Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Vrindum’s focus narrowed to the single point of Beregthor’s peril. Everything else vanished in the rage of battle. He tore into the daemons, and he was a force beyond reckoning. His throat unleashed a continuous cry of rage. His ur-gold sigils were molten with Grimnir’s wrath. The god demanded vengeance. Vrindum was that vengeance incarnate.

He did not see individual foes. The daemons were an undifferentiated mass that presented itself for the slaughter. Darkbane cut through a sea of daemonic flesh. Pink turned blue, blue vanished in sprays of ichor. Horns and blades slashed at him, but whether they hit or not made no difference. He was the fury of war, and no foul thing would stop him from reaching the runefather.

He drew alongside Beregthor, and the proximity of the runefather pulled him back again from complete battle madness. Krasnak had fallen, fighting to the last as his flesh mutated out of control, transforming him into a hill of pulsating scales and crawling parchment. Beregthor had lost his helm. His face and arms were sheathed in his blood, but he fought as if fresh to the battle.

‘Go back!’ Beregthor shouted.

Vrindum cut a pink horror in two, then destroyed the blue daemons before they uttered their first wail.

‘Come with me, runefather!’ he said. ‘You are restored to us! Your honour does not require your sacrifice!’

Beregthor shook his head. He thrust the Keeper of Roads forward through the jaws of a blue horror, exploding the daemon’s head.

‘I cannot return to the gate. If I do, I will bring ruin to us all. But you must. And destroy it.’

Ahead, Kaz’arrath was less than a dozen great strides away.

‘The gate is lost to us,’ said Beregthor. ‘We must take it from the daemons as they took ours in Sibilatus.’

Vrindum hesitated.

‘Go!’ Beregthor roared. ‘Your runefather commands it!’

With an agonised cry, Vrindum abandoned Beregthor. He turned back. Once more he cut his way through the daemonic horde. Wrath fused with grief. He would have tried to destroy every daemon in the field if not for Beregthor’s desperate order. Several fyrds of vulkite berzerkers were pushing hard to reach the runefather too, and it was not long before Vrindum was in their midst.

‘The gate!’ he said. ‘We are commanded to destroy the gate!’

He leapt onto the platform. He raced to the right-hand pillar, thinking only of his duty and not the consequences as he swung Darkbane. With the first blow, a chunk of ancient stone went flying. The vision in the portal shook. And a roar of denial and rage went up across the battlefield.

The daemons surged forward, and there was no laughter from the pink horrors now. They howled with desperation. They fell on the Fyreslayers with determination, forcing them back. The Drunbhor were suddenly on the defensive, fighting to keep the daemons from reaching the dais.

‘Think you to escape destiny?’

The voice was magisterial and filled with venom. Vrindum’s mouth flooded with blood.

‘The book is written. All change is ours. For you there is but the completion of your task,’ Kaz’arrath said. The daemon reached down and grasped Beregthor in a huge claw. It spread its wings, beat the air with them and rose above the fray, moving towards the dais. As it did, it struck downward with its staff, and Fyreslayers by the score died, their bodies twisted into the shape of unholy runes.

‘Destroy the gate!’ Beregthor’s cry was monstrous in its pain, a soul making its last stand in terrible combat.

Vrindum renewed his attack on the pillar. Stone flew. The wards blazed in anger, but he was not attempting to cross the threshold. Frethnir and Bramnor joined him. Their blows eroded the strength of the pillars.

‘Faster!’ Vrindum shouted. ‘We must end our failures here!’ Kaz’arrath descended on the dais. With a contemptuous gesture, the daemon swept aside the berzerkers who blocked its way. It held Beregthor towards the portal. It could ward the gate and twist its nature, but it could not open it. The runefather of the Drunbhor alone could do that. His body trembling, controlled by a will much greater than his, Beregthor raised the Keeper of the Roads and inserted its blade into the floating keyhole.

Vrindum attacked the pillar with the frenzy of wrath.

Beregthor turned the key.

The circumference of the portal blazed with lightning. The vision of the magmahold took on depth. The keyhole vanished. With a raucous caw of triumph, still clutching the victim of its manipulations, the Lord of Change stepped forward into the gate.

And the pillar collapsed.

It toppled like a felled tree, pulling the entire arch of the gate down with it. Runic, warded stonework fell into the portal with the daemon and Beregthor only partway through. The gate exploded. The heart of the Typhornas Mountains flashed with searing violet and silver. The dais erupted.

Vrindum hurtled through a maelstrom of fire and stone and raging power. The storm raged, and he raged with it. The fury of reality’s ending battered him.

He bellowed a cry of victory and grief.

VII