, returning with fatal strikes of their own. Heads rolled. Bones shattered. Pus-filled flesh was stripped from muscle. Truly, he noted with mounting respect, the Sun Cohort were a force to be reckoned with. He could see now why they were so fabled, and why they above all of Numas’ other forces were assigned to protect its four main gates.

For a terrible second, he pondered the fates of the other three gates, those to the north, west and south of the city, while their legendary guardians fought here. Quickly he dismissed the thought from his mind, and focused on the task at hand.

His muscles burned from hefting his weapon back and forth into the ranks of the enemy. They had not been fighting long, but he had been unable to sleep many nights, and was feeling the dull creep of fatigue as it threatened to petrify his heavy limbs.

He couldn’t give in. His life depended on it. His afterlife depended on it, judging by the vast number of freshly raised faces that he lay to rest. Many were barely recognisable as being dead, save the bloodied wounds that covered their bodies, and the pulsing witch-light in their eyes.

It was not a fate he fancied for himself.

“Talamanke!” he shouted, over the chorus of deathly despair. His oldest friend decapitated a revenant corpse with a single strike, and turned to face Ammon. Veins stood out thick on his arms, and in his neck.

“Ride left! We will cut in now, before our impetus is lost!” A single nod sufficed as response, and leading the rest of their regiment, the two veered slowly to the left. The cracks of their drivers’ whips added to the hellish cacophony of sound that assaulted Ammon’s senses.

Gradually, the chariots curved round, their destination the flashing blades and chanting priests of Imrathepis’ Sun Cohort, and the disciples of Basth respectively. Once there, the combined forces of all three would prove a hammer against which the abominations could not hope to compete. The dark shroud that bathed the deserts was slowly dissipating. The lights of Ptra shone ever constant in the background, atop the eastern wall, a beacon of radiant hope for him and his men as much as it was a source of despair for their enemies.

The Abominations would be destroyed, forced back, and the eastern gate completely cleared, until more of the undead shuffled around from the other gates at least.

But a victory was a victory, and it was within their grasp. The captain allowed himself a brief smile, grim but proud. They were so close, and then he could return to his quarters, and rest his aching body. With the legion of Nagash banished, he was sure his nightmares would vanish, and he could finally get some peace.

There was a thud as his chariot’s left wheel mounted an especially burly corpse. It crunched beneath him. More screams, this time to his right, as a wayward spear had taken one of his soldiers in the chest. He could see where it had slipped passed the breastplate, even as the unfortunate soul toppled from the back of his chariot. Ammon turned away. He would not watch the resulting orgy of feasting.

He could hear the shouts and cries of the Sun Cohort now, distant but audible over the groans of the corpses that staggered awkwardly toward him, then passed. They could not compete with his chariots speed. Their leathery fingers raked its chassis.

Yet more slipped and broke beneath his war chariot. Before him a ray of light shone weakly through the cloud cover. His driver’s whip cracked again. Shouts from behind him. The crunch of broken bones.

Then he was spinning, the terrified screams of his chariot’s horses tearing into his gut, and the breeze buffeted his face.

There was a weightlessness. He was flying. Blood ran into his eyes.

With a thud he hit the sand.

The floored horses flailed and screamed, their eyes white, mouths frothing. Maatmeses knew terror when she saw it. Nightmarish visions exuded from her mind, seeping into the heads of any men that strayed too close, and polluting their thoughts. They felt her pain. Her anguish. The agony that wracked her undead frame.

With a cold fury, Maatmeses stepped around from the path of the wrecked chariot, and towards its rider. The risen dead parted before her like slaves before a priest king, her iron will casting them back. This was between her and the mortal. Those corpses that did reach out, fumbling eagerly for her enemy’s throat and blood, she dismissed instantly, their husks falling limp to the sands.

A hoof kicked madly out, striking her abdomen, but Maatmeses did not so much as acknowledge the wayward blow. She had only eyes for the curled figure on the sands. He was the one responsible for Shepsit’s death. She could feel it. Feel him. He had wronged her, and now he would be punished.

