A Light Not Extinguished

Chapter 31: A Thing that Hates

"Let me preface this by saying I have absolutely no interest in writing. Unfortunately, my husband thinks he is funny and wagered me to write a damn book if I lost our last anniversary duel, which took place on the surface of a sun with both sides blindfolded and deaf. The next one will end in his swift and merciless defeat."

Now, I am aware that as an author I am supposed to accept 'constructive criticism', which is quite frankly the most ridiculous garbage I have ever heard. If anyone thinks they can do a better job than the High Priestess of Khaine, then by all means stop by the Grand Temple where I can aptly demonstrate your ignorance, preferably by splattering your guts across the arena. Appointments start at dawn.

With that said, let me begin to explain how you are certainly wrong when it comes to applying the Art of Violence."
-Prelude of the Mataru Kov Slaandra, roughly translated as "How to Perfectly Cut Up a Bitch". Authored by Qa'leh of the Temple of Khaine two centuries before the Great Sundering.

Three Seers of an absent goddess sat together as the end came for them.

"Any last words, sisters?" Apano, youngest of the three asked.

"What else is there to say?" Niquellos barked. The eldest of them had always been the most hot-tempered of them all. "The moment we stepped into the Great Game, we knew this would eventually be our end."

"We've delivered the message to the boy. Our mission is done." Halphas, the last of them concluded. "All that remains is to die on our feet."

Two blades pierced the door to their chamber, the pieces burning away to ash as a single figure stepped through, clad in only a suit of lightweight grey armor. It tossed a sparking head to the ground, the last of their psychomaton guard. Casually whirling its sickles, the figure took leisurely steps forward, the stench of its caustic malice thickening the air to the point where you could choke on it.

Halphas threw the set of runestones that she had been using for the past cycle on the floor. Their clinking sound was deafening in the sudden silence, as each of them tumbled before showing the same rune in unison, the one that had been shown for the last thirty-six times Halphas tossed them.

Dannan— Death.

"You have always been terrible at throwing runes, sister." Niquellos made a show of getting to her feet, but the trembling of her hands betrayed her. "Come then, slave of Excess. Let us finish this." There were no more words needed to be said. The agent of destruction before them would not be reasoned with. Could be reasoned with. It is a corpse that has forgotten how to be dead.

The three of them moved as one, each one levying forgotten magics and weapons in their hands as they struck at the intruder. Apano's chains sought to bound. Halphas's magics weaved grand illusions and mirages that blinded both the eye and the soul. Niquellos's cruel whips were aimed to kill.

The figure blazed through all of their illusions and assaults, sickles tearing through spells and witchcraft like paper. A curved blade found its way into Apano's eyesocket, the witch not even having the time to scream before psychic fire immolated her brain, the weapon's enchantments sending her soul in chains to the thirsting nascent Goddess.

The figure spat a singular word of power, one that crushed Halphas's ribs even as it knocked her spirit out of her physical body. As its sickles sliced a multitude of Niquellos's whips into useless thread, another word of power was uttered and a rift swallowed up the now unbound soul, thrown into the deepest reaches of the Empyrean.

Clapping its hands together, the figure froze Niquellos's arms literally, the limbs turning into ice that burst apart into fragments, even as it lunged forward and drove a sickle blade into Niquellos's heart with precise care.