— So... almost ready, Jurgen, — Erik said, reloading the pistols I'd taken from Waldemar the Witch Hunter as we moved. — Here. Take them.
— Keep them. You're a much better shot.
We pressed forward, the sounds of battle growing distinct. Trees splintered with a sickening crack, and the earth groaned under the weight of heavy impacts. Whatever was happening ahead was far beyond a mere skirmish.
— Faster now! — the dwarf urged. — A glorious death won't wait forever.
— I thought you weren't a Slayer? — I asked, surprised. — You didn't take the oath, did you?
— Not a Slayer, but I am Dawi. To any son of Grungni, a glorious death is sweeter than the finest mead. Kazak!
With that war cry—which translated roughly to "War!"—he charged. We quickly caught up and overtook him, however; for all their virtues, dwarfs make poor sprinters.
The clearing ahead opened up. The grove ended, and we burst out toward a ruined roadside shrine of Shallya, perched on the edge of a precipice. In the courtyard of the Goddess of Mercy's sanctuary, a merciless slaughter was in full swing. Five knights and their mounts already lay torn to pieces. About a dozen noble warriors remained, some mounted and others on foot, desperately holding the line. Their opponent was Tamurkhan himself, mounted upon his monstrous Toad Dragon. And the Maggot Lord was not the only champion of the Ruinous Powers present.
By the low stone wall surrounding the shrine lay an overturned Chaos Chariot. Perched atop it was a hideous warrior in heavy daemon-plate. Surprisingly, he wore no helm; his bald head was covered in weeping buboes. He gripped a shield in one hand and an intricately wrought axe in the other.
— Come here, you weaklings! — he shrieked, grinning with mad delight. — Haargan will have your guts!
One of the knights answered the challenge. He wheeled his stallion toward the madman and, catching a short gallop, tried to run him through with his lance. I hoped it would work. Not a chance. The freak blocked the heavy lance with an all-metal shield. The knight's charge only made him stagger; sparks flew from the shield as the lance shattered into splinters. The Chaos-worshiper seemed about to fall back, but with a sudden, violent snap of his arm, he hurled his terrifying axe. The strange blade flared with magic and sliced through the knight's steel plate like parchment. The riderless horse shifted nervously as the champion leaped down and effortlessly wrenched his axe from the corpse of the Empire noble.
Meanwhile, Tamurkhan's Toad Dragon spewed a torrent of acid and filth from its maw, trying to drench the other knights. The stream caught one of the horses in the flank; the hide began to smoke instantly, fur peeling away to reveal raw meat. The stallion reared, nearly throwing its rider, and the knight was forced to dismount in a panic as his mount lost all control.
Damn it! Elspeth and her dragon would have been very useful right about now. It wasn't clear how to even approach Tamurkhan while he sat atop such a dangerous beast. The Toad Dragon had taken many wounds already, but it was still a lethal threat.
Fine. Feet first, brain later. My Blood Chalice was almost full, and the magical buffs were still holding. Into the fray!
The dwarf caught up with us just in time.
However, as soon as we moved to engage Tamurkhan, that bald Chaos champion barred our way. He moved with surprising speed for a brute standing over seven feet tall in massive plate.
— And where are you going?! Where are you going?! — he laughed hoarsely.
The maniac's eyes literally glowed red. He was surrounded by the roiling energy of Chaos; he wasn't a sorcerer, but the Dark Gods had clearly cast their gaze upon him.
— Er, you gonna shoot 'im? — Magg asked. — I wanna save me gun for the tyrant.
— Errr, you gonna shshoot 'im?! — the champion mimicked. — Aim for me head, you noseless stuntie. Right here! Here! You won't pierce me plate, so try and crack me skull instead!
— If you insist, — Erik shrugged, raising a pistol.
The shot rang out, but the champion's figure suddenly shifted. No one expected him to move that fast. The bastard literally tore into our ranks, hunkered behind his massive shield. Magg didn't have time to react. Liandra tried to catch the enemy in the neck, but her blade lacked the reach. The boost from the Blood Chalice let me react in time, but I made a mistake: I tried to tank the enemy's charge, just as I had done with other Chaos Warriors. But this bastard wasn't just a warrior or a Chosen. An Exalted Champion, at the very least.
I braced my shield, dug in my heels, and...
I was literally thrown back about three meters. What incredible strength! It felt like being hit by a carriage. Only Magg could match him in raw power, but the Ogre was slower.
The champion took Gutrom's axe on his shield and used his own weapon to parry Liandra's thrust, catching her blade between two jagged notches in the axe-head, nearly disarming the elf.
I was only just getting to my feet.
Erik was at the champion's flank. The halfling tried to fire into a joint in the armor plates, but the champion anticipated it with supernatural instinct. He spun instantly toward the hobbit and...
---
INTERLUDE. Erik Greenleaf.
Everything froze at once. Darkness clouded his vision. Thoughts were paralyzed.
