Culhwch's eyes cracked open, though it made no difference. He was unable to see anything, so deep was the darkness of his prison. He could hear the breathing of his cellmate, disturbingly close.
"I almost had you, Culhwch," hissed the man, his voice the rustling of silk. "Just a bit more give in the chain and I'd be ripping open your belly right now."
"You say that every morning, Mabon, and you haven't gotten any closer," Culhwch sighed. He had been afraid of the man, if he even was a man, named Mabon for a long time but now the maniac's strange and twisted behavior wasn't even a shock. It had become predictable.
"Oh but I have, Culhwch," Mabon rasped, "millimeter by millimeter, the chain stretches from the pull of my body, little by little. Soon I will put my fingers into your gut and rip you open. How melodic your screams will be, the look in your eye so sublime!"
Culhwch sighed. "And how do you plan to see into my eye, Mabon?" It was darker than the darkest night, in the bondage they had found themselves.
A cruel laugh that made Culhwch's blood run cold. Mabon, he believed, was the most loathsome creature in the universe. "I can see you, Culhwch. My eyes are sharper than yours."
"I hope one day you will tell me how you have achieved that level of superiority," Culhwch sighed.
"My body is superior to your pathetic form," was Mabon's only answer. With the rustling of chains, the psychopath pulled away, more likely than not settling on the far wall.
Three years Culhwch had been a slave, but this past week chained in the dark had been the worst. He had been turned into a pit fighter, a gladiator, and he had done damn well in his forced role. To his good fortune, the bulk of what he was pitted against proved to be Chaos-corrupted slave-creatures and other foes of his people. It had been a hard three years, but he had survived it. His body was covered in scars and slave-tattoos, marking ownership, but he was unbowed. But here he was, chained in the dark with a madman, waiting for something.
"Mabon," he began, knowing asking questions of his cellmate was pointless, "you have been here longer than I. What are we waiting for?"
There was a moment of silence. "We are prey."
With a sudden crack of energy, the lights flicked on. Ancient electric glow lamps filled the room with fitful light. Even that made Culhwch groan and try to cover his eyes, feeling more pathetic than ever.
He was yanked to his feet by strong arms, too startled to fight back. He was marched through a door and down a long hallway, slowly but surely blinking away the pain of sudden light. The moment he got used to that, however, he was dragged out in the far brighter and agonizing light of midday. Here, he heard something familiar. The mocking, sneering, applause of a death pit.
"Choose a weapon," a voice grunted near his ear. The grip released his chain, and Culhwch stumbled forward. He reached out and caught himself on a stone table. Forcing himself upright, he reached out, and his hand found a hilt. He blinked his eyes weakly, trying to return sense to them, but the guards shoved him back, him still gripping whatever he had grabbed. It was comfortingly heavy, at the least.
"Honestly," Mabon sneered beside him, "this is nothing. You humans are so pathetic, a little bit of dark and you stumble all over yourself like a newborn whelp. You'd better survive Culhwch. They kill the other if one dies and the other lives."
"You have been threatening to kill me for the past week," Culhwch growled. He gave a few awkward swipes with his weapon. It was some kind of mace or club, he believed.
He could finally start to make out Mabon. A tall, stick-thin figure, almost emaciated, wearing as little as he was, a loincloth and leather belt, like what some of the wild tribes still wore. Two glinting things were gripped in Mabon's fists. Daggers, Culhwch thought. His eyes adjusted at last, and he confirmed something he had suspected for a long time. Mabon wasn't human.
Mabon was nearly eight feet in height, and so thin Culhwch could count the creature's ribs. His face was sharp and cruel, and his skin had a strange gray pallor, his ears were long and sharp, and he lacked hair.
"You are one of the Tuatha," Culhwch said dryly. They had been popping up more and more recently, as if they had realized they didn't need to just be legends for safety.
Mabon gave him the most livid glare he had ever experienced. If looks could harm, he'd be skinned alive. "I am not one of those abominations," the alien sneered, "I am Drukhari."
"I don't know what that is," Culhwch said, shaking his head.
The alien made a sickening sound in its throat, that Culhwch almost believed was laughter. Afterwards, it ignored him, turning away and glaring at the direction of the sun.
Culhwch took stock. The weapon he was holding was, in fact, a kind of mace, a simple hilt wrapped in leather with a heavy end of some heavy and powerful metal, spikes jutting from it. It was probably the crudest weapon Culhwch had ever beheld.
The guards were hulking things, wearing black armor and carrying broadswords and handguns. There were nine of them, far too many to fight even if they weren't protected by their fearsome metal shells.
"Move!" The leader boomed, poking Culhwch in the back with the tip of a gun.
"I'm moving, I'm moving," the knight-turned-gladiator snapped.
"Faster!" Another jab in the back.
Culhwch stepped onto the sand of the arena, trying to inject himself with a kind of swagger. The sand felt nice on his feet, after a week of nothing but bare stone. It was warm, and despite everything, he couldn't help but feel a thrill of pleasure.
The alien was already well onto the sands, moving with a kind of rapid fluidity Culhwch had trouble following. The twisted being didn't even spare Culhwch a glance, brandishing his knives at the crowd surrounding them.
