Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

The landscape was one of interconnected lakes stretching out towards a promissory red shimmer. Fire swirled across the surface of the water, reminiscent of the pattern of currents, but elementally subverted. That air was still and heavy. Cinders drifted. To describe the combined effect as a heat haze was inadequate. This place was heat. The very land was hazed.

And as far as Dunnegar could see, there was no mountain.

He shuffled back around on his metal stool. It was squat, of Angfyrd make, and hotter than all the hells. He endured it. His left arm roasted similarly on a portable anvil, his bicep bound tightly. He grunted, distracted.

‘No.’

‘There. No. No, wait a moment…’

The battlesmith scratched his dried brow and turned back to his book. It lay open on the back of a wooden cart containing the lodges’ treasures and that the Fyreslayers took it in shifts to pull. It was a straightforward, two-wheeled contraption with a low base built for low country. The wood came from trees that grew natively here, and as such was remarkably tolerant to the heat. The lodges had acquired it and two others like it several years before from a nomadic human tribe in trade for fyresteel weapons. There had certainly been plenty of those to go around since the battle against the Griever, too many to be carried by the few still walking. Hence the need for carts. Now, only this one remained.

A poor trade then, and one bemoaned constantly by the runefather, Nosda-Grimnir.

Running his finger along the map, Killim squinted towards the distant range, then did a double-take between the hellish topography in front of him and the ancient map on the page.

‘I’m sure of it,’ he muttered. ‘The river we followed had to be the Infernum. It had to be. And these are the first mountains we’ve seen.’

‘If you can call them mountains,’ said Solldun, runesmiter of the Sepuzkul lodge, absently.

He was runemaster now in all but name, but the honorific was as yet unearned, and he resisted it. Killim grumbled under his breath and returned to his maps as Solldun made some tightening adjustments to Dunnegar’s restraints. With roughened fingers, the runesmiter felt the muscles of his arm. Exposure to so much ur-gold had built them up hard and massive, but at the same time twitchy. Dunnegar’s muscles flexed painfully as the runesmiter’s fingers walked down to the wrist. Solldun closed his eyes and muttered half-remembered instruction, nodding as his fingers turned back to press down on a spot a thumb’s width up the berzerker’s forearm. Holding it there, he reached across the anvil for hammer and tongs.

‘Are you ready?’

‘Give it to me,’ said Dunnegar. His efforts not to growl made his words sound all the more forced. Deep breaths. He forced his heart to slow. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m ready.’

Puffing out his cheeks to steady himself, the runesmiter applied the rune to the proscribed patch of forearm. It hissed. Hot air blasted through Dunnegar’s gritted teeth. Then came Solldun’s hammer, smiting the rune through surface skin and deep into the muscle.

Dunnegar shivered as new strength suffused him. He felt it restore him to something nearer to normal. Or to a level of power that his body had come to demand as its normal.

‘Better?’ asked Killim.

‘Much,’ said Dunnegar, sagging back.

Breathing hard and feeling somewhat dizzy, he unfastened his bindings and flexed his bicep. It swelled to a pleasing degree. The rune in his wrist was hard and firm amidst the sliding muscle, like scar tissue. It shone dully under the sky’s pervasive amber glow.

So many of his runes had been used up in battle that even recovering the ur-gold from the dead couldn’t replenish them at the same rate. Rationing of the precious substance was beginning to fray sturdier tempers than his and it was only going to get worse. Even those runes that were newly forged, like the one now in his arm, were small and lacking in purity. Solldun had proven himself a force in battle, but he lacked the skills of a true runemaster. Rolk, he was not.

So why then did he feel so much better with the runesmiter’s weak work in his arm?

‘Perhaps now you’re of a mood to help,’ Killim said waspishly as Solldun packed up his tools and departed.

‘Show me a horde of orruks, old friend, and I’ll help.’

‘Old friend…’ Killim snorted, crossing his arms over his chest, but only for a moment. They were all too hot for that. ‘My old friend would be here with me making some sense out of this map.’

Dunnegar shook his head, ignoring him, levering his forearm backwards and forwards against the anvil and feeling the rune pull. Killim puffed out his chest angrily and made to remonstrate further when an even-tempered hail from the lakeside distracted him.