'Dark-loving bastard,' growled one of the Templars. 'Bit late now for prayers to the Lord Sigmar. On your feet! I'll not spill blood - even that of a betrayer of the faith - in the house of our Lord.'
There was no response from the kneeling, head-bowed figure. 'Pick him up,' gestured Gustav. "We'll drag him into the passage outside. Herr Konniger can ask his questions outside before we cut the devil's throat.'
The two Templars moved forward at their captain's command. Even as they did so, Konniger sensed something terribly wrong with the prone figure of the abbot. There was something about the figure's deathly stillness; something about the way the form under the cassock seemed somehow swollen and obese; something in the way the folds and creases of its vestments bulged and moved, almost as if...
'You heard the captain, heretic. On your feet. I'll not allow you to defile this holy place for a second longer than I have to-'
Konniger was already opening his mouth to call out a warning, filled with a terrible realisation, as the Templar aimed a kick into the side of the abbot.
A cloud of living, buzzing darkness exploded out of the abbot's corpse as the Templar's foot crashed into it, disturbing the thousands of insects that had filled Himerius's body to near bursting point or that were nesting in thick, crawling clusters amongst the layers of the monk's clothing.
Everyone inside the chapel was enveloped by the black cloud. 'Cover your faces!' warned Konniger, intuitively understanding the terrible death that must have befallen Himerius and shielding his own mouth and nose with the collar of his robe. This plague of flies was obviously some kind of daemon-work, the sage realised, but there were other mundane but no less lethal dangers here too, he knew. Maddened with fear, one of the Templars blindly swung his sword at the fly-filled air, as if he could hack a path through the cloud. Konniger ducked as the man's blindly-aimed back-swing almost took his head off.
Clearly, he had to do something, and fast.
He grabbed a burning torch from a nearby wall scion, intoning a few memory-dredged words of power over the simple flame. He always maintained a healthy disdain for magic and its practitioners, but what he was doing now was not magic as such. He had once been a priest of Sigmar, and still remembered the secret words of holy devotion through which a servant of the god might briefly invoke some of the deity's power as their own. It had been many years since Konniger had broken his ties of service to the Church, but he had never forgotten the necessary words of invocation, nor had he ever forsaken his personal vows to the god himself.
He was still a servant of Sigmar, and, here in the house of his god, his prayers and words of power were heard and answered.
A gushing lance of flame erupted from the torch, instantly vaporising and burning away those parts of the broiling cloud of flies which it touched. Konniger wielded the thing like a weapon, shouting the prayer words as he swung the torch back and forth, clearing a path through the living, seething cloud and achieving for real what the panicked Templar had uselessly been trying to do with his clumsy, futile sword blows.
'Back! Back through the doors to the passage outside!' called Konniger, waving the burning firebrand and rallying
the Templars to him. Together, they retreated back out of the doorway, Konniger waving the torch like a shield, creating a barrier between them and the daemonic plague of flies. The Templars almost fell through the doors, Gustav alone having the presence of mind to hang back and haul shut the wooden double doors as Konniger, bringing up the rear, backed through them, still warding off the buzzing, angry storm of flies. Only after the sage-detective was safely through did the Templar push shut the doors behind him. As soon as Konniger stepped across the threshold out of the chapel the bright jet of flame from the torch faded back to normal.
Konniger discarded the now-useless object without a second glance. The doors, man, seal the doors!'
Gustav grabbed a sword from one of his men's grasp in response to Konniger's warning, thrusting it through the dual set of door handles, employing the weapon as a makeshift door-beam. The doors held shut, but shook violently as the storm of insects battered angrily against them on the other side. The droning, buzzing sound was near- deafening, impossibly, unnaturally so, and the men had to shout to be heard over the noise.
