Kell's Legend

advisor. Graal waved his lacerated hand, “Don’t mind him, he is of no consequence.” Graal began picking shards from his flesh, some as long as two inches. He did not wince. “What’s wrong?”
    “The man. The hero. Kell.”
    “He still lives?”
    “More than that. He has been a…thorn, in my side. He has escaped.”
    “Send a squad. They’ll catch up with one old man.”
    “No, Graal. He is more dangerous than you could comprehend…and it stems from his axe. I know a bloodbond weapon when I see one. Graal, he must be dealt with immediately. You understand?”
    Graal rubbed at his chin, eyes distant. “He was there? During the Days of Blood? If he is in possession of a bloodbond weapon he must surely have experienced those days; one way or another.” Graal’s eyes glittered. His splintered hand was forgotten. “There is immense power in such a weapon. Power we can use, yes?”
    The Harvester nodded. “Send a canker.”
    Graal frowned. “A little excessive, my friend.”
    “I want him stopped. His life extinguished. Now!”
    Graal gave a single nod. It was rare he’d seen a Harvester so ruffled. He walked to the window, wondering if there was some unwritten bond here; some information to which he was not privy. Graal signalled to an albino soldier, who disappeared. Dagon Trelltongue used the time to pull himself to his feet,removing a tissue from one pocket and dabbing at his bleeding throat. He could feel the flesh, bruised, swollen, punctured, and he knew he would struggle to speak for the next few days.
    Distantly, there came a sound, savage, brutal, a snarling like a big cat only this noise was twisted, and merged with metal. Dagon shivered involuntarily, and found General Graal’s eyes locked to him again. The general was smiling, and gestured idly to the doorway. “A canker,” he said, by way of explanation, as six soldiers pushed a cage through high, ornately-carved double-doors.
    Dagon felt piss running down his legs as his eyes fastened on the cage, and he was unable to tear his gaze free from the vision.
    It was big, the size of a lion, but there the resemblance ended. Once, it had been human. Now it raged on all fours, pale white skin bulging with muscle and tufts of white and grey fur. Its forehead stretched right back, mouth five times the size of a human maw, the skull opened right up, split horizontal like a melon and with huge curved fangs dropping down below the chin like razor-spikes. Everywhere across the creature’s body lay open wounds, crimson, rimmed with yellow fat, like the open, frozen flesh of the necrotic, and inside Dagon could see tiny wheels spinning, gears meshing, shafts moving and shifting like, like…
    Like clockwork, he realised.
    Dagon blinked, and tried to swallow. He could not.
    The creature snarled, shrieked and launched at the cage wall. Huge bars squealed, one rattling, and the creature sat back on its haunches with its strange openhead, its twisted high-set eyes, one higher than the other, staring at Dagon for a moment and sending a spear of ice straight to his heart. Inside that skull he saw more clockwork, gears and levers stepping up and down, tiny wheels spinning. He fancied, if he listened carefully, he could hear the gentle, background tick tick tick of a clock.
    “What is it?” he whispered.
    “A canker,” repeated Graal, moving over to the cage and putting his hand inside. Dagon wanted to scream Don’t do that, it’ll rip your fucking hand off! But he did not. He stared, in a terrible, dazed silence. “When vachine are young, little more than babes, they go to the Engineer’s Palace for certain, necessary, modifications. However, the vachine flesh is occasionally temperamental, and suffers, shall we say, a set-back. The muscle, bone and clockwork do not meld, do not integrate, and as the vachine grows so it loses humanity, loses emotions, loses empathy, and becomes something less than vachine. It twists, its body corrupting, its growth becoming an eternal battle between flesh and clockwork, each component vying for supremacy, each internal war filling the new-grown canker with awesome pain, and hatred, and, sadly, insanity. Eventually, one or the other—the flesh, or the clockwork—will win the battle and the canker will die. Until that point, we use them for hunting impure vachine. The Heretics, the Blasphemers, and the Blacklippers. “
    Graal turned, then. His words had been soft, a recounting of Engineer Council Lore, the Oak