Vampire Counts Anti-Drug PSA
Panic teased his thoughts. Suddenly, he was back in his jar beneath the temple, unable to move, to blink the spiders from his eyes or pluck the beetles from his flesh. He wouldnât be buried again â he couldnât! He closed his eyes and clamped down on the fear. âWhy should you fear?â he whispered to himself. âYou are fear. You have been trapped before. Think. Think!â He clutched at the abn-i-khat amulets dangling from his neck and squeezed them. Abruptly he opened his eyes. He looked down, and the panic fled like a morning mist. âHaaaa,â he breathed. The amulets glowed and trembled in his fingers. He held them up to his mouth and blew on them, expelling a lungful of sorcerous breath. The glow grew, and he felt the sickly warmth of the stones on his palm. Gathering his legs under him, he wrenched one of the amulets loose. He hesitated. He had never dared take that step in imitation of Nagash. There was no telling what the eating of the stone would do to a being like him, or whether it would even have any effect whatsoever. But if it did⌠it was concentrated magic. Eating it had made Nagash more powerful than any other necromancer. Eating it empowered the skaven as well. And he needed power. He looked at it, looked at the way it seemed to suck in the darkness around it. The wyrdstone ate light and darkness alike, and the shadows seemed to be dragged towards the nooks and crannies of the amulet, as if grasped by invisible talons. Even so, the worry was there. Nagash had consumed it and been consumed by it. He had been made both more and less than a man by a lifetimeâs consumption of the soft, powdery stone. He had become addicted, requiring more and more of it to empower his spells. Then, power was a stronger drug than any Wâsoran had ever heard of. The only thing it was good for was gaining more power. That was what creatures like Neferata and Ushoran had never understood â power was an end in itself, to be hoarded and increased, as the skaven did with their wyrdstone. The weapons, the secrets of the skaven, would give him that power. They would give him the power to stare down the mad, phantom soul that rode poor, pathetic Ushoran towards oblivion, and to add its power to his own. âYou think youâre safe, old liche?â he murmured, examining the abn-i-khat. âYou think your secrets are safe, hiding in that iron circlet? You think to devour me, hollow me out like a mummy and slip inside to ride me into the dark, far future, my master? Youâre wrong, as you were wrong about Alcadizzar. I will be the one to devour you. I will swallow the carrion remnant of your tattered soul, Nagash, and I will be a true master of death.â Wâsoran opened his jaws and his tongue, the colour of a leech flush after a feeding, unrolled and extended upwards like the questing tendril of a squid, rising past his thicket of fangs. The tip of his tongue brushed against the amulet, exploring the rough facets. A surge of power rippled through him and he shivered in anticipation. Then, with a grunt, he dropped the amulet into his mouth. Even as his fangs sank into the soft stone, his body shuddered. He felt as if he had bitten into a lightning bolt, as if he were burning up from within. Swallowing the small chunks of stone, he flung out his hands and spat words of power. Dark magic coursed through him, and he felt it more strongly than ever before. A sorcerous blast struck the rocks and the rough stone bubbled and slopped like mud. Wâsoran scuttled forward, unleashing blast after blast, carving a path to freedom. The remaining amulets grew warmer, and he was tempted to eat another, but resisted the urge.
Wâsoran thought that eating warpstone would unlock a rock-star unlife of necromantic supremacy. Instead, it led him down a far less glamorous path. Only two years later:
Idly, Wâsoran took a bite of the lump of meat he held. He chewed slowly, sucking the blood from it. For all that it tasted foul, heâd found the blood of the greenskins to be a potent stimulant. He tossed the nearly-drained hunk of meat to the closest of the ghouls, which snapped it out of the air like a starving dog. Each of the ghouls was covered in jagged branding marks as well the pale weals of old incisions.
ABN-I-KHAT: NOT EVEN ONCE!
@occultdetectives