They won't hold for long!' shouted Gustav, watching as - impossibly, yet again - the wood of the doors started to bulge outwards from the pressure being exerted upon it from the other side. He didn't care how many insects that cloud had been composed of, even though it had seemed far more than any one human form could ever have blasphemously contained; no amount of such tiny creatures could exert that much force and weight. There was dark sorcery at work here, and the daemonically-inspired nature of that terrible insect storm was now clearly evident to all of them.
"Your sword, captain,' asked Konniger. 'Was it truly blessed by Magnus the Pious himself?'
'If it wasn't, then all those who have wielded it before me for these last two hundred years have damned themselves as impious liars,' replied the Templar commander, not understanding the reasoning behind the scholar's seemingly strange and incongruous question.
Konniger extended his hand, the tone in his voice deadly serious. 'Then give it to me, and let us put its authenticity to the test, otherwise we're all surely damned to the Dark.'
The sage-detective took the sword from the officer's hand, expertly brandishing it as he slashed the face of the doors, cutting a precise line of patterns across them. As he did so, he mumbled more prayers to himself, invoking the power of the deity he had once served in his earlier years as a priest.
At his words, at the touch of the saint-blessed blade upon the wood, lines of fire spread across the surface of the door, marking out the pattern which the former holy brother of the Imperial faith had slashed into the wood. It was the sacred cross shape of the hammer of Sigmar.
At its blazing appearance, there was a dull roar of raging anger from behind the sealed doors. The violent shaking immediately stopped, as if something on the other side had recoiled in fear and pain. The furious, droning insect buzzing faded away, and a second later was gone.
The men standing before the doors looked at each other in dumbfounded amazement. The sigil on the door was still burning, but no longer with the same unearthly radiance. Konniger felt the power that had briefly flowed through him fade away as he handed the sword back to Gustav.
'My thanks, captain. I'm heartily glad to be able to confirm for all our sakes that your blade was indeed blessed by one of the Church's most holy and venerable saints.'
Inwardly, despite the danger they had all just been in, Konniger was elated. He had called to his god for help. Sigmar was here with them, and had answered that call. Perhaps, Konniger thought to himself, all was not yet lost.
Konniger ran towards the stone wall beside the doors, crouching down until he was almost lying on the floor, and pressed an ear to the stone, straining his senses as he listened hard to the mute and solid stonework of the monastery. The Templars gawped at him in amazement, exchanging puzzled, worried glances. They surely owed their lives to this strange Altdorf scholar, but watching his actions now, none of them were willing to discount the rumours they had heard about him being some kind of raving madman.
"West,' said Konniger in satisfaction, standing back up and brushing away dust and the remains of dead, fire-blackened flies from the folds of his robes. 'You can still faintly hear them within the stonework of the building, and, by the sounds of it, they're heading west.'
To the abandoned west tower?' suggested Gustav, immediately realising the import of Konniger's words.
'Exactly,' smiled Konniger, grimly. There is still much happening here that remains hidden from us, but at least now we know where the answers are possibly hidden.'
He looked sharply at the Templar officer. 'Captain Gustav, are you and your men in the mood for some stone-breaking?'
Now it was Gustav's turn to smile. To avenge the deaths of my men
? To end the evil abroad in this place? Certainly, Herr Konniger. Lead on.' He gestured towards one of his men, a large, powerfully-built man-at-arms whose muscles swelled beneath his padded leather jerkin and chainmail hauberk. A heavy warhammer was strapped across the man's back. 'Master Beck here can crack the head of a man in full plate helm or even the thick skull of a greenskin savage with one hammer swing. I doubt a wall of monk-built stonework will prove much of a challenge to him.'
Konniger nodded, and led the Templars away, heading towards the west tower at the far side of the monastery building, leaving behind them the sealed doors of the now silent and empty chapel. Inside the daemon-defiled holy chamber, the empty, insect-devoured husk of Abbot Himerius lay forgotten on the floor before the altar, his corpse still caught in a position of perpetual contrition and confession.
