Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

As Vrindum sent two more daemons into oblivion, he saw many of his brother Drunbhor now fighting while their arms and necks bristled with spines. Blood poured down their skin, obscuring the fire of the ur-gold. The spines writhed. They whistled. And then, as ever to the rhythm of the wind’s three-note song, a metamorphosis took place. Drethor jerked. He dropped his weapons. He cried out in agony. He arched backwards. He kept bending until his spine cracked to splinters. Still he folded backwards, his hair and beard losing their red, turning pink, turning to flesh. The back of his head fused with his legs. Skin flowed over his face, destroying his identity. His shoulders moved back up through his torso until his arms emerged from the sides of his stomach. His misshapen legs grew longer. The flesh of his midsection tore open, becoming gnashing jaws. Muscle bunched, twisted, flowed and grew horns.

Where Drethor had been, a pink horror stood on his magmadroth’s back. It sank claws and fangs into the back of the beast’s neck. The magmadroth writhed, seeking to dislodge its attacker, but more daemons sprang into being, swarming over it. The enemy’s army grew. The lines of the Fyreslayers became ragged from a new and insidious incursion. The cry that went up was beyond rage. It overflowed with grief and horror.

‘Guard yourselves!’ Runemaster Trumnir shouted. ‘Purge yourselves of the foul thorns! Do not despair! Let the fire of Grimnir burn strong and destroy the taint of Chaos.’ He raised his staff high, and holy fire crackled around it. Daemons rushed him, but were held back by the hearthguard berzerkers at his sides long enough for him to complete his summoning and bring the point of the staff down with a blow that shook the earth. A moment later, lava burst from the ground, enveloping an entire cluster of the daemonic trunks. They shrivelled to ash in the molten rock.

Vrindum descended further into rage at the sight of his possessed brothers. He moved too fast for any daemon. He was a storm. Darkbane was a blur. He waded through a rain of daemonic ichor. The only clear thought in the whirlwind of his rage was the need to protect the runefather. Beregthor roared his battle fury, seeming in no need of protection. Vrindum broke through a wall of pink horrors to see Beregthor hurl four of them away at once with a mighty stroke of the Keeper of Roads. Their forms shattered and they fell from Krasnak’s back to be trampled to nothing beneath the magmadroth’s claws.

‘See our runefather lay waste to the daemon!’ Trumnir commanded. ‘Forward! Cut through the enemy in all his guises! Leave a trail of flame and blood to mark our passage!’

Inspired by the voice of the runemaster and sustained in wrath by the drumming of the runesmiter, the Fyreslayers attacked the pink horrors with renewed fervour. The duardin were wary now of the corrupting thorns. They had been made to fight and destroy creatures that had been their brothers, and vengeance was in every blow. The daemons had begun to break through the lines, but now they were hurled back, then hammered and slashed to oblivion.

Beregthor urged Krasnak into a charge, leading the Drunbhor host in a merciless advance. No longer did the Fyreslayers go around the trunks; instead they drove a straight line through the monstrous growths. Though the pink horrors giggled as if they had already won the battle, their laughter ended in squealing and the rending of daemonic flesh. Vrindum ran alongside Krasnak, Darkbane an engine of slaughter. The spirit of Grimnir was strong upon him. The intricate tracery of ur-gold that covered his flesh shone with anger. He lost himself in the charge, and his world became the destruction of the foe. He tore through daemonic flesh and pulsating trunks, unleashing a torrent of ichor and blood.

Then Darkbane swung through air, striking nothing. Vrindum ran forward a few more steps, but there was nothing to kill. He slowed, blinking. The rage faded, and he took in his new surroundings.

He had broken through the corrupted forest. The daemons were gone. Ahead, the ground became more rugged. Vrindum saw foothills, and the promise of mountains.

He looked up at Beregthor. The runefather seemed exhausted for the first time since the departure from Sibilatus, and more drained than triumphant. His face was set, committed to the path, apparently uninterested in anything except the march toward the goal.

And still the wind of the Evercry was constant. Short and long and short, the three notes guiding the Drunbhor to their destiny.

VI

The abominable forest was the first day. The first trial. Eight more days followed. For nine days, the Drunbhor fought through a land full of terrible life, corrupted and enslaved to Chaos. After the forest came the swamp. There the ground was a sucking mire, and ropes of flesh tangled the Fyreslayers while screamers of Tzeentch slashed through the air and through the warriors, their shrieks a choir following the song of the wind.