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1Chapter 1356: "Creator's Promise"
2Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations
3
4"Hey, Roland."
5
6"Roland, what're you spacing out for!"
7
8"Uncle, come and help save her!"
9
10Two voices rang out in turn, pulling Roland back to reality. He blinked his eyes a couple of times—the pillar of light, the snowflakes—everything had disappeared without a trace, and the messy bridge reappeared before him.
11
12Zero and Valkries were amid the ruins trying to clear out something. From their expressions, the unforeseen event had not come to a close.
13
14That's right —He suddenly recalled that the person who called her, the genius martial artist Fei Yuhan, whom he felt was different at the Martialist Association, where was she?
15
16Could it be that the 'her' whom Zero was referring to was—
17
18Roland's expression turned solemn.
19
20At that moment, his thoughts were finally back on the right track.
21
22He threw the entire episode to the back of his mind and rushed over to the two. The sight before him caused him to gasp in shock!
23
24Inside a shallow pit was a badly mutilated girl. Aside from her left arm, her other limbs were all completely pulverized to the point of having her bones and flesh blended together. Her body was covered in wounds, her clothes completely soaked in blood, and half of her spine were twisted and had punctured out of her skin.
25
26This was a sight that no one could ever lay their eyes on, even in a battlefield.
27
28And from what remained of her face, Roland recognized her as Fei Yuhan.
29
30She was barely clinging onto life, just barely.
31
32"How did this…"
33
34Roland knelt down, completely at a loss. Save her? Even with bandages, it was impossible to wrap her internal organs back into place, much less talk about stopping the bleeding. There was no spot that was perfect and unharmed on her body. Her bodily functions had completely broken down and she was completely relying on the Force of Nature to keep her consciousness from slipping away.
35
36But this bit of power was like the last bit of wax of a candle; she was already burning out.
37
38As a matter of fact, to be able to stay conscious in such a situation required extremely powerful willpower. Even as martial artists, very few were capable of achieving this.
39
40"Master became like this because she protected me…" Zero sobbed.
41
42"She's about to die." Valkries pointed out. "Even a Grand Lord with such injuries can only delay the inevitable in the Red Mist Pond. Furthermore, the standard of medical operations here isn't even comparable to the Red Mist Pond. Even if she had plenty of magic power in her, we can't reverse this. She is able to persevere because she is a true warrior."
43
44"You're finally… here." Fei Yuhan seemed to have heard them as she slowly opened her eyes. "Should I call you… Master Creator?"
45
46Her words were mixed with a hint of humor, and the expression she gave made it look as though she was not in a perilous situation.
47
48Roland seemed stunned for a moment. "You…"
49
50"I am sorry… I eavesdropped on your conversation." She winked at Valkries—the only action she was capable of making. "But if we could do it all over again, I would… still do this. Zero… is she okay?"
51
52The few sentences seemed to take a toll on her. They had to hold their breaths and get close to her to listen to her words.
53
54"Master, I… am fine…" Zero whimpered.
55
56"This world… is still fine, right?" Fei Yuhan sighed. "In a way, I can consider this as fulfilling my responsibility in protecting it."
57
58"So you are aware that this world is a Dreamworld—" Valkries frowned.
59
60"Maybe to you guys, there many worlds, but in my eyes… this is the only one. And it is a martial artist's duty to protect this world." She paused for a moment. "Allow me to say this… Master Creator, since you created this world, you should have some trust in everyone, right?"
61
62"Trust… in everyone?"
63
64"I know it will sound… ridiculous, but as long as you bring out some evidence, the higher-ups of the Association… isn't as obstinate as you think. We might not be able to do much, but we are not entirely useless as well… even if we can't beat the Oracles, at least we can help lessen your burden. Wouldn't it… be slightly easier to save this world?"
65
66Gather the strength of the masses—
67
68A light bulb came over Roland's head.
69
70That's right, I am the Creator of this world.
71
72But I'm not necessarily an omnipotent God.
73
74I can't do certain things.
75
76But others can.
77
78If everyone works together, who knows what miracle we can achieve.
79
80"The last thing I want to say is… thank you." Fei Yuhan's voice was already faltering. "Thank you for creating this world, even if it is just a dream—"
81
82"No, this isn't a Dream World." Roland interrupted, "It is a world that exists in the Realm of Mind, and will always continue to exist."
83
84"I knew… that you would say that." Fei Yuhan closed her eyes and revealed a satisfied smile.
85
86"Besides, even if I am able to produce some evidence, I alone will not be enough to convince the world that I am some god or creator. But if I have the words of the genius Martial Artist, maybe the effect will be different."
87
88She moved her lips. Are you… consoling me?
89
90"I'm not consoling you, I am stating a fact as a Creator." Roland stood up. "Listen well, this isn't the time for you to give up! Since you mentioned trust, please trust me. This isn't an irreversible situation!"
91
92"Because, I am a Creator—"
93
94Disconnecting from the Dream World, Roland suddenly sat up from a recliner.
95
96It was noon as snowflakes gently floated outside the window. Having stood guard inside the office, Nightingale immediately appeared before him and asked, "Why're you awake so soon? Are you feeling uncomfortable anywhere?"
97
98It was his first time entering the Dream World two days after losing consciousness. Ordinarily, he would sleep from one to four in the afternoon, but clearly it was not time yet.
99
100"Relax, I'm fine." Roland replied, "Inform Scroll and Honey to come to the castle immediately, I have an important task for them."
101
102Nightingale inspected his temperature and pulse carefully. After confirming that he was fine, she nodded. "I understand."
103
104After watching her enter the Mist, Roland returned to his work desk, took out a pen and paper, and started writing.
105
106He needed the power from both worlds to work together to save Fei Yuhan.
107
108Upon leaving the Dream World, time would pause, which undoubtedly provided the most crucial opportunity to save her. So as long as he did not enter the Dream World, her last breath would never end.
109
110The core of saving her laid in Nana's new ability—her magic ability to attach healing properties to enchanted objects. So long as they had enough of them, they could suppress the collapse of her body.
111
112The next ability was Scroll's territory—Roland himself could not 'bring' items into the Dream World, but Scrolls' Archives had the ability to do so. Considering that the witches' abilities extended to the Dream World, Nana's magical objects ought to work as well.
113
114Of course, just these two factors were not enough.
115
116Firstly, they needed to transport the magical objects from the archives to the bridge in the shortest time possible.
117
118Next, the the gauze that had magic embedded in them could only pull Fei Yuhan out of danger, but her broken limbs required professional equipment, and that required the help of a professional surgeon.
119
120Only by gathering the strength of both worlds could they create a miracle.
121
122Chapter 1357: Combined Rescue
123Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations
124
125Five days later, Seagull landed in Neverwinter's Aerial Knight Academy.
126
127Tilly left the plane with Nana. For the first time, she did not jump straight to ask Roland about her special plane, and instead asked fervently," Are we too late?"
128
129As the iron tower project's code tables were not completed, the prepared Aerial Knights that had completed their theory lessons proceeded to Thorn Town for hands-on training, leaving only flying messengers as the fastest form of communications. Although the time required to travel between the two kingdoms was not considered slow with an the time taking of four days to and one day back, it was rather long in an emergency situation like providing medical treatment.
130
131"No, you arrived at the right time," Roland replied.
132
133"Really, that's great to hear… I think it'll be better to have an Aerial Knight student stay and patrol Neverwinter to avoid having such a situation again." Tilly heaved a sigh of relief, "Oh right, who's injured?"
134
135"Errr…" Roland was at a loss for words. Flying messengers had limitations on information they could carry and thus, he did not mention too many details, and only requested Tilly to send Nana back to Neverwinter. When the question was fired, he realized that he had no answer. After pondering to himself for a moment, he said, "A person that doesn't exist in this world."
136
137"What?" The corners of Tilly's mouth twitched. "You're talking about someone in the Dream World?"
138
139As expected of Princess Tilly; her reaction is abnormally sharp…. Roland coughed twice. "That's almost right."
140
141"Then just tell it to us directly, and don't beat about the bush." Tilly rolled her eyes at him. "What? Are you afraid that we would get mad if we discovered that we rushed over a thousand kilometers just for an imaginary person in the dream world?"
142
143"You've hit the nail right on the head." Nana agreed.
144
145"You don't have to say it out even if you've guessed it." Wendy chuckled and shook her head.
146
147You three… is this some scheme against me?
148
149"Feeling guilty is a good thing, Brother." Tilly tiptoed and extended her hand out and poked his chest. "But you're looking down on all of us—if it's something that you feel has to be done, no matter how preposterous it is, we will take action and ask questions after. Now… what's next?"
150
151This… should be considered another form of expressing trust, right?
152
153Roland pressed down on Tilly's head and sighed. "We will return to the castle. Scroll is there waiting for us."
154
155…
156
157With ample preparations done, Nana quickly made a large pile of "enchanted sutures." According to her theory, the sutures would induce a healing result as long as they were placed near the wounds, regardless if one did not know how to sew a wound. The only trouble was extracting the sutures at a later date; otherwise, those unfixed stitches might bring about new problems for the patient.
158
159Considering how items from reality would not disappear, Scroll only had to enter and exit the Realm of Mind multiple times to obtain the large number of sutures; thus, Nana was able to preserve her magic power and attach magic power to the other medical treatment equipment that was needed later.
160
161Despite spending five days preparing for all the sutures, it was only an instant in the Dream World.
162
163Of course, this peculiarity might have been picked up by the people in the Dream World, like Zero or Valkries… but Roland was fully occupied to take that into consideration.
164
165Once everything was in place, Roland took a deep breath, turned to Scroll and the others and gestured for them to be at ease. He then closed his eyes and entered the Dream World.
166
167After a momentary trance, the familiar scene appeared before him once again.
168
169Fei Yuhan laid motionlessly in the pool of blood while Zero and Valkries looked at him in shock. Zero eagerly grabbed onto his sleeves. "Uncle, do you have a way to save her?"
170
171The time in Dream World flowed once again, and it felt as though he had arrived back in time five days ago.
172
173Roland did not explain himself. He quickly took out his cellphone and called Garcia.
174
175The Martial Arts Contest had already concluded and Garcia was most probably back at the apartments.
176
177The call connected quickly. "Hey, what's up?"
178
179"Where are you now?"
180
181"Outside."
182
183Roland's heart sank. "Why are you not at home?" If the plan failed, he had no other choice but to go along with his contingency plan and inform the Defender to mobilize people. But that required more time for explanations and might not end with the expected outcome.
184
185"Hey, what's with the attitude, can't I buy some food downstairs?"
186
187He immediately exhaled a breath of relief. "So you're around your residential estate? Do you have your car keys with you?"
188
189"Duh." Garcia's unhappy reply came through the phone. "What's your point?"
190
191Roland coughed twice, then replied with a solemn voice, "Listen well, I have a life-and-death request to ask of you, and only you can do it."
192
193"Oh…" Her anger immediately subsided, "Must… it be done over the phone?"
194
195"Yes, we don't have time. Drive over to Six Li Pavilion that's two streets away immediately and pick up a lady called Scroll. She will be waiting by the road, and you definitely won't miss her. Once you pick her up, send her over to the western suburbs expressway, which is where I am at now. The average travel time between these two points is about 30 minutes, but I do not have much time left. I need you to rush over with your fastest speed, I will take responsibility for all the troubles—Please, start moving now!"
196
197"…" The other end of the line remained silent for a few seconds, followed by the sounds of a sprint. "You don't have the time to explain anything now?"
198
199"That's right."
200
201"Alright, if I arrive at your location and realize that the situation isn't as urgent as it seems, you should know how serious the consequences will be! Also, you owe me a favor." The sound of a car engine revving sounded and she hung up.
202
203Roland keyed in Defender Rock's number.
204
205This time, he gave a rough summary of what happened over the phone, "Miss Fei Yuhan is severely injured right now and requires the Association to dispatch the best doctor and equipment to execute an emergency surgery. But this isn't enough, Garcia is currently bringing crucial emergency equipment over. If possible, I hope the Association can contact the Public Roads Department and get them to control the roads for her to reach the expressway as quickly as possible."
206
207Rock immediately agreed and liaised directly with the Public Roads Department, but Roland knew that the possibility of the government taking action without any prior communication was minuscule. Whether or not Garcia could arrive smoothly depended greatly on herself.
208
209It took Roland five minutes to finish the calls.
210
211All he could do now was wait.
212
213Amidst the adversity was a silver lining. In winter, the traffic wasn't bad, especially so for the suburbs. So long as it was not the peak hour, Garcia could drive a van at its fastest speed.
214
215"Uncle, Master, she… she… can't hold on anymore!" Suddenly, Zero's cries broke Roland's train of thoughts.
