C. Werner - Blighted Empire

The sky was black with dragons! Dozens of undead, decayed bulks, their scaly hides clinging in strips to bleached bones and scabrous flesh, bat-like wings fanning the air in torn tatters. Unlike the first dragon, great reptilian heads snarled from long, serpentine necks, profane fires burning in the pits of their decayed skulls.

Necrotic black vapours spewed from the fanged maws of the dragons as they came hurtling down. Swathes of skaven were annihilated, their bodies crumbling into desiccated husks. Survivors tucked tails between their legs and scurried away in abject terror.

Skrittar shifted his staff and sent the bolt of crackling warp-energy stabbing upwards. He was rewarded by watching the lightning smash through the skull of one dragon, sending the reptile crashing earthwards. For all their hideous power, the beasts weren’t invulnerable!

He tried to keep that thought as he watched tendrils of dark magic stream down from the broken tower. Glowing fog engulfed the destroyed dragon, seeping into its rotten bones. Soon, with awkward jerks, the reptile was lurching back onto its feet! Even more horrible, the skaven the behemoth had smashed in its descent were moving, dragging their crushed bodies towards their living comrades!

Eyes wide with horror, Skrittar realised the awful mistake he had made. The mage-meat he’d attacked wasn’t the enemy, just a minion sent out to bait the seerlord into committing himself. His true adversary was still in the tower, directing the magic emanations that had summoned a flight of dragons from their graves and which now sustained their obscene semblance of life!

That realisation sent a new determination raging through the seerlord’s black heart. To retreat now would be to accept defeat. He’d never get those craven mice of Clan Fester to take the field again, and even Clan Mordkin might lose their appetite for rotten meat after this fiasco. The secret of the warpstone would be out, all of Skrittar’s careful planning reduced to nothing as every clan in the Under-Empire came swarming into Sylvania to plunder the wealth that rightfully belonged to him!

No! He wouldn’t concede such ruination! He was the Voice of the Horned One, Supreme Prophet of He Who Is Thirteen! He wouldn’t allow the ignominy of defeat, not now when the Order of Grey Seers was so vulnerable. He’d spent the lives of twenty-four of his most powerful underlings to make this happen. He owed it to their martyrdom to seize the warpstone and make himself Grand Despot of Skavenblight!

‘Ring the bell,’ Skrittar snarled down at his slave. The hulking skaven leaned back, driving the warpstone striker against the bell. Another blast of arcane energy swept through Skrittar’s body, this time manifesting as a great crevice that snaked its way across the earth. The crushed, crawling skaven zombies vanished in the ruptured earth, the twice-restored dragon toppling into the great pit conjured by the tolling of the bell.

‘More bell!’ Skrittar shrieked, warp-lightning crackling from his fangs. ‘More bell!’

Again, the warpstone striker smashed against the bell, sending another blast of power through Skrittar’s body. A storm of lightning sizzled from his staff, slamming into one of the dragons, tearing its wings to shreds and sending its rotten bulk slamming into the earth. The seerlord paid no notice to the hundred or so Mordkin warriors pulverised beneath the behemoth’s bulk. What he did notice was the treacherous way his army was disintegrating, quitting the battlefield in panicked mobs! Such infamy was unbelievable! These flea-fondlers were engaged in the most important work of their miserable lives. They should feel honoured to die for the glory of Skrittar!

‘Got-want more bell!’ Skrittar hissed. He ignored the protest of the slave with the striker, baring his fangs at the wretch until another burst of power roared up from the grim tolling of the holy bell. Biting down on a nugget of warpstone, the grey seer redoubled the energies, transforming the swirling eddies of power into arching fingers of compulsion that reached out and burned their way into thousands of frightened skaven minds. Viciously, Skrittar probed that facet of their rodent brains devoted to hunger, stirring that lobe until what had been a fleeing mob was transformed into a starving swarm of frenzied monsters.

Froth dribbled from verminous fangs, blood dripped from glazed eyes as the rabid ratmen turned upon the dragons. With savage brutality, the skaven flung themselves at the decayed reptiles, swarming over them in a clawing, biting horde. First one, then a second dragon was dragged down by the sheer weight of its tormentors. Caring nothing for the hundreds smashed by the dragons’ claws or obliterated by necrotic breath, the crazed horde continued its rampage, slaughtering its own when there were no enemy near enough to slay.

Skrittar chittered maniacally as he watched the skaven swarm. He would teach the mice to fight! His lips curled and his tail lashed angrily against the stone arch. There were still too many dragons, and his enemy was keeping them away from the ground and the gnashing fangs of the skaven. To burn them all out of the sky would be impossible, but Skrittar realised that it wouldn’t be necessary. The only enemy he had to kill was the mage-man who had conjured up the dead-things to begin with.

Glaring at the tower, ignoring the scattered packs of fleeing skaven who had escaped the death frenzy he had inflicted upon their fellows, Skrittar snarled down at the bell-ringer. ‘Need-want more bell!’

The slave cried out in terror, protesting his master’s latest command. Skrittar stretched out his paw, crushing the ratman’s mind between his claws, reducing him to a fleshy puppet. With clumsy, spastic motion, the slave brought the striker cracking against the bell one final time.

Skrittar’s fangs bit down upon another chunk of warpstone, adding still more arcane energy to the reverberations of the spell. The seerlord focused his thoughts, directing the magic into a snaking chasm that would reach out and undermine the tower, send it crashing down. The magical fulcrum and the mage-man who had conjured it would be broken in one stroke of divine fury!

Such was his intention, but as Skrittar tried to focus his spell, he heard something crack inside him. Looking down, he saw his arm bend back upon itself in a fashion he was certain should be physically impossible. An instant later, all the fur on his left side turned into pulpy, twitching feelers, like the legs of a million fat spiders.

Skrittar tried to scream, but by that time it was too late to stop the runaway magic ravaging his body.

From the top of Vanhaldenschlosse, the metamorphosis of Seerlord Skrittar was like a blazing eruption of volcanic fury. The tower shook from the aethyric vibration and the unleashed Chaotic energies. The whirling current of vibrations faltered for an instant, their harmonies disturbed by the discordant inflection.

Vanhal stirred from his conjuration, his breath coming to him in shallow gasps. Returning his concentration to the three dimensions of mortal space was an ordeal to one who had sent his mentality soaring through vistas beyond the barriers of time and dimension. His consciousness had ridden astral tides, striding at once across powers and principalities to effect his mighty evocation. He had done more than simply form a spell from his will — he had effectually become the spell, channelling his essence into the enchantment.

The zombie dragons drawn from forgotten caves across half the world, the resurrected skaven, the walking dead of Sylvania, these had become more than simply puppets animated by his magic. They had become extensions of himself, extra fingers of his outstretched hand, physical manifestations of his soul. Vanhal had been more than an identity; he had become a multiplicity, an existence that transcended all concepts of mortality and divinity.