More chariots sailed passed her through the thick horde of undead, but none dared too close. Her aura of vengeance was absolute, keeping the mounts of Khemri at bay.

She was metres away now. Her lips parted in silent exultation. Unblinking eyes fixed on her quarry. The criminal. The wrong-doer! He would suffer!

One chariot doubled back, cutting a sharp half-moon through the shambling dead and heading directly for her back. She felt the young, fresh minds approaching, as much as she heard the grind of the chariot itself. Hope and terror engulfed the mortals, soldier and driver, as they neared her, with their large axe, spinning scythes and sharp hooves.

Screams filtered over the din of battle, mingling obscenely with the desperate moans of her dead, and the clash of weapon on weapon as in the distance, man fought skeleton.

She turned then, her eyes ablaze with an icy fury that struck the charging horses dead. Their bestial minds were as two small desert termites against a torrent of boiling water.

The stench of urine washed over her as the dead beasts released their bowels. It was swiftly enveloped by the rotten smell of the dead.
Both riders toppled from the chariot, sacks of muscle and bone, of no more consequence to the vampire. She span on her heel.

“You.” The word was lost in the maelstrom of battle, but it reverberated within the man’s head, chilling him to his very bones. He writhed under her voice, face buried in his arms and sand, legs curled.
“You murdered my daughter.” The words were like hammer-blows, striking his head, knocking him back. With a brutal carelessness she invaded his mind.

“Ammon…Ammon. So that is your name, murderer.”

“I am no murderer!”

The sheer savagery of her response sent him sprawling back again, a dog in the sand, reprimanded by its master’s voice.

“How dare you speak such lies!” He whimpered. “Your deepest, most reviled of secrets are laid bare before me, a testimony of your shameful atrocities, your ill-doings. I see into the inky blackness of your tainted heart, and what I see sickens me!” At this he seemed to gain strength, something of the man’s resolve clawing back.

“I have never done wrong!”

She snarled and a hundred visions swept unfettered through his mind. He saw himself, a small child, stealing coins from a blind man’s street earnings. He saw himself, a few years older, copying answers from his arm onto a sheet of blank papyrus. He saw himself, drunk, kissing Talamanke’s woman, saw himself slipping a pouch of gold from one of the dead into his own satchel. The ravaged memories crawled inside his head like a swarm of tomb scarabs, biting, scratching, gnawing, crawling, and his screams tore his throat raw.

“You must be punished!”

“I have not wronged you!”

“You MUDERED SHEPSIT!” Gone was any of her High Justice’s decorum. Maatmeses spat, her eyes like glowing coals, reaching out toward the foetal man as though to tear him to shreds with her golden khopesh.

“I am High Justice. I am Chief Judge. I condemn the wrong, I punish the criminal, it is my right!”

“Please, have mercy…” She looked disgusted.

“Mercy? I am inconsolable.” He cowered into the sands, as though they might hide him from this avenging monster. Even as he dug, scooping great handfuls of sand aside, he saw himself taking up his blade, staggering forwards, cutting into the two cursed blood-drinkers, and taking the woman’s head. He saw it flop almost casually to the side, heard her screams as though they were here now, screaming, screaming, screaming, never stopping. He backed away, turned, tried to run, found his blade in his hand, stumbling forward to cut at the fell Lahmian’s neck. The head flipped, the screams redoubled, louder, louder, he turned, fled, his weapon found her neck and a third level of screams mounted the first. They shook him to his very core, shredded his soul, chilled his blood. There was no escaping the screaming. No escaping the screaming!

Maatmeses turned from the mewling wreck that rolled, screaming on the floor, its mind a bloodied mess.

“For Shepsit,” she said coldly, her disposition returned. “Justice is done.” With a calm demeanour that defied her behaviour only moments before, she strode back through the ranks of shambling dead toward the hated soldiers of the Sun Cohort.

There were more yet to avenge.