It wasn't pain, but something utterly destructive. The end of all things. Erik Greenleaf, born in a small village in the Moot, should have died almost instantly. The Chaos champion's axe had sliced him nearly in half, diagonally from his right shoulder to the left side of his groin. Heart, spine, and liver were severed—a blow combining lethal mastery with inhuman strength. Erik should have died, but for some reason, he did not.
Time slowed for him. Almost stopped. He couldn't feel his legs; he couldn't feel the pain. Yet, the halfling still felt the weight of the trophy pistol in his right hand—the weapon Jurgen had taken from the dead Chaos Dwarf.
— Aim for me head, you noseless stuntie. Right here! Here! — the enemy's taunts echoed in Erik's mind.
In that strangely dilated time, the halfling slightly shifted his wrist and squeezed the trigger. It felt like it lasted a long time. Painfully long, even. Erik's vision was slowly claimed by a fog. Images from the distant past began to surface. A simple melody played in the background, and the words of a song formed in his fading consciousness:
"In years of old, long passed away,
The sun would guide my path each day,
A merry soul with friends so dear,
I knew no grief and knew no fear.
A happy sire, a lovely bride—
What more could fill a hobbit's pride?
But in the night, the shadow fell,
And broke the life I loved so well. "
[Translation Note: 🤧]
Echoes of horrific images drifted from the mist. His familiar, beloved home, turned into a theater of horrors. Rough hands pinning him to the floor. Disgusting laughter nearly drowning out the screams of his wife, his daughter, and his youngest son. Goblins... They ate them. Tortured them, butchered them, and ate them right before his eyes. They threw them into the same pot as the meat of a dog they'd beaten to death. And then they ate... Boiled heads, bloated entrails, wet matted clumps of women's hair.
All that horror had burned Erik's soul to a cinder.
— My dear...
A painfully familiar voice chased away the nightmares. Erik Greenleaf saw something beautiful above him. Green forests, golden fields, neat little houses in the background, and his family reaching their hands out to him. Dear faces he had almost forgotten in the cycle of endless violence.
— Hilda? — Erik said, not recognizing his own voice.
He reached out to his family, and they tried to pull him from a dark quagmire that was greedily consuming the halfling's soul. Erik saw himself from the outside: a hideous, pathetic, and terrifying creature. A missing nose, a face smeared with blood, sharp shards of teeth, a mad gaze. Shuddering with self-loathing, Erik let go. With a crazed smile, he watched as the faces of his family receded forever, as the happiness he was no longer worthy of slipped from his grasp.
Erik fell deeper. The darkness beneath him suddenly vanished, and an abyss full of sharp teeth yawned wide. The Great Maw. The ever-hungry deity of the Ogres, to whom the halfling had begun to pray instead of Esmeralda.
— Esmeralda... — the hobbit thought. — She protects the hearth, but the goblins razed my home. Esmeralda grants family bliss, but mine is ruined forever. That is why I chose the Maw. I prayed for hunger, so that I could eat as many of those greenskin bastards as possible before the end. —
Erik smiled again. As he fell, new images surfaced. The squealing of greenskins under his knife. Those filthy murderers, terrified and fouling their breeches, soon to become the culinary masterpieces of his skill. Magg Gutrom, with bliss on his broad face, gnawing on bones. Jurgen, swinging his sword in a Skaven mine. Together they had saved many, but Erik took even more joy in how many monsters they had slaughtered.
Though pure family happiness was lost to him forever, he could still savor the dark celebration of a bloody triumph. That was why Erik prayed to the Maw with all the sincerity of his madness. And the Maw heard him.
Plummeting past the giant teeth, the halfling realized it was the ever-hungry deity that had granted him that final shot. He saw the flash of flame spewing from the barrel of the trophy pistol, and the heavy bullet struck the Exalted Champion exactly in the temple. The champion's red-flickering eyes widened in surprise.
Then everything went dark. Erik fell into the deepest depths. Into something unknown and indescribable. His thoughts, his very soul melted, changed, and distorted. He screamed, though he no longer had a mouth. He fell apart and came together again. He was eaten, and he himself ate from within the one who had devoured him.
When the light flashed again, Erik could no longer even recall his own name. And he certainly could not have spoken it. His body felt alien and unfamiliar. Clumsy hands, gnarled little legs that he kicked about awkwardly. A huge palm wiped his face, and Erik blinked his eyes open. An Ogre's face loomed before him. But it wasn't Magg; it was another member of the gluttonous tribe. He had no beard, and his cheeks and forehead were covered in rough scars.
— It's lookin'... — the Ogre rumbled. — Lookin' at me. Got clever eyes, this one.
Erik wanted to speak to them, but suddenly realized his new vocal cords were completely unaccustomed to words.
— Give 'im to me! — another voice rang out.
It was also clearly an Ogre's, but it sounded different. Slightly less gruff.