216
217Roland immediately returned to Fei Yuhan's side. Her chest which was moving slightly previously had stopped.
218
219"Her heart and breathing has stopped." Valkries frowned. "Although I have no idea what you're trying to do, I'm afraid it is too late."
220
221"No, she will be able to make it." Roland extended his hand out and touched Fei Yuhan's forehead. "We are already at this stage, I believe she will not give up that easily."
222
223He had seen research verifying that the brain would still work for a period of time after the body functions came to a halt. The shortest time recorded was ten seconds, the longest a few minutes. The brainwaves during this period resembled that of a person having REM Sleep. How long the brain could continue working depended on various factors, but in terms of determination, it was fortunate that the genius Martial Artist was a person very well known for it.
224
22510 minutes and 25 seconds later, a reverberating car sound came from the end of the bridge.
226
227Roland's eyes immediately lit up.
228
229A simple and old-looking car ran through the red light and stopped right in front of the three.
230
231"Your Majesty!" Scroll opened the car doors and threw a paper bag over to Roland.
232
233The latter ignored Zero and Garcia's surprised expressions, tore the bag opened, and placed the medical sutures on Fei Yuhan's body.
234
235"Is that… an enchanted object created by a witch?" Valkries frowned.
236
237"That's right. As long as it takes effect, we can save a person even if they are on their last dying breath." Roland nodded.
238
239In that moment, Nana's power crossed from reality to the Dream World and worked on the body of a girl from the other world. Disturbing noises came out from Fei Yuhan's body as her flesh and internal organs started to reform and bind together under the effects of the magic power.
240
241It was after more than 10 minutes when everyone heard the faintest thump sound.
242
243Although it was extremely weak, it was the most beautiful sound ever.
244
245Fei Yuhan's chest started to heave once more.
246
247Loss of Control and Promise
248
249After slicing Kadir’s arm off with Ebony, Leguna slashed pierced the dagger into his back and picked his angle carefully so as to not hurt Kadir’s heart.
250
251After that, he clutched Kadir’s neck with his left hand and lifted him up before sending him flying with a kick.
252
253“Ebony’s Cruse — Pain! Ebony’s Curse, Rot!” Leguna yelled with his weapon raised.
254
255“Aaaaagh!” Kadir let out an ear-numbing groan.
256
257The power of the curses alone shouldn’t have been able to cause a mid-order magus like Kadir so much pain. But as he was heavily wounded, he wasn’t able to muster even half of his power, allowing Leguna to begin torturing him with the curses.
258
259“Hahahahaha!” Leguna licked his lips and laughed maniacally.
260
261“Big Bro… Leguna…” Severe pain assailed Innilis and that was the last thing she could say before she fainted.
262
263……
264
265[Kid! Kid!] Gahrona sent a metal rush to Leguna.
266“Ugh…” he groaned audibly in pain.
267
268[Have you finally snapped out of it?!] she cried.
269[I…] He looked at both hands and saw that they were covered with fresh blood. Kadir had already been turned into a corpse. But thanks to Gahrona, it hadn’t been turned into mincemeat like Nabir had back when he killed Jaehart and Minnie.
270[Are you back in the right mind?] she asked, struggling to suppress her anger.
271[Just now, I…] [Just now? You actually left the injured and unconscious Innie on the ground because of your desire for revenge against that stupid magus!] she mocked.
272[How’s she now?!] He felt a chill down his spine. If something happened to Innilis while he was out of control, he might hate himself for life. Maybe, he’d even take his own life.
273[How is she? What do you think?] she mercilessly said, [she was already quite badly injured from the explosion just now. How long do you think the weak girl can last if you continue to ignore her?] [No… no! Impossible… Innie…] Desperation filled his voice.
274[If you really understand the weight of the situation, stop being so reckless and emotional! Torture? Venting? Aren’t you a bigshot, Sir Leguna? I admit that sometimes, people have to be punished for their sins. But before doing so, make sure to be aware of the situation! Don’t lose control and turn into an idiot every time something happens! If you continue to be like that, I’ll ignore you for good!] [Innie…] It was as if he couldn’t hear her scolding at all. He was wallowing in endless regret and despair. [Even though I made it in time… and stopped him… But because of me… Noooo!] [Listen here!] she shrieked again, [Gerd took Innie away already! She’ll be fine after the priests heal her!] [Really?] Life began to return to him.
275[Since when have I lied to you?] Her tone then changed for the colder. [Don’t think you’ll get off this easily!] [Alright, fine…] He relaxed after hearing that Innilis was fine. Anything else no longer mattered.
276[Hey! You lost control again! It’s a huge deal! You have to control this! Otherwise, you won’t be able to protect your precious Innie, Eirinn and Annie! Keep yourself restrained, not just for your sake, but theirs too! I don’t want anything like this happening again, no matter what! If it does, I can guarantee that you won’t have the tears to regret something like this!] [Yes, I’ll take your teachings to heart!] he seriously said, without the slightest hint of sarcasm.
277The issue was that his berserk state was as its name implied. He lost control not out of his own volition. Ideally, even he would want to retain his calm at all times. But every time someone he treasured was in danger, he felt that he fell into and endless abyss. Within it, no pity, empathy, and worry could be found, only endless malice and bloodlust. It was as if he thought he would no longer get hurt anymore after killing every single person in the world.
278
279He wanted to stop that from happening as well. During the past year, he had done his best to prevent that from happening, but he broke the streak when Innilis was in real danger.
280
281Gahrona sighed powerlessly and said in a gentler tone, [Come to think of it, you really can’t be blamed for hit…] [Huh?] [Even I am not confident I’ll be able to withstand the corrosion of the darkness… It’s something that fellow left behind after al,] she said wistfully.
282
283[What are you talking about, Teacher?] [Hehe…] She didn’t answer that question and continued to mumble, [If you humans who become heaven’s chosen really are that easy to control, I’d be looking down at those lofty fools above.]
284After making up her mind, she said, [Forget it, Ley. I don’t expect you to not make a single mistake. But I need you to promise me one thing: protect these girls no matter what happens! No matter what kind of pain you’re going through. You must promise me to never give up hope no matter what. Fight for the sake of those girls! Can you do that for me?] [Of course! You didn’t need to remind me!] He got his emotions in order and said, [I’ve long set my mind on it. I will definitely strive hard for them! It isn’t just a promise to you, it’s a promise to myself!]
285
286Gahrona mulled about in silence. [Then, I’ll look forward to what you have to show for it.] [Great!]
287
288……
289
290Annelotte felt rather restless for some reason. She knew that it was an irrational gut feeling, but it bothered her nevertheless. She could clearly remember the last time she had that premonition. It was when she was bathing more than a year ago when Vera and Kurdak were captured by the Eye.
291
292That was why she was on full guard. Even though a good night’s sleep was hard to come by, she wanted to remain prepared for what would come. It bothered her that something might be happening while she was deep in sleep.
293
294Can it be a stalker? she couldn’t help but wonder. It wasn’t some first time some deviants devoted their time to following her around. Ever since she participated in the tournament hosted by the empire, she gained the reputation as Chino’s most beautiful.
295
296Ever since then, she noticed quite a number of pitiful male stalkers observing her from hiding. That only abated after she joined the tightly guarded bureau.
297
298Yet, she didn’t expect that stalkers would come scurying the first day she returned to Galestorm Manor.
299
300Aren’t they afraid of father? she thought. Some stalkers had shown up in the manor before, but they were chased away by an enraged Marolyt. Had she and Lisana not tried their best to stop him, he would’ve cut those poor sods apart with Azureflash.
301
302So, she thought that some suicidal stalker had come for her. Then again, it was the first time she felt that aware of someone’s presence. Could they really have hidden their presence from her sleeping father in the other wing? If that was the case, then they were definitely quite capable. Perhaps she should introduce them to the bureau to work under Leguna.
303
304Right as she was thinking that, a fatal slash of air coursed towards her. Annelotte started and evaded with a jump uncharacteristic of magi, narrowly avoiding the strike.
305
306“Oh?!” the assassin mused as he walked through the entrance and glared at Annelotte.
307
308“I didn’t think that a young magus like you could actually avoid my Crazy Blade Dance. Congratulations,” said the assassin confidently.
309
310Annelotte collected herself and cursed, something she rarely did. “Moron!”
311
312PROPHECY
313Ben McCallum
314
315I
316
317Thunder was a god’s spoken wrath.
318The sound had the shape of a snarled curse. The heavens’ anger was rich with spite. It rumbled into the physical realm as a literal thunderclap, the aftershock of a god’s volcanic contempt, a deity’s ill-temper translated into the world of natural laws and physical constants.
319It was a command that left nothing unchanged. The land yielded like clay to the god’s primordial brutality. Mountains fell flat in storms of tectonic agony, throwing up enough dust and ash to obscure the horizon. A filthy ocean of oil and blood boiled away in a blink-fast instant of hissing vapour. A toxic bank of fog formed in its sudden absence, vast enough to choke a nation.
320The god-thunder lengthened into a predator-growl, like the roar of some great hunting cat from antiquity. It opened a snaking trail of fissures in the parched earth, reminiscent of the earthquake-ravaged islands of the far south.
321Finally, with a snorted boom of disinterest, the riot of change fell silent and the god glanced elsewhere.
322It was the nature of the Chaos Wastes to warp and heave in such a way. It was a land slaved to malignant energies, doomed to conform to the whims of the aethyr. This cursed state owed every one of its torments to the ugly rent in reality at the world’s northern pole. It was here that the breath of the gods was at its foulest.
323It infected every principle of nature, every foundation of existence. Distance was a quaint notion, here. A league could be travelled in a matter of footsteps, or it could stretch out into endlessness at any given moment. In the ever-changing landscape, mountains could crawl across the horizon, becoming meaningless and confusing points of reference.
324Time, too, became a fickle thing. Anyone foolish enough to lie down and sleep upon the Wastes might wake to find that either mere moments had passed or themselves aged by half a century.
325Even roving warbands from the Hung and Kurgan territories turned their noses up at this region. It was merely the first step of damnation’s long road. The destruction wrought by the tyrannical god was a diluted echo of something fiercer further north. Ambitious warlords struck deeper into the heart of the Wastes to fight for the gods’ favour, where the suspension of order became stranger still, and far more dangerous.
326But of the death of mountains and oceans, two souls paid no heed. They didn’t hear the god-thunder, even as it drowned out their screams.
327Twins. Brothers, identical in all but minor ways. Their albino-pale skin showed an unhealthy grey under the weak light of the blighted skies. Their eyes marked them as souls with a god’s favour – in the magic-rich air of the Wastes, they were flickers of crimson fire.
328They howled like dogs. It was not a dignified sight. They stumbled over their long robes, barking at phantoms, drooling at nightmares only they could see. Pain was plastered over their gaunt features. And fear. Fear was a tangy spice in the chill air.
329Around them, ghosts blinked in and out of existence, either through their own uncontrolled talents, or as quirks of the haunted land. Colourless figures flickered as indistinct insights into whatever madness ran amok inside their skulls.
330It was not such a rare sight in the northern reaches of the world. For here, this was how men dreamed.
331Most men dream in silent repose.
332It was never their way. As children, the twins would howl into the late hours, screaming at the scenes that played behind their eyes. The tribe’s elders would gather in cautious silence, straining to steal any meaning from the youths’ anguished cries. Old men would lean over their cots, thin, gnarled hands outstretched as if to snatch their secrets from the air. The pair were blessed; they all knew that from the moment the children had left the womb. Ordinary infants aren’t born with a carnivore’s needle teeth.
333That practice soon ceased as the twins matured, and the howling became violence. Whatever secrets Tchar whispered to them, it turned the silent youths into snarling animals. Night after night, they bled under each other’s ferocity.
334Sharpened teeth weren’t the only sign of the Changer’s favour. Kelmain – Goldenrod, as he would soon come to be known – possessed fingernails that were blade-sharp claws on his right hand, the fierce gold of a cold steppe sunrise. Lhoigor – Blackstaff, true to his slightly quieter, more introverted nature – was much the same, save that his were dark silver on the opposite hand.
335Emerging unscathed each morning, they kept their secrets to themselves. No one enquired too deeply about what these children, so obviously born with Tchar’s blessing, saw. It was foolish to pry. When the mood took them, they offered whispered warnings of trouble down the road, of rival tribes waiting in ambush.
336No one realised that even in their hushed seclusion away from the rest of the tribe, they rarely spoke with their actual voices. It was their first expression of sorcerous talent, an ability to communicate with each other through thought alone. They shared the same dreams, experienced the same hungers and passions, and through the harsh years of their nomadic upbringing, they plotted the route their lives would take, like the charted course of a raiding vessel.
