by Warhammer
My chest, Dietz thought. His employer was telling him something, but what? What about my chest? His arms were still held tightly, but he shifted, twisting his torso, trying to figure out what the glance had meant. Then something moved within his jacket and he understood. Glouste! He had tucked the tree-fox inside when they had entered the tunnels, what felt like hours ago, and his pet had curled up and gone to sleep in her warm little nest. In all the confusion he had completely forgotten about her. Now she stirred slightly, awakened by his movements, and began to poke her head out of his jacket.
'Stay,' Dietz whispered to her, meeting her bright-eyed gaze. 'Stay, Glouste. Wait. Be ready.' She twitched her whiskers at him, and then retreated so only the tip of her nose was visible. A quick glance around assured Dietz that none of the cultists had noticed. They were too busy watching the fight.
I have a weapon, Dietz thought, his eyes still following the back-and-forth of longsword and rapier. I may be able to break free, but what then? And when?
Even as he watched, Dietz heard muttering around him. Several of the cultists whispered together off to one side, and then slid away from him. They skirted the chamber, moving quietly along the wall towards the duel - three of them, each holding a short, heavy club.
They're going to attack Alaric, Dietz realised. They're tired of watching and worried that Kristoff might lose, so they're going to even the odds. He started to shout a warning, but just then Alaric, who had just tagged Kristoff again along the cheek, disengaged for an instant and looked right at him. He knows, Dietz realised suddenly as his friend and employer resumed the duel. It's what he's been waiting for.
Ten cultists had been here when Dietz and Alaric arrived, not counting Kristoff. Four had died during their initial attack. Three had just moved to flank Alaric. That left only three on Dietz - one holding each arm and another in front of him. Alaric had been slowing his duel until the cultists came for him, knowing it was the only way Dietz would have a chance to break free.
Dietz wanted to shout anyway, to tell Alaric not to sacrifice himself like this, but he couldn't. He understood. This wasn't just about Dietz - Alaric was no more eager to meet Morr than he was and knew they had both understood and accepted the risks when they entered the tunnels, but they had the statue to consider. One of them had to live long enough to destroy it and dawn was upon them now. Any moment the witch hunters would give the order and men would die above, their blood sluicing down the gutters and through the grating overhead. If the statue was there to receive that offering, the gate would open and Chaos itself would pour forth beneath the unsuspecting city. They could not allow that to happen. Alaric thought Dietz would stand a better chance of stopping that, apparently, and Dietz knew he had to respect that decision.
The three cultists were only a little way from Alaric, and judging from his stance the young nobleman knew it. So did Kristoff, whose desperation had shifted back to confidence at the sight of his followers.
'Glouste,' Dietz called softly, and the nose protruding from his jacket twitched in reply. 'Attack when I give the word. Understood?' The nose bobbed slightly in what he thought was affirmation, though he could never be sure how much she really comprehended. Then he glanced back up at the duel.
'You die now!' the trader snarled, advancing again, his sword held high.
'Not by your hand,' Alaric replied, laughing. 'Or will you ask Khorne to handle it for you?'
As planned, the insult and the casual use of his god's true name goaded Kristoff into action and he stepped forward, longsword slashing across and down, its point twitching suddenly to one side in an attempt to dart past Alaric's defences.
For an instant it looked as if the ploy had succeeded. The longsword was met by Alaric's rapier, catching it full on, and then Kristoff shifted his weight and his sword angled inward, gliding along Alaric's as its point thrust at his chest.
Alaric altered his stance in response, his elbow lifting and pointing his own sword downward, knocking Kristoff s longsword back away from him. Alaric leaned in, his forearm striking the trader's sword at its guard and shoving it farther out of the way, and then Alaric leaned back, arm cocked back as well, and jabbed forward suddenly. The rapier pulled back across Kristoff s body, leaving a neat cut across his robes. It suddenly moved forward and its tip pierced the trader's chest, half the sword's length following it into his body.
With a gasp and a gurgle, Kristoff collapsed, pulling his body off the sword as he fell.
