Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Simpering and shuffling under the crack of whips, the ranks slowly parted to form a corridor. A pair of towering slaughterpriests walked down it with lengthened strides, escort and honour guard to the monster between them.

It might have been a horse once, but its mouth had since become a beak and its spine curved like one of the daemon hounds of Khorne. Fired burned where a mane should have grown and eyes with just enough intelligence to weep rolled in sockets all over its many-jointed limbs. And mounted on that fell beast rode the real monster.

He was a colossus of armour plate, clanking roughly from side to side with the violence of his mount’s ungainly stride. His armour was a fluted puzzle of grooves and channels through which blood sluggishly trickled. His helm had a Y-shaped opening that revealed a black face with eyes like burning coals, and a pair of flat, angular horns.

The priests of blood parted and there, straight backed and with arms crossed like statues before a realmgate to the Realm of Chaos, they stood.

The Lord of Khorne lowered his horn, made from a length of curving, hollowed bone, and regarded the Fyreslayers one by one.

‘I am Kar Thraxis,’ he said, the deep timbre of his words inflaming the blood of all who heard with a need to do violence. ‘I am the Ravager, the Devourer in Flame. I would meet your mightiest.’

Killim, Aethnir and Nosda-Grimnir shared glances.

Without waiting for them to decide, Dunnegar strode into the clearing and readied his greataxe.

Kar Thraxis nodded, apparently satisfied by what he saw. ‘I hear you slew the Griever.’

‘Not I,’ Dunnegar grunted, ‘but I was there.’

‘Good. You cannot imagine how long I have waited to see him dead.’

Dunnegar gave an impatient growl. ‘Are we going to fight then?’

‘One day. Perhaps.’

With a snap of his armoured wrist, a gang of inhumanly muscular men with dull, beast-of-burden looks, trudged between the watching priests. They dragged heavy chests behind them, pulling them by chains that were fed through the steel rings hammered into their bruised flesh. At a motion from Kar Thraxis, one of the slaughterpriests stepped forward to kick the lock from one. The giant bent low and threw it open.

The Fyreslayers murmured in stunned appreciation.

Dunnegar’s eyes widened as he took in the glittering hoard. As if he could simply absorb it all.

‘There is ur-gold here,’ said Solldun, crouching, eyes fire bright.

‘You’re sure?’ Dunnegar mumbled.

Many Fyreslayers had some sense for the presence of ur-gold, but only a runemaster had the gift to pick ur-gold from gold.

Solldun simply nodded.

‘You like my gold?’ said Kar Thraxis, a smile opening his face like a fissure in deep earth. ‘I had heard.’

‘We like some of your gold,’ Dunnegar said cagily, but bartering now seemed pointless. The Lord of Khorne had seen the hunger in them all, the starvation. He lowered his axe in surrender, dimly conscious of his brothers and cousins doing the same. ‘What do you want for it?’

Kar Thraxis gestured behind him. There, the storm that the Fyreslayers had been following like a guiding star blackened the mountain sky. ‘The war storm is here, led by a being the Stormcasts call Celestant-Prime.’

‘You want me to kill this Stormcast for you?’ Dunnegar wrenched his gaze from the gold and turned to face the Lord of Khorne. He felt no fear of this monster. He stuck out his jaw, puffed out his chest. ‘Because I can do that.’

Chuckling, Kar Thraxis dismounted and knelt to be eye-to-eye with the Fyreslayer. ‘His death by another’s hand wins me nothing.’

‘Taurak Skullcleaver,’ Dunnegar grunted in understanding.

‘The gods demand unity in the face of the storm. His death by my hand will also win me nothing. Will you do it?’

Dunnegar’s gold-flecked eyes met the Khornate’s hate-filled glare and held it. The runefather was dead, his lodge destroyed and swallowed by another. Ancient as such civilized trappings could appear, they were temporary. Grimnir’s life and death taught that. Only power was eternal.

Only gold.

He hawked up a gob of saliva and spat it on his palm, extending it to the Lord of Khorne as it sizzled.

‘I will. And I can.’

David Annandale The Keys to Ruin

I

Daemons were dancing over the Voidfire Plain. The flamers of Tzeentch spun and whirled, their columnar shapes rocking back and forth. Their serpentine limbs outstretched, they bathed the grasses of the Voidfire in their unholy flames, twisting the land, catching it up in their lunatic dance. Wherever he looked, Vrindum saw the daemons. They kept their distance from the Fyreslayers, too scattered and too few to mount a challenge to the great host. They remained writhing silhouettes close to the horizons. The grimwrath berzerker’s grip on Darkbane, his fyrestorm greataxe, was tight with frustrated anger. He longed to cut down the taunting abominations.