337With this power, with these gifts, they set off into the world, dreaming their dreams of what was to be, beholden to no one except the Changer.
338Consciousness returned with a strangled gasp.
339Kelmain’s vision swam, painting the world in bleary smears. The ragged inhalation awakened his physical senses. He tasted blood’s copper tang on his tongue, and spat it into the foul wind.
340Worrying. Something inside him must have ruptured. Visions always took their toll, but this was severe.
341He closed his eyes as his pulse began to quicken in the claws of a panic attack. The helplessness of disorientation was rare to a man like him, but the landscape had changed again. When the vision had taken him, there had been mountains on the horizon. Now there was just a distant dust storm, a smudge of black off to the... north. Or perhaps east.
342He grappled the momentary weakness. Throttled it before it could taint him further.
343He sat up delicately. The ash beneath him held his imprint, his robes leaving a confused outline on the ground. He bit back a groan, his every muscle offering him a thousand different pains. It was an effort to still the trembling.
344Lhoigor came awake opposite him. Where Kelmain would rouse slowly and carefully, his brother all but fled the visions. The seizures could be staved off, and willpower could force their muscles to obey, but Lhoigor always floundered, always let his fear master him. His screams were a confession of weakness.
345Stop it, he scolded. There was nothing of kindness in the voiceless communication.
346‘I am sorry, brother,’ came Lhoigor’s breathless reply. His voice was scratchy and hoarse at being so rarely used. ‘It always makes me so disorientated.’
347They sat in silence for several long moments, gathering their wits, cataloguing their pains. One brother scowled at the barren earth, grim and silent, where the other turned his crimson eyes skywards, as if entreating heaven to relieve him.
348‘Brother.’ Lhoigor’s voice still shook, uncertainty creeping into his tone.
349Lhoigor.
350‘What did we see?’
351You saw. We both saw.
352‘Nevertheless,’ Lhoigor pressed. Minor convulsions wracked his spindly frame. ‘I would hear you speak it aloud.’
353Kelmain sighed, composed where his brother was honest with his weakness.
354‘We saw him,’ he said, using his actual voice for the first time in days. ‘We saw the Slayer.’
355II
356
357The dragon opened its eyes.
358Lhoigor faltered in his chanting. It was something few mortals had ever witnessed, and it startled him, despite the fact that he had already foreseen this moment. To see such a beast in the flesh, to actually feel its breath gust past him...
359Focus. His brother’s rebuttal was hard. Impatient. This moment was crucial.
360It was easy for Kelmain to say. To one attuned in such a way, the dragon’s ancient intelligence was a palpable presence. It was not just a powerful creature. Its consciousness was a transcendent thing, an order of magnitude above humanity’s frail perceptions. Even the Slight Ones, who claimed companionship with these draconic gods, were like children in comparison.
361Lhoigor, focus.
362It was an effort to shrug off his fascination, but he took up the intonations where he left off, his thin lips framing impossible syllables. They rose and fell in time with the ancient creature’s slow, pounding heartbeat. Its lids began to drop again, closing over unfocused, reptilian eyes.
363Despite its elevated perceptions, the sleeping god’s senses were shut off to the world. Its centuries-long slumber, thus far undisturbed, was a deep, abyssal state of rest.
364At the periphery of his focus, Lhoigor sensed his brother’s movements. Kelmain was stalking around the cave, his feet shuffling in the darkness. His pulse quickened as he felt what his twin gripped in his golden-clawed hand.
365With fearless bare-skin contact, Kelmain hefted a shard of heaven.
366Wyrdstone, the scholars of the Empire named it. It was the stuff of the aethyr, condensed by the mortal world’s laws into a shard of luminous rock. To the men of the civilised south, it was pure corruption, a hazard to be purged and avoided at all costs. To merely be in the presence of the volatile substance invited mutation and madness. From their pulpits, priests and holy men representing a pantheon of southern gods urged their flocks to spurn the afflicted, to scorn those blackened by the Shadow’s touch.
367It was the cause of a thousand stillbirths and deformities across humanity’s various kingdoms and nations. A mere flake tossed into a well would doom a whole community. Beastmen and verminkin hoarded it as a rare and precious treasure, the former worshipping it as a gift from the Ruinous Ones, the latter prizing it as currency and a valued food supply.
368Kelmain plunged it into the dragon’s scaly flesh.
369The sleeping god groaned. It was a sound like the precursor to a volcanic eruption, a rumble of deep tectonic unrest. Lhoigor saw movement beneath its eyelids. Its dreams – whatever gods dreamed – darkened. He smiled as he chanted.
370The spell was a simple one, made easier by the presence of wyrdstone. The substance was flaky, and its potency persisted even when it was burned or dissolved in liquid. It mingled with the dragon’s potent blood, and with a soft exertion of his will, Lhoigor began to guide it through the creature’s veins. It invaded arteries like a disease, carrying naturally into the chambers of the beast’s ancient heart.
371The effect was unnerving in its immediacy. Mucus began to drool from the dragon’s slitted nostrils, its constitution already beginning to unravel as the taint thrived. The pitch of its heartbeat changed; instinct readied the dragon to fight an enemy that had already won.
372Lhoigor’s smile widened, his unnatural teeth showing bright in the cave’s dank gloom.
373‘It is working,’ he whispered breathlessly. He turned to his brother, seeing his expression mirrored: two vultures grinning over a carcass. ‘Another. Our work will be done before dusk falls. Skjalandir wakens today.’
374Another shard of heaven appeared in Kelmain’s clawed hands, and the sleeping god’s dreams grew darker still.
375It was fated to die. This, they realised only after their work was done.
376Swollen, corrupted, the dragon thundered from its lair for the first time in an age, no longer the exalted creature it had once been. Its mind was in a clawed grip, squeezed until all that was left was the overriding impulse to defend itself against threats that didn’t exist.
377It was a fallen god.
378It met the night sky with the promise of annihilation. Its ability to breathe gouts of flame from its fanged maw had been fouled: now acid and bile drooled from between its teeth every time it opened its mouth to scream.
379It heaved its bloated bulk into the skies on tattered wings, but it was too heavy to fly. Its form had been warped too much for the fallen god to achieve natural flight for very long. With every beat of its wings, it ravaged its own draconic musculature to stay aloft.
380Everything within a mile of the fallen god’s screams cowered. Birds broke their formations, scattering in the frantic need to flee. Nocturnal hunters howled and yelped, gnawing at their own bodies in confusion and fear. A community of humans and dwarfs eking out a grim existence in this relatively secure stretch of the Worlds Edge Mountains awoke to the roaring of a god soon to vent its wrath upon their homes.
381The twins did not see. The sense of premonition that seized them stole the nightmarish scene from their sight, replacing it with a whirlwind of unwritten futures, a roiling storm of prophecy.
382It was the price they paid for the potency of their visions. Prophecy was like experiencing a seizure, as if it was a curse rather than a gift. This was something they both knew and hated, because it reminded them of lesser seers who needed hallucinogens and incantations for their abilities to function. The injustice of it stung deeply.
383But these were thoughts for afterwards, when their muscles ceased trembling and the headaches passed. It was a bitterness that both nurtured in their hours of recovery, and both had entreated their god of claws and feathers to allay the pain.
384He only answered with more visions. More agony.
385In the vision’s embrace, they saw a god’s death.
386And the Slayer.
387The dragon dies.
388Skjalandir’s killer is a sword. The blade is a yard of ornate steelwork and burning runes, dragon-hilted and vicious. They know without understanding why that it is invested with the purpose of being the nemesis of all dragons, forged in the time when the blood shed between the elder races was still hot.
389The blade’s wielder is almost entirely unimportant. Blond-haired and shouting curses, he moves with a ferocity that isn’t his own. His uncharacteristic courage is an expression of the blade’s molten need to enact its purpose. The wielder is an unknowing puppet.
390The blade skewers Skjalandir’s brain. It is over as quickly as that. Their plan to ravage the mountain fails. The scheme that would have eventually seen the legendary Slayer Keep powerless beneath Skjalandir’s shadow dies with the stolen bravery of one fool with an enchanted sword.
391In a flare of exultant bliss, the blade falls silent, inert now that its task is done.
392All of these thing are irrelevant.
393Skjalandir’s killer did not come alone. His companions boast a ramshackle bundle of loyalties and allegiances: humans and dwarfs, adventurers and Slayers. The vision compels them to focus on one soul, a dwarfish Slayer who seems not to savour victory’s taste as the others do.
394Brother, look...
395I know, Lhoigor. I see it.
396Look at his axe.
397I know. I see.
398The course they had charted so many years ago became a quaint irrelevancy.
399The vision left them as they always did, but the revelation of what they had seen made their post-prophecy pains seem a small thing.
400‘The scope of this is troubling,’ Lhoigor observed. His words came with a small burble of blood where his needle teeth had pierced gum.
401‘At times, you wildly exaggerate, Lhoigor, but you irritate me far more when you understate things.’
402Kelmain was a master of his own emotions, and peerless at masking his fears and insecurities with arrogance and false confidence. Lhoigor looked away to cover a smile at his brother’s blunder. He spoke. He actually used his voice.
403‘I will be rational for both of us, then. Where do we stand?’
404Kelmain took a calming breath, marshalling his willpower.
405We will return to Daemonclaw as if nothing has happened. We say nothing of the dragon, and nothing of the fools who are fated to kill it. I will never admit failure to him. His petty little horde will have its siege.
406‘And the dwarf?’
407Kelmain glanced over the valley. From their vantage at the cave mouth, the mountain offered a wide view of the surrounding terrain. They heard the thunder of Skjalandir’s distant rampage. As the twins talked, they saw the dragon plunge from the air, his fire a tiny gout of malevolence in the darkness. In that moment, a dozen souls perished.
408Daemonclaw is beyond foolish, but he is... blessed. Slightly. Enough for him to be of use to us. He will not be blind to the dwarf’s presence. He will at least suspect what he represents.
409‘But Praag is long distant from here. You think the dwarf will be present for the siege?’
410Lhoigor, came Kelmain’s admonishment. Equilibrium was restored. Stop being such a fool. Think. We were showed this dwarf for a reason. He possesses rare significance. He will have a part to play in the razing of Praag.
411‘And what part would that be?’
412Kelmain’s lips twisted into a rare grin. His hoarse voice was rich with vicious amusement.
413‘I think he is going to kill Daemonclaw.’
414III
415
416Daemonclaw.
417Warlord. Champion of the Changer. A master of swordsmanship, a fiercely competent sorcerer. Uniter: a warrior of Tchar who held together the warring slaves of gods that despised each other.
418And, the brothers knew, born a pampered lordling of the Empire he was destined to conquer.
419They knew the warlord better than he knew himself. They knew his birth name, and they knew the petty viciousness that led him to swear his soul to the Changer. The childish need to murder his political rivals with clever poisons exposed him to a minor conjurer. This was what set him on Tchar’s path, and took him far north of his birthland.
420He was... competent. This, the brothers also knew. It was a tale repeated a thousand times across the bloody history of the north. Followers flocked to this fledgling warlord, won through cunning and force. He visited the ancient shrines, spattered the ritual circles with the blood of his conquests, and slowly, over the long years, Tchar took notice.
421The god of claws and feathers extended his taloned hand, and thus Arek Daemonclaw was born.
422Much was owed to the brothers, of course. He would have failed early on, had Kelmain and Lhoigor not seen that burning ember of potential. Their counsel secured his victories. Their warnings saved his armies. Their formidable power parted oceans in the depths of the Wastes that his forces might cross unhindered, and their prophetic gifts interpreted the Changer’s shifting whims. All for Daemonclaw. All in the name of an Empire in ruins.
423The warlord was theirs. They owned this creature.
424And now, on the eve of a city’s destruction, on the very precipice of his army’s first victory, their pet was showing... resentment.
425Rebellion, even.
426The warlord railed against their warnings. ‘Cross the Lynsk in winter,’ the brothers counselled. ‘Your warriors are no stranger to marching through the snows.’
427Oh, how he had flown into a rage, then. He claimed that to wait was idiocy. They would not expect an invasion at the height of summer. It was the pampered lordling who spoke that day, impatient for blood.
428They did not contradict him. They did not even act against him. But the brothers began to wonder. Had they made the correct choice? Was this truly the man who would usher in the Time of Changes?
429His army was vast. It was a patchwork coalition of tribes and warbands, over a hundred thousand damned souls hungry to tear down a city’s walls. It spoke of the power that Daemonclaw wielded that a champion of the Changer could win over servants of other, rival powers.
430It seemed right. It seemed like this was... it.
431Summer was a poor season to begin this war. The Empire and its ancestral dwarfish allies could respond hastily without the snows stunting their movements. That was something that could not be allowed to happen. That was why the brothers awakened Skjalandir, to cripple the Slayer Keep, denying the Empire reinforcements.
