A shriek of agony, louder than the storm, split the air. It took a moment for the High King to realise it had come from the fly swarm, speaking with one voice as they burned and died. The enchanted fire had lifted the malaise, and Snorri shook the insects from his beard, brushed them hurriedly from his armour and breathed again.
Alkhor loomed, mocking the dwarf with its gurgling laughter. Its plague sword was raised for a cleaving blow. Blinking away the filth crusting his eyes, Snorri thrust upwards with his rune hammer and crafted a lightning bolt from the storm that speared the daemon’s bloated chest.
Mirth became pain, the face of the daemon contorting as rune fire devoured and purified its flesh. It staggered then slumped, legs giving way to agony and bringing it within striking distance of the High King.
‘I said you would burn!’ Snorri roared, and slashed Alkhor open like a boil.
A slew of foulness erupted from the wound in the daemon’s stomach. Half-digested corpses, chunks of armour and cloth, scraps of corroded leather and the remnants of skeletons eroded by the daemon’s intestinal acids spilled out.
‘Don’t touch it,’ warned the High King, and his retainers stayed back.
Alkhor staggered again. Unable to regenerate, the daemon clutched its wound, spitting bile and curses at the dwarf who had hurt it. Pathetically, it began to sob.
Unfurled from its back, a pair of tattered fly-like wings started to beat.
But Snorri wasn’t finished with it yet.
‘Closer, filth,’ he growled, stepping down from his throne, ‘so I can take your ugly head.’
As Snorri’s booted feet hit the ground, Alkhor’s sobbing turned into derisive laughter.
‘Foolish little creature,’ it burbled and tugged at the edges of the wound the dwarf had made. From within the rotten ropes of intestine, the sacs of pus and putrefying organs, a welter of tentacles burst forth. One wrapped around the High King’s arm, the other pinned his leg. A third quested for his neck but he swatted it with his rune hammer before it could strangle him.
Each of the tentacles was swathed in sharp teeth that champed and gnawed at Snorri’s armour. Slowly, they began to drag the dwarf into Alkhor’s gaping maw.
Rising in the saddle, Malekith put the bloated lord firmly in his sights – along with Snorri entangled in the daemon’s intestines, losing his fight for survival. Malekith was about to even the odds.
Digging his feet into the stirrups arrested the elf’s descent and the dragon pulled up sharply, its long neck angling downwards and nostrils flaring. Trails of smoke extruded from the corners of its mouth, carried away on the breeze.
‘I hope that armour of yours is impervious as you claim…’
Inhaling a deep, sulphurous breath, the dragon unleashed fire.
Flames roared hungrily across the daemon’s wretched body, burning away pestilence and purging rot. Clods of fat, festering slabs of skin sizzled and spat. Alkhor squealed as the tentacles rippling from its stomach were reduced to charred meat, writhing like headless vipers.
‘Htarken…’ it pleaded, but the feathered sorcerer did not appear.
‘So that is your name,’ the elf prince muttered.
The daemon pulled away, its tattered wings beating furiously and spewing gouts of filth in its desperate attempt to escape. Slowly, Alkhor began to rise. Its body was still smouldering, shrinking as the dragon fire consumed it.
Snorri swung and missed. He cursed the daemon’s cowardice, hurling vengeful insults as it fled.
Malekith flew his dragon low and into the dwarf’s eye line.
‘Are you hurt, old friend?’
Snorri looked rueful, but otherwise uninjured.
‘Only my pride. Killing that thing will salve it.’
A feral smile turned the corners of Malekith’s mouth as he set his gaze on the fleeing daemon. Spurring his mount, he was about to pursue when he had to pull up sharply to avoid a burst of incandescent light exploding in front of him. Blinking back the after-flare, the elf saw a figure emerge from the sudden luminance. Clad in varicoloured robes, held aloft on feathered wings, Htarken barred Malekith’s path.
The elf reacted as quick as thought but his thrown spear evaporated into mercury before it could impale the daemon. Its outstretched claw and swiftly spoken incantation was enough to destroy the weapon. Htarken returned its talon to the folds of its robes, yet made no motion to attack.
All the while, Alkhor was escaping. Thinking quickly, Malekith turned to the lord of the eagle riders who had just arrived from on high.
‘Prince Aestar,’ he said, thrusting his sword in the plague daemon’s direction, ‘slay that thing!’
Nodding grimly, Prince Aestar soared through the clouds after the daemon, his brothers close behind. Malekith was left to face Htarken.
He would not be alone. A conclave of three Sapherian mage lords rose up beside the prince on pillared coruscations of gold.
‘You are finished, daemon.’ He gestured to the valley below where the hell-hosts were slowly dissipating, their mortal followers fleeing with the dissolution of their immortal allies. ‘Chaos has been defeated.’
‘Has it?’ Htarken spoke with a hundred different voices at once. Some were not even voices at all. They were the crackle of fire, the howling of the wind or the breaking of wood. They were cries of slaughter, pleas for mercy and the gibbering laughter of the insane. Birds, beasts, dwarfs and elves all collided in an unsettling union that put the prince’s teeth on edge.
Malekith grimaced as the sound of Htarken’s ‘voice’ echoed in his mind. Like a cancer, it sought to take root and destroy him from within.
‘Change,’ said the daemon, with the prince reeling, ‘is inevitable. Even with all your many gifts, the heritage of your bloodline, you cannot fight entropy.’
Malekith wondered why the mages had not yet banished this thing, and then he realised they were transfixed. Seized by a sudden palsy, they trembled as all the horrors of change were visited upon them. As the minds of the mages died, so too did the pillars of fire holding them up.
Htarken had them now, bound to puppet
