Shades drawn tight against this man ...There's a light in your heart ...There's a shadow in the shade of your e...There's a place we can go...In between a truth and...'s lit by the light in your heart ...The light in your heart ...In and out of doubt ...Let me dream in your footsteps ...Walk in your sleep ...There's a light in your heart ...There's a shadow in the shade of your e...There's a place we can go...In between a truth and...'s lit by the light in your heart ...The light in your heart ...Keeping my part together ...There's a light in your heart ...There's a shadow in the shade of your e...There's a place we can go...In between a truth and...'s lit by the light in your heart ...The light in your heart

I: The Fall of the Shadow-King ...Episode X: The Shadow-King Reborn ...parations commenced in earnest. A brief and perfunctory exchange between the Imperial Herald and the fortification's Watch Commander held no surprises, and the Emperor's banner was duly driven into the seared earth before Gul-Kothoth with a chilling finality. Vast siege engines and powerful ballistae were hauled inexorably into position, alongside a battery of katapelte and petrobolos. The one hundred thousand strong Imperial Frontier Army, having planted their regimental blazons into the arid soil, waited with a disciplined patience born of never having met defeat in pitched battle or siege, the dreaded Imperial War-Leopards straining noisily against their iron-link leashes to the rear of the cohorts of conscripts and auxillieries. The pitiless Iron Phalanx and their Lord Militant Commander had assumed position at the head of the army's Alpha Wing, polished swords, spears and poll-axes reflecting the glow from the myriad torches and braziers which still burned about the Imperial Host. And behind them were drawn up the legendary Legion of the Ebon Tiger, Pride of the Emperor, the infantry and cavalry famed throughout the Great Northern Continent, personal regiment of the feared general Baalthus Vane. True to their martial reputation, the six thousand strong Legion were inscrutible in their jet black armour, their sable banner billowing in the chill breeze which skittered over the plain. And finally, astride his azure-shaffroned warhorse and surrounded by his elite guard, the silvern-armoured Emperor Koord himself studied the precipitious gates with a disdainful scrutiny. At the Emperor's right hand was the renowned Swordmaster of Kyrman'ku, an eastern bladesman of preternatural skill and the most revered and expensive mercenary in the Imperium. At his left, the infamous Ogre-Mage of the Black Lake brooded silently, swathed in a stygian cloak and...st glorious victory is at hand. The procrastinating sybarites of the bureaucracy have been threatened and bribed into compliance over this venture. This more than anything else is why I have deigned to grace this final battle with my Imperial presence, ...e. Our victory here is assured. ...You should not call in your falcons before the hunt is done, my loyal servitor. Overconfidence is but one of the many...ties are long gone, my liege. The Imperial Military Council is the only entity fit...idian Crown itself! In the hands of a skilled thaumaturgist, it is said that the Crown...BAALTHUS VANE: The Shadow-Sword! The Obsidian Crown! The Ebon Sceptre! Feh! The power of the Trinity is but a myth! No antiquated trinket weilded by a religious fanatic will prevail against the Legion, sire. Our steel is proof against such diabolism! Behold! Gul-Tryarch has fallen, Gul-Azlaan has been given to the earth, Gul-Nomedes is naught but smouldering rubble, and soon we shall surge over the shattered remnants of Gul-Kothoth's renowned walls! The Vyrgothian Alliance shall crumble when these gates are breached, and the Over-King himself shall stand before thee in shackles! ...n weighing heavy on my mind. But now, the ...ine cracks appeared in the ancient cyclopean edifice, and hundreds of warriors, both attackers and defenders, perished in the fray, either crushed beneath the ceaselessly assailed testudo, hammered to crimson pulp by the merciless storm of unforgiving stone, or burned to blackened husks by the nightmare onslaught of flaming quicklime and saltpetre. Scaling ladders raised and repulsed in turn, storms of raz...... the Black Crown is upon us! ... EMPEROR KOORD: It is as I have forseen! Be spry, my sorcerous lackey... join the Iron Phalanx in entertaining these ... which speak to man in narcotic dreams from the darkest and most silent places, summoned forth that black potency which lay entwined in stygian tendrils wi...tinels of light and shadow spoke to eachother in tongues dormant sin...ep crimson exceeded in its vibrancy only b...And lo, there and army of five sc...lack circlet locked tight within the gnarled hand of the Master Wizard, and clove mercilessly into the glorious ranks of the Imperium. And all who were touched by this ruinous arc of coruscating radiance knew no more... Men and beasts reduced to blackened husks, charred shells of smouldering ash, lifeless effigies which toppled to the seared earth to be dissipated by the whispering breath of the wind. Again and again the ravaging radiance smote the ranks of the Empire, leaving a noisome charnel-pit of nightmare in its crackling wake. The forces of the Imperium were plunged into a howling vortex of disarray, and, faced with the unthinkable prospect of defeat, the unprecedented first routing of the Emperor's glorious army began to become a grim reality. Yet for all the unparalleled carnage which had erupted about them, there was one regiment of... 'Tis true... steel is no use against this ignoble magical trickery! But if our souls are bound for the Pit this day, we'll damn well take a few of these bastards with us! Onward, my Legion! Alpha forma...THE EMPEROR KOORD: My sorcerous thrall has fallen, but he has bought us time enough to riposte! And General Vane's mettle may yet turn the tide of war back in our favour. Now, let the final act be played out! I call thee forth, Ogre-Mage of the Black Lake! I call thee forth, Swordmaster of Kyrman'ku! It is time! Now, I charge...two pivotal players in the Emperor's plan, the two key figures in the Imperium's contingency, stepped forth to fill their most vital of roles in that grand theatre ...tter fearsome words in a tongue which was ancient ere the gleaming stars shifted upon the fathomless countenance of the distant heavens, words which in truth were not words, but rather a resonant key which would aspire to unlock a dire power which had reposed shackled since the fall of the legendary Shadow King himself, whose ebon circlet's power they even now sought to thwart. The incantation they gave voice to in the midst of that sanguineous turmoil which engulfed them was not so much heard by those within earshot as perceived, sensed as a vague disturbance in the fabric of reality, as fuliginous ripples on the surface of a hitherto still and placid pool, growing ever larger and more far reaching; an unnerving and unnamable sense of change which insinuated itself into the mind of the listener and suggested with a cold and disturbing quasi-certainty that something of preternaturally ineffable magnitude was transpiring, as surely as a festering and gangrenous corpse would split to spill its noisome gore. And as that maddeningly implacable incantation reached its resounding climax, a momentary silence enshrouded the battlefield, swathing the vista of chaos in an aura of noiseles...And it was in that oddly immeasur... in: Episode X: The Shadow-King Reborn