432But that plan had failed. And now this Slayer had been revealed to them. What next, then? What did he represent?
433It was prudent, the brothers decided, to be adaptable. Fluid. History would be made here.
434They doubted Daemonclaw would be the one writing it.
435The warlord was afraid.
436To his credit, he was a master of veiling his deeper emotions. A trait that Kelmain could respect, even if he wasn’t fooled.
437Arek Daemonclaw was a titan. He moved with physical arrogance and a striding gait, unhindered by the blessed plate armour that had painfully fused to his living flesh.
438The brothers had inscribed the runes adorning it personally, a glowing screed of warding text – fire’s harsh illumination against the black of iron plate – deflecting harm back at anyone dimwitted enough to confront him. Even as he strode into their tent, demanding they offer him a vision, he was almost unkillable by virtue of their efforts.
439Daemonclaw reached down, his armour creaking softly, to move the pieces of the chessboard. It ended the game in a victory for the white player.
440The brothers glanced up at him, identical, vicious smiles written across their pale faces.
441‘Why do you always do that?’ Khelmain asked.
442‘I fail to understand why you play each other at all.’ The warlord’s voice was a rumble of petulant syllables. It teased through the visor of his expressionless war helm.
443‘One day we hope to establish which of us is the better player,’ came Lhoigor’s answer.
444My, his feathers are ruffled. I wonder what ails him.
445Perhaps he has seen a certain Slayer sally forth from the walls, no? The voiceless communication was ripe with amusement. Their smiles widened.
446‘How many games have you played now?
447‘Close on ten thousand.’
448‘What is the score?’
449‘Kelmain’s victory, which you foresaw, puts him one ahead.’
450There was a pause. The warlord looked off into the darkness of the tent, his sapphire eyes glancing over the scattered miscellanea that made up the brothers’ worldly possessions. Outside, the walls of Praag held against a massed charge of beastmen. Their braying death agonies drifted into the tent.
451Breath of the Changer, he chafes at confessing his fears. This is glorious.
452‘You did not come here to discuss our chess playing, fascinating as it doubtless is,’ Lhoigor prompted.
453‘What do you require of us?’
454‘What I always do: information, prophecy, knowledge.’
455‘Tchar has granted us a great deal of the latter,’ Lhoigor sighed with mock wistfulness.
456‘Sometimes too much, I think,’ Kelmain observed.
457After several hesitant moments, the warlord shook his armoured head, and ploughed into what Kelmain and Lhoigor had already known for several weeks.
458Daemonclaw did indeed glimpse the Slayer.
459The dwarf was a machine. A murderous engine.
460How he came to be in Praag, the brothers didn’t know, but that was an irrelevance. The city was a convergence of a hundred thousand fates. Tchar had placed the son of Grimnir here for some bleak purpose. Almost certainly to thwart Daemonclaw.
461The warlord explained that the Slayer had emerged from the city walls like wrath’s very avatar. He was like a force of nature. Every movement caused something to die. Stinking, bestial corpses were piled high by the time the Slayer withdrew.
462It was, the warlord explained, his weapon that caused him a moment’s... unease. A trifling matter. A point of simple curiosity.
463‘Your forebodings are doubtless justified,’ Kelmain’s tone was sage. Patient.
464‘Sometimes Lord Tchar chooses to send warnings in just this manner.’
465Oh, he does indeed.
466‘I require more information than this,’ the warlord growled. The sound was a deep thrum of aggression. He wasn’t blind to the brothers’ amusement.
467‘Of course.’
468‘You wish to learn more of this axe and its bearer.’
469‘Naturally.’
470‘You wish us to invoke the name of the Changer and ask him to grant you the boon of a vision.’
471The brothers moved in synchronicity, the temperature dropping with the gathering of sorcerous energies. Daemonclaw took a step back, his plated boot clunking loudly against a tent pole dug into the earth. He envied and feared what they were capable of.
472The boon of a vision indeed, Arek. I pray you find this to your taste, my lord.
473‘Look, my lord. Let the Changer reveal all things.’
474And reveal, he did.
475A dwarf at the forge.
476The blow of a hammer against heated starmetal throws up a flare of eye-aching sparks.
477The anvil is a work of ancient genius. Dwarf artisanry cages and tames the winds of magic, imbuing it with the qualities that the runesmith requires. An axe takes shape on the iron surface, the metal hammered into a lethal smile.
478The weight of ancient prehistory is a musky scent in the air, mingling with the dwarf’s sour sweat. He hammers, and hammers, and hammers, until...
479A battle.
480A dwarf ripples with spiralling tattoos, the play of ink over iron-hard muscles giving them motion of their own. The blood that spatters him is foul and black, the stink of it overpowering every other sense.
481He bears an axe. The axe, alongside its twin, gripped in clenched fists. He wields them like he was born for this. As if this is his very purpose.
482The first great incursion, the warlord hears Kelmain’s whispered voice.
483At the very beginning, Lhoigor affirms. There is awe in their voices. Longing.
484The dwarf is a leader of armies. The numbers... the scale... The warlord has seen nothing like this before. Soldiers without end. Violence without restraint. The sky roils in apocalyptic motion, and a million souls wage war for a world that is already doomed.
485The warlord sees the dwarf’s insane decision. He sees him marching off into the heaving north, to deny the hordes their prize of his beloved mountains.
486He sees the axe, cast away, before he strides into his final battle.
487The axe is found.
488Karag Dum. The lost northern hold. The vision shows walls unblackened by time’s ravages, and towers manned by bearded warriors. They fight for their souls.
489The Wastes are young here, but the malignant energies expand their cancerous influence. Daemons walk the earth freely, and hurl themselves at the stone fortifications. The defenders are beleaguered. Flagging. Morale is nothing more than a grim need for survival.
490The axe’s new wielder performs a single act of stunning bravery. A bloodthirster, the very avatar of the Blood God’s wrathful purpose, perishes, defenceless against the baneful runes hammered onto the weapon’s surface. Its demise is a shower of boiling blood. The wielder dies in scalding agony, never having the chance to savour his victory.
491Another scoops the weapon from the ground. An oath forms on his lips, to bring vengeance to the great enemy that threatens to swallow up the world.
492He leaves Karag Dum in glory, and dies in failure.
493A convoy.
494Wagons. Armoured in steel plates.
495An expedition, Lhoigor breathes. To find lost Karag Dum.
496Futile, of course.
497Over weeks, the procession trails through the Wastes, each wagon gradually falling to misfortune and destruction. One remains, set upon by braying monstrosities, and the passengers emerge to defend the stricken vehicle.
498Decades into the future, a warlord in a tent outside a burning city takes a sharp breath.
499It’s him, Kelmain observes. The humour in his tone is malicious, serrated like a blade.
500The Slayer, Lhoigor says. Gotrek Gurnisson.
501The dwarfs abandon their ruined wagon, the expedition a failure. The Wastes does its vile work. The three survivors are separated, and Gurnisson trudges on alone. To see him in this way, as this diminished warrior bereft of the trappings of a Slayer is astounding. He looks so unremarkable, so... tame.
502And then, he finds the axe.
503The cave is inhabited by a creature. It lairs here, dragging back its kills, smearing the walls with its filth. Gurnisson needs the shelter. He starts a fight he can’t win.
504The axe is hoarded at the back of the cave, amid a pile of bones and a handful of rusting trinkets the creature considers precious. In desperation, Gurnisson takes up the blade.
505The moment his fingers brush against the weapon’s handle, the warlord feels the brothers spasm. It’s a moment that’s so rare that it feels as if the stars are in some unheard of, auspicious alignment. Fate’s threads stretch taut. Some even snap.
506Gurnisson lived through that night. He even made it...
507…home.
508A valley. Picturesque. Serene.
509Gurnisson is already changed. Dwarfs are thick, compact creatures. His musculature is swollen beyond what passes for normality. And his nature, too, is not the same. The dwarf’s soul has become a darker thing.
510The axe changes the wielder, brother. He has grown.
511Home, however, is not as he left it. He walks among a village of blackened structures and ravaged bodies. He pauses over a female with an infant clutched in her bloodied hands.
512Gurnisson bows his head. In the ashes of his broken life, he weeps.
513Vengeance.
514Gurnisson snarls a violent promise in the hall of a dwarf lord.
515The enthroned noble watches with a highborn’s sneering dispassion. The words they exchange are heated, laced with a mutual dislike. There is some unresolved history here, a past slight that stokes anger’s flame.
516With a lazy gesture of one broad hand, the noble orders Gurnisson’s death, and thus secures his own.
517It’s a charnel scene. The lord’s chamber, richly appointed in rare gold and the elaborate tapestries of a ruling clan, becomes a gory mess of broken bodies and spattered blood.
518When Gurnisson shaves his head, he takes his time. With a blade taken from the slain lord’s belt, he cuts away his hair, leaving the stubbly crest that signifies a dwarf undertaking the Slayer Oath.
519He leaves that chamber in the throes of shame, and begins a ceaseless hunt for his own doom.
520Altdorf.
521Accursed Imperial capital. Birthplace of the pretender-god Sigmar Heldenhammer.
522The tavern is the usual squalid dive so common in all Imperial cities. Whoring and drinking, pissing and retching, the sweating mass of humanity squanders what few copper coins they have to forget about the harshness of their lives.
523Gurnisson is here. And another. A human.
524That... fool... slew Skjalandir. It was him.
525They are drunk, and locked in intense conversation. The bonds formed during heavy drinking often endure the longest, but the human utters perhaps the stupidest words he will ever speak.
526He slurs an oath. To a dwarf.
527An oath.
528The warlord dies.
529Praag burns. Flame consumes the outer districts, and the raucous chanting of the conquering invaders is a deep chorus in the ruined streets and alleys.
530The sky is red. Literally, the very clouds are the deep crimson of arterial blood. Sorcery charges the air as the enchantments woven into the city’s broken walls bleed freely into the blighted skies. Everything smells of smoke and fire, blood and dying, looting and murder.
531Creatures that should not be wander the streets, feasting on the dead. They behold the world with beady scavenger eyes, avoiding anyone who comes close, and tearing out the throats of the mortally wounded.
532Praag burns, and yet the warlord dies.
533His life ends in a flurry of violence, surrounded by the heaving press of his own warriors. Gurnisson – the Slayer, the axe wielder – roars like a Lustrian carnosaur. The blade he fears, the weapon that is fated to end his life, is a blazing beacon of hatred for the warlord’s kind. It exults in the pain it is about to inflict. It howls its contempt for the Great Powers.
534His armour is breached, the enchantments of his slave-sorcerers burned out and useless. He feels his own blood snaking down the inside of the damaged plate in hot trickles.
535It flashes down in a blur of hot starmetal – gromril, the dwarfs name the rare and precious metal – and severs the warlord’s head from his shoulders.
536A hush falls over the–
537–stop this end this Kelmain Lhoigor I have seen en–
538–warlord’s forces. They pause in their destruction, uncertainty replacing the buzz of malicious celebration. Gurnisson’s human companion stoops to collect the warlord’s head, and holds it aloft so that they can all see.
539‘Your warlord is dead!’ he shouts, his teeth bared in angry triumph. ‘Your warlord is dead!’
540He nearly lost his balance.
541Stunned, he held out a plated hand to steady his bulky form. His breathing came in ragged gasps, his warped throat turning the sound into a panted growl.
542‘Your visions,’ he said, when his pulse had slowed, ‘have done nothing to reassure me.’
543The brothers watched with the warmth of a glacier. Their smiles were hungry. They scented the warlord’s weakness.
544He will tell us to kill the dwarf, brother. He will think that he can stop this.
545That he will, Lhoigor.
546How best to handle it?
547The way we always handle him. Humour him. Let him believe he is in control. He has scented his own demise. He will only grow more fearful as the hour draws closer.
548This war, this city... It was all for naught?
549No. Think of what will transpire. We have engineered the slaughter of thousands. This blow is not grievous enough to lay Kislev low entirely, but Praag will take years to rebuild. This army will scatter, but we will endure. And there are other, worthier warlords.
550True enough, brother. True enough.
551They gave Daemonclaw their assurances that such a fate could be avoided, and that death was just a mere possibility. They wove their lies with guiltless ease, and he calmed.
552‘See to it the dwarf and his human henchman die. See that the axe is lost and not found again soon.’
553‘We shall do our best,’ Kelmain lied with a smile.
554‘If the vision truly came from Tchar, it would be blasphemy to try and interfere with the destiny he plans for you.’ Lhoigor couldn’t help himself.
555‘Nonetheless, do it.’
556‘As you wish.’
