Prophecy Ben McCallum I Thunder was a god’s spoken wrath. The sound had the shape of a snarled curse. The heavens’ anger was rich with spite. It rumbled into the physical realm as a literal thunderclap, the aftershock of a god’s volcanic contempt, a deity’s ill-temper translated into the world of natural laws and physical constants. It was a command that left nothing unchanged. The land yielded like clay to the god’s primordial brutality. Mountains fell flat in storms of tectonic agony, throwing up enough dust and ash to obscure the horizon. A filthy ocean of oil and blood boiled away in a blink-fast instant of hissing vapour. A toxic bank of fog formed in its sudden absence, vast enough to choke a nation. The god-thunder lengthened into a predator-growl, like the roar of some great hunting cat from antiquity. It opened a snaking trail of fissures in the parched earth, reminiscent of the earthquake-ravaged islands of the far south. Finally, with a snorted boom of disinterest, the riot of change fell silent and the god glanced elsewhere. It was the nature of the Chaos Wastes to warp and heave in such a way. It was a land slaved to malignant energies, doomed to conform to the whims of the aethyr. This cursed state owed every one of its torments to the ugly rent in reality at the world’s northern pole. It was here that the breath of the gods was at its foulest. It infected every principle of nature, every foundation of existence. Distance was a quaint notion, here. A league could be travelled in a matter of footsteps, or it could stretch out into endlessness at any given moment. In the ever-changing landscape, mountains could crawl across the horizon, becoming meaningless and confusing points of reference. Time, too, became a fickle thing. Anyone foolish enough to lie down and sleep upon the Wastes might wake to find that either mere moments had passed or themselves aged by half a century. Even roving warbands from the Hung and Kurgan territories turned their noses up at this region. It was merely the first step of damnation’s long road. The destruction wrought by the tyrannical god was a diluted echo of something fiercer further north. Ambitious warlords struck deeper into the heart of the Wastes to fight for the gods’ favour, where the suspension of order became stranger still, and far more dangerous. But of the death of mountains and oceans, two souls paid no heed. They didn’t hear the god-thunder, even as it drowned out their screams. Twins. Brothers, identical in all but minor ways. Their albino-pale skin showed an unhealthy grey under the weak light of the blighted skies. Their eyes marked them as souls with a god’s favour – in the magic-rich air of the Wastes, they were flickers of crimson fire. They howled like dogs. It was not a dignified sight. They stumbled over their long robes, barking at phantoms, drooling at nightmares only they could see. Pain was plastered over their gaunt features. And fear. Fear was a tangy spice in the chill air. Around them, ghosts blinked in and out of existence, either through their own uncontrolled talents, or as quirks of the haunted land. Colourless figures flickered as indistinct insights into whatever madness ran amok inside their skulls. It was not such a rare sight in the northern reaches of the world. For here, this was how men dreamed. Most men dream in silent repose. It was never their way. As children, the twins would howl into the late hours, screaming at the scenes that played behind their eyes. The tribe’s elders would gather in cautious silence, straining to steal any meaning from the youths’ anguished cries. Old men would lean over their cots, thin, gnarled hands outstretched as if to snatch their secrets from the air. The pair were blessed; they all knew that from the moment the children had left the womb. Ordinary infants aren’t born with a carnivore’s needle teeth. That practice soon ceased as the twins matured, and the howling became violence. Whatever secrets Tchar whispered to them, it turned the silent youths into snarling animals. Night after night, they bled under each other’s ferocity. Sharpened teeth weren’t the only sign of the Changer’s favour. Kelmain – Goldenrod, as he would soon come to be known – possessed fingernails that were blade-sharp claws on his right hand, the fierce gold of a cold steppe sunrise. Lhoigor – Blackstaff, true to his slightly quieter, more introverted nature – was much the same, save that his were dark silver on the opposite hand. Emerging unscathed each morning, they kept their secrets to themselves. No one enquired too deeply about what these children, so obviously born with Tchar’s blessing, saw. It was foolish to pry. When the mood took them, they offered whispered warnings of trouble down the road, of rival tribes waiting in ambush. No one realised that even in their hushed seclusion away from the rest of the tribe, they rarely spoke with their actual voices. It was their first expression of sorcerous talent, an ability to communicate with each other through thought alone. They shared the same dreams, experienced the same hungers and passions, and through the harsh years of their nomadic upbringing, they plotted the route their lives would take, like the charted course of a raiding vessel. With this power, with these gifts, they set off into the world, dreaming their dreams of what was to be, beholden to no one except the Changer. Consciousness returned with a strangled gasp. Kelmain’s vision swam, painting the world in bleary smears. The ragged inhalation awakened his physical senses. He tasted blood’s copper tang on his tongue, and spat it into the foul wind. Worrying. Something inside him must have ruptured. Visions always took their toll, but this was severe. He closed his eyes as his pulse began to quicken in the claws of a panic attack. The helplessness of disorientation was rare to a man like him, but the