For there was a crowd, bigger than any Culhwch had ever fought for, and far louder. Their howls of exultation filled him with more dread than he had ever felt. It only grew as he took in his surroundings. Emperor help him, he knew where he was now.
The Circle of Spines was an eyesore on the coast of the lands held by the Chaoslord Diwrnach. The subject of dark rumor and horrid sacrifice. It resembled thousands of spines jammed into the earth, and built on it was stadium seating able to hold thousands of blood-hungry fanatics. And built within it was a carefully constructed apparatus to bring blood-sacrifices to the surface, to fight and to die on the blood-soaked sands. From here, Culhwch was able to see forms impaled on the spines that comprised the location, and flowing down the spines, he could see blood.
Mabon laughed, a crazed shriek. "Amateurs! Weaklings! Pathetic! Commorogh has a hundred arenas twice this size and they are counted the least!"
Whether truth or bravado, Culhwch couldn't bring himself to care. This was the horrific grave of thousands of brave warriors, slaughtered in sacrifice to the screams and exaltation of the crowd. Many gladiator fights were ultimately deathless, designed simply for entertainment. Mabon was right, they were prey. They weren't supposed to survive this. They were here to be devoured.
The monsters that emerged across from them was proof of that. They too wore little more than loincloths and belts, but the similarities ended. They were bulging with horrid muscles, and the brands on them weren't mere slave-marks, they gleamed with sorcerous strength. These were elite sacrificers, devoted to the paradox Chaos Undivided, the all-in-one.
Mabon's knives were two flickers of quick-silver in the sun. "Don't get in my way, Culhwch!" With a plume of sand, the alien moved so rapidly he almost vanished from Culhwch's sight.
Culhwch kept his feet set, placing his mace in a defensive poster. He wasn't quick and deadly like Mabon. He was a mortal man, not an immortal alien from a dark and far away city. For now, he watched and waited, ready to not let his life be given cleanly. He'd make the bastard pay, shatter bone and puncture organs. Perhaps if he and Mabon fought as a team, they'd be able to survive together, but clearly that was beyond the twisted creature.
Mabon was on the leading warrior in a second, dodging under a strike and lashing out with one of his knives. Blood sprayed in an arc, and the brute grunted in pain, but it was a shallow blow. Mabon's knives flashed again and again, each time sending blood flying. The alien was too fast for the giant human to perceive, but his weapons were only dealing superficial damage.
The other warrior ignored his fellow and continued to stride towards Culhwch. The sword in the murderer's hand was notched and almost seemed dull, but the hand that gripped it was attached to an arm that could drive even the most dull and crude blade through Culhwch's skull with ease.
The sword went up and down, slow and brutal, and Culhwch made the mistake of parrying. It was an easy block, but the impact made his mace vibrate like a metronome, the vibrations so powerful and painful he almost dropped the weapon. And just as he adjusted, the abomination was already swinging, magic rendering its human weaknesses to nothing.
Having learned his lesson, Culhwch sidestepped easily, the slow but powerful strike seeming to almost be moving in slow motion. With a cry, he swung his own weapon, striking his foe right onto its right knee. The spikes beat in deeply, and the bone cracked, but the half-made Chaos Warrior didn't seem to notice. Culwch ripped the mace free before he got stuck, the wound horrific and jagged. He didn't dwell on it, his opponent was already on the move, striking with the insane and savage desperation of a fanatic.
He ducked the stroke that would have taken his head and jammed the pointed head of his mace in the belly of his foe, almost busting it open like a watermelon. Blood and internal juices splattered over the sands and the crowd whooped and hollered.
The fatal error was checking on Mabon, Culhwch catching the alien out of the corner of his eye right as the sadistic being drove his daggers straight into his opponent's groin. The groan that came from the castrated Chaos Warrior was somehow human enough to make Culhwch feel a flicker or sorrow, and a spasm of sympathetic pain in his own privates.
Real pain rang out across his jaw as his own foe backhanded him for his lack of attention. He skidded across the sand, his mace spinning from his hand.
The warrior stomped forward, sword raised over its head. The crowd rose their voices in exultation, as their champion prepared to kill their loathed foe.
Anger and hate fueled Culhwch to action. He got to his feet in an instant, and rushed forward. The sword came down, and Culhwch seized the monster's wrists, and arrested the deadly progress with a growl. It was like holding back the tide, but Culhwch felt stronger than he ever had before, and somehow he managed it.
Rancid breath burned his face, and the mute snarled in his face. In answer, Culhwch drove his knee hard into the bastard's crotch. He was rewarded as the snarl abated and the grip loosened, the herculean might of the enchanted fighter ebbing for an instant.
It was the instant Culhwch needed. The moment the warrior's grip loosened, he wrenched the giant warblade free. With a snarl of his own, he drove the pommel straight into the right eye, destroying it in a gout of blood and unknowable juice.
The creature screamed, clasping a hand over its ruined face and backing away. Culhwch didn't allow it to recover, he hefted the sword high over his head, the whole thing feeling like he was somehow lifting the sword of his long-lost mount. It was almost the force of gravity that brought the weapon down on his enemy's skull. The blade was blunt and notched, but it was a heavy slab of metal with something resembling a proper wedge. Skin and bone and brain parted before it and the monster fell stone dead.