557They glanced at each other as he left, the black and white pieces of the chessboard sliding back into their starting positions.
558Delicious.
559IV
560
561The vision had not shown the actual truth. Not entirely.
562After all, Arek’s decapitation was not as clean as he had been shown. Not at all as clean.
563Dwarfs are often compared to their human allies and neighbours. Popular Imperial literature describes them as ‘short but stout’, always measuring them by human standards. The frowning, bearded little lords of the Worlds Edge Mountains; useful to have at your side in a fight, valuing a promise, and taking their quaint oaths very seriously.
564Humans could be very stupid, sometimes.
565To accuse a dwarf of having a dour nature is to misunderstand dawi psychology completely. It disregards an ancient culture’s pathological obsession with every slight, every injustice, every loss it has ever endured. Every month, another hold has to be scourged of verminkin. Every week, a new greenskin warleader trumpets his dominance by lining the mountain roads with fresh trophy pikes.
566To mock the importance they place in keeping oaths and fulfilling promises is to devalue a society that has endured since civilisation’s bloody dawn. To break a promise, to spit on an oath, is to throw brotherhood in their faces. It’s the fulcrum upon which their society spins. It is all they have.
567Every dwarf knows this. And they also know that the limits of their anger far exceed what humans have the capacity to comprehend.
568He put every remembered grudge into the blow. He summoned every shred of frothing, black rage into the strike that felled Daemonclaw and ended the razing of Praag. And yet, despite all these things, the axe forged in antiquity by an ancestor-god only partially severed his head.
569He grunted a Khazalid curse, blood and spit spraying from his lips. With a broad, flat boot, he forced the hissing gromril to bite deeper, as if he was breaking ground with a shovel. In the space between armoured pauldron and full-face war helm, black, polluted blood squirted from the wound in time with the dying warlord’s failing heartbeat.
570The head came free with the wrench of tearing sinew, and his armoured body crashed to the ground.
571What happened next, the vision had represented with chilling accuracy.
572‘Your warlord is dead!’ cried Felix Jaeger. ‘Your warlord is dead!’
573The brothers did not even spare a moment’s attention as their puppet died.
574They, of course, had abandoned him. Outside the walls, they had listened politely to the demands of Daemonclaw’s heralds to stop the spread of fires within the city. The army had to winter here, after all. Smoking ruins offered little shelter.
575Lhoigor had declined in a sorrowful, regretful tone, and with a gesture, their armour became molten slag.
576‘Now that Arek’s farce is concluded, have we a plan?’
577Kelmain’s rebuke had none of its usual venom. He was almost kindly, as if talking to a dim child.
578Of course we do, Lhoigor. We start again.
579‘Oh?’
580Kelmain gave a shrill laugh. Around them, the brothers’ cabal of lowly acolytes and half-hearted disciples listened with their shaven heads bowed in deference. No one commented on the apparent one-sidedness of the conversation.
581As this gaping wound in Kislev scabs over, all we must do is guide another soul along the paths Arek took. Except this time, we shall be careful to study his worthiness more closely, no? We should choose a man who thinks slightly less of himself than this fool did.
582Lhoigor dipped his bald head in concession of his brother’s wisdom. ‘If this is the case, I thought perhaps we could alter our route to include the mountains? I would very much like to examine Skjalandir’s carcass.’
583Kelmain’s answer was spoken aloud so the acolytes could hear his words.
584‘We travel by swifter means, my brother.’ He showed them his needle-teeth in what looked more like a threat-display than a grin. ‘Would you die for us? We are in a hurry.’
585In silent, wordless loyalty, they cut their own throats to power the brothers’ spell. With a thick bang of displaced air, they left the stink of a burning city behind them, and the fleeing hordes that had already begun to fight amongst themselves.
586V
587
588‘We saw,’ Kelmain repeated, almost choking the words from his parched throat, ‘the Slayer.’
589Lhoigor shivered. The images were scars in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t banish what the vision had shown. His blinking was rapid.
590‘Is he following us?’
591Lhoigor...
592‘He must have followed us from Praag, Kelmain. You saw what he is capable of.’
593If one more fearful muttering passes your lips, I swear by the blood of the Changer I will kill you myself.
594Kelmain’s chest rose and fell in anger, as well as fear of his own. Something was wrong. The quality of the vision had been too... violent. Too vivid. Even more than the premonitions they usually endured. And the weakness was passing too slowly.
595Tchar’s holy breath, his skull ached.
596As he rose to his feet, the trembling of his knees shocked him. With a golden-clawed fist gripping his staff for support, he limped a few steps to encourage circulation. Lhoigor remained where he was, biting his silver claws in fretful thought.
597At last, Kelmain sighed. ‘You realise this is an opportunity.’ He used his ravaged flesh-voice. Lhoigor always responded better this way.
598‘How so?’ His brother didn’t even look up.
599‘Recall the vision.’
600‘I... don’t want to, brother.’
601‘Lhoigor. Recall the vision. Describe what we saw.’
602The silver-clawed sorcerer took a shuddering breath. Kelmain shook his head in wonderment. It was true that the two almost shared souls, that was how fundamental their bond was, but some things remained hidden from each other. Lhoigor never realised that he possessed a fractional superiority in raw talent, where Kelmain refined his own abilities with tight, masterful control.
603‘He was walking through the Wastes. He seemed possessed by anger.’
604‘No. That isn’t what we saw. Clear your head. This is vital. Recall the vision accurately, Lhoigor. Don’t be afraid.’
605As calm settled over the tension of the silver-clawed brother’s shoulders, he began to talk.
606Not walking.
607Staggering. The Slayer is staggering.
608His boots scuff the ashen earth of the Wastes, footsteps trailing behind him for countless leagues. Gurnisson can barely stand. He cackles a madman’s laugh, as if this wretched state of being holds some private hilarity.
609The bleakness of cold sunlight catches on his golden armbands. The priceless metal is worn and scratched from a journey that has surely taken months. Every hour of that trek shows. New scars stand out as livid blemishes on pale, tattooed skin.
610His presence is somehow diminished. This isn’t the warrior who bested Daemonclaw. It seems that even the axe’s influence can’t – or perhaps won’t – sustain him. He holds the blade out in front of him, swinging drunkenly at enemies who aren’t there.
611With the one eye that remains to him, blinking and clogged with dust, he stumbles after landmarks that won’t stay still, mumbling over the sanctity of mountains, cursing the false tranquillity of open valleys.
612No anger. No wrathful pursuit of two twin sorcerers.
613Just a Slayer fated to find his doom in the north.
614‘Let’s kill him ourselves.’
615Kelmain hid a private smile. Like a child shown the foolishness of his fear, Lhoigor had certainly perked up.
616Now you are thinking like my brother again.
617They began to walk without paying attention to where they were going. It seemed an illogical thing to do, but it didn’t matter where you thought you were heading in the Chaos Wastes. It took you along its own paths, and guided you into its numerous pitfalls.
618I am sorry, brother, Lhoigor said for the second time that day. That vision was so strong. I was not myself when I came to.
619In truth, neither was I, Kelmain confessed, his reluctance to admit this obvious in the hesitance of his thoughts. Normally my wits convalesce swiftly. Not today.
620Does it give you pause? The strangeness of it?
621Kelmain shrugged his spindly shoulders. We stand on the precipice of the gods’ realm. We should be surprised that vague abnormality was all we experienced, no?
622It is possible that the vision isn’t accurate. Lhoigor was voicing a concern neither really wanted to face up to. Perhaps something interfered, poisoning our perceptions with false visions.
623Kelmain took a long, impatient breath. If that is the case, then we will deal with it as it comes. The possibility of destroying this Gurnisson, perhaps bending his weapon to our purposes, is too great an opportunity to pass over. He added, You darken my thoughts.
624The journey continued in silence, not even with their voiceless communication. Each brother kept his own counsel, perhaps wondering which of fate’s threads would snap with the Slayer gone.
625Or perhaps they simply pondered how they would murder him.
626He was almost dead. It quite removed the fun from the situation.
627He was far gaunter than the vision showed. His bones were visible on account of the severe wasting of his muscles, the bumpy curvature of his ribcage hiking with each spluttered breath. He couldn’t even stand up.
628He cradled his axe on the ground underneath him, as if sheltering it from predators. And the bands decorating his arms seemed too dull to be true gold. Curious.
629The brothers stalked around him, as lean as vultures, bent over in their predatory intent.
630‘You are ours, Slayer,’ Kelmain teased, the words close to a sneer. ‘Finally, this is the doom that has eluded you these past decades.’
631Despite the taunt, neither brother actually moved any closer. The dwarf was dying, but he was still dangerous. Obscured under his bulk, that axe waited.
632‘Do I congratulate you, dwarf? In your dim, oafish mind, is this a victory for you?’ Lhoigor sniped. ‘What a life it must be, to have death as your foremost ambition.’
633The brothers tittered like hyenas, and the Slayer glanced up at them.
634With two eyes.
635Both gleamed with madness, even if one was milky with blindness.
636‘He should possess only one eye...’ Kelmain began. The thought was finished as the dwarf heaved himself to his feet, brandishing his lethal weapon with the skill and strength of an infant.
637‘It is not him,’ Lhoigor breathed. ‘This is not Gotrek Gurnisson.’
638They burned him alive.
639When he rushed at them in one final, doomed burst of suicidal violence, his weapon swinging in weak arcs, as worthless as the blade itself.
640Realising they had been fooled, cursing whatever entity had fouled their gift, they annihilated the dwarf’s body with acid fire, and watched the emerald flame consume his wasted flesh. His dyed beard and crest went up first, in a spectacular moment of illumination. Then his inked flesh split open under the heat, spattering his boiling blood across the dust.
641‘Brother,’ Lhoigor said, after a long time of watching the flames. The blackened husk was a wretched shape, the impression of limbs extended in a plea for deliverance. ‘We should go, now.’
642Let me linger a while longer, Lhoigor. Let me scent his scorched bones for just a few more moments. I will have at least that satisfaction. He growled. I dislike being fooled.
643‘It is over now. He is dead, and the spirit who engineered this has had its fun.’
644Kelmain didn’t seem to be listening.
645‘Brother? Can you still your temper, just for this small while?’
646Lhoigor... come here. Look at this.
647A golden claw pointed at the dwarf’s burned husk, where blood had scabbed into the dust.
648‘What?’
649Kelmain sunk to his haunches, staring intently at where the blood had fallen the thickest. Do you recognise this shape?
650‘I am not sure. It could be anything.’
651You have studied more maps than I. I think I have seen this shape before.
652Even as they watched, something stirred in the aethyric winds. The scabbed blood reverted to its liquid state, and began to flow of its own volition into a sticky, sanguine pool.
653‘Yes,’ Lhoigor was breathless. Excited. ‘Yes, I do know this shape. It even mimics the contours of mountains.’
654They locked eyes. Two pairs of crimson orbs widened as they felt the warp and weft of their fates shifting, stretching.
655‘Albion.’
656Two brothers left a charred corpse in the dust.
657They left side by side, striding with a dark purpose, animated with the exultant rightness of the task that lay before them. The sanguine omen had pointed them to that mist-wreathed isle. As portents went, it was a rather unsubtle thing, but in their eagerness, they gave it little thought.
658They gave the Slayer’s blackened husk not even a second glance. It rocked in a gentle wind, the ash that had once been its living flesh flaking off in drifting falls.
659And then it sat up.
660The crunch of breaking charcoal was like hearing a twig snap in the forest. The head, little more than a featureless stump of blackened flesh, beheld the world without eyes, and scented the wind without a snout.
661It rose spasmodically to its feet, flakes of burned matter raining down from its body. The impression of a mouth – sharp and pointed like a beak – thrust through the brittle shell that formed the husk-thing’s face.
662It cawed long and loud, a sound rich with good humour.
663When it spoke, the husk-thing had several voices at once.
664‘Albion,’ came Daemonclaw’s reverberative drawl, underlaid by Gotrek Gurnisson’s gruff, grunting tones. The mockery was obvious. ‘Breath of the Changer. It’s Albion.’
665It pointed its beak skywards to caw its cackling laughter to the skies again, and opened its yellow, avian eyes.
666‘And what waits for you there, little brothers?’ The bird-husk spoke in Felix’s Jaeger’s smooth, cultured voice, while Ulrika Magdova echoed him in perfect harmony. ‘What waits, indeed?’
667The bird-husk’s back exploded into vibrant motion. Feathered wings, the blue of calmer skies, ruffled in the wind as more and more of its blackened shell began to fall away.
668‘Oh, I hope we have made the right decision,’ the daemon croaked, in the hoarse tones of Kelmain and Lhoigor. ‘I hope the spirit who engineered this has had its fun.’