'No!' One of the cultists next to Alaric shouted in disbelief as he saw his leader fall, and he stepped forward, weapon raised. One of his companions moved as well, and two clubs fell upon Alaric's head and shoulders, striking bone and flesh with a meaty thunk. Without a sound Alaric crumpled to the ground, the rapier falling from limp fingers.
'Now!' Dietz hissed to Glouste. 'Attack!' His pet darted forwards, out of his jacket in an instant. As he'd hoped she made for the nearest target, the cultist to his right,
and her sharp teeth lanced into the hand on his right arm.
'Aargh!' The cultist screamed and jerked back, colliding with the one beyond, clutching his torn hand.
'Get off!' Dietz snarled at the remaining cultist, twisting and grabbing the man's hand with his now-freed right hand. He squeezed, feeling the cultist's bones grinding together, and yanked the man in front of him. A quick kick struck the first cultist in the groin, doubling him over, and another took the second cultist in the head as he struggled to regain his feet, felling him for a second time. The three around Alaric were too far away to interfere, torn between beating up Alaric, aiding Kristoff, and running to apprehend Dietz. He was free, at least for the moment. Even as he realised that, however, Dietz heard a pattering sound and knew it was almost too late. The executions were done and the blood was starting to pour down.
'You failed,' the cultist in his grasp said, his face still twisted in pain, but bearing a mocking smile nonetheless. 'When the blood strikes the statue the gate will open and the Blood God's champion will step forth!'
Dietz thought quickly. He was too far from the statue to reach it in time. He had no weapons except the ones the cultists had dropped, Glouste - and the man trapped in his grip. He grinned back and was pleased to see the doubt and fear blossom in the other man's face. 'Not yet,' he said, and his other hand grabbed the man's waist' while his right hand shifted from hand to shoulder. He bent as his hands moved, shifting his feet to get better leverage. Then, with a grant, Dietz straightened, lifted the stunned cultist from his feet - and hurled him across the room.
It was not as prodigious a toss as the tentacled mutant had managed back in the tunnels, but Dietz was tall and his muscles had been hardened by years of labour. He also had fear and rage on his side, powering his desperate attempt. The cultist flew backward, sailing across the floor - and struck the statue full-force.
'Oof!' The man's shoulders and back collided with the heavy stone carving, doing him only a little damage and knocking the wind from him, but the impact rocked the statue on its base, unsettling it where it rested on the uneven stone floor. It teetered, causing Dietz's heart to skip - and then it fell.
Wham! The statue slammed to the ground, causing a small cloud of dust and tiny rock fragments. Cracks spider-webbed its surface, visible through the bloody coating, but it remained intact. It was no longer directly beneath the grating, however.
And just in time, as blood began to spill down from above, so much that it formed a thin curtain across the centre of the room. Droplets sprayed everywhere, some striking Dietz where he stood, others hitting Alaric as he lay upon the ground. Most of them, however, flowed straight down, pooling in the room's centre where the statue had been instants before, drenching the cultist, and all but drowning him-
-and then flowing down from that high point, a thin layer of blood creeping across the floor in every direction.
'No!' Even as Dietz watched, some of the blood touched the statue where it lay - and was sucked into the stone. A strang
e light appeared within the statue, a blood-red glow that soon filled the room and dwarfed the torches and the sunlight visible above. The glow rose, breaking free of its carved prison, compressing and elongating until it towered above the statue, and where it touched the carving the stone seemed to melt. The air around the glow shimmered, and everything in the chamber seemed to shudder and swell, and shrink, as if the light itself was causing the room to alter.
Then the glow deepened, turning darker. The light shifted to darkness, shadows roiling across it, and the mere sight of that swirling caused Dietz's stomach to heave and his eyes to burn. He tried to look away, but could not. Neither could anyone else. Everyone in the room stared, barely breathing, as the shadowy disk widened, its colours dimming until it resembled blood and ash, and blackened sludge all teeming about one another in mid-air.
Then, through that strange swirling mass, a shape advanced. A limb pierced the curtain: a great scaled foot settling onto the stone floor, its claws digging into the rock.
The gate was open. Khorne's champion, a daemon of Chaos, was loosed upon Middenheim, and the world.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
'Aaah!'
