Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

There were no paths. The Fyreslayers were forced to wend their way between the trunks. The line of their march became twisted. When Vrindum looked back, he could see only the first couple of fyrds behind the runesons. On a column of more than a thousand Drunbhor, if something happened to the leaders or the rearguard, the other end of the host would not know it.

If the Voidfire Plain had been no proper place for a Fyreslayer, this was worse yet.

‘We are here!’ Vrindum shouted. Let the enemy come at last and meet the edge of his axe. ‘Know us and fear us!’

Laughter ahead. For a terrible moment, Vrindum thought it came from the runefather. Then he realized it emanated from a cluster of trunks a score of paces further on. As one, when the wind’s long note sounded, the growths on the trunks bulged, deep pink and shining. There was a wet tearing noise. The tumours grew arms and horns. They pulled away from the trunks, glistening with mucus. Newly born and ready for war, the pink horrors dropped to the ground. They were heavy, squat, horned things, some with three limbs, some four, some five. All had huge, gaping jaws. Their flesh was the colour of exposed muscle.

Bramnor answered the daemons with laughter of his own, angry yet eager.

‘Finally!’ he roared. ‘A proper fight.’

The rumble of voices along the Drunbhor column echoed Bramnor’s words. Drethor and Frethnir added their voices to the clamour. Bramnor was the brashest of the runesons, but all were hungry to inflict true punishment on the enemy after the grinding losses of the Voidfire.

‘Guard the flanks!’ Beregthor commanded, even as Krasnak charged with him towards the immediate threat.

The hearthguard and vulkite berzerkers aimed their weapons to the sides. The column moved forward, its edges sharp.

The daemons rushed at Beregthor, Vrindum and the runesons. A moment later, more of the pink horrors burst from the trunks on either side, falling to the ground with fat thuds, a rain of monstrous fruit. And as the daemons surrounded the Drunbhor, the plants attacked too. Their true nature was now clear; they were daemons of the same ilk fused and melded into each other, their limbs distorted and stretched into branches, their horns turned into the spines. Flexing, grasping, the conglomerations of daemons were even more like tentacles now, as if the entire forest were the claws of a great fist that now began to close. The huge trunks whipped down, shaking the earth with their impact. The spines lunged for the Fyreslayers.

‘Avenge Sibilatus!’ Trumnir cried. ‘Avenge its desecration!’

On his magmadroth, Runesmiter Harthum beat the war altar, and down the length of the Fyreslayer line the sigils of ur-gold worked into the warriors’ flesh stirred them to the joyous frenzy of war. The essence of Grimnir awoke in all of them, and would be satisfied with nothing except the utter annihilation of the daemons. Vulkite berzerkers tore into the pink horrors, while the magmadroths slashed at them with great claws and spat streams of flaming bile. In the gap created by the dissolving, burning daemons, the hearthguard berzerkers stormed outward, pushing hard against the daemons, cutting down abominations who dared attack the runefather. The vulkite berserkers advanced on either side, and the more the gibbering creatures attacked, the wider the column became as the Drunbhor met their challenge with a rising tide of fury.

Vrindum hurled himself at the daemons seeking to climb the flanks of Krasnak and take down Beregthor. He slammed into them with the force of a battering ram, knocking them back. His blows sank into solid, dense muscle that flowed with the possibility of change. There was no structure of bone. Revulsion fuelled his rage and his violence, and he struck harder yet, severing the flesh completely. It came apart in sticky tendrils.

A cackling daemon opened its maw wide enough to swallow his head, and Vrindum cut it in half with a single blow of Darkbane. The daemon’s laughter turned into a shriek, and then into wails of petulant grief as the two portions of its body shifted to blue and sprouted limbs. The new daemons reached for Vrindum, their gestures both predatory and entreating. They barely had time to come into being and mourn the loss of their greater self. Vrindum already had Darkbane raised again. He brought it down in a diagonal slash. One blow had ended the pink daemon; now one blow destroyed the two blue ones. The onyx blade smashed through Chaos flesh so hard it left a huge cleft in the ground. The daemons vanished mid-howl, their essence erupting then dispersing with a fading echo of a snarl. Vrindum yanked the greataxe from the ground and rounded on more of the foe.

Standing high on his throne, a roaring Beregthor battered pink horrors down from Krasnak’s flanks with the Keeper of Roads. He hit the head of one daemon with such force that he squeezed its essence within the cleft of the blade. Then he twisted violently, snapping the head in half. The blue horrors that came into being were flawed, malformed even for daemons, half their heads missing. Beregthor dispatched them quickly, crushing their bodies beneath the weight of the grandaxe.

Trunks bent and limbs grasped, but the Fyreslayers concentrated on the daemons not rooted to the ground. The other pink horrors numbered in the hundreds, a horde that would have overwhelmed an army of mere mortals with the sheer monstrosity of its existence. But the Fyreslayers waded into the struggle with eagerness. They were strong, and they were legion. They hacked at the pink horrors and then the squealing blue daemons. The enemy multiplied, then began to dwindle in a matter of seconds.

The Drunbhor batted away the probing spines as a mere annoyance. Drethor was bleeding from minor wounds on his face and chest. They were insignificant, barely noticed in the heat of anger and slaughter.

The fused horrors reached and stabbed, accumulating wounds, drawing blood. The tips of their horns broke off and left jagged burrs in the flesh of the duardin.

As Vrindum sent two more daemons into oblivion, he saw many of his brother Drunbhor now fighting while their arms and necks bristled with spines. Blood poured down their skin, obscuring the fire of the ur-gold. The spines writhed. They whistled. And then, as ever to the rhythm of the wind’s three-note song, a metamorphosis took place. Drethor jerked. He dropped his weapons. He cried out in agony. He arched backwards. He kept bending until his spine cracked to splinters. Still he folded backwards, his hair and beard losing their red, turning pink, turning to flesh. The back of his head fused with his legs. Skin flowed over his face, destroying his identity. His shoulders moved back up through his torso until his arms emerged from the sides of his stomach. His misshapen legs grew longer. The flesh of his midsection tore open, becoming gnashing jaws. Muscle bunched, twisted, flowed and grew horns.

Where Drethor had been, a pink horror stood on his magmadroth’s back. It sank claws and fangs into the back of the beast’s neck. The magmadroth writhed, seeking to dislodge its attacker, but more daemons sprang into being, swarming over it. The enemy’s army grew. The lines of the Fyreslayers became ragged from a new and insidious incursion. The cry that went up was beyond rage. It overflowed with grief and horror.

‘Guard yourselves!’ Runemaster Trumnir shouted. ‘Purge yourselves of the foul thorns! Do not despair! Let the fire of Grimnir burn strong and destroy the taint of Chaos.’ He raised his staff high, and holy fire crackled around it. Daemons rushed him, but were held back by the hearthguard berzerkers at his sides long enough for him to complete his summoning and bring the point of the staff down with a blow that shook the earth. A moment later, lava burst from the ground, enveloping an entire cluster of the daemonic trunks. They shrivelled to ash in the molten rock.