Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Again, Trumnir looked surprised. The runemaster’s beard and hair were streaked with lightning strokes of iron grey. He was older than Beregthor. That he had not known such secrets stunned him perhaps even more than the other Drunbhor.

Beregthor raised the grandaxe. ‘The gate is locked. It will open only to the Keeper of Roads. We must seek it where the wind is born. We march to the Typhornas Mountains.’

Mountains of lore. Mountains from the oldest stories of the Drunbhor.

A quest for a myth within myths. That was when Vrindum saw the first shadows of doubt and unease on Frethnir’s face.

‘How will we find them?’ the runeson asked.

‘By answering the call of the wind,’ said Beregthor. ‘It summons us to the west.’

Towards the storm.

V

The ground began to slope upwards where the Voidfire Plain ended at the forest of monsters. The smell of incense was overwhelming. It clawed at Vrindum’s lungs when he breathed. The Drunbhor left the grasses behind and passed between trunks swollen with bulbous growths. Their texture was patterns of shifting, spiralling whorls. Their colours varied from deep flesh-pink to the blue of bruises, and the shades changed from one moment to the next. To gaze on a single plant was to be confused by an ever-shifting pattern of colour and movement.

The limbs of the plants were long, thin and serpentine, reaching across the space between them to tangle with each other. It was impossible to tell where the branch of one plant ended and that of another began, as the limbs rubbed against one another, creating a susurrus of muttered truths and shapeless words. They seemed to gesture towards the Drunbhor, calling them deeper into the woods of madness.

‘Be vigilant, fyrds of the Drunbhor,’ Beregthor called.

Clusters of spines curled out from the trunks and branches. Their tips were sharp as blades.

The plants were as tall as fifty feet when they stood straight. Many were coiled like giant ferns or the tentacles of a sea leviathan. Like the flamers on the Voidfire Plain, they danced to the song of the wind. Though each monstrous plant had its own movement independent of all the others, the rhythms of each sway and bow and sinuosity were in time to the sounding of the three notes.

Short, long, short. The beats soft, strong, soft. The song never altering, the same notes since the first moment of the storm. The lightning had long since ceased, but the song remained, calling and calling.

‘The wind summons us!’ Beregthor said, as he had so many times since the coming of the storm. ‘It calls us to battle!’

The dance of the corrupted plants disturbed Vrindum. If the call was to the Drunbhor, why did these unclean growths respond to it?

Behind Vrindum, Frethnir said, ‘These creatures sense us.’ Shudders ran up the trunks and along the branches, as though a web had been disturbed. Vrindum eyed their movements carefully, even as he also watched the shadows between their trunks. There was no underbrush in the forest-that-was-not-a-forest, but the plants stood close to one another, and the light was dim.

There were no paths. The Fyreslayers were forced to wend their way between the trunks. The line of their march became twisted. When Vrindum looked back, he could see only the first couple of fyrds behind the runesons. On a column of more than a thousand Drunbhor, if something happened to the leaders or the rearguard, the other end of the host would not know it.

If the Voidfire Plain had been no proper place for a Fyreslayer, this was worse yet.

‘We are here!’ Vrindum shouted. Let the enemy come at last and meet the edge of his axe. ‘Know us and fear us!’

Laughter ahead. For a terrible moment, Vrindum thought it came from the runefather. Then he realized it emanated from a cluster of trunks a score of paces further on. As one, when the wind’s long note sounded, the growths on the trunks bulged, deep pink and shining. There was a wet tearing noise. The tumours grew arms and horns. They pulled away from the trunks, glistening with mucus. Newly born and ready for war, the pink horrors dropped to the ground. They were heavy, squat, horned things, some with three limbs, some four, some five. All had huge, gaping jaws. Their flesh was the colour of exposed muscle.

Bramnor answered the daemons with laughter of his own, angry yet eager.

‘Finally!’ he roared. ‘A proper fight.’

The rumble of voices along the Drunbhor column echoed Bramnor’s words. Drethor and Frethnir added their voices to the clamour. Bramnor was the brashest of the runesons, but all were hungry to inflict true punishment on the enemy after the grinding losses of the Voidfire.

‘Guard the flanks!’ Beregthor commanded, even as Krasnak charged with him towards the immediate threat.

The hearthguard and vulkite berzerkers aimed their weapons to the sides. The column moved forward, its edges sharp.