The cultist Dietz had thrown had rolled over onto his hands and knees, and shaken the blood from his face. Unfortunately that meant he saw the daemon standing before him. His scream was high, almost girlish, and quickly faded away, leaving nothing but an odd tittering sound to issue from his slack lips. The cultist's eyes were wide but unfocused and blood dripped from his ears and nostrils as he turned in a circle, around and around, never stopping, still tittering. The sight had driven him mad.
Alaric, lifting his head as he struggled to regain his senses, could hardly blame the man. He could feel his own sanity fighting to break free, desperate to run screaming from the sight before him. The daemon had most of its leg through, and a hand emerged as well - if he could call it a hand. It perched at the end of what must be an arm and it had several of what could be fingers, but surely fingers did not writhe like maddened snakes, wriggling every which way? Surely fingers did not pulsate, widening and thinning along their length? Nor did they have barbs at the end, which widened into circular teeth-filled apertures that could only be called mouths? Nothing had hands like that, at least, nothing from this world.
Think rationally, Alaric told himself desperately, levering himself up on one arm and then getting one knee beneath him as well. Keep your mind focused on the small details. Do not let it overwhelm you.
The skin... that was something. He concentrated on the skin, what he could see of it. It was scaled, but not like a snake or a fish. More like - well, more like a shingled roof, each scale overlapping the one before it and protruding above it a bit. Except that these scales were sharp and curved outward, creating little hooks all up and down the creature's limbs. And the colour! His mind tried to rebel again, but he forced it back. That colour was like nothing he had ever seen, like nothing in this world. It was dark and his mind screamed red, but his eyes claimed black or perhaps green or sometimes brown. When he tried to name the colour he could think only of death and blood, and war and pain. That was the colour it bore.
One of the cultists behind him had collapsed, foaming at the mouth, at the creature's appearance, and as he reclaimed his rapier and stood, Alaric saw the one by the statue spinning in circles. For some reason the sight helped calm him. Is this what you expected, he wanted to ask them? Is this what you hoped for? You summoned this creature. Are you displeased with the results?
At least one cultist was not disappointed. 'My lord,' Kristoff moaned, clutching his chest, but still struggling to sit up. Alaric cursed - apparently his aim had been off. It was a good job his father and old Mardric were not here to see that. 'We welcome you in the name of Khorne! We salute you! We praise your strength and rejoice in your aid!'
'Oh shut up,' Alaric told him, kicking idly at Kristoff as he walked past him to approach the creature. It was still emerging from the strange dark-lit disk, moving as slowly as a large man manoeuvring his way through a tight doorway. The rest of the arm was visible now, up to the barbed shoulder and the strange overlapping plates across the shoulder and upper chest. Its lower chest was covered in thick hairs or perhaps they were tentacles since they waved about wildly, but at least it was not armoured. If the creature possessed vital organs then some of them would be in the hairy abdomen, Alaric hoped. Not letting himself think about what he was doing he stepped forward and lunged, his blade sliding between several of the squirming hairs and sinking deep into the daemon's flesh.
It shuddered, and then made a strange deep gasping sound, wet and raspy, that stabbed at Alaric's head. The sound came again and again, and Alaric felt his own blood run cold as he realised the creature was laughing at him. He had stabbed it, delivering what would have been a mortal blow for any man, and it laughed.
The hand swooped in, faster than Alaric could clearly see, and grasped his rapier a foot below the guard, just before the point where it entered the body. The hand turned suddenly, a sharp motion, and his sword snapped, leaving him holding a hilt with a foot of jagged metal above it. The other portion disappeared within the creature, sucked in as if the daemon was made of brackish black water and the sword tip had been tossed in from above.
'Yes!' Behind him Kristoff had managed to regain his feet and tottered forward, swaying, face still pale from blood loss. 'Display your strength, great one! Teach this unbeliever the folly of opposing you! With your power this city will fall and the Lord of Skulls will feast upon the blood we provide! He will know us as his favoured servants and - urk!'