669
670THE TILEAN’S TALISMAN
671David Guymer
672
673From now on, Siskritt intended to do as he was told. No more, no less. He cowered beneath the table as the slaughter raged around him. Trembling, he risked a peek through the cage of his own claws. The room resembled the aftermath of a stampede: tables and chairs had been smashed to kindling and the floor rushes were thick with the blood of countless corpses, both skaven and man-thing.
674Heedless of the carpet of carrion, the melee swirled on through the same dense smoke that seared Siskritt’s snout. The roar of warpfire flooded his ears as the tavern’s frontage burned, fingers of green-black flame licking hungrily at the beamed ceiling, casting the whole orgy of bloodshed in an unearthly glare and exciting his whiskers with the tang of warpstone.
675A sudden crash above his head made him jump and he bit down hard on the pommel stone of his shiny new sword to keep from yelping out loud in terror. A dirty, gold-furred arm fell across his view, the battered wooden shield it bore sliding free and rolling to a halt at his feet. The Horned One’s sigil stared into him. Silently, he screamed into the precious stone. It was a sign. He was going to die here.
676Unconsciously, his paw moved to the talisman around his neck.
677It had been worth it, whatever happened. The talisman belonged to him now. It would protect him. The horrors of the room seemed to fade as the talisman’s magic seeped through his fur and flesh, flowing lazily up his arms and filling his mind with calm thoughts. He closed his eyes and could almost hear its whispering voice, reassuring him, encouraging him.
678He pulled the sword from his mouth and regarded the gleaming blade. This was ridiculous, now that he thought about it. It was just one dwarf.
679Siskritt snarled, shaking his head as the moment passed. This was not just any dwarf: it was like a warpstone-powered engine of death.
680The dwarf tore its axe from the belly of another skaven, its momentum carrying it through a low spin to take the legs from the next. An iron-shod boot across the struggling warrior’s windpipe put an end to his suffering.
681Siskritt watched as the dwarf took advantage of the momentary lull to wipe skaven blood from its good eye.
682In the far corner of the tavern, the few surviving man-things still hung on. Backs to the wall and side-by-side, they fought a losing battle against the endless tide.
683The dwarf hefted its axe with a sneer. It opened its mouth to speak and, though Siskritt could not make out every word, its joyful belligerence was plain to see. It hurled challenges at the swarming clanrats, cursing their cowardice as the axe bit deeply into their wiry bodies. In a furious panic, skaven warriors turned swords and teeth upon one another, but there was nowhere left to run. With a final roar of laughter, the dwarf barrelled forwards, tossing the survivors aside like grass. It burst through the press of furred bodies, bellowing a war cry as it swung its axe for a warrior that knelt across a prone man-thing on the rush-covered floor.
684The skaven sprayed the struggling man-thing’s grimy red cloak with fear-musk and hurriedly raised his blade in defence, but the dwarf’s axe clove the rusted weapon in two like rotten matchwood. The tip skittered off into the darkness as the rune-encrusted axe buried itself in the skaven’s skull.
685The man-thing heaved the dead skaven away and clambered upright, suddenly wracked by a fit of coughing as it drew in a lungful of the acrid smoke. Siskritt could not clearly see its face through the haze, but the man-thing was tall, and its armour writhed with green shapes reflected from the spreading warpfire. He recognised it as the dwarf-thing’s companion, Feelicks. The man-thing gabbled something in Reikspiel, but the dwarf merely laughed as it sent another warrior flying with a swipe of its bare fist.
686It spoke slowly, in the usual manner of the dwarfs, but Siskritt still struggled to puzzle out their conversation. He cursed bitterly as the exchange passed over his head.
687A shrill note from the doorway grabbed the man-thing’s attention as a fresh wave of skaven warriors spilled through the blazing portal. Charging ahead of the rest, a wicked halberd held high in both paws, was a massive, black-furred brute in armour the colour of malachite, a challenge shrieking from his throat.
688The dwarf grinned. Its man-thing friend sagged.
689Siskritt leapt from his hiding place, sword in paw. He was saved. Nobody was stronger than Krizzak. He rushed to join the battle, already picturing how the grateful chieftain would reward his bravery.
690The dwarf lumbered forwards to meet Krizzak’s mighty charge, swinging its axe in a killing arc. At the last instant the giant skaven checked his run and the axe instead tore out the ribcage from one of his more slow-witted brethren. Taking advantage of the mis-strike, Krizzak threw his weight against the dwarf, pinning its weapon and burying his teeth into its neck.
691The dwarf bellowed like an enraged bull, and with a strength that defied reason, it ripped the skaven’s jaws clear with its free hand. The dwarf compressed its grip around the huge skaven’s throat, and Krizzak thrashed and squealed – a pathetic, mewling sound that seemed unreal coming from the jaws of the giant warrior – and sank his claws deeply into the dwarf’s bicep. Blood ran freely down the dwarf’s arm, but its hold didn’t loosen. Instead, the dwarf roared and hauled down hard, smashing the skaven’s snout with a brutal headbutt, splattering its own tattooed hide with its foe’s blood and sputum. Krizzak staggered back a pace, shaking his head to clear it before the dwarf’s axe parted it from his shoulders.
692Too late, Siskritt realised he was alone, and face-to-face with a monstrosity: the vivid orange mohawk, the skaven gore smeared across the fearsome patterns on its brutish face, the axe wielded with unnatural strength that dripped with the still-warm blood of his kin. He sprayed himself with fear scent.
693A faint tinkling skirted the boundaries of his perception, vaguely registering as the sound of his sword clattering to the floor from his trembling fingers.
694He was thrown back into his senses by a body bowling into him. He looked up into a familiar face twisted with fear.
695‘Crassik?’ he squeaked in surprise. With no time for any further thought, he spun his litter-brother around and shoved him into the dwarf’s path. ‘Fight, Crassik-brother. Kill-kill!’
696Whirling away, Siskritt dashed for freedom. He had only to make it to the cellar and from there he could easily lose the dwarf in the tunnels. The cellar, he thought with black despair, why had he not just stayed down in that cellar?
697Siskritt stumbled through the shattered furniture away from the rampaging dwarf. Frantically he threw his gaze left and right but could see nothing through the smoke. He forced himself to be calm. Yes! The cellar was to his right; even through the fire he could detect the rancid ale smell. He dashed in that direction, vaulting the bar, only to blunder straight into the man-thing Feelicks. This time he saw its frightful face, blackened with ash and its pale hair pasted to the skin with spatters of blood.
698Only their mutual surprise spared Siskritt’s life.
699His paws twitched instinctively for his weapon, but too late he recalled how he had dropped it. The man-thing’s eyes widened, and it raised its sword above its head for the killing blow.
700Siskritt scrunched his eyes tight and waited for death.
701The talisman vibrated on its chain, a muffled bell tolling inside his skull, and for an instant he was enveloped by an incandescent shield of light. The man-thing cried out in alarm as the sword was wrenched from its grip and fired into the ceiling like a missile from a bolt thrower.
702Hesitantly, expecting his head to split like a cracked nut if he moved too hastily, Siskritt opened one eye. The man-thing’s sword was buried to the hilt in the rough wooden beams, the owner’s knuckles whitening around the grip as its feet kicked ineffectually at the empty air, trying to turn its own weight and straining muscles to tug the weapon free.
703Siskritt tittered and scooped up a fallen blade. It wasn’t his nice new one, but there’d be other swords. The man-thing dropped to the floor empty-handed and spun into a fighting crouch in front of him, raising its fists as he approached. Siskritt rejoiced. Just one unarmed man-thing and he would be free!
704Suddenly the man-thing relaxed, a smile splitting its ugly face. Siskritt’s nose twitched at this puzzling behaviour, but the heavy footsteps behind him sent cold dread marching up his spine, scattering all thoughts of the man-thing in its wake.
705He spun on his heel as the dwarf approached.
706The fighting was over. His kin were all gone and the tavern was a dead place. The only sounds that remained were the crackling of the wooden structure as it was consumed by warpfire, the heaving breaths of the man-thing, and the footfalls of the dwarf that seemed to echo the frantic hammering of his own heart.
707‘You!’ he hissed in broken Reikspiel. ‘How you still live-breathe?’
708The dwarf raised its axe. ‘Because nothing has killed me yet.’
709Siskritt snarled. His talisman would spare him. He lived with the Horned One’s blessing. He sprang forwards, ducking under the dwarf’s swing to stab at its belly. The dwarf swatted aside the flat of his blade on its wrist and, with a deftness of foot that would not have been misplaced on an Eshin assassin, shifted its balance to bring the axe backhanded between Siskritt’s shoulder blades.
710As it had before, the talisman flared into life. It caught the axe in mid-swing.
711The dwarf roared as the talisman held its weapon in a supernatural grip, the axe’s runes glowing hot as it burrowed into the flickering barrier. The talisman’s song became a scream, filling Siskritt’s ears with pain. Just as he felt he could endure no more, the light fled before the dwarf’s axe, drawing back into the talisman and leaving him deafened and in darkness. He stared at it in disbelief as the dwarf’s axe punched into his spine.
712His sword slithered free from nerveless paws and he sank to his knees, crumpling over onto his side. His face struck the floor but he barely felt it, his nose filling with the scent of blood, wood dust and mouldering straw.
713The talisman lay before him, amidst the corpses, as far away as its chain would allow, almost as though it were trying to escape him. Siskritt tried to stretch out a paw to reclaim it but his arms no longer obeyed. Sound and colour bled from his world as his vision closed in around the talisman.
714Why had it left him? Why could he no longer hear its whispering voice? Why had it betrayed its new master at the moment of his greatest need?
715It was the last thing he saw as the darkness claimed him.
716Siskritt watched his litter-brother work as the blood ran in tiny rivulets between the flagstones, relishing the fleeting warmth as it moved languidly between his toes. Drawing his sword, he padded over to where the dead man-thing lay, the notched and rusted weapon reflecting nothing of the cellar’s dim torchlight.
717He prodded the corpse with the blunted tip of his blade. ‘Fool! Can’t you see, is not the one!’
718Crassik sniffed. ‘You sure, Siskritt-brother? Man-things look all same-same to me.’
719Siskritt snarled, treasured notions of skaven supremacy offended by his litter-brother’s slack-jawed idiocy. ‘This one doesn’t have it. Is just a child-thing. Look how small it is! And is too pale. The man-things of Tilea have darker hides. You spend more time watching man-things back home, then you not be so stupid-slow.’
720He sighed. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that their target should fall so invitingly into their lap; Siskritt had never been overly burdened with the Horned One’s favour.
721Vaguely, he realised his litter-brother was still speaking.
722‘We must be going-gone. Lesskreep kill-feed for rats if missed.’
723‘Fool!’ Siskritt resisted the impulse to lash out. Crassik was nearly twice his size, and not too beholden to his litter-brother’s wits to administer a beating of his own. ‘None will miss us. Who will miss two from so many? None. None will care.’
724‘But–’
725‘Graaah!’ With a cry of exasperation, Siskritt ignored his better judgement and cuffed the other skaven across the snout. ‘Sneak into man-thing town is what Lesskreep said, and sneak-sneak is what we do. If no other skaven knows this tunnel then is because they are not half so smart as Siskritt. Lesskreep will be pleased.’
726And besides, he thought, when he found this man-thing merchant, this Ambrosio Vento, and took the talisman it wore for himself, maybe he would feed Lesskreep to the rats instead…
727Siskritt chewed his weapon nervously. If any of that was going to happen, then it had to happen soon. At best, he had an hour before the attack began. When that happened, his opportunity would be lost and the Tilean’s talisman would be looted from its corpse as a pretty bauble by whoever found it first and was strong enough to keep it longest.
728And that, Siskritt acknowledged, would not be him.
729He returned his attention to the immediate problem, looking up at the ominous portal to the surface world. For so foreboding a thing it was a simple affair: plain and pale-coloured, raised about the height of a man from the floor, and accessible by a half-dozen roughly hewn stone steps. Giant barrels loomed in the shadows on either side like leering trolls as he padded silently towards the steps. A man-thing might have been given pause, but Siskritt was born to darkness.
730He pressed his muzzle to the door and listened.
731His hearing was exceptional, even by the standards of his own race. He could pick up the strains of several man-thing voices, but they were distant and his grasp of Reikspiel far too rudimentary to pick out one voice amongst so many. He stayed a moment longer, the scent of the damp wood filling his nostrils, until at last he was satisfied he could open the door in safety.
732He returned his attention to Crassik. ‘You watch-see, you watch-guard. Understand? You pay attention. I go see. Anyone comes in here you kill-kill. Be quiet.’ He gestured at the dead man-thing. ‘And no eat-eat. You pay attention. You listen for me. I call, you come run-quick. Understand?’