Another pair of hands took Erik. An Ogre woman's face appeared before him. She turned him over in her hands and kneaded him, but didn't try to cause pain or hurt him.
— Such a fatty! Heavy one, too! — she cooed. — You hungry? Wanna eat?
Then Erik noticed someone else. A creature tiny compared to the Ogres, hideous and green with a long nose and large ears. The sight of this creature triggered a surge of mixed emotions in the new Erik. He reached out toward the greenskin with his short, pudgy hands.
— Aaaa... — the Ogre woman sighed kindly. — Look, he's curious. That's a gnoblar. See? Gnoblar.
The Ogre woman held little Erik close to the wary greenskin. The creature recoiled, but the woman didn't like that.
— Scraps, what's wrong with you? Play with my little son.
— Yes, yes, mistress, — the gnoblar stammered. — I'm just... Aaaaieee!
As soon as the greenskin lowered his guard, Erik managed to grab one of its long ears and bit down with the small but already exceedingly sharp teeth of a newborn Ogre. The gnoblar shrieked, the adults laughed, and Erik...
He was happy.
It tasted so good!
---
The Chaos champion had killed the halfling with one monstrous blow. Sliced him clean through. It seemed the monster's lethal mastery was ready to claim another life instantly, but at the last second, Erik had managed to shoot the Chaos-worshiper in the head. For just a heartbeat, the enemy warrior hesitated. That split second was all Liandra needed to strike him from behind, across the neck. Such an attack could have decapitated an ox. But either the elf's blow hit a piece of the enemy's armor, or his bones had undergone reinforcing mutations.
Haargan—or whatever his name was—kept his head on his shoulders. Blood sprayed, but the champion didn't even seem to notice the wound.
I tried to hack at him. The enemy met my strike with his axe—not flat-topped, but edge-to-edge. Sparks showered in all directions as two weapons from the forges of Chaos collided.
With his shield, the champion blocked the attacks of Magg and the dwarf.
— Witness me!
I don't know who the madman was addressing: Tamurkhan or one of the Dark Gods. I attacked his head again, forcing him to block with his shield this time. More sparks and the dull ring of broken metal. It seemed even the Dawi-Zharr axe couldn't withstand this kind of butchery. A shard chipped off the blade of my weapon.
Steady, Jurgen. Remember your training. Don't let emotion cloud your mind. Look for the weak spots in his def— Shit!
The Chaos champion's axe nearly did to me what it had done to poor Erik. The shimmering blade ripped through part of my cuirass despite the remains of the magical reinforcement from the Winds of Metal. However, the extra protection gave me the fraction of a second needed to spring back.
Simultaneously, I tried to strike the enemy's arm, but changed my move at the last moment. Instead of attacking, I hooked his axe with mine, trying to foul his movements.
Haargan yanked his weapon back, nearly pulling me forward, but the tactic worked. The champion managed to block a blow from Magg, but Liandra caught him in the neck again. This time, the elf ripped open his throat.
The madman laughed even as blood pulsed from the wound.
— Witness me! — he croaked a second before I, Magg, and the dwarf brought our strikes down on his head simultaneously.
Weakened by blood loss, even this monster could no longer move with his previous speed. And yet, we literally had to mash his skull into small pieces before the Exalted Champion finally settled down.
I'm not sure, but I think even with a chunk of his brain gone, he continued to laugh, spitting blood and broken teeth.
— That's for Er! — Magg roared in fury, ripping the remains of the freak's head from his neck and biting down.
Meanwhile, the dwarf knelt beside the dead halfling.
— A glorious death, — the Dawi stated. — Grungni be my witness—a glorious one.
Erik's face expressed nothing, but his eyes were wide open, as if in the final moments of his existence he had seen something that struck him to the core of his soul. I hope that was the case.
I took my pistols back from him, tucking them into my sash. Time was short, but I had to prepare. Inspecting the trophy Dawi-Zharr axe, I found several cracks on the blade and a missing piece from the bottom. Damn. I'd grown to like this choppa. Then I looked at the Chaos champion's axe. It was practically intact. What incredible durability. The blade of the daemonic weapon shimmered slightly, and the air around it roiled.
— There is likely a minor daemonic spirit bound within this object, — Loom-Pia spoke up.
— Can we use it?
— Yes. However, it would be wise to dispose of such a trophy in time. For now, use it to fulfill the Great Plan. This leader is clearly marked by the Ruinous Powers, and thus must be destroyed. —
Hm. Loom-Pia didn't express interest in my affairs very often, but the idea of taking down Tamurkhan clearly appealed to him. So be it.
— For our gods! — I declared, wrenching the terrible axe from the fallen champion's hand. — And for our fallen!
— For Er and the Maw! — Magg roared.
— For the fury of Khaine and the wisdom of Asuryan, — Liandra said, more coldly than the rest of us.
— Grungni and Grimnir! — the dwarf chimed in.
With those words, we launched our attack to challenge Tamurkhan himself.