Nick Kyme: The Great Betrayal

Lesser, maggot-ridden beasts loped alongside them in their thousands. Some had once been men. Slug-like beasts with gaping maws like cages of acidic slime slithered behind them. Daemonic tallymen rode on the backs of the beasts, rusted bells ringing at their shrivelled necks. Diminutive, wide-mouthed daemons, covered in boils and pustules, swarmed like a rancid sea. They gathered at the edges of the horde, giggling like manic children.

‘Such horror…’ breathed the High King of the dwarfs, knowing even this was not the worst of it. Snorri followed the diseased ranks of the enemy until he saw the bloated lord.

Behind its pestilent legions there loomed a malevolent creature, cankerous and rotten as its vassals. Clad in rags and strips of flesh, a cloud of flies buzzed around it like a miasma. Tattered wings hung from its emaciated arms and a flock of rotting crows perched on its hulking shoulders, cawing malevolently.

Alkhor, it had named itself. Defiler, it boasted. Tide of Pestilence and Harbinger of Nurgle, it claimed. None of which were its true names, for daemons would never relinquish those.

Disgusted, Snorri saw a throng of warriors attack the beast and his heart swelled with pride. The banner of Thurgin Ironheart fluttered on the breeze. Snorri clenched a fist as a flash of fire tore down the daemon prince’s flank. For a moment it burned, and the dwarf dared to hope… But then the rent flesh began to re-knit, hideous slime filling the wound and resealing it.

Alkhor’s foul laughter gurgled on the breeze. Its crow host cawed and chattered as a stream of utter foulness retched from the daemon’s ugly mouth.

Thurgin and his clansmen were overwhelmed, drowned in a stinking mire of vomit. Dwarf skeletons, half clad in rotting plate and scraps of burned leather, bobbed to the surface of the miasma. Hundreds died in seconds, their gromril armour no defence against Alkhor’s disgusting gifts.

‘That creature needs sending back to the abyss, as do all its debased kind,’ said Malekith.

Deep as an abyssal trench, a roar split the heavens. It brought an answering cry from the elf prince before he declared to the dwarf, ‘The war hinges on the next few moments.’

Snorri’s jaw clenched. The elf was right.

On the other side of the vast plain, the elves fought a very different foe. Lurid, gibbering creatures cavorted in unruly mobs. Bizarre, floating daemons dressed in skirts of transmuting flesh spat streamers of incandescent fire from their limbs. Feathered beasts, bull-headed monstrosities and hell-spawn wracked with continuous physical change roved next to the daemons.

‘They were all once men,’ said Snorri, ‘the barbarian tribes of the north.’

Malekith looked grim. ‘Now they are monsters.’

Overhead, the sun was eclipsed as a massive shadow smothered the light.

Lifting his gaze, the prince of the elves saw a massive host of dragons coursing through the red skies. He longed to join them, his fist clenched as he watched the princes of Caledor and their mounts clash with flights of lesser daemonic creatures.

Amidst the swathe of dragonscale, he saw the smaller forms of eagles circling with the dragons. They picked apart the hellish flocks so the larger beasts could bring their fury to bear on the Chaos infantry. No less proud, the belligerent cries of the eagle riders carried through the battle din to the glittering elven warriors below.

He recognised one of them, noble Prince Aestar. He was keen-eyed and raised a quick salute to his lord, which Malekith returned before turning his gaze on the elven warriors below.

A large phalanx of knights, riding hard alongside scores of chariots, hit a thick wedge of pink, gnarled daemons that blurred and split apart as they were killed. Malekith gaped in disbelief as smaller blue imp-like abominations sprang from the ashes of their larger dead hosts and swarmed over the mounted elves. Victory looked far from certain for the knights, who were on the verge of slowing down and being overwhelmed when a conclave of Sapherian mages riding pillars of storm-cloud rained enchanted death down on the daemons. The creatures squealed in pain and delight, before the knights ended them and the mages flew off to confront a coven of sorcerers riding screaming discs of flame.