733Crassik said nothing, preferring to stare sullenly at his own paws. Siskritt smirked. His litter-brother didn’t want Siskritt to have the talisman for himself, but Siskritt was in charge, and Crassik far too big and stupid to help him steal it. Too bad for Crassik.
734‘Understand?’ he repeated.
735‘I watch tunnel. Come run quick-quick. I understand.’
736Siskritt took a deep, steadying breath, cracked open the door, and scuttled hesitantly into the light.
737It was blinding. And terrifying.
738With trembling paws, Siskritt clung to the door frame, reassuring himself that escape was possible at any time. Gradually, the white glare began to fade and a vision of a smoothly cut, upward sloping stone passageway came into focus. A high-pitched squeak, well beyond the range of feeble man-thing ears, escaped his lips.
739It was strange, he thought, to be so fearful of walking amongst the man-things. He had spent many nights crouched in the shadows of Sartosa, ever alert for even the most meagre of opportunities for his own advancement. But the Tilean port city was a warren of bolt holes and hiding places from years of discreet skaven exploration, and Siskritt knew every inch of it better than the scratches on his own claws. Even now, after many weeks’ absence, he could picture its close, densely shadowed alleys, filled with the detritus of a city awash with poverty and prosperity in equal measure.
740Feeling emboldened by thoughts of home, he managed to slide one foot-paw forwards. He winced slightly, half expecting his leg to be burned from his body by the unfamiliar environment. When it was not, he felt his courage return like a rising tide. He flitted along the passageway’s upward incline, moth-like, towards the second doorway, cowering beneath the open frame to peer at the man-things beyond.
741He supposed it was some kind of common room, typical the world over of all man-thing buildings of similar function, no doubt: wide, straw-covered floor; high ceiling supported by sagging beams and joists; a score of rectangular tables and short stools littering the floor space; and a long bar opposite the doorway.
742The room was near deserted. His sharp eyes counted no more than a dozen men: the old, the sick and the crippled. Their conversations were muted, and their eyes were dead inside haunted faces. Siskritt cared not for their fears.
743Upon their first arrival in the Badlands, the clan had stirred up the local orc-thing tribes who had gone on to burn a swathe through this barren corner of the Old World. It had been the grey seer’s plan and Siskritt couldn’t help but admire the old skaven’s cleverness, even though the merest thought of the grey-furred rat set loose the fear of the Horned One himself in his soul. At the cost of a few hundred clan warriors, the seer had unleashed a horde of the orcs into the man-thing territories, and even now most of those of an age to fight were somewhere out in the Badlands hoping to repel the supposed marauders. And while orc and man-thing slaughtered each other in the fields, Siskritt and his kin would rise up to claim what remained.
744Siskritt peeked out from the doorway and behind the length of the bar, pulling his head back to relative safety with all the speed of a serpent’s flickering tongue. He snarled silently, nibbling at his dulled sword blade in consternation.
745The bar was just a single stretch of plain wood with nothing at either end. It could give him a clear and concealed run across the common room, and to the stairway he had glimpsed at its opposite end. Were it not, that was, for the fat man-thing standing squarely in the way as though placed there by the Horned One himself as some wicked taunt. Siskritt bit down hard on the metal as he took another, more measured, look.
746Tasting iron on his lips, he withdrew his sword and hefted it thoughtfully. These men were on the very brink of madness after months of war against the orc-things, their soft minds ready to snap, to be sure. Catching the fat one unawares, Siskritt could kill it easily and swiftly – both things he liked – and he suspected there was a good chance that these others would not come willingly to its aid. He could be gone and away before anyone caught a glimpse of him. A good chance…
747But not good enough a chance for Siskritt. He liked to deal in certainties. Anything less left a chance for error, and when the cost of failure was so high…
748Well, what in this world could be more valuable than his own life?
749Not for the first time that day, he cursed the haste he’d been forced into. He didn’t like it. It made his fur crawl and his tail itch. Every sound and shadow sent his heart into his mouth. As if skaven lives were not already too short! He didn’t understand the rush, and that bothered him. What bothered him much more was the danger that that entailed for him. Damn that stupid grey seer, and damn Hellpaw too! Siskritt didn’t understand how someone as big and frightening as the warlord could be pushed around by anyone, even the insidious Thanquol.
750He shivered. He had met the grey seer just once, and then only briefly, for he had felt a sudden urge to be anywhere but in that infamous skaven’s presence.
751What was Thanquol after? He’d have given anything to find out. He shivered again, and changed his mind. He really didn’t want to know.
752He gnawed upon his blade to keep his fear in check and chanced another look along the bar. The fat man-thing was lost in conversation, but he could neither see to whom he was speaking nor understand the words he uttered. Nor did he much care. All he could see was a few inches of bright orange hair flaring up from behind the bar. Yet another child-thing; this place seemed infested with them.
753Riven with indecision, he hopped back and forth, one foot to the next, expelling some of the anxious energy that was bubbling up inside him. He had come too far, risked too much, to be thwarted at the last by… by a… a stupid, fat man-thing.
754His racing thoughts were disturbed by a distant scream from somewhere outside the tavern. His ears pricked up, though none of the man-things seemed to notice. As if the first had been some kind of signal, the strains of pained and frightened man-thing voices started rising from all across the town, merging together with the sound of slamming doors and of weapons being drawn. It was a cacophony that was most pleasing to Siskritt.
755At last, the noise reached the weak ears of the man-things. They raised wrinkled faces from their cups and muttered to each other fearfully. Siskritt found most of what was spoken incomprehensible, but one word stood out, a word that was common to all lands and languages of men throughout the world.
756Orcs.
757He couldn’t help but smirk. Yes man-things, he thought, turn to face the orc-thing that isn’t there, and die with a skaven sword in your back. It was at times such as this that the sheer magnificence of the skaven intellect simply demanded to be recognised.
758Muffled noises filtered through the sturdy walls of the tavern: confused shouts, screams, the pounding of running boots on cobbles, and the dull clamour of steel on steel.
759The men shuffled nervously from the doorway and towards the bar, perilously close to where Siskritt lay hidden. For a moment he feared that man-thing soldiers would come bursting in, but such fears were instantly scattered by the roar of an explosion, close enough to rattle the door in its hinges and bring clouds of dust and grime streaming from the rafters, sending the man-things into fits of coughing. He flinched momentarily, but gripped the wooden frame tightly to steel his nerve.
760The fat man-thing cursed in words Siskritt did not know, before reaching behind it to a spot on the wall that was hidden from Siskritt’s view and plucking a giant war hammer from a sconce. Siskritt gulped to see the ease with which the silver-haired man-thing hefted the massive weapon, seeing for the first time the broad shoulders and powerful muscles that had lain hidden beneath thick rolls of fat. A former adventurer settled down for retirement, no doubt. He should’ve suspected as much. In many ways life in the Badlands bore similarity to life in the clans: only the strongest could survive and thrive.
761Again, he cursed the enforced haste. If he could have had just one day to scout the tavern…
762The innkeeper strode across the room with a calm authority, its hammer glowing with an inner power. Finally the fat one neared the door, squat and suddenly forbidding as if it were a portal to the Chaos Wastes themselves. Before it could lay hands upon the handle, a voice spoke out. Its words were in slow, deliberate Reikspiel, and Siskritt could just about make them out.
763‘I wouldn’t open that door just yet, manling.’
764The speaker strode from where it had been hidden behind the bar. The enormous orange mohawk came into view like the sails of a smuggler’s ship rounding the horizon, followed by the muscular, heavily tattooed shoulders of a dwarf Slayer.
765The fat one turned to the dwarf to say something that seemed to Siskritt to be quite innocuous, but the dwarf spat back a venomous reply that was far too quick for him to follow. The man-thing dropped its eyes and raised an empty palm in surrender, and spoke again, this time more softly.
766Siskritt cursed the man-things and their pointless plethora of languages and dialects. He would gladly have traded a paw to know what it was they were saying.
767The dwarf cast the innkeeper a glance before returning his stare to the doorway. The man-thing towered above him, but the dwarf had an aura that dominated the room. Even Siskritt felt himself hanging on his next words. ‘I don’t know, manling. I’m just looking forward to killing it.’
768Siskritt snickered. Foolish dwarf-man, no orc-things for you this day.
769Taking one last look, he scurried behind the protection of the bar and dashed with silent haste to its far end. It was only a short hop from the bar to the shelter of the stairway. His ears twitched as the sounds of battle drifted closer.
770A green-black glow was streaming through the cracks in the door, accompanied by the murderous crackle of warpfire, bathing the man-things in a ghastly light. The air was practically fizzing with warpstone ash. There was a brief struggle in the street outside: shouts, screams, shrill squeaks, and metal sliding though meat. The door rattled angrily, as though something soft and heavy had just been thrown against it. The wail of a man-thing melted into a gurgle and, by its silhouette, Siskritt saw it slump against the outside of the door.
771Suddenly, it was as though a spell of quietude had been broken.
772The fat one began bellowing orders and the man-things snapped into life. Tables and chairs were dragged into a crude barricade, while those that had them readied their weapons. Siskritt picked out ridiculous names called between the man-things: Roodolf, Gunter, Holegur, Feelicks. The one named Roodolf hurried for the cellar door, fumbling with a heavy iron ring of keys.
773The sense of entrapment closed in upon him like claws around his throat. Between the rising barricade and the man-thing Roodolf, there was no way out. Panic rose in him as Roodolf drew closer and closer.
774Grah! Now or never!
775Half running, half crawling, he scrambled across the straw covered boards and behind the thin wall of stone that partitioned the stairway from the common room. He came gasping to a halt on the first step as he waited for his panicked heart to slow. Silently, he promised himself he would never ever do anything like this again.
776He glanced back around the wall just in time to watch the man-thing disappear down into the cellar. For a short moment he thought of Crassik; he would not grieve for the idiot, but the sudden feeling of isolation wormed its way through his veins. He was alone, trapped in the lair of the man-things!
777He took a deep breath, and though the air was thick with man-thing fear, he felt calmer. Crassik or no Crassik, he had always been alone. One Siskritt amidst a hundred thousand less deserving skaven. He ignored the shouts and noises of the busy man-things and returned his attention to the task in hand. The talisman was so close now he could almost feel its weight around his neck.
778The stairway was short. He counted ten bare wooden treads leading up to the building’s second level, but they were widely spaced, more suitable for the long stride of a man-thing than for Siskritt’s short legs. He leapt delicately from one step to the next, taking great care to land silently, though he doubted the sound of a creaking board would carry far above the excited chittering of a thousand clanrat warriors closing in on an easy kill.
779The upper floor was better kept than the lower. A wide, carpeted hallway stretched ahead of him, its stained and faded patterns barely visible after years of wear. To the left was an evenly spaced trio of low, recessed doorways leading to the guest rooms, each one carved with the likeness of a different fantastical beast. He could not quite discern the carvings on the further two, but the nearest door carried a rendering of a three-headed chimera, sufficiently lifelike to make him squeak out in alarm when he rounded the corner to find it six inches away and glaring into his face.
780The wall to the right was broken by several wide and intricately leaded windows, and the view beyond was one to warm the heart of any skaven.
781The city burned.
782Half of the skyline was alight, with pockets of green-tinged flame in hotspots throughout the city. Siskritt’s heart swelled at the inherent greatness of his race. Let the foolish man-things sit behind their walls and battlements. How useless they were in the face of skaven cunning. He watched as another explosion carried the roof from a nearby building, its walls bursting like overripe fruit to be consumed by the warpstone-fuelled fires.
783The flames painted the hall with an eerie green light through the windows, as though Siskritt himself swam in molten warpstone, trapped behind glass for the amusement of some half-crazed Clan Skryre warlock.
784He was dragged from his reverie by a sound from further along the hallway, and he dived through the chimera door just as a pair of armed men clattered past him and down the stairs. From the furthest doorway a voice yelled after them in the Tilean tongue that Siskritt knew well.
785‘I’m the one that pays you, you ungrateful dogs! Not this excuse for a city!’
786For a few moments, Siskritt could hear the man-thing still hanging upon the threshold as if fully expecting its minions to return.
787‘Fine then! Die together, all of you!’
788The door slammed closed and Siskritt grinned to be the beneficiary of such unlikely luck. Listening to his prey’s former bodyguards lending their efforts to the man-things below, Siskritt mouthed a silent thanks to the munificence of the Horned One.
789He spared a glance over the empty, unmade chimera room. The eldritch warplight from outside cast long shadows that flickered and danced across the walls and ceiling. Even in this state, the room smacked of human luxuries he could only imagine… But one day soon he would have all of this, and more. He squeezed his eyes tight with pleasure at the prospect. His paw closed over his chest where his talisman might soon rest. Yes, he would have all this and much more besides.