Istnofret's eyes shone like sun-kissed emeralds, glittering with the touch of Basth. The sounds of battle, of death and pain and blood, was barely audible, background noise beneath the constant, monotonous chanting of her priests and she. The incantation was all that mattered. It must be upheld. It must be maintained. The Sun Cohort fought to protect them, and they would return the favour. At the very heart of the Sun Cohort’s regiment, Istnofret invoked loving Basth, and the cat goddess heard her pleas.

Her bronzed lips moved quick and smooth, forming the words that spilled in equal measure from her heart and memory. Her cream robes were unspoiled by battle, her rich skin pristine and her expression flawless. She was every inch the vision of Basth, beautiful, strong, defiant and proud. Her priests took inspiration from her, using her divine appearance as a well of belief, of optimism, of certainty. Basth was watching over them. She would not abandon them to the depredations of the undead.

And Basth was watching over them. Istnofret observed through detached eyes as one warrior took a rusted spear to the neck. It sliced through flesh, leaving a smear of rust and dirt about the wound, but no sooner had the spear-point withdrawn, a miraculous thing happened. The flesh knitted softly back together, joining where moments before it had been viciously undone, and in seconds only a small red patch of tender skin remained of the otherwise mortal wound. She allowed herself a gracious smile. The Incantation of Jaded Healing was a most sacred and potent of rites. None but the favoured of Basth could invoke it. The soldiers of the Sun Cohort were most fortunate for their presence, and to Basth’s generosity. She of all beings knew the capricious nature of the cat goddess.

To her right, one of the Nehekharans stumbled and fell, his head rolling to rest near her feet. Dark, rich blood pooled from the gaping hole in his neck, sticking to the sands in a morbid puddle. A tall skeleton stepped over the fresh corpse, its empty gaze surveying the chanting priests. Something in its bony grin sickened Istnofret. The dead should not walk!

Quickly, another of the Sun Cohort dispatched the monster, its heavy khopesh crashing through the skeleton’s spine, but he in turn took a blade to the stomach. A fresh wave of sweat and decay washed over Istnofret, cloying and rotten.

The wound began to heal, raw flesh stitching itself neatly back together, but another blow slipped through the man’s side, and into his heart. Against such grievous wounds, even Basth could not aid him, and he fell under a third methodical blow. Istnofret took a deep breath, to steady her nerves, as another two skeletons trampled the corpses. She had known this time would come; it was inevitable.

They were breaking through.

With a last, heartfelt prayer to Basth, Istnofret broke from the incantation. For a moment, the rest of the priests’ words slowed, as her departure from their chant increased the pressure on their own ancient bodies, but they did not stop. They would not, until death itself claimed them. They had faith in the goddess.

She blinked, her luminous eyes disappearing for an instant behind long black lashes, but time seemed to drag out into an eternity. Tensing slightly, the High Priestess of Basth raced forward, her long, olive legs slipping slowly from the length of her robes. The dead staggered closer, their steps ungainly, grins unfaltering. With painstaking slowness, she neared them, and they turned to stare at her through the lightless hollows of their eyes. The first raised its weapon, a bronze scimitar.

Then time re-asserted itself. Springing forward, Istnofret ducked and leapt up between the skeletons, twisting in the air as she did so. Her arms flashed out, her body coiled, and with unsurpassed grace she landed on the sands. Behind her, two skulls rolled to the ground, their bony bodies crumbling afterwards.

She felt elated. Heightened. The strength of Basth flowed through her limbs, inspiring her with athletic vigour. Her small chest rose and fell in quick succession, and the many emblems of Basth, the trinkets and hieroglyphs that adorned her, shone with white light.

More undead spilled past the Sun Cohort, their rank bodies and nerveless fingers all around her. They groaned pathetically as they reached for her, desperate to clutch her flesh, to tear it, to rip it and devour it. She had to staunch the wound that had opened up in the Sun Cohort’s ranks. Her priests needed her help with the incantation. It would not hold without her for long.

The first corpse snatched out, its grasp shooting suddenly for her neck. Whatever sick enchantment animated it seemed to grow dark and strong at the promise of blood, but Istnofret was faster still. She stepped nimbly back, her right hand flashing forward even as she did so. The Claws of Basth buried themselves in the bottom of its jaw, sinking deep and smooth into its rotten brain. A confused look glazed its features, and the
lights in its eyes died.

