Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Thrumnor was deep in the pounding trance of the ritual. He had caught a great fountain of lava in the clenched gauntlet of his will and chanted a prayer of low, guttural syllables. The blood of Vulcatrix must be called to answer. Righteous rage forced a wave of lava to climb above the ocean. It forced it to change its strength from fire to rigid stone. Rhulmok’s voice was there with him, no less determined but calmer, grinding and growling like the parting of stony waves. The cooling lava lengthened and the bridge came into being, arcing out from the side of the Forgecrag towards a new peak, one that had risen from the ocean a month before, and was now deemed stable enough to explore. Then, at the horizon, where the Great Weld stood guard, there was an explosion of lightning. It disrupted the song. Its thunder was too distant to be heard, but it was so huge it was felt in the air, and Thrumnor stuttered in his song. Rhulmok choked. The half-made bridge collapsed into the lava. Grimnir’s Binding unravelled, its energy lashing out uncontrollably across the bridges. They shook, cracking and groaning. The filament nearest to the incomplete crossing began to glow. Hundreds of Fyreslayers caught on the strut started to run, racing against the rising heat and shifting rock. They barely made it to the safe ground of the Forgecrag before that bridge, too, collapsed.

Out of the trance, Thrumnor saw the last flashes of Binding dispersing over the farther bridges.

‘Grimnir grant we killed no one,’ said Rhulmok, his voice strained with shock.

Thrumnor grunted. His own breath was rasping. His gaze was fixed on the sky’s rage. This was no natural storm. The lightning struck again and again as if beating a rune into flesh. Pulsing in sympathy with the flashes was a searing glow on the summit of the Weld. The light was a vivid green, and Thrumnor experienced each burst with a mixture of holy dread and the excitement of war.

‘What does this portend?’ Rhulmok asked. There was awe in his tone, but great suspicion too.

‘It portends much,’ Thrumnor said. ‘The hammer of Grimnir strikes his anvil once more

,’ he recited.

Rhulmok did not appear to recognise the line of prophecy. The foretelling was an ancient one, and almost forgotten. There was much of it that Thrumnor could no longer recall himself.

‘We must speak with the runefather,’ said Rhulmok.

‘Aye,’ Thrumnor agreed.

But there was something he must do first.

II

Thrumnor knelt before the altar. It was a great stone anvil with seams of gold running through it. The strands gathered at its base, and then appeared to flow upwards, becoming a statue twenty feet tall: Grimnir in battle against the wyrm Vulcatrix. The statue was resplendent with golden fire, shining in the light of a hundred torches. There was no ur-gold in its construction; that element, holy with the contained essence of Grimnir himself, was too precious to use in anything but the runes hammered into the Fyreslayers’ bodies. Such was the craftsmanship of the artisans who had created the altar, though, that the lines of the figures resonated in the runes of whoever came before it. Thrumnor felt the warmth of the designs in his flesh. Their power stirred, urging his blood to battle, to march along that road leading to the union with Grimnir, and the great reforging of his scattered being.

Thrumnor leaned forwards, arms spread wide. He rested his palms and his forehead against the side of the altar. With his eyes closed, he could feel the stone vibrate with the beat of the distant storm. The beat passed into his body. His runes flared. Fire coursed through his soul.

The beat grew stronger. It overwhelmed him. Thrumnor no longer touched the altar. He was falling through a darkness resonating with the blows of hammers, a boom boom boom boom shaking realm upon realm. Then, at the centre of the dark, there was a sharp point of bright orange light. It spread with every beat of the hammers. Then the dark peeled away, and Thrumnor beheld a vision. Something dark yet streaked with red and gold moved up the height of a vast anvil. It seemed to be a stream of living ore. A hammer as big as the sky was poised over the anvil. When the ore was gathered, the hammer fell. An explosion filled Thrumnor’s sight. The anvil shattered, then lava was flowing over a landscape. There was movement on the ground before its path, a suggestion of flight, a ripple of war. The lava consumed all. It was a tide hundreds of feet high, and it moved with purpose. Thrumnor could not see where it came from, nor where it was going, but a great will determined the destruction. There was a reason for this wave. And there was judgement.

The vision faded. Thrumnor rose to his feet. He bowed his head before the image of Grimnir and gave thanks.

‘I know what we must do,’ he said.