Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

‘Our runefather is slain!’ he said. His voice was loud, and carried well over the constant rumbling of the twin lava rivers and the crackling boom of the storm. ‘For three hundred years he led us. No longer!’ He stared over the heads of his congregation, speaking directly to the heart of the mountain. ‘He and twenty other good duardin were slain as they drove the enemy out of our hold.’ He dropped his gaze to meet the eyes of his fellows. ‘The runefather was not fond of long speeches.’ There was scattered laughter at this. ‘Who needs talk? He was brave! He refused defeat each time it was so generously offered to him by our besiegers. He was noble! He was the most generous of ring-givers.’ He paused. ‘And he was my friend.’

More than a few voices rumbled aye to that. Karadrakk-Grimnir had been well loved.

‘We will not be broken. Burukaz Ulgaen-ar!’ called Tulkingafar.

‘Ulgaen-ar burukaz!’ the others responded.

Tulkingafar nodded at the hearthguard manning the cage machinery. They turned the wheels reverently, the ratchets on the axle clacking one tooth at a time.

‘From fire we were born, to fire we return,’ Tulkingafar intoned. ‘Burn brightly in the furnaces of Grimnir, Karadrakk-Grimnir Ulgaen, and be forged anew. May the heat of your soul never cool, and its flames never dim.’

The cage reached a near-vertical position and the hearthguard ceased their turning. One pulled a lever. A gate opened at the foot of the cage, and Karadrakk-Grimnir slid from its confines and fell into the Ulgaen-ar magma river. A bright flash of fire marked his passage from one world to the next, lighting up the faces of the mourning lodge members, showing many tugging at their beards with sorrow.

The mountain rumbled. The cracking of stone sounded deep in the ground. Short-lived geysers in the rivers sent shadows leaping across the craggy stone, and teased starbursts from the veins of minerals in the rock. The cavern returned to its sombre ruby.

‘The Ulmount mourns the loss of a good master,’ said Tulkingafar. ‘Grimnir has taken him to his forge.’

A battlesmith went to the empty cradle. In a droning chant he began to recount the many deeds of Karadrakk’s long life as Marag-Or and Tulkingafar went down the row of occupied cages and immolated their dead.

However, one priest-smith present had his mind on other things. Drokki of the Withered Arm looked up the tall chimney of the Ulmount’s throat. The faces of Grimnir looked down at him reproachfully at this stinting of duty, but he was not interested in their disapproval. He stared at the lightning flashing across the sky, and he worried.

‘In a week’s time, the Ulgahold will have been under siege for one hundred and one years. We come here to discuss the wishes of Karadrakk-Grimnir Ulgaen, and who among you, the seven surviving sons of Karadrakk-Grimnir, will assume the heavy burden of responsibility for leadership of Lodge Ulgaen-ar.’

Tulkingafar gave the seven sons a steely look. They stared back with varying amounts of defiance, hope, sorrow and fear.

Get on with it, you pompous ass, thought Ulgathern. He bridled at Tulkingafar’s superior manner, his ponderous delivery. Ulgathern was eager to be done; he itched to avenge his father, and he needed to talk to Drokki. At first he had dismissed Drokki’s talk of the Great Omen, but since the storms he had come to half-believe him. And now this…

The auric regalia he had to wear was heavy, a wide poncho of gold plates sewn to thick leather, and a huge, ceremonial helm. Fyreslayers as a rule rarely wore much. Their holds were warmed by the blood of the earth, while their own Grimnir-given fires kept them heated in the most inhospitable of environments. To wear too many clothes or, Grimnir forfend, too much armour, was an affront to their shattered god. Ulgathern found the gear uncomfortable. The zharrgrim temple was nigh to the forge, where streams of lava were harvested for their metals and channelled into the fyresteel foundry. The grumbling of hot stone bottled up behind its sluices was as oppressive as the heat. But borne the heat must be, and he stood there sweltering and stiff with all the stoicism expected of a duardin.

Ulgathern did not like or trust Tulkingafar. He was too invested in politicking, always seeking to exert his temple’s pre-eminence in the hold over that of Magar-Or’s, and he was the worst of Drokki’s persecutors. Too often the intention of Tulkingafar’s actions appeared not to be to increase reverence of Grimnir, but to consolidate his own power. To have risen to so lofty a rank within the zharrgrim at such a young age spoke of a certain ruthlessness.