Part 18

A heavy fist struck Narissa in the jaw, throwing her bodily across the Basilica Exsolutus. She caught the fall on her hands, springing backward with the easy grace of an acrobat. Her eyes burning with fury, she smiled at Mordred through bloody teeth, spitting upon the ground. The others all watched in awe as her pet gracknyl stalked up beside her, glaring with the silent threat of its kind at her attacker. Mordred was unmoved, for he was clad in the fur of a more lethal beast, and the axe in his hand was how he’d obtained it.

I for one thought him a fool.

He looked upon the beast tamed by Narissa and knew he’d conquered worse, and so dismissed her. What he missed was that the woman was by far the more lethal of the two. It was why the gracknyl, named Grendel, was not attacking. Such beasts were silent until they ripped apart your ribcage, but this one was not preparing an attack. It waited to observe its mistress take down this challenger, under no illusion its help would be needed.

I myself watched in a mixture of shock and horror.

“No true champion of Khorne would mix worship with Nurgle.” Mordred snarled, summing up the crux of their dispute in his typically brutish fashion. I was already tired of his posturing, his flexing, his constant need to be the loudest and most dangerous person in the room.

It was an especially futile effort in this room, with one foot in the warp, where beings of infinite lethality dwelled.

Narissa, on the other hand, was much more to my liking. She was lithe and slender, honed as the bronze sword she drew with one hand, as flexible as the metal tipped whip she held with the other. Mordred was a monster of a man, bulging muscles capable of crushing rock, but she was an elegant blade indeed. And while he reveled in the glory of Khorne, Narissa had spoken a single sentence of appreciation for the patience of Nurgle, and so the Nine were already fracturing.

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The voices had not warned me of this. They did not speak of each other as foes, though they evidently were. I knew the four gods of Chaos as siblings, kin, different faces of a single stone. None of the Nine felt the same. Each favored one of the four, maybe two if they were generous, but no more.

It was my role to bring them together, to be the axle these eight spokes turned around. I didn’t realize how difficult such a task would be until that moment.

“Then what has kept you waiting all of these years, imbecile?” Narissa spat, circling her foe, his axe constantly at the ready. “Did you pace your cage up north ceaselessly? A beast worrying at the bars? We knew this day would come, and it is Nurgle who gave us the patience to wait for it.”

“It is Tzeentch that preaches we wait for the right time to strike.” a new voice cut in, the tension in the air thickened to an impossible degree. “When their back is turned and their defenses are down. You must wait for a chance.”

Both turned to Veros, the one among them who believed fully and only in the Changer of Ways. Whatever their own differences might be, one believing in Khorne alone and the other praising Nurgle alongside him, neither favored the treacherous magic of Tzeentch. “If you want to lose your tongue, continue to speak.” Narissa hissed.

“You can have the tongue. I want the rest.” Mordred growled.

I merely sighed.

At least none of the worshippers of Slaanesh felt the need to speak up. They seemed too embroiled in the amusement of this show to do more than watch. For that I was grateful, and even the voices in my mind had grown silent. They did not guide me, or instruct me how to proceed. This was apparently my own path to navigate. And it was then that I realized the truth.

This was a trial.

I knew abruptly that my future would contain many such moments, those who believed in the same gods warring over differences that seemed minor to me. I had been blessed with greater understanding, with a wider perspective. It was why I had been chosen. Thousands, tens of thousands, would one day obey my words and heed my teachings.

If I could reign in the other eight.

And if I could not keep a paltry cadre of Nine together, I was hardly worthy at all.