ing to the sound of my tears. ...then I see the look in your eyes. ...if you only hold me tight ... Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark. ... We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love ... There's nothing I can do,... Once upon a time there was light in my life ...but now there's only love in the dark. ...if you only hold me tight ... Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark. ... We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love ... There's nothing I can do,... Once upon a time there was light in my life ...but now there's only love in the dark.

ing to the sound of my tears...then I see the look in your eyes... lying like a child in your arms...then I see the look in your eyes...if you only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do...Once upon a time there was light in my life...But now there's only love in the dark...now and then I know there's no one in the universe as mag...now and then I know there's nothing any bette...And there's nothing that I ju...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...Once upon a time there was light in my life...But now there's only love in the dark

ing to the sound of my tears...then I see the look in your eyes... lying like a child in your arms...then I see the look in your eyes...if you only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do...Once upon a time there was light in my life...But now there's only love in the dark...now and then I know there's no one in the universe as mag...now and then I know there's nothing any bette...And there's nothing that I ju...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...Once upon a time there was light in my life...But now there's only love in the dark

ing to the sound of my tears ...then I see the look in your eyes ...you'll only hold me tight ...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark ...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love ...There's nothing I can do ...Once upon a time there was light in my life ...But now there's only love in the dark ... lying like a child in your arms ...then I see the look in you eyes ...you'll only hold me tight ...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark ...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love ...There's nothing I can do

ing to the sound of my tears....then I see the look in your eyes....if you only hold me tight we'll be holding on...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark....We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love but now I'm on...There's nothing I can do,...Once upon a time there was light in my life but now there's only love in the dark....if you only hold me tight we'll be holding on...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...at to do I'm always in the dark....We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love but now I'm on...There's nothing I can do,

ing to the sound of my tears...then I see the look in your eyes...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do...Once upon a time there was light in my life...But now there's only love in the dark... lying like a child in your arms...then I see the look in you eyes...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do

ing to the sound of my tears...then I see the look in your eyes...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do...Once upon a time there was light in my life...But now there's only love in the dark... lying like a child in your arms...then I see the look in you eyes...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do

ing to the sound of my tears....then I see the look in your eyes....if you only hold me tight we'll be holding on...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark....We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love but now I'm on...There's nothing I can do,...Once upon a time there was light in my life but now there's only love in the dark....if you only hold me tight we'll be holding on...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...at to do I'm always in the dark....We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love but now I'm on...There's nothing I can do,

ing to the sound of my tears...then I see the look in your eyes...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do

ing to the sound of my tears...then I see the look in your eyes...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do

ing to the sound of my tears...then I see the look in your eyes...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do

on't let his memory in...I see you in every shadow of the room, you're not here to hold me tight... the morning light, there's no way to win...I see you in every shadow of the room, you're not here to hold me tight... the morning light, there's no way to win

ing to the sound of my tears...then I see the look in your eyes...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do...you'll only hold me tight...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the ti...o do and I'm always in the dark...We're living in a powder keg and gi... time I was falling in love...There's nothing I can do