Kristoff stopped suddenly, his words choked off as the daemon's hand lashed out for a second time, this time catching him by the throat. It lifted, raising him so his feet dangled above the ground, and then those wriggling fingers tightened. The trader-turned-cult leader gasped for breath, his face going purple, both hands beating uselessly at those monstrous fingers. Then something long and thick and sinuous - a tail? A tentacle? Alaric forced his mind back to smaller details - whipped through the portal and wrapped around Kristoffs waist. It tugged down while the hand yanked up and as Alaric looked away hastily the trader's head was torn from his body. Blood fountained from his neck and the tentacle disappeared back through the portal, taking the body with it. Alaric heard a loud throaty noise, punctuated by gulps, and realised that the daemon was drinking Kristoffs blood. The trader's head had fallen to the floor and rolled up against the nearest wall, its eyes still wide with surprise. Perhaps, thought Alaric, this was not what he had expected either.
The remaining cultists were certainly not thrilled at the daemon's response to Kristoff s greeting. They fled, screaming and crying, and pleading for their lives, leaving only Alaric and Dietz behind to watch as the daemon continued its advance. The tentacle had returned and part of what would be considered a hip had emerged as well.
'What can we do?' Dietz shouted, running over to Alaric, and for an instant Alaric wanted to hug the older man. Dietz's face was pale, his eyes wide and he had been muttering something as he rushed over, but his voice was level and his movements normal. He was keeping his sanity tightly leashed as well.
'I don't know,' Alaric admitted, still unable to look away from the horrid sight of the daemon's emergency 'I stabbed it-'
'I saw,' Dietz confirmed. 'Weapons won't work.'
'No they won't,' Alaric agreed, 'and we couldn't fight it anyway. Look at the size of it! You saw what it did to Kristoff He shuddered at the recent memory. Much as Kristoff had deserved to die for his crimes no one deserved that. 'It's too powerful for us,' he finished softly.
'We could get help,' Dietz pointed out, but Alaric shook his head.
'No time,' he said. 'We'd have to navigate the tunnels again and then make our way back to the surface. Then we'd have to find someone who would believe us. Kleiber might, but by the time we found him and convinced him, and he marshalled some troops the daemon would have completed his entrance. Once he's fully in this
world he'll be invincible.'
'Then we can't let him enter,' Dietz argued. Alaric started to laugh, and then stopped.
'It shouldn't take this long,' he said, not realising he had said it out loud until Dietz responded beside him.
'What, you'd hoped it would be faster?' He laughed, a short, bitter sound that was a relief from the madness nonetheless, and Alaric managed a weak chuckle in return.
'No, of course not,' he replied, 'but the process should have been much quicker. The gate opens and the daemon steps through. Why is it inching through one piece at a time?'
The daemon was now almost halfway through - the tentacle was revealed as sprouting from its shoulder just below the neck, and one powerful, bat-like wing had edged through as well, fluttering as if eager to take flight.
Dietz pointed to the statue where it lay on the floor. 'It fell over,' he said. 'Did that alter the gate?'
Alaric frowned as he thought about everything he'd learned about Chaos back in school and added in what he had deduced recently about the statues and their function. 'It shouldn't have,' he said finally. 'Not just laying it down. The portal would still open normally.' He studied the statue instead. Even with its strangely deformed edges and its partially melted base it was reassuringly solid and normal compared to the daemon it had summoned.
'It's the blood,' he decided after a moment. 'It only received blood along one side.' He gestured towards the statue and the markings they could now see carved upon it - the ones on the side against the floor were glowing with the same dark light as the portal itself. 'The portal is only partially open' he told Dietz. That's why the daemon has to enter so slowly.'
'What if we smash it?' asked Dietz, reaching down to pick up a club that one of the cultists had dropped. He indicated the cracks across the statue's side. 'It's damaged already.'
'That might be slowing the process as well' Alaric admitted. He thought about it and nodded. 'Yes, breaking the statue might close the gate, but we'll have to act quickly, before the daemon can stop us.' He frowned, glancing around. 'It would be best if we had a distraction.' Then his gaze fell upon the cultist still turning in circles. 'Right, leave that part to me.'