Lord of the Night

On Tsagualsa, the Night Haunter spoke his name, and selected him above all others as his heir. How had he felt, in that frozen moment? How had his selection ignited his mind?

He felt... unsurprised. He felt as though he had always expected it.

He was the Talonmaster. He was his master's truest son. It was natural.

The brute Acerbus left without comment.

On Tsagualsa the Night Haunter dismissed his remaining captains, and to his throne he led Zso Sahaal.

Yours, one day. One day soon!

And he had told Sahaal how it would happen, how he had seen it: burned upon his dreams like a cruel pantomime, played out over and over every night. An assassin of the Callidus shrine would come for him, slinking in the dark, creeping across the writhing galleries of the living palace with her heart hammering in her ears, her fists clenched tight.

There would be no opposition. No attempts to stand in her way. She must be allowed through to enact the final grisly scene.

The Night Haunter, baleful eyes shining, lipless mouth trembling, turned to Sahaal then and made him vow it. Arms interlocked, eyes meeting in shadowed pools.

There would be no intervention. The assassin would fulfil her role. She would play out her part in the endless comedy. Sahaal vowed it, and hated himself. And the Night Haunter, Konrad Curze, his master, made him vow to watch it all. To stare from the shadows to see it happen. He made him vow it on the sacred hatred of the Legion, on the insult that must he repaid, and Sahaal could no more break his oath than he could kill his lord himself. He would watch his master die. And when the she-bitch was gone — her bloody task complete — he would step from his vantage and lift from his master's corpse the Corona Nox. He would take it for himself. He would show it as his symbol of office, and he would lead the Night Lords ever onwards. He vowed it.

He would lead them as his master had done, with boundless hate and endless patience. He would unite them in crusade upon the Traitor Emperor, and all would be well.

And his master turned to him and asked him if he knew, if he understood, what it was that made the Night Lords weak. What was the flaw that crippled their hearts?

Sahaal did not know, so Konrad Curze sat and smiled, and told him.

It had something to do with power. It had something to do with rage. It had something to do with the fear that the Legion grasped, the terror they used as a weapon to destroy their foes.