Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Under the runefather’s stern direction, the magmadroth slammed sideways into a band of muscle-bound barbarians that came rushing in to assault the duardin’s beachhead, flattening most before they had time to swing their axes and goring the rest on its horns. Into the ensuing carnage rode the Sepuzkul runefather, Nosda-Grimnir, on his cadaverous grey mount. The magmadroth swung its wizened, shovel head from side to side, flaming bile streaming from its maw in a ribboning inferno. With a triumphant yell, Killim hammered his rune standard home as the hearthguard ran past to secure their lords’ bridgehead.

On an explosion of rune-propelled acceleration, Dunnegar burst through their formation and straight towards a sweeping rock face.

It was a wall of ice, almost vertical, rising a hundred feet to near the orbit of the mountain’s accursed eye. The Bloodbound hurled rocks and curses. The sky hurled snow. The hearthguard split into two to go around. Dunnegar charged straight at it. His bare feet drew sparks from the frozen rock.

Blistering speed and a confidence that even he could see might be blind bore him up the incline and in amongst the bewildered Bloodbound.

The mountain disappeared. The battle was gone. There was no duardin with him but Grimnir.

He hacked and he killed, surrounded by screams he only half-heard as wounded Bloodbound were pitched over the cliff behind him to their deaths. A blood warrior in full plate dripping red ran at him under the drone of a swinging chain. Dunnegar held up his forearm and in a roared entreaty called on Grimnir’s strength. The chain wrapped around an arm that was suddenly golden-red, and blistering under the heat. A yank brought the god-touched warrior staggering into range of the headbutt that split his visor and threw him to the ground.

Dunnegar felt another rune awaken, then another.

It was glorious. It was divine.

‘Dunnegar!’

He parried a bloodreaver axe, spun his greataxe so it was horizontal to his chest and punched it forward. The long haft took out half a dozen charging warriors, buying him a second that he spent to look back the way he had come.

Blizzard aside, the clifftop vantage granted him an unimpeded view of the battle. A column of Fyreslayers four across and two-thousand long was still trouping across the rock bridge. Frothing Bloodbound launched themselves into the fray in a suicidal push to hold them there. It might have worked, but to their evident dismay the Fyreslayers were more than their equal in savagery. In that quick glance, Dunnegar saw the flashes as the Sepuzkul runesmiter turned his attentions to awakening individual Fyreslayers’ runes, mushrooming beacons of auric brilliance followed by the cannonball-like devastation wrought by empowered duardin steaming ahead of their kin. It made him ache for more of the same.

Teeth bared in punishing self-restraint, he cut down a spear-wielding barbarian that jumped in from his left. The warriors closed, sensing his weakening, his reluctance to exploit the few runes he had left. He hacked open another, kicked one to the floor with a shattered ribcage, then fell to grappling with a hugely muscled skullreaper that bulled into him from the right. Their arms knotting about one another’s, they ploughed across the ridgeline, knocking men screaming from their path.

‘Ho there, Dunnegar! Here!’

Killim. Through the tangle of limbs and snow, Dunnegar saw the smith at the foot of the bridge. He was waving furiously for Dunnegar’s attention and, seeing that he had it, immediately directed it back uphill.

Caldernorn was tackling the mountain, bounding from ledge to ledge, claws driving into sheer rock while its tail lashed bloodreavers to their deaths. This was the ur-salamander’s environment, more than all the blessings of Khorne could ever make it man’s.

And then, in an avalanche of hellishly animated brass, the Griever joined the battle.

Caldernorn was gigantic even by the standards of its kind, but the juggernaut ridden by the Griever was a daemon of solid brass, and was charged with a power far in excess of its size. The daemon rammed the hard flat of its head into the bulbous armour of the magmadroth’s shoulder. The reptile was pushed back across the mountainside, and then, with a shriek of claws across stone, it was shoved clean off the ridge.

For a moment it seemed to hang. Horgan-Grimnir’s latchkey grandaxe lunged into space. The Griever’s lance spat towards it. The blades missed each other by a metal shaving. Then Caldernorn’s claws found rock again, throwing Horgan-Grimnir back into his seat, and it tore away up the mountain’s flank. The magmadroth scrabbled for higher ground, drawing itself above the Chaos lord, and then swung its head back to loose a torrent of flame. The Chaos juggernaut glowed like an anvil as the Griever turned into the current with his arm held protectively over his grinning skull helm, his lance kindling yellow-red with corposant.