The Twice Dead King: Ruin by Nate Crowley

Author:Nate Crowley [Crowley, Nate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2021-08-02T07:25:02+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE HORROR IN THE GARDEN

For a long time after the procession had passed, Oltyx remained still. There was, he allowed, a lot for him to process. His subminds, too, were subdued as they recovered. Doctrinal was only just now recompiling itself successfully, after collapsing into a spiral of refrenation back when the awful chant had first mentioned seized hearts. In the end, it was Strategic that broke the silence.

Well, master, it said, attempting consolation, I suppose at least now we know what Djoseras meant by ‘the life of the city’.

Oltyx continued to lurk at the edge of the foetid garden as he considered his next move. A light rain had begun to fall, pattering on the canopy above him, and spreading red pools on the path ahead where the carrion engine had shed its load. Considering he was standing ankle-deep in muck, before the gore-strewn remnant of his ancestral home, he was feeling surprisingly robust. Perhaps because the situation was so patently insane – so truly cleaved from anything he might have been tempted to seek reassurance from – it was much easier to arm himself against the horror that had seized him upon encountering the Baron Tystrakhon. For now at least, the chains that bound the deep panic, which he would not name, were strong as godsteel.

Even so, he was adrift. At least when he had entered the city, doomed as he had been, he had possessed at least a measure of certainty. His dynasty had been in danger, and he had been making one final effort to convince its ruler to see sense at last and save it. He had known it to be a hopeless endeavour, but his course had at least been clear – even Neth could have carried it out.

But every assumption that had defined his world had vanished with the setting sun. Even the idea that there was a dynasty still to be saved now seemed in doubt. As the rain fell harder, drops bursting on the flanks of the ziggurat across the path, it was as if it doused his core itself. All those bitter years, holding the line at the bleak frontier of the kemmeht, he had spurred himself with the certainty that, despite the unworthy dynast who sat on its throne, eternal Ithakas was protected by his hand. But Ithakas, it seemed, as the downpour sloughed another atom-thin layer from the stronghold of his forebears, had fallen many years ago.

Although the beacons of the ziggurat still lanced into the heavens, they seemed no more than the open eyes of a corpse now – with vines sprawling from crack to spreading crack, the structure seemed long abandoned. No wonder there had been no response to the oncoming crusade. No wonder the border worlds had never been reinforced against the orks, for all their pleading. Nobody had been there to hear their pleas.

Unnas was gone, slaughtered by the atrocities that had grown up under the decadence he had permitted. All that remained

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