790He crept back into the hallway, reassuring himself that the Tilean’s guards were fully occupied downstairs and would not be returning any time soon. Satisfied, he moved lightly past the second guestroom – a manticore, he thought – and around a long table towards the third.
791Suddenly, a low rumble vibrated its way up through his feet. He stared out of the window in horror as the tall building across the street subsided into an evidently ill-judged skaven tunnel, burying hundreds of panicked clanrats as they swarmed clear. Broken tiles tumbled from its roof and peppered the rough stucco walls of the inn. As realisation finally dawned, Siskritt rolled under the table just as the tiles from the building’s elevated garret smashed through the windows, showering the hall with glass and heavy lengths of gritty lead that thundered against his scant cover. Rolling into a ball, he buried his face in his fur until the scraping of settling rubble and the thin cries of buried skaven told him the barrage had ceased.
792Timidly, he unblocked his ears and poked his snout from his hiding place. The sounds of slaughter came clearly now through the voided windows, the wind laced with screams and heavy with the scent of smoke and burning flesh. He took a sniff, but he could smell little beyond his own blood, welling up where a sliver of glass had lacerated the soft flesh of his nose. Squeaking alarm, he squashed his bloodied snout beneath the tattered sleeve of his tunic.
793The last wisps of courage fled his body with the blood from his precious nose and he scampered clear of the table, blind to everything but the instinct to escape. He collided headlong into a wall, collapsing tail-over-head into a heap before righting himself in a blur of blood and fur. Witless with panic, he trembled in the shadow of the wall, catching short rapid gasps of the charnel house air. Slowly, his nerve returned and he gingerly pulled his sleeve from his face. He gave his nose a tentative dab with the cleaner – relatively speaking – side and almost fainted with relief when it came away bloodless.
794He gave the cloth an experimental sniff. Blood, dirt, faeces. All of the familiar smells.
795Using the window ledge for support, he pulled himself upright, tiny slivers of glass twinkling from his fur in the fiery green glow, and peered down into what remained of the street below.
796The man-thing city was overrun. The sounds of fighting continued in more distant quarters, but here clanrat hordes flowed through the thoroughfares like high-tide in the Sartosa marina, and the only sounds to punctuate their excited chittering were the cries for mercy of the nearly dead.
797Everywhere, he could see skaven warriors spilling from open doorways carrying looted treasures and man-things: the living, the dead, and the half-consumed. The inn itself seemed to have checked their advance, a lone bulwark placed in the path of an unstoppable tide. One particularly creative skaven had fashioned a battering ram from an abandoned cart and was attempting to smash through to the last pocket of defenders within. Siskritt watched with detached disdain as the impromptu siege engine fell apart under the pressure without having made a dent in the heavy doors.
798Fools. Someone would pay for that failure. Siskritt could have done better.
799True enough, some poor unfortunate – whether the guilty party or no – had already been run through by one of his nearest compatriots, and a maddened brawl broke out before normality was restored by a high-pitched barrage of threats and bluster from a larger rat in the muddied green armour of the clan.
800As Siskritt watched this minor sideshow unfold, the excitement in the street had quite palpably turned up a notch. Scanning the crowd, he could just about discern a huge black-furred skaven arriving from a side street.
801It was Krizzak, Hellpaw’s feared lieutenant and second in command of the whole clan. He and his stormvermin elite were shoving a path through their lesser brethren, while a group of smaller figures trailed behind in his wake, clutching an unlikely array of machinery in their paws.
802Siskritt’s nose twitched.
803Lubricant… accelerant… a cocktail of chemicals he couldn’t begin to identify but had learned, through hard experience, to recognise a mile away. The delicious taint of warpstone reached his nostrils with bleak inevitability.
804Warpfire thrower!
805‘No, no, no. Now-now Siskritt, before whole wretched man-thing place comes down!’
806He turned to face the final door, carved into the features of some kind of a feathered monster. A griffon… Or possibly a cockatrice? He didn’t care. It was nothing but the final obstacle between himself and the first step on his path to greatness. His fur tingled.
807Drawing his sword, he kicked at the door with a snarl. Once. Twice.
808On the third kick the lock gave and the door burst inwards. He charged through, experiencing a bravado that came only through an immediate sense of absolute mortal terror, his blade held before him as though he had a rabid plague rat by the tail.
809At that exact moment, the side wall of the tavern was wreathed in a great gout of warpfire from the crew below. The surviving windows exploded inwards as fiery tendrils licked at the beams and plasterwork. Siskritt screeched in terror as he was hurled from his feet and into the room on billowing wings of unholy flame.
810The Tilean merchant threw itself to the floor and wailed as Siskritt descended upon it, wreathed in a halo of green-black fire. A pewter goblet it had been clutching fell from its fingers, the blood-red contents already spilled over its silken finery.
811Ignoring the stupid man-thing entirely, Siskritt hissed and snarled as he swatted out small fires in his fur and clothing, his tail spinning an intricate spider’s web of afterimages as its flickering tip lashed through the air. His wild eyes darted about the room seeking some means of escape…
812But then they settled upon the talisman.
813He caught his breath and his eyes narrowed, terror at once overcome by a fierce, jealous avarice. It was here. It would be his!
814With wisps of smoke rising from his warpfire-scorched fur, he advanced towards the snivelling man-thing, crushing the fallen goblet beneath his paws as it scrambled backwards. He was invincible. I am Siskritt, fearsome and great, scourge of the man-things, and soon-to-be favoured of the Horned Rat!
815The man-thing, who Siskritt knew was called Ambrosio, retreated until it sank into the corner, its eyes dilated with fear and its face slack with incomprehension. Siskritt had little sympathy as he closed the distance between them with short, quick steps. Despite all the evidence before their flabby noses, the man-things continued to refute the very existence of the skaven.
816A Tilean of all people, dwelling in the shadow of Skavenblight itself, should know better.
817‘W-wh… what…’ The man-thing cowered like a monkey cornered by a bird of prey. It might be better dressed than a monkey, it might be taller, but its flapping lips gabbled no less gibberish.
818‘Quiet, man-thing. Be silent-still.’
819‘Y-you speak Tilean! Are you a daemon sent to punish me?’
820Siskritt responded with a burst of chittering laughter. ‘Yes-yes. I’m a daemon of… of… man-thing gods. Give me talisman and I’ll go away-gone.’
821He held out an expectant paw. He hoped the man-thing didn’t notice how it trembled. He hoped the man-thing’s weak nose couldn’t smell his fear scent.
822The man-thing started to weep, tears scouring twin trails over its sand-worn cheeks. Ambrosio folded down to grovel at Siskritt’s feet, either uncaring or blindly unaware of the man-thing blood that was congealed there, spongy and soft like jelly.
823Siskritt cocked his head in bafflement as the man-thing began to babble a litany of supposed sins for which it was, of course, wholly repentant. The whole spectacle might have been amusing were he not so pressed for time. His back blistered in the terrible heat, and alarming groans of tortured wooden beams spread through the building. Not far below his feet, he heard the solid doors of the tavern collapse.
824There would have been no need for orders. The weight of warriors filling the street would be pushing the nearest skaven through the hanging curtain of cinders and into the inn where the frightened man-things waited. The first dozen might die in agony, stepping in molten metal, fur set alight by dancing flames. Already, the frantic screams of skaven and man-thing were echoing through the smoky corridors like the unquiet spirits of the damned. Ambrosio snivelled on the carpeted floor as the sounds of chaos and carnage grew.
825It was only through an effort of great will that Siskritt did not snivel right alongside the man-thing. He held his paw outstretched. ‘The talisman, man-thing! Hurry-Hurry.’
826‘M-my talisman? Of course. It belonged to a man I sold as a slave. Am I being punished for that sin? If I buy back his freedom, will I be allowed to live?’
827‘Yes-yes, man-thing will live! Just give talisman quick-quick or foolish man-thing die!’
828Fingers sticky with sweat, Ambrosio yanked at the chain about its neck, the links tearing at its straggly beard in its haste to see the item removed. It pressed the talisman eagerly into Siskritt’s paws as though relieving itself of a curse from the gods.
829Siskritt beamed with delight. In a way, it was.
830His gaze settled on the talisman in his paws as though pulled by a puppeteer’s strings. The chaos of battle ebbed away as the talisman held his full attention. Long seconds passed with only the sound of his own breathing and, if he closed his eyes, the faintest whispering inside his mind, congratulating him on being such a clever skaven. So much work, so much risk, so much planning, and now it was his. Lovingly, he traced his claws across its surface.
831The talisman was jet black within a latticework of platinum and a long silver chain. Even were it not magical, this pendant could doubtless have bought him his own clan. But magic it was; Siskritt could feel it. It felt unnaturally heavy in his paw given its size, and it had a presence, as though it was regarding him in return.
832He pushed the eeriness aside and popped the chain around his neck, the talisman falling to rest against his thighs.
833He felt strong. The man-thing had kept the talisman hidden beneath his silks, but Siskritt let it hang over his rags with pride. Let the others know I am a skaven to be reckoned with!
834Ambrosio sank to one knee, having seemingly travelled through the veil of madness and well beyond the other side. ‘I have served you, servant of the gods. Will you keep your promise to me? Will you permit me to live?’
835Siskritt shuffled forwards and reached down for the sword in the man-thing’s hand. The merchant released its grip willingly. Siskritt held the blade in his admiring hand. It was a long and beautiful weapon, double-edged with a cruciform hilt and tapered to a wicked point that drew blood when he laid his finger upon it. Elegant lettering traced the length of the blade from tip to hilt. He recognised the curling Arabyan script, but he could no more read it than he could this man-thing’s mind.
836It was a fine weapon indeed.
837Siskritt looked up at Ambrosio. ‘Of course I help, man-thing. You help-help, I help-help.’
838The merchant followed him out into the hallway, but it paused at the shattered windows. The wind was angry and its breath was hot with fiery green cinders, roasted meat, and blood: always the pervasive iron whisper on the tongue, of blood.
839Ambrosio was aghast. ‘What has happened here? Have I brought this terror upon them all?’
840‘Quiet now, man-thing. I say Siskritt will help you.’
841The street was largely empty, barring a few hold-outs that had successfully avoided the fighting. The whole frontage of the building was alight with warpfire, and even just standing here at the window was uncomfortably akin to being strung above some hungry giant’s fireplace.
842Silently, Siskritt crept up behind Ambrosio. Jumping up from one leg, he planted a firm kick with the other into the merchant’s back. Had it been further from the window it might not have fallen, but its clumsy feet caught on the base of the wall and tipped it over the edge, its silks flapping madly in the rising heat as it pitched forwards with an undignified yelp. The man-thing disappeared into the flames before it had even a chance to scream.
843An ominous groan from the floorboards beneath the steaming carpet sent Siskritt scurrying for the stairwell. Somehow, the fighting downstairs raged on and he could hear the booming war cry of the crazed dwarf rallying the survivors for a final stand. Siskritt drew his enchanting new weapon and waited for the right moment to join in the fray. He was injured and bloodied: no one could claim that he hadn’t been present all along.
844He fondled his talisman and grinned; a smile filled with wicked, yellowing teeth. He could almost taste the greatness that would soon be his. Lesskreep, Krazzik, Hellpaw, and yes, even Thanquol. They would all recognise his power.
845He flew down the stairs like a shadow to rejoin his victorious brethren.
846Gotrek spared his companion a glance before walking over to where the last ratman lay. He pulled his axe free from the dead creature’s spine, the blade coming loose with a wet squeal of bone and a small gout of dark blood. Almost as an afterthought, he stamped down on the pathetic creature’s little trinket, grinding the black shards into dust beneath his boot.
847He scanned the room, looking for more enemies but, disappointingly, there appeared to be none left alive.
848Felix came up behind him, hacking and wheezing in the smoke. ‘Now, may we leave? Or are you going to insist on having one more drink first?’
849Gotrek ignored him, instead clambering up onto one of the few remaining tables and grabbing the hilt of his companion’s runesword. He tugged it free from the ceiling without the slightest effort. Agape, Felix almost failed to catch the weapon as Gotrek tossed it over to him.
850‘No,’ he said finally. ‘The ale in this place tastes like orc-spit.’
851Felix raised a blood-caked eyebrow, and shrugged before starting for the cellar door. Gotrek stopped him with a raised meaty fist.
852‘Where do you think you’re going, manling?’
853‘That last ratman was headed this way, obviously there’s a way out.’
854Gotrek shook his head and laughed his deep, gruff laugh. Lumbering into a run, he drove through the flames and out into the street. The sounds of battle resumed.
855Felix sighed as he swallowed a curse. ‘A burning city filled with an army of ratmen? Of course we’re going that way.’