Whatever secrets the abbot had to tell, whatever he knew of the horrors that had been going on here undetected apparently for so long, he would now have to stand before Lord Sigmar and answer for them.
In the darkness of its prison, the daemon-thing hissed in anger at the failure of its insect servants who were even now returning to their master's lair. But they were not the only ones coming, the once-human creature sensed. The secret of its lair had now been discovered, and the sage and the holy warriors were on their way.
Another part of its diffused, nebulous mind buzzed in soothing reassurance, reminding it that all was far from lost. It had other servants at its disposal, did it not? To defend it and die for it. The things waiting in the woods outside, and one more was still at large within these walls. The creature focussed its new daemon-sight, seeking for
and finding the final one, seeing with satisfaction that it was where it should be.
One last task, and its work would be done. One final act of subservience, and it could be safely disposed of.
Up in the belfry, Rynok balanced on the precarious wood- board rim that ran round the edge of the shaft of the bell-tower, carefully wrapping the thick coils of bell-rope round his body. Twice round his waist and several more times round his neck, leaving enough slack between them for the ones round his neck to do their proper task. He had torn away the stitches of his cassock, hauling it down off his shoulders, baring his deformed, Chaos-damned flesh to the world. The thing at his back moaned and gibbered, but he no longer cared to listen to it. His task was almost done.
He stepped off the platform into nothingness, the weight of his falling body drawing the coiled lengths of rope tight around his waist and neck. The hideous twin-thing growing out of his back screeched in fear and excitement.
Rynok's neck snapped a split-second before his weight on the rope set the bell in motion, and the last thing the damned-for-all-eternity monk heard was the apocalyptic tolling of the huge bronze bell in the belfry above.
The bell kept ringing, sending out its summons to those waiting beyond the monastery walls as Rynok's corpse swung from side to side, battering with bone-crushing force against the walls of the belfry shaft. It didn't matter. The monk had already found the oblivion he had been praying for, and his work here was finally done.
The sound or the tolling bell rang out over the tree-tops of the darkened forest, setting off a chorus of excited whoops and barks from the ranks of the assembled beastmen.
Arek looked expectantly towards Sorren. The sorcerer nodded, clucking to himself in pleased satisfaction. 'See? Did I not say a signal would be sent to us when the time was right?'
He drew his sword, eliciting another chorus of excited roars from his troops. At his command, the beastman horde charged forward towards the monastery gates once more.
There was pandemonium in the refectory as the occupants reacted to the sound of the tolling bell. Templars nervously fingered their sword pommels, wondering if their prisoners were manifesting further new signs of Chaos contamination as the monks wailed and moaned in terror. The Templars considered the flagellant monks to be madmen at best, and, at worst Chaos-corrupted servants of the Unholy Powers. None of them thought to ask the monks about the specific source of their new-found terror.
The great bell of the monastery of Alt Krantzstein had never been rung in the entire long history of the Order of the Holy Three. The legend went, in a decree handed down from the sainted trinity themselves, that it would ring only of its own volition, and then only in two momentous occasions. The first was the prophesied second coming of Sigmar, as the patron deity of the Empire returned to save his faithful people in their greatest hour of need.
The second - closely related to the first, some theologians argued - was to herald in the end of the world.
Given the recent events in the monastery, and the unhappy fact that none of the well-documented portentous events that were supposed to precede the return of the Lord Sigmar had yet occurred, the monks could only assume that the tolling of the bell signalled the second and more calamitous of the two possibilities.
Perhaps, though, they were not far wrong. For, as far as most within the monastery were concerned, that night would indeed be the end of the world.
Hurrying through the passages of the monastery, Konniger and the others were stopped short by the tolling of the bell. Several more Templars, their so-far fruidess search of the building interrupted by the ominous sound, joined them at the entrance to the monastery's great hall.
'Herr captain, what's happening? Is it another attack?'