landscape had changed again. When the vision had taken him, there had been mountains on the horizon. Now there was just a distant dust storm, a smudge of black off to the... north. Or perhaps east. He grappled the momentary weakness. Throttled it before it could taint him further. He sat up delicately. The ash beneath him held his imprint, his robes leaving a confused outline on the ground. He bit back a groan, his every muscle offering him a thousand different pains. It was an effort to still the trembling. Lhoigor came awake opposite him. Where Kelmain would rouse slowly and carefully, his brother all but fled the visions. The seizures could be staved off, and willpower could force their muscles to obey, but Lhoigor always floundered, always let his fear master him. His screams were a confession of weakness. Stop it, he scolded. There was nothing of kindness in the voiceless communication. ‘I am sorry, brother,’ came Lhoigor’s breathless reply. His voice was scratchy and hoarse at being so rarely used. ‘It always makes me so disorientated.’ They sat in silence for several long moments, gathering their wits, cataloguing their pains. One brother scowled at the barren earth, grim and silent, where the other turned his crimson eyes skywards, as if entreating heaven to relieve him. ‘Brother.’ Lhoigor’s voice still shook, uncertainty creeping into his tone. Lhoigor. ‘What did we see?’ You saw. We both saw. ‘Nevertheless,’ Lhoigor pressed. Minor convulsions wracked his spindly frame. ‘I would hear you speak it aloud.’ Kelmain sighed, composed where his brother was honest with his weakness. ‘We saw him,’ he said, using his actual voice for the first time in days. ‘We saw the Slayer.’ II The dragon opened its eyes. Lhoigor faltered in his chanting. It was something few mortals had ever witnessed, and it startled him, despite the fact that he had already foreseen this moment. To see such a beast in the flesh, to actually feel its breath gust past him... Focus. His brother’s rebuttal was hard. Impatient. This moment was crucial. It was easy for Kelmain to say. To one attuned in such a way, the dragon’s ancient intelligence was a palpable presence. It was not just a powerful creature. Its consciousness was a transcendent thing, an order of magnitude above humanity’s frail perceptions. Even the Slight Ones, who claimed companionship with these draconic gods, were like children in comparison. Lhoigor, focus. It was an effort to shrug off his fascination, but he took up the intonations where he left off, his thin lips framing impossible syllables. They rose and fell in time with the ancient creature’s slow, pounding heartbeat. Its lids began to drop again, closing over unfocused, reptilian eyes. Despite its elevated perceptions, the sleeping god’s senses were shut off to the world. Its centuries-long slumber, thus far undisturbed, was a deep, abyssal state of rest. At the periphery of his focus, Lhoigor sensed his brother’s movements. Kelmain was stalking around the cave, his feet shuffling in the darkness. His pulse quickened as he felt what his twin gripped in his golden-clawed hand. With fearless bare-skin contact, Kelmain hefted a shard of heaven. Wyrdstone, the scholars of the Empire named it. It was the stuff of the aethyr, condensed by the mortal world’s laws into a shard of luminous rock. To the men of the civilised south, it was pure corruption, a hazard to be purged and avoided at all costs. To merely be in the presence of the volatile substance invited mutation and madness. From their pulpits, priests and holy men representing a pantheon of southern gods urged their flocks to spurn the afflicted, to scorn those blackened by the Shadow’s touch. It was the cause of a thousand stillbirths and deformities across humanity’s various kingdoms and nations. A mere flake tossed into a well would doom a whole community. Beastmen and verminkin hoarded it as a rare and precious treasure, the former worshipping it as a gift from the Ruinous Ones, the latter prizing it as currency and a valued food supply. Kelmain plunged it into the dragon’s scaly flesh. The sleeping god groaned. It was a sound like the precursor to a volcanic eruption, a rumble of deep tectonic unrest. Lhoigor saw movement beneath its eyelids. Its dreams – whatever gods dreamed – darkened. He smiled as he chanted. The spell was a simple one, made easier by the presence of wyrdstone. The substance was flaky, and its potency persisted even when it was burned or dissolved in liquid. It mingled with the dragon’s potent blood, and with a soft exertion of his will, Lhoigor began to guide it through the creature’s veins. It invaded arteries like a disease, carrying naturally into the chambers of the beast’s ancient heart. The effect was unnerving in its immediacy. Mucus began to drool from the dragon’s slitted nostrils, its constitution already beginning to unravel as the taint thrived. The pitch of its heartbeat changed; instinct readied the dragon to fight an enemy that had already won. Lhoigor’s smile widened, his unnatural teeth showing bright in the cave’s dank gloom. ‘It is working,’ he whispered breathlessly. He turned to his brother, seeing his expression mirrored: two vultures grinning over a carcass. ‘Another. Our work will be done before dusk falls. Skjalandir wakens today.’ Another shard of heaven appeared in Kelmain’s clawed hands, and the sleeping god’s dreams grew darker still. It was fated to die. This, they realised only after their work was done. Swollen, corrupted, the dragon thundered from its lair for the first time in an age, no longer the exalted creature it had once been. Its mind was in a clawed grip, squeezed until all that was left was the overriding impulse to defend itself against threats that didn’t exist. It was a fallen god. It met the night sky with the promise of annihilation. Its ability to breathe gouts of flame from its fanged maw had been fouled: now acid and bile drooled from between its teeth every time it opened its mouth to scream. It heaved its bloated bulk into the skies on tattered wings, but it was too heavy to fly. Its form had been warped too much for the fallen god to achieve natural flight for very long. With every beat of its wings, it ravaged its own draconic musculature to stay aloft. Everything within a mile of the fallen god’s screams cowered. Birds broke their formations, scattering in the frantic need to flee. Nocturnal hunters howled and yelped, gnawing at their own bodies in confusion and fear. A community of humans and dwarfs eking out a grim existence in this relatively secure stretch of the Worlds Edge Mountains awoke to the roaring of a god soon to vent its wrath upon their homes. The twins did not see. The sense of premonition that seized them stole the nightmarish scene from their sight, replacing it with a whirlwind of unwritten futures, a roiling storm of prophecy. It was the price they paid for the potency of their visions. Prophecy was like experiencing a seizure, as if it was a curse rather than a gift. This was something they both knew and hated, because it reminded them of lesser seers who needed hallucinogens and incantations for their abilities to function. The injustice of it stung deeply. But these were thoughts for afterwards, when their muscles ceased trembling and the headaches passed. It was a bitterness that both nurtured in their hours of recovery, and both had entreated their god of claws and feathers to allay the pain. He only answered with more visions. More agony. In the vision’s embrace, they saw a god’s death. And the Slayer. The dragon dies. Skjalandir’s killer is a sword. The blade is a yard of ornate steelwork and burning runes, dragon-hilted and vicious. They know without understanding why that it is invested with the purpose of being the nemesis of all dragons, forged in the time when the blood shed between the elder races was still hot. The blade’s wielder is almost entirely unimportant. Blond-haired and shouting curses, he moves with a ferocity that isn’t his own. His uncharacteristic courage is an expression of the blade’s molten need to enact its purpose. The wielder is an unknowing puppet. The blade skewers Skjalandir’s brain. It is over as quickly as that. Their plan to ravage the mountain fails. The scheme that would have eventually seen the legendary Slayer Keep powerless beneath Skjalandir’s shadow dies with the stolen bravery of one fool with an enchanted sword. In a flare of exultant bliss, the blade falls silent, inert now that its task is done. All of these thing are irrelevant. Skjalandir’s killer did not come alone. His companions boast a ramshackle bundle of loyalties and allegiances: humans and dwarfs, adventurers and Slayers. The vision compels them to focus on one soul, a dwarfish Slayer who seems not to savour victory’s taste as the others do. Brother, look... I know, Lhoigor. I see it. Look at his axe. I know. I see. The course they had charted so many years ago became a quaint irrelevancy. The vision left them as they always did, but the revelation of what they had seen made their post-prophecy pains seem a small thing. ‘The scope of this is troubling,’ Lhoigor observed. His words came with a small burble of blood where his needle teeth had pierced gum. ‘At times, you wildly exaggerate, Lhoigor, but you irritate me far more when you understate things.’ Kelmain was a master of his own emotions, and peerless at masking his fears and insecurities with arrogance and false confidence. Lhoigor looked away to cover a smile at his brother’s blunder. He spoke. He actually used his voice. ‘I will be rational for both of us, then. Where do we stand?’ Kelmain took a calming breath, marshalling his willpower. We will return to Daemonclaw as if nothing has happened. We say nothing of the dragon, and nothing of the fools who are fated to kill it. I will never admit failure to him. His petty little horde will have its siege. ‘And the dwarf?’ Kelmain glanced over the valley. From their vantage at the cave mouth, the mountain offered a wide view of the surrounding terrain. They heard the thunder of Skjalandir’s distant rampage. As the twins talked, they saw the dragon plunge from the air, his fire a tiny gout of malevolence in the darkness. In that moment, a dozen souls perished. Daemonclaw is beyond foolish, but he is... blessed. Slightly. Enough for him to be of use to us. He will not be blind to the dwarf’s presence. He will at least suspect what he represents. ‘But Praag is long distant from here. You think the dwarf will be present for the siege?’ Lhoigor, came Kelmain’s admonishment. Equilibrium was restored. Stop being such a fool. Think. We were showed this dwarf for a reason. He possesses rare significance. He will have a part to play in the razing of Praag. ‘And what part would that be?’ Kelmain’s lips twisted into a rare grin. His hoarse voice was rich with vicious amusement. ‘I think he is going to kill Daemonclaw.’ III Daemonclaw. Warlord. Champion of the Changer. A master of swordsmanship, a fiercely competent sorcerer. Uniter: a warrior of Tchar who held together the warring slaves of gods that despised each other. And, the brothers knew, born a pampered lordling of the Empire he was destined to conquer. They knew the warlord better than he knew himself. They knew his birth name, and they knew the petty viciousness that led him to swear his soul to the Changer. The childish need to murder his political rivals with clever poisons exposed him to a minor conjurer. This was what set him on Tchar’s path, and took him far north of his birthland. He was... competent. This, the brothers also knew. It was a tale repeated a thousand times across the bloody history of the north. Followers flocked to this fledgling warlord, won through cunning and force. He visited the ancient shrines, spattered the ritual circles with the blood of his conquests, and slowly, over the long years, Tchar took notice. The god of claws and feathers extended his taloned hand, and thus Arek Daemonclaw was born. Much was owed to the brothers, of course. He would have failed early on, had Kelmain and Lhoigor not seen that burning ember of potential. Their counsel secured his victories. Their warnings saved his armies. Their formidable power parted oceans in the depths of the Wastes that his forces might cross unhindered, and their prophetic gifts interpreted the Changer’s shifting whims. All for Daemonclaw. All in the name of an Empire in ruins. The warlord was theirs. They owned this creature. And now, on the eve of a city’s destruction, on the very precipice of his army’s first victory, their pet was showing... resentment. Rebellion, even. The warlord railed against their warnings. ‘Cross the Lynsk in winter,’ the brothers counselled. ‘Your warriors are no stranger to marching through the snows.’ Oh, how he had flown into a rage, then. He claimed that to wait was idiocy. They would not expect an invasion at the height of summer. It was the pampered lordling who spoke that day, impatient for blood. They did not contradict him. They did not even act against him. But the brothers began to wonder. Had they made the correct choice? Was this truly the man who would usher in the Time of Changes? His army was vast. It was a patchwork coalition of tribes and warbands, over a hundred thousand damned souls hungry to tear down a city’s walls. It spoke of the power that Daemonclaw wielded that a champion of the Changer could win over servants of other, rival powers. It seemed right. It seemed like this was... it. Summer was a poor season to begin this war. The Empire and its ancestral dwarfish allies could respond hastily without the snows stunting their movements. That was something that could not be allowed to happen. That was why the brothers awakened Skjalandir, to cripple the Slayer Keep, denying the Empire reinforcements. But that plan had failed. And now this Slayer had been revealed to them. What next, then? What did he represent? It was prudent, the brothers decided, to be adaptable. Fluid. History would be made here. They doubted Daemonclaw would be the one writing it. The warlord was afraid. To his credit, he was a master of veiling his deeper emotions. A trait that Kelmain could respect, even if he wasn’t fooled. Arek Daemonclaw was a titan. He moved with physical arrogance and a striding gait, unhindered by the blessed plate armour that had painfully fused to his living flesh. The brothers had inscribed the runes adorning it personally, a glowing screed of warding text – fire’s harsh illumination against the black of iron plate – deflecting harm back at anyone dimwitted enough to confront him. Even as he strode into their tent, demanding they offer him a vision, he was almost unkillable by virtue of their efforts. Daemonclaw reached down, his armour creaking softly, to move the pieces of the chessboard. It ended the game in a victory for the white player. The brothers glanced up at him, identical, vicious smiles written across their pale faces. ‘Why do you always do that?’ Khelmain asked. ‘I fail to understand why you play each other at all.’ The warlord’s voice was a rumble of petulant syllables. It teased through the visor of his expressionless war helm. ‘One day we hope to establish which of us is the better player,’ came Lhoigor’s answer. My, his feathers are ruffled. I wonder what ails him. Perhaps he has seen a certain Slayer sally forth from the walls, no? The voiceless communication was ripe with amusement. Their smiles widened. ‘How many games have you played now? ‘Close on ten thousand.’ ‘What is the score?’ ‘Kelmain’s victory, which you foresaw, puts him one ahead.’ There was a pause. The warlord looked off into the darkness of the tent, his sapphire eyes glancing over the scattered miscellanea that made up the brothers’ worldly possessions. Outside, the walls of Praag held against a massed charge of beastmen. Their braying death agonies drifted into the tent. Breath of the Changer, he chafes at confessing his fears. This is glorious. ‘You did not come here to discuss our chess playing, fascinating as it doubtless is,’ Lhoigor prompted. ‘What do you require of us?’ ‘What I always do: information, prophecy, knowledge.’ ‘Tchar has granted us a great deal of the latter,’ Lhoigor sighed with mock wistfulness. ‘Sometimes too much, I think,’ Kelmain observed. After several hesitant moments, the warlord shook his armoured head, and ploughed into what Kelmain and Lhoigor had already known for several weeks. Daemonclaw did indeed glimpse the Slayer. The dwarf was a machine. A murderous engine. How he came to be in Praag, the brothers didn’t know, but that was an irrelevance. The city was a convergence of a hundred thousand fates. Tchar had placed the son of Grimnir here for some bleak purpose. Almost certainly to thwart Daemonclaw. The warlord explained that the Slayer had emerged from the city walls like wrath’s very avatar. He was like a force of nature. Every movement caused something to die. Stinking, bestial corpses were piled high by the time the Slayer withdrew. It was, the warlord explained, his weapon that caused him a moment’s... unease. A trifling matter. A point of simple curiosity. ‘Your forebodings are doubtless justified,’ Kelmain’s tone was sage. Patient. ‘Sometimes Lord Tchar chooses to send warnings in just this manner.’ Oh, he does indeed. ‘I require more information than this,’ the warlord growled. The sound was a deep thrum of aggression. He wasn’t blind to the brothers’ amusement. ‘Of course.’ ‘You wish to learn more of this axe and its bearer.’ ‘Naturally.’ ‘You wish us to invoke the name of the Changer and ask him to grant you the boon of a vision.’ The brothers moved in synchronicity, the temperature dropping with the gathering of sorcerous energies. Daemonclaw took a step back, his plated boot clunking loudly against a tent pole dug into the earth. He envied and feared what they were capable of. The boon of a vision indeed, Arek. I pray you find this to your taste, my lord. ‘Look, my lord. Let the Changer reveal all things.’ And reveal, he did. A dwarf at the forge. The blow of a hammer against heated starmetal throws up a flare of eye-aching sparks. The anvil is a work of ancient genius. Dwarf artisanry cages and tames the winds of magic, imbuing it with the qualities that the runesmith requires. An axe takes shape on the iron surface, the metal hammered into a lethal smile. The weight of ancient prehistory is a musky scent in the air, mingling with the dwarf’s sour sweat. He hammers, and hammers, and hammers, until... A battle. A dwarf ripples with spiralling tattoos, the play of ink over iron-hard muscles giving them motion of their own. The blood that spatters him is foul and black, the stink of it overpowering every other sense. He bears an axe. The axe, alongside its twin, gripped in clenched fists. He wields them like he was born for this. As if this is his very purpose. The first great incursion, the warlord hears Kelmain’s whispered voice. At the very beginning, Lhoigor affirms. There is awe in their voices. Longing. The dwarf is a leader of armies. The numbers... the scale... The warlord has seen nothing like this before. Soldiers without end. Violence without restraint. The sky roils in apocalyptic motion, and a million souls wage war for a world that is already doomed. The warlord sees the dwarf’s insane decision. He sees him marching off into the heaving north, to deny the hordes their prize of his beloved mountains. He sees the axe, cast away, before he strides into his final battle. The axe is found. Karag Dum. The lost northern hold. The vision shows walls unblackened by time’s ravages, and towers manned by bearded warriors. They fight for their souls. The Wastes are young here, but the malignant energies expand their cancerous influence. Daemons walk the earth freely, and hurl themselves at the stone fortifications. The defenders are beleaguered. Flagging. Morale is nothing more than a grim need for survival. The axe’s new wielder performs a single act of stunning bravery. A bloodthirster, the very avatar of the Blood God’s wrathful purpose, perishes, defenceless against the baneful runes hammered onto the weapon’s surface. Its demise is a shower of boiling blood. The wielder dies in scalding agony, never having the chance to savour his victory. Another scoops the weapon from the ground. An oath forms on his lips, to bring vengeance to the great enemy that threatens to swallow up the world. He leaves Karag Dum in glory, and dies in failure. A convoy. Wagons. Armoured in steel plates. An expedition, Lhoigor breathes. To find lost Karag Dum. Futile, of course. Over weeks, the procession trails through the Wastes, each wagon gradually falling to misfortune and destruction. One remains, set upon by braying monstrosities, and the passengers emerge to defend the stricken vehicle. Decades into the future, a warlord in a tent outside a burning city takes a sharp breath. It’s him, Kelmain observes. The humour in his tone is malicious, serrated like a blade. The Slayer, Lhoigor says. Gotrek Gurnisson. The dwarfs abandon their ruined wagon, the expedition a failure. The Wastes does its vile work. The three survivors are separated, and Gurnisson trudges on alone. To see him in this way, as this diminished warrior bereft of the trappings of a Slayer is astounding. He looks so unremarkable, so... tame. And then, he finds the axe. The cave is inhabited by a creature. It lairs here, dragging back its kills, smearing the walls with its filth. Gurnisson needs the shelter. He starts a fight he can’t win. The axe is hoarded at the back of the cave, amid a pile of bones and a handful of rusting trinkets the creature considers precious. In desperation, Gurnisson takes up the blade. The moment his fingers brush against the weapon’s handle, the warlord feels the brothers spasm. It’s a moment that’s so rare that it feels as if the stars are in some unheard of, auspicious alignment. Fate’s threads stretch taut. Some even snap. Gurnisson lived through that night. He even made it... …home. A valley. Picturesque. Serene. Gurnisson is already changed. Dwarfs are thick, compact creatures. His musculature is swollen beyond what passes for normality. And his nature, too, is not the same. The dwarf’s soul has become a darker thing. The axe changes the wielder, brother. He has grown. Home, however, is not as he left it. He walks among a village of blackened structures and ravaged bodies. He pauses over a female with an infant clutched in her bloodied hands. Gurnisson bows his head. In the ashes of his broken life, he weeps. Vengeance. Gurnisson snarls a violent promise in the hall of a dwarf lord. The enthroned noble watches with a highborn’s sneering dispassion. The words they exchange are heated, laced with a mutual dislike. There is some unresolved history here, a past slight that stokes anger’s flame. With a lazy gesture of one broad hand, the noble orders Gurnisson’s death, and thus secures his own. It’s a charnel scene. The lord’s chamber, richly appointed in rare gold and the elaborate tapestries of a ruling clan, becomes a gory mess of broken bodies and spattered blood. When Gurnisson shaves his head, he takes his time. With a blade taken from the slain lord’s belt, he cuts away his hair, leaving the stubbly crest that signifies a dwarf undertaking the Slayer Oath. He leaves that chamber in the throes of shame, and begins a ceaseless hunt for his own doom. Altdorf. Accursed Imperial capital. Birthplace of the pretender-god Sigmar Heldenhammer. The tavern is the usual squalid dive so common