Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Dunnegar gave voice to a trembling yell that was Grimnir’s battle wrath alloyed to ur-gold no longer, and wrestled the skullreaper from his arms. He broke him across his knee and swung the limp body into the horde, clearing a yard or so for him to run into. Close to the stone and powerful, he bowled Bloodbound aside as if the ground were still shaking.

Behind them was a rock shelf about twelve feet high.

He ran at it, stuck out a foot and kicked off, gaining another few feet of air beneath him, and then swung his greataxe for the ledge. It bit. He hit the cold rock face, thumping the air from his chest. With a wheezing inhalation, he dropped a kick on the blue-veined Bloodbound that came grasping for his legs, and then heaved himself up.

He had time for a breath and he took it. It lanced his lungs with cold, but was welcome there in spite of it.

He was on the very top of the mountain’s cheek, just as it began to slope upwards to the eye. The snow was coming down even more thickly with the altitude, and the realmgate was little more than a fell glimmer. The Griever’s monstrous last line of defence were grotesqueries of looming musculature. The berzerker did not enjoy the runefather’s advantage of a mountain beast, but his wild charge had carried him almost as far.

Wrapped in a scarf of steamy breath, he pushed into the waist-deep drift towards the gate.

Shouts filtered through the blizzard. A grunt. A clash. A daemonic howl. Dunnegar ignored them, eyes staying true to their goal. Horgan was the greatest warrior to carry the name Grimnir in many years. He had once felled Dunnegar with a single punch. The runefather could win his battles without help.

Fire rippled through the gloaming snowfall, opening it up like a fissure.

Dunnegar turned then. Through the steam, he saw a scene of struggle that could have rivalled the gold-brought visions at his Trial.

Caldernorn had its jaws locked around the juggernaut’s throat, but the daemon, in turn, had the ur-salamander on its side and was in the process of mounting its heaving chest. Horgan-Grimnir held firm in the saddle with a titanic grip, stubbornly resolved to his oath that he and the beast would never be parted.

One handed, he parried the Griever’s increasingly frenzied lunges. Flesh banners snapped and ruffled in the heat rising from Caldernorn’s body. The Lord of Khorne chattered like a rolling skull as the juggernaut crunched forward, raising a shriek from Caldernorn as the daemon walked its crushing weight up its neck. In a panic, the beast began to thrash. Horgan-Grimnir raged and swore, but one hand and the grip of his thighs was no longer enough to remain mounted. Sacrificing his guard, he redoubled his oathsworn grip.

The runefather smiled briefly, as though he’d won some kind of victory.

A moment later, Dunnegar watched the Griever’s lance explode from his chest.

Loss hit with the weight of an avalanche. Not grief. Horgan-Grimnir had never been so dear to him. But loss: a challenge to which he would never rise, a trial that there would be no chance to pass.

The runefather arched his back in pain. Caldernorn was still, sinew and scale crunching under the juggernaut’s tread.

‘Rolk Langudsson!’ Horgan howled through bloodied lips, erupting in a column of searing runelight ‘Your oaths are fulfilled!’

The Griever was on top of him, too intent on twisting the lance and claiming another skull for his armour to care how his victim chose to meet his end. He was close enough that he likely never saw the latchkey grandaxe arcing towards his neck.

Howls of an inhuman rage permeated the snow as, as if in tableau, Horgan-Grimnir and the Chaos lord slid from their mounts one after the other.

Dunnegar heard rather than saw the warped spawn tramping down from the realmgate to belatedly aid their master. He knew he should have taken the gate then while it was unguarded, but to his shame he couldn’t bring himself to do so. The battle was won with the death of the Griever, he knew, and others could claim the prize and see the runefather’s quest continued.

He turned aside.

Already partially buried, Horgan-Grimnir nevertheless glittered with precious ur-gold runes, singing to his soul like the forest to a sylvaneth. Dunnegar hefted his axe, quite prepared to defend the runefather’s remains with his own life.

An oath was an oath, but gold was gold.

‘On the three thousand, three hundred and thirty-first day, there was fire…’

The Angfyrd Odyssey

It was a commonly held belief that Fyreslayers did not feel the heat. Dunnegar knew it was untrue. Rather they endured it, like duardin. However, in this unending land where fire fell as rain and rivers boiled whilst somehow remaining liquid, endurance alone could carry them no further.

‘See that mountain over there.’

Killim’s voice was a dry growl. He lowered his flame-discoloured book tiredly and pointed into the distant haze.