It was madness, a desperate struggle where the fates of not just lives but souls were at stake.

‘There…’ Malekith gestured to the second daemon lord, the feathered sorcerer. ‘The creature is drawn into the open at last.’

‘Like poison from a wound,’ snarled Snorri. ‘We must act swiftly,’ he said, with half an eye on the edges of the rock where more beasts had begun to appear.

The feathered sorcerer was a creature of mischief and convoluted machination. Though they had never seen its true form, for it wore many, it had chosen an imperious aspect and was swathed in varicoloured flesh-cloth. Beneath its cowl, there was the suggestion of a beak. In one claw the daemon prince clutched a staff of obsidian carved with the faces of the damned. Souls were enslaved within its haft, ever screaming, ever changing as the Architect of Fate moulded them to its will. Unlike Alkhor, it did not attack but merely watched. But as the elves pulled open the threads of its legions, the daemon would soon have to act.

A massive shadow loomed above Malekith, and he averted his gaze from his enemy to crane his neck and search the skies. Something was approaching through the choking cloud, the thump of its wingbeats like peals of thunder.

From below the rock shook, the earth underfoot trembling as if in fear as something massive neared the summit.

‘Time to leave,’ said the elf.

‘I crave a moment longer…’ Snorri stared straight ahead at the massive claw that had just reached up over the edge.

After a long climb, a cyclopean brute had gained the Fist of Gron’s flat summit.

A second claw joined the first and slowly a massive, tusked head came into view. It snorted, releasing a drool of snot from its blunt, scarred snout. Tiny eyes, hooded by a sloping brow, glinted like rubies shot through with dark veins of anger. Its hide-wrapped chest was brawny and swathed in a thick fur. Scales colonised its abdomen, swallowing muscular forelegs and then back legs as the shaggoth heaved itself up.

‘I saw it earlier,’ Snorri confessed, ‘when we were at the edge together, lingering behind the lesser beasts.’

Malekith had put some distance between them both, so the dwarf had room to fight. He shook his head.

‘You were waiting for it, weren’t you?’

As if bored with the exchange, the shaggoth bellowed and thumped its chest. It hefted a cleaver as large as a tree in one meaty fist. Plates of armour, shields and pieces of cuirass taken from dead heroes, wrapped its torso. A shoulder guard fashioned from battered war helms hung from strips of sinew lashed around its neck, back and chest.

‘Not exactly,’ the High King lied.

Snorri swung his rune axe in a practice arc, eyeing with dangerous belligerence the massive brute that had just crested the rock. He had fought one of these creatures before with Malekith at his side. It was many years ago. He had been a younger dwarf then, and his friendship with the elf was in its infancy.

‘No, you wanted to kill it,’ Malekith protested, circling around to try and reach the monster’s blindside.

‘Well… it has climbed such a long way to taste the bite of my axe.’

‘There’ll be plenty for you to kill below. More than enough to satisfy any battle-lust,’ the elf reminded him.

‘Aye, but I want this one,’ said the dwarf, catching the monster’s reflection in the blade of his axe.

Scenting blood, the shaggoth threw up its head and roared at the lightning wracking the sky. Its ululating challenge was eclipsed by another as an even larger beast armoured in carmine scales descended on the shaggoth like an owl upon a rat. Hide and metal plate tore open like parchment. Fire spewed from the dragon’s jaws in a red conflagration that set hair aflame and sizzled flesh. The shaggoth recoiled in agony, realising the larger monster’s dominance, but Malekith’s dragon raked it with sword-long claws and clung on. Strips of meat and sinew ripped away from the shaggoth’s body as it fought desperately to free itself. A cleaver blow went wild and the dragon chewed off the other monster’s arm, releasing a font of spewing gore from the point of dismemberment. Then it bit down on the shaggoth’s neck, tore out its throat and the brief one-sided brawl was over.