Extracting her long talons, she stepped in and past the tumbling corpse, spinning swiftly around it in a single fluid motion that planted her at the heart of the breach.

The undead surrounded her. Their groans mingled with the chanting of her priests. Something yellow and pus-like splattered against her flesh, but she ignored the distraction, instead bringing the butt of her elbow into a corpse’s head. There was a crack and it span away.

Springing back, she crouched and pounced, the motion carrying her into the chest of another of the walking dead. Her feet planted into its sodden flesh and pushed back, sending the abomination sprawling to the ground. A single stamp to its neck ended the thing’s existence.

The remaining three monsters closed in, the desiccated grooves of their leathery flesh and flickering hollows of their eyes all too visible at this distance. Istnofret braced her feet and flicked round in a half-circle, her robes twisting in accompaniment to the graceful movement. The Claws of Basth tore into all three of the cursed ones’ chests, ruining their hearts and dispelling the corruption that gave them life.

The Sun Cohort closed in around the breach, four warriors racing over to intercept any further of the shambling monsters, and Istnofret turned back to her priests. They stared at her reverentially, Nebankh and the others, their faces gaunt, and tired, but nonetheless lit by a sacred understanding of what they had just witnessed.

Basth watched over them. She heard their cries and answered their invocations, and while the Incantation of Jaded Healing continued, wounds would re-knit, and the dead would stay dead.

Istnofret, most beautiful and radiant of the priests of Basth, glanced once more about the immediate battlefield before returning to her incantation. The soldiers of the Sun Cohort fought bravely as ever, and the undead were falling beneath their blades like the corpses that they were. Captain Ammon’s chariots too were making good progress, mowing down the walking dead as they rode back and forth through the decaying ranks.

Up ahead, she could make out Prince Imrathepis himself, recognisable from his rich, commanding tone of voice and glittering armour. His own khopesh, a large, two-handed weapon, shattered bone and flesh indiscriminately, tearing a chunk out of the undead forces. Truly, he was a worthy prince.

The monotonous chorus of her priests drew her attention swiftly back to the matter at hand, and Istnofret rejoined her priesthood. Basth would hear her cries, and lay her protection over those who guarded her disciples.

Maatmeses' khopesh sang a song of death, tearing through breastplates, greaves and helmets as if they were made of wood, and not hardened sheets of metal. Corpses heaped at her feet, bloodied and broken, but the ancient woman cared not. Vengeance shone in her eyes. Her tongue spat vindictive words. For over a decade, she had waged war against the people of Nehekhara, marching at the head of Nagash’s legions with her vampire kind, and the years had done nothing to quell her insatiable drive for revenge.

She had been wronged, and for that, there was no excuse. Rather than diminishing, her need for law and justice had soured and turned rotten, corrupting her values slowly but irrevocably. She lashed out, fangs glinting, and dragged her heavy blades in opposite directions. They hooked on a soldier’s stomach and rent him apart in a shower of blood.

Law was certain. Law was definite. Law was right. Drawn to these values, Maatmeses had risen quickly through the ranks, until she had claimed her title as High Justice of all Lahmia. Under her iron rule and irrefutable authority, Lahmia had prospered, and its criminals punished.

Two men raced toward her, their spears clasped tight, aiming for her heart. The points glinted menacingly in the Nehekharan sun. Maatmeses turned her gaze on them and unleashed their darkest fears from the shackles of their mind. The two fell screaming to the sands. Giant scorpions erupted in their mind’s eye, pincers snapping, tails darting forward to poison their thoughts. Maatmeses stepped over their convulsing forms, and deeper into the fray.

Even when ill-fortune beset her, when her husband, that nameless, cursed excuse for a man, abandoned her for her own sister no less, Maatmeses had her law. It was unchanging. Cold. Certain. In her dispensing of the law, she was in complete control, and her work quickly became a necessity. To feel was to hurt, something she would not allow, not after the anguish she had been through. Years of repression lead to a dependency on her work. It gave her life meaning. Drove her to every greater heights of justice. At her pinnacle, Lahmia’s cells had writhed with the bodies of criminals: murderers, thieves, blasphemers and spies, all waiting to be tried, and punished.