He dropped the sword and went for the mace instead. He ignored the cheers of the crowd. They didn't care who died, he realized, only that someone did. He hated them, every last one of the sick freaks.
Mabon was straddling the waist of his downed, bleeding opponent, driving his daggers into the screaming fighter again and again. The look of twisted ecstasy on the alien's face almost made Culhwch puke.
"For pity's sake!" Culhwch cried over the screams of the crowd. "Just kill it!"
Mabon gave him a disgusted look, then shrugged and slashed open the dying warrior's throat. With one more spasm of sheer agony, the torn apart figure lay still. "I was almost done anyway," the Drukhari sneered.
The crowd grew suddenly silent. Culhwch turned to the door they had entered the pit from, only to find it still closed tight. "Now what?" he growled. "What the hell do you want with us?"
"What? Did you think it was over? Stupid mon-keigh." Mabon wiped his knives on his slain foe's loincloth. "You don't just have one fight."
Culhwch's heart sank as a door across from them creaked open on ancient hinges. From it emerged a massive figure, something that had once been a draig, but was now something far worse. Its gaping maw was filled with fanged tentacles that lashed about like living things, dripping with venom. Its body was pale and smooth, completely scaleless. It resembled a jellyfish, twisted and forced into the general shape of a draig.
He looked at the mace in his hand, feeling instantly inadequate. "There is no way in hell we can fight that!"
Mabon gave him a blank, incredulous look. "What do you mean, we?" The alien turned and fled away, rushing for the opposite end.
"Xenos bastard!" Culhwch roared. Any self-pity was washed away in a burst of red rage. He considered charging the alien instead of the monster, smashing open the dark fae's skull. By the time it crossed his mind, the draig had let out a strange, undulating cry and was halfway to him.
Culhwch answered the monster with his own berserk roar, and hurtled himself at it, dropping all pretense at defense in his fury. He was nearly at the level of the infamous black rage that afflicted many warriors on both sides of the conflict between Chaos and Order.
The thing lashed out with its many tendrils, wrapping them around Culhwch's body, he lashed out viciously, striking several away, shattering the venom coating spikes on them. There were too many moving too quickly for him to entirely protect himself, but he barely noticed the pain as he was lashed and encircled.
The venom boiled through his body, but he was in the thick of his rage, his arms free, he began to bludgeon the skull of the draig, beating it over and over, screaming to the heavens. Blood and ink flew everywhere, the venom boiled in his veins, the draig made no sound beyond the squelching of its rapidly deflating head, the crowd was matching Culhwch's screams with gusto, and many had started pounding the earth with their feet, setting the arena to rumbling. His arms ached with more than just the agony of the deadly venom, but he was moving on reflex, lifting and striking the mace with mechanical, instinctual, motion.
The draig at last stopped moving, its skull and brain nothing more than a fine mush. The tentacles loosened from around Culhwch. He staggered to the ground, and kept to his feet with his remaining will.
The crowd was still howling with mad joy. Culhwch shook his mace at them, and tried to scream, but it was drowned out. The ground met him and the last thing he felt was the jarring impact of slamming into it with all force.
He knew he was dying when his eyes cracked open an eternity later. He couldn't move, as weak as he had ever been. He was in someone's arms, draped across their forearms like images of the Emperor cradling Sanguinius.
Above him he saw a muscular form, crowned a colossal rack of antlers. "You," he croaked, "The Horned King."
"You can still speak?" The voice was deep, melodious, and strikingly appealing. "You impress, Sir Culhwch. I knew from the moment I saw you in that filthy pit that you didn't belong there."
"Your pit instead, right?" Culhwch growled.
"This is far more than a mere gladiator arena, son," answered the Chaos Lord, "it is a testing ground. I hope that soon you will understand."
Culhwch had the strangest sense that they were rising. "What are you doing?" he moved his head, and saw a set of craggy steps built into a wall of black stone. And then they were at the edge, a crater like a volcano looming before them. Uniformly circular, but primal in a way that only ancient stone formations could be.
The Horned King walked to the edge of the crater. He looked down into Culhwch's terrified eyes. "Be brave, son," said Diwrnach, "you have shown that you have the boldness needed, now, we shall see if you have the will."
"No-" And then there was the rush of air by his ears, a scream, and the instant sensation of striking something wet and hot and agonizing. And Culhwch screamed for an eternity.
*************
He rose from the bed, still screaming, clawing at his body, the many new scars sticking out horrifically. He raked them with his hands, his screams slowly turning into confused sobs of terror.
He was on a proper bed, but was barely comfortable given his still screaming veins. It was as if the venom was still inside him, too entrenched in his blood to go away.
"Oh do shut up," Mabon's sneering voice only added to his discomfort.
Culhwch took several deep breaths. "What happened?" he croaked.
"We won," Mabon sneered. The Dark Eldar was also on a bed, though he was still chained.
"I don't remember," Culhwch whispered. Oh but he did.
Mabon gave him a look. "That is understandable. You did die, after all."
