#65 Elohiim Lord of Hosts
The duardin airships retreated into the highest clouds, even as black metal debris and ghoulish body parts rained down upon Barfunweltz Cemetery below. ‘Overlords’ they called themselves, yet Elohiim was Lord of the Night, above and below.
He turned his back on the vanquished foe to face his new allies. Before him jostled a screeching flock of ungainly crypt flayers, interspersed with a few varghulfs. At their head, an abhorrent ghoul king cavorted atop a tattered terrorgheist. Elohiim effortlessly resisted their collective delusion as it pressed against his psyche, but was pleased to sense that they regarded him as they saw themselves: majestic; a holy angelic being. In fact, they clearly believed him superior to themselves, and even to their leader the False Messiah.
But that was only right, for as Elohiim looked upon the False Messiah, what he already knew was confirmed: this deranged Abhorrent was indeed somehow a part of Mad Kaphool, the shattered king to whom he had granted the blood kiss so long ago. Elohiim was his Progenitor (or rather, one of them), and so the False Messiah and his Raptured Court owed him their respect and fealty. Most Soulblight vampires would be appalled by the prospect of their thralls including the children of Ushoran, but Elohiim entertained no such pride.
Gesturing to the ghoul king on his terrorghiest, Elohiim opened his mouth to speak, and the flying flesh-eaters immediately fell silent to listen. “This is my blood-son. With him I am well pleased!”
The resulting screaming of the flayers was unpleasant even to Elohiim’s ears but he knew that in their deluded minds it was nothing but songs of praise for him and the False Messiah.
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Elohiim never smiled, but for a moment he felt pleased. Events which had troubled him for an age were perhaps finally facing resolution. For it had been back in the Age of Chaos when Mannfred Von Cartstein had commended the ambitious young vampire Lord El to Nagash. The Great Necromancer had sent him to punish the hubris of a Shyishian King, Gulaab Kaphool. Having easily infiltrated the unusually diverse royal court, Lord El had inveigled his way into the king’s inner circle before revealing himself and launching his devastating attack. Wielding a portion of the power of Nagash himself, Elohiim had shattered Gulaab Kaphool’s very soul, splitting it into five parts, for the king had professed to worship five gods. Elohiim had wrenched one portion from the king’s body and escaped to the royal Barrow where he had already killed and raised its Guardians in his service. There he bound that fifth of soul to himself as a wight, the King of Thorns, his ward.
But it was not the will of the Great Necromaner to allow the other four fifths to go free, for Nagash is all and all are one in Nagash. And so Elohiim enticed Mad Kaphool – with his four fifths of a soul – to come to him. There upon the desolate moor, just below the mound of his own Barrow, Elohiim had turned him into a Soulblight vampire. And thus had Nagash’s will been done... or so Elohiim had thought.
Taking both his newly-enthralled Wight King and his reanimated army of Lost Thorns, Elohiim had returned to the Legion of Night to continue his eternity of bloody warfare. Disinterested in his blood-son, he lost track of Mad-Kaphool when he became a Paladin of the Order of the Blood Drenched Rose.
And so the Age of Chaos had passed and the Age of Sigmar had dawned and still Elohiim and the Lost Thorns had shed mortal blood in the name of Von Carstein. But then came the Necroquake. In his zeal for the Supreme Lord of Undeath, Elohiim had been dangerously close to Nagashizzar when the event occurred. Along with many other Soulblight lords, the tsunami of amethyst magic had been too much even for him and his body had been mutated and transformed into the nightmare form a Vengorian Lord.
Tormented by episodes of bestial madness and maudlin despondency, Elohiim had retreated to Ghyran. Why he had chosen the Realm of Life when most Vengorians had withdrawn to Ghyr he was not sure, but perhaps it was to punish himself. For it was also around this time that he had first heard the Prophecy of the Cinquefoil. If only he had known about the prospective reunification of Gulaab Kaphool’s shattered soul he would never have lost track of his blood-son the Paladin!
Even as he mused, hovering before the adoring worship of the Raptured Court, Elohiim could feel the slough of despair coming upon him yet again. For he had recently discovered that things were even worse: The Paladin had only been three fifths of Gulaab’s soul anyway!
Elohiim had been wise to lend Lady Beauvoir the King of Thorns and follow them back here to Barfunweltz. But it troubled him to hear that only four of the ‘Petals’ (as she called them) had been found. He would continue to watch Beauvoir and her coven: it was imperative that he found the Fifth Petal before this upstart lackey of Neferata, although he would certainly use her to do so.
Just then Elohiim became aware of a few dark shapes far below him. Near the ground, a small contingent of Kharadrons had escaped with their Gunhauler and were attempting to execute a controlled crash-landing among the tombs of Barfunweltz. Even as they neared the ground, he could feel the stirrings of Nighthaunt spirits outraged by the Kharadrons’ trespass. Closing his eyes, he sensed again the approach of a familiar soul – or rather another part of it – as the Empty Hearse drew near to the beleaguered duardin down below…
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