Then Neferata, in her vain idiocy, had spoiled everything.

Four more soldiers rushed her, their bravery undone by the terror in their eyes. The first’s head she took clean off, his body falling to twitch in the sands. The second felt the full force of her khopesh through his chest, the weapon forced through, powered by an unholy strength. His ribs snapped and blood drenched her fist.

She dragged the body, still hooked on her vicious weapon, in a wide arc, knocking it into the third soldier and sending them both sprawling to the ground.

The fourth sank its spear deep into her gut.

Something smouldered weakly inside of her, and after a moment she recognised it as pain. Her weapons fell to the sand, and she clasped the spear tight in her hands. Ancient eyes fixed on those of the offending mortal.

“You dare,” she began, taking a step further into the spear, “to defile me…with your treacherous hands?” The man shivered, paralysed by those condemning eyes.

“I will have…my justice!” The spear was almost completely out of her back, and reaching around she plucked the last foot from her body.

In the blink of an eye, she had gutted the man with it, the spear point stabbing out from his open mouth. Those around fell back aghast, horrified by what they saw. No mere woman should be able to do such a thing!

Corrupted by Neferata and her dark, potent elixir, Maatmeses’ role as High Justice became an obsession. It was her sole reason for existing. Lahmia’s upkeep meant everything to her. Everything. Everything.

And the city’s eventual destruction had unchained everything she had sought so hard to keep locked up inside of her.

Maatmeses gasped, her jaw falling slack. Such hatred… A shiver wracked her body, followed quickly by a cracked scream. She stood alone, amid a pile of the freshly dead, but the nearest soldiers shouted and collapsed. Shock registered in their voices as Maatmeses’ anger bore into their brains. She clutched at her head, fingers knotted in her hair.

Her hordes were much diminished. Reduced to a barely a third of their number, the rotting corpses fought on regardless, driven by a cannibalistic hunger for the flesh of the living. Most of her skeletons lay broken and smashed, and without even trying, she could sense the powerful wards that lay over the dead. Protected them. Kept them safe from her magics.

She could not flee, every urge told her to leave this place, to rejoin her kin at the other walls, but she could not. She could not! Magic more ancient and powerful than her own held her fast, obedient, a slave to its will, and she could not break it.

He held her here.

If she was to succeed in her task, she would need to replenish her forces. Briefly, her mind turned to W’soran’s spawn. The two priests stood before her tent, tiny silhouettes in the distance, but she could tell from the swirls of dark energy and the tumultuous skies that they were busy with her prior task. To distract them now would be to relinquish their hold on the bloated black clouds, and this she would not allow. The overcast skies and banished sun were far more potent elements to her cause than a legion of the undead. Fear and despair were ever her allies against the weak hearts of the enemy.

With a sudden jump her head snapped back, and an expression of cunning crept over her face, cold and reptilian. She could muster the dead from their grave-less sleep herself, she did not need the aid of W’soran’s gets for that.

All she had to do was silence those whose stead-fast wards kept her necromancy at bay.

Sweat clung to Prince Imrathepis’ forehead. Blood and grime tarnished his once magnificent armour, and several bruises spoiled his rich, dark flesh, festering like corrupt purple fruits. The undead, by comparison, were tireless. They did not sweat, or ache. Even as he watched, one of his men lopped off a creature’s arm, only for it to snatch out with its other, fingers scrabbling desperately for his soft neck, wherein lay his blood, his pulse, his life.

They were every inch the abominations they had come to be named. Blasphemous. Gluttonous. That they should walk was sacrilege alone, sacrilege of the highest kind! The keen edge of his gleaming blade tore into the ribcage of the skeleton. Bare bone cracked, no match for the hefty bite of the khopesh, and the balefires died in its empty eyes. He lashed out with his foot, kicking the crumbling bones aside.