in all Imperial cities. Whoring and drinking, pissing and retching, the sweating mass of humanity squanders what few copper coins they have to forget about the harshness of their lives. Gurnisson is here. And another. A human. That... fool... slew Skjalandir. It was him. They are drunk, and locked in intense conversation. The bonds formed during heavy drinking often endure the longest, but the human utters perhaps the stupidest words he will ever speak. He slurs an oath. To a dwarf. An oath. The warlord dies. Praag burns. Flame consumes the outer districts, and the raucous chanting of the conquering invaders is a deep chorus in the ruined streets and alleys. The sky is red. Literally, the very clouds are the deep crimson of arterial blood. Sorcery charges the air as the enchantments woven into the city’s broken walls bleed freely into the blighted skies. Everything smells of smoke and fire, blood and dying, looting and murder. Creatures that should not be wander the streets, feasting on the dead. They behold the world with beady scavenger eyes, avoiding anyone who comes close, and tearing out the throats of the mortally wounded. Praag burns, and yet the warlord dies. His life ends in a flurry of violence, surrounded by the heaving press of his own warriors. Gurnisson – the Slayer, the axe wielder – roars like a Lustrian carnosaur. The blade he fears, the weapon that is fated to end his life, is a blazing beacon of hatred for the warlord’s kind. It exults in the pain it is about to inflict. It howls its contempt for the Great Powers. His armour is breached, the enchantments of his slave-sorcerers burned out and useless. He feels his own blood snaking down the inside of the damaged plate in hot trickles. It flashes down in a blur of hot starmetal – gromril, the dwarfs name the rare and precious metal – and severs the warlord’s head from his shoulders. A hush falls over the– –stop this end this Kelmain Lhoigor I have seen en– –warlord’s forces. They pause in their destruction, uncertainty replacing the buzz of malicious celebration. Gurnisson’s human companion stoops to collect the warlord’s head, and holds it aloft so that they can all see. ‘Your warlord is dead!’ he shouts, his teeth bared in angry triumph. ‘Your warlord is dead!’ He nearly lost his balance. Stunned, he held out a plated hand to steady his bulky form. His breathing came in ragged gasps, his warped throat turning the sound into a panted growl. ‘Your visions,’ he said, when his pulse had slowed, ‘have done nothing to reassure me.’ The brothers watched with the warmth of a glacier. Their smiles were hungry. They scented the warlord’s weakness. He will tell us to kill the dwarf, brother. He will think that he can stop this. That he will, Lhoigor. How best to handle it? The way we always handle him. Humour him. Let him believe he is in control. He has scented his own demise. He will only grow more fearful as the hour draws closer. This war, this city... It was all for naught? No. Think of what will transpire. We have engineered the slaughter of thousands. This blow is not grievous enough to lay Kislev low entirely, but Praag will take years to rebuild. This army will scatter, but we will endure. And there are other, worthier warlords. True enough, brother. True enough. They gave Daemonclaw their assurances that such a fate could be avoided, and that death was just a mere possibility. They wove their lies with guiltless ease, and he calmed. ‘See to it the dwarf and his human henchman die. See that the axe is lost and not found again soon.’ ‘We shall do our best,’ Kelmain lied with a smile. ‘If the vision truly came from Tchar, it would be blasphemy to try and interfere with the destiny he plans for you.’ Lhoigor couldn’t help himself. ‘Nonetheless, do it.’ ‘As you wish.’ They glanced at each other as he left, the black and white pieces of the chessboard sliding back into their starting positions. Delicious. IV The vision had not shown the actual truth. Not entirely. After all, Arek’s decapitation was not as clean as he had been shown. Not at all as clean. Dwarfs are often compared to their human allies and neighbours. Popular Imperial literature describes them as ‘short but stout’, always measuring them by human standards. The frowning, bearded little lords of the Worlds Edge Mountains; useful to have at your side in a fight, valuing a promise, and taking their quaint oaths very seriously. Humans could be very stupid, sometimes. To accuse a dwarf of having a dour nature is to misunderstand dawi psychology completely. It disregards an ancient culture’s pathological obsession with every slight, every injustice, every loss it has ever endured. Every month, another hold has to be scourged of verminkin. Every week, a new greenskin warleader trumpets his dominance by lining the mountain roads with fresh trophy pikes. To mock the importance they place in keeping oaths and fulfilling promises is to devalue a society that has endured since civilisation’s bloody dawn. To break a promise, to spit on an oath, is to throw brotherhood in their faces. It’s the fulcrum upon which their society spins. It is all they have. Every dwarf knows this. And they also know that the limits of their anger far exceed what humans have the capacity to comprehend. He put every remembered grudge into the blow. He summoned every shred of frothing, black rage into the strike that felled Daemonclaw and ended the razing of Praag. And yet, despite all these things, the axe forged in antiquity by an ancestor-god only partially severed his head. He grunted a Khazalid curse, blood and spit spraying from his lips. With a broad, flat boot, he forced the hissing gromril to bite deeper, as if he was breaking ground with a shovel. In the space between armoured pauldron and full-face war helm, black, polluted blood squirted from the wound in time with the dying warlord’s failing heartbeat. The head came free with the wrench of tearing sinew, and his armoured body crashed to the ground. What happened next, the vision had represented with chilling accuracy. ‘Your warlord is dead!’ cried Felix Jaeger. ‘Your warlord is dead!’ The brothers did not even spare a moment’s attention as their puppet died. They, of course, had abandoned him. Outside the walls, they had listened politely to the demands of Daemonclaw’s heralds to stop the spread of fires within the city. The army had to winter here, after all. Smoking ruins offered little shelter. Lhoigor had declined in a sorrowful, regretful tone, and with a gesture, their armour became molten slag. ‘Now that Arek’s farce is concluded, have we a plan?’ Kelmain’s rebuke had none of its usual venom. He was almost kindly, as if talking to a dim child. Of course we do, Lhoigor. We start again. ‘Oh?’ Kelmain gave a shrill laugh. Around them, the brothers’ cabal of lowly acolytes and half-hearted disciples listened with their shaven heads bowed in deference. No one commented on the apparent one-sidedness of the conversation. As this gaping wound in Kislev scabs over, all we must do is guide another soul along the paths Arek took. Except this time, we shall be careful to study his worthiness more closely, no? We should choose a man who thinks slightly less of himself than this fool did. Lhoigor dipped his bald head in concession of his brother’s wisdom. ‘If this is the case, I thought perhaps we could alter our route to include the mountains? I would very much like to examine Skjalandir’s carcass.’ Kelmain’s answer was spoken aloud so the acolytes could hear his words. ‘We travel by swifter means, my brother.’ He showed them his needle-teeth in what looked more like a threat-display than a grin. ‘Would you die for us? We are in a hurry.’ In silent, wordless loyalty, they cut their own throats to power the brothers’ spell. With a thick bang of displaced air, they left the stink of a burning city behind them, and the fleeing hordes that had already begun to fight amongst themselves. V ‘We saw,’ Kelmain repeated, almost choking the words from his parched throat, ‘the Slayer.’ Lhoigor shivered. The images were scars in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t banish what the vision had shown. His blinking was rapid. ‘Is he following us?’ Lhoigor... ‘He must have followed us from Praag, Kelmain. You saw what he is capable of.’ If one more fearful muttering passes your lips, I swear by the blood of the Changer I will kill you myself. Kelmain’s chest rose and fell in anger, as well as fear of his own. Something was wrong. The quality of the vision had been too... violent. Too vivid. Even more than the premonitions they usually endured. And the weakness was passing too slowly. Tchar’s holy breath, his skull ached. As he rose to his feet, the trembling of his knees shocked him. With a golden-clawed fist gripping his staff for support, he limped a few steps to encourage circulation. Lhoigor remained where he was, biting his silver claws in fretful thought. At last, Kelmain sighed. ‘You realise this is an opportunity.’ He used his ravaged flesh-voice. Lhoigor always responded better this way. ‘How so?’ His brother didn’t even look up. ‘Recall the vision.’ ‘I... don’t want to, brother.’ ‘Lhoigor. Recall the vision. Describe what we saw.’ The silver-clawed sorcerer took a shuddering breath. Kelmain shook his head in wonderment. It was true that the two almost shared souls, that was how fundamental their bond was, but some things remained hidden from each other. Lhoigor never realised that he possessed a fractional superiority in raw talent, where Kelmain refined his own abilities with tight, masterful control. ‘He was walking through the Wastes. He seemed possessed by anger.’ ‘No. That isn’t what we saw. Clear your head. This is vital. Recall the vision accurately, Lhoigor. Don’t be afraid.’ As calm settled over the tension of the silver-clawed brother’s shoulders, he began to talk. Not walking. Staggering. The Slayer is staggering. His boots scuff the ashen earth of the Wastes, footsteps trailing behind him for countless leagues. Gurnisson can barely stand. He cackles a madman’s laugh, as if this wretched state of being holds some private hilarity. The bleakness of cold sunlight catches on his golden armbands. The priceless metal is worn and scratched from a journey that has surely taken months. Every hour of that trek shows. New scars stand out as livid blemishes on pale, tattooed skin. His presence is somehow diminished. This isn’t the warrior who bested Daemonclaw. It seems that even the axe’s influence can’t – or perhaps won’t – sustain him. He holds the blade out in front of him, swinging drunkenly at enemies who aren’t there. With the one eye that remains to him, blinking and clogged with dust, he stumbles after landmarks that won’t stay still, mumbling over the sanctity of mountains, cursing the false tranquillity of open valleys. No anger. No wrathful pursuit of two twin sorcerers. Just a Slayer fated to find his doom in the north. ‘Let’s kill him ourselves.’ Kelmain hid a private smile. Like a child shown the foolishness of his fear, Lhoigor had certainly perked up. Now you are thinking like my brother again. They began to walk without paying attention to where they were going. It seemed an illogical thing to do, but it didn’t matter where you thought you were heading in the Chaos Wastes. It took you along its own paths, and guided you into its numerous pitfalls. I am sorry, brother, Lhoigor said for the second time that day. That vision was so strong. I was not myself when I came to. In truth, neither was I, Kelmain confessed, his reluctance to admit this obvious in the hesitance of his thoughts. Normally my wits convalesce swiftly. Not today. Does it give you pause? The strangeness of it? Kelmain shrugged his spindly shoulders. We stand on the precipice of the gods’ realm. We should be surprised that vague abnormality was all we experienced, no? It is possible that the vision isn’t accurate. Lhoigor was voicing a concern neither really wanted to face up to. Perhaps something interfered, poisoning our perceptions with false visions. Kelmain took a long, impatient breath. If that is the case, then we will deal with it as it comes. The possibility of destroying this Gurnisson, perhaps bending his weapon to our purposes, is too great an opportunity to pass over. He added, You darken my thoughts. The journey continued in silence, not even with their voiceless communication. Each brother kept his own counsel, perhaps wondering which of fate’s threads would snap with the Slayer gone. Or perhaps they simply pondered how they would murder him. He was almost dead. It quite removed the fun from the situation. He was far gaunter than the vision showed. His bones were visible on account of the severe wasting of his muscles, the bumpy curvature of his ribcage hiking with each spluttered breath. He couldn’t even stand up. He cradled his axe on the ground underneath him, as if sheltering it from predators. And the bands decorating his arms seemed too dull to be true gold. Curious. The brothers stalked around him, as lean as vultures, bent over in their predatory intent. ‘You are ours, Slayer,’ Kelmain teased, the words close to a sneer. ‘Finally, this is the doom that has eluded you these past decades.’ Despite the taunt, neither brother actually moved any closer. The dwarf was dying, but he was still dangerous. Obscured under his bulk, that axe waited. ‘Do I congratulate you, dwarf? In your dim, oafish mind, is this a victory for you?’ Lhoigor sniped. ‘What a life it must be, to have death as your foremost ambition.’ The brothers tittered like hyenas, and the Slayer glanced up at them. With two eyes. Both gleamed with madness, even if one was milky with blindness. ‘He should possess only one eye...’ Kelmain began. The thought was finished as the dwarf heaved himself to his feet, brandishing his lethal weapon with the skill and strength of an infant. ‘It is not him,’ Lhoigor breathed. ‘This is not Gotrek Gurnisson.’ They burned him alive. When he rushed at them in one final, doomed burst of suicidal violence, his weapon swinging in weak arcs, as worthless as the blade itself. Realising they had been fooled, cursing whatever entity had fouled their gift, they annihilated the dwarf’s body with acid fire, and watched the emerald flame consume his wasted flesh. His dyed beard and crest went up first, in a spectacular moment of illumination. Then his inked flesh split open under the heat, spattering his boiling blood across the dust. ‘Brother,’ Lhoigor said, after a long time of watching the flames. The blackened husk was a wretched shape, the impression of limbs extended in a plea for deliverance. ‘We should go, now.’ Let me linger a while longer, Lhoigor. Let me scent his scorched bones for just a few more moments. I will have at least that satisfaction. He growled. I dislike being fooled. ‘It is over now. He is dead, and the spirit who engineered this has had its fun.’ Kelmain didn’t seem to be listening. ‘Brother? Can you still your temper, just for this small while?’ Lhoigor... come here. Look at this. A golden claw pointed at the dwarf’s burned husk, where blood had scabbed into the dust. ‘What?’ Kelmain sunk to his haunches, staring intently at where the blood had fallen the thickest. Do you recognise this shape? ‘I am not sure. It could be anything.’ You have studied more maps than I. I think I have seen this shape before. Even as they watched, something stirred in the aethyric winds. The scabbed blood reverted to its liquid state, and began to flow of its own volition into a sticky, sanguine pool. ‘Yes,’ Lhoigor was breathless. Excited. ‘Yes, I do know this shape. It even mimics the contours of mountains.’ They locked eyes. Two pairs of crimson orbs widened as they felt the warp and weft of their fates shifting, stretching. ‘Albion.’ Two brothers left a charred corpse in the dust. They left side by side, striding with a dark purpose, animated with the exultant rightness of the task that lay before them. The sanguine omen had pointed them to that mist-wreathed isle. As portents went, it was a rather unsubtle thing, but in their eagerness, they gave it little thought. They gave the Slayer’s blackened husk not even a second glance. It rocked in a gentle wind, the ash that had once been its living flesh flaking off in drifting falls. And then it sat up. The crunch of breaking charcoal was like hearing a twig snap in the forest. The head, little more than a featureless stump of blackened flesh, beheld the world without eyes, and scented the wind without a snout. It rose spasmodically to its feet, flakes of burned matter raining down from its body. The impression of a mouth – sharp and pointed like a beak – thrust through the brittle shell that formed the husk-thing’s face. It cawed long and loud, a sound rich with good humour. When it spoke, the husk-thing had several voices at once. ‘Albion,’ came Daemonclaw’s reverberative drawl, underlaid by Gotrek Gurnisson’s gruff, grunting tones. The mockery was obvious. ‘Breath of the Changer. It’s Albion.’ It pointed its beak skywards to caw its cackling laughter to the skies again, and opened its yellow, avian eyes. ‘And what waits for you there, little brothers?’ The bird-husk spoke in Felix’s Jaeger’s smooth, cultured voice, while Ulrika Magdova echoed him in perfect harmony. ‘What waits, indeed?’ The bird-husk’s back exploded into vibrant motion. Feathered wings, the blue of calmer skies, ruffled in the wind as more and more of its blackened shell began to fall away. ‘Oh, I hope we have made the right decision,’ the daemon croaked, in the hoarse tones of Kelmain and Lhoigor. ‘I hope the spirit who engineered this has had its fun.’