Very proud. You’ve done well. And your work is not yet finished!
Over the course of the evening, the ballroom steadily filled up with bodies, dresses and masks in rainbow colours; some of the guests eating the food that had been provided, which ran down the sides of the room on never-ending tables; others dancing now that the full orchestra had started up. Grail had finished eating a large serving of cake, washing it down with some of the finest wine available in the province, when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Excuse me, but would you care to…’ asked a woman in an electric-blue dress, her auburn hair cascading over her shoulders, a mask that was of a much darker blue covering the top half of her face. She nodded towards the dancers in the hall. Grail recognised her from somewhere, but wasn’t sure where. Madame Ellada’s perhaps? He knew Russart had arranged for a few of her employees, male and female, to be on hand, in case any of the guests might want entertainment of a more exotic nature later on.
‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said Grail, holding out his hand to take hers, which was gloved, up to her elbow. He led and they began to dance, mixing in with the other people in the crowd. The lady with the auburn hair laughed and he couldn’t help doing the same. Maybe he would enjoy her company himself, he thought; it had been some time since his last visit to the backstreets, after all. Once business had been concluded, perhaps. Yes, then.
The music swelled, the pace quickened, and the pair began to spin. Grail smiled, then laughed again. The woman laughed too, hair flying around madly as she danced. Flying around her head with a life of its own, almost like–
Like tentacles attached to her head, coming out of her face. Grail squeezed his eyes closed, then opened them again. The scene had reverted back to normal. Just a flash of–
He felt that tingling sensation, a warning.
Grail banged into a dancer on his right, turning to apologise but seeing, instead of a man or woman, a thing with beaked features. Some of the masks were indeed of this variety, he reminded himself, but the one gazing at him now was so intricate it had to be real. The sound accompanying it: that of flapping, leathery wings.
He let go of the woman he was dancing with, veering off to the right and away from both her and the bird-man. Falling instead into someone whose face was all scales and jagged teeth, eyes jet-black and reflecting his own sweating, fleshy countenance.
‘No, this can’t be! Not here. Please, not now!’ he was crying out. Grail stepped on someone’s toes, and looked down – only to see a fine line of coloured scales curling around that dancer’s bare calves. He felt the bile rising in him at the sight of such corruption.
He couldn’t hear the music for the sound of the whispering.
Finish your work! More!
Grail pushed one body aside, then another, just as he had when he’d been trying to escape from his chambers. Except that seemed like the only secure place for him now, in his room.
‘Russart!’ he bellowed, though he couldn’t see his aide. ‘Russart, get all of these… Get them out of here!’
Grail looked from face to face. He saw the bewilderment of regals and the high-born, then the green-skinned ugliness of orks, tusks protruding from their mouths, before finally monsters of a different kind. Those he had only encountered of late. Things low-born from the shadows but now so varied in their palettes: pinks, blues, greens and reds. Approaching him, waking something inside him.
It felt like it went on forever, losing track of time.
There were cries and screams as the guests assumed they were in danger, which actually helped clear the room. The music had ceased, the musicians being ushered to the exits. Grail staggered on, tumbling away from them all, attempting to escape up the corridor. Leaving the panicked noise of over a hundred people–
The explosions, the sound of las-fire.
–leaving it all behind him, eager to be back in his chambers. To be safe, to protect what was his. Grail virtually fell through the door, shutting it again and barricading it after him; shoving a chair and table against it.
He rushed into the bedroom, grabbing the box that looked like a bench, dragging it onto his bed and opening it with his handprint. Checking to make sure they were all still there, his most precious items.
Then, a sound. Out in the shadows. Grail called for the light, but just as before it only turned on the smaller bedside one; didn’t extend far enough to identify who was present. Someone who’d snuck in, who wanted what was his.
You can have more!
‘W-who is it? Identify yourself!’ More monsters, more of the creatures he’d seen in his dreams and in the real world? That had truly awoken him?
No. As the figure stepped out into the light, Grail saw his old friend Russart once more, his mask discarded. He sighed with relief. The man had got here before him. Had been waiting for him, to protect him.
‘Governor, sir.’
‘Oh, thank goodness! I thought–’
‘Enough of all that. Let’s get on with our business, shall we? You know what it is that I want,’ said his bodyguard. ‘You’ve known all along. Suspected anyway.’
‘What?’ spluttered Grail.
‘Your power, your wealth. All of it. I’m tired of being in the shadows. We both survived that day at Fennan’s Pass, but only one of us became governor of this world.’
Grail pointed accusingly: ‘You? You did this to me? Poisoned me? What? Was it taking too long?’
Russart didn’t reply, he just drew his laspistol, finger on the trigger.
‘Russart, no!’
‘Yes,’ said the man, and fired.
Grail didn’t hear the shot, but he felt the searing pain in his chest. Realised he was tumbling backwards onto the bed; knocking the box over with him, releasing the precious gems and metals, jewellery. The things that gave him the most pleasure, the most comfort: tokens, trinkets, souvenirs and charms; being showered in them.
But something else. The thing that fell to the ground with him, the last item he saw before everything went totally black. Before the shadows surrounded him a final time.
The medal he’d received for his actions that day on Fennan’s Pass, now dark and tarnished, covered with intricate, repellant designs like nothing he’d ever seen before. It – and he – now belonged, he realised in his final moments, to those very same monsters that had been haunting him.
Reminders of promises he needed to keep, a transaction when the time came. Getting him away safely, from his old homeworld, from the warzone at Fennan’s Pass. More than simply luck, building up his career, his station. But with a debt to be paid; a mutual understanding.
To create a point of weakness on Aranium, which was not only of strategic importance – a planet from which to launch a whole new wave of attacks – but whose natural resources would support their own mortal armies.
The forces of Chaos. The masters he had been serving without fully understanding it, and who he had failed.
Just as they had failed to keep him alive this time.