His eyes burning with a mixture of pride and loathing, the prince of Numas stepped forward. His fingers tightened around his massive weapon and with a grunt he brought it arcing around. Sunlight, weak but present, danced off its shining edge as it clove through the abdomen of three of the rotting corpses. They had been Nehekharans, not so long ago. Their flesh still held an olive tint, and their faces stretched with expressions of misery and anguish.

His blade ripped clean into their dead flesh, tearing out their stomachs in a spray of blood.

Not their blood. Not his blood. The blood of his men, that sat, congealing, in their bowels. A commanding shout tumbled from his open mouth.

“Forward!”

All around him, his Sun Cohort, his greatest pride, and that of Numas, fought valiantly, each man more than a match for a dozen of the undead monsters. In their midst, protected from the ravenous, unnatural attentions of their enemies, the priests of Basth chanted aloud, their voices worn, and strained, but relentless and controlled. While they still spoke, he and his men were safe from all but the most grievous and mortal of wounds. His angry bruises were a testament to that; each one marked where the tainted weapons of their enemies had slipped past his guard, and sliced into his flesh.

Basth, in her infinite grace, has spared him the wounds, and reduced them to the mottled purple of his flesh.

A third force raced up ahead, Ammon’s chariots scouring the ranks of their enemy and crushing their bones to dust, even as the Khemrians lashed out with their spears and axes, felling more of the shambling foe.

The only real enemy, he knew, with an anxious glance in their direction, were the blood-drinkers. He could see them even as this distance, a plague on his far left flank. There were only a handful, but their savagery and strength was terrible to behold. Bare fists broke bones. Their sickle-like khopesh cleaved men in two. The wind itself could barely move as fast, or with such purpose, as those unnatural monsters.

Hatred welled up within him like a desert spring. They were single-handedly holding the undead’s right flank intact, and more than a hundred of his loyal men lay broken and ruined at their feet. They were abhorrent, and they must die, soon. If the battle stretched on much longer, who knew how many more of the undead might intervene.

The entire city was surrounded by their sickening contingents.

“Forward! Forward, blessed Sun Cohort!” he screamed, almost choking the repugnant stench that flooded his mouth and nose. Slowly, but with the undeniable strength of the tide itself, his golden host advanced, step by step crushing the undead that opposed them. Skeletons cracked and returned to dust. Revenant corpses fell to pieces beneath the deadly attentions of their blades.

They were as the gods themselves, smiting the blasphemers with an irresistible wrath, divine and mighty.

Movement caught the corners of his eyes. He would have dismissed it; the battlefield was alive with struggling corpses and bitter warriors, but a scream made him turn, just in time to see what looked like a woman grasp one of his men by the neck and toss him bodily into their ranks. He did not rise.

Two more of his men rushed her, their gleaming khopesh dirtied with the black, dead blood of their enemy. She snarled and shouted something inaudible, her hand rising to a pendant round her neck. His soldiers fell limp. Spasms wracked their bodies and piercing screams shot from tortured mouths.

Such harrowing sounds were never meant for a grown man’s lips.

“Blood-drinker!” he shouted out, recognising the woman for what she was. She seemed not to hear him, preoccupied with tearing a gaping hole through his regiment. Another warrior fell at her feet, his neck broken with a single vicious twist of her arm. Imrathepis could not stand it. These men, seasoned veterans and the pride of Numas, were as children before her unholy strength. An unholy strength gained from the feasting on his peoples. His insides clenched tight.

“Monster! Beast of cursed Lahmia!” She froze. All those around her screamed and groaned, as though suddenly beset by invisible enemies. Even as this distance, he could understand something of what they felt, for the air grew suddenly chill, and dark shadows flitted behind his eyes.

Her head shot round to face him, and for the first time he saw her eyes.

Hatred smouldered there. No, not smouldered. Raged. They radiated enmity and fury, and it took all of his resolve not to recoil from that condemning gaze. In his mind’s eye, her head flickered between that of a woman’s, and that of a fierce crocodile’s, its jaws snapping, head shaking with rage.