Gustav answered his man's urgent query with a shrug, apparently not knowing what to do or say. Events in this Sigmar-damned place were moving faster than he could keep pace with, and while he was still trying to get to grips with one Dark-inspired event, another one or two - equally ominous and mysterious - occurred in the meantime.
There was something lurking in this place he could not see, something intangible, yet able to manipulate events around them all. In trying to fight it or even understand what manner of foe he faced, Gustav secretly felt as clumsy and out-of-his-depth as the Templar brother who had tried to use his sword to cleave a path through that unnatural cloud of insect creatures. This was not what the captain's training or temperament were suited for, he knew. Give him an enemy he could see and perceive, and he would stand and face it without fear, pursuing it to the ends of the earth, if necessary.
As if on cue, there came the sound of another smaller bell, urgent and clanging, from nearby: the alarm bell from the guards on the battlements outside. The meaning of this he understood immediately, and almost welcomed the sound, since at least now he knew instantly how to respond. He looked towards the scholar.
'Another attack on the walls. Our brethren outside need our help...' He looked helplessly at Konniger, his voice tailing away.
'I understand. You and your men have more immediate matters to attend to. I will continue to deal with this other matter on my own.'
'Alone and unarmed?' queried Gustav, clearly torn between his mission to guard the scholar and the need, with battle imminent, to be with his men outside. 'I cannot allow that, Herr Konniger. I insist you take some of my men with you.'
"We both know you have no men to spare, captain. What good would taking men away from their places on the battlements do, if all it achieved in the end was making the task of the enemy outside that much easier? No, let me go alone. You have your work to do, and I have mine.
'Besides,' he added with another grim smile, 'Sigmar's favour has been with me so far, so I trust he has not abandoned me just yet.'
Gustav nodded, and gestured towards the Templar called Beck. Without a word, the man unslung his warhammer and handed it to Konniger. 'If I cannot give you an escort, I can at least give you a weapon,' noted Gustav. 'If Sigmar's favour is with you, then it seems appropriate that his weapon should go with you too.'
The two men - sage and soldier - nodded to each other in salute. 'Sigmar watch over you, Herr Konniger,' said Gustav as he turned and led his men off at a run towards the growing clamour from outside. Konniger watched them for a second, intoning
a silent prayer for their safely as he hefted the unfamiliar weight of the weapon in his hands.
A warhammer, one end of the forged-steel hammerhead blunt and solid, designed for crushing bone and pulverising flesh. The other end of the weapon's head had been shaped into a cruel metal beak, engraved to resemble the head and beak of the Templar order's mascot griffon beast, and was designed to smash through metal armour to reach the vulnerable enemy flesh inside. Not a subtle or artful weapon, reasoned Konniger, even if it was similar to that legendary weapon wielded by the Lord Sigmar in his mortal guise as Sigmar Heldenhammer.
Even though he disdained the use of weapons, Konniger had no little proficiency in the use of one or two of them. The warhammer was not one he was familiar with, however. It did not matter, he told himself, since he would be using the thing as a tool rather than a weapon, and the only material that the fearsome, heavy steel head would be smashing and pulverising would be ancient, crumbling stone and mortar rather than living flesh and bone. Or so he hoped.
He was about to leave when a sudden thought stopped him in his tracks.
The tolling of the bell had brought all the searchers running to meet here, at this central point. All of Gustav's men were accounted for, but it was only now, with a lurch of sudden and apprehensive awareness, that Konniger realised that there was still one person unaccounted for.
Sigmar's oath, he silently asked himself, afraid of what the answer might be, what had happened to Vido?
Vido frantically scrabbled with his dagger blade at the damnably resistant, rust-frozen internal workings of the door lock, aware all the time of the terrible sounds of the monstrous things crawling and flopping up the stairs towards him.
They had come out of the darkness, summoned from their lairs far back in the tunnels and passages of the surrounding
crypts by the light and the noise, and by the heavy slamming of the door which they no doubt had been conditioned to realise meant the coming of food. And by the scent of freshly-spilled human blood.
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