reality placed on his abilities to travel. Even the strange paths of the Vortex had allowed him to move more swiftly when he had been entrapped within them, and he had become used to the freedom they offered. It was this fact that had provided the germ of his original plan, and the reason why he had chosen the place for his escape to which he had now returned.
Nearby there was a waystone and an entrance into the odd underworld that the first so-called rulers of this world had created to allow themselves swift travel from point to point. He could call upon its power and make it serve his own purposes.
‘Tell my best beloved to prepare themselves. They are going to witness a miracle,’ the daemon said.
Elrion’s face lit up with curiosity. He knew that his master did not make such promises lightly and that something ominous and awesome was to be expected. N’Kari smiled, revealing his enormous fangs. He reached out and stroked Elrion’s cheek with his taloned hand. ‘Yes, little mortal, you’re going to witness a mighty sorcery.’
N’Kari approached the waystone.
To his daemonic eyesight it glowed, revealing the faint seepage of energy from within the Vortex. His smile grew wider, his fangs glittered in the moonlight. He knew all about this sort of magical power and how to wield it and shape it to his purposes. He was going to perform a feat of magic here that the elves would remember for as long as they existed – which, Slaanesh willing, would not be very long even as mortals measured time.
He was going to do something here that had never been attempted before in this world and probably would never be attempted again because there was no one who could match his knowledge, magical power or skill when it came to this. There was no one else who had paid the price of being imprisoned within the Vortex for five millennia either. It had allowed him to maintain his form here in a way that few other daemons could manage without the winds of magic blowing strongly. It was going to allow him to do something else as well.
He decided that he would need to make a few sacrifices before he began. It was not that the magic required them – it was simply that he liked to begin a new venture with an offering to his patron daemon god in order to curry favour and bring good fortune. It could not do any harm, it might do some good, and at very least it would give him some pleasure, which was the main thing.
He used a waystone as an altar and offered up six choice souls to Slaanesh. If through force of habit he stole most of their essence for himself, it was only fitting because he was going to need some of the power they provided to work the spell he intended.
He drew a six-pointed star using the blood of his victims and placed a severed head at each point. Once that was done he began to chant, as much to focus his mind as to impress his followers. As he chanted, he drew more lines in a mightily convoluted hieroglyphic that represented a path between this waystone and another one, within a day’s march of where his next victim dwelled.
In his mind he visualised the tunnel of light between the two points and, as he tapped the powers of magic, he forced his view of the world onto the world itself. The thing that he was creating in his mind through the power of his magic was also coming into being in the malleable substrata of reality that the waystone tapped into.
By the time he had finished his ritual, a glimmering archway hovered in the air before him, its surface shimmering like oily water reflecting firelight. With a gesture of his claw, he indicated that his followers should pass through it. Not without some reluctance the first of them did so, disappearing through the iridescent arch, as if they had dived into strangely coloured water.
Only when he had witnessed the last of them pass through did the daemon join them and do the same, plunging into a gap in reality and venturing through the strange tunnel in which kaleidoscopic sensations assaulted his senses.
Takalen the Ranger sniffed the air. There was something odd about it, a smell of rotting flesh that should not have been there. The lord who owned this mansion was old but