She walked toward him.

“Today is the day you die, monster, and I shall be the one to do it!” The voice that filled the air sounded much different to the one in his head. It was stronger. Braver. Lacked the fear that clutched suddenly at his heart with its icy fingers. “The clouds part, and Ptra himself shines over us, blessing me with his brilliance, his favour, even as he curses you!”

She was only a few feet away now, and this close, he could see how far she was from the woman he had first presumed. Her eyes were oily pools of shining death. Fangs glinted, exposed behind drawn lips, needle-like and numerous. Even her skin looked hard, and rough, not like that of a mortal’s.

And always, at the back his mind, her head flitting between that of a vengeful crocodile, cunning and ancient and scaly. Then she spoke, and her voice was as stony as her visage:

“I died already, many, many years ago, Nehekharan, but I did not stop existing. I lived on through my work. My city. My fate was tied with that of Lahmia’s.” She paused, watching, staring, seeing more perhaps than he did.

“And now, like Lahmia, I am ruined!” She attacked in a flash, moving with a speed he thought impossible. Her arms flashed out, fingers like claws, seeking his heart, and he barely had time to lift his heavy khopesh before she was upon him. He beat back her ravages with a swipe of the gleaming weapon, but knew he would not last long. Against such a swift opponent, the doubt-handed khopesh was unwieldy. Slow. A hindrance.

She lashed out again, leaping bodily toward him, and his head filled with dark shapes. They swept up into his consciousness, his father, staring down at him, shaking his head, banishing him from Numas. He fought back the despondent moan that lumped in his throat, and suddenly her claws were raking his flesh, and his father was gnashing his teeth, and blood ran like tears from the old king’s eyes.

Imrathepis stumbled and fell to the sands.

“What…what trickery is this…”

“Do not talk to me of trickery, you who are most treacherous,” she spat, and her words might have been venom for the way they infected him. “Your father helped burn my city. My home. Destroyed everything I ever cared for-”

“You, care? You are a beast! Sick, unnatural! You do not know the meaning of the word!”

“LIAR!” she screeched, and she darted toward him. He raised his khopesh, but too late; she grasped the massive weapon, and tossed it aside as though it were matchwood. Her breath washed over his face.

“I cared too much. I cared for my laws. I cared for my city. I cared, and I was wronged! And now, for this injustice, I claim my vengeance!”

In that moment, Imrathepis of Numas knew true terror.

A dull sound, steady and constant, bore into his head, droning on until it was all he could hear. It scoured his mind, abolishing the shadows that festered there, banishing his nightmares and dispersing them like sand on the wind. A weight lifted from his heart, strength filled his limbs, and though he could not make out the sacred words, one in particular was repeated over and over, one that he did recognise:

“Basth! Basth! Basth!”

The blood-drinker seemed to hear it too, for she froze, and her head snapped up again, and then, as though awakening from a dream, she cast herself backwards, rising from above him to stand several feet away. A deep hiss rattled in her throat, and she stared avidly around her into the faces of the soldiers, threatening, daring, promising. It was a look that said:

“I see every one of you, and I know you, and I will come for you,” and they knew that she would.

Something behind Imrathepis caught her attention, and all colour drained of her face. Her expression fell. Eyes shone wide. For a brief, unsettling moment, she looked human again, no doubt the woman she had once been, so many decades ago. Pity stabbed at his heart.

Then the sands themselves exploded at their feet, rising in a storm of grit and rubble that coated their tongues and filled their armour.

When they settled again, she was gone.

 

[Get of W'soran]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Yay! =]
V'azrin was in this story!

Awesome as always TPL =]
Can't wait for more

 

[Devo]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

I like the new dimension added to Maatmeses's character. It adds a nice depth.

Excellent writing, as always.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Very nice and good to see V'azrin in his younger years!

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Ah TPL - I wish you would join the TVC - I must find a way to drag you in!

 

[Get of W'soran]

RE: The Heart Never Lies - Ch. 3

Ah TPL - I wish you would join the TVC - I must find a way to drag you in!

V'azrin demands it!!! =P